But there were no soldiers standing in the courtyard beneath the cloudy autumn sky. Instead, Luzia saw a man she recognized, clad head to toe
in darkest blue velvet, the sleeves slashed with cream satin, a fur-lined cloak tossed over his shoulder. This was Víctor de Paredes, Hualit’s lover, the man whose money had bought this house and the very clothes on her aunt’s back. His dark hair was short, his forehead high and white, his eyes cold, wet, and green as a mossy stone.
It was said Víctor de Paredes was the luckiest man in Madrid, maybe all of Spain. His ships passed through every storm unscathed. The men he sent looking for gold and silver always found it. Blight never struck his crops and his roof never leaked unless he was thirsty and in need of a drink. No
one could account for the fact that he had achieved the rank of caballero and was accepted in the best circles—despite continuing to engage in trade. He had a scar shaped like a crescent moon on his cheekbone, the result of a piece of stray birdshot during a hunt, a testament to his good fortune. That bit of lead and iron would have taken the eye of a less lucky man. When
people said his name, they tapped their own fingers to their cheekbones, as if the gesture might bring them luck too. But Luzia had to wonder, if he was so lucky, why the birdshot had hit him at all.
De Paredes had a tidy beard and close-cropped mustache. Everything about him seemed precise and he stood at an angle, as if he were posing for a portrait. Luzia saw that he had removed his hat. Then he’d been here for a while, waiting.
“Go on,” said Hualit. “Make your curtsy.”
Luzia did her best, trying to remember her servant’s stance of deference and to keep from staring at Don Víctor. But he didn’t seem quite real to her. She had been visiting her aunt’s house since she was a child, and she had only glimpsed Víctor de Paredes twice—first that time on the street and
then once, when he’d arrived early, and Hualit had shooed Luzia into the kitchen with Ana, who hadn’t looked up from the pot she was stirring.
Luzia had waited for them to leave the courtyard and then scurried out to the street, doing her best to ignore the sounds of her aunt’s sighs and laughter.
Now he had appeared like a man in costume, an actor in a play, but she had no idea what role he’d come to perform. She wondered where Ana was. Had Hualit sent her away, or was she hiding somewhere in the house? Was Víctor de Paredes here to warn them of the inquiry? Or—and Luzia knew not to hope it—had he come to offer some kind of rescue? For all her
thoughts of brave orphans and wily queens, didn’t they also have help from kindly mentors? Beneficent kings?
Don Víctor looked her up and down. A crease appeared between his
brows and his long face lost its dignified stillness. He looked like an infant about to pass gas.
“When you described her …” His displeasure was obvious, a man who had ordered something at a high price only to be disappointed upon delivery.
“She is smart and obedient,” said Hualit. “Far more valuable qualities in a young woman.”
“But for what we intend …”
“Another challenge,” conceded Hualit. “A mighty one.”
A woman could bear only so much. “If you wish to say I am plainer than expected, I ask only that you address your insult to me rather than talking around me as if I were a candelabra.”
De Paredes stared at her as if she actually were a candlestick that had begun speaking.
Hualit laughed lightly but pinched Luzia’s arm. “There, you see? A bit of spirit is just what’s needed.”
For what? Luzia wanted to ask, but Hualit’s nails were digging into her arm through her sleeve, pressing her demand for silence into Luzia’s skin.
“Has she any education?” Don Víctor asked. “She’s a quick study,” said Hualit.
Even Luzia knew that wasn’t an answer.
“Tell her what you want.” This new voice seemed to come from nowhere, water without a source. It had the lifeless quality of ashes gone cold.
“Patience, Santángel,” Don Víctor replied, with the barest glance over his shoulder.
Beside her, Luzia felt a shudder pass through her aunt’s body.
Luzia peered into the shadowed alcove where she and Hualit usually sat to have their wine. A man was bundled into the corner, a black cloak drawn tight around him though there was no chill in the air. His hair was so fair it gleamed white, and his eyes glittered in the gloom, silvery nacre. He looked less like a man than a statue, an icon made from shells and stone, a sorry saint tucked into a niche in a neglected parish church.
“I have all the patience in the world,” said the creature in the corner, the man Don Víctor had called Santángel. “But this is like watching a cat play with its supper. Let the mouse go or explain what meal you intend to make of her.”
Don Víctor kept his eyes on Luzia. “I will see the trick you performed for Pérez’s spy last night. Your milagrito.”
So Luzia had been right. The red-bearded man had been a spy. Was Pérez an inquisitor, then? A priest or a cardinal of some kind? And what was she meant to do now? Lie? Say that it had been some silly sleight of hand? She was afraid to look at Hualit for guidance.
“Go on,” said Don Víctor as she stood there, motionless. “Pretend it is another of Doña Valentina’s sad parties. Show me.”
“There are no candles,” she said, her voice reedy with fear. “Show me something else.”
Luzia whispered, “There is nothing else.” “No education, but she’s learned how to lie.”
“Don’t be unkind, Víctor,” Hualit scolded gently. “Luzia is a simple girl.” Simple, stupid, graceless. All the things she’d been warned she must be.
Certainly she was fool enough to end up in this predicament. The
crossroads was far behind her, all opportunity to make the prudent choice gone. Hualit had warned her, but Luzia hadn’t listened. She’d liked the feeling of the refranes in her mouth too much, the music that belonged to her alone, a small thing, a nearly useless thing, but hers. Maybe the magic she used was demonic after all. She had wondered sometimes who
answered when she sang her little songs. What if it was the devil who heard her whispered prayers?
“She’s frightened,” said Santángel. “And she’s useless. Can you not see this is beyond her?” He stood beneath the arch now, like a bat emerging
from its cave, still sheltered by the shade of the desiccated grapevines that grew over the colonnade. He was unusually tall, and the skin stretched tight over the sharp bones of his face. He looked at once beautiful and like he
was dying, as if a sheet had been laid over a particularly handsome corpse. And he was lean enough that she wondered if he was a priest, or some kind of monk who would fast himself to dust to bring himself closer to Christ.
His eyes had a curious silver quality, glinting like coins, and it was only when she met his gaze that she realized she’d seen him before, that day on the street outside her aunt’s house when the almond trees had bloomed.
He’d been huddling in Víctor de Paredes’s coach, and Luzia had experienced the same sensation that morning that she felt now, as if she
were lifting straight out of her shoes. She gripped Hualit’s arm more tightly, convinced for a moment that she might simply float away, or humiliate herself by vomiting on the courtyard stones.
“Perhaps some refreshment?” Hualit offered, lifting an elegant hand. “Good decisions are seldom made without a little wine.”
Hualit’s gesture was as graceful as ever, her voice steady and full of that warm tone that reminded Luzia of a sweet glass of jerez. Only Luzia knew her aunt too well. She was nervous. It was there in the tight corners of her smile, the tense angle of her head. Hualit was afraid—but not of Don Víctor. She was afraid of the pale stranger in the alcove, curled into his cloak like an autumn leaf. She was afraid of Santángel.
“I didn’t come here for wine and conversation,” said Don Víctor, an edge to his voice.
Hualit gave a brief nod and squeezed Luzia’s arm again. “Show them.”
Did she want Luzia to pretend to fail? Were they staging a play of their own? It would be easy enough. Don Víctor and his friend were already
prepared to dismiss Luzia, to believe she was a fraud. He would be angry at Hualit for wasting his time, but no doubt she would find some way to
console him.
Or did Hualit mean it? Luzia couldn’t help but think of the look of assessment on her aunt’s face the last time they had parted. How had Don Víctor come to be in this courtyard? How did he know of her association with Hualit unless her aunt had been the one to tell him? Calculation was a natural state of being for a woman who lived two lives, and looking around the courtyard, Luzia wondered: Had her aunt set this stage to her own
liking?
Well, if Luzia had learned anything from Hualit it was the value of powerful friends. She might snicker at Vitoria Olmeda trying to lure Luzia beneath her roof, but she couldn’t sneer at Víctor de Paredes, her own patron. His servants dressed more finely than Don Marius himself. Luzia might burn. Or she might sprout wings after all—very fine wings of velvet and pearls.
Luzia stepped away from her aunt, forcing Hualit to release her arm. She curved her hand around her mouth, hiding her lips, and bent to the
grapevine as if whispering some news to it. It was the first song she’d sung, the first magic she’d learned from Hualit. “Quien no risica, no rosica,” she coaxed, words lifted from a letter written by an exiled hand. She would
grow Don Víctor a splendid bunch of grapes and he would invite her to be a part of his staff. She could work in the kitchens or maybe be trained as a maid. She’d stuff her pockets with gold coins, and have more than one dress, and pay for masses to be said to help her parents’ souls out of purgatory.
The vine unfurled as if eager to hear more of this glorious future, a green strand that emerged from the dead gray stalks, twisting and curling, reaching for purchase, hard green grapes bursting from its leaves in a swelling cluster, their taut skin flushing pink then red as garnets, sweet and round, begging to be burst between someone’s teeth. She dared a glance up at Hualit, who stood with arms crossed, her hands cupping her elbows, at De Paredes leaning forward with his lips slightly parted, and at sickly Santángel, his disinterested eyes like opals, gray then green then gold.
Again she felt herself rising out of her shoes.
The vines leapt, twining around the column, sprawling over the courtyard in an undulating carpet of curling shoots and velvety leaves. They exploded into thick bunches of red grapes, surging over the lip of the fountain, filling its basin. They climbed the walls, lunged up and over the roof. Hualit sprang back. De Paredes stumbled as the vines galloped over his shoes and twined around his ankles.
Luzia clapped her hand over her mouth, stifling her song. A few notes, a nothing, barely a milagrito, a scrap of tune she used to make a pot of herbs grow in the winter, a white rose bloom recklessly in the Prado to bring herself a little cheer, and once, when Águeda’s daughter had wept on her wedding day, saying there were no flowers for her hair, a crown of sweet-
smelling jasmine when it was most needed. It was the smallest magic, meager, slight.
So what had happened? Why were they now standing in a shaded bower of grape leaves, the sky barely visible, the vines creaking, water from the fountain splashing onto the fruit clogging its star-shaped basin and dribbling onto the courtyard tiles? Why did she feel the echo of that slender tune
inside her lungs, a song desperate to be sung again, louder, the shape of it so large it might crack her ribs in its desire to be freed?
Víctor de Paredes’s eyes were alight, his cheeks flushed. He looked like a man who had stumbled into a room full of treasure and didn’t know what to seize first. Luzia could sense Santángel watching her from the deep shadows, but she was afraid to look at him again.
At last Don Víctor reached up and plucked a grape from the swollen mass beside his head. He popped it into his mouth, closed his eyes and chewed, swallowed, no sound in the courtyard but the click of his teeth and tongue and throat working, the sighing of the vines.
When his eyes opened, the greed was still there, but he’d lost his unruly air. He spread his cloak over his shoulders and settled his hat on his head. A man who knew what business had to be done.
“An invitation will come to you through your mistress and you will accept it,” he said to Luzia. He gestured to Santángel to follow and strode past them to the door, crushing grapes beneath his black leather boots. “Turn your mind to making her presentable,” he called to Hualit as he passed through the door to the street.
Santángel trailed him, his cloak gathered tight around his narrow shoulders. She could not make sense of the pity she glimpsed before he raised his hood to hide his face and those strange glimmering eyes.
