“Presentable for what?” Luzia demanded when the door closed behind Santángel.
Hualit sagged as if her bones had gone soft, then marched to
where the table was set with the small jade glasses and heaps of cheese and dates that no one had touched. She poured herself a cup of wine and gulped it down, then poured another and brought it to Luzia.
Luzia pushed it away. “What am I doing here? What does your patron want with me?”
Hualit downed the second cup. “Never refuse wine, Luzia. You don’t know when you may be offered it again.”
“Who was that man? The one with the white hair?”
This time, Hualit tried to pass off her shiver with a shake of her shoulders. “Guillén Santángel. He is … a member of the De Paredes household and has been for a very long time.”
It was hardly an explanation, but Luzia had more pressing questions. “Why did you do this? Why did you bring me here?”
“Your reputation demanded it. If I hadn’t brought you to Víctor, someone else would have.”
“Does he know I’m your niece?”
“Certainly not. I told him you’re an orphan—which is true—and let him surmise the rest.”
“So he thinks I’m a bastard raised at the Colegio de Doctrinos?”
“You gave me little choice.” Hualit dropped onto the cushions and poured another glass of wine. She was one of the most beautiful women Luzia had ever met, but in this moment she looked only old and tired. “You need allies now. We both do. The man you met last night belongs to Antonio Pérez.”
Antonio Pérez. “Not—”
“The king’s former secretary, Luzia. He is the wiliest, most dangerous man in Spain, and now you have his notice. This is where your miracles have gotten you. You think Marius Ordoño can protect you from Antonio Pérez? You think that the king will simply watch you curtsy and bob your head stupidly and let you return to emptying chamber pots?”
“The king?” Luzia’s voice frayed, cracking on the words. “But surely—” “The king wants miracles and Pérez has promised to provide them. He is
hosting a torneo at La Casilla to find a holy champion.”
Luzia sank down beside Hualit. “I will have that wine now.” Hualit poured.
“Well,” Luzia said when she’d finished her second cup. “I suppose I’m doomed.”
“Don’t be an idiot. You’ve been given an opportunity and I will help you seize it. For the both of us.”
“Is the mouth of a shark an opportunity?” “For the shark it is.”
Luzia knew the price of fish and how to tell when an orange was at its sweetest. She knew how to get the stains out of linen and wipe the streaks from glass. She knew nothing of politics or influence. “These waters are too deep, Hualit.”
“You must get used to calling me Catalina. Or better yet Señora de Castro de Oro.”
Luzia gave an exaggerated bow. “My apologies, señora. But changing your name doesn’t change our circumstance. It can’t shake the Jews from the boughs of our family tree.”
“Let me see to that.”
She had calculation in her eyes once again, and at last, Luzia understood. “You knew,” said Luzia. “You knew Don Víctor would take an interest.
You told me to stop my milagritos because you were certain I would disobey you. Did you know Antonio Pérez’s spy would be at Casa Ordoño?”
Hualit gave a small shrug. “It was for you to decide what disaster you might court.”
Luzia rose and felt the wine pulling at her balance. Hualit had set the trap. She’d provoked her and it had been Luzia’s own stubborn pride that she’d relied upon, her belief that her gifts must count for something.
“You know the same refranes,” Luzia said. “You’re the one who taught me the words. Why can’t you be the one to court Pérez and the king?”
“You have no talent for politics. I have no talent for magic.” Hualit said it lightly, but Luzia didn’t think she imagined the bitterness in those words.
How had she never grasped this? Hualit couldn’t work the refranes, not the way Luzia did. She couldn’t hear the music of them, or she gladly would
have seized this opportunity for herself. “Think for a moment, Luzia. Consider what Víctor is offering you. How do you think I transformed myself into Catalina de Castro de Oro? Consider the cost of becoming a widow suitable for more than an hour’s rutting from a man like Víctor de Paredes. You cannot imagine the degradation it required to make a new
name and a new history for myself, to prune our family tree just so.”
A stillness descended in the courtyard, as if something powerful might be listening. Fate or God, or more dangerous yet, a curious neighbor. The
grapes Luzia had created hung heavy from the arbor, strange to her now, as if someone else had made them bloom and ripen. She had the uneasy sensation that if she held one of those grapes in her hand, she would feel it tremble in her palm, as if it were an egg, something waiting to be born beneath its thin red shell. What might it become? What might she? Could Víctor de Paredes rewrite her history so easily?
“He can give me a name?” A real name. An Old Christian name, free from doubt or taint or suspicion. She could seek employment in better households. She might marry and have children without fear. She might be free to speak, to read, to be seen.
“He must. If he is to present you to Pérez.”
Impossible. Dangerous. They were all mad to consider it.
“Your ambition is clouding your judgment,” Luzia said, angry at the hunger in her voice, the longing, the greedy thing inside her that couldn’t turn away from this chance. “I can’t play this game.”
“You leave the game to me,” said Hualit. “I can play with the best of them.”
Not far from that quiet courtyard, Víctor de Paredes’s coach clattered over the cobbles of one of the capital’s newly paved streets, and Santángel watched the city slide past, the crooked mess of brick and sloping adobe walls, the occasional stone facade, all crowded together. He thought of the
winding streets of Toledo, the hills of Granada. Madrid bored him. He was sick of the smell of horseshit and filth, the nattering of people. He was sick of everything.
“Are you listening, Santángel?” He nodded, though he wasn’t.
“It’s late to secure an invitation to La Casilla,” Víctor continued. “Pérez’s little contest is only a few weeks away, but I will find a path.”
“I have no doubt you’ll try.” Nothing was out of reach for Víctor de Paredes. There was no limit to his influence or his aspirations. Or his good fortune, of course. “But Pérez’s other hopefuls have been preparing for months. The girl will be at an impossible disadvantage.”
“She will manage,” Víctor said. “Or she won’t.”
His easy tone didn’t fool Santángel. Certainly Víctor had hoped to build himself a menagerie before, a casa de fieras. His other prospects had proved too risky, and presenting an illiterate scullion to Antonio Pérez might prove more perilous still. If Víctor could have taken his family name out and polished it to a high shine every night, he would have. So if he really intended to back this girl in this very public endeavor, she’d have no choice but to succeed.
“You’re so sure Pérez will allow it?” Santángel asked. “He doesn’t like you.” Bribes would be of no use. Pérez was the only man in Madrid with more money than Víctor de Paredes.
“He will. He’s too desperate to regain the king’s favor to bar the door to her potential.”
“And what will he find when he opens that door?”
Víctor sighed. “I do wish she presented a more appealing candidate. But you saw what she can do.”
“A bit of household magic.”
“I know, I know. You’ve seen wonders. But try to remember that the court has not witnessed the miracles you have.”
“You should remember that as well. What that sad, shuffling shadow of a girl managed has nothing to do with God or His angels.”
“I am not concerned by that.”
“More fool you. Is a title worth so much that you would risk your life and fortune?”
Víctor looked at him as if he were mad. “Of course. And when I’m done with her, that shadow of a girl will burn so bright with holy light the Pope
will have to squint to look at her.”
Santángel almost laughed. How human Víctor seemed, how at his ease, brimming with confidence and humor, happily blaspheming as if he and Santángel were old friends. Maybe they were. A master could never truly know a servant. But a servant must know his master well, and it was not
hard to understand Víctor de Paredes. He was as ambitious as his father and grandfather had been before him. He was a caballero but he wished to rise higher, and for that he would need the ear of the king, something not even Santángel could provide. Since the loss of the armada, Philip had become even more of a recluse, hiding in El Escorial like some kind of wounded suitor, his gift of bloody war rebuffed by England’s heretic queen.
It wasn’t just the king who was sulking. It was as if all of Madrid, all of Castile, shared his dark mood. Their great navy in ruins. Their prayers unanswered. English pirates laying siege to the coast. The warnings of
Piedrola and the dark prophecies of that stupid child Lucrecia de León had all been fulfilled. The filthy streets of the capital were as full of discontent as they were of piss and garbage. Who was this Austrian to squander their taxes and their sons in his endless wars? What if God had turned his back
on Spain and her empire? Philip heard their muttering. It was why he’d sent the Inquisition after Lucrecia and her followers.
“You shouldn’t be so eager to throw your lot in with Pérez,” Santángel warned, even as he wondered why he bothered. Perhaps because after all these years he still wanted to save his own cursed neck, and his fortunes could not be untangled from Víctor and his kin. “The king has no love for him anymore.”
“The king’s mood will change when Pérez brings him a champion.” “Your champion.”
“Precisely.” “A scullion.”
“I am a beggar at the table and I must take what crumbs fall to me.
Besides, the prospect of the Marquesa de Ardales is an olive farmer’s son.” Now a small smile crept across Víctor’s face, his scar crinkling slightly.
If only that scrap of metal had pierced his eye and gone straight through his skull. Santángel had wondered about that moment too many times. Víctor had no sons. If he had died on that hunt, would Santángel have been free?
Or would he have been doomed to sit in place, waiting until a De Paredes
heir could be found to command him? “She surprised you,” Víctor said. “Admit it.”
Santángel would confess no such thing. At least not to Víctor. But to himself? He might as well admit he’d expected another fraud. He’d met countless supposed mystics and holy men in his long life. Monks who claimed they could levitate, seers whose hands bled when they were
possessed by visions, dousers and diviners. But he couldn’t deny what the girl had done in that courtyard or the way his blood had leapt at it. An
unwelcome sensation. He had been asleep for so long. He didn’t want to rouse himself to part the curtains and squint against the sunlight. Yet here
was this sad servant pulling magic from the air and forcing him awake. And what a girl—shoulders hunched, eyes downcast, without dignity or beauty or fire. A sorry vessel for power.
His stomach growled. He was hungry for the first time in what felt like years.
“She has some talent,” Santángel said grudgingly. “But that won’t be enough. You expect that frightened, homely thing to survive among Pérez’s vultures? If you wish to wreck your reputation and bring ruin upon your family, by all means, bring your scullion to La Casilla, and when she fails, I will enjoy your humiliation.”
That much at least was true.
“She will not fail,” said Víctor. “You will make certain of it. You saw the power in her.”
Saw it? Santángel had felt his bones tremble with it. “What I saw was wild. Unpredictable. A child who has learned to start a fire is powerful too.”
“She can be trained.”
“How certain you are. And if something goes wrong? Will you see your family dragged to Toledo for trial? Yours is a grand fortune and one I’m
sure Church and crown would love to pluck.”
“You will keep my family from ruin, as you always have.” Víctor tugged gently at his beard. “You will teach this girl. You will make sure she
conquers the tests Pérez puts before her and that she wins his tournament.
Pérez will have the king’s favor and be made his secretary once more. The king will have his champion to best England’s whore queen. And I will be a count. Perhaps a duke. In time a grandee.”
“Everyone will be happy.” “Even you, Santángel.”
“Now that truly would be a miracle.”
“Of course you will be happy,” Víctor said. “You will be free.” Santángel stilled the tapping of his gloved hand on his knee. He watched
Víctor’s face. Freedom was not something Víctor joked about, not something he ever spoke of. When he had been a boy he had made Santángel promises. That he would not be cruel like his father or his grandfather before him, that he did not wish for a slave. That had changed, as all things did. Santángel stayed silent, waiting.
“Train her well,” Víctor said. “Secure her success as the king’s favorite, and you will be released from my service.”
He couldn’t mean it. And yet … if this girl could win, if she could claim a place by the king’s side, she might be both spy and servant for Víctor de Paredes, more valuable than Guillén Santángel had ever been.
Freedom. After hundreds of years. First hunger, now fear. And all in one afternoon. But they weren’t such different things really. This was the fear of wanting something he had forced himself to believe would remain forever out of reach.
Was it even possible to make the scullion a success? He thought of her standing in the courtyard, her white cap clamped to her head, her ruddy cheeks, her rough, red hands balled into fists as the magic overtook her.
“This will end badly, Víctor.”
Víctor de Paredes smiled. “For someone, perhaps. But not for me.”
