Page 2 of The Familiar

Aunt Hualit had only laughed when Luzia told her. “If a little bit of magic could make us rich, your mother would have died in a palace full of books, and I wouldn’t have had to fuck my way to this beautiful house. You’re lucky all you got was a spider bite.”

Her aunt had taught her the words, pulled from letters written in countries far across the sea, but the tune was always Luzia’s. The songs just came into her head, the notes making a pleasant buzz on her tongue—to double the sugar when there was no money for more, to start the fire when the embers had gone cold, to fix the bread when the top had burned so badly. Small ways to avert small disasters, to make the long days of work a little more bearable.

She had no way of knowing that Doña Valentina had already visited the kitchen that morning, or that she had seen the burnt bread in its pan. Because while Luzia had been born with certain talents, far-seeing was not one of them. She wasn’t prone to visions or trances. She saw no futures in the patterns of spilled salt. If she had, she would have known to leave the bread untouched, and that it was far better to endure the discomfort of Doña Valentina’s anger than the peril of her interest.

CHAPTER 2

Valentina had no handmaid, so it was left to the scullion to help her undress every night, to douse the candles, wipe down the windows and seal them tight, and set the chamber pots beneath the beds. Usually Valentina was able to ignore the girl. She was a good enough worker, appropriately drab in her linen and wool, not the type to attract notice. It was one of the reasons Valentina had hired her, though truth be told, she’d not had much choice. The wages she could afford to offer were low, and with so few hands to help, the work was hard.

But this night, as the girl unhooked the back of Valentina’s gown and brushed it down to remove any dust, Valentina asked, “What’s your name?” She must have known the scullion’s name at some point, but had used it too rarely to commit it to memory.

“Luzia, señora,” the girl said without looking up from her work.

“And do you have a suitor?”

Luzia shook her head. “No, señora.”

“A shame.”

Valentina expected a mumbled yes, señora. Instead, Luzia, folding the dress into its trunk, said, “There are worse things for a woman than being alone.”

I was happier in my mother’s house. The thought came unbidden to Valentina, the grief sudden and overwhelming. But of course there was no greater shame than an unmarried daughter, nothing more useless than a woman without husband and children. Was this girl happy? Valentina wondered, the question forming on her tongue. She clicked her teeth, biting back the words. What did it matter if a servant was happy as long as she did her job?

“You and the cook thought you’d have a laugh at my expense today, didn’t you?”

“No, señora.”

“I know what I saw, Luzia.”

Now the girl looked up, and Valentina was startled to see her eyes were deep brown, nearly black.

“What did you see, señora?” she asked, her dark gaze like a slick river rock. Valentina had the uneasy sense of the two of them alone in this room, of the silence of the house, of her own weakness. She felt as if she’d opened up a cupboard and found a wolf.

“Nothing,” Valentina managed, embarrassed by the catch in her voice. “I saw nothing.” She stood and crossed the room, sense returning as she put distance between herself and the scullion. “Your gaze is very bold.”

“Apologies, señora,” Luzia said, eyes on the floor once again.

“Go,” said Valentina with what she hoped was a careless wave.

But when Luzia had departed, Valentina bolted the door behind her.

Luzia didn’t sleep that night and she took no chances the next day. She waited for the water to boil without singing a word to hasten it. She fetched wood for the fire without speaking a syllable to lighten it. She didn’t breathe properly until she was hurrying down the street to San Ginés. Doña Valentina had been watching her closely since the incident with the bread. She wasn’t looking for magic; Valentina thought Luzia and the cook were out to get her with some petty prank.

But on the streets, Valentina couldn’t follow. No woman of her station could leave the house without her husband or father or priest to accompany her. Luzia had heard of rich ladies who broke bones toppling from their houses, and one who had even died when she had leaned out too far, trying to get a glimpse of something new. She sometimes played a game with herself when she was tired or her back was aching: Would she prefer to sit on a cushion and embroider all day but only see life bound by a casement? Or would she prefer to take another walk to the well? When the buckets were empty the answer was easy. Not so much when they were full.

As she passed in front of the house, she felt Doña Valentina’s eyes on her from her high window, but Luzia refused to look up, and walked as fast as she could to San Ginés, the twists and turns of the dusty streets familiar, the mile vanishing beneath her feet.

Luzia’s aunt had told her she must be seen at church every day. But when she entered the dark nave, it was her mother who she thought of, buried somewhere beneath her feet. Someone was always being buried at San Ginés, the stones lifted, resettled, and dislodged again, the bodies rearranged to make more space.

Blanca Cotado had died in a pauper’s hospital, her corpse paraded through the streets with the other dead so the parish clergy could collect alms to put toward masses said for the departed. Luzia had been ten years old and she’d remembered her mother’s words of instruction, of the true prayers she was meant to recite, a secret echo in her head. It was a game she and her mother had played, saying one thing and thinking another, the bits and pieces of Hebrew handed down like chipped plates. Luzia didn’t know if God heard her when she prayed in the cool shadows of San Ginés or if He understood the language she spoke. Sometimes that worried her, but today she had other concerns.

She strolled out through the church’s eastern door and into the neighboring garden with the statue of the Blessed Virgin nursing. She might be Ruth, her father had said, she might be Esther. But her mother came from a long line of learned men, and she whispered, These statues aren’t for us. Luzia’s feet carried her down a winding side street that led to Plaza de Las Descalzas and then on to a brick house with a grapevine carved over the door. Luzia visited every few weeks, though she would have come every day if she could. She always carried fresh linen in her market basket so she could pretend she was bringing it to one of Hualit’s servants if for some reason she was questioned. But she never was. Luzia knew how to be invisible.

Once she had seen Hualit’s patron, Víctor de Paredes, leaving her aunt’s house. He’d worn black velvet and climbed into an even blacker coach, as if he were vanishing into a well of shadow, a piece of night that refused to budge in the afternoon sun. To avoid questions for her aunt, she had continued walking past Hualit’s door, pretending she was on her way somewhere, but she hadn’t been able to resist a peek inside the coach. She only glimpsed De Paredes’s boots, and opposite him, bundled into the corner, a slender, sickly young man, his skin smooth and gleaming, his hair the cool white of a dove’s breast, his eyes glittering like oyster shells. When she’d met his pale gaze, she’d had the odd sensation she was lifting out of her shoes, and she’d hurried on, only looping back when she could be certain the coach had gone. It was still winter, and she’d been surprised to see that the almond trees peeking over the walls on her aunt’s street had burst into bloom, their branches thick with tufts of trembling white flowers.

Today there were no almond flowers, no inkblot coach sitting in front of the house, and Aunt Hualit opened the door herself, herding her inside with a smile.

Stiff lace and black velvet were the fashion now and Hualit wore them whenever she left the house, when she became Catalina de Castro de Oro, mistress to Víctor de Paredes. But at home, in the elegant courtyard with its burbling fountain, she wore robes of colored silk, her thick black hair snaking around her shoulders in waves scented with bee balm.