Page 75 of The Familiar

“I don’t recall,” he said. “But I’m happy for the skill. I would spend a lifetime braiding and unbraiding your hair.”

Lovers’ nonsense. But she would grow fat on nonsense every day if she could. She only wished she had her simple convent dress to wear—as if a shell of black wool could protect her. The velvet would have to do.

There was a harried rapping at the door and Valentina appeared, her face waxen, her hands trembling.

“I was just bringing Luzia to you,” Santángel lied.

Luzia watched Valentina take in the rumpled bed, the discarded dress, and the floor wet with bathwater. But all she did was hold out her hand to Luzia. “Come,” she insisted. “I don’t know where Don Víctor is. Marius wants us to leave, but we have no carriage.”

“The alguacil won’t let you leave,” said Santángel. “They’re searching the palace for someone.”

The shouts of soldiers rose from below, then the thud of their boots on the stairs.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” Valentina gasped, as if suddenly realizing that Luzia was the likely target.

Here it is at last, Luzia thought as the soldiers crowded the hallway. No more pretending, no more challenges, her fate finally written. She drew in a breath, as if she were about to plunge underwater. But they thumped right past her, their swords rattling, their boots making the floor shake.

From somewhere down the hall, Luzia heard a new voice, a high pleading wail.

Valentina pressed her fist to her chest. “What is that?”

The answer came quickly. Teoda Halcón’s nursemaid was hauled screaming from their rooms.

“Get on your feet!” the cuadrillero demanded, trying to make her stand. But the woman only continued to weep.

“I’m innocent! I didn’t know!” Her words came in great gulps between her sobs, rising and falling in gusts of misery. “I didn’t know!”

He seized her by the hair, dragging her down the hall. She didn’t fight him but clung to his legs, like a limp reed. “Mother of God, help me, I am innocent!”

Teoda’s father was next, head hanging, steps measured, as if he were walking in a processional, the cuadrillero’s hand on his shoulder. He wore a long linen shirt and a dressing gown, his leather shoes and stockings jutting from the hem. They looked like they belonged to someone else.

Only the Holy Child was fully dressed, as if she had known this moment and this fate were coming. Maybe her angel had whispered in her ear. Or maybe her guilt had done that work. Her face was streaked with tears, but she was calm and she was praying loudly, though the prayers were nothing Luzia had ever heard.

“I reject your priests and accept only the word of God,” she said, her small face determined. “I reject your saints and give my faith to Jesus only.”

“Be quiet or I will silence you,” snapped the cuadrillero, guiding her down the hall. He was slender and round-faced, barely a man.

“Neither you nor your Pope can silence truth. I have seen your king’s death, and he will go slowly, drowning in his own filth.”

“Be quiet,” he growled, and struck her hard across the face.

The girl toppled and slumped against the wall. She looked up at him, spat blood. “I have seen your death too, and it is an ugly one.”

The soldier shrank back but one of the others kicked her in the side.

“We’ll find a gag for you, demon.” He picked her up with one hand and slung her under his arm like a calf, her little heels kicking the air, as he clamped his other hand over her mouth.

As they passed, Teoda’s eyes met Luzia’s briefly, and she saw no fear there, only rage.

“What is happening here?” Valentina cried.

“Return to your rooms, señora,” said the young soldier who had cringed away from Teoda’s prediction. “All is well now.” But Luzia saw his hands were shaking.

For the rest of the day, they huddled in the Ordoños’ rooms. There was no sign of Hualit or Don Víctor. No word was sent.

Santángel came and went, returning with almond cake or a pitcher of wine, or sometimes a bit of information—the grounds had been searched and secured, the puppeteer had a burn on his leg but was well and ready to travel home, the Holy Child’s room had been torn apart and Calvinist texts found in her father’s belongings. Luzia remembered standing before the church officials, wondering aloud if they were meant to behave as if they were at a party or a church. Depending on the church, it can be hard to tell the difference. Had Teoda been preparing to use the performance as an attack on the vicar’s holy men? And if she was the one who had created those monsters, what did it mean for Teoda’s predictions? Who was whispering in her ear in the guise of an angel? Or was all that invention too, another manufactured miracle?

Luzia’s mind could find no place to settle. It alighted on one thought, one feeling, then took flight again, a bird hopping from branch to branch. She would meet Santángel’s gaze and her mind flooded with images, his bright head between her thighs, the sound of his breath hitching as he entered her, the press of his thumb urging her desire forward, the grip of his fingers as he lifted her hips. She was a marionette, a collection of limbs, an invisible string connecting her throat, her heart, her lungs, her cleft, and with a mere glance a ghostly set of hands jerked up on those strings, making her catch her breath and clamp her thighs together.