For all your intelligence, you don’t think sometimes, Catalina had said. How true. There she was, making stories up in her head when he had said nothing cruel to her.
“No. I’m so sorry, Francis. I’m the fool, a court jester,” Noemí said, attempting a sort of lightness in the delivery, hoping he understood she hadn’t meant it, that they might laugh this silly quarrel away.
He nodded slowly, but did not seem convinced. She stretched out a hand, touching his fingers, which were dirty from handling the mushrooms.
“I really am sorry,” she said, this time eradicating any flippancy.
He looked at her with great solemnity and his fingers tightened around hers, and he gave her a little tug, as if to pull her closer to him. But just as quickly he released her and stepped back, grabbing the red cloth he carried atop his basket and handing it to her.
“I’m afraid I’ve dirtied you,” he said.
“Yes,”—Noemí looked at her hand, smudged with soil—“I guess you have.”
She wiped her hands clean on the cloth and handed it back to him. Francis tucked it in a pocket and set the basket down.
“You should go back,” he said, glancing aside. “I still need to collect more mushrooms.”
Noemí didn’t know if he was telling the truth or was still upset and merely wanted her gone. She couldn’t blame him if he was sore with her. “Very well. Don’t let the mist swallow you,” she said.
She reached the cemetery’s gate soon enough and swung it open. Noemí looked over her shoulder and saw a figure at a distance, Francis with his basket, the curling wisps of mist making his features vague. Yes, he must have been the silhouette she had spied in the cemetery earlier, and yet she felt it couldn’t have been him.
Maybe it was a destroying angel of a different kind, Noemí mused, and immediately regretted such an odd, morbid thought. Really, what was wrong with her today?
She retraced her steps, followed the trail back to High Place. When she walked into the kitchen she found Charles sweeping the floor with an old broom. Noemí smiled in greeting. Just then, Florence walked in. She wore a gray dress, a double strand of pearls and her hair up. When she caught sight of Noemí she clasped her hands together.
“Finally, there you are. Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you.” Florence frowned, glancing down. “You’re trailing mud inside. Take off those shoes.”
“I’m sorry,” Noemí said, looking down at her high heels, which were crusted with dirt and blades of grass. She took them off, holding them in her hands.
“Charles, take those and clean them,” Florence ordered the man.
“I can do it. It’s no problem.”
“Let him.”
Charles put the broom aside and walked toward her, extending his hands. “Miss,” he said, the one word.
“Oh,” Noemí replied and handed him the shoes. He took them, grabbed a brush that lay upon a shelf, and sat on a stool in the corner of the room and began brushing the dirt off her high heels.
“Your cousin was asking for you,” Florence said.
“Is she all right?” Noemí asked, immediately worried.
“She’s fine. She was bored and wanted to converse with you.”
“I can go upstairs right away,” Noemí said, her stockinged feet moving quickly against the cold floor.
“There’s no need for that,” Florence said. “She’s taking her nap now.”
Noemí had already stepped into the hallway. She looked back at Florence, who was walking toward her, and shrugged. “Perhaps you could go up later?”
“Yes, I will,” Noemí said, but she felt deflated and a little bad for not having been around when Catalina wanted her.
10
In the mornings Florence or one of the maids came by to deliver Noemí’s breakfast tray. She had tried to converse with the maids, but they did not offer anything but curt yeses and nos to Noemí. In fact, when she encountered any of the staff of High Place—Lizzie or Charles or the eldest of the three servants, Mary—they inclined their head and kept walking, as if they were pretending Noemí did not exist.
The house, so quiet, with its curtains drawn, was like a dress lined with lead. Everything was heavy, even the air, and a musty scent lingered along the hallways. It felt almost as if it were a temple, a church, where one must speak in low voices and genuflect, and she supposed the servants had acclimatized to this environment and therefore tiptoed along the staircase, unwilling nuns who had made vows of silence.
