Page 100 of The Familiar

She had been lonely in that house sometimes. She had wondered what life might have in store for her. She hadn’t predicted this.

“I can offer you jewels,” she said as she made her way to the edge of the bridge, listening to the sound of the water far below. If she were brave she could jump. “Money.”

Gonzalo laughed. “You can’t afford us, señora.”

“Will you make it quick?” she asked.

“I can offer that,” said Celso. He sounded sorry, but his hand was already on the knife at his hip.

“You have other things to bargain with,” said Gonzalo.

Now Hualit laughed. “So you can fuck me and then cut my throat and leave me in the bushes?”

“You must prepare yourself,” said Celso.

She held her hand out to him. “Pray with me.”

“It isn’t right,” Celso said to Gonzalo. “She doesn’t have a priest.”

“She’s a whore,” said Gonzalo. His blade was in his hand.

“I won’t fight you,” she said, smiling gently, softly.

Hualit hoped they would say prayers for her in Salonika. Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.

Gonzalo grabbed hold of her shoulder.

“Come,” she said, her hands grasping his jacket, her back pressed against the railing. “We’ll go together.”

He was stronger, but he didn’t expect the weight of her, her pockets full of reales, her hems and sleeves sewn full of jewels.

Gonzalo shouted as they toppled from the bridge.

It felt good to take one of them with her.

Hualit’s neck snapped when she struck the surface. She died quickly as she’d hoped to, as Celso had promised she would. Gonzalo broke his back but floated along for quite a while, trying to fight the current, until finally, weeping, he slipped beneath the surface.

Months later, a woman brought a fish home from the market and cut it open to find an emerald the size of her thumbnail. She thanked the fish, tucked the jewel into her pocket, and left the house, never to be seen again. Her husband, a drunkard with heavy fists, found only the fish, which he was forced to prepare himself for dinner. He choked on a bone and was buried in a pauper’s grave.

His wife walked all the way to Paris, where she opened a parfumerie and lived happily for many years, eating lamb and vegetables and snails, but never fish, who she felt had done enough for her.

CHAPTER 44

Luzia woke in the larder. It was cold and dark and the air smelled wrong, like iron and urine and damp. I was dreaming, she thought. I dressed in velvet and met an angel. I made miracles on my tongue.

The world returned in an ugly wave of memory. Donadei’s warship, the slabs of jade embedded in his cross becoming scarabs, Santángel’s arms tight around her as they raced through the woods, his blood on her hands. She tried to sit up.

“Easy,” said a familiar voice. “You took a bad blow to the head.”

Luzia touched her fingers to her temple. Someone had struck her. She remembered now, soldiers riding her down in the woods, pain splintering through her skull.

The cell was narrow, the ceiling low. The only light came from a candle set on the stone floor. Two low wooden platforms, cots of a sort, had been placed side by side in the room, with a bare scrap of space to maneuver between them. A girl was sitting on one of them, a child, her back settled against the wall, her short legs stretched out before her.

“Teoda?”

“I’m afraid so.”

The bundle of rags beside the Holy Child shifted and Luzia realized there was a third person in the cell, an old woman with gray hair pulled tightly back from her lean face.