Page 109 of The Familiar

Teoda barked a laugh. “Very well. The inquisitors have clearly driven you mad, but I’ll see if Rudolfo will get word to my brother. He has far more freedom than I have. They even allow him paper sometimes. But Luzia … my dreams don’t lie. I watched you burn.”

“Fate can be changed,” Luzia said. “Curses can be broken.”

She had to believe that, or she would sink beneath the waves.

CHAPTER 48

They had little time to act. Luzia was afraid that she could be taken for another interrogation at any time. She didn’t want to drown again.

Despite her anger and her fear, some part of her had believed Santángel would come for her, that he would find a way, but she couldn’t hope for that any longer. No one would carry her, so she would find a way out herself. And if Teoda’s angel was right and they were all meant to end here, so be it. Better to be hunted and brought down than to bare her throat for the slitting. She would die as a wolf did.

Teoda was able to get a note to her brother Ovidio, but only by convincing their guard Rudolfo that Luzia could perform love spells. He was infatuated with a beautiful wool merchant’s daughter named Mariposa Baldera.

“But I can’t,” Luzia had protested.

“You’ll suggest killing a guard but you won’t lie to one?”

“What do we do when he realizes we’ve swindled him?”

“We’ll be gone by then,” said Teoda. “Or dead.”

When Rudolfo brought Ovidio’s reply, he asked what Luzia needed for the spell.

“First you must prepare yourself,” Luzia said, eyeing him up and down. “The … incantations won’t work if you’re not clean of mind and heart.”

Rudolfo had nodded as if this made perfect sense and repeated back their instructions to wash his body thoroughly every morning, wear only unstained garments, brush the crumbs from his mustache, and use polish on his teeth.

They had debated whether to include Neva and if she could be trusted not to share their plans, but the question had been answered one night when her snores stopped and she said, “I already know of your schemes and I want no part of them. I am old and my children are here. I want to go home.”

Luzia hoped she would get there before life in a cell killed her.

Teoda fretted that they should wait for Ovidio to secure papers for Luzia. But when Luzia thought of the water, her throat filling, her lungs fighting the flood, she shook her head. “No. We go as soon as we can.”

Only four days after Luzia had been subjected to the toca, they were ready.

Night came on slowly, as if afraid of what they might do. They needed to look as reputable as they could, so they washed their faces and hands, and Neva braided Luzia’s hair. Then they could only wait. They told time by the chiming of the church bells. Luzia couldn’t name the parish. In Madrid, she would have known.

“San Vicente,” Teoda told her. “It’s said he converted his jailer.”

Luzia remembered that story and the ravens that had watched over his body.

They counted the chimes, listening to the prison fall asleep, the whispered conversations fading, the sounds of business being attended to in the inquisitors’ chambers, the slamming of doors and shuffling of bodies.

“What was your plan?” she asked Teoda, keeping her voice low, trying to pass the time. “If you had won the torneo and the king had made you part of his court?”

“I would have learned all I could and shared it with Spain’s enemies. I would have made the king doubt his precious saints and himself. I would have been the greatest spy in all the world.” Her dimple appeared. “And the smallest.”

Outside, the hoofbeats of horses and the rattle of carriage wheels gave way to the calls of night birds and the gentle hoot of owls from the woods and meadows beyond the city walls. They had only a stub of candle to burn, and soon the darkness of the cell was complete.

At last, a single bell rang out, different from the chimes of the church bells, a clanking sound, like a cow that had strayed away from its herd.

Teoda’s hand brushed Luzia’s and they held tight to each other, waiting. Again they heard the clanking bell.

Teoda squeezed her hand and they rose as quietly as they could.

Luzia laid her palm against the door and reached for the refrán. She could feel that secret song, that larger magic, eager to be sung, nearer since she’d faced the inquisitors, but she pushed it away. Santángel had been right. She wanted to live.

Boka dulse avre puertas de fierro. Words she’d used to open locked trunks or cupboards rather than go searching for a key. Sweet words open iron gates. Help me, she prayed silently to the unknown author of those words, someone sleeping in his bed across the sea, or rising to nurse her child, or laboring away by candlelight somewhere. Help me find my way.