Page 112 of The Familiar

There was a room dug into the earth beneath the home of Víctor de Paredes. It was not quite wide enough to sit in and not quite tall enough to stand in. Its walls were smooth stone and it could only be reached through an iron hatch that latched on the outside. There had been one of these rooms in every De Paredes house for more than four hundred years. It was called the scorpion’s den.

Víctor’s men had found Santángel on the forest floor where the king’s soldiers had left him for dead, the arrows still lodged in his chest. First he had endured the agony of the shafts being pulled from his body and then he had been thrown into his den to heal.

It should have been nothing. He’d endured far worse. He had lived with the futility of his own situation a very long time. He was no different from other men, caught up in the movement of a world that did not care for him, at the whim of a God who did not heed him.

But this time his helplessness drove him mad. He shouted his rage. He pounded on the walls of his cell. He swore bloody revenge. It didn’t matter. No one came. No one brought food or water. They knew he wouldn’t die. He would wither and shrink to nothing, a living corpse, but he would go on.

Santángel had lived only one life, and it had been both long and remarkably boring. His early years of travel and debauchery, of scholarship and pleasure seeking, seemed like a dream someone else once had and then tried to relate to him. He had forgotten fear, forgotten rage. What had remained was a kind of scholarly curiosity about the world and its workings, a dim hope that one day, in one of his many books, he would discover the secret of the bad bargain he had struck with Tello de Paredes and he would find a way to undo it.

There were no surprises. Everyone reminded him of someone he’d met before; every moment was one he’d already lived. He had thought this unrelenting march of sameness would continue until he found a way to break free or he found the courage to die.

Then Luzia had entered his life, a character in a play who was meant to have a few lines and depart. Instead she had overtaken his story. The plot he knew so well had suddenly confused him, the shape of his narrative bending around her into something new. But a tragedy could not become a comedy. In the end, she had been trapped by his curse, just as he was. The plot’s shape returned and his tragedy became hers.

He remembered the pain of the arrows piercing his lung, his side. If she wasn’t conscious to heal herself, it would be that easy for her to die. If she’d escaped the woods, could she have made it to Madrid? Was she hiding somewhere or captured? Sometimes he let himself believe that the king had changed his mind, that Luzia was safe in the Alcázar or placed in a convent or even back at Calle de Dos Santos. Sometimes he imagined she was in the house above him. Víctor would enjoy that.

If she was alive, then there was hope, wasn’t there? Or was this helplessness some punishment for his selfish youth, his murderous past? If she was in hiding, she would need a way out of Spain. Santángel could get her money. He could even find a way to provide her with documents for safe travel. But how could he predict the way his own influence might ruin any attempt to free her? If her escape was a danger to his master, he would never succeed. He rehearsed arguments for how to persuade Víctor to help her. He would beg for her life as he had never begged for his.

And if his master didn’t agree? There was a way to sever his luck from Víctor de Paredes. All he had to do was ride away. He could travel through the night, find a fine horizon to serve as his last sight of the world. He would burn away to ash and his death would break the tether that bound him to this family. Víctor’s good fortune would burn to nothing with him. Luzia would have her chance.

He must have been unconscious when Víctor sent Celso to retrieve him from the basement because he had no memory of being transported. He woke in the dining room, to the scent of braised meat and spiced wine. He had no appetite, despite the days of starvation, but he forced himself to eat. If he was to think, if he was to strategize, he needed his strength back.

Víctor watched him and when Santángel pushed away his plate, he said, “Did you enjoy your meal?”

“Did you enjoy your tantrum?” He didn’t want to spar with Víctor, didn’t want to play these games, but all must seem to be as it had been.

“I hope you had time to think. Free from distraction.”

Santángel said nothing.

“Do you not wish to know where the scullion is?”

“You will tell me when it suits you.”

“I see your equanimity has returned. I hardly recognized the lovesick fool I found bleeding on the ground in the woods.” Víctor tapped his fingers on the arms of his chair. “Your place is with me, Santángel. And your attempt to help Luzia Cotado evade capture did not please Vázquez.”

“But my luck kept you from any real danger, didn’t it?”

Víctor acknowledged this with a nod.

“Your little friend is making trouble.”

His relief must have shown because Víctor smiled.

“Yes, Guillén, she lives. She is in Toledo. A prisoner of the Inquisition.”

It took five centuries of patience to keep Santángel in his chair. He wanted to leap up and choke the smug smile from Víctor’s face. He wanted to steal a horse and ride through the night to her.

“Why the Inquisition?” he managed, pleased at the steadiness of his voice.

“She was denounced.”

“By you?”

“No. I said I was taken in by her illusions but that I knew nothing of heresy or plots against the king.”

And he had been believed. He would always be believed. As long as Santángel lived.

Santángel knew he should keep silent, give nothing more away, but the madness of the scorpion’s den was still with him, clawing at his good sense. “Has she faced torture?”