Page 122 of The Familiar

Now Quiteria read back over the pages she’d written, setting them aside carefully so that Valentina couldn’t helpfully tidy them into confusion. Her new play was more complicated and more ambitious than anything she’d attempted before. She just hadn’t quite settled on an ending. When she was satisfied with the scene she’d written for the character of the lovesick prison guard, she went to find Valentina.

Valentina had woken when Quiteria left their bed to work. She took the time to make herself a cup of chocolate that she hoped would restore her energy after a sleepless night and ease the guilt she felt for enjoying such happiness when Luzia was about to die. She was still somehow surprised this day had come. She wasn’t sure what she had believed would stop it, only that she hadn’t thought such a thing could really come to pass.

She knew Luzia would have no more need of fresh dresses or linen, but she did the laundry anyway, pressing the cuffs and collars carefully. Then she and Quiteria walked to the Plaza de Zocodover. The streets were thronged with people, the churches bursting with penitents. They prayed with particular fervor this morning, grateful that they were safe from the Inquisition’s reach and, for this moment at least, purgatory and its punishments.

The parade that snaked from the prison to San Vicente to the plaza began with the carpenters and masons who had erected the amphitheater, the scaffolds, and the balconies. Among them were the coal provisioners and woodsmen who had supplied kindling for the pyres that would burn at midnight beyond the city walls. Hidalgos arrived on horseback, council members and ambassadors, persons of great renown, in gilded coaches.

“Come,” said Quiteria as they approached the plaza. “I can get us good seats. The inquisitors want us all to behold their might.”

The auto de fe had really begun the night before when the friars and chaplains and priests gathered to sing psalms and celebrate. In the morning, they said mass, and then breakfast was served to anyone who had a part to play in the ceremony, even those condemned to die. Valentina wondered if Luzia would eat or if she was too frightened.

When the king appeared high above them with Prince Philip and Princess Isabella, she felt a strange sense of disappointment. After all Valentina’s effort and hope, there he was with his children, far more frail than she had imagined.

“He’s just a man,” she said.

“What did you expect him to be?” Quiteria asked.

Valentina wasn’t sure. He wasn’t a saint or even a priest. But somehow she had believed that to be in his presence, to be gazed upon by him would change her, give her value, turn her from common lead into something worth keeping.

Quiteria had warned her that the day would be long. First came the horrible spectacle of the parade, the crowd shouting at the penitents in their sanbenitos and pointed pasteboard hats, their feet bare. They carried candles or rosaries, and ropes were tied around their necks, the knots indicating how many lashes they were to receive. Most wore yellow banded with red, but those condemned to die wore black sanbenitos painted with dragons and flames. There were only three of them. From a distance it was hard to see their features, but she recognized Santángel by his height and Luzia by her lack of it. How small she seemed standing on that stage as the crowd jeered and spat at her.

Valentina clutched the sachet of rosemary at her sleeve. For protection.

I’m here, she wanted to shout. I’m sorry. I only wanted a little warmth. I didn’t know what kind of fire I would start.

Another mass followed, and then a sermon delivered from the rostrum. Only then did they begin to read out the charges and punishments for lesser crimes like fornication or blasphemy. Valentina had to look away when the floggings began.

They paused for the midday meal, and the inquisitors and king retired while the rest of the friars and chaplains ate at long tables.

Valentina and Quiteria bought pies from the stalls. She’d thought she would have no appetite, but the cold and the boredom had left her eager for comfort. She couldn’t reconcile this performance of piety, this purging of sin, with the Spain she knew. Even in her sheltered time on this earth, she had seen enough drunkenness, swearing, fornication, and corruption to know that life was sinning. It happened all around them, a constant tide of iniquity.

If she herself had ever been truly pious, she certainly wasn’t now. She hadn’t known what she was reaching for when she’d set out on the road to Toledo, only that she couldn’t spend another day with Marius, angry and ashamed, and more lonely than she’d ever been.

“Did you ever wish for children?” she asked Quiteria.

“I have a son. He lives with my husband in Calahorra.”

“You have a husband?” Valentina exclaimed. What man could manage such a woman?

“It was a necessity. He’s a sweet fellow. He’s good with the boy and he leaves me to my own devices, so long as I return every few years to tell him I love him. I think I’ve always been lacking that thing that would make me a good mother.”

“I would have liked to have children,” Valentina said. At least she had thought so. Knowing how quickly the world could change, how cruel it could be, she was less sure now.

“It’s not too late.”

“I am barren.”

“Is Marius the only man you’ve ever fucked?”

“Of course!”

“Then take a lover. Do it quickly, and if you conceive, tell your husband the child is his.”

Valentina laughed, then stifled the sound. Despite the tumult around her it felt wrong to laugh, to eat, to think on a future in the shadow of the tribunal. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“I can help with that,” Quiteria said, and Valentina turned to hide her flush.

Was it really possible for her to have a child? It would tie her to Marius in a way she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to be bound. When she thought of going back to Madrid, she felt only dismay.