Page 13 of The Familiar

“Has she any education?” Don Víctor asked.

“She’s a quick study,” said Hualit.

Even Luzia knew that wasn’t an answer.

“Tell her what you want.” This new voice seemed to come from nowhere, water without a source. It had the lifeless quality of ashes gone cold.

“Patience, Santángel,” Don Víctor replied, with the barest glance over his shoulder.

Beside her, Luzia felt a shudder pass through her aunt’s body.

Luzia peered into the shadowed alcove where she and Hualit usually sat to have their wine. A man was bundled into the corner, a black cloak drawn tight around him though there was no chill in the air. His hair was so fair it gleamed white, and his eyes glittered in the gloom, silvery nacre. He looked less like a man than a statue, an icon made from shells and stone, a sorry saint tucked into a niche in a neglected parish church.

“I have all the patience in the world,” said the creature in the corner, the man Don Víctor had called Santángel. “But this is like watching a cat play with its supper. Let the mouse go or explain what meal you intend to make of her.”

Don Víctor kept his eyes on Luzia. “I will see the trick you performed for Pérez’s spy last night. Your milagrito.”

So Luzia had been right. The red-bearded man had been a spy. Was Pérez an inquisitor, then? A priest or a cardinal of some kind? And what was she meant to do now? Lie? Say that it had been some silly sleight of hand? She was afraid to look at Hualit for guidance.

“Go on,” said Don Víctor as she stood there, motionless. “Pretend it is another of Doña Valentina’s sad parties. Show me.”

“There are no candles,” she said, her voice reedy with fear.

“Show me something else.”

Luzia whispered, “There is nothing else.”

“No education, but she’s learned how to lie.”

“Don’t be unkind, Víctor,” Hualit scolded gently. “Luzia is a simple girl.”

Simple, stupid, graceless. All the things she’d been warned she must be. Certainly she was fool enough to end up in this predicament. The crossroads was far behind her, all opportunity to make the prudent choice gone. Hualit had warned her, but Luzia hadn’t listened. She’d liked the feeling of the refranes in her mouth too much, the music that belonged to her alone, a small thing, a nearly useless thing, but hers. Maybe the magic she used was demonic after all. She had wondered sometimes who answered when she sang her little songs. What if it was the devil who heard her whispered prayers?

“She’s frightened,” said Santángel. “And she’s useless. Can you not see this is beyond her?” He stood beneath the arch now, like a bat emerging from its cave, still sheltered by the shade of the desiccated grapevines that grew over the colonnade. He was unusually tall, and the skin stretched tight over the sharp bones of his face. He looked at once beautiful and like he was dying, as if a sheet had been laid over a particularly handsome corpse. And he was lean enough that she wondered if he was a priest, or some kind of monk who would fast himself to dust to bring himself closer to Christ.

His eyes had a curious silver quality, glinting like coins, and it was only when she met his gaze that she realized she’d seen him before, that day on the street outside her aunt’s house when the almond trees had bloomed. He’d been huddling in Víctor de Paredes’s coach, and Luzia had experienced the same sensation that morning that she felt now, as if she were lifting straight out of her shoes. She gripped Hualit’s arm more tightly, convinced for a moment that she might simply float away, or humiliate herself by vomiting on the courtyard stones.

“Perhaps some refreshment?” Hualit offered, lifting an elegant hand. “Good decisions are seldom made without a little wine.”

Hualit’s gesture was as graceful as ever, her voice steady and full of that warm tone that reminded Luzia of a sweet glass of jerez. Only Luzia knew her aunt too well. She was nervous. It was there in the tight corners of her smile, the tense angle of her head. Hualit was afraid—but not of Don Víctor. She was afraid of the pale stranger in the alcove, curled into his cloak like an autumn leaf. She was afraid of Santángel.

“I didn’t come here for wine and conversation,” said Don Víctor, an edge to his voice.

Hualit gave a brief nod and squeezed Luzia’s arm again. “Show them.”

Did she want Luzia to pretend to fail? Were they staging a play of their own? It would be easy enough. Don Víctor and his friend were already prepared to dismiss Luzia, to believe she was a fraud. He would be angry at Hualit for wasting his time, but no doubt she would find some way to console him.

Or did Hualit mean it? Luzia couldn’t help but think of the look of assessment on her aunt’s face the last time they had parted. How had Don Víctor come to be in this courtyard? How did he know of her association with Hualit unless her aunt had been the one to tell him? Calculation was a natural state of being for a woman who lived two lives, and looking around the courtyard, Luzia wondered: Had her aunt set this stage to her own liking?

Well, if Luzia had learned anything from Hualit it was the value of powerful friends. She might snicker at Vitoria Olmeda trying to lure Luzia beneath her roof, but she couldn’t sneer at Víctor de Paredes, her own patron. His servants dressed more finely than Don Marius himself. Luzia might burn. Or she might sprout wings after all—very fine wings of velvet and pearls.

Luzia stepped away from her aunt, forcing Hualit to release her arm. She curved her hand around her mouth, hiding her lips, and bent to the grapevine as if whispering some news to it. It was the first song she’d sung, the first magic she’d learned from Hualit. “Quien no risica, no rosica,” she coaxed, words lifted from a letter written by an exiled hand. She would grow Don Víctor a splendid bunch of grapes and he would invite her to be a part of his staff. She could work in the kitchens or maybe be trained as a maid. She’d stuff her pockets with gold coins, and have more than one dress, and pay for masses to be said to help her parents’ souls out of purgatory.

The vine unfurled as if eager to hear more of this glorious future, a green strand that emerged from the dead gray stalks, twisting and curling, reaching for purchase, hard green grapes bursting from its leaves in a swelling cluster, their taut skin flushing pink then red as garnets, sweet and round, begging to be burst between someone’s teeth. She dared a glance up at Hualit, who stood with arms crossed, her hands cupping her elbows, at De Paredes leaning forward with his lips slightly parted, and at sickly Santángel, his disinterested eyes like opals, gray then green then gold. Again she felt herself rising out of her shoes.

The vines leapt, twining around the column, sprawling over the courtyard in an undulating carpet of curling shoots and velvety leaves. They exploded into thick bunches of red grapes, surging over the lip of the fountain, filling its basin. They climbed the walls, lunged up and over the roof. Hualit sprang back. De Paredes stumbled as the vines galloped over his shoes and twined around his ankles.

Luzia clapped her hand over her mouth, stifling her song. A few notes, a nothing, barely a milagrito, a scrap of tune she used to make a pot of herbs grow in the winter, a white rose bloom recklessly in the Prado to bring herself a little cheer, and once, when Águeda’s daughter had wept on her wedding day, saying there were no flowers for her hair, a crown of sweet-smelling jasmine when it was most needed. It was the smallest magic, meager, slight.