18: Beatriz

18

BEATRIZ

Present day

AFTER ANA LUISA’S FUNERAL, Andrés followed me gingerly into the parlor. He stared at the blood dripping from the wall for a long time.

At last his chapped lips parted. “I have to close the circle.” His voice was barely above a whisper.

“Is it possible?” I asked.

“I hope so.” He inhaled through his nose and exhaled long and slow. “Cielo santo. I hope so.”

He faced the circle, his eyes fluttering shut, and began to chant softly. His hands extended out in front of him, palms facing upward like a supplicant’s. I fell back a step.

The humming I had noticed earlier increased. It rose in volume and pitch, a swarm of bees filling the room; pulses of it rolled over my skin in waves, raising gooseflesh. Quickening my heartbeat.

Soon, I became aware that Andrés’s voice faltered. Though I could not understand him, I thought he was pausing, and starting again. The humming hovered at one pitch and then dropped, and began its slow rise anew.

Finally, Andrés stopped chanting altogether. I waited for him to turn to me, I waited for solace to flood over us like dawn after a long night . . . but the determined line of his shoulders collapsed. He lowered his head, held it in his hands.

The hum of the circle continued. If I closed my eyes, I could still see the circle as if it were etched in red marks on the inside of my eyelids. My intuition told me he was not finished yet. “Did you close it?”

“No.”

A long moment of silence passed.

Distantly, a trill of mocking laughter. Cold shot down my spine.

“Are you going to try again?” I asked.

He inhaled deeply. “I can’t.”

He couldn’t? What did that mean? I drew forward a step, the click of my shoes on flagstone echoing through the room. He had steepled his hands before his face, pressing them to the hard line of his mouth. His face was gray, his gaze fixed on the circle, unmoving, not even as I drew close.

I thought of him on his back on the floor of the capilla, gray faced and coughing, his teeth stained with blood. Can’t fix broken witches.

Last night and the shock of this morning were trying for me, but even more so for him.

“You need to rest,” I said. If I were honest with myself, I would admit that I wanted to say let me care for you. If he was my protector through the night, I would be his in the day. Share this burden, I meant to say. You’re not alone. Instead, I bit my tongue. Resisted the desire to take him by the arm. The situation we found ourselves in was dangerous enough. Becoming too familiar with him could lead nowhere but more trouble. “Come, let’s go to the kitchen.”

“I can’t remember.” The tremble in his voice struck a hollow note. His expression as he stared at the circle—was that fear behind his eyes? “The right prayer. I can’t remember it. I can’t close it. I can’t.”

His voice cracked over the last word. Sympathy yawned in my chest; now I did let myself put a light hand on his forearm. But deep in my bones, I did not believe him. How could I? Andrés cured the sick. Andrés rose into the air like a saint. Andrés was capable of anything. “Do you have it written down somewhere? Among your things in town?”

“No.”

The defeat in his voice chilled me. Was it that that drew gooseflesh over my arms, or was the temperature of the room dropping? Were the shadows thickening, growing stronger as they fed on the taste of our fear, or was it my mind playing tricks on me?

“Then how—”

“I memorized everything,” he said sharply. “It is too dangerous to write. And I—” His voice caught. His eyes had taken on a glassy cast. He was on the verge of tears. “I can’t remember the words.”

I saw him being flung against the wall as if he were no more than a rag. The darkness had not killed him. But by smashing his head against the wall, by injuring him so, it had taken something almost as precious as his life: his ability to protect us all.

A sharp spike of fear dug into the back of my skull.

“Is there anything that doesn’t require words?” I asked, fighting to keep rising panic out of my voice. “Something where you act on instinct, or you could improvise, or use castellano . . .”

“Absolutely not,” he snapped. Anger crackled like lightning over his words, drawing his shoulders back sharply as he turned to me. He said, “This—what I did in this room last night—it must be controlled. It’s dangerous. You don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

A flush rose to my cheeks and smarted there. No, I did not understand his witchcraft. But I understood that it was dangerous to be without protection in this house. Without his power, we were bare and defenseless against the darkness. Yet here we still stood, unshielded and unarmed, surrounded by the house, by the malice that festered and spread in its walls like an infection.

We were its prey.

Beatriz.I stiffened. A voice called my name, rising in my mind though I heard nothing. The hairs on my arms stood on end. When is nightfall, Beatriz? When is day?

My fingers curled tight around Andrés’s arm; I cast a wild look around the room.

No one was there.

“Andrés,” I hissed. “I hear a voice. Do you hear it?”

In a fluid movement, he seized me tightly by the shoulders. My breath caught, startled by the harshness of his touch.

Aren’t you frightened?

“Andrés—” I cast my eyes around the room again.

Don’t you know what he is capable of?

“It’s here,” I breathed. “She’s here.”

That which we had set loose last night. Whoever had frightened Ana Luisa to death and smashed the crucifix. She was in the walls, in the rafters, around us—

“Look me in the eye,” Andrés said forcefully, shaking my shoulders when I did not immediately obey. His grip was so tight it would leave bruises. “Look at me.” His tears had evaporated; his eyes burned feral, and . . . yes, it frightened me. This passion made him a stranger, commanding, dangerous. “Do not listen to her. Cast her from your mind this instant.”

He has secrets, Beatriz . . .

“Do you hear it?” I asked, raspy and uneven. “Tell me. Please.”

“Cast it out.” His command had the brassy ring of the priest he was, one who cries for his congregation to repent of their sins, whose condemnation of the Devil fills cathedrals. “Cast it out.”

I shut my eyes.

Beatriz, Beatriz, Beatriz . . .

I curled my hands into fists and thrust it away with all my might. No, I told it. No. Out.

The voice stopped.

Footsteps rang in the corridor, announcing someone’s approach to the parlor.

My eyes flew open.

Andrés dropped my shoulders and turned to face the door.

Paloma stepped into view. “Ay, Cuervito,” she said, drawing the syllables out as she took in the half-tidied mess of the room, the melted-down candles, the censers, the broken glass. She made the sign of the cross. “You’ve outdone yourself this time,” she added dryly.

“Palomita, you should be resting,” Andrés said. In the blink of an eye, he had transformed. His face and voice were soft with concern, his posture once again full of gentle authority. Everything about his presence exuded calm.

But I was rattled to my core.

“I can’t sit still,” Paloma said. “Give me something to do.”

Andrés walked toward her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You could rest in my rooms, if you’d prefer. I understand—”

She shoved him away, clearly frustrated. “You’re not listening. Give me something to do,” she said. “I can’t sit alone doing nothing.”

I was desperate to be out of this room. I needed to be away from Andrés. I wanted the safety of being outside, where there were no voices, or at least—

“Will you help me cook?” I said abruptly.

They looked at me in one motion, surprised—as I had been—at the strange pitch of my voice. I cleared my throat. “I . . . I need to make something.” As we no longer have a cook, I added silently. “I would appreciate some help.”

Paloma raised a brow. “You cook?” she asked dryly.

“I do,” I said. “And I will need to ensure that I have a plan for when my husband returns day after tomorrow.”

Paloma stiffened. “The patrón will be back? Santo cielo, Andrés. You need to clean up.”

My whole body trembled as I crossed the room to Paloma. As I stepped through the doorway, I cast a look at Andrés over my shoulder.

The wall behind him was perfectly blank.

No blood. No name.

It was gone.

---

*   *   *THE COLD IN MY bones did not lift as Paloma and I entered the kitchen. While she lit the oven, I knelt in the doorway to light the censers that stood guard there. It took me longer than usual to get the resin to light; my hand shook violently. Finally, smoke twined upward like columns, filling the kitchen with the distinctive aroma of copal. I inhaled of its comfort. My heart slowed. This was safe. This I could rely on. This would not falter.

Andrés, on the other hand . . .

I bit my lip as I glanced down the hall. Before me, it was a cool dark, a neutral dark that did not watch me. Perhaps the house’s attention was on Andrés. He has secrets, Beatriz . . .

A shudder tripped over my shoulders.

How was I going to survive the night? How was I going to survive at all? How on earth was I to receive Rodolfo? Would he humor my many censers ringing our bed? Would he think me superstitious, or worse, mad?

WasI going mad?

The darkness smirked at me.

I jerked back from the doorway and turned to Paloma. The kitchen faced south, and she had thrown its wide door open to the garden. Sunlight streamed rich and warm into the room as she stoked the fire.

“What are we making?”

Her voice was taut. I knew that feeling. She itched to work with her hands, to forget.

“Something simple and filling,” I said. “Arroz con pollo,” I decided. “It will be easy to make a lot. Padre Andrés is exhausted, and I worry . . . I think he might be ill.”

“What happened?”

I did not know how to reply.

“You won’t shock me. He and I have few secrets between us,” Paloma said flatly, leaning against the side of the kitchen doorway. She scanned the garden beyond: a few chickens wandered in a wide pen abutting the kitchen wall. “I’m not like him, but I was our grandmother’s shadow, just as he was.”

She stepped into the garden and approached the chicken coop. I turned away. Yes, I cooked. But though Tía Fernanda’s cooks tried to teach me, I could not stomach the killing of fowl. Later, when she had plucked and gutted the chicken and I was washing my hands after helping dispose of the unneeded parts, Paloma said: “So how did Andrés hurt himself this time?”

I cleared my throat. Wiped my hands on the rough apron I had thrown on over yesterday’s dress.

“To be frank,” I began in a low voice, low enough that I hoped the house could not hear, “Padre Andrés tried to exorcise whatever it is that makes this house . . . what it is.”

Paloma made a soft noise of understanding. Evidently, talk of exorcisms in the same breath as her cousin did not surprise her in the least. She jerked her chin to the shelves. “Pots for rice are there.”

I stepped around her as she reached for a meat cleaver, found the pot, and placed it on the enormous stove. I wiped sweat from my brow. The warmth of the kitchen felt clean and whole after the bone-deep chill of the rest of the house.

“He hit his head,” I said. “So hard that he vomited and cannot remember half of what happened in the night. And now he cannot recall prayers your grandmother taught him.”

Paloma looked up at this, cleaver held aloft over the chicken carcass. “That’s not good.”

“I’m afraid,” I said, averting my eyes to the pot. My hands moved without my thinking, and soon, the smell of browning rice enveloped us like a rich blanket. “How long has the house been this way?”

A long moment passed. Paloma continued cutting up the chicken into the appropriate-sized pieces. Instead of answering, she asked another question: “How is it that a woman of your class is like this?”

“What?” I said. Mad? I wondered.

“Useful.”

I stared at the rice, moving it around the bottom of the pot with a large wooden spoon. I added more ingredients; cumin bit the air, mixing with the sizzle of broth hitting hot oil.

Useful.From Paloma’s tone, I knew it was meant to be taken as a compliment. But how I had loathed being called useful by Tía Fernanda. As if being of use to her was the only way I could earn any worth.

In faltering sentences, I explained my family’s past: my mother being turned out by her family for marrying my father, how we relied on Papá’s extended family in Cuernavaca, living with them in an ancient stone house on an hacienda that produced sugar. Papá inherited a little from those relatives, and his rise through the army and position in the emperor’s cabinet meant we catapulted to as high a class standing as Mamá had started. I explained how we fell just as quickly: when Papá was murdered, refuge with Mamá’s cousins was our only choice. How Tía Fernanda treated me. How when an offer of marriage was extended to me, I seized it like a drowning man clings to driftwood. For what other choice was there?

Paloma sighed softly when I came to the end of my tale. She was chopping tomatoes for the sauce.

Her face had an odd look on it.

Pity, I realized with a start. Paloma pitied me for my story. Pride flung up hard walls around me.

“So that is why I am useful,” I said. “Because my family will have nothing to do with me.”

“I thought you would be like the other one, when you arrived,” Paloma ventured in a small voice.

The other one. María Catalina.

I waited for her to elaborate, but she did not. One by one she put the tomatoes in the pot, salted them generously, and remained silent as she stirred.

“What was she like?” I prompted.

Her face changed again at this question. It lost its open look and shuttered. She stirred a few moments longer. “Like the patrón,” she said at last.

“How so?”

She worried her bottom lip as she withdrew the spoon from the pot. “I wouldn’t say this to most people, but you seem to have a level head about the world.” I glanced at the censers in the doorway. Levelheaded was not how I would describe myself after living inside these walls. “I think you see the world more clearly than the hacendados,” she continued. “We don’t have a choice when it comes to our patróns. We tolerate them. We survive them. Some have a harder time of it than others. Our patrón makes life difficult for young women who work in the house. Do you understand?”

My face must have betrayed my confusion, for with a small, frustrated noise, Paloma pivoted to blunter language. “Girls feared working in the house, near the patrón, because some of those who did became pregnant. Against their will. When the señora found out, she was furious. She said that she didn’t want him leaving a trail of bastards across the countryside.” Paloma set the heavy lid on the pot with a resounding clang. “She got her wish. She made sure of it.”

My heartbeat echoed in my ears. I was swept back to my first day at San Isidro, when Rodolfo led me on a tour through the cold, dark house. In the dining room, he forbade me from going up to the ledge that ringed the room.

A maid fell from there once, he said.

I could not speak for shock. Not only had Paloma accused my husband of raping servants, but he and his first wife of murdering them.

She folded her arms across her chest, her flint-hard eyes challenging me to defy her. To lose my temper, to tell her to stop lying.

I couldn’t.

For I believed her.

I sank into one of the small chairs by the kitchen table and put my head in my hands.

Mamá hated Rodolfo because of his politics. But perhaps that had cloaked something else, an instinct, an intuition. Rodolfo was not who I thought he was.

And his first wife?

Red eyes, flesh-colored claws . . .

“I’ve overheard the patrón talk about the Republic,” Paloma said. “About abolishing the casta system. About equality.” She snorted. “I don’t think he knows what that word means. Not when he and his treat their dogs better than us.”

From the moment I had woken to Paloma pounding on Andrés’s door, the morning had dealt me blow after blow. Ana Luisa dead. Rodolfo returning. The voice. Andrés’s loss of memory.

Now this.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked weakly.

Paloma did not look up when she answered. “You said your family doesn’t want you. That means you’re one of us, now.” Her voice grew distant, cold, as if it were coming from the mouth of a much older woman. “That means you’re trapped in San Isidro, just like the rest of us. And you’ll die here like the rest of us.”