9

9

TWO DAYS LATER, PALOMAdelivered Rodolfo’s response to my latest letter. I was weeding the garden around the front door, my broad-brimmed hat protecting my skin from the sun as usual. I could have kissed Paloma when she handed me the letter, but my spirits sank when I noticed how wary she was of me. I did not know which was worse—the disdain with which Ana Luisa regarded me, or Paloma’s clear unease?

She left as I ripped open the seal, dirt from my fingertips smearing the fine paper.

I had asked for more than furniture this time.

Querida Beatriz, Rodolfo began. He wrote that he understood my desire for a priest to bless the house, to bury a statue of such and such saint in the garden, to sprinkle holy water on the threshold and throughout the rooms. Give the enclosed letter to Padre Guillermo in town—he and his assistant will be more than obliging.

My lips curled into a grim smile. I was not a devout woman. My views on the clergy were informed by Papá, who often repeated the words of revolutionary leader Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. Of his enemies in the Church, the insurgent priest said they were Catholic “only to benefit themselves: their God is money. Under the veil of religion and of friendship they want to make you the victims of their insatiable greed.”

I did not trust the clergy, not so long as men like my husband could buy them and their services. Still, I had to help myself somehow. Despite my distrust of priests, part of me suspected—an irrational hope, perhaps, born of sleeplessness and desperation—that they had the power to do something I couldn’t.

I didn’t care about a sprinkle of holy water here and there, a murmured prayer over my threshold.

I wanted an exorcism.

And Rodolfo’s letter was going to get the priests into my house so I could show them how desperately it needed it.

---

*   *   *THE NEXT MORNING WAS Sunday. I dressed in my finest as Mamá and I always did, pinching my cheeks in the mirror to bring color to my wan complexion. My nights were restless, my dreams populated by dark shadows that caused me to wake with a cry in the night, my heart racing as I fumbled for matches to relight the double-thick tallow candles I had asked Ana Luisa to bring me. I had ransacked the beds where Ana Luisa grew her weeds and, given no other weapon to assuage my paranoia, cut fragrant, sappy bunches of herbs to scatter around my bedroom’s threshold.

I wondered about the soot markings in the kitchen and nearly laughed at myself as I imagined asking a priest about them. That was almost as ludicrous as asking cold Ana Luisa herself.

Paloma accompanied me on the way to town. It was dark in the carriage; Paloma pulled back the corner of one window covering and stared intently out the window, studiously avoiding my gaze. She clearly had no intention of making small talk during the ride into Apan, and neither did I.

Like the first time Rodolfo and I had come to Mass, whispers followed me up the aisle; curious eyes weighed on my shoulders as I genuflected and took my seat near the front of the church. I cupped that power and held it close to my chest, letting its warmth burn away the memory of the look Juana had given me in the hall. I was not mad. I was not shocked, not seeing things.

Something was wrong with the house.

And because I had married Rodolfo, because I had a man’s voice to speak for me, I could wrangle a priest into helping me fix it.

I watched the priest as he held the Eucharist before us. The flesh beneath his chin trembled in the way of the well-fed as he spoke; the war had been easy on him. Not so of his congregation: I lost count of the widows as I watched people crowd to the front of the church to receive Communion. Many of the men of fighting age had a pinned-up, hollow trouser leg and crutches, or were missing an arm. Padre Guillermo blessed them all, bidding them farewell one by one at the arched doorway. I hung back, watching him clasp the dark hands of his parishioners in his own plump, age-speckled white ones, wisps of hair from his balding crown silhouetted against Apan’s blinding azure sky.

I approached him last, Paloma trailing in my shadow.

“Doña Beatriz,” he effused. “I trust you are settling in well.”

His hands were as sweaty as I anticipated. I forced my lips into what I hoped was a beaming smile, counting the moments until it was proper for him to release my hands. I counted at least two moments longer than I would have hoped, but kept the smile pasted on my face.

I fished into my well-stocked reserve of society small talk to gush about the beauty of the countryside, the kindness and goodness of my new husband, the quiet of our home. Then I reached into my small purse and withdrew Rodolfo’s letter. I had read and resealed it and was pleased to discover that Rodolfo promised the priest silver in return for following my wishes.

Their God is money.

If only he knew what that silver was in return for.

I had written Rodolfo a long letter around my request for a priest to come to San Isidro, but I had not touched on anything that was truly unsettling me: the body in the wall that no one else seemed to see.

The only thing less desirable than the daughter of a traitor was a madwoman.

I was not mad. All I wanted, as any devout Catholic would, was for a priest to come and tread his holy, plump feet over my threshold and throw water at things in return for my husband’s money. That was all I wanted.

Or rather, that was all I told Padre Guillermo in the bright light of Sunday morning.

Once he stepped into my home, we would have a different conversation.

“Padre Andrés will join me.” He gestured over my shoulder at a second priest lingering at the door bidding farewell to the townspeople, a slender young man with the serious expression of a student. I had noticed him during Mass, flitting like a raven behind Padre Guillermo’s ample, ambling form on the altar. “He is well acquainted with the property.”

Padre Andrés met my gaze over Paloma’s head. They had been engaged in a hushed conversation, and I was immediately struck by how the severe line of his nose and shape of his eyes echoed Paloma’s in the way of relatives. But unlike Paloma, his eyes were light, hazel in the direct sunlight. He could not have been much older than me, for his clean-shaven face was still lean in the rangy way of youth. I thought of the men with crutches and the widows; there were so few young men among the townspeople. Perhaps if he hadn’t become a priest, he would also be missing a limb. Perhaps he might not be here at all.

He dropped my gaze. It was only then that I realized how inappropriately long I had held it, and felt embarrassed warmth rise up my neck.

“Doña Beatriz,” he murmured in greeting, keeping his eyes shyly downcast. “Welcome to Apan.”

---

*   *   *I AWAITED THE PRIESTS at the gates of San Isidro the next morning, swaying slightly from exhaustion. I had slept especially poorly the night before. It was as if the house knew what I had done. That I had gone and tattled on it to its parents, that men with heavy books and heavier senses of self-importance were coming to shake its ill humors loose.

And it retaliated.

A cold wind kicked up inside the house as I left the kitchen last night. At first I thought a door had swung open, but the wind poured down the hall, ripping my hair loose from its bun, its ice sinking into my bones and tightening around my chest like a clawed hand. I tried to run forward, run through it, but it was too powerful. I took slow strides, teeth chattering, throwing my weight into the wind and fighting to make my way to the staircase as it ripped at my hands.

I clutched a piece of copal to burn in my room the way Ana Luisa did in the kitchen. I hadn’t been able to find any in town as I intended, so I ripped apart the pantry when she was gone to help myself to her supply. The pickings were meager—she must have kept her store in her own home in the village.

I don’t know how long it took me to get to my room. The cold stiffened my limbs, weighed on my chest; it only increased when I entered the parlor. It was as if I had stepped into an icy stream. I wondered if I could see my breath on the air, but the dark was too complete, too thick, soot black and heavy. My numb fingers fumbled the matches in my bedroom, and time after time, I lit a candle and it was extinguished by the wind. Tears rose in my eyes.

Nothing else in the rooms seemed disturbed by the wind. Not the curtains, not my papers, not Papá’s map in the study. Only me. Me and the candles.

I had to focus on lighting the copal. It must be the reason the kitchen seemed so quiet when Ana Luisa was in it, empty of something the way the rest of the house never was. It had to be the solution. It had to be.

I nursed the end of the block of resin as its tip reddened and began to smoke, cupping my hands around it and coaxing until the plume grew hale and curled toward the ceiling. Slowly, the temperature of the room began to warm. The chill seeped away; the darkness grew warmer, less dense.

A wink of red light caught my eye from the study, hovering about a meter and a half off the ground. It moved closer and closer to the bedroom, approaching with the quiet determination of a hunter.

I leaped to my feet and slammed the bedroom door shut. I stuffed the key in its hole and locked it as swiftly as I could.

Click.

I withdrew the key.

The room was silent. My racing heartbeat began to slow. The numbness had faded from my fingers, and soon would from my freezing feet and arms. Now that I had copal, I would be able to sleep.

I stepped away from the door.

Thundering erupted over the door from the study, as if a thousand fists were hammering against it, pounding and pounding with immortal force.

I flung myself back, narrowly missing the end of the four-posted bed as I fell to the floor in a heap. The thundering paused, then began again with renewed force, so hard the door handle rattled and bounced against the wood. I imagined the hands that had shoved me on the stairs, icy and disembodied, pounding and pounding. The door was going to break off its hinges. It was going to cave in, and whatever was making that noise, whatever had red eyes and moved with the silence of a ghost, was going to sweep into the room and come for me.

But it never did. The pounding would stop, then begin again, but the door never gave out. I nursed the resin incense and lit candles, then sat with my back against the stucco wall, my knees curled to my chest, my hands over my ears.

That was how the night passed. Pounding on the door, then silence. Pounding, then silence. The silences were never the same length; long after midnight I began to drift off in one of the longer pauses, and then would wake with a strangled scream as the thundering of thousands of hands attacked the back of the door.

The sun rose. My incense burned low. My sanity was in tatters, shredded by a thousand claws.

It wasn’t until morning light crept into the room and silence stretched long, longer than it ever had in the night, that I summoned the courage to peer through the keyhole into the study.

It was empty.

Of course.

What had I expected to see? A thousand people, snoring in heaps on the floor after a taxing night of terrorizing the lady of the house?

It took me a full hour after that to brave opening the door, and by then, it was time to greet the priests.

I expected to see Padre Guillermo, looking maddeningly well rested, his pale face cherry bright from the walk up the hill from the stables. But the first of the priests who entered San Isidro’s courtyard was younger, his thinning pale hair streaked with gray only at the temples. A light sheen of sweat shone on his brow as he strode toward me. Padre Andrés followed at his shoulder, his chest rising and falling as slowly as if he had ambled lazily across the plaza de armas on his long legs. Though he was also dressed in black, no sweat shone on his brow. Streaks of red winked in his dark hair in the midmorning sunlight as he followed the other priest’s example and nodded his hello.

“Buenos días, doña,” the first priest said. “I am Padre Vicente.”

“Welcome, Padres,” I said. “Where is Padre Guillermo?”

“He is busy,” Padre Vicente said, taking a handkerchief to dab the sweat at his brow. He did not deem it necessary to elaborate.

He was taller than Guillermo, and not as plump; his middle-aged face had fewer lines and a cool, settled expression that stoked a curl of fear in my belly. Was it that his straight-backed confidence was that of the fiercely pious, or that his assessment scraped over me in a way that was far too close to Tía Fernanda for comfort?

I cleared my throat. “Thank you for coming all this way in his stead,” I said. “Please, come into the house.”

I made sure I spent the requisite amount of time charming them, seating them on the terrace overlooking the half-weeded back garden. I asked Ana Luisa to bring them cool drinks; she sent Paloma instead. I spoke of weather and the other hacendados with Padre Vicente, leaning on all the high-society airs I had learned while living in the capital in an attempt to impress him. Men like him only pitied women they deemed worthy of the effort: the wealthy, those of high class. I was not born one of these. I had to rely on my new surname and acting the part. Though I was exhausted and felt close to shattering from the night before, I poured all my energy into trying to endear myself to him. Despite my efforts, Padre Vicente only half listened to me; my initial curl of fear spread, winding tight and trembling around my spine.

Padre Andrés remained silent. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I caught a strange expression cross his face—it took on a distant look, as if he were eavesdropping on another conversation.

But there was no one else in the house to eavesdrop on.

A moment later, his expression cleared. It was calm and attentive as he nodded along with whatever Padre Vicente was saying.

Had he heard something? Did he understand why I had invited them here?

Would he believe me?

A small bud of hope fluttered behind the hollow of my throat. I cradled it tenderly, praying to I knew not whom that at least one of the priests would not think me mad as I brought them to the north wing.

The day before, when the sun was at its zenith—for I could not force myself when there was anything less than the brightest light possible—I went back to the north wing. It was as it had been when I brought Juana and Paloma to see: smooth, unblemished stucco mocking me. Sometimes when I headed upstairs, I would cast a glance over my shoulder, thinking I had spied a tumble of bricks out of the corner of my eye . . . but whenever I turned to face it, it was gone.

Had I imagined it? Was it there or not?

It was time to end this, once and for all.

“This is where you wish to begin the blessing?” Padre Vicente looked around the dark hall, frowning at the cobwebs, a crease deepening between his brows.

I turned to face the priests. I accidentally met Padre Andrés’s gaze; he must have been watching me with a scholarly focus. There was something in his eyes, an understanding frankness that stole the words from my lips.

He knew.

Intuition was a cool hand on my fevered brow.

He would listen.

“I know this sounds shocking, but someone died in this house, Padre Vicente,” I said, the authority in my voice echoing through the narrow hall. “Someone died and was buried in a wall. Covered with bricks. I know because I found a body. This house is diseased because of it. There are . . . there is a spirit. A malevolent one . . .”

“That is quite enough, Doña Beatriz,” Padre Vicente snapped, his brows now drawn close together.

My cheeks flushed hot. I don’t quite know what I expected, but I certainly should not have expected it to go well. Perhaps it was because I described the house as diseased. Perhaps it was because I had no proof of this body I claimed to have found buried in the walls of the house.

“I will do what I came to do. That is all.” He turned on his heel and stalked toward the front hall, muttering prayers of blessing and sprinkling holy water on this wall and that. That wasn’t what I wanted.

“This house needs an exorcism, Padre,” I said, following him toward the front door. “I beg you.”

“I said, that is enough, Doña Beatriz.” Padre Vicente gave me a sharp look that indicated how obvious it was to him that something on San Isidro’s property needed an exorcism, and it wasn’t the house. “Do not give me further reason to believe you mock me with Satan’s tongue.”

My breath caught. I trod on dangerous ground. We must bear this with dignity, Mamá often said—the well-worn habit of fear bade me be silent. I should have held my tongue. But the cold of the north wing sank its claws deep into marrow. I could not shake it. I would never be free of it. I needed help. I needed someone—anyone—to listen.

“Please,” I repeated softly, and caught Padre Andrés’s forearm as he trailed behind Padre Vicente.

The young man paused, his eyes falling to my hand on his arm. I dropped it as if I had been burned—laying hands on a priest was not something a woman like Rodolfo Solórzano’s wife should do. Something no sane woman would do.

Yet I had.

For there was a curl of fear in the way Padre Andrés held his shoulders, a bent to his posture that told me he felt there was a predator nearby. That he was ready to spring away, because he, too, felt there was something breathing down his neck.

He raised his gaze to mine.

He believed me.

“Padre Andrés, my work here is done,” Padre Vicente called. He was already in the garden.

“No, please,” I breathed. The holy water and begrudging blessings were not enough. I couldn’t face another night like the previous. I would lose my mind, or—

“Andrés, boy!” That was the cross bark of a superior who would not tolerate being disobeyed.

“Come to Mass often, Doña Beatriz,” Padre Andrés said. His voice was low, sonorous—low enough that Padre Vicente could not overhear him in the garden. “The sacraments remind us we are not alone.”

Then he dipped his head and stepped into the light. I watched his dark silhouette, slender as a young oak, as he crossed the courtyard in Padre Vicente’s wake.

There was a lilt of invitation in that final phrase, in the urgent shade of his eyes.

Come to the church, it said. I will help you.