Page 11 of The Familiar

“Well?” demanded the man with the red beard. “See how she stands there like a knob of rock. You expect me to believe God would place real power in the hands of such a creature?”

“God or the devil,” murmured the woman who had laughed so heartily at Luzia’s joke.

The man laughed. “Surely the devil would choose a more pleasing means of seduction.”

“Clap your hands,” Luzia said, surprised at the command in her voice. It had the snap of a whip over a horse’s back.

The man’s laugh died on his lips. Who was a peasant to command a person of his stature? And yet, in this room, on this night, he had asked for her to perform, and so her impudence must be permitted. Such was the temporary power of the singer, the actor, the fool.

“Clap your hands,” she demanded, and they obliged.

Luzia felt the song, hot under her tongue like the seeds of a pepper. The noise cloaked her tune, a familiar song, one she used when the coals in the hearth had gone cold. Ken vende el sol, merka la kandela. A warning. A chastisement. He who sells the sun must buy candles. Luzia could see Hualit’s finger wagging, but in her mouth the words caught fire.

The candles on the table and the sideboard had been guttering in their wax pools, burned down to the nubs. But now the flames shot upward, gouts of yellow light that nearly reached the ceiling.

Don Marius gave a shriek as his sleeve caught fire. He banged his arm against the table, trying to quench the flames. Valentina hurled a pitcher of water at him.

Everyone pushed their chairs back. They were all talking at once.

Luzia knew she had done too much and yet she didn’t want to stop.

En lo eskuro es todo uno.

The song took shape easily, as if it had been waiting for her; it sent a chill through her like a cloud passing over the sun.

There was no need for her to raise her arm, but she did, demanding the audience’s attention. With a whoosh the candles were extinguished, leaving the room in darkness.

Now everyone was chattering and shouting.

“I shall faint!” the woman cried.

Valentina lit a candelabra. Her hands were trembling and she dropped the torch as it burned the tips of her fingers, but her wide eyes were full of happy wonder. The guests were laughing now, fanning themselves, their cheeks flushed with pleasure. Light had been restored, Luzia was once more just a serving girl who had done her best to entertain. The delicious illusion of danger had passed and they could all exclaim about it and marvel over Don Marius’s scorched sleeve.

But not the man with the red beard. Only he stayed silent and seated. He didn’t look sleepy any longer. He certainly didn’t look pleased. He remained in his chair, staring at Luzia, still as a cat that has spotted its prey.

CHAPTER 7

Huddled on the floor of the larder that night, Luzia kept her candle burning, though she knew she wouldn’t be granted another for the week. She listened to the mice shuffling in their tunnels and thought of how quickly her time as a bird, even a land-bound bird, had ended. Rat or turnip, she’d been lucky to live beneath anyone’s notice.

She didn’t sleep that night. Instead she packed her basket: the end of a wheel of cheese, red sticks of spicy lomo embuchado that she’d helped Águeda make and that had been drying in the air above her as she slept for months. Some dried figs, a heel of stale bread, her second set of linen, and the few coins she’d managed to earn. It was all she owned. Hopefully Hualit could advance her a bit of money against the sale of Valentina’s pearl.

She had no warm coat or traveling shoes, but she would have to make do. Maybe she should be grateful she didn’t have much to carry, but she felt a jolt of anger at how little weight she had in this world, how little she had to keep her from being caught up in the wind and scattered like dust swept off the stoop.

She’d understood too late what the man with the red beard was, not just another bored nobleman but an informer. He would go to the inquisitors. He had probably been sent by them to discover the demonic nature of what was transpiring beneath the roof of Casa Ordoño. She would be thrown in a cell like Lucrecia de León, only she had no rich friends to advocate for her. She would be flogged and tortured, then burned as a heretic or a witch, or maybe they would decide she’d been possessed by a demon. Hualit had warned her: the Church owned miracles and their saints performed them, not scullion girls with muddy family names. She couldn’t blame her mother’s stubborn nature or her father’s madness, or even some ancestor on her shadowy family tree. Maybe there really was a demon inside her. One that craved feather beds and fine food and applause.

She thought about leaving before sunrise, but she was afraid to travel the streets at night on her own and it was important she not look like she was running. So she waited.

At dawn, she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and set out as if she were headed to the market, her basket swinging from her arm. Then she turned and made for San Ginés. She probably should have gone to confession or morning mass, but she was too afraid to stop moving. And what good would it do her?

It had been her mother’s great-grandfather who had been dragged from his home in Sevilla and offered death or baptism, who had seen the Talmud burned and pissed on, his neighbors’ houses ransacked for silver and silks. Once, her father had taken Luzia to a part of Madrid she didn’t know. He’d pointed to six windows arrayed in a line beneath a roof. Careful now, he’d said, his eyes bright with excitement, don’t look too curious. This used to be a synagogue. You must remember. You must learn to see our secrets so that your name can be written in the book.

None of it had quite made sense. After her mother’s death her father saw signs and secrets everywhere. Luzia had asked Hualit about it and her aunt had flown into a rage. She’d slapped Afonso and cursed his name. But it had been Hualit who taught Luzia those precious, perilous scraps of language, that mix of Hebrew and Spanish and Turkish and Greek that arrived in letters carried over land and sea.

“What’s the difference?” Luzia had asked when she was still a child. “My father gives me Hebrew. You give me … whatever the refranes are. Both are secrets to keep.”

“Your father’s Hebrew is as full of holes as his mind. Your mother was the educated one. And the difference, querida, is that my secrets may do you some good.” Then she’d grinned and waved her hand over the wilted irises set on her dining table. “Ken no rizika, no rozika.”

A bit of nonsense, a little rhyme. But the curling edges of the iris petals had plumped and stretched, gently ironed by an invisible hand, smooth as if they’d just bloomed, their purple bright and new.