Page 36 of The Familiar

“No!” Luzia cried. “I … I don’t think so. I don’t know what I meant to do.” If she’d had murder in her heart it had been for Víctor de Paredes. “Is he cruel to you? Has he hurt you?”

“He is a man and so the answer must be yes.”

“Just speak plainly for once.”

“And what will you do if I say yes?” Hualit sighed. “Luzia, he has never struck me, never beaten me. His tastes are not like that. My life is better with him in it, querida, and yours is too.”

Luzia turned her head away, but Hualit grabbed her chin just as Don Víctor had. “Listen, Luzia. Do you know where I got the money for the coach I took to the Prado every night to wait for Víctor? For the gowns that so enticed him? For my own linajista to make me a good Christian widow worthy of more than a nobleman’s cock? I let a man wash my hair with his piss because it gave him pleasure. I dressed as a milkmaid and let the alguacil fuck me in a field while I pretended to weep. And those were the least of my humiliations. Learning to curtsy, to perform for the king, it is nothing. You must seek to please Don Víctor and Pérez or we will both pay for it.”

Luzia shoved her aunt’s hand away. She sat up and pulled her knees close, wrapping her arms around them. “You know as much as I do about the refranes. Why do they work? Why do they not work? I am lost in the dark.”

“What happened here … it could be un esticho. Witchcraft. One of the torneo competitors trying to disturb your gifts. I’ll write to Mari. She knows all about shedim and how to deal with angry spirits. Los ke vienen i van.”

Those who come and go. Luzia didn’t want to believe some vengeful spirit was chasing her, or that she was already in danger from rivals she’d never met.

For a long moment, Hualit was silent. “I’ll write Gento Isserlis too, but I have to be more careful with how I phrase things. He’s always on guard for idolatry.”

“He’s a priest?”

“A rabbi.”

“You exchange letters with … with a rabbi?”

Her aunt closed her eyes. “He leads a congregation in Salonika. I send money for oil, for the lamp in the synagogue. There are many synagogues there. Can you imagine?”

Luzia couldn’t make sense of the words her aunt was using.

Hualit looked sad. “Do you really not know what I am? Why I serve olives and figs to you but never ham? Why I have a private confessor to dole out the sacrament and who has his own secrets to keep?”

“But you said … my father … you said he was a fool. That—”

“Because he is. Because only secrecy can protect us.”

“You were baptized!”

“That wasn’t my choice. When King Manuel demanded the Jews of Portugal relinquish their children, mothers took knives to their babies’ throats rather than see them baptized. Maybe that’s what my mother’s mother should have done too. Anusim, they called those who chose baptism over death. Forced ones. But what are we, their descendants, who say false prayers and kneel in their murderers’ churches?”

Christian. They were Christian, weren’t they? But here was her aunt, who had only ever seemed to care for good wine and fine silk, a Judaizer, the embodiment of everything the Inquisition reviled.

“Luzia, I might be the holiest and most pious of Christians and it would not be enough for them. Their great religion can make bread into flesh and wine into blood. But they don’t believe that any amount of holy water or prayer can truly make a Jew a Christian.”

“Does Ana know?” The housekeeper attended church with Hualit daily. Had it all been performance?

“Of course. We pray together and keep the Sabbath when we can.”

Two Judaizers beneath one roof. Luzia leaned back against the wall. “Why tell me this now? Why burden me with such a secret?”

“Is that cruel?” Hualit mused. “Maybe so. Your father wanted you to have a Portuguese name to match his own. But my mother gave me a name full of power. It is not a woman’s name or a man’s. It is not Hebrew. It is not Spanish. It is not Arabic. It is all of these things. Just like the refranes you use to work your miracles. We don’t need to understand where that power comes from, only that it is yours to wield.”

“How can you say that? I killed a man today. He died in this room. What if it had been Don Víctor I killed? What then?”

“Don’t think he isn’t wondering the same thing, Luzia. If he fears you a little, maybe that’s a good thing. Show him you can be biddable. Win Pérez, then win the king. Make them shower you in jewels and reales.”

“And then?”

“We’ll make our escape with our pockets full of gold and silver. We’ll join Rabbi Gento in Salonika. We’ll bring Ana too. His congregation is full of forced converts. They’ll welcome us back. They’ll teach us to pray properly. We’ll eat mulberries in the summer and brave the winds in the winter. We’ll keep the Sabbath holy and fear nothing but old age. But until that day all we have to protect us is the illusion of respectability, and we need Víctor de Paredes to preserve it. Find out what went wrong today and don’t let it happen again.”

CHAPTER 19