Page 7 of The Familiar

In the days and weeks that followed, Luzia never knew how Don Marius managed to pay for the candles that arrived with their wicks bound together like bushels of wheat, the lamb and pork and fish for Fridays, the sweet wines, and paper packets of spices. She went up the stairs and down the stairs, marveling at how quickly word had spread, grateful for the nights when Doña Valentina and Don Marius dined with friends instead of at home.

The whispers of the hidalgos were overheard by servants and became whispers in sculleries and markets. Doña Valentina had a girl who could work milagritos beneath her roof. Just how miraculous were these little miracles? Well, that was hard to say. It all might just be a bit of trickery—but good trickery. And wasn’t the chance for such entertainment worth an evening of Don Marius drinking all of your wine and Doña Valentina’s meager conversation? So they came to Casa Ordoño and ate whatever sad stew and scrap of meat Valentina served. They endured the tepid broth and equally tepid gossip, and then, when they’d suffered enough, Valentina would excuse herself and call the scullion.

Every night Luzia would serve the fruit and every night one of Valentina’s guests would be offered a slender goblet, its rainbow glass gleaming in the candlelight. The chosen guest would take it giddily in her hands and then—sometimes with the nervous bravado of light blasphemy or the theatrical confidence of a player laying down a winning card—she would smash the goblet on the floor. The others would shriek and jump as if startled. But how could they be taken by surprise when the breaking was inevitable? Luzia wondered but didn’t ask. Each night she clapped her hands or stomped her feet to hide her whispered words. The tune would fly from her lips like sparks caught on a draft. The pieces of glass whirled and reassembled, the goblet made whole again.

Each night the guests gasped and cheered.

“How is it done?” they demanded. “What is the trick?”

“Now, now,” Don Marius would say, beaming at Luzia like a fond father, his finger ticking as if setting a rhythm to play by. “Her secrets are her own.”

“Is she mute?” a woman asked one night. The pearls hanging from her ears were big as quail eggs.

“A servant who can’t speak?” her husband said. “Dios, we should all be so blessed.”

“Are you mute, Luzia?” Don Marius asked in that same warm way, a generous man always ready to grant a gift. It was the first time he’d ever spoken anything other than a command to her, certainly the first time he’d ever used her name.

Luzia didn’t look up, but she could imagine Valentina’s hands twisting her napkin in her lap, clutching the cloth as if squeezing Luzia’s hand and urging her to speak, to keep her from embarrassment, to please Don Marius as nothing seemed to.

“No, señor,” she said. “It is only that I have nothing to say.” She had plenty to say. About the thin stew and those pearl earrings and the price of salt and about the unpleasant surprise that even magic could become drudgery. But it was nothing they wanted to hear.

“Never stopped me before!” boomed the husband, and everyone roared with laughter. Luzia thought, If I could really work miracles you wouldn’t laugh so easily.

That night, she undid her mistress’s hair, the braids bound so tightly that Valentina’s face seemed to sag when they were released. Luzia brushed out the strands, that murky shade somewhere between blond and brown, a sluggish river in her hands.

“This cannot continue,” she said, without breaking the rhythm of her stroke, surprised and pleased at the heavy quality of the words.

Valentina grabbed her hand. It was not quite a rich woman’s hand. She had to turn it to far too many tasks for it to be properly smooth. “It will continue or I will throw you out in the street.”

But Valentina’s grip was like a woman clinging to a wet rope, afraid she’d lose hold and be plunged into the sea. She was watching a ship full of guests sail away, a lighted galleon full of gossip and delight.

Luzia met Valentina’s eyes in the mirror. “I don’t think you will.”

“What do you want?”

“Money.”

“I don’t have money.”

“Then I don’t have miracles.”

Valentina reached up and drew the lump of pearl from her left earlobe. It was nothing like the warm, glossy dollops that had hung from her guest’s ears. But it was the only pearl Luzia had ever held.

It was useless, of course. If she tried to sell it, she’d be accused of theft. And yet still she clutched it in her palm as she fell asleep on the larder floor, a moon she’d plucked from the sky when such a thing shouldn’t be possible, a treasure all her own.

CHAPTER 5

Ten days passed before Luzia was allowed to go to mass.

Doña Valentina had invented a thousand chores that needed doing to keep her from leaving the house.

“You can go to church next Sunday,” she complained. “Surely that is enough.”

Luzia studied the freshly cleaned game birds laid out for that night’s supper. There was something accusatory in their nakedness, their pale, pimpled bodies. Her fingers were still cramped from the effort of removing their feathers.

“It is my soul we discuss,” Luzia said, dropping her voice as if the devil himself might hear. “Surely that is enough.”

Luzia knew Valentina would happily consign her to eternal damnation for the sake of a seat at the right table, but it would be a very bad thing if Luzia was not seen attending church, taking communion, making her confession. In the dim light of the kitchen, Luzia watched Valentina calculate the narrow difference between a little miracle and the crime of witchcraft.