Paloma looked out at the garden. The mist had lifted, but the day was gray, and in its light the flower beds looked especially lifeless and forsaken.
Though she was a servant and I the patrón’s wife, that did not mean I was any more entitled to what she knew than she was to my own troubles. Any other time, I would have backed away. Respected the sorrow that so clearly hung around her like a shroud.
But a deep intuition, or perhaps dread, or perhaps even fear told me I had to know.
“What happened?”
She inhaled deeply through her nose, and her dam burst:
“I told you I heard rumors that the patrón raped someone who worked in the house. That was a lie. Mariana told me it happened, then later, she told me she was with child. She was frightened. I asked Andrés for help. Titi . . . I mean, our grandmother, had many cures, and I knew she had taught him the one to end pregnancies. He had just returned from Guadalajara. I think he brushed up against the Inquisition there—he was afraid. But I pushed him to do it. Do?a Catalina saw him bring me the cure. She threatened him. Cast him out. And then she turned on me.” She barely drew breath, she was speaking so quickly. “We watch each other’s backs. That’s how we survive. But I—” Her breathing hitched; tears made her eyes glassy, reflecting the gray light of the morning. “She was cruel. She told me she would not tolerate bastards and kept beating me until I told her who the cure was for. Mariana wouldn’t have. Mariana was stronger than me. But I gave in, and a week later, Mariana was dead. Do?a Catalina ordered her to take candelabras up to that ledge in the formal dining room, even though we never had guests and no one used that room. Only Do?a Catalina was there when Mariana fell . . .” Her voice cracked. “Do?a Catalina killed her, I’m sure of it, and it’s all my fault.”
Sobs seized her. She leaned into me; I slid an arm over her shoulders and held her tight. The clouds did not part, but the sky was lightening. I tilted my face up to it. I wanted to spirit us away, lift her and take her with me somewhere, anywhere but here.
But there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to seek refuge. Nowhere to find peace.
Slowly, Paloma caught her breath. She sniffed. “That bitch got what she deserved,” she whispered.
I stiffened. “I thought she died of typhus,” I said slowly, my voice sounding distant as it echoed the words that Tía Fernanda had once stage-whispered maliciously behind my back.
Paloma lifted her head. “Who buries someone who died of typhus in a wall?” she cried.
Juana, Juana . . .
From the crumbling wall in the north wing, the skull grinned out at me, mocking me with its too-wide smile and crooked, broken neck. I thought of Juana mocking me for thinking someone was buried in the wall, releasing me so I fell back into the cold dark of the north wing.
As you wish, Do?a Beatriz. Your word is the patrón’s.
Juana hated me because I threatened her authority. I was her brother’s wife, a check on her power in the kingdom of San Isidro. She must have hated María Catalina because she, too, was a symbol of Rodolfo, how Juana’s life of privilege and freedom was nothing but a lie. That it could all be taken away in a moment.
For Juana was a bastard.
Rodolfo kept this secret. Out of misplaced loyalty to her or his own pride, he had never told a soul. Not even me. And when he threatened to treat her as he believed she deserved, when he threatened to disown her . . .
It wasn’t the house that killed Rodolfo. Not like Ana Luisa, no. He never felt the cold, he saw no apparitions nor heard dissonant laughter, because the house—María Catalina—liked Rodolfo.
But Juana?
Juana killed him.
She must have killed María Catalina too, for the same reasons. She was the one who buried her in the wall, covering up evidence of her crime and showing her brother the grave behind the capilla.
Shouts and swift footsteps sounded from beyond the courtyard gates. Paloma and I looked up as Juana appeared in the open doorway, flanked by two of Román’s troops.
“There she is!” she cried, voice wretched from weeping. She was a portrait of perfect anguish, her hair dirty and wild around her tear-streaked face. The men broke into a run, charging me and Paloma.
It was as if the world slowed and went silent as realization dawned on me. That was why the caudillo and his men had arrived so quickly: they had already been on their way. For Juana had summoned them.
Paloma yelped and leaped to her feet. But where was there to run?
The clean skirts of Juana’s work dress swirled around her legs as she stopped walking. She lifted a finger and pointed at me.
I was frozen to the spot, even when Paloma grabbed my arm and tried to wrench me to my feet. For when Juana met my eyes, my blood ran cold: there was a hardness in her gaze that pierced me like a bayonet.
She had planned this.
“That’s the bitch who killed my brother,” she said.
27
ANDRéS
I PACED THE COMMON room of José Mendoza’s house. Though the area before the hearth was no broader than four strides, I walked those four strides back and forth, back and forth, as desperately as if the act alone could solve our troubles.
Mendoza and Paloma sat at the table on wooden chairs, watching as I wore the flagstones down. Then they exchanged a look I could not parse. They knew each other well, Paloma and Mendoza. Not only was Paloma friends with the foreman’s daughters, she had become his protégé in all but name when the patrón was in the capital. I was glad he had offered her a place to stay—she was still too shaken by the suddenness of Tía Ana Luisa’s death to stay in her own home alone. I turned to him for his steadiness and his wisdom, now that the tide had changed and the world had been turned on its head.
Do?a Juana accused Beatriz of murdering Rodolfo. She was placed under house arrest. The caudillo Victoriano Román left the keys of the house with Juana, and two of his men standing guard as he returned to Apan. He needed to check the state of the prison, he said. During the war, the small jail on the outskirts of Apan was barely more than a way station for captured insurgents, men who spent mere hours under its roof before being dragged from their cells and shot against the stucco walls at dawn. Now it was populated by town drunks and the occasional bandit; apparently, it would be inappropriate to place a member of the landed class among their ilk, even if that person was accused of murder.
Fury filled me when I heard this. What was inappropriate were these monstrous accusations against an innocent woman.