Page 48 of The Familiar

Luzia felt a pang of fear. Such a command was prelude to a beating with a switch or stick, but if a king, even a man who was only king in his own palace, gave you an order, there was no choice but to oblige.

She offered up her hands. He took hold of them, his rings flashing. His own hands were soft, slick like dumplings when they slid from the soup pot.

He laughed. “Rough and tough as animal hide. They told me you were a scullion, but I did not quite believe.”

“I am an honest woman, señor. It is true.”

He gave her hands a squeeze, then dropped them. “I have no doubt of that at least.” He glanced at Don Víctor for the first time. “The little nun has made a very big impression.”

Don Víctor laughed. “I am certain she never took orders.”

But Pérez was already gone.

Hualit embraced her. “Well done, querida,” she whispered in Luzia’s ear. “You showed that bitch what her fancy gowns are worth.”

“How did you know the sign of the Pleiades?” Don Víctor asked.

Luzia looked at him blankly. “Beg pardon, señor?”

“Be careful,” Hualit said. “The Beauty will not be happy with you. Keep your eyes open.”

The musicians struck up their cue again, a signal that the next hopeful was to perform now that Pérez had returned to his position at the center of the room.

“Let us learn what we can,” said Don Víctor, though his eyes were still on Luzia.

She let herself search the crowd, seeking Santángel. He would know now that she had lied. And that she had read his personal correspondence. She thought of his hands pulling apart the pomegranate, an offering after the nightmare of what she had done to Álvaro, an opportunity for her to renew her faith in herself, and for them to keep faith together. But when she’d stood on that stage, listening to the applause for the Beauty, humiliation flooding through her hot and prickly as a fever, she hadn’t been able to think of Santángel or to look any further than the next moment when she would stand on stage and be made a laughingstock. She had felt the pull of the magic that had split her tongue, like a door begging to be opened, escape waiting on the other side.

Then she’d gazed out at those reassembled glasses in their perfect rows, and she’d heard the refrán in her aunt’s voice, remembered Hualit leaning back on the cushions in her courtyard, laughing as she read from the letter in her hand. El ombre es mas sano del fierro, mas nezik del vidro. Luzia hadn’t understood some of the words, and she and Hualit had worked them out together. A man is stronger than iron and weaker than glass. She’d never thought of the refrán as something she could use, but standing there, helpless, her anger mixed with the memory and the song leapt to life in her mouth. The words had saved her.

That didn’t mean they would spare her Santángel’s anger.

Luzia’s worry only increased as she watched first the Holy Child and then the Prince of Olives perform. Some part of her had hoped the rest of the competitors might be frauds. But if they were, they were far better at it than Gracia de Valera.

Teoda Halcón began on the stage but descended to the crowd and stood before Pérez, his hand in hers, her small face serene and glowing. She recited the dream she’d had the previous night, which involved an apple orchard, a white horse, and a woman bathed in moonlight, then she gestured for him to come closer, and when he bent down, she whispered in his ear.

Pérez swayed slightly when he stood erect once more, his face pale. He blinked slowly, then said in a quiet, rasping voice, “A secret. Spoken to me by my father on his deathbed.” He closed his eyes. “Remarkable.”

“Such pride he has in you,” said Teoda in her high, sweet voice. She turned to the crowd. “And now I must advise you all that a storm is coming.”

“But the skies have been cloudless all day!” someone cried.

His words were lost to a rumble of thunder and the sudden patter of rain against the ballroom windows.

The crowd burst into thrilled applause.

“This will be what the king most desires,” grumbled Víctor. “Someone who can see into the hearts and minds of men, into the future itself.”

“Just remember,” Hualit said. “The king didn’t thank Lucrecia de León for the favor.”

The musicians leapt into another dramatic chord, and Luzia was grateful for the distraction.

On the stage, Fortún Donadei sat with the curved wooden body of a vihuela braced between his legs. He wore olive green velvet patterned with elaborate cutwork, a falling band of gilded lace at his neck and sparkling at his cuffs, his hose and breeches of the same green. A large golden cross hung at his neck, studded with fat gems. He plucked out a few notes, a tentative melody forming, then took up his bow and bent his head as he drew it across the strings.

The song was cheerful and his booted foot tapped along, the kind of music one might hear in a marketplace or taverna, nothing formal. And yet there was sadness in it too, a kind of longing that seemed to speak through the bow, as if the instrument itself was weary and aching, each pull across the strings a lamentation. He didn’t look out of place any longer, not with an instrument in his hands.

Was it Donadei who created this sadness? He looked beautiful in the golden light of the stage, his curls darker, his sun-bronzed skin nearly the same warm hue as the vihuela, as if they’d been carved from the same tree and polished by the same hand. Was it this profound feeling, this trembling ache between joy and misery that had lured his patroness into the olive grove? There was pleasure in this sadness. It was the feeling of remembering great happiness you will never have again, the first flush of desire you know will never be consummated but that you can’t help but hope for anyway, the desperate longing to see your beloved even when you know you are not loved in return.

Luzia’s eyes caught movement near the ceiling of the room—a bird had somehow gotten into the ballroom. There were two of them, she realized, little black things, chirping and circling the chandeliers. They fluttered toward the stage where they were joined by another, and then another. They were a flock now, moving with the music of Donadei’s bow, the flow of their bodies forming shapes that then dissolved with another turn of their wings. Luzia realized she was holding her breath as she watched and that the rest of the guests were too. With a final sad sighing of his bow, the birds rushed from the room in a gust and Donadei’s song ended. As one, the crowd sighed too, then exploded into applause that put the Holy Child’s thunder to shame.