Mexican Gothic(81)

“Serving in town as your family’s middleman.”

“It’s what I was given to expect.”

“You’ve had no other desire but that? To serve your family?”

“When I was younger I dreamed I’d go away. But it was the sort of dream only a small child can have, like thinking one day you might join the circus. I didn’t pay it any heed, lately. It was pointless. After what became of my father, I figured, well, he had a stronger personality than I have, he was more audacious, and even he could do nothing but obey the will of High Place.”

As he spoke, Francis reached into his jacket’s pocket and took out the little portrait she’d seen before. She leaned down, looking at it with more care than the first time. It was part of an enamel locket, one side painted blue, decorated with golden lilies of the valley. She traced a flower with a nail.

“Did your father know about the gloom?”

“Before coming to High Place, you mean? No. He married my mother, and she brought him here, but she obviously didn’t mention it. He didn’t know for a while. By the time he learned the whole truth it was too late, and he eventually agreed to stay.”

“The same setup that they are offering me, I suppose,” Noemí said. “A chance to be a part of the family. Not that he had much of a choice.”

“He loved her, I guess. He loved me. I don’t know.”

Noemí handed him back the locket, and he tucked it into his pocket. “Will there truly be a wedding ceremony? A bridal dress?”

she asked.

She recalled the rows of pictures in the hallways, fixing each generation in time. And the bridal portraits in Howard’s room. If they could, they would have painted Catalina’s portrait in the same style. They would have painted Noemí’s portrait too. Both paintings would have hung side by side atop a mantelpiece. There would also have been a photo of the newlyweds, decked in their fine silks and velvet.

The mirror offered her a vague impression of what such a wedding picture might have looked like, for it captured both Noemí and Francis, their faces solemn.

“It’s tradition. In the old days there would have been a great feast, and every person attending would have given you a gift of silver.

Mining has always been our trade, and it all began with silver.”

“In England?”

“Yes.”

“And you came chasing more silver here.”

“It had run out, over there. Silver, tin, and our luck. And the people back in England, they suspected us of odd doings. Howard thought they’d ask fewer questions here, that he’d be able to do as he wished. He wasn’t wrong.”

“How many workers died?”

“It’s impossible to know.”

“Have you wondered about it?”

“Yes,” he whispered, his voice thick with shame.

This house had been built atop bones. And no one had noticed such an atrocity, rows and rows of people streaming into the house, into the mine, and never leaving. Never to be mourned, never to be found. The serpent does not devour its tail, it devours everything around it, voracious, its appetite never quenched.

She gazed at the wide-open fangs of the snake surrounding the mirror, and she turned her face and rested her chin on his shoulder.

And like that they sat for a long time, she dark and he pale, making an odd contrast amidst all the snowy-white sheets, and around them, like a vignette, the darkness of the house blurring the borders.





23





N


ow that there was no need for pretense, they let her talk to Catalina without the watchful maid to spy on them. Francis was her companion instead. She supposed they saw them as a unit. Two symbiotic organisms, tethered together. Or else, jailer and prisoner.

Whatever their reasoning, she appreciated the chance to speak to her cousin and pulled her chair closer to the bed where Catalina was resting. Francis stood on the other side of the room, glancing out the window and tacitly offering them privacy as they spoke in whispers.

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you when I read the letter,” Noemí said.

“I should have known.”

“You couldn’t know,” Catalina said.

“Still, if I’d simply fetched you, despite their protestations, we wouldn’t be here.”

“They wouldn’t have let you. Noemí, it’s enough that you came.

Your presence makes me better. It’s like in those stories I used to read: it’s as if you’ve broken a spell.”

More likely it was the tincture Francis was administering, but Noemí nodded and grasped her cousin’s hands. How she wished that it were true, though! The fairy tales Catalina had shared with her always had good endings. The wicked were punished, order was restored. A prince climbed a tower and fetched down the princess.

Even the dark details, such as the cutting of the wicked stepsisters’

heels, faded into oblivion once Catalina declared that everyone lived happily ever after.

Catalina could not recite those magical words—happily ever after —and Noemí had to hope the escape they had formulated was not a tall tale. Hope was all they had.

“He knows something is wrong,” Catalina said suddenly, blinking slowly.