The Hacienda(20)

It was damaged, Rodolfo said. Earthquake, or perhaps water damage. If he had asked the foreman José Mendoza to look into it, clearly it had not been done.

How odd. I put the pencil and paper down on the steps, resolved to investigate the damage myself. The first board came off easily. I tossed it to the side. It struck the flagstones; the sound echoed in the foyer as I took off another, and another, until the passage was open. I collected my pencil and paper and walked forward.

Though sunlight still shone outside the house, the clamminess in this narrow hall was thick as mist. It weighed heavily on my chest, akin to physical pressure. Perhaps there was a well nearby, or an underground spring.

I reached out to brush my fingertips against the wall, expecting them to come away damp. They didn’t. The wall was cool to the touch, but dry. Dry and cold as clay that had been left out in the chill of a winter night. Temperatures had an odd way of shifting in this house when I least expected them to. Our house in the capital was built of wood, and the house in Cuernavaca was stone; I was unlearned in the ways of stucco, of thick walls and slim windows.

Perhaps I could convert this part of the house into storage. It would be perfect for storing things that needed to remain cold. Wax in the summer. Maybe even ice, if that luxury were ever to be had in Apan. I smiled, half laughing at myself in a vain attempt to alleviate the clammy pressure in my chest. I had not seen ice in a home in years. I would have to write to Rodolfo to ask if there was even ice in the capital.

I placed the paper on the hall wall next to me and began to write. North wing: naturally cold storerooms. Check temperatures again in the late aftern—

The wall shifted beneath my weight.

I lurched backward so I wouldn’t fall.

Flakes of stucco went flying as I did. I hit the solidness of the opposite wall with a thud, cracking my skull against it.

Stars speckled my vision; I hissed in pain. My headache, which had faded over the last hour or so, roared back with a vengeance.

Last night had made me overly jumpy. Well done, Beatriz, I mocked myself. As easily spooked as a colt.

There was a dent in the wall before me. Bits of stucco had indeed crumbled away, like dry icing from a stale cake.

I frowned. If the wall before me was as solid as the wall behind me, that sort of dent should only be possible with the force of a battering ram, not a girl of twenty leaning against it to write.

But if it wasn’t as solid as the wall behind me? Gritting my teeth against the pain in my head, I stepped forward to the wall to investigate. While every wall in the house appeared to be made of the solid indigenous building materials, bricks of mixed mud and agave fiber and clay that had withstood centuries of earthquakes and floods, this wall was different.

I brushed my fingers over ruined stucco. It came apart at my touch, flaking like dandruff. It couldn’t be stucco. Or even good-quality paint. I took a piece and sniffed it. It was lime whitewash, covering stacked bricks.

How odd. Had part of the house been walled up hastily? I frowned at the wall. The hall was narrower than most, and dim, but I could make out the outline of bricks. San Isidro was many things, but shoddily built was not one of them. It was solid to its heart.

I set down my paper and pencil and tested one of the bricks.

It came away from the wall in my hands. I shrank a step back, surprised and somewhat afraid that the whole thing might come crashing down.

It didn’t. I set the brick down quickly and peered into the hole in the wall. Something caught the light and glinted. There was something back there.

Driven by curiosity, I took out two more bricks, then jumped aside with a yelp as half the wall came cracking down. White flakes of limestone went flying; clouds of dust rose from the wreckage. That was indeed shoddy workmanship, I thought. I must tell Rodolfo that the—

My thoughts stopped dead. The fallen bricks had been covering something up.

A skull, white as the limestone, grinned coquettishly out at me.

Its neck was bent at an angle not unlike the dead rat’s on the doorstep, and its spine curled down in positions I knew were wrong. Though I knew little of the human body, my gut told me it was wrong.

Around the skeleton’s broken neck, a golden necklace glinted dully. That was what had caught my eye.

I cast down the clay I had been holding.

A body had been bricked into the wall of San Isidro.

I needed to talk to Juana.

I turned on my heel and fled.

I found Ana Luisa in the outdoor kitchen of the servants’ courtyard, serving pozole to the tlachiqueros for lunch.

“Where is Juana?” I cried.

The tlachiqueros, the other servants, Paloma—they all turned to stare at me. I must have looked like a madwoman, racing from the house as if pursued, covered in dust and limestone, my eyes wild, my hair falling from its knot. I didn’t care.

“I need Juana,” I said to Ana Luisa. “Now.”

She took me in from head to toe, then jerked her chin at her daughter.

“Do as Do?a Beatriz says,” she said. “Take her to Do?a Juana.”

The weight of all the people’s eyes pressed down on me like a thousand hands. I wanted to be away from them; I needed to get away from them.

Paloma shot her mother a reluctant look and stood, slowly, too slowly.

“It is urgent,” I said to her.

She turned to me, her face still as a statue’s. My voice had come out hard, even if I felt like I was going to shatter like glass.