The Hacienda(72)

“Perhaps I am,” Beatriz muttered, the animation in her face dulling. Her shoulders slumped as she leaned against the back of the pew. “I have nightmares. I see things no one else can. I hear things no one else can.”

“Perhaps you are a witch, Do?a Beatriz.”

Her laughter was the bright, sudden snap of castanets, its surprise echoing in the dome of the chapel. She cast a coy look at the crucifix and crossed herself. “God forbid, Padre,” she said, a little breathless as she touched her thumb to her lips.

Despite myself, a smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. God forgive us, blasphemers both.

I moved to the side, slightly away from her down the pew, and patted the pile of blankets that remained. “Rest,” I said. “I will wake you before dawn and escort you back to the house when it is tolerable.” I almost said safe, but I wondered if it ever would be.

It was as if she heard this, or saw the thoughts written across my face. “You should rest too,” she said. “Your head . . .”

“It will heal, God willing,” I said. Then, soft and determined: “I will not leave you.”

She considered this, her expression grave. This was the fifth night we had spent in each other’s company, each more unpredictable and dangerous than the last.

“Do you promise?” she asked.

When a man makes a promise, he makes it on his honor. When a witch makes a promise, they feel it in their bones. Titi believed words are power: they may lay your destiny in stone or shatter a legacy altogether. Words can damn or bless in equal measure, and are never to be used lightly.

“I promise,” I breathed.

Then I knelt on the knee rest before us, reaching out of habit to my pocket for my rosary. I met the soft cloth of my sleeping clothes. My rosary was in my room, resting on the stack of books next to my bed. No matter. I made the sign of the cross and began to pray in a low voice. I had learned visiting orphanages in Guadalajara that there was no easier lullaby than someone else’s meditative prayer. Behind me, I heard Beatriz lay herself down on the blankets, shift, and settle. Her breathing softened, then deepened.

When I was certain she was asleep, I let my voice drop to a murmur, then fell silent.

She was curled in a fetal position on the pew, one arm tucked under the blankets she used as a pillow. Dark hair tumbled over her cheek and her mouth, rising and falling with her breathing.

I brushed curls away from her face, mimicking her own gesture by tucking one gently behind her ear. I ached to leave my hand on her hair, to stroke it gently, but I drew it back. She shifted; her eyes fluttered open.

“Sleep,” I murmured. “You’re safe.”

Her eyes drifted shut. She believed me. She had seen all I was—darkness, damnation, and doubt, my failings, my fear—and still trusted me enough to fall asleep by my side.

I listened as her breathing resumed its deep, steady pattern.

“I promise,” I whispered.





24





BEATRIZ



BEATRIZ.”

Sleep was deep and soft and dreamless, and I was reluctant to be drawn out of it. Let me be, let me sink deeper into silence. It was only when there was a hand on my shoulder that I floated to the surface of awareness.

I was curled on my side on a bench. Candlelight draped over me like a blanket. I blinked. There were pews before me. An altar. Where was I?

“Beatriz.” That was Andrés, his warm hand on my shoulder.

The night before flooded me: fleeing the house, racing through the rain to the capilla. How Andrés found me here and stayed with me through the night.

The Andrés who stood over me now was not the one I had embraced last night, whose black hair was messy from sleep, whose ragged nightshirt I had soaked with my tears. He was dressed in his austere black habit, and was freshly shaven, his hair slicked away from his face. He smelled of a piney local soap and, faintly, of copal.

I tightened the blanket around me. I was now—in a way I hadn’t been last night—acutely aware of how little I wore. I hadn’t cared in the middle of the night. Safety was what mattered then. Nothing else had crossed my mind.

Almost nothing else. Looking up at Andrés now—Padre Andrés, I emphasized to myself—should fill me with a sense of shame. I should not admire the dark line of his lashes or the placement of the small mole on his cheek. I should remember last night more innocently, not lingering on the warmth of his body, nor the weight of his hands on me. I hadn’t cared then. But as the daylight strengthened, so would my shame.

I didn’t want it to.

I wanted to stay in the capilla forever, abandoned in sleep, not a shred of guilt to be found within me.

I did not want to go back to the house. Which was precisely what Andrés had woken me to do.

Seeing I was awake, he sat next to me on the pew and offered me a cup of water. I snuck a glance at his face over the rim as I drank deeply.

He was staring into space, or perhaps up at the crucifix. His mouth was firm, and the lines forming around it seemed deeper than ever. There was no peace to be found there.

I lowered the cup and followed the line of his eye up to the crucifix. The carver and painter had fixed Jesus Christ’s gaze upward in agonized rapture, but a small, curling feeling of shame told me His attention was focused on the more earthly affairs before Him. I set the cup down and tightened the blanket around my shoulders.