The Hacienda(76)
When Paloma turned her attention back to me, I placed the small pouch of carefully selected herbs on the table. I had prayed over them as they dried, imbuing them with the correct intent. Ideally, I would have brewed them immediately. Titi had the luxury of being able to brew cures in her own home; as a priest, I had neither the privacy nor the impenetrable disguise of a woman hiding in plain sight in her kitchen.
Fortunately, Titi had predicted this might be a problem I would face, and gave me alternative instructions. These I began to recite to Paloma, beginning by stressing how important it was to brew the herbs in the correct order.
“Stop,” she interrupted. “I can’t remember all that. Write it down.”
“No.” Written instructions, if found, could implicate Paloma and Mariana, even though Mariana could not read. The girls could be punished. “It’s too dangerous.”
“What if I confuse the instructions?” Paloma said when I voiced my concerns. “That’s also dangerous.”
“Titi would not want us to get caught,” I said.
“Titi would not want Mariana to die on our watch,” she hissed.
I had no reply to that. Titi made that explicit when she first taught me the recipe—error could harm the recipient, perhaps irreparably.
Sensing my weakening resolve, Paloma rose. “There’s paper in the drawing room,” she whispered.
“Paloma, wait,” I said, but she was already gone. She slipped into the hall, her bare feet whispering along the flagstones. I was achingly aware of how hard my frightened heart beat as I waited for her return; it was so loud it nearly drowned out the sound of a door opening and softly clicking shut. Let this not be a mistake, I prayed silently. I sent the prayer up to the heavens; it caught in the rafters of the house like a cobweb. Voices of the house approached it, cooing with curiosity, passing it from presence to presence like children with a new toy. Before I could scold them, ask them to release my prayer to the heavens where it belonged, Paloma returned.
She set charcoal and paper on the table crisply.
“Be quick about it,” she said.
I kept my instructions shorthand and as spare as possible. Paloma knew the names of the herbs; it was a matter of which ones to crush in a molcajete and how much broth to boil. What symptoms Mariana should expect after drinking the mixture. That the cramping would pass within a week, but if the bleeding continued for longer, to send for me.
No sound but the scratching of the charcoal on paper disturbed us. I did not notice how silent the voices in the rafters had fallen until a new voice—a real, mortal voice—shattered the peace of the kitchen.
“What is this?”
Paloma and I jumped, our faces whipping to the door.
Do?a Catalina, the patrón’s wife, stood in the doorway of the kitchen, the lit candle in her hand illuminating her frighteningly pale face.
“Padre Andrés came to discuss my mother’s illness,” Paloma blurted out. “She has a weak heart but is quite proud and often refuses help, do?a. He is our kin, so—”
Do?a Catalina swept into the room like a cloud of white smoke, a dressing gown swathing her like a saint’s robe. She narrowed her eyes at me; seeing I was in the middle of writing, she drew close enough to read. When I moved my hand and forearm in a vain attempt to conceal the writing, she snatched the paper away.
Even in the light of her candle, it was clear how color rose to the high points of her pale cheeks as she read.
She put the paper down, then seized Paloma by the forearm with a sudden violence that brought me to my feet. “Is this for you?”
“No!” Paloma and I cried in unison.
“Silence,” Do?a Catalina spat at me. “Get out of my house.”
I stepped forward instinctively, meaning to put myself between my cousin and the snake that bared its fangs at us, ready to strike.
“Release her,” I said. “This has nothing to do with her.”
Do?a Catalina took a step back, yanking Paloma to her feet with her. She was tall and had no trouble looking me dead in the eye.
“That is enough.” Her voice was deathly soft. Paloma yelped; Do?a Catalina’s long fingernails dug into my cousin’s skin. “You have no business contradicting me before my servants, nor encouraging them to sin. I knew when I first came to this godforsaken place that a mestizo priest meant corruption among the villagers, but I expected drinking and licentiousness. I did not expect this.”
“I protect their health and their souls, do?a,” I said archly. Stung pride goaded me, loosened my tongue. “It is not easy, when they suffer so at the hands of their patrón.”
“You dare speak of my husband that way?” she said.
“Let her go,” I snapped.
“I think not, Padre Andrés.” Then her face shifted, mercurial as smoke. Anger carved the delicate lines of her face deep, transforming her beauty into something brutal as a coy, sharp smile played across her lips. “Leave. Or I shall tell Padre Vicente you not only trespassed on my property, you spread satanic beliefs among the villagers.”
This robbed my reply from my lips. Padre Vicente was just waiting for an excuse to condemn me, and I had just put all the proof he needed in writing. All my years fighting to remain hidden would be for naught; already robbed of my grandmother, the villagers would be robbed of me too. If the Inquisition was merciful, I would be removed from Apan and appointed elsewhere after a thorough reeducation. If not . . . I could be imprisoned. Tortured.