The Hacienda(81)

Not enough.

“I will come forward anyway,” I said.

But as I spoke, my mind lingered on Juana. She had not waited for any other evidence. Clearly, she had decided to take advantage of the tragedy and rid herself of Beatriz.

Or had she designed it?

Bastard, Rodolfo said last night. He threatened to disown Juana. Now he was dead. The woman who would inherit all his property accused of his murder. Who, then, stood to profit from the blood spilled in San Isidro?

“Did you know that Do?a Juana is a bastard?” I asked Mendoza suddenly.

Paloma gasped. Mendoza looked up, wide-eyed. “Your pardon, Padre. What the hell?”

“I heard Rodolfo discussing it with her last night,” I said.

“When?” Paloma said. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Outside the green parlor, after dinner,” I said. “You must have left already. He called her a bastard, shouted at her for calling their father hers. Then he said that if she did not behave, she would inherit nothing of old Solórzano’s property. And now . . .” I let the words trail off suggestively.

Silence hung over the room like a shroud.

Mendoza swore softly.

“Blackmail,” Paloma said, firm with conviction. “We blackmail her. Make her withdraw her accusation, or you’ll tell all the hacendados she’s a bastard. She must have cousins somewhere who’ll gladly descend and take the land from her.”

“Not a bad idea, Palomita,” Mendoza said. “But you need proof, and the man who knew the truth is dead. If I were to go through old Solórzano’s documents . . .”

God forgive us, I thought, running a hand over my jaw. Talking of blackmail and bastards and stealing papers from the dead.

“Those would all be in the house,” I said.

“Carajo,” Paloma said, and thoroughly ignored my chastising look.

“I will go into the house tonight,” I said. “I will find the papers, and I will stay until dawn.”

“Are you crazy, chamaco?” Mendoza cried. “That house!” He crossed himself.

“I won’t leave Do?a Beatriz alone in there after nightfall,” I said.

There was no need to explain why. I had seen the villagers cut the house a wide berth. They could feel it. They knew. They crossed themselves at the mention of it, and there were rumors that the reason Juana had abandoned the house was not simply because of money, because of the war, because of the lack of guests and family on the property. They knew it had done something to her: Juana had always been headstrong, almost churlish, but there was a wildness to her now, one that spoke of something shattered within her.

She heard things, perhaps even saw things. I saw it in the way she took her drink last night. That was how my father drank when he heard voices.

Do?a Catalina’s cruelty was trapped in the rafters of the house, bound by her hatred into its very walls. Her essence was the sickness, and the house was festering, rotting with her from the inside out. Poisoning the foundation and spreading like disease. What emanated from its walls was a storm brewing, building in strength and venom. When it was unleashed . . . anyone within its walls could be harmed.

“I’m afraid . . .” I inhaled and let the breath out sharply. “I’m afraid the house may try to kill Do?a Beatriz.”

“You’re right to be afraid,” Paloma said. “But you’re forgetting something.”

“What is that?”

She met my eyes levelly, her mouth set in a grim line. “Juana might kill her first.”





28





BEATRIZ



THEY LOCKED ME IN a storeroom while Rodolfo’s body was removed from my bedchamber. My wrists were bound with rope. I lowered myself to the floor, curled my knees to my chest, and rocked back and forth in the dark. Hunger gnawed at my belly; I had not eaten all day, nor had water since the cup Andrés offered me in the capilla. The lack of food was making me dizzy and caused my hands to tremble.

The house curled around me with all the tenderness of a rattlesnake. Its rank breath trailed over my arms, curled around my neck. Too close. Too airless.

Visions intruded in my mind. At first they pushed like hands through curtains: prying and grasping, a dozen of them or more, their rhythm unpredictable as the thunder of fists on my bedroom door. But their ability to seize me was ultimately blunted by thick fabric.

The hands grew claws. Long, flesh-colored claws. They sliced through the curtains, through the barrier between me and it, carving my defenses to ribbons. They sank into my flesh, forcing visions that were not my own into my mind:

    Juana’s face loomed over me: calavera-white, her footstep soft as a puma’s, appearing out of the gloom. The burning of alcohol in my nostrils. The steady beat of rain on the roof. Blooms of smoke; the fading of Juana’s face. I felt circled by her, trapped. I knew she disliked me, even resented me, that our argument that night was heated, but this—

The glint of steel in the darkness. Once, twice. Again. Pain blooming in my throat, my breast. A sour swoop of vertigo. The sensation of falling; a sickening crack. Darkness broken only by the thunderous drumming, of rain.



I tried to push them away. These were not my memories. Their metallic tang was someone else’s fear. Cast it out, Andrés said. But the claws of the house held me too tightly, their needle tips sinking fang-like into the flesh of my throat. Cracking the fragile casing of my mind and sinking deeper, deeper, deeper . . .