The Hacienda(83)

I had cared for him, when we met. I was hungry for him and all he stood for. That hunger soured to fear and disgust in the last weeks, as I learned of his cruelty and his hypocrisy. But he was dead. As dead as my dream for a home.

Now what awaited me? Prison? An asylum? Execution, for my supposed crime? My heartbeat quickened at the thought. The vapor of the spilled alcohol was making me dizzy, but at least it masked the smell of Rodolfo’s death.

His chest lifting; his head turning. The jerk of his lips and the sharp movements of his glassy eyes . . . these were imprinted in my mind, burned there in a way more powerful than any nightmare. Andrés and the caudillo and José Mendoza staring at me, completely unable to see or hear.

Tell him the truth, that strangled voice said.

The truth was Juana killed him. Juana killed anyone who stood in her path. And she had won. With her crocodile tears and authority as an hacendado’s daughter, she had won. She told the men I was mad.

The truth was I was mad.

Andrés had come too late. The house cracked my mind open and shattered it like china before I even knew of his existence, before I knew a witch could purge the house of evil intent.

Cast it out.

I could not, not now. Perhaps I never could have. I was vulnerable and ripe, and doomed from the first night I saw red in the dark. The house knew me as prey the moment I crossed its threshold, and now, it would devour me.

Lifting my eyes, I saw my father’s map on the wall. I had pinned it above my desk weeks ago, the day Rodolfo left for the capital. I was so occupied with the north wing and the green parlor that I had not thought about this room much at all, not since the day I discovered my silks covered with blood. That was the only point at which Juana and I had spent any time together.

Apparently, it was enough to convince her I was to be gotten rid of.

My eyes stung with tears. What had I done wrong? Nothing. What could I have done right? Nothing. I married Rodolfo and presumably would bear heirs to inherit this property away from Juana. Perhaps I was not even a flesh-and-blood person to her: I was but a symbol of her brother taking away what she wanted, what she believed to be hers.

Hadn’t I longed for the same? Wasn’t that what an hacienda represented? Rodolfo’s money was liberation from Tía Fernanda’s reign of humiliation. Deliverance from desperate reliance on the fickle kindness of relatives I barely knew. I had sacrificed any hope of love in my marriage to secure my autonomy.

Juana sacrificed María Catalina. She sacrificed her brother. I had no doubt she would spill my blood, too, if she saw it beneficial to her.

I had to fight back.

I was not my mother, ready to give up when the blood was spilled and the muskets leveled. No. I was a general’s daughter.

But I was so, so tired.

My feet squished across the wet carpet as I went to the desk and kicked the chair back. I sat beneath my father’s map and rested my elbows on the desk. My arms ached, my wrists ached. My throat stung from bile, and my mouth tasted sour. I wanted to lay my head down on the desk. But even that I could not do. My hands were bound and going numb from it.

The shadows in the room were lengthening. Tears filled my eyes.

I rested my forehead on my hands, my position so similar to praying it brought the image of Andrés in the chapel last night to my mind.

How many times had I heard priests lecture about prayer from their pulpits and let the words wash over me, unbelieving? I had never trusted them. Never truly trusted the existence of God. Yet a few weeks ago, I would have said I never believed in the existence of spirits.

Or witches.

Help me, I prayed. Give me the strength to fight.

I began a rosary. I built a barrier to protect myself with words, layering them around me like an impenetrable skirt, like stones, anything to keep the house at bay. Whenever I lost track of where I was, I thought of Andrés’s voice beginning the words of the next Hail Mary. It was a trick of my mind, I knew it was, but I followed, whispering when my voice grew hoarse and cracked. When I reached the end, I began again.

For the length of another rosary, the house was silent.

The sun set, its dying light bleeding across dark storm clouds. The dark deepened, from blue to gray and finally black. A distant roll of thunder.

I heard the cold before I felt it. It scraped along the floorboards like claws, the sound vibrating in my teeth more than my ears: like metal on metal, glass on glass.

I lifted my head.

Blood rushed from it. My hands were numb and bloodless. Hunger dizzied me, sucked the strength from my legs and left them trembling.

The cold slinked around my ankles, curling up my calves.

I jumped up. The rug was clammy, squelching beneath my feet. Unbidden, I envisioned it drenched in blood, like the sheets in my bedchamber that morning.

Beatriz. A whisper, girlish and light.

Cast it out.

Darkness filled the room, crackling and snapping with potential. It was kindling ready to light.

Light. Candles were in my bedchamber, I knew that. And copal.

But I would have to enter the bedchamber.

My heart curled in on itself at the thought. I couldn’t.

Deep in the house, a door slammed.

“No,” I whispered. “No, I’m so tired.”

My voice cracked. A long moment passed. My shoulders were wound tight, taut as rope. I braced, ready for the next slamming door.

It never came.