Chapter 21
Minerva
Someone knocked over a teapot, spilling its contents over the rug in the living room and shattering delicate teacups.
It was either Leoncio, careless and cruel, or Eugenia, pregnant and clumsy.
It didn’t matter. None of the del Valles cared.
No one noticed me as I picked up jagged pieces of porcelain and soaked up scalding liquid from the rug with a rag.
I kept my gaze lowered as Octaviana and Eugenia murmured over needlework.
The occasional snap of newspaper pages turning brought to mind visions of Senora Encarnación.
I saw her in the breakfast room of Casa Azafrán, squinting at articles over her spectacles and cursing whomever it was who decided that paper was scarce and print must be made smaller.
Leoncio was the only one who read the news now. Instead of looking up when the papers rustled, I flinched.
The messengers recently brought a stack.
Leoncio worked through them haphazardly, out of order, leaving inserts scattered across the house like a cat leaves the guts of a kill it has lost interest in.
I collected them as Sara and I tidied various rooms. The papers were all loyalist, their large black headlines bleeding with praise of the Viceroy and his army’s progress.
Eastern District Purged of Insurgents
15 Murderers Executed by Firing Squad
Viceroy Orders Construction of New Prison
I scrubbed the newsprint from my fingertips until my hands were red.
“Ha,” Leoncio declared. “Listen to this.”
“What is it, mijito?” Octaviana asked, her words dripping with sweetness.
I had picked up all the large pieces of teapot. As I swept up smaller shards, I snuck a glance across the room. In the low light of chispa and the fire, I caught a glimpse of a headline over Leoncio’s shoulder.
Mothers of Disappeared Protest on Calle Jacaranda
“ ‘The mothers and family members of disappeared members of el Partido Valbuenista de Liberación Nacional marched on the Viceroy’s Palace for the second time this month,’ ” he read aloud.
“ ‘Representatives of the group informed reporters of La Voz del Palacio that they will continue to do so until the government meets their demands and reveals the locations of missing persons. They provided this paper with lists of the individuals they seek; these are too long to print.’ Too long to print. Ha!” Leoncio crowed.
“What they mean is that it’s too pathetic to print. ”
“Didn’t Tío Cirilo write that they are allowing the protests to continue?” Eugenia said. “Why would they do that?”
“Probably because it’s hilarious,” Leoncio said, snapping the paper shut. “Asking the government to reveal ‘the locations of missing persons’? They’re all rotting in a pile at the bottom of the slums. Everyone knows that.”
The words rang like a gunshot on a cold morning.
I should not have been surprised by how callous Leoncio is, not anymore, but I was.
I expected Octaviana to put down her needlework, lips parted in a surprised oh, and scold him.
It was too much to hope that she would slap him, but I would give three weeks of my wages to see it.
She didn’t even look up from her stitching.
“Maybe they should tell them,” Eugenia remarked dryly, squinting as she picked at a stitch with her needle. “It’s better than being forgotten in La Fortaleza.”
Leoncio clicked his tongue, a mocking chastisement. “No one gets forgotten in La Fortaleza, prima,” he said. “The guards remember to torture them every day. And soon some of the women protesting will have grandchildren because of it. Wouldn’t that make them happy?”
Eugenia made a small, amused sound.
Octaviana shook her head as she unclipped and readjusted her wooden embroidery frame.
“Don’t be crude, mijo,” she said. “Those babies will be adopted by families loyal to the Viceroy,” she continued.
“The sweet, innocent things did nothing to deserve being handed off to flea-bitten rabble. Cosme,” she added, “bring a lamp closer. The fire is not bright enough for me to choose the next color.”
Their conversation moved on from death and torture and rape as if they were nothing more than scraps of neighborhood gossip.
Shattered porcelain pieces rang against one another as I cleaned. The sound dug into my molars like knives.
The next day, I woke earlier than most of the house. Mist lay thick on the grounds. People were slow to stir, as if the fog had cloaked the house with a spell to keep them all in eternal slumber.
Nightmares sent me stumbling into the kitchen.
These were not like my dreams of the fourth floor.
Instead, I saw Senora Encarnación as she choked and gasped.
Behind her stood Ygnacio. He was not a cloud of darkness, but a boy, his hands resting on the back of Senora Encarnación’s chair, the shadows making his face more handsome than it should be. His reptilian eyes fixed on me.
Monsters. Murderers. Pillagers. Rapists, he said.
The bakers and cooks ignored me, preoccupied with their morning duties, as I poured myself coffee and sat in a quiet corner of the kitchen by the back door.
The air smelled of mesquite woodsmoke and bacon and the cinnamon the cooks spiced the servants’ coffee with.
I lingered over my mug, praying its steamy vapors would lift the sleeplessness that lay heavy on my face.
It was hot enough to scald my tongue when I sipped.
A man—one of the guards, judging from his uniform and the bandolier strapped across his chest—burst into the kitchen from the back door.
Bakers and cooks looked up at the draft of cold air and the snap of the door shutting behind him.
“Is la senora awake?” The guard’s cheeks were flushed from exertion; his glasses fogged in the warmth of the kitchen. “We caught a spy.”
The cooks and bakers looked at one another, shaking heads as they passed rolling pins and rags. No, no. La senora does not wake until at least eight, they said.
“I’ll speak to her footman,” the guard said. “Where is he?”
“I’ll get Cosme.” One woman wiped her hands. The guard followed her through the door to the dining room; the door slammed shut behind him.
Voices erupted around me, underscored by an uncanny buzz: that trembling, sick-smelling kind of anticipation mixed with fear.
Opinions were swapped like cards in a ruthless, restless game.
They’d shoot him now and question the situation later.
No, they wouldn’t shoot him until la senora was awake.
No, absolutely not, they’d send him to the Viceroy for questioning—any spy with the guts to trespass on la Casa de las Gardenias knew too much.
Was it instinct? Was it fear? Was it morbid curiosity? Something drew me toward the back door, quiet as a shadow retreating from the cacophony of the kitchen.
I stepped out into the mist. My limbs were alight with needles as if they had been woken from slumber. Something was wrong. Something bad.
The door to the slaughterhouse was open.
Through it, I glimpsed movement.
That would be where the spy was being kept. I shouldn’t go closer. Every law by which I had survived this far forbade it.
But something in the flash of movement I saw hit me in the sternum, like Ygnacio tapping me there yesterday. The sensation spread. As ink dropped in water, dread billowed through my body.
I glanced in either direction. No one was around. I could hear other guards shouting to one another through the mist as they searched for other spies.
I sprinted across the courtyard.
Voices wove through the mist and disappeared, as if they were snatched away by ghosts. I approached the corroded metal doors of the slaughterhouse—or slaughter shack, as the unassuming, lean-to structure should be called.
Instruments for butchery hung along the walls: chains for binding hogs and hooks for stringing them up to drain; axes for beheading chickens. It smelled metallic and cold. Dried blood darkened the wooden floor.
Against one wall was a cage made of metal wire to hold beasts as they awaited their end.
Inside crouched a thin young man.
He looked up at me, and my breath caught in my chest.
Exhaustion and hunger and hard living had transformed his face; thinness exaggerated how his ears were almost too big for his head.
Ears that were just like mine.