Chapter V
V
Alba
Alba woke to the rumble of male voices in the parlor downstairs. She lifted her head from her pillow and cocked it to the side, straining to make out whose voices they were.
The pitch and fall of one voice struck her as familiar. Carlos? It was barely light outside.
She thrust off the blankets. Snatched her dressing gown from where the servants had laid it out the night before. Long, skeletal fingers of frost stretched over the window; her breath clouded on the glass as she peered into the courtyard below.
As she suspected. The Monterrubio carriage.
The wooden staircase was cold against her bare feet as she took the stairs two at a time, not caring if the hair worked loose from her plait flowed over her shoulders like the wool rebozo she now wrapped around them.
The city was restive. Four days of mounting anxiety and four nights of ill sleep had passed since the bride fainted at her wedding reception.
Some shops shuttered. Solareros vanished from the city, retreating to the countryside; plague did not strike each casta with equal blows.
But even most peninsulares and criollos canceled social engagements, retreating into their silk- and brocade-lined shells.
Others still went calling on one another, even as some fainted in the streets, fine skirts collapsing into the dust around limp bodies. And, without fail, a red trail of fever led from house to house, following in the shadow of those brazen enough to flaunt the specter of the matlazahuatl.
The fainting bride had died yesterday afternoon. Coffins began to appear soon thereafter, carried on slumped shoulders through the winding streets of the city.
The hall to Papá’s office was empty. Mamá did not allow any servants into the house from outside; only those who resided in the Díaz household were present, and at this hour, were likely preoccupied in the kitchen.
Alba leaned to press her ear against the door of Papá’s study. She felt more than heard the click of the door handle.
She hurtled back, steading herself just as Heraclio Monterrubio, Carlos’s father, stepped into the hall.
His hair was snowy white—naturally so, not powdered, like some of the wealthy mineros’. His shoulders were bulky enough to cast Alba in shadow as he turned—loomed, really—and registered that someone was there. His face was not a place where one often found kind expressions. Today was no exception.
If he was here, at this hour, did that mean that Carlos was ill?
“Alba!” Papá was just behind Heraclio.
“I heard voices,” she said. “Is everything all right?”
“We must go,” Heraclio declared. “Good day, Emilio.” Over his shoulder, he called: “Carlos. Come.”
The tightness in Alba’s breast loosened as Carlos stepped around Papá. He cast Alba a brief, soft smile. It was not enough to dispel the tension that hung thick in the air like smoke, but it did clear it somewhat.
“Will you…?” he said to Papá.
“I’ll explain,” Papá said.
Carlos reached out one hand toward Alba, then retracted it. Again, apology crossed his face.
“We do have to go,” he said. “There is much to be done before tomorrow.”
Earthquakes were not infrequent visitors to Zacatecas; this felt like one. A brief but violent tremor. The shatter of china. Sudden, and then just as abruptly slack; the snapping of a chicken’s neck. A reminder that her world was not as stable as she once thought.
With the Monterrubios gone, Papá gestured for her to follow him back upstairs. He still wore his embroidered dressing gown—a sign that Heraclio and Carlos’s visit had surprised him as well.
“What was that about?” Alba asked.
He held up a hand— wait . They traversed the vacant, gaping house, wooden floorboards creaking beneath Papá’s slippers and Alba’s bare feet the only sounds. From outside, a rooster crowed—only once, the sound anemic and frail.
Mamá’s breakfast room was flooded with pale light and the crackle of the hearth behind her. She sat by a steaming pot of chocolate, spectacles perched on the edge of her nose as she scanned a letter. At Papá and Alba’s entrance, she lifted her head.
“I saw the carriage leave,” she said, lifting the spectacles from her face. “What on earth did Heraclio want?”
“They’re leaving the city first thing tomorrow morning,” Papá said. He gestured for Alba to take a chair at Mamá’s table; he did the same and sat with a long exhale. “To go to Mina San Gabriel.”
Hearing the name of the mine from Papá’s lips arrested Alba. It yanked what she had read in the letter rudely into the present. It made it real .
“Oh?” she said, prodding Papá to continue.
“And,” Papá said, meeting Alba’s eyes with a nod, “they’ve invited us to join them.
It is a plain house, but spacious, and comfortable.
The air will be so much cleaner there, Lucero,” he added, perhaps noting—as Alba had—a shift in her mother.
Mamá’s brows had raised and she leaned back in her chair.
“I stayed there once, a long time ago. It was quite agreeable, if rustic.”
Alba fought to keep her own face schooled into stillness. Was that long time ago precisely twenty-five years ago? When he had returned with a child?
“ Rustic is not the word I would choose for an hacienda de minas in the mountains,” Mamá said. She took a silver spoon and stirred her chocolate. Thin ribbons of steam rose from the cup. “Remote, perhaps. Isolated. Does Heraclio mean to keep Alba prisoner?”
“He must have guessed you have misgivings,” Papá said. Gently, almost apologetically, he added: “We are not subtle people.”
Mamá gave a mighty roll of the eyes.
“Misgivings? Is this about Carlos?” Alba asked. Mamá’s expression settled into exasperation, firmly directed at Papá. The look she gave him said Why would you say that in front of Alba? as clearly as if she had spoken it.
“It is nothing, mi amor,” she said.
A prick of annoyance flared in Alba’s chest. She was not a child, no matter how much her mother treated her like one.
“Mamá,” she said sharply. “It’s never nothing when you look like that.”
“You can’t take her by surprise if you decide otherwise,” Papá said to Mamá.
It was so blatant, the way they expected her to simply accept their decisions. The way it seemed so obvious that they could end her engagement—the most important decision a young woman could make about her life—whenever they wished.
Mamá loosed a sigh, then turned to Alba. She reached past her chocolate and took Alba’s hands in hers. Her rings were cold and hard.
“I look at you and at Carlos and I wonder,” she said. “A mother can’t help but wonder. All I want is for you to be happy. If we can find someone who makes you happier—”
But it was not about happiness. It had never been about happiness. Every man they had ever introduced her to was a stranger, was rich, owned a mine, owned an hacienda in the south…
Family, you know . The voice of the man from the courtyard rose unbidden to Alba’s mind: Greedy and rotten to the core.
If this were about her happiness, they would not be discussing her marriage at all. They would leave her alone to embroider, not lie to her or to themselves about what marriage meant.
“And whose family can pay their debts,” Papá interrupted in a low voice.
And that was what this conversation was about: Papá was disgruntled that Alba’s engagement had intervened in his ability to call in the Monterrubios’ debts.
Mamá shot him a stern look. “This is about Alba’s happiness,” she said. “Not your investments.”
This conversation was becoming a mockery of Alba’s intelligence. She had to end it, or she would lose her temper.
To Alba, Mamá said: “Engagements are not binding, mi nina. Youthful passions come and fade. If you worry that you were too rash in deciding, it is not the end. My sister,” she added, tapping the letter before her, “knows of a merchant’s son in Puebla who is looking for a wife.
Emilio,” she said, drawing the syllables long and dolloping her voice with sweetness.
Her lower lip drew down into a pleading expression.
“Let’s go to Puebla. Let’s escape this.”
Mamá squeezed her hands. Alba looked up from their clasped hands to Mamá’s face. To her light eyes. To the way her hair barely contrasted with her cheeks, it was so fair.
Mina San Gabriel was where she had been discovered as an infant.
The invitation beckoned her with a seductive finger.
It called to her, as crisp as if someone had whispered in her ear.
There would be people who had spent many years in the mountains, who knew the gossip, who might have heard the story of a foundling long ago.
Who might see Alba and recognize someone else’s face in her features.
Her heart raced against her ribs. Becoming betrothed to Carlos had bought her some ownership over her life, but perhaps it could mean even more. A plan was slowly assembling itself in her mind as she picked up her cards and assessed the suits in her hand.
“Doesn’t disease spread in cities?” Her pulse pounded in her ears. “The matlazahuatl began here, but could it not be carried to and spread in another city? Isn’t that what happened the last time it struck?”
Alba could tell Mamá shot Papá a look over her shoulder, but without being able to see Papá’s face behind her, she could not parse what it meant.
“Would it not be wiser to remain outside of cities until it passes?” Alba said.
“People carry disease from place to place, yes,” Papá said. “That matlazahuatl affected Puebla as well. It is the truth,” he added defensively to Mamá’s deepening sternness.
“Alba, won’t you consider—” Mamá began.
“If you don’t want me to marry Carlos, then don’t play games with me. Just say it,” Alba said.
Her parents both looked at her, shocked at her sharpness. It had come out harsher than Alba intended. A shadow of hurt flickered across Mamá’s face; guilt bloomed in Alba’s throat, poisoning her words. But she said them anyway.
“I want to be with Carlos,” she said. “I’m going, with or without you.”
—