Chapter XI
XI
Alba
The next day, Padre Bartolomé was hearing confessions in the chapel after breakfast. Alba opened the wooden shutters of her room and watched as Mamá picked her way up the dusty path to the chapel.
Her bright silks and black lace mantilla gave her the aspect of a jungle bird, deliriously out of place in the midst of gray rock and gray dust.
There was no confessional in the chapel.
No grate between sinner and confessor. She shuddered to rid herself of the swell of revulsion at the thought of confessing to Padre Bartolomé’s face.
Imagine having him watch her with those pale, piercing eyes as she picked out the darkest parts of her soul and hung them on the line to dry.
Loathing prickled over her skin like the needles of a sleeping limb.
“I would rather swallow a knife,” she murmured, then paused. Her voice struck her own ears as hoarse. It caught on a dissonant, unfamiliar note, and sounded deeper than it normally did.
She cleared her throat and closed the shutters with a firm snap. She snatched her rebozo from where she had abandoned it at the foot of her bed after Mass and slipped out of the house as quickly as she could.
—
Sun broke through the clouds in long, pale shafts, bright enough to make her shade her eyes and bring sweat to her brow and underarms as she ascended the wide path to the incorporadero.
Carlos had pointed the amalgamation patio out when they had first arrived; the need for sunlight in the refinement process meant that this was one of the few places at the hacienda de minas that did not seem perpetually cast in shadow.
She welcomed the warmth as she climbed, letting the shawl slip from her shoulders, letting light sink into her bones.
After Mamá left for the chapel, Alba had slipped into the kitchen to pepper Socorro with questions. The cook seemed startled at first, for one of her hands flashed in quick motion: fingertips to forehead, then to the opposite wrist. The same gesture Carolina had made.
Nausea burgeoned in Alba’s throat. Perhaps Mamá was right—perhaps she was unwell and should stay in bed.
But once Socorro warmed up to Alba, she began to talk at an energetic clip as she washed dishes.
Evidently, the greatest effect the lean household staffing had on her was the scarcity of willing ears in her general vicinity.
Alba lent her own pair out of gratitude for the information poured into them.
Victoriano and Carolina’s illegitimate daughter was called María Victoriana.
She lived in the village of San Gabriel, the adobe hamlet beyond the chapel, where the workers lived.
That was where Victoriano had stayed when he was alive instead of in Casa Calavera.
Apparently, he had only shared Heraclio’s company when merchants visited the mine, or when the brothers rode to the capital alongside mules laden with silver ingots to be minted.
No love lost, it seemed.
Socorro mentioned that María Victoriana was most likely found in the azoguería every morning after Mass.
La azoguería. The mercury room . Was that near the incorporadero?
“Where is that?” Alba asked.
Socorro had shot her a look, its dubious slant enhanced by the low set of her dark brows.
“No fine senorita such as yourself should be bothered with incorporo work,” she said, and moved seamlessly back into a story about her niece’s upcoming wedding to a wealthy solarero who lived in Tonalá Chepinque, south of Zacatecas.
But to the incorporadero Alba went regardless, sweating and out of breath as she took the final switchback of the path and stepped onto flat ground again.
Before her was tumult.
Fine dust, perfumed with mule manure and a sharp, chemical tang, rose to choke her; she pulled a corner of the rebozo to cover her nose and coughed into it as she squinted into the sunlight.
When Carlos had said patio , she expected something the size of the patio they sat on together outside of Casa Calavera.
The expanse of the incorporadero mocked her.
This was a vast, open space, larger than the land taken up by Casa Calavera.
It had to be for the scale of work occurring.
Teams of mules pulled an enormous millstone in a circle; below them, on a flat, broad expanse, men and mules walked back and forth through what appeared to be thick, metallic mud, deep enough that it came up to the men’s knees.
Dozens of people moved ground black powder from the mill into large piles and poured water into the mud where the men and mules trudged.
A girl should stand out like a bright flower among the gray, the dust, the mud—and yet there was no sign of her. Where was the azoguería?
And why was María Victoriana there?
A line of low buildings stretched along the northeastern side of the chaos. Dark smoke rose in a thin, sinuous cloud from one. She would start there.
She kept the rebozo close to her face as she cut a broad path around the dusty mill.
A small group of three women were gathered near the low buildings, chatting and laughing with one another. Two held baskets of food on hips and head; the other had a jug of water.
This was what her birth mother must have looked like at one point in her life, gossiping with friends. The realization flashed through her, hot and painful, leaving an aching sense of absence in its wake.
What had happened to her birth mother that drove her to abandon an infant? Where was she now?
These women looked about Alba’s own age, far too young to know anything. She had to find María Victoriana, and through her, gain access to the memories of the deceased Victoriano.
“Excuse me,” Alba said, lowering the rebozo from her face. “Which is the azoguería?”
It was as if a priest had descended among sinners.
One woman elbowed another; their conversation cut off abruptly.
They pulled back from her as one, retreating a few steps each, the motion swift as a reflex.
Three sets of coolly judgmental eyes swept over her, assessing her skirts—embroidered silk, covered with dust—to her throat, where her customary pearls sat against drops of perspiration.
Embarrassment flushed through her cheeks. Hadn’t she been thinking how Mamá looked like a tropical bird? She was just as ridiculous. Perhaps even more so, for she had alighted and shaken out her fine feathers in the midst of the dust and the work.
“Over there, senorita,” one said, pointing to an open door.
“Thank you.” The sooner she left them, the better.
She turned, but as she did, she caught motion from the corner of her eye—in unison, two of the women had touched fingertips to their foreheads, and then to left wrists. The third made the sign of the cross.
Darkness swamped the corners of her vision; her breath caught, cold and sharp, somewhere between her ribs.
She coughed, heaving and straining against her dress, and reached for the doorway to the azoguería. A few deep breaths and the darkness cleared. She was not unwell. She was fine . She had merely overexerted herself walking all the way over here.
As she entered the azoguería she had expected to find María Victoriana immediately, or at least alone—and she was wrong.
The room bustled like the inside of a hive.
She would have stepped back to reassess her plan, but a lustrous glimmer caught her eye: A large table was laden with pine boxes and glass jars of a silvery, viscous substance.
Her whole world was built on the ingots it refined, but she had never seen mercury before.
Even in the cloudy, workmanlike jars, it had a celestial quality, as if the full moon had wept and men collected the tears for their greedy, worldly affairs.
She wanted to take one of the jars with her.
To stare at it. To see if it emitted its own light after the sun set.
“I know what your stupid book says,” a girl’s voice snapped. “I read it when I was ten, and I’m telling you, this ore is good enough that we can use less.”
Alba stepped into the room, tracking the source of the voice. A wooden scale large enough to weigh three chickens at a time hung from the ceiling. Two figures stood before it, one tall, one shorter…and in skirts.
Her quarry.
She began to weave her way through the bustle toward the girl, then stopped mid-step.
Elías—for of course it was Elías who stood next to María Victoriana, setting small metal weights onto the scale—lifted his face toward her.
Pieces of his dark hair had been pulled loose from the horsetail at his nape and fell into his face.
He pushed them back quickly, leaving a line of powdered black ore smeared across one cheekbone like Ash Wednesday soot.
His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, baring lean, muscled forearms and a dark inked mark on the inside of one wrist.
The mercury room . Of course the two azogueros would be there. She should have expected to see him, she should not be so caught off guard by his presence—
“Senorita Alba,” a voice oozed toward her. “We weren’t expecting you. Buenos días.”
She whirled and found Romero grinning at her. He stood before a full white sack that swung heavy from the ceiling. It appeared he had been striking it with a wooden paddle; mercury dripped from it, which he collected in a glass jar.
Somehow, when he said buenos días , it felt as if he were saying get out . Which was what she should do. She should find another way to speak to María Victoriana, another time, another place.
The activity in the room had stilled; it felt as if everyone was staring at her. Her mouth went dry.
“Here to steal some mercury? We punish thieves at this mine, you know,” Romero said, his smile slipping wide. “Some hands will be cut off for what went missing last night. Or did you simply get lost again?”
A low chuckle rippled through the room.