Chapter XV #2
“Perhaps Padre Bartolomé will hear confessions in the interim,” Mamá said to Papá. “You will speak to him, won’t you?”
“Confessing to someone young enough to be my own child?” Papá’s scoff communicated he had no intention of doing so.
“I haven’t said confession since we arrived,” Alba blurted out.
She felt as if she were racing up a staircase and building it at the same time; if she was not careful, she could run off the edge. And she did not feel careful. She felt desperation rising in her like a swell of locusts.
Mamá gave a sharp intake of breath—not because she was breathless from their swift walk back to the house; no, indeed, if anything, she was haler in constitution than Alba was, a healthy color rising to flush her cheeks.
“It’s not as if I am not in a state of grace, Mamá,” Alba said.
“You mean to say you haven’t committed a mortal sin in the last three days?” Papá wondered dryly. “How else do you keep yourself entertained out here?”
“This is not a joking matter,” Mamá snapped. “Emilio”—she slipped into a plaintive, childish tone—“can’t we leave?”
Yes, can’t we leave? The thought curled into her like a burr, sinking into her skin and pushing deep, deep, deep. Flee the mine .
But if she did and gave up Carlos, she might as well be signing away her body to the highest bidder.
They had to stay. She would stay, even though her cold, cold bones felt ready to turn against her own will and begin walking down from the mountains of their own accord.
“You saw my letters,” Papá said to Mamá. “The coffin makers cannot keep up with demand.”
“I have heard that people hemorrhage from their eyes as they succumb,” Alba lied breathily, with perhaps a bit more color than was necessary. “They choke on their own blood. I won’t have you exposed to it. Your constitution is too delicate.”
“Indeed, indeed,” Mamá agreed. She dabbed at her face with her kerchief, her bag of smelling salts swinging with the motion.
Alba deposited her with Papá in the one drawing room that had good light and air, giving only a wan excuse about going to her room to find her embroidery as she left.
Instead, once she was out of sight, she gathered her skirts in cold palms. She set off down the narrow halls at a quick pace, at a prowl, on the hunt for the one person who could help.
Her heart thrummed against her chest as she turned this corner and that; the sense of hunt infused her with energy, as if someone had poured hot light through her veins to wake her from a long, cold sleep.
Where was he? She would find him, she would find him, and when she did—
“?Senorita!”
She had turned a corner and nearly walked directly into him.
Padre Bartolomé fell back a step, then two, a reflexive recoil. His nostrils flared; his eyes went wide. A faint pallor swept over his cheeks.
“Are you well?” It was close to a gasp.
“I need to say confession, Padre,” she said, ignoring the question, even as he appeared to scan her face for signs of illness.
“Not now, surely?”
That lilt of uncertainty was unlike him. He stumbled half a step behind their interaction.
“Now, yes,” Alba said. “I fear that time is of essence. Please,” she added, tardily, almost as plaintively as Mamá. “I need your help.”
Bartolomé shifted his weight as he considered this—in a fluid gesture, he moved from the stance that suggested retreat into a more confident posture. As if he had caught up with himself, caught himself, and slipped himself back into his own body with a relieved, short exhale.
“Well.” For a moment, that was all he said. “I would never deny anyone the sacraments. Come, let us find a place to sit. After you, senorita.”
That place ended up being the same terrace where she had spoken with Carlos.
“We could find somewhere more private, if you prefer,” Bartolomé said, setting his hands on his hips as he assessed their surroundings. “But if you say that time is of essence, then…”
“I will speak quietly,” Alba said. She settled into one chair; Bartolomé followed suit and began to recite.
His voice fell to a distant hum. Her breath seemed to drain out of her, rushing down like rain through a steep arroyo. She would not faint.
A stray thought curled around her mind protectively.
Something is not right , it said, observing the disarray, the spinning.
This was not an ordinary plague of sleeplessness.
Her skull felt desert dry, laced with dull pain.
She leaned back in her chair; when the tightness of her dress pinched her and shining sparks of color smarted in her vision, she straightened.
She could not faint. What good would she be to Elías then? He had saved her; she must help him.
“Padre,” she interrupted, “if I confess, will you promise not to tell, but will you intervene?”
Bartolomé’s brows drew close together. For the first time, she caught a glimpse of bruised shadows beneath his eyes, a fragile sliver of humanity beneath a hard shield. Perhaps he was exhausted from speaking to so many people in the hamlet of San Gabriel—or so said Socorro.
He’s looking for something , the cook had said dismissively. Good luck to him.
“We say vows to protect everything that is said in confession.” This was somber, yes, but underscored with a waver of concern. “You may put your heart at peace, senorita.”
“Yes, but will you say something?” The sharpness in her voice caught on her own ears; if it were a blade, it would have drawn blood.
For a moment, he did not reply.
He watched her. Perhaps he was tired, but if there was a hint of exhaustion in the delicate skin beneath his eyes, there was none to be found in his gaze itself—this scrutinized her. It made her want to peel her skin off and flee.
No, she had to stay. She could tell him what had happened; she was safe within the sacred space of confession. Describing what had happened aloud might sound damning, especially to the wrong ears—Carlos’s—but she had done nothing wrong.
How dare he look at her that way, when she had done nothing wrong. He was ready to condemn her with fire and brimstone, all priests were like that, ready to attack whenever they smelled that she was weakest—
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Bartolomé said gently.
Alba sucked in a sharp breath. Shut her eyes. Forced the tumult in her mind to still.
She thought of Elías taking her hands in the mine. The lilt of his sad, sweet lullaby.
“Forgive me, Padre, for I have sinned. It has been two weeks since my last confession. I think,” she added.
“Perhaps slightly less.” The onset of the matlazahuatl in Zacatecas had paused even Mamá’s usual daily confessions; then they had traveled to Mina San Gabriel, where the only confessor was Bartolomé. “But never mind: I sleepwalk.”
She opened her eyes. He sat leaning slightly forward, one hand on his knee, which gave him a look of studied attentiveness. Or it would have, had it not been for the perplexity spelled across his features.
“You sleepwalk,” he repeated, voice falling flat on the words.
“You can ask my parents, they will confirm it,” she said.
“I have done so since I was a child, but I have not suffered from it in years. Perhaps it is this new place, or the distress of matlazahuatl back home, but lately I wake in strange places. In the hallway. By the window. It is not my fault,” she added, throwing up a shield.
“Ask Mamá. She will tell you it is the truth.”
She spoke quickly, ready to plow through any interruption or accusation, or any demand to know why on earth she had hunted him down and insisted on confessing only to talk about sleepwalking.
He did not.
He did not prompt her to continue; he did not grow impatient or fidget. He simply studied her and waited as she searched for words.
You cannot trust him. He will hurt you.
It felt like a whisper against the back of her skull, a brush of dust-dry wings.
But this was the only way.
“Last night, I woke and I was outside.” It broke like a thunderclap; then the torrent followed: “I was far from the house. Halfway to the mine. It was so cold. I could have been harmed, if it were not—”
There was no turning back. She did not have much faith in God, but she felt faith in Bartolomé’s adherence to the dicta of his vocation.
Each of his choreographed moments in Mass sang his love of order.
He was polished. He was Squared-off edges and wet ink that would not smudge. He was a row of perfect stitches.
“If it were not for Elías,” she finished.
To his credit, if Bartolomé was surprised, he did not allow his face to betray it.
“He was in that hut, halfway between here and the mine,” Alba said, gesturing toward the house, as if she could point his gaze through the building in that direction.
“I think it’s some kind of workshop. He said he saw me sleepwalking.
He came and woke me. He prevented me from going farther.
He made sure I was warm and then escorted me safely back to the house.
” Her voice rushed quickly; if she lost her way now, she did not have faith that she would find her courage again.
“When we returned, we heard Romero with Heraclio and Carlos. They were talking and drinking. I returned to my room, but I could not sleep after that. I was too afraid of it happening again. The sleepwalking. So I stayed by my window. I did not see anyone leave the house apart from Romero. And I stayed awake until dawn , Padre.”
Or she could have sworn that she had. Perhaps there had been a wink of drowsing here and there, but admitting that would besmirch everything she had said with doubt, and there could be no doubt .
Elías had helped her. She had to help him.
If something happened to him…she would never forgive herself for inaction.
Bartolomé’s face shifted, resettled. He straightened and leaned back in the chair. “I see,” he said, rubbing the line of his jaw with one hand. “Why do you think this is a sin, senorita?”
Alba opened her mouth; for a long moment, her mind was a buzzing flush of white. The way she had told it, it was not a sin, no—but that was not the whole story.
She did not want to tell him the whole story.
“I was unaccompanied in the presence of a man who is not my fiancé,” she said. Her tone was a shield: She spoke as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. As if she were Mamá lecturing her younger self.
And you had sinful thoughts.
Yes, she had.
She was in confession. If she was to keep the pretense of the fact that she was in confession and not simply begging him to intervene on her behalf, she had to pay for it.
“And I…” She inhaled sharply, shut her eyes. She thrust the words out as hard as she could. “I had sinful thoughts. But don’t tell Carlos that part, please,” she added, opening her eyes.
Bartolomé’s face was studied, impassive.
She could read no indication in the lines of his mouth or the set of his jaw or even the shade of his eyes that what she had said caused any emotion.
Did he look that way behind a confessional grate?
Was he always this infuriatingly patient, or, in the dark of the confessional, would he react with the judgment he must feel?
“I don’t want him to be angry,” she said. “Elías could not have hurt Romero. He was with me. And then he was back at the house. You cannot tell Carlos how you know.”
Bartolomé’s eyes dropped. She followed to where his gaze sketched over her wrists and the backs of her hands.
Thin red marks stretched over her skin, peeking from under the sleeve of her dress.
She had noticed them when washing in the morning and paid them no heed. Winter in Zacatecas habitually dried her skin and made it itch; the mountain air was even more arid. She should keep her nails shorter, perhaps wear gloves to bed, as Mamá made her do when she was a child.
Bartolomé looked away, chewing his lip as his gaze settled on the chapel, then traced the line of the mountains beyond. In thought, he looked more human than he ever had: fragile, breakable. Skin and bone, like any other man.
“Senorita Díaz.” When he spoke at last, his voice was soft. “You do not strike me as someone who gives their trust over easily to strangers. That is fine and fair. Everyone has their reasons for being the way they are.”
She had heard him smooth his tone while speaking to the people of the mine, and to Mamá; she had thought it studied and superficial. She dismissed it as manipulation. But now? She could not help the scrap of hope that fluttered in her chest, the last sail of a sinking ship reaching for the sky.
“Our histories write who we are, and it is not my place to question or challenge that or demand change. I will not demand that you trust me. But I promise”—and this he swore with a blaze of barely reined passion, so fierce that she wanted to lean back from its heat—“I will defend the innocent from evil.”