Chapter XXXI #2
“Basta,” the priest spat. “If you can change her without untying anything, you are free to. But if you are harmed”—here his voice became the equivalent of a wagging, warning finger—“it is your own fault.”
When he stepped out the door, María Victoriana began changing Alba’s soup-soaked white dress. There was no pulling it over her head with her tied to the bed; María Victoriana took a glinting dinner knife from the tray she had brought and began to rip the dress along the seams to remove it.
“Where is he? He needs to get away from here immediately,” Alba said. “He did too much in front of Padre Bartolomé. They’re going to hurt him unless—”
“They already have,” María Victoriana snapped. “Save me your tears,” she added harshly, seeing that Alba’s mouth had dropped open in horror. “You’re not the one who can hear him screaming.”
“Where is he?”
“The stables,” María Victoriana said. “The priests intend to exorcise you in the morning and then leave with him for the capital for trial. They’ll probably kill him, and it’s all your fault.”
“We have to free him,” Alba said. María Victoriana’s fingers were cold as she wrenched cloth around her shoulders and over her chest. “If we can get him a horse and send him on the road to Acapulco, he’ll—”
“You don’t think I’ve tried?” María Victoriana snapped.
“I will fix this,” Alba swore, low and passionate.
“It’s no use,” María Victoriana said. She had shoved the nightgown over Alba’s head and buttoned it haphazardly, then tucked the sheets in around her tightly.
Her eyes shone too bright, as full of repressed emotion as her shaking voice; her cheeks were flushed.
“You did this. And I’m the one who’ll have to bury him. ”
“Enough,” the priest said. Alba startled; she had not realized the priest still hovered a step beyond the doorway. Had he been listening the whole time? “She is dressed, is she not?”
María Victoriana stood back sharply from Alba’s side, brushing quickly at her eyes.
“She’s dressed enough, Padre,” she said. “You may continue. She is not hungry.”
Without another look at Alba, she snatched the tray of spilled soup and left the room. The priest sat at his post. Fingertips over rosary; more droning prayers.
María Victoriana’s words hung low over her, steady and swooping, a vulture over carrion. You’re not the one who can hear him screaming.
María Victoriana was right: This was all her fault.
They would continue to hurt Elías unless she did something.
But she was tied to a bed, watched every moment.
A sob wracked her body, and she let herself drown in helpless wretchedness and the acute knowledge that Elías was hurting and it was all her fault .
One wrist—her right wrist—brushed up against something cool.
Her breath caught. Her spine stiffened.
She shifted her wrist again, searching for that cool sensation.
It was metal.
—
Alba waited for twilight.
Priests came in and examined her. Some wished to interrogate her; Padre Bartolomé restrained them. Not physically, no, but he was a dominant presence in the room whenever he entered. He made it clear that he had ownership of the situation.
She was his . He would lead the questioning, he would decide when they carried out the exorcism, he he he .
This resentment sparked a wan, distant flutter of delight from the demon.
She felt it in her breast as Bartolomé stood over her speaking to the other priests, pointing at her face and explaining the appearance of bone and gristle.
She saw his bone and gristle. She saw flaps of flesh hanging off his jaw as if a butcher had been interrupted mid-carving.
She heard the buzz of fat, black flies when he drew near.
She shoved it all down. She would be her own tonight.
No one asked her if she was well. No one wondered if she was in pain.
If she needed to relieve herself (she did) or if she was hungry (she was).
The Inquisition was a famished snake in the presence of an unguarded egg.
Priests circled her thorny nest, long tongues flicking between their teeth, beady eyes reptilian in their lust. They all looked the same.
They all were the same: men who had been promised violence and denied it for years, who had finally found an object for their belligerence.
When the hovering circle of priests had broken up and left, herded by Bartolomé out of her rooms to dine with her parents, Alba looked within.
Nothing looked back.
It was like calling into a cavern and expecting an echo, only to have the words swallowed by darkness.
If Carolina’s story that Elías had recounted was to be believed, she had been this way her whole life. Burdened by this parasite bound to her soul. Never alone. Never her own .
Elías was the only one who could fix that. They had been wrong to seek the help of Bartolomé. All he wanted was to use her for his own advancement.
How he had glowed in the esteem of the other priests! He was greedy, he was filth, she would sink her teeth into him, and—
A grim twitch of her lips as she fought to halt that line of thinking. It would be naive to think that she was fully free. But whatever Elías had done, he had weakened the demon substantially.
And María Victoriana had left a knife beneath the sheets.
She ensured her lips were pressed tightly together and her face was as blank as possible; she had been left with a guardian, another faceless priest deep in prayer, his rosary clicking in the corner of the room.
Freeing her first wrist took writhing and reaching. But she had never been bested by a knot in her embroidery, and she refused to be bested now.
She scored herself a dozen times before getting the rope off her right wrist; blood stained her sheets bright as poppies. The left was easier. At last, rope loosened and fell away from sore flesh. Lightheadedness made the victory melt sweet on her tongue.
She shot the priest swift, apprehensive glances as she worked. His eyes were downcast as he rocked back and forth gently in the rhythm of meditation. She had to unbind her ankles next. But how to do so without alerting the priest?
There should be a key to the bedchamber on her desk. If she could unbind herself and flee the room fast enough, she could lock the door behind her, buying her precious time to escape the house.
But that would require speed and strength. Did she have enough of either? Only sitting up would tell her, and sitting up was the first step in a mad sprint to the stables. This could be a fool’s errand. This could be madness.
She was going to try anyway.
She took the knife in her hand beneath the sheets and sat up.
“Senorita—”
She yanked off sheets. She reached for her ankles. The knife had been dulled by working on her wrists, but now she had been bitten by wildfire and worked as if possessed. The thought made a mad grin streak across her face.
Rope snapped. She yanked it away.
The skin at her ankles was open and wept, but she did not feel it. The priest had risen and was at her bedside. He put heavy hands on her arms to push her down to the bed, and suddenly she was in a dark hallway, she was a child, she was trapped by hot breath and grasping hands—
This time, she would not freeze. She would fight. For herself. For Elías.
We fight dirty.
She whirled up at the priest with a snarl, with a brandishing of teeth and knife right beneath his nose.
He jerked back reflexively; it was the only reason the blade did not slice his cheek open.
Good . Let him know she was not defenseless.
She would not be a virgin in a white dress waiting to be sacrificed.
She loosed a warning hiss and jabbed the knife toward him as she flung herself from the bed and landed on her feet.
They were numb. She had barely eaten. Her throat was dry. Didn’t matter. She felt only victory, a pure, drunken bubble of elation, as she half fell toward the door.
“Don’t you dare—”
She ducked his outstretched hands. She was an animal, twisting and crawling and untouchable, and she was through the door. She slammed it shut behind her. Held it back with her own body. The priest tried to open it; a shudder through the door, through her chest. Once, twice.
He was bigger. Heavier.
She cast a wild look at her writing desk. Key, key, where was the key—
She spotted it.
She lurched forward, snatched it, then spun, and as the priest emerged through the door, she threw her whole weight against the wood and caught his hand in the doorframe.
A feral cry; a thick crunching of fingers. She released the door; the hand withdrew with a yelp. She slammed it shut and locked it with a violently shaking hand.
She was barely clothed. Buttons of her nightdress unbound and no shoes. A howling priest pounding on the door behind her.
She snatched a rebozo cast haphazardly over one chair and flung herself toward the door, dinner knife still in hand.
Through the door, down the hall. She yearned for the brilliant blue of Acapulco, for the salty taste of freedom stinging her lips as she stepped onto the deck of a ship, but she had no supplies, nothing. Not even shoes. She might have to release that dream to the night and weep as it slipped away.
But so long as it rode on a swift wind with Elías in tow? So be it.
“Alba!”
A hand caught her by the upper arm. She whirled and brandished the knife, ready to snarl, but—
Carlos lurched back from the knife. His face was openly shocked, streaked with salt as if he had been weeping. His grip was firm on her arm, pinioning her to the spot. She was but steps from the door to the patio. She was so close.
She lowered the knife. “Let me go,” she whispered.
From behind her came the low thumping of a fist on a wooden door. A muffled cry. The priest—and her disappearance—would not go undiscovered for long.
She tugged at her arm; Carlos did not release it.
“Where on earth are you going?” he asked, voice low. “You’re not supposed to be—”
She had heard the demon humiliate him. And now that she had, it was glaringly obvious: He was in love with Bartolomé, or had been infatuated, and he, too, had been betrayed by the arrival of the Inquisition.
If he did not spin the story carefully, the priests’ presence could cast the Monterrubios into ruin—their reputations and business had only a slim chance of surviving such a scandal. He was wounded. He was alone.
But he was her oldest friend. She had placed her life in his hands, for among all her acquaintances in Zacatecas, he was the only one she trusted to treat it with dignity.
Perhaps he still would.
“They’re going to kill him,” she said, low and urgent. “It’s all my fault. I have to get him out. Let me go . Please .”
“Alba,” he said. “You must go back to your room. Bartolomé will—”
“You saw him hurt me,” Alba cut him off, her voice cracking. She yanked at her arm again. Damn Carlos for being stronger than he appeared. She did not want to resort to threatening him with the knife, but if he didn’t let her go, she would.
His frown deepened. “He is trying to help.”
“And Elías actually can !” she cried.
A low rumble of displeasure in her chest. Its resonance felt foreign as it rattled against her ribs. She shoved it down. The demon was weak. And it would stay weak, so help her God.
Carlos hushed her harshly, casting a look over his shoulder. There were too many people in this house, too many enemies. She tugged at her arm; still he did not release her.
“I want him to live,” she pleaded.
“You want him,” Carlos interrupted, voice bitter.
Alba opened her mouth to defend herself, but Carlos held up his other hand.
“I don’t want to hear why,” he said. “I know that we don’t love each other as a married couple should. Probably never would. But I like to think I could have given you a safe life. Perhaps even a happy one.”
A sob thickened in Alba’s throat. She had chosen her future husband well.
“You still can,” she whispered. Her voice was shredded: from weeping, from screaming, from the way this felt like the most permanent goodbye she had ever voiced.
“You’re a good man. You deserve more than a mutually beneficial marriage.
You should have someone who loves you, who will come here with you and make you laugh. That is not me.”
He met her eyes and held them for a long moment. His grip on her arm loosened, and then dropped entirely.
“Bartolomé won’t stop,” he said. “And I fear…he hasn’t been listening to me. If it came to it, he would let you die before he gave up the chase.” He inhaled deeply. “I will help, but only if you promise to run too.”
Relief threatened to make her knees weak. “Carlos—”
Shouts rose from the direction of her bedroom. The priest had broken free; or others had joined him. They would find her. She had to run.
Carlos, too, looked like a hare who had heard hunters: alert, alight, trembling with the need to flee.
“He’s in the stables.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a key, then pressed it into her palm.
“I’ll hold them off as long as I can and meet you there with supplies.
And shoes,” he added, glancing down at her bare feet. “Now go .”