Chapter 25
Minerva
I skirted Sara during the turndown service tonight. I didn’t know if she would find it suspicious that I was tidying the rooms out of order, but she would think it was odd. Odd things stick out in the memory.
And I was full of odd things tonight.
Fortunately, it was Sara’s turn to do Leoncio’s room. She would be preoccupied and rushing to get through her work to get out of his rooms as soon as possible.
I also rushed. When I dusted a ceramic vase in Eugenia’s room too aggressively, it wobbled precariously; time seemed to slow as I lurched forward to grab it.
A clatter on the floor—but it was just my feather duster.
The vase was intact, held in place by my trembling hands. Sweat prickled in the small of my back.
When I reached Octaviana’s room, I listened as I turned the handle of the door.
The metal gave a lusty creak.
I must oil it tonight.
I walked into the room as casually as I could.
The path between the door and the bed—which I crossed in about six or seven steps—was dangerous waters. Which floorboards squeaked? Which did not? Any could spell my doom.
I slipped off my shoes and walked forward.
Six. Five. Four. Three. Two—
I was at Octaviana’s beside table.
I imagined her asleep in the cavernous bed, large enough that it could happily sleep four of me. In what position did she sleep? Curled up, or as rigid as a corpse, with her arms at her sides, buried beneath the thick comforter?
When I crept into this room in the dark, in the middle of the night, would I be able to find her wrist at all?
It is twine, I think, Ygnacio said during our meeting on the fourth floor. Not that I can get a close look. She hasn’t been without one in decades.
There was a reason Octaviana forbid discussions of superstition among her staff. Why the threat of dismissal hung so powerfully over any conversation of an echo where it oughtn’t be, or of a shadow hanging over Senora Encarnación as she choked on poison.
Octaviana knew.
Once Ygnacio mentioned that Octaviana wore an amulet, I sought it out.
I risked bringing not enough firewood to the living room where she and Leoncio and Eugenia sat after dinner—Cosme called for more, and when I entered, I let my eyes sneak to Octaviana’s wrists.
I dipped my chin, as if submissively, as I retreated behind Leoncio and Eugenia.
Firelight danced over Octaviana’s long sleeves. We all wear long sleeves. Seasons mean nothing here. The days are foggy and the nights clammy, even in the presence of the fire that Cosme stoked as I backed out of the living room.
Lace reached to the base of Octaviana’s thumbs. Her wrists were fully concealed by fashionably tight fabric and fastened with half a dozen buttons down the outside of her forearm.
Then, Octaviana raised her hand, squinting as she pulled apart embroidery floss in the low light.
Firelight caught a ripple in the silk. On her left wrist, beneath the fabric.
A crease.
A bump, or two, or three.
I found proof of what Ygnacio could already sense, yes, but more importantly, I now know where it is.
What if I cut off Octaviana’s amulet while she sleeps? I suggested last night. For if I managed to do so without waking her, Ygnacio could dip into her dreams. Sway her nightmares. Plant ideas.
I made Octaviana’s bed as quickly as I could, then headed toward Octaviana’s bathroom to clean the tub and arrange the bath salts.
If my plan worked, it would be as if I stood at the top of a steep hill with the del Valles, with the Viceroy himself. It would be as if I gave them a sharp enough shove to go spilling and tumbling down, down, down…
To where the Valbuenistas wait.
I couldn’t stop my brother from fighting this war.
I couldn’t stop the war on my own. If I wanted Arnulfo to live, for us to be able to be at peace and be with each other on the other side of this, then I must do what I have always done.
What I did when thunder cracked as Papá entered our home, a sign that within minutes, his knuckles could whiten around the punishment belt.
I had to be be invisible. I had to melt into the walls. When I placed my Hounds and Mice on the board—for I had to, and I would—I had to be inconspicuous.
For only then would I be able to give them the push that would send them tumbling down to the fates that awaited them.
Everything I wanted hinged on being able to get that amulet off Octaviana’s wrist without waking her.
The floors creaked like Senora Encarnación’s knees. I had no idea if Octaviana was a deep sleeper or a light one. If she suffered from insomnia. If she was prone to shuffling to the bathroom once or twice in the predawn hours, as Senora Encarnación would.
Arnulfo will die if I can’t figure this out. If not killed by the del Valles directly, then by war: a stray bullet, hunger, or the diseases of living in the jungle. I can’t be weak. I cannot give up.
Nor could I put myself in enough danger that I would risk being suspected of disloyalty, and killed.
I leaned my lower arms on the edge of the tub and heaved a deep sigh, working the cleaning cloth over the belly of the tub. I cleaned dust and stray hairs; some leftover salt grime from Octaviana’s bath the night before.
I ignored the stiff ache in my arms and back from a night of very little sleep. Then, as my final task before retreating downstairs with Sara to wait until the del Valles vacated the living room so that we could tidy it, I made sure the bath salts were refilled and arranged correctly.
I poured extra salt into the pot labeled Bergamot talk of him influencing Leoncio through dreams was enough to make me snap. We made plans to meet the next night. But until we met, I said, I didn’t want to see him. Nor talk to him.
Perhaps I should have been more precise.
I didn’t want to hear him, either, but there he was as I turned the corner and raced on light, silent feet down the carpeted hall to Senora Encarnación’s rooms. Dustcloths covered the furniture.
It felt like stepping into a recurring dream—I had been here before.
I had already walked through this nightmare.
Already seen the dustcloths, that time I entered these rooms on my first day in la Casa de las Gardenias.
Except this time, instead of white light shining into the room from the windows, there was but the grayest sliver of twilight.
As I entered and crossed to the bathroom, I felt the same distinct sensation of being watched.
Ygnacio. I knew he was around. I ignored the sensation and went directly to the medicine cabinet. Yanked it open. Squinted in the low light.
Every moment I spent looking was a moment when I could be missed. A moment when someone could come looking for me. A moment when someone might appear in the mirror behind me and ask what on earth I was doing, going through Senora Encarnación’s belongings.
Bottles for pain management. Dark brown and amber. Tonics for coughs. For arthritic joints. A clear bottle for drops that she put in her eyes on dry days (not used since we arrived). A small silk bag of pills for constipation (nearly empty). Dried herbs: lavender, yerbanís, laurel, rosemary, rue.
I knew exactly what I was looking for: a small, dark blue bottle with a cork stopper.
It was always surprisingly heavy in my hand—perhaps the glass was double thick.
The label, scrawled in a stranger’s hand, simply read: Sleep.
The powder inside was white. Finer than salt but otherwise indistinguishable from it.
A sprinkle of it into a full bath, and Senora Encarnación would snore until dawn.
Relief swelled in my throat as I slipped it into my pocket.
I shut the medicine cabinet. Caught my reflection in the mirror.
Behind me, in the doorway to the rest of Senora Encarnación’s rooms, stood a dark figure.
I whirled, heart lurching. Explanations tumbled and shattered on the bathroom floor. I should not be in here and I would be questioned and I would be tortured and I would be shot and—
It was Ygnacio.
“What?” Exasperation sharpens my exhale.
“Someone’s coming,” he said.
He vanished.
I snatched my cleaning supplies and retraced my steps. The bottle in my skirt pocket beat a staccato rhythm against my thigh. I could not be caught on this floor. I had to get down one flight.
I turned the corner to the grand central staircase. No one.
No one yet.
My footsteps rattled my bones with their loudness. I was on tiptoe, taking the steps as quickly as I could as I reached the second floor landing, and then—
I drew up abruptly to keep from running directly into someone. Chest heaving. Arms shaking.
Filomena, too, had stopped walking. Abruptly, judging from the swing of her skirts. I nearly mowed her down.
“Watch where you’re going,” she snapped.
Her eyes skated over me. What did she see? A wild guilt in my eye, burning there like the panic of a trapped animal?
“Sara left something in Senora Eugenia’s piano room.” The words came out at a warble, my voice shaking as hard as my heart. “This duster.” I brandished it like an amulet between us. “I needed it. Tidy the living room tonight. To tidy the living room, I mean.”
It was almost imperceptible, but Filomena’s eyes narrowed. What was perceptible: her gaze swept past me, up the staircase. When it came back to my face, it was intense. Molten.
She seized my upper arm in a tight grip and leaned in close to me.
She could hear my heartbeat. She could smell my guilt. She was so close I could see the spidery green veins beneath the thin, fair skin below her eyes. She would reach into my pocket and take out the bottle and know precisely—
“I have a sister,” she said. Her voice was barely above a whisper. Barely above breathing. “She was disappeared.”
She straightened, her face impassive as it drew away from mine. But she did not break eye contact. Like that moment in the hall when she was with Leoncio and she saw me, I know she saw me, I was hypnotized, paralyzed, unable to break away even when every part of me screamed to flee.
Disappeared.
“Why would you tell me that—” The words melted away on the air as soon as I spoke them. We barely exchanged words, and already this conversation was so damning, for both of us.
As suddenly as she had taken my arm, Filomena released me.
“I never notice what the maids do,” she said. She enunciated this very clearly, as if for an audience. I strained my ears, but I couldn’t hear anyone else.
That didn’t mean that no one was listening.
Or watching.
Filomena found an aloof poise, her chin tilted up. Her lips perched closer to a sneer than not. “You’re all so beneath me,” she said. “And I’m so preoccupied with caring for Senora Eugenia, after all. Her condition makes her very demanding.”
The ghost of her grip—like iron, almost desperate—lingered on my upper arm.
She lowered her voice to barely a whisper when she said: “But others see things. Watch your back.”
She then walked briskly up the stairs, presumably to Eugenia’s rooms, as smoothly as if she had never stopped.
I inhaled through my nose once, twice, a third time, to still my trembling body. I resumed my path downstairs. No echo followed my footsteps. I resisted the urge to pat my pocket, to ensure that the bottle was still there.