Page 10

III

María’s spirits soar at the sight of her new home.

The Olivares estate may not be a whole city, like Burgos, but it is still a magnificent domain.

A village sits in the crook of the slope, and smaller houses dot the surrounding hills like sheep, but the casona rises above them, a massive building with tall stone sides and a crimson-tiled roof, all of it surrounded by a high rock wall.

The gates stand open, and their horses pass within, into a courtyard trimmed with trees, half a dozen servants waiting to welcome the viscount and his bride.

The servants shuffle into motion, stewards unloading the carts. María’s trunk is carried off, and Andrés helps her from her horse and takes her arm.

“Come, my wife,” he says, leading her inside. “Let me show you everything.”

María smiles, and today there is no need to feign excitement.

Their house is grander than anything she has ever seen, and her husband preens, one arm swinging wide to gesture at this detail in the archway, this pattern in the floor, this painting on the wall.

His voice echoes through the hallways, that is how large they are.

“It is yours,” he says as they pass a room with a table longer than her family home.

“It is yours,” he says as they cross another, inner courtyard, dotted with olive trees, and climb a set of stairs.

“It is yours,” he says as he unveils the room that will be hers, the bed heaped with blankets that spill over the sides.

“It is yours,” he says as he draws her to the open windows, and gestures to the rolling land beyond, its stables, and orchards, and fields. María drinks it in with hungry eyes, one triumphant word ringing through her mind.

Mine .

They dine together in the great hall, flanked by doting servants and paintings of her husband’s family.

His parents stare down, stern-faced, from their respective frames—a small shrewd woman and a large-bellied man.

His younger brothers, each on horseback, swords raised, despite the fact they’re dressed not for crusade, but court.

A sister, round-faced, reclining in a chair beside a hound.

And then, of course, there is Andrés himself, standing proud, the Order’s red cross emblazoned on his breast.

The painter has been generous.

Her husband is a handsome man, but an artist’s tools have further chiseled out his jaw, lengthened his limbs, graced him with a godly stature.

The real Andrés sits below and drinks with a mortal mouth.

He slouches in his mortal frame, and talks with his mortal voice, and she pretends to listen.

The food, when it arrives, is sumptuous, and soon her senses are subsumed by the jeweled pears and honeyed carrots, the roasted pheasant and ruby wine.

For the most part, her husband seems content with the sound of his own voice.

Only once does he stop and notice the object of her attention.

“You have a healthy appetite,” he says, and she knows he means despite her shape.

María may be lean, but it is not for lack of appetite.

No, she has always been hungry. Even when the crops were good, the winter kind, and there was no shortage of food in Santo Domingo, and she could eat as much as she pleased, she never felt full.

Her mother always wondered where it went.

Her father, when he was alive, liked to joke that she had an extra stomach.

María would chew stems of grass in the field, suck on cherry pits until they were pebbles, lacking any taste, and at night, the plates would be empty, her brothers leaning back in their chairs, content, and she would long for more, wish the satisfaction lingered past the time it took to taste it.

And that was mean fare compared to this.

Her mother warned her against rich foods, how they would turn her stomach if she ate too much. But perhaps that was the problem all those years.

Perhaps rich is what her body hungered for, she thinks, as she spears another candied carrot with her fork.

Her husband comes again that night.

His room, she will soon learn, belongs to him alone, while hers must be ready to hold them both. A small enough price, María tells herself, for what she’s won.

He climbs into her bed. Into her. His breath hot, his voice wine-loose, his body pressing hers down into the linens—she will later find their folds like patterns on her skin, unwelcome echoes of his weight.

His face contorts in pleasure.

Her own draws tight with pain. She clutches at his back, nails digging into flesh, hoping it will hurt, but it only seems to spur him harder. Again, her gaze escapes to the ceiling, but the wooden beams are lost behind the canopy.

Again, her husband’s hand drives into her hair, his fist tightening with every thrust.

Again, when he is done, he puts his palm against her stomach, as if she is nothing but a vessel. An attractive pot, waiting to be filled.

She resists the urge to recoil.

At least this time he does not stay. Eventually he rouses from his stupor, rises, and returns to his own room.

The bed is hers again.

María touches the place between her legs and finds it sore, a warmth and wetness in his wake.

She wishes she had paid more attention to the cook’s hands at the inn, the jars she pulled, the tonic brewed—hopes what she took will last another night.

She doesn’t dare go to the viscount’s own kitchens and ask his cook for remedies.

And so, even though she has never put much faith in God, or asked him to intercede, María now closes her eyes and says a prayer.

Then she rises, cleans herself as best she can, and considers the twisted linens, the indent of her body like a ghost. The bed smells of his sweat, so María pulls the linens free and dumps them on the floor, before climbing back beneath the blanket.

A hand throws open the curtains, letting in a vicious streak of morning light.

A voice she doesn’t know speaks up. “Mi senora.”

María groans and drapes an arm across her eyes, cursing the sun, and Andrés, and whoever designed a room with windows facing east.

“Mi senora,” comes the voice again, and this time she sits up, one hand holding the blanket to her chest. There is a girl in her room.

She reminds María of a deer, fawn-colored hair and doeish eyes, a narrow body balanced on fragile limbs. When she speaks again, her voice is soft, and low, and coaxing. As if María were the one about to spook.

“I’m sorry to wake you, but the viscount . . .”

The girl trails off, as if the mere existence of the title renders any other words unnecessary. But María is still taking her in.

“Who are you?” she asks.

“Ysabel,” says the girl, as if the name means something. Then, when it clearly doesn’t, she adds, “Your maid.”

“Ah.” María has never had a maid before, but she’s determined not to let it show. She slides out from beneath the covers and stands, clothed in nothing but ropes of red hair, the light running fingers down her skin.

Ysabel casts her gaze down, but María catches the blush that spreads over her cheeks as she takes up a heap of fabric and comes toward her. María lets herself be guided, limb by limb, into a dress she’s never seen before, smiles at the fine stitching and the weight of the cloth.

New clothes for this new life. A gown the color of rich wine, trimmed with creamy lace. Bronze buttons that catch the light and flash like sparks.

Ysabel’s touch is gentle, and steady.

“The viscount is waiting in the dining hall,” she says as she fastens the clasps.

“Already?” asks María, glancing at the window.

From the corner of her eye, she catches Ysabel’s face, the mouth twitching up.

“Sí, mi senora,” she says gently. “It is almost noon.”

The maid shifts her hair out of the way, to reach a button there, and when the girl’s fingers graze the skin at the nape of her neck, María shivers.

Ysabel apologizes quickly, asks if her fingers are too cold.

María lies and says, “Yes.”

Andrés is not in the dining hall.

She is greeted only by the remains of his meal, the dregs left in his cup. A servant informs her that the viscount has come and gone.

To where, she asks, and learns that her husband is meeting with his vassals.

The table is still laid, a bounty waiting in the center, and so María eats alone, picking at the spread of meat and cheese and fruit and savoring the quiet.

Silence is a kind of wealth, she thinks, taking up a pear. The house in Santo Domingo was so cramped with life that it was always loud. Here, she can hear the crisp skin of the pear splitting beneath her teeth.

A bowl of black cherries sits in the center of the table, the dark fruit nestled in a cloth. María pops one in her mouth as she looks up and finds yet another painting of her new in-laws, the Count and Countess Olivares, staring sternly back.

She rises, taking the cherries with her.

Wanders the halls, as she did with Andrés on her arm the day before, but this time she lets her mind run up ahead.

Lets it smooth its hands against the walls and change these tapestries, those chairs, this rug, draping her taste like gossamer.

Paintings come down, and curtains go up, sculptures move and furniture’s replaced until piece by piece, the house begins to suit her taste.

She steps onto the patio and surveys the rest of the estate, feasting on the bowl of cherries, and despite the tightness of her dress, the stiffness of her shoes, María feels herself expanding with the scale of her new home.

One by one she spits the cherry pits into her palm, until the small stones look like bloody teeth.

It should repulse her, but it doesn’t. They have always been her favorite fruit.

In fact—she scans the fields beyond the walls and decides that she will have one tilled, and turned into a cherry orchard.

And then, because she does not want to wait, she passes through the gates, and spends the next hour pressing pits into the soil in the nearest olive grove, burying them like secrets just beneath her feet.

It will take time, she knows, but it will be worth it, to see the cherries growing up like weeds between the olive trees, to imagine Andrés’s surprise, his annoyance, even, as her black fruit invades his green.

When her palms are stained and the bowl is empty, she sprawls in a shady corner of the estate and lets the warmth lure her to sleep.

She wakes to the sound of Andrés’s horse coming up the road.

María blinks, and rises dreamily, brushes the dirt from her dress, and goes to meet her husband on the path.

“Esposa mía,” he says, but this time there is no kindness in it. Only a tight contempt. He dismounts and takes her arm, fingers digging roughly through the sleeve.

“What are you doing out here?” he demands, as if he’d come upon her in the middle of some foreign city, and not the fields surrounding their estate. He does not wait for her to answer, is already turning her back toward the walls. “You must stay within the gates.”

Must is a word that has always made María bristle.

“Why?” she asks. “These are your lands.” And she is quite proud of herself for saying your, not our, or my, but the words do nothing to appease him. A groom hurries up to relieve Andrés of his horse, and he turns her toward him, surveying her as if for damage.

“Because,” he says, one hand drifting up to cup her cheek, “you are a jewel. Others might see you and grow greedy.”

María wants to laugh. There are nothing but field hands and workers, and if she wanted one of those she could have stayed in Santo Domingo.

“Do you think so little of me?”

“I think the world of you,” he answers blithely as he leads her back into the house. “And that is why I want you to myself.”

That night, in bed, when Andrés runs his fingers through her hair, his grip is tighter. He wraps the strands around his fist as if they are a set of reins, doesn’t let go until he’s come.

When he is gone, María dumps the soiled sheets onto the floor and parts the heavy curtains, throwing the windows wide to let the night air in.

And the sun.

In the morning, the first light spills in, unobstructed, waking her early.

She doesn’t call for the maid, even though the dresses in the cupboard all seem to require more than two hands, and she is surprised to find her own trunk empty, the garments from her old life gone. She selects one of the simpler gowns and does her best to draw the ribbons and fasten the stays.

Then she stands at the open window, brushing her hair as she waits for Andrés to ride out. She has just finished combing out the knots, is about to braid it when she hears the gate groan open, and sees her husband set off on his horse.

As soon as the dust has settled in his wake, she goes straight to the stables, finds a groom, and asks to have Gloria saddled.

The groom stares at her, aghast—perhaps by the sight of the viscountess’s loose hair, or the undone ribbons at her back—then blushes deeply and says it won’t be possible. And yet, the dappled gray mare is right there, black eyes blinking in the stall behind him.

María runs her hand along its neck. “Is something wrong?”

The groom shakes his head. “No, mi senora. The mare is fine. But you are not to ride her.”

Her temper flares. “She is my horse.”

The groom only grows more flustered. “I’m sorry, mi senora, but it is not safe. You do not know these hills, and the mare is young. You might come to harm, or fall . . .”

It quickly becomes clear he is nothing but a puppet, Andrés’s orders fed between his teeth.

“So the viscount forbids it, then?”

The groom bows lower. “Please understand,” he says, and those are the first words that do not have the echo of her husband’s voice.

María scowls at the wooden gate that separates her from her horse.

“What did the viscount tell you to do, if I try and ride her?”

The groom gives her a miserable look. “I am to hobble the horse.”

It has been a warm morning, but now, the air goes cold. Anger rises in her throat, and she can almost feel the rough fingers knotting in her hair.

María swallows hard. Touches the ruby pendant at her collar. Forces the breath out of her lungs and bends her mouth into a patient smile.

“There will be no need for that,” she says, looking up at the stable roof, the slices of sky beyond. The beginnings of a cloudless day. “The weather isn’t suited anyway.”

The groom sags in relief. “Very well, mi senora,” he says as María turns and strides back into the house, as if it is her choice.