Page 2

By late morning, the caravan has moved on, but the widow hasn’t.

Her pale horse stays stabled by the inn, where she remains inside her room, the curtains drawn.

The hours pass, and as they do, the widow requests no water or wine, accepts no offered food, till some wonder if she means to become a saint.

If it is piety, it is surely the strongest kind. If it is sickness, they want no part.

The hours pass, and as they do, the gossip spreads like shadow, and here is what it says:

Perhaps she is old.

Perhaps she is weak.

Perhaps she needs rest.

Perhaps she is sick.

Perhaps the journey is too much.

Perhaps the heat—

Perhaps the sun—

There is no consensus, save that the men do not like her. They treat her like a nuisance, a parcel dislodged off another pilgrim’s horse.

“What kind of woman travels by herself?” they gripe.

“What kind of woman stays behind alone?”

The answer is, of course, a widow.

But there is another word that trails behind it, in a whisper.

( Witch. )

But then, a witch would never go on pilgrimage.

Whatever the reason, the men lean away, but the women —they have always had a taste for gossip. They arrive at the widow’s door throughout the day, pass an hour in her room, perhaps for company, or charity, or simply talk, a chance to hear where she has been, where she is going.

María thinks of the wooden crate, and wonders if the widow is selling something. It happens often enough—pilgrims act like ants, carrying things along the road, tracking other places in like mud on the bottom of their feet.

Her mother clucks her tongue, and hands her a basket of freshly mended things.

She does not like the widow, and has been out of sorts since she arrived. But when María asks why, she will not say, only crosses herself, a gesture that piques María’s interest as she takes the basket and sets off for the families Baltierra and Munoz and Cordona.

She passes Rafa at the edge of the yard, shoring up the fence, which always seems one strong breeze away from falling down.

He glares at her as she goes by, and she knows he is looking to find something wrong.

Stand straighter, María. Be tidy, María.

Have some modesty, María. She smiles and curtsies as she passes, a gesture with all the flair of a curse.

The day started hot, but soon a swell of clouds rolls in, and by the time she’s delivered her mother’s work, a storm is churning.

She quickens her pace, the now-empty basket swinging from her fingers, the taste of rain on her tongue. She cuts through the copse that runs like a road along the edge of town, is startled when one of the trees steps sideways, and María sees it’s not a tree at all, but the widow.

María stops, breath caught between her teeth.

The widow’s face is uncovered, the veil tucked up into her hat brim.

María stares at the curls of blond hair now visible against her neck.

Stares at her smooth cheeks, her pointed chin, the smooth pink bow of her lips.

She doesn’t look sick, or old, or weak. If anything, she is younger than María would have guessed. And twice as pretty.

The wooden crate sits beside her in the grass, its lid thrown back, contents winking in the light. She’s disappointed to see it holds only small, stoppered bottles and none of them look to have blood or feathers or bones.

The widow sinks to her knees at the base of a tree, gloved fingers sliding through the roots, and—

“What are you doing?” María asks.

The widow doesn’t jump at the sound, doesn’t even look up from her work.

When she speaks, her voice is smooth, and surprisingly low, and she speaks Castilian so well María doubts Felipe’s guess that she is French.

“I’m gathering herbs.”

“For a spell?” she asks, the words out before she thinks to stop them.

The widow looks up, then, revealing eyes that are a startling shade of blue, the edges crinkled in amusement. “For a tonic.”

María frowns. “Is a tonic the same thing as a spell?”

“Only to a fool,” says the widow. “Are you a fool, little girl?”

María shakes her head, but cannot help herself. “So you are not a witch?”

The widow straightens, and for a moment, the full force of her attention lands on María again, solid as a stone, before it slides past her, toward the town. “So much superstition, from a place that believes a roasted hen really sprang up off a dinner plate and began to sing.”

She is speaking of the tale that made Santo Domingo famous.

“That,” declares María, “was a miracle.”

The widow seems to consider. “And how is a miracle different from a spell? Who is to say the saint was not a witch?” She says it blithely, as if the words have no weight.

And María finds herself grinning at the sheer scale of the blasphemy.

The way it would make Rafa scowl, and her mother cross herself.

“So you are a witch, then?” she asks brightly.

The widow laughs. It is not a witch’s laugh, which María has always imagined would sound like the splitting of wood, or the guffaw of crows. No, the widow’s laugh is soft, and heady, thick as sleep.

“No,” she says, the humor clinging to her voice.

“And this is not magic. It’s medicine.” She holds out a small red weed, pinching it between gloved fingers as if it were a rose.

“Nature gives us what we need,” she says, and for the first time, María thinks she catches it, the faintest trace of somewhere else, the edges of another accent, one she cannot place.

“There are teas and tonics for many things,” continues the widow.

“To shed a fever, or ease a cough. To help a woman get with child, or get rid of it. To make a man sleep . . .”

María’s gaze drops to the ground between them. She spots another crimson stem, is already reaching down to pull it out when the widow catches her hand.

Even though they were several strides apart.

Even though she never saw the widow move.

She is there now, a head taller than María, one gloved hand circling her wrist.

“Careful. In nature, beauty is a warning. The pretty ones are often poisonous.”

But María has already forgotten about the plant. Her world has narrowed to the widow.

The sun is gone now, lost behind low clouds, and up close, she smells like candied figs and winter spice.

Up close, her gray clothes are not so dull, but finely sewn, and trimmed in glinting silver thread.

Up close, her blue eyes are fever bright, and there are faint shadows in the hollows of her cheeks, and María wonders if she was wrong, and the widow has indeed been sick.

The woman’s mouth twitches, one corner tilting into a rueful smile. Her pink lips part, and the world goes small and tight as a held breath. María feels herself falling forward, even though she hasn’t moved an inch.

Then thunder snaps like a branch over their heads, and the widow’s hand withdraws.

“Run home,” she says as the first drops of rain break through the canopy.

And for once in her short, stubborn life, María obeys.

She turns, sprinting out of the copse of trees and down the road, as if she can outrun the rain.

She can’t, ends up soaked through by the time she drops the empty basket inside the door.

Her mother mutters about wet clothes and catching cold as she peels her out of her dress and puts her by the fire, afraid she will take ill.

She doesn’t, but that night, senor Baltierra dies in his sleep.

By dawn, the widow is gone.

It will be ten years before María sees her again.