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I

Andrés has gifted her a horse named Gloria.

A dappled gray mare, its coloring as strange and striking as her own.

At first María thrills—at the beast’s size, and the way she feels when set upon it.

She has little experience with horses, but at once they seem to understand each other.

She can feel the beast’s potential coursing through its flanks, its longing to charge ahead, and her heart quickens at the thought of letting it, feeling its power on display.

But Andrés insists on keeping his mount at her side, close enough to hold her reins as well as his.

The servants and their carts have all been sent ahead—or trail behind, she isn’t sure, knows only that they travel alone save for a pair of men on horseback, trailing in their wake.

They move at a graceless trot, and as the day wears on, she grows tired and temperamental.

Andrés has told her nothing of the journey, how far it is, how long it will take, so when they turn a bend and she sees the shape of buildings on a distant rise, red-tiled roofs clustered close as grapes, her spirits lift.

“What do you think?” he asks, and María marvels, gaze drawn to the castle looming on the hill.

“That is la casona?” she asks. “Your estate?”

Her husband laughs, a barking sound with all the softness of an ax. She will learn, in time, how well he wields it, how efficiently it cuts.

“That is Burgos,” he says between chuckles, as if she is a fool. “No, my wife, this city and its castle belong to the king. We are only stopping for the night.”

María musters a smile, as if she were only joking. But there’s no need. Andrés has already turned away.

The sun sets as they approach, and all over Burgos, lanterns begin to glow with amber light, first a handful and then a hundred, until the city looks like a bed of embers spilling down the hill.

Up close, the first thing that strikes her is the smell. The smell of beasts and unwashed bodies, sweat and shit mixing on the trampled road. María scrunches up her nose. She is no stranger to the scent of farms, but this is different, stale and close and smothering.

They stop at an inn—the finest in town, according to Andrés—but María is too tired to appreciate the fuss the owners make over the viscount’s arrival, or the quality of the house itself. There is little sense in savoring what isn’t hers.

Andrés orders a meal to be sent up, then takes her hand and leads her to an upstairs room.

There, a fire has been struck in the hearth, and a bed stands, proud and stalwart, four wooden pillars and a heavy quilt.

It takes all María’s will not to fling herself upon it, the way Andrés flings himself into a chair, shrugging off his coat and undoing the laces of his mud-caked boots.

How strange, she thinks. She has never been alone with a man who isn’t kin. Knows that she should blush, demure, but only stares, as if bemused by his presence. This stranger, who is not a stranger now.

Husband.

Wife.

Words that hardly fit, especially here, in this odd state of in-between, one game ended and another not yet started.

María goes to the basin in the corner, a pitcher of scented water at its side.

She pours, and dips a cloth, begins removing the hours on horseback, the dust and sweat of the ride.

She hears Andrés rise, his weight crossing toward her, and for the first time she feels her boldness slip, tells herself it’s just the strange nature of the day, which began in one place and is ending in another.

She is not afraid, she tells herself, and yet, her body tenses when she feels him at her back, half expects him to start pawing at the laces on her dress.

Instead, his hand closes over hers as he takes the dampened cloth and sets upon the task himself, polishing her stroke by stroke, as if she is a piece of silver.

Her head aches, her hair bound up too long in braided copper ropes, and as if he knows, Andrés begins to pluck out the pins, dropping them one by one into the bowl until her hair comes free, bringing with it a sound, like a growl, in the back of his throat.

“For you,” he says, and she turns to face him, finds something glinting in his hand. A ruby the size of her thumbnail, on a glinting rope of gold.

“A wedding gift,” he says, sliding the chain around her throat. The ruby comes to rest like a kiss between her collarbones. She fondles it, and smiles, looks up to thank her husband, only to find his eyes lidded, dark. “Esposa mía . . .” he begins, taking her chin between his fingers.

A knock sounds at the door.

Their meal arrives. A heavy tray covered with a metal cloche.

“Leave it,” he orders gruffly. The servant nods and sets the tray on the low table by the hearth, is gone again, the door whispering shut in their wake.

The scent of fresh-baked bread and roasted meat drifts toward her, and hunger blooms, sudden and bright, but when she moves toward the table, Andrés catches her wrist.

“Leave it,” he says again, and María knows, by the tone of his voice, the weight of his touch, that his hunger has a different shape.

When he peels her out of the dress, and takes her to bed, he is not gentle.

Men like that, they take what they want.

And sure enough, as he presses her down into the bed, María feels like a pair of doors forced open.

A house invaded. She wants to fight back, to fling him off.

Instead, she digs her nails into the bedding, and bites her lip until it bleeds.

Her gaze escapes to the ceiling, and she searches for faces in the wooden beams.

Andrés winds her hair around his fingers as he thrusts, grunting until, at last, he spasms and collapses, spent, one hand splayed across her stomach, and the last thing he says before he falls asleep is not “I love you,” or “Thank you,” or even “My wife,” but “Let it be a son.”