I
Santo Domingo de la Calzada, Spain
1521
The widow arrives on a Wednesday.
María remembers, because Wednesdays are for bathing, and her
hair takes an age to dry after it’s been washed and combed. She
remembers, because it is warm for the end of April, and she is
sitting in a patch of sun at the edge of the yard, sucking on a cherry
pit (one of the first of the season) and holding a lock up to the light
to see if the hair is turning darker, or if it is simply still damp.
María’s mother says she is becoming too vain, but then, her
mother is the one who makes her go to bed each week with clay in
her hair, hoping it will mute the glaring strands. As far as María can
tell, it isn’t working. If anything, the hair looks even brighter.
She would not mind so much, María’s mother, if the hair were
honey-colored, or earthy, even auburn, but such an angry shade of
red, she says, is a bad omen. Not a warm color, but the hot orange
of an open flame. One she cannot seem to douse.
Something tickles María’s shin. A thread has come loose on the
hem of her dress, and she will have to ask her mother to fix it. Her
mother is a seamstress, small fingers making perfect lines. The trick
to sewing, she is always telling her, is patient hands and patient
hearts, but María came into this world with neither. She is always
pricking herself with the needle, losing her temper and flinging the
work aside, half-done. Born restless, her father used to say. Which
was fine for a son, but bad for a daughter.
María rolls the cherry pit along the inside of her teeth as she pulls
at the thread, unraveling her mother’s patient heart a little more,
when the church bells begin to ring.
And just like that, the day is suddenly more interesting.
She springs up and takes off barefoot down the road, skirts
tangling around her legs until she hoists them up out of the way.
Heads for her favorite watching spot, the top of Ines’s stable, only to
find that Felipe is already there.
“Go back home,” he calls as she hoists herself up into a cart and
then onto the slanted tiles of the roof. “It’s not safe.”
Only three years between them, his thirteen to her ten, but he’s
taken to acting like it’s an uncrossable distance, as if he’s full grown
and she is still a child, even though he still cries when he gets sad or
hurt, and she has not cried since before their father died.
“I mean it, María,” he scolds, but she ignores him, squinting into
the late-afternoon light as the caravan rolls into town.
María cannot read or write, but she can count. And so she counts
the horses as they come—six, seven, eight, nine—has started
numbering the riders too, when a voice barks up at them.
“Madre de Dios. Get down, before you break your necks.”
Felipe turns, almost slipping on the slick tiles as he does, but María
doesn’t bother. It is just Rafa, and she doesn’t have to look down to
picture him perfectly, hands on his hips and head thrown back,
frowning the way their father did. The way her oldest brother has for
the last year, since taking his place. As if that’s all their father was: a
set of shoulders, a stoic jaw, a hardened voice. A space he can so
easily fill.
“Now!” he barks.
Felipe’s bravado dissolves under Rafa’s glare, and he climbs down,
shuffling carefully across the tiles. María holds her ground, just to
prove she can, but there is nothing to see now, the caravan has
rounded the bend on its way into town, so she finally complies, and
jumps, landing in a puddle that splashes her skirts. Felipe is just as
dirty, but Rafa directs the full force of his glare at her, and her alone.
Before María can dance out of reach, he grabs her by the shoulder.
“You could have fallen.”
“Nonsense,” she says. “I would fly.”
“I do not see your wings.”
“I need no wings,” she says with a smirk. “I am a witch.”
It was only a joke. He called her one last week, when he came in
and saw her sitting by the hearth, her red hair wild and loose, her
attention lost inside the flame.
But now, as the word leaves her lips, his hand lashes out, striking
her across the cheek.
The pain is sudden, hot, but the tears that brim are those of shock,
and rage, and for an instant she imagines lunging at her brother,
raking her short, sharp nails across his cheek, the look on his face,
marred by bloody crescents.
But it is a feral kind of an anger, and María knows that it would
only get her whipped, so instead she decides she’ll fill his good boots
with manure. She grins at the thought and the sight of her smile
seems to unnerve her brother even more.
Rafa shakes his head. “Go home to Mother,” he says, flicking his
hand as if she’s a stray cat, something to be shooed. He sets off
down the path, and Felipe trails silently behind, a shadow in his
wake, the two boys heading into town to greet the caravan.
María rubs her cheek and watches them go. Counts to ten, then
shifts the cherry pit between her teeth and bites down so hard it
splits.
She spits the broken shards into the dirt, and follows.
Santo Domingo is a blessed town.
It sits on the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrims’ road. María has
always been fascinated by the people who come down it. Her father
told her that they made the trip to cleanse themselves of sins, and
when she was small, she thought of those sins as boulders, heavy
burdens like theft and murder and abuse, each enough to weigh a
body down, bend a spirit low. María would marvel at the constant
train of criminals, advertising their guilt even as they attempted to
atone.
Only later did her mother say that not all sins were boulders, that
most in fact were more like pebbles. An unkind thought. A hungry
heart. Small weights like greed and envy and want (things that
didn’t seem to her like sins at all, but apparently they added up).
More disappointing still was when María discovered that some who
walk the pilgrims’ road are not guilty of a sin at all. That they make
the trip not to atone for their past, but to secure their future. To ask
for miracles, or intercessions, or simply pave the way into God’s
grace.
That struck María as horribly dull, so to amuse herself, she’s taken
to concocting sins to assign to each and every traveler.
As the caravan unloads in the town square, she decides that the
man at the front stole a cow from a family who then could not
survive the winter.
The woman behind him drowned an unwanted baby in the bath,
and then could not get with child herself.
The man with the red cross emblazoned on his cloak is a knight of
the Order, there to shepherd the flock, but María decides that he has
wives dotted like seeds along the road, a breadcrumb trail of sins.
The old man behind him prayed for his wife’s death, and then it
came to pass.
The young one slayed a man in a duel.
And the woman in gray . . .
The woman in gray . . .
María falters.
It’s not that her imagination fails her, but it is hard to come up with
a story when she cannot make out the woman’s features. She is
draped in fabric, all one shade, like a pillar cut from a block of stone,
or a drawing made in mud. A ghost wrapped in a dark gray frock, a
gray hat with a gray veil pinned around its rim, hands gloved in
matching cloth despite the heat of the cloud-strewn day. She is a
statue, cold and colorless, among the bright brigade.
María skirts the square till she finds Felipe. His gaze flicks toward
her, and he gives a world-weary sigh. “Rafa will cane you.”
“I’ll bite him if he tries,” she counters, flashing teeth.
Felipe rolls his eyes, seems intent on ignoring her, but she elbows
him in the side.
“What?” he hisses.
She points to the woman, asking why she looks so strange, and he
replies under his breath that she looks to be a widow, and that it
must be a kind of mourning dress. María frowns. She has seen
widows on the road before. They have never looked like this.
But Felipe simply shrugs and says that maybe she is French.
María’s frown deepens, unsatisfied. She wants a closer look.
The bells have stopped ringing, and now the town is moving
through its motions.
The baker’s son appears with loaves of bread, the innkeeper with
salted fish and ale. María’s mother arrives, offering to mend any
holes from travel wear, which gives her an idea. María slips forward,
weaving toward the widow’s horse as a man holds out a hand and
helps her down. There is no pack, only a small wooden crate that he
frees for her.
When it shakes, the contents sound like bells. María wonders what
it holds.
She is almost to the widow’s side, about to ask if anything needs
mending, when the widow turns her way. She can’t make out the
woman’s face, reduced to smudges by the heavy veil, but she has
felt the heat of Rafa’s glare enough times to know the widow’s gaze
is leveled straight at her. And María, who thinks herself afraid of
nothing—not the dark corners of the yard at night, or the height of
the stable roof, or the spiders that hide in the wood stack—stops in
her tracks, the words turned to rocks in her throat.
She stares back at the strange woman, perplexed by the feeling
that rolls over her. No doubt, she would have flung it off, continued
forward, but before she can, Rafa’s hand lands on her shoulder, and
then it is too late. The widow is turning away and the party is
dispersing, the horses for the stable, the humans for the inn, and
María finds herself herded roughly back home.
The next day is hot and bright and cloudless.
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 Muñoz 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, señor Baltierra dies in his sleep.
By dawn, the widow is gone.
It will be ten years before María sees her again.
