Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

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.

II

1529

It is a late-October day, and María is sitting on the stable roof, her bare feet swinging off the edge. She knows that Rafa is searching for her, has been for the better part of an hour now. His fault, she thinks, for always looking down instead of up.

She hums, and twists a fiery strand around her finger.

Somehow, she is nearly eighteen.

María knows it did not happen overnight, that she did not go to bed a girl and wake a woman, though some days it feels that way. The seasons have worked their change in halting strides, stretching her slowly into a stranger, her body too narrow, no hips or breasts to speak of, and her features too sharp—a long jaw, a narrow face, a high forehead interrupted by fair brows. Felipe likes to say that she looks like bread dough that’s been stretched too much and failed to rise.

But her hair.

In the end, all her mother’s efforts were in vain. It has not been cowed, darkened by mud or time to a more ordinary shade. Instead, it has grown brighter, defiantly so, year over year until it now seems imbued with molten light, a liquid copper spilling in loose waves down her back. In sun, it shines. At night, it burns, like a lantern in the dark.

And if she is too long and lean, too wild to be considered comely, the strangeness of her hair has made her something even better. Striking. There may be nothing of Castilian beauty in María, but there is something undeniable about her looks. A primal grace that makes men turn their heads and their horses in the direction of the hunt.

She made note of this new power as the seasons turned and the men in her own village—some little more than boys, others old enough to be her father—began to stare.

She made note, and knew something must be done.

Someone whistles now, a short, sharp sound, and she looks down over the edge to see Felipe craning his head, cheeks still dusted from his work in the shadow of the blacksmith.

“Rafa’s been looking for you,” he calls, one hand up against the glare.

María lies back against the sun-warmed tiles, studies a passing cloud. “I know.”

Below, Felipe lets out an exasperated sound.

“María, please,” he says plaintively, and she sighs, and sits back up.

“Fine, fine,” she says, flinging herself over the edge. The drop is high enough to make her brother suck in a nervous breath, but she lands like a cat, bare feet sinking in the hay.

Felipe conducts her like a jailer, one hand against her back as he ushers her to the house. Inside, their mother sits by the fire, sewing in her lap. Rafa paces a groove into the floor.

But María’s gaze goes to the stranger sitting at their table.

The man is handsome enough, broad-shouldered and dark-haired, his beard trimmed short and his eyes a light brown at odds with the rest of his complexion. And though he is of average size, he seems too big for the narrow house, too tall for the low beamed roof, too fine for the threadbare rug beneath his boots.

“María,” says Rafa, in the scolding tone that always accompanies her name. “This is Andrés de Guzmán, Viscount of Olivares, and esteemed knight of the Order of Santiago.”

She wonders absently how long it took Rafa to memorize that string of words. But her attention hangs on the viscount. The cloak draped over his shoulders, lined with black fur. His vest, made from a fine brocade and fastened with jeweled clasps. The medallion of the Order on a gold chain around his neck. All of him flashing like a gem among the river stones.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she says, adding a breathless edge to her voice, as if she’s run all the way across town, instead of strolling up the lane.

Andrés de Guzmán rises from the chair, gives a flourish and a bow. “Encantado, mi señora.”

“A pleasure to meet you, vizconde,” she says, dropping into a low bow. A moment later, she feels the grip of his glove on her elbow as the viscount returns her to her feet.

“Now, now,” he says, “a woman need not bow so low to her betrothed.”

The air in the room tenses around the word.

But not María.

She is many things—stubborn, cunning, selfish—but she has never been a fool. She knows that she was born into this body. She knows it comes with certain rules. The question has never been whether she would wed, but whom.

So last year, when the heads began to turn, and Rafa started to worry the topic of marriage as if it were a wound, she looked around at the options in Santo Domingo, and found them lacking. She looked at her life and found it small. Saw the road that lay ahead, and there were no curves, no bends; it ran straight and narrow all the way to its end. She saw it in her mother’s hands, gone stiff with age, as they now struggled with fine stitches that had once come easily, only a matter of time before María herself was expected to take up the tedious work. She saw it in Rafa’s wife, Elana, round with a child that had already begun to waste her beauty and drain her youth. In Felipe’s bride, Lessandra, promised to him so long that she had never thought to stray. Both women walked into their marriage beds without so much as looking round to see if there were other paths.

But María has known, all her life, that she is not meant for common paths, for humble houses and modest men. If she must walk a woman’s road, then it will take her somewhere new.

She stares at the viscount now, seated at her table, as if they have not met before.

As if she did not see him riding at the helm of the caravan a month ago.

As if he did not see her standing at the edge of the crowd, and follow her across the square and into the shadow of the church.

As if she did not lure him there, feigning innocence as he cornered her, spilled praise at her feet and pressed to see what she might give. What he could take.

As if he did not reach out and coil a lock of copper hair around his glove.

As if she did not see the hunger in his eyes and know that she could use it.

By then she had spent nearly a year honing her gaze on the pilgrims passing through, balancing on that knife’s edge between too brazen and too shy. She had learned when to hold a look, and when to drop it. When to let a smile flicker like light on her lips, and when to bow her head.

When to be the predator, and when to play the part of prey.

And that day, in the shadow of the church, she’d played it perfectly, bold enough to catch his eyes, chaste enough to stay his hand. Andrés de Guzmán had retreated, understanding that if he wanted to touch more than María’s hair, it would be as her husband.

And so he went.

And here he is again, and the silence must be stretching on too long, because Rafa clears his throat.

“The viscount has come to ask for your hand,” he explains, as if she is too thick to understand the meaning of the word betrothed.

They are expecting a performance, and so she gives them one.

“In marriage?” she asks, twisting her face into an imitation of surprise, eyebrows arching at this wholly unexpected ambush. She even looks to her mother, as if for aid, finds only relief and resignation on the woman’s face. As if this is a burden lifted, when the truth is, it was never hers to carry. With their father gone, Rafa is the master of the house, and so the task of marrying María off falls to him. As he reminds her. Often.

“It is a happy day,” says her mother.

“Indeed,” says Rafa, looking as smug as Andrés, each convinced that they are the mind behind this meeting. As if she did not set the game and arrange the pins so all they had to do was knock them down.

“What if I refuse?” she asks, just to savor the surprise on Andrés’s face, the shock on Felipe’s, the horror on Rafa’s. She lets the question hang only a moment before laughing. Her brother sags, relief and embarrassment flooding his cheeks.

“Apologies, mi señor,” he says to the viscount, clearing his throat. “María has an odd sense of humor.”

The viscount doesn’t laugh, but he does not seem insulted either. He answers Rafa, but his attention is pinned to her. “María has only ever been a sister and a daughter. But she will soon learn to be a wife.”

The slightest emphasis on the word learn, like a switch grazing a horse’s flank.

But it will take more than that to make her flinch.

“Well, María?” says Rafa, urging her with a pointed look to accept the offer.

And for once, she does as she’s told.

She nods, holding out her hand, and Andrés de Guzmán’s mouth splits into a haughty grin, like he’s the one who played the game, and won. And as he bends his head to kiss the bare skin of her knuckle, where the wedding ring will go, María imagines the road curving away beneath her feet, and smiles, too.

The viscount returns a fortnight later, a new kind of caravan in tow.

Cart after cart fills the road behind his horse, each one steered by a well-dressed servant and each brimming with gifts—fine tapestries and casks of wine, candied fruit and cured meats. One cart rattles with chargers and cups, enough for every mouth in town, another arrives with hens packed so tight their feathers jut between the slats and fly away like dandelion fluff. An homage to the miracle that made Santo Domingo famous, though hopefully none of these will rise up off their dinner plates.

In hours, the town’s plaza is transformed.

Tables dragged from the houses and hauled into the square, every oven commandeered to prepare the wedding feast.

The night before, María’s mother brushed her hair a hundred times, until it shone as bright as the fire in the hearth. And as she did, she told her daughter what it meant to be a wife.

Gentle. Loving. Obedient.

Words that made María tense. And, as if her mother could feel her stiffening, she leaned close and said, “You will learn, it is better to bend than to break.”