A MAN STOOD at the foot of my bed. In his hand there was a long knife. The candlelight shone on the blade, and I knew by the way he held the shaft that he’d used this knife before. He had killed with this knife. My breath thickened in my throat. On my tongue was the taste of my own fear.
She was very, very frightened. I could see her fear, smell it almost. And yet she did not flinch. She did not cower down, nor run to hide, nor edge away. She sat up and looked at me.
I rose up from the bed and faced him, conscious of being only in my nightclothes. It came to my mind that when he plunged the knife in, the colour of my blood would contrast vividly against the white muslin of my shift. His face was in the shadows, his eyes burning with a strange luminance. Familiar eyes. Yet I did not know him . . . ‘What do you want?’ I asked.
‘I come for my revenge,’ I said. ‘Should I stab you? Or take this as a rope to hang you with?’
With my free hand I ripped down the tasselled sash that held back her bed curtains. ‘I might string you up so that you can dance the same jig your father made my father dance.’
I moved nearer to her. There was a pulse beating at her throat under the golden skin, and her pupils were dilated. In one hand I held my dagger; in the other the length of silken rope.
‘It is your time to die,’ I told her.
I brought the knife point close to her breast.
‘Saulo?’ I whispered in terror. ‘Saulo? It cannot be you.’
Had I gone mad? Was I dreaming? Living in a waking nightmare, where I could see and touch an assassin who had come to kill me? Some demon who had taken the guise of the man I loved?
‘Saulo?’
‘He was hungry,’ I said.
‘Who, Saulo? Who was hungry?’
‘My father,’ I told her. ‘We were all of us starving, but I know that he would not have assaulted you. It was not in his nature. If he tried to snatch your purse, then it was to buy medicine for his wife, my mother, or to feed his son – me.’
‘Ah,’ I whimpered. ‘Now I know who you are. You are the son of the beggar. I knew that one day I would face a judgement for what I did that dreadful afternoon. I thought it would be in the next world, not this one.’
‘The day has come, Zarita,’ I said. ‘For I was here an hour or so ago and saw you with Ramón Salazar and recognized you.’
‘Did you know who I was from the beginning?’ she asked me. ‘Was everything we did, was all you said to me . . .’ And here her voice wavered. ‘Was all of it a lie?’
‘It was you who lied,’ I said hoarsely, ‘when you falsely accused my father of assaulting you.’
‘I didn’t lie. I didn’t accuse him of assaulting me. He touched me, it’s true, but his fingers only brushed against mine—’
As she began to speak, I held up my hand. ‘Silence! I don’t want to hear excuses. You have already bewitched me enough to addle my brain.’
But Zarita would not be silenced.
‘You are right, Saulo, when you say that your father did nothing. He was blameless. It was my fault; my stupidity, my foolishness. It wasn’t wickedness – that I can say truly. Not for hope of any mercy from you, but for the sake of truth, for you should know of the last act of your father, that he was an honourable man. And I believe he tried to save you.’
‘Your words have no meaning for me,’ I told her.
‘To begin with,’ she persisted, ‘when he ran from the church, your father was only desperate to get away, to lose himself in the alleys and streets leading off the square. So he ran forward. But then he saw you, and he veered off towards the sea to take them away from you, his son. I was some distance behind and I could see the whole scene. Many times over the years I’ve thought about those events. I’m convinced that when he caught sight of you, he altered direction towards the docks so that you wouldn’t be caught up in whatever happened; so that you would not be punished as he knew he would be.’
A clear recollection came to me.
My father had seen me. I could visualize him now, racing towards me in the square and then changing tack. Away from safety, towards a closed-off route – to save his son.
Tears were in my eyes. I dashed them away. ‘None of this will save you from my vengeance. Do not think to ask for mercy.’
As I spoke, a shard of another memory sliced through my mind and I saw a girl pleading for mercy. Not for her life, but for mine. Zarita had knelt before her father and stopped him when he’d been about to hang me.
Saulo hesitated.
Why?
He’d come to my room intent on murdering me in revenge for the death of his father by my father’s hand. Yet now he seemed unsure.
I should call for aid. But if I did so, Saulo would be arrested, and without doubt executed.
‘You must leave,’ I told him. ‘Lest you be discovered here. I wouldn’t want your blood on my hands, for I already have your father’s death on my conscience.’
‘As I have yours,’ he replied abruptly.
There! It was said! Now she knew!
‘You . . .? My papa . . . Oh! Oh!’
Zarita covered her face with her hands and sank down upon the bed.
‘Oh! I understand! That is why the tree outside my home was poisoned. It was you who set fire to the house. It was you Papa was running from when his heart gave out!’
Zarita raised a harrowed face to mine and moaned in a wretched voice. ‘Such dreadful outcomes from one deed!’
There was a sudden cry of alarm, and then a thunderous knocking on the inside corridor door. For a second I thought that in some way she’d secretly summoned help. But she was as surprised as I was.
‘I should answer them,’ she said, her voice distraught. ‘Señora Eloisa takes a strong sleeping potion each night. It will take her several minutes to wake up.’
‘Ask them who they are and why they disturb you at this hour,’ I ordered her. ‘But do not move from the doorway of this room.’
I stood behind her as she opened her bedroom door. ‘Who are you?’ Her voice was unsteady as she spoke.
No reply came. Only an increased hammering on the corridor door.
‘Ask them again,’ I instructed her.
She called out again in a louder voice. ‘Name yourself! I will not unlock the door unless you do so!’
‘You will do as we say!’ came the reply. ‘Open up this door in the name of the Holy Inquisition!’