The Familiar

Santángel rides with Luzia through the forest, trying to think of ways he can get her to Hualit so she can escape. Soldiers fire arrows, bringing Santángel down, and he tells her to run. Valentina and Marius also flee, but when Valentina begs Marius to give Luzia his horse, he refuses. She hears Luzia scream.

Hualit travels in the coach Víctor provided her, reflecting on her past and the future she hopes for in Salonika; “She’d had enough disappointments to know it was dangerous to long for something, to imagine it for months and years and to find yourself on the cusp of it at last” (296). She admits to herself that Luzia’s loneliness and her need for affection frightened Hualit.

The coach stops and the henchmen make her get out. Hualit realizes Víctor told them to kill her. She offers one of them the jewels she has sewn into her clothing, which make her heavy. She pulls one of the henchmen over the bridge with her; Hualit’s neck snaps, and Celso drowns. Months later, a woman buys a fish at a market and finds an emerald inside. She leaves her husband and walks to Paris, where she is happy.

Luzia wakes up in a prison cell in Toledo, a prisoner of the Inquisition tribunal. Teoda is in the cell with her, along with another woman, Neva, who has been charged with fornication. Teoda says there is an auto de fe (the spectacle meant to punish and humiliate the Inquisition’s targets) planned for All Saints, a few weeks away. Lucretia de León is in the next cell, but none of the others from the trial are prisoners. Teoda has confessed to heresy and is unafraid of being killed.

Valentina is put in the city prison, then questioned by the vicar. After a week, she finally says her husband is a coward, not a conspirator. She finds Marius at Casa Ordoño. She decides to go to Toledo to help Luzia.

Their jailer, Rudolfo, brings Luzia food; Lucretia tells them the lady playwright took up a collection for her. Someone sends her clothes with rosemary and rue, herbs for protection, and Luzia knows it is Valentina. Teoda tells Luzia what to expect during her interrogation. Luzia thinks of the man she knew from the market, broken by the Inquisition’s tortures, and wonders, “Who will carry me?” (316). She fears Santángel was using her, and she will die and disappear.

Luzia is brought before the tribunal and told to confess, but she doesn’t know what the charges are. She reminds herself of her magic, but they torture her by pouring water into her face and mouth, and she cannot think of the refranes. Drowning, she sees Hualit and screams that the devil whispered to her so the men stop.

Back in the cell, Teoda says her angel told her Hualit died. Luzia decides they must escape so she will not be tortured again. She is surprised to realize Teoda is not a child but a woman who has a child-sized body. Teoda admits she was attracted to Fortún Donadei, revealed herself, and he betrayed her. Luzia wonders if she would have fallen for Donadei’s schemes had she not been besotted with Santángel: “A life lived hungry could lead you to eat from anyone’s hand. She would have fed greedily and never recognized the taste of poison” (324). She tells Teoda that curses can be broken.

Luzia and Teoda bribe their guard, Rudolfo, to carry messages to Teoda’s brother, Ovidio, by pretending Luzia will teach Rudolfo a love spell to win the girl he likes. On the appointed day, Luzia uses her refranes to open the locks of the prison doors. Ovidio meets them at the gates, but one of the guards takes Luzia’s hand and realizes by her calluses that she is not the noblewoman she is pretending to be. Ovidio is killed by the guards, and Luzia uses her magic to build a barrier of rocks so Teoda can escape. Luzia herself is recaptured.

Santángel has been put in a pit in the earth beneath Víctor’s house, what is called the scorpion’s den. He reflects on his life, long and boring, bereft of pleasure until he met Luzia. He will burn himself to ash and break his bondage if it will help her get free.

Víctor informs Santángel that he has been made a duke. He plans to convince the tribunal to release Luzia to him, and then he will have both Luzia and Santángel in bondage. Santángel knows from experience that if he tries to act against Víctor, his luck will turn things in Víctor’s favor.

To entertain herself, Luzia advises Rudolfo on how to win his girl. Luzia is brought out for sentencing. She thinks that, if she is burned, she will use her magic to take others out with her, maybe the king. She sees Víctor de Paredes, and then Santángel. Santángel hints to Luzia that attacks on Víctor must come from the side. She understands what he is saying and, when questioned, says that Santángel led her into heresy. Santángel admits he is the devil’s man.

The warden brings out Fortún Donadei, who is wearing his gold cross with the emerald in the center. Donadei testifies that Víctor is innocent of conspiracy. He accuses Luzia, and she admits, “The devil whispers and I answer” (353). Santángel fears he has doomed them both.

Donadei approaches Luzia as she is led off and taunts her that he will have a place in court. Luzia says his ambition will bury him. Luzia bribes Rudolfo to take her to Santángel’s cell. She asks him to trust her. She reflects on her father and his illness, alternating between melancholy and feeling overly joyful, and how he froze to death when he gave away the coat Luzia bought him. She remembers what Donadei said, that all curses require sacrifice (360).

On the day of the auto de fe, Marius hears the woman next door playing the harp. The king arrives for the display. Quiteria Escárcega, the playwright, writes. Valentina has been living with her and they have become lovers. They go together to the auto de fe.

Valentina is not impressed at the sight of the king. She wants to shout to Luzia for forgiveness, saying, “I’m sorry. I only wanted a little warmth. I didn’t know what kind of fire I would start” (366). She thinks that the spectacle of the Inquisition has become sad: “The machine had been built to consume heresy and impiety, so would it simply keep finding heresy and impiety to feed on?” (368). Valentina realizes that both she and Luzia have been lonely and overlooked.

Santángel, Luzia, and a Flemish pirate, the three prisoners condemned to the pyre, are taken outside the city gates. They are bound to a post, and Luzia is gagged. The executioner lights the fire, and Santángel smells orange blossoms. Luzia sees Fortún Donadei with his cross and the emerald set in it. She smells orange blossoms and lets the power fill her: “The song spilled through her one last time, splitting, changing, tearing open the world” (374).

The royal confessor tells the king that the three prisoners died. He does not mention there were no remains. The king weeps. Valentina returns to Madrid and invites Quiteria Escárcega to stay with her. Marius moves out. Fortún Donadei blames Luzia for his emerald talisman cracking at the auto de fe, and his powers have deserted him. Víctor de Paredes becomes afraid of everything and dies poor and alone in his bed.

A young couple who appeared naked on a street near the harbor, along with a pirate, lie in a bed in a shabby inn. As the sun rises, he turns to ash. Luzia says prayers, then her refranes, and Santángel is “stretched out beside her once more, made whole as a broken glass had once been made whole” (379). They are free, neither changing nor aging, and they roam the world together, each city new. Every morning he dies and is reborn, and he treasures her “as only a man who has lost his luck and found it once more ever can” (379).