by Luz Gabás
Brianda was not surprised by what she learned. Like so many others, Göldi had really been killed because she posed a threat to a powerful man. Apparently, Tschudi had had an affair with Göldi and then fired her. When she had threatened to reveal the matter, he had denounced her as a witch.
She continued to read until she understood Neli’s point. In 2007, the Swiss parliament had declared that the execution had been a miscarriage of justice. The representative of Glarus asked for a formal pardon for her, which was granted in August 2008 with the argument that she had been the victim of an illegal trial. One of the articles described Glarus as strained by that “regression” to the past. Opinion was divided between those who wanted the stain on their history erased and those who denied responsibility for something that had happened so long ago. Finally, though, Anna Göldi was exonerated.
She heard pawing at the door and got up to open it. Luzer came in and waited for her to sit before lying down close by. After several days bringing him food and water, Brianda had decided to release him. At the beginning, he did not move from the barn, but bit by bit, he began to show interest in his surroundings until one afternoon he followed her on a walk. Since then, it seemed clear he had accepted her as his new mistress.
“I really misjudged you, didn’t I, Luzer?” Brianda murmured, rubbing his back.
That night, like an intangible bridge between the material and the psychic world, the conversation with Neli and the pages about the Swiss woman stayed in bed with her until her senses gave way to sleep.
Brianda dreamt that her teenage hands held a quill that she dipped in ink and then slid along scraps of parchment beside the window in a room with bare stone walls and animal skins on the floor. On the rough paper, she poured out her desolation for the loss of Johan and Corso and her rage at new circumstances that were going to prevent her from keeping the name of Lubich alive. Like a long lament, the text flowed along the pages in the same pitiful, distraught, whiny tone. A sudden gust of swirling wind invaded her room, shuffling the pages before letting them fall softly to the floor like leaves falling from trees. Brianda gathered them up and began writing again. As if stuck in a loop, the scene tediously repeated itself waiting for a variation that never came.
It never came, but it had to come.
The following morning was Sunday. While she had breakfast with her aunt, Brianda thought about her dream and wondered what it meant. Isolina asked her to come to mass, and she agreed, but she asked that they leave a little early so she could talk to Neli.
Brianda drove Colau’s car to the square in the lower part of Tiles. While Isolina went ahead to the church, Brianda knocked at the door of Neli’s house. Jonas led her to the garden, where Neli was planting flowers with her children, taking advantage of the break in the rain.
“I read about Anna Göldi last night.”
Neli took her arm and pulled her a few paces from the children.
“I suppose,” continued Brianda, “that you plan to get pardons for the women. And, obviously, other folks in town will object.”
“What about you?” Neli asked her. “Will you support my petitions?”
“Listen, I understand why they’re anxious for any opportunity to boost the local economy.”
Neli looked at her angrily. “One of your ancestors was murdered, and you don’t even care!”
“It happened so long ago, I just can’t imagine—”
Then she remembered Colau’s need to hide the truth about Jayme of Cuyls. For him, it didn’t matter that more than four hundred years had passed. Maybe it was the origin of his family’s bad reputation. He had lived all his life with a permanent blot on his name. She remembered the curse that Neli had told her about: wherever a Cuyls goes, life ends.
As if she were reading Brianda’s mind, Neli asked, “How will you feel when you see witch souvenirs with the name Brianda on them? You’ll be Brianda the witch.”
Brianda shrugged. “I don’t live here.”
“Right, of course, you think you can run back to Madrid and forget everything.” Neli’s tone turned bitter. “That’s not possible now. You know it as well as I do.”
“What the hell do you want me to do?”
“Come on! If there’s anyone who can do something for those women, it’s you. Those dreams and visions are real; it’s undeniable. How else could you know all the things you do? Look inside yourself. You have to pursue this, investigate until you find the truth about what happened.”
Neli went back to her gardening as the bells began to toll for mass. Brianda left through the garden gate and walked, pensively, toward the church.
Inside, she sat beside Isolina next to the chapel to the Virgin of Tiles. She could not pay attention to the mass because she kept thinking about Neli’s words and remembering the portrait of Anna Göldi she’d seen online. It showed a woman with delicate features, sad brown eyes, dark hair, and rosy skin. Murdered by church and state because a powerful man wanted her out of his way. How terrible. She shivered, imagining the woman being hung by her thumbs with rocks tied to her feet. Brianda wondered how quickly she herself would confess to whatever they wanted if she were tortured. What would it feel like to kneel in the village square before they cut off her head with a sword? What would be her last thought? She tried to compare Anna’s story to Brianda’s. Anna was a servant who supposedly had an affair with her master. Brianda was the heir to a vast estate. Anna was illiterate.
She shivered again.
In the previous night’s dream, the young Brianda wrote and wrote.
If only she could read that lament! How frustrating it was to perceive an idea as true with no physical proof, and that so much information was available about Anna Göldi’s case but none about what had happened in Tiles. After the executions, the members of the council had recorded a list of names and little else. Did they care so little about the deaths of so many? Or had shame and remorse left them speechless? There are episodes in history that must not stay buried, she thought, finally understanding Neli’s anger.
She paused and glanced around the church. The same people occupied the same seats as always. The priest stood in front of the altarpiece Neli was restoring. The saints were in the chapels. The mute Virgin of Tiles had her tiny key hanging around her neck.
Brianda rested her hand on the back of the pew in front of her and examined a small slot in the wood with the tip of her index finger. Her finger fit perfectly in the small gap, which she stroked until her heart gave a start.
When had she done that very thing before?
Where had she done it?
Her breathing quickened, but instead of feeling afraid of the possibility of another vision, like the one she had suffered in that same church, she knew immediately what she had to do and where she had to go.
And she understood her dream.
As happens to the land in winter, the deepest weariness had covered her just before the blossoming of spring. Winter had taken over her mood for months, but now she felt herself crossing an invisible line that separated depression from revelation. She only had to keep her balance and not fall into the void, and any step that she took from then on, no matter how small, would lead her forward.
27.
“Do you recognize this?” Brianda opened the palm of her hand and showed Neli an old key the size of a child’s thumb.
Neli nodded.
“Of course, I cleaned the rust off myself. Why did you take it?”
“Umm.” Brianda smiled nervously. “I know where its lock is and I need your help?”
“This minute? I mean—” The nervous smile was contagious. “You know I want to help! But where are we going to go at nine o’clock at night?”
“To Lubich.”
Neli closed the door that connected the kitchen to the sitting room, where Jonas and the children were watching television, and lowered her voice.
“Corso isn’t back yet.”
“Exactly. He can’t find out about this, not now. I know
exactly, well, I think I know exactly what I’m looking for. Is Jonas still working there?”
“Yes, and he has the keys if that’s what you’re asking.”
Brianda sighed in relief.
“So, will you come with me? If I don’t go now, I won’t sleep a wink tonight, but I’m afraid to go on my own.”
“Did you bring a flashlight?” Neli asked, and they grinned at each other.
Neli told Jonas that Brianda was taking her for a quick drink in the bar. She grabbed the keys to Lubich and a thick jacket and got into the car.
“I can’t believe we’re going to do this,” Neli said when they took the fork toward Lubich, rubbing her forearms more out of nerves than cold. “Now I’m the one experiencing a regression—to my youth! Could you slow down?”
“Sorry.” Brianda took her foot off the accelerator of Colau’s car. “I’m just impatient. You asked me to look inside myself and, I don’t know, there it was! But I’ll tell you one thing: if my intuition is wrong, I’m done with all of this.”
“It would be a pity,” murmured Neli, “because since I met you, I’ve never seen you so alive.” She kept quiet for a while before adding, “I’m sorry I got annoyed this morning, but all this is important to me.”
Brianda nodded. “To me as well.”
She stopped the car at the bottom of the gated drive and waited for Neli to find the key on the heavy bunch using the beam from the headlights.
“I should leave it open, right?” Neli asked when she got back in the car.
“Yeah. We won’t be long.”
How strange it was to come back to Lubich! Brianda remembered the first time she had dared cross these woods. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud or a shadow over the unfurled autumnal colors. She had been in awe on entering: the high stone wall, the wrought-iron railing, the moss on the rocks, the big patios, and the sober buildings. And after giving herself to Corso in the tower, she had left shocked by her passion and by the appearance of his wife, and worried about having betrayed Esteban. How many times, in the solitude of her apartment in Madrid, she had remembered Corso’s rough hands on her skin, the weight of his body against hers, his dark hair falling over her face. And how much she had missed him. They had been together only once, and the memory still burned as if she were branded by it.
They drove along the gravel path to the clearing in which the contour of Lubich rose in the middle of the mist. Instinctively, they shared a nervous glance. Brianda stopped the car in front of the main entrance, but did not turn off the headlights until they’d opened one of the gates. Then they used their flashlights.
In the silent night, their footsteps reverberated like gongs. Occasionally, there was also a faint noise like a clicking or a crunch. Brianda kept her eyes glued to the ground. The farther they went into the main patio, the tighter the knot in her stomach grew. She remembered a vision where Johan anxiously watched his daughter hanging from the top of the tower. She remembered the desolation in his gaze when they said good-bye, before she bumped against the stone walls of the narrow stairs coming down from the tower, before Johan’s body crashed against the rocks.
She grabbed Neli’s arm.
“What are you scared of?” Neli asked her. “Chain-dragging ghosts? Invisible and mischievous imps?”
Brianda did not answer, and Neli took it as a sign of assent.
“Fear is psychological. I’ll show you.” She turned off her flashlight and asked Brianda to do the same. “If you are open to suggestion, in that climbing vine you’ll see a man’s shadow. Can’t you see his legs half-open to balance the shot from his arquebus?” She pointed to the carved eave of the main house. “And what about the shapes of those pipes? Don’t they look like grotesque and deformed gargoyles about to jump on top of you?” She paused and lowered her voice. “And those planters at either side of the main door? They’re just flowers, but they look like the teeth of the devil—” She suddenly went quiet. “Did you hear that? Is it Corso’s horse in the stable or the stamping and bleating of a demonic billy goat?”
Brianda punched Neli in the arm.
“That’s enough!” She didn’t want to be afraid of Lubich. She wanted it to be the happy setting for her dreams of Corso.
“Suggestion is terrible, Brianda. Because of it, thousands of people have died. Imagine four hundred years ago, with no electricity. The devil was present in every shadow. As a child, did you ever see faces in the cracks on the ceiling? And always monsters, never cute boys, which shows the mind’s natural inclination toward the morbid.”
As if wanting to absorb its positive energy, Brianda gently placed her hands on the wooden door under the lintel where the name of Johan of Lubich was carved and the date, 1322. She remembered Corso saying he’d found the stone and placed it there, and she wondered who had removed it, when and why.
While Neli looked for the right key, Brianda closed her eyes and pictured what they would find inside. The enormous hall, the impressive staircase, the heavy doors, the excessive decoration, the small office. Her breathing quickened. She was so close to finding something.
“Hurry up!” she pleaded.
Neli finally opened the door, and, without hesitating, Brianda led her straight to their destination.
“I see that Corso made sure you knew your way around.” Neli laughed. “Can you believe I’ve never been in here? I’d love to poke around a bit. What if we turn on a light?” She answered herself: “Better not. Someone could see it, and I don’t know how we’d explain this. I have to admit, I’m afraid of getting caught.”
Brianda hastened her step, not out of fear but because of the anxious knowledge that she was so close to her goal. She opened the door that led to the office where she had felt unwell, just before Corso suggested showing her the tower. She slid the beam from the flashlight around the room, left her bag and the car keys on a table in the middle of the room, and focused on the small chest on the carved-leg table that was at the back wall.
“Neli, I bet that there’s a tiny carving of a boxwood sprig inside the lid.”
Brianda opened it and pointed the light at the mark.
“Like on the confessional in Besalduch!” said Neli.
“It was made by the same carpenter.”
Brianda slid her fingers along the minuscule pieces of bone and boxwood that decorated the drawers before stopping at the door guarded by small columns. Her hand shook opening it, and she had to take a deep breath before stroking the interior of the compartment, looking for the notch that, she was now certain, was a tiny lock.
“Here it is!” she murmured.
She took the Virgin’s key from her pocket and, as carefully as she could, slipped it into the slot. It fit perfectly. She turned it to the left and heard a dead click, as if the wood was opening. She turned it to the right and the interior walls of the compartment folded to one side, as if joined by invisible hinges.
“The flashlight, Neli!”
Brianda felt the urge to cry as she took the folded sheets of paper from their secret vault. They had hidden there for centuries. Her brain refused to consider any other possibility. Another key could not exist. Nobody had read these before. Not even Corso. She was the one who had brought them to light.
As if they were the most fragile of treasures, she placed the papers on the table by her bag. Beside her, Neli held her breath, hanging back so Brianda could be the first to read them. She let several long minutes pass in silence.
“Any idea what they are?”
Brianda sighed. “It’s difficult to make out the handwriting. All of Colau’s documents are transcribed. With this, I can only get the odd word. We should go home and try there.”
“Let me look,” said Neli. “I’m used to old handwriting. A quick look and we’ll go.”
She took a page and pointed the flashlight at the beginning, accompanying the beam’s journey with murmurs. Then she flicked through various pages, took another sheet, and repeated the action.
“Neli!”
Brianda squealed, unable to wait any longer.
Her friend shook her head.
“It’s not easy. They’re separate notes written by the same person. I think it’s something like a diary—”
Brianda shouted out in triumph. A diary! She was going to ask Neli if she could make out a name or date when the door suddenly opened, bright lights came on, and a man shouted, “What the hell?”
Brianda closed her eyes and shrank.
She had spent so long wishing to see Corso again.
And now, under the circumstances, she felt incapable of even looking at him.
28.
None of the three said a word.
Brianda fixed her eyes on Corso’s leather boots, which were stationary in the doorway. Although she could not see his face, she felt him staring at her, stunned and angry. She slightly raised her gaze to the waist of his jeans and then up to his chest. As her eyes traveled up that body that she had missed so much, her shame increased. She did not dare look him in the eye.
She tried to find an excuse but couldn’t think of any. In any case, not even the tangible proof that her premonition was correct could justify breaking in. Why didn’t he say something? Why didn’t he yell? He had all the reason in the world to do so. She remembered the last time she’d seen him, on horseback with the rain lashing against his face. She had imagined hundreds of reunions; in all of them, their eyes met, their hearts beat wildly, and they hurried into a long, warm, and silent embrace before wiping away the long separation with caresses. But reality could not be more different. She fought back her tears, not wanting to look even more stupid and infantile, and cursed her luck. Now Corso would forever remain a fantasy.