Yzabel cleared the pain in her throat. “The prelates might oppose out of sheer stubbornness.”
“We’re lucky that you’re more stubborn than they’ll ever be, then,” Denis said. “If there’s anyone who can convince them of its benefit, it’s you. Which brings us to our dilemma: The prelates have too big a hold on the country. Their first concern isn’t Portugal, but the Holy Church. That needs to change. The people can’t control their future when they give most of it to the prelates.”
He was testing her devotion to God now, poking the arrows of her moral compass. And while she did believe in the Holy Church and its goodness, she wasn’t the naïve little girl he’d promised to marry. She realized not every prelate was good. She’d seen it, with her own eyes.
“I may be devout, but I’m not blind. Or stupid. The Church is already responsible for our spirits; they shouldn’t have to be responsible for our bodies as well. It’s on us to make it right. Now that you left the farmers in charge of their own lands, they can sell more, profit more, and stop needing charity. More money for them, more taxes for you.” She lifted her chin, looking him square in the eye. “The Church can keep on gathering its funds the way it always has, by relying on the good will of the people.”
A smiling tug played in the corner of his lips. “The Pope might take offense, you know.”
“The Pope is Saint Pedro’s successor. He will understand.” She took a bite of turnip, washed it down with a sip of wine. “And people are good, Denis. They will give as much as they can if they know it’ll help someone else. Should you do this across the country, and rescind your limits on donations, the Church will have no reason to object.”
He blinked. “You’ve really changed.”
Yzabel looked away. “I had to.”
It was God’s will she change, God’s will she accept her gift of the Holy Spirit and use it for the people. God’s will that led her to Fatyan. And where there was God’s light, there was the Devil’s shadow as well. She should’ve held strong against the darkness instead of letting the lust fester like a wound.
That wound bled still, along with the ones on her back, along with the punctures of the cilice’s teeth.
“You’re finally seeing the big picture, Yzabel. This change…it’s for the better.” From across the table, his hand folded over hers. “I’m glad we’re discussing how to run the country again.”
She turned her fingers under his. “So am I.”
But at night, when she was alone with Lucas in her cold tent and couldn’t turn roses into bread, she wished again for Fatyan to be with her, wished she’d open the flap and climb inside. She’d sit behind Yzabel and whisper exactly what was wrong, that she should remain calm and keep practicing. Before the hopelessness and regret flooded her again, Yzabel sent magic spinning into a rose, a quick succession of images flashing in her attentive eyes—stalks of wheat, grinding flour, a splash of water, a dash of salt, a bit of yeast, a ball of dough sitting on a tray over embers, bloating, browning.
The rose compacted, widened, swelled, and instead of a prickled stem, there was the rough shell of the bread. A loaf smaller than the palm of her hand.
Food she’d made from a flower.
Her lungs expanded with overwhelming relief when it did, her breaths growing bigger when the next rose became bread, too. Lucas licked her face, and she smiled as he gobbled up the loaves in single bites.
The lightness in her being didn’t last long, for even though Lucas was company, he was still a dog. He lacked the capacity to comprehend the miracle that had just transpired, and as much as she talked to him about it, he would never answer. He wasn’t Vasco, or Brites, or Faty.
Faty, who would’ve been now free if Yzabel hadn’t lost control of herself.
A blanket drawn over her thoughts, she crawled to the trunk where she’d placed the stone for the journey. The rock was warm on her hand, alive with magic, and she held it in front of her between index and thumb.
“Faty,” she whispered, unsure she could be heard, certain she’d choke if she didn’t try. “Faty, our bargain’s done. You can come out.”
She waited for Faty to answer inside her head as she had the day they’d found each other. Waited for the stone to erupt, for the ground to shake, the birds to stir. But she’d had her chance, and now that it’d been wasted, all the stone held for her was silence.
As soon as she lay down to sleep, her tired eyes drifted to where Fatyan used to sit beside her, and Yzabel would find herself wishing she could place her head on Faty’s lap. Faty would run her hands over Yzabel’s curls, wrap them around her fingers like rings; when Yzabel could barely keep her eyes open, they’d lie, curled against each other—
She pulled at the wounds in her back until she could feel them bleed again, falling asleep to the sound of her sobs and the taste of her tears. The morning would come with Denis’s gentle rebinding of her wounds, getting better despite her tugging on them at night.
That was how much God wanted her to recover. The gift of the Holy Spirit wasn’t just helping her regain her flesh but healing the lash’s marks as well.
The Lord loved her still. Even though she’d let herself crave another woman’s touch, He cared for her, mending her body so she could fulfill her purpose to bring true peace to this country.
She thought on it, desperately. How to tip the scales of balance without eliciting a revolt that could bring civil war upon them, how to make everyone’s lives better in ways that would hurt no one. But how could she hope to bring peace to a country when there was no peace in her heart?
The days passed. Her relationship with Denis improved, returning to the cooperating friendship it’d been during their long correspondence. Whenever there was a settlement, he’d let her give alms to the poor so long as she kept them small, merely enough to keep starvation at bay for a week. He wasn’t aware that she ended up giving more, and although she knew she shouldn’t lie to Denis about anything any longer, Yzabel couldn’t bring herself to tell him of her magical gift.
A gift she controlled because of Fatyan.
With the mastery achieved, Yzabel now had to find a way on how to use it to its fullest potential, and she had to do it by herself. As they rode, she thought on ways she could bring food to the people. The easiest way would be to involve the servants, but after what happened to Brites, Yzabel couldn’t risk it. This meant she’d have to distribute the bread herself, but with her job as future queen consort, she had little spare time available to her. Short of duplicating herself, Yzabel had no idea how she was supposed to do it.
When the caravan stopped for lunch, Yzabel plucked as many estevas as she could and placed them in her apron’s pocket.
“Your Highness, why those?” Lady Aldonza asked. “They’re a weed!”
Yzabel shrugged, keeping things short and courteous. “Estevas are powerful medicine. I like to keep our cabinets stocked.”
Truth was, she hated picking estevas. Their resin left her fingers sticky, her skin stiff, but they were everywhere, and could be used to disinfect wounds, or to soothe flea bites. She’d keep some of these to make some salve, but most had another purpose.
Surely, she could turn estevas into bread as easily as she did roses. As such, whenever they stopped, and she walked the streets with her ladies-in-waiting or her betrothed, she’d slip the poor a coin, then linger back a moment longer to shove her hand into her apron and sneak in a loaf of bread as well. It was tricky, with Matias now the head of her Guarda and lingering at her back, but she learned to work the dead angles in his sight and how to use her dog’s massive frame to hide her surreptitious movements.
Everyone, Matias and Denis included, thought the thanks that came after was for the money. She didn’t bother to correct them. It was keeping things from her betrothed, yes. But sinning was forgivable if done in the name of good.
Unnatural love between women
wasn’t a good cause, even if love itself was the noblest of causes.
Was that why loneliness clung to her like an illness? Because she still wasn’t being too honest with her betrothed? Or was it because she truly did love Faty, and to be without her was to starve her sick heart?
The araba was full of women, Estremoz several days away from the horizon, and still she succumbed to the bitterness of saudade. The melancholy wouldn’t lift, the pain in her chest wouldn’t fade, and even if she wanted to run back to Fatyan and apologize, she couldn’t.
Fatyan was gone.
The stone now lay dangling between her breasts, wrapped in ribbons of silk tied to a fine silver chain, beating with the same rhythm as Yzabel’s heart. So close. So far. Every night, she fell asleep with the stone clutched in her hand, whispering things like Sorry. I love you. We can never be together. I want you by my side.
Every time, the stone responded with taunting silence, its magical glow shuddering as if to say, You’ve had your chance.
“I must say, you’ve been looking better with each passing day,” Lady Aldonza’s statement plucked her from dark daydreams. “The king must be relieved.”
“It’s good to see a man thusly concerned with his future wife. That he insisted to see to your every meal before you’re even married, oh!” Countess Mariana fluttered her rich eyelashes with a sigh. “It’s not just his verses that are romantic, but his gestures as well.”
Yzabel swallowed the lump of memories that surfaced. “I’m lucky to be marrying him.”
“Has he visited you at night?” asked Aldonza in a too-innocent chirp.
Their marriage had all but been formalized, with their long engagement and Yzabel’s subsequent delivery to the Portuguese lands, so it wasn’t too odd a question or implication. Still, prickling unease curled her toes, the discomfort lowering Yzabel’s gaze to where her hands rested in her lap. “No. There would be no point, considering my health.”
She was still healing. All she could do for now was eat, get better, and wait for her womb to be fertile again. There would be no point in her bedding Denis until then, anyway; an unwillingness that had nothing to do with the fact she still thought about Fatyan, and everything to do with the lack of moon’s blood.
God must’ve been listening to her thoughts, because the following morning, when she went to the chamber pot, drops of red colored her bodily fluids pink.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Despair
Breaking open the little box of necessities filled her with unexpected relief. The cotton rags with strings would finally be put to use, as would the small necklaces she filled with lavender and sage to hide the smell. All of which she’d made with Brites while expecting the flow to come back.
She tied the string around her hips to keep the rag in place; it was uncomfortable to walk with the cotton between her legs, but it was either that or let the blood run freely. With the pendant of flowers behind her clothes, no one even noticed she’d reached her time of the month.
The cramps were the worst, periodic stabs to her womb that made her grimace and groan. She longed for mint tea to ease the pain, but to deny herself a woman’s aches was to go against God’s wishes. He’d sent her this pain as a sign that she could now love her betrothed the way she was supposed to. Perhaps if she let him do what men did, she’d stop thinking of Fatyan’s hands on her skin, of her lips upon her own.
But God was as cruel as He was merciful, and the tide didn’t last long—three days later, it was gone. The next, the familiar donjon of Estremoz rose from atop the hill. The sun hung halfway down, and around the road, men and older boys tended to the fields, cleaning the earth from weeds and other maladies.
“Esh-tre-mous,” Marquise Júlia said from across the araba. “Quaint name.”
“As the story goes, it’s because a group of settlers found a tremosso tree somewhere around here,” Aldonza explained as the araba rolled over the portcullis and into the city walls. “They returned to harvest it every year, and the place where the tremossos grew eventually became Estremoz.”
Yzabel tuned out, taking in the familiar small houses painted in quicklime to reflect the oppressive summer heat, with blue or yellow lines trimming their bases, doors, and windows to keep the flies and mosquitoes away; the cobblestone-paved roads, and the sidewalks in the traditional Portuguese style, with white and black stones. The village’s women and young children tended to their own small gardens—some were lucky enough to have a chicken or two, maybe a neighborhood pig they were fattening up for slaughter come Februarius. A loathsome custom come at the end of winter, with the pig’s cries finding her regardless of how hard she covered her ears or how far away she stood.
Pigs were such smart, sweet animals, and eating their meat invariably made her sick. The Bible forbade it, too, yet another rule ignored in the name of survival to no cataclysm. No part of the pig went to waste, either. Every bit of flesh, every drop of blood, every sinew and organ and nerve turned to another purpose. She couldn’t fault the Portuguese for it, not when pigs fed so many; that she could go without eating it was her privilege, and not something the commoners could avoid.
It was a sin God allowed because it saved lives; and yet, why did she keep comparing it to her agonizing feelings for Fatyan? Was it because her absence made a different part of Yzabel starve, and she feared the saudade would kill her with its melancholy as starvation nearly had?
This had to be a test from God, as the blessing had been. Yzabel had almost failed the first; she couldn’t fail the second.
As she examined the town on their way up to the castle, Yzabel committed the streets to the map in her mind, making note of where the guard postings were stationed and more places she should avoid. The open terrain of the plaza between the city center and the poor quarter would be her biggest obstacle; she’d have to swipe a copy of the city’s blueprints from the Steward’s Office later, to see if there was a way around it.
Her rooms in Estremoz’s castle were as opulent as they’d been in Terra da Moura, save for the pile of letters waiting for her in the desk. Yzabel took her time going over the weekly reports from her many castles and villages, riches she’d gained when her papá signed her hand away to the King of Portugal and the Algarves. Come summer, she’d have to visit them all, make sure everything was as stated. If Terra da Moura had taught her anything, it was that the absence of a just hand gave way to greedy deceit.
Yzabel turned back to her letters, making note of the advancements in her own lands. Her shelters in Porto Mós and Óbidos should be open, giving aid and shelter to old or sick prostitutes who couldn’t find work, as well as to women who’d been ostracized from society. She wanted to build another in Odivelas, too; it was, reportedly, Denis’s favorite place for philandering, and God knew those poor women needed shelter once the men began finding them unappealing. She wanted to know if the hospital she’d ordered to be repaired in Alenquer had been done properly.
So many liked to call those women names, to spit on them and cast them out, for they were unrepentant sinners who deserved no charity.
To Yzabel, they were simply people down on their luck who deserved to be granted basic needs. Jesus had risen to Maria Madalena’s defense, and for women, so would Yzabel.
She kept her mind and body occupied. After she broke fast at dawn, she tossed the leftover crumbs to the birds at her window, small blackcaps and warblers, as well as large crows. They stayed on the sill after the meal, and she took to singing to and with them during the busy mornings spent running her own estate, boosting her spirit through the often-tiresome business. The afternoons she spent with her ladies-in-waiting and evenings in prayer and poring over the city map. Matias followed her around everywhere she went, and Faty’s Stone pulsed against her breast when he came too near as if to remind Yzabel not to trust him. Her relationship with Matias was cordial at best, strained at worst, yet regardles
s of how often she complained to Denis that she did not want him in charge of her safety, the king would not budge.
Every night, there would be great feasts awaiting them in the dining hall, boar braised in clay pots, kale and chorizo shredded into thick caldo verde, sweet rala bread, endless cheeses and limitless wine. But while the Court gorged on every bite, the people were still starved.
Yzabel saw them when she and her ladies-in-waiting walked through town when the weather allowed. Children so thin it was a wonder the strong wind didn’t take them and send them flying across the sky. Still, they laughed as they played games before the sun fully disappeared and they had to go to bed. From some houses came the cries of babies and infants, of tired wives and husbands. When they were outside as the workers returned to their homes with empty cork tarros dangling from their arms, Yzabel couldn’t ignore their slumped shoulders and half-closed eyes.
They needed her help still.
But Estremoz wasn’t a passing village on the way. They were to remain here for the next four months or so, and she knew if she gave people bread in the open, her actions would eventually reach Denis. He’d ask where she got it, and that was a question she couldn’t answer.
Still, she had to help.
First, however, came another duty. One she had to prove she could do.
Yzabel called for the servants to prepare a bath, then placed the stone’s necklace on the small table by the tub, arranging soaps and oils around it as she waited.
By the firelight, she soaked in foam, rubbing away the dirt on her skin, the impurity between her legs. The hot water reminded her of the springs, of Fatyan’s fingers kneading her back, her shoulders, relieving one tension to awaken another. Yzabel hadn’t understood it then, but she did now, when the ghost of touches past brought a tightness to her core, tears to her eyes, and a beautiful ache to her chest.
She missed her. So much.
How had Faty woven herself into Yzabel’s soul so fast? Why couldn’t she untangle the threads between them, how did absence make the longing greater? Was it because there had been no parting words between them, no closure as to what those kisses had truly meant? Or because the last Yzabel had seen of Faty was the pain of rejection on her face?
A Curse of Roses Page 20