Page 54 of The Hacienda
I turned my head.
Thick strokes of blood splayed across the white stucco, forming a single word, repeated over and over:
RODOLFO RODOLFO RODOLFO RODOLFO RODOLFO
It had been blank. Mere minutes ago it had been white and plain. And now—
A single droplet of blood rolled from the lastO. It was fresh blood, as wet as new paint and dripping.
RODOLFO RODOLFO RODOLFO
I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t breathe.
RODOLFO RODOLFO
“Did she...” Andrés trailed off.
She.She.
I heard she died of typhus. I heard she was kidnapped by insurgents.
“Did you know Rodolfo’s first wife?” I demanded.
“I...” Andrés paused. “I met her. Yes.”
“What did she look like?”
“Like she came from a peninsular family,” he said softly. “Tall, white. She had the palest hair I have ever seen. It looked like corn silk.”
I tore myself away from the wall to look at Andrés. If he had eaten or rested, it hadn’t improved his appearance—his face was sickly, his expression queasy.
“Andrés. I had a dream when you were last here.”
I told him what I had dreamed: the woman in gray, her hair like corn silk, and her eyes like embers. Her flesh-colored claws. The shredded sheets, the marks carved deep in the wooden headboard of the bed.
He listened silently, still hovering in the doorway, either too ill or too stunned to move until I delivered the final piece of what I had to say.
“Juana told me Rodolfo is coming back in two days.”
Andrés looked back at the wall. His eyes followed a thick bead of blood as it carved a fresh path down the stucco. The scrawl was rough, frantic. Could it have been written in fear?
Was it a warning?
“I think you are in danger, Beatriz,” he breathed.
That I knew was true.
But fromwhom?
17
ANDRÉS
Enero 1821
Two years earlier
COLD RAIN SLICKED THEroad from Apan to Hacienda San Isidro, leaving my clothes splattered with mud. The walk took the better part of the day; I arrived as evening darkened in the west.
