“No bother. It’s my job to serve you. Where are you hurt?”
There was no way I would remove my trousers in front of this woman, but the determination in Julia’s eyes told me she wouldn’t leave me alone unless she’d tended to at least one wound. I rolled my sleeve up to my elbow, revealing the fresh scrape. The blood had already dried but it was still tender and bright red. For the first time in my life, I was grateful for the fine hairs on my arms.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
Julia didn’t answer. She was too busy setting the basket on my night table, removing a cotton ball from the tin box and moistening it with alcohol.
If you looked at each of Julia’s features with close attention, you wouldn’t find anything particularly striking about any of them: her eyes were too distant from each other, her nose was rather common, and her eyebrows too thin, but all together they composed a harmonious, pleasant-looking face. Her one beauty lay perhaps in her soft, button mouth. She was thin, with no breasts to speak of, and wore tiny earrings—her only visible piece of jewelry.
“It’s going to burn,” she said before pressing the moist cotton against my elbow. I flinched at the sting and bit my lip.
Julia dressed the wound and, without a warning, pressed another cotton ball against my forehead. I froze. What if the beard and mustache fell down?
My hands dampened while she tended to my facial wound. Her warm breath tickled my nose. The aroma of sautéed onions and lavender lye wafted from her hair. As she parted her lips, I noticed her crooked front teeth, her overbite reminiscent of a rabbit. I’ve never been this close to a woman, except for my mother, and her proximity made me uncomfortable.
How would a man react to having a woman so close? Cristóbal would probably stare at my chest, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I had an urge to push her away, but that would be suspicious.
After excruciating seconds bandaging my forehead, she leaned back. “There.”
I stood up. “Gracias.”
“Dinner will be served in about twenty minutes. I will come and fetch you then.”
“Don’t bother. I can get there on my own,” I said. I wasn’t used to all these servants at my beck and call. Cristóbal and I had lived in a minuscule apartment in Sevilla with barely enough room for the two of us and our plants. I’d done all the cooking myself and Do?a Candelaria, our landlady, sent her maid once a week to wash our clothes and tidy up the place.
Nodding, Julia collected the used cotton balls and placed them inside the basket.
“Julia?”
She lifted her eyes to meet mine.
“Have you worked here long?”
“It’ll be four years in December,” she said.
So, she’d met my father. And probably the burned man, too.
“Don Martin showed me a house today destroyed by a fire. Do you know who lived there?”
“The foreman and his family, but I vaguely remember them. I’m always at the house.”
“You don’t know their names?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I was touched by what happened to them. Maybe something can be done for those poor people.”
“They left after the fire.”
She collected her things. I had to get more information from her before she left, like who else lived in this house.
“One last thing, Julia. Is Do?a Catalina married?”
“No.”
“But she’s so pretty. She must have a lot of admirers.”
“If she has any, I’ve never met them.” She examined me in silence as if to determine if I was trustworthy or not. “You’d best stay away from her. La Ni?a Catalina is considered a saint around here.”
I smiled, but Julia’s frown left no doubt that she wasn’t joking. I didn’t know if I was more amused by the fact that she thought I had a romantic interest in my sister or by the saint comment.
“A saint? Why?”
“She saw the Virgin when she was a child.”
I wasn’t sure if I perceived contempt or admiration in her tone.
“Where did she see her?” I asked, swallowing the word “allegedly.”
“She appeared in her room. She sent a message through her to all the villagers.”
“What message?”
Julia finished collecting her things. “You’ll have to ask her personally.”
Without another word, she left the room. I’d only heard of Virgin apparitions in books and legends, never in real life. I wondered what my father thought of this saintly daughter of his. Did he, like Julia, believe this to be true? Or had he been a skeptic, like me?