How wide his eyes were with disbelief, when he finally turned to face her. Just a woman. This time Mercedes plunged the knife into his chest. He collapsed as she yanked it out, but she’d caught him underneath the shoulder, far too high for his heart—if he had one—and the blade was just too short. Mercedes thrust it one more time, although her fingers were already slippery with his blood. This time the knife went between his opened lips and Mercedes pressed the blade against the corner of his mouth.
“You see? I’m not some old man, hijo de puta,” she hissed at him. “Nor a wounded prisoner.”
She slashed the knife up into his cheek. Then she peered down at him, on his knees, pressing his hand against his bleeding mouth.
“Don’t you dare touch the girl.” She barely recognized her own voice. “You won’t be the first pig I’ve gutted.”
Her knees spoke another language. All her fear seemed to have gathered in them, but she made it to the barn door and pulled it open. Mercedes didn’t even notice that she still had the bloody knife in her hand when she stepped outside. She managed to hide the blade once again in her apron and she began to walk. Past the soldiers in the yard. None of them paid attention to her.
Invisible.
Only one turned his head. An officer. Serrano. He stared after her, but Mercedes kept walking. A radio was blaring in front of the stables, announcing the winning numbers of the lottery the cook always spent her money on.
Keep walking.
“Hey, did you see that?” Serrano called over to Garces, who was frowning in disappointment at the rebels’ lottery ticket he’d kept after picking it up in the woods. “Can you believe it?”
Serrano’s face was blank with bewilderment. “He let her go.”
He pointed at Mercedes. Garces crumpled the lottery ticket in his hand and threw it to the ground. “What are you talking about?”
Mercedes walked faster. She felt Garces’s eyes on her back. Maybe he didn’t enjoy torture as much as his capitán but he for sure didn’t mind killing.
“Hey!” he called after her. “You! Stop!”
Mercedes began to run.
Oh, this was easy.
Garces pulled the pistol out of his holster.
So much easier than taking a hammer to a tied-up prisoner.
He took aim as carefully as Ofelia’s father had put yarn through the eye of a needle.
“Get her, Garces!”
But Garces had forgotten about Mercedes. He lowered his pistol and stared at his capitán stumbling out of the barn like a drunk, his shirt covered in blood, his hand pressed over his mouth.
“Come on!” It was hard to understand what Vidal was saying with his hand over his mouth. “Bring her to me!”
Garces didn’t move. He just stared at the blood seeping through Vidal’s fingers. “Capitán, what . . .”
“Bring her to me, damn it!”
This time the hand came down. The mouth that yelled at Garces opened wide into Vidal’s left cheek. It wasn’t easy to take one’s eyes off that bloody grin, but Garces finally managed to lower his gaze.
“Mount up!” he shouted to his soldiers.
Mercedes had just reached the trees when she heard Garces bark his order. Why didn’t you kill him when you had the chance? she asked herself when she looked back and saw Vidal. If she’d had a better knife she would have done it. Yes, she would. She stumbled on through the wet ferns, their fronds brushing her skin and her clothes. Mercedes hadn’t run like this since she was a little girl, and then it had been for the joy of running.
Joy. How did that feel? She couldn’t remember. . . .
She soon had to lean against a tree to catch her breath, even though she heard horses snorting behind her, their hooves trampling down the ferns, their riders yelling. So many of them and she kept stumbling over roots and rocks while they came closer and closer.
A clearing opened between the trees. Tall pines standing in a wide circle as if they had gathered to watch her die. The soldiers encircled Mercedes with their horses when she had barely crossed half of the clearing. Her hair had come loose and she felt as small and vulnerable as a child.
Garces smiled down at her, his gaze mocking and admiring her at the same time. All women were prey. Look at her, Garces’s eyes said. Quite beautiful for a maid. He calmed his horse, caressing its neck as if it was hers. He took his time getting out of the saddle. He was enjoying this. The fun was just starting.
“Shhh,” he said, walking toward her, holding his hands up soothingly as if he were calming a child.
Mercedes had always believed Garces to be less cruel than Vidal, but what did that matter? He was one of them. She reached for her knife. Its blade was still red with his capitán’s blood when she pointed it at him.
Garces took off his uniform cap, still smiling as if he was courting her. “You are going to stab me? With that little knife?”
Oh, how she wished to be a man.
“It’ll be better if you come with us without struggling. The capitán says if you behave . . .” How a man’s voice could turn into a cat’s purr when he was hunting a woman.
Mercedes pressed the blade against her throat. Tarta hadn’t had that chance. Poor Tarta.
“Don’t be a fool, sweetheart.” Garces took another step toward her.
Mercedes pressed the knife so firmly against her throat she felt the blade prick her skin. Garces kept walking.
“If anyone’s going to kill you,” he purred, “I’d rather it be me.”
He was still smiling at her when he died.
The bullet hit him in the back. The others tried to flee, but they fell one by one. while Mercedes was still pressing the knife to her throat. Her ears were numbed by the shots and the screams when she finally lowered it. Around her, panicked horses were slipping in the grass, dropping their riders at her feet, and the clearing was covered with the bodies of dying men.
Mercedes couldn’t tell if any of the soldiers managed to escape. If yes, it wasn’t many. She only saw a few horses galloping into the forest, wild and free for the first time in their lives. And there was Pedro. When her brother came walking toward her, followed by his men, it felt as if he were emerging from a dream, a good dream for a change. He pulled her into his arms and Mercedes cried, holding him tight, weeping at his shoulder, weeping, weeping, while his men shot at the soldiers still stirring among the trampled ferns.
Shots and sobs . . . the sounds of the world. There had to be more than that, but Mercedes had forgotten. She hugged Pedro and it seemed as if she’d never stop crying.
The Tailor Who Bargained with Death
In A Coruña there once lived a young tailor named Mateo Hilodoro, who was happily married to Carmen Cardoso, a woman he had loved since childhood. He felt like the richest man on earth when she gave birth to their daughter, who he loved as much as his wife. They called the girl Ofelia. Mateo sewed all her clothes himself and made dresses for her dolls, copying the robes the princesses wore in his daughter’s fairy-tale books.
Mateo Hilodoro was indeed a very happy man. But on the night of Ofelia’s birthday his hand cast the shadow of a skull onto the green linen he was cutting to tailor a new dress for her. Hilodoro stepped back from his workbench to find Death standing behind him. Her face was as white as her dress.