Vidal was just giving the boots the last bit of polish when Mercedes walked in with his coffee and bread.
She couldn’t help but stare at the two scrawny rabbits lying on the table next to the pocket watch they’d all been warned never to touch. The kitchen maids had been gossiping all morning about what Vidal had done to the poachers who’d been looking for food to feed their family. Father and son. Mercedes took the metal coffee mug from the tray and placed it between the rabbits. So much cruelty. She’d seen too much of it in this place. Sometimes she wondered whether it covered her heart like mold by now.
“Mercedes.” It always sounded like a threat when Vidal said her name, although he usually spoke to her in so soft a voice it reminded her of a cat hiding its claws under velvet fur. “Prepare those rabbits for dinner tonight.”
She picked them up and inspected the skinny bodies.
“Too young to make a good meal.”
Where were the sick girls they’d been supposed to feed? she wondered. Out in the yard one of the soldiers had imitated how the old man had begged for his son’s life. He’d laughed while describing how Vidal had killed them both. Were they born that cruel, all these soldiers slashing and burning and killing? They had been children once like Ofelia. Mercedes feared for her. The girl was too innocent for this place and her mother wouldn’t be strong enough to protect her. She was one of those women who looked for strength in men instead of finding it in her own heart.
“Well,” Vidal said. “A cup of stew, then, and the meat of the hind legs.”
“Yes, señor.” Mercedes forced herself to look straight into his eyes. She didn’t lower her gaze when he got up from his chair, although she feared he’d see the hatred in her eyes. If she lowered them, though, he might read that as guilt and fear, which was far more dangerous. The guilt would make him suspicious and fear would make him hungry for more.
“This coffee is burned a bit.” He liked to stand close to her. “Taste it yourself.”
Mercedes took the black metal mug with her left hand, still holding the two rabbits in her right. Young dead things. You’ll soon be as dead as them, Mercedes, her heart whispered. If you keep on doing what you’re doing.
Vidal was watching her.
“You should check on all these things, Mercedes. You are the housekeeper.”
He put his hand, so smooth and clean, on her shoulder. Mercedes wished her dress were thicker, when he slowly moved it down her arm. The fabric was so worn, she felt his fingers on her skin.
“As you wish, señor.”
Vidal had a great appetite for women, although they all knew he despised them. Mercedes wondered whether Ofelia’s mother didn’t notice the contempt in his eyes when he held her in his arms.
Vidal didn’t call her back when she walked out of the room, but Mercedes felt his gaze between her shoulder blades like the tip of a knife.
She took the rabbits down to the kitchen and told Mariana, the cook, the capitán had complained about the coffee.
“He is nothing but a spoiled brat!” Mariana said.
The other maids laughed. Rosa, Emilia, Valeria . . . most of them had no reason to fear the capitán, as they rarely even saw him in person. They didn’t want to see what he and his men did. Mercedes wished she could be that blind. Though maybe the older women had just seen too much to still care.
“We need one more chicken and some beef for the dinner.” Mercedes filled two buckets with boiling water one of the maids had prepared. Ofelia’s mother had requested a bath.
“One more chicken and some beef? Where are we supposed to find that?” Mariana mocked.
She was from a village close by and had two sons in the army. “Men want to fight,” she liked to say. “That’s how they are born.” And it didn’t matter to them for what they fought. What about women?
“He invited them all,” Mercedes said. “The priest, the general, the doctor, the mayor and his wife too . . . and we’ll have to feed them.”
“And they all eat more than a stable filled with hungry pigs!” the cook called after her as Mercedes carried the buckets to the stairs.
The maids were all laughing as they brushed the rabbit blood from the table.
They didn’t want to know.
8
A Princess
Ofelia didn’t tell her mother about the labyrinth or the Faun. She’d felt so close to her before the Fairy came to get her. But the Faun’s words echoed in her mind when she crawled back into the warm bed and Ofelia lay in the dark looking at her mother’s face wondering whether she maybe wasn’t her daughter.
The crescent moon. Mother.
She felt very guilty when the pale morning sun shone through the dusty windows and her mother smiled at her and kissed her forehead, as if she wished to kiss those thoughts away.
Don’t betray her! Ofelia told herself while Mercedes and another maid filled the tub in the adjoining bathroom with steaming water. She is so lonely! As lonely as I am. . . . The tub looked as if someone had brought it from a much grander home in the city. Many such houses had been destroyed in the war that had also killed her father, and Ofelia had often played in the ruins with her friends, pretending they were the ghosts of the children who once lived in the deserted rooms.
“That bath is not for me. It’s for you, Ofelia! Get up!”
Her mother smiled at her, but Ofelia knew the smile was meant for the Wolf. She wanted her daughter clean and dressed up for him, her hair combed, her shoes polished. Her mother’s eyes glazed and her pale cheeks glowed when he was near, although he barely paid attention to her.
Ofelia longed to tell Mercedes about the Faun, maybe because she’d warned her about the labyrinth or because Mercedes had secrets of her own. There was a knowledge of the world in Mercedes’s eyes that Ofelia didn’t find in her mother’s.
“Ofelia!”
Her mother looked like a bride this morning in her white dress. She sat once more in the wheelchair, as if the Wolf had stolen her feet. He had crippled her. She used to dance in the kitchen while she was cooking. Ofelia’s father had always loved that. Ofelia had climbed on his lap and they’d watched her together.
“Your father is giving a dinner party tonight. Look what I made for you!”
The dress her mother held up was as green as the forest.
“Do you like it?” She caressed the silky fabric. “What I would have given to have a dress as fine as this when I was your age! I also made a white apron for it. And look at these shoes!”
They were as black and shiny as the soldiers’ boots. They didn’t belong in the forest and neither did the dress, although it was green.
“Do you like them?” Her mother’s eyes were wide with excitement. She looked as eager to please as a scolded little girl. Ofelia felt sorry for her and embarrassed.
“Yes, Mamá,” she murmured. “Yes. They are very pretty.”
Her mother’s eyes grew wary. Help me, they pleaded. Help me to please him. It made Ofelia feel so cold. As if she was back in the labyrinth, the shadows of its walls darkening her heart.
“Go on now.” Her mother lowered her glance, her eyelids heavy with disappointment. “Take your bath before it gets cold.”