“Gabon, Ipar,” she called as she closed the bedroom door, sure at least that Amaia felt secure and protected.
Engrasi had been anxious and apprehensive all day long. After the French police officers left, Joxepi had warned her, “You can’t leave her alone for a second, Engrasi. Don’t let her stick her nose outside unless Ipar is with her. If those people are as dangerous as the French inspector said . . .”
Ignacio, as taciturn as ever, jerked his head in disagreement. “Ipar will give his life to protect her, but the desire that motivates people like that is so deep and vile that no dog can intimidate them.”
Engrasi accepted his counsel. She knew he was right.
“I’ve been thinking for a while of sending Amaia away to study, maybe even outside the country. She was the one to suggest it, actually. She’s gifted, very advanced in her schoolwork. Months ago, one of her teachers told her about a boarding school in Pamplona. It has a fine reputation; the coursework is all in English, and she’d be there throughout the week. Some students come home only during vacation. And I could go see her on the weekends.”
“After what they just told us, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second.”
Engrasi had indeed been seriously considering the possibility for some time, not only because of the attempted abduction, but also because she was haunted by what Rosario had said: “If there’s one thing I’ve known since the day that girl was born, it’s that we all have a destiny, Engrasi. She’ll fulfill her destiny just as I must fulfill mine.”
Engrasi went downstairs to the living room. She used a couple of lengths of kindling to light the logs in the fireplace, then went to the sideboard and unlocked a drawer with the key she wore on the chain around her neck. She took out a little black silk bag and brought it to the table. She undid the knots in the drawstring, one by one. She inspected her deck of Marseilles tarot cards with a vague feeling of dread. They were a bitter but necessary pill, considering the seriousness of the consultation she was about to make.
She shuffled the deck deliberately, focusing on exactly how to ask her question. She put the cards down, cut the deck, and shuffled again.
Her deck was so ancient and worn that if she laid the cards out on the table face down, she could recognize each of them by their tattered corners and telltale use marks. When consulting on her own behalf, she used the method of the Roma, who interpreted one after another the ten cards that wound up on top of the deck. She would flip each card over and then set it in place in a pattern that would come to resemble a Celtic cross.
She framed her question and set out the first card, which by the terms of this consultation represented Amaia. The Star, with the image of a beautiful naked woman beneath a clear sky filled with stars; a maiden pours the water of knowledge into a river that vanishes into the horizon. Engrasi smiled; that was her girl, all right. The Star was the essence of youth, beauty, and a luminously pure soul. It evoked the clarity of a nourished mind that could see truth and perceive what others had hidden. It augured a brilliant future, good fortune, smiling happiness, and a beneficent heaven.
She turned over the second card, even though she knew immediately what she was about to see. Death, a skeleton with empty eye sockets, stood on a battlefield, scything off heads. Engrasi held back, reluctant to place the second card in its assigned place above the Star, wanting somehow to keep it from covering the girl sleeping upstairs. She held it up, careful to keep it from touching other cards. After all, this most feared card in the deck didn’t always symbolize actual death. Frequently, and probably this time as well, it was a portent of destiny about to reveal itself. It could be a warning of great danger, received in time to take swift action to avoid disaster.
She was anxiously studying the skeleton’s empty eye sockets, as if hoping to extract some additional meaning from the shadows within them, when someone pounded on the front door. She was so startled that she dropped the card and saw it land half across the earlier pick, hiding the starry sky and most of the long hair of the beautiful maiden.
The frantic knocking resumed. Engrasi got up; she left the tarot deck on the table but pushed the card showing Death away from the young woman on the Star. Alarmed, she went to the door. “Who is it?”
“Engrasi, it’s me, Juan. Please let me in!”
She opened the door and was confronted by the contorted, tear-streaked face of her brother.
“Engrasi, where’s the girl?” he cried out.
“Amaia’s upstairs, asleep in her room. Juan, do you have any idea what time it is?” She was trying to make sense out of all this.
“I need to see her. She’s going to kill her!” he cried as he pushed his way into the house and leaped past his sister toward the stairs. Engrasi followed, trying to warn him. “Juan, don’t! Don’t open the—”
She caught up with him just as he turned the handle to push the door open. Ipar’s snarling muzzle thrust through the door, and the dog’s vicious snap barely missed Juan’s hand, leaving it wet with saliva.
Juan turned back to his sister, thrown into confusion. “Wh-what’s this?”
“That’s Ipar,” Engrasi told him with great seriousness. “He’s Amaia’s bodyguard. Let’s go downstairs. We need to talk.”
Juan stood petrified for several seconds, unable to tear his gaze from the door behind which his daughter was sleeping, guarded by a vigilant dog. He turned to his sister and nodded. He spoke in a very low but determined voice. “I’ll sign the papers for Amaia to go to that school. We have to get her out of town right away.”
Engrasi had never seen her brother so decided. “What made you change your mind?”
“Rosario is going out at night, the way she did before Amaia was born. It’s starting again, Engrasi. If we don’t do something quick, she’ll kill her.” He broke down and sobbed. “Rosario will murder my little girl!”
56
INFECTION
The swamp
Nightfall, Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Sweaty, nauseated, and cursing her bad luck, she’d followed the traiteur’s advice. Amaia’s fever wasn’t particularly high, but she was shivering uncontrollably and felt an agonizing burning sensation each time she tried to urinate. Fortunately, Annabel had a good stock of single-dose antibiotics to attack the infection.
The fisherwoman stirred the contents of a little envelope into a glass of clean water. “Good drug, this one. Tomorrow you look back on this like a bad dream. I know how it feel, baby. This bad water and all those germs . . .” She handed the glass to Amaia, who downed the contents in one long swallow. Annabel told her to eat something.
The shrimpers and fisherfolk had improvised tables by setting plywood sheets on sawhorses and other assorted pieces of furniture. They brought out dozens of folding chairs. Amaia was going to tell Annabel she couldn’t eat a bite, but the tempting odors coming from the kitchen changed her mind. “What smells so good in there?”
Annabel smiled. She was a tall, strong woman, a bit overweight, her shoulder-length hair loose in the front and done up in a ponytail behind. “Ham and shrimp. My man, Clive, and the boys cooking up a jambalaya.”
“I’ve never had that,” Amaia admitted. “It smells wonderful.” She went to the kitchen, where a big pot on a portable camp stove held a simmering red-tinted mixture. Clive was stirring it with a long wooden spoon and explaining the recipe to Johnson.