Flour Against Sleeplessness

At three in the morning, when you learn you have exactly seven days to live before you are beheaded in a public square, there are two things you can do: drop to the stone floor crying about Sunday strolls in Bogotá, or knead bread.

I chose bread.

In the lower kitchens of the fortress there wasn't a living soul. I plunged my fists into the earthenware basin with a vengeance, venting into the rye and white flour all the sheer dread I couldn't afford to show in front of Caterina or the old majordomo.

Seven days.

Sweat dripped from my brow, plastering dark strands of hair to my temples. The whalebone stays no longer pinched so fiercely; pure visceral terror had stripped two sizes off my waist in three weeks, and now the heavy kirtle hung loose around my hips.

Fear smells of rusted iron and a sunless hearth.

Suddenly, the heavy wooden latch on the side postern gate creaked.

I froze with floured knuckles raised in midair, holding my breath. A stray cat doesn't heave open an iron-studded oak door.

The leaf opened two inches. A tall silhouette stumbled across the stone threshold and dropped to both knees upon the greasy flags.

"Damián?" I gasped under my breath.

The young sentry from the Gray Guard attempted to push himself up using his halberd, but the iron spiked out across the slick floor. The sleeve of his gray surcoat was shredded at the left shoulder, his chainmail soaked in a dark, thick paste that dripped steadily onto the cedar shavings.

It wasn't kitchen tallow. It was blood.

With his good hand he slammed the oak bar down with a hollow thud, gasping with a ragged rasp that seemed wrenched from deep within his chest.

"You ought not to be down here tonight, Lady Violante," he managed through clenched teeth. "There were four of them... upon the north spiral stair."

"Four what, Damián? What happened to your arm?"

"Sellswords. They wore city guard livery, but the blades were curved Vizcayan daggers. They came to slip poison into your pantry casks."

I hauled him onto old Fermí's wooden stool before he could pass out across the onion sacks.

I ripped the clean hem of a linen tablecloth with my teeth, grabbed the spirits from the shelf, and pulled down a copper saucepan of boiling water from the kettle.

"This is going to sting to high heaven," I warned him, shearing away the bloody sleeve of his surcoat with a kitchen boning blade.

Damián clamped his jaw until the sinews in his neck corded like bowstrings. When I dumped the stream of neat spirits across the deep gash tearing through his shoulder, he didn't cry out: he only let out a guttural hiss, digging his boots into the floorboards.

Caring for someone already condemned is a very slow form of suicide.

"I dropped two of them before they gained the landing," he muttered, his eyes glazed with sudden fever. "The other two scrambled out through the gunloop into the dry ditch. If the constable discovers a duel took place upon the night watch, they'll put me upon the block for mutiny."

"Nobody is going to discover anything, Damián. I'll scrub these stones clean before daybreak."

I dressed the gash with firm, steady swabs of warm cloth. It was a vicious cut, razor-clean; another quarter-inch and they would have severed the artery.

"Why did you do this?" I asked softly, binding his shoulder in tight turns of bleached linen. "You know my trial date has been moved up. If they execute me, anyone who lifted a finger to aid me goes to the scaffold in the same cart."

Damián took several long moments to answer. The flickering tallow lamp threw long shadows across his weathered, weary, and stubbornly loyal face.

"Because in three years of standing watch, I've seen kings, bishops, and noble ladies stride through that archway," he said slowly, looking me square in the eye. "And you are the only soul who ever remembered that sentries get cold hands too."

The royal chapel smelled of cheap frankincense and cold, weeping limestone.

The dark circles under my eyes were so pronounced that Caterina had dusted half a box of Venetian rice powder across my cheeks just to hide that I hadn't slept in forty-eight hours. To quiet the churning nausea of sheer nerves, I held a shaving of dry licorice root between my cheek and gums.

I knelt at my mahogany prie-dieu, pretending to mouth the chaplain's Latin psalms, when the rustle of white silks announced the saint's arrival.

Sibila of Moncada did not take her customary bench among the princess's ladies. She glided down the center nave with hands folded in pious contemplation and knelt directly upon the stall beside mine.

The most lethal venom is always delivered behind a smile of pious pity.

"The Lord's peace be upon you, Duchess Violante," she whispered with an angelic cadence, so sickeningly sweet I almost wanted to ask for a bowl of salt to cut through the sugar.

"And with your spirit, maiden Sibila," I replied with a theatrical devotion that would have brought tears to an abbess's eyes.

Sibila tilted her head toward the bronze rood screen, but through the corner of her lashes she tracked every twitch of my profile.

"I was informed there was a most regrettable disturbance near the lower buttery last night," she murmured, passing the beads of her coral rosary with rhythmic precision. "They say a sentry upon the postern gate was gravely wounded by dockyard ruffians. What a misfortune that bloodshed prowls so near your private chambers, dear."

My heart skipped a beat, but my face stayed stone. I chewed the licorice bark and offered an easy smirk.

"Harbor rats always scent out pantries where flour is abundant, Sibila. But do not fret: the Gray Guard keeps excellent deadbolts. It would be a terrible shame if someone tripped in the dark trying to pry open doors they were never invited to enter."