“But here they’re really something special; they don’t spare anyone, not the morning star itself. Why don’t you try to guess the nickname they’ve given you?”

“Who?”

“You.”

“I don’t have the slightest idea.”

“Promise me you won’t be upset; it’s just that they’re so terrible. . . .”

“All right, go ahead. I can see you’re burning up to tell me. . . .”

With a little laugh, Isabel agreed to pronounce the syllables, very slowly.

“They call you La Alazana, the roan.”

“Alazana? Why?”

“It must be the color of your hair. It’s what they call the mares that are that color.”

The taunting insinuation made every plebeian element in Julia’s soul churn. But with an effort to smile, she pretended the joke had amused her and Isabel pretended to believe her. The conversation went on like that.

“The doctors don’t understand how my daughter has recovered.”

“They don’t understand how she got sick, either. They aren’t very quick off the mark, those doctors. Their brains must be full of cobwebs.”

“And they’re the ones with the advanced degrees. Imagine what other people think, common people, the vulgar, as they’re called.”

“What do they think?”

“That what happened with Idolina was something to do with witchcraft. That you have a pact with the devil.”

“Of course, a roan mare is capable of committing any atrocity.”

“You’re not going to believe me, Julia, you’re going to laugh because it’s really the limit. A group of ladies—and the most prominent ladies in Ciudad Real—went to talk to His Excellency Don Alfonso Cañaveral, in order to find out what the truth of the matter is.”

“It’s odd that the bishop didn’t ask me to make a statement.”

“He came to talk to me.”

“And what did you tell him?”

Isabel raised her eyes from her work and looked squarely at her interlocutor.

“I don’t care what means you used to cure Idolina. For me, it’s enough to see her good and healthy.”

But Isabel was very careful not to say she believed Julia was innocent of the supernatural machinations she was accused of. Her reticence enraged the foreign woman.

“Well, when they ask you you can tell them that what the girl suffered from was fear.”

“Fear?”

“This house is so big, so dark! At night the shadows of the trees in the garden look like souls in Purgatory. And then there are the stories the servants tell next to the fire, stories about terror, apparitions . . . murders.”

Isabel was uncertain where Julia was headed. But the last word put her on her guard.

“There was no murder here. Idolina’s father died in an accident.”

“Yes,” Julia conceded, “an accident. Did the authorities investigate?”

“Why? It never occurred to anyone that there was any irregularity.”

Isabel tried to hide her unease. But her breathing had quickened.