“Agreement had nothing to do with it! ‘You’ve made me angry,’ I told her. ‘Now we’ll have to come to an understanding by force.’ In the sheepfold next to the big house there was a set of stocks. I had her put there, day and night. And she fooled all of us. To persuade us to free her, she pretended to be willing to do as she was told. Later I discovered that she was giving Idolina less milk in order to give some to her own daughter. I had to separate them.”

The story seemed to end there. Nevertheless, Julia wanted to know.

“And the other baby?”

“She died.”

An expression of such surprise and disapproval appeared on Julia’s face that Isabel was forced to justify herself fiercely.

“And why shouldn’t she die? What was so important about her? Teresa’s no more than an Indian. Her daughter was an Indian, too.”

“And you condemn her for her race?”

“I didn’t say that,” Isabel snapped. “You foreigners come from another world and don’t understand what goes on in Ciudad Real. I’ve heard what Don Fernando preaches: that we Coletos are savages, that we treat the Indians worse than animals. But it isn’t true, por Dios! We baptize everyone with the same water, and there is no money or color or language that will set us apart from each other in the eyes of the One who will measure our worth in the end. No, it isn’t that we disdain them; they’re the ones who debase themselves. You don’t know their ways. I’ve lived for years among Indians. And I swear I have seen this with my own eyes: when a ewe is lost and the lamb is left helpless without a mother, the women take care of it. They nurse it, even if they have to take the breast away from their own babies, even if hunger finishes them off. And my child, a Ladina, was going to be worth less than an animal is worth to them?”

La Alazana hesitated before answering and Isabel wanted to finish her argument.

“So, from a distance and in cold blood, someone like you can be outraged, can gasp. But trapped in that situation, listening to Idolina cry, hour after hour, inconsolable, you don’t hesitate. I did what was within my power to do. And in my conscience I did the right thing.”

Isabel had worked herself up. Her pale skin was inflamed with purplish blotches.

“And there you have the proof that I didn’t do anything wrong: Teresa herself, who hasn’t left us since then.”

“Did she have anywhere else to go?”