The number of Angels is not important, Elesa. Is that what you have been sitting there wondering about all this time? If you must know, there were three, but I never saw them. I only heard their voices.

My mind was raw and bruised with worry. By the end of the first week, I could not remember Charles’s family name. I could not remember his full rank. Did he tell me he was a surgeon? I took out the calling card that he had given me, and I stared at the words, begging them to tell me what they knew. They refused, as always.

God heard my prayers though. All of them.

Charles returned. The sun shone. We met in the room near the stables. We met there again in the weeks to come.

I was soon glowing, my skin stretched with what I thought was happiness. Kanella noticed my appearance and so did Charles. Both of them knew before I did.

I was craving spoon sweets. I ate jars of them. Cherries were my favorite. The whole soft fruits, dripping their dark syrup, made me sigh. Giorgio, already within me, preferred the small fruits of the land.

When I saw Kanella for the last time, she would tell me that she had been counting the days, as she wanted to be absolutely certain before she told my father. She never had the chance. Other Cerigote eyes and mouths had done it for her, just as I had prayed.

Charles had stammered and blushed when he asked about my “menses,” which was a word that had no meaning to me. He posed his question a different way by inquiring when I had last worn “guard-napkins.” He sounded confused. Did he think that I was a soldier? Perhaps they needed these items in order to eat. I asked if he was feeling feverish. I thought he might have caught an illness during his frequent trips to the north.

As it often happened between us, Charles and I agreed not to understand each other. I shrugged and smiled, and his questions went unanswered, as though he had never asked them. I finished tying the ribbon of my bonnet, and he kissed me goodbye. My departure from the room near the stables was always first and on my own. I opened the door, and I smelled them. Vinegar and the center of bones. That was what their rage smelled like to me.

My brothers pushed me aside and rushed into the room of animal smells, less pungent than their own. They kicked the door closed behind them. They shouted from within. They made the loud sounds of men angered and dishonored. The washerwomen were now gathered by the door. One of them looked directly at me and told the others that I was “the poor daughter.” A taller woman next to her repeated the words, as if saying them a second time made them truer. I recognized their voices. They were the floor scrubbers, the fate tellers, the Cerigote eyes and Cerigote mouths that, as the Angels had promised, would free me.