He practiced his Spanish, telling the two women about himself, describing Boston, relating his adventures and misadventures at sea, holding them spellbound with the story about the hurricane. By the third day, Elvira felt free enough to speak about herself and told him, there before the shrine to Babaluaye, amid the scents of sarsparilla, aloe, and sage, kneeling on the reed mat beside a headless dove whose blood had sanctified the herbs, that she was striving to be an iyawo of Babaluaye, a bride of the orisha; that is, she was in her novitiate as a priestess of santeria. Her mother, Mercedes, had died when she was thirteen; died of a broken heart because her father had given himself to another woman, that adulteress having been the insurrection against the Spanish. Her father, Tomas Casamayor, had been criollo, tall and fair, as fair as you, Will (it thrilled him to hear her speak his name), and her mother had been black and had died from longing for Tomas, ever absent in his devotions to the insurrection and José Marti. After a Spanish bullet found her father at Santiago and her mother died, Elvira was so grief stricken that she could not eat and would have starved herself to death if Rosaria had not healed her sorrow with her special cures. That was when Elvira became interested in the religion, but it had only been in the past year that she’d begun to study it seriously, learning the herbs by sight and name and use, along with the ancient chants that had crossed the seas on the slaving ships. She hoped soon to make her asienta, the ceremony of initiation, when the orisha of Babaluaye would be seated on her head.

Will was enchanted, thoroughly captivated, and so touched by the tale of her orphaning that he very nearly cried out, Marry me! Be my wife! I will take care of you forever!