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Valentina, and who ran off one night when Valla was a little girl with only the clothes on her back, not that I blame the wretched woman in the slightest for doing so.
    “My mother,” added Consuela, her voice thinning to a wry edge, “he also attempted to imprison as he imprisoned poor Hannibal—she was a mantua-maker—and she struck him over the head with a tortilla-press and made her escape with the connivance of some muleteers. I don’t think he ever tried that sort of thing again with a woman. But you see, because Melosia ran away, Natividad’s mother did not see any reason why Father could not marry Natividad, and so of course to silence her Father arranged for it that Natividad marry Franz.”
    While Consuela was speaking, January was marginally conscious of a steady parade of servants past the open bedroom door. They bore the luggage, bedding, ewers of water, and wood for a bedroom fire along the
corredor.
Consuela seemed to employ nearly a dozen servants, far more than even the most lavishly-kept woman would have in France, let alone in the United States. Having seen the sheer numbers of poor in the streets, January guessed there were men and women who would happily scrub chamber pots for food and a place to sleep in an attic.
    No wonder anything in this country, from murder to imported point-lace, could be bought with a bribe.
    With raised eyebrows, Rose asked, “And your brother agreed to this—er—arrangement?”
    “He had to.” Consuela poured herself another cup of coffee, and dropped a chunk of pale-brown sugar into its inky depths. “He was a colonel in Santa Anna’s army, and without my father’s money he could not buy uniforms or guns for his men when they march north to Texas to deal with the
Norteamericano
rebels, for of course the Army has no money to pay for such things. Franz does not like women, you understand, let alone that Natividad is a
cusca
and stupid as a wooden peg.”
    “So Hannibal is still at the hacienda?” asked Rose. One would never guess to look at her that twenty-four hours ago she’d been loading rifles in an overturned stagecoach with blood all over her dress. She had a long oval face and, despite a treacherous dusting of freckles, a naturally serious expression: in her pale-blue traveling-dress, simple hat, and spectacles, she looked like she’d never done anything in her life but teach geography to schoolgirls.
    “Oh, yes. You understand, my father had been holding Hannibal prisoner for six days already
before
the murder. Myself, I was ready to strangle the old lunatic, for I was singing
La Sonnambula
in three days at the Teatro Principal and had to rehearse, and an excellent performance it would have been had the conductor been sober. I cannot think why it was not my father who was poisoned, instead of Franz.”
    “Holding him prisoner?” asked January, startled. “What had he done?”
    The diva shrugged. “Played the violin.”
    “It must have been quite a tune,” Rose remarked.
    The smile that tugged Consuela’s full lips was both reminiscent and wry. “You know how Hannibal plays,” she replied. “As the angels of God would play, did God permit His angels to suffer passion and grief. He also plays picquet—Hannibal, I mean—an old-fashioned game much out of favor these days, but my father dotes upon it. And he can talk to Father of Petronius and Suetonius and listen when Father goes on for hours and hours about the statues of the old gods that he digs up from the ruins of the Indian cities, or buys from every peddler who comes through the village. So when it came time for Hannibal and myself to return from our visit at the end of August, Father said it would suit him better that Hannibal remain as his guest, and play the fiddle for him every night, as the singer Farinelli once did for the King of Spain, and play picquet with him, since the rest of the family were all bores and monstrosities.”
    January said, “Hmmn.”
    “I should think,”