defeated. In those three weeks, he reported, he had discovered that his power was more limited than he had supposed. At the moment of truth he found that he could do nothing to move the heavy bureaucracy of the state. He had ridden at top speed to Madrid to intercede before the king in person, but His Excellency had shuffled him off on his secretary, one of the most powerful men at court, with the warning not to bother him with any more of his nonsense. Moncada had made no headway with the secretary, however eloquent his plea, and he did not dare bribe the man; a mistake would be very costly. He was notified that Tomas de Romeu, along with a handful of traitors, was to die before a firing squad. The secretary added that if Moncada threw down the gauntlet to fate by defending a vulture, he might regret it. The threat was clear. Upon his return to Barcelona, he had barely taken time to bathe before hurrying to tell the whole story to the girls, who wrung their hands as they listened, but were strong. To console them, Moncada assured them that he was not giving up; he would keep trying through every means to have the sentence commuted. “In any case, you ladies will not be alone in this world. You can always count on my esteem and my protection,” he added, looking grieved. “We shall see,” Juliana replied, without a tear. When Diego learned of the most recent developments, he decided that if the heavenly Eulalia had not been able to do anything for them, he would have to go to the terrestrial Eulalia. “That senora is very powerful. She knows the secrets of half the world. Everyone is afraid of her. Besides, in this city money counts above everything else. The three of us will go talk with her,” said Diego. “Eulalia de Callis does not know my father and, from what they say, she detests my sister,” Isabel warned him. But he had to try. The contrast between that excessively adorned mansion, reminiscent of the most luxurious homes of the gilded age of Mexico, and Barcelona sobriety in general and the de Romeu house in particular was staggering. Diego, Juliana, and Isabel were led through enormous salons with frescoes and Flemish tapestries, oils of noble ancestors, and paintings of epic battles. There were liveried servants at every door, and maids dressed in Dutch laces taking care of horrid Chihuahua dogs, who cast their eyes down when anyone of a higher social status passed by. I am referring to the maids, of course, not the dogs. Dona Eulalia received her visitors on the canopied throne in the main salon, decked out as if she were going to a ball, though as always she was in strict mourning. With her layer on layer of fat, her small head and beautiful eyes shining like olives through their long eyelashes, she looked like an enormous sea lion. If the elderly senora hoped to intimidate them, she succeeded. The young people were choking with shame in the cottony air of this mansion. They had never been in a situation like that; they had been born to give, not ask. Eulalia had seen Juliana only from a distance, and she was curious to examine her more closely. She could not deny that the girl was attractive, but her looks did not justify her nephew’s lunacy. She looked back in memory to her own early years and decided that she had been as beautiful as the de Romeu girl. Besides her flaming hair, she had had the body of an Amazon. Beneath the fat that now impaired her ability to walk, she held intact the memory of the woman she had once been: sensual, imaginative, filled with energy. It was not for nothing that Pedro Fages had loved her with inexhaustible passion and had been envied by scores of men. Juliana, in contrast, had the look of a wounded gazelle. Whatever did Rafael see in that pale, delicate girl who surely would have all the fire of a nun in bed? Men are a parcel of fools, she concluded. That other de Romeu girl, what was her name? She was the more interesting of the two. She seemed not at all timid, though her looks left a lot to be desired, especially in comparison with Juliana. The child had the bad luck to have a celebrated beauty for a sister, she thought. Under normal circumstances she would have at least offered sherry and tidbits to her visitors. No one could accuse Eulalia of being stingy with food her house was famous for its cuisine but she did not want them to feel comfortable, she needed to keep the upper hand for the bargaining that undoubtedly lay ahead. Diego started by explaining the girls’ father’s situation, not omitting the fact that Rafael Moncada had ridden to Madrid for the purpose of interceding for him. Eulalia listened in silence, observing each of them with her penetrating eyes and drawing her own conclusions. She could guess the deal that Juliana had made with her nephew; otherwise he would never have risked his reputation to defend a liberal accused of treason. That stupid move could cost him the favor of the king. For a moment she was happy that Rafael had not achieved his objective, but then she saw the tears in the girls’ eyes, and her old heart betrayed her once again. It often happened that her common sense and her good judgment in business ran afoul of her sentimentality. Emotion had its price, but she dispensed money with grace; her spontaneous fits of compassion were the last remaining vices from her lost youth. A long pause followed Diego de la Vega’s plea. At last the matriarch, moved despite herself, told them that they had a very exaggerated notion of her influence. It was not in her power to save Tomas de Romeu. She could do nothing that her nephew had not already done, she said, except bribe his jailers to give the prisoner special considerations until the moment of his execution. They must understand that there was no future for Juliana and Isabel in Spain. They were daughters of a traitor, and when their father died they would be daughters of a criminal with a dishonored name. The crown would confiscate their wealth and they would be put out in the street, unable to live in this or any other country in Europe. What would become of them? They would have to earn their living embroidering sheets for brides or as governesses for other women’s children. Of course, Juliana might persist in enticing some gullible man to marry her, including Rafael Moncada himself, but she was confident that at the hour of making such a grave decision, her nephew, who was not totally devoid of brains, would weigh in the balance his career and social position. Juliana was not on the same level as Rafael. Furthermore, there was no greater nuisance than a too-beautiful woman, she said. No man should marry one; they attracted all kinds of problems. She added that in Spain, beauties without fortunes were fated for the stage or to being kept by some benefactor. Everyone knew that. She wanted with all her heart for Juliana to escape that fate. As the matriarch was building her case, Juliana was losing the control she had striven to maintain throughout the hideous interview, and a river of tears washed down her cheeks and bosom. Diego decided they had heard enough, and wished that Dona Eulalia were a man, so he could have thrashed her right there. He took Juliana and Isabel by the arm and without so much as a goodbye propelled them toward the door. Before they got there, the voice of Eulalia stopped them. “As I said, there is nothing I can do for Don Tomas de Romeu, but I can do something for you girls.” She offered to buy the family’s properties, from the ruined mansion in Barcelona to the remote abandoned lands in the provinces, at a good price and with immediate payment. That way the girls would have the capital they needed to begin a new life somewhere far away, where no one knew them. She told them that she could send her notary the next day to examine the titles and prepare the necessary documents. She would arrange with the chief military officer in Barcelona to allow them to visit their father one last time, to say goodbye and to have him sign the papers of the sale, a transaction they should complete before the authorities intervened and confiscated everything. “What you intend, Your Excellency, is to get rid of my sister so she will not marry Rafael Moncada!” Isabel accused, trembling with fury. To Eulalia the insult was a slap in the face. She was not accustomed to having anyone raise her voice to her; no one had done that since her husband died. For a few seconds she couldn’t breathe, but over the years she had learned to control her explosive temper and to appreciate the truth when it was right under her nose. Silently, she counted to thirty before she answered. “You are in no position to refuse my offer. The deal is simple and straightforward: as soon as you get the money, you leave,” she replied. “Your nephew blackmailed my sister into saying she would marry him, and now you are blackmailing her not to!”
“That’s enough, Isabel, please,” Juliana murmured, drying her tears. “I have made a decision. I accept your offer, and I appreciate your generosity, Excellency. When may we see our father?”
“Soon, child. I will notify you when I arrange the interview,” said Eulalia, well satisfied. “Tomorrow at eleven, we shall receive your accountant. Good day, senora.” Eulalia kept her part of the bargain. The next morning at eleven o’clock on the dot three lawyers appeared at the residence of Tomas de Romeu; they went through all his papers, turned out the contents of his desk, checked through his slapdash accounting, and made an approximate evaluation of his holdings. They reached the conclusion that not only did he have much less than it appeared, but he was up to his neck in debt. As things were, the income for the girls would not be adequate to maintain them at their current level. The notary, nevertheless, had brought specific instructions from his pa trona When she made her offer, Eulalia was not thinking of the value of what she would acquire but, rather, of what the two girls would need to live. That is what she offered. To them it seemed neither too much nor too little. They had no idea even of what a loaf of bread cost, so they were not capable of comprehending the sum that the matriarch was prepared to give them. Diego similarly had no experience with finances and had nothing at that time to help Juliana and Isabel. The sisters accepted the stipulated amount without knowing that it was twice the value of their father’s properties. As soon as the lawyers prepared the documents, Eulalia obtained permission for a visit at the prison. La Ciudadela was a monstrous pentagon of stone, wood, and cement designed in 1715 by a Dutch engineer. It had been the heart of the military might of the Bourbon kings in Catalonia. Thick walls crowned by a bastion at each of its five angles encircled its vast grounds. From its height, it dominated the entire city. To construct the impregnable fortress, the armies of King Philip V had demolished entire barrios, hospitals, convents, twelve hundred houses, and several nearby forests. The massive edifice and its dismal legend hovered over Barcelona like a black cloud. It was the
