Another round of spitting.
‘And you know what they did? Our ancestors?’ asks Donatella.
Tatiana shakes her head.
‘They kept a list. Of all the women. The ones who betrayed us, who watered down the Kastellani blood. And after the battle, after the Moors fled back across the ocean, after Sant’Iago returned to Andalucía, the people went from house to house and fetched them out. And they brought them to the church that had been made into a mosque and they made them kneel before the altar and confess their sins. They shaved their heads and made them beg forgiveness.’
‘Waah,’ says Tatiana, her hand going to her hair.
‘But though God may forgive, the people of La Kastellana could not. So, once their souls had been offered up to God, they led them up the cliffs to the Grota de las Sirenas and one by one, even as they begged for their lives, they threw them in.’
‘What?’ Tatiana finally looks impressed.
Mercedes nods. ‘Is true. Legend say they become mermaids when they die. And they keep our seas safe ever since. From invaders.’
‘Their penance,’ says Paulina.
‘If you go up to the cave mouth when the sea is high,’ says Donatella, ‘you can hear their voices, crying out for forgiveness.’
Tatiana utters her first Kastellani word. ‘Oao,’ she says.
As they enter Plasa Iglesia, the mood darkens. The Saint reaches the church steps, the exhausted sacristans staggering beneath their load. In his wake, as he enters the porch, the solteronas take their places. Two by two by two, all the way to the great iron doors. Hands buried deep in the front pockets of their white aprons. Vengeful eyes.
They’re so powerful, thinks Mercedes. This power only manifests once a year, but this one day holds us all in thrall. They know everything. Those beady eyes, drilling into your core. No wonder we are so nice to them. Bring them baked goods, greet them with subservient smiles, offer discounts in the market. Because you never know, really, do you? Whether a judgement begins because one day you failed to show enough respect? Or what might make someone go to them with a tale. In a way, they keep us all civilised, in this tiny place where a grudge is something you’ll never get away from. Best to avoid provoking one in the first place.
They queue up, thirty deep around the perimeter, and wait their turn.
There are never consequences for men. The adulterer responsible for last year’s shaming continued to frequent the bar all year as the sirena he’d created hid away, her shutters bolted. He wouldn’t even, Felix Marino says, leave when the cuckold appeared; just carried on drinking beer at the bar as though he had nothing to hide. Yet, for the women, their entire lives are constrained by the promise of this single day. There isn’t a decision you take all year that doesn’t involve at least a moment of what would the solteronas think.
They’ve all fallen quiet now. Even Tatiana has nothing to say.
In the church tower that was once a minaret, the bell begins to toll.
The crowd hesitates. Then, one by one, old ones to the forefront, they step forward and shuffle up the steps, heads bowed humbly before God and their judges.
‘I don’t know why that lot have to make such a big show of worrying,’ Larissa mutters. ‘There hasn’t been a sirena over the age of fifty since the seventeenth century.’
Donatella looks over her shoulder and smiles. ‘Or an ugly one.’
Heads turn and hush them. They fall quiet. But Mercedes sees Larissa fight a smile.
‘Dear God, how long does this take?’ mutters Tatiana. ‘My feet are killing me.’
Maybe you should have stayed on your yacht, then, thinks Mercedes, spitefully. You were the one who insisted on coming.
And on, and on. The sun is off the square, at last, but the heat has done its work. Mercedes’ mouth is dry, and the anticipation, the knotted tendons in her neck, have brought on a familiar high-pitched headache. Once you’re inside the church, you get water. But until then they must all stay pure.
A tiny ripple of movement among the white robes on the steps. Hands that have been buried deep in apron pockets shift, closing around their contents. It’s coming, she thinks. And from the electric stir in the crowd around her she knows that they have seen it too. She stands on tiptoe to see the front of the queue, but all she can see is the backs of taller heads. I hate being twelve, she thinks. All I ever do is wait.
The solteronas’ expressions harden. Is it their lives, she wonders, that have made them so bitter? Or did God choose them to be alone because this is who they are?
It must be giddy hell if you’re at the front right now. They all see the signs. They’ll all know that la sirena is queuing beside them. Can anyone really be sure la sirena is not herself?
And on they come. The butcher’s wife. A teacher from the school. The dairy farmer’s wife, whose six daughters often bear bruises for not being sons. Maria who has taken Mercedes’ place at the Re del Pesce for the summer. Maria whose family have cleaned the castle for generations. Another Maria, who sells suppositories in the sparkling new pharmacy. So many Marias. As each runs the gauntlet and hurries, unscathed, shoulders dropping, into the cool, dark sanctuary of the church, the crowd shuffles and sighs as tension rises and recedes, rises and recedes like ocean waves.
Tatiana starts to speak and Mercedes turns her head to shush her. And by the time the collective gasp of the crowd, and Larissa’s hand flying up to cover her mouth, alert her that the shaming has begun, the seasoned leather lashes that live in those apron pockets are whipping through the air. Beating the sin from the sinner.
‘Who is it? Who is it?’