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CHAPTER 1

Su Alteza Isabel II, Reina de España, carried ten relics on her person during her last few weeks of pregnancy. These included the desiccated right arm of John the Baptist, which, wasted and ancient, resembled a piece of driftwood, and a rosary belonging to Saint Francis of Assisi that smelled of flowers at all times. No one could blame her for taking every possible precaution. Out of twelve deliveries, each ferocious and hard-fought, only five of Isabel's children survived.

And the queen was determined that this child would live.

In February of 1864, two days before Saint Valentine's feast day, Isabel delivered a blue, half-asphyxiated child. The jawless skull of that love-feasted saint, bedecked in preserved flowers, stared out at her from its small crystal coffin — a relic sent to the queen from Rome. Upon seeing the infant's skin going from pink to pale lavender, to indigo, Isabel cursed the date, and thought, desperately, that had she held the child in for two more days, just two more, then Saint Valentine might have intervened.

Whisked away by her formidable doctors, the baby was doused with holy water, el agua del socorro, so that her soul might not be trapped in purgatory forever. But events unfolded in unexpected ways. The child recovered her breath, and, soon enough, rested comfortably in her mother's arms.

Outside of the Palacio Real de Madrid, a white flag was hoisted, and fifteen salvos rang out, indicating a girl, an infanta, had been born. The noise infiltrated the room of Isabel's labor. It disrupted the first song Isabel sang to her daughter, a tune that no one recalls, and, thankfully, interrupted, too, her memories of the other babies who had lived only an hour or so after birth, who had turned blue, who had gone still and cold in her arms.

Isabel let out a bark of laughter when the little infanta sneezed, but the sounds converged with shouts of anger and cries of anguish coming from the streets of Madrid — anger because the flag and the salvos had announced a girl, and anguish because there would be no spare son, so ardently hoped for in those dark, frightening days. She was named Eulalia, which meant "well-spoken." No other Spanish royal had shared the appellation, and so it was a name for the present and the future, a name without a past.

The baby was placed on a silk cushion of royal blue, and the cushion was laid on a silver platter. Baby, cushion, platter were paraded before the ambassadors and palace folk waiting in the main hall. Wearing their silks and furs against the chilly air, the men and women of the hall clapped and peeked at the small rosebud that was the baby's genitals and sighed. The baby made no sound, but peered at them all with damp, lively eyes. A man commented how she appeared to be thinking hard about something. Another said she resembled no Bourbon he had ever seen. Another lamented that she was not the son they had hoped for. But the important thing was that she would live. That was certain, and there was relief and happiness at that.

The milk brother, too, was born in this time of peace, three months before Eulalia. The Carlists, those pretenders to the throne, had gone quiet in the years before he was born, meeting in secret, biding their time. Amalia, his mother, remembered that on the day that peace was declared, the children in her village were given pots and pans and bells to ring, and that they trooped through Burgos in celebration. The priests had been angered by the display, for many of them had supported Don Carlos, since he had promised the church land and wealth. Though peace was declared, the fighting went on for a few years, and Amalia, who was only nine years old at the time, would lie awake, listening to gunfire in the distance at night, like the cracking of giant bones in the hills.

The milk brother, whose name was Tomás, was born in a small, dusty room in a house in Burgos, attended by the same midwife who had been at all of his mother's deliveries — a woman named Gisela Castillo. She had delivered half of Burgos's women of their babies, mainly because she was talented, but also because everyone thought she was good luck embodied. Her curious eyes, one blue and one brown, were what started the rumor, and Spaniards being the superstitious people they were, Gisela Castillo became a very busy woman. But her luck had not held when it came to Amalia. She'd come to Tomás's birth dressed all in black, ready to grieve another dead Aragón baby.

At once, Amalia shouted at her to leave. "You're bringing bad luck in here, dressed in mourning!" she said before a wave of pain silenced her momentarily. When it passed, she threw her discarded Sunday dress at the midwife — light blue and dotted with white daisies — one she had embroidered herself. A heavy sleeve slapped the midwife across the face. "Put it on," Amalia told her.

"But it will get ruined, Amalia. Be reasonable."

She gritted her teeth. "Put it on."

In the end, the midwife did as she was told, changing into the dress immediately. It draped over her body like a formless sack. Gisela was quite small. She was slim and brown, her skin retaining some of that sun from the island where she'd been born and raised. They were the same age, Gisela and Amalia, and the latter noticed, as the former dressed herself, the way Gisela's tiny belly button resembled a knot in a tree. Amalia hadn't seen her own belly button in months, she thought between spasms of pain. Gisela rolled up the sleeves and got to work, her mouth set in a pucker. Later, Amalia would apologize, and thank Gisela for changing out of her black dress, but in that moment, they could do nothing but glare at one another. Into this volatile air came Tomás, screaming.

"He sounds like a peacock," Gisela said, bundling the baby and giving him to Amalia. "Have you ever heard one? They cry like infants, but twenty times louder. They stroll around certain parts of Havana, like princes."

"You are ridiculous, Gisela," Amalia told her, teasing, the air simmering between them cooled now that the baby had arrived, pink and vociferous and large. Amalia had never seen such a large baby, in fact, nor had Gisela. Even so, they watched over him like a pair of lionesses through the night.

Rubén, the milk brother's father, who never got the chance to hold any of his previous babies while they still lived, cried fat tears when Tomás was first put in his arms. "Ay, mi vida," he crooned at the baby, and kissed the top of his still sticky head again and again. Both Amalia and Rubén had buried, deep in their hearts, their blighted hopes for the children they had lost. Now, they placed them all on Tomás, young as he was, and imagined the paths he would follow, the man he would become.

Outside, no one waited to hear the sex of this child. There were no cannon shots. Rather, the road outside was quiet, because it was a Sunday, and because the Aragón neighbors had come to expect only sadness from this particular family.

Two weeks after Tomás was born, Gisela came over, a new dress draped over her arm. She'd made it herself, and she'd embroidered the deep blue eyes of peacock feathers along the hem.

"Ay, Gisela, you didn't have to," Amalia said.

"Your old dress was ruined. And besides, this particular birth is one to celebrate. Look, look at the peacocks. Fit for a queen."

Amalia examined the exquisite sleeves, ran her finger against the silky threads of the embroidery, tested the whalebone in the bodice against her thumb and forefinger. She was all business, all poise until she felt her eyes sting.

"Don't cry," Gisela said. "If you don't like it —"

"I adore it," Amalia said. "Gracias." Then she sobbed and sobbed until Gisela had to take the baby from her. "It's normal, this crying," Gisela said, but Amalia felt as if she'd been suddenly dropped into very deep water and could only beat her legs for so long.

Tomás was Amalia's fifth baby. Gisela had been there through all of them — Emilia, Francisca, Rubén, who looked as if he might survive, then decided that he'd prefer to follow his sisters to the grave, and finally, Alicia. Each time, Gisela had tucked herself behind Amalia like a pillow, cradling her while she cradled her darlings. She'd whispered "Ya, ya, basta," into Amalia's ear when her sobs had left her breathless. Sometimes, Gisela would sing Cuban songs, and the rhythms of her voice seemed to mimic the coming and going of the sea. It was Gisela who would take the babies away at last, her spine curved, her body a hollow of shared grief.

For Amalia, holding Tomás in those early days felt like trying to cradle a porcelain tea set. His tiny ears were teacups of bone china, and his long calves were like delicate handles. His nose was a spout, his cheeks were creamers of the thinnest ceramic. At any moment, Amalia feared she would drop him and he would shatter, as all the others had done.

But Gisela had come by every day, repositioning Amalia's arms, helping her when Tomás kicked so hard that he was impossible to diaper, feeding Amalia malted drinks and cooking up bacalao for dinner, and holding Tomás when Amalia could no longer bear his weight.

"Big boy, the biggest," Gisela would say to him, nose to nose. He would try to focus on her strange eyes, then he would turn his head and squall.

Amalia knew that Tomás's birth and survival would keep Rubén close by forever. She would observe him with their son, how her husband would lower his face toward the baby and touch noses with him, and she would think, "I have won him now." She had felt him growing distant with each birth, each death. He would take on more work, and that work made him more tired at night, so that he would skip the dinners she made and eat only bread, too exhausted even for conversation. In bed, he would roll over onto his side, away from her. Amalia would rub his arm, slide her hand down to his stomach, lower still, and he would not stir. "Buenas noches," he would whisper and become very still until she removed her hand. That Tomás was even conceived was a wonder to her, and Amalia could not remember what the night had been like, whether she had wept afterwards, as she sometimes did, or if he kissed her mouth.

Now, his son alive and thriving, life thrummed in Rubén again. He smiled often, and snuck up behind Amalia to kiss her ear loudly, and she would smack him playfully complain about her ringing ear. Amalia prayed that Rubén would not change again, that God would allow him to remember the happiness of their life in that moment when the winds changed, as they would, inevitably.

It was Gisela who first told Amalia about the doctors from the palace, the ones who had selected Burgos as the place to search for the new nodriza. "You should apply," Gisela suggested. "It's only for two years, and Tomás here will be like a little prince."

Even then, in the flush of the idea, Amalia had misgivings. "A milk brother is far from a prince."

"I'd rather live in a palace if I had a choice," Gisela answered.

"Away from my husband?" Amalia asked, and Gisela stared at her feet. "Rubén will not be easily convinced, and he won't want me to —"

"It says here," Gisela said, reading from the newspaper, "that there is a stipend of 24,000 escudos for the selected woman."

Rubén came in at the moment, his hands blackened with soot. He'd been on the roof, fixing the top of the chimney, which had blown over in a storm. "Twenty-four thousand escudos? Who has that kind of money?"

Gisela read the announcement again, while Amalia bounced Tomás.

"Tomás would be a little prince," Gisela repeated, then turned to Amalia and said, "The odds are you won't be selected."

Amalia and Rubén debated the merits of the position for days, trading opinions back and forth, as if they were playing a card game. One moment it made perfect sense, a provident choice. The next, it didn't.

"My mother was a wet nurse," Rubén said one night. Amalia had not known this. "When my brother was born," he said, and they both crossed themselves, for Rubén's older brother had died young of scarlet fever. "Not for the queen, of course. For a well-to-do Italian family that lived in Burgos for some time. She loved that baby of theirs, a girl."

"Your brother's milk sister," Amalia said.

"I suppose so. The money was good, my mother always said. It paid off the house I grew up in." Rubén looked at his hands, turning them over this way and that. Silently, he pointed at his calluses, one at a time, and Amalia reached over to make him stop. Her own hands weren't soft, and already, a single, pale sunspot had emerged beneath a knuckle on her left hand. She'd forgotten what they'd looked like when she was very young. Near them, Tomás snored in his sleep.

So they decided it, in silence and together, that being a milk brother to a princess of Spain was no bad thing.

The queen's doctor, Bruno Aguilera, and a palace administrator, Manuel Izquierda, came to the countryside to interview and examine sixty-four women for the job. The examinations lasted only two days, and the same procedure was followed for each applicant. The doctor and the palace manager palpated one hundred and twenty eight breasts with their small, cold hands. They peered into the women's mouths and compared the redness within to a little piece of crimson fabric. They weighed the women, measured their height with golden measuring tapes. The men took turns sniffing their ears — too much wax inside meant the woman was lazy about hygiene. If the woman made the cut, they would ask to see the child the woman was nursing, the future milk sister or milk brother to the royal baby.

While the doctors examined Amalia, Rubén and Gisela waited outside, at the doctors' request. Before going out, Rubén had whispered in his wife's ear, "Don't tell them about the others," and she knew he meant the babies who had died. Later, she would learn that Rubén had gone to the church and removed the babies' death certificates when the office was empty, just in case the palace doctors went looking for them.

Amalia unbuttoned her shirt, and cold, manicured hands felt her breasts, squeezing her until she cried out, and a thick drop of milk trickled down her stomach. Her own mother came to mind as it was happening. It was a nun who had first revealed to Amalia that her mother had been a prostitute. "Nearly all the children had whores for mothers," she'd said with a pitying look, and Amalia had replied that nearly all nuns were kicked out by their villages for their ugliness. She had been made to wash all of the habits in scalding water that afternoon. But the punishment had not made the memory of the nun's accusation, that her mother had been a prostitute, fade. Amalia thought of her as she was touched and prodded by the men from the palace, and wondered if the deep shame she was feeling, so deep that she forgot where she was for a moment, had been her mother's constant companion.

Before Amalia was allowed to dress herself again, one of the doctors asked, "Tell us about your parents during the war. They were not Carlists, of course." He smiled strangely, stiffly.

Amalia swallowed hard, told them what the nuns had told her, that her mother had run from the Carlists on the Basque border, and had left Amalia at the orphanage for safekeeping. For good measure, she added, "My father was killed by the Carlists for joining the Liberales." Amalia made that part up for good measure.

"So much bravery from our men," the questioning doctor said sadly. Gooseflesh prickled Amalia's arms. "We are finished, señora," the other doctor said. They would not look Amalia in the eye, though she bore her own gaze into their faces.

When she brought her son out to meet the men, blinking at them with still sticky eyes, they commented on his size — "He's a large one, no? Well done, señora," and on the size of his penis — "Excellently formed," they said — and decided that Amalia's milk was fortified with nutrients good for growing. The baby cried, and clawed at the air in their arms as if he mistrusted the doctors' ability to keep from dropping him, and this was the first time Amalia realized that her son had a brain in his head.

Holding Tomás, feeding Tomás, watching as his small stomach grew and his sighs became contented and happy, was the single most wonderful thing Amalia did each day. She thought often of Queen Isabel, who would never know the sweet feeling of a suckling child, how it felt as if her entire self was being funneled into that little body. Amalia thought that, perhaps, having never known it, Isabel imagined that the child would be like one of those doctors, exposing her, shaming her. Perhaps royal people could not bear to have themselves diminished in any way, dispossessed of any thing, including milk.

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Excerpted from "The Living Infinite"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Chantel Acevedo.
Excerpted by permission of Europa Editions.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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