Fernando’s golden days with Carmencita were few and far between. Golden or not, his days with her were altogether numbered. He was eight years old when she died. Had she not been the type to leave him to his own devices for long stretches at a time, he might have worried at her being gone from the apartment for a day and a night together. As it was, he was merely puzzled when the policía showed up at the door, to tell him that his missing mother had been found drowned to death and washed-up downriver.

Whether it was foul play or not which had ended Carmencita’s wayward life, Fernando would never know. Not much investigation went into the cause of her death, as she had no family in the city except for him, little money and even fewer friends. Her funeral mass was an alms service, poorly attended. After it was over, a young nun came up to him. She knelt, smiling kindly at him as she met him eye-to-eye.

“Have you any family to take you in?” she asked.

Fernando shrugged. Everyone knew he was Don Juan Francisco’s bastard, but this nun was new to the city. Perhaps being ignorant of the don’s rakish reputation, or full of righteous naïveté, or simply moved by compassion for this winsome young orphan, she packed Fernando off to his father’s hacienda to plead his cause herself.

Juan Francisco was not at home when they arrived. They were received instead by his noble wife, the grave and sanctimonious Doña María Luisa (‘Santa María Luisa’ Juan Francisco referred to her snidely, though never directly), who grew only more grave and sanctimonious as the interview progressed. María Luisa remembered well her husband’s late and only mistress, the slattern Carmencita and this whelp of hers Fernando—the one innocent by-blow of a litany of infamous debaucheries.

In truth, María Luisa de Aria took pains to remember even the least and most casual of her husband’s many transgressions, a faithful accounting which had served her well throughout the years of her marriage, as righteous ammunition against him. She was a woman of great conviction and great fury, and these traits each fueled the other, stoking her temper to blazing heights which were terrible to behold. Her cold demeanor made these blazes all the more frightful.

Perhaps sensing something of this capacity in her, Fernando kept tensely still and silent throughout the interview, intimidated by those light grey eyes of hers scanning over him, coolly and inscrutably. Her statuesque beauty intimidated him all the more. Whatever María Luisa was searching for in him, she seemed to find. Perhaps it was a font of self-martyrdom against Juan Francisco which would never run dry. Perhaps it was a living symbol of her graciousness which could be held aloft for all to witness and admire. A symbol no doubt enhanced by the fact that Fernando was a good-looking boy, who, except for his tawny skin (which could be forgiven him), bore his father’s fine patrician features in perfect miniature. Had he possessed his mother’s uncouth gypsy eyes, had he been a sickly or an ugly child, the fastidious lady might not have found herself so magnanimous toward him.

“My hope, señora, is that you’ll find it in your heart to—”

Raising a hand to cut the nun off mid-sentence, María Luisa declared, “The boy is clearly a charming, affable child, and an innocent besides.”

Fernando glanced to the nun, seeing his own puzzlement reflected in the slight knit of her brows. For Fernando had not spoken a word to María Luisa, ‘affable’ or otherwise. Nor she to him. But this seemed irrelevant.

María Luisa went on to proclaim, “Not only will Juan Francisco and I provide for this child, we will raise him here in this house, as one of our own, with all the rights and privileges afforded thereof.”

The kindly nun was flabbergasted at this pronouncement. To have Fernando adopted by Don Juan Francisco and his wife was not what she’d ever expected from this visit. She’d merely hoped to prevail upon the San Martín family’s spirit of charity—or perhaps even their sense of shame—to help make arrangements for the woebegone Fernando. Taken aback by the fairytale ending unfolding before her eyes, an outcome which seemed too good to be true, the nun hesitated, uncertain now as she looked upon this austere noblewoman what her intentions toward the poor, bereft orphan might be.

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La Gorgona © CS Dark Fantasy