Chapter 1 Summary

A woman is writhing on a bed in the convent. Three nuns are tending to her. The walls are painted with a mosaic of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. One of the nuns is sent to retrieve the priest.

Dame Dakers takes the black cat the priest had in his lap and drops it into the boiling cauldron of water. She places the lid on top. She chants while she does this. Dame Dakers thinks about how all of their efforts have failed thus far. She thinks that if God fails, now it is time to summon the Devil.

Eighty miles away, Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar is trying to deliver her first baby from a mother's womb. Delivery has not been going as planned, or well. The mother is exhausted but uncomplaining. As Adelia takes a break to breastfeed...