Catch a Shooting Star jd edit 03 12 2012 html (15 page)

            Sure, the house was probably sold by now, knowing Diego.  But, she had friends who lived nearby who would gladly take her in.  That was her motivation when the chance for her to leave came after the last of the horses trotted out of the stable.  She sprang from her hiding place and grabbed a rope to tie the two bags together, and then she slung them across Dancer’s withers.  She coaxed him to take the bit and buckled the straps across his jaw, then, without bothering with the saddle, she led the gelding to a barrel and climbed onto it.  Using the barrel for a booster, she mounted the gelding and stabbed him with her heels.

            True to his name, Dancer sidestepped and then thrust his head forward as he galloped out of the stables.  Savannah steered him in the direction of the village, which she knew was one village closer to her destination and one village away from the man that she hated.  She kept him close to the shadows of the buildings as she guided the horse through the streets so that she would not be seen.  She looked back to see that all of the men had gone off toward the mountains in search of her so she turned her mount in the opposite direction. 

            Savannah let the reins fall against Dancer’s neck while he plodded behind a little adobe hut.  She reached back to bind her hair into a braid and secured it with a ribbon before she leaned to take up the reins again.  The wind whipped around her, carrying with it the muffled sound of a baby crying.  Her heart ceased its beating as the sound brought with it the memory of her heartbreaking loss.  So anguished was her sorrowful mind that she believed that the cry belonged to her little Benito. 

            But it couldn’t be.  Could it?  Was she going crazy or was that actually her baby crying, calling to her in a way that only a mother would recognize?

            Instinct, motherly instinct directed her mindlessly toward the sound that compelled her to find out once and for all if that was truly her child crying.  A right turn and then a left took her to the tiny adobe hut that she sought.  As the gelding skidded to a stop, she slid from his bare back and onto the ground, and then ran up the stairs.  Without bothering to knock, she threw open the door and stumbled inside the house.

            The startled woman who had been nursing her child while rocking in a chair, quickly arose, her eyes wide with fear.  The woman hurriedly placed her baby into a cradle and began blubbering in Spanish, begging for forgiveness from this strange female intruder.

            Savannah pushed by the woman and as if in a daze, she went to the second crib, where the baby continued to cry.  Leaning over the crib, she saw the face that she knew as her Benito.  Her heart leapt into her throat and her hands shook involuntarily as she reached inside the blankets for her Benjamin.  Tears of joy streamed down her cheeks as she pressed him to her breasts and cuddled him as she had so many times before.

            The wet-nurse recovered her shock of being caught nursing her own child and she rushed to take the Benjamin from his mother, scolding her in Spanish for barging in and taking the child. 

            But Savannah turned away from her, and told the woman, “He’s my baby.  He’s my Benito.”

            Realizing that the other woman spoke English and that she must be the Don’s wife and the baby’s mother, the nurse reverted to that language as she admonished, “You must not be here.  You must leave here before Señor Fernandez returns.  He is a very dangerous man!”

            “Señor Fernandez has no control over my child,” Savannah said as she wheeled away from the woman who tried again to take the baby.

            “But he will…” she protested, bringing her hands to her waist and rubbing them together in anxiety.

            “He will do nothing.  I am taking my son so far away that Don Diego cannot ever find him.  Or me,” Savannah declared as she reached for the blanket in the crib, and with a swish of her split skirt, she stepped around the pleading woman and stalked out the door.

            She led Dancer around to the adobe porch and slid onto the horse’s back, nudging him with her heels into a swift trot.  As the gelding carried her and her son away from the house, she could hear the woman screaming her pleas to her.  Ignoring the desperate shrieks from behind her, she nuzzled her son’s sweet-smelling head and carried him away from the place that she hated so much, vowing never to return.

Chapter Ten

            The tiny adobe house at the edge of the village was no sanctuary for the wet nurse.  She knew that when Don Diego found out that his son had been kidnapped, he would make her suffer for letting it happen.  She looked down at her baby, who lay sleeping in her crib and recalled the words that the frightful man had drilled into her head.  Knowing that her child would pay with her life, and fearing that Señor Fernandez would certainly choose a painful demise for the baby that she held dearly in her arms, she heaved a great sigh of misery as she prayed to Mother Mary and God for forgiveness.  She kissed her daughter on her cheeks, on her lips and on her forehead before she asked the baby to forgive her also for what she was about to do, and then she placed her lovingly back into her crib. 

            She stepped to her bed and took up the feather pillow and let out a sorrowful sob as she went back to the crib and laid the pillow onto her baby’s body, covering the writhing child’s face.  Great tears of guilt and regret fell down her cheeks and her shoulders rocked compulsively as she carried out the task that she knew she must.  And when she felt no more movement from beneath the pillow, she lifted it up and let it drop to the floor before she reached into the crib to bring the lifeless child to her tear-stained face.  Pressing the baby to her breasts with one hand, she touched her forehead and then each of her shoulders with an invisible crucifix.  This death that she had given to her child was far more merciful than the one which Don Diego would have sentenced her to, but it was still a sin and she was prepared to do her penance as a terrible sinner.

            Leaning over the crib once more, she placed the limp baby inside and lovingly covered her with a soft knitted blanket.  She bent to kiss the baby one last time before she backed into the rocking chair and waited for the return of Don Diego and the punishment that definitely would come for her.

            A vulture circled in the sky, spiraling upon a thermal wave that he had found under the puffs of clouds that floated above the desert.  It had been following the horse that stumbled over the barren and cracked land, waiting for the horse to fall, sending its rider to the ground in a heap of delicious death.  The bird watched as the woman swayed, almost losing the burden that she clutched so closely.  It screeched a victory cry as the horse stumbled for the last time, spilling the woman and the bundle onto the hot, dusty ground.  Eyeing the meal that awaited him, the vulture swooped closer to the ground in anticipation.

            Savannah clawed the earth, trying to reach the baby, who lay screaming his fear into the blanket that covered his head against the heat of the sun.  She had not discovered that she had gone into the desert until it was too late to turn back.  She could not—would not go back and face her husband.  She must continue.  She must get herself and her son to safety.  She grunted as she crawled toward her son and, putting her arm around the bundle, she laid her head on the child in order to shield him from the sun and closed her eyes. 

            She had not meant to fall asleep, but she was so weak and so tired.  When she awoke, she had thought that it all had been a dream in which she was in the desert, baking in the sun with a swarm of vultures hopping around her.  But, as she opened her eyes wide, she found that it was real.  She was laying in the sand, sprawled out like an eagle in flight, an eagle that was intent upon taking its young to safety. 

            She spread her fingers to caress her son, but there was no soft, yielding blanket beneath her as she remembered had been there before she had fallen asleep.  Her son was not under her.  She squinted and turned her head from side to side but he was not next to her either.  She gasped in surprise when she looked in front of her and saw no bundle there.  She craned her neck to look behind her and there, in the arms of the wet-nurse, was her son. 

            Savannah crawled painfully toward the woman in an effort to take her son back from her, but a booted foot slammed her body back into the burning sand and a voice that she had hoped to never hear again sent shivers up and down her spine.

            “I am very disappointed in you, Querida,” Diego said in a voice that was not filled with malice, but that carried a tenderness that she knew was not really there.

            Savannah took in a breath of fear as her mind cried, Oh God!  He found us!  She knew that she had failed to get away from him.  She lowered her head to her forearm and wondered how he intended to punish her.  Would he see to it that her son would go back with that woman and never know his real mother and make the child despise her while she wasted away again in the home that she despised?

            To her surprise and disappointment, that was not to be the case.  Instead, he ordered the party to go back to the village, to make sure that his son made it back to the house in safety.  When the others had mounted up and the dust had swirled around her as she lay pinned beneath his foot, he smiled down at her and ignored her anguished pleas. 

            Raising his eyes to the sky, he spoke to the hovering vulture that was brave enough to light a few feet from her prone body, “Welcome, my friend.  Would you like an invitation to your feast?”

            He cocked his head then looked down at his wife’s frightened face as he continued to talk to the bird, “Well, then.  I shall be more than happy to oblige you.”

            He sneered at her as he stepped on her hand and pulled his sword from its scabbard, and then he very deftly placed it on the bone at the end of her wrist.  As the blade inched up her arm, slicing the skin and muscle, his smile widened and he began to laugh a hideously triumphant laugh.

            Savannah winced in pain as the blade ripped into her flesh, searing and tearing her arm inch by excruciating inch until a pool of blood spilled onto the scorched sand.  She cried out in agony when the sword’s tip slid easily into the gap that it had created on her forearm just below her elbow.  Then, she swore angrily at his laughing voice as the blade was lifted and his heavy foot left her hand.

            “I believe that you owe me an apology, Querida,” Diego said in a soft voice as he swiped the blade with a handkerchief, covering the white cloth with her blood.

            Angrily, Savannah rolled onto her back and tried to sit up, but his boot caught her in the chest, sending her sprawling backward onto the sand once more. 

            “I said, apologize to me!” He growled through gritted teeth.  “If you do, I will leave you here to die.”

            “And if I don’t?” she asked defiantly, holding the bleeding arm with her other hand as she looked up at him.

            “If you don’t, my dove, I will kill you right here and right now and there will be no chance that you will ever see Benito again.  If you do, maybe, just maybe, you will survive long enough to crawl back to me and to your home and our son.”

            Savannah thought for a long moment, eyeing the vulture that flapped impatiently a few feet away and then at the man who towered above her with a most victorious smile upon his handsome yet devious face.  If she died right now, she would never have a chance for revenge and to see her son again.  Without thinking about it further, she spat sand from her dry mouth and said without remorse, “I’m sorry.”

            “Good!” Diego exclaimed as he replaced the sword and folded his arms across his chest in delight.  “Apology accepted.”

            Savannah watched as her husband slapped his palms together as if washing his hands of her, and then turned on his heel.  Before she could get to her feet, he was in the saddle spurring his horse away.  An angry huff puffed through her lips as she threw a handful of sand at his retreating figure, realizing that he had left her there to die in this God-forsaken desert with nothing for company but her dying horse and the hungry vulture that eased closer to her with her every breath.

            She lay her head on her arm and prayed that death would come quickly, more quickly than the death that poor Dancer was destined to endure, for the vulture had hopped toward the gelding and began to pluck at his quivering flesh.  Relieved that the bird had chosen another body for its meal, yet sad that the only alternative for food was her beloved Star Dancer, she began to cry.

            Death, for her did not come.  Only the pain of the blistering sun and the gushing wound on her arm, which in a sudden yet short burst of energy, she had bound with her petticoat.  Hours passed while she sat with her arms crossed over her knees and watched the vanishing figure of her husband and vowed that someday she would get her son back and make herself a gleeful widow.

            Weighing her options as she cursed the tiny man on the horse that shimmered on the horizon, she considered which would be the best way to make that happen.  If she was lucky enough to crawl her way back to the village and try again to get her son, Diego would certainly kill her.  He had left her there to die and he would not hesitate to finish the job if she showed up back in their home.  No, she would need some help, for she could not accomplish this feat alone.  It would take an army to penetrate the guards that Diego would place at the courtyard perimeter.