Daughter of Fortune (35 page)

“Qué pasa, chiquita?” he whispered.

She had told herself that she would not cry, but she
could not stop the tears. “Oh, Diego, Cristóbal is in the garden!
He watched me bathe.
Dios mio,
I am so ashamed. He told me
he has come in warning.”

Diego released her and raced down the hall. She
heard the door to the kitchen garden opening, then there was
silence. With flint and steel, Maria lit the candle again and sat
on the bed. She looked down at her hand. It was streaked white
where she had struck Cristóbal.

She heard Diego in the hall again. He threw his
sword down on the bed when he entered the room and sat next to her.
“No one was there, Maria.”

Maria stared at him, then lowered her eyes. Her
hand, stained with white from Cristóbal’s face, was proof that she
had not merely imagined his appearance. It was proof also of the
anger and violence that stalked the land. “He said I was to tell
you how he had come. Diego, he looked like those Indians on the
road today. He didn’t look like himself. He was terrifying.” She
buried her face into Diego’s shoulder.

“Cristóbal is a man torn in half,” Diego whispered,
his hand on her damp hair. “The Indian half has won. But perhaps
there is something we can do.” He stood, pulled her to her feet,
and led her to the wooden wardrobe in the corner of his room.
“Maria, can you use an arquebus, a firing piece?”

She shook her head.

“I would be more surprised if you could, but you are
a woman of some resource.”

“Gracias
,” she replied, a ghost of a smile
crossing her face.

He opened the wardrobe. A cry of rage escaped him.
“Dios! Someone has already taken it!”

Maria leaned against his arm and felt him tremble.
He looked at her, and the age in his eyes was even more frightening
than Cristóbal’s death mask. He took his dagger out of his belt and
handed it to her, then pulled his leather cloak out of the
wardrobe, the same cloak he had worn when he had found her after
the Indian massacre. He slung it around his shoulders, swiftly
knotting the cords.

“Let us go,
querida
.”

Erlinda met them in the hall. Her face drained of
color as she saw her brother’s expression. Diego put his hand on
her arm. “I am going out to look for the horses.”

“What about prayers?” Erlinda managed, clinging to
his hand as if to stop him.

“Pray for me tonight, Erlinda. For all of us. Come,
Maria. I will talk as I saddle Tirant.”

They left the hacienda through the kitchen garden
and crossed the footbridge. “After I leave, tell one of my Mexican
servants to pull the water barrel inside the kitchen and fill it.
Close and bar all the shutters. See if you can find my dogs and
bring them inside, too.” He stopped. “Where are the dogs? I haven’t
heard them all evening. Well, anyway, my guards will be on the
hacienda roof, as they always are.”

They reached the stables and Diego put out his arm
suddenly, pushing Maria back. She heard him suck in his breath,
then looked around his arm and grabbed it.

Tacked to the adobe wall of the stable were Diego’s
dogs, gutted and spread out, their heads hanging down, their blood
dripping in the dust. Maria covered her eyes with her hands. When
she took them away, the dogs were still hanging, their gray coats
dark with blood.

“Now we know where the dogs are,” said Diego
quietly. He took out his sword again. “Do not follow me.”

She waited in the horse corral, unable to move.
Diego called to her finally, and she jumped. “Come, Maria, and
quickly,” he said.

She ran into the stable, staying as far away from
the gutted dogs as she could. Diego was leading Tirant from his
stall. He hurriedly saddled and bridled the animal, talking to her
as he worked.

“Open the doors to no one—I mean no one—except me
tomorrow, but if you should see any of the upper valley rancheros
passing this way, going toward Santa Fe, get them to take you and
my family with them. Even if you have to walk alongside their
horses. Do not leave alone. But if I should not return by midday
tomorrow, then go. But stay off the roads.”

“Will Erlinda and your mother listen to me?” Maria
asked as Diego swung into the saddle.

“I honestly do not know, and I have not time to find
out. I am going back to the old Taos road. I am going to watch
there and see what I can see.” Before he ducked out of the stable,
he snatched a coil of rope hanging by the door.

Maria ran after him into the corral. He looked back
at her. “Bless you, Maria
querida
,” he said and disappeared
into the darkness.

She stood there a moment in the empty corral. She
looked down at her white hand. It still held Diego’s dagger. She
climbed through the fence and hurried across the footbridge.

The Mexican servants were all gathered in the
kitchen, silent and watchful. In a voice that did not sound like
her own, Maria directed two of the men to close and bar all the
shutters, and another to haul in the water barrel. She told the
other men to mount the roof for the nightly watch. “Bring your
families into the chapel tonight,” she added. “Make sure all the
doors are triple-bolted tonight.” She hurried down the hall to the
chapel and met Erlinda coming out.

“They are bedded down, Maria,” she said. “Mama is
sleeping, and I told the girls a story tonight.” They walked arm in
arm back to the kitchen. Erlinda watched the men filling the water
barrel inside by the back door. “Diego fears an Apache raid?” she
asked.

Maria shook her head. “It is the Pueblo Indians that
he fears.”

Erlinda stared at her, an incredulous look on her
face. “Maria, you are joking! Has my brother lost all reason? His
Indians are not capable of mischief. Oh, they steal, they lie, but
they do not raid. ”

Maria thought of the gutted dogs and Cristóbal in
his white paint but said nothing.

“However, Diego would have us safe, rather than
sorry, and I bless him for that. Someday he and I will laugh about
this!” Erlinda turned to the men, who, having finished filling the
barrel, stood waiting. “Do as you always do, my servants. Go to
your families. This will be over tomorrow.”

The men bowed and left. Erlinda looked at Maria, who
was staring into the glowing coals in the fireplace. “Come to my
room, Maria, I will brush your hair and braid it for you.”

They spent the next hour in Erlinda’s room, Maria
listening in silence as Erlinda chattered about her future visit to
Santa Fe. She was not usually so voluble. Did she too sense the
danger and seek to ward it off with words? Did she believe her
counterfeit cheer would cheer Maria?

Finally Maria went to her own room. Luz and Catarina
were sleeping in the same bed, curled up close to each other. Maria
pulled the blankets up higher around their shoulders and made sure
the small fire in the grid was properly banked. Closing the door
behind her, she went into the hall again. All was quiet in the
chapel, so she went to Diego’s room, picking up his dagger from the
hall table where she had left it.

She lit the candle in his room and sat down on the
bed, propping his pillow behind her head and leaning against the
wall. The fire had not been lit in his room that night, and the air
was chilly. Maria pulled her legs up tight against her body and
rested her chin on her knees. She heard the Mexican guards on the
roof as they walked back and forth, watching. She closed her eyes
finally on the reassuring sounds of the guards.

Maria roused herself at intervals throughout the
night, her heart pounding as she listened for the slow steps of the
guards. Finally dawn illuminated the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains.

She woke with a start, sitting up in Diego’s bed.
During the night she had crept between the sheets and covered
herself with his Indian blanket. Out of habit, she reached out with
her toes to feel for his sword. Of course it was not there. Diego
was gone, and she felt a longing for him that was both more
terrible than anything she had ever known, and more wonderful.

She propped the pillow up against the end of the bed
again and picked up the Masferrer family journal. It was open to
yesterday’s entry. “August 8,” she read, squinting in the early
morning light. Diego’s handwriting was large and sprawling and hard
to read. “A visit to Emiliano with my Maria. She learned to make a
saint out of cottonwood. Trouble with my Indians, with my brother.
The horses are gone, the wagons burned, the fields empty of
farmers. Father, what would you have me do?”

Maria put her head down on the parchment. With his
words of instruction last night, he had transferred some of his
burdens to her shoulders, and the weight was heavy.

She wiped her eyes and set the journal back on the
little table next to a wine bottle and silver cup. She picked up
the bottle and took a large swallow, thinking about her mother. “A
lady drinks only from a cup, Maria.” She took another drink from
Diego’s bottle and shoved the cork back in, thinking how he would
tease her if the bottle were half empty when he returned.

If
he returned. Fear pulsed in her veins and
made her temples throb. She got out of his bed, straightening the
pillow and arranging the covers. The pillow smelled of lavender
now, but she did not think he would mind.

She went into the hall. The Mexican servants were up
as usual, the women making their familiar kitchen clatter as they
prepared breakfast, the men attending to their chores outside. As
she approached the kitchen, she saw that the shutters were open
already. The steady rap of hammers and whine of saws from across
the
acequia
told her that they were at work on the wagons
again.

Erlinda was setting the table for breakfast. “God’s
blessing on you, Maria,” she said as always, her cool blond
serenity camouflaging the difference of this day.

“And His Mercy on you, Erlinda,” Maria answered as
always, struck by a feeling of unreality as if she were floating
through a nightmare of her own creation.

“Mama is asking for Diego,” Erlinda said. “Would you
see if he has returned?”

Maria hurried through the kitchen, admonishing the
women to close and bar all the shutters again on her way. She heard
the servants giggling behind her back, but she had no authority to
make them obey her.

Maria went into the garden, her eyes going
immediately to Diego’s Apache moccasins, lying where she had
dropped them when she’d slapped Cristóbal. She looked at her hand,
but the white paint had worn off. She sat down on the ledge by the
oven and put on the moccasins, doing up the laces rapidly, then
hurried through the garden and crossed the footbridge, toward the
stable.

One of the Mexican servants had cut down the dogs,
and the animals now lay on the ground in a puddle of dried blood.
Maria looked around and swallowed. She had not noticed in last
night’s darkness, but the unknown butcher had draped the animals’
entrails over the fence. A servant was now removing the offal,
looping it over his arm and dropping it on the pile by the stable
doors.

“Have you seen Señor Masferrer?” she called, shading
her eyes against the rising sun.

“No, Señorita, he is not here.”

She hurried back to the hacienda, pausing only long
enough to fish her towel out of the
acequia,
where it had
snagged on a cottonwood limb. In the kitchen, Luz and Catarina
looked up from their morning mush and chocolate. Maria flashed what
she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Girls, Diego has asked that you
play indoors today. Something quiet on the patio. If you are good,
I will tell you stories in the afternoon.”

She expected an argument from them, some words of
protest at confinement on such a beautiful day. Instead, they
followed her quietly down to the patio. Luz turned to her Indian
doll that Cristóbal had carved for her, picking up the toy and
patting the Pueblo blanket, bright with design, around the wooden
figure. Catarina picked up her embroidery, watching Maria through
troubled eyes. When Luz sat down next to her, crooning to her doll,
Catarina edged closer on the bench. Clearly the children sensed
something.

Maria left the girls and walked to the front of the
hacienda, throwing back the bolts on the door with difficulty and
walking into the coolness of the portal, where honeybees were
already gathering around the opening flowers. She could see no
movement on the road passing the hacienda. She walked down to the
big iron gate, but did not open it. The road was deserted. By this
time of morning, there were usually laborers trudging to the
fields, children hurrying to small labors, women carrying market
goods from Tesuque to the nearby haciendas. Today there was no
one.

She looked north past the cornfields. No sign of
Diego. She would wait until midday for his return. If he was not
back by then, they must follow his instructions and leave. With a
great weight on her heart, she went back inside, locking the front
door behind her and throwing the bolts in the cool silence of the
foyer. She paused, leaning against the door, all strength gone.

When she had gathered her ragged emotions into some
imitation of serenity, she returned to the kitchen, where she could
see Erlinda from the window, heating water in the yard for the
washing. Maria walked past her without speaking and crossed the
footbridge again, looking to the cornfield, willing Diego to
appear, even as she despaired of seeing his dear face again.

And then she saw him. She ran past the stable,
ignoring Erlinda’s cries. She gathered her skirts around her and
ran into the field, crossing it at an angle. Her mother would have
been shocked at such a display of legs and petticoats, but Maria
did not care.

He was riding slowly down the Taos road, tugging two
Indians after him on a rope. She ran to the road and waited for
him. The Indians were white-painted, their hair long. One of them
stared at her hard, then looked away. The other walked with his
head down, scuffing at the dirt.