Sacred Ground (22 page)

As she neared the end of her morning labors, having also harvested pennywort stems to go into wound ointments and henbane leaves for rheumatism poultices, Luisa saw men arriving on horseback from the direction of the Old Road. A cloud crossed the face of the sun, briefly casting the landscape in shadow and sending a ripple of fear through Luisa’s bones. She knew why the men had come.

Lorenzo did very little work around the rancho. Most of the rustling and herding was done by Indios trained to be
vaqueros
, leaving Lorenzo and his friends to spend their days gambling, hunting, and lounging in the sun. But the men arriving today had come not to roll dice or to hunt deer, but to bargain with Lorenzo for possession of his daughter.

Angela was a prize to be fought over.

As word of Los Angeles spread south toward the lower Mexican provinces, more settlers were coming to the Pueblo in search of a better life. The problem, however, was most of the newcomers were unmarried men. The governor, anxious to tame this wild frontier by providing wives for the men, had sent several desperate requests to the Viceroy of Mexico to send
doncellas—
“healthy maidens” —to California, but with no success. Then he asked simply for “a hundred women.” When this produced no results, the governor resorted to accepting foundlings— orphaned girls— who were rounded up in Mexico and brought to California, where they were distributed among families.

These men today, whom Lorenzo was welcoming with happy shouts and cups of wine, wanted Angela not so much because she was available or beautiful, but because she was
hispana.
By marrying a woman of pure Spanish blood a man of mixed blood could apply for an official decree of
legitimidad y limpieza de sangre—
“legitimacy and purity of blood” —for his children, a decree certifying that the bloodline was untainted by Jewish, African, or any other non-Christian blood, thus assuring them of prominence and high social standing in the colony.

No one knew the truth: that Angela wasn’t
hispana
at all, but Indio. Luisa’s “gift from God.”

Luisa remembered the day, the hour, when Lorenzo brought the angel home. Luisa’s knees had been raw from kneeling in prayer to the Blessed Virgin. Her child, buried in the Sonoran desert, was gone but her love was not. She had needed an outlet for her maternal love. Luisa hadn’t even had the comfort of a grave to visit, to tend and weed and nurture, no headstone upon which to lay flowers, no gentle mound of grass to go to when the soul needed solace. Lorenzo, being a man and having his duties, filled his hours with work. Luisa had only Selena’s little dresses that would never be worn again. As she spoke her vow to the Blessed Mother—
help me to have another child and I shall devote myself to good works in thy name—
there was Lorenzo with a child in his arms. The girl was crying, “Mama! Mama!” And as soon as she put her arms around the child, Luisa felt the dammed-up love flow from her heart like a cleansing brook. She knew that this was Blessed Mary’s answer to her prayers, and while she would always grieve for the little one buried in the desert, Luisa would love this angel with all her heart and devote her life to good works as she had promised.

No one had questioned the sudden appearance of a child in Captain Lorenzo’s small adobe house. Everyone in the colony was too busy trying to survive to wonder about the private affairs of others. If people remarked upon Angela’s dusky coloring— Luisa being fair-skinned— Luisa simply said that the girl favored Lorenzo’s mother, who was olive-complected. Luisa did not consider this lie a sin because she believed it to hold a kernel of truth. Luisa secretly believed Angela wasn’t a full-blooded Indio. While the girl did bear a resemblance to the natives who lived at the Mission, her skin was lighter and her face wasn’t as round. Luisa wondered if perhaps the child was the offspring of a Spanish soldier.

The voices of Lorenzo’s visitors drifted on the breeze and swirled around the garden where Luisa toiled. She held these men in contempt. Arrogant braggarts, and yet not a drop of pure racial blood ran in their veins.

Luisa was a highborn Spanish lady who had been raised in a country where the lines of social class were clearly drawn: there was the noble class, the wealthy merchant class, and the peasants. Rarely did they mingle. Bloodline meant everything. Even in New Spain, where the Spanish had ruled a bare two hundred years since conquering the native populations, strict racial boundaries were maintained. The new aristocracy in Mexico were the
peninsulares—
whites born in Spain— which caused resentment among the whites born in Mexico— the
criollos.
Only
peninsulares
could be addressed as Don and Doña and they did not marry outside their class. Next came the
mestizos
, those of mixed Spanish and Indian descent— a large, amorphous class of people who were shopkeepers, artisans, servants. Comprising the lowest social stratum were the
indígenas—
the native Indios— used mainly for hard labor. So strict were the rules of race and class that an
indígena
caught wearing European clothing was punished by the lash. Luisa, being a
peninsulara
, had been very comfortable with Mexico’s class structure.

But in Alta California there were no clearly drawn social lines. Nearly everyone here was of some sort of racial mix, with very few white Europeans. It was hard to know one’s station. Although Doña Luisa had no doubts about her and Lorenzo’s place in this frontier society, there were wealthy rancheros of Indian and Spanish mix who had been peasants in Mexico! It was like a soup in which all the bloods were being stirred. It troubled her sense of class. Lorenzo, as a
patrón
with five hundred head of cattle, a member of the Spanish aristocracy,
and
a retired military officer, was treated with respect. But in the insanity of the frontier mind, the same respect was accorded to Antonio Castillo, a man of Mexican and African blood, married to a local Indian woman, simply because he was the blacksmith at the Pueblo! Here a person’s occupation counted as more important than his ancestry, which to Doña Luisa was backward thinking and unhealthy for a young society.

Feeling her fears prick her anew at the sight of Lorenzo’s visitors— her flight from California was less than twenty hours away— Luisa left the garden and delivered herself into the coolness of the solarium, where she kept her vast store of herbs and medicines.

Her home was not as grand as Lorenzo had promised a decade ago, but sufficient to reflect their higher station. Made of adobe with a thatched roof, the structure consisted of four sleeping chambers, a dining room, a hall for entertaining visitors, and a massive kitchen that fed not only the captain and his wife and daughter, but the Indian women who laundered and sewed and cooked and made candles, and their husbands the
vaqueros
and
caballeros.

Men and their empty promises, Luisa thought contemptuously as she sorted leaves from stems and separated them into storage baskets. Not only had Lorenzo not given her the grand house he had promised, but the struggling pueblo was not conforming to Governor Neve’s original vision. Here was an opportunity, he had declared at the dedication ceremony eleven years ago, to plan a city unlike any in Europe, for it would be a planned city before the first inhabitant even took up residence. He had drawn up a blueprint for the Pueblo, showing the layout of plaza, fields, pastures, and royal lands. There would be no unfettered growth for the Los Angeles Pueblo, Neve had promised. And yet already new arrivals were building where they pleased! Luisa could see the sprawl this homely town would someday be.

As she laid the opium out to dry— later it would be rolled into a sticky black ball and stored in a leather case— Luisa examined her conscience once again and found no reason to feel guilty about running away. Hadn’t she fulfilled her promised to the Blessed Virgin?

Luisa was proud of the number of Indian women she had converted to Christianity. They attended chapel every Sunday, dressed modestly, and when one wished to marry, the prospective husband was required to convert. Because she was a fair and generous mistress, most of her servants were loyal. Many even emulated her. Doña Luisa wore her long black hair in a braid pinned in a coil at the back of her head, covering it with a small mantilla of black Spanish lace which she removed only at bedtime. And so her servants covered their hair with scarves. They recited the rosary and named their daughters Maria and Luisa. Only rarely did one run away back to an Indian village and the old life. More and more camps were springing up on the ranchos, built by Indios who had left their native life to work for the colonists, becoming expert horsemen, cattle wranglers, silversmiths, and carpenters. With beef provided at every supper, they saw no need to make the annual trek into the mountains to gather acorns. A few still went, to hear the stories and to arrange marriages, but the gatherings in the forests were growing smaller each year. The five-day festival that for generations had been held in honor of Chinigchinich, the Creator, was being replaced by Christmas holidays and the Feast of Santiago, patron saint of Spain.

The solarium was filled with baskets made by Luisa’s Indian women. Some were quite exquisite and supposedly the patterns told stories. The women who wove the baskets had cheerfully told these myths to Luisa— explaining to the Señora how the world was created and how Grandfather Tortoise caused earthquakes. Little Angela had told the same stories at first, about coyotes and tortoises and a First Mother who came out of the east to start a new tribe, but Doña Luisa had replaced these heathen tales in Angela’s mind with Christian stories and Spanish fairy tales: the story of two sisters, Elena and Rosa, who lived in the Kingdom of Sapphires and how they were transformed by their godmother, the Fairy of Happiness; the tale of young Gonzalito, who, with the help of magical animals, saved a princess and her kingdom from a wicked dwarf; and the adventure story of four princes on a quest for the hand of Princess Aurora. Stories Luisa herself had grown up with and which now were Angela’s.

She looked through the open window and saw that Lorenzo and his guests were still drinking in the shade of the rose arbor. One man, a head taller than the rest, caught her attention: Juan Navarro. Luisa didn’t like him. There was something strange about his eyes. They lacked warmth, making Luisa think of the eyes of a cold sea creature. And his smile was not so much a natural smile as a drawing back of his lips to bare his teeth. Rumor had it that Navarro was in Alta California fleeing the Inquisition, who had brought him up on charges of reading forbidden books. He made his living off the dead. Navarro had plundered the tombs of the Aztecs and found fortunes in gold, silver, turquoise, and jade. Granted, they were heathen tombs he robbed so no desecration had taken place. Nonetheless, it seemed ghoulish to Luisa to take a ring from a corpse and wear it on one’s own hand. She knew what his ambition in California was: Navarro was a man of low birth who wanted to marry into aristocracy.

Fear stabbed her again, and she quickly suppressed it. Let Navarro ask Lorenzo for Angela’s hand. Luisa wasn’t worried. She would readily agree to the betrothal— on the condition that the wedding take place
after
their return from Spain.

Leaving the solarium, Luisa made her way through the house where women were polishing furniture and scrubbing tile floors, and delivered herself into her private chambers, where trunks stood packed and ready for the journey. This was Luisa’s private sanctum, where Lorenzo had not set foot since the house was built. He kept to his own quarters at night, seeing his wife and daughter only at the evening meal. Luisa knew he would not miss her for long. Perhaps at first he would feel outrage when he realized she was never coming back, but then his fellows would come over for a game of dice, the wine would flow, and the two females who had once taken up space in this house would eventually be forgotten. Lorenzo would not be without consolation. Luisa not only knew about his Indian mistresses, she knew about his Indian bastards as well.

Sitting at her dressing table, Luisa raised the lid of a small wooden box and lifted up the velvet lining. Under it was a brass key. As she held the key in her palm, curling her fingers around it, she felt fresh hope flow from the metal into her flesh. The key was to a small casket which was currently in the safekeeping of Father Xavier.

The secret cache had begun by accident, ten years ago, when Antonio Castillo, the blacksmith, had ridden frantically from the Pueblo to tell Luisa that his child was ill with fever and they needed the señora’s help. With special herbs Luisa had brought the child back from the brink of death and Señora Castillo had been so overjoyed she had insisted upon giving Luisa a gold ring as a token of the family’s gratitude. Luisa had tried to refuse but the ring was pressed upon her, and her acceptance of it sent the señora away a happier person. And then when Luisa had helped a young wife through a perilous childbirth with potions she had learned from an old Indian woman, the grateful husband had humbly offered Luisa the gift of a small silver brooch. After a while, Luisa stopped refusing. She didn’t see why one could not do good works in the name of the Blessed Mother
and
receive payment as well. Did not the Mission Fathers pass the collection plate during Mass?

Lorenzo did not know about Luisa’s secret cache. When she had collected the first few valuable items, she had feared he would find them and gamble them away. With the colonists and soldiers Lorenzo played cards and dice, and with the Indians, the wager could be on the number of fingers a player was holding up behind his back. Lorenzo would even lounge with his fellow rancheros under a tree, watching
El Camino Viejo
, and they would wager on the color of the next horse that would come trotting by. So Luisa had taken her little casket of treasures to Father Xavier at the Mission and entrusted it to his care. Over the months and years, whenever Lorenzo was away gambling or hunting, Luisa would pay a visit to the Mission and deposit the latest with Father Xavier, as if he were a banker. There was coinage in the casket, too: silver pieces of eight, Mexican pesos, Spanish
reales
and even some gold doubloons. A king’s ransom.