Return to Paradise (Torres Family Saga)

by Shirl Henke

  “You have much need of confession, Spaniard, if such could save your blackened soul,” she whispered, slapping several cloths into the water and splashing her gown in the process.

  Then he began to rant about one woman in particular, Louise. “Louise, come, love, let me—” Miriam's hands flew to her ears as he described in licentious detail what he would do with various parts of her voluptuous body! The depravity of the savage! She looked at the big copper basin filled with water and debated giving him a full bath to aid in the reduction of his fever.

  “Twould serve as well to reduce that great staff, you rutting beast!” His phallus stood rigidly at attention beneath the wet linen clinging to it.

  Rigo had been thrashing and tugging at the bindings on his arms and legs for hours. Suddenly he pulled one arm free and attempted to sit up. Miriam quickly threw herself across his shoulders, attempting to restrain his free arm before he did further injury to his side. He buried his face against her neck and his hot lips seared her bare skin above the ruffle of her undertunic. He was nibbling on her as if she were a piece of roast fowl!

  She shoved him down into the soft pillows but to do so she had to sit on the bed and lean against his naked body. That treacherous free hand reached up and clasped her waist as he murmured, “Louise, darling.” Then before she could calm her pounding heart enough to think straight, his fingers slid deftly up her side and cupped a breast, boldly massaging it as he once more kissed her neck.

  Lightning bolts streaked through her. She lay immobilized over his hard naked flesh. “So small, you have need of fattening,” he murmured as he fondled the breast through her thin cotton gown.

  The point of her nipple felt on fire as the hot raw pleasure of the intimate, forbidden caress robbed her of will, of thought. She had never allowed Benjamin such liberties even though he had tried to take them. In all her lonely twenty-four years, Miriam had never been touched like this by a man's mouth and hands!

  Then his words began to penetrate the haze of newly awakened sexual pleasure. So small. Need of fattening! Miriam knew she was tall and plain and not particularly curvaceous, but when he added the additional injury of calling her Louise to the insult of cupping her breast and finding it wanting, she finally reacted.

  With a burst of energizing anger she pressed her palms against his chest, ignoring the sensation of springy black hair that tufted between her fingers. She shoved with all her might and broke free, then shinnied from the bed to stand panting like a hare run to ground by a wolf! The whole front of her gown was soaked from contact with the wet cloths that had been laid across his torso. Angrily she smoothed her skirts down and stomped around the bed to refasten his arm.

  Once that task was completed, she went to the marble-topped table across the room and poured a drop of opiate into a goblet. “You will drink this and you will remain quiet the rest of the night, Spaniard, else I will smother you with a goose-down pillow!” she grated out as she stirred the opiate with a small amount of water. When he again began to speak, she pried his jaws open and dropped the mixture neatly to the back of his throat. He coughed until she massaged his throat. Then he swallowed and lay back, spent for the moment. So was his erection, she noted with a smirk of satisfaction.

  Dawn's pale golden fingers inched their way into the bedchamber, spreading warm light after Miriam opened the drapes. She stood surveying the dark blue waters of the bay in the distance. Isaac's home was situated high on a hill that gave it a view of the busy harbor far superior to that from her father's house, even though Judah Toulon had built his far closer to the docks from whence flowed his living.

  “Twill be a lovely day,” she murmured sleepily, rubbing her stiff aching back. She, like Benjamin the day before, had dozed in the high-backed walnut chair. It was damnably uncomfortable in spite of the velvet cushions. Visions of a hot scented bath and a soft bed floated before her eyes.

  The sound of the bedcovers rustling quickly ended her reverie. Miriam turned to find Rigo straining at the bonds holding him flat on the mattress. She crossed the floor to the bed and calmly reached down to feel his forehead, trying not to betray the pounding of her heart. “Your fever has finally broken. Good,” she said precisely, forcing herself to meet those piercing blue eyes. Why did they make her feel so different from Benjamin's? After all, they were identical.

  “Why am I trussed up like a pig for slaughter?” he asked angrily, his mouth parched and his head throbbing every bit as wickedly as his wounded side. He tugged at the linen roping, furious with his weakened condition before this coolly imperious woman.

  “You burned with a high fever for over twenty-four hours. What would you have had us do—keep five servants here to prevent your thrashing?” she asked reasonably as she began to slip the knots from his left wrist. When she moved to the foot of the bed and began to untie his ankle, he stiffened and grew very still. Please, God of Jacob, do not let him remember last night!

  “You tied me spread-eagle naked to this bed, woman?” he asked in a low, deadly voice that left her afraid to continue her task. But one arm and leg were already freed and he was still weak as a babe from his injuries.

  “Benjamin concurred such was the only way to keep you from doing injury to yourself.” Her voice was amazingly calm, but her cheeks were beginning to burn. As she untied his last bonds, she struggled to keep her fingers from trembling.

  Rigo watched her, noting—no, more—sensing her discomfiture, for she controlled her emotions with greater skill than any female in his considerable acquaintance. He tried to remember what had transpired during the night. He had thrashed with a high fever. After a dozen years on more than a hundred battlefields, he was deadly familiar with the feverish rantings of wounded men.

  “Do you speak Castilian?” he asked, his eyes boring into hers.

  “Not passably as yet, but I understand it. Benjamin has been teaching me,” she replied, knowing it would do no good to lie when he could so easily learn the truth.

  “What did I say, my lady Miriam, all trussed up, begging for your succor during the long, lonely hours of the night?” he asked bitterly, already fearing the worst.

  She sighed raggedly. “You mostly mumbled incoherently.”

  His hand snaked out with amazing speed and strength to seize her wrist in an iron grip. “What did I mumble?” Rigo gritted his teeth and fought black waves of dizziness as he held tightly to her wrist, all the while damning his puny strength.

  She tried to pull away, immediately reevaluating her diagnosis of his weakened condition. “Release me! You are hurting me, ill repayment indeed for someone who has spent hours sponging your burning body to break your fever!”

  He released her as if scalded and she jerked back her hand, quickly stepping away from the bed. His eyes were slitted and his brow creased as he glared at her. “You uncovered me, tied naked to this bed and...” His voice faded as he recalled hazy snatches from the preceding night.

  “You were burning up. Yesterday afternoon Benjamin prescribed wet cloths to cool your skin—tis what the Tainos do on Española for fevers. He bathed you thus.” She stopped abruptly—too abruptly, for she could see he immediately understood that she had been a participant in the act.

  “And where has my brother been all this past night? You alone treated me, did you not, my lady?”

  “When you began ranting and the fever grew again, I knew of nothing else to do, save to smother you and end your suffering!” She glared back at him and added, “Of course, had I done so, you would doubtless be in far greater misery in the next life, you womanizing, immoral heathen!”

  Just then he caught a faint trace of her fragrance, the smell of roses. His scowl lifted as he vaguely recalled fondling her breast, an experience he was certain she had never had before. He smiled coldly. “I had dreams about Louise—very vivid dreams...” His eyes moved insolently from her face down the slender curves of her body, pausing deliberately at her breasts. “Somehow I must have gotten free of my restraints,”
he speculated.

  “You found my charms far less to your tastes than those of your plump Louise. I do not like being handled as if I were a camp follower in your army's train, Spaniard.”

  “Is that why you dress in limp rags and drab colors—or do Jewish ladies take the veil as our holy sisters do?” he asked, surprised at his own curiosity. Did she believe she was not desirable?

  Miriam snorted in disgust. “I do not wear gaudy colors or mince about in a clumsy farthingale because twould interfere with my work. I am a doctor and as such, I pronounce you well on your way to recovery. After Benjamin has broken his fast I will send him to see how you fare.” She turned and walked to the door with her spine rigidly straight. The rays of the rising sun fell on her silky hair, once more burnishing it pale bronze.

  Rigo felt a distinctly familiar tightening in his loins and marveled that this cold, unnatural Jewess could engender such feelings in him. He had always preferred his women lush and fleshy, not slim and angular. Then he remembered his words to her when he thought she was Louise and burst out laughing. “Best break your own fast heartily and fatten up, Lady Miriam!” he called out as she slammed the heavy oak door.

  * * * *

  Isaac paid the messenger and dismissed him, then sat pondering the letter for Rigo. It had come a long and circuitous route, all the way from the Indies, thence to Seville and on to General Pescara's army. Pescara himself had paid the youth who traveled from Italy to Marseilles in search of Rigo. The letter was from the foster brother Benjamin had told him of, Bartolome de Las Casas, a Dominican! With a troubled frown Isaac wondered if the man was part of the Holy Office. So many Dominicans enlisted in the Inquisition they had been dubbed across Europe “The Hounds of God.”

  With a sigh he stood up and tapped the heavy, travel-stained letter against the desk. “Perhaps tis time I spoke with my nephew and took his measure, now that Benjamin and Miriam have determined he will live,” the old man said to himself as he strode purposefully across the room.

  Rigo sat in the large soft bed, propped up with pillows supplied helpfully by a pretty serving wench, whose eyes were round with a mixture of fear and fascination for this newest and most exotic member of the Torres family. He had been given the great luxury of a bath and a shave. His long black hair had been neatly trimmed to shoulder length once more and he felt on the mend, even if weak and in pain.

  For the past two days the invalid had not seen Miriam, his doctoress. Benjamin had tended him, remarking on his amazing recuperative powers. He was still uncertain of his feelings about his brother, although Benjamin’s affection for him seemed genuine. It was difficult not to like his golden-hued reflection, yet that very resemblance reminded Rigo of their father. In spite of his brother's insistence that Aaron Torres had not deserted his eldest son, Rigo resisted letting go of a lifetime of hatred. Everything he had learned of life, from the streets of Seville to the battlefields of Italy, made him disbelieve Benjamin.

  Rigo was a bastard and worse yet, the issue of a woman of an inferior race. If that were not enough, he was raised in the very church and state that had caused the death of his grandparents and exile of his father. It made no sense. Rigo's pondering was cut short by a rap on the door. Benjamin would not stand on such a formality. He fleetingly wondered if it were Miriam, then dismissed the idea. She had doubtless had enough of his rude Spanish insolence, he thought wryly. He called out in Provencal for the visitor to enter.

  Isaac Torres was an impressive man, slightly above middle height, barrel-chested and straight-backed in spite of his advanced years. His snowy hair was thinning but the penetrating blue of his eyes had never dimmed even if his face was creased by age. He wore simple, loose robes, a Moorish affectation left from his years with the Castilian court.

  Rigo nodded at his great-uncle without smiling, his eyes measuring the old man as Torres measured him in return. He did not shrink from the assessment. That boldness seemed to amuse Isaac, who tapped a heavy sealed missive against his leg.

  With a slight smile that did not reach his shrewd blue eyes, the old man said, “Benjamin did not exaggerate. You look amazingly recovered.”

  “He saved my life with his medical skills. I owe you as well, Don Isaac, for taking into your home one of the enemy.” Rigo's eyes moved fleetingly to the letter in Isaac's hand, then returned to his face.

  “An odd way to refer to my only brother's eldest grandson. You are of my blood. I could do nothing less,” Isaac replied as he walked across the thick carpet and stood beside the bed.

  “I may by accident of birth be of your blood, but I arrived with a foreign army to lay siege to your newfound home. You have little reason to welcome me,” Rigo said baldly. He was surprised when Isaac raised his chin and gave a harsh, mirthless laugh.

  “Little reason, indeed! I warned your idealistic younger brother that you were raised to be a loyal son of the Church and subject of the Spanish monarchy.” He paused and his expression shifted quickly to graveness. “I care not who is king—in Spain or France. Francois hates Jews as much as Charles, but in this place my family has been secure. I would keep them so.”

  “And you think I mean harm to Benjamin? To your whole family?”

  “You speak Provencal without an accent, far more fluently than I, who have lived here for thirty years. I did not survive at the court of Fernando Trastámara by being unwary.” Isaac waited as Rigo met his eyes steadily.

  Then a slow, cynical smile slashed his mouth as he said, “I admire your candor—and your shrewdness. You are bound by your law to take me in, but you will not trust me. We are well met, Don Isaac,” Rigo said with a mock salute. “As to my Provencal, twas an accidental skill, put to use by Pescara when he found I could gather information. I have been a spy.” He shrugged unrepentantly. “Twould seem my whole life has been naught but a chain of accidents from the moment of my conception. You do not trust me. I am uncertain if I should trust my brother's claims about our father, but that has not brought you to interrogate me.” Rigo waited, knowing the wily old man would reveal his reasons for the visit in his own good time.

  “I think we have some common ground, even if we do not like each other,” Isaac said sourly. “We have both been forced to survive by our wits. I have you now in my power. Before I release you to return with Benjamin to the Spanish colonies, I would know more about your Dominican foster brother.” He handed the letter to Rigo. Quickly scanning the seal and noting the imprint from the Dominican monastery in Santo Domingo, Rigo burst out laughing.

  “God's bones, what a route this message must have taken to reach me—and you think Bartolome a jackal of the Holy Office!” He held his aching side as he laughed at the very idea of the gentle Bartolome as Inquisitor. “My foster brother is the last man who would ever trade in human misery. He has spent his life defending those pathetic primitives in the Indies. Bartolome de Las Casas no more approves of my being a soldier than do you.” Then a new thought occurred to Rigo and he fought the urge to laugh again. What would the devout priest think when he learned of Rigo's Jewish family? Sighing at the image of Bartolome on his knees in earnest prayer, Rigo broke the seal and began to read.

  2 July, 1523

  My Dearest Rodrigo,

  When last I wrote to you I had just embarked upon a course to set the turmoil in my soul to rest by joining the Order of Saint Dominic. After witnessing the bloody cruelty inflicted on the native inhabitants of these islands by our countrymen, I spent a decade decrying the monstrous injustice, petitioning the colonial authorities and journeying to Spain to lay my cause before the royal court. I have found a small measure of peace with the good brothers here in Santo Domingo, but my heart is still troubled.

  I hear the cries of those poor dying people even from beyond the stone walls of our garden, even in the stillness of the chapel. It would seem the Lord has more work for me even though I have failed him and his children so often in the past. The governor, my old friend Cristobal's son, is beleaguered on all sides by enem
ies, not the least of which reside at King Carlos' court. Tis rumored Diego Colon will be recalled yet a second time to Spain. He seeks my council and I cannot deny him although it troubles me that I have not been able to do more to preserve his office and to save the Indians. Slavers hound them to extinction and his Excellency is powerless to stop them. You should reconsider your decision to remain with the Imperial Army, Rodrigo. Española has need of honest men far more than your general.

  I know your feelings about your Indian heritage. If only you could come here and meet these noble souls before they all perish, you would change your mind. They need your strength. So do I. Pray for us as I do for you. May God and Our Lady keep you safe until we are reunited here on Española ...

  Rigo scanned the closing with its exhortations to write more often. Bartolome would never abandon hope that his adopted brother might come to the New World.

  Isaac watched the play of emotions on Rigo's face as he read the letter, seeing a genuine expression of warmth infuse the harsh mask. “You love this Dominican well,” he said softly.

  “He has newly professed his vows with the order in Santo Domingo two years past, but was ordained the first priest in the Indies in 1512. Bartolome is fifty years old now. Unlike me, he has spent his life trying to save others.”

  “Their bodies or their souls?” Isaac asked skeptically.

  “First their bodies. Their souls he leaves to God's mercy. Bartolome has fair worn out a dozen ships sailing from Española to Spain, pleading the cause of my mother's people. Tis a waste, yet he does not see it so. He is too good for this world,” Rigo said sadly.

  “You despise your mother's people,” Isaac said with sudden intuition.

  Rigo's face hardened. “They bare their bellies to Spanish steel and do not fight back. They choose rather to let a gentle man like my foster brother sacrifice his life and his health pleading their cause.”