He tried the door, found it open, and entered upon a shadowed office, lit only by a narrow window in the thick adobe wall. He thought it might belong to a clerk, but the portly man standing within was no clerk. This one stood over six feet, had a long acquiline nose, large features, dark flesh, and straight jet hair combed back. But what astonished Childress was the man’s uniform, which was sky blue with white lapels, a crimson sash, polished black boots, a sword in a gaudy scabbard, and acres of gold braid at the shoulders and sleeves of his tunic.
Childress was quite taken with him.
“Senor?” the man asked, politely.
“I am looking for el gobernador,” Childress replied.
“Armijo here, come in, and how may I be of service?”
“Governor! I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“Think nothing of it. Nada. That is the way of the Republic of Mexico, which rests upon the will of the people.”
Childress listened to the rhetoric, assessing this amazing apparition, and then shepherded his women in.
“Your excellency, I am Sir Arthur Childress, Her Majesty’s viceroy for Madagascar and Ceylon, here on a little journey on my own account, and not the queen’s.”
“Ah! The English! A great nation! And what brings you to our province of Mexico?”
“Ah, Governor, first let me introduce these lovely ladies, their royal highnesses the queens of Zanzibar and Sheba, who have traveled far with me as we search for suitable investments for their endowments.”
The governor bowed. The ladies nodded.
“They speak not a word of Spanish, nor do they grasp any European tongue save for a few words of English, so their purpose here is to decorate our little meeting with their dusky beauty.”
“Ah!” Armijo gallantly rounded his desk, and clasped the hand of each woman, bowing gallantly to them.
“Sonofabitch,” murmured Victoria Skye, which Childress thought was appropriate.
“Now, your excellency, if you could spare us a few moments, I shall describe our business here, and perhaps you can advise me as to its prospects. As part of my task of governing the protectorates, it is my duty to seek financial opportunities for the royal households, and I am here because Mexico is ripe for development. In short, excellency, we are looking to purchase a large estate, one with cheap labor at hand, for it is with such labor that large bonanzas are made.”
“Plantations? Don Arturo, this is an arid climate, and not suitable for plantations.”
“Ah, yes, but there are gold and silver mines and great livestock holdings, and these are of some interest to me, on behalf of these great ladies, of course.”
“Ah, si, it is so. The riches of Mexico are indescribable, and there is abundant labor, and more can be gotten. But tell me, have you spoken to others about all this?”
“Indeed, Governor, we have spread the word wherever we have been, starting in Taos, the ranchos there, and we will continue southward into Chihuahua, Sinaloa, and other provinces.”
“And how, Don Arturo, did you come here?”
“By steamer to New Orleans, river packet to Independence, and out the commercial trail with a caravan, past fierce Comanches and wild tribes. But we were not troubled.”
“Ah! You have seen the commerce.”
“We think there is great profit in it. And I have good English capital to put into it.”
Armijo flashed a great smile, baring even white teeth. “Then it is up to me to persuade you to invest in Nuevo Mexico, si?”
“Well, your excellency, you can start by describing the labor situation, for there is no profit to be gotten from an estate without plenty of cheap help.”
Armijo shook his head. “Oh, some merchants here profit without very little help, señor, but yes, the great estancias, or haciendas, or mines, are built upon the backs of many hombres.”
“What does it cost?”
Armijo shrugged. “What is the price of food and some rags?”
“How does it work?”
“The hacendado indentures his help, and pays them in food and clothing and shelter; it is very simple.”
“And they work for that, excellency?”
Armijo shrugged. “Some don’t.”
“And what of them?”
The governor smiled. “Ah, this is the land of opportunity, my friend. Opportunity for you, and for me. I have many resources at hand, and can find just what you are looking for. Land, labor, mines, livestock, titles to property, influence. For a small consideration to the public purse, of course.”
“Ah, Governor, how secure is it? I have heard that the wild men of Texas are even now marching. I must think of the safety of our investments!”
Armijo frowned. “Any invasion will be crushed swiftly. There will only be a crowd of vultures feeding on the gibbets.”
“That is good news, your excellency. The Texans are a rabble, and have no regard for human life.”
“They are braggarts, too, and cannot speak without exaggerating their powers and virtues. My English friend, consider me your reliable friend and the person in office who can steer you toward a successful venture.”
“Well, your excellency, yes, there is something you can do.”
Armijo’s eyebrow arched upward.
“Labor is the secret! I should like a list of the hacendados and mining associations that employ much labor. And these I will visit and talk to at length.”
“Consider it done. Come back before the sun sets, and I shall have a list for you. Are you sure there’s no more?”
“Oh, your excellency, there is always more. What does one do for entertainment in this noble capital city?”
“How about an execution?” Armijo asked. “Only an hour ago, I received word by courier that a Texas spy will be here in the morning. We handle such things with dispatch, my English friend.”
“Ah, yes, keep me informed. The queens are avid for executions,” Childress said. “How will it be? By shot or noose or garrote or ax?”
“We practice marksmanship,” Armijo replied.
Their business done, they were ushered out of the governor’s chambers, and it was then, in that plain adobe antechamber, that Standing Alone shrieked and swooned, but Childress caught her just before she fell, even as a coppery serving girl gaped.
thirty-seven
Standing Alone collapsed into Childress’s arms, a strange, guttural sobbing racking her. The thin serving girl stood, paralyzed, bewildered, and then began edging away.
Victoria cried out to her: “Wait!”
But the teenaged child, her gaze riveted to the woman in fancy clothes and a great hat, cried out, and then backed away.
“No!” cried Victoria.
But the girl vanished into the private rooms of the governor’s palace.
Childress, seething with curiosity, helped the stricken woman to her feet, and signaled to Victoria, who began talking to the Cheyenne woman in the lingua franca they had worked out.
“Ask if that was her daughter!”
But Victoria had already done so. She nodded. “Yes, in all likelihood, but it happened so fast that she’s not sure. The girl! Right age, right face. The strong cheekbones of her people. Little Moon is the name she was given.”
“She must be sure. We need to see her. And then, if it’s her daughter, we must plan. Fast!”
Standing Alone stood now, gulping air, staring at that massive wooden door where the serving girl had disappeared. The gaunt girl was barefooted, wore only a simple shift of unbleached muslin, minimal clothing, the least possible cost for a slave.
“She must be sure. We must see that girl again. They must talk to each other! If this is her daughter, it’s a stroke of luck! Maybe she knows where her brother is.”
But Standing Alone was mute, staring at that forbidding wooden door with great iron straps holding it together, a door that must lead from this antechamber to the governor’s private apartment in this long box of a building. He was tempted simply to barge in, take t
he women with him, and plead ignorance of local custom if they ran into trouble. Get a look at that girl one way or another. And if she was Standing Alone’s daughter, begin to plan, plan, plan.
“Victoria, tell her we’ll sit here in this waiting room. This is a room where people wait to see the governor. A reception room. See the benches. If this was her daughter, the girl might recover soon enough, and come peek, eh?”
Victoria nodded. She looked cross, as if Childress were intruding on some private matter, some women’s prerogatives. But she led Standing Alone to the cottonwood bench, and there they sat. Childress didn’t mind. His mind was teeming with ideas. He had Skye to worry about, and as yet he hadn’t any notion of how he might free the man. Things were happening too fast. He had supposed he might have days, even weeks, to work out a scheme, a bribe, a trick, a political ploy, an escape. But this was Mexico, and trials and executions scarcely lasted fifteen minutes.
They sat in the anteroom, waiting. Occasionally Mexicans entered from the plaza, glanced at these exotic foreigners, vanished into one door or another. Others emerged from the governor’s chambers, and left. The girl didn’t return. Then, when the plaza door opened, Shine leaped in, and with a bound settled beside Childress, tugging his sleeve and reproaching him for ignoring his friend and ally. Childress rubbed the monkey’s back, and the monkey chittered and delicately scratched his own belly.
The girl did not appear. Time was wasting! Childress’s mind teemed with schemes, but nothing gelled. He strolled outside. His trotters were restless. They needed water and a rubdown and some good feed. But they would have to wait. He couldn’t leave here. He surveyed the plaza quickly, noting its bustle, the babble of many voices from many lands, the street vendors, the carretas, burros, young women sashaying along, the dogs circling. When Skye arrived, these people would all amass right here, drawn by gossip and rumor and the thrill of death.
He returned and settled again on the bench in the anteroom. The women stared at that silent door, willing it to open, willing that child, not so much a child anymore, but a woman, to open it.
And she did, an eternity later. The door creaked. Deep in shadow stood that girl, peering at them, safe in there, ready to slam the heavy door shut in an instant.
Standing Alone had removed her hat, the broad brim of which had veiled her face during the first encounter. Now her sleek jet Cheyenne hair, parted in the center and drawn severely back, was not hidden.
They stared. Standing Alone groaned, and staggered to her feet. She said something in her own tongue, a name, Childress guessed. Little Moon. Little Moon! The girl cried out, looked about fearfully, and closed the door in the very face of her mother. But then she opened it a crack again, and Childress saw the mother reach out and touch her daughter, and her daughter touch her mother, and he heard the sound of soft keening in the gloom. Then someone came in the plaza door, and swiftly the inner one slid shut. But moments later it groaned open again, and there were furious whispers.
“Tell her we’ll get Little Moon out,” Childress said to Victoria, but Skye’s wife glared at him, as if he were interfering with something sacred. Childress sighed impatiently.
Standing Alone was crying softly, and the girl, still deep in shadows and fearful to come out of the door, stood tautly, choking back her joy and terror.
He turned to the monkey. “Go,” he said. The spider monkey sailed through the air, slipped into the darkened door, and tugged at that dim figure within, but the girl only squealed in alarm. There was a new volley of whispering between mother and daughter, and this time Standing Alone reached down to pat the monkey. So Little Moon was learning about the monkey, and that was the next step: expect the monkey.
It seemed a long visit, growing more dangerous by the second, but then the girl begged off. Standing Alone cried out, but the girl slipped that dark door shut. Only then did Victoria help her friend back to the bench, and the monkey joined them, clucking beside them.
Slowly Standing Alone translated, with fingers and words, everything that had transpired, until Victoria got it whole.
“It’s her, Little Moon. She’s not sick. She wants to go. She’s damn afraid. She works for the governor, makes food, cleans up, and he’s got big medicine that can track her down to the sunset or the sunrise and throw her into a hole. She’s plenty sick with worry.”
“How’s Standing Alone?”
But he didn’t need to ask. She sat there, rapt, her mind a thousand years away, something so sweet and beautiful on her features that Childress marveled. For all those years she had sat at Bent’s Fort waiting for news, waiting for this very moment. And now it had happened. She had seen her daughter, whole and unharmed.
“Tell her that we’ll think of something,” he said gently.
Victoria nodded.
“Did they make plans to meet again?”
Victoria shook her head.
“We know where she is. We know how to reach her. Now we’ve got to do some planning. Skye’s coming soon. We have no time at all! I thought we’d have days to work this out.”
Victoria stared at him so darkly, with so much pain in her eyes, that he was driven back by it.
“Come along outside now. It won’t do to linger in here. I’m the royal viceroy. You’re the queen of Zanzibar,” he said.
She only stared at him. Right now she was no one but Victoria Skye and her friend was no one but Stands Alone of the Cheyenne people. Nonetheless, at his beckoning, they abandoned the Governor’s Palace and stepped into the bustling plaza. No time, no time!
The horses were restless, but he chose instead to walk his women around the plaza. They needed to walk. It was as if walking was their salvation. He could not walk far, his enormous bulk paining him with every step, but this time he plunged forward, the women on each arm, Shine resting on his shoulder and drawing stares and laughter.
The plaza bustled with vendors selling dulces, tortillas filled with hot meat, and tamales, and he was reminded that he hadn’t a cent. They hadn’t eaten for some while. The horses needed feed and water. Yanks were haggling with Mexicans about the contents of those begrimed prairie schooners that had just come in from the States. Oxen drooped in their yokes. But no ideas came to him. Rarely had his good swift mind failed him so utterly.
The toured the plaza, and Childress settled the women in his carriage. He peered at their hungry, distraught faces, and then at Shine, who sat beside him, picking his nose.
He glanced about, fearful of discovery. “Fetch,” he said to the little creature.
The monkey sprang gracefully to the clay, and then in bounds, clambered to the roofs, and dropped downward again, hidden from view. People squealed, jostled one another for a look at the little fellow, and he swung upward, the projecting vigas of the adobe buildings offering him his own walkway. Then he vanished. Childress waited patiently, trying to look as though he had no part of any of this. When the little fellow did appear, it was so suddenly that Childress startled in his seat. Shine simply bombed down from a rooftop into the carriage, one of his little hands clutching his loot, several steaming tamales wrapped in cornhusks, and carried in a sheet of coarse brown paper.
“Ah, the pirate has struck!” Childress said, his stomach growling with anticipation.
He doled out the meal, furtively watching the crowd, which had failed to notice Shine’s arrival in the carriage. The monkey ate one of the tamales himself, licking his fingers and smacking his hairy lips.
And then, as swiftly, he was gone again, swinging casually along the roofs, unseen by anyone this time. Childress didn’t like it. He wanted to get out of the plaza. The ebony calash and its handsomely dressed occupants were drawing too much attention in this rude frontier town. He waited itchily, irritably, and finally with anger, but the monkey did not reappear.
He turned. The women had finished eating, and were staring at him. The anguish in their faces touched him to his core.
Then Shine appeared, this time with more booty: a small bur
lap sack of white beans, rustled from some grocer. They would have to be cooked somewhere, but there was nourishment in them.
White beans. A plan bloomed in Childress, at last. He eyed the monkey, wondering whether there was time to train him.
thirty-eight
Maybe they were expecting him. As the carreta creaked into Santa Fe, silent crowds lined the narrow streets; almost as if they knew who he was accused of being, and what his fate would be. They craned their heads as the cart and the soldiers and the old peon walked by, but they weren’t examining the soldiers or the hogs or the old man; they were studying Skye, the doomed.
It was hard to focus his mind. He had been four days in the cart along with two hogs, and most of it he had been fevered. But last night, at a village north of the town, he had felt a change within himself, and within the hour his flesh was cool. That crisis had passed; he now faced another, vastly darker and more menacing than anything he had ever experienced. All because he had been falsely accused by one who called himself a friend.
He had rocked along the stony trails hour after hour, the hollow plodding of the little burros carrying him closer to his doom with every passing minute. Santa Fe was oddly silent, as if all commerce had ceased; as if even the wind had turned timid. He heard only the heavy breath of the weary burros, and the ceaseless groan of cottonwood axle against hub, as the carreta grumbled toward the governor’s palace where matters of life or death would unfold.
The crowds thickened as he approached the plaza. Most stared silently, but then a young man spat at him as the carreta passed. And often he heard that whispered anathema, “Tejas!”
These were mild people, neither fierce nor armed. They peered at him solemnly from faces used to sunny living. The bronzed laboring men, creased by sun and chapped by wind, watched impassively, but the dons, most of them tricked out in gaudy coats and white lace and fancy boots, nodded shrewdly and whispered to those beside them.
The Deliverance Page 20
