Days of the Dead

by Barbara Hambly

  January, stepping over to the rail and following his gaze, saw an extremely handsome traveling-coach draw up in the courtyard, barely to be seen through the dust-cloud raised by its six matched bay horses and innumerable brightly-liveried outriders. A slender, graying, and extremely dandified gentleman in a suit of elaborately-ruched red linen stepped from the vehicle, bowing as he gave his hand to help down an elderly matron with a nose like a hatchet and enough diamonds around her throat to purchase the populations of several villages.

  “Doña Imelda de Bujerio,” identified Hannibal, coming to the rail at January’s side. “The gent in crimson is her son, Don Rafael; he’ll explain to you a little later what it’s like to be a black slave on a sugar plantation, he knows all about it from reading the novels of the Duchesse de Duras.”

  A second coach—smaller and plainer than the first—came through the gates. By the way Doña Imelda immediately began giving orders to the man and two women who got out it was clear that these were servants.

  “In addition to being betrothed to that minx Valentina, Don Rafael is engaged with Don Prospero in selling cattle to the Army for the invasion of Texas. Doña Imelda was part of the group sitting out with me here on the night of the wedding-feast, along with Valla’s duenna Doña Filomena Borregos. Procul este, severae . . . Señora Lorcha was here, too, playing dragon to her daughter the lovely Natividad, like the three Fates accompanying the Graces, though to do her justice, Doña Filomena is a sweet-natured soul, if a trifle fond of her sherry, and mended my shirts for me up until the time I was accused of murdering her nephew. Ah, there’s Doña Josefa. . . .”

  A woman emerged into the light, dust, and confusion of the courtyard, clothed and veiled in funereal black unrelieved by the slightest brightness of ribbon or jewel.

  “There’s a gate just beside the stair,” provided Hannibal. “It leads through to the ladies’ courtyard that lies to the north of this building. Doña Josefa, her daughter Paloma, Valla, and Doña Filomena dwell there in a sort of Catholicized purdah. Up until a few months ago Josefa’s son Casimiro was in there as well. Casimiro’s eight, and has just been promoted to that room down at the far corner on the other side of the stair. Señora Lorcha, I might add, was livid that she and her daughter weren’t allotted rooms in the ladies’ courtyard, but there are limits, even in this household. I wonder if we’ll be privileged to witness . . . Ah, yes! Here they are now.”

  Hannibal leaned his chin on the railing, like a man high in the gallery of a theater looking down upon the stage, and January, looking past him, saw another little group of vaqueros ride into the yard, guarding two women in black. The taller, dismounting, seemed to ooze from the saddle and into the arms of the vaquero who sprang to assist her down; her riding-dress was cut so as to leave no one in the slightest doubt as to her charms. The vaqueros sent an Indian servant to bring a bench for the shorter woman to dismount. She was stocky, stubby, and moved with a kind of stiff wariness. Even though she was veiled, January could sense the bitter watchfulness of her eyes.

  Doña Imelda’s middle-aged son stared at Natividad like a child at a plate of gingerbread. His mother had to speak sharply to him, to wrest his attention away, and she did so without, apparently, even giving the two newcomers a glance.

  “And all of them were sitting with you here, at the end of the corredor, on the night of Fernando’s death?” asked January.

  “As far from one another as they could be and still remain in the same group,” replied Hannibal. “Concha must have told you about Señora Lorcha’s attempt at pre-emptive nuptials. The last time I encountered an atmosphere that glacial was when a cousin of mine married a poacher’s daughter by the rites of an inappropriate church and brought her to Sunday dinner. I don’t think Doña Imelda even looked at either of them throughout the evening. But this far from town one has very little choice about after-dinner entertainment: it was sit out here or go indoors and contemplate the horrors of the religious art on your bedroom walls.”

  Rose said, “Hmmn.” In every inn and house January had so far entered—including Consuela’s—nearly every room that did not contain a painting of the Virgin boasted a crucifix, usually of Indian work, Christ’s face and body streaming with blood from graphically depicted wounds.

  Just what I want to see the last thing before I blow out my candle at night.

  “And no one came in or went out of the study?”

  “No. As you see, there’s a torch-bracket immediately opposite the door. Josefa dragged Paloma away fairly early, rather than have her exposed to such a raffish crew as Natividad, Concha, and Señora Lorcha; Valentina left as soon as it grew full dark. Doña Filomena dozed off after her fifteenth sherry, and I can hardly say I blame her.”

  January glanced over the rail again, observing, indeed, how Doña Imelda and Doña Josefa kept their distance from—and their backs turned to—Natividad and her mother. “And no one heard anything from the study?”

  Hannibal sighed and shook his head. “The door was shut and bolted—the window shutters, too. The walls are three feet of solid adobe. From where we sat we could hear Santa Anna thundering on in the sala about how he was going to wipe the Texian rebels from the face of the earth. I doubt that if Fernando had cried out at the top of his lungs he’d have been heard.”

  He winced, sickened with pity for even a man who would almost certainly have had him killed. “But I doubt he had the breath to cry out, once the poison started to work. His face was so swollen, I’m not sure I would have recognized him if it hadn’t been for his hair and his uniform. He looked like he’d died of suffocation, mouth gaping, tongue sticking out—his hands were still tangled in his collar, one of those ghastly military ones designed to protect you from inadvertently breathing in battle. The room was quite bright. Fernando couldn’t abide what he called the ‘medieval dark’ of candle-light and had a patent Argand lamp on the desk and two more in his room; he’d brought them from Germany.”

  From somewhere in the courtyard a voice wailed in French, “The President? Here? And no one has thought to tell me this until now, now, when there is nothing to eat for dinner but that pitiful roasted deer, those wretched vols-au-vent, and only three jellies to offer! It is enough to slay oneself, to fall upon one’s sword. . . .”

  The chef, thought January. Presumably, the one who had counted on the wedding-feast to make his reputation . . .

  “How did Franz look when you spoke to him directly after supper?”

  “He didn’t look well,” said Hannibal. “But of course, for twenty-four hours he’d been trying to make sense out of Don Prospero’s financial papers, not a task I’d care to undertake sober.”

  “Consuela tells me he threatened you earlier in the day.”

  “And so he had.” Hannibal sighed and took January’s flask for another sip of brandy. “You have to understand that the day had started with Don Prospero standing stark naked in the courtyard, conversing at the top of his lungs with an invisible Jaguar-God. Don Anastasio tried to quiet him and got a mano thrown at him—one of those rock pounders that the Indian women grind corn with. By pretending to be Quetzalcoatl, I managed to get Don Prospero back upstairs and into his room, with Father Ramiro telling me all the way I should be garroted as a heretic, but that was followed almost immediately by Señora Lorcha’s attempt at a sneaky wedding—there’s a door from Natividad’s room into Don Prospero’s, and Señora Lorcha had stolen the padlock key. Fernando and his two mad-doctors arrived in time to put a stop to that, so I understand his being snappish. After supper I went to see him, quite frankly to see if he’d call off his father’s thugs long enough for me to make it back to Mexico City. I mean, he didn’t want me here, I didn’t want to be here, so it should have been possible for us to find some kind of common ground.”

  “I take it,” said Rose, “that matters did not work out that way.”

  “No,” sighed Hannibal. “No, they didn’t. You see, the amorous Valentina . . .”

  Within the sala,
a rifle cracked. The next instant, the two gentlemen in European tailcoats burst through the door and pelted toward the stairs—January noted that one was fair and tall and the other dark and awkward-looking and taller still; both had mustaches and the fair one wore a monocle. Both ran like men who had long ago concluded that it was beneath their dignity to run and had recently changed their minds and were out of practice—they collided at the top of the stairs in a shower of notebooks, pencils, and high-crowned beaver hats, and nearly scratched each other baldheaded trying to be the first one down.

  “Drs. Laveuve and Pichon,” identified Hannibal in the tone of a gamekeeper helpfully identifying various sub-species of pheasants for the uninitiated guest. “Pichon is one of the chief physicians at San Hipólito, the biggest hospital for the mad in Mexico City; Laveuve runs a private clinic for those unfortunate enough to be both wealthy and insane.”

  “Piss-scryers!” howled Don Prospero, emerging from the sala with a rifle in his hands. “Clyster-jockeys!” In the courtyard, the fleeing medicos seized the nearest horses, scrambled awkwardly to the high-cantled saddles, and spurred through the gate, followed by the laughter and shouted advice of the vaqueros. Doña Imelda’s maids and valet, emerging from their rough little travel-coach, sprang back into it for safety, and Don Rafael looked as if he wanted to join them, but Doña Imelda only drew herself up in affront, and none of the other women—Natividad, Señora Lorcha, nor Josefa—even appeared to blink.

  “I’m surprised at you, ’Stasio,” said Don Prospero mildly as Don Anastasio emerged from the sala door behind him and went to gather up the two Europeans’ dropped litter of notebooks and pencils. “Bringing in doctors to pick at me like a couple of sopilotes. You didn’t used to be so solicitous. What, you here, Antonio?” Don Prospero added as Santa Anna and his young aides came out behind Anastasio. “When did you arrive? And Conchita . . .”

  “Papa.” Consuela gestured toward January, and he advanced to the group and bowed. “This is Señor Benjamino Enero, a surgeon of the United States, appointed by the British minister to look into this matter of Fernando’s death.”

  The dictator’s dark, sharp glance took in January’s well-cut clothing, African features, and clean linen, and his dark brows arched in speculation. But Don Prospero merely waved and said, “No need for that, Conchita—though of course it is very kind of you, Señor Enero, and kind of Don Enrico Ward of England as well. But Fernando himself will tell us everything we need to know. Still, a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Señor.”

  He turned eyes of chill Pyrenean blue, the heritage of centuries of aristocratic criollo inbreeding, on January. “Did you know that the surgeons of ancient Egypt were performing cataract surgery before Moses ever marched his Israelites forth from bondage? Surgery is true medicine, true healing, unlike those imbeciles. . . .” He gestured at the dust-cloud still hanging over the court, all that was left of the two mad-doctors. “My dear,” he added as the newly arrived guests emerged from the stairway—he strode past Don Rafael and Doña Imelda as if they were invisible, to clasp Natividad’s hands. Natividad sighed—to remarkable effect, her half-bared bosoms in their fluff of black lace resembling nothing so much as a blancmange set on a plate at a wake—and glanced smokily across Don Prospero’s shoulder to meet Santa Anna’s appreciative eyes.

  “Hinojo!” bellowed Don Prospero, and a tall and surprisingly handsome major-domo appeared, clad in the fashion of the preceding century in knee-smalls, silk stockings, and a red satin coat. “Fetch out brandy to the corredor, and tell Guillenormand to prepare the boeuf marchand de vin . . . I believe it’s the marchand de vin you liked so much last time, my Eagle?” Santa Anna almost visibly fluffed his plumage at the flattering nickname. “Oh, run along, Ylario,” Don Prospero added, and made shooing gestures as the Capitán and his blue-coated men emerged from the sala. “No one wants you here pulling long faces and no one wants to hear about the Principles of Universal Law.”

  “No,” said Ylario softly, his bitter eyes going to the President of his country. “I see that clearly, Señor.”

  Santa Anna waved a gracious dismissal, as if the sun were not sinking and the fifteen supperless miles that lay between Hacienda Mictlán and the city were not haunted by bandits. Ylario bowed, but as his constables filed down the stairs and Santa Anna’s aides settled themselves on the rough chairs of Indian work to enjoy their brandy, Ylario himself walked along the shadow-barred arcade to the corner where Hannibal and Rose sat.

  January saw him stop before them, and through Don Prospero’s booming introductions as the de Bujerios ascended the stairs, he heard Ylario say to Hannibal: “Do not think that you can hide behind your patron forever, Señor. Justice will not be cheated. And you will hang.”

  Under the circumstances, one could scarcely expect dinner to be a scintillant meal, and it was not. Santa Anna, the Napoleon of the West as he modestly referred to himself a number of times, monopolized the conversation with an air of gracious condescension, speaking of his own exploits and glories—and of his upcoming march to slaughter the Norteamericano bandits disrupting the peace of Cohuila-Texas—and making sure nobody listened to anything else. The General’s young officers were clearly torn between being a reverent audience and flirting with Don Prospero’s angel-faced daughter Valentina, who did her best to distract them. She was, January guessed, sixteen, her fair hair and blue eyes attesting to pure Spanish blood. Clothed in black, with a pair of sapphire girandole earrings sparkling in the candle-light, she was seated next to the elegant Don Rafael, who graciously explained to her—and to the young officer on her other side—exactly why it was important for Mexico that the American colonists be evicted from Texas, and how much he had paid his tailor for his suit.

  “The girl will have horns on him before the dishes from their wedding-breakfast are washed,” muttered Consuela at January’s elbow. “She was flirting with the priest at her First Communion, that one.”

  In New Orleans—where he had for years earned his living playing the piano at subscription dances and private balls among the Americans, the French, and the free colored—one of January’s favorite pastimes had always been watching people. I don’t see why white folks’ business is any affair of yours, his mother would sniff—not that his mother wasn’t one of the best-informed gossips in Orleans Parish. But January was fascinated by what went on beneath the surface of all those polite exchanges: by who spoke to whom, and who snubbed whom; by glares and crossed glances and eyelids lowered above the sandalwood filigree of a fan.

  Additionally, he realized, most of these people had been present at Don Fernando’s ill-fated wedding-feast. They had seen what went on. Was it beyond the realm of possibility that one of them had found some way to slip poison into Don Fernando’s food and shift the blame onto Hannibal’s bony shoulders?

  He leaned over to Consuela. “How was the table arranged on the night of Fernando’s death?” he asked her quietly. “Who sat next to him?”

  “It was almost exactly as you see it,” she replied. “Except that Franz, not my father, was at the head. Like my father, Franz would rather have Santa Anna sit at his right than Doña Imelda, who should by rights be there—” Doña Imelda, ignored on the dictator’s right, glared smoulderingly at her host, furious at the snub, as she must have been at the wedding-banquet, too. “Santa Anna would much rather sit at my father’s right—or Franz’s, that night—than at Josefa’s right . . . as who wouldn’t?” She nodded toward the foot of the table, where Doña Josefa presided over her single small hunk of bread, her coarse black dress smelling of unwashed flesh and unhealed abrasions underneath, and her emaciated hands folded in prayer.

  So Franz had been flanked—as Don Prospero was flanked tonight—by his fiancée, Natividad Lorcha, on his left and President Santa Anna on his right. And judging by the way Doña Imelda and Josefa were glaring at the shapely young woman, he guessed that Natividad would have found it impossible to dump poison onto her intended’s plate undetected, had she s
o desired.

  The food was served à la française: turtle en croute, game-bird hash, glacéed venison à la Turque, and a dozen removes cramming the long table, from which the guests helped themselves or were helped by the servants, rather than having the food on the sideboards and a footman behind each chair. January couldn’t imagine someone at table poisoning any dish without killing at least several fellow diners as well as Fernando.

  The food was very much à la française as well: soufflés, vols-au-vent, boeuf marchand de vin, followed by Camembert cheeses and tartlets of pears and apples. Having dined marvelously at Consuela’s the night before upon an amazing variety of moles of chocolate and chilis, tamales sweet and savory, ropa vieja, and exquisitely stewed axolotl from the lakes, January could only shake his head over his host’s apparent contempt for anything that smacked of the food of the countryside. Even the penitential Doña Josefa ate white bread—albeit stale—not tortillas.

  After supper the Indian servants kindled lamps on the corredor, and lit smudges of lemongrass and gunpowder in iron cressets to discourage the mosquitoes that rose up off the lake. The women repaired to the corredor immediately, while the men remained around the table, smoking cigars and listening to Santa Anna on the subject of the perfidies of the American chargé d’affaires—“Spymaster, rather! Hounding me with petitions and protests about what is none of his business—for every one of those so-called Americans in Texas became a citizen of Mexico before he took up land! Harboring dissidents within his household and doing all he can to stir up trouble behind my back . . .”

  Hannibal, January noticed, had departed when the women did, and a few moments later he heard the sweet drift of violin music from the corredor outside, mingling with the voices of the vaqueros around their fire at the other side of the great central court, with the deeper notes of their guitars and Natividad’s light, empty-headed laughter.