Days of the Dead

by Barbara Hambly

  “Ah, yes, the tea. Those two on the end were M’sieu Franz’s—Don Fernando’s—that he brought with him from Prussia. He preferred tea to coffee—coffee made him itch, he claimed—and always bought the finest China green to drink after supper. Myself, like Don Prospero, I prefer a good cup of well-brewed coffee to such rinse-water, and Don Anastasio will have the smoked teas of Formosa. . . . The blue box contains an infusion of jasmine and rose-hips M’sieu Franz would take to settle his stomach. For a man who would flog his soldiers fifty lashes for an unshaven chin, he was like a dyspeptic grandmother about his food! Clean, he said, it must be clean—to me he said this, to me, Sacripant Guillenormand! As if in this kitchen . . . What do you want, limb of Satan?”

  Father Ramiro drew himself up with dignity in the doorway. “I come only to fetch a little water.” The priest held up a plain terracotta pitcher as evidence of his intention.

  Guillenormand watched him with wary loathing as Father Ramiro lumbered across the kitchen to one of the water-jugs beneath the purifiers on the shelf. Ramiro, for his part, glared at the cook as he filled up his jug and then departed, ostentatiously walking a wide detour around the table with its pile of pastries.

  “He came to see if I was out, that he might steal as many pastries as he could cram into his dirty sleeves,” Guillenormand muttered to January, watching the priest cross the kitchen court to the open firepits, where two women were rolling corn dough into neat balls and squeezing them flat in a sort of long-handled iron waffle-maker—the tortilla-press, January guessed, of the sort with which Consuela’s mother had cracked Don Prospero over the head. “I should have asked you, M’sieu, to begin with: would you and your lady prefer tea rather than cocoa? I cannot offer you Don Anastasio’s chamomile, of course. . . .”

  “I would not dream of asking for it,” replied January. “But yes, if you could make up a pot of M’sieu Franz’s China green, I’m sure my lady wife would much appreciate it.”

  And I’m sure I can find something in the nature of a stray kitchen-cat or a rat from the granaries, January reflected as he bore a tray, two cups, cocoa for himself, and a number of pastries back to his room, to test the tea on before Rose or I will touch it.

  The experiment might tell us something interesting.

  SIX

  “I told you the evidence was damning.” Hannibal perched tailor-fashion on the leather chest at the end of January’s bed while January searched for a place of concealment for the pot of Fernando’s tea. When he’d returned to the room, Rose had been gone, the bed made up, and the blue-and-yellow pottery slop-jar emptied and clean. Clearly the servants had been in. All he’d need, he reflected, was for Zama or Cristobál to return and sample the tea while he himself was out looking for his wife.

  “You didn’t tell me you’d been making love to the virgin daughter of the household,” he said to Hannibal.

  “That’s because I hadn’t been. Well, not very much, anyway.”

  January straightened up, tea-pot in hand, and regarded him in exasperation. The sparseness of Mexican furnishings meant, among other things, that there were very few places in which to conceal anything. The bed was high, and anything under it would be immediately visible. There wasn’t even an armoire, such as there would be in a bedchamber in New Orleans or Paris.

  “I suppose Cupid wrote those love-letters that were found on Fernando’s desk?”

  “He might have.” Hannibal poured out a cup of cocoa for himself and broke off half a pastry. “But if he did, he wrote them in truly execrable English—from which, God help me, I was fool enough to agree to translate them into Spanish. I find myself inclining these days to the prevailing local sentiment that education only addles women’s minds, but over the years Don Anastasio has managed to convince Don Prospero to have his daughters educated. It did nothing but make a novel-reader out of Isabella—and all Doña Josefa will read or permit her daughter to read are prayer-books and the lives of female saints. But Valentina has a brain in her head. I suppose somewhere, some poor American has a collection of her love-letters in my handwriting; God knows what effect that will have on my reputation. . . .”

  “Where did Valentina meet an American?” January set the pot back on the tray on the thick sill of the window and settled into the chair beside it. “I thought the virgin daughters of the household never left their courtyard unescorted.”

  “Out riding,” said Hannibal. “Like Beatrice passing through the streets of Florence with her duennas, to pierce Dante’s heart with love from afar. There was a little encounter with beggars who could have turned threatening—I gather from the vaqueros there were two on the pathway and about a dozen hidden in the rocks near-by. ‘Mi corazón’—the little minx is always careful to ink out her beloved’s name before she brings me the latest billet-doux for translation—and a couple of his norte friends rode up and turned the tide of the encounter. A few days after that she came to me with a letter to translate.”

  “Which you did.”

  “I couldn’t see the harm in it.” Hannibal licked pastry-icing off his long fingers. Down in the courtyard, Santa Anna’s men were preparing to depart, in a great confusion of trampling, shouting, jingling spurs, and dust. As he’d come past the sala on the way to his room, January had seen the dictator in conference about Army provisions with Don Prospero, Don Rafael, Doña Imelda, and Don Anastasio, and wondered if Capitán Ylario had made it back to the city unambushed, and how long it had taken for him to get past the customs barrier.

  “Which I did,” Hannibal confessed. “The more fool I. Honi soit qui mal y pense. I was still at Consuela’s flat in town—Valla begged me not to tell her. Valla slipped me the letter, I gave her the translation the next time we were here; she must have spent all night writing a reply, which I then took and translated into English.

  This wimpled, whining, purblind wayward boy,

  This senior-junior, giant-dwarf Dan Cupid;

  Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,

  The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans. . . .

  “Her shining knight of the north must have gotten her letter somehow—I have no idea how they exchange letters, but if it were me I’d have a drop-box somewhere in the hills—because the next time I came here there was another letter from him, longer but no better spelled. . . .”

  “And the correspondence flourished,” concluded January grimly. “As such correspondences will. I understand your not wanting to smirch the young lady’s name by accusing her of trading letters with a man her father almost certainly wouldn’t approve of, but since Fernando had learned already that she was exchanging love-letters with someone . . .”

  “Why didn’t I tell Fernando it wasn’t me?” Hannibal leaned back against the bedpost. Like most of the household, he was somberly dressed, his trousers and short Mexican jacket both black out of respect for the family’s grief, and a black silk scarf tied over his long hair, vaquero-fashion. “I asked Valla about it first, of course—I had deduced, from being slammed up against a wall and half-strangled, that Fernando had found the love-letters. She then assured me that she had burned the originals, and that she was prepared to swear that not only had I written all the letters to her myself, but that I had sneaked into the women’s courtyard at night and attempted to rape her. The light of love, the purity of grace / The mind, the music breathing from her face . . .”

  January said, “Hmmn.”

  “You can see why I am extremely glad that somebody showed up who at least believes me.” The fiddler fell silent for a time, chewing on a corner of his graying mustache, watching January with somber, coffee-black eyes. “Which I appreciate, by the way,” he added. “Especially as I realize that this—er—new addition to the evidence in no way lessens my motivation for killing Fernando. Or offers an alternative source of poison in the approximately three minutes between the conclusion of supper and my entry to his study, glass in hand.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” January touched the side of the
tea-pot with the backs of his fingernails. “What can you tell me about Sacripant Guillenormand?”

  Voices in the corredor. Don Prospero’s: “Their President would never dare to enter into war with Mexico, my Eagle! And the Americans themselves are few and cowardly. You have nothing to concern yourself with.”

  “I have to concern myself with that scoundrel chargé d’affaires Butler and those troublemakers he calls his secretaries. . . . Ah, my beautiful lady Rose!”

  January and Hannibal traded a glance, then both went out into the arcade, January pausing only long enough to stow the little pot of tea in the bottom of the chest, tucked carefully in with Rose’s petticoats. Gorgeous in yet another gold-laced uniform, white doeskin riding-breeches molded to his thighs like a lady’s gloves, the President bent over Rose’s hand while Natividad—who managed to be heavily veiled yet scantily covered at the same time—stood demurely at his side.

  “I have offered the escort of my men to the lovely Señora Lorcha and her daughter,” Santa Anna informed his host with the air of Socrates about to spend an evening chastely discoursing philosophy with Alcibiades in bed.

  Señora Lorcha, hovering protectively at her beautiful daughter’s back, glanced at Don Prospero to see how he’d take the news, but was disappointed. The old hacendado merely waved a careless hand. “Splendid, splendid, my dear Eagle. High time she went back to town. My dear, I trust we shall meet next week?”

  “I would love that above all things, sir,” cooed Natividad in her breathless little-girl voice. “That is . . . Mama?”

  “We shall see, child,” returned Señora Lorcha grimly, her eyes narrow with loathing. January understood: popular gossip indicated that the President went through mistresses like a rat through cheese, so the exchange of an elderly prospective husband for a questionable politician was, in the long run, probably not a profitable one.

  “Three thousand head, mind you,” said Santa Anna to Don Prospero, “and five thousand of sheep . . .” He stepped aside as two liveried footmen jostled past, carrying Natividad’s trunks, trailed by a slatternly maidservant puffing on a cigaretto. “Have the first of them at the camp by Thursday, and I’ll send the first dozen soldiers seconded to your silver mines in Catorce by the first of the month. Dare I hope I shall see you at the bull-fight Sunday? By all means do not forget the English minister’s reception on the thirtieth; I shall be retiring after that to Mango de Calva, and won’t return until it’s time to march against Texas.”

  Hannibal’s eyes widened. “Mango de Calva’s his hacienda near Vera Cruz,” he explained softly to January. “If he’s not around to back up Don Prospero . . .”

  “We’ll get to the bottom of this before then.”

  Natividad languishing on his arm, Santa Anna halted before them, inclined his head. “Good hunting, Enero,” he said. His expression was that of a man at a cock-fight, knowing that one of the contenders will be razored to pieces and no more than mildly curious to see which. “I await with interest the results of your enquiry.”

  “No more so than do I, Excellency,” responded Hannibal with a courtly bow.

  “My dear friend!” Don Prospero draped an arm around Hannibal’s shoulders as the President and his party descended to the court. “Don’t listen to Antonio, eh? What is he when all is said and done? President of Mexico? Pah! Merely a moneylender’s son! I have told you before this not to worry yourself—Fernando shall tell us what he wants done, and we shall do it.” He smiled again, like the statues of the Jaguar-God.

  As the carriage pulled out of the courtyard in a roiling of dust and clattering hooves, January, Hannibal, Rose, and Consuela returned to January’s room. “You got cocoa?” asked Rose, lifting the lid from the pot. “Zama promised to fetch me some and I last saw her engaged in what I can only hope is matrimony with one of the vaqueros.”

  “I imagine it’s stone cold.” January poured a cup for her, and another for Consuela, who was shaking dust from the folds of her midnight-blue taffeta dress.

  “You had tea also, didn’t you?” Hannibal looked around, and January sat on the lid of the chest.

  “In a manner of speaking. I just had a rather interesting conversation with Sacripant Guillenormand.”

  “I’m astounded,” retorted Consuela. “Unless you find it interesting to hear an exact account of the difficulties in obtaining fresh peas.”

  “And I,” said Rose, “have had an even more interesting conversation with young Maria-Paloma Fuentes—Doña Josefa’s daughter. It appears that young Miss Valentina has been making clandestine rendezvous with a suitor by the garden wall.”

  “Has she indeed?” remarked Hannibal. “Both she and her corazón were remarkably discreet about it in their letters—unless they wrote in some sort of code. Number of kisses equals the date, that sort of thing.”

  “You know, then?” Rose set down her cup.

  “I know she has a lover.” With an apologetic glance at Consuela, Hannibal repeated to the two women the account of his career as literary Cupid. Consuela rolled her eyes and tapped him sharply with her fan.

  “Cabeza de burro. You didn’t see her setting you up as a decoy, in case the letters were found?”

  “I’m afraid my mistrust of women is insufficiently acute. Splendide mendax et in omne virgo nobilis aevum. . . .”

  “If Valentina is such a flirt,” put in Rose reasonably, “surely there are other damsels willing to marry the—er—informative Don Rafael . . . who took time off from explaining the Texas conflict to Santa Anna last night long enough to tell me that it is not a good idea to be a woman of color living in New Orleans. Particularly if Don Prospero is so taken with the Natividads of this world. Your brother may have stopped him from repudiating his marriage to Doña Melosia on this occasion, but you know there will be others.”

  “I know it,” said Consuela grimly, “and Valla knows it—since our father does not hesitate to threaten her with it whenever she crosses his will. As for Don Rafael, Father bought up all the de Bujerio lands when Don Rafael’s father went bankrupt in 1827. He permits Don Rafael and his mother—and all his sisters and cousins and aunts—to live in their old town house in the city, but that is not so very different from one of the jacals on the edge of the village.”

  January raised his eyebrows. “And I thought my old master’s family was a nest of snakes,” he remarked.

  Consuela sipped her cocoa, made a face, then set the cup aside. Through the open door drifted the shouts of grooms and vaqueros, the musical jangle of harness and the stamping of hooves as another carriage was brought into the court: “. . . sheer, unreasonable willfulness,” trumpeted Doña Imelda’s voice from the corredor. Skirts rustled and two women passed the window, pacing along the arcade, Doña Josefa in her unwashed black gown like the gorgeously-clothed Doña Imelda’s shadow: “I search my daughter’s room as a matter of duty to her. . . .”

  “Of course! Why Valla should put up such a fuss . . . but there! She has never had the discipline a girl requires. The possession of trinkets is only a temptation to sin. It is good training to be reminded that the soul possesses nothing, not even itself.”

  “You are truly a saint, my dear Josefa.”

  No wonder Fernando demanded the corner room with locks on its doors, January reflected.

  “How I envy your daughter, Doña Imelda! Every time I hear of the preparations for her entry into the convent, my heart swells to bursting with longing.”

  “Now, that is only natural.” Doña Imelda’s voice, blaring as a regimental band, purred with satisfaction. “The Bleeding Heart is the most exclusive convent in town. I’ve heard the Incarnation is accepting just anyone these days. You will come to the ceremony, won’t you?”

  “If my father will permit.” The hate in Josefa’s voice was as clear as if she had spat upon his name. “What can one expect from a man who . . .”

  Their voices faded, leaving a stain upon the silence of the room.

  “Madness has a way of spreading in famili
es,” said Rose at length. “I don’t mean that the children inherit weak minds, necessarily. But everyone’s behavior twists to accommodate the conduct of one member, like beaten horses that shy if a stranger so much as lifts his hand. Things that would be unthinkable elsewhere seem normal. One must either go mad oneself, or flee.”

  Hannibal said softly, “Or both.”

  “Or both,” Rose agreed. “In any case, Paloma says that on the night of the wedding-feast she slipped out of her bedroom while her mother was praying, and sat in the shadows of the ladies’ courtyard by the gate, listening to Hannibal play. She loves your playing,” she added, glancing across at the fiddler. “If nothing else, you’ve brought the poor child great joy.”

  “I’m glad,” replied Hannibal. “I honestly am. But I regret to say that given the choice of being triced up on the stable gate and flogged to death by Fernando, or being hanged for his murder, I’d sooner have sent Paloma joy post-paid from Mexico City.”

  “I cannot,” Rose sighed, “find it in me to argue with you. On the evening of the eighth of September, Paloma heard a man whistle on the far side of the wall, and peeked out of her hiding-place in time to see Valla climb the grapevines that cover that wall—they’re centuries old and some of the stems are as big around as a man’s leg. . . .”

  “O wall, full often thou hast heard my moans,

  For parting my fair Pyramus and me,

  My cherry lips have often kissed thy stones. . . .”

  Rose picked up Consuela’s fan and tapped Hannibal sharply. “According to Paloma, this isn’t the only meeting she’s witnessed. The most recent one, she says, was ten or twelve days ago: St. Bridget’s day, which her mother celebrated with an all-night vigil of prayer because St. Bridget was a widow. I asked Paloma what the tune was that the rider whistles; she said it was this.”