Days of the Dead

by Barbara Hambly

  Hinojo and the foreman Vasco appeared with a haggard and ghostly Hannibal between them: “You should be more grateful, eh?” chided Don Prospero with a glaring smile but an unmistakable edge of hardness in his tone. He prodded Hannibal playfully in the chest. “Instead of Guillenormand’s veal à la Reine, you could be eating stale tortillas in the yard of La Accordada prison. Now, tell me if you don’t think tales of that strumpet Helen of Troy parallel exactly the conduct of Xochiquetzal . . . ?”

  Although swaying with exhaustion and opium-laced brandy, Hannibal exerted himself to be charming at dinner (“It’s obvious Menelaus married Helen only for her dowry—she’d probably been waiting for years to show him that nobody treated her that way and got away with it. Helen would have run off with Thersites if he’d had the wits to sing her a love-song. . . .”) and after dinner played the gentle gavottes and old Scots ballads that seemed to bring the Don the only relaxation his furious mind was capable of grasping.

  What will your mother say, Pretty Peggy-o?

  What will your mother say, Pretty Peggy-o?

  What will your mother say when she finds you’ve gone away

  To places far and strange to Fennario-o?

  January borrowed a guitar from one of the vaqueros and joined him in the lively contradanses and the strange old Irish planxties that seemed to be woven of starlight.

  “Stay here, Enero.” Don Prospero removed the cigar from his mouth and regarded January with deep approval. “The violin alone is the song of the gods, but accompanied . . . Paradise itself! I will have Hannibal play for los niños in the cemetery on the first night of the feast, when all go to the churchyard to make music. . . .”

  “Like Compair Lapin,” smiled January, but he watched Don Prospero’s face as he said it. “Brother Rabbit.”

  There was no reaction, no flicker of guilt, only a shaken head and an inquiring look: “It is a story of my people,” January told Prospero. “Compair Lapin once took his fiddle to the churchyard at a place called Red Hill, and played the dead up out of their graves, so that they danced on the hillside in the starlight. His music was so wild and so beautiful—and his power so great—that the angels came down from Heaven to dance, and all the beasts of the earth came also, and ringed the hill with song. Then the Devil himself came up out of the ground, and had to dance, and couldn’t stop dancing. Compair Lapin wouldn’t let him stop dancing, but played on and on, until the Devil swore to leave Compair Lapin and all his family in peace forever.

  “And after the Devil swore, they all danced for the joy of it in the Red Hill Churchyard until the sun came up, and the angels fled away into the sky, embarrassed at what they’d tell God about where they’d been all night, and the dead sank away back into the earth, and the Devil went home to Hell with sore feet.”

  Don Prospero laughed out loud at this, and Hannibal played a strange trace of some ancient tune, like wind through bones.

  “At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow

  Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise,

  From death, you numberless infinities

  Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go.”

  “Even so,” said the Don. “Like your Compair Lapin—your little Fray Tochtli—I beg you, at least remain until the Feast of the Dead. You will keep the feast with me, and play the dead up out of the ground—maybe even make my Fernando dance, eh? I’d like to see that.”

  “I am desolated to be forced to turn down such an offer,” said January, leaning his arm over the slender waist of the guitar. “But Señora Montero is pledged to return to town tomorrow, to rehearse for the opera in which she will be singing. I have agreed to assist her with my playing.”

  “She doesn’t need you. I’ll tend to her.” The old man spoke as if Consuela weren’t sitting three feet away, on the bench with Don Rafael, who kept depositing bits of current events and information about his hacienda at her feet like a dog hopeful of favorable notice. January wondered if it would be possible to get out of this place tomorrow before Don Prospero found some means of making him stay.

  “I suppose if we were really sensible, we’d steal a couple of horses tonight,” he said later when he and Rose followed Hannibal back to his room and stillness descended on the casco.

  “It would do you no good.” Hannibal dropped down onto the bed as if someone had cut the strings that kept him on his feet, and fished under the pillow for another bottle of laudanum. “I’ve tried it. Vasco and his minions keep a close watch over the corrals. . . . Where’er yon fires ascend, the Trojans wake, and one is only watched more closely later. In your case I doubt the American chargé d’affaires, Mr. Butler, would raise much of a fuss if Don Prospero put you in chains: he’d think it only natural. Did you find any trace of the fatal tea-cup?”

  January shook his head. “Which in itself is odd, I think. We did find this. . . .” He held up the green-bound ledger he’d taken from Fernando’s desk. “Fernando’s expenses since June, not only in pesos and dollars but in thalers, silbergrosschen, and friedrichsdor uniforms, boots from London, horses—he seemed to prefer Hanoverian warmbloods to the local stock. . . .”

  “I’d prefer a well-raised Swiss goat to the local stock myself.”

  “—a rather stingy salary to someone named Laurent. . . .”

  “His French cook, back at the town house on the Calle San Francisco. God knows what became of him. Fernando had as little use for the local cuisine as his father does.” Hannibal held up his glass of sherry and carefully dripped laudanum into the golden liquid. “And I can tell you that leaving the carved-out hearts of small livestock in people’s rooms is no local magic that I ever heard of.”

  “I didn’t think so,” January agreed. “There was no writing or symbols around it, as you’ll find in nearly any gris-gris I know; no salt or ashes, not even any blood dripped in the cage. I’d be curious to know what was done with the carcass. . . .”

  “Don’t stay around to look.” Hannibal’s eyes, sunken in hollows of bruised-looking flesh, were deadly grave. “I’ll search, and let you know somehow. Whatever it means, I suspect that like Macbeth’s dinner-guests, standing not upon the order of your going is your best course of action. I’m sorry now I even wrote to you—a momentary attack of panic on my part. I never for the world thought . . .”

  January stepped over to the bed and laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We’ll get you out,” he said gently, answering, not Hannibal’s words, but the fear that lurked in his eyes. Hannibal glanced up at him, and January saw, behind the fear in those coffee-black depths, naked despair.

  Then Hannibal looked away and said lightly, “Of course you will, amicus meus.” The lilt of the well-bred Irish gentry was stronger now in his voice, with tiredness and drink. “But best you get yourselves clear of the mess first.”

  “Of course we’ll get you out.” Rose said it briskly. “Benjamin, at the very least you can come up with one of those mysterious drugs one hears of that counterfeit death in all its particulars, so we can smuggle him out in a coffin. . . .”

  “Don Prospero will begin to be suspicious when I don’t put in an appearance on All Souls.”

  “By then you’ll be long gone.”

  “Contrary to Mr. Shakespeare and any number of operas and novels,” sighed January, “—not to mention, I am told, a thriving market in patent coffins that can be opened from inside by the twitch of a lever—in all my medical experience I have yet to encounter a poison that reliably induces coma. The closest I’ve ever heard of is belladonna, and I assure you, you wouldn’t like it.”

  Hannibal smiled faintly. “Another illusion shattered.”

  Outside, Don Prospero’s voice lifted angrily: “. . . my land and I can do as I please!” January had no idea to whom he was speaking—possibly Consuela, though the singer had gone to her room before Hannibal was finished with his playing. Possibly to no one at all. The torches along the corredor had burned themselves out, and the moon had set; the Don’s voice came de
ep and harsh out of the utter darkness.

  “Think yourself ill-done-by, I’ll wager. All women do. Don’t know when you’re well off, my girl! The King of the Toltecs sent his daughter to the Aztecs as a hostage to ensure their good behavior—a fair trade if I do say so—you’re lucky I haven’t done as much. They skinned her.” His voice rang with satisfaction on the words. “When the King came back to speak to their ambassadors, the High Priest was wearing her skin.”

  There was no reply, but in January’s mind he heard the echo of Don Anastasio’s voice: It might be best to get Hannibal out of here before Don Prospero comes back with what he thinks his son is going to tell him. . . .

  He wondered what voice Don Prospero might be hearing in his mind, and what it was telling him.

  “Well,” said Hannibal into the silence, “that’s certainly one that even Euripides never came up with.”

  January slept uneasily, and dreamed of flight across those hot yellow lands under the burning eye of the sun—the Smoking Mirror—pursued by a gaunt, brown-faced priest, clothed in the rotting skin of a girl. In the morning he rose with the tinny clank of the chapel bell and packed his trunk, then went down to the stables to make sure that Consuela’s coachman Juan was in fact putting to the horses as he had been ordered, to be ready for departure at first light.

  He wasn’t, nor did Consuela herself, dabbing marmalade onto a delicate croissant roll in the sala, appear to be in the slightest haste: “Those lazy conchudos in the stables are just trying to figure out which strap goes into which buckle. The coach will be along.” She looked sleek and well pleased with herself, and there was a love-bite on her neck; January wondered whose.

  He emerged from the sala, wondering how early Don Prospero would be up and about and if he and Rose might be able to leave on horseback unmolested, and was met by the small black-clad form of the boy Casimiro, who rose from one of the leather-covered benches with a ludicrously tiny white dog in his arms. “Señor Enero?” asked the boy, and January bowed. “Is it true what my Uncle ’Stasio says, that you’re a physician?”

  “I’m a surgeon,” said January, “but I’ve studied medicine as well.” He squatted and held out his hand for the little dog to sniff.

  “Do you know about insane people? This is Pequeña,” he added, bending to stroke the dog’s snowy head. “She’s my Aunt Valentina’s dog, but Valla doesn’t care for her much. I feed her. Did Uncle ’Stasio send for you, to tell if Grandfather is insane?”

  He glanced worriedly over his shoulder as he spoke, down into the courtyard in the direction of the chapel, where, January guessed, his mother was still at early Mass. Then he lowered his voice and whispered, “Did you really have a rabbit in your room?”

  “Did you find one?” asked January softly, and the boy nodded, his dark eyes big. “Where?”

  “Out by the kitchen. Yesterday before supper.” The boy sat again on the leather-covered bench, and January took a seat beside him. Casimiro was thin, like his sister, Paloma. January hoped Guillenormand was managing to slip Josefa’s children a little extra food while their mother was occupied with her prayers.

  “Pequeña had got out, and I went to look for her, because she could be hurt by the big dogs in the stables. The stable dogs had just found the rabbit; they hadn’t torn it up, so I could see . . .” The child shivered. “I ran and got Uncle ’Stasio and he gave it to one of his own vaqueros to bury, and he said to me, ‘Don’t pay any attention to this. But tell me at once if you should ever find another like it.’ And he looked angry, with his mouth all hard, not looking at me at all.”

  January nodded and laid a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You’ve never found anything like it before?”

  Casimiro shook his head.

  “Does it frighten you when your grandfather has his spells?”

  “A little. Mama says God struck Grandfather mad for reading about the devils of the Indians, and that’s why he’s a heretic. But God wouldn’t punish a man for being a heretic if he became one only because he was mad. Would he?”

  “I don’t know,” said January. “I wouldn’t think so, because God is wiser than any human being, and understands all the reasons people do what they do. But I don’t know.”

  For a time Casimiro thought about that, gently stroking Pequeña’s bat-like ears. There were smudges of sleeplessness beneath the boy’s eyes, and January wondered if he, too, dreamed about Indian priests clothed in the flayed skin of children.

  “Do you know what happens to—well—what happens to—to people’s families when they get locked up for being insane?” asked the boy hesitantly. “I mean, if—if something were to happen to my mother and sister . . .”

  “You mean if they go into a convent?”

  Casimiro nodded, his pale little face calm as ivory but the wretchedness showing in his eyes.

  “Is that what would happen if your grandfather were to be insane?”

  “Oh, yes. Uncle ’Stasio says I could stay with him—would I? When Uncle Damiano and Luis were alive, I was going to go live with them. But then they died, and Uncle Fernando said I’d have to go to military school in Germany the way he did. . . .” His voice shook a little, and he clung tighter to the dog, who licked his chin with a long pink tongue. “My mother cursed him, and swore she’d never let him make me do that. But if she went into the convent she couldn’t do anything about it. She might not even know. They don’t let them have visitors there, and they can talk to people only once a month through a barred window and maybe not even then, and they have to wear crowns of iron spikes on their heads so the blood runs down into their hair. I’m glad . . . it isn’t a good thing to say, but—maybe it was God who made Uncle Fernando die so I wouldn’t have to go to military school? So I could go live with Uncle ’Stasio?”

  January was silent, turning the matter over in his mind. At length he said, “Again, Maître Casimiro, I don’t know—and I can’t know—why God has things happen the way they do. All we can do is thank Him for His gifts to us, even the ones we don’t understand or like.”

  Casimiro nodded—the concept of receiving incomprehensible or unpleasant gifts from God was evidently not a new one to him—and he leaned closer to January, glancing behind him at the sala’s open doors. In a whisper he asked, “Did Grandfather kill the rabbit?”

  “What’s that brat doing here?” Don Prospero slammed open the doors of his study and stepped into the corredor. He was dressed for riding, and his long white hair lay on his shoulders like a lion’s mane. “The woman’s turning both those children into impossible mealy-mouthed hypocrites—can’t stand brats around. Tlaloc had the right idea. His priests killed them and ate them, and every tear they shed was another raindrop that would nourish the cornfields. All they’re good for.”

  January opened his mouth to protest, but Casimiro had already slipped away like a little dark ghost, hugging Pequeña to his breast.

  “You need to see the Temple of Huitzilopochtli.” Don Prospero jabbed a finger at January. “There’s a truly amazing one at Nemictiliztli Mountain, near the foot of the Chalco pass. Nearly unspoiled, because of the cliffs all around it. You need a rope to get up to it. Simply incredible reliefs. The altar’s still standing. I’ll have the men bring along torches—it’s only twenty miles or so, but it may be dusk before we get back. . . .”

  At twenty miles away—with cliffs of unknown height but whose steepness required a rope—it would be black dark and late when they returned after a day’s exhaustion. Tactfully, January answered, “Thank you, I truly appreciate the offer, Don Prospero. But they’re just bringing our carriage. . . .” He breathed a prayer that this was in fact true.

  “Consuela can rehearse on her own,” retorted the Don cheerfully. “You really must see the reliefs in the temple. I’m having Vasco saddle horses for you now. But you’ll have to hurry and change. . . . Here, you!” he called to Cristobál, just emerging from January’s room with the trunk on one shoulder as—thank God—Consuela’s carriage rat
tled into the courtyard. “You put that back! Your master isn’t going anywhere.”

  “I’ll certainly come with you, with your permission.” Hannibal stepped out of his room, deftly halting his host halfway to the courtyard stair, where Cristobál stood, trunk on shoulder, waiting for orders. Given the strain of climbing the pyramids the day before—not to speak of the amount of brandy and laudanum he’d consumed at night—he looked chalky and ill, but his light voice was fluent as ever. “I’ve been meaning to ask you if there were any decent reliefs of Huitzilopochtli to study; I’m curious about your theory that there was, in fact, communication with the ancient Greeks that would show itself in similar artistic motifs.”

  “Really?” Don Prospero’s eyes glittered, fascinated.

  “It isn’t inconceivable that Greek mariners could have made the passage,” said Hannibal. “In Wolff’s Prologomena ad Homerum . . .”

  He took Don Prospero by the embroidered sleeve and guided him back to his study; January, without wasting a second, strode quickly and noiselessly to his own room, where Rose was just finishing strapping up her boxes. He gestured to her imperatively, and Rose, bless her perceptive heart, responded without a sound.

  As he escorted her to the stair past the open door of Don Prospero’s study—with Cristobál silently following—January caught Hannibal’s eye; the fiddler winked. January didn’t even want to think what kind of punishment his friend was letting himself in for with a forty-mile ride, plus cliffs that had proven formidable enough to discourage even the Conquistadores.

  For a miracle, Consuela was packed also, and Zama and Pepita were both awake, dressed, and where they could be located. Only when the trunks were strapped up and the carriage had been driven through the gates did January, Rose, and Consuela ascend again to the study to take leave of their host.

  Don Prospero, deep in the comparison of half a dozen stone and terracotta statues lined in a row on his desk, only waved impatiently at his guests’ farewells: “Good to have seen you, good to have seen you. . . . Hinojo! Have the boys saddle Don Rafael’s horse! And get him awake and dressed. He’ll come with us,” he confided to Hannibal, who was perched on a corner of the desk like a ghost trying to get up enough strength to haunt the house. “Do him good. Valla, too, and that worthless duenna of hers—never heard a woman whine so much in my life.”