Days of the Dead

by Barbara Hambly

  “Well, if Helen’s husband was always going on about people in stories, or having conversations with gods or with the flowers in the vases, I’m not surprised she left him. Did you find who really killed Fernando? Or at least did you get poor Hannibal out of there and safely on a boat? Because I know he can’t have killed Fernando. He wouldn’t do such a terrible thing.” Her brown eyes filled with tenderness, and January wondered exactly what her relations with Hannibal had been. He decided not to ask.

  “In fact,” said January, “there may be the possibility that Fernando’s death was an accident. That’s why it is imperative that I speak to President Santa Anna before he leaves tonight.”

  Her eyes and her mouth made a succession of perfectly round O’s. “You mean someone gave him poison by mistake?”

  “Something like that,” January said. “I’m not sure yet. Was there anything—any sort of common food—that Fernando couldn’t eat? That made him very sick?”

  “Oh, everything!” The young woman rolled her expressive eyes. “He wouldn’t eat aubergines because they gave him indigestion—the one time poor Señor Guillenormand served them, Fernando was up half the night moaning, with Werther running back and forth with cups of tisane and threatening to beat Señor Guillenormand, and Don Prospero saying he would shoot them if they as much as touched his cook. And strawberries gave him a rash. And if the sugar wasn’t white enough—it had to be scraped off the very outside of the loaf—he would have the migraine. Myself, I couldn’t imagine him leading soldiers anywhere where he couldn’t have his own cook and Werther running after him with steam kettles and lavender water. Not like . . . well, not like the President, for instance.”

  She cast down her painted eyes shyly and January knew that whosever arm she’d come in on, it was with Santa Anna that she would leave.

  “But had Fernando ever been really sick? Deathly sick?”

  She frowned, puzzled, then nodded uncertainly. “Yannamaria told me when he was a little boy, before he went to Germany, he used to have choking fits when he got very angry, or sometimes for no reason at all. Is that what you mean? Once it was so severe, they were terrified that he’d die, and Isabella stayed up all night, praying for him. Poor little boy.” She frowned, and toyed with her fan, her exquisite face looking suddenly very Indian in repose. “It isn’t kind to say so, but I’m glad I don’t have to marry him, no matter what Mama says about needing the money. And the President”—her eyes glowed softly as she spoke his title—“is very kind. Kinder than Don Prospero.”

  “I’m sure he is,” agreed January, still watching the scrum around Santa Anna the way Juan the coachman watched the traffic on the Calle San Francisco, waiting for a momentary hole. “The night of Fernando’s death, did he have any quarrel that you know about with Señorita Valentina? Or to your knowledge, did anyone see a stranger near the casco, an intruder?”

  “No.” Natividad shook her head, all the diamonds flashing in her hair. “Other than Valentina’s lover, you mean? I don’t think Fernando knew about him,” she added, seeing January’s startled expression. “Oh, please don’t tell Prospero—Don Prospero,” she corrected herself hastily, “or poor Don Rafael, or . . . or anyone. I think it was too bad of her to encourage Hannibal to write love-letters to her at the same time. She might have broken his heart!”

  January privately reflected that a broken heart was not what Hannibal was likely to have gotten out of any relationship with Valentina, but held his peace. “Do you happen to know if anyone encountered this lover of hers that night? Werther, for instance?”

  “Werther.” The girl made a face. “He wouldn’t have, because he sat the whole evening in Fernando’s room, waiting for him. I know, because I could see him through the doorway from where I was sitting. I was cold and wanted to get my shawl out of my room, but I . . . I didn’t want to walk past the door when Werther was looking out. He . . . he was so mean sometimes.”

  January wondered whether it would comfort her to know that Werther had been paid—at least a little bit—for some of his meanness.

  “Señor Enero?”

  January turned, to see Sancho signaling to him from in back of the crowd around the door.

  He bowed over Natividad’s hand, then made his way, with some difficulty, to where the footman stood. “This came for you this afternoon.” Sancho held out a single sheet of paper, folded neatly into a letter and sealed. January recognized Hannibal’s writing.

  “This afternoon? I was there two hours ago.”

  “It was enclosed in a letter for the Señora Montero,” said the man apologetically. He contrived, even in his best crimson livery with ruffles at his chin, to look a little feral, like a bandit in a not-very-convincing disguise. “The Señora did not return from the de Bujerios’ until an hour ago. She said it was important. . . .”

  The seals were cracked. Of course Consuela had read it. But standing beside the sconces on the landing to peruse the enclosed tale of escape attempts, assault, and strange intruders in the night, January hoped that even as he read, she was organizing horses and saddles for a fast ride to Mictlán. “Thank you,” he said, and handed Sancho a coin. “Please ask Juan to bring the carriage around.”

  No hope in getting to Santa Anna, not without violating every canon of the etiquette by which these people lived, and the hour or so of maneuvering that it would take might cost Hannibal his success in getting clear of Mictlán. With luck they’d arrive at the Saragosse ruins before the vaqueros ran him to earth, and be able to get him clear of the place before Don Prospero’s return.

  He swam through the crowd again toward Rose and Natividad. He glimpsed Don Prospero as he passed: the hacendado was still standing beside Santa Anna, but with everyone crowding around the Generalissimo trying to get his attention, no one was paying particular heed to the old man. There was a discontented glint in his eye, a restless anger in the way he looked about him, and January remembered Consuela saying, God forbid the bride should have more attention paid to her on her wedding-eve than he. . . .

  Natividad’s slim waist was now encircled by the green satin arm of the young Major Cuchero. Momentarily abandoned, Rose was looking around the room as if searching for someone. When January came up beside her, she looked up at him and said softly, “Ylario’s left.”

  “Damn. When?”

  “I don’t know. I was just thinking, that as long as Don Prospero is here in town for the night, tonight and tomorrow might be an ideal time—”

  “—to get Hannibal out of there.” January handed her Hannibal’s letter. “If Ylario gets him now, he’s a dead man—I’m not sure Don Prospero would bother to come into town after him if it would involve sitting in the customshouse line to get through the gate. I’ve sent for the horses; we can—”

  “You are a scoundrel, sir!” bellowed the harsh voice of Mr. Hale over an explosion of uproar around Santa Anna and his entourage. “A liar and a rogue! We are not Mexicans, but Texians!”

  “By your oaths you are citizens of Mexico!” returned Santa Anna above an almost indescribable din of shouting in Spanish, French, English, and Italian. “And as such you are traitors and spies! Arrest them!”

  “You have no right . . . !” shouted Butler, striding toward the President at the same moment that Hale yelled, “You dare call me traitor!” And he lunged at Santa Anna’s throat. Dillard and Butler grabbed Hale’s arms as Santa Anna’s aides closed in around them—the President’s hand went to the ceremonial sword at his side, and for a moment January thought he was going to go after the men himself. January grabbed Rose by the wrist and tried to thrust his way past the whole boiling mess to the door, but at that moment Don Prospero—who had bowed to Natividad when first he’d come into the room—now caught sight of her and the handsome Cuchero and reacted as if he had just seen her for the first time.

  “Whore!” he screeched, wrenching the sword from the President’s hand. “Trojan hussy! Traitoress!” He threw himself at the young woman, who—precipitately aban
doned by her escort—dodged behind January, clinging to his coat and screaming while the bodyguards shoved and struggled to follow the retreating Texians. “I have witnessed your harlotries, Tlazolteotl—I, the Jaguar-God, the avenger!”

  January caught Don Prospero’s wrist, and though his own strength was tremendous, the madman’s made nothing of it; it was, for an instant, terrifyingly reminiscent of the shrieking young lunatic at San Hipólito. The old man was howling “The Jaguar-God will be avenged!” while Rose hustled Natividad toward the nearest door. Natividad dropped her fan en route and darted back for it—January thought Rose was going to slap her, for Don Prospero nearly twisted out of his grip and hurled himself at the saffron-clothed beauty. January succeeded in wrenching the sword from Don Prospero’s hand only moments before the Graf, Sir Henry, the papal nuncio, and several assorted Colonels swarmed over the enraged hacendado. Staggering free, January made for the door, sword still in hand, and was seized from both sides by Santa Anna’s bodyguards.

  “Not so fast, Norte. . . .”

  There wasn’t a Texian in the room.

  NINETEEN

  “This is an outrage!” thundered January in the most upper-class Spanish he could muster. “I am an agent of the British minister . . . !”

  One of the guards who was shoving him along the Paseo de Bucareli hooted with laughter. “Tell me another, Zambo!”

  “Yes, and those other greigo swine are all agents of the American minister,” snarled the guard at his other side, but the sergeant in charge of the party took a closer look at January’s well-cut clothing and clean linen by the jolting torchlight.

  To him January said, “If you will look in the right-hand pocket of my coat, you will find the minister’s letter of authorization.”

  The lancer on that side released January’s manacled arm and groped under the tail of his coat for the pocket—not easy, since the squad pushing him along the street didn’t halt. It was early in the evening by Mexican standards, not yet one in the morning, and the Paseo de Bucareli was alive with carriages, riders, stray soldiers from the camp, and the inevitable léperos, whining for alms or warily looking out of the candle-lit darkness of the pulquerias to watch the guards and their prisoner pass by.

  The lancer pulled out Sir Henry’s letter and January’s purse of money, both of which the sergeant snatched. He held the letter over by the nearest lancer’s torchflame and studied it far too quickly to read what it said, but at least, January hoped, he would recognize the seal of the lion and the unicorn. Then he shoved it—and the purse—into his own pocket. “We’ll see about that,” he said.

  “Señor . . . !” Corporal Rios was in charge of the watch-room, and came out into the stone-flagged gate-passage as the lancers shoved January toward the iron gates at its end.

  “You know this one?” the sergeant demanded.

  “I do, sir. He came this morning, on business from the British minister.”

  The sergeant studied January again, clearly gauging the amount of tip implied by Rios’s reverent air. “Take him upstairs, then. After tonight the British minister’s lucky he isn’t spending the night here, too.”

  The moon had set. As they crossed the dim, star-lit pavement of the yard, some of the men huddled in the shadows raised their heads; most slept two and three together, under their combined serapes for warmth. The torchlight touched others, crumpled in the corners, without those striped Indian-weave blankets that so many men wore like cloaks—the fate of those who have no one to guard their backs.

  Then they climbed the stone steps to the upper gallery, and January wondered if he’d end up sharing a cell with Werther Bremer.

  “Can I fetch you anything, Señor?” asked Rios as he unbarred an iron-strapped wooden door halfway along the gallery. He held the torch inside and a rat went whipping away into a crack. Neither of the two men dozing there—strangers to January, but each with his own blanket and both better dressed than the men in the yard—so much as stirred.

  “A blanket,” said January, though he knew he wouldn’t sleep. Nights on the high Mexican plateau were cold.

  Rose would come in the morning, if she hadn’t been arrested herself. He hadn’t seen her as the sword had been wrenched from his hand. Everything had happened so fast—being slammed against the wall by Santa Anna’s lancers, his wrists bound behind him, being thrust down the stairs. Corporal Rios unlocked the manacles and even dipped a little bow as he departed; January wondered whether Rose would be able to see Santa Anna—dear God, he was leaving for Vera Cruz later in the morning!

  Sir Henry would be able to do something, he told himself, his heart beginning to pound hard. Von Winterfeldt would be able to do something. At the very least, Sancho would carry word to Consuela and she would take the necessary steps to get him—and possibly Rose—out of prison. He wouldn’t be left here, as so many of the native Mexicans were, for weeks and months, waiting for the alcalde to hear his case. . . .

  But even a day would be too late for Hannibal.

  Damn it, he thought desperately, pacing the two strides that took him from one side of the cell to the other, then the two strides back. DAMN it . . . !

  Pounding on the door would only get him off to a bad start with his cell-mates, whom he might have to deal with in a few hours—in the worst case, perhaps for a day, or two days. . . .

  Virgin Mary, please don’t let it be two days. . . .

  Rios came with a blanket, thick and warm and not even particularly buggy. January thanked him—“I will not forget”—and settled down to wait, wrapping himself as he sat in the corner farthest from the one the rat had disappeared into, as the torchlight faded again from the judas-hole, leaving the cell in pitch-darkness. At least, he reflected, he wouldn’t have to worry about being quietly sold to slave-dealers, something that occasionally happened to those free men of color in the smaller town jails in Louisiana if they were unfortunate enough not to have families on hand to bail them out.

  Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. . . . January dug in his pocket, felt the chipped blue beads of his rosary, like the promise of daylight in darkness. Pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death.

  Somewhere bells struck two.

  Get me the hell out of here.

  The wary skitter of rat-feet whispered in the dark.

  Bells struck three.

  Torchlight. Boots, and the fat, unshaven sergeant’s voice, then the grate of the bolt in its sockets. “All has been regularized, Señor.” The sergeant even bowed. “Your servants are waiting for you at the gate. We hope you have not been inconvenienced. . . .”

  January’s purse was considerably lighter when the sergeant handed it—and the letter of introduction—back, but he gave the man a peso nevertheless, and Rios another—and slipped him a third when the sergeant turned to lead him down the gallery stairs.

  January almost didn’t recognize Rose, standing in the torchlit dark of the gate passage. She wore a vaquero’s leather knee-breeches and a striped serape like a muleteer’s, her spectacles flashing under the wide brim of a leather hat. “I got a few of your things from Consuela’s but we must ride fast. The gates at the causeways are still shut, but Cristobál says he can lead us through the marshes and around to pick up the Chapultepec causeway.”

  In the torchlight January recognized Sancho, more bandit-like than ever with a cigar at a jaunty angle and a couple of rifles slung on his back.

  “Santa Anna was still trying to smooth Don Prospero’s feathers—I didn’t dare bring up Hannibal’s status for fear of setting him off,” went on Rose as their horses wound their way from the Paseo—still lively with homebound revelers—into the night-black barrios that ringed the town. “But I did get a pardon for you. Even if we can’t meet Hannibal at Saragosse, we can probably intercept Ylario on his way back to town with him. It’s too much to hope that Hannibal was able to get away.”

  Stars powdered the sky above the low black shoulders of those crowding hovels, but no trace o
f its fragile light penetrated the alleys below. January was conscious of scufflings and whisperings in that darkness, like the rats in the cell he’d just left: “Rifles . . . four of them . . . they have horses . . . no, too many for us . . .”

  Then the stinks of privies and sties lessened, and the oozing ground underfoot gave way to the wider gleams of water. In the starscape of ink and silver, it was impossible to tell where firm tussocks became beds of reeds; Cristobál lit one of the lanterns he carried on his saddle, but even with his guidance January and the others frequently ended up hip-deep in brackish mud that reeked of sewage going back to Montezuma’s day. At least, January reflected, there weren’t crocodiles to contend with, though the mosquitoes were bad enough. Far to the south, an edge of snow marked the breast of Popocatepetl, and above it, a thin plume of smoke veiled the stars.

  Even when they reached the tree-lined causeway at the aqueduct’s feet, and passed the stench of the army camps beneath the shadow of Chapultepec Hill, their progress was slow. Though he knew that the absolute darkness that kept them all to a walk would likewise keep any bandit company in its lair, January strained his ears for the beat of hooves, the clatter of tack that would tell him that El Moro and his cohorts were on hand and they’d have to fight. The four of them might have been too much for the unarmed léperos of the barrios, but against outlaws he knew they wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Once light began to stain the sky, they picked up speed. Ylario, too, would have been slowed by the darkness, but he had a long start on them, and January now strained his eyes over the harsh roll of the deforested landscape, seeking the sight of a plume of dust that would speak of riders coming back toward the city. They found the ruined storage building across the stream from the village of Saragosse but saw no sign that Hannibal had ever arrived there. Riding on, they passed Indians with their burros, coming into the wakening town with baskets of marigolds whose butterscotch hue flamed like the music of trumpets in the early light.