Days of the Dead

by Barbara Hambly

  From the brush he whistled the first two bars of “Eine Kleine Nachtmüsik” and she turned, smiling, as he stepped from cover just enough to be seen.

  “Thank God you’re safe.” Rose wore the vaquero gear she’d had on for the ride out to Mictlán. “I thought you’d make for . . .”

  She broke off as January strode across the clearing and caught her in his arms with almost brutal ferocity, his lips taking hers as if the act of kissing could negate peril, fate, and death. Her mouth tasted of dust and sweat. “How did you get out?”

  “I faked a faint,” said Rose, “when everyone came barging into our room and the shooting started.” She didn’t sound in the least afraid.

  “What the hell was going on?”

  “My darling, if I had the slightest idea of that, I’d have been able to do something other than flee like a scared mouse the moment everyone’s eyes were off me. I know perfectly well you didn’t murder the cook.”

  “Murder the cook?” January stared at her, aghast. And then, despite shock and horror and bafflement, his sense of the ridiculous pinked him like an impish fencer and he clapped his hand over his mouth to keep from laughing. “No wonder Don Prospero was outraged!”

  Rose chuckled, too, shaking her head, and tightened her arm around his ribs. “Of course. He keeps his own son’s killer on hand to play picquet with him, but touch one hair of his cook’s head . . . Poor Guillenormand!”

  “What happened?”

  She made a gesture of despair. “The shooting waked me—the shooting and Don Prospero screaming Assassin! I reached the door, wrapped in the bedsheet, just in time to see the whole boiling of them—Prospero, Anastasio, Don Rafael, Father Ramiro, and six vaqueros—come barging along the corredor toward our room. They burst in, all shouting at once. Father Ramiro yelled, ‘See, there is blood!’ and pointed to the chest in the corner. Don Anastasio found the key for it on the windowsill and they opened it. Your shirt and jacket were there—the ones you had put out to be cleaned . . .”

  “Which anyone could have picked up . . .”

  “. . . along with a sack of money. . . .”

  “What?”

  “Don’t ask me.” She shrugged. “I know only what they pulled out. It was quite a substantial sack, and heavy, there must have been close to a thousand dollars in gold in it. Don Prospero let out a bellow like a bull stuck with fireworks, and started cursing you for a thief and an assassin. At least I assume that you were the thief and assassin he referred to, because he had your shirt in his other hand. Then someone—it sounded like Sancho but I can’t swear to it—shouted ‘There he goes!’ from the main gate, which was absurd, because you were already long gone. . . . To my unending relief, by the way, that you had the wits to get out of there promptly. . . .”

  “I would have gone back for you come nightfall.”

  “Then I can only be glad I got out of there when I did, because you’d never have eluded all the searchers around the house. I fainted at the first shout of ‘there he goes,’ and the minute everyone charged out of the room I snatched up my riding-gear and my boots and dashed into the nearest unoccupied store-room while everyone was running down to the gate. I gather Sancho and Cristobál kept everyone dashing hither and thither for some fifteen minutes just by shouting ‘There he goes!’ periodically. When I slipped out, no one was in the main court—even the women who grind the corn were all grouped around, listening to Yannamaria go on about how she knew it was coming because the French tarugo had been a heretic and an atheist. That was the reason I was able to get water but no food.”

  She gestured toward the bottles slung from the saddle-horn; she must have taken the time to collect them from every saddled horse in the courtyard. “There were blood-smudges on the railing of the corredor and the stairs, and one quite large one on the doorjamb of our room. It was about the level of where I’d have put my hand—shoulder height—and of course about six inches lower than where you would have left a mark.”

  “Hmmn.” Rose was tall for a woman, nearly equal in height—give or take an inch or two—to Hannibal, Don Anastasio, Don Rafael, Sancho, Cristobál, Doña Josefa, Santa Anna, and about two-thirds of the vaqueros.

  “As I was dressing,” Rose went on briskly, “I heard someone shout to Hinojo the butler asking what was going on and he said that the black Norte had cut Monsieur Guillenormand’s throat and taken his money. I went down, got the biggest horse I could of the several saddled ready there, and rode out through the gate. Did you leave the key to the trunk on the windowsill?”

  “No, but whoever picked up my shirt and jacket could easily have found it, it was on the table next to the bed.” He led her into the shadows of the trees, where his own little piebald mustang cropped weeds in the shade. All the while the thoughts returned, She’s alive. She’s safe. He felt more relief than he had about getting away safely himself. “Thank God you got out of there. . . .”

  “Oh, absolutely.” Rose settled her hat back onto her hair, which she’d tied back under a silk scarf like the vaqueros did. “Anastasio mentioned to me when we were here last week that Don Prospero has grown unpredictable and vindictive lately.”

  “It’s more than that,” said January. “I’ll show you, in the pyramid.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past Prospero to hold me hostage to bring you in. I’m a little afraid he may decide to use Hannibal for that same purpose, though I’m not sure he’d jeopardize his card partner. Admittedly, my flight suggests complicity in your crime, darling, though what reason you and I would have to conspire to murder that poor chef . . .”

  “Exactly,” said January. “Why would I murder poor Guillenormand?”

  “Other than for his money? Now I know how Joseph’s brethren must have felt in the Bible when he got even with them by caching Pharaoh’s tableware in their baggage and accusing them of theft.”

  “Rose, you and I don’t need money. We have money. Not as much as we did before I started gambling at Consuela’s parties . . .”

  “That’s only our story,” Rose pointed out. “Don Prospero doesn’t know anything about us, after all. Only that we’re friends of Hannibal—and Consuela probably described us to him as impoverished, which we were the last time she saw us. Did Guillenormand tell you anything last night?”

  “Only that neither chilis nor chirimoyas had ever sullied the hauteur of his cuisine. He became quite angry that I’d even suggest such a thing. Angry enough, obviously,” he added grimly, “to fulminate to the wrong person about how I’d been asking questions that might lead to an enquiry about who else had been in the kitchen on the afternoon of Fernando’s wedding-dinner. I had thought, you know,” he added, unhitching his own mount’s tether and leading both horses farther into the trees that grew so thick along the north side of the Pyramid of the Sun, “that Fernando had been poisoned by accident. Poisoned by some ingredient introduced without Guillenormand being aware of it. Despite his oaths to the contrary, people come in and out of that kitchen all the time, though I’d be a little surprised if Father Ramiro or Señora Lorcha could get near enough to the food without being tossed out again. But this puts paid to that theory.”

  “Leading us to two questions,” said Rose. “Who knew the family well enough to know there was a sensitivity to whatever it was? And which of those people was present both on the night of the wedding-banquet and last night?”

  “Three questions, my nightingale,” corrected January. “Which of them had a reason for wanting Fernando dead?”

  In the tangled thickets that grew in the old ball-court, it was difficult to hear the sound of approaching riders, and visibility was cut to no more than a few yards. Mosquitoes hummed above the stagnant pools. Checking the ground for tracks, January found the place where John Dillard habitually tethered his horse when he went to check Valentina’s message-drop under the jaguar statue: he found the droppings of a grain-fed horse there less than a day old.

  And a short distance away, tracks of a woman’s feet, fresher st
ill. Where the ground was damp, water was still oozing into them, coming and going—she must have worked her way to the place under cover of the trees while he was in the pyramid, only hours ago. While everyone was either at Mass or out hunting him, he thought wryly. Her father—or one of the servants—must have recounted to her what had happened at Sir Henry’s. Of course she’d know—or hope—that Dillard would leave a message for her. . . .

  And so he had. After prodding the hole with his stick to discourage whatever might have taken refuge there—nothing either emerged or rattled at him—January knelt to investigate, and brought out a folded rectangle of yellowing paper, the torn-out page from the back of some book. On it was printed, in laborious letters,

  SARAGOSSE GRAVYARD——TONITE

  The note lay on top of a rough wooden packing-box that proved to contain tortillas, white cheese, and several sweet bosc pears that had to have come from Don Anastasio’s orchards by way of the unfortunate M’sieu Guillenormand’s kitchen. January handed Rose half the tortillas, cut off a chunk of the cheese, and took two pears. Then he closed the box and pried farther into the hole, unearthing a light-blue piece of paper, unweathered and fresh. In a hand that looked like that of a professional scribe was written in Spanish, Beloved, I must fly this city, and the country as well. Will you come?

  “He must be hiding somewhere in the hills,” January told Rose. “Which means you and I should make ourselves scarce as soon as we can. She may have left a signal of some kind for him. You don’t think Guillenormand caught Valentina stealing food . . .”

  “And that slender little girl cut his throat for him?” Rose retreated across the clearing, watching from the shelter of the trees while January reached with his snake-stick to scuff and scratch out his own tracks. It was tricky to do this without obliterating Valentina’s as well—Dillard would almost certainly read the ground when he approached the place himself. January wished he knew more about tracking and signs. Lieutenant Shaw of the New Orleans City Guards could tell by glancing at hoofmarks the age, sex, condition, and probable burden of a horse—maybe the color of the rider’s shirt as well, January wouldn’t put it past him. “Cutting a man’s throat is something that’s easiest done from behind—not someplace a smallish girl is going to be in the midst of a murderous argument with a man who’s going to expose her to her family. It’s possible—”

  “But partakes, as Aristotle—and Hannibal, I’m sure—would point out, of the improbable possible rather than the probable impossible. I think you’re right.” Beside the horses and once more in the heart of the thickets, January unhooked the water-bottles from the saddles, wrapped some of the cheese in a tortilla, and sat on a deadfall juniper. “On the other hand, Valentina would certainly have heard from her sisters about Fernando’s sensitivity to certain foods. She may well know all kinds of things that no one has thought to tell either of us. Which, for that matter, she may have passed along to Don Rafael . . .”

  “I think any information of any sort being passed from her to him is definitely in the realm of improbable possible.” Rose tore into her makeshift comida with an alacrity that reminded January that like himself, she had had no chance to eat since yesterday’s supper. “Just waiting for a break in his discourse could take you all night. But for what she knew, or guessed . . . You know, if there was the slightest reason for Don Anastasio to want Fernando dead, I’d say it had to be he. The mere fact that he’s as solicitous as he is about what his wife eats indicates he has a suspicion about morbid sensitivities. You don’t think Fernando insulted Anastasio in some unforgivable way, do you? Or that he nursed a secret passion for the lovely Natividad?”

  “I think any man who nursed a passion for the lovely Natividad would have no trouble consummating it for a very modest sum,” remarked January. “Besides, Fernando was working with Anastasio in getting Don Prospero confined. He has to have known that with Fernando dead, he’d have to deal with Josefa, which I can’t imagine him wanting to do. As for Josefa herself . . .”

  “It’s true she’d know whatever Valla knew,” Rose said slowly. “And she’s intelligent, which is something people don’t expect of religious fanatics. She certainly had reason to fear Fernando’s ascent to power, and she would certainly be trusted by Guillenormand enough to be able to get behind him if he were sitting at a table doing accounts, for instance. But whether—”

  January threw up his hand, and Rose fell silent at once. Into the silence January heard the rumble of hooves.

  Rose clapped on her hat as January shoved the rest of the food into the big black gelding’s saddlebag, jerked the cinches tight. They expected me to be on top of the pyramid, watching, he thought, rather than down here. . . .

  The nearest gully was northwest, so he and Rose headed out at as swift a trot as the horses could manage through the thick trees as far east as the old ball-court went. When they reached the end of the trees, he could see no riders in that direction, no dust. Only a wasteland of scrubby grass and gray-green agave, where longhorned Mexican steers ambled from waterhole to waterhole. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get clear of this place before the searchers get to the top of the pyramid themselves. Feel up to herding more cows?”

  “I pictured myself engaged in many exotic activities when we came to Mexico,” Rose reflected, following him toward the nearest bunch of steers. “But somehow driving cattle never occurred to me. My brother and I—my father’s white son—used to take herds over to Chenier Caminada to sell, and swim them across the gaps.”

  “You think you can get that herd to Saragosse?” January pulled the knots free and unshipped the lariat tied on the black gelding’s saddle, using the thick coil of rope to slap his mount’s flank, as he’d seen the vaqueros do.

  Rose urged the little piebald into a hard-gallop beside him. The horses, rested, moved friskily toward the cattle, clearly ready to do their day’s work. “Of course. Though why we need to steal Don Prospero’s cattle on top of our other sins . . .”

  “They’ll search around the pyramids first,” said January, reining his mount sidelong to nudge the first of the steers back into the larger band. The heavy reins, and the massive Spanish bit, made the trained horse instantly responsive to the smallest gestures. “If someone goes up to the top of the pyramid to look for us . . .”

  “. . . all they’ll see is a couple of perfectly innocent charros taking a herd of cattle back to Don Anastasio’s land.” Rose nipped in front of another steer, the horse clearly knowing the work. “From there we can . . . what? Circle back to town and present our side of the problem to Sir Henry? I feel certain he’s heard more eccentric things from Don Prospero than the mere murder of a cook. Get in touch with Don Anastasio himself? He’ll be in the cemetery tonight—and we have to be there in any case to intercept Valentina.”

  “If—for whatever reason—Don Anastasio did kill Fernando,” said January slowly, “I think it would be singularly dangerous to let him know we’re not halfway to Vera Cruz and still running.” He tried to imitate what he thought Rose was doing, veering back and forth across the heels of the herd, urging them in the direction of the distant village. He hoped that none of those few vaqueros who might have the courage to climb the Pyramid of Mictlantecuhtli on the Day of the Dead would be bright enough to wonder about the obvious ineptitude of one of those “innocent charros” he saw from the top. “Whoever murdered the cook did so because he—or she—saw that I was getting close to the answer. If I can’t be driven off, I will need to be killed. . . . And now that you’ve joined me, you’ll be presumed to know whatever it is I might have learned.”

  “I wonder if that’s what the priest had in mind when he asked if I would take you for better or for worse. Hey up, Bossie, no you don’t!” She swung her hat at a cow, who shook enormous horns at her but trotted back to the herd. “On the other hand, it’s very likely Don Anastasio will remain at Mictlán for part of the day—to supervise the search for you, if he is the murderer, or to deal with Don Prospero at the very
least. We might well learn something from a simple investigation of the hacienda de Saragosse if we’re not too long about it. After that I suppose we can make it to Mexico City before mid-day tomorrow, and take refuge with Sir Henry.”

  “We could,” agreed January, squinting at the angle of the sun. “But unless I’m much mistaken, tomorrow night is when Don Prospero is going to visit his private offrenda within the Pyramid of the Dead to ask his son about what he should do with his murderer. And whatever he thinks Fernando will tell him to do with Hannibal, I’d rather be on hand.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  They concealed the horses in the ruined curing-shed at Saragosse, which stood across the village stream and about a half-mile from the small casco’s red-washed walls. The shed itself had apparently been torched several years previously, by bandits or by soldiers in the endless struggles for military supremacy that had blotched Mexico’s history since its independence from Spain; when January made a cautious foray into the weed-grown fields that surrounded it, he saw the remains of a fire beneath the ragged growth of soapweed and creosote as well.

  “So much for Don Anastasio’s efforts to bring peanuts into fashion among the upper classes,” he murmured, returning to the striped shade where Rose was looking around for a vessel to carry water to the horses. From the debris along the walls he picked out a snarl of hair-stemmed vine, studded still with the dried remains of hulls. Broken tables down the center of the shed must have been for stripping and sorting the pods from the dried vines; the remains of two ovens and a woodshed outside showed where they’d been roasted. “Can you picture Doña Imelda settling down with a bowl of peanuts and a glass of pulque? Neither can I.”

  The village was quiet save for the voices of some of the women washing clothes on the flat rocks of the stream beyond the trees. After resting the horses and letting them forage among the tall grasses, Rose and January re-saddled and rode in a long circuit around the outside of the village to the churchyard that lay just outside the casco walls. A few men were still tinkering with the bamboo framework for the fireworks up near the church door, and others were just setting up tables for refreshments. Most of the graves had been decorated with flowers, and some with the little statues that mocked death: skeleton priests and nuns, ladies and gentlemen, and here and there with the loved toys of children whose parents had not forgotten them. As they passed the village, January saw thick trails of marigold petals running through the dust of the street, and into the doorways and courtyards.