by Carla Kelly
Diego spoke to her out of the shadows. “We are going. After lighting such a fire, we dare not stay. Come.”
They walked to the horses, Maria hurrying ahead in her anxiety to be away from the bloody ground and the nightmares biding their time in the grove. The horses were restless, milling around with nervous whinnies, tossing their manes, stepping here and there in impatience.
Maria saw the looks the men exchanged. Several of them checked their heavy firing pieces before swinging into the saddle. Diego loosened the strap holding his sword.
“We may have work this night,” he murmured to no one in particular. He looked at her frightened face. “And yet, they might not attack. But they are here.”
She nodded. She too could sense the presence of the Indians. The Apaches were never far away. She watched Diego as he mounted his horse. He had called her La Afortunada, the Lucky One. How strange.
The others mounted. Diego held out his arms, and Maria put her foot in his stirrup. He pulled her up into the saddle with him. “Hang on,” he directed. She grasped the high saddle horn.
They left the blazing funeral pyre at a gallop, traveling two abreast and moving fast over the darkened land. The moon was only a slice in the sky, and Maria could not see the path they followed, but she did not question the abilities of the men she rode with. They knew where they were headed. They knew this road as they knew their own wives and children.
After nearly a league of rapid, silent travel, the pace slowed to a walk. Maria dozed in the saddle, trying not to lean back. She struggled to stay awake. She had never been this close to a man before, not even her father. When she felt herself falling against him, she pulled herself awake. Once, when she relaxed against Diego Masferrer, she yanked her head up, cracking him under the chin. Without a word, he transferred the reins to his left hand and with the other, firmly pushed her against his chest. Her eyes closed and she slept.
In her dream, Carmen de Sosa ran alongside Diego’s horse, tugging at Maria’s dress with her bloody hands. Maria whimpered. “Por Dios, they follow me,” she whispered, pulling her legs up out of Carmen’s dripping grasp. She cried out and tried to scramble from the saddle, but Diego held her down, his arms clamped firmly around her body.
Diego was silent, as if trying to understand what she feared. “Maria,” he said finally, “go back to sleep. I shall keep them away.” She shut her eyes. “Sleep, sleep,” he said over and over, until sleep overtook her and closed out the soothing sound of his voice.
They halted for the night several hours later in the shelter of an abandoned building. The adobe had crumbled away from the tops of the walls, and the roof was missing, but it was shelter of sorts, protection.
The men quartered their horses inside the small enclosure, leaving the saddles on and lying down beside their animals, the reins wrapped around one wrist. Diego helped Maria into the most protected corner of the ruin and lay down without a word. He was asleep at once. After looking around at the other men, Maria sank to the ground and closed her eyes, knowing that she could never sleep in such circumstances.
She woke with the sunrise, and discovered to her acute embarrassment that at some point during the night she had curled up against Diego Masferrer. He had covered them both with his cloak and his arm was thrown over her waist, drawing her up tight against his body. She feared to move and wake him so she lay still, looking at his hand close to her face. His fingers were slender but strong-looking, and he wore a heavy gold ring on his index finger. The reins of his horse were still wrapped around his wrist. Maria closed her eyes again and sighed.
The movement of her ribcage woke her protector. He untangled the rein and sat up, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Válgame, it is late,” he said under his breath. “We are old women.”
Maria sat up. All the men were asleep except the guard, who was seated in the empty window, looking out at the morning. Diego waved to him and then went from man to man, shaking them awake. Maria got to her knees. Her whole body ached from sleeping on the gravel and bits of adobe littering the ground, but she was warm. The attitude of the guard at the window told her they had nothing to fear at the moment. She sat back cross-legged on the ground and leaned against the wall, feeling a contentment wholly out of proportion to her circumstances, feeling safety in the presence of these hard men from Santa Fe.
But I will have to say goodbye to him—to them—in Santa Fe, she reminded herself silently. I owe them so much.
Maria performed her ablutions in a puddle of standing water behind the adobe building, wondering as she splashed muddy water on her face if she would ever be really clean again. She thought of the tin hip bath that used to hang in her dressing room in Mexico City. Surely her sister Doña Margarita had a bathtub, perhaps even some clothing besides the everlasting brown serge—jerga—she had been wearing for six months.
She dried her face on the hem of her dress and joined the men for more hardtack and jerky. One of the soldiers gave her a handful of dried apple. The linty bits of fruit tasted better than anything she had eaten in months. She smiled at the soldier, who blushed and turned away, a grin on his face.
Diego lifted Maria onto his horse and then mounted behind her again. It was still a tight fit, but after sleeping next to him in the adobe shelter, Maria did not feel the constraints of yesterday. What was it her mother used to say? “Necessity is the soup that helps the food down,” she said out loud, as if reciting from a primer.
“Qué es, chiquita?” Diego asked.
She repeated the proverb and Diego laughed. “Yes, Maria chiquita, and let me tell you another dicho—‘One must cut the cloak to fit the cloth.’ This is our motto, as you will discover.” He must have felt rather than heard her sigh. “As perhaps you have already discovered.”
She said nothing more, closing her eyes against the brightness of the morning sun. She did not even have cloth to cut, only the dress she sat in and the shoes one of the men had retrieved from the grove of trees. Her only hope was that at the end of this dreadful journey her sister was waiting. Her sister and her sister’s husband who would become her protector.
She sat up straighter, narrowly missing Diego’s chin again. “What do you know of Doña Margarita Espinosa de Guzman?” she asked.
He was silent for a moment, and when he finally spoke it seemed to Maria that he chose his words with particular care. “You do not remember her?”
“Not well. I was so young when she married and moved here.” She laughed softly to herself, and Diego leaned toward her, his hat brushing her hair.
“Qué es, chiquita?” he asked.
“During Margarita’s wedding I threw up all over the chapel, and she boxed my ears after the ceremony.”
He laughed. “You cannot be her favorite sister!”
"Al contrario, Señor,” she said, “I am her only sister, she my only living relative. Why else would I have come to this sinkhole?” She paused, embarrassed. “Señor, I did not mean to insult your colony.”
Diego nudged her with his shoulder. “A sinkhole it may be to you, Maria, but some of us like it. Tell me of your sister.”
“You probably know her better than I do. She was almost nineteen when she married Felix de Guzman, and glad enough to find a man, I think.”
She felt him chuckle, his good humor restored. “Chiquita, there are those who would say that Felix de Guzman was a poor substitute for a man.”
Again doubts assailed her. “And pray, Señor, what do you know of him?”
“He was a cabrón,” he said quickly.
Maria gasped.
“Forgive me, Maria. That was a dreadful thing to say.” He thought for a moment. “But I do not know how I can improve on it.”
Her doubts growing, Maria pushed the insult aside. “You say ‘was,’ Señor.”
“Your sister is fortunately a widow, praise be to God,” he said, no apology in his voice.
“What are you saying?”
“Did you not know? Ah, of c
ourse you did not know. Don Felix was killed three months ago.”
The familiar chill settled in her bones again. Even Diego’s warmth could not take it away. “How did it happen?”
“His own Indians slit his throat from ear to ear. The general feeling in Santa Fe is that he richly deserved to suffer more than he did.”
“How can you say that, Señor?” she burst out.
“Don Felix was a wretched man who beat his wife and daughters and abused his Indians. He was also the town moneylender. I think all of us owed him money.” He sighed. “Still owe it. The wonder of it is that he did not die sooner, but indeed, the Lord’s ways are mysterious. ”
“Why were you all in such debt to him?”
“Times have been rough here, chiquita. The drought has burdened us for four years.” His tone hardened. “And do not imagine that de Guzman’s death cancelled our debts. La Viuda Guzman, your sister, sees to it that we are reminded quarterly.”
Maria could not think of anything to say, but Diego’s good humor took over. “Never fear, Maria. Two years ago, even before Felix went to his reward, Margarita told me how I could wipe out my debt.”
The lightness of his tone should have warned her. “And how was that, Señor?” she asked.
“I had only to wed and bed her eldest daughter, your cousin Isabella.” He laughed out loud and spurred his horse forward. “I chose not to take her advice.”
She could not help but laugh. “This would be so dreadful?”
He leaned forward, his brown eyes twinkling into her blue ones. “La Doña Isabella de Guzman has buck teeth and one eye that wanders. I cannot believe you are related to her.”
She was acutely aware of her dishevelment and Diego’s nearness. She brushed at the dried mud on her arm and tried to straighten her skirts. Diego’s arms tightened around her as he slowed his horse to a walk again.
“I truly did not mean to embarrass you, Maria,” he said, “and do not fret over your appearance. My Erlinda would say that miracles are performed in bathtubs!”
She laughed because she knew he was trying to cheer her, but then she was silent. Margarita was a widow. For the next few miles she mulled over this new misfortune and concluded finally that her sister would be more delighted than ever to see her. She would turn to a relative for consolation. Surely it could be no other way.
The horsemen rode steadily toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. As they passed a hacienda, two of the riders waved to Diego and turned off. Maria watched them until they disappeared within the brown adobe walls of the estancia.
“What do they grow here?” she asked, looking at the barren landscape.
“Cattle. Sheep. Children. We are not precisely covered with the wealth of the conquistadors here, chiquita. ”
They did not pause for the nooning, but ate their hardtack and jerky in the saddle, riding on into the afternoon. Maria would have welcomed the opportunity to climb down from Diego’s saddle and walk around, but the men were intent on reaching Santa Fe with word of the Apache massacre.
She leaned forward and shaded her eyes with her hand. She could see nothing that resembled civilization. No majestic cathedral, seat of a bishop. No zocalo, its impressive space covered with the shops and stalls of merchants and Indios engaged in the big and little commerce of Mexico. No elegant homes fronting the streets with stark walls, opening into cool interiors. No floating gardens as she remembered from Lake Texcoco. There was nothing familiar, nothing of home here.
The horses and riders continued their gradual climb over an empty land, dotted here and there with distant estancias that she did not see until Diego tapped her shoulder and pointed to them. The ground was dry and barren, but the air was cooler and the land covered with piñon pines and scraggly juniper. Maria sniffed the air. How sharp and pleasant was the smell of the trees, how unlike the recent odors of death.
The steady climb continued, and then after hours of seeking, she saw fields of corn and beans, newly planted and tended by Indians, who looked up when the horsemen rode by, then turned back, silent, to their stooping work. Maria noticed the veins of irrigation ditches outlining each field. Then in the distance she saw a church’s stubby spire made of wood, then another. She pointed toward the nearer church.
“You have found San Miguel,” Diego replied. “In the middle of Analco. It is the Indian parish, the church of the Indians brought originally from Mexico by our grandfathers.” He pointed toward the other spire. “And that is San Francisco, named after our worthy patron saint. Our town is named la villa real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco. A lot of name for something so small, eh, chiquita?”
She did not answer. They rode slowly through Analco, a collection of mud huts on narrow streets surrounding the church of San Miguel. Maria craned her neck for a glimpse of something better.
There was nothing better. The closer they rode to Santa Fe, the lower her heart sank. Santa Fe, la villa real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco, was a jumble of adobe houses, all the color of the red earth around them. The streets were narrow and dirty, the penetrating smell of piñon wood smoke everywhere. It was so small.
Diego sensed her disappointment. “And what did you expect?” he asked.
“I ... I ... don’t know, really,” she faltered. “Something more.”
“I have never seen your Mexico City,” he said. “We are an outpost, nothing more. A fort on the frontier. All the grandness here is in the name. I suppose we have little to recommend us.” He paused and chuckled. “Could you not have found relatives somewhere else?”
The riders slowed their horses to a walk as they passed the church of San Francisco and entered a plaza straggly with weeds and empty of people.
“It is the dinner hour.”
Dinner. People sitting down at tables. Napkins. Tablecloths. Food in plates and bowls, food that did not have to be broken in small chunks and soaked to softness. Conversation. “It has been so long,” Maria murmured. Her eyes filled with unexpected tears. How long had it been since she had sat down to a meal with family and friends?
Diego shifted in his saddle as he said his farewells to the accompanying riders. “We will have to rouse the governor from his table, Maria chiquita,” he said as he dismounted. “Let us enter the courtyard of the palace.”
A palace? Maria scrubbed the tears from her eyes and looked around. Surely there could be no palace in this place. With an ache of homesickness, she remembered the tall buildings of Mexico City, and the mighty Aztec temples, most of them torn down. Mexico City was a town of plazas that welcomed with trees and cooling fountains.
Diego laughed at the bewildered expression on her face and pointed to the north. “Our palace,” he said.
Maria stared at the long, low building with stunted towers on either end. The zaguan—vestibule—was open, brass cannons pointing out on both sides of the massive gates. She shook her head and Diego laughed again.
“What is that? You are not impressed?”
Diego was wrong. She was impressed, not by the beauty of this building but by its solidity. There was none of the grace of height and form she remembered from the city of her birth. The walls here were thick and squat and solely functional, but they had been whitewashed with gypsum—yeso—and the particles sparkled in the afternoon sun. This primitive frontier outpost had been built to last and she was impressed in spite of herself.
As Diego led his horse through the gates of the palace, his long spurs clunked on the hard-packed earth, sending up clouds of dirt. Maria looked at him and smiled. He was covered with the white dust of the trail, even as she was.
When Diego lifted Maria down, she looked around her. The courtyard of the governor’s palace was a spacious plaza, surrounded on all sides by government buildings. A small man-made stream emptied itself into a tile-rimmed pool. Grass grew with more success here than in the plaza outside and paths had been laid out with gravel and rimmed with early spring flowers in orderly beds. She could hear the tinkle of a wind chime.
&n
bsp; Maria ached from her hours in the saddle. She wanted to dip her dusty fingers in the tiled pool but was too sore to move beyond the nearby bench. She hobbled to the low wooden seat and sat, rising again quickly. “Dios mio!” she exclaimed.
Diego laughed again, taking off his black hat white with gypsum dust and slapping it against his leg.
“It is well for you, caballero,” she snapped, and then was instantly sorry for her bad humor. It would not do to offend this man who had rescued her. Indeed, she did not want to, but her backside was on fire.
“Oh, chiquita,” he said, ignoring her outbursts. “Maria chiquita! Things will get better soon. Let me rouse the governor from his table.” He smoothed the red silk scarf pulled tight over his hair, brushed off his leather doublet and entered the palace.
He returned in scarcely a minute with a look of genuine frustration on his face. “I can’t even get in to see him. I gave the message to his clerk, who tells me he will pass it on!” He sat down heavily on the bench next to Maria. “Is it any wonder that we flounder here?’’ Maria looked at him, and after a moment he smiled. “I am sorry. I just wish ... well, I do not know what I wish. I do know that Antonio de Otermin is not overly fond of us rancheros.”
They sat for a moment in silence. “I have sent a man to your sister, La Viuda Doña Margarita.”
La Viuda. The widow. Maria thought of the missing cask of jewels, then of the glances the horsemen had exchanged when she mentioned her sister’s name. But she refused to worry. She had reached Santa Fe. Surely she was safe now.
She sighed and tried to run her fingers through her tangled hair, but it was matted with dirt. All her hairpins were gone and the auburn tresses hung dull and stringy around her face. She was painfully aware that her dress was ripped in several places, that she wore no stockings, that her petticoat was in tatters. She brushed futilely at the brown serge of her skirt and blinked back tears.
“Never mind,” said Diego, watching her. “At least you are alive,” he added quietly. They sat together, shoulders touching.
