Daughter of Fortune

by Carla Kelly

  “Diego!” said a voice behind them. Maria turned to see a man hurrying through the door of the palace, tugging off his napkin as he approached. He was dressed in dark red velvet, the doublet glittering with gold buttons and the sleeves slashed with cloth of gold showing through. His high boots were of soft, crushed leather and shone to a high polish. The man was altogether grand. As Maria got to her feet, she was terribly conscious of her disheveled state.

  “My clerks have trouble sorting out what is news from what is not news. Excuse my seeming reluctance. It was not intentional. Now tell us of this which has come to pass.”

  He spoke to Diego, but his eyes were on Maria. They were kind eyes, worried eyes. Maria’s uneasiness increased. The governor walked to her and took her hand in both of his, looking deep into her troubled eyes. “You are ...”

  “Maria Espinosa de la Garza,” she replied in a whisper.

  He patted her hand. “What can we say?”

  Diego came closer. “Maria, this is His Excellency, Don Antonio de Otermin, governor of our province of New Mexico.” He turned to the governor. “And did your clerk tell you of the massacre?”

  “He told me, but not until the first course of my dinner was finished,” said the governor drily. “We will begin an immediate inquiry.”

  “There is no need, Governor. All are dead except Maria. Why waste reams and reams of paper and send a report to the viceroy in Mexico who will probably not bother to read it anyway?” Diego turned away and gazed out toward the open gates.

  The governor looked at Diego’s back. “The paperwork would choke you, Masferrer. But the viceroy sends me no troops and the garrison’s horses are plugs. And so I have to commandeer you reluctant rancheros to double as militia.” His voice rose. “But I will do the paperwork, too, Masferrer, because it is the law ... something you New Mexicans prefer to avoid.”

  Diego turned around quickly, his face brick red. He started to speak, glanced at Maria’s white face, and was silent. The men regarded each other until the governor finally turned back to Maria. He spread his hands expressively, “There are no words to express my distress, Señorita.”

  There was silence again, except for the sound of the water dribbling into the tile pool. Maria closed her eyes in exhaustion. All she wanted to do was go to her sister’s home, have a bath and sleep. Diego cleared his throat and she opened her eyes.

  “I must go now, Maria. I have to ride another three leagues to Tesuque or Erlinda will worry.” He paused, reluctant to leave. “Your sister will be here soon.”

  Maria held out her hand and Diego took it. Her hand was trembling, but he held it firmly.

  “I ... do not ... words are not sufficient,” she began. How could she ever express to Diego Masferrer what she really felt? He had saved her life. She knew that she was in his debt, but she also knew that to state such a fact would only embarrass them both. She looked at the ground, then started in surprise when he put a finger under her chin and raised her head.

  “I know, chiquita,” he said, “I know. But had our places been reversed, you would have done the same, Maria La Afortunada.”

  It was a compliment of vast proportions, probably difficult for a man to say. Maria smiled , then turned when she heard a rustle of silk behind her.

  It could be no one but Margarita, her sister.

  Margarita stopped suddenly and stared at her sister. Once again Maria became conscious of the tatters she wore. She brushed nervously at her rags, unable to interpret the expression on her sister’s composed face. Maria turned to Diego for reassurance, but he and the governor, bristling at each other only moments ago, were now exchanging glances.

  So there they were again, those looks. Maria moved closer to Diego, a motion that was not lost on the widow. She looked from Diego to Maria, not a flicker of feeling showing on her face.

  “Well, Masferrer, have I you to thank for this unexpected blessing?”

  Her words were not at all kind. Diego opened his mouth to speak, but the governor interrupted. “Come, Diego,” he began, his voice jarringly loud in the quiet courtyard. “You must reach your holdings before nightfall, and I am facing an unpleasant task with Hidalgo de Sosa. Perhaps Señora Guzman would appreciate a moment alone with her sister. ”

  Diego’s glance flickered back to Maria, the same disquiet in his eyes that had been in his voice when he spoke of Margarita’s dead husband. Maria fought the urge to grab his arm and plead with him to stay. What would Margarita think? Her own sister stood before her, but as Diego tipped his hat to her, turned back to his horse and swung into the saddle, Maria felt her strength leaving with him.

  The governor patted her arm, then hurried toward his palace, calling for his clerk. She was alone with her sister, La Viuda Guzman.

  Margarita took a step closer, then stopped. “So you are here,” she said.

  “I had no place to stay, and could not wait for a reply before setting out. The journey, as you know, is interminable.”

  This interview was not going as Maria had hoped. There was no welcome in her sister’s eyes, no soft expression of sisterhood. Maria was acutely aware of her own dirt and rags. If the situation were reversed, she knew that she would have flung out her arms and held Margarita close, but her sister made no move. She stood there fingering the rosary that dangled from her belt, her eyes raking Maria, appraising what stood before her like the disappointed assayer of precious metal.

  “You have not grown tall,” she commented.

  “No, Señora,” Maria replied.

  “Well, where is it?”

  Maria frowned and shook her head. What did she mean? “Where is what, hermana mia—my sister?” she asked, twining her fingers together.

  “The cask of jewels. Your letter mentioned some jewels of our mother’s. As older sister, they are rightfully mine,” she said impatiently, her fingers clicking the beads in her hand.

  Maria slowly sank down on the bench. “They are lost,” she whispered. And so am I, she thought.

  “Come now, Maria, do not mumble,” her sister demanded, coming a step closer.

  Maria looked up, her eyes bright with tears. “The jewels are gone,” she repeated. “The Indians took them.”

  “So you come to me with nothing?” her sister murmured. “And now I am to provide for you and my five daughters besides? Five daughters, Maria, bless the Lord. And now you.”

  Maria said nothing. There was no refuge for her in this miserable mud town on which she had pinned all her hopes. She had made a terrible mistake, one she had no power to rectify.

  Again there was that cool appraisal from Margarita Espinosa de Guzman, the bloodless assessment of the auctioneer, and not a sister .

  Maria clasped her hands tighter and raised her head. She would not give Margarita the satisfaction of knowing how terrified her little sister was.

  Finally Margarita spoke. “As the situation stands now, Maria, I cannot help you,” she said evenly. “My husband, rest his soul, left me in debt. Great debt.”

  “But Diego said you ... he said ...” Maria interrupted, then stopped.

  “Lies! You can no more trust a ranchero than fly! I am a poor widow. When I received your letter, I had hopes that our mother’s jewels would clear the books.”

  Maria interrupted again, a column of fear running the length of her back. “But, sister, I told you in the letter that it was not much!”

  “Don’t interrupt,” the widow snapped. “I have five daughters who must be provided for. It will take all my resources to keep them fed and clothed. You will have to look elsewhere for help.” She paused and again scrutinized Maria as she would a melon in the marketplace. “A pity you are not married.”

  Maria wrenched her eyes from her sister’s unwavering gaze. “After Papa died, my dowry money went to help pay off his debts. There was nothing left.”

  Margarita continued her scrutiny. “But then, I am not sure that the fortune of Cortez himself could have secured you a husband. Men have some taste.”
/>
  Maria raised her eyes again to her sister. “I look more pleasing when I am clean!” she shot back, biting off each word. She felt a great anger growing in her.

  This time La Viuda looked away. “Well, as I have said, you must look elsewhere for help. I can offer you none.”

  Maria rose slowly. She had thought that she would be relegated to some menial position in her sister’s household, but not this, never this. She understood Diego’s uneasiness now, and panic rose in her. “Doña Margarita,” she whispered, fighting to control her voice, “I have nowhere to go. I know no one. I have no clothes, no money.”

  “Then you must become a ward of the town,” said Margarita decisively. She reached into the reticule that hung from her waist and pulled out a lace handkerchief. Dabbing at her dry eyes, she continued, “I am a poor widow now, Maria. Surely I cannot be expected to nurture every stray and waif that it is my misfortune to know.”

  “But I am your sister,” Maria said simply.

  “So you say, but I have no proof of that. You were a small child the last time I saw you. Who can say that you are not an imposter, seeking to work into my good graces? Why should you survive cholera in Mexico City and an Indian raid here?”

  Maria shook her head. “No, no,” she whispered.

  Margarita turned to go, then looked back. “I have lived in this miserable place for ten years now. I learned early that survival is the only consideration. A ward of the town you will be, Maria. Good day. ”

  Maria followed her to the palace gates, but the widow would not look back. Squaring her shoulders as if to shake off the demeaning experience she had been subjected to, the widow pushed her dry handkerchief back into her reticule and walked rapidly away, her black skirts sweeping the ground behind her.

  Maria leaned against the gate and closed her eyes. A ward of the town! With pain she remembered the wards of Mexico City—the homeless, the unwanted, the confused. She remembered as a child following the ragged shadows as they swept offal from the streets, taunting them, teasing them. She remembered the handful of coins her father used to give her to put in the church’s poor box, money for the minimal upkeep of Los Olvidados, the Forgotten Ones.

  “And now I am La Olvidada,” Maria said out loud. What was it Diego had called her only yesterday? La Afortunada, the lucky girl.

  Diego. Maria looked around quickly, then glanced out into the plaza. He had gone, riding away to his own holdings as soon as La Viuda appeared. Numb, she sat on the bench again, oblivious to the pain in her back and legs, still as a statue. Her mind was as blank as it had been during the Indian raid. She could think of nothing except that there was nothing. She was hungry, dirty, and above all, afraid, but no one cared. La Viuda had told her to become a ward of the town, but Maria knew that she could not seek refuge from the splendid Governor Otermin. She would be too humiliated ever to do that.

  I am not the daughter of my father for nothing, she thought then, jarring her mind back into action. Even after his fortunes were gone, Papa had swept his cloak about him with the same swirling bravado, faced his friends with the same pride of presence. He had gone uncomplaining and courageous to his death.

  Maria looked down at her hands. They were scratched and brown, her fingernails broken and dirty. She smoothed her tattered remnant of a dress. Eight months ago, she had been somebody, a beloved, pampered daughter. Now she was nobody. As a ward of the town, she would be less than nobody. She belonged nowhere, not in Mexico City anymore, and not even here in this depressing backwater mud fortress. For one terrible moment, she trembled with a great, overpowering hatred for her parents. How could they have left her, Maria Espinosa de la Garza, in such a situation? La Afortunada, indeed.

  The moment passed. She sat in silence on the bench, her back straight, her ankles properly together, her hands folded in her lap. “I was supposed to have died twice over, but I did not,” she said out loud to the water splashing in the tile pool. She stood up, arranging the tatters of her dress around her with the same delicacy of movement her mother had taught her to use when walking in velvet and silk. She folded her hands in front of her again and looked back at the governor’s palace. She would not give anyone the satisfaction of her defeat. Margarita had said something about survival. She, Maria Espinosa, would survive, and in a style that would bring a smile to her dead father’s face, a nod of recognition.

  She glanced through the window into the offices. She could see the governor bending over a man seated with his head bowed. Surely the husband of Carmen de Sosa, she thought. Poor man. She straightened her shoulders and walked out of the courtyard and into the plaza. Diego had mentioned that he lived three leagues north, a place called Tesuque. She would find him. Perhaps he would take her into his household as a servant. She had no skills, but she could learn household tasks.

  If I cannot gratify my relatives and die, then I must live. There is revenge of sorts in that, she told herself as she started north on the road out of Santa Fe.

  Chapter 3

  Emiliano el Santero

  The streets of Santa Fe were deserted. The calm stillness of the late afternoon rested on the town, the same stillness to be found in any township or city in any part of the Spanish New World. Maria was long familiar with it and the very silence around her offered comfort in its familiarity. The citizens were eating dinner behind the strong, cool adobe walls of their homes.

  Her stomach rumbled. She had eaten nothing since the hasty meal of hardtack and jerky, taken in the saddle. She found a rain barrel leaning against someone’s wall, wiped away the green film, and scooped up a drink.

  The road north was the same rough oxcart path she had followed with increasing weariness for the last six months. She stood in the middle of it, looking north. Camino Real, indeed. This King’s Highway held no promise, but she could almost hear Diego’s words in her ear, reminding her to cut the cloak to fit the cloth. She started walking north.

  The road continued the steady climb from lower plain to mountain plateau, winding now around conical hills and green juniper, fragrant with early spring.

  She had gone less than a league when the strap on her shoe broke. She took it off and kept walking, her damaged shoe in one hand, her eyes looking north. The sun was low in the west, and she looked east toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. When the sun left them they would be dark and mysterious again. And with night would come the dreams. Maria shuddered and hugged herself. She knew she had not left Father Efrain and Carmen de Sosa behind, and now there was no Diego with his sword to send them loping into the bushes. She would not sleep. She would walk until she dropped.

  She knew she ought to be rehearsing in her mind what to say to Diego Masferrer when she found him. He would be surprised, of course, and shocked, perhaps even angry. No, she decided, he would not be angry. Then she shook her head. How could she know? Only an hour or two ago she would never have guessed that her own sister would spurn her; how could she say that she knew anyone’s heart anymore? But she would throw herself on his mercy. She could do nothing else. She would offer to wait on his wife and children, serve as their maid. He had mentioned someone called Erlinda. Maria could offer to dress his wife’s hair. She had some talent in those directions. Mama had always liked her to arrange her hair on special occasions, even though Mama had had a servant girl whose sole duty it was to wash and display her mistress’s hair.

  Maria fingered her own tangled hair. Diego would never believe her. The only other possible talent she possessed was a certain cleverness with paint and likenesses. She smiled to herself, remembering the small portrait she had done for her mother, presenting it with a mixture of shyness and pride on Mama’s last birthday. Her smile faded and she stumbled on the road. Two weeks after her birthday, Mama was in the arms of death. Where was the miniature now? Probably sneered at by the fiscales, tossed out by the solicitors and long since burned. Her talent for painting would do her no good, not in this hard place.

  The sun hung for a long, tantalizing momen
t on the rim of the western edge of the world, then sank suddenly out of sight. Maria stopped in the middle of the trail, whimpered, then looked around to make sure that no one had heard such weakness from an Espinosa, a descendant of conquistadores. She began to walk faster. She must come to this Tesuque before all light left the western sky.

  When she thought she heard someone following her, she started to run, but surely it was only the sound of her own feet. Maria looked over her shoulder and gasped. There was an Indian behind her. She caught her foot in her dress, fell and cut her knee. The blood ran down her leg and she dabbed at it with her skirt, her fingers cold and stiff She was too tired to run, too weary to care anymore. Her mind was blank again of everything except the approaching Indian.

  He did not hurry his pace, but walked steadily on, burdened by the load on his back. He was not dressed like the Apaches who had massacred the mission supply caravan. His hair hung long and free, and he was dressed in the shirt and loincloth common to the Indians of the pueblos she had seen in her months of travel in the province of New Mexico. He came toward her slowly, bent almost double by the weight on his back. Maria closed her eyes in relief. He was an old man. He approached with slow steps, then stopped in front of her and smiled, a wide, almost toothless smile.

  Maria raised her hand slightly in tentative greeting and began, “Buenos noches, viejo. Habla español?”

  He nodded. “Of course I speak Spanish. Would you tell me to my face that I have learned nothing in fifty years?”

  “No, not I, Old One.”

  He was a tiny man, even shorter than she, looking smaller still bent over as he was by the load he carried. His hair was white and his face wrinkled, but his hands were shapely and his fingers long. They were the hands of an artist, but that could not be. Not in this hard place. He shifted his feet and dropped part of the load, muttering under his breath. Maria smiled. She stooped to retrieve what had fallen to the ground. It was a bundle of deerhides, scraped clean and softened.