by Carla Kelly
Before she could answer, the bell rang from the hacienda’s interior. “Let us go to chapel, Maria,” Cristóbal said, offering her his arm.
She took his arm, struck by the incongruity of an evening’s stroll, with a half-breed Indian, by the pig pen. As she and Erlinda well knew, times change.
Silent, they walked into the hall to the chapel at the far end, through the wide doors carved with the keys of Peter and the crowns of Castile and Aragon. La Señora knelt already at the front of the chapel, praying her private prayers. Diego knelt beside her, saying his rosary in a low voice. He glanced behind him at Cristóbal’s firm footsteps. There was no warmth in his eyes as he turned back to the altar.
Maria knelt beside Cristóbal, too tired to pray. Cristóbal pulled out his rosary. Head bowed, he whispered to Maria, “Just close your eyes. No one will know you are not praying. I do it all the time.” He gazed down at the beads in his hand and crumbled them into a tight ball, his knuckles white.
Luz and Catarina, scrubbed and ready for bed in their nightgowns, came in with Erlinda, her eyes lowered and her hands folded in front of her. They knelt in front of the altar, crossed themselves, then sat behind Maria and Cristóbal. Diego’s Mexican servants filed in last, kneeling and praying on the hard-packed earth, then sitting cross-legged by the doors.
When everyone was in the chapel, Diego rose and closed the doors. He led the family and retainers in several psalms, the words memorized in a lifetime of evening prayer. His voice was pleasant to Maria’s ears, soft as she had heard it first when he pulled her into his saddle on the river’s flood plain. The gentleness of it was soothing and restful. Her eyes closed.
When they had finished the psalms, Diego prayed for them, a homely prayer asking for rain in this time of dryness, blessing flocks and fields, exhorting Catarina to watch her tongue, praying for the Lord to bless Old Martin with his gout, Flacca the cook with her toothache, the seamstress in childbirth, and thanking God for another day of life on the Rio del Norte.
With the same gentleness that made Maria smile, Diego asked the Lord’s blessing on the Viceroy in Mexico, praying for God’s bounties to fall on him as rain and asking that his decisions—particularly those pertaining to the river colony—would be wise. And if not wise, at least not harmful.
And finally, he prayed for the king of Spain, Carlos Segundo, His Most Catholic Majesty, living and ruling in a land none of them had ever seen, and probably never would, but which was home in some mystical way.
Then he was finished. He led his mother to the altar and knelt next to Maria as the household’s oldest member led them all in the Rosary.
Before she began, Diego took another rosary from his pocket and handed it to Maria, closing his fingers around it. “Here,” he whispered. “You may have this one.”
She smiled at him, feeling at the same time Cristóbal stirring restlessly on the other side of her.
Then it was over. They all rose from their knees, genuflected and filed from the chapel, pausing to kneel again and kiss Diego’s hand. Cristóbal knelt and kissed his brother’s hand, rising quickly and leaving the chapel without a word. Diego looked after him, but said nothing.
Señora Masferrer was the last person to leave the chapel. Diego knelt in front of her, and she made the sign of the cross on his forehead.
“Mi hijo,” La Señora whispered, “my son.”
She said no more. Diego bowed his head, and Maria could see the burden that he shouldered, the responsibility of Las Invernadas. She blinked back sudden tears of exhaustion, realizing how much greater was Diego’s weariness than her own.
Maria said goodnight to Erlinda and went quickly to her room. She unbuttoned her dress and let it fall to the floor, leaving it to lie there in a crumpled heap. Not even bothering to pull the pins from her hair, she fell into bed and was asleep in a moment.
Father Efrain woke her, standing and smiling by her bed, then taking off his smiling head and tossing it into her lap. Maria screamed, desperate to brush the head from her lap, yet too terrified to leap from bed for fear that Carmen de Sosa’s restless fingers would pat her legs as the poor woman continued her miserable search for her bloody hair.
Maria sobbed, staring into the dark room, kneeling in the middle of the bed, careful not to touch the sides. Before she could scream again, Diego threw open the door, his sword drawn, a blanket thrown around his bare shoulders.
Father Efrain sank to the floor out of sight and the head in Maria’s lap rolled off the bed. She gasped and drew another breath to scream, but Diego clapped his hand over her mouth, then pulled her close to his chest, sitting on her bed and lifting her onto his lap. When he took his hand away, Maria let out a shuddering sigh and burrowed closer to him. Wordlessly he held her, his hands gentle on her back.
Finally he let her go and stood, drawing his Indian blanket around him like a toga. He lit the candle by her bed and walked slowly around the room, the candle held high.
“Nothing here, Maria chiquita,” he said in his soft voice, “ninguna cosa. Now say your Rosary again like a good girl and go back to sleep.”
She did as he said and blew out the candle. When she whimpered, reaching out for him, he sighed and sat on the floor by her bed, muttering, “Dios mio," when his bare legs touched the cold ground. He leaned his head against the bed, looking back at her.
“Lie down, Maria,” he said, groping for her hand in the dark and twining his fingers through hers.
Maria pulled his hand close to her, holding it tight against her stomach until her hands relaxed and she slept.
He was gone in the morning when she woke, but he had left his sword at the foot of her bed.
He was seated in the kitchen when she entered. His hands were cupping his earthenware goblet but he was staring with heavy eyes at the opposite wall. She paused, remembering her nightmare, but he turned at the sound of her footsteps and beckoned her in, patting the bench beside him. “Sit here, Maria,” he said.
“Oh, I should not,” she began, her face fiery red. “I have to start on the bread.”
He reached out and pulled her down beside him, looking away from her embarrassment as he spoke to her. “Do not let last night trouble you, Maria, I beg. We all of us have our ghosts.”
“Even you? ”
He took her hand and kissed it. “Even I.” He released her hand and stood. “I have an idea. Suppose you sleep with Luz and Catarina? Would that make it better?”
She nodded.
“Then I will see that your bed is moved into their room this morning.”
“Gracias, Señor,” she said.
‘‘No hay de que, Maria," he replied, getting up and putting on his hat. “But do remember this. I will always be there if you need me.” He paused at the door. “I forgot to tell you last night. An old friend of yours will be coming here today. ”
“Quíen es?” she asked. “I know no one here.”
“Emiliano my saintmaker will be saddened to hear that you do not remember him,” Diego replied, opening the door. “He remembers you.”
“What is he coming for?”
“You shall see.”
Maria was shaping the last loaves of bread into round balls when Emiliano came. She watched him walk down the path from the footbridge, hurrying in that same loping gait she remembered from the night on the road. He carried a leather sack on his back this time.
“Good morning, Old One,” she said, cutting a sign of the cross on the loaf before her.
“And good morning to you, Señorita,” he said. “Help me with this.”
She put the bread in the oven and helped him take the sack off his back.
“Look in it,” he said as she stood there.
The bag was full of smaller sacks of color such as she had seen in his santero workshop. She put them on the table as he sat there.
“That is good, my child,” he said. “I tell Diego that I am too old for this, but he insists that there is no one else yet to paint his walls, and besides,
I owe him the tribute. A persuasive young man, Maria,” he said. “Don’t listen to him.”
She laughed. “I understand now. It was for you that the walls were whitewashed not long ago?”
“Of course. Where do we begin?”
They began with a serious consultation with Erlinda, who chose the colors that would decorate each room this year. With a grunt of assent, Emiliano set to work, mixing his colors in wooden troughs and readying his brushes. Maria watched him from the doorway, drawn to his splash of colors as she had been drawn to his painted saints. The sala walls would be red this year, the color to be painted from the floor up to a height of two feet. The bands of color would prevent the glittering gypsum-washed walls from showing everyday soil too soon.
Emiliano mixed the red to the shade of fresh blood, a fitting contrast to the dark furniture brought from Spain in years past, the white walls, and the Indian blankets covering the low adobe outcroppings built into the unbroken wall facing patio windows.
Einiliano turned around, his hands still busy with the paints. “Do you stand there all day or do I get some help?” he demanded.
“I would like to help,” she offered, feeling shy in the presence of this saintmaker, this artist. “What would you have me do?”
“Take a brush and paint,” he said, holding out a knotted bunch of yucca fibers.
She took it. “How do you know I will do well?”
He squatted on his heels, facing the wall. “I remember how you looked at my santos when I brought you to Tesuque. You seem to be one who is interested.” He paused, searching her face. “Am I right?”
She nodded and dipped the brush in the red paint, red the color of a flowing wound, a beating heart. She applied the color in long, flowing strokes under the direction of the saintmaker.
“Besides,” he continued, after the silence of nearly an hour. “The master said you would be inclined to this work.”
She smiled but said nothing as she silently blessed Diego Masferrer and brushed on the beautiful paint, watching it soak into the skin of the adobe. Together they painted the lower portions of each room’s walls, some blue like the kitchen; others the yellow of the sun, some the red brown of the earth itself.
After an even more serious consultation with Luz and Catarina, and after considerable coaxing of Erlinda, Maria painted the girls’ bedroom the rich red of the sala, reserved for important persons. And when the red was waist-high on the walls, Maria bordered the color with a rim of design she had noticed on a Pueblo cooking pot.
“Oh, Maria, no one else has such a design,” said Catarina, almost reaching out in her delight to touch the wet wall.
Luz pulled Diego away from the noonday meal and dragged him down the hall to the room. With mock seriousness that made the little ones giggle, he flourished his napkin across his mouth and stalked around the room, surveying the design from every corner. He grabbed Luz suddenly and picked her up.
“I like it, hermana mia,” he declared, nuzzling her with his beard until she shrieked. “But who do you think you are, children of our king himself, that you should have so noble a room?”
“We are Masferrers,” said Luz proudly when he set her down.
“And that,” he said, ruffling her hair, “is infinitely better.”
Maria watched the two of them, a lump rising in her throat. To be part of such a family, of such a pride rooted deep in love.
“It will do,” agreed Erlinda, who had heard Luz’s laughter and stood in the doorway. “Just as long as you do not become too grand for us, small ones.”
“Erlinda!” Catarina exclaimed, “it is only a decoration! Maria told me we are special.” She smiled at Maria.
Diego spoke up, helping Maria to her feet and taking the brush from her hand. “Next year you will do this in the sala, too.”
The other bedrooms would wait until tomorrow. Although her knees ached from so much time spent on them, inching along the floor, Maria was sorry to see Emiliano cord up his fascinating bag of colors. He had said little to her during the painting, but she knew he was not displeased with her work.
“Well, Maria, you are a painter,” he admitted as he shouldered his leather sack and prepared for the walk to Tesuque in the late afternoon. “But are you an artist?”
“I do not know,” she said.
“Return with me to Tesuque,” he asked, “and we could see this evening. ”
Maria looked at Erlinda, but the widow shook her head. “Not this evening, Emiliano. My mother has need of Maria.”
“Very well. Pry Diego away from this place sometime and have him walk with you,” Emiliano told Maria. “I would like to talk to him, too.”
“I will see to it,” said Erlinda as he left. She turned to Maria. “Mama told me last night that she wished you to visit her this day. Come along. ”
Erlinda led the way down the hall, stopping to knock on the blue door.
“Come in and God’s blessings on you,” said the voice within. Erlinda opened the door for Maria but did not enter herself.
The room was dim and cool, smelling strongly of candles. Maria hesitated, then went to the small woman sitting in the chair by the bed.
“Ah, Maria, wait, wait,” La Señora said. “You did not pause before Our Lady of Remedios. Go back and do as you should to our colony’s patroness.”
Maria returned to the wooden figure by the door. It was a bulto, a statue fashioned by Emiliano, crudely carved, with arms held stiffly in place by gypsum-covered cloth hinges. Maria knelt in front of the statue, noting with appreciation that the saintmaker had copied the face of La Señora on the bulto, the deepset unseeing eyes, the hair closely curled, an imitation of tight ringlets. The statue’s body was short and compact, possessing none of the grace of a Spanish madonna, but overflowing with endurance and generosity.
Maria prayed what was in her heart at the moment, and then rose and seated herself on the stool by La Señora.
“If you look here on the table by my bed, you will see the library of Las Invernadas,” said La Señora, a slight smile playing around her mouth.
Maria picked up one volume, a grim collection of the lives of the saints that she remembered from her father’s library. There was an ecclesiastical history of Rome, a Latin Bible, and nothing more.
“If you can find the time, you are always welcome here to read. I cannot say that the books will always keep us awake, but surely they will do us no harm.”
“Do you wish me to read now?” Maria asked.
“Yes, but not these. There is another book. Go fetch it from Diego’s room. I believe he keeps it by his bed.”
“In his room?” Maria asked. “I could not go in there.”
“Of course you can, my child. He is never there during the day, but if you are timid, knock.”
Maria left La Señora and went down the hall to Diego’s bedroom, pausing to knock before entering. His room was stark with a crucifix at the head of the narrow bed, an unpainted table and stool, a clothes chest, and a pair of boots in the corner.
As spare as it was, and totally unremarkable, the room was filled with Diego’s presence. It may have been the lingering smell of wellworn leather, or the scent of sage from the clothing chest. Maria felt her timidity replaced by a rush of feeling.
She took the journal off the table, pausing to straighten the blanket and pillow on the bed, smoothing out imaginary wrinkles.
She returned to La Señora, pausing this time for a small curtsy in front of the Madonna before seating herself on the stool.
“This journal is our pleasure,” said La Señora, reaching out to touch the worn leather cover. “If you were to turn to the very front, you would read what Tomas said on the occasion of our marriage more than twenty years ago. And on to the record of crops, of failures, of fires, of raids, of sparrows found homeless in corn rows, of loose teeth and new teeth. It is all here. A record of our lives.”
La Señora leaned back in her chair, her hands resting in her lap. “Everyone has
favorite entries. When he has time in the winter, Diego likes to gather us all in the sala, sit the girls on his lap and read until the candles gutter out.” She chuckled. “Luz likes the time Catarina made mud pies in the sala. Catarina enjoys reading about her brother Francisco’s departure for Mexico City, when he cried because he had to go, and Diego cried because he could not go!” She paused, remembering, then touched Maria’s knee. “Such a day that was! I think Catarina likes to know that Diego can cry, too.” She leaned forward. “But now, I would have you turn to December 18, 1661,” she said.
Maria turned to the year, leaning forward in the shadowy room to decipher the spidery handwriting of Diego’s father. She read slowly, her fingers following the words. ‘December 18, 1661. My son Cristóbal was born today. I will call him my son, for he is. All the confession and penance cannot change the fact. He is strong and healthy and seems destined to live.’ ”
Maria looked up. La Señora’s expression was inscrutable. “Why did you have me read this?” she asked.
“I feel you should know something of Cristóbal, my child. And lately, he has been on my mind, for reasons I cannot explain even to myself. But what was I saying? Yes. Cristóbal was born about six months after Diego, the son of my husband Tomás and my Tewa maid. No, no, not the maid I have now, but another. Tomás never made any pretense about the birth, although I knew that he could have and I never would have been the wiser. And I had not the heart to blame him. What good would that have done?”
“Cristóbal was raised here, then?”
“Yes. At Tesuque and here. Cristóbal’s mother died when he was three, and he was raised then with my own children. My husband loved him. And there has always been a closeness between Diego and Cristóbal. But lately I wonder.”
She looked at Maria suddenly. “Is this so? I sense a restless spirit in Cristóbal lately.”
“I cannot say, my lady,” said Maria, choosing her words with care. “At times Cristóbal looks at Diego in such a strange manner, and at others they are laughing and talking.” She stopped. “I do not know what I am saying. I have been here only a few days, and I do not know anyone well yet. ”
