by Carla Kelly
“How indeed?” he said, teasing her. Diego threw up his hands. “Caramba! The Inquisition!” he exclaimed as he stood up. “It is a matter between Maria and me. When I need you, Catarina, or you, Luisita, to help me with my affairs, I will tell you.”
His words were hard, but his eyes smiled at his sisters, and they grinned back. “And now excuse me, all of you. I will retire to write in my journal. This has been a day of some event.”
After the dishes were washed and the silver plates locked back in their cabinet, Maria took the leather bucket from the hook and walked to the acequia. The night air was cool, the slight breeze chilly on her cheeks. The crickets sawed and buzzed in the cottonwoods, and the horses made their usual snuffling sounds in the stable beyond the acequia, but tonight there was little comfort in familiar things.
She wished again they had had the chance to tell the governor about Popeh. Maria climbed down the side of the ditch to the water, noting as she dipped in the bucket how much lower the water was. If only God would bring us rain, she thought, then paused, remembering Diego’s words to Cristóbal in the pueblo.
“I am afraid,” she said out loud, then looked around to make sure no one was near. She sat where she was, her knees drawn up to her chin, her arms tight around her legs, feeling cold in July.
She thought of her sister again, trying to divine the reasons for her strange behavior. Diego had said something about the hardness of the country, and also about the cruelty of Margarita’s husband. Maria could testify to the hardness of the land, but the husband? Maria did not know. How little she knew of men.
But I do know it would be better, much better, to be loved and then marry, rather than to marry and hope to be loved. She knew no one, not one of her friends, who had loved first. It was a thing not done. She tried to recall Felix de Guzman’s application for her sister’s hand, but she only knew stories of the wealth and property that had exchanged hands as Margarita went from one master to another. That was the way it was, the way it always was.
She sighed. She would never know what had made Margarita as brittle as glass, but she knew enough to fear what Margarita would do now. Maria understood the ways of her country. As soon as the governor wrote to the viceroy for his advice, and as soon as the reply came, she would be under the control of La Viuda Guzman. Instinct told her that Margarita would use her hard. A hundred times a day she will tell me how grateful I should be for a sister’s concern, and forget how shocked she was that I should scrub someone’s floors.
It wasn’t the work that saddened her. She was used to work now. It was the abiding knowledge that she belonged nowhere in the river kingdom of New Mexico. She had come as an intruder, and she remained one, a survivor who never should have lived.
Like a tongue worrying an inflamed tooth, her mind darted back to Diego, always to Diego, and his words to the governor. He would marry me to keep me away from my sister, she mused, but is this right? Is this fair? And who was to say, when she was his wife, his property, that he would treat her any better than Felix de Guzman had treated Margarita? There must be love, she thought, looking across the acequia to the dark fields beyond. If only he loved me as I love him.
Maria stood and picked up the bucket, bending down for more water. She looked out across the rows of corn and remembered Cristóbal sitting beside her evening after evening, saying nothing, thinking his secret thoughts.
Perhaps she should have married Cristóbal. At least he loved her. She remembered the brothers’ shouting match in the kitchen and tears came to her eyes. La Afortunada, indeed, she thought, walking slowly back to the hacienda. A girl of fifteen with no husband, no prospects and no dowry.
Evening prayers were the same, and somehow different. Diego’s Mexican workers huddled in the back. The young girls, scrubbed clean, wriggled through their devotions with giggles and nudges. Erlinda glided in and knelt in her usual place. She closed her eyes and her lips began to move as she fingered her rosary. La Señora’s face was troubled, her brown eyes, so like Diego’s, dark pools of ruffled water. The serenity had vanished from her, stripped like husk from corn in one swift motion.
Cristóbal’s place was empty, his voice missing as Diego led them in the psalms. Maria turned anxious eyes to Diego, then lowered her gaze before he looked her way. Already the room was full of questions. How unfair it would be to raise another.
Diego’s prayer was the same, the invocations and blessings on the land and its people. If he paused in his prayer for the governor and for the viceroy in Mexico City, and those others in authority, perhaps it was her imagination. He prayed for the king with his usual fervor. And there he would have ended his devotions on any other night, but he went on. Although her eyes were closed, Maria felt everyone in the room lean forward to hear him, so eager were they all for some solace.
“And now, Father Eternal, bless this house. Watch over my lands, protect my Indians, my flocks, my herds, my loved ones.” Diego continued. “Oh, Father,” he began, and paused again. Maria wondered what father he prayed to. Was it the All-knowing Father, or his own who had died too soon, leaving heavy burdens on young shoulders? “Oh, Father, protect us each according to our needs. Grant Luz peace. Let her know there are those who hold her dear. Teach Catarina to school her tongue, to know when to be silent. Give Erlinda a heart to take in even those who would cause her fear. And help Maria to understand what she is to us.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Father, help me to know my friends from my enemies. And teach us love and understanding, for without them, we are as dust.”
He said amen. They crossed themselves, rising swiftly from knees accustomed to prayer. Maria could not look at Diego as he walked to the back of the chapel. Her eyes were wet, and she wiped them on her sleeve, then extended her arm for La Señora to grasp.
The Indian servants filed past their master, kneeling to kiss his hand. Catarina kissed his hand and slipped out quickly, but Luz kissed his hand and clung to him for a moment. Diego smoothed back her hair, kissed her, and sent her after her sister. Erlinda knelt next and rested her cheek on his hand for a moment. She rose without looking at his face and hurried out.
Maria knelt at Diego’s feet as she did each night and kissed his hand. Instead of drawing back his hand when she finished her obeisance, Diego reached forward with his other hand and cupped her face. There was no one to see him. The others had gone ahead, and only La Señora remained behind to bless her son.
Maria looked up in surprise at Diego. He looked down at her, more serious than she had ever seen him. “I meant what I said, Maria.” He let go of her and turned to his mother. Maria rose and hurried out of the chapel.
What did he mean? Was he speaking of his words in the governor’s office? Of his prayer? Or were they somehow one and the same thing? Maria slipped into the storeroom off the kitchen and wiped her eyes on the dishtowel drying there. Luz and Catarina would want a story before sleep, as always. She could not come to them in tears.
The children had abandoned their bed for Maria’s that night. The three of them crowded close together, their arms around each other. Luz whimpered when Maria blew out the candle, but by the time Maria had finished her story of the poor girl and the prince who loved her, embellished this time with jokes and bumbling suitors, Luz was content. The three of them lay together in close companionship. Maria believed that she would not rest, not after the events of the day, but the warmth of the small bodies on either side of her soon put her to sleep.
It was a night of troubled sleep. Father Efrain put his head in her lap again, but when she looked down, it was the face of an Indian with curious yellow eyes that refused to close, even when she ran her hands over and over his face to shut the lids. And Carmen de Sosa whimpered and searched for her hair, or was it Luz, nestling close to her, who cried in her sleep?
Maria woke at dawn, exhausted. The girls still slept, so she raised herself carefully on one elbow. The sword was there at the foot of the bed, as she had known it would be. She stretched and fe
lt the heavy metal with her toes.
She glanced at Catarina’s bed. It was empty, but someone had slept there all night. Maria got up slowly, careful not to wake the little girls. She tiptoed on bare feet to Catarina’s bed, where she sat and felt the indented pillow. It was still warm. She leaned forward and sniffed the pillow, breathing in the scent of sage. She put her head down on the pillow and closed her eyes again. When she awoke, the girls were dressing and the sword was gone.
Catarina pulled her dress over her head and ran her fingers in her hair. “Ay, Maria, you are the sleepy one this morning. I can already smell chocolate from the kitchen.”
Maria sat up and tugged her nightgown down around her knees. Luz looked at her from the bed where she still lay, both pillows propped behind her head. “Diego came in here, Maria. Did you know?” She giggled. “He wasn’t even dressed! He got his sword. Did you know that he left his sword here?”
Maria smiled. “You ask more questions than Catarina.”
Luz continued, snuggling deeper in the pillows. “He told us to be quiet and let you sleep. We promised that we would, then he pulled your nightgown down around your ankles and covered you with that rug from the floor.” Her eyes were big. “Why would he do that?”
“I expect he did not want me to be cold, Luz, and did not want to wake me,” said Maria, touched and embarrassed at the same time. “Heavens, let us dress and get to the kitchen. The sun must he almost up.”
“I am already dressed,” declared Catarina. “Perhaps I will tell on Luz.”
Maria laughed, “If you go outside this room looking as if you ran backward through a bush, Erlinda will laugh! Come, my child, and let me braid your hair.”
The sun was up and warming the patio in the hacienda’s interior before they finally left their room. Erlinda was sitting alone in the kitchen. She shook her head over her sisters. “Mother in heaven!” she exclaimed, “it must be six of the clock! You three must think you are the viceroy’s children, to lie in bed after sunrise!”
Luz and Catarina looked at each other and covered their mouths, giggling behind their hands. Maria stood behind them, her hands on their shoulders, enjoying Erlinda’s gentle joking. The morning sun was warm and inviting in the long room, and the delicious aroma of piñon and juniper wood in the fireplace was pleasing to the senses.
She went to the kitchen door and looked out. Maria had seen Diego’s Tesuque Indians at other sunrises, raising their arms to the morning sun, singing a wordless song to it, their invocation to the dawn as meaningful in its own way as the prayers in the chapel. The thought struck her suddenly that she would like to stand in the middle of the garden and lift her arms to the beckoning sun, praising the bringer of dawn.
“Maria, how like Diego you grow!” Erlinda chided. “How many mornings have I seen him do just what you are doing. He surveys his beans and tomatoes, gives some sort of silent benediction to the ovens and hives. A lord surveying his lands. You would think he commanded vast domains in this new world.”
Maria turned around. “Life is made up of such small things, I think. And I do count each day as special.” She sat at the table, looking down at the plate the Mexican servant girl put before her. “Besides, I like the morning.”
Erlinda rose from the table. “Perhaps I have lived too long in this kingdom to appreciate what you and Diego see in it.” She laughed, brushing her hand against Maria’s cheek. “All I see here is work to do!”
They worked that morning, weeding the garden, baking the day’s bread, hauling water from the acequia for La Señora’s bath. After their midday bread and milk, Maria set her young charges to stitching on their samplers in a comfortable corner of the patio, and she and Erlinda began to wash the family silver.
“Maria,” began Erlinda after a long, companionable silence, “what would you say if I went to Santa Fe to stay with the Castellanos?”
Maria’s hands were deep in yucca suds and water. “Erlinda, we would miss you. ”
“And I, you. But while we were there yesterday, Don Reynaldo and La Señora Castellano asked me to visit them. I mentioned it to Diego this morning, and he thought you could manage without me for a while.”
“You would like to go, wouldn’t you?” Maria asked as she wiped the knives clean of polish and set them in the cool rinse water.
“Oh, I would. I love the Castellanos. And I feel that I owe them something of myself.” She paused as she dried a spoon in her hand, rubbing it over and over.
Maria removed the last of the knives from the rinse water and spread them on a towel. “Erlinda, how old were you when you married Marco?”
“I was your age. Fifteen.” Erlinda sat down on the bench by the table, the spoon still in her hand. “Let me tell you how it was, the day that Don Reynaldo and Marco rode out here to our holdings. I was not supposed to know about it, of course, so Diego sent me to read to Mama. You should have seen Diego. He was only just turned seventeen then, but head of the household. He tried so hard to act older than he was, but I knew he was scared, too.”
She put down the spoon and took a handful of the knives Maria held out. “Poor Mama! I think I must have read the same sentence over and over to her, so distracted was I, wondering what was going on in the sala.” Her hands continued to polish as she spoke. “After they left—with never a word to me, of course—Diego teased me and said that nothing had happened. I shouldn’t have done it, Maria, but I pushed him down, sat on him, and tickled him until he told. He is very ticklish.”
“I cannot imagine your doing such a thing, Erlinda!”
“Well, it was more than two years ago, and we were both much younger then—in many ways.”
“Tell me what happened then,” Maria asked.
“After Diego pushed me off, we sat there on the floor in the sala and he told me of my forthcoming marriage. He showed me the paper with all the marriage arrangements.” Erlinda picked up another knife. “I had no idea of our worth until then. I was to take three hundred sheep, 10 horses, 250 cattle, blankets, pottery, furs, cloth, and yes, 500 nails and an entire blacksmith’s shop. Diego also said I could choose twenty Indians to take with me. It was quite a list.”
She paused then, glancing shyly at Maria. “Why do you allow me to wander on like this?”
“I just wondered what it was like,” said Maria, taking the knives from Erlinda and replacing them in the deep drawers of the cabinet. “I have often thought it would be special to love the man you marry.”
“It is,” Erlinda replied simply. “We were of one mind about things that mattered. Even here, this is not often the way of it. I know I was lucky.” She stopped then, no sadness in her eyes, only a remembering look. “You will know how it is someday, Maria.”
“I cannot see how,” Maria answered, sitting down on the bench. “I have no dowry, not even one of those nails Diego gave away for you.”
“It is a problem,” Erlinda agreed. “Do you think the Widow Guzman would ever ...”
Maria interrupted. “No, she would not. I cannot imagine her ever providing the wool of one sheep, let alone the whole animal. ”
“How curious,” murmured Erlinda. “But I do not doubt that you will make a happy marriage someday.”
“How could I possibly, with no dowry?” Maria asked. “No, if I marry, it will have to be to someone as poor as I.”
“Diego might ... Diego might provide you with some dowry. It would be like him.”
“I could never expect such a thing, Erlinda.”
“You could. You do not have to live here long to discover what a big heart he has. Besides, he likes you. Sometimes he gets such a look in his eyes when he watches you. I think he would like to ...” Erlinda broke off, laughing. “He told me once that he thought you had the most beautiful hair.”
Maria’s hands went to her hair. “He did?”
“He did. Something about the way it shines in candlelight. ‘Copper and gold,’ that was what he said.” Erlinda stood up. “Come now, think of the time we ar
e wasting! Let us see how my sisters are doing. It is much too quiet on the patio.”
“How can you let me daydream out loud, Maria?” she continued as they walked toward the patio, “Still, let us consider the Castellanos’ offer. Perhaps this winter I can go to Santa Fe.”
Maria went to read to La Señora from the book of saints. She had read the work many times over, but she cherished the time spent in quiet with La Señora.
After only a few pages, La Señora’s head dropped forward and she slept. While the woman dozed, Maria thought again of marriage. Cristóbal wanted to marry her, but Diego would not give his permission. Cristóbal called his brother greedy. Erlinda said he had a generous heart. Which was it? Or could a man be both? She had cast herself on his mercy, and he had protected her, yet Diego was dogged when it came to defending what he considered his own. Even after all these months and all their closeness she could not pretend to know him.
“I have not seen Diego,” Maria said to Erlinda, as the two of them hurried over dinner preparation that evening.
“He left early this morning, just as I came into the kitchen. We had time for only a few words. Here, taste this,” she commanded, skimming some broth off the pot she was tending.
Maria leaned over the pot, blew on the spoon and sampled the offering. “Ay de mi, Erlinda,” she exclaimed, as the fiery liquid burned its way down. “You certainly have a way with chilies!”
Erlinda laughed and swung the kettle back over the low flames. “I do not think we will see much of Diego from now until the harvest, especially now that Cristóbal ...” She stopped and turned away. “Well, we may not see Cristóbal around here again. And so the burden falls heavier on my brother.”
Maria nodded. All the more reason for her to speak with Diego and make him understand she did not hold him to his hasty words.
“But you remind me,” Erlinda continued. “He told me this morning on his way out to tell you that he had something to ask you. Today or tomorrow.”
Maria felt the heat rise within her and knew it was not from the chili.
