Spanish Serenade

by Jennifer Blake

  “You need not kneel,” Refugio, said, his voice deadly quiet. “There is no priest here to give you succor or unction, nor is there sanctuary.”

  “You can't kill me here,” Don Esteban said on a panting breath.

  “Why not?” Refugio said simply, and closed in, carrying his sword before him in a dazzling steel-blue whirl.

  It had been a trick, a pretense, Refugio's moment of weakness. Annoyance and rich gladness ran together in Pilar's veins as she realized it. Her heart beat with a jarring thud inside her chest and the fear in her veins circulated with the cold ache of poison. She paid no attention to the lady of the house, who continued to scream behind her, nor to the murmur of the crowd beginning to gather on the street outside, attracted by the screaming of the official's wife and the clanging of the swordfight. Pilar could not breathe, could not think, could do nothing except strain to follow the shifting movements of the men before her.

  They fought each other there before the altar while the sun's glow through the one high window sifted soft gold light down upon them. The candlelight ran in fiery gleams along their blades and tinted their damp faces with glassy shades of orange and blue and yellow. Their coarse striving in that place was profane, and yet carried also a trace of lofty purpose, as if the issue of life and death had its own ennoblement.

  Don Esteban was harried and worn, with cruelty lingering in his eyes. Refugio's features reflected intent, pitiless p patience. It was the patience of the stalking lion. He was El Leon. What reason was there to fear for him?

  What reason, except that if he died, Pilar knew, a part of her would die with him? What reason, except love? She loved him.

  That truth of it hardly had time to penetrate before Don Esteban clenched his hand on the altar cloth and gave it a hard jerk. The candlesticks toppled. The candles spilled, rolling; falling to the floor. The don swirled the altar cloth like a matador's cape and tossed it at Refugio, trying to entangle his blade. In quick reflex, Refugio knocked it aside. He caught the end to drag it from the other man's grasp, tossing it in his turn. Don Esteban thrust at the soft white folds with a savage swipe that sent the cloth lofting back toward the altar and its flickering, smoldering candles. At the same time, he heaved himself around with his back to the end of the altar, then darted behind the heavy piece, setting the lace curtains that flanked the crucifix to swirling. Refugio dodged to the other end. The don scrambled to the reverse side once more, tearing the lace curtains down from their fastening and flinging them between himself and Refugio. As Refugio sidestepped the dragging mass, the other man dived along the wall, overturning chairs, circling toward the entrance doors, toward Pilar.

  Refugio called out to her as he sprang after his opponent, but she had already seen her stepfather's murderous intention. She backed swiftly away, searching for a weapon. The nearest one was a tall candlestand of wrought iron, with unlighted candles on the spikes of its branched arms. She skimmed behind it and picked it up, using it like a pitchfork to ward off her stepfather. Don Esteban growled a curse, but ran past her. He caught the wrist of the official's portly wife, twisting it behind her back, then he pressed his sword point to her well-padded ribs.

  “Stop there, Carranza!” he shouted.

  Refugio skidded to a wrenching halt. Pilar put down the candlestand and stepped to his side. The four of them stood still. The breathing of the two men was ragged. The air whistled in Don Esteban's throat while his chest heaved. The official's wife bleated with every breath. Behind them came an ominous fluttering sound and the flare of light.

  Fire!

  The altar cloth had caught from the fallen candles. The flames had ignited the sagging lace curtains and they were flaring high, setting those still attached to the wall alight. There was a soft explosion of fire that leaped to the ceiling. As they stood there, the dry wooden boarding began to smoke while small tongues of flame licked along its edges.

  As she turned back to Don Esteban, Pilar saw the sneer of satisfaction on his face. “You did it,” she said. “You did it on purpose.”

  “Wasn't it clever of me?” he said, and gave the official's wife a hard push that sent her catapulting into Refugio's arms. Spinning around, he leaped for the door and flung it open.

  “El Leon!” he shouted to those gathered outside. “It's the bandit, El Leon, scourge of Spain! He's robbed the house of Treasurer Nuñez and set it on fire!”

  15

  AN OUTBURST OF CALLS and yells followed Don Esteban's pronouncement. Cries of “Fire! Fire!” could be heard as one person after another picked it up and sent it on down the street with the accusation against Refugio. The noise rose like the angry buzzing of a disturbed beehive. A man appeared in the open doorway, and then another, and another.

  “Out the back,” Refugio said.

  The words held rage and distaste for the retreat, but were spoken without hesitation. He was right, of course; there was no other way. For Refugio to force a fight on Don Esteban while a fire raged and his past rose to confront him was impossible. To try to battle his way out the front through the growing mass of people would be a dangerous incitement, and to remain behind suicidal. Don Esteban had won his freedom and also redeemed his life.

  Refugio cast a harried, frowning glance at the chapel where the light of the burgeoning flames reflected on the walls.

  “There's no time,” Pilar said quietly.

  “No,” he answered in grudging agreement. He caught her hand as he swung toward the rear of the house.

  Pilar plunged with him through the rooms at a run. They emerged from the back door and cleared the rear gallery with a few steps and a soaring leap. They raced across the open ground with their heads down, jumping across rows of beans and peppers, circling drainage ditches filled with scummed water. Behind them came the peculiar rumbling roar of a mob gathering for pursuit. The first of the men swarmed out of the treasurer's house. There came a shrill yell as Pilar and Refugio were sighted.

  Charro, Enrique, and Baltasar dashed out to meet them as they neared Don Esteban's house. With drawn swords at the ready, the three closed in behind Pilar and Refugio as a rear guard as they dove inside. Orders, succinct and detailed, flowed from the lips of the brigand leader. By the time they passed through the house and spilled out the front door, Baltasar had been dispatched for Isabel, Enrique sent to find Doña Luisa, and Charro and Vicente assigned to remain, no matter the cost, at Pilar's side.

  Refugio, vocal and incisive at their head only a moment before, was not with them when they reached the street. They did not pause to question why, but set out at a run in the direction of the river. They were far down the street when Pilar, over her shoulder, saw Refugio, slide from the front door of Don Esteban's house, gesture behind him with a shout, then lope away in a different direction from that they had taken. A tight knot formed in her throat as she saw the angry mob pour out the door he had just left, swarming after him. He was leading the pursuit away from them.

  All around them was clamor and confusion. Smoke rose in a dark cloud behind them. Minute by minute it grew darker, boiling higher. They could smell it as it was driven toward them in a haze along the streets, backed by the warm wind out of the south. Soldiers in uniform came running toward the smoke. They shouted orders and called for help, for buckets and water barrels, ladders and axes. The words were in Spanish, however, and the French shopkeepers and clerks and housewives running to view the commotion shrugged in incomprehension.

  “The church bells! The priests must be told to ring the bells, to spread the alarm!” someone was yelling as they neared the church of St. Louis at the Plaza de Armas.

  “They will not,” came the answer. “It's Good Friday.”

  “They must! The town will burn!”

  “It's Good Friday. The bells are silent on Good Friday. They will not ring the bells.”

  The bells did not ring. They did not ring while Pilar and the others pounded past the rickety stalls of the marketplace. They were not ringing while they raced along
side the walls of the convent of the Ursuline nuns. They still had not rung as they stepped up on the low and curving river levee and slowed to a walk. They did not ring as they reached the boats that would take them through the swamps.

  Refugio was not there. The two boatmen who had been hired to guide them were standing on the levee, staring at the swirling column of dark gray smoke that rose into the sky above the houses. They asked quick, anxious questions of Pilar and the others, for they had relatives in the town. They seemed not to like the answers they got, because they drew off a few yards to talk it over between them.

  Behind the men, at the foot of the levee, lay the two boats. They were hardly more than dugout canoes, but must have been cut from trees of enormous height, for they were at least thirty feet long. They appeared clumsily built, with the marks of the ax still on them, yet rode easily in the water. They provided no overhead protection from the elements, but the bulwark-like cross sections of wood left in three places to strengthen the boat made rudimentary seats.

  Enrique joined them a short time later. Doña Luisa would not come, he said. She wished them a fond farewell, but could not leave her property claims in the colony unsettled, nor did she have any reason for, or intention of, braving the sea voyage again so soon.

  Baltasar arrived just afterward with Isabel at his side. She had with her a number of bundles containing their clothes, and also a few sacks of provisions, since there was no way to tell how long they might have to wait before making contact with a privateer willing to take them to Havana. The other girl fell on Vicente with cries of joy, hugging him until he turned scarlet. She was full of exclamations about the fire and the way it was spreading, and asked every two minutes where Refugio was and why he was not with them.

  The smoke grew thicker, becoming a pall that darkened the sky as it climbed into the heavens. It drifted out over the river in acrid, throat-burning rolls that hid the anchored ships and flatboats from sight. Above the rooftops could be glimpsed leaping orange arrows of flame. The sound of yells and shouts came on the wind, along with the muted crackle and roar of burning wood.

  Refugio came walking out of the smoke from the opposite direction of that which they were watching. He had removed his coat, and his shirt was torn. His hair was tousled and his skin gray with soot. He looked at the provisions piled around Isabel's feet, and a frown creased his brow.

  “Spectacles are enthralling,” he said, “but hardly worth the risk of starving. If I am forced to load these wares, then everything not my own goes into the river.”

  They converged upon him, but before they could answer his unspoken charge of slothfulness, he spoke again. “Where is Doña Luisa?”

  Enrique explained with a sad shake of his head. “I tried to tell her it was your order that she come with me. She still refused. She was not impressed with the reasons I gave her, and when I threatened to take her by force, she laughed. I could not harm her, so I left her.”

  Baltasar grunted. “Let her stay here, then.”

  “To die?” Refugio said quietly. “She has done nothing to warrant begin left to Don Esteban's revenge.”

  “You think he would strike at her?” Pilar asked.

  “Since he will be balked of striking at us, there is nothing more likely. More than that, Doña Luisa might find herself answering questions from the governor about her recent guests. Don Esteban's ruse is a great success. There's scarcely a person, child or crone, who isn't now watching for the fiendish bandit, El Leon. It makes for difficulties.”

  “The sooner we leave then, the better,” Charro said in low tones, “and the more likely it is that we'll have our transportation.”

  Refugio glanced behind the other man at the boatmen near the water's edge. “There's a problem?”

  “They seem to be having second thoughts,” Charro answered.

  “Let them go where they will,” Refugio said after brief consideration, “but keep the largest of the boats at all costs.”

  “We need the men for guides,” the other man said, though the words had a tentative ring.

  “Only if we try to make our way through the swamps.”

  “If?” Baltasar growled in disbelief.

  But there was no answer. Refugio had vanished into the smoke again.

  “Where is he going?” Isabel demanded, her tone querulous.

  “At a guess, after Doña Luisa.” It was Enrique who answered in a voice heavy with disgust.

  Charro agreed. “Ten to one he brings her back.”

  “I'm not so great a fool as to bet against a certainty,” Enrique said.

  “I don't see what he wants with her,” Isabel complained.

  “A conscience sop? A hair shirt?” Charro answered. “Take your pick. Our Refugio collects both.”

  Vicente stepped forward, a frown on his thin face. “Who is this woman, Doña Luisa? What has she to do with my brother?”

  It was Enrique who explained. Pilar hardly heard what he said. Charro was right, she was sure; Refugio was afraid to leave Doña Luisa behind for fear of what might happen to her. But was that all there was to it? The attachments formed early in life, especially those thwarted in some way, were often stronger and more enduring than those of later years. He had gone to Doña Luisa so readily that day on the ship, without a word of protest or a backward glance. That could mean that it had not been a totally distasteful sacrifice. To have refused would have caused danger for his men and for her, but did he have to go so easily, with such smiling charm?

  What a terrible thing it was to love. It caused such doubts, such fears. She was suddenly jealous of the time Refugio had spent with Doña Luisa, but most of all she envied the other woman her knowledge of him when he was young and without care. What a charming young grandee he must have been, full of wit and laughter, music and uncomplicated sentiment. She would never know him like that. Never. It hurt.

  How long had it been since she began to feel this way? Had it begun in the patio garden in Seville? Or was it in the mountains when Refugio discovered his brother had been taken by Don Esteban? There had been something there, some painful awareness, some current of attraction that she had tried to deny.

  That night on the ship, when he lay injured and near death, or so she thought — how easily she had made the decision to offer herself, to use her body to rouse him from his reverie with death. She could not think of it without feeling her face burn. She should have known then. Perhaps she had known, but had kept the knowledge carefully hidden, even from herself. How else to explain it?

  What point was there in thinking of it? He was a bandit, an outcast who was now wanted in the new world as well as the old. He had no future that he could share with a woman. He kept her with him, and Doña Luisa, because he felt responsible, but each was another burden, their safety a duty doggedly assumed. He might make love to them on occasion, but it was no more than a way to pass a pleasant hour, a means of forgetting, or else it was yet another duty.

  She must not let him know. She was not quite certain what he would do. He might turn on her with scathing reminders that he had never intended to entice her, never meant to bed her. Or he might just as easily smile and pretend with sweet and aching tenderness that he returned what she felt. Either one would be more than she could bear.

  Tears burned in her throat, rising to her eyes. She wiped them from under her lashes, hoping that anyone who saw would think they were caused by the smoke.

  They well could be. New Orleans was burning. Driven by the wind, the flames were spreading in a wide swath. People were fleeing in panic, streaming out of the town gates carrying whatever they could salvage, or else taking to boats and paddling out to the safety of the middle of the river. It appeared that the house Don Esteban had been staying in must be on fire, along with most of the rest of Chartres Street above the Plaza de Armas. Several of the ships tied up at the levee near the square had caught fire also, the flames leaping into their crosstrees like so many torches.

  Abruptly, somewhere n
ear the far side of the palisade, an explosion erupted. The thunder of it boomed with a cracking roar that echoed back from across the river. Debris spouted into the air along with a great fountain of fire that lit up the sky with lurid orange and yellow.

  Isabel gave a small scream, crying out. “What was that?”

  “A cache of gunpowder, at a guess,” Charro said.

  “The powder magazine,” Baltasar said.

  Charro nodded. “It will spread the fire.”

  He was right. Nor was that the only explosion. Gunpowder was necessary for hunting, and hunting was a way of life in the colony. The shopkeepers who sold it, and the hunters who stockpiled it, provided stores that in their eruptions increased the consuming fury ten times over. It began to look as if the entire city might be engulfed.

  There was a furtive movement behind them and a faint, lapping sound. The boatmen, under the cover of the explosions, were making ready to shove off their boats.

  “Hey, you! Wait!” Charro yelled as he turned, leaping down the gently inclined side of the levee.

  “Sorry, my friend,” they called. “We can't waste our time here while there's money to be made ferrying people away from the fire!”

  Charro's sword rasped as he drew it. Enrique and Baltasar whipped out their own as, seeing the problem, they took a running jump after him. Vicente, though unarmed, wasn't far behind them.

  Charro reached the boats before the two other men, presenting the point of his sword so the boatmen jerked away from the dugouts, standing erect. However, Baltasar, holding his sword above his head, made no attempt to slow his progress, but slammed into the boatmen. They went sprawling. The big outlaw bent over one, catching the front of his shirt, smashing his sword hilt into the man's jaw. Enrique snatched his dagger from his belt and, reversing it, struck the other boatmen alongside the head. The bandits bent over the men on the ground, but they lay groaning with no fight left in them.