Wind of Destiny

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘If only it could be true,’ Christina said as they drove back to the plantation.

  ‘Of course it is true,’ Carlotta declared. ‘Soon we will hear that General Gomez has marched back to lay siege to Santiago, and then we will have won the day.’

  It isn’t true, Toni thought. It just can’t be true. Because that would be too wonderful to be believed.

  The following night, just after midnight on Easter Sunday, she awoke to the sound of hooves on the drive. Walking horses. She leapt out of bed, pulled on her dressing gown, forgot about slippers, and ran down the stairs. Carlotta and Christina were also awake, and hurrying along the gallery. Toni did not wait for Salvador to appear, but herself unbolted the front doors and threw them open, going out on to the verandah. It was drizzling, and the night was dark and distinctly chill. And coming towards the house were six horsemen. Or at least, five horsemen, and a sixth horse, carrying a burden. Her heart constricted.

  ‘Who is it?’ she called.

  Toni! Oh, my darling Toni.’ Rafael leapt from the saddle and ran towards her. She smelt him before he reached her, even in the darkness could make out the mud and filth staining his white uniform. His hat was gone, and his sword. But his revolver still hung from his belt.

  For a moment she hesitated, then allowed herself to be taken into his arms. His clothing was also very wet, and the dampness came through her nightclothes on to her flesh.

  ‘Oh, my darling,’ he said. ‘Oh, my darling.’ He released her to embrace his mother and sister in turn, while the four horsemen slowly dismounted to lift the sixth man from his saddle, to which he had been tied, as the rain splashed on their heads.

  ‘What has happened?’ Carlotta asked, while Christina busily lit candles.

  ‘It was terrible,’ Rafael said. ‘Terrible. Father … ’

  For the first time Carlotta looked away from her son, to the man being carried up the stairs. ‘Arnaldo?’ she asked. ‘Arnaldo?’ Her voice rose an octave. ‘Arnaldo?’ she screamed.

  Rafael caught her arm as she would have dashed forward. The four men carefully laid the planter on one of the settees on the verandah.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Christina whispered, and made the sign of the cross. ‘Oh, Holy Mother.’

  Toni took the candle from her hand and held it above the wounded man as she peered at him, felt her stomach roll. Don Arnaldo’s entire jacket was a mass of dried blood. Into which fresh blood continued to ooze. His eyes were shut and his face yellow. His breathing was laboured.

  ‘Arnaldo!’ Carlotta wailed, having to be restrained by three of the men to prevent her from throwing herself on to the body of her husband.

  ‘There was no surgeon,’ Rafael said. ‘We did the best we could … ’

  Don Arnaldo was slowly bleeding to death, might have been doing so for some days, Toni realised, and they were standing around him and wailing. ‘We must take him upstairs,’ she said. Perhaps he was not actually her father or her husband, or perhaps because she had always known it would come to this, for at least one of the men, she was capable of taking command, where the others, even Christina, were too shocked.

  ‘Yes,’ Rafael agreed. ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘Take the whole settee,’ Toni commanded. ‘Christina, you must wake the servants. We need light, and hot water. What is it?’ she asked. ‘A bullet wound?’

  ‘A bayonet thrust.’

  ‘A bayonet thrust?’ She was appalled. But the men were already lifting the settee from the floor. She would have to light the way with her candle; Christina had hurried away to the back of the house to rouse Salvador. Dona Carlotta had fallen to her knees and was alternatively weeping and praying, fingering the rosary she always wore. ‘Rafael, comfort your mother,’ Toni said. As if anybody could.

  The men carried the settee across the hall, leaving muddy footprints on the polished parquet. Then they grunted as they slowly climbed the stairs.

  ‘Were you in the battle?’ Toni asked, holding the flaring candle above them so that they could see where they were going.

  ‘Battle,’ one remarked contemptuously.

  ‘We were there,’ said another.

  ‘They came at us in a row, with bayonets,’ said the third man. ‘We shot them down, but still they came, shouting curses. And those bayonets … ’ he gave a shudder and almost dropped his end of the couch.

  Toni wanted to shudder too. The thought of being pierced by a bayonet made her want to vomit. But that was what had happened to Don Arnaldo.

  ‘Is there food, senora?’ asked the fourth man. ‘We have not eaten in two days.’

  ‘You will have food,’ Toni promised. ‘In there,’ she told them, indicating Don Arnaldo’s dressing room, trying to concentrate, while clouds of lead seemed to be encasing her heart, her stomach, her very brain. They had pitted peons against regulars armed with bayonets, as she had feared would be the case. She dared not think what was going to happen now.

  The couch was placed on the floor in the centre of the room. By now there were other people clustering behind them, Salvador, bearing a glowing chandelier, Christina, several maids and footmen, peering over each others’ shoulders at the wounded man. Their master.

  ‘We must get his clothes off,’ Toni said. ‘His wound needs to be dressed, and we must stop him catching cold.’ As if a cold would ever matter to him again, she thought.

  ‘I will do it, senora,’ Salvador volunteered, setting the chandelier on the dressing table so that it was directly above the settee. He knelt beside his master, taking from his belt a sharp kitchen knife, made the sign of the cross, and began cutting at the stiff material. The tunic had only been wrapped round Don Arnaldo’s shoulders after the wound had been first dressed, but it had stuck to the flesh in many places, cemented by the drying blood, and Salvador had to proceed slowly and carefully. While he did so, Toni knelt at the other end and unlaced her father-in-law’s boots. Clean socks were essential, Dona Carlotta had said. These socks were wet and filled with mud.

  The four men who had carried the settee shuffled their feet, and Toni remembered them. ‘There is food and wine downstairs,’ she said. ‘Miguel?’

  ‘Yes, senora,’ said the senior footman.

  Toni raised her head. ‘Take these men downstairs and give them food and wine. Anything they wish.’

  The men left the room.

  ‘Senora,’ Salvador whispered.

  Toni turned, looked past him, and her stomach seemed to brush her heart aside as it surged into her throat. Salvador had cut through the original bandage as well, and she gazed at a huge bleeding hole in Don Arnaldo’s left side; almost she expected to see his heart beating into it. Certainly there was something moving …

  ‘That is his lung,’ Salvador told her.

  ‘Holy Mary Mother of God,’ she whispered. ‘We must close it up. Quickly. You,’ she shouted at the maids. ‘Tear up some sheets.’ She pointed at the bedroom shared by Arnaldo and Carlotta, which was through an open door.

  The maids stared at her in consternation; the sheets were best linen.

  ‘Do it,’ Christina said, her voice low.

  The sheets were tom up, and now Christina came to help Salvador and Toni, wrapping the strips of cloth round and round her father’s body, watching them immediately turn pink and then red.

  Rafael appeared in the doorway. ‘We were defeated,’ he announced.

  No one spoke.

  ‘We were driven away in rout,’ he said. ‘Our men fled every which way. We tried to rally them. Marti … ’

  ‘It is his fault,’ Toni said. ‘All of this is his fault.’ She worked as she spoke, while tears streamed down her face. Don Arnaldo had been such a kind man.

  ‘Marti is dead,’ Rafael wailed.

  She raised her head.

  ‘Dead,’ he howled. ‘Shot down at the head of his men. Marti is dead.’

  There was a shudder from beneath her hands, and Toni looked down again. And made the sign of the cross once again. Don Arnaldo Diaz de Obrigar wa
s also dead.

  Chapter 7

  The Camp — 1895

  ‘Oh, Papa,’ Christina said. ‘Oh, Papa.’ It was the first time Toni had ever heard her sister-in-law address her parent with such warmth, such intimacy. Now she stepped to one side as Christina dropped to her knees beside the settee.

  ‘Where is Dona Carlotta?’ she asked Rafael.

  ‘Downstairs. I left her lying down. Is he … ?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘He cannot be. Father … ’he knelt beside his sister, held the dead man’s hands.

  ‘We must send for the priest, senora,’ Salvador said in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But it must be someone we can trust. Not a word of this must get out.’

  ‘I will go myself,’ he volunteered.

  ‘I would be most grateful, Salvador,’ she said, and went outside on to the gallery. She felt dizzy, almost unreal, and suddenly exhausted. And very cold. She had never actually been involved in a death before; her grandparents had died when she had only been a small child. And there were so many other things beating at her mind, preventing her from knowing what had to be done … send for the priest, Salvador had said, and indeed the good fellow was already hurrying for the stables. But Don Arnaldo is dead. It is too late for the priest.

  Except to bury him.

  And then … Jack, she thought. Oh, God, Jack! She discovered she had put her hand to her face, and her fingers were wet, and smelt. Blood! There was blood on her hands and on her nightdress and dressing gown. There was even blood on her bare feet, and mud, where she had trodden in the men’s footsteps. There was blood and mud everywhere, because as she looked down the stairs she could see the stains on the wood, blood which had dripped from the settee as it was carried upwards.

  The servants were leaving the death chamber. ‘Luis,’ she said to one of the footmen. ‘The stairs, the hall, the verandah, must be cleaned, before light.’

  ‘Yes, senora,’ he said doubtfully. In the nearly a year she had been on the plantation, she had never given an order before.

  But Jack … she looked at the bedroom door, as Rafael also came out.

  ‘He was a hero,’ he said, and she realised he was speaking of his father. ‘He fought at our head, refusing to retreat, even from the bayonets … ’

  Did you retreat from the bayonets? Toni wanted to ask.

  Perhaps he sensed that, for he said, ‘I shot the man who killed him. And carried Father from the field. But by then our entire army was in retreat.’

  ‘Were there many dead?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think most got away. The regulars did not pursue us very hard. I think they were surprised by the ease of their victory.’

  ‘What of … what of Jack?’

  ‘Oh, he got away. It was he commanded me to bring Father back here, to die on his own land. If he had to die.’ He gave a little sob.

  ‘Did Jack fight well?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh yes, like a demon.’

  Still nothing but praise for Jack, even if he had led them to disaster. While she wanted to do nothing but sit down and weep her relief. Because Jack was alive, and he would stay alive. They would never kill Jack.

  ‘You must go to your mother,’ she said. ‘Mother! I don’t know what to do. I should return to the army. I … ’

  ‘Were you recognised by the Spanish?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Go to your mother,’ Toni said again. He was sounding like a bewildered little boy. That was because he was, a bewildered little boy.

  He went down the stairs, and she waited for the wails of anguish. They came soon enough, and then he was half carrying, half escorting the stricken woman up the stairs towards her. ‘I am sorry, Dona Carlotta,’ she said. Carlotta stared at her, clearly not recognising her. Toni waited for them to go into the bedroom, where Christina remained, then she went downstairs herself, out on to the verandah, to breathe some air which was not contaminated with the stench of blood, and sweat, and fear. Was she frightened? She did not think so. She felt strangely aloof from it all, and yet had to restrain the wildest of thoughts which kept racing through her brain. Arnaldo was dead. Rafael was alive. It could so easily have been the other way around. And what then? If she was so relieved about Jack that she felt physically sick, he was yet as lost to her as if he too had been shot. He would not return to Obrigar until the rebellion ended. But how long would that take to happen? The last revolution had dragged on for ten years, and then had ended in defeat.

  She had to write to Ma and Pa now. She had to tell them what had happened. And ask for their help? How could they help these people now? How could anyone?

  She heard footsteps, and raised her head. ‘You were magnificent,’ Rafael said. ‘I am so proud of you.’

  There was no reply she could make to that.

  ‘Toni … ’ he sat beside her. ‘We have put Mother to bed. She … I don’t know how she will recover from this. Having left her family to be Father’s wife, she and he were very close.’

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘Christina is stronger,’ he said. ‘Christina will be of help to you.’

  ‘To me?’

  ‘I must go back to the army,’ he said. ‘You must realise that. It is my duty to do so.’

  She frowned at him, only slowly understanding what he was telling her. ‘You want me to manage the plantation?’

  ‘In so far as it can be done with reduced labour,’ he said. ‘It should be possible to save some of the cane … ’

  Her dream, she thought. But she had never dreamed of being alone. Or that it would happen so soon. ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ she protested.

  ‘Martinez will help you. He is a good man. And Sanchez knows more about the factory than I do.’

  ‘But if you have been defeated,’ she said. ‘Won’t you be coming home? Isn’t the revolution over?’

  ‘Never,’ he declared. ‘It will never be over. We will fight until we win.’ Some of the ardour left his voice. ‘We have no choice. If only the Americans would come in … ’ He looked at her, as if she could in some way influence that. ‘We shall fight forever,’ he muttered.

  Which was what she was afraid of; she had married a bandit.

  Salvador returned just after dawn, with Father Jaime. By then Rafael had aroused the peons, survived the clamour of the women who had wanted to know about the fate of their loved ones, and caused a grave to be dug in the little cemetery a quarter of a mile behind the house. Toni had only been here a few times before, always with Christina, to place flowers on the graves of her grandfather and grandmother, and the other members of the Diaz family; some of the headstones were very old. The two girls had in fact arranged the Easter flowers on the graves only the previous Friday, after returning from church. Now the sudden pit of black earth looked obscene.

  The coach makers had hastily constructed a coffin, in which Don Arnaldo’s body had been placed; two of the Negro women from the village had washed it, and dressed it in one of his best civilian suits.

  ‘It is sad,’ Rafael said. ‘He would have preferred to be buried in uniform.’

  By then too he had bathed himself, and changed his clothes, so exhausted he fell asleep twice while being dressed. Toni also had a hot tub, to wash away the blood.

  Father Jaime led them to private prayer in the drawing room, standing over the open coffin, looking down on Don Arnaldo’s face, dignified and composed in death. Then he held another prayer on the verandah, before which all the peons and their wives and children had assembled. He said nothing about the revolution, but praised Don Arnaldo for his many high qualities and for his belief in freedom, and he asked for special prayers for those who, for whatever reason, were absent today. Of all those still on the plantation, only Dona Carlotta was not present. She was in her bed, in a collapsed state, all of her strength drained away by the death of her husband; Rafael and Christina had had to feed her laudanum.
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  The entire community proceeded up the slope beyond the house, the coffin borne by six peons, and followed by Rafael, Christina and Toni. Rafael had changed into a dark suit, and carried no weapons; Christina, and Toni both wore black, Father Jaime prayed again at the graveside, and the coffin was lowered into the ground. The peons heaved the earth back on top of it, and the assembly made the sign of the cross. This is so wrong, Toni thought. A man like Arnaldo Diaz de Obrigar, the head of one of Cuba’s greatest families, should have been buried with all of Santiago standing around, with the Governor General himself to pay his last respects. But the Diazes had put themselves beyond the pale.

  The three of them walked slowly back to the house, with Father Jaime. ‘I shall not expect you in church today, senorita,’ the priest told Christina. ‘Or your mother, of course. I shall offer a prayer for her speedy recovery. But you understand that I must get back. Lumbrera is in the district, and he will have heard of this.’

  ‘Then you must prepare yourselves for a visit from him,’ Rafael said, after the priest had left on his mule. ‘And I must get away while I can.’

  ‘Would it not be better to wait, and face him out?’ Toni asked.

  ‘I … ’ he licked his lips. ‘No, I do not think it would be better. All Cuba has been placed under martial law. He would have the right to arrest me merely on suspicion. And then … ’ he licked his lips again.

  He is afraid, Toni thought. More afraid of being arrested by Lumbrera than of being forced to fight another battle against the Spanish bayonets. She wondered what little trick the colonel had for dealing with men.

  ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘my place is with the army. Jack only gave me leave of absence for a week to return Father. I cannot desert my men, my command.’

  ‘Next month will be our anniversary,’ she said. ‘Our first anniversary.’

  ‘Maybe … maybe we shall have triumphed by then.’ He held her arms. ‘I wish I could stay with you, my Toni. I dream of you every night. But there is work I must do.’ His smile was twisted. ‘Now I too have a dead father to avenge.’ He drew her close, released her to embrace Christina, then hurried down the steps and mounted his waiting horse. The four men who had brought Don Arnaldo home were already in the saddle, although they too had to be exhausted, but like Rafael, they would not stay to be arrested by Lumbrera.