Zorro

by Isabel Allende

  “It seems a little strange,” the amazed man managed to stammer out. “Strange? You must be new to Barcelona!” Diego interrupted. “Her Excellency has always sent wine to the troops on her birthday, and she has even greater reason now that our country has been liberated from the atheist despot!” Still bewildered, the lieutenant ordered his subalterns to retrieve the cask from the carriage, and even invited Diego to toast with them, but he excused himself, alleging that he had to deliver similar gifts to La Ciudadela. “Soon Her Excellency will be sending you her favorite stew: pigs’ feet and turnips. How many mouths to feed here?” Diego asked. “Nineteen.”

  “Fine. Good evening.”

  “Your name, senor, please ”

  “I am Don Rafael Moncada, nephew of Her Excellency Dona Eulalia de Califs,” Diego replied, and rapping on the carriage door with his cane, he ordered the false coachman to drive on. At three in the morning, when the city was asleep and the streets were empty, Diego prepared to carry out the second phase of his plan. He was banking on the fact that at that hour the men in the barracks would have drunk their wine, and if not asleep they would at least be stunned. That was his one advantage. He had changed his clothes and dressed as Zorro. He carried his whip, a pistol, and his sharp sword. To avoid attracting attention with the sound of horse’s hooves, he went on foot. Hugging the walls, he made his way through the alleyways to the barracks, where he verified that the same guards, yawning with fatigue, were still standing beneath the lanterns. Apparently they had not had their share of the wine. Julius Caesar and two other members of La Justicia were waiting in the shadows of an entryway, disguised as sailors, as they had agreed. Diego gave them their instructions, which included the categorical order not to intervene and come to his aid, whatever happened. Each man should look out for himself. They wished one another luck in the name of God, and separated. The “sailors” staged a drunken brawl near the barracks while Diego, hidden in the darkness, awaited his chance. The ruckus attracted the attention of the guards, who briefly abandoned their posts to check out the source. They found the spurious drunks and warned them to move on or they would be arrested, but the offenders continued swinging blindly at each other, as if they hadn’t heard. Their staggering and the nonsense they were shouting was so comic that the guards burst out laughing, but when they tried to disperse the supposedly drunk men, they miraculously regained their equilibrium and redirected their blows. Caught by surprise, the soldiers did not have a chance to defend themselves. The “sailors” overcame them in an instant, then took them by the ankles and dragged them unceremoniously down a nearby alley to a dwarf-sized door set back from the street, beneath an arch. Diego’s comrades from La Justicia knocked three times; a peephole opened, they gave the password, and a sixtyish woman dressed in black opened the door. They stooped down to go in, to avoid banging their heads against the low door frame, and pulled their inert prisoners into a coal bin. There they left them with their hands bound and hoods pulled over their heads after taking their clothes. The former sailors were quickly transformed into guards and hurried back to the barracks to take up posts beneath the lanterns. In the few minutes it had taken to replace the guards, Diego had gained entrance to the barracks, sword and pistol in hand. Inside, the building seemed deserted; the quiet of the graveyard reigned, and there was very little light because the oil in half the lanterns had burned out. Invisible as a ghost only the gleam of his blade betrayed his presence Zorro crossed through the entry hall. Cautiously, he pushed open a door and peered into the hall used as an armory; it was here the contents of the barrel had been dealt out, because he found a half dozen men snoring on the floor, including the lieutenant. Diego satisfied himself that none of them was awake, and then checked the cask. They had emptied it to the last drop. “To your health, senores!” he exclaimed with satisfaction, and on a playful impulse traced the letter Z on the wall with three strokes of his sword. Bernardo’s warning that Zorro would ultimately take over came to his mind, but it was too late. Quickly, he gathered up firearms and swords, piled them into the chests in the entry hall, then continued his exploration of the building, extinguishing lights and candles as he went. Shadows had always been his best allies. He found three more men felled by White Owl’s potion and calculated that unless the lieutenant had lied, there were eight left. He hoped to find the prisoners’ cells without running into guards, but he heard voices nearby and realized he had to hide. He found himself in a large, nearly empty room. There was nothing to crouch behind, and there was no time to douse the two lanterns on the opposite wall, fifteen paces away. The only things that might be of use were the heavy ceiling beams, but they were too high to jump up to. He sheathed his sword, put his pistol in his waistband, unrolled his whip, and with a flick wrapped the tip around one of the beams, tugged to tighten it, and pulled himself up, as he had done so often in the ship’s rigging and in the Gypsies’ circus. Once there, he coiled his whip and flattened himself along the beam, at ease, knowing that the light of the torches did not reach him. At that moment two men sauntered in, jabbering; judging by their behavior, they had not drunk their ration of wine. Zorro decided to stop them before they reached the armory where their companions lay sprawled in a deep sleep. He waited until they were beneath the beam, then swooped down on them like an enormous black bird, cape flapping and whip in hand. Paralyzed, the men were slow to draw their swords, giving him time to buckle their knees with two swift blows of the whip. “Good evening to you, senores!” he said, making a mocking bow to his victims, now on their knees. “I beg you, please place your swords on the ground… oh so carefully.” He snapped his whip as a warning and drew his pistol from his sash. The men did exactly as he said, and he kicked their swords into a corner. “Perhaps you will assist me, Your Mercies. I assume that you do not wish to die, and for me it would be an annoyance to have to kill you.

  Tell me, where is the best place to incarcerate you so that you will not cause problems?“ he asked sarcastically. The soldiers gaped at him in a daze; they had no idea what he meant. They were ignorant conscripts, a pair of peasants who in their brief lives had witnessed horrors, survived the killing of war, and nearly starved. They were not up to riddles. Zorro simplified his question, accentuating his words with snaps of his whip. One of them, too frightened to speak, pointed to the door they had come through. He suggested that they say their prayers, because if they were deceiving him they would die. The door opened onto a long bare corridor that they marched down in single file, the captives ahead and Zorro behind. At the end, the passageway split. To the right was a battered door; the one to the left was in better condition and bore a lock that opened from the other side. He motioned to his prisoners to open the one to the right. That revealed a nauseating latrine composed of four holes in an excrement-covered floor, a few pails of water, and a lantern swarming with flies. There was no way out other than a small opening with iron bars. ”Perfect! I regret that the fragrance is not that of gardenias.

  Perhaps in the future you will swab this down more carefully, caballeros,“ he commented, and with his pistol indicated that the terrified men should go in. He bolted the toilet and walked to the other door. The lock on the door to the left was very simple; he was able to open it in seconds with the steel pin he always hid in the seam of a boot to perform his magic tricks. He opened the door with caution and stole down a stairway, reasoning that it led underground, the most likely place for the cells. At the end of the stairway he pressed himself against the wall and glanced around the corner, A single torch lighted a small airless room guarded by one man; he, too, seemed not to have tasted the wine laced with the potion, as he was sitting cross-legged on the ground, laying out a game of solitaire. His gun was within reach of his hand, but he did not have time to pick it up before Zorro leaped toward him and with one kick to the chin tumbled him backward, then with a second kick sent his weapon flying. The stench in the place was so foul that Diego was nearly driven back, but this was no moment for queasiness. He took the
torch from the wall and started looking into the cramped, damp, vermin-ridden, pestilent cells where the prisoners were jammed together in darkness; skeletons with the eyes of madmen. There were three or four to a cell so small that they had to take turns standing and sitting. The fetid air pulsed with the panting breath of those miserable wretches. Zorro called for Manuel Escalante, and a voice answered from one of the cells. He raised the torch and saw a man clinging to the bars, so badly beaten that his face was a shapeless purple mass in which no features were distinguishable. ”If you are the executioner, you are welcome,“ said the prisoner, and Zorro recognized his maestro from his dignified bearing and firm voice. ”I have come to free you, maestro. I am the fox. Zorro.“

  “Good idea. The keys are near the door. And on your way, it would be wise to tend to the guard; he is beginning to come to,” Manuel Escalante calmly replied. His disciple found the key ring and opened the maestro’s barred door. The three prisoners who shared his cell rushed out, pushing and scrambling like animals, maddened by a mixture of terror and gut-wrenching hope. Their rescuer stopped them with his pistol. “Not so fast, caballeros; first you must help your comrades,” he ordered. The menacing aspect of the large pistol had the virtue of restoring some of the men’s lost humanity. While they struggled with keys and locks, Zorro shoved the guard into the empty cell, and Escalante took his gun. Once all the cells were open, the two of them led away those pathetic, ragged specters, uncombed and covered with dried blood, filth, and vomit. They went up the stairs, down the corridor, across the empty room where Diego had jumped from the beam, and got as far as the armory before coming upon a group of guards alerted by the noise from the dungeon. They had come prepared, swords in hand. Zorro fired the single shot of his weapon, hitting one of the guards, who dropped like lead, but Escalante found that his own musket was not loaded, and he had no time to do it. He gripped it by the barrel and erupted like a tornado, swinging blows in every direction. Zorro had drawn his sword, and he too attacked. He managed to hold back the onslaught long enough for Escalante to pick up one of the swords that had been taken from the men Zorro had locked in the latrine. Between the two of them, they created more noise and harm than a battalion. Zorro had plied his foil every day since he was a boy, but he had never had to use it in a serious fight. His one duel to the death had been with pistols, and had been much cleaner. He found that there is nothing honorable in a real combat, where rules count for nothing. The only standard is to win, whatever the cost. The blades did not ring in an elegant choreography, as they did in fencing classes, but were aimed directly at the enemy to run him through. Gentlemanly conduct was forgotten; blows were ferocious and gave no quarter. The sensation he experienced as steel pierced flesh was indescribable. He was suffused with a blend of unholy exaltation, repugnance, and triumph; he lost all notion of reality and was transformed into an animal. The cries of pain and bloodstained clothing of his adversaries made him grateful for the techniques gleaned from his associates in La Justicia, as infallible on the Circle of the Master as in all-out, hand-to-hand combat. Afterward, when he had time to think, he appreciated the months of practice with Bernardo, when he was so worn out after finishing that his legs barely held him. In the process, he had developed very quick reflexes and peripheral vision: he sensed instinctively what was happening behind his back. In a fraction of a second he was able to parry the simultaneous moves of several opponents, judge distances, calculate the velocity and direction of every thrust, defend himself, attack. Maestro Escalante showed himself to be as effective as his former student despite his age and the terrible beating he had suffered at the hands of his torturers. He did not have the younger man’s agility and strength, but his experience and calm more than compensated for those deficiencies. In the heat of the fray, Zorro was sweating and panting, while his maestro was brandishing his sword with the same decisiveness but with much more elegance. Within a few minutes the two of them had disabled, disarmed, or wounded every guard. Only when the field had been won did the rescued prisoners dare come near. None had had the courage to help their rescuers, but now they were more than willing to drag the vanquished guards to the cells that they themselves had occupied only minutes before, insulting and punching them as they pushed them inside. Only after their victims were gone did Zorro recover his senses and look around him. There were pools of blood on the floor, blood spattered on the walls, blood on his sword… blood everywhere. “Holy Mother of God!” he exclaimed, frightened. “Come along, we cannot stop to think about this now,” said Maestro Escalante. They left the barracks without encountering resistance. The freed prisoners disbanded and scurried through the dark streets of the city. Some were saved by fleeing the country, or hiding for years, but others were captured again and tortured before they were executed, in an attempt to extract details of how they had escaped. Those men were never able to tell who the daring masked man was who had set them free because they didn’t know. They heard nothing but his name, Zorro, which explained the Z scored on the wall of the armory. A total of forty minutes had passed between the moment the supposed drunks distracted the sentinels in front of the barracks and the time Zorro rescued his maestro. The comrades from La Justicia were waiting in the street, still wearing the guards’ uniforms, and they conducted the fugitive to the port. When they said goodbye, Diego and Manuel Escalante embraced for the first and last time. At dawn, once the soldiers had recuperated from the effects of the drug and could reorganize and tend to the wounded, the hapless second lieutenant had to report to his superiors. The one thing in his favor was that even with all that had happened, none of his men had died in the clash. He informed them that from what he had been told, Eulalia de Callis and Rafael Moncada were implicated because the fateful cask of wine that had intoxicated his troops had been a gift from them. That same afternoon a captain, escorted by four armed guards, presented himself before the suspected culprits, though he was extremely obsequious and nothing but flattery rolled from his tongue. Eulalia and Rafael received him as they would a vassal, demanding that he apologize for disturbing them with his nonsense. The lady sent him to the carriage house to see for himself that their coat of arms had been ripped from one of the carriages, proof that the captain deemed insufficient, though he didn’t dare say so. Rafael Moncada, arrayed in the uniform of the king’s officers, was so intimidating that the lieutenant did not ask explanations of him. Moncada had no alibi, but with his social position he did not need one. In the blink of an eye the suspects were cleared of suspicion. “The officer who allowed himself to be deceived in that manner is a dithering imbecile and should receive harsh punishment. I demand to know the meaning of that Z slashed on the wall of the barracks, and the identity of the bandit who dared use my name and that of my nephew for his villainy. Is that clear, officer?” Eulalia spit at the captain. “Have no doubt, Excellency, that we will do everything possible to clear up this most unfortunate incident,” he assured her, retreating toward the door with deep bows. In October, Rafael Moncada decided that the moment had come to be more autocratic with Juliana, since diplomacy and patience had not given results. Perhaps she suspected that the incident in the street had been his work, but she had no proof, and the persons who could furnish it, the Gypsies, were long gone and would not dare return to Barcelona. In the meantime, he had investigated and found that Tomas de Romeu was insolvent. Times had changed; that family was no longer in any condition to make demands. His own status was exceptional, and the one thing he needed to hold the reins of his destiny in his hands was Juliana. True, he did not have Eulalia de Callis’s approval to court the girl, but he decided that he was past the age to be ordered about by his domineering aunt. However, when he tried to send a letter to Tomas de Romeu to request an appointment, it was returned; Romeu had already left the city with his daughters. No one knew where he had gone, but Moncada had ways to find out. By coincidence, Eulalia had that very day summoned him to set a day for her to introduce him to the daughter of the duke and duchess de Medinacelli.
“I am sorry, aunt. However suitable that union might be, I cannot be a party to it. As you know, I love Juliana de Romeu,” Rafael announced with all the firmness he could muster. “Get that girl out of your head, Rafael,” Eulalia warned. “She never was a good match, but now marrying her would be social suicide. Do you think she would be received at court when it is known that her father is a French sympathizer?”