by Henke, Shirl
Nicholas studied the column, recognizing the insignia of the Republic of Mexico that the officer was wearing. “They're not well armed. I doubt they'll want to make a fight of it. I wonder what the devil they're up to?”
“Perhaps the French chase them?” Hilario speculated.
Nicholas shrugged. “Not very likely. Wrong direction. They're headed toward Sinaloa, but there's only one way to find out.” He watched as the lieutenant signaled his men to halt down by the bank of the river, where it snaked nearest the house. He noted they were careful not to trample Mercedes’ fields. Most of the corn and other crops had been harvested now, but should she see any damage inflicted, she would probably open up with that shotgun, he thought with grim humor.
The lieutenant was a small, thin man with almost delicate features offset by a heavy straight mustache. He rode up to the front gate, flanked by two of his men. After assessing the three armed men with a practiced eye, he dismounted. “Good day,” he said, smiling broadly. “I am Lieutenant Bolivar Montoya, Army of the Republic of Mexico.”
“Don Lucero Alvarado, patrón of Gran Sangre, a hacienda lately fallen on evil times,” Nicholas replied.
“Who among us in these times has not found them evil, Don Lucero? My men and I mean you no harm. We are on our way to join with General Diaz in the south. Our horses are drinking from the river but my men could use fresh water from your well, if that is possible?”
Montoya was the soul of courtesy, if that was all indeed he “could use.” Fortune observed the man's uniform, scarcely up to French standards of spit and polish but a real uniform nonetheless. He had the bearing of a career soldier and his men were uniformed, albeit poorly. They were not banditti, but that did not mean they would be adverse to appropriating any loose livestock, food or other materials for the republic. “Your men are welcome to water but you will understand my reluctance to admit twenty armed men to the interior of my courtyard, Lieutenant Montoya?”
The mustache lifted in a genial smile. “But of course, I understand.” He shrugged. “It will scarcely be the first time we have drunk muddy water with our horses and been grateful for it.”
“There's no need,” Fortune said. “My men will draw buckets and bring them outside the compound for your soldiers to fill their canteens. We have little in provisions left but if you need cornmeal or beans, we could let you have some.”
“You are most gracious, Don Lucero. We could most certainly use extra rations,” the lieutenant replied as Nicholas indicated the officer should follow him into the courtyard and have a seat.
After giving terse instructions to Gregorio to have the houseboys haul water and fetch some sacks of corn and beans, he said to his guest, “Angelina will bring us some coffee, although I must apologize that it is cut with chicory.”
“It does not matter, for we have tasted no coffee in weeks. Few of the hacendados have been so hospitable,” he said dryly. “Are you a supporter of President Juarez then?”
Nicholas shrugged, then grinned frankly. “I support the side that wins.”
Lieutenant Montoya laughed, then his narrow face grew earnest and his black eyes glowed with conviction. “If that is so, I strongly advise you to stand behind the republic. I've just come from El Paso del Norte where I met Don Benito. A very great man.”
“So I've heard,” Nicholas replied thoughtfully, as they sipped the coffee Angelina brought from the kitchen. Over the years he had heard stories of Juarez from friend and foe alike. The more time he spent in Mexico, the more he had acquired a grudging respect for the integrity and stubbornness of the little Indian from Oaxaca. Juarez was a country lawyer with an utter lack of self-aggrandizement. When he had arrived in Mexico City to assume his legal role as president of the republic, Juarez had worn a plain wool suit and ridden in a small black carriage without fanfare. It was a startling contrast to the extravagant pomp and lavishly gilded lifestyle of the emperor and his court, and that contrast was not at all favorable to the puppets the French had placed on the throne. Montoya's next words immediately caught Fortune's attention.
“The president has just held a secret meeting on the border with the North American General Sheridan. The Yankee brought assurances from Washington that now the Southern rebellion has been crushed, the Union will turn its attention to the French invaders on Mexican soil.”
“Noble sentiments,” Fortune replied, “but what is he doing to back them up?”
Montoya's eyes lit up. “Much! The whole arsenal in Baton Rouge has been emptied out. The guns and ammunition are already being distributed among General Escobedo's army in Chihuahua. Within a year we will sweep from the north while General Diaz comes out of Oaxaca in the south. The French—if they are so foolish as to remain—will be caught in a great pincer along with Maximilian's so-called Imperial Mexican army.”
Nicholas rubbed his jaw in consideration. “I've heard rumors in Hermosillo that General Bazaine has received orders from Napoleon to begin a withdrawal. At first I didn't believe it.” He shrugged.
"Believe it," Montoya replied earnestly. "With the United States government supporting us now that their war is over, Juarez cannot lose."
* * * *
Mercedes stormed out of the kitchen no sooner than Lieutenant Montoya's troops had ridden away, saying, “I can't believe you gave our food—my cornmeal—to those republican rabble!”
“Best to keep our options open, beloved.” She looked at his thoughtful expression. “You actually think they'll win?” she asked incredulously.
“I'd say the chances are becoming better than even. While you've been isolated here in Sonora, struggling to hold the hacienda together, I've ridden from Guerrero to Coahuila and back. I've seen the way the imperials take a state or a town, then can't hold it against the constant guerrilla assaults. These people never give up, Mercedes. They fight with their machetes, hell, with their bare hands if they have to. You of all people should understand that kind of stubbornness.”
She could feel his eyes on her and knew he was also alluding to their own nightly warfare. Fidgeting with her apron pocket, she replied, “You seem to admire them, even after all the times they've wounded you.”
He reached for her hand and raised it to his lips in a mocking salute. “My cross to bear—I seem to most admire the adversaries who wound me deepest.”
She knew again that he did not speak only of the war.
Chapter Eleven
“The day after we rode southeast into Chihuahua, a French patrol arrived at Gran Sangre. Gregorio Sanchez reported to me that Don Lucero directed them west, saying we had headed toward Guaymas. I think you can use him,” Lieutenant Montoya said to the man seated on the opposite side of the crude wooden table.
“Ah, but can we trust him?” His slight figure was clad, as always, in a serviceable black suit and plain white shirt, which contrasted sharply with his swarthy bronze complexion. His face was Indio, with a square stubborn jaw, blunt-featured, homely. There were those who likened it to that of his North American counterpart Abraham Lincoln. President Benito Juarez's expression was impassive as he inhaled his Cuban cigar, a small indulgence he had begun while exiled in New Orleans many years past. His eyes, large liquid black pools, were his most dramatic feature. Right now he fixed them intently on Lieutenant Bolivar Montoya.
“I believe he is sympathetic to our cause. Why else would he misdirect the French?” the lieutenant asked.
“Why indeed?” Juarez echoed. “He may simply have decided to support what he thinks will be the winning side.” He tapped his pencil thoughtfully on the scarred pine table strewn with papers and documents. The men were seated in a small shanty on the outskirts of El Paso del Norte. The humble cabin had been the presidential headquarters for the past year, the last in a succession of rude outposts as the republic's government in exile retreated from the capital, moving ever northward from San Luis Potosí to Durango to central Chihuahua and finally to this isolated border hideaway.
But now the little ma
n of law's stubborn determination was at last being rewarded. The course of the war had finally begun to turn. The relentless tenacity of republican guerrilla tactics had worn down and utterly frustrated General Bazaine's French regulars. Even the barbaric retaliations against the Mexican population by General Marquez had served only to stiffen resistance to the imperial cause. Now at last the president had two armies in the field under Diaz and Escobedo, troops actually equipped with enough guns and ammunition to face the imperials head-on. Soon he would be moving south again as the perimeter of Maximilian's empire continued to shrink.
“We need a man in Sonora, Mr. President,” Montoya said earnestly. “The hacendados there are solidly in the imperial camp and far too wealthy and powerful to ignore. A man like Alvarado, master of Gran Sangre, would be a decided asset spying for us.”
“But if his only motivation is expediency, it might not be worth the risk of revealing Gregorio Sanchez and the others to him. The patrón still has the power of life and death over every person on his estate,” Juarez reminded gently. “I will consider the matter,” he said, dismissing the young officer with thanks.
“But Nicholas Fortune isn't the patrón of Gran Sangre.” Bart McQueen spoke as soon as Montoya had closed the door. He had been sitting in the corner, hidden in shadows. In his line of work, McQueen preferred it that way.
“Tell me everything you know about Fortune.” Juarez took another puff on his cigar and leaned back from the table as the methodical American crossed the room and took Montoya's chair.
“Nicholas Fortune, born sometime around 1836 in New Orleans, mother a stage actress turned prostitute, father...” He shrugged. “Most probably Don Anselmo Alvarado, who was keeping Lottie Fortune in high style around that time.”
“But the don made no attempt to recognize the boy,” the president interjected.
“None. Probably didn't even know of the boy's existence and, doubtless, would not have cared. In any case, by the time Lottie was pregnant, he'd lost interest in her and moved on to the arranged marriage with Sofia Obregón. The boy spent his early years on the New Orleans streets, then a brief period in Texas before joining the Legion.”
Matter-of-factly and with amazing thoroughness, McQueen described Nicholas Fortune's life up until the time the spymaster had encountered him in Havana four years earlier. “Nick was working for the cane planters. Hired to suppress a local rebellion among the workers. He was supposed to lead a team of professional soldiers against a bunch of unarmed field hands, but he walked away from it.”
“So, the man has a conscience?” Juarez inquired skeptically.
McQueen's smile was thin. “It's possible, but frankly, I doubt it. The sugar interests in New York who had hired him underwent some severe financial setbacks. They couldn't pay him. He drifted into Saint Augustine, then hired on with his old employers, the French, to invade Mexico. Apparently he and old Don Anselmo's legitimate son stumbled across one another by accident.”
As McQueen described the circumstances under which Nicholas Fortune and Lucero Alvarado had exchanged places, Juarez was again amazed at the Norte Americano's incredible skills as an intelligence agent. He had been dispatched by President Lincoln to act in strictest secrecy as liaison to the government of the Mexican Republic. Over the past two years Juarez had found him to be completely dependable and utterly ruthless in pursuing the goals of his superiors in Washington. As a man of single-minded devotion to his own republic, the president of Mexico was just as happy he and Bart McQueen were on the same side.
“Essentially we have Fortune just where we want him,” McQueen concluded. “If he wants to continue masquerading as his half brother, he'll have to cooperate with us.”
“To be my eyes and ears in Sonora,” Juarez supplied.
“Especially with that coterie of hacendados surrounding our old friend Don Encarnación Vargas. I hear he's holding a large ball next month, to honor the visit of Prince Salm-Salm and his American wife who will be touring the northern states as special emissaries of the emperor.”
“Does anything go on in the capital to which you are not privy, Mr. McQueen?” Juarez asked with a slight smile on his austere features.
“Very little, Mr. President. I have good sources—although yours are higher placed. Have you heard from Miguel Lopez lately?”
Juarez grimaced in distaste. “I dislike dealing with traitors such as Lopez. He would sell his own wife and children if it were politically advantageous. I suppose that's why I dislike using a man like Nicholas Fortune. He's spent his life for hire with no allegiances to any cause but his own.”
“But that very allegiance to himself will work for us. After a life of rootless wandering, he wants desperately to be patrón of Gran Sangre. The only way he can is if he helps us.” McQueen shrugged cynically. “And, who knows, our doubts notwithstanding, perhaps Fortune has developed a conscience.”
* * * *
Nicholas leaned up and propped his head on his hand, looking down into Mercedes’ face. His other hand brushed lightly across her breasts, causing the nipples to harden and distend. He had just finished making love to her for a protracted period of time, holding off his own climax, driving slowly and deeply into her body until at last he had been forced to give in to the shuddering ecstasy.
She could no longer be cool and unresponsive to him. At first she had been physically frightened of him, remembering her husband's roughness. Then she had grown wary of an even more frightening threat when she had found her body beginning to betray her. The natural hungers she had been unaware of and then suppressed were tearing at her now. Yet to give in to them was to give in to him and she was still afraid to trust him. Lucero had scarred her deeply in the first weeks of their marriage.
“Don't you ever feel as if you're missing something?” he asked softly, watching the bowstring tautness of her body, lying so still and silent beside him. “I know you ache...here”—he skimmed over her breasts again, before moving lower—“and here.” His palm flattened on the concave hollow of her belly. Then his fingers brushed the soft dark-gold curls at her mound. “Most of all, here.”
He massaged her pubic bone in a slow rotating circle, wanting to see if she could remain still. When her hips arched infinitesimally, he smiled.
Mercedes ground her teeth in frustration as tears stung her eyelids. Sweet Virgin, how she did ache! What was he doing to her? What did her body want—no, crave? Yet she knew that if she surrendered to his sensual torture she would lose her self-respect, her hard-won independence, perhaps her very soul.
“What we do is to create children. There's nothing more to it,” she replied with a tight finality, wishing desperately for him to pull the covers over her burning nakedness, roll over and go to sleep. But he did not. Instead his soft silky laughter, oddly sad, caressed her cheek.
“Spoken like a good little girl raised in a convent. But there is more, so very much more, Mercedes. Pleasure beyond imagining, even by that facile busy mind of yours. But only if you allow yourself to experience it. Do you dare?”
“I thought you wanted to do your duty for Gran Sangre, to get an heir on me. Do it and let me be gone from your bed.” She hated the ragged plea in her voice.
“Ah, so you admit it at last...a part of your fears, at least.”
“I know my duty. I have no fears about having children.”
“But you do fear I'll introduce you to passion—a passion I can fuel and assuage until you're breeding. Then I might leave you. Isn't that it, beloved?”
“You will leave me once I'm great with child. You'll have to seek your amusements elsewhere when I can no longer...” Her voice trailed away in embarrassed misery as she realized what she had just blurted out. She could feel his smile.
“Being great with child doesn't stop a woman from making love. Believe me, I saw enough soldiers' wives during the course of the war to know that for a fact,” he replied dryly.
“You don't like shapeless, ugly women, Lucero,” she accused. The m
ore she said, the worse she sounded, like a jealous shrew, perfectly pitiful!
“What makes you think I'd find a woman carrying my child to be unattractive?” The question caught him by surprise. He had never looked at the soldaderas' swollen bellies with anything but pity for their harsh life. Enciente rich ladies did not even appear in public. Certainly he would never have felt inclined to dally with one even if the opportunity had presented itself.
In fact, his own illegitimacy and harsh childhood had made him exceedingly careful in the matter of contraception. He wanted no innocent children of his left behind to grow up despised and abused as he had been. But the idea of Mercedes—his wife—filled with his baby was suddenly immensely appealing. He was shocked at his reaction to the prospect.
For the first time Mercedes looked up into his eyes, sensing an undercurrent of uncertainty that emanated from him. “You obviously found Rosario's mother of less interest after she was breeding,” she snapped.
“Let me rephrase my question,” he said, again cursing Luce for this tangle. “What makes you think I'll find you unattractive when you're pregnant?”
“Perhaps I'm barren and we'll never know. Lord knows you've labored diligently enough with no result for the past months.”
“Would it bother you, not being able to bear my children?”
“It would mean an annulment. Freedom from you. Perhaps it would be worth it,” she replied, striving for a light tone of voice, not succeeding. Nicholas knew that she loved children, had been raised to believe that the main function of her life was to give a husband heirs. Rosario was a great joy to her. He knew how she would feel the pain of barrenness.
“Liar,” he whispered. “Anyway, I wouldn't give you up even if you were barren, which I very much doubt. A few months is far too short a time to prove your fertility. I have every confidence I'll be watching that little belly grow round within the year. Now as to laboring diligently, perhaps I ought to persevere...just to set your mind at rest about your infertility as quickly as possible.”
