They entered the rooms Gomez had been using. The woman stopped within the door, glancing around the room. The ceiling was supported by smoke-blackened beams, between which were laid a herringbone pattern of small round sticks, painted alternately red and yellow. The floor was carpeted with rough jerga and the whitewash they called yeso was peeling off cracked mud walls like a white scum. For a moment Teresa thought the woman would show disdain, or anger. But neither came. She dropped her shawl from her face with a resigned sigh and walked listlessly across the room.
“Your husband says it is the only building in the province with glass windows,” Teresa said.
“How nice,” Doña Beatriz said.
From one of her bags she got a guaje, filled with tobacco, a package of hojas, and a flint and steel. Skillful as a man, she tapped a measure of tobacco into the cornhusk hoja, rolled it, licked it, struck a spark with her flint and steel, and lit the cigarrito. Then she produced a pair of tenazitas de oro—the little golden tongs in which these privileged women held their cigarettes to keep the tobacco from staining their fingers. She saw Teresa watching her and offered the tobacco and hojas. Teresa accepted with thanks, and in a minute both women were smoking.
“It will not be so bad,” Teresa said. “I understand there is to be a baile tonight in the plaza to celebrate the new governor.”
Doña Beatriz’s eyes started to glow; then the light died out. “I will ask my husband,” she said.
“He’ll be busy. They have been spending every night with that assembly. We could go anyway.”
The woman looked at her in surprise. “What?”
“Why not? Who would stop us?”
Doña Beatriz smiled, a little sadly. “I talked like that—once.”
There was the military clatter of boots on the hard ground of the patio, and Gomez’s sharp voice: “Beatriz, they tell me you are here.”
From boredom and listlessness she went into a stiff, almost painful expectancy, like a puppy waiting to greet its master and not knowing whether it would meet anger or humor. She nodded at the door and Teresa moved to open it.
“Here, señor,” she said.
Gomez strode in the door. His eyes were red-rimmed with weariness, his face deeply lined. He glanced at Teresa, went to Doña Beatriz, took her elbows, kissed her on the forehead.
“We quit only for a bite to eat,” he said. “You brought my velvet calzones?”
“Yes, señor.”
“Extra shirts?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He glanced around the room. “You are comfortable? Anything you want?”
“Nothing.”
Gomez moved to one of the colchones and sat down, leaning back against the wall, pinching his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Ah, these meetings. Battles. Nothing but battles. That Villapando is a stupid fool.”
Doña Beatriz knelt before him and started pulling off his boots. “Perhaps a cool, wet cloth for your face? And some wine?”
He nodded and Teresa stepped to the door, clapping her hands for one of the servants in the patio. She gave the orders to the woman. Doña Beatriz was helping Gomez off with his jacket.
“Maybe it would help to relax tonight. Teresa says there is to be a baile.”
He shook his head. “Too much work.”
“But there will be dancing, and music—”
“I said no.”
Doña Beatriz pouted like a sullen child. Gomez had not opened his eyes; he leaned his head back against the wall, rubbing tiredly at his face. The servant came with a basin of water and a bottle of wine.
“Call me if you wish anything,” Teresa said.
Doña Beatriz nodded, without looking at her. Teresa left. It was like stepping from a prison. She took a deep breath of the air outside. She knew pity for Doña Beatriz, a little contempt. Hers was not the cruelty and pain Teresa had known. But still it was poignantly typical of the subjugation the women of this land endured.
The rich one, as a young girl, was subject to the iron-bound discipline of a father. She was held in Turkish seclusion, prevented from meeting all but the sons of the finest families, courted under the watchful eye of her parents or a duenna. When the time came for marriage the parents made the choice and saw to all arrangements. If the girl had not yet met the man who was to be her husband it was of no consequence. Often bride and groom did not see each other till the day of their wedding.
After that she was imprisoned within the thick walls of another house, subject to every whim of another man—growing as docile and beaten and resigned as Doña Beatriz under the insidious fetters of custom and tradition. If the man was kind and thoughtful she was lucky, and her cross was not so heavy. But often he was restless, brought up in a culture where a man was expected to roam, even after marriage. And if he sought sweets at other doors, the wife had little recourse.
The thought of it, the picture Doña Beatriz had made, filled Teresa with a fierce resurgence of her old rebellion. She would never bow her head again. She would have the tenazitas de oro in which to hold her cigarritos and diamond earrings dripping from her ears like icicles and a Spanish shawl two hundred years old with fringe so long it swished at her ankles. But she would never bow her head.
She was still sitting in the shade of the willow by the servants’ quarters when Gomez came from his rooms. He saw her and walked tiredly across the hot patio. A harried look clung furtively to the corners of his squinted eyes. An aging man trying to keep a restless young wife on the leash, and wondering, always wondering. He stopped beside her. The flesh about his lips was tinged with gray.
“You will let the other servants care for Doña Beatriz. You are a bad influence on her.”
Teresa smiled tauntingly. “Are you afraid of me?”
He did not answer her smile. “I know what you are doing, Teresa. I know what you were doing up in Taos. Amado did not become a general by himself. Do you think his protection will be enough?”
“It would be,” she murmured, “if he was governor.”
She saw Gomez’s eyes flutter with surprise. But it was not a new thought to her. She had seen the way Villapando looked at her, had seen Amado’s popularity waning—had caught other warning signals of the increasing precariousness of her position. The possibility of Amado as governor had started as a vague idea—probably long before they reached the Palace. But now it was a definite hope, another opportunity to be grasped in her constant struggle.
“I think you’re already fed up with Villapando,” she told Gomez. “You chose to speak through him in the beginning because you knew he could draw the Indians to your cause. But you never thought they’d take over so completely. Villapando is sincere, honest, but no politician. He will not make the deal you wish with Don Biscara.”
Again that flutter of surprise. “How did you know?”
“The servants talk. I know most of what goes on in the council chambers. You know we’ll need the support of the rich ones in Rio Abajo if we’re to survive. The Indians and the peons hate Don Biscara because he is a gachupin. You hate him because he looks down upon you. Yet you know he must be cultivated as the only link between your present government and the ricos of the Lower River.”
His lips compressed, and a sardonic twinkle came to his eyes. “And I thought I was the politician,” he said.
“Perhaps you want a reconciliation with the central government, too.”
“Of course,” he said. He turned, locking his hands behind him, and began to pace agitatedly. “From the beginning I knew we could not break away from Mexico. Texas or the United States would gobble us up immediately. The most we can hope for is to make Mexico City treat us as an equal instead of a slave. Give us a governor from our own people, adequate protection from the Indians, give us some satisfaction for our other complaints.”
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��You know you can’t be governor,” she said. “The rebels wouldn’t overthrow one aristocrat and put another in. They want a man of the people. But you let the wrong man be put in your place. Villapando is too ignorant to be a good governor, too stubborn to let others make him a good governor. What you need is a man who can be molded.”
“Amado?” He smiled wryly. “And then you would be safe, wouldn’t you? Protected by the supreme power in the country.”
She smiled. “We would both gain what we wish, Don Augustín.”
He pursed his lips, eyes cynical. “You are like an eagle who means to fly despite its cage, Teresa. You are as deadly as you are beautiful. A man would be a fool to link himself with you.”
He turned on his heel and walked toward the Palace. At the door, however, he halted a moment. He looked over his shoulder at her and there was a puzzled frown on his face. Then he wheeled impatiently and disappeared inside.
At the same time she saw Amado crossing toward her from the barracks. He had seen her talking with Gomez and did not care for it. He stopped before her, scowling, pulling at his chin.
“What are you concocting now, querida?”
She smiled bewitchingly. “Don Augustín and I were plotting to make you governor.”
The vertical grooves dug into his brow. “Don’t joke.”
“Who’s laughing? You know what a mess Villapando is making. The Mexicans are disgusted with him. Gomez thought the time ripe for a man of your talents.”
His brows rose and some of the surliness left his face. She had touched his ego again. But such a bold concept took time to adjust to. She knew what an opportunist he was, knew he must have dreamed of some day attaining such a high office. Yet to be presented with the possibility so abruptly was a little frightening.
“Look how quick you became a general,” she prompted. “Isn’t this the next logical step?”
His eyes began to glow with the old covetous light. But as always the questions, the doubts, the apprehensions came to harry him. She saw them cloud the light from his eyes.
“How can it be? Try to overthrow Villapando and the Pueblos would turn on us.”
“What if we had more Mexicans on our side?” she said. “A real army. Would you declare a counter-revolution and accept the governorship?”
He studied her a long time. Finally a smile pinched his carnal lips at the corner. He began to chuckle softly.
“Teresa, mi vida, when will you cease to amaze me.”
He looked at her a moment longer, still chuckling. Then he turned and walked thoughtfully to the Palace. She knew what kind of a seed she had planted. In such a sly, Machiavellian mind it would not take long to blossom.
But something had been planted in her mind too. A growing understanding of the possibilities unfolding before her. All along she had sensed that what had happened with Biscara was merely a culmination, a turning point. Yet the things driving her went deeper than the simple need to escape him. She had sensed it before—she saw it clearly now. In the shape of things to come she saw a chance of freedom, of independence that far transcended any fear of Biscara. These were the needs that went to the root of her and that would have driven her whether Biscara threatened her or not.
10
Toward the end of August, Lieutenant Hilario Perea was brought to Santa Fe from Taos. He was imprisoned in La Garita—the diamond-shaped, somber-towered prison on the hill overlooking Santa Fe.
A portion of the dragoons in Santa Fe had declared for the rebels, and the two men who took Lieutenant Perea through the dark gate of the garita had served under him but two weeks before. They were embarrassed by their position and would neither meet his eyes nor speak to him. They showed him to one of the cramped, dirty cells and shut the heavy oaken door on him.
There was nothing to sit on and he lowered himself to the dirt floor, hungry and exhausted, his clothes grimy and filmed with dust. He was still bitter and confused over the shocking change in his life. He had been born of the gente fina, a scion of one of the most aristocratic families in Mexico City; he had received his training at the Colegio Militar, riding with the finest cavalry in the world. He had won the Golden Cross of honor for service with General Santa Anna in the war with Texas. After the cessation of hostilities, Santa Anna himself had ordered Perea to Santa Fe, saying that they needed an officer of his caliber to hold the reins on the restless, rebellious troops of the northern department.
It had been a disillusioning experience. Used to the pomp and glitter of Mexico City, the violence and glory of the recent war, he had found nothing but a squalid outpost and a ragged garrison of untrained, unequipped men who had no right to be called regulars. To him, the whole revolt had been a farce. He did not know how long he had sat steeped in his bitterness and his disillusionment when he heard bare feet slapping against the earthen floor outside. A chain clanked, the bolt was drawn, the door opened.
He blinked his eyes in the dimness. He recognized Teresa Cavan.
Sunlight came through the barred window at his back and fell across her in yellow stripes. She wore a black rebozo like a hood, its long ends pulled across the front of her body by her arms. She had worn no enaguas when he had seen her in Taos; now the flounces of these petticoats, red and blue and yellow, peeped from beneath the hem of her skirt. Her tawny bare feet seemed a primitive paradox to such frilly femininity.
He got hastily to his feet, smoothing his rumpled tunic. He inclined his head gravely, giving her the traditional greeting of the house. For he was a gentleman, and would have been courtly in hell.
“Buenas tardes le de Dios, señorita.”
“Que Dios se los de buenos a usted,” she said, answering with the same grave ceremony. “May God give them good to you.”
He waved her in. “Would that I could celebrate our meeting more graciously. All I can do is thank you for saving my life.”
“You must turn the heart of many señoritas,” she murmured.
He looked into her eyes. They were green, in this light, and they looked hard as stone. “I would be naïve to think you saved me for that reason,” he said.
She moved closer. Her lips, untouched by rouge, were red as coral. They brought back with sensuous impact all the kisses he had ever stolen.
“Then we will not be naïve,” she said. “It is enough that you are alive and can help us now.”
He frowned, suspicious. “How?”
“There is only one man strong enough to bring some order out of this chaos. General Amado has always been a strong centralist. He was seduced into this revolt on false pretenses. He thought Governor Carbajal would merely be held as hostage till the central government recognized our claims. Now that he has been betrayed, he is planning a counter revolution. With one squadron of regular dragoons he could overthrow this rabble and restore the city to its rightful hands.”
Perea could not hide his excitement. “There are squadrons in Chihuahua.”
She shook her head. “They would take too long to reach. As you know, many of the dragoons here deserted and fled to the mountains or Albuquerque. You are the most popular man in the army, Lieutenant. They would rally to you.”
He looked at her in surprise. She was smiling. Her teeth were perfect—small, white, pointed—giving her, in that moment, a strangely savage look.
“Among these dragoons who have declared for the rebels there still must be some friends of yours,” she said. “Who could you trust implicitly?”
“Lieutenant Miguel, Corporal Chavez.”
“Good. Your escape will be arranged. Send a courier to Mexico City immediately, informing them that General Amado is working night and day to defeat our enemies. Bring your troops back as soon as possible.”
Twenty-three, impressionable, an incurable romantic—Perea was completely in her hands. Blindly loyal himself, such evidence of loyalty in a
nother was logical to him. He did not seek further motives. She was offering him a chance to escape, to redeem his pride, to turn defeat into victory. What more could a soldier ask? He took her hand. The satiny warmth of it went through him like a shock.
“Señorita,” he said. “I am your servant.”
A shadow crossed her face, and for a moment the soul went out of her eyes. In a barely audible tone, she said, “I hope you will not regret it…Hilario.”
* * * *
That night Teresa found Lieutenant Miguel and Corporal Chavez in the barracks behind the Palace. She told them she had seen the order for Perea’s execution on the governor’s desk. They were shaken. Though they had declared for the revolution, they were already becoming disillusioned. Perea’s death would make them lose all faith in the insurrectionists. Miguel had been in Perea’s class at the Colegio Militar, and could not let his old friend die.
Thus they plotted the escape. At eight that night Chavez would go on duty as corporal of the guard at the garita. Miguel was to have three horses saddled and ready in one of the alleys under the hill. At fifteen after eight, Teresa was to light a fire at the rear of the Palace. This would give cause for Chavez to send most of his men from the garita to help fight the fire. He and Miguel would then overpower the remaining guards, release Perea, and flee south with him.
At the appointed time, Teresa started the fire in a woodshed. It was separated from the Palace and would not endanger the main structure. But it made a frightening conflagration, filling the whole courtyard with a pall of black smoke. The troops came from the barracks, some in shirt sleeves, others pulling on trousers. The governor and his retinue of Pueblo caciques and alcaldes rushed from the Palace. By the weird light of the flames Teresa saw dark figures running down the slope from the garita. All pitched in to form lines for the bucket brigades.
Teresa stood in the narrow alley between the Palace and the servants’ quarters, watching the turmoil through slitted eyes. The courtyard was filled with shouting, coughing figures that shuttled back and forth like shadows before the ruddy backlight of the fire. When the blaze was under control, Teresa saw some of the men moving back from the shouting mob, coughing and wiping soot from their faces. She made out Amado and Gomez and Villapando, grouped together with some of the caciques.
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