Bride of Thunder (12 page)

Their eyes battled. Zane's mouth curved down and she guessed it was on the edge of his tongue to remind her she was a bond-servant. That half-hostile, half-melting, wholly vital awareness coursed between them till she felt as if he held her physically, caressed her with those long brown hands.

“We can do that, of course, though at La Quinta all you needs will be provided for. Any that aren't will have to wait till we make another trip to Mérida. Please consider the
medios
part of your … salary.”

“You'll make an entry of it in the accounts?”

He lifted his eyes to the heavens. “My God, yes! I'll emblazon it on the wall if you like! Now, have a look around, for the dancing will start soon, and, unless you've an urgent desire to watch, we'd better get back to our quarters.”

Mercy found nothing she needed, but she signaled to Mayel to choose a mirror and felt grateful to Zane as she paid for one bordered with red. Jolie must have all the things an indulgent, well-to-do father would have bought her over the years, but Mercy wanted to take some gift to her. As a child, proper or no, she had always loved presents and had tended to appreciate bearers of them.

At last, worriedly conscious of Zane's impatience, she found a table with small carved animals, so handsomely done that the maker must have worked with love, as well as a careful eye. She pointed to a pheasant, a deer, and a jaguar. The old Indian who must have created them looked at them with rather sad eyes and named a sum.

“A
medio
apiece,” said Zane. “He'll be happy with two for the lot.”

“I'd rather give him what he asks for.”

“That is not the way it's done.”

“He hates to sell them at all,” said Mercy, and she put three
medios
into a hand scarred with work and age. The old man wrapped the creatures tenderly in bits of colored paper. Mercy thanked him, hoping he'd understand that she admired his art, and for the moment something flickered in those melancholy eyes set deep in the wrinkled face.

He muttered something. Zane made a curt reply and drew Mercy away. “What did he say?” she asked, holding onto Mayel's hand as Zane hustled them through the packed street.

“He said you were as gentle as a deer and that he would pray the jaguar would not harm you. It was pretty clear he considered me the jag!”

Mercy burst into helpless laughter. “I should think you'd take that as a compliment.”

“If he knew you,” returned Zane, “he'd know it was the other way around.”

Vicente had obtained milk and served them mugs of frothy hot chocolate before he went off to the evening's festivities. Mayel almost fell asleep while drinking hers, part of the
panuchos
still clutched in her hand. Zane shooed her off to bed and came to watch Mercy wash the drinking mugs and stand them upside down to dry on the window ledge.

“All this must seem heathen to you,” he said, his eyes glowing in the candlelight. “Are you afraid, Mercy?”

She stared at him. What was wrong now? Had he decided he didn't want her at his home?

“That was the plaza where
ladino
troops won back the town from the rebels, whipped them, and then hurled them from the second-story balcony of the municipal palace to bayonets waiting below. They say a young boy begged and cried, but they tossed him down, too.”

“Don't!” cried Mercy, putting her hands out.

“But that was nothing compared to when Crescencio Poot marched into Tekax with several thousand men in 1857. He and his Cruzob macheted and killed over a thousand people—babies, the elderly, whomever they came upon—and then drank and raped and looted through the night. Poot had them out the next morning and away with their spoils of cloth, liquor, weapons, utensils, and gunpowder. It took five days to bury the dead.” Zane strode to the window and gazed out toward the merriment a few streets away. “I'm glad my father was dead by then, that he never knew what the Indian he had saved did to helpless, unarmed people.”

Mercy felt sick. The spiced, rich food she'd enjoyed now made her queasy. Zane turned and caught her hands.

“Let me send you back,” he urged. “Vicente can take you. This isn't your country. It's not right to take you where such things happen.”

“You say La Quinta hasn't been raided.”

“Poot can't live forever. He's assassinated many in his time. Someone will likewise blot him out.” He gripped her shoulders. “Go now, Mercy. I'll pay your way back to Texas—New Orleans, if you'd prefer. But I was mad to dream of taking you to La Quinta.”

“I've no place to go.” Mercy realized it was true. “I've no one left. You've offered me a home and work, Zane. Are you reneging?”

His eyes narrowed. “No, just giving you a chance.”

“Thank you.”

“Not at all!” he said savagely. “Whatever happens, don't blame me!”

He gripped her wrists and pulled her to him. His mouth took hers and seemed to drink from her, drawing out her strength, but when his hands cupped her breasts, stroked them till they tingled and her body screamed, she managed somehow, desperately, drunkenly, to pull away.

“You promised!” she gasped.

His face was a ruthless, jeering mask. He took a long step forward, as if to seize her. She shrank away.

“Oh, damn you!” he grated. “Go sleep with the child! You're a married woman, and you manage to look like a violated nun!”

He swung out. The door banged. Mercy heard the click of his boots outside. She knew he'd ease his frustration with some soft body, or at least with wine.

All she could do was go to her hammock … and think of him, achingly hungry for his lean, hard fingers and his wildly sweet kisses, which made her forget everything else.

She stiffened with shock. Dear God! She was falling in love with him—a man who distrusted women, who was resolved to treat them only as a convenience.

Mercy fought back tears. She mustn't let him guess she cared, mustn't let him have what was nothing to him but honor to her. Someday he might change. Meanwhile, she must resist his power, armor herself against his appeal.

Where was he now?

She remembered the coquettishly lovely mestizo woman, a beautiful Creole who'd smiled at him from behind an older woman's back, and she writhed inwardly as she pictured him in someone else's arms. He'd find a woman, of course he would, and he'd forget all about her as he sated himself.

Mercy gave a few self-pitying sobs, but she quickly derided herself into drying her eyes. She'd never let him know how she felt! Never! Not unless … unless he asked her to marry him.…

Rejecting that insane delusion, she tried to make her breathing match the steady, even sound of Mayel's. Her eyelids grew heavy. She gave a last protesting sniffle and then slipped into dreams.

It was a silent group that left Tekax the next morning. Vicente behaved as if nursing a dolorous headache, Mayel kept stealing glances in her mirror, Zane had dark hollows under his eyes, and Mercy, wondering where and how he'd spent the night, was afraid she knew.

They came through Peto, a garrison town defending this southern point of the frontier, its fine old church and gracious colonial buildings dominating the plaza, which Mercy was sure had its bloody history of looting, takings, and retakings by Cruzob and
ladinos
. She didn't ask and was glad Zane didn't seem to feel obliged to tell her. Probably he felt he'd given her full warning last night, a final chance, and now she could take what came.

Turning east from Peto, leaving the
camino real,
they took a road squeezed by thick growths and vines. It was past noon when they rode into a small village and swung their hammocks in the roadhouse, a structure intended for use by the priest when he came or for the occasional traveler or official. A couple of Indians brought glossy green leaves from what Zane said was a breadfruit tree. Its fruits were edible and so were its nuts and sap, while the evergreen leaves made fine provender for livestock. The animals were led off to water and then hobbled to munch on breadfruit leaves while their owners rested and partook of tortillas and beans, the only food quickly available.

Their rest was brief, though. Fleas assailed them, seconded by mosquitoes, and they were forced to retreat outside. It was scarcely worthwhile hunting for trees for their hammocks, so they rested against the packs for an hour and then were on their way again.

Welted by mosquitoes, it took Mercy a while to recognize a different tormentor, but as she began to itch in new spots, driven almost wild with the urge to dig ferociously at the bites, Zane gave her the first sympathetic glance he had spared that day.

“
Garrapatas,
” he said. “My father called them chiggers.”

Mercy groaned. “I thought they felt familiar!”

Zane grinned. Either he was feeling better after whatever his night's occupation had been, or he undertook to take her mind off their tiny but maddening attackers by filling in some of the background of the War of the Castes.

After losing many warriors in battles against the
conquistadores,
the Mayas had lost thousands more of their number to smallpox, other plagues brought by the invaders, and from starvation when forced from their cornfields, but gradually the Indians increased again. They were obligated to work one day a week for the owner of the land on which they lived and planted, but that was not too arduous. Six months of labor would produce the thirty bushels of corn to feed a family and another thirty bushels to barter for salt, cloth, and gunpowder.

It was only after independence—when the former colonies, free of Spain's restrictive rules, could grow sugarcane and other crops—that labor on some haciendas became unremitting for those Indians who had gone into debt during a time of famine or need and thus became virtual slaves.

During the sporadic separations and wars with Mexico after independence, Santiago Iman, a captain in the militia, promised the Indians that if they'd join him against the Mexican forces, he'd put an end to the obventions or payments they had to make to the Church. Iman armed the Indians who answered his appeal and Yucatán drove the last Mexican troops from the state in 1840.

“Strange things went on,” said Zane. “Yucatán even hired three ships of the Texas Navy to patrol the waters between the peninsula and the Mexican mainland. Did you know that?” Not waiting for her reply, he continued. “It would have been Texas—it was then, had been ever since the Texans defeated Santa Ana in 1836 and gained their freedom from Mexico.”

Mercy nodded, smiling as she bit back the impulse to inform this arrogant man that she knew the history of her own state very well, indeed.

“Well,” Zane went on, undeterred, “when Santa Ana returned from his defeat in Texas, he sent an expedition to Yucatán. So, once again, the Indians were given promises—a lower Church tax, the gift of new lands—if they'd help fight the Mexicans. They did. It was at this point that the Texas Navy was hired to harass the Mexican fleet. With this help, the Yucatecans successfully fought off a forcible takeover by Mexico. Shortly afterward, however, due to the economic realities, I guess, the Yucatecan leaders felt compelled to send a commission to make peace and arrange for an advantageous reunion with Mexico.”

Zane shook his head. “And for that,” he continued, “everyone was happy—except the Indians, who never got the land they had been promised. But then, during the Mexican-American War in 1846, Yucatán became angry at Mexican indifference to its exposure to the American fleet, and again there was revolt against Mexico.”

“No!”

“Yes. And once again the Indians were promised land, lowered taxes, and given guns. Native troops helped take Tekax and Peto from Mexican troops and then took Valladolid in January, 1847, running amok and slaughtering civilians. That was when the Indians first tasted blood—some say quite literally that they ate human flesh during the sacking. They knew they could fight, knew they could win. They began to ask why they should fight
ladino
battles for promises that were never kept.”

“Small wonder.”

Zane nodded. “Mayan leaders took counsel and sent to Belize for guns. While trying to track them down, government forces looted and burned the ranch of one of the leaders near Tepich. A white officer violated a twelve-year-old Mayan girl, the first rape of thousands to occur during the war.

“A few days later Indians killed every one of Tepich's score or so of white families, making exception only for rape in retaliation for what was done to the Indian child at the ranch. Then the
ladino
troops took the village and burned it, killing the Indians, defiling their shrines, and filling the well with stones. That was the start of the War of the Castes, and the fate of Tepich was repeated bloodily in many other towns and villages.”

“Of course I've heard of the Mexican-American War,” said Mercy, “but I didn't know about the other war till we got to Yucatán.”

“And I'm sure you didn't know that in 1848 Yucatán's Governor Santiago Mendez sent letters to Spain, the United States and Great Britain, offering ‘domination and sovereignty' over the state to the first power willing to help Yucatán put down the rebels.”

“Incredible!”

“Incredible politics is the rule in Yucatán,” Zane said wryly. “When Mendez's offer wasn't accepted, he resigned and the new governor hit on the profitable idea of selling Mayan captives into Cuban slavery, a practice that continued for years, and the Mayas sold were often peaceful—easier to catch than the rebellious ones. Through all this you must remember that most of the rebels were
huits,
or ‘loincloths'—Mayas who still lived pretty independently in the wilds. The subjugated Mayas who'd served the
ladinos
for centuries in towns and haciendas didn't join the Cruzob and were often slaughtered along with their white masters.”