Bride of Thunder (22 page)

Jolie's golden curls bounced as her head tilted back, defiance in every line of her small body.

“I thought Salvador might like to study with you,” Mercy continued. “If he wants to be an
H-men,
surely the more he knows, the better.”

“You'd teach Salvador along with me?”

“Yes, and Mayel, too. It'll be more interesting for you and probably for me, too. Of course, until I learn more Spanish and Mayan, or until Salvador and Mayel know more English, you'll have to translate, but that'll be good practice for all of us.” Mercy added frankly, “Since I have to learn two languages, I'll be studying hardest of all, I imagine.”

Jolie's brightening face dimmed. “Papa won't allow it.”

“I've already asked his permission.”

“And he said yes?” demanded Jolie incredulously, her blonde brows rising.

Mercy nodded. “We can try it, at least. It was hard to convince your father, and I expect that he'll stop by sometimes to be sure everyone's studying. Do you think you can find Salvador and Mayel and tell them we'll start in the morning after breakfast and study till noon?”

“Victoriano may not like Salvador's taking lessons with an outsider.”

“Surely you or your father can explain that Salvador will be a much more valuable helper if he knows English and something of the world beyond La Quinta and Yucatán.”

“Then Victoriano may get jealous and want lessons, too,” Jolie said, smiling. She scooped up Flora, and the coati hung over her back like a plump fur stole. “I'll go ask Salvador. But, mind you, I won't make him come if he doesn't want to. And you could tell Mayel yourself, couldn't you?”

She skipped off, followed by the young coatis, indeed resembling some child witch with her familiars. Mercy drew in a last sensuous inhalation of leather, horse, and oil smells before she started back to the house. She had conditionally won this first skirmish, but she suspected she was in for a long, wearying battle.

At least Jolie didn't shock her. She remembered too well her own roguish “Why not?” reveries in childhood, that curious amoral period when nothing seemed ordained except what she chose. At that age, which was Jolie's now, she would have loved to be a witch!

Mercy went through the sitting room, smiling and admiring the various garments in progress. It gave her the feeling of being someone's frightfully spoiled mistress, though, except for the satin Zane himself had bought, none of the gowns was extravagant. It was just that having so many new things at once, including underwear, was a never-before-experienced luxury that made her feel vaguely guilty, as if she didn't deserve them.

But she hadn't deserved to lose her father or Star or to have Philip sell the farm, and certainly she had not deserved to be wagered and lost at cards. There was no reason why she shouldn't enjoy the clothes, her pretty room, Chepa's excellent cooking, and the well-run household as long as she did what Zane expected—well, not
everything
he expected, but as much as she could for Jolie.

10

What to teach the daughter of a plantation owner, the descendant of a warrior chief, and the almost-crucified son of a Mayan priestess? Arithmetic, of course, demonstrated with pebbles for Salvador and Mayel. They should not take long to catch up with Jolie, whose mastery of adding and subtracting was at best shaky. And Salvador could already count to thirty, the number of leaves left on a hemp plant after the twelve largest ones were cut.

Jolie could read both English and Spanish quite well, so she read classics, history, poetry, and did compositions, while Mercy worked with Salvador and Mayel on basic English or practiced with them the Spanish she was learning herself. With this last, they got Jolie's patronizing help.

Geography mixed with history took wings when Mercy hit on the idea of relating the Mayan ruins, which they took for granted, to the pyramids of Egypt, ziggurats of Babylon, mosques of Arabia, and the great cathedrals of Europe. And she found another sphere of comparisons in the tree that the children knew as the ceiba: this was the same tree that supposedly grew in the Garden of Eden, that was called the
yggdrasil
in Scandinavian myth, was known as the banyan in India, and that formed the basis for both the stylized menorah of the Jews and the pagoda of the Chinese.

Mayel found the language hard, but she practiced shyly during other hours, anxious to please Mercy. Salvador was eager and quick, learning English much faster than Mercy was acquiring Mayan. Jolie, proficient in speaking all three and reading two, basked in her role as translator, though she was not inclined to study anything that didn't come easily. She had an agile, broad-ranging, but undisciplined intelligence.

Zane stopped by for a few minutes every morning, listening from the door but not interrupting. Mercy had not seen him alone since that walk to the moonlit ruins, and she wondered if he meant to ever after be distantly polite but avoid any real contact.

On the third day of lessons, though, during the noon meal, he asked if she'd like to meet him at the stables at about three o'clock. “Wear something you can ride in,” he warned. “I may have found you an acceptable horse.”

“A … a horse?” Mercy had missed her spirited but sweet-tempered mare more than, truth to tell, she missed the man who'd sold her—sold them both, for that matter.

“Not a mule.” Zane sounded irritable and she noticed with a little shock that he was looking tired, hollow around the eyes. “I'd thought this filly might do for Jolie in a few years, but there's no use having her be riderless that long. Besides, the mare Jolie has now should do her fine till she's twelve or thirteen and has more weight and strength in her wrists.”

Jolie had been staring almost open-mouthed. Now she sprang up and ran to Zane. “I'm strong enough for a big horse, Papa! Let me try!”

“And how would Piñata feel if she knew you were so anxious to have another mount?”

“I'll still love Piñata, but I've had her since I was a small child!”

“All of two years,” he answered solemnly. “Piñata's a nice pony with sense enough to keep you from breaking your neck. You may have your pick of the new colts this year, and it'll be ready by the time you are.”

“I'm ready now!”

“You're not,” he said sternly. “But have your dessert and we'll go look at the colts when you've finished.”

“No!” she screamed. With a stamp of her foot, she glared furiously at Mercy, tried to speak, then fled when her voice failed her.

Mercy gazed in dismay at Zane.

His jaw clamped tightly and he rose, excusing himself. “I'll see you at three o'clock,” he said, then turned to go.

“Oh,” protested Mercy, “I don't think I should have that mare now.”

“It was stupid of me to mention I'd thought of holding her for Jolie,” he admitted, “but there'd have been little sense in it, wasting several years of a horse's riding time. Far better that she choose a colt. And she will, as soon as she gets over her tantrum.”

“But …” Mercy bit her lip. She'd gotten Jolie to her lessons, but they'd reached no rapport yet. This might make understanding completely impossible.

“Jolie's spoiled,” Zane said. “I'm just realizing how much. You, of all people, must know I can't give in to her against my better judgment.”

True enough. It was just a shame he'd let slip his previous half-plans for the horse. Mercy dreaded repercussions, and, though she'd longed to have a horse again, she'd rather have done without than have gotten one this way.

“At three,” said Zane and strode through the gate.

She read Stevens for a while, finally forgetting her distress at Jolie's resentment in fascination at the traveler's account of Uxmal and over details of the villages and countryside such a short time before the War of the Castes would bring such violent changes. When her ornate little clock pointed to two-thirty, Mercy dressed in her fullest skirt, the old gray gabardine, tucked the black coral necklace she always wore out of sight, fastened her hair back neatly, and went to the stables.

Zane was there before her, watching a boy lead a dainty little chestnut mare around the clearing. Already saddled, the mare was brushed and burnished till she gleamed like new copper, and the way she tossed her head was archly feminine. Mercy thought with a pang of the mare Star, which Philip had sold, the companion she'd never see again, and she felt disloyal to be so thrilled at this mare's grace and carriage. But she couldn't resist approaching gently and speaking.

“Beauty,” she whispered, stroking the silken muzzle with its twitching nostrils, “oh, you beauty!”

“Her name's Castaña,” Zane said, strolling up and inspecting the mare with a critical gaze that nicked to Mercy. “She matches the color of your hair.” He smiled wickedly. “She's sweet-tempered, however, and doesn't require a heavy rein. Her gaits are smooth. It's a joy to mount her.”

Blushing furiously, Mercy shielded her face against the mare's glossy neck. “If you like her so much, you should keep her.”

“She's too light for me. I'd wear her down if I rode her much.”

You'd wear down anyone or anything,
Mercy thought, but she judged it wisest to avoid double meanings. She luxuriated in stroking the mare and murmuring to her.

“Let's see you handle her,” Zane proposed. He gave her a hand up and scowled as she hooked her knee above the sidesaddle horn. “Do you know what I'd do if I were an enlightened female?”

“I'd love to hear!”

“I'd get some of that material made into divided skirts,” Zane said, “even trousers. Damned if I'd ride to one side like that! Any fool can look at a horse and tell how it was meant to be straddled.”

“Indeed!” flashed Mercy. “Then one can only assume that the fool of a man who invented sidesaddles hated women!”

“Probably.” Zane's eyes sparkled with mischief. “To men, at least, the shape of the body or object suggests its natural use, the best way of grasping and using it. Now, this can be varied for piquancy or the novelty of experiment, but there can be no doubt that the best way to ride and control a horse is with a leg on either side, just as a similar position …”

“I think I
will
ask for some divided skirts,” Mercy interrupted. “If you don't mind, I can't think why anyone else should, and it would be such a relief!”

“Take the mare around to the clearing,” Zane said. “Then, if she and the gear all suit you, we'll go for a ride.”

It was a delight to feel the intelligent, sensitive response to the slightest pressure of the reins. Castaña loped and cantered and single-footed till Mercy longed to turn her loose on a broad expanse where they could stretch out and skim the earth, the way she used to do with Star.

“She's no hacienda breed that only knows how to trot,” Zane approved as he signaled Mercy to halt near the stable.

Zane's raven-black stallion was led out for him and the boy opened the gate near the stable. They skirted the corrals and picked up a narrow track where Zane led till they emerged on what was a fairly good but somewhat overgrown road.

“The way to Tihosuco and Valladolid,” Zane said. “Or one could go south from Tihosuco to Chan Santa Cruz.”

“The Cruzob holy town?”

Zane nodded. “Myself, I prefer Tulum, on the coast, about a day's ride from Chan Santa Cruz. The castle is on a cliff above the water, and from it you can watch that incredible blue-green water surge over the white sands to break on the rocks. My father used to take me there. He never got over his love of the sea. But the region belong to the Cruzob now. Tulum used to be a center for the worship of the setting sun; the ancients made pilgrimages there. They believed an underground tunnel led from there out beneath the sea.”

“It sounds beautiful—and fearsome.”

“Both. But I wish I could show you the sea. Those Caribbean waters have to be the clearest in the world. Pure white sand can be seen under the waves a long way out, as if one were looking through a gigantic liquid sapphire. There are palms and clumps of purplish periwinkles, and fantastic coral reefs often make pleasant, sheltered spots. My father also took me to a place called Akumal, Place of the Turtle, which had a beautiful curving, sheltered beach. We'd hired a native boat to sail us to Isla Majeres, where Lafitte had headquartered, and to Cozumel, another pretty island. We grilled our catch and swam and lay on the sand. At night the stars and moon were so close that it seemed we could touch them. I'm glad my father didn't live to the time when he couldn't visit the sea. He had a good death—he had heart failure while breaking in a new horse, and he was dead when he struck the ground.”

Mercy didn't know how to respond to that. After a long moment, she spoke, softly. “You miss the sea, too.”

“Yes. But it was a holiday for me, a special time, not a home, as it was for my father till he settled at La Quinta. I'm sure if it hadn't been for me, he'd have gone back to sailing after my mother died.” Zane gave her a sheepish glance. “I blasted you for talking so much about your father,” he said gruffly. “It would seem it's your turn.”

“I like to hear about your father.”

“No need to be polite.”

“But I do! It makes you seem more … human.”

His mouth twitched. “Even the devil was young once. Shall we try your mare's canter here, where the road is broad enough?”

At the end of an hour they turned back toward La Quinta. “Xia's village is about ten miles down that side road,” Zane said and pointed as he swung Kisin around. The black horse was named for the old god of earthquakes, who was also, Zane had said, the Mayan devil. “I'll take you there soon if you'd like to go. As I warned you, La Quinta's isolated.”

“I'd like to see the village, of course,” said Mercy, stroking Castaña's neck, inexpressibly happy at being on a fine horse again and at having stayed on good terms with this unpredictable man for a record length of time. “But La Quinta has everything essential. I don't mind that it's not close to a city.”