Bride of Thunder (24 page)

“Thank you,” said Mercy, smiling into the taut little face, hoping this would be the start of a tolerance that might warm to friendship. “I won't be late.”

“Neither will we,” Jolie said. Snatching Salvador's hand, she pulled him after her.

Zane and Jolie, on good terms again, filled the noontime conversation with a discussion of the colts Jolie had announced she was eager to examine. It really did seem that she had decided to adapt gracefully to the situation, though her gaze flicked hurriedly past Mercy when she looked her way at all.

“I'll be busy going over accounts with Macedonio this afternoon,” said Zane as they rose at the end of the meal. “But if you wish to ride, I'll tell one of the men to accompany you.”

“Thank you, but I won't have time today,” Mercy said. “I'm going to visit the scribe with Salvador and Jolie.”

“He's showing us the maps and genealogies!” Jolie said.

“Good!” Zane slanted Mercy a surprised but pleased glance. “But I think, Doña Mercy, that I didn't yet advise you against riding alone. Never do that. If I can't escort you, I'll send a reliable man.”

Though Mercy loved solitary jaunts, it wouldn't have occurred to her to ride alone in this region, but she found the prohibition a trifle galling. Still, with his eyes holding hers, there was nothing to do but nod agreement.

“I'll meet you at three,” she promised the child, and she went to her room while father and daughter drifted through the courtyard, their laughter floating back.

Mercy watched them through the window, the black head and the gold one. Each was the only blood relative the other had in the world; their closeness was both tender and alarming.
That's how Father and I were,
Mercy thought with a surge of pain.
Can I ever be that close to another man, ever trust one?
At least she could understand Jolie's possessiveness and give her room and time to accept an outsider. From this afternoon's invitation, that acceptance might come sooner than Mercy had dared to hope.

Lying down with Stevens' travels, she read till it was time to join the children.

Sóstenes Pec, the scribe, was a withered old man whose hands shook as he opened the rawhide-covered chest in the village's public building. He said something in Mayan to Victoriano Zuc, the
H-men,
and the only Indian male Mercy had yet seen who could be called fat. His skin looked woman-soft, and he had a trilling, rather highpitched, voice.

In Spanish so slow and simple that Mercy could follow the gist of it. Sóstenes explained that he had learned to read and write from his father, who had learned from his father, who had studied with the priests in Tekax. The priests had destroyed all the old Mayan hieroglyphic manuscripts they could find because the hieroglyphs were so bound up with old gods and beliefs. Still, the Spaniards hadn't tried to replace the Mayan language with Spanish, but had taught the sons of priests and leading families how to write Mayan words in European script, so nearly every village had a scribe who could do this.

Carefully, Sóstenes displayed documents concerning land and then a number of more or less handsomely ornamented genealogies. He spread out his own, painted on very thin bark, which showed a many-branched tree with a man and woman on either side of it. These, he said, were his great-grandparents, and on the branches were written the names of their descendants.

Next he exhibited a round map, also on bark, marking Mérida as Tihoo and showing Mani as the center of the country, according to the old Mayan tradition. Another map showed the village and surrounding region. There were royal grants of common land, several land treaties, and bills of sale.

Victoriano, who either spoke no Spanish or pretended not to, took Salvador to one side with several of the documents and, with Sóstenes' help, apparently explained to him some important facts about the village. Jolie pressed a small pointed finger on a symbol a short distance from the village on the map that Mercy was studying.

“This is what's left of a temple with a big jaguar. Would you like to go see it? It's near a wellspring in a cave that's supposed to go way down underground, maybe all the way to the sea.”

“How far is it?” Mercy asked, hoping the expedition would be feasible. She was eager to respond to these first hints of acceptance from the puzzling; haughty, yet vulnerable little girl.

“Oh, half an hour, maybe,” Jolie said and shrugged. “We wouldn't be late for dinner. Salvador's already been there. We can let him study with Victoriano while we go on.”

“All right.”

Mercy thanked Sóstenes, praising the care that had been taken with the priceless old records. She said goodbye to Victoriano while Jolie, in Mayan, must have explained to him and Salvador where she was taking Mercy.

Flora was waiting outside the council building and greeted them with delighted whimpers, pacing along beside them as they took a narrow path leading out of the village. They passed several cornfields where men were harvesting and one place where an Indian was clearing a new field, alternately using an ax and machete, depending on the size of the tree or bush.

“This all must have been part of the old city,” Jolie said, kicking at the round-edged stones of what had been a wall. “Papa says it covered several miles, but there's not much left of it now except this jaguar shrine and the tower behind the orchards.” She shot Mercy a weighing glance. “Have you seen the tower?”

“Yes.” Mercy tried to avert questions about the circumstances. “It would be a great place for Rapunzel. Do you know that story?”

“The name of my grandfather's
chère amie
was Rosamunda,” said Jolie with disconcerting directness. “He never loved her as he did my grandmother, but Chepa says a man should not live without a woman. Did Papa show you the tower?”

“Yes.” Mercy's cheeks were hot. It was ridiculous to be interrogated like this by a child, but refusing to answer would make it seem she had something to hide.

Again, that strangely adult violet gaze touched her, then veered away. “Xia lived there once, you know.”

What a grotesque conversation! But the only way Mercy could think of to manage it was to be matter-of-fact, to register no shock for the benefit of those sharply inquiring eyes.

“Yes, so your father said.”

“Did he tell you she was
his chère amie?
” queried the girl, her eyes narrow violet slits.

Mercy's breath caught with stabbing pain. “That's none of my business,” she contrived to say coolly after a moment. “And this is an improper subject, which we'll not discuss again. However, since you plainly know more about such things than you should, let me assure you that I'll never live in that tower!”

Jolie nodded and sighed. “That's what Xia said. She said you'd make Papa marry you.”

Was there no way to end this absurd and wildly indecent exchange? “Your father doesn't intend to marry,” said Mercy in a crisp tone. “And since I've never met Xia, I'm amazed that she'd say such things, especially to you.”

“
She
doesn't think I'm a baby,” snapped Jolie. “She knows I can understand things.”

With supreme effort, Mercy held her peace, but she had a vastly uncomfortable flash of how an older woman possessed of a priestess' lore, if not supernatural powers, could work on the mind and senses of a child like this. If Xia
had
said those things, and Jolie's crudities had the ring of truth, the woman had to be in love with Zane. And even if he'd never marry her, she at least had his body, which Mercy must deny.

Jolie scooped up Flora and set her over her shoulder. “There it is,” she said, pointing “See the jaguar? Around on the other side there are signs carved on the stone.”

The jaguar was really two seemingly male and female heads and torsos connected by one smoothly massive shared lower body. The heads faced in opposite directions. Dominating the rubble of walls and fallen arches, the double beast had evidently been kept cleared of creeping vines and plants by some devotee. A short distance away water gleamed from a limestone grotto that led into a dark hole.

Mercy was moving around to see the glyphs Jolie had mentioned when there was a cracking sound, scrambling, and then a cry.

11

A few feet away, Salvador lay sprawled in a hole, which he had evidently fallen into. A snake with a yellow-marked head so deeply pitted that it seemed to have four nostrils was struggling in a litter of branches and leaves. With a hiss, Flora shot past Mercy and landed on the snake's back, tearing it open with suddenly lethal claws, ripping out its entrails.

Mercy snatched up Salvador, lifted him clear of the hole, and put him on the ground in front of the jaguar, flinching at the marks on his leg.

“
Cuatro narices!
” Jolie was wailing. “It's poisonous!”

“Run for Chepa and your father!” Mercy ordered.

She'd never tended a snakebite, but she remembered a treatment her father had used, repudiating as worse than useless the popular remedy of whiskey. “
Don't let the person run or spread the poison through the blood,
” he'd warned. “
And get the venom out
—
quickly
.”

“Salvador,” Mercy whispered, “Salvador, be quiet.”

Jolie plunged away with a terrified moan. Mercy had no knife. Suddenly she thought of the sharp black coral around her neck. Slipping it off, she selected the sharpest piece, gritted her teeth, and cut a cross over each fang mark. Clamping her mouth over one incision, she sucked and spat, sucked at the other and spat again, then returned to the first cut.

Salvador didn't move or cry, but his body was trembling. When she glanced up, his dark eyes watched her with a trust that made her suck again, though by now she should have most of the venom out. Her mouth felt strange. Father had said it was important not to have cuts or sores in the mouth. She spat several times, rinsing with the flow of saliva. She decided to start carrying him. She didn't know what more, if anything, Chepa could do, but waiting here was just too frightening, and the minutes she could save might be vital.

Lifting the boy, staggering under his weight, she talked to him softly as she labored along the path, assuring him in mixed Spanish and English that most snakebites didn't kill, and, anyway, most of the poison should be out.

Sweat had broken out on his face but he smiled. “
Gracias,
” he whispered. His eyes closed. Mercy plodded on, her back and arms aching, praying for someone to hurry. Flora, having devoured all she wanted of the snake, stalked regally before them.

Mercy, obsessed till now with trying to treat the bite, began to reconstruct. Salvador must have finished his lesson with Victoriano and run ahead to surprise them, hiding behind the jaguar in the shrine, which was probably a favorite retreat of the children's. When he'd bounded out, he'd fallen into the hole, where the snake was resting.

In another second, Mercy would have stepped on that deceptive covering of leaves and branches herself. If she'd been bitten, would Jolie have been so stricken? Would she have run as if devil-possessed for help?

Mercy pushed such thoughts away. The cornfields were deserted, but the village must be close. She hoped Jolie had called for help as she ran through. Gasping for breath now, Mercy felt so dizzy that she wondered if she'd swallowed and absorbed some of the venom.

A small calloused hand brushed her cheek. “
Lo siento,
” murmured the boy.

“
Está bueno,
” Mercy encouraged. “Chepa will help.”

She heard a confusion of voices ahead. Victoriano appeared, followed by Sostenes and a dozen excited women. Victoriano snapped an order that melted away the group, except for the scribe, and he took Salvador from Mercy's exhausted arms, examining the cuts Mercy had made, scowling, and shaking his head as she tried to explain to Sostenes in garbled Spanish what she'd done.

If the boy died, it was plain that the
H-men
would blame her, but before he had a chance to try his remedies, Chepa trotted into the village, moving with astonishing speed for her ample build, and gathered Salvador to her bosom, dismissing the
H-men
almost as curtly as he had sent away the curious women.

Victoriano drew himself up and seemed ready to blast the housekeeper when Zane, followed by a white-faced Jolie, strode into the clearing. Again, Mercy told what she'd done.

“It sounds reasonable;” Zane said. “I'll carry him, Chepa. You go ahead and make your brews.”

Easily lifting Salvador, he spoke with courtesy to the
H-men
and scribe and moved off with such long steps that Mercy and Jolie had to run to keep up.

“You sucked out the poison,” he said over his shoulder. “Little fool, to take such a chance! Are you sure you didn't swallow some?”

“I spat it out.”

Zane glared at her as best he could while keeping one eye on his route. “You look awful! Chepa will make you some tea, too, and put you to bed! Sucking fer-de-lance venom! Your father was crazy to tell you such a thing!”

“He thought it worked better than anything else.”

“For the victim, maybe! But how about you? What if you have a canker or hollow tooth or …”

“Don't yell at her, Papa!” Jolie gave his arm an admonishing tug and darted ahead. “I'll bring some water so Mercy can rinse out her mouth.”

Relieved of Salvador's weight, Mercy breathed less painfully, but her head throbbed. Still, she kept up with Zane till Jolie intercepted her with a gourd of water and insisted she swish it thoroughly around her mouth. When this was done, Jolie grasped Mercy's hand and they hurried to the kitchen.

Zane held the boy while Chepa measured herbs into an earthenware pot. Water must have been boiling for some other use, for a kettle of it was ready and she poured some of this over the leaves and dried blossoms.