Bride of Thunder (43 page)

There was a crashing sound. The animal convulsed. A man with a rifle fired again. Mercy clambered up the bank, her garments heavy with mud, as another shot resounded. By then the crocodiles were devouring the dead or wounded ones.

Mercy leaned shuddering against a tree. Whoever that man was, he'd saved her from a frightful death. He was dark-skinned; that was all she'd noticed: But she couldn't see him now. Then she heard the soft sound of naked feet and knew he was coming to her. She couldn't run, couldn't get away.

But she still had her knife.

Stand up!
she ordered herself.
Cruzob or mestizo or sunburned
ladino,
he'll treat you better if you don't act as frightened and helpless as you are
. But it's hard not to look afraid when you've just been chased by crocodiles. It's hard not to look helpless when you're mud-sodden and thirsty and tired.
Try!
Swallowing hard, she stepped away from the tree and tried to smile, though she kept the knife in her hand.

“Thank you,” she said in Mayan while the man was still hidden by vines and leaves. She still didn't know the tongue well and groped for phrases. “I'm lost. Help me home. You will be paid well.”

“I'm already paid.” The reply came in good Spanish as the man came out of the brush.

Mercy stared at him unbelievingly. But there was the golden earring, the hawk face, the tawny eyes.

“Dionisio!”

He smiled. “Ixchel,” he said.

“I … I don't understand.” He'd sent thanks and she'd thought him kindly disposed, but who could blame any Maya for hating whites?

“Ixchel was our goddess of healing. Since I saw you in the infirmary that day, that's what I've called you.” His smile deepened and she grew conscious of the way the mud and water plastered her clothes to her. “Ixchel was also the goddess of the moon, love, childbirth, and weaving. She had a famous shrine at Cozumel, but now that's where
ladinos
send their political enemies. You can't care much for that right now, though!” Slinging his rifle across his shoulder, he picked up her pack. “You need a place to bathe Come.”

She fastened her sandals and followed him back to the trail, so grateful not to be in some crocodile's jaws that she scarcely minded the discomfort of the caking mud. He wore a shirt. She knew that beneath it his back must be a mass of scabs.

“How did you get away?” she asked. “How, did you find me?”

“I was looking for you.” He answered the last question first. “It wasn't hard to follow your sandals off the track.” So much for her faith that she could have eluded Cruzob if they found her footprints. “There's a well not far ahead where you can cleanse yourself and rest. I'll tell you then about what's happened at the estate.”

The crude stone well had a hollowed log trough beside it for watering pack animals. After giving her a gourd of clean, sweet water, Dionisio filled the trough full and told her to bathe.

She did this, left with no choice but to change into her clean things. Dionisio changed the water twice while she washed and rinsed her clothes. When these were spread over a bush, he mixed corn gruel and produced some tortillas, which made the jerked meat much tastier. When they had finished with a bit of honey and dried coconut, Mercy sighed and cut off the cumbersome, voluminous bottom of her divided skirt. Dionisio tucked the cloth into the woven fiber bag he wore over the shoulder that didn't bear the rifle. He also had a machete and knife.

“Tell me,” Mercy said.

She listened, unable to take it in, then tried to make it real by asking questions. “You say that Canul's outposts ambushed Eric's men and most of them were killed? And Eric? Presumed to be among the dead? Ah, Dionisio! And Canul came down to the estate, looted what he could, and set the rest on fire?” Alison's harp, Alison's portrait. What a strange way for them to be destroyed after journeying so far. “Canul didn't kill anyone but Don Gerardo and the overseers?” she said finally.

“No. He said why should he kill Mayas and blacks with whom he had no quarrel, or the fat cook? But the red hair, the man of accounts, he tried to stop the looting and was macheted.”

Poor McNulty. He hadn't lived by the sword, but by his ledgers. He'd been out of place on the estate, with no stomach for cruelty but no will to stop it, either. But Celeste? Her adored Thomas?

Dionisio didn't know if Thomas had died in the fight, but he was positive that no women had been killed or raped and that the accountant was the only person to die in the great house. Canul had taken food, the contents of the store, weapons, tools, mules, horses, even some of the black pigs, but he'd left the village standing, suggesting to the people that
they
might take over the refinery, and if they did well, they should pay him yearly tribute for use of the land and removing their master.

“And you're on the way back to your village?” Mercy asked.

He nodded. “When it was clear that Canul wasn't going to slaughter everyone, Francisca knew I'd be leaving. She told me your ‘death,' which had caused great mourning in the village, was a ruse, and she asked if I'd try to overtake you and help you get to your home.”

“I was certainly never more glad to see anyone in my life!”

He laughed. “I can believe it. If you hadn't thrown your waterskin and gourd, I might not have been in time.” He glanced at the sky. “Can you walk farther before we stop for the night?”

Mercy glanced at the well, reluctant to leave it. “I have a water bag,” he said. “And I know where water is, providing this dry season hasn't scorched it all up. I don't like to stay long at this well.”

“Why?” she asked as she tied her sandals and collected her laundry. Dionisio fastened her clothes to a limb that she could carry over her shoulder while he took her pack, slinging it beside his bag.

“This is where Jacinto Pat was murdered. Pat survived the longest of the three rebel chiefs who began the war, but a jealous man killed him here while he was on his way to Belize for guns.”

“Do you think the well's haunted, then?”

“It is for me, because if the leaders had listened to Pat, a peace might have been negotiated that would have saved many lives. But they were jealous and called him a traitor. So Pat died, the war went on, and Yucatán lost half its people, all in a few years.”

“Was your village in the war?”

“My uncle was
batab
then and sometimes he fought alongside the Cruzob, but as much as possible my village stayed aloof. We had never been much bothered by
dzuls,
and we simply wanted to be left alone.”

Mercy nodded. “That's probably what most people wanted.”

“Yes. It was the Huits—‘loincloths,' or untamed Indians—who were having their lands taken or being forced into servitude, losing the freedom they were used to, who were the thrust of the rebellion. They now control the southeastern part of Yucatán, bonded together by the Talking Cross.”

“And Canul with his Icaiches are enemies of the Cruzob?”

“They're supposed to be, but Canul would rather raid below the Hondo and try to absorb other independent groups like mine. If he could dominate the Macanches, Lochas, and Ixcanhas, he might be strong enough to occupy most of Belize and hold power equal to that of the Cruzob.”

“Yet you wouldn't kill him.”

“I may kill him in a battle, but that will be clean, not a deceitful trick to serve a
ladino
.” He said the word like a curse.

What did he mean to do with her? He hadn't said, though his manner was protective. Mercy screwed up her courage to say, “I'm a
ladina
.”

He glanced over his shoulder with a smile. “You're Ixchel.”

Was he serious? A prickle of fear edged her spine. She forced herself to speak lightly. “I'm plain Mercy Cameron, Dionisio. Please, will you help me find my way to La Quinta?”

Halting, he turned to regard her with eyes that were the color of dark honey. She'd had a cat once with eyes like that, a cat that had loved to be held in her arms but that would never stay in the house. “I'll take you wherever you wish, Doña Mercy, even to Mérida or Campeche, but first I must stop at Chan Santa Cruz to try and arrange for a closer alliance. Canul won't molest my people if he knows that would bring retaliation from the Cruzob. It was General Crescencio Poot of Chan Santa Cruz who drove the Icaiches out of Chichénha. No one cares to anger him.”

“You mean I'll have to go into Chan Santa Cruz? Can't I wait in the forest?”

“Are you so fond, then, of crocodiles?” He laughed. “I'm required to spend a month each year in garrison duty at Chan Santa Cruz. Mine's overdue because of the bond I gave the
dzul,
Kensington, for those rifles. Since I want assurances from the Talking Cross, I had better first render my service.” He frowned, scanning her so intently that she blushed. “You're a woman all the
batabs
would like in their hammocks. The best way to protect you is to say you're my captive.”

“But a month! I'd rather go on by myself!”

“I won't permit that. It's too dangerous.”

“You mean I am your captive?”

“No. Truly, Ixchel, I am yours. But I must fulfill my obligations to the Talking Cross for the safety of my people.”

“Could you send a messenger to La Quinta, then, to request an escort for me?”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Two difficulties, Doña Mercy: to find a man who would go, and to persuade the Talking Cross to allow outsiders to come for you and depart. I don't think it could be done, not without imperiling those who helped. A month is not so long. And you'll learn things that no other
ladinos
know, except slaves, who'll finish their years at the shrine city.”

Mercy bit her tongue to keep from saying that she didn't want to learn about Chan Santa Cruz. “A month seems a very long time to me,” she said. “I don't know if the people of the estate knew, but Kensington abducted me.”

“It was known. People wondered why he went so far to steal a woman when he had many beautiful ones in his household.”

“Then you should understand that I want to go home. Please take me safely past Chan Santa Cruz and let me travel on.”

He stopped in a small glade, put down their bags, and fired at a ripple in the tall grass. Something leaped, convulsed, then was still.

“A small wild pig,” he said. “Good. We'll camp here and cook it.”

“But we just ate!”

“When you taste this meat, you'll get hungry,” he promised. “And we'll carry the rest to eat tomorrow. Find some big green leaves while I make the fire pit.”

It might be better to give him time to think about her request. Though Mercy was determined not to let him ignore her urgency, she first helped him collect rocks for the hole and then went searching for the largest leaves she could find and presently returned with dozens from a nearby tree.

He had a fire burning inside the rock-lined pit and was apparently dressing the animal over at the edge of the grassy stretch. Bringing it back to the fire, he sprinkled it with a mixture of seasonings from his bag, and wrapped it in leaves. When the fire had burned to ashes and the rocks glowed with heat, he raked out some of them, put more leaves in the pit, nested the pig there, and put on the rest of the leaves, a little earth, the hot rocks, then more earth.

“It's like
pibil,
” Mercy said, thinking of Chepa and La Quinta with great longing and growing anxiety.

Had she only traded one captor for another? Could Dionisio intend to leave her, another
ladina,
in Chan Santa Cruz? She didn't know what to think, couldn't gauge his feelings toward her, though she couldn't deny the man-woman magnetism that flowed between them.

“
Pibil
requires many more herbs,” said Dionisio. “But the method's the same.”

Twilight deepened. He hung their hammocks close to each other, as if he guessed that Mercy was beginning to have desperate thoughts of slipping away in the night.

She could stand it no longer. “Dionisio,” she said, “stay at the shrine, since that's your duty. But let me go home.”

Evidently he'd been thinking, too, for he took a while to answer. She found this reassuring. If he meant to hand her over to the Cruzob, he needn't be velvet-gloved. “The
tatich,
Bonifacio Novelo, loves women. No doubt I could win his favor by sending you to his house. Your sweetness might even charm Crescencio Poot, though he'd probably not feel satisfied until he'd cut your throat. I swear that I will not give you to them, nor leave you when I go. But you shall wait with me this month of my service. I owe you my life. That debt can't be paid by letting you risk death or violation.”

“I tell you, I accept my chances, and I prefer to take them!”

“No. I will serve my time—one month. Then I will take you wherever you wish.”

Mercy abandoned the argument. He sounded honest. But he might be killed or die or succumb to pressures now unforeseen. She'd travel with him till they were near the shrine and then she'd try to get away in the night.

In the darkness, Dionisio grasped her hands. “By my honor as a
batab,
I will protect you with my head. You will go to this La Quinta, if that's your desire. But you must promise me not to journey by yourself.”

“Why should I promise?” she demanded angrily. “I haven't asked you to be responsible! If you're as grateful as you say, you'd let me do what I want to!”

His laughter was softly amused. “Did your mother let you play in the fire because you cried to touch it? You will not go alone. So, till I can take you, will you agree to be my guest?”

“What if I won't?”

The long, slender hands grasped hers more tightly. “Then, for your own good, you'll really be my prisoner. Tonight I'd tie you up, and at Chan Santa Cruz, when I couldn't be with you, I'd ask that you be closely watched.”