Bride of Thunder (48 page)

“But I hate for people to think I can do more than I really can! Suppose they carried a dead baby in from some far-off village or someone died making the journey who might have lived otherwise? What if …”

Shaking his head, Dionisio hushed her lips with his fingers. “Your father was a wise, good man. Did none of his patients die?”

“Of course, but … he was a
real
doctor!”

“Oh.” Dionisio's brow puckered. “You mean he'd accept and do his best for people who he knew were going to die? He could endure their deaths because, perhaps, he made these easier, and there were other people he could help?”

Mercy bit her lip. “I don't think I'd be a good doctor. Maybe I never can accept that there'll be those I can't do anything for. The reason I worked with Juanito so long was that I couldn't bear to get up and face his mother.”

“A good thing in his case.” Dionisio held her and she wondered why, though he was only a few years older than she, he often seemed so wise, possessed of a fatalistic understanding that made her feel childish and spoiled. “Don't be troubled, my heart. Until he decides what to do, the
tatich
won't make an effort to spread tales of your powers. You won't suddenly be surrounded by the ailing. Let me give you a thought. It's from our prophet, Chilam Balam. It helped me heal from Señor Kensington's whipping, and also when my wife and our child died.” Dionisio's voice softened. “‘
His word was a measure of grace, and he broke and pierced the backbone of the mountains
.…
Who? Father, Thou knowest: He who is tender in heaven.…
'”

She received his gift, this talisman that couldn't be stolen.
Tender in heaven
. The words were like him. They lay down in his hammock, sweetly close. He talked to her in Mayan, as he often did, telling her stories—children's stories of gods, animals, and mortals. For that night, he could have been an older brother, cheering her in the darkness.

Early in June Dionisio's service was completed and he set out for Macanche with his rifle, machete, bag of corn-meal, and water gourd. “I'll return as quickly as I can,” he said. “But councils enjoy long arguments and persuadings. Be patient.”

He held her, his arms warm and strong and cherishing. She walked with him to the western way out of the village and watched till he turned at the edge of the forest and raised a hand in farewell before he vanished. Her throat burned and she fought back tears.

He'd be back. There was an excellent chance that the
tatich
would consider the alliance more useful than a
dzul
healer, that Dionisio would be able to take her straightaway to La Quinta.

And then?

Then he'd go to his own village. In a year or two he'd marry and have children, just as she hoped to have babies with Zane, at least one with hair and eyes like his. But she'd never forget Dionisio, his forest, his people, and all that he'd taught her.

If Zane could accept—and she wasn't sure he could—that she'd been used repeatedly by Eric Kensington, he should be able to accept the good and natural thing between her and the
batab,
though she hoped Zane would never question her till she had to lie or try to explain. Zane was her lover, her man. But she loved Dionisio as she did the sun and flowers and birds, knowing they weren't hers.

As she turned from the western boundary, the
tata nohoch zul
stood in her way, his stout, hard belly protruding under his bright sash, his eyes narrow as he smiled.

“You're sad at your master's leaving? He's young and lusty, yes? But save your tears for later. The
tatich
would speak with you now.”

She fought down the urge to cry out to Dionisio. Braced for almost anything, she followed the chief spy to the long arcaded palace. The supreme leader again occupied his hammock, enjoying fruit, crusty bread with honey, and aromatic coffee. He wore lace-trimmed white trousers still, but this time his shirt also was white, richly embroidered.

He motioned for her to take a stool near the hammock. “The bread is fresh-baked,” he said. “And you like coffee, don't you?”

The golden-brown loaf-did smell tantalizing but it must have been made by one of the women in the slave compound. Mercy declined it and the coffee, also.

“The
batab
's departure has left you too sad to eat?” chided the
tatich;
devouring alternate bites of honeycomb and mango. “Strange, when you are affianced to another man.” His eyelids drooped and a slow, sensual smile curved his lips. “Possibly you cling to whatever man is closest.”

There was no mistaking the suggestion in the deep, pleasant voice. Mercy went cold. If he wanted her, she was completely in his power. The Cruzob priesthood wasn't celibate. Under the
ladino
clergy, villagers had preferred a priest to have one woman so that he'd leave the others alone. There were no moral checks on the Great Father. Mercy stared beyond him, at the execution tree in the plaza, summoning her courage, trying to still her careening thoughts.

He was physically repulsive to her, but she dreaded even more the smell of death and power about him, lives and pain absorbed and fattening him like the food he took. It made no sense, perhaps, after Eric, but she knew she really would rather die than belong to this man. She would rather run off and take her chances in the jungle, or try to kill him, though that would mean being hacked to bits by machetes.

“The
batab
was kind to me,” she said firmly. “He told me much about the Mayas. We were friends in the soul.”

The
tatich
laughed. “But souls inhabit bodies. Will you say you never pleasured each other amidst the wild thyme?”

Involuntarily, Mercy glanced at the spy. So he'd been watching even then. She turned proudly to the mestizo. “I'll say that what's between the
batab
and me was for us, for our spirits, and it doesn't concern the man I wish to marry.”

“He'll be a most unusual male if he agrees,” said the
tatich
dryly. He let honeycomb melt in his mouth as he lay back and studied her, then swallowed and gave a small dismissing shrug. “But if the cross allows its vassal, Dionisio, to keep you, I shall use my influence to get him to offer you for ransom to your
dzul
. It's all right for Cruzob to keep white slaves, but it's not good that they should love them.” His broad face twisted with disgust. “This thing of souls! You would blight his, destroy him!”

“No!”

“Yes. It is as our prophet wrote: ‘
The
dzuls
trampled the flowers, and they sucked to death the flowers of others so that their own might live. They killed the flower of Quetzalcoatl.
'” The sonorous tone boomed on accusingly. “‘
The
dzuls
only came to castrate our sun! And the children of their children remain among us and we receive only their bitterness.
'”

The
tatich
brooded, his dark eyes fixed on Mercy, though he appeared to be seeing something else. “You're honey to the
batab
now, and he is the sun to open your bloom. But when your honey's gone and your flower is withered, the bitterness left would unman him. I need whole men. Yes, I will try to persuade the
batab
to sell you to the
dzul
—if I accept the alliance. Now, tell me of your country. How are the leaders chosen? And is it possible, as I have heard, that heretics live beside Catholics? Will the black slaves have their own country now that they're free? And what of the Indians? I've heard of the Comanches, very fierce, and the Apaches, too. Some of the Mexican troops that were sent to fight here had also served on those northern frontiers.”

He had a keen, wide-ranging intelligence. Having apparently decided not to concern himself with Mercy's body, he feasted on her mind, drawing from her information she'd never analyzed or considered before in depth. Once she believed the sexual danger past, Mercy found herself stimulated and engrossed. She even accepted coffee when the military band was playing sprightly polkas interspersed with religious music at the eight o'clock service. The
tatich
said that nowadays he often let a
maestro cantor
celebrate the mass, and that he himself worshipped in his private chapel.

“I don't fight now, either,” he chuckled with a sigh. “Too old, too weary. I've earned my rest,
señora
.” He extended his muscular, heavy hand toward the plaza and swept it to indicate the shrine city. “When I think of when God first spoke to us in the little valley yonder! We were starving, beaten, whipped.
Ladinos
cut down the tree by the
cenote,
the Mother of Crosses, they defiled our chapel, and looked on us as carrion! We couldn't plant corn. So many of us died. But the cross saved us,
señora
. Counting allies, I command an army of eleven thousand, and I have a treasury of two hundred thousand pesos and much rare jewelry and plunder. The
ladinos
were so routed when they attacked here in 1860 that I don't think they'll ever again have the stomach for it.”

The
tata nohoch zul,
standing through all their conversation, growled rapidly in Mayan. The
tatich
responded, laughing, then said to Mercy, “He thinks we should take advantage of the
ladino
war, let them bleed each other well, as they now do at Mérida, and then fall upon the victors while they're drunk and happy.” He swayed the hammock gently. “Ten years ago I would have been rallying men. It would be a great chance, perhaps our last chance, to fulfill the dreams we had at first, driving out all the
ladinos,
leaving them not even Campeche and Mérida. But I've fought so many battles,
señora
. Unless the cross commands it, I won't march.”

And the cross can't command it unless you do,
Mercy thought. With all her heart, she was glad that the
tatich
was disinclined to risk what the Cruzob held in a challenge to the whites.

The spy spoke again and she recognized the name of Crescencio Poot and the gist of the comment, that the general might have a thirst for conquest even if the
tatich
didn't.

“The general of the plaza is under my orders,” snapped Novelo. “I can send him to the whipping post or the stocks, just as I can do to anyone—from soldier to general!”

The spy bowed his head. “Indeed, Father, that is your power.”

Mollified, the
tatich
resumed his questions. It was noon when he gave Mercy leave to go, telling her to visit him again in the morning. Grateful that the spy ignored her, Mercy went to her hut, ate corn gruel, and tried to rest, but the loneliness was oppressive. Zane at Mérida, Dionisio on the way to Macanche—both seemed terribly far away, while the chief spy was close.

Getting out of the hammock and fastening her sandals, Mercy decided to see if she would be allowed to leave the city and walk in the woods. She could collect frangipani flowers for a healing ointment, and the flowers and bark of the magnolia were supposed to be useful for a failing heart. She needed to steep some willow leaves in case someone came to her with a fever or headache, and she hoped to find a red morning glory, which, according to the
Badianus
copy, was a good purgative.

With a hemp bag to hold her finds, Mercy passed a sentry who ordered her to stop and asked where she was going. She explained in halting Mayan that she wished to gather plants. While the sentry hesitated, a plump young man who resembled a Buddha strolled from the nearest street and told the guard he would accompany Mercy.

At first, being trailed by a man she was sure was one of the
tata nohoch zul's
agents made her nervous, but once they reached the woods, he kept mostly out of sight. The fantastic truth was that she soon forgot him in her pleasure at finding some thistles reputedly useful for fever and an exceedingly beautiful magnolia from which she gathered blossoms and bark.

She wandered on and found herself by the cornfield where Dionisio had shown her the birds of the
yuntzilob
. In just these weeks, the corn had broken from the earth and its tender green stalks stirred very gently in the slight breeze. Passing the village as before, she encountered a tortoise among some rocks, but it wasn't crying now.

“Did your tears bring the rains?” she asked it softly.

It moved on, ignoring her, but, glancing up, she saw the skies were overcast, and she quickened her pace, reaching her hut just as the showers started. The unobtrusive young Buddha had melted away. She hoped if she was to be shadowed, he or someone equally invisible would do it, not the
tata nohoch zul,
who turned her blood to ice.

She spread out her discoveries to dry, and then there was nothing to do—nothing, and it was a long time till night. She sat in the light by the door and read her father's worn letters for the hundredth time. Even though she knew the words by heart, they encouraged her. Constantly, in what he did more than what he said, his message was that one must keep trying, help with the load of the world as much as one could, and find some grace and laughter in the struggle.

The rain had stopped. She put away the letters and decided to go to the slave compound and see if anyone was sick or if she could help with the work. She was no good at making tortillas, but she could carry water or mash the soaked corn into paste.

She skirted the plaza and the great mortared pile of the church, giving it a curious glance. She'd never been inside, but Dionisio had told her
la santísima,
the Talking Cross, was kept in a wooden chest, though there were other crosses on the altar. A sentry guarded the sanctuary day and night. She prayed that the cross would stay mute and never command the holy war that the head spy had plainly wanted.

As she started to enter the group of buildings behind the church, the Buddha came out of the shadows of the barracks. “You may not mix with the other slaves,” he said in soft, apologetic Spanish.