Daughter of Fortune (49 page)

Diego came down the passageway behind her. He put
his arm around her waist and walked her to the door of the chapel.
She let him pull her along, her eyes going back to the men on the
benches, then to her husband’s face. He looked as they did, and she
was glad.

He paused at the chapel door. Maria hugged him and
made the sign of the cross on his forehead. “Go with God, my
husband,” she whispered.

“And you,” he answered.

She patted his good arm and left the church swiftly,
almost running. The courtyard was silent in the early dawn, the
children exhausted by the terrors of the night. Smoke hung heavy
and choking over the ground. Here and there younger children still
slept, but the women were awake, staring without seeing.

She looked at the still mask of tragedy on each
face, the calm acceptance of what the day would bring, and knew
without consulting a mirror that she wore the same expression.
Their sorrows were hers, finally. She had as much to lose as they.
She watched the women of the upper colony and knew that she
belonged in this hard place. The river kingdom in its death
struggle had finally taken hold of her.

She walked across the silent, stinking plaza and sat
down next to Señora Castellano. The woman pulled Maria close. “He
is too old, my Reynaldo,” said the woman, stroking Maria’s hair.
“And my sons too young.”

Maria was silent, thinking of Diego’s love. They had
their night. Now it was morning.

The men came out of the chapel. Governor Otermin
stood at their head, a slender figure in his rags and dented
helmet. Diego came toward her. He carried a sword, turning it over
and over, testing the weight and heft of it.

Maria walked with him to the fortress gates. Other
women joined their men. They were by nature a restrained and
reticent people, unused to showing affection in public, but
everywhere there were kisses and embraces, final words, last
hurried instructions, as the colonists tried to express in a few
seconds what they had waited a lifetime to say.

“Take care of my sisters,” Diego said, then looked
at the ground. “If it should come to that, do not let yourselves be
captured. If you should survive and I should not ...” He stopped,
his voice full of unshed tears. “
Dios, querida
, this is a
cruel thing!”

It was the closest he had come to a protest in all
the days of their trial. He touched her cheek. “Then we will meet
in heaven, for we are in Purgatory now.”

She hugged him to her, then forced herself to walk
away.

“I love you,” he called after her. It was something
no Spanish man ever said lightly, or even out loud. She turned and
kissed her hand to him, amazed at her brazenness. They gazed at
each other another moment, and then he was gone in the crowd around
the gate.

Otermin stationed a guard at every third rifleport,
then gave the signal for the gate to be opened. With a shout of
“For God and Spain!” that roared from every throat, the remaining
defenders rushed into the sleeping plaza, swords drawn, lances
ready.

The noise of swiftly joined battle was deafening.
The women in the fortress shrieked and ran back to their screaming
children. Maria picked up her skirts and climbed the ladder to one
of the vacant rifleports. She could see nothing but smoke from the
arquebuses. At the next rifleport the guard fired, paused to
reload, then fired again into the crowd of swirling Indian and New
Mexican bodies. Maria reached for his arquebus. “If you can find
another one,” she shouted over the noise of the battle, “I can
reload this one while you fire the other.”

Without a word, he handed her the heavy firing piece
and raised another one to the tripod. Awkwardly at first, she
swabbed the barrel, rammed down another charge and ball, and handed
the weapon back. The soldier, an elderly man, paused long enough to
grin at her, his white teeth a contrast to his black face.

She stood at the rifleport all day. The August day
was hot, but such a pall of smoke hung over Santa Fe that she could
look directly at the dull copper ball that was the sun. The
fighting spread through the
villa
as the remaining houses
burned. Men returned to the gates bearing their wounded to be
tended by women and priests. As soon as their wounds were bound,
the men who could still walk hurried back to the fight.

Maria saw Diego once and called to him. He waved and
blew her a kiss, then was gone again.

“Your husband?” It was the only thing the rifleman
had said all day.

She nodded and took the gun he handed her, reloading
it quickly and expertly, then giving it back. The muzzle was hot
and her hands burned at the touch, but she did not stop. Her whole
body ached, but she was bound up with Diego and his venture in the
plaza. She leaned against the fortress wall and doggedly reloaded
arquebuses. Other women joined her at other rifleports, and they
all worked silently, swiftly, their faces filthy, their clothing
sooty and burned in spots from the fire of the weapons.

In the middle of the afternoon, someone in the noisy
courtyard gave a great shout. Maria whirled around quickly, fearful
of Indians in their midst. Through the smoke and the haze, she saw
water flowing in the
acequia
again. It was muddy and
sluggish at first, but it was water. Soon young children came to
the gun holes with drinks for everyone. Maria didn’t wait for the
sediment to sink to the bottom of the cup. She drank her portion in
two swallows, spitting some of the water on her burning hands.

In late afternoon, Otermin’s brave venture was over.
One moment there was the noise of battle, then silence.

The quiet hummed in Maria’s ears. The rifleman
motioned for her to stop reloading. She rested the arquebus against
the ledge and moved to the soldier for a glimpse out of his portal.
She sucked in her breath at the sight, then turned away to lean
against the wall, her eyes wide and staring.

The plaza was filled with bodies. Maria sat down in
a heap by the rifleport and put her head between her knees,
clenching her fists and holding them tight against her body to keep
her hands from shaking. I could walk from one side of the plaza to
the other and never touch ground, she thought.

Her empty stomach churned and she put her hand to
her mouth. The rifleman slumped down next to her and took her hand.
They sat together, companions in misery, until the gates swung
open.

Slowly, one by one, the soldiers and rancheros
returned from their day’s work. Maria let go of the rifleman’s hand
and crawled to the edge of the platform, too tired to stand. From
her vantage point, she watched the men return.

Governor Otermin was carried in by two men. He was
still alive, but he bled from several wounds. She didn’t see a man
coming through the gates who was not wounded. They were silent and
grim as they had been in the chapel that morning. Most of the men
barely cleared the gates before they collapsed against each other,
their exhaustion complete.

Maria climbed down the ladder, her legs unsteady.
The smell of blood and death in the plaza was overpowering, and she
blinked back the tears she had been too busy to shed all day.
Señora Castellano ran past to her husband, who sprawled on the
ground, leaning against one of his young sons. Both were wounded,
but they looked up when she put her arms around them, saying their
names over and over in her own litany of devotion.

Maria rested by the wall close to the gate, watching
the men straggle in. She looked for Diego, but could not find him
among the soldiers limping in, dragging their weapons behind them.
Some of the men dangled scalps from their belts, and one soldier
carried an Indian’s head, his fingers clenched in the long black
hair. Maria shuddered and turned her face away as he passed,
leaving a trail of dark blood.

“Where is Diego?” It was Catarina, tugging Luz after
her.

Numbly, Maria walked back to their corner of the
portal with her sisters. She accepted the bowl of water and scrap
of towel from them and wiped the gunsmoke off her face and
neck.

“Your hair is black like mine, Maria,” said Luz,
wrinkling her nose, “and you smell funny.”

“It is just the gunpowder,
chiquita
,” she
said, digging the soot out of her ears.

Luz watched her, then put her hand to Maria’s cheek.
“Can we find Diego?” she asked.

“I will go look. You two stay here with the
Castellanos and I ... I will bring him back.”

“But if he does not come?” Luz asked anxiously,
searching Maria’s face for reassurance.

“I will find him, Luz,” said Maria. She hesitated
and looked down at the familiar face turned up to hers. “But if ...
if I cannot find him, Luz, you have me. I will never leave you and
Catarina.”

“I know that,” said Luz.

She kissed both girls and walked slowly toward the
gate. More men had come in and were being led away by wives and
children. Father Farfán rose from a wounded man he was tending and
put his hand on her shoulder.

“He is not here?” the priest asked.

She shook her head. “I cannot see him. Oh, Father,
do you think ...”

“No,” he interrupted firmly, “I do not. He will
come.”

She stood by the gate and looked out over the hazy
plaza, thinking of her long watch along the Taos road that endless
day before the massacre. The wait was long then, but nothing
compared to this wait, this final wait.

Maria saw her husband just as the sun was going
down. He and two other Spaniards were walking slowly, painfully,
across the plaza, supporting each other. With a little cry of
delight, she ran toward him, raising her skirt to keep the blood
off the hem.

She stood before him in silence. He said nothing,
but watched her, taking her into himself with his eyes as if she
were water to drink, food to eat, a pillow to rest on. She touched
his face and then his arm. He was not a dream. He had come back to
her alive.

“Here, Maria, put your arm around this man.”

She did as he said, hooking the fingers of her other
hand possessively in Diego’s belt.

“Here, here, woman!” he said, “I am not going
anywhere!”

She could not trust herself to speak, or even to
look at him. The four of them crossed the plaza and entered the
governor’s courtyard as the sun went down and night settled on the
ruined
villa.

The wounded men were quickly led away by their
families. Diego took Maria in his arms and they stood close
together by the gates. No words passed between them. She hugged her
husband to her, knowing that there was nothing more in the world
that she would ever need or want. It was enough to be with him.

After several long minutes of silence, she felt a
lump against her back. Diego was carrying something that she had
not noticed before, and it was digging into her. She tried to pull
away from his embrace. “What is that?” she asked.

He didn’t let go of her. Wincing, he brought his arm
around in front of her. “Look what I have for you, my heart.”

She took the small object from him and turned it
over in her hands while she stood in the circle of his arms. It was
her San Francisco. She stared at it, unbelieving.

The arms were both missing and someone had made a
hole through the body and strung the figure on a rawhide thong. The
image was still covered with pink gypsum, a memorial to the
struggle of the brothers in the saintmaker’s workshop. She ran her
finger down the fold of San Francisco’s robe, remembering again
that wonderful afternoon when she had found the saint in the
wood.

“Diego,” she whispered, still unbelieving, “Diego
mio
, you didn’t go back there!”

“No, no. Many of the Pueblos were wearing figures
like this, or bits and pieces from the churches—vestments, sashes.
I don’t know why. For luck? For vengeance? I recognized our San
Francisco, but I had to track that Indian almost to the hills to
get it back for you.”

He chuckled and drew her close again, the saint
between them. “He didn’t want to die anymore than I did, so we
fought rather cautiously. Took a while.”

“I can always clean it off and put on new arms,” she
said, closing her eyes as he kissed her ears, her neck.

“No,” he said when he could speak. “Don’t. Leave it
the way it is. We will remember.”

She nodded slowly. “And I will remember what
Emiliano the saintmaker taught me.”

“It is well. I believe that is what he
intended.”

With a grimace that stabbed at Maria’s heart, Diego
put his arm around her and started walking with her toward the
Castellano’s little corner. “Do you still have that needle and
thread?” he asked suddenly. Her eyes flew in alarm to his
shoulder.

“No, not that. My pants are ripped. It’s my only
pair.”

She patted his stomach and laughed.

“Ay, I am a wealthy man, Maria,” he said. “I have a
wife, a mother for my future children, and my own saintmaker. But I
do wish you could keep from ruining all the dresses I give you. Did
you stay at that rifleport all day?”

“Of course,” she said.

“ ‘
Of course,’ ” he echoed. “How
could I have thought otherwise? I fear you will lead me in a merry
dance, Señora Masferrer!”

After a quick meal of jerky and hardtack and a long,
long drink from the
acequia,
Diego rested with his head in
Maria’s lap. His eyes were closed, but he was not asleep.

“Take a good look around.” he said.

“What are you saying?”

“After we rest for a couple of days, we are leaving.
Walking south to try to find the rest of the colony at Ysleta,
around the lower river.”

“And then?”

“We will continue south. Perhaps to El Paso del
Norte, the crossing. ”

“That is a long walk, Diego
mio
.”