Days of the Dead (35 page)

January studied her, that slim, beautiful girl in her gaudy skirt and borrowed reboso, and tried to picture her alone in a foreign land with a child or children to feed. When Santa Anna’s Army reached Texas, Dillard would be in the forefront of the battle. And even with the amount of sand and sawdust in the Mexican Army’s gunpowder, some of those bullets would find flesh.

Would she be afraid then?

Or would she stay on anyway, to become a Texas woman, the founder of a new state?

Another explosion, and the sky was filled with blue and green sparkles. “Sulphate of potassa,” remarked Rose.

“Uncle ’Stasio makes them,” agreed Valentina, sitting on a rock as Dillard came back carrying the lantern and a slim sheaf of papers. “He can make nearly anything.” She took from him a lead-pencil, and tore off the bottom of one of the sheets. “‘I, Maria-Valentina de Castellón, daughter of Don Prospero de Castellón and of Melosia Valenzuela, do here attest and swear that the letters written to me in the hand of’—by the hand of?—‘Mr. Hannibal Sefton were in fact only translations of letters received by me from my affianced husband, Mr. John Dillard of Smith County, Tennessee, and Nashville-on-the-Brazos, Texas; and in keeping silent concerning this fact Mr. Sefton was obeying my earnest pleas, and defending my honor.’ There!”

She signed with a flourish and thrust the papers at January. Gravely, she added, “It will do you no good, but I do owe it to Hannibal that at least he not be accused of trying to seduce me. He did us all the greatest of services, poisoning my brother. Tell him I thank him for that. We all should, Josefa and Natividad and even Father, because it was Fernando who really wanted Father locked up. I mean, if Father had been locked up, Fernando would have taken over Saragosse as well, and put in a ‘good administrator’—” Her voice twisted over the words, as if she said
slave-driver
or
whoremaster.
“But ’Stasio was afraid if he didn’t help Fernando, Fernando would have his way anyway and then would throw him—and Isabella—out into the road.”

She put her arm through Dillard’s. “And if we are taken,” she added to January, “I will tell them that you forced me to write that letter—and all of these as well—and that you dishonored me afterwards. Let us go,
amor mio.
” She smiled up at Dillard. “We can be in Jalapa by morning.”

“And God help him,” murmured Rose as the Texian and Don Prospero’s younger daughter mounted their horses and splashed away up the course of the trickling stream, “the day he runs afoul of that little cactus-blossom. Curious how it didn’t seem to occur to any of them—not Rafael or Don Anastasio or Valentina—that being thrown out to make one’s own living is not the end of the world.”

“God forbid that the nephew of the Marquis de Merced should have to enter trade.” January slung his rifle back over his shoulder and crossed the moonlit rocks back to where the overgrown path led up to the curing-shed. “Or learn how to deal with life that doesn’t include being treated with respect by everyone he meets.”

“For a woman it’s different, of course.” Rose uncocked her pistol and slipped it into her sash. “There isn’t much else Doña Gertrudis
can
do except be passed along as a duenna to whoever in the family wants one—including the bastard daughter of a family friend who’s no better than she should be. Whatever papers Don Prospero may have had regarding the status of his friend’s lands and property must have been kept fairly secret—it doesn’t seem to be something Ylario knows, for instance. But Fernando would certainly have come across them in sorting out Don Prospero’s effects.”

“And may have been so foolish as to mention his plans to Anastasio.”

TWENTY-FOUR

They slept a few hours in an arroyo, and rode through the pre-dawn starlight to reach the pyramids of Mictlán just before first light. January saw no sign of fire, smelled no smoke as they circled through the gullies and woods that surrounded the old temples, then moved cautiously in for a closer look. They found horse-droppings in the woods, and the tracks of men—mended
zapatos
without the scuffing of a vaquero’s protective
bota
attached—but no evidence that the riders whose coming had driven them away yesterday had ascended the Pyramid of the Dead.

“What will you tell Don Prospero?” Rose asked as they climbed the broken remains of the old stair to the flattened area outside the crypt passage. The soft dirt of the passage, and of the crypt around the broken altar, was unmarked by any boots but January’s own.

“The truth,” he replied, studying again the vases of marigolds, the dying roses weeping from the Death-God’s eyes. The things that had been dear to Fernando. “Depending on how receptive he seems to be and how many other voices he’s already hearing in his head. Last night was the night of
los niños.
The night of All Saints,” he went on, coming out to cut a branch of scrubby sagebrush to scratch out his own tracks. “Tonight is the night of All Souls. Everyone returns, saint and sinner alike, presumably even apostates like Fernando.”

He walked back down the passageway, brush branch in hand, and his shadow against the light made Mictlantecuhtli’s features flicker, like eyelids stirring in sleep. The pale daylight gleamed wanly on the Meissen china, the curves of candy and bones, tea-cup and sword. “If Don Prospero intends to have words with his dead son, it will be tonight. And it will be here.”

They spent the day lying on top of the pyramid in the dismantled shrine, alternately watching the hacienda and the surrounding rangelands, and picking out the worn shapes of priests and warriors, singing-girls and sacrifices, from the stones around them. The church-bell tolled in Mictlán, calling the people to the Mass of All Souls:
Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeculum in favilla. . . .
The wind bore up to them the scents of smoke from the village, where a second feast was being prepared, and in the streets January could see the women scattering more flower-petals, to lead the spirits home.

“Santa Anna may not even know about Don Prospero’s purchase of the Avila de Saragosse lands,” said January as he passed Rose a water-bottle. After checking on the horses and making sure of the loads in all their guns, she was stretched out full-length, reading Valentina’s love-letters.

“But records of the transaction would have been among Don Prospero’s papers. It’s what Anastasio was truly afraid Fernando had mentioned to Werther Bremer—what he was afraid Bremer would tell Ylario.”

“And poor Hannibal simply walked into it,” sighed Rose. “Valentina may have been poorly educated,” she added, turning over the love-letter in her hand, “but she definitely has a working knowledge of the more sensational romantic fiction available in Mexico. This business about
I am your humble and willing slave, you torture me but to try me,
is straight out of
Glenarvon,
and
In thy veins while blood shall roll, I am thine! Thou art mine! Mine thy body! Mine thy soul!
comes from
The Monk.
I know, because one of the girls in the school I taught wrote the same thing to a young poet she was enamored of. Poor Hannibal, to have to translate this tripe. Her letters are all in his handwriting as well, poor man. She must have dictated them. The signatures seem to be hers.”

“Good,” said January. “At least Ylario can’t argue that he wrote her half of the correspondence to exonerate himself.”

“Nonsense,” retorted Rose. “Of course he can—and will. He’ll say Hannibal deceived the poor girl into signing them—told her they were affectionate missives to her father or something—which I’m sure is exactly what she’ll swear to if she’s caught.”

She sat up and brushed the dust from her elbows. It was the hour of siesta, and on the top of the pyramid the sun was brutal, but January dared not relax his guard. “Do you think he’ll believe you? Don Prospero, I mean?” she asked.

January hesitated a long time, then said, “I think so. When a man has a valley-wide reputation as a wizard, it shouldn’t be too hard to convince his friend that he was capable of brewing a potion that could kill one man out of a table-full and leave the rest without even a tummy-ache. I don’t have to make a case that will stand in court. Only one that will convince Don Prospero to release Hannibal from custody, and smuggle him out of the country ahead of the law.”

“It’s a pity in a way,” said Rose. “I think Hannibal is genuinely fond of Consuela. Goodness knows he looks better than he has since I’ve known him. What if Don Prospero doesn’t come?”

January glanced down the hill-slope to the broken stone images at the bottom that marked the ancient sacrificial stair. “He’ll come,” he said.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis.
In New Orleans his mother and sisters would be tidying up the grave of his mother’s recent husband, Christophe Levesque, and the family tomb of the Janviers. White members of that old French family would be chatting with them comfortably, quite at ease with St. Denis Janvier’s mistress and his daughter, “from the shady side of the street.”

Maybe that’s why everyone puts skulls on the
offrendas, he thought, gazing off across the lizard-brown softness of the dry range.
Because Death strips away the smiling lips, the painted cheeks, the skin whose hue is so desperately important to so many people. “Get thee to my lady’s chamber and tell her that though she paint an inch thick, to this end will she come.”

Under the skin, Death grins at us all.

The moon stood high before the sun faded, nearly full and glowing with burning silver light. Firefly sparks flowed along the village streets and a little jewel-heap of amber lights congregated beneath the shadow of the church-tower, but for the most part the night’s feasting seemed to be in the homes. “We may not see him coming once it grows dark,” said January with regret as the ruby globe of the sun dyed the snows of Popocatepetl. “And he’ll see whatever light we kindle.”

Faced with the prospect of a long vigil in the tiny chamber behind the stone image, he was thinking less and less well of his plan.

While Rose stood watch, January descended to scout the area, then saddled both horses in case of need for a quick getaway. While the last blaze of daylight still gilded the sky, they entered the crypt again, the light of their candles making every carving and shadow move with a gruesome underwater animation. Darkness tangled in the roots that thrust apart the crude corbeling of the ceiling, and lent the Death-God’s skeletal countenance a malign expression of watchfulness. Directly below it, Fernando’s bland, prim face appeared even more withdrawn, aloof and calculating between tea-cup and sword.

“Where will you be?” whispered January, handing Rose his rifle.

“Lying in the brush behind Quetzalcoatl’s head.” She gestured out the passageway, and down to the foot of the pyramid. “There’s no real cover closer than that. I’ll have to wait till he goes inside before I start to climb, so stall as long as you can.”

She would be far too distant to be of real help in an emergency, reflected January, but that couldn’t be helped. There was nothing closer, and it was highly unlikely Don Prospero would be accompanied.

“Let’s just hope the sound of my voice coming out of the idol doesn’t panic him into falling into the well.” January took a snake-stick in one hand and a candle in the other, and edged his way around the gaping black circle of the pit to the tangled roots that concealed the entrance to the priest’s nook behind the statue. “It won’t do me any good to tell him that the gods want him to release Hannibal if he proceeds to break his neck—or if he sees either of us and realizes the voice of the god is a hoax.”

“On the other hand, pushing him in the cenote may solve many of our problems,” remarked Rose judiciously. “Let us keep it as a last resort in case of emergency. Do you have any little companions in that niche to keep you from growing lonely?”

“The last thing I want while I’m in there,” growled January, holding the candle to the cramped throat of the nook, “is the patter of little feet. Yuh!” he added as a rather large brown scorpion scuttled out and vanished at once into the shadows.

“Better that you saw it go out than in,” said Rose in the comforting tone of one who doesn’t have to sit in an underground hole with scorpions herself.

January made no reply. The wavering candle-flame made everything seem half-alive, and deepened rather than revealed every tenebrous crevice between the ancient stones. What had appeared, in the open air of Saragosse’s moonlit stream-bank last night, to be a brilliant means of freeing Hannibal now presented a gruesome series of logistical realities.

January unearthed and killed three more scorpions and a tarantula, which made him feel worse rather than better. Like mice or roaches, he suspected there were ten unseen for every one eliminated; he felt like the hero of a blood-and-thunder melodrama hewing at a wolf-pack in knee-deep Russian snow. At last he retreated to where Rose stood watching the moonlit hill-slope, and said, “I’m going to keep a candle burning in there with me. Will you owl-hoot when you see Don Prospero coming up the hill?”

“Do you think you’ll hear me inside?” she asked. “Or that Don Prospero won’t wonder why there are hoot-owls in this part of the country?”

“I’m not sitting in there without a candle.”

She put her hands on his shoulders and tiptoed to kiss him, smiling. “Hannibal owes us both dinner at the Buttonhole Café,” she murmured, “when we’re all safely back in New Orleans.”

The candle helped a little, though its uncertain light did nothing to dispel the inky shadows that clotted the little priest-hole like horrible lace. There was barely room for January to stand, and he could not sit without his back touching one wall or another. He was reminded of the dungeon in the Châtelet prison in Paris that had been called “Little-Ease,” so constructed that the unfortunate occupant would be unable to either sit or lie and was too low to stand in, either.

No wonder the French rose in revolt.

That dungeon had probably been infested with roaches and rats, too, he reflected with a panicky twitch as he brushed at his shoulder for the dozenth time, fancying he felt the pricking feet of a vinigaroon when it was in fact only a fold of his shirt. At least, he decided, he was not of a fanciful disposition, or superstitious about crouching in the dark heart of the Pyramid of the Dead on the night when all the souls of the departed floated through the darkness. His childhood had been spent in a world of spirits and
loa,
of the platt-eye devil and a thousand Petro demons that needed propitiation. But even as a child in the slave-quarters of Bellefleur Plantation, his attitude had been pragmatic. There were mojo-signs and conjure-bags and gris-gris to deal with such spirits as Onzoncaire and Guédé-Five-Days-Unhappy. Whatever there was to be afraid of in the darkness, his father had been able to say
Look it in the face. The bad spirits can’t abide being looked at in the face, and the good spirits will look you right back.

It was not that he did not believe that spirits walked the darkness, he reflected, watching the candle-shadows waver over the stone pits that were the idol’s eyes, the stone tube that was the idol’s mouth. They were still there: the spirits of the Aztec priests who had crouched here where he crouched; the youths and maidens who had lost their lives on the altar or in the cold, lightless waters of the holy well. Just as he knew his own ancestors walked the swamps of the Mississippi bayous when the sun went down.

You just looked them in the face, seeing them for what they were, spirits like oneself.

An owl hooted. With a silent prayer that it was Rose—and that something would happen fairly soon and not leave him for another three hours in total darkness with the scorpions—January touched the speaking-tube with one hand, and puffed out his candle.

Blackness, in which the silence seemed more crushing than the weight of the hill above him. A thousand scorpions the size of dogs emerged from the caverns of his imagination to ring his boots.

He was just wondering if that had been an actual owl—and how he could get his candle lit again—when a tiny rim of reflected gold bobbed on the inner surface of the speaking tube. Startlingly clear, he heard a man’s breathing in the temple, and the scrape of boots; the rustle of clothing and the creak of belt-leather. Of course, he thought, this was a spy-hole; the acoustics of this hidden chamber must be designed to magnify the slightest whisper in the sanctuary outside.

His mind filled with tarantulas, January pressed his face to the curved stone of the inner side of the idol’s skull-like head, and looked out through the speaking-tube of the mouth in time to see Don Anastasio lay the unconscious Don Prospero down in the shadows beside the inky abyss of the holy well.