Paradise & More (Torres Family Saga) (33 page)

      
“Your woman, she is a good worker. The white dress is foolishness. Better to wear no clothes, but she has learned much today. In time she will grow stronger and her skin will darken as yours has. She is a good Taino.” With that startlingly fulsome praise, Tanei bowed and walked serenely away.

      
Magdalena turned to face Aaron's fierce scowl. His face looked like the
huracan
she had heard Don Cristobal describe. Mustering every ounce of pride she had left, she forced the wilted, aching, itchy misery that was her body to stand straight before him and defiantly placed her mud-and-excrement encased hands on the equally filthy cloth bunched about her hips. “You wrinkle your nose?”

      
“You look like a harlot crawled from the sewers of the Malaga waterfront,” he ground out in low, whiplashing tones.

      
“You knew the nature of the work you assigned me—even the composition of the soil enrichers. Do you not like smelling it so close? See how it smells when worked into your skin,” she said as she rubbed both grimy hands roughly and thoroughly across his bare arms. Then she embraced him, her sweat-soaked, reeking body rubbing the under-tunic's coating on his chest and loincloth.

      
Before he could untangle himself, Aaron was covered with the awful muck. “By the twenty-four balls of the twelve apostles! You have covered me with shit!”

      
Magdalena's eyes widened in amazement. “Wherever did you hear such an oath?” she gasped.

      
Aaron smirked. “I learned that and many another worse from the sailors of their Most Catholic Majesties' ships
Santa Maria
and
Nina
,” he said, shoving her away and trying desperately to breathe without gagging.

      
“Most certainly not from the admiral,” she replied righteously, striding boldly past him to enter the
bohio
. She ignored him and began to wash her hands in a basin of tepid water. Before she could even pick up a towel on which to dry herself after a bath, she had to get this filth free from at least one part of her body!

      
He leaned on the door frame, watching her with a peculiar mixture of emotions—intense irritation combined with an inexplicable surge of desire—and admiration. Aliyah's sweet-smelling body, pressed so intimately to his this morning had aroused no passion. This excrement-coated little vixen made his pulse leap. “You are right, the admiral does not indulge in the vices common to sailors—and soldiers. I learned a few choice epithets from the Moors, too, during the war. You, my lady, incite my penchant for blasphemy in at least two religions!”

      
“Best beware, if not for your benighted soul, then for your position. I am certain the admiral would reprimand you,” she snapped, still scrubbing furiously at her hands.

      
“The admiral would more certainly reprimand you for appearing in public with arms and legs bared. You are, as you have ever reminded me, a Castilian noblewoman, my lady,” he said with contemptuous irony in his voice.

      
She swiveled from her kneeling position in front of the basin and flung the filthy water directly into his face. “In a village of naked people, with you yourself clad only in that—that codpiece and your sun-darkened skin, you dare to tell me I should cover myself to slave in a sewer!” She was shrieking as he advanced on her. He deftly dodged the basin as she heaved it at him, ignoring the noise as the fired clay shattered on the door frame. Shaking droplets of the foul water from his face and hair, he seized her and tossed her up over his shoulder.

      
“Now we both stink so badly I scarce can tell where one of us ends and the other begins, but do not wriggle that shapely bottom overmuch or I will paddle it until it grows as red as your hair.” He scooped up the large drying cloth and his leather saddlebag, then strode toward the door. Magdalena clawed and shrieked as furiously as an enraged parrot.

      
Aaron gave her rump a hard stinging swat and she subsided to mere guttural curses. “For a fine-born lady, you have heard an oath or two yourself, wife,” he said grimly as he walked toward the river.

      
Realizing that she was creating great amusement for the Tainos and that her already screaming muscles ached even more abominably with each kick and wriggle, Magdalena subsided as Aaron walked from the village. Soon he reached the river, the most public and common place where the villagers bathed. He did not stop but continued upstream, following the twists and turns of the water into higher elevations. The jungle closed about them in emerald splendor, the soft hues of twilight muting the brilliance of flowers from vivid crimsons and golds to delicate pinks and yellows.

      
Finally he turned off the trail and stepped between the large, fanlike leaves of a copse of dense low bushes, then stopped and put Magdalena down. Even before she turned, she heard the splash of the waterfall from a rocky ledge jutting out over the enchantingly lovely secluded pool. The beauty of the silvery spray and aqua water, surrounded by whispering palms and flowering shrubs, robbed her of speech.

      
“Tis a small tributary of the river below. An underground spring feeds its waters into the main body at the foot of the mountain,” he said as he tossed his bags onto the mossy ground beside the drying cloth.

      
“Did you find it or do others know of this enchantment?” she asked in awe.

      
He smiled, feeling oddly warmed by her pleasure and the disparity between the pristine beauty of the setting and the filth-covered condition of the intruders. “I was brought here when first I arrived at the village. At that time public bathing with, er, women and girl children watching me made me most uncomfortable. Guacanagari and his brother first showed me this place.”

      
“The women and girls, indeed! You puffed-up hypocrite,” she said, bristling as she surveyed his scanty loincloth.

      
A slow smile spread across his face. “Perhaps
puffed-up
is appropriate, wife, but I do not want you stinking as you do now. Disrobe and bathe. I only pray you do not pollute the drinking water so far below with your foulness.”

      
She turned and looked at his excrement-smeared skin. The left side of his head, which had rubbed against her hip while he carried her, attested to how her clothes had marked his jaw and clotted its debris in his long curling hair. “You are no cleaner than I am now.” It was her turn to smirk.

      
“Then God help the fishes,” he said with an oath. He quickly stripped off his loincloth and weapons, then looked at Magdalena with impatience.

      
She was struggling with the tight knot that tied her skirts. He stalked across the clearing, snatching up the knife from his belt on the ground, and said tersely, “Let it go. 'Tis ruined beyond washing anyway.” When she continued to tug at the garment he yanked her hands free and she let out a small involuntary hiss of pain.

      
“You are bleeding,” he exclaimed in puzzlement as he grabbed one small hand and inspected it. Blood of the Martyrs, her fingertips were crisscrossed with tiny cuts and her palms laced with broken blisters! The acidic soil enrichers must have burned like fire, yet she had worked in them all day. “You will sicken with a disease of the blood from rubbing filth in this broken skin,” he said, his voice cross with concern. “Let me cut the tunic away, Magdalena,” he added more gently.

      
Slowly she let her stinging hands drop and he quickly cut the noisome garment from her and threw it in the bushes. “Now I have one less piece of clothing. Soon I will work as the Taino women do,” she said as she turned and began to unfasten the
bejuco
ties holding her braid atop her head.

      
He watched her, noting the way she winced perceptibly with every movement. Her feet were almost as cut and blistered as her hands. Every muscle in her body must have been taxed beyond his capacity to imagine. Raised to be a soldier since boyhood, Aaron had long known physical hardship, but this delicate woman could never have imagined this hellish kind of toil.

      
Once she finished unplaiting her hair, Magdalena felt his eyes on her and looked up to meet the level blue gaze. Instead of the scorching, smirking arrogance she expected, he appeared contrite—perhaps even ashamed? More likely he pitied her! She turned on her heel and dove into the water, swimming to the center of the pool before she surfaced. The smell was almost gone already when she shook her head free of sparkling droplets.
Blessed Virgin, thank you!

      
“You gave me a fright.” Aaron said as one long arm snaked out and seized her around her slim waist, pulling her to him as he treaded water. “Few ladies of the court learn to swim.”

      
“More is the pity for you, then, that I was raised in the marshes swimming with peasant girls, else you might have been free of an unwanted wife,” she said, kicking off and crossing the pool with strong, smooth strokes.

      
He chuckled and began to swim for the shore where his bag lay. The sound of his rich laughter did queer things to her heart, making it leap and beat erratically in her breast. Then, when he walked dripping from the water and knelt with unconscious grace before a low shrub, the heat in her cheeks began to move lower, thrumming through her racing blood. He broke off a handful of the spiky green branches from the plant and returned to the water with them.

      
“This will cleanse the stench from us,” he said, coaxing her near by offering her a piece of the aromatic plant. ” Tis called fruit soap by the sailors. I can barely pronounce the Taino word for it myself, but it means sweet smell in their language.”

      
When she reached for it, his hand closed firmly yet gently about her wrist and he pulled her into the shallow water near the falls. “Stand up and let me show you how to apply it,” he commanded, himself rising to stand knee-deep in the silvery aqua water.

      
Magdalena complied and he worked the pulpy mass between his palms until he had a creamy white liquid which he then began to rub over her arms, then up to her throat and about her face.

      
“Close your eyes. It stings.”

      
She obeyed, swaying in the warm night air. Unconsciously, her hand reached out and held to his shoulder as he worked the lather downward, reaching her breasts, which he washed with exquisite care. Her eyes flew open as she felt the raw frisson of pleasure that tightened her firm young nipples until they ached.

      
Aaron suppressed the groan of desire that struggled to burst from deep in his throat and said hoarsely, “Here, take this piece and lather me as I do you.” His hands moved lower and he slid them about her slim hips, gliding around her to cup and massage her buttocks.

      
Magdalena worked the creamy white soap onto his shoulders and across his chest. When she began to cleanse his shaggy gold hair, he turned her around and worked the soap into her masses of dark russet curls, then moved down her slim back, her legs, even to her small feet, lifting them one at a time from the shallow water. Taking more of the plant from the rocky ledge by the side of the falls, he handed her some leaves and turned his back. At the unspoken command she soaped his broad back, her fingers caressing the old scars, now so familiar on his hard, splendid body. When he turned again to face her, she reddened, feeling his straining staff push gently against her belly.

      
“Wash it, Magdalena,” he whispered as he began to lather her belly and then moved to the curls at the juncture of her thighs. He felt her quiver. The breathy little moan she emitted felt sweet and warm against his cheek.

      
Magdalena felt the world begin to spin, and her body seemed to whirl out of control. Always Aaron's touch had this effect on her. She quickly grasped his staff in her small hands, wanting to evoke a similar feeling of powerlessness in him. When she massaged the hard pulsing rod with slick soap, he gasped and muttered what sounded like an oath in the Taino tongue.

      
They stood quietly for a moment, gently caressing as they bathed, both inundated with such intense feelings they could scarcely breathe. Then one soapy lock of her hair plopped against his chest, breaking the spell. He ceased his delicate stroking on her soft nether lips and scooped her into his arms, carrying her beneath the waterfall. “Let us rinse off. We are bathed cleaner than a Jewish rabbi before Yom Kippur,” he said as he set her on her feet in the falls.

      
The cool water splashed everywhere, like silky music stinging them softly as they ran their hands over each other, partly to wipe away the soap, mostly to feel the heat from each other's flesh. Their laughter blended with the gentle patter of the falls as they clung and kissed beneath its purifying blessing.

      
Aliyah, who had seen them bypass the village's public bathing place, followed the lovers to their secluded Eden and watched as they bathed and laughed, cavorting so sensuously in the water. She remembered a distant atoll where he had done the same thing with her in a secluded pool, always careful of his privacy when coupling with a woman. A jealous rage built in her as she watched Aaron pull the pale, skinny foreigner deeper behind the curtain of water and sink slowly to the earth with her in his arms. She turned and ran from the hateful sight, unable to bear seeing Magdalena claim her golden lover. How easily he had refused the enticement of her lush curves this very morning, only to fly to his shapeless, ugly, red-haired wife!

      
Aaron gently lay Magdalena back on the soft moss behind the falls. As he caressed her skin, now free of the lubricating soap, he could feel all the insect bites and abrasions she had endured. The sun had painfully reddened her face, arms and legs. He leaned down and kissed her eyelids, murmuring, “Lie here and wait but a moment. I have medicines in my pack to soothe your sore skin.”
      
Gently touching her cheek with a featherlike caress, he stood up and walked around the falls, circling the pool to fetch the cloth and his saddlebag.