The Captive Heart (22 page)

She'd heard enough. Too tired to bother with him anymore, Miriam said good-night, gave Micah a rather perfunctory peck on the cheek and went back inside, utterly exhausted. Harvey and Dr. Gant were asleep in the basement, her sisters and parents gone to bed upstairs. Pausing momentarily in the living room, Miriam closed her eyes and basked in the silence. Even now, after all the grief and loss, she felt completely at peace here in her father's home. There was no sound at all, save the reassuring
clip-clop
of Micah's buggy horse rounding the house and heading down the driveway.

But then the buggy stopped. There was a muffled shout as Micah's horse pulled up short, and a few seconds later she could hear him turning around and coming back. Perhaps he'd just forgotten something. Miriam started for the back door, but she froze when she heard the sound of other horses, several of them, moving at a quick trot around the house toward the back. No one would come to visit at this hour unless something terrible had happened, but bad news always came by way of a single rider, and she could hear at least three horses.

Bandits!
That would explain why Micah had cried out and turned around. She flew to the steps and shouted a warning up to her father, then ran to the front door. Maybe Micah could at least delay them long enough for her to bar the doors. Panic-stricken, she jammed the plank into the brackets and raced for the back door, but too late.

The door burst open just as Miriam reached the kitchen. She skidded to a stop, clutching her heart, for in the doorway stood a breathless, freckle-faced young woman with wild red hair spilling about her shoulders.

Rachel!

There was a split second when the two of them just stared at each other, hardly daring to believe this moment was real, and then Rachel broke down, rushing into her sister's arms. There was a tumult of footsteps on the stairs, shouts of panic turning to screams of recognition and then unbridled joy as the whole family stormed the kitchen.

———

Peering over Miriam's shoulder, Rachel saw her brother and sisters part to make a path as her mother hurried across the room in a nightgown, her hair loose and untended. Mamm's face contorted and her eyes brimmed with tears as Miriam stepped aside and she wrapped Rachel in a fierce, hungry hug.

Mamm clung to her, weeping openly while the others crowded around to wait their turns. Dat stood there patiently in his nightshirt, the ring of gray hair pointing at odd angles around his bald head. His face held a mixed message. Rachel saw his joy at her return, but it was tempered by a deep and unmistakable sorrow. Looking into his eyes, Rachel mouthed a one-word question.

“Aaron?”

His head moved slightly, side to side, then tilted down, breaking eye contact. So it was as she feared.

Her brother was gone.

Rachel wept with her mother, tears of grief mingling with tears of joy.

Chapter 31

B
y the time Micah and Jake finished putting away the horses and came inside everyone had gone and dressed themselves and come back. Miriam and her sisters put together a meal for Rachel and Jake while everyone else gathered around the kitchen table.

The pain and sorrow of the last week ebbed, and a tide of joy overtook them.

Even Mamm smiled. For the first time since Aaron's death, Mamm talked a little and made sense. Part of her personality returned. She still wept softly now and then, but she seemed to have pulled back from the brink of insanity.

“So tell us what happened,” Miriam said, sitting across the table from Rachel. “We want to know everything.”

“It was horrible. Awful.” Rachel's face darkened even as she cut off a chunk of steak and stuffed it into her mouth. Slowly, she filled in the gaps in what Miriam already knew, describing how El Pantera and his men stopped the buggy, and what happened to Aaron.

Mamm broke down again at that point. Rachel shot Miriam a worried glance and pressed on, describing how Ada grabbed Little Amos and ran away with him.

“There were twelve bandits—some of them we've seen before. They tied my hands and put me on a horse with one of them.”

She told how they camped that night and reached Diablo Canyon the next day. Once or twice Miriam saw something in Rachel's eyes that said she wasn't telling all she knew, but that was okay. The two of them would talk privately later, and there would be no secrets between them then. Miriam understood well enough that there were some things best left unsaid in front of Mamm.

“I thought things were as dark as they could get,” Rachel said, “lying there in chains in a stall in El Pantera's barn, waiting to be sold like a slave. But then they caught Jake and it got darker still.”

Caleb stared at Jake. “They
caught
you?”

“Jah,” Jake said. “And Domingo, too. They were waiting for us, knew we were there the whole time.”

“They brought Jake down to the campfire where the bandits were having a fiesta,” Rachel said, “and made him fight El Pantera.”

The girls all gasped. Micah leaned on the table, eyeing Jake.

Jake raised a hand, shook his head. “I just wrestled him, that's all.”

Micah's eyebrows went up. “You
wrestled
El Pantera?”

Jake shrugged, talked around a mouthful of potatoes. “Jah. Would have beat him too, if he hadn't cheated.”

Rachel then told how all three of them had been chained in the barn, how Jake got loose and knocked out the guard.

Watching her sister closely, Miriam knew she was hiding something here too, because Rachel was careful not to even look at her.

“We got away in the middle of the night,” Rachel said quickly, “and took all their horses with us so they couldn't follow—at least not for a good long while.”

She told of the old farm couple who had helped them, and how, the next morning, they heard El Pantera and his men slaughtering the goats and chickens.

Caleb shook his head at that. “Such a waste. Do these men have no shame?”

“No, Dat, they don't,” Rachel said. “And there are worse things.”

Things about which, Miriam noted, Rachel didn't elaborate.

Miriam could stand it no longer. Up to now Domingo had been a large part of the tale, but he was not here now, at the table with the rest of them. Had he gone on to his house without even stopping?

“Where
is
Domingo?” she asked bluntly. From the corner of her eye she saw Micah turn and stare at her, but she dared not look at him.

A new grief came into Rachel's eyes and she shook her head slowly. “Miriam, I'm so sorry, but I fear we have lost Domingo.”

Fighting back tears, Rachel told the story of how they had come to the narrow place called El Ojo, where Domingo made his stand. She paused for a moment, then said softly, “We never heard or saw anything after that, from the bandits
or
Domingo. He stopped them in the pass, but it cost him his life. He sacrificed himself so we could get away.”

Miriam struggled to control her breathing. Micah was sitting right there beside her, watching her face. Slowly, she pushed her chair back, rose to her feet, smoothed her dress, and walked stiffly to the back door. She didn't dare turn around.

As she put her hand on the doorknob she said quietly, “Someone has to go and tell Kyra.” Then she picked up a lantern from the counter and went out, closing the door softly behind her.

Images clashed and swirled in her mind, and she saw flashes of the barren rocks, the great horse coming to save her, the jaguar—
el pantera
—the battle, the falling.

The emptiness and the moan of the wind in the rocks.

Domingo was lost.
It hadn't been her after all, but Rachel he had died to save. He lived by the sword, and now her premonition had come true and he had died by the sword. She'd seen it all in her dream, and said nothing. And if she did nothing to prevent it what right did she now have to feel as if someone had ripped the very heart from her chest? She couldn't breathe.

The gatepost of the barn lot swerved into her path and she clutched at it before she collapsed, sinking to her knees, clinging to the post, the lantern sagging to the ground as she sobbed. A little sound came from behind her—the back door opening, closing.

“
Please
, Gott,” she whispered between sobs, “please, please don't let that be Micah.”

Soft hands gripped her shoulders. Thin arms wrapped about her and Rachel's voice whispered into her ear, “I'm so sorry, Miriam.”

As soon as Miriam could bring her voice under control she glanced back at the house with red eyes and whispered, “I'm surprised Micah didn't—”

“I stopped him,” Rachel said. “I told him to wait, to give us sisters a chance to talk.”

Miriam touched shaking fingertips to Rachel's cheek. “You're very thoughtful.”

Rachel shook her head. “Not really. It's just that Domingo said something right before he left us, and I didn't want to repeat it in there, in front of everybody.”

In front of Micah.

Miriam sniffed, trying to draw her mind back from the abyss.

“What did he say?”

“He gave me a message, just for you. I don't know what he meant, but he said I should tell Cualnezqui that maybe he was wrong. And then he said, ‘I know this one thing is true—there is no greater love.' ” Rachel's head tilted then, her eyes puzzled. “Did he mean love for
you
?”

It made no sense to Miriam either, yet the words sounded familiar. She thought they might be from the Bible, but how would Domingo know them?

“Rachel, did Domingo ever say anything about the Bible? About reading it?”

Rachel thought for a moment, and brightened. “Jah, he did, when we were on the trail, running from the bandits. He said he still didn't understand, but he'd read some of it.”

Miriam nodded slowly, staring into the lantern, and the rest of the words came to her out of the light.

“I remember now,” she said. “It was Jesus who said those words. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' ”

She wept, holding Rachel, the friend for whom Domingo had laid down his life. They stayed there for a few moments, two sisters clinging to each other by a gatepost, a small circle of light in a world of darkness, and then Miriam pulled away, wiped her eyes and helped Rachel to her feet.

She heard the back door open as she was asking Rachel to help her saddle a horse. Micah called out to her.

They waited for him, and when Micah came into the light he laid a gentle hand on Miriam's shoulder.

“A horse?” he asked. “Where are you going so late?”

“Kyra's,” she said, palming tears from her face.

“Would you have to go to Kyra's house tonight? It's nearly midnight, Mir. You should wait and go in the morning.”

Miriam looked up at him and calmly replied, “They are Domingo's family, Micah—his sister, his mother, his nephews. He bought Rachel's freedom with his life. Do we not owe it to him to respect his family and treat them as our own?”

Micah sighed wearily. He had no answer for this.

“All right, then I'll drive you there. You shouldn't be running all over the country in the middle of the night by yourself.”

———

As the crow flies the village of San Rafael was only a few miles away, but the ridge lay in between. It took more than a half hour by road. A midnight drive on a pleasant night under a sea of stars would normally have been a romantic outing for a man and his betrothed, but a palpable tension hung between them.

Halfway there, after a long silence, Micah said, “I still don't see why you couldn't wait till morning to talk to Kyra.”

“Kyra is my friend,” Miriam said, her hands in her lap, her eyes elsewhere. She would say no more.

The village was dark and quiet. A few skinny dogs bristled and barked as the courting buggy passed through the dirt streets. There were very few lights in the windows of the adobe huts at this hour of the night. Miriam guided him to Kyra's house at the back of the village, bordering on the bean fields.

“How is it you know where Domingo's house is?” Micah asked, the note of suspicion unmistakable.

“We always come here in the fall to help with the bean harvest. Here, it's this one.”

It was only a little two-room adobe house with a thatched roof, but Kyra's hand was evident. Vines covered a shade trellis over the front door, and dense beds of flowers and herbs crowded up against the house.

Miriam knocked, and a minute later Kyra's voice came from inside. “
Quién es?
”

“Miriam.” She offered no explanation. Kyra knew she would never come in the middle of the night without good reason.

A bar slid away. The door opened and Kyra stood there, beautiful even now, in the glow of an oil lamp hastily lit. Her raven hair was tousled from sleep, hanging in her face and cascading down over the Aztec blanket she'd used to cover herself.

“What has happened?” she asked, clearly alarmed as she stepped aside and ushered them into the front room.

“It's Domingo,” Miriam said, and the fear in Kyra's eyes deepened.

“Oh no.” Shaking her head, Kyra took a deep breath and a slender hand came up to her throat.

Miriam nodded gravely. “Rachel came home tonight. Jake and Domingo found her and got her away, but the bandits came after them. El Pantera's men caught up with them, and Domingo stayed behind to hold them off at a place called El Ojo. There was a battle, and Domingo did not walk away from it. I'm so sorry, Kyra.”

Kyra's eyes filled with tears. She swallowed hard, but she did not break down.

“I must tell our mother,” she whispered, sighing with dread. Striking a match, she lit another oil lamp and set it in the center of a rickety square table. Miriam and Micah pulled out a couple of old kitchen chairs and sat at the table waiting while Kyra went to wake her mother.

The room was spare, a large fireplace at their backs with a cooking rack over it, an oak cabinet next to it, and pots hanging from pegs on the walls. There was a cot against the far wall, neatly made, with pine boxes shoved underneath it. Domingo's bed. In the corner sat a little table, covered with a white linen cloth, bearing a hand-carved crucifix and a handful of stubby candles.

A moment after Kyra's light disappeared into the back room the muffled murmurings of mother and daughter suddenly swelled into anguished cries of grief. Kyra's mother wept loud and long. After a while Kyra came out without her lamp and closed the door softly behind her.