Until the Day Breaks (California Rising Book 1) (13 page)

“Pledge your allegiance to Tohic now. Offer him your soul in return for your life.” Chula’s voice sounded so strange, almost like a man’s voice, a seductive voice.

Sweat trickled down Sarita’s temples into her hair that was tangled around her on the pillow. “What will Tohic do with my soul?”

“That is Tohic’s business. Do it now before he leaves us.” Chula was trembling.

“I give my soul to Tohic,” Sarita whispered.

Chula clapped her hands. “Make her a gatherer. She has the beauty and intelligence for that,” Chula’s voice pleaded with someone Sarita couldn’t see. A moment later, Chula’s body went rigid, and her eyes rolled in her head again.

Sarita looked away from Chula’s distorted face, her fear intense, but already she could feel the fever breaking and her life returning in a rush of strangely chilling air.

After that day, Chula taught Sarita the ancient ways of Tohic. When she was well enough, they went to the oak grove on a full moon night and offered a sacrifice for the gift of Sarita’s life, a newborn lamb Chula had convinced a vaquero to bring to the grove that night long ago.

After depositing the lamb into Chula’s arms, the vaquero jumped on his horse and galloped away in a hurry. Everyone who’d grown up at the mission was frightened of Tohic. The padres caused this, convincing the Indians they must worship the God of the white man and forsake the gods they’d always known and trusted. Gods like Tohic, who could heal sickness.

But right now, Sarita didn’t care about sickness, she cared about winning Roman back. Surely, Tohic would help her. Tohic gained as much as she did from her union with a man. She was a gatherer, and when she joined herself with a man, that man became Tohic’s as well. After she’d united herself with Roman in the
mayordomo
’s quarters, she could sense he wanted to escape her. This had confused her. She knew how proud Roman was and how much he hated the Americanos
.
Perhaps that was why he behaved so strangely with her. She’d been in the gringo’s bed. But the gringo was nothing. Tohic was everything. And Tohic would change Roman’s mind. Tohic would make Roman love her again.

She gathered her herbs and her sacrifice and the bloody cloth from Roman’s back, the blood she’d drawn when they were one flesh in the
mayordomo
’s quarters. She also collected the gringa’s hair from her hiding place beneath the loose tile in the floor of her room. Her foolish husband was still entertaining the Vasquezes downstairs. He would never know she’d left the hacienda to seek Tohic’s blessing this night
.

She’d noticed the way Joshua lusted for her cousin, Maria. He hungered for the girl as surely as she hungered for Roman. Let them all get drunk. Dance to the music the Indian servants played in the
sala
. Let her husband make a fool of himself with her little red-haired cousin. She no longer cared about any of them.

The puppy whined when she picked it up. That troublesome servant, Rosa, had seen her take the whelp from the litter in the barn this afternoon. Sarita wasn’t concerned. The half-wild dogs at El Rio Lobo meant nothing to anyone. Surely, Rosa would not have the courage to tell Joshua. Sarita wasn’t stupid. She knew why her husband kept that milky-skinned servant here.

Nobody would know she journeyed to the oak grove this night. El Rio Lobo wasn’t like Rancho de los Robles in this way. The sacred groves grew very near Roman’s home. Here, she must travel a considerable distance to reach a sacred grove. She would need a horse to get there.

She stuffed the puppy in one sack and the rest of the sacrificial articles in another bag. The whelp whimpered. Before she put the bloody cloth in, she pressed it to her face, her beloved’s blood. Heat washed over her, pooling in her belly. Roman would belong to her again, but first she must convince Tohic to get rid of the gringa.

Why Roman had taken her pale, skinny stepdaughter when he left troubled Sarita to no end. Hopefully, he’d snatched the girl to rid himself of her, but she sensed something else. Roman could be violent toward men, but never had she seen him raise a hand against a woman. He wasn’t that way, though that violent seed in him slumbered somewhere in his spirit. It had been born into him. Roman’s father had been a man of pride and passion and anger so it would be easy for Tohic to awake these seeds in the son.

She’d already prayed and chanted and worshipped Tohic in the hours after rising to find the hacienda in an uproar over Roman carrying away the gringa. She felt Tohic’s acceptance of her prayers even then. Even now. Before presenting a blood sacrifice.

Tonight she would get back into Tohic’s good graces. Denying herself food had centered her body, mind, and soul on Tohic. The moon was right. Full and heavy in the sky like a woman about to give birth, just the way Tohic liked it. She smiled. Blood always pleased him. Roman’s blood on the cloth would be a promise that one day Roman would be his. And the death of the whelp would signify the death of Rachel Tyler. With the gringa’s hair, Sarita would beseech a powerful spirit of infirmity to come upon her stepdaughter, the fire of Tohic’s fever to destroy her adversary.

Rachel woke in the middle of the night. The room felt unnaturally cold. Horribly cold. And dark. A darkness that went beyond just physical darkness. The urge to pray was so strong she got out of the bed and knelt on the planked wooden floor. Roman had given her a room down the hall from his. The chamber’s painting intrigued her. It was a crucified saint, his suffering eyes raised trustingly to heaven. Before going to his own room, Roman had translated the inscription for her:
Dark Night of the Soul.

Kneeling there beside the bed in her nightgown, she shivered, trying to ignore the chill in the room, but the cold grew overwhelming. The air was like the breath from a grave. The sinister chill wrapped around Rachel like talons as she prayed. Soon, she could no longer continue to kneel, she shivered so fiercely. Climbing back into bed, she burrowed under the covers but could not get warm. She began to feel sick and feverish, though still so terribly cold.

And on she prayed.

A longing for her grandmother overcame her. Together, her grandparents would come into her room and lay their hands upon her and pray when she was sick. Her grandfather had even anointed her with oil in the name of the Lord when she was ill as a child.

Fever raged through her now, reminding her of the days on the ship when she thought she might die. She became so sick she could no longer even pray. She fell into fitful dozing, dreaming of a terrible man on a pale horse.

Roman found her after knocking repeatedly on her door the following morning. When she did not answer, he let himself into the room. The iciness of her bedroom shocked him. Strangely, her room was much colder than the rest of the hacienda.

In the bed, she was out of her head with fever. Scooping her up, he carried her swiftly to his quarters.

An Indian maid was straightening his bed when he opened the door. In rapid Spanish, he told her to fetch Lupe.

Lupe had raised eleven children, all of them grown now, with their own families living here on Rancho de los Robles
.
Not only had Lupe seen her own children safely through many fevers, she’d brought healing to countless others as well, including him and his sister. When he was a boy, Lupe had nourished him and Maria, not only with her hearty food, but with her strong-handed love. After they lost their mother it was Lupe he looked to for a mother’s guidance and affection. Through the years, Lupe had bound his wounds and comforted him when he needed comforting. Lupe would know what to do.

With the maid off to find Lupe, Roman tore the covers back from his bed and placed Rachel between the fine white sheets embroidered with colorful thread at the edges. She whimpered like a child when he placed her on the mattress.

Without really thinking, he kicked off his boots and lay down beside her. He pulled her into his arms, speaking to her in Spanish, hardly realizing that even in her right mind, she wouldn’t understand what he said.

The heat of her body appalled him.

This was not just a fever. Her murmuring and thrashing and unawareness of him convinced him this sickness could be deadly. He stared at her flushed face, willing her to open her eyes and look at him, but she didn’t. Her eyes were shut as she moaned and fought him. When Lupe hurried into the room, he jumped out of the bed.

“She was fine last night,” he told Lupe in hasty Spanish.

Lupe felt her forehead. The old Indian’s eyes widened. “She’s on fire. We must cool her.” Lupe rushed from the room and soon returned. Roman had never seen the old woman move so fast. He had no idea what age she really was; she’d come from Mission Dolores in Yerba Buena many years ago. She was the most religious person on the rancho. Lupe recited the rosary morning and night before preparing the meals for the
familia
with her host of helpers.

“
Las
ninas
will bring the water.” Lupe attempted to shoo him from the room.

Roman refused to budge. “You must leave, Don Roman. Her gown will be removed so we can bathe her.”

“I have already seen her bathing.” Roman crossed his arms, unwilling to leave.

Lupe placed her hands on her hips, her eyes afire. “Do not confess your sins to me,
mi hijo
. Go find a priest for your confession.”

“I have not sinned with her. She bathed in the creek last night. All I did was keep an eye on her so a bear didn’t carry her away.”

“The creek is very cold. Look at how slender she is. She should not be in the water this time of year,” Lupe chastised him.

Roman felt like an eight-year-old boy again. He uncrossed his arms and joined Lupe at Rachel’s bedside. “Will she be all right?”

The old Indian’s dark eyes softened. “I do not know, Don Roman.”

A young maid rushed in with a bucket of water. The girl was Lupe’s great granddaughter. Another Indian girl followed, carrying two more buckets. A third girl arrived with an armful of towels; she was related to Lupe as well.

“Do not worry, Don Roman. Your señorita is young and strong.” Lupe looked at Rachel and tried to sound convincing. “If we can break the fever, she will live. I will go make a tonic out of willow bark.” She attempted to push Roman from the room with her.

He wouldn’t move from Rachel’s bedside.

The servant girls looked at each other. Nobody smiled, especially Lupe.

“Don Roman,” Lupe said sternly, “you are not her husband. Dios does not approve of you being in this bedroom with your
novia.”

“This is my bedroom. How does anybody know what God approves of?” he said in frustration.

“My Bible,” Rachel whispered from the bed.

Roman could see Rachel was still completely out of her head. “Get her Bible,” he told one of the girls standing there. “It’s in the crucified saint’s room.”

The rooms were referred to by their paintings. Not the inscriptions on the canvases, but what the
familia
had labeled each art piece years ago. Everybody knew the rooms this way. Tia Josefa called his “the devil’s room,” but he preferred to call it “St. Miguel’s room.”

Lupe’s granddaughter hurried to obey him.

Roman looked at Rachel, so ill in his magnificent bed, and his anger increased. His Catholic religion always portrayed suffering saints. Dying saints. If a person was godly, they were beheaded or burned at the stake or sawed in two or nailed to a cross. All for a God who supposedly loved them. When he was young, his mother tried to explain this strange love of God to him, but he didn’t understand then, and he didn’t understand now. His mother had loved God, and she had suffered, and died in this very bed.

After they buried his mother, Father Santiago had done something strange. The padre placed his hands on Roman’s head and prayed fiercely over him, beseeching God to save his soul. The fervent prayer, nearly as much as burying his beloved mother, had left Roman forever changed. Forever marked by God. His mother’s funeral had been the typical gathering, a grand affair, like weddings and christenings always were in California.

Years later, Father Santiago had said the burial mass for his father after the Indian raid left his father lanced to the ground in the pasture. Many Californios attended the elaborate funeral. His father was a respected and revered leader of the
gente de razón,
the son of a blue-blooded solider of Spain. After Mass at the Royal Presidio Chapel, the body of Roman’s father was returned to Rancho de los Robles and buried in the Vasquez cemetery alongside Roman’s mother and grandparents and several infants his parents had lost. Since then, servants and friends alike had been buried in that cemetery. Death was no stranger in California.

“I will say the rosary for your
novia
.” Lupe’s raspy voice stopped Roman’s careening thoughts. The old woman motioned for the girls to deposit the water beside the bed, along with the towels. “She must be cooled. Her body is far too hot.”

The servant girl returned with Rachel’s Bible, handing it to Lupe, who handed it to Roman. Lupe patted his cheek with her gnarled hand. “Dios has the power to heal. Pray to him,
mi hijo
.”

“I will bathe her,” Roman said as he knelt beside the bed.

Lupe frowned.

“I will not let her die.” He placed the Bible on the bedside table and then took up a cloth and dipped it in the bucket of cold water.

“Her life is not in your hands,
mi hijo
. God alone holds the living in his hands.”

“Go and say your rosary, then, for her. Take the girls with you. Leave me alone with Rachel and God.” He swore under his breath. Fear more than anger drove him now.

After the servants departed, he pulled Rachel’s nightgown up to her thighs and began to bathe her burning legs with towels soaked in the buckets of cool water. Then he drenched her forehead and flushed face. Eventually, he took out his knife and cut the nightgown off most of her body, removing the gown’s sleeves and neck and nearly all of the skirt. He did not feel an ounce of desire as her pale skin was exposed, only a growing fear that she would die the way his mother had died.