Zorro (24 page)

“In view of the fact that it is impossible to get inside La Ciudadela, Bernardo, I will have to settle for the palace of Le Chevalier Duchamp. I want to have a private conversation with him. How does that seem? Ah, I see that you don’t like that idea, but I can’t think of another. I know what you are thinking: that this is some kind of schoolboy prank, like that time with the bear when we were boys. No, this is serious there are human lives to consider. We can’t allow them to shoot Amalia. She is our friend. Well, in my case, she’s something more than a friend, but that isn’t the point. Unfortunately, brother mine, I cannot count on La Justicia, so I am going to need your help. It will be dangerous, but not as much as it would appear. Here is my plan…”

Bernardo threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender and prepared to back his brother, as he had since they were born. Occasionally, when he was especially tired and lonely, he was convinced that it was time to return to California and face the undeniable truth that their childhood was behind them; Diego did show regrettable signs of being an eternal adolescent. Bernardo wondered how they could be so different and yet love each other so much. While for him destiny was a heavy weight on his shoulders, his brother was as carefree as a lark. Amalia, who knew how to read the enigmas of the stars, had explained why they had such different personalities. She said that they were born under two different signs of the Zodiac, although in the same place and during the same week. Diego was a Gemini, and he was a Taurus, and that was what determined their temperaments. Bernardo listened to Diego’s plan with his usual patience, without showing the doubts that troubled him, because deep down he had faith in his brother’s inconceivable good luck. He knew that Diego arrived at his own conclusions, and then did something about them.

Bernardo carried out his assignment, which was to strike up a friendship with a French soldier and get him to drink until he passed out. He then removed the man’s uniform and donned it himself: a dark blue jacket with a crimson military collar, white breeches and shirt, black leggings and tall headgear. In that uniform he was able to lead a team of horses into the palace gardens without attracting the attention of the night guards. Security around the sumptuous residence of Le Chevalier was somewhat lax because it had never occurred to anyone to attack it. At night, guards were posted with lanterns, but with the tedious passing of the hours their vigilance relaxed. Diego, dressed in his black acrobat costume, with cape and mask, the attire that he called his Zorro disguise, used the dark shadows to approach the building. With a spark of inspiration, he had pasted on a mustache he found in the costume trunk of the circus, a black tracing on his upper lip. The mask covered only the upper part of his face, and he was afraid that Le Chevalier could recognize him; the fine mustache was to distract and confuse him. Diego used his whip to pull himself up onto a balcony on the second floor; once he was inside, it was not difficult to locate the wing of the family’s private quarters, since he had been there several times with Juliana and Isabel. It was about three in the morning, an hour when no servants were around and the guards were nodding at their posts. The palace was decorated not with typical Spanish sobriety but in the French manner, with so much furniture, draperies, plants, and statues that Diego had no difficulty moving through the palace unseen. He went down countless corridors and opened twenty doors before he came to the bedchamber of Le Chevalier, which turned out to be unexpectedly simple for someone of his power and rank. Napoleon’s personal representative was sleeping on a hard soldier’s cot in a nearly bare room lighted by a candelabrum in one corner. Diego knew, from indiscreet comments Agnes Duchamp had made, that her father suffered from insomnia and took opium in order to get some rest. One hour before, his valet had helped him disrobe, brought him a glass of sherry and his opium pipe, and then installed himself in a chair in the corridor, as he always did, in case his master needed him during the night. The valet slept very lightly, but that night he never noticed when someone brushed by him. Once inside Le Chevalier’s room, Diego tried to exercise the mental control shown by the members of La Justicia; his heart was galloping, and his brow was wet. If he were caught in this room, he was as good as dead. Political prisoners were swallowed up in the dungeons of La Ciudadela forever, and better not even think of the stories of torture. Suddenly the thought of his father struck him like a blow. If Diego died, Alejandro de la Vega would never know why, only that his son was caught like a common thief in someone else’s home. He took a minute to calm himself, and when he was sure that his will, his voice, and his hand would not tremble, he went over to the cot where Duchamp was floating in the lethargy of opium. Despite the drug, the Frenchman was immediately awake, but before he could yell, Diego covered his mouth with a gloved hand.

“Silence, or you will die like a rat, Excellency,” he whispered.

He touched the tip of his sword to the chest of Le Chevalier, who sat up as far as the sword would allow and nodded that he had understood.

In a whisper, Diego laid out what he wanted.

“You give me too much credit. If I order those hostages to be released, the com andante of the plaza will take others tomorrow,” Le Chevalier answered in the same low tone.

“It would be a pity if that should occur. Your daughter Agnes is very precious, and we do not want to hurt her, but as Your Excellency knows, many innocents die in a war,” said Diego.

He put his hand to his silk jacket, pulled out the lace handkerchief Bernardo had retrieved, and waved it in the face of Le Chevalier; though he could not see his daughter’s embroidered name in the pale light, her father had no difficulty recognizing it from the unmistakable scent of violets.

“I suggest that you not summon your guards, Excellency, because at this moment my men are already in your daughter’s room. If anything happens to me, you will not see her alive again. They will leave only when I give the signal,” Diego said in the most amiable tone in the world, sniffing the handkerchief and stuffing it back into his jacket.

“You may escape with your life tonight,” Le Chevalier growled, “but we will track you down, and then you will regret you were ever born. We know where to find you.”

“I think not, Excellency. I am not a guerrilla, and neither do I have the honor of being one of your personal enemies.” Diego smiled.

“Who are you, then?”

“Shhhh! Do not raise your voice. Remember that Agnes finds herself in good company… My name is Zorro, caballero. At your service.”

Forced by his captor, the Frenchman went to his desk and scribbled a brief note on his personal stationery, ordering the release of the hostages.

“I would be grateful if you would add your official seal, Excellency.”

Diego indicated.

Grumbling, Le Chevalier did as Diego directed, then called his valet, who came to the doorway. Behind the door, Diego held his sword pointed at the servant, ready to eliminate him at the first suspicious move.

“Send a guard to La Ciudadela with this letter,” Le Chevalier ordered.

“And tell him he must bring it back to me immediately, signed by the officer in charge, so I can be sure I am being obeyed. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Excellency,” the man replied, and hurried off.

Diego suggested that Le Chevalier should return to bed and keep warm.

It was a cold night, and they might have a long wait. He regretted, he added, that it was necessary to impose in this manner, but he would have to stay with him until the signed letter was returned. Did he have a chessboard or some cards with which they could pass the time?

The Frenchman did not deign to reply. Furious, he slipped beneath the covers, watched by the masked man, who made himself comfortable at the foot of the bed, as if they were intimate friends. They tolerated one another in silence for more than two hours, and just when Diego had begun to fear that something had gone wrong, the valet knocked at the door and handed his master the paper signed by a Captain Fuguet.

“Hasta la vista, Excellency.” And Zorro’s parting words were, “Please be kind enough to give my greetings to the beautiful Agnes.”

He felt sure that Le Chevalier believed his threat and would not raise the alarm before he was safely away, but as a precaution he bound and gagged him. With the tip of his sword he traced a large letter Z on the wall, then with a mocking bow bid his host farewell and dropped from the palace wall to the ground. There he found his horse where Bernardo had hidden it, its hooves wrapped in rags to silence sound. He rode away without raising an outcry because no one was in the streets at that hour. The next day soldiers pasted notices on the walls of public buildings that as a sign of goodwill on the part of the authorities, the hostages had been pardoned. At the same time, a secret hunt was begun to find the dastardly sneak who called himself Zorro. The last thing the leaders of the guerrilla forces could understand was this sudden mercy for hostages, and they were so confused that for a week no new attempts against the French were carried out in Catalonia.

Le Chevalier could not prevent the news from spreading that an insolent brigand had gained entry to his very bedchamber, first among the servants and the palace guards, then everywhere. The Catalans howled with laughter at what had happened, and the name of the mysterious Zorro passed from mouth to mouth for several days, until other matters engaged the public’s attention, and he was forgotten. Diego heard about it in the School of Humanities, in the taverns, and in the de Romeu home. He bit his tongue not to boast of his exploit in public, and he never confessed to Amalia. The Gypsy believed she had been saved by the miraculous power of the talismans and amulets she always wore and the timely intervention of her husband’s ghost.

Barcelona, 1812-1814

I cannot give you any further details about Diego’s relationship with Amalia. Carnal love is one aspect of Zorro’s legend that he has not authorized me to divulge, not so much out of fear of being the butt of jokes or accused of lying as from a sense of gallantry. It is common knowledge that no man that women flock to boasts of his conquests.

Those who do, lie. And besides, I take no pleasure in prying into others’ intimate moments. If you are expecting spicy pages from me, you will be disappointed. All I can say is that in the period when Diego was disporting himself with Amalia, his heart was given wholly to Juliana. So what were those embraces with the Gypsy widow like? One can only imagine. Perhaps she closed her eyes and thought of her murdered husband, while Diego abandoned himself to a fleeting pleasure with his mind a blank. Those clandestine meetings did not muddy the limpid adoration the chaste Juliana inspired in Diego; his emotions were compartmentalized, parallel lines that never crossed. I suspect that that has often been the case throughout Zorro’s long life. I have observed him for three decades, and I know him almost as well as Bernardo does, which is why I dare make that statement. Thanks to his natural charm which is more than a little and his awesome good luck, he has been loved by dozens of women, usually without inviting it. A vague hint, a look out of the corner of his eye, one of his radiant smiles, is ordinarily enough to make even women with virtuous reputations invite him to climb to their balcony at questionable hours of the night. However, Zorro does not fall for them he prefers impossible romances. I would swear that as soon as he jumps from the balcony to terra firma, he forgets the lady he was embracing only moments before. He himself does not know how many times he has fought a duel with a vindictive husband or offended father, but I have kept count not for reasons of envy or jealousy, but because of my thoroughness as a chronicler. Diego remembers only women who tortured him with their indifference like the incomparable Juliana. Many of his feats during those years were frantic attempts to attract that young lady’s attention. When he was with her, he did not play the role of the faint-hearted fop that he adopted to deceive Agnes Duchamp, Le Chevalier, and others. To the contrary, in her presence he fanned out all his feathers like a peacock. He would have done battle with a dragon for her, but there were none in Barcelona, and he had to settle for Rafael Moncada. And now that I have mentioned him, it seems only fair to do justice to the man. Every story must have a villain. In fact, his wickedness is essential, for there are no heroes without enemies of their own stature. Zorro was fortunate to have a rival like Rafael Moncada; otherwise I would not have much to tell in these pages.

Juliana and Diego slept beneath the same roof, but they led separate lives, and there were few reasons for them to meet in that mansion with so many empty rooms. Only rarely were they alone, because Nuria watched Juliana and Isabel spied on Diego. Sometimes he waited hours to catch her alone in a corridor and walk a few steps with her without witnesses. They happened upon one another in the dining room at dinner hour, in the salon during harp concerts, Sundays at mass, and in the theater when there was a play by Lope de Vega or Moliere, writers who delighted Tomas de Romeu. In church as well as in the theater, men and women were seated separately, so that Diego had to be satisfied with observing the back of his beloved’s neck. He lived in the same house with her for more than four years, pursuing her with a hunter’s dogged determination, without a single episode worthy of mention, until tragedy struck the family and the scales tipped in Diego’s favor. Up until then, Juliana had responded to his siege with so little emotion that it was as if she didn’t see him but he needed very little to feed his illusions. He believed that her indifference was a stratagem intended to mask her true feelings. Someone had told him that women do such things. He was pitiful to see, poor man; it would have been better had Juliana loathed him. The heart is a capricious organ that can make a sudden turn, but warm, sisterly affection is nearly impossible to reverse.

The de Romeu family made occasional trips to Santa Fe, where they owned a semi-abandoned property. The patriarchal home was a square building on the point of a cliff, where the grandparents of Tomas de Romeu’s deceased wife had ruled over their children and their peasants. The view was magnificent. Once those hills had been covered with vineyards that produced a wine comparable to the best of France, but during the war no one had tended them, and now nothing was left but dried-up, insect-infested runners. The house itself was taken over by the famous Santa Fe rats, well-fed, bad-tempered vermin that the campesinos had been known to eat during times of hardship. With garlic and leeks, they are not half bad. Two weeks before going there, Tomas would send a crew of servants to smoke out the rooms, the only way to make the rodents retreat temporarily. Those excursions were less frequent now; the roads had become too dangerous. One could feel the hatred of the country folk in the air like hot breath, exhalations of bad omen that raised the hair on the back of one’s neck. Tomas de Romeu, like many landowners, scarcely dared leave the city, say nothing of trying to collect rents from his tenants, for fear of having his throat slit. In the country Juliana read, played her music, and tried to charm the campesinos like a fairy godmother to gain their affection, with little success. Nuria criticized the climate and complained about everything.