Conquistadora (59 page)

“They set fire to the cane all the time,
señora
.”

“I know the difference between a controlled burn and that.” Ana pointed to the flames, growing and spreading quickly. “San Bernabé is a farm, not
cañaveral.
”

Conciencia appeared.
“¡Señora!”

“I see it, Conciencia.”

The three women stood on the
balcón
watching the flames weave and dance in sparkling bursts of yellow, red, orange, blue.

“It won’t burn for long,” Meri said. “It rained this afternoon.”

“Not there,” Conciencia said.

They watched for some time as the blaze spread. Ana pointed her telescope in its direction. “It’s completely out of control.”

“No bell,” Conciencia noted, and it was true. Even from here, they should have heard a warning to the neighbors about the fire and calls for help.

Ana scanned the night. On the boundary of Los Gemelos and San Bernabé, erratic lights moved like fireflies in the evening. Torches. “Someone is setting fire to our cane.” As if her words were action, flames peaked over the valley in tall red and yellow flashes. The torches went in several directions at once, regrouped, and another fire started farther east.

There was nothing she could do except turn her telescope toward the mill, as if finding Severo among the movement of beasts, men, and equipment would warn him that several fields away the cane was on fire. When she first looked, there was nothing out of the ordinary near the beast-powered
trapiche chico
nor by the larger, steam-powered
trapiche grande
. But suddenly the bell clanged its insistent, unmistakable warning. Someone had seen the fire. The sound changed everything.

“Have them saddle my horse,” Ana ordered, and Conciencia flew inside, calling for Teo.

“You’re not going down there,
señora
?” Meri was shaking.

“Of course I must,” Ana said. “There will be injuries, burns, I have to take care of them—”

“Ay,
señora
, I should have told you!”

Ana stopped in her tracks. “Told me what?”

“Jacobo was talking about … 
¿lo puedo decir?
Rebellion. I heard him,
señora
. And he also said the words … the words ‘independence,’ ‘war’ against the
españoles
. I told him not to—”

“Our Jacobo?”

“Yes, that Jacobo, the man who fought the
blanco
when I was burned—”

Ana looked toward San Bernabé, then at the burning canebrakes. She hadn’t considered that whoever was setting the cane on fire could be one of her people. Her knees felt slack, but she wouldn’t show it, not especially to this girl whom she’d grasped from death’s fingers, whom she felt owed her, yes, owed her her life.

“Are you telling the truth, Meri? Do you know of others—”

“I only heard Jacobo say those words.”

“When?”

“A long time ago. Before Segundo was born. I should have told you then, but—”

“Yes, you should have.”

“Do I get my freedom,
señora
? The law says that if I tell, I get my papers—”

“You’re a de Fuentes, Meri,” Ana snapped. “You’ll have to ask
el patrón
.”

Conciencia returned to fasten Ana’s riding boots, followed by Gloria with the medicine chest. Teo and Paula appeared with a basket full of clean rags for dressings.

“Teo, you and Paula stay with Meri and Pepita,” Ana said. “Everyone else, down to the
batey
.”

The guard dogs in their pens were barking as if they understood there was a crisis. She ran into the bedroom and unlocked the cabinet where Severo kept the arms. She chose the rifle and made sure the action was clean and smooth. She’d practiced on the targets Severo had set up for her, and now appreciated how skill was a comfort in emergencies.

Pepita was startled to see Ana armed.

“¡Señora!”

“Don’t leave the house, and don’t leave Segundo alone.”

“A sus órdenes, señora,”
Pepita said in a tiny voice.

Ana strode to the yard, loosed the dogs. They stayed near her, as Severo had trained them to do. The old men and women of El Destino had assembled near the path, shivering in the night air. She didn’t think they’d hurt her. Young men were the most likely to rebel, and they’d be in the fields. The elders waited for instructions. If any of them were part of a rebellion, they would have done something already.

“We need you all.” Ana spoke with as much authority as she could manage; she would not allow herself to panic. “From here it looks like there will be burns and injuries. Those of you who can’t fight the fire will transport victims and help in the infirmary.” They must believe it was an accidental fire. None but Ana, Conciencia, and Meri had seen the torches in different directions. The others shouldn’t suspect that one or more of them had rebelled. But she was more than aware of the eyes fixed on the rifle in her hands. She pretended it wasn’t there.

Conciencia led the way on her mule. Ana took one last look at the fire below, still spreading, but still, thankfully, mercifully, far from the mill and warehouses. She nosed Marigalante toward the path. A few men held lamps on notched sticks, the tenuous flames dancing gaily, just enough to brighten a few yards ahead of them.

Suddenly, Ana was afraid to ride into the path. Her mare felt her anxiety and skittered. If she weren’t an expert rider, Marigalante would’ve sent Ana down. She managed to control her and swallowed the lump in her throat.

She’d never been on the paths at night without Severo. She was now being led down the hill by a forlorn procession of the old, the crippled, the maimed. She had a weapon if she needed to defend herself, but couldn’t imagine firing at any of them. She was struck by the familiar dread whenever she remembered that she was the mistress and these were her slaves; their lives were in her hands, but now they held hers. She should have locked herself behind the safety of her door, but she’d gone too far, had been decisive without remembering the dangers that kept her under her roof once the sun dropped into the sea.

The
campo
that soothed the music of her nights from the
balcón
now sounded different when she was in the jungled, dark terrain. Her entourage stamped their feet along the rocky path to scare off the slithering creatures of the night. Branches creaked and thwacked against her. Marigalante trod suspiciously, as if she’d not gone up and down this path a thousand times. Ana kept track of the hounds as they ran ahead, returned, barked, and howled. Ana wasn’t as adept as Severo at managing the dogs, but if anyone attempted to hurt her, she knew they’d protect her.

A gust of wind smacked her face, and Ana slapped it back as if she could punish it. She felt like crying but refused to give in to fear and to the rage that accosted her whenever she felt weak or helpless. She tightened her jaw and ordered the procession to move faster, even though her eyes were watering from the smoke now billowing up the hill into the night sky, the air sticky and cloying with burning sugar.

When Ana and the others from El Destino arrived at the infirmary, Zena and Toño had already opened cots and were tying up hammocks. Four workers were recovering from illnesses, so Ana looked in on them. Afterward, she and Conciencia set up their bowls, unguents, and bandages, and with nothing more to do, waited for more patients.

Ana climbed to the
casona
porch to have a better view of the fields. To her left, the fire over San Bernabé appeared to be smoldering, but along the road to Guares, flames sparked and danced like a target.

Efraín and Indio appeared on the path, and for a moment, the two young men she’d known since they were infants, coming out of nowhere, startled her.

“Why aren’t you at your jobs?”

“
El patrón
sent us to see after you,
señora.
”

“We’re all fine here,” Ana said, coming down the stairs. “Bring some hammocks for the injured, and let’s go to Ingenio Diana.”

“No,
señora
!” Conciencia said.

“Is there any reason to keep me here?”

“No, but, it’s dangerous. We don’t know what—”

“You take care of things here until I come back.”

Efraín and Indio rode mules bareback, no match for Marigalante, but she let them go ahead. The path between the lower
batey
and Ingenio Diana was a labyrinth defined by the canebrakes on either
side, in front, behind her. She could taste fear; every creak and rustle could have been someone waiting to jump in front of her with a machete. No, not someone, a man she knew, Jacobo, whose wounds she’d salved. Wounds inflicted by Severo.

“Ahead to the left,” Efraín called. The night was so dark that they were going in the correct direction from sheer habit.

Of course Jacobo wouldn’t be hiding in the cane to hurt her. He’d be running in the other direction from where she was going, running as far as he could from Hacienda los Gemelos. And why wouldn’t he? What was there for him but toil and suffering? She shook her head, her usual gesture to stop thinking that didn’t lead to answers, only more questions.

“Across the bridge,” Indio called, and in a few moments she saw the irrigation trench to either side and the planks across it from one field to the other. There was light ahead as they neared Ingenio Diana. There was activity, movement, and purpose ahead. No time to think, no time to reflect or question, no time to look within. She had a job to do.

Severo saw the flames at San Bernabé almost as soon as they peaked over the trees. He let the
ingenio
foreman know that he was going to help with the fire, took Efraín and Indio with him, and rode toward the farm. But when they entered the path, Efraín pointed to the southeast.

“Look,
patrón
!”

A field was ablaze. Severo sent Indio to alert the foremen, and he and Efraín surveyed the burning canebrakes along the road to Guares from the
ingenio
. Dry cane leaves produced spectacular flames because they burned first, but the stalks, being mostly liquid, were consumed more slowly. That was the theory behind the controlled burns that cleared the sharp, prickly leaves for a more efficient harvest of the sucrose-rich stalks. But Severo knew this fire had been set intentionally to damage the crop; he hadn’t ordered the work, as the field was not quite ready.

He organized the foremen and as many workers as could be spared from the
trapiche
, where the cane juice extraction could not be stopped. The bosses formed squads. One of them ran to Severo.

“Three from the same team are missing,” he said. “Yayo, Quique, and Jacobo.”

Severo looked toward San Bernabé. Yayo, Quique, and possibly Jacobo might have gone up there first to round up others and alert their women. That they set the farm on fire did not bode well for don Luis.

“Get the squads working.”

Everyone knew what to do in case of fire. Picks, shovels, and hoes, plenty of water and sand were always available, especially near the steam engine, boiling house, and warehouses. Men, women, and children rushed in the direction the foremen led.

Severo ran from one end of the
batey
to the other giving instructions to the foremen, who in turn mobilized the workers, distributed tools, formed bucket brigades. The gentle evening breeze had turned into a full-blown wind, whirring and moaning like the giant bellows that fanned the first tentative coals that boiled the water that generated the steam that drove the engine that moved the crushers that pulped the cane.

As the workers ran toward the Guares road, another fire started in a field behind the animal-powered
trapiche chico
and spread quickly, jumping over berms and across paths. Severo called the squads back to contain the flames where they threatened the
trapiche
and purgery on one side and the warehouses on the other. Because the steam generator for the crushers of the
trapiche grande
was fueled by wood and the highly flammable bagasse, it was crucial not to let the fire come anywhere near where they were dried and stored, or the building and surrounding structures would be consumed in minutes.

The beasts in the work yard had spooked. Those that could, escaped to safe ground. Two long-horned bullocks still tethered to their cart bellowed, stomped, and dragged their half-full cart in a mad race across the
batey
. A worker who wasn’t fast enough to get out of their way was gored, flew head over heels, crumpled to the ground, and was trampled. A spark set the cane in the cart ablaze, further terrifying the bulls, already crazed with fear. They ran straight toward the warehouses. Seeing what was about to happen, Severo shot one of the beasts to the ground as the other bull kept running. He fired again but missed. To his astonishment he saw
Ana, still on Marigalante, shoot the second bull and order workers to douse the flames with sand and water just yards from the building.

Flushed, Ana dismounted and ran toward him. “It’s Jacobo,” she said. “Meri heard him talk.”

“Yes. We realized this as well. They can’t be too far.”

“They?”

He explained as they inspected the damage behind the purgery. “They chose the wrong night to run away. The civilian militia and regular soldiers are on alert because of the news earlier today.”

“You’re sure it was just those three?”

“Maybe some in San Bernabé. If there were more of ours, we’d know by now.”

Ana examined the man from the bulls’ rampage. “Gone,” she sighed, mentally counting: this man, and three runaways who would probably be executed. “Four workers lost in one day. And we don’t know how many
cuerdas
burned.”

“We’re doing the best we can,” Severo said. “Keep a squad here to finish up,” he ordered a foreman. “Send the rest to the east fields.”

“Will you be able to save some of the crop?”

“We’ll try. Those fires are smaller and seem to have been a diversion. Still, there might be injuries. I’d feel better if you were in the lower
batey
. Things are under control here.” He walked with her toward Marigalante. “That was excellent marksmanship, by the way.”