Daughter of Fortune (44 page)

“Maria, you amaze me,” Diego said. “I never would
have thought of it.”

“Of course not. You are a man,” she replied. “Here
now, stuff this down the front of your shirt,” she said, handing
him the loaves. “If I put them down my chemise, they will fall
through.”

He smiled and winked at her and she blushed. He took
the bread, put it carefully in his shirt, and handed the other
loaves to his sisters. “You carry these. Now remember what I said
about keeping your eyes closed, my sisters. I have never been more
serious.”

Maria picked up Luz. “Now turn your face into my
neck,” she ordered, “and close your eyes.”

“Is this a game?” Luz asked.

“Yes,
querida,
a game. Now you must follow
the rules. Like you did at the
acequia
when you were so
brave.”

With Diego in the lead, they entered the kitchen
again. Maria clutched Luz tight against her, pushing her face
farther into her hair. Diego walked swiftly down the hall,
stumbling once over a body and nearly dropping Catarina. When she
raised her head, he pushed her back against his shoulder.

Maria dogged his footsteps, covering Luz’s eyes and
nose with her free hand. Luz was crying soundlessly, her tears
soaking into Maria’s chemise, her shoulders shaking. Maria clung to
her and stared straight ahead at Diego’s back, noting how his blood
had soaked through everything he wore until he was
rust-colored.

Then they were in the Gutierrez chapel, staring at
the destruction around them. “Did our chapel look like this,
Diego?” Catarina asked in disbelief.

“Yes, it did, my sister.” He sat down heavily next
to Maria, weariness written on his features. Maria reached out to
him, and he took her hand. “Take the bread out of my shirt. Feed
the girls.” He let go of her hand and slid to the floor. With a few
swipes he brushed aside the plaster shards from a ruined saint and
laid his head down on the earthen floor. He was asleep before Maria
had time to help him.

She knelt by Diego and pulled the bread from his
shirt, pausing to put her hand on his heart. The rhythm was slow
and regular, and she closed her eyes in relief. He seemed cooler,
too, as if the fever was passing.

She stood up, brushing off her dress. “Come, girls,
let us eat.” Maria held out the blackened bread. “Bless us, Lord,
and these Thy gifts,” Maria murmured, making the sign of the cross
over the black loaves. She tried to tear the bread into sections,
but the crust was so tough and charred that it would not break. She
looked at Diego, but he was lying on his knife, and she did not
want to disturb him. Instead, she took the bread to the ruined
altar and struck the loaf against the sharp corner.

The bread opened to reveal still-doughy centers.
With no one alive to tend the ovens, the hot fires had gone out
before the centers were cooked.

They ate silently, scooping out the uncooked dough,
saving the hard shell for the last. Maria didn’t think the girls
would eat the crust, but they broke it into smaller pieces and
sucked on them until they were soft enough to swallow.

When they finished, Catarina eyed the remaining
loaves. Maria shook her head. “Let us save those for Diego.”

Catarina nodded, even as her eyes lingered on the
bread and she wiped her mouth with her nightgown sleeve. Maria put
the remaining bread on the ground next to Diego, and with her hands
swept a wide area by him clear of debris.

“Lie down now, my sisters,” she said. “It will be a
shorter day if you sleep.”

Luz and Catarina curled up close to Diego. Luz
pillowed her head on her arm, then looked at Maria sitting by them
on the bench. “Do you have a story?” she asked.

“But please, not about El Cid,” begged Catarina.

“What? Have you had enough adventure?” Maria asked,
sitting on the floor by Diego’s head. “Ay, well, let us think.”
Leaning back against the bench, she closed her eyes and put her
hand lightly on Diego’s hair. He stirred but did not waken. “What
about the little
picaro
and the blind man?” she asked, then
said, “No, no,” hastily as she saw again the blind eyes of La
Señora. When there was no comment from the sisters, she opened her
eyes. Luz and Catarina were already asleep.

Maria sat on the floor of the Gutierrez chapel and
looked around her. Daylight was creeping into the room. Everywhere
she looked was ruin, unsoftened now by the gloom of early dawn. She
thought of the Masferrer chapel and remembered the evening prayers,
Diego leading them.
How proud we all were
, she thought,
and see where it has led us
.

Her fingers were still in Diego’s hair. Absently she
wound his black curls around her fingers. His hair was so black
that it was almost blue in the morning light that filtered in
through the small window. He stirred in his sleep and frowned.
Maria saw his eyes moving behind his closed lids.
And now he
dreams
, she thought, running her hand lightly over his eyes,
covering them. When he was still again, she got up quietly and
climbed out the patio window.

She stood on the patio for many minutes, trying to
summon the courage to enter the hall of death again. The patio’s
small tiled fountain no longer ran, but a pool of water had
collected in the blue basin. She washed her hands and face and
drank deeply. After she smoothed down her chemise she walked into
the hallway.

Flies buzzed and hummed around the festering bodies.
The smell was so overwhelming that she turned back to the patio
until her stomach was calm. Then she entered the hall again,
crossing it quickly into one of the rooms where the door had been
battered and smashed inward.

It was a family bedroom, stark in its simplicity
like the rooms at Las Invernadas. The bedding was covered with
blood and ripped to shreds, the altar splintered to kindling. It
was the same in the next room she entered, and the next. The
devastation was total. The Indians had left nothing in any of the
rooms that could ever be used again by another, carting off
whatever they coveted, destroying the rest.

The fury of madmen was everywhere as she wandered
from room to room. The horrors of the past week had reached such a
proportion that they were almost meaningless to her. Her fellow
Spaniards lying like ruined dolls were not people anymore, but
objects, not unlike the saints pulverized to dust in the chapel. It
was all the same. Maria shuddered at her own callousness, and at
the same time was grateful for it.

She finally came to a small bedroom at the back of
the hacienda. It contained no dead body, but had been stripped and
desecrated like the other rooms. With one difference. The bedding
had been ripped, but not carried away or otherwise destroyed.
They must have begun to tire
, she thought to herself,
or
perhaps they were bored
.

She pulled the torn sheet off the bed, folding it
neatly into a small square. The disarray around her compelled her
to fold the cloth carefully, precisely. The feather pillow was
still intact, so she picked it up, putting her face to it for a
moment.

Something about the room told her that it was a
woman’s place. She knelt by the bed and felt under it, smiling as
her hand came in contact with a small basket. She pulled it out and
looked inside, gasping with pleasure. It was a sewing basket, with
needle, thread, and thimble. Erlinda always kept such a basket near
her for late night mending.

A careful search of the room revealed nothing else,
so she let herself into the hall again and traveled the length of
it to the kitchen, holding her breath, then breathing into the
pillow.

In the kitchen the dried blood had stained and
seasoned the food yanked from pantry shelves and strewn around. She
picked her way among the bodies to the dry sink, found a wooden
bowl only partly broken, and added it to her pile.

She forced herself to stay in the kitchen of death,
watching out the window for an unendurable time until she was sure
there was no one outside. She let herself out the door and set down
her booty, spreading out the torn sheet. The Indians had ridden
their dead masters’ horses through the kitchen garden, but she
managed to harvest two handfuls of crumpled beans and several
tomatoes. She ate one on the spot, the juice dribbling down her
chin.

By now the sun was high overhead. As she sat
cross-legged in the garden, she saw movement on the north road.
Quickly she gathered up the small handful of food into the sheet
and crawled toward the kitchen, pushing her bundle in front of her.
Inside the kitchen, as she inched along the floor, her eyes were
drawn to the feet of the corpses. She paused and sat up, looking
more closely at the bodies.

Two of them were small girls. Swallowing several
times, Maria gently pulled of their shoes, putting them on top of
her sheet-covered pile. Luz and Catarina had been barefoot ever
since she’d yanked them out of their beds at Las Invernadas.

She got to her feet and moved hurriedly out of the
kitchen and down the hall again, forcing herself to look carefully
at the bodies. She saw no clothing that was not torn or bloody, so
she entered the patio and climbed back in the chapel window.

Diego sat there, waiting for her. “I told you not to
leave the chapel, Maria,” he said, his voice low and angry.

She said nothing.

“Don’t you ever listen to anyone?” he asked, passing
a hand across his eyes.

In answer Maria opened the bundle and extracted the
wooden bowl. She climbed out the window again, filled the bowl from
the tiled fountain, and carefully returned through the window
again. “Here, drink this,” she said, holding it out to Diego.

He did as she ordered, then leaned his head back
against the bench, still exhausted. She got more water and set the
lopsided bowl on the earthen floor.

“I found a needle and thread, Diego
mio
,” she
said as he watched her out of half-closed eyes. “I am going to sew
up your arm.”

He went visibly paler under his growth of beard,
then sighed and held out his arm, resting it on the bench. “I
suppose you are,” he said. “Well, lead on,
capitana
.”

She knelt close to him and began to undo the knot on
the soaked bandage. “Let me have your dagger,” she said. He handed
it to her and she cut through the knot.

“Gently,” he whispered, “gently.”

She unwrapped the bandage and gazed at the jagged
cut. “I must clean this again,” she said, dipping a square of the
bed sheet in the water. She swabbed his arm until all traces of the
gypsum were gone, taking several trips to the patio for more water.
When she was through, she pulled out the needle and thread, cut off
a suitable length, and knotted one end. She looked at Diego and
swallowed.

“I know, I know,” he said, “you are going to tell me
that this will hurt you more than me.
Chiquita
, I do not
believe you.”

She sighed. “I suppose you’re right. Now hold
still.”

Taking several deep breaths, she began to sew up the
wound, pausing after every stitch until Diego could control the
tremors in his arm. She knew she was as white as he was, but she
had to go on. She had to stop the bleeding. Several times he raised
his other arm involuntarily to stop her, and she held his hand to
her breast, squeezing his fingers with all her strength. Even in
the coolness of the chapel, Diego was drenched with sweat. As she
worked, sewing and wiping, she felt the sweat dripping down her
back, too.

When she finished and bit off the thread, she sat
with her head between her knees until the room stopped spinning.
Then she fashioned a pad from the cleanest part of the sheet and
made Diego hold it tight against his arm while she bound it with
the long remaining strip of material, winding it around and around
until his arm was covered from shoulder to elbow.

When she was through, Maria leaned back against the
bench next to Diego and they sat together, staring at the crucifix
that still hung behind the altar. The
Cristo
has been torn
off, but still dangled at the foot of the cross. “Now what
happens?” she whispered.

“We stay here until dark, then we walk to Santa
Fe.”

“Do you think you can?”

“I think I have to,” he replied, sinking lower
against the bench. “Lie down with me now.”

She took the feather pillow and put it behind their
heads, then turned sideways against him, and he laid his bandaged
arm across her hip.

“Tell me a story, Maria,” he said, his lips against
her ear.

He was warm, but it wasn’t the warmth of fever now.
She huddled closer to him, relishing the comfort of his body. Her
chemise was thin and she had been cold for so long.

“What story do you want to hear?” she asked as he
kissed her ear.

“I like the story about the poor girl who marries
the prince,” he said, as he kissed her again.

“Who told you that one?”

“Catarina, I think. Maria ... Maria?”

She was asleep.

Maria woke hours later. Diego’s hand was covering
her mouth. “Don’t say anything,” he whispered.

She opened her eyes and he took his hand away,
grasping the dagger that was lying by her head.

“Indians,” he whispered, “in the hacienda. They
speak Tano, so they must be from Taos. Pray to God they will leave
when they see there is nothing here.”

“The girls?”

“Still sleeping.”

She drew closer to Diego, feeling the rapid beating
of his heart against her. “It isn’t fair, you know,” she
whispered.

“What do you mean,
querida?
"

“I wanted to grow old with you. Would that not have
been a fine thing?”

Diego was silent. He kissed her ear and sighed. They
listened to the footsteps in the hall. No one entered the patio.
There was deep silence, then much gagging and retching. After that,
the footsteps hurried back to the kitchen again, and the hacienda
was deathly silent once more.