Zorro (38 page)

Lafitte’s home was two stories high, Spanish style, with latticework at the windows and a broad terrace facing the sea. The house was constructed of brick covered with a mixture of plaster and ground oyster shells. The farthest thing from a cave, as the prisoners had expected, it was clean, organized, even luxurious. The rooms were large and cool, and the views from its balconies were spectacular; the light wooden floors shone, the walls had been freshly painted, and on every table were vases of flowers, trays of fruit, and carafes of wine.

A pair of black slave girls took the women to their rooms. For Diego they produced a pitcher of water for washing up; they gave him coffee, then led him to a veranda where Jean Lafitte, accompanied by two brightly colored parrots, was resting in a red hammock, strumming a stringed instrument with his gaze lost on the horizon. Diego judged that the contrast between the man’s evil reputation and his refined behavior could not be more startling.

“You may choose between being my prisoner and being my guest, Senor de la Vega. As my prisoner you have the right to try to escape, and I have the right to prevent you in any way I can. As my guest you will be treated well until we receive your father’s ransom, but you will be obliged by the laws of hospitality to respect my house and my instructions. Do we understand one another?”

“Before I answer, senor, I must know your plans regarding the de Romeu sisters, who are in my charge,” Diego replied.

“They were, senor; they no longer are. Now they are in my charge. Their fate depends on your father’s response.”

“If I agree to be your guest, how will you know that I will not try to escape anyway?”

“Because you would not do that without the de Romeu girls, and because you will give me your word of honor,” the pirate replied.

“You have it, Captain Lafitte,” said Diego, resigned.

“Very well. Please, join me within the hour to dine with your friends. I believe that you will not be disappointed with my cook.”

In the meantime, Juliana, Isabel, and Nuria were going through some upsetting experiences. Several men had brought tubs to their room and filled them with water; then three young slave girls appeared, equipped with soap and brushes; they were under the direction of a tall, beautiful woman with sculpted features and long neck, a large turban gave her another hand span of height. She introduced herself in French as Madame Odilia and clarified that she was the person who ran the house of Lafitte. She told the prisoners to take off their clothes, that they were going to be bathed. None of the three had ever bathed naked in their lives; they had always washed with great modesty beneath a light cotton tunic. The fuss Nuria kicked up provoked an attack of the giggles in the slave girls, and the madame of the turban dryly commented that no one dies from taking a bath. That sounded reasonable to Isabel, so she took off everything she was wearing. Juliana imitated her, covering her private parts with both hands. This brought on new giggles from the Africans, who compared their own mahogany color with that of this girl who was white as the dining room china. Nuria was another matter. To get her clothes off, she had to be held down, and her screams shook the walls. The young slaves put the women in the tubs and lathered them from head to toe. After the first shock, what they had thought would be an ordeal proved to be not really so bad, and soon Juliana and Isabel began to enjoy it. The slaves took away their clothes without explanation and brought back rich brocade gowns, badly suited for the warm climate. They were in good condition, but it was evident that they had been worn; one had bloodstains on the hem. What had happened to the former wearer? Was she, too, a prisoner? Better not to think of her fate, or the fate that awaited them. Isabel deduced that the haste to get them out of their clothes was in response to specific instructions from Lafitte, who wanted to be sure that they had nothing hidden beneath their skirts. They had prepared for that eventuality.

Diego decided to take advantage of the conditional freedom he had been granted by the corsair, and went out to reconnoiter the grounds in the hour before dinner. The pirate town was made up of vagabonds from every corner of the globe. Some were living with their women and children in palm-thatched huts, though bachelors moved about without a place of their own. Good French and Creole food was available, along with bars, brothels, and artisan’s shops. Those men of many races, languages, creeds, and customs had in common a fierce love of liberty, but they accepted the laws of Grand Island because they seemed reasonable and the system was democratic. Everything was decided by vote; they even had the right to elect and remove their captains. The rules were clear: anyone who molested another man’s woman ended up marooned on a waterless island with one flagon of water and a loaded pistol; theft was disciplined with a lashing, and murder with hanging.

There was no blind submission to a leader, except on shipboard during action, but everyone had to obey the rules or pay the consequences. At one time they had been criminals, adventurers, or deserters from warships; they had always been outsiders, and now they were proud to belong to a community. Only the most capable went to sea; the others worked in smithies, cooked, cared for the stock, repaired ships and small boats, built houses, fished. Diego saw women and children as well as men who were ill or had amputated limbs, and realized that veterans of battles, orphans, and widows were given protection. If a sailor lost a leg or arm at sea, he was compensated in gold. Booty was shared equally among the men, and some was given to widows; the rest of the women mattered very little. They were prostitutes, slaves, captives from assaults, and a few courageous free women not many who had come there of their own will.

On the beach, Diego came across a score of drunks who were punching each other for the pure joy of fighting and chasing after women in the light of bonfires. He recognized several of the crew from the ship that had destroyed the Madre de Dios, and wondered if this was not his opportunity to get back the La Justicia medallion that one of them had taken from him.

“Senores! Listen up!” he yelled.

He gained the attention of the least intoxicated, and they formed a circle around him while the women used the distraction to pick up their clothes and run. Diego looked around at the puffy faces, the bloodshot eyes, the toothless mouths cursing him, the claws reaching for daggers.

He did not give them time to organize.

“I want to have a little fun. Do any of you dare fight me?” he asked.

An enthusiastic chorus answered him, and the circle around Diego tightened; he could smell their sweat and the alcohol, tobacco, and garlic on their breaths.

“One at a time, please. I will begin with the hero who has my medallion; then I will whip each of you, one by one. How does that sound?”

Several pirates fell on their backs in the sand, weak with laughter.

The others consulted among themselves, and finally one opened his filthy shirt and showed Diego the medallion, more than ready to fight this sissified man with woman’s hands who still smelled of his mother’s milk, as he put it. Diego said he wanted to be sure that it was in fact his medallion. The man took it from his neck and dangled it before Diego’s nose.

“Don’t take your eyes off that medallion, friend, because if you are careless for an instant, I will have it.”

The pirate immediately pulled a curved dagger from his waistband and shook off the alcohol fumes, while the others stood back to give them room. The villain threw himself toward Diego, who was waiting with his feet planted firmly in the sand. It was not for nothing that he had learned La Justicia’s secrets. As his opponent rushed him, he made three simultaneous moves: he blocked the hand with the dagger, stepped to one side and crouched, and, using the other man’s momentum, pushed up and flipped the pirate over his back. As soon as he hit the ground, Diego stepped on his wrist and wrested the dagger from his hand. Then he turned toward the spectators with a small bow. “Where is my medallion?” he asked, looking at the pirates one by one. He approached the tallest of them, who was standing a few steps away, and accused him of having hidden it. The man unsheathed his knife, but Diego stopped him with a gesture and told him to take off his cap, because that was where he would find it. Nonplussed, the man obeyed.

Diego reached into the cap and pulled out his jewel. Surprise paralyzed the others, who didn’t know whether to laugh or attack, until they opted for the behavior most appropriate to their temperaments: to give this upstart a good lesson.

“All of you against one? Doesn’t that seem a bit cowardly?” Diego challenged, whirling with knife in hand, ready to leap.

“This caballero is right; that would be cowardice unworthy of you,” came a voice from behind him.

It was Jean Lafitte, amiable and smiling, with the look of a man out for a walk but with his hand on his pistol. He took Diego by one arm and calmly walked away. No one tried to stop them.

“That medallion must be very valuable if you are willing to risk your life for it,” Lafitte commented.

“My grandmother gave it to me on her deathbed,” Diego joked. “With this I can buy my freedom and that of my friends, Captain.”

“I’m afraid it isn’t worth that much.”

“Our ransom may come, and it may not. California is a long way away, and something could happen to our message. If you will allow me, I will go to New Orleans to gamble. I will bet the medallion and win enough to pay for our ransom.”

“And if you lose?”

“In that case, I would have to wait for my father’s money, but I never lose in cards.”

The pirate laughed. “You are an original, all right. I think we have a lot of things in common.”

That night Justine, the beautiful sword Pelayo had made for Diego, was returned to him, along with the trunk containing his clothing, saved from going down with the ship by the greed of a pirate who could not open it but had brought it with him, thinking it contained something of value. The three hostages dined with Lafitte, who looked very elegant, all in black, cleanly shaved and hair recently curled. Diego thought that by comparison his Zorro cape and mask were rather sad-looking; he needed to copy some ideas from the corsair, like the sash and the full sleeves of the shirt. Their meal was a parade of dishes influenced by Africa, the Caribbean, and the Cajuns, the latter being what the immigrants from Canada were called: crab gumbo, red beans and rice, fried oysters, turkey roasted with nuts and raisins, fish with various spices, and the best wines stolen from French galleons, which the host barely tasted. A young black boy was pulling the rope of a cloth fan above the table, meant to stir the air and keep away flies, and on a balcony three musicians were playing an irresistible blend of Caribbean rhythms and slave songs. Silent as a shadow, Madame Odilia stood in the doorway, directing the slave serving girls with her eyes.

For the first time Juliana saw Jean Lafitte at close quarters. When the pirate bent to kiss her hand, she knew that the long journey of recent months that had led her here was at last over. She discovered why she had not wanted to marry any of her suitors; she had rejected Rafael Moncada so many times that he was crazed, and had not responded to Diego’s advances in five years. She had waited her entire lifetime for what her romantic novels described as “Cupid’s arrow.” How else could she describe this sudden love? It was an arrow in her breast, a sharp pain, a wound. (Forgive me, dear readers, for this ridiculous euphemism, but cliches contain great truths.)

Lafitte’s dark gaze sank into the green water of her eyes, and his long-fingered hand took hers. Juliana stumbled as if she were going to fall, nothing new she tended to lose her balance with strong emotion.

Isabel and Nuria believed it was fear at meeting the corsair the symptoms were similar but Diego understood immediately that something irrevocable had changed his destiny. Compared to Lafitte, Rafael Moncada and all Juliana’s other suitors were pesky insects. Madame Odilia, too, noted the corsair’s effect on Juliana, and like Diego, she intuited the gravity of what had happened.

Lafitte led them to the table, and sat at its head to conduct polite conversation. Juliana stared at him, hypnotized, but he purposely ignored her, so much so that Isabel wondered if their host had a problem. Perhaps he had lost his manhood in a battle; these things happened a stray musket ball or a blow and the most interesting part of a man could be reduced to a dried fig. There was no other explanation for his indifference toward her sister.

“We appreciate your hospitality, Senor Lafitte,” Diego said, figuring that he had to get Juliana out of there as quickly as possible. “Even if it is forced upon us. However, it does not seem to me that this community of pirates is an appropriate place for these senoritas.”

“What other solution do you suggest, Senor de la Vega?”

“I have heard of an Ursuline convent in New Orleans. The senoritas can wait there until we receive news from my father ”

“I would rather die than live with those nuns,” Juliana interrupted, with a vehemence they had never known. “I am not leaving here!”

Every eye turned toward her. She was red, feverish, sweating beneath the heavy brocade dress. Her expression left no room for doubt: she was prepared to kill anyone who tried to separate her from her pirate.

Diego opened his mouth, but he did not know what to say, so he closed it, defeated. Jean Lafitte interpreted Juliana’s outburst as the message he desired and feared, almost as a caress. He had tried to stay aloof from the girl, repeating to himself what he always said to his brother Pierre business before pleasure but apparently she was as taken as he was. That devastating attraction confused him, as he prided himself on thinking coolly. He was not an impulsive man, and beautiful women were not new to him. He preferred quadroons, famous for their grace and beauty and trained to satisfy a man’s most secret whims. White women to him had always seemed arrogant and complicated; they were often ill, they didn’t know how to dance, and they were rather useless when it came to making love they did not even like to take their hair down. However, this young Spanish woman with the cat eyes was different. She could hold her own in beauty when compared to the most celebrated Creoles in New Orleans, and it seemed that her limpid innocence did not interfere with a passionate heart. He veiled a sigh, trying not to lose himself in the traps of his imagination.