Beneath a Wounded Sky

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  “Four,” George said.

  “A sacred number,” Whistling Elk said quietly.

  Storm Arriving shot the storyteller another glare and Whistling Elk turned away as if two men grappling in the dirt was a regular occurrence.

  “Who gave you these feathers?” he said, and then suddenly grunted. The pressure on George’s ribs relented and Storm Arriving was lifted up.

  Limps had grabbed Storm Arriving by the scruff of his tunic. He hauled him to his feet and then struck him backhanded across the chest. Storm Arriving stared at his Kit Fox brother, dumbfounded.

  “One Who Flies caught the eagle himself,” Limps rumbled. “He asked me how. I told him how. I watched him build his blind. I saw him lay the bait. From afar, I watched. He waited. Two days, without food or water, and from the sky above the eagle watched him, too, judging him. On the third day, the eagle saw that One Who Flies was worthy, and that his sacrifice would be honored. He came down, and he gave One Who Flies a chance to take his life.”

  Storm Arriving, George, Whistling Elk, everyone gathered was stunned. It was more than anyone had ever heard Limps say at one time. Limps, his eyes flinty with anger, struck Storm Arriving again across the chest and pointed at George.

  “He did not beat at the great bird as a boy might. He took the eagle’s wounds like a man. Talon and beak tore him as he fought for the proper hold. And he killed the bird well. One thrust of his knife.” He turned to the gathered crowd. “One thrust.” And then to Storm Arriving again.

  “He caught the eagle. He chose the finest of the feathers. He chose their number. For you.” He took a step away, then turned. “For you.” Then he folded his heavy arms across his chest and appeared as if he would never utter another word.

  The shock of Limps, speaking in sentences, wore off slowly, but Whistling Elk brought them all back to reality with a gentle cough.

  Storm Arriving looked around at the assemblage. He looked at the gifts again, then at the men who brought them, and George thought he glimpsed a flash of embarrassment cross the soldier’s face.

  “Leave the gifts,” he said. “I will consider them.” Then he stalked away, his long strides taking him into the evening gloom.

  Whistling Elk walked over and extended a hand to George.

  “That,” he said as he helped George to his feet, “could not have gone better. Very well done! And you!” He turned to Limps and took him by the shoulders. “You told a story!” His voice was filled with amazement and pride.

  Limps’ grin shone in the gathering dark.

  “So,” George said, brushing himself off. “What happens now?”

  “Now?” Whistling Elk said. “Nothing. We are done.”

  “What? But...but he didn’t accept the gifts. He just said he would consider them.”

  Whistling Elk patted George on the back. “It is the same. No one returns such gifts afterward. It is his way of expressing his displeasure. In the morning, he will still have them, and thus accept them.”

  George looked around. Everywhere he looked, he saw a smile. What Whistling Elk described was true.

  “Then, we are done?”

  “We are done,” Whistling Elk said. “Shall we go tell your wife?”

  Chapter 2

  Monday, September 1st, AD 1890

  Palacio del Gobernador

  La Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba

  Alejandro sipped his port, tasted honeyed plums, and frowned.

  “Wine gone sour?” Roberto asked from the dark leather divan that dominated the center of the smoking room.

  “Eh?” Alejandro said, distracted from his thoughts. “Oh. No. It’s excellent, as always.”

  “What, then?” Roberto asked.

  Roberto’s years as governor of Cuba had greyed his hair and rounded his belly, but they had not dulled his wits. His brother-in-law was still as sharp as the day they’d met, back when they were both soldiers of the Crown in the highlands of Alta California. Despite his sleepy, after-dinner torpor, Roberto could still discern Alejandro’s mood from the slightest clue.

  “Go on,” Roberto said, waving his cigar. “Tell me. Good money says I already know.”

  Alejandro smiled and went to the humidor. He selected a long puro and stepped to the candelabra. He took a thin wooden spill from a silver cup and touched it to the flame. The strains of the string quartet playing a Mozart sonatina resonated from the room to which the women had repaired after dinner. He knew Victoria’s taste ran more toward the new French composers, but Roberto’s Olivia was the more conservative of the two sisters and, as hostess, she set the tone for the household.

  “If you are such a clairvoyant,” he said as he puffed the cigar to life, “then you tell me.”

  “Very well,” Roberto said, sitting up a bit taller. “You’re anxious. Impatient.”

  Alejandro laughed and walked the perimeter of the smoking room, regarding the oil-brushed landscapes that studded the dark-paneled walls. “Hardly insightful,” he said, inspecting the Shepherds in the Hills at Aix-en-Provence. “My daughter could have told me that.”

  “All right then,” Roberto said, lofting a cloud of smoke toward the Tiepolo-inspired ceiling. “You want to act. This quiet after the storm in the harbor; it eats at you.”

  “Hm,” Alejandro said in grudging acknowledgment. It had been a month since the explosions that had ripped through Havana’s harbor, sinking three Spanish ships of the line and two freighters. He had never been comfortable with his involvement in the plot to blow up the ships and frame the Americans for the deed. Even more distasteful was the loss of life the act had caused—two score and twelve had perished in the explosion or the ensuing fires. But without a doubt, the worst of all was the fact that the tragedy, manufactured as it had been, as costly as it had been, had not brought about the desired effect. The portside fires had been cold for weeks, and still there had been no word from Madrid. The Crown, the Premier, even the Viceroy in San Francisco, were all uncharacteristically silent. When Alejandro thought of the charred bodies he saw floating off the quay, the pall of oily smoke above the exposed keel of an overturned warship—

  “Each day that passes without a call to arms is an affront to Spanish honor,” he snarled. “Sagasta and Cánovas! Those ministers should be put down like the sick old mares they are. And María Cristina! How can she stay silent?”

  “Oh!” said Roberto playfully, rising and leaning forward to inspect Alejandro’s expression. “So you are on personal terms with Her Majesty, now?”

  Alejandro reined in his emotions. He had never told Roberto about the private audience their Queen Regent had granted him, nor had he breathed a word of the intimate regard and favor she had bestowed upon him. That night she had gone against the advice of her chief ministers, elevated Alejandro to the post of Special Ambassador to the Cheyenne, and authorized him to forge an alliance with the natives of the American Interior.

  Sow us a friendship, and we shall reap a nation, she had told him, and then had caressed his cheek. It was a memory that still made his heart pound.

  Roberto would laugh the incident aside and call him an old fool for reading too much into the attention of a young and lonely widow, starved for allies in a hostile government—an interpretation that had also crossed Alejandro’s mind a few times as he struggled to understand her actions. But more than Roberto’s ridicule, Alejandro feared any embarrassment the knowledge of that night might cause his wife. He knew that anything he told Roberto, Roberto would tell Olivia. Olivia, in turn, would of course tell her sister, and Victoria deserved much better than to be the subject of family gossip. Victoria had stood by Alejandro through his past disgraces—both military and political. He was not going to sully this latest triumph if he could avoid it.

  No. The kind and tender touch of his Queen would forever warm his heart and fuel his loyalty to the Crown, but there was no reason to speak of it to anyone.

  “Our Royal Queen Regent and her ministers,” he said, composed once more, “waste p
recious time. Spain must respond to the Americans’ scurrilous attack—”

  “Which we orchestrated.”

  Alejandro glared at Roberto. “Do you believe they know this?”

  Roberto shrugged and went back to his seat on the sofa. Leather creaked and sighed. “They must suspect.” He sipped his port. “The next message from Madrid will either be a commission that sends you to your Cheyenne, or a summons that will take you—take us—to the gallows.”

  “¡Dios mío!” Alejandro breathed. “May it be the former.”

  Roberto laughed. “You are eager to leave my house! Is the wine so bad?”

  Alejandro chuckled and was grateful for Roberto’s eternally sunny outlook. “Of course not,” he said. “But I can do nothing from here. I must be out there, among those savages, if I’m to—” He caught himself again. “—forge this alliance and restore our family fortunes.”

  Roberto reached for the cut-crystal decanter of port and refilled his small glass. “I remind you,” he said, “that you are hardly a frontiersman.” He held out the decanter.

  “What do you mean?” Alejandro said, setting his glass down for another splash of port. “I was a field general, on the march for months at a time.”

  “Ages ago,” Roberto reminded him as the crystal stopper clinked into place. “And your general’s tent with a full support staff was much homier than the conditions you experienced last time you were among those ‘savages,’ as you call them.”

  “True,” Alejandro admitted. “But this time I will be among them as an Ambassador of the Spanish Crown, not as a fever-ridden shipwreck survivor.”

  “You hope,” Roberto said with a wink.

  Alejandro nodded.

  Indeed, he thought. I do hope that.

  The two men drew on their cigars and enjoyed a moment of shared quiet. The scent of hibiscus wafted in from the patio beyond the open French doors. With it came the sounds of the city that lived beyond the garden walls. The sun was setting, and as the day’s oppressive heat was coaxed offshore by the easterly trade winds, the populace prepared for the last act of Havana’s lively day.

  Like most of the great cities in Europe, the governor’s mansion was in the heart of the capital city, surrounded on all sides by her vitality. As he walked to the open doorway, Alejandro could hear two guitars and a violin playing an old folk ballad in an alcove down the street—a dissonant counterpoint to the more courtly melodies that drifted in from the sitting room. Farther out, a young woman sang a love song, a dog barked, and laughter rose and fell as townsfolk emerged onto the still-warm cobblestones. Seagulls slipped past overhead, mewing in the cooling air, and beyond all came the bells of churches calling the worshipful to vespers. Havana was such a mix of contrasts—Spaniard, Creole, Indian, and Negro; an olla filled with faiths and classes and professions that put pirates and nuns, doctors and canefield workers all shoulder-to-shoulder on the narrow streets. Alejandro used to marvel at Roberto’s ability to govern such a place until Roberto himself explained.

  “Havana has been here for three hundred years,” he had said. “Do you think it needs me to keep it running?”

  A shout from the courtyard interrupted his thoughts, and the sound of hooves on gravel announced the arrival of a messenger. The two men stood just as the door opened and Gutierrez, Roberto’s butler, entered with a tray in his hand. On the tray was an envelope.

  “My apologies, sir,” Gutierrez said to Roberto, and then turned to Alejandro. “This telegram just arrived for you, Excellency. From Madrid.”

  Alejandro and Roberto shared a look.

  Was this the commission?

  Or the summons?

  Alejandro took the red-bordered envelope.

  “Thank you, Gutierrez,” he said, and the butler bowed and withdrew.

  Alejandro’s name was written on the front in block letters, and the back was sealed with wax. He cracked the seal and unfolded the telegram. He read.

  Spain directs U.S. to cede territory to our native allies. Viceroy to stage

  forces at Cimmaron. You must prepare the way. Honor now the trust I put in you.

  MC

  Alejandro stared at the words, reading them a second time, then a third.

  “Looks like good news.”

  Alejandro started at the voice by his side and turned to find Vincent D’Avignon reading over his shoulder. Alejandro stepped away from the man and put the telegram back in the envelope.

  Vincent D’Avignon was a wiry man of indeterminate age who had come into Alejandro’s life via a long road of questionable repute. He had arrived in Havana as a hanger-on and sometime-aide to young George Custer and his native allies. Alejandro had never heard the whole of their history, but it was clear from the attitude of George’s companions that D’Avignon was neither trusted nor liked. “Tolerated” was the word that Roberto had used to describe his own opinion of him, and lately, “useful” was also an applicable term, for it was D’Avignon who had executed their gambit of the portside explosions. And it was D’Avignon, too, who had given Alejandro the motive for war: gold, and lots of it, tucked away in the heart of Cheyenne Alliance Territory.

  Yes, Vincent D’Avignon had proven himself extremely useful to gentlemen who wanted to keep their hands clean. It was not difficult, however, to remember that he was also an unmitigated scoundrel.

  “Who’s MC?” D’Avignon asked, studiously innocent.

  “MC?” Roberto said, nearly spilling his drink. “You’re not serious.” He stood and held out his hand. “Let me see.”

  Alejandro tucked the envelope inside his coat.

  “Well, at least tell me!”

  Alejandro crossed the room to the French doors. He glanced over at D’Avignon. “Her Majesty has demanded the United States cede the Interior to the Cheyenne,” he said. “She is sending an army into Tejano to underscore the point.”

  Roberto sat down again. “¡Dios mío!” he breathed. “She intends to invade?”

  “Heh!” D’Avignon laughed. He hooked his thumb in Alejandro’s direction. “And wants him to lead the way!”

  Alejandro glared at the man. “Where the devil did you come from?” he asked, nettled.

  D’Avignon shrugged. “I was in the garden. I heard a horseman. That means only one thing around here: news. So, I thought I’d drop in to see if it was the news we’ve been waiting for. It seems like it was.” He smiled his long-toothed rogue’s smile. “You were going to tell me, weren’t you?”

  Alejandro nodded. “Of course,” he said.

  “Naturally,” Roberto agreed. “Wouldn’t leave without his chief prospector. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”

  Alejandro looked from man to man, unsure of which was annoying him the more. “Perhaps you would excuse us?” he said to D’Avignon. “With this sudden change in plans, there is some family business I’d like to discuss with my brother.”

  D’Avignon raised his hands. “Certainement,” he said, backing toward the garden door. “Je comprends tout.” He stopped at the humidor, opened it, selected a puro, brought it to his nose, and inhaled its aroma. “There are a thousand details to be settled before so grand an expedition.” He took a box of matches from his pocket and, striking one, lit the cigar. “Just remember to reserve me a bunk.” He bowed to the two men in turn—”Your Excellency. Governor.”—and strolled out into the garden, scarved in smoke.

  Roberto watched him disappear into the evening gloom and tsked. “Something about that man...” he said.

  “Something?” Alejandro said, tossing the stub of his cigar into the fire. “Everything!”

  “Hush,” Roberto said, rising his seat on the divan. “He’s a necessary evil and has proven himself quite useful. Now—” He waggled the fingers of his open hand. “Let me see that telegram.”

  Alejandro considered it. Hiding it at this point would raise more suspicions than would revealing its contents. He produced the envelope and handed it to Roberto.

  Roberto perused it at arm’s
length. “MC,” he said. “Not ‘Her Majesty,’ not ‘Queen Regent María Cristina,’ Just MC.” He folded the telegram and looked to Alejandro.

  “You read too much into it,” Alejandro said, turning his back and walking to a bookshelf.

  “Do I?”

  “Yes,” Alejandro snapped over his shoulder.

  “Then look at me.”

  “What?”

  “Look at me,” Roberto said. “Look at me and tell me what happened at El Escorial.”

  Alejandro faced him and let his perturbation show on his face. “Don’t be an ass, Roberto.”

  “That is not an answer.”

  Air escaped Alejandro like water from a tipped bucket, all in a rush. He searched for the words to describe the private audience their Queen had given him. He quaffed his port and set the glass down on a marble-topped table. “It was nothing like you are thinking, I mean.” He began to pace the room. “It was just a moment of...of extraordinary personal favor.”

  Roberto raised an eyebrow.

  “You mustn’t speak of this to anyone,” Alejandro said.

  “Now I am concerned,” Roberto said, and Alejandro tried again.

  “It was...it was nothing,” he said.

  “Hardly that, it seems.”

  “We just had a quiet talk. She spoke to me as an equal. She held my hand. She stroked my cheek. It was all perfectly innocent.”

  “Innocent?” Roberto said, incredulous. “And this took place where?”

  Alejandro shrugged. “In her apartments.”

  “Her private apartments?”

  “Yes,” Alejandro said, eyes flashing at the insinuation. “With the door open and with a guard outside.”

  Roberto nodded and eased himself down onto the divan. “A guard who heard everything, no?”

  Alejandro nodded.

  “And who could report every word to Ministers Sagasta and Cánovas?”

  Alejandro took a sharp intake of breath as Roberto’s point struck home. He sat down heavily next to Roberto. “She intended all along...”

  “Yes,” Roberto said. “And you, so long out of favor, failed to see it for what it was.”