Mustering all his diplomatic skill, Alejandro smiled. “Of course, Mr. Ambassador, of course. The Spanish Crown would never dream of abrogating the sovereignty of territories controlled by the United States,” he said, putting especial stress on the word controlled. Boudoin heard the inflection, and understood it. He pointed at the door.
“Get your treacherous ass out of my house.”
Still smiling, and feeling not at all unsatisfied by the encounter, Alejandro did just that.
It was late when he arrived back at San Lorenzo. The broken dish of a moon flew high up between the wind-blown clouds, painting them with silver light as they passed within reach. The palace was a dark monolith pierced by four tiers of windows like ordered caves in a mountainside. A few of the caves held the banked fires of lamplight as some clerk toiled over a report, some aide read a novel, or some minister enjoyed just one last sherry before retiring for the night. But as Alejandro entered the building, servants were ready and waiting for him, asking if he needed anything, offering him some refreshment, and informing him that Her Majesty was waiting for him in her apartments.
“What?” he said in surprise.
“Right this way, if you please, señor.”
He followed, calm as a lamb, through what seemed like a mile of corridors, up flights of stairs, and past the watchful gaze of alert and armored guards, until he was at last brought to a small, unmarked door. The door was built of layers of wood, carved and shaped by hands long dead. His guide nodded to the guard who stood outside and the guard rapped heavily on the thick wood. A voice spoke from within the room beyond, a syllable that the guard took as permission granted. He opened the door. The servant retreated. Alejandro swallowed and slowly entered the room.
As a royal apartment, it did not live up to Alejandro’s expectation. He expected gold throughout in metal and leaf, jeweled fabrics, attendants and ladies in waiting. He expected plush furnishings, intricate carpets, and nothing less than the glory of Spain.
What he found instead was an anteroom with floors of simple parquetry, hardwood chairs of clean lines, and on the walls of the room, blue and white tile had been set from the floor to up to the height of a man’s waist to create a porcelain wainscoting that kept the otherwise dark room bright and cheerful. A modest chandelier of wrought iron hung from the white coved ceiling, bathing the room with a gentle glow. Above the tiling, pictures had been hung on the walls—some of which were no doubt priceless treasures, but most of which were small, unassuming portraits of family members, past rulers, and landscapes of local scenery.
“In here, Don Alejandro.”
“Your Majesty?”
“Yes,” she replied. “In here.”
He walked forward toward her voice, and found her at desk in a small room. She sat straight-backed on the edge of her chair, writing in the light from an oil lamp. A bookcase stood atop the desk, giving the queen little room to write her letters, but she did not seem to mind. On the wall around her were again the small pictures, most barely larger than his hand. The queen, dressed in her customary black, put her signature on the bottom of her letter and put the pen back in its inkpot.
“There,” she said, setting the letter aside, and, “Please, Don Alejandro. Come in. Be seated.”
There were three chairs along the wall behind her. He moved toward them, hesitated, not knowing if he should take the one closest to her or the one nearer the door. She made up his mind for him, offering the chair nearest to her. He bowed, and took his seat while she turned her chair around to face him.
“So tell me,” she said, “how did that Georgian boor take your news?”
The queen had left off using the royal “we” in her conversation, and it unsettled him. He reassessed his surroundings. Sitting in the private apartment of the queen, having a personal conversation with her five paces from her bed, sitting close enough to touch her, he was suddenly quite glad that the guards had left the door to the hallway open. They would be able to vouch for the propriety of the meeting, should a rumor start. He had not heard such rumors about María Cristina, but he’d also spent his life in New Spain, not the Old, and some types of news got squashed before they could travel too far.
He cleared his throat, smiled a nervous smile, and related to her the main points of his meeting with Boudoin.
“And he didn’t insult me once?” she asked.
The heat of blood flushed his neck and face.
The queen laughed in hearty humor. “I can see that he did, and that you defended me.” She reached out and put her hand on his. “And honor and modesty kept you from telling me of either. How sweet, Don Alejandro.”
“Your Majesty,” was all he could manage to say. While she was not an unattractive woman—in a Germanic way—the sheer magnitude of her position frightened him beyond any masculine response. Of course, the touch of the royal hand may have been nothing more than a gesture of thanks, as between close friends, meant to put him at his ease; but he wasn’t her friend and he didn’t feel at ease, much as he tried to appear so.
“What do you think the Americans will do?” she asked, leaning back a little in her chair.
Alejandro was glad for the change to a subject that required some thought. “It will depend entirely upon what you actually decide to do, Majesty. At the very least, they will denounce this alliance, just as Boudoin did this evening, and that is if you do nothing. If you do anything openly such as send in arms or supplies, I expect they will react more strongly, perhaps with a limited blockade of the Tejano ports. If you send troops in... I think you know what reaction that will bring.”
She nodded, a pleased expression still gracing her youthful features. “Turning the tables, they say, is fair play, no? The Americans have been backing, supplying, and promoting the rebels in Cuba for twenty years, trying to overthrow the Crown and build an independent state...an independent state that would naturally want to join the Union to which it owed so much. And so I say, what they do in the hills above Havana, we can do in the plains of their West.”
Alejandro tried to calm his excitement at the prospects opening before him. “It is dangerous, your Majesty. As I’ve said.”
She laughed again, reached forward and caressed his cheek and jaw with the palm of her hand. Then she took his hand and stood, drawing him to his feet. “You cannot fool me, Don Alejandro. You are too wily and too intelligent not to want this alliance, regardless the cost.” She walked him out to the anteroom and there, before the open door, where the guards without were sure to hear, she said, “Go, Don Alejandro Silveira-Rioja. I make you Special Ambassador to the Cheyenne, free to negotiate with them on behalf of the Spanish Crown.”
He dropped to one knee before her without thinking, bowing his head in gratitude. “My humblest thanks, your Majesty.”
She stepped forward and lifted his chin so that he would look at her. Tiny thing that she was, as he knelt he still came up nearly to her shoulder. She leaned forward and kissed him on both cheeks.
“Sow us a friendship, Don Alejandro, and we shall reap a nation.”
Then she drew him once more to his feet, and escorted him to the door.
The guard closed the door. Alejandro, more than a little stunned, stood in the hallway, collecting his scattered thoughts.
Special Ambassador. Had it truly happened? And what of her attentiveness? Had any of that actually happened?
Thrown into deep confusion, he headed down the hallway, toward the main corridors. He walked without thinking of where he was going, following the path of least resistance, drawn downward from the upper stories to the main floor. Slowly, a desire, a thought formed in his mind, accompanied by a purpose and a goal. Looking up, he saw where he was and, recognizing it, turned right and walked onward.
He entered the darkened basilica. The architects of the Palacio de San Lorenzo, acceding to the wishes of Philippe Segundo, incorporated the secular as well as the religious within its walls, building into the palace’s heart a grand basilica of soaring
height. The columns and arches of grey stone, carved and fitted with immense precision, echoed Alejandro’s crisp footsteps as he walked down the ash- and ivory-colored tiles of the nave. With chapels and shrines on either side, he passed the grille and stepped out from beneath the choir loft. The columns ascended into darkness, so high he could barely see the circle of the rotunda in the weak light of candles and oil lamps.
As he approached the altar, his eyes and the dim light worked in joint effort to bring out the wonders around him. Angels emerged from the darkness. Arched ceilings shimmered with divine blue and gold and, as his steps slowed, slowly, too, did the multitude of figures begin to appear in the frescoes that hung a hundred feet above him. He could almost hear their wondrous song, the harmonies of heaven. He halted at the steps that led up to the altar. To either side stood a tall, domed pulpit from which the priests gave their sermons, and ahead, the wall behind the altar glowed with the softness of candlelit gold. He stared upward at the portraits of the saints and the martyrs, feeling insignificant and unworthy before such grandeur.
For the second time that day, he knelt and, overcome by events, lay himself prostrate before the altar, his arms stretched out to either side. The tile floor was cold along the length of his body, and its chill seeped into his limbs, his torso, the flesh of his cheek.
“Dear Lord,” he began, but halted, the words of personal prayer so long unused that he did not know how to utter the thoughts that roamed in his head.
Is it wrong for me to pray for war? Is it a sin to work so hard for something that will cause the death of men? What if, out of it, comes an ultimate good? Is it a sin to bring glory to the Church, or souls to the paradise of Heaven?
But he knew that his motivations were far from such a noble—and justifiable—cause. No, his motives were for personal gain: position, power, money. But if he created enough good, would God forgive him his more temporal goals?
He brought his arms beneath him and clasped his hands, still prone before the altar. “Dear Lord in Heaven,” he began anew, “if I succeed, it will not be for myself alone. It will be for You as well. The Church will benefit from my desires. If you only will help me and guide me, I will give back to you as I have never done before. I will dedicate chapels, build whole churches among these Cheyenne. I will use my position and wealth to benefit the poor and destitute. I will expand Your Church on Earth. If You only give me the tools I need to forge this new nation, as my queen has commanded me.”
He lay there a while longer, the cold seeping into his joints, thoughts of what lie ahead filling his brain. María Cristina, Custer, One Who Flies, Speaks While Leaving, himself—they were all inextricably bound, woven together by acts and desires. But acts and desires were not enough to build a nation.
To build a nation took blood.
Chapter 21
Moon When the Whistlers Get Fat, Full
Fifty-seven Years after the Star Fell
South of the White River
Alliance Territory
Storm Arriving soared above the sacred mountains. The warm wind, lush with the scents of tree and grass, sunshine and river, buoyed him, lifting him higher. He could feel the wind pass through the finger-like feathers of his outstretched wings, and riffle across the sleek, flat plumage of his body. He clenched talons that were eager to grip and opened his shiny beak to shout his desire to the world: Wife of mine, where are you?
A screech from below echoed his own, answering him in a different voice. His eagle’s sight found her at once—a thousand feet below, the sun bright along her glossy back. She craned her feathered neck to fix him with her gaze, then snapped her black-tipped beak before loosing another rough-tongued cry of ardor.
He stooped, folding wings tightly against his ribs, tucking curled feet up under his tailfeathers. With movements as small as thought, he aimed his body at her, shifting his course through the fluid air. Shallowing, he approached, extending rasp-like legs, talons open. She rolled, her back to the world, and met him claw for claw. Wingtips touching, they fell in taloned embrace, mating in brilliant, sunlit freedom, bodies entwined, heedless of up or down. He filled her with his light and they screamed as one being, one thought, until the wind caught up to them and separated them with its powerful hand.
They flew together, and he rolled under the sun’s pleasure, happy, his wife beside him, sleek and beautiful. She screeched again, a thought that was not for him, and she wheeled toward the south. He flew to catch her, to keep pace with her flight, but could not. He called after her: Stay! Don’t leave me.
Her winged form dwindled, an undulating curve that disappeared in the atmospheric haze, taking with it his desires for lodge and family, leaving behind his aching breast and a growing desolation.
He cried out one final time, and let rest his pinion arms, giving himself up to the earth’s inexorable pull. Bereft of his lifemate, he would return his body to the earth and send his spirit to the stars. But as he fell, his body changed, and though he let his arms droop, still he flew, lower and lower, until he was skimming above the prairie’s pelt. His despair turned to fear as his arms and legs became pendant sticks armed with hooks. His breathing chest became rigid with blue armor. His view of the world was not downward but all-encompassing, and he could see at one time both the brown water flowing through a tawny land, and the double-pair of glassy wings that sprouted from his back.
He had become one of the little-whirlwinds, a blue dragonfly born of blue waters, quick, and hard to kill. He stopped above a meandering river, hovering, breathing without breath, feeling his body buzz beneath shivering wings. To the north were the sacred mountains, the teaching places of his people, but he did not want to go there. There was nothing for him there. To the south, there was the memory of what was and what might have been, and as his fear faded, he knew that neither did he want to go searching for ruined pasts or lost futures.
He pivoted eastward and shot forward. The flat land became hilly as he left the plains and approached the borderlands. His fear melted away, replaced with a vibrating rage. He heard the sound of other wings, and without turning saw others like himself joining him. Blue, green, red, black, and striped yellow, they flew toward the vé’ho’e lands, close to the ground, pulling behind them the vortex winds that gave them their name. The whirlwinds grew, combined, and when they reached the banks of the Big Greasy, they drew destruction in their wake.
The vision flew apart, broken into pieces of light as a hand shook him awake. He blinked. He lay in a deep bed of sweet flag, the air heady with the scent of its crushed leaves. The sun was rising and the blade-tips and flowered spikes were aflame with a light as orange as glowing coals.
It was Whistling Elk who shook him awake. He stayed in a low crouch, his gaze fixed on the distance.
“Bluecoat patrol,” he said.
Storm Arriving rubbed his eyes, still caught between dream and reality. “We must—”
“Quiet,” Whistling Elk said. “We knew what to do.”
Gunfire erupted in a volley and men shouted, screamed. Storm Arriving remembered the eagle of his dream and frowned. A few more shots and the screaming stopped. Whistling Elk looked, was satisfied, and stood. He offered his hand. Storm Arriving took it and rose.
The remnants of his battle group had bedded down along a shallow creek whose waters had been swallowed up by reeds and sweet flag, providing ample cover. Beyond the creek, the tall prairie grasses stretched toward the horizon, a golden hide studded with green outcrops of buckbrush and yellow dabs of mustard flower. Horses ran, riderless, toward the southeast, and eight soldiers walked back toward the creek, their hands full of rifles and supplies taken from the bluecoats who undoubtedly lay dead in the deep grass.
“We should leave,” Whistling Elk said. “The main body won’t be far behind them.”
Storm Arriving tasted bile. “We are reduced to scavenging and raiding,” he said. Along the creekbed, his hundred men prepared to depart, but for where? For what?
�
��It is all we can do with so few against so many,” the man-becoming-woman said. “It is better for the People if we live and fight than die in glory. You taught us that.”
“Yes,” Storm Arriving said, half to himself. “But we do nothing. We achieve nothing this way.”
“Then what?”
Knee Prints by the Bank came over to them. “The messengers are ready to take word to the other battle groups. What are your orders for the day?”
He felt the wind rise, coming in from the west, pushing at his back as he watched the land glow beneath the rising sun. From the south would soon come the column of bluecoats they had been harassing for a moon and more, a lance of men thrust deep into Alliance territory. On horse and on foot they would come, hundreds strong, armed with rifle, pistol, and heavy gun. The two other battle groups followed similar columns, keeping pace, wreaking what havoc they could, but always retreating to spare their own forces. They buzzed around them like yellow-jackets at a cookfire, but onward would the bluecoats came, and soon—very soon—they would find the People. That meeting would mean the end. Of everything.
“Storm Arriving?” Knee Prints by the Bank said. “Your orders for the day?”
The wind pushed again, a spirit hand urging him eastward.
“If we cannot turn the lance, we must turn the hand that wields it,” he said, and his voice seemed far away to his own ears.
Knee Prints by the Bank cleared his throat. “Yes. That is good advice, but hardly the kind of orders that the other groups will understand.”
Storm Arriving brought his focus back to the men who stood by him: Whistling Elk, whose dual nature provided insight into men’s hearts; Knee Prints by the Bank, whose resolve and respectability commanded men’s minds; and the men themselves, each blooded of body and soul, each willing to follow and fight.
“Send out the orders,” he said. “Ride east, and let them see us ride east.”
The Cry of the Wind Page 28