The Deliverance
Page 19
Then Shine leaped gracefully back to them, and tugged at the fabric, and she surrendered to him. Damned Little Person was smart, but as long as he was on her side, maybe she could tolerate him. The monkey chittered and chattered, and then he held it out to her. She discovered buttons. She slid her arms under the fabric and pulled it over her head. Shine bounced and clacked his teeth and made disgusting noises.
She got her dress on and fumbled with the buttons that ran down her bosom. She had scarcely heard of buttons until she had seen them in the settlements.
“You’ll find slippers in several sizes. Find some that fit, and make sure they match. I think you will be the queen of Zanzibar.”
“The what of damned what?”
He laughed. “Madam, trust me. Yes, the queen of Zanzibar. You’re exotic. That will do nicely. Just do this: in company, never speak to me in English. Only in Crow. And tell our friend to use only her own tongue. From now on, you are the queen of Zanzibar, and I am the Margrave Childress, royal governor of Trinidad and Tobago.”
She grunted. This was all a mystery to her.
“The more exotic, the better. We will be whatever my imagination requires.”
She was pawing the slippers, trying to sort them out, with little success. But off to the east, the sky over the black mountains had lightened, and soon there would be a moon. Maybe she should wait.
“What is this carriage? How did you get this?”
“By nefarious means, fraud and deceit, foul conduct, and criminal sleight of hand. Shine was my accomplice.”
Big medicine. The fat man had powers she could barely grasp. She didn’t know the half of what he was yammering about.
“This carriage, madam, assures our complete success. I am the queen’s royal viceroy of British Guiana, and you are my ladies, and we are touring, looking for an estate.”
“I thought you were the margrave, or something.”
“Details, details. Trust me.”
They sat quietly in the calash while the sky lightened, and finally the white moon rimmed the skyline of distant black peaks. She stared at him, amazed. Childress wore a black suit and silk top hat, a snowy shirt and red cravat, all of it encasing his enormous bulk, and even had shiny black boots on his feet.
“Where’d you get that stuff?”
“I defrauded a tailor, my dear.”
“Where did you get our stuff?”
“A seamstress defrauded me, cleaned me out of all my loot. I should say that Shine was the generous provider of the means. I did not inquire too closely where he obtained his lucre. Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
She might have laughed, had not her fear for Skye clawed so hard at her.
“What does all this stuff do for us?”
“My dear, we were vagabonds, and now we are people of great rank, and there will be much fawning and bowing and scraping wherever we go. Also, it’s very important never to pay for anything. That is expected. When we’re hungry, we’ll demand food and that will be that. They’ll bring it. Royalty never pays.
“Also, you’re safe. The two Indian women indentured into perpetual servitude have vanished. Practice looking haughty.”
She didn’t quite fathom all this, but neither did it matter.
“Now, my ladies, if you are ready, I shall turn around and we shall have a little examination of our wardrobe. By all means, step out and straighten up.”
She nudged Standing Alone, and they stepped down from the carriage. Childress stepped majestically to earth, and toured around them in the soft white light of a gibbous moon.
“Ah, yes, a little large, a little long, but we’ll have your dresses hemmed in Santa Fe. Tell our Cheyenne friend she has mismatched slippers.
Standing Alone corrected her mistake.
“Yes, yes, you’ll do. Queen of Zanzibar, and I’ll think of something for her. Mesopotamian royalty, Pharaoh’s bastard daughter. But now, the hats, don’t forget the hats.”
She discovered a broad-brimmed one and pulled it on, and Standing Alone imitated her.
“Yes, yes, quite excellent. Very exotic. Watershot silk dresses and hats with silk flowers on them. I think I shall call her the queen of Sheba.”
“What’s a queen?”
“A woman chief, or a chief’s wife.”
“Ah! I’m a chief!” Victoria swept around in a circle, commanding the moon and stars to obey her.
“Well, mesdames, let’s go find Skye and rescue him. In that compartment under the seat is all sorts of gear, including clothing for him, sandals, a brace of revolvers, blankets, some beans and a cookpot, a few knives and other fangs, and whatever else I could commandeer from Larrimer. Step in, now.”
She stepped in, amazed by the fat man.
thirty-five
Skye stared up into concerned faces. The soldiers peered down at him, but so did a slender woman who knelt beside him, studying him with tenderness.
He hurt. No part of him escaped. But his bowels especially tormented him, always on the brink of convulsion, and he was always teetering into nausea. He didn’t want to be moved. He closed his eyes because it hurt to look anywhere, and the morning light tormented his brain. The woman applied another cold compress, but he was already half frozen, and he couldn’t comprehend it. He tried to paw her compress away, but she held it firmly to his forehead.
The soldiers were debating; he gathered that much, and wished he could grasp their sibilant, staccato language. He knew what it was all about: to stay here and wait for him to get better, or to load him in that stinking carreta and keep on going. In the midst of all this talk, he heard the old man whose cart had been commandeered, and it was not hard to guess what he had to say about it.
“Agua,” he said, and moments later, the woman pressed an earthen cup to his lips. He sipped, feeling the chill liquid slide into him, and the water convulse his stomach once again.
He had been sicker than this before, but never so nauseous, or so filthy from lying among pigs. The Mexicans continued their debate, until at last the voice of the corporal silenced them all: soon enough he would know what the soldier had decided.
The woman continued her ministrations, so Skye opened his eyes to look at her. She was young and pretty and strong.
“Gracias,” he whispered. At least he knew the word for gratitude.
She nodded.
He heard the squeak of the carreta, a sound that had been the counterpoint to much of yesterday’s travel, and he knew that they would be leaving soon. Sure enough, in a bit they helped him to his feet, and he stepped gingerly over the clay floor of this little jacal and out into the morning sun.
It was a fresh sweet dawn, and he would have enjoyed it but for his wasted and wounded body. Every step hurt, but he made his way to the carreta, where the proprietor of the cart, burros, and the little hogs awaited him. He crawled in, assisted by the soldiers, and discovered clean bedding there. The hogs were next; carried squealing one by one into the carreta, and then the stakes were driven into the holes in the bed, and Skye was off to the meat markets of Santa Fe once again. The dispossessed family watched cheerfully as the cart creaked and squawked its way down the clay pathway. Skye closed his eyes, determined to save his strength and ward off as much pain as he could.
The pigs jostled him, and he realized they were rooting at him with their bristly snouts, snorting softly. Maybe they considered him edible. He pushed them back, but they were curious about him, this third party en route to their executions. They seemed naked as babies.
He had never been on intimate terms with hogs before, so he watched them even as they watched him, and the carreta creaked its way south. They were all watching each other, the soldiers watching him, the weathered old peon watching his pigs, the burros, the swaying cart, and the soldiers, and the corporal riding behind them keeping an eye on them all.
They squeaked and chattered through little settlements, and on each occasion the Mexicans swarmed around the cart, examining Skye and the pigs, wh
ispering and smiling. Skye didn’t need to know the tongue to know the nature of the jokes. Swine and foreigners, they were all the same to these grinning people. They even weighed about the same, were the same color, and yielded about the same amount of meat, he supposed.
Mostly he closed his eyes because light pained his head, and he ignored this rural Mexican world, except when the pigs jostled him by rooting around in the straw, or in one case, urinating. A goodly part of the day passed, and the more he traveled on his dubious bed of straw, the more the cart hammered his aching body. His fever did not go away.
Thus the day passed well into the afternoon, and then he was aware of a commotion behind him. When he struggled to his elbows to see beyond the mounted corporal, he spotted a fancy ebony carriage pulled by two sleek black trotters. Not even the light skim of dust over this rig dulled its magnificence. A bulky man in a black suit and silk top hat drove smartly, and behind were a pair of women got up in high fashion, with wide-brimmed hats shading their Mexican faces.
He settled back into the straw. There would be more jokes at his expense, but he was too tired to cope with them, too sick to care.
There was an exchange in Spanish between the corporal and the driver of the fancy rig, and some laughter. He heard the word “Inglaterra,” and the corporal said “Tejas,” while gesturing toward his prisoner. Texas. England. Were they talking about him? The privates marching beside, their lances over their shoulders, were enjoying the exchange, and glancing covertly at Skye. The two hogs turned and studied this new intrusion upon their lives with alarm.
He closed his eyes and focused on gaining strength. If he was to survive, he would need to make a good case in Santa Fe, plead the truth and do it so eloquently that the cynical governor might free him. It wouldn’t be easy: that miserable Childress had betrayed him so thoroughly he might not have any sort of chance.
The two-rut road wound out of a defile, passed yet another cemetery, and the country broadened into a tawny benchland above the twisting river, marked by dots of green juniper.
Here the road widened too, and the impatient driver of the black carriage eased to his right and began to pass the entourage. Skye struggled up to get a look, and discovered an apparition: driving this elegant rig was Childress, got up in a black suit, silk top hat, white shirt, and cravat, and sitting in the rear seat like royal princesses were his wife Victoria and his friend Standing Alone.
No! Impossible! Delusion! He fumbled into the straw, dumbfounded, and then struggled up again, disbelieving: he was sick, this was simply delusion and mirage, a trick of light. Victoria didn’t look like herself; Standing Alone looked even less like herself; the fat man might have been Childress, but wasn’t, and all this plainly was a cruel hoax of fate. It had to be a hoax; the women didn’t so much as blink an eye, but stared blandly right through him. But yes, there was the monkey, Shine, sitting right beside Childress.
“Look at that hog going to market,” Childress said in English, and a voice Skye knew well.
Skye rose and stared at him so darkly that Childress coughed, his hand politely to his lips.
“At your service, Sah. Her majesty’s lord viceroy of the Lesser Antilles,” he said, and the queens of Zanzibar and Sheba, en route to the capital.”
The corporal eyed him suspiciously, unable to grasp English, so Childress enlightened him in Spanish: Zanzibar, Sheba, Antilles.
“Ah!” exclaimed the corporal, impressed by these people of vast importance.
The carriage had pulled alongside now, and Skye stared at the women, his own wife in some outlandish costume that made her look like some Hottentot. She nodded slightly; an eyebrow arched.
“Sick,” he said softly. He lifted his bloodstained feet.
She made no sign.
“Love you,” he said desolately, something thick and painful filling his chest. Were the women prisoners of that betrayer Childress? Was the Texan relishing every moment of this encounter? Somehow, Skye thought not: this was a rescue effort. “Thank you, whatever you are doing,” he muttered.
She pointed at the carriage floor with her toe, and he saw something blue-black lying there; a weapon. And wrapped parcels of provisions. How had this happened? Who had helped them? Had they really come to help him? Where did this rig and equipment come from? How was it paid for? Who was Childress now pretending to be? What would happen?
Dizzily, he sunk back to the straw.
“Which of the hogs will yield the most meat?” Childress asked. “I say, the one in the center, eh? He’ll look good, hanging from a meat hook.” He translated his witticism into Spanish for the entertainment of the soldiers. They laughed, but looked uneasy.
“Were going to pay a little visit to Governor Armijo,” Childress said, cheerfully. To the Mexicans he said, “Santa Fe, el gobernador.”
They nodded.
“You should fetch a fine price at the butcher, my good man,” he said. “Good flesh, but caved in a little.”
Skye felt black rage permeate him, and gathered his strength. Any more of that and he would rise, tear apart those stakes, and land on Childress before anyone could stop him. But he knew better.
Tears had gathered in Victoria’s eyes, which she artfully brushed away under the deep shade of her hat.
“Tallyho, old boy,” Childress said, and smacked the lines over the croups of his trotters. The black horses lurched forward, and the carriage swiftly passed the groaning carreta.
The old peon cursed softly. He didn’t like rich foreigners, Skye gathered.
Santa Fe. Visiting Governor Armijo. What did that mean? He wrestled with it until he was dizzy. He wrestled with the whole idea that Childress was trying to help him, believing and disbelieving, unable to put it all together. But in the end, he thought that Childress probably was doing just that. Somehow, he had found the women and sprung them from Padre Martinez’s grip, and that in itself was a feat. Where had they been hidden and how did Childress find them?
Skye lay back in the straw, his mind awhirl, barely noticing the foulness of the urine-soaked bedding. What did it all mean? He had no answers. Who was Childress? He had called himself most everything, and none of it was true. The man was an enigma; his purposes a mystery.
The swaying cart, pounding on its rough wheels, slowly lulled him into a nap, and so the day passed. By dusk, he was thirsty and still sick, but he had hope, and he knew that something was afoot.
thirty-six
The man called Childress was not a bit impressed.
Santa Fe looked to be nothing but a gaggle of one-story adobe buildings that would wash away in the first deluge. If this was a capital of a province, what did the rest of Mexico look like? He saw no brick in the streets, or good carpentry, or any sign that these people had mastered the civilized arts and crafts.
The city was perched on an arid slope and watered by a poor excuse for a creek that was largely unbridged, sawing the town in two. At least the view east and north, into the pine-covered reaches of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, was grand.
There was scarcely a pane of glass in the city, and people employed rudely fashioned wooden shutters to keep out the cold or let in some light. The clay streets were scarcely wide enough to allow the passage of a vehicle, and his progress through the northern reaches of the little town scattered old women in black, barefoot trabajadores, children, and women carrying impossible loads of food or merchandise on their slim backs. Such animals of conveyance as he could see were largely burros, plus a few mules, but horses were scarce.
On the tawdry plaza, ankle-deep in dung, some Yank ox-teams stood restlessly in their yokes while the scruffy frontiersmen gawked at pretty Mexican girls and guarded their trail-worn wagons. The girls tossed them bright smiles and swaying hips and shy glances. Some of the Mexicans wore capacious straw hats against the bright glare of the day, and most wore simple sandals of leather, and not a few carried a folded serape over their shoulders, and so were equipped for an instant siesta, Childress supposed.
He drove his carriage round and about, exciting glances among the warm-fleshed and cheerful crowds, who studied these foreigners closely, their gazes falling upon him in his black suit and top hat, and his two dusky passengers, who managed to absorb these wonders of Mexican civilization without so much as a gesture or exclamation. They played their part well, and the effect of their haughty silence was to make them look blasé and a little bored, which was perfect.
He finally returned to the plaza, having gotten himself lost in the warren of little callejas north and east of the public square, and here he stopped next to a scraggle-toothed Yank teamster who sported a beard that reached his waist.
“Childress here, my good man. Tell me, where is the governor’s residence and seat of government?”
The teamster looked amused. He jerked a dirty thumb in the direction of a low building that embraced one entire side of the plaza, a building with a shaded gallery in front of it, and loafers parked in the shade. It looked no more like a seat of government than a country church looked like St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“That’s the palace.”
“That? That warehouse? Thank you, Sah,” he said, and wheeled his calash around the plaza once again to maneuver it into a suitable place to park. There seemed to be no order at all; one put his rig wherever one could, and if that bottled traffic, so much worse for the victims.
“All right, ladies,” he said, having commandeered a spot.
“Step lively. Now remember, let me talk; you look royal.”
“Crap,” said Victoria.
He handed them down to the grimy gumbo of the plaza, and they hunted for a door to this horizontal mud palacio, and since there were several it would be a matter of luck.
They entered, found themselves within a barracks room, withdrew, and headed to the next orifice, which admitted them to an antechamber of some sort, as plain as everything else in this disturbing city. But at least an orange and green flag of the Republic of Mexico stood at an inner door, and Childress supposed that might herald something.