Days of the Dead

by Barbara Hambly

  “Look, they’re already setting up the frames for the fireworks in the churchyard tomorrow night.” Sancho pointed with his cigar toward the rust-and-golden tilework of the stumpy church tower, visible beyond the willows. “No one, not the tiniest child, will be forgotten.”

  No, thought January as they rode on. He thought of his mother, and his sisters, Olympe and Dominique, in the cemeteries of New Orleans, cleaning the marble and polishing the iron, remembering even the babies who had died. Two of Olympe’s six children, dead before they learned to walk, and the infant that Dominique had birthed during the fever summer. Thought of the graves he wanted to visit: his young friend Artois St. Chinian’s, and that of his old teacher Gomez. Should he die here in Mexico, his name would be remembered, if not by his mother then by his sisters. His mother was so snobbish about being half white that she could only barely be gotten to admit that someone as dark as January was her son in the first place.

  It crossed his mind to wonder what Hannibal felt on the advent of this feast of families—on all those Days of the Dead in New Orleans, when the city was decked with flowers for those who, though gone, were not forgotten.

  Had his own family, of whom he never spoke, forgotten him?

  Dust above the cottonwoods, catching the morning sun like gold.

  “If you’re going to take on the policia,” said Sancho, “it’s better if Cristobál and I hide in those cottonwoods there, so we can cover them with the rifles.”

  “This isn’t a military ambush,” protested January. “I’m going to see if I can make Capitán Ylario see reason about there being another explanation for Don Fernando’s death. I don’t propose to get into a gun-battle over it.”

  “No, of course not,” agreed the footman. “But if we do get into a gun-battle, I should rather do it in those trees, where there is cover.”

  “Besides,” added Rose, tossing a spare bullet-pouch to Sancho, “it’s always easier to make another man see reason if you have him in a cross-fire. Are those cottonwoods in range, Sancho? Wouldn’t you have a better line of fire from those rocks?”

  “Most assuredly, Señora, but the rocks are low, and I cannot fold up my horse like this handkerchief and put him in my pocket.”

  “I’ll hold him.”

  January sighed.

  Moments later, the approaching riders crested the little rise: Ylario, three uniformed constables, and a disheveled Hannibal, his wrists lashed to the saddle-horn and the Capitán himself holding the reins of his horse. January set his own mount sideways across the road at the little hill’s crest, with Rose stringing out the spare mounts to block the way around him. Ylario and his men drew rein; January held up his hands to show them empty.

  “I wish only to talk, Capitán.”

  “Then ride with us back to the city and talk on the way.” Ylario’s face was dusty and grim, and like January, he still wore the neat black coat, pale pantaloons, and immaculately tied linen cravat he’d had on the previous night.

  Like January, he was covered with grime, rumpled, considerably worse for wear, and probably extremely cross.

  “Those scoundrels de Castellón pays to run his cattle for him will be after us—and myself, I have had enough ‘talk’ from Don Anastasio.”

  He urged his horse forward, but January didn’t budge. When they were almost knee to knee, Ylario stopped.

  “I ask only that my friend should have justice,” said January. “You have no proof—none—that Fernando de Castellón did not die of some other cause.”

  “That will be for the judge to decide.” Ylario stared up at January, his eyes bitter with years of frustration and disillusionment. “He’s waiting for us in his rooms even as we speak.”

  “Non vultus instantis tyranni,” said Hannibal quietly, “mente quatit solida.” Under the layer of filth his eyebrows stood out blackly against chalky exhaustion; he did not look as if he’d slept in nights. One of the constables struck him across the shoulder with his quirt; Ylario snapped, “None of that. The man is a murderer but not a dog.” He turned back to January. “If you’re so certain of your friend’s innocence, ride back with me and speak to the judge. Tell him your evidence, as I shall tell him mine. Myself, I am not interested in your opinion. I ask only that the laws men died for in this country be upheld, and that punishment be meted out to all criminals equally, and not merely to those who have not curried the favor of a dictator’s friends.”

  “You have no proof. . . .”

  “What more proof do you think I need?” The Capitán’s mouth twisted, and he tried to rein around January, who moved again into his path. “You Nortes seem to regard my country’s laws as if they were the rules of a children’s game and not binding upon you, the adults. But I tell you, protector or no protector, Norte or not . . .”

  “And I’m not,” sighed Hannibal, as if he’d given up on convincing anyone otherwise.

  “. . . he will hang for his crime, and I will see it done.” Ylario reached to the holster on the front of his saddle. “Now, get—”

  Before his hand could touch the pistol, a shot cracked, as loud as a cannon in the thin, clear air. One of the constables threw up his arms with a cry and at the same time from the rocks beside the road Sancho yelled, “Señores, look out!” January saw gunflash from the rocks as riders thundered up from the gully a dozen yards away, ragged men on starved-looking horses, led by the red-clothed black figure he recognized instantly from the mountains above the Vera Cruz road.

  “El Moro!” shouted Ylario’s sergeant quite unnecessarily, and January’s horse squealed and leaped as a stray bullet stung its flank. As the constables scrambled for their rifles to return the bandits’ fire, Rose spurred her horse into their midst, caught the lead-rein of Hannibal’s mount out of Ylario’s hand, and galloped away along the rim of the gully toward the more settled lands of the now-distant village of Saragosse. January plunged after them, glancing back in time to see one pursuing bandit shot off his horse by Cristobál. He’d left the spare mounts, and they mingled with the remounts led by Ylario’s men, kicking, screaming, and plunging in all directions as the bandits fired again.

  At the first possible break in the gully’s lip, Rose urged her mount down into the thick of the cottonwoods and paloverde that grew along the stream, the two men following her into the concealment of that windless shimmering green-and-gold world. “The spare horses should keep them busy.” Rose drew rein and sprang down; January was already pulling his knife from his belt to cut the rawhide strips that bound Hannibal’s wrists. “Are you all right?”

  “Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam. I will be as soon as I get some feeling back into my hands.” The fiddler dropped from the saddle and stumbled to the edge of the stream, where he knelt, flexing his hands cautiously in the trickling water. “Though I am rather tired of being cursed as a Norteamericano when in fact I’m a subject of King William’s—not one of his favorites, to be sure, but then, I daresay Mr. Jackson wouldn’t have much use for me either.”

  He bent, and shoving back his hat dashed handfuls of the bitter-cold water on his face. “You have no concept how exquisite it is simply not to be under the domination of a madman. No wonder Valla’s duenna drinks. If I didn’t drink already, it would certainly drive me to it. And speaking of drink . . .” He hunted through his pockets for his square black bottle of laudanum and sherry. His hands, wet from the stream, were shaking badly. “Did you get my letter?”

  “Last night. Consuela didn’t return home until late. . . .”

  “I might have expected it. Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti, in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua. . . .”

  “I think she was at a party celebrating the entrance of Don Rafael’s sister into a nunnery.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. . . .”

  “I think you’ve been listening to Don Prospero on the subject of Helen of Troy entirely too long,” said Rose severely.

  “A sin
gle evening,” sighed Hannibal, “of Don Prospero on the subject of Helen of Troy . . . Well, nevertheless. I did try to escape when the vaqueros were at supper, only they weren’t, not all of them. I was laughingly escorted back to one of the store-rooms and locked in. Vasco seemed to think it a huge joke, and it probably is, for him. Nobody’s going to hang him for Don Fernando’s murder. Barely had rosy-fingered dawn stolen o’er mead and meadow when Ylario and his bravos galloped in and held up the lot of them at gunpoint. If I get out of this country alive, I shall spend the remainder of my declining years in a condition of bemused astonishment. Did you speak to Sir Henry?”

  For answer, January held up the letter of introduction. “And to Don Prospero’s long-suffering man of business, and to the equally long-suffering Señora Lorcha, and, more to the point, to Werther Bremer—after he turned a wild bull loose on me in the mistaken belief that I was El Moro, who apparently assaulted him on his way back from Mictlán.”

  “And I spent a vastly entertaining afternoon at the Convent of the Bleeding Heart of Mary—I truly did—” Rose said, “and Benjamin has a theory about how Fernando might have been poisoned even though he ate the same supper as everyone else.”

  While January slipped the heavy Spanish bits from the horses’ mouths and poured oats from one of the saddlebags onto a stream-side rock for the tired beasts to eat, he explained about poor little Madame Valory in Paris and her children who could not eat whelks. “It’s conceivable that Fernando could have lived till the age of twenty-five without his sensitivity becoming active because he lived fifteen of those years in Europe,” he said. “I’m guessing whatever he was sensitive to is a New World food, and one that isn’t eaten even now in Europe, at least not by the upper classes. Potatoes don’t count, everyone in France and Ireland eats them now.”

  “It has to be one that isn’t eaten by the upper classes here either.” Hannibal leaned his back against a deadfall cottonwood. “Certainly not in Don Prospero’s household. Could it be what killed his mother?”

  “Having been raised in Spain,” said Rose thoughtfully, “Doña Maria-Exaltación might not have known she had a sensitivity to whatever it is, either—if it was even the same thing. At the convent they said she was always sickly in the same way Fernando and apparently Isabella are. But at the Convent of the Bleeding Heart she wouldn’t have eaten anything other than dry bread and water, which would be enough to make me marry even a lunatic if it would get me out of there. Hannibal, did you see anything resembling a will on Don Prospero’s desk when you went back to search for Valentina’s letters? Capitán Ylario has them now, by the way.”

  “I wondered what had happened to them. No, no will, but I wasn’t looking for one. The Declaration of Independence could have been lying on the desk and I wouldn’t have noticed it, Argand lamps notwithstanding. I guessed I wouldn’t have much time to search. Now that I think of it, the papers were much disordered, much more so than when Fernando had been at them for two days.”

  He frowned. “There seem to be rather a lot of people searching that study. If Prospero mentioned the will to anyone—which he certainly didn’t to me . . .”

  “Well, you inherit a hundred thousand pesos and a sugar plantation in Vera Cruz,” said Rose. “Which isn’t going to do you any good if Ylario sees it.”

  “Thank you for modulating my transports of joy before they endangered my health. I wonder if he actually meant to sign the will. It sounds like exactly the sort of thing he’d do to get a rise out of Fernando. Thank you,” he added as January handed him a couple of tortillas from the other saddlebag, along with slices of white cheese from the small block that Rose had packed. “We will eat our mullets / soused in high-country wines, sup pheasants’ eggs / and have our cockles boiled in silver shells. One of the things I most love about you, amicus meus, is that you never forget the essentials of life.”

  After eating, January changed his much-scuffed evening clothes for the rough trousers, shirt, and boots Rose had lashed on behind his saddle, and the three friends moved on, seeking a break in the gully wall that they could follow up to return to the city. Throughout their rest he had been straining his ears, not only for the sounds of pursuit but for any sign of Sancho and Cristobál. January hoped the Yaqui had been able to track them. If not, better perhaps that both returned to the city.

  It was past noon now. Their spare horses gone, it would be well after nightfall before they returned—and then there remained the problem of how to get Hannibal safely to the coast.

  “We’ve ruled out Don Prospero as a culprit,” said Rose as they moved on foot through the dense rustling heat within the gully. “Though that business with the rabbit’s heart still makes me very uneasy.”

  “Makes you uneasy?” Hannibal’s eyebrows laddered a series of parallel wrinkles all up his forehead. “You try playing picquet with him until four in the morning, with every other blessed soul in the casco asleep, and those obsidian sacrificial knives grinning at you from the shelves. I asked Vasco about the rabbit, by the way—about whether Don Prospero had ever done something of the kind before—and he only shrugged.”

  His boots slipped in a puddle, and he caught himself on his horse’s bridle and added, “Do bravely, horse, for wot’st though whom thou mov’st? The servants seem to think he’s always been this crazy. It isn’t as though he hasn’t plenty of company in the British aristocracy. I had an uncle who used to dance and sing in unknown languages—he claimed they were Hittite and Japanese, of which he was not a student—all around the upstairs gallery of the hall, and all the family ever did with him was keep a padlock and chain handy for when there was company for dinner. He was quite reasonable otherwise, and would help the servants polish the silver.”

  “Rabbit or no rabbit,” Rose said, “Don Prospero seems to have had little trouble keeping the family fortune intact during eighteen years of continuous civil warfare, which is more than can be said of most of his neighbors. Do you think Don Anastasio has returned to Saragosse, by the way, now that poor little Pilar is safely entombed in her convent? He might be prevailed upon to give us fresh horses—possibly even to keep Hannibal hidden until we can make arrangements to leave for Vera Cruz. As a botanist, he might even have some idea of what could have found its way into the food to kill Fernando.”

  “It might be worth scouting to see,” agreed January, pausing to scan the bank above them again. “Once we get out of this gully, that is.

  “‘Non vi dispiaccia, se vi lece, dirci,

  s’a la man destra giace alcuna foce

  onde non amendue posseamo uscirci,

  sanza costrigner de li angeli neri

  che vegnan d’esto fondo a dipartirci,’

  as Dante overheard Virgil say under similar circumstances.”

  “You’d think after months as Don Prospero’s house-guest I’d know how to get back to the city,” sighed Hannibal. “But this is the farthest I’ve gotten from the hacienda. I’m not even sure we’re off his land yet.”

  The thick yellow heat seemed to congeal in the gully with tormenting clouds of gnats before they found a watercourse that cut the bank, barely wide enough for a horse to ascend and almost too steep to climb. Now and then January would hear the dry clatter of rattlesnakes—long experience in the bayous of Louisiana had caused him to cut a snake-stick, and he’d been poking the brush and rocks with it as they’d walked.

  He scrambled up the water-cut to the plain above, looked around cautiously, and saw nothing but tumbled rocks, a few clumps of cottonwoods marking the course of the smaller stream, and three or four grazing steers. Clear and hard, the mountains stood to the east and north. He would be glad, he realized as the wind dried the sweat from his face, to get out of this land and back to the world he knew.

  It took him and Rose nearly a half-hour of shoving, coaxing, and care to bring his horse to the top of the bank; Rose remained on guard at the top while January went down for the others. None of the beasts wanted particularly to climb the bank; January w
as hot, cross, exhausted, and covered with filth by the time he and Hannibal got the third horse to the top.

  There they found that Rose had been joined by Vasco and four of Don Prospero’s vaqueros, standing around, grinning, with guns in their hands.

  “You’re very lucky, Señor Enero.” The handsome vaquero chief shook a reproving finger at January. “It might have been that heathen bandit El Moro and his men who happened along, and not us, when you came out of that gully. What would you have done then, eh?”

  January sighed. “I can’t imagine.” He could guess where they’d been hiding, among the cottonwoods near-by. Of course, all they’d have to do once they tracked the three horses into the gully was to follow it to the next break on the Mexico City side and wait out of sight.

  “Or that Ylario.” The scar-faced Quacho clicked his tongue. “He had already talked with El Moro when we met him, I think; he was on foot, and without his constables or horses. Two of the boys took him back to town.”

  “He must have been so grateful to you,” enthused Rose without a trace of irony in her voice.

  The men all bowed to her, and Vasco kissed her hand. “He was, beautiful Señora. He was pale with it and nearly in tears. Will you and your husband come back with your friend”—he indicated Hannibal, who was already being put on a horse by two of the men—“to Mictlán for supper? We know you are honored friends of the Padrón. Or if you wish, one of us will ride with you back to the city, to keep you safe from El Moro and his men.”

  “We accept Don Prospero’s hospitality with grateful thanks.” January bowed deeply. “And our thanks to you for taking such care.”

  The least he could do, he reflected wryly as he mounted once again, was get an interview with the cook. And perhaps, if he was lucky, join the queue to search Don Prospero’s study before the hacendado himself returned.