Days of the Dead

by Barbara Hambly

  January grunted and gently pulled off Hannibal’s boots. “And here all my life I’ve fought for the right not to be useful to every American slave-owner who comes along.”

  The fiddler’s dark eyes twinkled. “Touché—I admit that I have less to complain of than you, amicus meus. At least I had opportunities to fritter away. And even being the prisoner of a madman awaiting the opinion of a dead one is less daunting than the task of convincing Compair Ylario of the existence of morbid sensitivities. I wonder if something of the kind was what actually slew Achilles?”

  Soft scratching sounded on the door; to Hannibal’s “Enter,” it opened, admitting the footman Bonifacio. “I’m very sorry, Señor,” he said. “But Don Prospero is finished with his supper, and insists that you come out and play for him.”

  The muscles in Hannibal’s jaws tightened hard at the thought of getting up, much less making music for several hours while the men smoked and played cards in the gallery. From the darkness outside, Don Prospero’s voice could be heard, sharp, with a dangerous note, like broken mica in the sun: “Tired? Nonsense! If the man’s tired, it’s his own fault. Now get him out here. I’ve missed his company, and I want to ask him about that rascal Ajax, going mad and murdering sheep on the plains of Troy—all a hoax, I say, a lie put about by Odysseus!”

  “Much as I would love to play duets with you again, amicus meus,” said the fiddler as he reached wearily for his boots, “I should advise you not to remind Don Prospero of how much he’d like you to remain for a few days. Get out of here at daybreak if you can—I’m sure Don Anastasio would put you up at Saragosse. . . .”

  He groped under his pillow for his bottle of laudanum-laced sherry and took a quick sip, wincing at the bitterness beneath the musky sweet. “You could ask Don Anastasio about Doña Isabella’s sickliness, and he may even have some ideas about how to convince Capitán Ylario that just because he hasn’t heard of complicated medical conditions, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

  But January was not destined to benefit from Anastasio’s knowledge. After a stealthy visit to the corrals—where, as he’d suspected he would, he found Sancho and Cristobál bedding down with their saddles for pillows—to make sure their horses would be ready at daybreak, he returned to his room. There he found Rose sitting quietly in the darkness of the unlighted doorway, listening to Hannibal play.

  They went to bed soon after. It had been a very long two days.

  The first cracks of light through the shutter woke him, and the silence. He’d meant to rise early for Mass, but—oddly—heard no bell. On a Sunday one would think Father Ramiro would be more assiduous, not less, in impressing Doña Josefa with his piety.

  Or had the previous sleepless night in the cell, coupled with the long ride, so worn him out that he’d slept through the peal? There was no sign of a breakfast-tray—Guillenormand was evidently still furious with him—and no hot water in the can outside the door. As he washed in leftover cold water, and dressed, January became aware that no sound of servants passing came in from the arcade. No laughter or joking of the vaqueros down in the court.

  Something was wrong.

  He pulled on his boots and riding jacket, and slipped from the room, quietly so as not to waken Rose. As he opened the door he heard the vaqueros in the courtyard, talking rapidly and quietly, clustered together by the empty workrooms.

  A knot of servants crowded around the mouth of the passageway to the kitchen courtyard. Guillenormand would undoubtedly fling pots at him—imported or not—if he entered the kitchen court, but at least he could find out from the vaqueros what was happening. He descended the stair, started across the dusty open quadrangle. . . .

  “MURDERER!”

  January spun and dodged in the same heartbeat that a rifle barked, and a ball tore the ground where he had stood seconds before.

  “ASSASSIN!” screamed Don Prospero’s voice. “BLACKGUARD! SAVAGE! NORTE VILLAIN!”

  The old man on the gallery above the gateway that led to the women’s court wore only his nightshirt and had Vasco and two other vaqueros with him, all armed; Don Prospero seized Vasco’s rifle, and January, alone in the midst of the courtyard and the only possible target, plunged sidelong and ran.

  “TAKE HIM!” the hacendado screamed, and January, realizing that whoever was dead, now was not the time to stand still and ask for information, bolted for the little group of vaqueros leading their horses toward the main gate.

  One of the men fumbled with his pistol; two others ran to intercept January, but January simply smashed one aside with the back side of his fist—it was like hitting a straw dummy—and as the other one seized his arm, elbowed him hard across the face, sending him flying. The third man got his gun up, but by that time January was within arm’s reach of him. He tore the weapon from his grasp, threw himself on the largest of the three horses, and lashed the animal’s flanks with the quirt that hung from the saddlebow.

  “Shut the gate, you imbeciles!”

  But January had a long start on them. He ducked as he passed under the archway, bolted out among the trees and water-carriers and flocks of turkeys around the hacienda gate. He heard shots behind him and knew it would be only moments before pursuit was organized, and lashed the tough cow-pony harder, reined around, and headed for the nearest tree-filled gully. Don Prospero’s shrieks of grief and outrage followed him, hanging like dust in the yellow morning air.

  TWENTY-ONE

  For all it had been the largest of the three available, the cow-pony was a small animal. Under January’s massive weight, it stumbled, and January slowed to a jog. In the green-and-yellow shade of the cottonwoods in the arroyo, he listened but heard no sound of pursuit. He stepped from the saddle, led the mustang swiftly along the round smooth rocks of the dry stream-bed, picking the stoniest ground. North of the hacienda, the land was broken by a maze of gullies, where winter rains washed the eroded soil down toward the shallow lake. January turned down one water-cut, then up another, remembering again Dante and Virgil traversing the narrow canyons of Hell, always listening behind him.

  Always making his way as well as he could around the hacienda north and east, working toward the yellow, brushy heights that rose behind the Spanish walls in a line straight as the haft of a war-club: the pyramids of Mictlán.

  Virgin Mary, he prayed as he walked, get Rose out of there before Don Prospero takes it into his head to hold her hostage for my return.

  And once you’ve dealt with that miracle, he added, could you please somehow let me know what the hell this is all about?

  The Don had sounded awfully certain that whoever was dead, January was responsible.

  Even in the clear morning light, silence immersed the pyramids of Mictlán as if they’d been sealed in glass. January concealed the cow-pony in the deep, overgrown depression of the old ball-court, then warily crossed the broken tangle of bunch-grass and ocotillo to the Pyramid of the Dead. He climbed the eastward face, despite its steepness, to keep the bulk of the hill between himself and Mictlán, and the morning sun blazed dizzyingly strong on his head.

  But when he attained the broken crown and stood among the rubble that the Conquistadores had left of the temple, he could see far off the yellow plumes of dust where pursuit galloped now here, now there across the range.

  No one was coming anywhere near the pyramids.

  Having watched the vaqueros on this spot a week ago, January had been fairly certain that left to themselves, they would not enter the woods that crowded so thickly around the old mounds’ feet. The silence here seemed deeper than in the open cattle-ranges, or in the gullies farther west toward Saragosse. The music of birds seemed to whisper echoes of flutes and horns long consigned to the Inquisition’s fire, of players who lingered here still. The sudden buzz of an insect had a quality here that it had nowhere else, alien and frightening, as if a long-silenced voice were trying to frame forgotten words.

  The gods were here—those gods that, as a Christian, January no longer be
lieved in. They had never left.

  He sank down with his back to the square base of what had been a pillar. In a tangle of mesquite, a worn carving showed hook-nosed warriors holding a victim stretched over the altar—Usually an enemy warrior, he remembered Don Anastasio saying. They were thrifty that way, rather than wasting warriors of their own. Rather like Santa Anna’s recruiters taking pelados from the jails, he supposed.

  A lizard flickered over the stones.

  A rattlesnake buzzed, far off but clear as the tolling of the church-bell in the village.

  Savage, Don Prospero had screamed. Assassin . . . !

  Why was he so sure that the killer was me?

  Even as he framed the question, January threw up his hands in disgust. His voices may have told him so. Tlaloc may have appeared to him and said, By the way, the black Norteamericano is the one who killed . . .

  Killed who?

  Someone whose life meant more to Don Prospero than his son’s, anyway.

  From the pyramid’s top he could see the casco itself in the preternatural clarity of the forenoon light, tiled roofs and the dark-green of dusty cypresses. Yellow and blue tilework gleamed on the façade of the chapel, whose bell clanged small and clear, calling the faithful to a belated Mass. Dust hung heavy around the yellow walls as riders came and went, swift and tiny as fish in clear water. The light flashed on the reed-mottled silver of the lake. In the village streets January could discern where marigold petals had been strewn, blazing pathways to lead the dead home to their families tonight. Another plume of dust marked more riders galloping from the gate.

  Evidently, if Rose and Hannibal had protested that January had been continuously with one or the other of them all night, Don Prospero wasn’t listening.

  I must go back for her. His heart lurched and he wondered how he’d manage it. There was no reason to think the Don would turn his rage against her, of course. . . .

  January remembered the rabbit’s heart, and shivered.

  Good God, he doesn’t think I’M the one who murdered Fernando, does he? Had Guillenormand, in fury . . . or fear? . . . accused him of the crime?

  No. Someone else. Someone who died last night.

  He closed his eyes.

  And for whatever reason, he thinks I’m the killer.

  The air grew burning, and seemed to thin with the rising day. Forms moved about in the village churchyard, arranging baskets, pots, bottles of marigolds on the graves. A framework of bamboo for fireworks, as there would be also at Saragosse. Musicians set up chairs in the shade, and January remembered Compair Lapin, setting out to play the dead up out of the earth with his fiddle, and to make the Devil dance.

  When he was sure no riders were anywhere near, he descended the precipitous slope to the crypt passageway on the eastern side, wondering what kind of concealment the little chamber would offer him in the event of a search. If Don Prospero sent for Ylario, it would take more than the shadows of ancient gods to keep that coldly rational lover of justice away.

  Or would Don Prospero take vengeance on his own? If he—or Don Anastasio—led the pursuit, they’d search the crypt. God knew where January could conceal his horse, although if worse came to worst, he could release it, and steal another from the corrals. The casco was within an hour’s walk of the pyramid’s western slope, with sufficient brush and trees to cover a man afoot. He’d need a place to lie low if he was going to stay until darkness—and the confusion of the feast—gave him the chance to go back for Rose.

  But even in the passageway he smelled the musky pungence of marigolds. Morning sunlight glinted on shapes and colors within that had not been there before.

  January checked his steps, the hair prickling on his nape. Then he moved forward slowly into the dimness of gold and shadows.

  Around the ghastly carving of Mictlantecuhtli, the Death-God, an offrenda had been raised. Garlands of marigolds circled the skeletal neck, and two late-blooming pink roses had been inserted into the hollow sockets of the God’s empty eyes. They were already losing their petals, which lay like waxy tears among the marigolds heaped around his feet. Elaborate designs had been worked on the stone in red and gold flower-petals, mingled with cigars, with pottery cups of pulque, rum, and expensive cognac, with bits of candy creeping with ants. Mixed with these things were bones: rabbit, chicken, sheep. The skulls of cats grinned horribly amid the flowers.

  A green-and-white Meissen tea-service was arranged there: pot, slop-bowl, saucer, cup, water-pot, even the two gold spoons. A pair of white gauntlets embroidered in gold with the crest of the Royal Military College in Potsdam. An officer’s sabre in a red velvet sheath. Half a dozen lead soldiers whose regimental companions January had already seen on the household offrenda in the sala at Mictlán, and a small portrait of Fernando in the crimson uniform of the Tenth Berlin Guards.

  I have found little altars among the pyramids . . . January heard Don Anastasio’s voice whisper in his ear. It is not only food that has fed those returning spirits.

  Did Anastasio guess even then who had raised them?

  Gingerly, January picked his way around the broken altar-stone, the gaping black maw of the holy well, and stood where the doorway’s brightness haloed the offrenda spread upon the steps. The flowers weren’t fresh—they’d been set in cheap clay pots of water, perhaps as much as two days earlier.

  Before Prospero left for Sir Henry’s reception in town, thought January.

  The passage of the sun would soon leave the ruined sanctuary in deeper shadow, and the slits and niches in the walls already gaped like windows into Hell. He dug in his pockets for his tinderbox and retreated to the sunlight outside, where he cut a short sapling for a torch and a longer one for a snake-stick. He’d already seen scorpions darting among the broken stones with their barbed tails curved high.

  Would Don Prospero lead the searchers here? To this secret sanctuary, this hidden offrenda to his dead son?

  Probably not—but he might very well come and look himself.

  January’s first thought had been to see if there was a way to conceal himself down the cenote, but a closer examination of its rim showed only sheer walls. Holding his torch down that black throat, January could see a narrow ledge about ten feet down, and beyond that only shadow. A dropped pebble clinked on stone very quickly, so it was at least dry and not abysmally deep. Still, there was no way to descend that wouldn’t involve a tell-tale rope, and if he were stranded there, it was a near-certainty he’d be left to die of thirst. If the behavior of the vaqueros was any clue, no one but Prospero himself ever came here.

  An examination of the crypt walls proved more promising. The gaps and niches in the stonework were mostly too small to conceal even a man of Hannibal’s slight frame, much less one of January’s height and bulk. But one, cleverly tucked into an angle of the wall, led back to a tiny space within the rear wall of the chamber itself. January could barely squeeze himself through the aperture, but found, when he did, a little hollow in the stonework, some four feet by four feet by seven, the ceiling blackened with ancient soot and the floor paved with cut stone. Straw cushions almost reduced to dust still lay on a low bench built out of the wall that separated this room from the sanctuary, and in the wall were three holes, the lowest of which was rimmed in a fading glim of the light that came through the sanctuary door from outside.

  He was, he realized, behind the image of Mictlantecuhtli himself.

  January felt immediately better. Not a superstitious man, he had nevertheless seemed to feel, all through his examination of the sanctuary chamber, the dead eyes of the Lord of the Place of the Dead fixed on his back. Now he felt as if some monstrous shape of nightmare had pushed up its mask and revealed itself as an actor, hired to play the part. The God of Death was merely an image on the wall—an image, to judge by the remains of the cushions, behind which a priest could kneel to whisper judicious messages to whatever royal officials came to consult the deity. Not so different, he decided, wriggling out through the hidden door
way into the sanctuary again, from the steam-driven mechanisms that mysteriously opened ancient temple doors in Egypt, to awe the worshippers.

  It was good to step out into the sunlight again, to feel the hot, dusty wind on his face. He leaped and slapped at imaginary scorpions on his back only three or four times, when those breezes riffled his shirt. Regaining the top of the pyramid, he could see dust where horsemen searched the rangeland from arroyo to arroyo. But only a single rider approached the pyramids, coming up out of a gully and making a long circuit over the rolling scrublands and clumped agave to the east. January watched for a long time, until the big, thick-bodied black horse was almost among the woods that surrounded the pyramids, although he was fairly certain who that lone vaquero was.

  Kneeling in the temple ruins, he whispered a prayer of thanks.

  He descended the pyramid’s northern slope, cutting back and forth because of its steepness, and then followed the line of heaviest cover around the bases of the pyramids of the Moon and the Rain. By the time he reached the last in the line of artificial hills, the rider had come into open ground at the foot of the Pyramid of the Sun and dismounted.

  Spectacles flashed in the shadow of her hat.

  She, too, had ridden cautiously, certain that she would find him here but not willing to take off the hat that covered her long hair and shaded her face until she was sure she was unobserved. In her right hand she held a red bandanna, an old signal between them that said All is well.