by Carla Kelly
A careful search of the room revealed nothing else, so she let herself into the hall again and traveled the length of it to the kitchen, holding her breath, then breathing into the pillow.
In the kitchen the dried blood had stained and seasoned the food yanked from pantry shelves and strewn around. She picked her way among the bodies to the dry sink, found a wooden bowl only partly broken, and added it to her pile.
She forced herself to stay in the kitchen of death, watching out the window for an unendurable time until she was sure there was no one outside. She let herself out the door and set down her booty, spreading out the torn sheet. The Indians had ridden their dead masters’ horses through the kitchen garden, but she managed to harvest two handfuls of crumpled beans and several tomatoes. She ate one on the spot, the juice dribbling down her chin.
By now the sun was high overhead. As she sat cross-legged in the garden, she saw movement on the north road. Quickly she gathered up the small handful of food into the sheet and crawled toward the kitchen, pushing her bundle in front of her. Inside the kitchen, as she inched along the floor, her eyes were drawn to the feet of the corpses. She paused and sat up, looking more closely at the bodies.
Two of them were small girls. Swallowing several times, Maria gently pulled of their shoes, putting them on top of her sheet-covered pile. Luz and Catarina had been barefoot ever since she’d yanked them out of their beds at Las Invernadas.
She got to her feet and moved hurriedly out of the kitchen and down the hall again, forcing herself to look carefully at the bodies. She saw no clothing that was not torn or bloody, so she entered the patio and climbed back in the chapel window.
Diego sat there, waiting for her. “I told you not to leave the chapel, Maria,” he said, his voice low and angry.
She said nothing.
“Don’t you ever listen to anyone?” he asked, passing a hand across his eyes.
In answer Maria opened the bundle and extracted the wooden bowl. She climbed out the window again, filled the bowl from the tiled fountain, and carefully returned through the window again. “Here, drink this,” she said, holding it out to Diego.
He did as she ordered, then leaned his head back against the bench, still exhausted. She got more water and set the lopsided bowl on the earthen floor.
“I found a needle and thread, Diego mio,” she said as he watched her out of half-closed eyes. “I am going to sew up your arm.”
He went visibly paler under his growth of beard, then sighed and held out his arm, resting it on the bench. “I suppose you are,” he said. “Well, lead on, capitana.”
She knelt close to him and began to undo the knot on the soaked bandage. “Let me have your dagger,” she said. He handed it to her and she cut through the knot.
“Gently,” he whispered, “gently.”
She unwrapped the bandage and gazed at the jagged cut. “I must clean this again,” she said, dipping a square of the bed sheet in the water. She swabbed his arm until all traces of the gypsum were gone, taking several trips to the patio for more water. When she was through, she pulled out the needle and thread, cut off a suitable length, and knotted one end. She looked at Diego and swallowed.
“I know, I know,” he said, “you are going to tell me that this will hurt you more than me. Chiquita, I do not believe you.”
She sighed. “I suppose you’re right. Now hold still.”
Taking several deep breaths, she began to sew up the wound, pausing after every stitch until Diego could control the tremors in his arm. She knew she was as white as he was, but she had to go on. She had to stop the bleeding. Several times he raised his other arm involuntarily to stop her, and she held his hand to her breast, squeezing his fingers with all her strength. Even in the coolness of the chapel, Diego was drenched with sweat. As she worked, sewing and wiping, she felt the sweat dripping down her back, too.
When she finished and bit off the thread, she sat with her head between her knees until the room stopped spinning. Then she fashioned a pad from the cleanest part of the sheet and made Diego hold it tight against his arm while she bound it with the long remaining strip of material, winding it around and around until his arm was covered from shoulder to elbow.
When she was through, Maria leaned back against the bench next to Diego and they sat together, staring at the crucifix that still hung behind the altar. The Cristo has been torn off, but still dangled at the foot of the cross. “Now what happens?” she whispered.
“We stay here until dark, then we walk to Santa Fe.”
“Do you think you can?”
“I think I have to,” he replied, sinking lower against the bench. “Lie down with me now.”
She took the feather pillow and put it behind their heads, then turned sideways against him, and he laid his bandaged arm across her hip.
“Tell me a story, Maria,” he said, his lips against her ear.
He was warm, but it wasn’t the warmth of fever now. She huddled closer to him, relishing the comfort of his body. Her chemise was thin and she had been cold for so long.
“What story do you want to hear?” she asked as he kissed her ear.
“I like the story about the poor girl who marries the prince,” he said, as he kissed her again.
“Who told you that one?”
“Catarina, I think. Maria ... Maria?”
She was asleep.
Maria woke hours later. Diego’s hand was covering her mouth. “Don’t say anything,” he whispered.
She opened her eyes and he took his hand away, grasping the dagger that was lying by her head.
“Indians,” he whispered, “in the hacienda. They speak Tano, so they must be from Taos. Pray to God they will leave when they see there is nothing here.”
“The girls?”
“Still sleeping.”
She drew closer to Diego, feeling the rapid beating of his heart against her. “It isn’t fair, you know,” she whispered.
“What do you mean, querida? "
“I wanted to grow old with you. Would that not have been a fine thing?”
Diego was silent. He kissed her ear and sighed. They listened to the footsteps in the hall. No one entered the patio. There was deep silence, then much gagging and retching. After that, the footsteps hurried back to the kitchen again, and the hacienda was deathly silent once more.
After a long period of waiting, Diego sat up. He touched Maria’s face with his fingertips. “We may grow old yet, querida mia. Do you think you could love an old man?”
“I would like to have the chance.”
They sat together until the girls woke up. Maria took them to the patio where they washed their hands and faces in the remaining puddle of water. Back in the chapel she unplaited their braids and with her fingers, combed through their hair until it met her satisfaction, then rebraided their hair.
“There, you look better. Come see what I have for you.” She handed them the slippers from the dead girls. Luz’s fit snugly, but Catarina’s were too large.
“Erlinda would say that I will grow,” said Catarina, tugging at the rawhide thongs and tying them twice around her ankles. “I can keep them on.”
In the deepening shadows of approaching evening, they ate the other loaves of bread and the few beans and tomatoes.
The four of them sat close to each other until night fell on the hacienda. When the shadows were dark across the chapel, Diego got to his feet. He leaned against the bench for a brief moment, then straightened and reached for the bow and arrows that leaned against the wall. He slung the bow across his shoulder and handed the quiver of arrows to Maria. She gave him the dagger.
Diego turned to Catarina. “I do not think I can carry you this time, sister. Hang onto my belt and follow me. Maria, can you carry Luz?”
She picked up the child, who clung to her and put her face into Maria’s neck again. Maria kissed her. They followed Diego and Catarina into the silent hall, picking their way through the bodies and debris. Catarina sobbed out
loud, but she did not let go of her brother.
They hurried through the kitchen and out into the clean air. Diego wiped Catarina’s face and held her close for a moment.
“Was it like that ... at home?” she asked.
“It was. But we are still alive, Catarina. Mama wanted it that way, and we must fight to stay alive for her.”
They left the shelter of the hacienda’s walls and crossed the cornfield. “And now we will go to Santa Fe, my sisters,” Diego said, holding tight to Catarina’s hand.
Luz clapped her hands. “And will we stay with the Castellanos again?” she asked, dancing as Maria set her down.
Diego glanced at Maria, then back at his sister. “I pray we will, Luz. You pray, too.”
They followed the river to the small stream that branched off toward Santa Fe. The mountains were dark in the moonlight and a small breeze played through the piñons. Maria shivered in the cold. Diego stopped and tried to take off his doublet.
“Here, Maria. I can take this off one side if you can help me with the other.”
She pulled off his doublet and put it on. His homespun shirt was torn and rust-colored now from all the blood he had shed. It was the reddish-brown of the earth around them.
“I felt sure I would get another argument from you,” he said.
“Not this time, mi caballero muy elegante,” she replied. “I am too cold to argue.”
They walked the remaining two leagues to Santa Fe, Maria carrying Luz, Catarina keeping up with her brother. The eastern rim of the elevation encircling Santa Fe was dotted with hundreds of campfires that looked like fireflies winking in a placid summer sky. Beyond the specks of light the sky was a dull glow.
The villa of Santa Fe was on fire.
Chapter 15
Masters of the Earth
“It is as I feared,” Diego said quietly. “Are we the only Spaniards alive in New Mexico?”
Maria’s mouth was so dry she could not speak. The same glow she had seen from the grove of trees after the raid on the caravan now lit the sky, only this time it was greater, and turned the night into early dawn.
“A week ago, I would have said nothing like this could happen,” said Diego, “but now I do not know.”
The glow deepened as they approached town. To avoid the Indians on the hills, they turned west and then south again, skirting the burning village and coming at it from Analco, the old Mexican Indian district that Maria had first seen so many months ago. They walked in the protective shelter of the cottonwoods as long as they could, then struck out across the cultivated fields, through the high corn. The chapel of San Miguel was a flaming ruin. As they came closer, the roof fell in with a roar, spraying sparks into the night sky.
Maria stood still in shocked amazement, letting Luz down to the ground. “Diego, is it all gone? All of it?” She turned her face into his chest and his fingers were heavy on her hair.
The dried blood on his shirt was scratchy against her face. She circled his waist with her arms, unwilling to move another step, more afraid now than she had been during the early-morning rampage at Las Invernadas. There was no belonging here. There was only death.
The four stood close together watching the flames of San Miguel, listening to the crackling of the fire in the church, breathing the smoky smell that had been in their nostrils for days. Suddenly Diego pushed Maria away and stalked some distance from them. He stood with his head cocked to one side, his weight on one leg in a gesture so reminiscent of Cristóbal that Maria turned away.
“Listen!” he commanded.
They listened, hearing at first only the flames that fed on neighboring huts, and the crashing of heavy timbers inside the church. Then she heard it, arquebus fire and the boom of a small cannon. It could only be one of the cannons that adorned the entrance to the governor’s palace as a showpiece in better days.
Diego returned to the little group, leading them into the shelter of the cornfield again and out of the reflected glow of San Miguel. “Maria, we are not alone,” he said, and his voice was full of enormous relief.
He looked toward the eastern elevation that surrounded the burning villa. “It appears that most of the Pueblos are camping north of the city. We have not seen anyone in Analco.”
“Yes?” said Maria, waiting for him to continue. They were sitting in a cornfield, Indians were everywhere, dawn was coming, and they would be discovered when the sun rose, but still she relied on Diego to save them.
“As I see it, Maria, we have two choices.”
She smiled again, feeling a sudden reassurance far out of proportion to their situation.
“We either leave Santa Fe now and strike out for the lower river kingdom around Ysleta, or we stay here and try to get into the governor’s palace, never an easy task, as I recall, even under the best of conditions. But I fear that things are no better in Rio Abajo. Besides, I do not think any of us would get much beyond a league or two. We really have no choice.”
So it was to be the governor’s palace.
“How?” Maria asked.
“I think the situation calls for one bold move. Por Dios, Maria, you had better do as I say this time! Let us get as close as we can to the palace while it is still dark. If the Indians have been at their mischief all night, they will tire with the dawn. You take the dagger, Maria, and put the quiver on my shoulder. Ah, this is well. Girls, be silent as mice, I beg you.”
They followed the cornfield down to the ditch running by the side of the road, feeling the heat from San Miguel on their bodies as they walked, bare and exposed in the light of the flames. As they strode along, Diego reached behind him for an arrow and nocked it to the bowstring. Maria tightened her grip on his dagger.
When they reached the row of burned huts beyond San Miguel, Diego ducked inside the first intact doorway, pulling his sisters after him. Maria followed, stumbling over the charred door frame. Diego crossed swiftly to the gaping window hole facing east and peered out. He stood there, silent and alert, for what seemed an interminable time. Then he turned away from the window, and with a finger to his lips, led the way out of the ruined adobe house. They sidled slowly along the outside wall of the ruin, toward the governor’s palace.
The arquebus fire was louder now, but less frequent, just an occasional accent to the crackle of the fires all around them. For one sickening moment Maria feared that the garrison was being overwhelmed, the riflemen at their posts dying slowly one by one.
In the smoldering street before the plaza, two white-painted Pueblos in loincloths with scalps dangling from their waists stood carelessly at ease, gazing toward the plaza, hands on hips. In a sudden motion, Diego raised his bow to shoulder level, pulled back steadily on the bowstring, and sent an arrow deep into the back of one of them. The other whirled around, but Diego had already fitted another arrow to the bow and let it fly. The arrow penetrated the Pueblo’s throat, the feathered end of the shaft protruding in front.
The girls flattened themselves against the side of a still-burning house while Diego motioned to Maria. “Here! Help me pull them into the shadows! We need their weapons.”
She ran forward and grasped one of the dead bodies under the arms, tugging him toward the house where the girls hid. Luz shrieked in fright. Diego dropped his Indian and slapped her with the back of his hand. Luz drew farther into the shadows, her hand to her face, her eyes wide with shock. Catarina grabbed her little sister around the waist and held her tight.
“See if he has a weapon,” Diego hissed at Maria. She turned the Indian over and pulled a long knife from his scalp string. Her hand brushed against the bloody hair, but she did not hesitate.
“Hand it to me,” Diego ordered. He stuck it in his belt and took out another arrow, wincing as he reached behind his shoulder with his bandaged arm. Maria looked at his arm anxiously, but there was no fresh blood on the bandage.
The arquebus fire dropped off, then stopped. They hastened around the last corner before the plaza and stood gaping at the sight b
efore them.
The east end of the governor’s palace was on fire and the smoke billowed across the plaza, enveloping it in a haze-like fog as if from a riverbank. Hundreds of lndians, stripped and painted for war, stood in the plaza, looking like the damned in one of the lower levels of hell. Diego crossed himself and muttered a Hail Mary, his voice a subdued whisper.
Many of the Indians sat on the ground. Some already slept, leaning against each other. Others were silent, watchful, their eyes on the burning palace, on the men and women inside, beating at the flames with Indian rugs. The multicolored weavings were a spot of brightness in the smoky, stinking haze.
She turned to speak to Diego, to plead with him to abandon the idea and take their chances in the desert, but he hushed her.
“We cannot turn back. It is too late,” he said. “This is what we will do.” He looked into her eyes. His hands were bloody from the dead Indian, and he wiped them on his shirt, still holding her gaze. “Take the girls and walk along the rim of the plaza, keeping in the shadows. I am going the other way. ”
Maria tried to protest. “Be still!” Diego ordered. “Now listen to me for once, my love, and do as I say.” He grabbed her shoulder and shook her. “I will start shouting. When I do, you run straight for the gates. Do you understand?”
Tears streamed down Maria’s face. He shook her again, his voice compelling. “I must have your word, Maria. The sky is light enough. Someone inside will see you. Wave your arms and yell as you approach the gates. Now, will you? Will you?” He shook her again.
“I cannot leave you, Diego.”
He backed away and pulled her hands from his chest. “You have to,” he said. Tears filled his eyes and he brushed them away. “Just remember me, querida. Now go.”
He pushed her away from him and she stumbled back against Luz. Without another look at Diego, she turned, wiped her eyes on her chemise and took each girl by the hand, pulling them along the edge of the smoke-filled plaza.