A Masque of Chameleons

by Joan Van Every Frost

  While she waited, she removed Jason's coat and laid it across his chest and shoulder, for the room was bitter cold. The only injury besides bruises she could find was a long deep cut, its edges open like a mouth, that slanted nearly the length of his forearm along the bone. Already there was a pool of blood on the floor where he had held his arm away from the bed. She tore the bloody sleeve from his shirt and bound the wound temporarily. When at last the girl came, she sent her off again for a needle and thread.

  “What do you think you're going to do?” he asked, alarmed.

  “I'm going to sew it up.” she said calmly. “Look out, this is going to hurt.” She poured the cut full of brandy to the accompaniment of a loud hiss from Jason.

  “Jesus,” he gasped. “You don't fool around, do you? How about some brandy for me?”

  When the needle and thread were brought, she doused them in the brandy as well and calmly set about sewing up the wound as if it had been a tear in a dress. He gritted his teeth and the muscles stood out in his arm, but he made no sound. When she had finished, she handed him the bottle. As he drank, she wet a cloth in warm water and sponged off the blood from his arm. Then she tied a brandy-soaked rag around the wound.

  “Do you really think that creature could have been sent by someone to attack us?” She asked as she worked on him.

  He shook his head. “Who’s to know? For what it's worth, I hardly think so. It's not really in Zaragoza’s interest to kill me now. You should never forget that even if there were no conspiracies, life here is cheap and the starving desperate. Mexico has always been a bloody, violent land, dangerous as hell to live in.” He winced as she tied the last knot.

  “You smell like a distillery,” Roberta laughed, “but a doctor I once knew was a great believer in the medicinal qualities of brandy inside and out. His patients seemed to do better than most, so I'm inclined to think he may have been right.”

  He smiled crookedly at her. “Where did you learn to sew up wounds?”

  “The same doctor. When I was twelve, I fell out of a tree and cut my leg.” She pulled up her skirt as far as her knee and showed him a neat long scar that ran down the calf of her leg. “Needless to say,” she remarked dryly, “I never forgot a single step of the process. There are a few things I do know, though not many.”

  “I’m deciding you know more than I ever gave you credit for.”

  “I’ll be back,” she said, leaving the room with the basin and cloths. The bloody water she threw out the window into the dirt yard in back. No one was about, and in the pantry she found a pile of clean rough muslin sheets, a chunk of ham shoulder, and a round of goat cheese.

  “In fact,” he greeted her as she clumsily made her way through the door, “I take back every derogatory remark I ever made about you.”

  “That’s a poor excuse for a blanket,” she remarked as she made up the bed, “but I suppose we can use our cloaks.”

  “We?”

  “You didn’t think I was going to go off and leave you, hurt as you are? If you think it hurts now, wait until later.”

  “Well, uh, I suppose I thought you might take another room.”

  “And have to keep getting up in the cold to come look at you? You must be joking.”

  He grinned. “You never fail to astound me. You’re the one who was so squeamish about watching someone else make love, and now you’re offering to hop right into bed with me.”

  “Why shouldn’t I? We’ll be fully dressed, and besides, you’ve got no base designs on me anyway.”

  “You’re right about that,” he said ruefully. “I don’t think I’d be interested in Cleopatra herself tonight, let alone a Lady Borgia who sews people up like trussing a fowl.”

  Chilled to the bone despite the thin blanket, their cloaks, and their street clothes, they lay uncomfortably on the lumpy straw mattress and tried to sleep. She remembered how her leg had throbbed, and she knew what he must be feeling. She heard him swallow. “Jason? Tell me a story. I’m too cold to sleep.” “What kind of a story would you like?”

  “Tell me about when you were growing up.”

  “When I was growing up? That seems like another century … “ There was a silence, then: “Toby and I had a favorite place we used to go to swim, a natural water hole with trees you could dive from. I can hear him now: 'Jasey!’ he’d yell out. 'Watch me, Jasey! I’m gonna go off this branch like you did.’” There was a silence again.

  “What was he like?” Roberta asked.

  “Toby? Toby was one of those people you know are going to die young. Most of us are made with some kind of flaw like a fault in a rock, but not him. The only times I ever saw him really mad was at cruelty, like the time Bobby Alarcon drove nails through some of those bright green little tree toads.” As he remembered, his very speech was becoming more Texan.

  “When Toby lit into him, I naturally had to wade in too, and he beat both of us to a fare-thee-well. I don’t guess I ever took more of a beating, but he just cuffed Toby around a little as being too small to be worth his while. The only time Toby cried, though, was when he was trying to wash the blood off my face later.”

  “Did you and Toby look alike?”

  Jason laughed. “Not in the slightest. He was as blond as I am dark, hair as light as Gavin’s. He had blue eyes that seemed to look right through you and a smile that would melt ice.”

  Except for the blondness, Roberta thought, he might have been describing himself, but she said nothing.

  “When he grew up,” Jason went on, his voice full of affection, “he was bigger than I am by quite a bit, big as Will. He was gentle, too. There’s something about a big gentle man that’s well nigh irresistible.” His voice grew soft and far away. “I wonder what he’d have been like now? Married and a gaggle of kids no doubt — he loved kids... Jason stopped. “Oh, hell,” he added roughly, “I’m getting drunk, I can tell.”

  It was Roberta’s turn to wonder how Jason might have differed had Toby still been alive. “And you?” she asked. “Would you have been married with a gaggle of kids?”

  He stirred restlessly. “Who’s to know? The ranch was never enough for me. Even if the general hadn’t sent me to England, I’d have left. I’m a wanderer, always have been. I suppose that’s what drew me to acting, a wandering profession if there ever was one.” He hunched up on the bolster, and the light of the lucifer as he lit his cigar left Roberta night-blind except for the glowing end.

  “Why did Alarcón send you to England?”

  “I’ve never been sure. I guess partly because he was fond of me. He had three boys of his own, and a more good-for-nothing lot would be hard to find. All three of them were sent to England to school, too, and none of them lasted more than a term or so. The girls in that family are the only ones worth anything.”

  “How did you come to know the Alarcóns? From what you’ve ever said, your ranch sounds more like a working operation, not a grand hacienda.”

  There was a smile in his voice. “I wanted to be a bullfighter, a torero”

  “A what?” she exclaimed, disbelieving.

  “I was nine years old, and I wanted to be a torero. Among other enterprises, the Texas Alarcon hacienda was known for its fighting bulls. I saw a bullfight in El Paso, and from then on I was crazy to be a matador. It was Alarcón himself who caught me trying to pass his bulls right there in the pasture on a moonlit night. I’d gotten away with it a couple of times before, but this time he was waiting for me.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He laughed and picked me up the way you’d pick up a struggling alley cat. He put me on the saddle in front of him and took me to the hacienda. He was very nice about it and explained why he didn't want the bulls catching on to how easy to kill people really were. My dad didn't bother explaining — he gave me an awful hiding.”

  “How could you justify fighting against the general in the Texas war?”

  “He thought Mexico was crazy to try to hold on to Texas. He’d already sold his h
acienda there and arranged to be placed in charge of the garrison at Veracruz while Santa Anna was blundering around Texas. Then he neatly slid out of Veracruz before the Pastry War with the French broke out.”

  “He sounds a bit opportunistic.”

  “No, only smarter than most. Alarcón is a realist. He's a fierce old man with white bristling mustaches who, loves Mexico but has no illusions about her. The only reason he's agreed to be President is because he thinks Santa Anna is dragging the country down to utter ruin.”

  “You fought in Texas for the same reason you became an actor, didn't you?”

  “Perhaps. In those days I wanted to take life by the shoulders and shake out of it every last morsel to be savored. When I look back on those times, I might be watching a stranger. The wild youngster who rode off to the Texas war had a head bursting with ambitions and dreams. Nothing was impossible.”

  “And now? Where are the ambitions and dreams now? This Mexican adventure won't last forever, you know.”

  “You're right about that,” he replied thoughtfully. “I've heard that the Sandwich Islands are an earthly paradise. Perhaps I'll ship clear across the Pacific and take a look at the Orient too while I'm at it. The Cannibal Islands, Japan, the Spice Islands, Samarkand, the Desert of Kyzyl Kum — God, how those marvelous names roll off the tongue.”

  “Are you rich then?”

  He laughed. “Hardly. As long as ships go begging for crews, though, I can go where I like.”

  She tried to visualize the fastidious, elegant Jason scrubbing decks, but even with the memory of him as a villainous Uparo, she couldn’t manage it. “Don’t you ever plan to settle down?”

  His voice was hard. “Ah yes, a wife and kiddies and all of that. No, my dear, I don’t plan to play that scene. I’m only half a man if you like, but I’ve given my hostages to fortune and I don’t intend ever to have another. Wives and children are not for me, not ever. Eventually I’ll go back to acting; I’m good at it and I like the life.”

  “For what it’s worth, I think you’ve made the wrong decision. Or rather, for the wrong reasons.”

  “Do you now? Well, women always want to see a man chained and docile, don’t they?”

  “It isn’t that. I’d like to see the Orient too, as far as that goes. It’s only that I read The Ancient Mariner’ in that book you gave me on board ship, and I think you’ve got your dead brother hanging around your neck like Coleridge’s albatross.”

  He didn’t answer. She heard the gurgle of the brandy bottle before he said in a too even tone that let her know she had trespassed unforgivably, “We’d best get some sleep.”

  Though she lay awake for some time, she never heard the deep breathing that would have meant he himself had fallen asleep.

  CHAPTER XI

  The next morning she found it took very little imagination to envision him scrubbing decks after all. A rough black stubble smudged his cheeks, his hair was matted, and the scar stood out redly in the lined weary paleness of his face. He looked both villainous and older than his thirty-three years. Both of them of course reeked of the brandy she had so liberally splashed on his cut and bandages. Even as she looked at him, his eyes opened, deep sapphire blue that gave her the same feeling she had experienced when the ship had passed from the Bermuda Banks over into the deeps.

  He smiled faintly. “From the expression on your face, I must assume that this morning I’d need no disguise to pass for a leparo”

  “How does your arm feel?”

  “It throbs like hell just as you said it would, thank you.”

  The wound had bled very little in the night, and though swollen enough to pucker the stitches, it showed no signs of pus.

  “You’ll do until we can get you to a doctor,” she remarked as she rewrapped the arm in a different cloth, this one mercifully not soaked in brandy.

  “Why should I go to a doctor? McCardle should have had you in his hospital unit. If this doesn’t go septic, and it doesn’t look as if it will, you’ll have done a damn sight better than a local quack poking around in my arm with his dirty fingers.”

  As they ate breakfast in the room later, she heard the clopping of a number of hooves outside the window, and looked out to see their fellow actors dismounting in the stable yard. She leaned out the window and shouted, “Hugh!”

  It was Will who answered her, however. “Where in the hell have you been? I’d have gone looking for you last night only I hadn’t the faintest idea where to begin. Was that son of a bitch Whitney anywhere near you? I’ll break his neck for him.”

  “Stop acting like a dunce, Will,” she retorted, secretly pleased he was so upset. “Jason’s hurt.”

  “He is!” Hugh’s agonized exclamation just missed becoming a shriek. “What’s wrong with him? Where is he?”

  “He’s right up here. You’d better take a look at him, Hugh. He wants to go on tonight, but I’m not sure he should.”

  ffMerde!” Hugh said disgustedly. “Of course he shall go on. I’m coming up.”

  Roberta had to admit that Jason didn’t look nearly as bad as he had earlier. A shave had helped, and his face now had color.

  Hugh sniffed disapprovingly as he entered the room. “Are you sure he’s got more than just a hangover?” he demanded.

  “That was Nurse Roberta’s idea of treating the cut I received,” Jason replied, amused. “It does smell rather like a distillery in here, doesn’t it?”

  “What’s all this about your not going on tonight?”

  “Of course I’m going on,” Jason snapped. “I’m not going to your bloody rehearsal, you’ll have to do without me there, but I’ll be on stage tonight.”

  Hugh looked so relieved that Roberta didn’t know whether she wanted most to smack him or laugh.

  *

  Down the long lacy aisle of tablecloth, broken at intervals by candelabra and bowls overflowing with brilliant red poinsettias, Roberta could see the great forehead and large dark eyes of Santa Anna as he bent his head to talk with Daphne. As was Mexican custom, the guest of honor, on this occasion the French ambassador, sat at the head of the table with his wife to his right next to Santa Anna. The theatrical people were scattered down the table among the other guests, who were members of the diplomatic corps, large landowners, colonels, generals, and a scattering of French, German, and British foreigners. As official dinners went, it was a small one, encompassing little more than thirty people, but that was only to be expected on so informal an occasion when theatrical people were among the invited guests.

  Roberta could see at the other end of the table a scowl on Jason's face, despite the determined efforts of the Nicaraguan ambassador’s daughter to add him to her string of suitors. She was pretty enough and very animated and Roberta thought Jason ought to have been pleased. Instead, he looked as if someone had just stepped hard on his thumb.

  Roberta found herself next to a rather dashing dragoon colonel on one side and, surprisingly, an empty chair on the other. Who would have had the effrontery to stand up Santa Anna? Her question was answered when she turned away from the colonel to find Zaragoza sitting there murmuring apologies for being late. With complete aplomb, he picked up her hand and kissed it.

  “It is seldom indeed that one finds oneself seated next to a beautiful woman at one of these atrocious dinners,” he said smoothly in Spanish.

  “Hardly for lack of candidates,” Roberta remarked dryly. “The daughter of the Nicaraguan ambassador, for example, is a very handsome girl.”

  “No,” Zaragoza replied thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t say Yolanda was handsome. She's pretty in a pouty kind of way, but she'll be fat by the time she's twenty-five. It doesn't take much padding on those birdlike little bones to conceal them entirely. You, on the other hand, should wear rather well, though you're going to have to be careful not to become gaunt later on. I see some of those fierce large American women with their wrinkled skin pulled tight over hollow cheekbones and they make me shudder. Promise me you won't turn into one of th
em, my dear.”

  “Why, Senor Zaragoza, I had no idea you were such a connoisseur of feminine pulchritude. I do hope I don't disappoint you when I'm in my dotage.”

  “For my part, I should be glad to see you reach your dotage — it would mean that I'll have lasted to see mine.” He laughed, but had there been a hint of menace in the first part of his remark? Roberta shivered with instinctive dread.

  “What a dreary subject,” she exclaimed gaily. “Here I am only in my early twenties and you in the flower of your manhood, both of us talking about our old age. Let us rather talk of Mexico. Early next month we do Cuernavaca, and a week after that we set out for Morelia. A number of people have described to me the beauties of Cuernavaca, but very few seem to be familiar with Morelia. In fact, most still seem to call it Valladolid.”

  “It is my opinion that Valladolid — Morelia — is the most beautiful city in Mexico, surrounded by some of the nation's most beautiful landscape,” he replied pompously. “It is an absolute jewel. It is interesting that you are going there next month because I, too, have business there around that time. Perhaps we shall meet. I shall be delighted to show you one of my favorite cities in the world.”

  Roberta felt an icy clutch at the bottom of her stomach. She doubted it was mere coincidence that Zaragoza’s business took him to Morelia when the theatrical troupe would be there. What she couldn’t reconcile was Jason’s apparent intelligence with the clumsy attempts at disguise and deception they had been practicing.

  Zaragoza went on about the delights of Morelia, to the accompaniment of an amazing array of dishes accompanied by an equally splendid array of wines. The menu included tournedos of beef, whole suckling pigs, wild dove and quail, venison, avocado soup, white asparagus, and exotic preserves.

  “Thank God Santa Anna is a connoisseur of the good life,” Zaragoza remarked in a low voice at one point. “Barbarians like his predecessor only just escaped serving tortillas and beans at their banquets.”

  An Englishman across the table addressed a question of protocol to Zaragoza then, and Roberta turned to the dragoon colonel on her left.