A Masque of Chameleons

by Joan Van Every Frost

  “What is it?” He sounded very ill-tempered indeed.

  “It’s me,” she answered, knowing perfectly well he would recognize her voice. “Don’t you want anything to eat?”

  “No,” he answered rudely.

  “Listen, Jason, are you all right? You must be hungry — the rest of us were starved.”

  “Dammit, leave me alone!”

  “Well, I can’t go on talking to you through this door,” she persisted, “and I won’t go away until I know you’re all right. You’re the only first-class curmudgeon we’ve got.”

  She heard the bolt drawn and he stood in the doorway, his face a mask of pain. “Satisfied?” he sneered.

  “I was right. It’s your leg, isn’t it?” She didn’t wait for any answer. “I’m going to have them send up a hot bath for you and some supper. Don’t you dare bolt that door again or I’ll have it kicked in.”

  Before long she had shepherded a veritable procession of two scullery maids to haul the water in buckets, a stable boy with a large copper tub, and herself carrying soup, cold meat, cheese, and tortillas on a tray. Jason was sitting on the edge of the bed rubbing his leg, but he stopped and stared as the strange gaggle of people entered the room. She put the tray down and turned to leave.

  “Robbie?” His voice was tentative.

  “Well?”

  “I know this sounds silly, but I can’t step into the tub, you see. My leg won’t bear any weight when it’s like this.”

  “Oh, Jason, I should have thought! Of course I’ll help you.”

  “Except for Will’s bottom, have you ever seen a naked man? I don’t think this will be easy for you; maybe you’d better call someone else.”

  “I suppose if I ever want any children I’ll have to see a naked man sometime.” She smiled wanly. “I may as well begin now.”

  Ever since the night he had had his arm cut, she had had a rather proprietorial feeling toward him. Short-tempered, dictatorial, and fanatic he might be, but in an odd symbiotic way they were dependent on each other. If Hugh had been in better shape she might have fetched him, but he had barely lasted out supper himself. Somehow she couldn’t bear the idea of Will or Gavin or Sid or Guy dealing with her dragon when he was helpless.

  Jason undressed down to his underwear that went halfway down the calves of his legs. He was wider in the shoulders than she remembered from the theater in Veracruz, and better muscled.

  “Stand over here by the tub with your back turned,” he said almost kindly. “All I need is something to put my weight on as I get in.”

  She stood there for what seemed quite a while staring at the washstand and feeling more than a little foolish. Then she heard him hop over to her and felt his hands on her shoulders.

  “Brace yourself. I’m going to have to put my weight on you for a moment.”

  The hands bore down heavily on her shoulders, and she heard a splash. “Hand me the soap, will you?”

  She gave him the soap sitting on the washstand, carefully not looking at him. There was a great swishing of water, and then a groan of comfort as he lay back in the hot water.

  “Oh my God this feels good, you’ve no idea. You can turn around if you like — the water’s too soapy now to offend your modesty.” He sounded amused.

  “I must seem like a prig,” she said stiffly.

  “You’re not alone in being terrified of the human form divine. There are a multitude of husbands and wives who have lived together for years and never seen each other naked.” He spooned the soup into his mouth. “The Mexicans do know how to make soup.” He looked at her as she fidgeted about trying to look everywhere but at the tub. “Tell me the truth, Robbie. Have you ever looked at yourself naked in a mirror?”

  Caught by surprise, she blushed scarlet, at a loss for words.

  “Well, well, there’s hope for you yet, my girl,” he said cheerfully. “I can see you have. Have you ever seen a naked male, even a small boy?”

  She shook her head unhappily.

  “I wonder how you think we’re made?” he mused. “You couldn’t have gotten much of a view of Will.”

  “I don’t know!” she exclaimed wildly then. “And I don’t want to know!”

  “Don’t turn your back, Robbie — I’m not going to force any visions of my anatomy on you. Pour some more hot water in the tub, will you? There’s a good girl.”

  He was so cheerful and matter-of-fact about it all that she found her offended embarrassment difficult to maintain.

  “For God’s sake, sit down. You make me nervous, fidgeting about like that. Bring me a cigar first, though.”

  Silently she held a cigar for him to bite off the end, and lit it for him. She put a towel and an ashtray on the chair that had held the remains of his supper and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “You know, perhaps I ought to encourage Will to have an affair with you after all. If anyone can get you over this idea that bodies and lovemaking are ugly, he should be able to. God knows he’s had enough experience. As your friendly father figure, I feel responsible for - ”

  “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” she cried, nearly in tears. “You insufferable brute, if you say another word, I’ll go off and leave you to dissolve in that bath.”

  He looked contrite. “I’m sorry, Robbie. Truly. I shouldn’t have teased you. It just goes to show I’ve been keeping the wrong company lately; I’m not used to ladies.”

  In the end he got out quite easily by himself, and she turned around to find him modestly arrayed in a full-length robe. He walked over and drew her to him, holding her against his shoulder. “Thank you, Robbie — more than I can say. I know what it cost you. As it was, I’d have sat here in the dark hurting and feeling sorry for myself and drinking too much.” He let go of her and put his hand under her chin, tipping it up so that she looked directly into his eyes. “Don’t ever be ashamed of your looks, Robbie, with or without clothes.” He gave her a friendly pat on the bottom. “Go to bed, little duck. You must be at least as tired as I am.”

  Tired as she was, however, sleep was a long time coming. Her head hurt, and she couldn’t lie on her sore shoulder. She found herself wondering at one point exactly how men really were made.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Cuernavaca would have been a pretty town had it not gone somewhat to seed. Great houses roofed with red tiles and surrounded by walled gardens whose bougainvillea and cup of gold spilled over the walls and hung nearly to the street outside lined a long deep ravine riotous with flowering vines and wild undergrowth. Up on a hill, the palace of Cortes had fallen into ruins, as had a large part of the conqueror’s cathedral, a massive pile of stone crumbling here and there and patched in places with adobe brick.

  “It l-looks as if some very rich folk live here,” Guy remarked the next day as they walked through the town to the theater where they would be playing, a large house with what must have been fine gardens gone somewhat wild.

  “They don’t live here for the most part,” Jason replied. “Most of the houses belong to wealthy Mexico City dwellers who come down here from time to time to escape the cold. I suppose that the scenery and the mild climate were what attracted Cortes to begin with. The Aztec nobles used to vacation here even before the Spaniards came.”

  “Well, I just hope there are plenty of people in residence now,” Hugh said. “I was assured in Mexico City that this time of year we would be playing to full houses.”

  “It wouldn’t take much to fill this house,” Jessica remarked dryly. “Even counting the corridor, there’s not room for a hundred people. The echo in this patio is wicked, and what are we supposed to do if it rains? It seems a pity to have made that fearful ride for so little.”

  Hugh was defensive. “It isn’t the size of the audience here that’s important, it’s who they are. I’m told that wealthy vacationers here are often in an expansive mood.”

  “I thought this whole tour was already financed,” Will exclaimed angrily. “You mean we’re going to have to scrimp an
d make do and beg for funds after all?”

  “The tour is certainly underwritten,” Hugh soothed him, “but you wouldn’t complain over a bit extra on your pay, now would you, mon fils?”

  “All the same,” Will grumbled, “I just hope you don’t expect Jessica and me to make up to some doddering old couple the way we had to in Boston that time. God, but that old girl had a breath that would fell a horse.”

  Gavin pointed out bamboo that cut off half the back area of the stage and they fell to blocking out the action to allow for it. Roberta noticed with relief that Jason seemed to have recovered miraculously. He looked fit and rested, a far cry from the suffering cripple of the night before. She did wish he hadn’t carried on that shocking conversation with her, though. Her mind had a thoroughly disconcerting way this morning of attempting to visualize even such unlikely candidates as Sid and Hugh without their clothes. She shook her head in dismay, though the idea of portly Sid naked made her grin in spite of herself.

  That night the two thirds of the patio taken up with benches was jammed, while people stood in solid ranks filling the roofed corridor around the patio area. The actors were playing almost literally in the laps of the front row of the audience, which made Silvia nervous enough to jump an entire scene. The others in turn had to scramble nimbly to bring the dialogue back to where it should have been. Apparently the audience noticed nothing, because they laughed appreciatively throughout and applauded enthusiastically when La Escandalosa was finished. The Robbers' Roost had them clutching their sides, for these were people who made regular trips between Mexico and Cuernavaca, and were all too aware of bandits and their ways. To see a nest of them undone by an imperious mother-in-law tickled them no end.

  *

  Roberta was wiping off the thickest of her makeup when Jason approached her. “Tomorrow night we're playing only Othello, and we won't begin until after ten. That will give us plenty of time.”

  “Sometimes it seems as if I do nothing but put makeup on and take it off,” Roberta complained. “It takes a good half hour to stop being Carmelita, you know. I expect any day now to find my skin coming off with the makeup.”

  “You won't have to make up this time.”

  “What? Why ever not?”

  “This time we're simply going to bundle you up in a hooded cloak. You won't be talking to anyone because we won't be having a meeting. Wear something comfortable — you'll be doing some walking and riding both.”

  “Jason, what's going on? What do you mean, we won't be having a meeting?”

  “Just that, dear girl. They've had it all their way so far, and it's time to give them some respect. Cuernavaca is too good a jumping-off place for a revolt, and it’s come to my attention that here they plan to raid us and break up the meeting. We wouldn't need you except that unless you’re along, no one will ever believe we really plan to hold a meeting.”

  She saw that she would get nothing further from him, and she refused to give him the satisfaction of begging.

  The sun was just going down the next day, painting the ruined palace above the town a livid red, when Jason and Roberta set off on horseback. They rode out nearly due west into the setting sun and in twenty minutes or so came to a magnificent waterfall. On the heights above they could see a small village clinging to the cliff over which the water shot in sprays of white foam. They passed across the stream below the falls and then angled upward on a clearly marked, narrow trail. Suddenly they were among a thick stand of gloomy pines where night seemed already to have fallen. They could just see the trees thinning to a clearing when they heard the whicker of a horse. Jason pulled up and gave a convincing owl’s cry.

  “Thought you’d never get here.” The man had materialized suddenly as if out of air. Astonished and then amused, Roberta saw that it was Ephraim, their Texas coachman from Veracruz. She should have known that Jason wouldn’t have made do with neutral strangers then.

  “I wanted it not too dark to see us go, but dark enough for our purposes here,” Jason replied. “Robbie, get down and let Eph take the horses.”

  They walked to the edge of the clearing and waited while Ephraim tethered the horses in plain sight.

  “Perfect,” Jason said. “Did you and your boys bring the lanterns?”

  “Yep, but you’d best check the oil level, Jase. You know just how much you want.” There was still a Texas twang, but no longer the parody he and Jason had playfully provided as coachmen.

  On the far side of the clearing there was another path that descended steeply to a shelf of rock where six or eight men who appeared to be vaqueros stood smoking and talking in low voices. As they came up to them, Roberta saw that each man was picking up four lanterns by their wire handles. Jason took up each one, shook it next to his ear, and finally nodded.

  “Have you all got torches?” he asked in Spanish.

  “Not just torches,” Ephraim replied in English, “but one of them new carbide lamps too.”

  Jason nodded again and turned toward a wide shadow in the face of the cliff. “As we go in,” Jason had switched to Spanish once more, “Eph here will tell you where to put each of your lanterns. We've got a hammer and plenty of spikes in case there isn't a convenient ledge.”

  Roberta was surprised to find that the shadow wasn't a shadow at all, but a wide low opening in the rock that they could just about enter by crouching. The small birds she had seen turned out to be bats. At first a few, then a solid stream of them flowed out into the gathering dusk in search of food. They made shrill squeaking sounds as they fluttered out like a dark river into the lowering sky.

  Meanwhile Jason fiddled with the gas lamp for a bit before he got it going. He seemed in no hurry. Suddenly they heard one of the horses whinny above them, and Jason ducked through the opening to one side of the exiting bats. As she followed him, she heard Ephraim say, “That mare of Jorge's is as good as a watchdog.”

  Inside, they found themselves in a huge grotto whose walls, ceiling, and even floor were alive with grotesque and fantastic shapes around which a few bats still fluttered. Roberta and the men weaved their way among the pinnacles and spires like drippings from a giant's candle, and the glare of the gas lamp cast eerie shadows on the stone faces of the gargoyles, ogres, dwarfs, hydraheaded beasts, gnomes, and misshapen monsters of all descriptions. The distorted configurations held beauty and terror both for the awestruck onlookers. Several of the men crossed themselves.

  Jason then disappeared through a narrow passageway leading back into the mountain, and the rest followed, leaving an oil lamp burning in the first grotto. Their torches flared and smoked in the cold breeze through the opening. Another chamber opened up before them, almost as large and every bit as fantastic as the first. It differed, however, in that there were some seven openings large and small around the back and sides of the cave where the rock was carved and runneled into an elaborate curtain of stone.

  “All right, Eph, take the gas light and start down that one there.” Jason pointed out the largest opening. “Leave a lantern about every fifty feet or so until you run out and then come back. Make it as fast as you can; I don’t know how long it’s going to take them to find out where we went and follow us.”

  “Jason!” Roberta hissed. “Someone’s coming!”

  They ran back and stood waiting just outside the main entrance, and now they could hear the slide of a boot on rock, and the trickling of tiny dislodged pebbles.

  “Quick!” he whispered, and took her hand, pulling her back inside the cave. They quickly picked their way to the second cavern and waited in an agony of suspense for footsteps from either direction. They could hear men’s voices from the outside of the cave, then suddenly one voice much nearer as its owner shouted, “It’s a cave! They’re in here all right — they left a light.” At that moment the light from the large passage across the cave they were in changed from the dim glow of a distant oil lamp to the white brilliance of the gas light as Ephraim appeared running, followed by the other men. Still holdi
ng Roberta’s hand, Jason fell to his knees and wortned his way into a small hole off to the right. On hands and knees they wriggled through a seemingly endless burrow in the rock, Roberta's riding skirt maddeningly catching on projections of rock. She could hear the scufflings and whispered oaths of the men behind her, but she was excruciatingly aware of ton of weighted stone overhead that had only to shift a few feet in order to crush them all. The thought of being buried alive in the darkness of that mountain was terrifying, and she tried in vain to put it out of her mind.

  The blackness ahead not so much lightened as changed in character, and she became aware of a cool current of air washing over her face. They must have been descending imperceptibly as they also curved to the right, for they came out on a long slope some way below the main opening.

  “Eph, you come with me. The rest of you stay here, and for God's sake don't make a sound or show a light.”

  The night was clear, so that the dim starshine allowed her to see their dark shapes until they slipped up over the lip of the ledge in front of the cave. All was quiet for a long time, for there was no noise to be heard except a muffled cough from one of the men. Then all at once there was a heavy thud, and they felt a faint jar beneath their feet. Without waiting for word from Jason and Ephraim, they began to climb silently up to the ledge.

  Jason was standing at the cave entrance with a lighted torch in one hand, pounding Ephraim on the shoulder with the other. “Damn if we didn't block that entrance like stopping up a mouse hole,” he shouted exuberantly, “and just about now the lights are going out.” His face was that of an exultant boy who has just played a spectacular trick on the grown-ups.

  Roberta felt an icy chill. She could visualize all too well what it was like for the men within to be trapped in the stifling darkness peopled by those wild, grotesque formations of uncaring rock. “How could you do it?” she cried without thinking.