A Masque of Chameleons

by Joan Van Every Frost

  As she watched him, Jason suddenly became alert, looking at something on the far bank opposite her for a moment and then grinning before he ran easily to the edge of the channel and dived neatly into the water. Sid was waiting for him, and they floundered back and forth, wrestling. For the better part of half an hour the water was roiled with splashing, ducking, thrashing bodies. At last one by one they got out, toweled themselves dry, and lay down in the sun, talking in voices so low that she couldn’t hear what they said. Roberta was beginning to feel chill despite the warmth of the water in which she stood, and she could see the skin on her fingertips white and wrinkled with the long soaking. Her teeth had begun to chatter by the time they all dressed and sauntered off through the trees.

  Shivering, she crawled out of the water and lay down in the sun to dry off. The previous hour had been a series of revelations, not the least of which was that under certain conditions human nakedness, even male human nakedness, could be as natural as animal nakedness, and that men, even as old as Hugh, given the right circumstances retained the capacity for a youthful playfulness that was very appealing. At last almost reluctantly she dressed and made her way back through the trees.

  “Have you a touch of dysentery, dearie?” Daphne asked worriedly. “You were gone so long I almost went looking for you.”

  Roberta shook her head, smiling. “I found a secluded pool all to myself,” she replied, “and selfishly I didn’t share it.”

  “Well, at least you don’t have to wonder anymore, do you?” Jason drawled at her shoulder. So it was her clothes he had seen just before he went into the water. This was the first time he had spoken directly to her since Morelia. His face now was all innocence, but there was an amused glint in his eye.

  She reddened in spite of herself but determined to brazen it out. “Just as I thought,” she announced, “not worth it at all.”

  He laughed. “You’ve got guts, Robbie, I have to give you that.”

  “It isn’t guts you have as much as nerve,” she flashed back.

  Daphne was watching them with a puzzled expression, but since they seemed to be good-natured about whatever they were saying, she decided that it was just her imperfect knowledge of English that was interfering with her understanding.

  *

  It was at Guadalajara that Roberta thought seriously about whose voice it was that kept importuning Jason, for he admitted to her the first night they were there that he had heard it a number of times since it had first spoken to him from the moonlit ruins of the haunted monastery.

  She rather favored Josefina, who had joined them on a seeming whim that could have been design. Josefina had the morals of an alley cat, loved the good life, and had no visible means of support except a dead husband for whose money they had to take her word. Zaragoza had to be behind it unless one could credit Josefina with unrequited love. Hardly, considering the openness and good humor with which she had bedded every male in the cast, with the possible exception of Hugh. Even thin, mournful Jack had fallen to her wiles, though she had muttered darkly the next day about people who should clean their teeth more often.

  Jason came over to where the women were working on the costumes, his face as young and open suddenly as at the hot pool. “I’ve had word from General Alarcón,” he said happily. “After we return from Aguascalientes he wants us to stay at San Xavier as his guests for as long as we please. Hugh says that the rains may make us skip Queretaro anyway.”

  “Who is General Alarcón?” Josefina asked, interested, “and where is San Xavier?”

  “General Alarcón is the only honest politician in Mexico, perhaps in the world,” Jason informed her loftily. “San Xavier is his hacienda near Lake Chapala where he raises fighting bulls and maguey. The San Xavier marque is famous for the best mescal in Mexico.” Roberta hoped that he wouldn’t continue to be so embarrassingly stuffy about Alarcón. She was becoming more and more anxious to meet this paragon who could make even the skeptical Jason lose his sense of proportion.

  “As long as we don’t have to drink that ghastly pulque, I don’t mind.” Josefina shuddered. “Does the general have a wife?”

  “Josefina, you’re incorrigible,” he laughed. “He’s got his mind on other things at the moment.”

  “No man has his mind on other things,” she retorted flippantly.

  “Is he coming to see you perform?” Roberta asked, shaking out the suit Jason wore in La Escandalosa.

  “I assume he will,” Jason replied. “His is the third box on the left. He’s very fond of opera.”

  “My, how refined,” Josefina murmured. “The Mexican generals I’ve met this far, except for Santa Anna, wouldn’t know a soprano from a basso profundo.”

  That night there were spectators in the third box on the left, all right, but the poor lighting — nothing more than candles in glass chimneys — kept them from being seen very clearly. If Alarcón came backstage afterward in the crowd that milled about congratulating the actors, Roberta didn’t see him. When she asked later, no one else had seen anyone like him, either. Jason himself mysteriously disappeared, presumably for a reunion with the great man.

  Roberta was desperately concerned as to where and how Cristiano was, and it was a blessed relief to have him unexpectedly bear her off to supper one night after the performance. She nearly hadn’t recognized him. He hadn’t shaved his beard, but it was fashionably trimmed, his mustaches waxed, and beyond that he came impeccably dressed in evening clothes. He took her to Amaud's, evidently a popular restaurant, because every table was filled except the one to which the maitre d'hotel escorted them with a flourish while waving about the enormous menu cards.

  Cristiano perused the list of dishes. “Let's see, we'll begin with the escargots, go on to the Lake Chapala whitefish, then I think the veal cordon bleu. We'll see about dessert when we get there.” He snapped his fingers for a waiter and only then turned to her. “If that is all right with you, of course. Would you rather have the oysters in place of the snails?”

  She laughed and shook her head. “I didn't know that Morelia rancheros were so conversant with French menus.”

  “I was sent to friends in France for a year to complete my education. It isn't often I get a chance to show off like this.” He had a long conversation with the wine steward, then ordered their dinner.

  “And now,” she said as they awaited the arrival of the first course, “what have you decided to do?”

  “About what?” he asked innocently.

  “About the conclave, of course. As you seem to know, Alarcón has reason to be indebted to me. I'm sure he'll listen if I back you up.”

  “And you won't back me up if I don't take you to the conclave?”

  “You know better than that. What we really need are those lists. I'm astonished they would put them in writing.”

  “They could hardly commit them to memory.”

  She remembered Jason's casual “My dear girl, memorizing is my business.” She shrugged.

  “So you won't insist on going,” he said with relief.

  “Cristiano,” she said slowly, “what if they don't pass out lists? What if they simply read them off? That's what I would do in their place.”

  “Then I suppose we must try to steal the master list.”

  “Do you know who their leader is? Is it Santa Anna?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s likely with Zaragoza as second in command. His voice and diction are different, but if I were he I would change my voice too. I would also feel a bit nervous having Zaragoza breathing down the back of my neck as well.”

  “How do you propose then to steal a master list? I can just see your being allowed to creep around the presidential palace.”

  “You have something in mind, I can tell.” He swirled the snail on the end of his fork in the wine and garlic butter, but his mind was far from his food. His eyes never left hers.

  She borrowed Jason’s words. “Cristiano, I am an actress, memorizing is my business. I can’t memorize a
ll the names — you’d need Silvia for that and I don’t think she has the nerve. What I can do is to memorize the captains, and each of the territories. If the Army knew who was leading each band and where to look for him, it would be easy enough to destroy the whole structure.”

  “I must say, querida, you possess a truly diabolical mind.”

  He raised his pinot blanc and they touched glasses and smiled at each other, for all the world indistinguishable from any of the other lovers always to be found dining at Amaud’s.

  CHAPTER XVII

  In spite of herself she had to admire the way the outlaw chieftain controlled the conclave. There were outraged howls of dismay at the extent of some displacements, but the masked man coolly mocked, humored, and cajoled them into accepting the changes. His air of command was absolute, a man obviously used to being obeyed without question, but flexible enough to go out of his way to make the obedience a willing one.

  She was nervous, because the meeting took place in the middle of the day at Zacatlán, to accommodate those who had distances still to ride afterward. At this meeting there were more masks than in the dark patio at Morelia, and more than twice the number of bandits. It resembled, she thought, nothing so much as the organized nucleus of an army without uniform. Could that in truth be what it was? An armed, mounted, self-paid army. Santa Anna, however, already had an army. Should this new surmise be correct, though it was no more than a hunch, then Alarcón could have a rival, a formidable rival. What would Jason say to that?

  Most of the meeting was taken up with the redistribution of territories and manpower. “On the first of June I want you all to gather once more here at Zacatlan. Arrangements are already being made, and by then there will be bivouac areas for all of you, plus field rations and fodder and picket lines for the horses. I don’t give a damn what you are doing, or how rich the prize you have your eye on, I want you here then without fail. I can’t tell you how long you will have to remain, perhaps as long as a month.”

  At the familiar “Vaya con Dios,” Zaragoza rose to his feet, followed by Pepino and then the multitude, who had been sitting on the ground. They cheered themselves hoarse as the chieftain mounted a large black stallion and cantered away alone, a striking figure indeed as he fihally disappeared over the next hill at a steady, distance-eating gait.

  She arrived at the theater only just in time to get ready to go on stage — fortunately she wasn’t in the opening act. Jason came up to her while she was putting the last touches on her makeup and she decided she couldn’t go through it with him again.

  “I know,” she said to him before he could open his mouth, “ “‘Where in the hell have you been?’”

  “No, I wasn’t going to say that. What you do is, as you say, your business.” He looked and sounded tired.

  She could hear Gavin onstage saying, “‘Give him defense against the elements, For I have lost him on a dangerous sea’,” and knew that she and Jason would have to go on in moments. “Jason, please take me out to supper afterward. I’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast and I’m famished.”

  They walked together toward the wings, where Guy was already waiting to go on and Roberta realized that Jason wanted to refuse her invitation, but he shrugged and nodded.

  “Jasey, Jasey!” a ghost of the little voice called briefly and was still.

  Jason never broke step, pretended not to hear it, but she could see a muscle bunch in his jaw. She just had time to put what she hoped was a reassuring hand on his arm before Jessica came up breathless as always and they all walked out on the stage lit only by two banks of candles. That night there was little of Jason's mocking slyness in his Iago; in place of the previous marvelous subtlety, he delivered his lines with a viciousness Roberta had only heard him use once before. Instead of toying with Desdemona, he cut her down, and when at last he stabbed Emilia, it was almost with savage glee.

  *

  He took Roberta to a small cafe not far away. Jason toyed with his food as she wolfed hers down, too busy eating to try to carry on a conversation. In the end, she ate not only her own sopes, but his too when she saw that he had no real interest in them.

  ‘I’m going back to the States,” he said suddenly, staring down at the fork he was fiddling with.

  She froze, holding the last sope in midair. “You what?”

  “I've told Hugh I'll finish out the Guadalajara engagement, and then I'm leaving.”

  She felt an excruciating twist in the pit of her stomach, and put down the sope uneaten. She gave a little smile. “I always seem to be losing fathers, don’t I? What does your precious general have to say about that? It's him as well as Hugh and the rest of us you’re deserting.”

  He looked up at her then, and she was shocked at his expression of hopelessness. “I told him,” he said quietly. “He agreed that since I felt I must go, the sooner the better for my sake. You see, he cares for me as much as I do for him. I love the old bastard and he knows it.”

  So she wasn’t the only one seeking a father, Roberta thought to herself. Aloud she said, “May I ask why you’ve decided to go?”

  “I’m not sure I can even tell you. I just know that I must.” His eyes were dull, lifeless in a way she’d never seen before. “I’m tired of all this — it’s time to go on.”

  She had a swift revelation. “It’s Toby, isn’t it?” she demanded, taking his hand in hers as if by physical contact she could make him answer. “Tell me the truth, Jason — you owe me that at least.”

  He took his hand away and began to fiddle with the fork again. “Partly.”

  “What do you mean, partly?” she asked triumphantly. “The voice told you to go, didn't it? Didn't it, Jason?”

  “All right, yes, Toby told me to go, that if I would only visit his grave — I never have nor wanted to — he could rest easy.”

  “Jason, Jason.” She felt like weeping. “You're being used. Can't you see that? Can’t you see, someone wants you out of the way, you pose a danger for someone.”

  “It's no use, Robbie. I've made up my mind.”

  “You haven’t made up your mind,” she told him scornfully. “Someone else has. You're letting them use you, Jason — you're begging them to use you.”

  He shook his head stubbornly.

  “Then listen to me. You thought I spent the afternoon with a man, didn't you?”

  He simply looked at her, waiting.

  “Well, I did. With a lot of men, one of them Cristiano.”

  “I thought as much,” he commented evenly.

  “You did, did you? What would you say if I were to tell you that I was right about a conspiracy of brigandry? I went to a conclave, as they call it, of robber bands from as far east as Toluca, as far north as San Luis Potosi, as far west as Guadalajara. There must have been five hundred or more men gathered outside Zacatlan. Zaragoza is second in command.”

  “You've made this up.” He didn't sound very interested.

  “Made it up, have I? Listen to this,” and she began to reel off the names and places she had memorized. “Rodriguez Esteban, one hundred kilometers of the Tepic road, beginning at Guadalajara; Sandoval Sanchez, one hundred kilometers of the Zacatecas road, beginning at Guadalajara; Gutierrez Lopez, one hundred kilometers of the Morelia highway, beginning at Guadalajara; Gonzalez Flores, the road between Jiquilpan and Zamora; Gonzalez Padilla, the other half of the Morelia highway... Enough? I didn't count them, but there are some thirty or forty territories like that.

  “More important, they were all instructed to gather again on the first of June to wait for further orders. Could they be part of a private army of Santa Anna’s to put down rebellion wherever it might spring up? Just as bad, could they be part of a private army belonging to someone who intends to be a rival of Alarcón’s for the presidency? Jason, you can’t go now. Your general is in trouble he doesn’t even know about.”

  “You’re sure of all this?” Jason demanded, his eyes brilliant again.

  “Of course I’m sure. I wa
s there. I tell you.”

  “You say Zaragoza was second in command. Who was the jefe?”

  “I don’t know, he was masked. But Jason, if you could have seen the way he handled those men, if you could have felt his sheer force... He’s dangerous, let me tell you.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Jason replied thoughtfully. He looked at her again. “If you made this up, I’ll break your neck.”

  “Don’t you see, Jason? Whoever is behind all this, Santa Anna or someone else, he wants you out of the way. He’s made it his business to know all about you, to surround you with spies, to find your weaknesses. That isn’t Toby you’ve been hearing, that was the voice of your enemy — the general’s enemy. You can’t run away now.”

  “I won’t be seeing him until we get back to Guadalajara. I can’t tell you where he’s going.”

  Until we get back to Guadalajara... That meant that he was going to stick it out after all, she thought happily. I did it, I changed his mind. “Can't you get word to him?”

  “Not safely unless I go myself, a dead giveaway that we know too much. Whoever this is knows that we've planned Santa Anna's overthrow for June. We'll be back here by the middle of May or a bit later, plenty of time. If I just continue on as we have been, our mysterious villain, who sounds like Santa Anna to me, should be lulled into thinking we suspect nothing. Let's see, if we leave Aguascalientes on May 6 or 7, we should be back here around the middle of May sometime.”

  “Jason? Jason, I'm sorry about the conspiracy and sorry someone is mucking things up for the general, but I’m glad too. Do you know what I’m trying to say?”

  The smile she hadn’t seen for so long came then, and he took her hand. “That last sope is going to be too cold to eat,” he said gently.