A Masque of Chameleons

by Joan Van Every Frost

  *

  Her mare was frisky after the long rest, and they galloped slantwise up the slope toward the top of the mountains behind the hacienda buildings. The sky was a bright, soft blue with a few feathery clouds sailing across it, the lake below a blue-gray slate with purple cloud shadows racing across it, and beyond the water the mountains so startlingly green. In place of the harsh, hot winds of spring, there was a gentle breeze blowing, laden with the smell of greenness and moisture.

  “Why, it’s a whole new world!” Roberta exclaimed in delighted surprise.

  “It's like a new miracle every year. The first rains come, and overnight everything is green and gentled. It’s as if the air had turned to wine.”

  She looked at him startled. He was not usually given to poetic speech unless he was quoting something. He looked back at her and laughed, knowing what she was thinking. She wondered what it was that had given him his youth again today.

  At last they came to a sheer rock face down which fell a curtain of water to form a little pool at the bottom. They dismounted and tethered the horses in the sunny clearing on the bank of the stream. Roberta sat down, and leaned against the the warm surface of the rock face to the side of the small waterfall. Jason looked down at her, his face very still.

  “For heaven’s sake sit down,” she said at last. “You make me nervous, standing there glowering.”

  He slowly sat down and rested his head on her lap. “Do you mind?”

  “Why should I?” she answered carelessly, though she was sure he must hear the fearful pounding of her heart.

  Apparently he didn’t, for she could see that he stared unseeing at the green tops of the trees and the intense blue beyond them. “I’ll be leaving soon, Robbie,” he said as if from far away.

  The scene before her darkened, and she wondered briefly if a cloud had passed over the sun, but the sky above them was empty of anything but light and space and a red hawk sailing down the wind. She swallowed. “I hope the Sandwich Islands are everything you want them to be, Jason,” she managed to say lightly, as if she were a casual friend wishing him well. She was very aware of the weight of his head, and it was all she could do not to cradle it in her hands. This was different from her daydreams about Will; with Jason it was all of him she wanted now, his mind and his heart and his body. What stopped her was the thought of his rebuff. He would look at her in that cold cutting way and chop her heart down to a bloody stump. And why not? Hadn’t she acted the slut often enough? Not even an honest slut, either, because she refused to give of herself. She wasn’t even sure that she could give herself now if he asked it of her. She wanted to cry but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  “I shall miss you, Robbie.”

  “Not for long, Jason.” They were using each other’s names as talismans against some cold unknown to come. “You’ll meet another rich lady who hunts tigers and climbs mountains and goes on safari — and live happily ever after. You’ll have daughters of your own to worry about. When are you going?”

  “Right now the mobs are loose in Mexico City. Paredes is about to pronounce the revolution from Guadalajara and lead the forces loyal to him toward Mexico. Most of the Army in Mexico will defect, and the whole business will be over quickly. I shall leave here with Alarcón tomorrow or the next day, and once he is sworn in, I’m off to see the world.”

  “That soon?” She had thought she knew what pain was when she had come upon Will and Josefina, but it was as nothing compared to the blinding clench of agony she now felt. “Then I — I’m glad we had this morning. For old times’ sake,” she added hastily.

  He looked up at her then, his face unreadable, his eyes a fathomless blue. “Yes, for old times’ sake, love...”

  *

  As the horses picked their way down the steep slope toward the hacienda buildings, Roberta could see a group of saddled horses being led by the stable hands back toward the barn. Jason’s face lit up, and he put his spurs to Bolero, galloping him full tilt down the remaining hillside at a reckless pace, letting out a series of shrill yips of pure exuberance. Following more slowly, Roberta arrived finally at the stable yard to find Jason embracing a gray-haired man as tall as he, with far more warmth and fervor than he had embraced Alarcón. The two men drew apart and looked at each other, grinning. With an affectionate slap on the arm of the older man, Jason turned to a handsome woman waiting nearby and crushed her, too, in a fond embrace.

  “By God, Carmelita, you've turned into a fine figure of a woman, you have indeed!” he exclaimed, affection in his voice.

  Carmelita? Dear heaven, what was going on?

  Jason turned to Roberta and said proudly, “Robbie, this is General Ildefonso Alarcón de Vega. General, may I present the young lady who has been of such assistance to our cause, Roberta DuPlessis.” Jason sounded as stuffy as Cristiano at his worst.

  The general fixed his regard on the astounded Roberta. Even before he bowed charmingly over her hand and said, '‘Seldom has a cause had such fair ladies to speed it along,” she knew with blinding certainty exactly how his voice would sound. That mouth with its gray mustache was almost as familiar to her as Jason's, for she had made it her business to memorize its every contour. Once again she was struck by that vitality and force she knew so well. Before he straightened up and looked her in the eye once more, she darted a panicked glance at Jason, who stood there and smiled so fatuously that she realized she could expect nothing from him, least of all belief. Behind Jason, wearing a far more cynical expression, was Ephraim. Would he help her? His bland gaze fastened on hers for a moment and he slowly winked. She determined to try.

  “Carmelita,” the general said, “meet your namesake, whose real name is Roberta.”

  “How brave of you to have done all you did,” Carmelita said to her, and smiled engagingly. One of his children, at least, had inherited the general’s charm.

  “I thought — “ Roberta began.

  “I know what you thought,” Jason broke in, “but the one you knew as Carmelita was fabricated, so to speak, by the people in the United States who hired me. They got her out of a San Diego sporting house where the act she put on had nothing to do, believe me, with Othello. I objected on practical rather than moral grounds, but they said it was all but impossible to find a Mexican lady who was willing to pretend to be an actress. A lady in Mexico simply doesn’t go on the stage. The one they found was the black sheep of a wealthy Guadalajara family, who had run off to California with an American card sharp.”

  “So that was why you didn’t take her death harder.”

  “By willfully climbing into everybody’s bed, she compromised the whole affair. Zaragoza must have known immediately that the real Carmelita would never have acted like that. I was sorry they killed her, but she was hurting the cause.”

  There it was again, that damned cause of his. Yet what was it all for? To put a murdering blackguard in as President of Mexico. She looked at the man who resembled the general so closely but paled in aspect next to him. So that was why Emil had been there, to disguise him as the general. In the trauma of seeing her father — no, her uncle — she had forgotten all about Emil.

  “You see,” Jason went on, “we were a necessary diversion to occupy Zaragoza and others while the general slipped away and arranged for the subversion of the army elements in Mexico City. Those rancheros and hacendados we were meeting could hav.e had little or no effect on any revolt. There weren’t enough of them, and they were too far from Mexico, where the forces that count must be located. There wasn’t only Zaragoza to worry about, for we discovered that even Santa Anna didn’t entirely trust him and had set others to watching him. Not only that, but at the end, as you know, we found out that there was probably another rather powerful contender for the presidency, and he, too, must have been confused by our efforts and the apparent constant presence of the general at San Xavier.”

  The idiot sounded actually smug. That was one contender who wasn’t confused in the slightest. She notic
ed that when Jason mentioned the contender, the general suddenly looked very alert. Could it be that he hadn’t been aware until now that Jason knew so much of the outlaws?

  “What contender, my boy?” the general asked smoothly.

  “It’s a long story, sir.” Oh, the damned fool! “To be brief about it, there is a network of bandits that none of us ever suspected existed, and their leader has gathered them at various strategic points ready to take over when Santa Anna topples. I told Agustin about it,” he indicated the general’s impersonator, “but he said it would be safe enough to wait for your arrival. Agustin,” he explained in an aside to Roberta, “is the general’s brother.”

  “I’m very sure that we don’t have to worry about any outlaw jefe,” the general pronounced confidently, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if Santa Anna is right about not trusting Zaragoza. That fox appears to be playing a devious game. I think I shall return to Guadalajara tonight after all and lay up in the hideout to await the carrier pigeons from Mexico.”

  “This time I’m coming with you,” Jason said.

  “No, my boy, not this time either.” There was a strange look of anguish on the general’s face. “It must seem once more as if I am here, and only if you are here will it seem as if I am here.”

  Roberta wondered if Jason had been idiotic enough to implicate her as well to the general’s brother, and decided that he probably had, though at the moment the general might not yet know that. When everyone went to the house, there would certainly be elaborate explanations, compromising both her and Cristiano. There was only one chance, a very slender one at that, but she would have to take it. They had all begun slowly to drift toward the house.

  “Why, I declare,” she said brightly, “I’ve lost the silver bracelet my mother gave me. Oh, I do hope it fell off around the stables here and not up on the hill. Ephraim, be a love and help me look, will you? I’ll join all of you in a short time. You’ve no idea how much that bracelet means to me now.”

  Jason started to say something. Please, please, let him not announce that she never wore bracelets. Almost as if he had heard her, he shrugged and led the way to the house, talking animatedly with the general.

  “I’ve got this notion that things ain’t so good,” Ephraim said as they pretended to search the ground.

  “Oh, Ephraim, you’re so very right. Did Jason tell you about the bandits?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s a help anyway. The leader of the outlaws isn’t some mysterious contender, it’s Alarcon himself.” “Do tell!” Ephraim exclaimed, and gave a low whistle. “What do you mean to do about it?”

  “I’m going to try to ride to Guadalajara and see if I can’t get Paredes to believe me. Then I’ll go out to the outlaw camp and try to find Cristiano to get him out before the soldiers come.”

  Ephraim was too practical to start arguing about what women could or couldn’t do. “You want I should go with you? My men are in Guadalajara.”

  “No, you’ve got to try to warn Jason. Give me a message for your men and I’ll send them along. God willing, they’ll get here in time. The general must realize that Jason has no idea who the jefe is.”

  “They stored young Gavin’s belongings down in the barn here. I think it’s worth the time to dress like a man. Your mare wouldn’t make it halfway at any speed, but Gavin’s buckskin is hard as nails and with you riding astride he ought to make it all right. I’ll saddle him while you change your duds.”

  After she had mounted the buckskin, she looked down at Ephraim. “Wish me Godspeed,” she said as she gathered up the reins.

  “I’ll do better’n that. I’ll tell them a whopping lie that might give you an hour or more head start. Remember, he’s a natural singlefoot, so gallop him a mile and singlefoot him a mile or you’ll founder him afore you ever get there.”

  Keeping the barn between her and the house, she rode over to a wooded draw that was harder going but would conceal her on her way up to the crest of the mountain. As she came halfway to the top, she suddenly realized that this was the same draw they had struck higher up this morning, which led to the waterfall. Oh, Jason, Jason, you’re going to be hurt badly, and it’s me you’ll hate for taking him from you. That is, if any of us come out of this alive.

  She skirted the waterfall, being careful to stay in the trees, and continued up past the spring that fed the waterfall through the green and flowers to just below the crest where the trees gave out. She got off and led the horse those last yards, keeping him between her and the lower slopes, hoping that anyone glancing up at that distance would think it was only a loose horse up there. Once on the other side, she cut over to the track and put the buckskin into a gallop. Before the first hour was up she had come to the main road between Chapala and Guadalajara.

  Except for a string of burros and one stagecoach that rattled by in a choking cloud of dust even now in the rainy season, she had the road to herself. As she approached the crucero with the Juanacatlán Falls road, however, she saw four or five riders standing about in a group talking. As she came nearly abreast of them, they wheeled across her path and one of them put up his hand as a signal for her to stop. She made a show of wiping her face with a bandanna handkerchief and then kept it over her nose and mouth as if she’d been absentminded.

  “A dónde se va, hombre?”

  “Guadalajara.” She tried to make her voice as low and harsh as she could.

  “Caramba, it’s a woman!” one of them exclaimed.

  Another drew a nasty-looking long-barreled pistol and pointed it at her. “Look at her eyes up close.”

  Even as she spurred her horse, two of the men were upon her; one grabbed the reins of her horse while the other pulled at her chin until she faced him. “Gray eyes, all right,” he said.

  They bound her hands behind her and led her horse through the warm afternoon sunlight onto the Juanacatlán track. After an hour’s ride they came to a turnoff that led north between two hills and then into a stand of oaks and mesquite. At the end of a long drive shaded by tall coconut palms came the hacienda, a low, square gray pile of stone much like a prison. An icy chill clutched at her when she realized she would probably die somewhere within those grim walls. She would not have minded quite so much if her dying would serve a purpose, but there was no purpose left for which to die. Alarcón might avoid a war, but what difference if year after year thousands went to their deaths along the roads and highways of Mexico?

  They pulled her down from her horse and marched up to the great front door. In answer to a yank on the bell rope booted footsteps resounded against a tiled floor. There was the scraping of metal and the inside bar was shot and the door swung open.

  “Welcome to my humble abode, Roberta,” Zaragoza said in English, as he bowed and waved them in. “I know you’ll excuse me, but I didn’t expect you so soon, and I have rather urgent business to transact before I am at liberty to chat with you. Meanwhile, I have invited an old friend of yours in to keep you from becoming bored. I’m afraid he’s a bit under the weather at the moment, but Fm sure your presence will revive him.” He gestured to her guards. “Take her down and put her with the other,” he ordered in Spanish.

  They crossed a luxuriantly planted patio to a huge stone kitchen, then through the pantry and down the stone stairs to what was obviously a wine cellar. Beyond the bins was another door, small and heavy, leading through a bricked-up archway into another part of the cellar. They unlocked this door with a great iron key, then another door across the vaulted cellar that led to a room perhaps ten by ten feet, in the corner of which was a pile of something from which two rats scurried. There was an appalling smell in the dank air. One of the guards set down a candle on the floor while the other pushed her in, slamming the door behind her. She picked up the candle and examined the door, but found no apparent weakness. As she bent to look at the keyhole, she heard a groan behind her and her blood froze. It could only have come from the pile of rags in the corner, she decided, and gingerly pic
ked up the edge of the ragged cloth.

  In the flickering candlelight there peered out at her fearfully the all but unrecognizable face of Cristiano, his bloody toothless mouth gaping at her, his eyes no more than slits in the swollen flesh that surrounded them, the proud arch of his Aztec nose smashed flat, even his ears sliced off. “Cristiano! Oh, my dear, what they’ve done to you...” She knelt over him and gingerly lifted the rotten cloth that covered him. He cowered from her.

  Under the cloth he was naked, and his body bore the marks of numberless burns and surgeries where unspeakable things had been done to him. He whimpered like a frightened child. Tenderly she pulled the cloth back over him and pillowed his ruined head in her lap.

  “Is it you? Truly? Or another dream?” he whispered with his broken mouth, and she saw the ugly bruising on the front of his throat.

  “It's me, Cristiano. I don’t think either of us will be hurting much longer.”

  “Ah, querida, I am so sorry, so ashamed. I finally had to tell them everything. Even about you.”

  “Hush, my dear. Of course you did. I would have, anyone would have. We just had some bad luck, that’s all. How did they catch you?”

  He began a laugh that turned into a cough and spit up half a cupful of blood on the floor beside them. “I went to Alarcón,” he managed to whisper at last. “Isn’t that the greatest joke you ever heard? When I heard nothing from you, I rode right up to San Xavier and knocked on the door. How the hell was I supposed to know that was his brother?” he asked querulously. “All I knew was that he wasn’t the jefe we were looking for. I’ve never seen the general except at a distance.”

  “Why did they torture you if they already knew everything?” Roberta couldn’t help asking.

  “That weasel brother of his was too eager, too quick to believe. I sensed something wrong and stopped, but not before I’d gone way too far for myself. When I asked in the beginning where you were, he said you were away. I don’t think then that he suspected you had actually gone with me to the meetings, and he wasn’t even sure you knew about it at all. He must have wanted to make sure, though — they really did want to find out.” He sighed. “They did indeed find out.”