Roberta had been feeling around in Salazar’s pockets and came up with the keys. She tried three of them before she found the one that unlocked his leg shackles. She saw that his ankles were raw and bloody; he must have been straining against them harder than he had seemed to be. She couldn’t help it, she laid her head for a moment against his legs.
“What’s the matter?” he asked dully, not recognizing the caress for what it was.
“Nothing. I felt a weakness for a moment, that’s all.” She rose wearily to her feet.
She noticed that Jason was dragging his lame leg as they went out into the now blowing rain and mounted the two horses Ephraim had brought for them. “Where are we going?” she asked Ephraim.
“I’ve been puzzling on it, and that’s a fact,” Ephraim admitted. “It’s possible you’ll get a welcome you won’t like back at San Xavier. I reckon the safest for now is to hole up in Guadalajara and hope we don’t get found until all this blows over.”
“That could be months!”
“You want to be back with the likes of Salazar?” Ephraim asked shrewdly. “When Zaragoza finds you’re gone, he’s going to head for that bunch at Zacatlan you was telling me about, and every road in this part of Mexico’s going to be crawling with them vermin out looking for you. If they’ve got pigeons, there won’t be a road between here and Mexico you’ll be safe on.”
“If we hole up, they’ll take Guadalajara apart piece by piece until they run us down. No, that won’t do either.”
“Don’t leave much choice, do it?”
“There is another choice, Eph, though I don’t know how good it is,” Roberta said slowly.
“What’s that?”
“The river. We can try to go down the river.” “You’re crazy. You can’t swim down that river, specially now with the rains and all.”
“Cristiano left a boat hidden for his own escape and — and mine. He foresaw that the roads would be impassable, and he had it built.”
“It may be a piss-poor gamble, if you’ll excuse the expression, but it’s all we’ve got. Let’s try it. What d’you say, Jase?”
Jason rode on beside them, buried beyond caring in some shadow world of his own where betrayal and pain surrounded him no matter which way he turned.
Just as the rain began to thin, and the thunder and lightning disappeared behind the hills, their blowing horses galloped down to the flat that extended into the city. One of the horses whinnied, and without a word they turned aside into the shelter of the trees. All three dismounted, and while the horses rested, each of them stood poised, hands on their mount’s nostrils, ready to stifle any further sound. It was only minutes before they could hear the splashing of a number of horses passing at a canter.
“That’s got to be Zaragoza and his boys,” Ephraim whispered, though the now distant riders couldn’t have heard him if he had shouted. “Let’s see, it’ll take him two — three hours to get back, then mebbe five or six more to Zacatlan.”
The boat seemed more and more risky to Roberta. There was no way of telling if the river was even navigable. What if there were falls or shallow rapids? The boat was bound to be too heavy for the two of them to carry. “Wouldn’t a ten-hour start be enough to try the roads?”
“No’m, it wouldn’t and I’ll tell you why. About all you could do would be to head out for Saltillo and Texas or for Torreón and Texas. You’d just about have to take a packhorse or two for the water, if nothing else. The minute you go far north of here by whatever route, you come to nothing but brush and cactus and sand. They’d run you down in a day or so because they wouldn’t have to carry enough for a long trip.”
Roberta was silent. There just didn’t seem to be anything to say.
The rain had stopped entirely by the time they came into the city. Ephraim wanted to skirt the whole place to the east, but Jason insisted on riding on into town, alone if need be. Roberta knew what he was doing and dreaded it. Without pausing, Jason led them through a maze of back streets north of the cathedral and the plaza, and at last stopped in.front of a darkened, shuttered house with a crude unevenly lettered sign that said huaraches. As they came up to the door, they saw that it hung open, the bar torn out of its socket and a spray of new splinters sticking out from the doorjamb.
“Hola!” Jason called. “Anybody home?”
There was no answer.
Ephraim lit a match and its feeble light picked up the glint of glass on an oil lantern that sat against a welter of leather thongs and partly woven huaraches. Armed with the lantern, they went back through another broken door to find almost exactly the scene they were sure would confront them. Five bodies lay shapelessly about, blood everywhere. They saw that one was the general, all right, and one was Jean-Paul DuPlessis. The rest could have belonged to either side, though Roberta thought she recognized the guard who had gone with Zaragoza. She looked at DuPlessis and felt nothing.
Jason knelt by the general. He wiped the worst of the blood from his face, and straightened him out with his hands crossed on his chest. He stood up. “Goodbye, you fierce old bastard,” he murmured in English. “I can't hate you even now.”
In silence they mounted their horses and clattered off down the cobbled street. If the neighbors had any curiosity about the shooting and the later arrival and departure of yet more horsemen, there was no sign of it. Mind your own business and you lived longer in a country overran with bandits and politicians, one often indistinguishable from the other.
The horses were tired, and they didn't push them. If the boat wasn't there, had perhaps never been there except in Cristiano's tortured mind, they would go to earth in Guadalajara, for there should be time to return.
“You’re sure there’s supplies on that boat?” Ephraim asked, looking worried.
“I’m not sure there’s a boat,” Roberta replied. “If there’s a boat, though, there’ll be supplies. Hurry up, Ephraim, we can’t take forever.”
“Oh, I’m not coming.” He spit in the river.
“What do you mean, you’re not coming? If they can’t find us, don’t you think they’ll settle for you?”
“Don’t intend to let them try. Me and the boys here are going to wipe out the tracks we just made, and make a whole lot more up to the top of the barranca slope there. Then I’m going to send two of them with the fastest horses on toward Zacatecas. I know a feller real well in Apozol, about halfway to Zacatecas, and they’ll just disappear there. That should keep Zaragoza pretty busy for quite a spell. Less you have awful bad luck, get seen in the wrong place maybe, old Zaragoza’ll never stumble onto the idea of you taking a boat.” “But, Ephraim, what are you going to do?”
“I’ll hide out in Guadalajara long enough to rest my horse, and then make a run for San Xavier.”
“San Xavier! You’re mad!”
“No, I ain’t. Alarcón’s brother ain’t worth much, but that Carmelita is something else again. She’ll be mad as hops over Zaragoza doing in her pa, and not all five hundred of them bandits could take that hacienda if she decided to defend it, which I think she will. Anyhow, a lot of them bandits will go off on their own once they know the old man’s dead.”
“Are you sure, Eph? Are you really, really sure?”
He nodded. “I’m sure. I might even be able to make them think that you two are at San Xavfer, which will give you more time.”
“Eph, say goodbye to the company for me, will you? Especially Hugh and Daphne. Tell them if we get out of this I’ll either write them or meet them in New York.” He nodded again, and gestured with a thumb at Jason. “If old Jase here ever regains his wits, tell him if he ever wants to get hold of me, to write my brother Josiah in Sweetwater. Take good care of him, girl — he acts like he needs it. We’ll rest at the bridge till I’m sure you’re not coming back.”
Jason had said nothing ever since Guadalajara, hadn’t even seemed to be entirely aware of what they were talking about. Yet now he obediently waded into the river after her, and they half swam, half w
aded until the current pushed them off their feet. They floated with their hands out to fend off any rocks as the river rounded the cliff face then shallowed out at a beach where the cliff briefly became slope once more. At the base of the next cliff was a large mesquite tree tilted up on its side, just as Cristiano had told her, and for the first time Roberta allowed herself to hope that the boat was there. Beneath the jutting roots was a large dark hole where the river in past years had eaten out the bank beneath the tree. Pushed up into the hollow was the boat, more a large raft with low sides than a real flatboat. On it was a sizable bundle covered with oilskin and bound to the raft with ropes.
“I’d try to signal Eph,” Roberta remarked, “but I don’t think I could get far enough back against that current for him to see me.”
Jason said nothing.
Together they horsed the raft out into the current, leaped aboard, and gave the vessel momentum with the poles Cristiano had thoughtfully provided. From then on it was a question of keeping their balance and fending off rocks and shallow water into which the current kept pushing them. Already dazed with fatigue, they found the trip a nightmare of last-minute reprieves and close escapes. Their misery became complete when it began to rain again, soaking their already wet clothes. Finally it was Jason who made the decision to stop, probably because he could no longer stand. They headed the craft into the first beach they saw ghosting by in the dark, dropped into water to their waists to push the clumsy vessel as far up the gravel as they were able. They snubbed the sturdy tie rope around a tree well up the bank.
Staggering with weariness, they unroped the bundle and lifted it, being careful not to let the fine drizzle fall into the contents beneath. To their joy, they discovered that there was another large piece of oilskin beneath the outer one, which meant they could use one of them for shelter from the rain. Jason found a package of jerked meat and another of dried fruit, which they stuffed into their mouths by the handful when they realized how hungry they were. Shivering uncontrollably, they spread two of the heavy serapes on the pebbly sand a foot or so apart and lay down on them, pulling the oilskin entirely over themselves. Roberta could never remember feeling so cold. No matter how she turned, an icy current of air seemed to come from the space between them and freeze her wet clothes to her body. She was so tired that she actually ached with the desire for sleep, but the discomfort was such that she remained awake.
“Robbie?” Jason whispered then, his teeth chattering.
“Yes?”
“Come over here. Please? I’m freezing to death.”
So there had finally come a time when sheer physical misery set aside all of the pain and the betrayals and the other hurtful lumber knocking about in his mind. Under the oilskin she moved her serape so that it overlapped his and threw her manga over them both. Like tired children they fell asleep in each other's arms, the warmth of their bodies belatedly penetrating their sodden clothes and easing the spasms of shivering. Roberta woke once as it was getting light to find him snuggled close, his breath warm on her skin. She tightened her arms around him and slept again, a little smile on her lips.
When she finally wakened in earnest, it was to a world of golden light and blessed steamy warmth. She had been dimly aware of his getting up earlier, but not enough to waken. Now the morning sun shone directly on the oilskin, which gave off an acrid though not unpleasant odor. She put her head out and looked around. They were beside a wash that in the heavier rains probably emptied into the river, but now there was no more than a trickle of water along the smooth stones. She saw Jason stripped to the waist as he faced a small mirror hung on the branch of a tree and swiped a straight razor deftly down his lathered face.
“I don't believe it,” she laughed.
He turned and grinned at her, waving the razor in greeting. “Your Cristiano was certainly thorough,” he replied.
Never had she realized how resilient was the human spirit. The warm sun, the blue sky, the glorious feeling of being thoroughly alive after the dark and the rain and the prospect of death made her feel a little as if she were drunk. She was conscious of each breath she took, each crunch of pebbles under her feet. She knew that Jason must feel the same to have emerged from his bottomless depression of the night before.
Not even the dampness of her clothes daunted her. She held together Gavin’s torn shirt and made her way to a small stand of silver-trunked trees. Beyond was a shallow inlet of the river, warm in the bright sun. She took off her clothes and sat in the water as though it were a bathtub, splashing her face and running her fingers through her hair. Reluctantly she put on the damp pants and shirt again. At least the soaking of the night before had washed out Cristiano’s blood. For a moment her eyes stung before she shook her head, to bring herself back to the peace of the moment.
When she returned, she found Jason lying prone on a great flat water-smoothed slab of rock, his clothes draped about in the sun to dry.
“Better take off your wet clothes too,” he said without lifting his head. “Don’t worry, I won’t look.”
She looked at him, though, and for a long time, at the line of slightly curling dark hair on the nape of his neck, the muscles running smoothly across his shoulders, the graceful curve of his backbone, the tight hard buttocks, and the thickness of his upper legs giving way to slender sinewed calves. His head was turned away from her, and she could see the curve of his ear lying flat against his hair, the line of a cheekbone, the ridge of his broken nose. Her eyes still on him, she slowly removed her clothes and laid them out beside his to dry. She was conscious of the warmth of the sun and the brush of a gentle breeze against her body. She felt suddenly light and made of air herself, ready to soar off into the sun-drenched sky.
She sat down beside him and began gently to massage his lame leg, running her fingers lightly over the deep scarred crater. He flinched at her touch, then sighed. She could feel the large muscles of the leg hard and knotted, so she kneaded them with her fingers until she felt them soften and relax at last. She went on rubbing, working up over the hard buttocks and yet farther up onto his back. As she rubbed, she could feel the bands of muscle beneath the startlingly smooth skin, the spring of his ribs, the cunningly interlocking discs of his backbone. As her hands slid over his sun-warmed back, she felt a strange honied stirring inside herself, the gentle moving of a shy, wild creature coming slowly awake. The touch of his skin turned silken under her hands.
“Robbie,” he said then in a strangled voice, “you’ll have to stop or I can’t answer for it.”
“Do you want me to stop?” Her voice carried a new huskiness.
He sat up then and took hold of her shoulders, his face looking very young and uncertain. When he saw her expression, he let out a long breath, the uncertainty gone, as if it had never been. “I don’t want you ever to stop.”
Jason’s nakedness, even his erect maleness, seemed natural now, and she realized fleetingly that engraved on her mind from the day she had seen him naked with the others at the stream had been every detail of muscle and bone and flesh of his body. How could she have been so stupid for so long? The feel of his mouth on hers was as familiar as if he had kissed her a thousand times before instead of only once quickly outside an inn in Puebla centuries ago.
He bent his head and kissed her breasts slowly and lovingly, feeling her tremble under his hands. “The roes that feed among the lilies,” he murmured and buried his face between them. A wild sweetness had been rising up in her and now threatened to burst her very flesh asunder. She held him hard against her, the sunlight orange behind her closed eyelids. As he entered, she gave a gasp at the quick flash of pain caused by the tearing of that thin membrane on which everyone seemed to place so much importance. Thinking her gasp was one of pleasure, he began to make love to her in earnest, his thrusts steadily becoming deeper and wilder, his quickening breath warm on her neck, bringing her up to the brink of something she had never imagined, until his cry tumbled finally and forever the dark walls of shame and d
enial that had always imprisoned her. She soared into the blinding sun that burst in an explosion of incandescent orange and dripped glowing molten drops down into the warm darkness, their light fading slowly into nothingness.
At last she felt him ease off his weight, and opened her eyes reluctantly to find him propped up on one elbow, smiling, and watching her. “Aren’t you going to go to sleep?” she asked at last.
He raised his eyebrows, his hand resting on the curve of her thigh. “Am I supposed to go to sleep?”
“Well,” she said uncomfortably, “I’ve been told by married friends that men get rather ill-tempered afterward and turn over and go to sleep.”
He laughed. “They had bad luck with their lovers then. I have no intention of going to sleep, and I don’t feel in the least ill-tempered. On the contrary, as soon as I get my wind, we’re going to do that all over again, only slower and better. Much better.”
He ran his hand down the length of her body and cupped it briefly between her legs. There was blood on his fingers when he brought them away. He looked startled. “Are you having your period?”
It was her turn to laugh. “No, my love, I am not having my period.”
“Dear God,” he sighed, “and here I was so sure that Will and Gavin and probably Olmedo as well had been before me. If I’d known you were still a virgin, I’d likely never have touched you.”
“Then I’m glad you didn’t know. Is it really so important, this business of being a virgin?”
He gave her that marvelous smile of his then, and pulled her to him once more. “I don’t suppose it is at that,” he murmured just before he put his mouth on hers. “You seem to have a natural talent.”
CHAPTER XXVI
He stirred reluctantly and kissed her shoulder. “I suppose we’d better think about getting under way,” he said lazily. “The rain will come soon enough, and I’d like to be beached and ready for it this time.”
A Masque of Chameleons Page 32