Sherlock Holmes: The American Years

by Michael Kurland

  It added to my annoyance that we traveled not north toward my hacienda, but east toward Veracruz, in the footsteps of the fleeing Englishmen. Have you been to Veracruz? It is the antechamber to el infierno, hot and sticky and pestilential, and the air so studded with obnoxious insects that one cannot breathe without snuffling up a kilo of them. I would rather spend a month in, oh, por ejemplo, the wretched village of Pénjamo than spend an hour in Veracruz.

  I told him all of this in furious whispers, in Spanish, while he coughed and blew his nose and stared at me, for if he could not understand my words he certainly understood my tone. The carriage rattled over the cobblestones. Eduardo, my majordomo, sat atop and drove the carriage, his son Heriberto rode alongside, and Maria, my maid, sat beside me and covered her mouth, giggling silently, as I finished my tirade. All of these people carried my life, and the boy’s, in their hands, but I trusted them implicitly. We had been together for a long, long time.

  The boy pulled the blankets around his ears and I turned away, trying to settle myself by remembering the melody of the great chorale from Sr. Beethoven’s final symphony. My music master had taught it to me when I was just a girl, and I had never heard it given full throat by a professional chorus. Now I never would. I hummed the melody under my breath, furious.

  Suddenly the boy sat up, alarmed. “Something is happening ahead,” he said, suppressing a sneeze with such ferocity that his face turned crimson. “Ahead!” He pointed and made wild gestures with his hands. Eduardo rapped on the carriage roof and slid back the little window behind him.

  “Doña Ana, I fear the road is blocked—there are carts backed up ahead of us.”

  “Damn!” I said in English, at which the boy’s eyes opened wide. “¡Maria, mi bolsa!” Maria snatched up my valise. I snapped it open and grabbed at the clothes within it. “And damn Teobaldo for making us leave so hurriedly.” I thrust an armload of petticoats toward the boy. “Quickly, take your clothes off and put these on.”

  “You, you speak English,” he said. His nose was even more red than his face.

  “And you won’t speak it again if you know what’s best,” I retorted. “Go on, you have nothing that Maria and I have not seen before. They are searching the wagons ahead, you don’t have much time.” I pushed the clothes into his arms. “Now, unless you want to die!”

  At this he became greatly animated under the blankets. Maria giggled again and I tapped her shoulder, hard.

  “Listen, young man,” I whispered. “You are my niece Candelaria and you are gravely ill, and I am trying to get you home before you die. I think you have, um, what do you have? Cholera? No, nor typhus, they are both too smelly. Ah! You have the swellings in your armpits. You must carry your arms like this.” I illustrated, holding my elbows up and away from my body. “Maria, una mantilla. You must keep your hands covered under your blankets, they are most inelegant, you have bitten the nails to the quick.” I took my powders from the valise. “Close your eyes,” I commanded, and powdered him until his face looked ghastly.

  Maria folded his discarded clothes and stuffed them under the cushions. We sat on them and he half reclined on the opposite seat, his preposterously long legs doubled up under the blankets and the dress and the petticoats, his head under a thick flannel, and a mantilla over all. I myself was convinced that this would not work and could picture him swinging from a tree, his long red nose still dripping, while the comandante kindly instructed his men not to shoot me in the face. I rapped on the carriage roof, and when Eduardo slid open the window I said, “the plague.” He nodded and closed the window again, and the carriage bumped to a halt.

  “And you are mute!” I added in a hiss. The flannel and mantilla shook as the boy nodded. A moment later the carriage door opened. A young lieutenant thrust his head in and executed the sketchiest of bows.

  “What does this mean?” I demanded before he could speak. “I do not have time to play these little games, there is a sick woman in this carriage and I must get her home immediately!”

  The lieutenant raised an eyebrow. “Señora, we are searching for a dangerous criminal, an Inglés, known to be an agent of his government intent upon discovering secrets of the most high type and using them against our beloved country. A small matter of illness cannot stand in the way of our national security.”

  The English señor produced a treble groan and, under the blankets, raised his elbows away from his body. The lieutenant leaned back, looking surprised.

  “La peste bubónica,” I whispered. “Do not say it to her—she does not know she is dying.” I produced a tear. “Such a tragedy, she is so young.”

  But I said this to nothing. The door had snapped closed and, after a brief interlude of shouting, we were on our way again. Eduardo threaded the carriage through the waiting carts and wagons. News of our pestilential cargo must have preceded us; beyond the window I saw the carters make haste to move out of our way, squeezing up against each other and holding their clothes against their noses and mouths. The young señor sat up.

  “Candelaria, lie down,” I said in Spanish. “You are gravely ill.”

  “Someone touched the carriage,” he said, his eyes wild. “There is something on the back of the carriage.”

  Feverish again, I decided, and touched his forehead. He jerked back but I felt the heat against my fingertips.

  “Lie down,” I said again in Spanish, pushing his shoulder. “You are dangerously ill.”

  If he didn’t understand my words at least he understood my gestures, and lay back. After what seemed like an eternity, we were out of the city and on the open road. I breathed a sigh of relief but did not let him sit up until the city had fallen behind us and the farmlands gradually faded back into pastures and then into the rough flanks of the mountains. By the time I thought we might be clear of problems, at least for the time being, the boy was sound asleep, and I left him so.

  I am, as I have said, Ana Magdalena Coraje Montalvo de Conejo. I married when I was very young, as my parents and his had arranged. When Armando Regiberto Conejo de Platas y Zanahória first took me so very far to the north, I was convinced that I would die away from the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the capital. I had been raised amid statesmen and artists and had attended schools in Madrid and London, so what possible interest could a ranch hold for me? And indeed in the first years I suffered much misery, hiding it as well as I could from Armando. It was not a happy marriage. I felt continuously out of place, out of time, and out of life. He died just before the marriage of our oldest daughter, falling from his horse while overseeing herds far from our hacienda. I could not return to the capital then, for the Army of the United States had invaded and my family thought I and my children would be safer hidden away in the north.

  By the time it was safe to travel, I had fallen in love with my home, with the wild barrancas and far vistas, the bright hot cleanliness of the skies and the voices of my Indios as they worked the land. These clean, free expanses welcomed me, now that I too was free. More, I had entered into a grand experiment and could no more leave it than I could cut off my own hand.

  I had read the books of el obispo Vasco de Quiroga, the bishop of Michoacán three hundred years ago, who was a believer in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and created, around Lake Pátzcuaro, a series of self-governing villages based on different crafts, which supplied the area with needed goods and the villages with income. Armando thought it all nonsense and called me a little fool, but I kept the books hidden away in my own room and did not forget them.

  After Armando’s death, barred from returning to the capital and bored with the long, quiet days, I met with the village leaders and began applying Tata Vasco’s teachings to our hacienda. We were fortunate to have good deposits of clay and many of the minerals needed for the glazes; the riverbanks provided an abundance of tules and willow for making baskets and wickerwork; for the first few years I paid to import copper from la tierra caliente, until my copper-working village could afford to purchase its own raw mat
erials. Expeditions to the Sierra Madre brought the wood needed to make furniture. As soon as possible, in each case, I withdrew myself so that the people themselves developed their businesses, took their profits, and governed their pueblos. I maintained a hospital on the grounds of my hacienda, as Tata Vasco had maintained hospitals near his cathedral in Pátzcuaro. Did I say that I trusted my Indio companions implicitly? It is because I, in turn, had earned their trust.

  Any widow with a good portion is a source of constant interest, and I had had my share of suitors and proposals. I turned them all away. Why should I trade my freedom for a coddled life as another man’s little fool? But I was nonetheless an object of some interest, even now that I was stout and gray, even as a great-grandmother, and thus must act with some circumspection. Indeed, I had come to Mexico City circumspectly, for the season of music and fiestas but, far more importantly, to order supplies for the steam-powered mill we were building. The gears and wheels were on their way north, a source of great satisfaction to this little fool. Miserable and benighted, indeed!

  The English señor muttered and thrashed, and I pulled the flannel away from his face. His forehead burned. We needed to get him into a bed, and quickly. I rapped on the roof.

  Eduardo found a pueblito with a shaded well where we filled our water bags. Maria and I stripped the young man down to his small clothes but I kept the petticoats and dress close by—we had barely entered the mountains around the capital’s basin, still far too close to General Pulgón for my peace of mind. Eduardo handed up water bags, then touched my hand.

  “Mira, Doña Ana,” he murmured, and held up his fist to show me a red cloth. “It was stuck behind one of the nails on the back of the carriage.”

  I took it, remembering the boy’s earlier panic. It was a cavalryman’s bandana, ironed and starched, obviously the property of an officer. The young lieutenant, I thought, marking our carriage to make it easier to follow. I thanked Eduardo and tucked the bandana away, angry with myself for not paying more attention.

  Maria and I sponged the boy down while he muttered and shouted in English, his limbs thrashing about until Maria tied him up in his petticoats. Heriberto watched for a little while, then snorted with disgust and mounted his horse. He was still a young man and, like all young men, had little patience for anything he thought sin machismo. We followed him up the mountain along roads that, for all the traffic they had borne over the centuries, were miserable, rutted punishments better suited to purgatory than to a God-fearing and progressive country like Mexico.

  An hour passed as the boy slept uneasily; another hour passed but he could not be said to be awake. In midafternoon I rapped for Eduardo and we spoke again. We waited in the shade of some pines while his son spurred away, and came back with word that a monastery lay off the road ahead and that they would take us in for charity’s sake. Eduardo took us off the road to Veracruz and guided us along a narrow, rocky track while the sun sat lower and lower in the sky behind us.

  We had entered the shadows of evening when we came around a final bend and saw, just above us, the monastery, its lanterns lit to guide us in. As we grew closer, I saw that only a few windows were lit; the bulk of the monastery was dark. The monks lost no time in lifting the young Englishman and carrying him gently into their infirmary, and just as gently turned me toward the guest quarters, where I could wash and compose myself before the evening meal.

  The monastery was an old one, probably built during the Spanish conquest. We were high in the mountains and the cold crept in through the thick walls and up from the stone floors. I splashed water on my face and arms. Maria gave me a clean shawl and mantilla, and a minute later a monk came to show me to dinner.

  Of course it is not seemly that a woman join the monks, so the abbot had arranged to share a meal with me privately. He was a tall, spare man, younger than I, but then most people are younger than I. He introduced himself as Father Bernardo del Caldo. I remembered his parents, good people with an estancia near Cuernavaca, and I told him that. His older brother had, of course, inherited everything, but Bernardo would have grown up knowing that, and knowing that he was destined for the priesthood. It was an honorable disposition for a younger son, and this one carried it well.

  By tradition the evening meal is a light one, but when the abbot learned that I had been on the road since before sunrise and had not stopped for the midday meal, he sent his steward for cold meats and some cheeses. I tucked my hands into my sleeves and regarded the plate.

  “My people,” I said, “have also not eaten since before sunrise.”

  The abbot smiled at this, the first full and open smile he had given me. “I have already instructed them to be fed, Doña Ana. With your kind permission.”

  I smiled at him in return, and reached for the meats.

  The food was good but simple and very plainly cooked, and the wine tasted new and harsh. Father Bernardo probed for news from the capital. I temporized, wondering how much I could tell him. Since the days of the expulsion of the Jesuits, Mexico’s formal relationship with the Catholic Church had been uneasy; often our various governments had expropriated church lands. What the government, any government, takes, is unlikely to be returned. Was this priest therefore in favor of Benito Juárez or against him? Juárez was no enemy of the church, but he had raised money by selling confiscated church lands to hacendados. It made things complicated both for the clerics and for ordinary citizens.

  So we talked about matters of culture. The discussion came around to Sr. Beethoven, who had written at least one Mass of which the priest approved, although he said he himself preferred Bach. Our discussion was cordial and careful on both our parts. I told him that the young señor was, and I tried to blush as I said this, the illegitimate son of my nephew from a visit he had made to the United States, and that I had promised to put him on a boat to New Orleans but he had fallen ill on the road.

  The abbot smiled at me. “Fallen ill on the road to Damascus?”

  “Hardly, Father, and Veracruz does not qualify as a holy city.”

  “Had you arrived earlier, I would have sent you on to the hacienda in the valley below us. It is far more comfortable, and General Pulgón’s hospitality has been praised.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “¿De veras? By whom?”

  The abbot smiled into his wine glass. “He is most generous with us, and we in turn pray for his soul.” He sipped. “The general has mentioned you to me, Doña Ana.”

  My shoulders stiffened. This could not be good.

  “He has told me of your villages in the north, of the aid you have given to the Indios. He mentioned schools, I believe, and a hospital?”

  I nodded, my lips pressed together.

  “And some scheme having to do with el obispo Quiroga?”

  We looked at each other in silence for a moment. He leaned forward to refill my wine glass. “The valley below was once, of course, a part of our holdings. The general bought it ten years ago. His ways are . . . different from ours.”

  I had my own reasons to despise Pulgón, but the monks probably ate only through the general’s charity. I did not care to speculate where the abbot’s heart lay, and only murmured and kept my thoughts to myself, and sent a small prayer to the Virgin.

  After the meal I asked to visit the infirmary, which was in a small building of its own, and the abbot brought me there himself. A welcome fire burned in a brazier. I hastened to it, for I had been freezing since we entered the monastery. Two cots were drawn near the fire. In one, a very old monk lay partially propped up, gumming at a piece of bread. My young Englishman lay on the other, thrashing against the blankets, his fever not yet broken. The infirmarian eyed me suspiciously as I touched the boy’s forehead. I picked up a cup of watered wine and held it to the boy’s lips. He managed a few sips.

  I asked after herbs. Soon the infirmarian and I were deep in a discussion of worts and balms and reducers of fever. Into this civilized discourse came a tremendous banging at the monastery gates. The a
bbot and I looked at each other in alarm: Who could it be, this much past sunset? We heard the gate creak open and the clatter of hooves, and shortly after that the gatekeeper came into the infirmary, almost running.

  “It is General Tomás Pulgón, he seeks an English assassin who has escaped from the capital!”

  The abbot looked at me. I shook my head but held my breath. He carried our lives in his hands: Englishman, me, and my people. The lantern hissed and the gatekeeper shuffled from one foot to another, fingers twisting together. At last the abbot nodded.

  “Fra Pedro, take the general to my room and see that he has a glass of brandy. His trip must have been very arduous and I am sure he is thirsty. Quarter his men in the old wing. Tell him I will be with him soon.”

  The gatekeeper’s sandals slapped against the stones as he hurried out.

  “Pulgón will search,” I began.

  “And will find two sick monks in the infirmary,” the abbot said. “Fra Hortensio, I believe you keep a small supply of walnut juice on the shelves. Bring it to me, and more blankets. Señora, you know what to do?”

  I nodded, already working the boy free of his clothes. We stripped him and dyed his face, hands, and feet with the walnut juice, dragged a brown cassock over him, and wrapped him in the blankets. He woke and began shouting in English, and the abbot took up a rag and stoppered his mouth with it.