“Remember my relatives?” his sweet wife chided.
“Only too well. Such a man is Joaquin Muñoz. He proses on and on when he corners you at Mass, or maybe a market fair. I’ve seen people leap behind trees to avoid him.”
“But you would never do that,” Paloma said.
“I’m as guilty as my neighbors,” he told her cheerfully. He put the scrap on the top of the pile. “We’ll visit him tomorrow morning, because he’s nearby. Get the worst over first, I always say.” He reached across the desk and touched her hair. “You’ll want to try out the mare and the sidesaddle waiting for you.”
Her expression changed into something so tender, almost as if she understood his great fear of leaving a wife behind. Even now, just thinking about his return eight years ago to find his family dead made him breathe a little faster. Surely she couldn’t be aware of that, but he already knew how kind she was. He couldn’t say he was surprised when she put down her knitting and came to him, cradling his head against her breasts as his arms went around her.
He must have finished shifting paperwork later than he realized, or possibly that little walk along the acequia with his lovely wife took longer than he thought, because supper was over in his kitchen by the time they arrived there. Marco had told his servants years ago not to wait for him for meals, so he was not surprised. Perhaps Sancha wanted him to have a little more time alone with Paloma.
Supper was green chili stew made with turkey, and more hunks of bread for dipping. Maybe la cocinera had taken her own look at his slim wife and decided on flan without his urging. It came to the table rich with rum sauce and quivering. Paloma looked at it for the longest time, maybe trying to remember when she had last eaten a sweet of any kind. The expression on her face after the first bite did not go unnoticed by the cook, who nodded, satisfied, and left them alone.
“I could eat this all day,” she said, after silently finishing her bowl of flan. The look in her eyes made him cup his arm protectively around his dessert, to ward her off.
She laughed and leaned closer. “Tell me about Joaquin Muñoz.”
“He’s really old, nearly sixty, I think, and a widower. It seems to me that he spends his life complaining about something or other.”
“He lives alone?”
“With a few slaves—Indians taken in raids by Comanches and sold to him. He also has Comanche slaves from De Anza’s raid. I prefer servants to slaves.”
“Comanches like to trade?” she asked. He heard the disbelief in her voice.
“Hardly anyone is better at it. When they’re not pissed and bothered about something, they are surprisingly human. I still never trust them, but some do. Open up.” Marco took a spoonful of flan and gave it to Paloma. “Señor Muñoz has a daughter in Santa Maria, the widow of a blacksmith.” He ate the next spoonful as Paloma watched. “Wait your turn! Pepita has had her eye on me, even though I am somewhat younger.”
“Maybe word has gotten out about your prowess,” Paloma teased.
“There was never anyone but Felicia and you, so who would know?” he said simply. “Paloma, I love you.”
It was Paloma’s turn to confess her feelings later, after prayers in the chapel with the servants. While he chatted a few minutes with Sancha and the cook, then walked outside with Emilio, she went to their bedchamber. She stood in the doorway and watched the two men, heads together, saunter across the compound to the stable.
After taking a deep breath of the piñon-scented evening air, cold now, she closed the outside door and prepared for bed, kneeling a moment at the reclinatorio, thanking God for His goodness. Sancha must have directed a servant to bring in a brass can with warm water. Paloma washed herself and went to bed, relishing her full stomach. She woke when Marco came to bed and gladly made love to him.
Her husband rose before dawn. He put a hand on her hip, whispering to her that she did not have to get up so early. One thing led to another and neither of them got up so early.
Funny how sweet conversation could be, after love. “What can I do to nudge Sancha into becoming an ally?”
He thought a moment. “I have an idea. I happen to know that for some reason, Sancha does not care to gather eggs. I supposed she could have delegated it to another, since she is my housekeeper now, but when she came here with Felicia, she was just a servant. Felicia started gathering eggs for her. I’ll show you where the henhouse is.”
Hand in hand, they tiptoed from the still-dark hacienda like children bent on mischief. He gave Paloma a basket and pointed to the henhouse. “Make Sancha happy,” he said and kissed her cheek.
It’s funny what people do not care for, Paloma thought as she gathered eggs, getting pecked for her pains. Maybe that jab of the hen’s beak bothered Sancha. I think of flan and eggs with green salsa and eggs with chorizo, and eggs with eggs. So easy to like eggs. I just think of what they will become, and overlook the chickens.
Even though it was cold, she mulled around that idea, thinking of Sancha and her understandable reserve. “I want Sancha to like me almost as much as her darling Felicia,” she said out loud, but softly. “She will become my ally. I am not certain how yet, but it will happen.”
She looked around. No one had heard her. Maybe it is as simple as liking eggs. I will like Sancha starting now, she told herself.
She took another bucket and dipped water from the acequia, shivering as she washed off each egg. Dawn was shaking off a cold night when she came into the kitchen with a bucket of clean eggs. Sancha was just unlocking the door to the pantry. She looked up in surprise as Paloma came in through the kitchen garden door. She nodded her approval, which made Paloma smile.
“Good morning, Sancha,” she said. “Thank you for getting warm water for us last night.”
It sounded simple, almost stupid. She thought of all the times Sancha must have done just that for the mistress of the house who had taken her along when she married Marco Mondragón. Better than most, Paloma knew that servants were there to serve. No one in the odious Moreno household had ever complimented her. As she smiled at the housekeeper and went back to her room to finish dressing, she glanced back to see Sancha admiring the clean eggs, a look of pleasure on her face.
Breakfast was eggs and sausage with green chilies, tortillas and baked apples drenched in cream. Declaring he was not over fond of cream, Marco shared his portion with her after she had finished her own. He also shook his head at finishing his milk, and pushed it toward Paloma. As Paloma drank it, she glanced at the cook, who was nodding to her husband.
“Hmm. You are in a conspiracy to fatten me,” she commented later, as he helped her into the sidesaddle after morning prayers.
“No one gets fat in Valle del Sol,” he assured her as he mounted. “Let’s just call it smoothing the fabric over your bones.”
“You may call it whatever you like,” Paloma said generously.
The sun had topped the mountains when Paloma, Marco and their four outriders paralleled the cliff face south on a more obscure road than the one followed yesterday to the Double Cross. Marco had slung his own bow and quiver of arrows over his shoulder.
“Do you have a firing piece, husband?” she asked, curious.
“I seldom use it. The bow is faster and I am better with it.”
Smoke billowed up from the chimney at Hacienda Muñoz, adding its feathery plume to other cooking fires Paloma saw all over the valley, greeting another day with cornmeal mush, eggs and sausage. The hacienda was located on a bench overlooking Santa Maria, where the view of the Texas plains far to the east stretched on and on.
“He chose a high place,” Paloma said. “What a fine view he has.”
“Joaquin’s grandfather came into Valle del Sol with my grandfather and probably had more land, too. Lately, though …” His voice trailed off. “Well, let me say that Señor Muñoz just might be too old to manage it. Or so his daughter Pepita tells me.” He sighed. “And tells me. She is the managing sort.”
They waited a long time o
n horseback in front of Hacienca Muñoz before someone swung wide the gates. “I wonder if Joaquin has a retainer any younger than he is,” Marco whispered to her as they rode inside into the courtyard.
Although the hacienda had been built as a fortress, there were obvious signs that Señor Muñoz had relaxed his guard—the few watchmen on the parapet, the general air of shabbiness, the weeds growing tall beside the acequia. She let Marco help her from the saddle and executed what she hoped was the proper depth to her curtsy to the old man who had limped from his hacienda and now regarded her suspiciously from under bushy eyebrows.
Silent, standing close to Marco, Paloma listened as her husband went through the proper ritual of greeting. Everything was as it should be, but without any obvious warmth.
Señor Muñoz led them into his kitchen, where she knew all business took place in Valle del Sol. With its dirt floor and walls in need of whitewash, this kitchen was a pale cousin to the one at the Double Cross. She sniffed, noting the absence of good kitchen fragrances. This kitchen was sour and smelly.
She sat, hands folded politely in her lap, as her husband held out the small scrap of paper with its cryptic message about boots.
“You have probably found these by now,” Marco said, when Muñoz just stared at the scrap, as though trying to decipher the message, too.
“My best pair of boots,” he said finally, and glared at Paloma’s husband. “I have wondered when you would get around to me. My best boots!”
“I was in Santa Fe and some time on the trail,” Marco explained. “Don’t you remember?”
“Of course I remember!” Muñoz snapped.
Silence. Paloma glanced at Marco, who was trying to remain calm, as a juez should.
“Señor, have you found them?” Marco asked at last.
“I have not! Do you think I would misplace my own best boots?”
Marco shrugged, and the old man just glared.
“Excuse me, Señor Muñoz, but were they stolen?” Paloma asked, since the men were engaged in a staring match.
It was as if she had reminded him. Muñoz slapped the table. “They were. And by Toshua, my slave.”
“The boots disappeared and then Toshua, as well, so you assume it was him?” Marco asked, teasing out bits of information like a doctor would tease out a splinter.
“Fulano! I chained him to a post in one of my outbuildings but he refuses to confess,” the old man replied. “It is your job to make him confess.”
“I’m not the Inquisition,” Marco protested. “I can talk to him. Where is he?”
Paloma glanced at Señor Muñoz, disquieted now as he seemed to be wondering that very thing. As the silence lengthened, she spoke in a low voice meant to be soothing. “Señor, will you take us to him?”
“I haven’t seen him in a while,” he said, reluctance evident in every syllable, as though he was a small child expecting a huge scold.
“Surely someone is feeding him,” Marco said.
Muñoz shrugged, and Paloma felt goose bumps march up and down her arms.
“I remember a loaf of bread,” he said finally. “Back when there were leaves on the trees. I must have told someone to feed him.”
Marco leaped to his feet. “We have to find him,” he said. “Take us to him right now. I insist.”
Remaining seated, Muñoz just gestured to the wider world. His expression fierce now, Marco took Paloma by the hand and ran outside, looking around. There were numerous outbuildings, some of them poor dwellings for his slaves and servants. Marco pointed to a shed. “Start this way, Paloma. I’ll go that way.”
She did as he said, an archer following her. Frightened, she worked the latch on the structure, barely more than a shed. The door was warped. Without a word, the archer shouldered it open. Nothing but a rotting harness met their eyes. The archer looked around in disgust. “You would never see such a mess on the Double Cross,” he muttered.
They went to another shed, and another. Nothing. Marco was out of sight now, on his own search. How do you misplace a man you have chained? Paloma asked herself.
Nothing. She looked around, discouraged. All that was left was a henhouse, at least she assumed that’s what it was, because it reminded her of a similar building on her father’s hacienda. No chickens were about, but there was no mistaking a flat pan for grain, quite empty, and a low door next to a closed hatch with a pulley system—the rope rotted away—where at some point in the past generation or two, chickens had entered and exited.
She and the archer looked at each other. He shook his head and started toward Marco, but Paloma went to the small door, which opened easily. The odor that assaulted her nostrils made her step back in horror, trip over her skirt and sit down with a plop.
“Get Marco,” she called over her shoulder as she stood up, covered her nose with the hem of her skirt, and crouched down to look inside.
She heard nothing. There was only a sharp smell of human urine and feces. She swallowed down breakfast again, and crouched there as her eyes became accustomed to the gloom. Gradually she discerned the outline of nesting boxes, and then the sight of a naked man chained to pole in the far corner.
In disbelief, she looked at him, some instinct telling her that he was a Comanche. She hesitated, afraid to go closer. There were enough links on the chain to allow him to lie down. The area around him had been cleared of the rank straw that littered the rest of the henhouse, almost as though he had scoured it for any bits of grain, feathers, or egg shells to eat. He had defecated in one area, maybe back when he thought he might be taken from this hole. Now he sat, head down, in his own filth, his efforts to remain clean too much. As his strength had waned, he had lost all hope. His knees were drawn up to his chest and his forehead rested on them. He sat still and she could not hear him breathing.
One loaf of bread since the leaves had been green. “Dios mio,” she murmured. Señor Muñoz had starved his slave to death over a pair of missing boots. “Pobrecito,” she said, her voice a little louder. Not in her worst moments in the Moreno household had she been treated as poorly as this Comanche.
She took a deep breath and regretted it, because the stench made her eyes water. It couldn’t have been tears at the man’s plight. This was a Comanche. “Pobrecito,” she said anyway, ready to scramble away from the entrance and look for Marco.
She heard a small sound. It could have been a mouse in the straw, but even a mouse wouldn’t pass through such a foul hole on his way to some place better.
The chained slave had raised his head. Paloma held her breath as he stared at her, unblinking—eyes like a hawk, wary and alert despite his obvious distress. She knew she would not move one step closer, not ever. Comanches like this had gutted her mother and then peeled back her scalp while she was still alive and trying to hold the slippery unborn baby slit from her womb.
As Paloma watched him, almost too afraid to move now, he slowly held out his hand to her.
Never, she thought. Never.
She could have kept her resolve without a qualm, if she hadn’t looked into his eyes again. This time she saw something human. She knew what it was to be hungry. She knew what it was to never bathe, because that was a luxury for others. She knew what Father Eusebio would do, and Father Damiano.
They are priests, she reminded herself, sworn to help the wounded. I am not and this man is my enemy. She started to back out, then remembered her own bloody sandals Marco had tacked to the wall in his sala. “Are you brave or not, Paloma?” she murmured, and decided she was not.
If she hadn’t looked into his eyes one more time, she could have closed the door, lied to her husband, and left the man to die. But she looked, and saw the honest man. It chafed her, but she could not deny the look.
She inched closer, still terrified. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed an egg in a nesting box he could not reach. She knew he could see it from where he sat, and she wondered how many days the sight of food had tortured him. She put her hand around the egg, certain it
must be rotten.
Gently, she rolled the egg toward the Comanche, and watched, tears in her eyes, as he crammed it, shell and all, into his mouth.
“I have been hungry, too,” she whispered, as the odor of rotten egg rose to compete with the stench of the filthy man. She went to the door and walked into the sunlight, breathing deep, as the Comanche called after her.
To her relief, Marco was running toward her. She wanted to grab him and never let him go, but someone else needed her more.
Chapter Twenty
In Which Paloma Is Braver Than She Knows.
“You found him,” Marco said, taking her arm. He felt her tremble and caught her as her knees gave out.
“I need to get some water,” she told him. “A bucket. A cloth.”
He pointed her toward the weed-choked acequia. Concerned, he watched her stagger toward the water, as if she had seen too much in the henhouse. He ducked inside, gasped, and wondered why she hadn’t fainted at the sight.
The Comanche, eyes wide open, stared at him as he crunched through an egg shell and chewed doggedly. Marco turned his head and took shallow breaths, determined not to vomit and disgrace the Mondragóns.
“Do you speak Spanish?” he asked.
The Comanche swallowed, retched, and nodded.
“We will get you out of here,” Marco said, sitting back on his heels “If you make a move to harm me or my wife, I will kill you without a qualm. Understand?”
The Comanche nodded. He closed his eyes, after fixing Marco with a look of resignation, something he never thought to see on a Comanche’s face. As his eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom of the henhouse, Marco saw the running sores on the man’s legs and around his neck, where the iron collar bound him.
“All this for a pair of boots,” Marco said, more to himself than the captive.
The Comanche shook his head slowly, as if to move more would jog his head loose from his neck. “I did not,” he whispered.
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