The Book of True Desires

by Betina Krahn

  “Perfectly.”

  “Good.” She scowled as she looked him over. “Where’s your machete?”

  “I didn’t think—” He straightened to his full height. “In my haversack.”

  “You were out here by yourself unarmed?” She exchanged looks with Ruz, who seemed to understand without translation. She thrust her machete at Goodnight, handle first. “Take mine. Get to the front and help clear the way.”

  He took the blade and stalked irritably up the path to join the others. As he passed the lead burrow, Rita stretched out her neck to sniff after him and nickered softly. Itza laughed and the professor chuckled as he translated.

  “She says she likes you, my friend. She thinks you are pretty.”

  “The feeling,” Goodnight muttered, “is not mutual.”

  February 1, Day 12

  Two guides: $40.00 U.S. gold. Six mangy burros (rental): $30.00 U.S. and one bottle of Irish whiskey (requisitioned from yours truly). Flour, corn meal, dried beans, salt pork, carrots, onions, peppers, and coffee: $34.00 U.S.

  Camped by the Tecolutla River. Bugs everywhere. So noisy I can’t sleep. Every beast in the jungle comes out at night to screech, grunt, yip, or howl his arse off. Itchy said noise is from mating. Now strangely aroused by listening.

  Hands raw from wielding damnable machete. Can hardly hold pen. Shoulders in knots. Back and feet aching. Took aspirin with whiskey. Must have canceled each other out. Still feel terrible.

  Personally cleared two miles of path. O’Keefe probably cleared twenty. Swings a machete like it’s a butter knife. George Almighty ——she’s lethal with that thing. And stamina…she never seems to get tired. But at least she sweats. Saw it show as a strike-through on her. Strangely aroused by that, too.

  Must be the heat. Bloody wretched heat. All I can think about is…

  Note: Began collecting specimens. Limited possibilities for testing necessitate using self for guinea pig. Methods: Application to skin and ingestion.

  Eighteen

  That night, as Cordelia’s party camped by the river, the mapmaker Gonzales was receiving a response to his telegram to the Spanish governor of Cuba, in the person of a small, dapper man in a white linen suit and a pristine Panama hat.

  “May I help you, senor?” Gonzales studied the man who had entered his shop flanked by two burly men whose flat black eyes bore no trace of light or humanity. Clearly, this was a time for answers, not questions.

  “The governor of Cuba is very grateful, Senor Gonzales, for your loyalty to Spain and her emissaries in the colonies. I bring you his personal thanks. And I must add my own to them.” He doffed his hat. “Don Alejandro de Castille, of Madrid. Without your message, senor, we would have lost track of the pirate O’Brien. I understand he was here.” When Gonzales nodded, the man smiled humorlessly. “Did he happen to have someone with him? A very handsome woman, perhaps?”

  “Si. Two women, in fact. And a man they called ‘professor.’”

  Castille’s smile broadened, revealing prominent eyeteeth that lent his face a reined savagery. A wave of uneasiness swept through Gonzales.

  “Ah, yes. That old thief, who calls himself Professor Valiente. He has stolen important materials from the Monastery of St. Montelado. Did you know that?”

  “How could I, senor?”

  Castille removed one of his gloves as he strolled by the shelves and he feathered his fingers over the ends of the rolled maps in the bins.

  “He has taken a set of scrolls that are very precious and must be returned.” Castille turned on the mapmaker with a wave that dismissed further explanation. “Clearly, O’Brien brought them here for maps. Did you sell them any?”

  “Si, senor. Two maps of the same river, in the same region.”

  “And where is this river?”

  “Veracruz. It is called the Tecolutla. There is a village on the Gulf coast by the same name.” Eager to get the man out of his shop, he turned to the chart table behind him and selected a rolled map from the stack lying on it. “I found another map of the area, after they left. They had a curve drawn on paper, and looked for a river to match it.”

  “And this river matched it?”

  “Si. I studied this map—it is a better version of the ones I sold them. But I cannot see anything along this river that merits such interest.”

  Castille traced the lines of the river, seeming to absorb them through his fingertips. It was like watching a snake’s tongue searching for food, Gonzales thought with increasing discomfort. This “friend of the governor” was not a man many would call “friend.”

  “You needn’t concern yourself about it, Senor Gonzales.” Castille motioned to one of his henchmen to roll the map and take it. “It is in my hands now. I will see that the things he stole are returned to their rightful owner.”

  He tossed a large gold coin on the map table and with a chilling smile, climbed the stairs to the street.

  Gonzales looked at the coin for a moment, then turned away with a shiver, leaving it for his apprentice to collect.

  It rained in the night, which was both good and bad. It allowed them to collect fresh water for drinking, but everything was soaking wet when they had to pack up the tents. It seemed to be a good/bad kind of a morning; later Itza and Ruz announced they would reach a village by nightfall—welcome news—but they had to make their way through another day’s worth of jungle to get there.

  They had to make seven to ten miles with spongy, waterlogged ground underfoot and leaden skies and dripping vegetation overhead. The steamy wetness made the scent of the vegetation—rampant new growth on top of unrelenting decay—all the more pungent and seemed to make the edges of the fronds and leaves sharper as they glanced off collars and shirt sleeves and slid against unprotected skin. Tiny unseen scratches filled with sweat and stung, making the lead position as miserable as it was arduous.

  “It’s all yours,” Cordelia said, offering her machete to Goodnight when he came to relieve her. He raised his own, and she noted wryly that he was wearing the goatskin gloves she had required him to bring.

  “I see you’re learning,” she said, stretching her knotted shoulders as she watched him grasp and hack branches that intruded on the way.

  “I’m stubborn, not insane.” He glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

  “I thought you were just British,” she said distractedly, focused on the movement of his back muscles beneath his sweat-dampened shirt. She shook her head. “Which explains perfectly your gambling problem.”

  “I do not have a gambling problem,” he said, displaying a surprising array of leg strength and dexterity as he nudged and kicked aside brush.

  “Of course you do. It’s the English disease. That and blocked bowels.”

  “Blocked bowels?”

  “Haven’t you noticed that nine out of ten purgatives on the market are produced by Englishmen?” Once more she lost her concentration to the spell of his strong, sure movements.

  “That’s ridiculous.” He paused to glance back at her.

  “Name one that isn’t.” She joined him, stepping over plants he had purposefully trampled.

  “Wampole’s—” He frowned and tried another. “Latham’s Cathartic—” He stopped again. “Fletcher’s… Carter’s Little Liver… a-ha! Cascarets Candy Cathartic!”

  “Made by an Englishman named Sterling,” she countered.

  “Persian Pills.”

  “Made by Henry Benton. And don’t forget Simmons Liver Regulator and Doctor Mintie’s English Dandelion Liver and Dyspepsia Pills.”

  After a satisfying pause, she heard him mutter something that sounded suspiciously like “bullocks.”

  “How is it you know so much about purgatives, O’Keefe?” he said over his shoulder as he took another slice at some stubborn branches. “Got a little English in you?”

  “It so happens that I used to work in a pharmacy when I was girl. At one time I wanted to—” She halted and veered quickly from that territory. “So, this
wager you lost with Hardacre, was it business or pleasure? Not that wagering with Samuel P. would ever actually qualify as ‘pleasure.’”

  “My business is none of your business,” he ground out, pushing back a stubborn branch and giving it a chop when it refused to yield.

  “So, it was business,” she concluded. She was making progress. “A doctor-cum-chemist who wagers on business matters with a steel tycoon—it would have to be something weighty and important, right?”

  “Feel free to speculate,” he muttered irritably.

  “Maybe he bet you that something couldn’t be done. Or made,” she said, thinking of how the old man had turned the tables on her. When Goodnight halted for a minute, refusing to look at her, she came alert. “Is that it?” She seized the possibility. “You were trying to prove something could be done or to invent something?”

  The longer he remained silent, the more she sensed she was on the right track and had touched on something highly personal to him. True, it was his business and no concern of hers. But therein lay a major part of the attraction. Seeping through her vague sense of guilt at prying was an overpowering urge to know every detail.

  Then it struck her: everything Hardacre did involved money.

  “Wait. You didn’t bet him, you borrowed from him! And he foreclosed on you. That was it, wasn’t it?”

  “Owww—dammit!” He scrambled back suddenly grabbing his arm and then ripping back his sleeve to stare at his flesh in horror.

  “What is it?” She rushed to see what had happened.

  “Something bit me.” He was inspecting his arm as Itza and the professor arrived to see what had happened. “It couldn’t have been a snake—I was watching for bloody snakes.”

  The guide saw the punctures on his forearm and whirled, scanning the ground and nearby brush. A moment later he pounced on a long, dark branch that abruptly coiled and fought as he lifted it for inspection.

  “Vine snake,” the professor translated as the guide displayed the culprit. “They hang stiff and still… pretend to be branches… also called ‘whip snake.’”

  “Are they poisonous?” she asked, her stomach knotting.

  “Yes.” The professor interpreted Itza’s nod and then his hand motion. “Some.” They watched Itza slice the snake in half and sling it into the bush.

  “What does that mean, ‘some’?” She held Goodnight’s arm, watching the area around the bite reddening fast. “What do we do?”

  “He gets a little sick.” After more consultation with Itza, the professor sighed. “It makes a bad sore, but he does not die.”

  “Is he sure?” Goodnight asked, looking at Itza, who nodded and showed two whitish patches on his left arm— presumably scars from similar bites—and nodded. “Lovely. Just lovely.”

  Cordelia went back for Goodnight’s bag of medicines and helped clean and bandage his arm. He took aspirin to ward off the fever he expected and insisted he felt fine.

  But as they pushed on, his eyes darkened and it became increasingly clear he wasn’t himself. He ambled along mechanically, staring blankly ahead, unresponsive to their questions, looking as if he were listening to something only he could hear. She suggested they stop and rest until the heat of the day passed, but he refused to sit. His hair was wet and his shirt was drenched with sweat.

  When she shot the professor and Ruz worried looks, the guide pulled some leaves from his pocket and offered them to Goodnight, saying that chewing them would help the discomfort in his arm.

  To her surprise, Goodnight stuffed them into his mouth. The more he chewed, the more he relaxed and his limbs loosened. Walking with an increasingly eratic gait, he strayed off the path to investigate odd looking plants— sniffing blooms, leaves, bark, and sap, rubbing some parts on his skin, popping other bits into his mouth, and tucking leaves, seeds, and pods into his pockets. She held her breath each time he charged away and exhaled each time he came loping back, looking a little less stable.

  “What on earth are you doing?” she demanded, following him, frantic that he might step on a coiled rattlesnake or into a hole and break a leg.

  “Did you know,” he said slowly, exaggerating each word as if he were playing with the sound of his own voice, “that there are only about ten pharmaceuticals that are proven to work? Ten. Yet, how many pills an’ elixirs are sold with promises to restore hair or relieve dropsey or cure club feet—to cure everything from common colds, to catarrh, to cancer?”

  Fearing he might fall flat on his face at any time, she took his good arm and tried to steady him.

  “Just ten? Why don’t you come back to the others and tell us all about it? It’s not good for you to be out here by yourself.”

  “Only ten. Out of the thousands and th–thousands that make millions and millions for th’ snake-oil hawkers. The rest don’t do a bloody thing. If you’re lucky. If yer not lucky and you get hold of a bad ‘medicine’ it can make you worse or even kill you.”

  He paused to gnaw on a particularly gnarled twig, waited a moment, analyzing it’s taste or effect, then tossed it aside with a curl of his nose.

  “Nobody bothers to test their drugs, see. Jus’ brew it an’ bottle it up. One dollar, two dollars a bottle. As long as there’s enough alcohol in it—”

  “Really, Goodnight.” She snatched a huge, hairy looking leaf from his hand before he could shove it into his mouth. “You’re starting to worry me. You can’t just go munching your way through the jungle. Some of this foliage may be poisonous. Come back with me and we’ll find you a place to rest until you—”

  “Science.” He held up an index finger and swayed around it. “Science must lead the way. Test the medicines. Prove they work.” He reached out and grabbed a thick, rubbery leaf and, before she could stop him, took a huge bite out of it. After two chomps, he froze, wretched, and frantically began to dig it out of his mouth with both hands. “Ack–k–k— argh–h–h— ugh–h–h—”

  “For heaven’s sake—” She waited until he’d spit several times to clear his mouth before seizing his hands and pulling him back toward the main party. “I refuse to stand by and watch you make yourself sick.”

  He allowed her to pull him along, until he spotted something interesting. “Wait, wait—there’s something that looks like Hart’s Tongue—Wait—” He pulled free and headed straight for the leaves of a long, blade-like fern with hairy, nasty-looking brown curls on stalks above it. He pulled leaves and sniffed and tasted them, fortunately with better results than his last specimen.

  “What are you doing?” She planted herself in front of him, seizing the leaves and trying to wrest them from his grip. “What does any of this have to do with… ohhhh. Medicine and chemistry.” Her mind flew as she looked up into his unsteady gaze. “You were trying to make medicines?”

  There was a long silence before he answered.

  “I built a laboratory. To develop proven cures.”

  “So you borrowed money from Samuel P.,” she supplied, searching his face and seeing in his glazed eyes a melancholy glint of confirmation. “And did you develop any cures?”

  “Not… fully.”

  “So, you didn’t make any medicines.

  “Not as such.”

  “Or any money.”

  His silence as he stood there swaying and looking miserable and bereft was all the confirmation she needed.

  This backhanded revelation certainly explained Samuel P’s antagonism toward him. His venture smacked of an idealism that was heresy to a devout capitalist like her grandfather. That, paired with his upper-crust British superiority, made Goodnight a perfect target for Hardacre’s bootstrap American prejudices.

  “Look! Hibiscus!”

  He was off and running again.

  She wrestled the large red flowers from his hands— though not before he managed to stuff a few in his pockets—and dragged him bodily back to the rest of their party. Ruz gave him another handful of leaves to chew and he gradually slid from his seat on an upraised root to a seat on
the moist ground. Soon he was sprawled on his back with his eyes closed and a hint of a smile on his face.

  Itza and Ruz shook their heads and, through the professor, registered the opinion that he was better off this way. After redistributing the supply packs to free one of the burros, they lifted him gently and hung him across its back. They continued on with Goodnight dangling over the burro, oblivious to both his ignominious position and the warmth of Cordelia’s gaze on him.

  It took a snakebite, heaven knew what mix of exotic herbs and poisons, and some intoxicating leaves the natives chewed to do it, but she finally got the truth out of him. He was a scientist, a researcher, trying to make the world a better place. And he’d had the bad luck or bad judgment to borrow money from her shark of a grandfather. When he couldn’t pay, the old man required him to work off the debt.

  How callous and shortsighted, taking a man like Goodnight from his work to make him draw baths and press clothes and tend gouty old feet. How dare Samuel P. do such a thing? It exceeded even her worst expectations of him and made her all the more determined to succeed with this expedition.

  It struck her, as she watched Goodnight’s strong arms sway helplessly, that he felt the same. His strange behavior with the plants was his attempt to find something to take back, a discovery of substance, something to use in making real medicine. Something swelled in her chest, making it harder to breathe.

  They were more alike than she had guessed. Stubborn, proud, independent—they even had similar goals with regard to her wicked old grandfather. Glancing around to make certain no one could see, she reached out to rifle her fingers through his hair. No wonder she was so attracted to him.

  Nineteen

  The village, nestled in a sharp bend in the Tecolutla river, was little more than a handful of dwellings surrounded by maize fields carved haphazardly out of the surrounding jungle. Chickens roamed the huts at will and the local children were employed in a continuous patrol to keep the burros and pigs out of the fields. The people recognized the Platanos and welcomed them warmly. Most had seen English-speaking men before, but “yanqui” women were a novelty. They were fascinated by Cordelia’s long, burnished hair and amber eyes and by Hedda’s split skirts and flower-trimmed sunhat.