“Buenos días, Doña Mercy.”
“Buenos días, Mayel.” Mercy searched for words. “Como estas?”
There followed a torrent of words and gestures, none of which Mercy understood, except for “buenos” and “está bien,” repeated many times. She sighed, realizing again that she must learn two languages before she could enter fully into the life of La Quinta. But there was no mistaking Mayel’s happiness. She was like a shrinking thorn plant that had suddenly burst into leaf and flower.
“She says the wonder of La Quinta is what it doesn’t have,” said a scornful voice from the window. Curled into the ledge that was large enough for a bench sat Jolie, her pointed chin digging into her knees, her tousled curls a bright blaze. “There’s no jail, no whipping post, no administrador or assistant mayordomos, and the chichan cuenta, a little bill, is an honest charge that is paid off regularly so that a nohoch cuenta, a big bill, doesn’t accumulate and make the workers debt-slaves.”
“I’m afraid I still don’t understand much of that.”
Jolie shrugged as if to say Mercy’s dullness of wit was no surprise, nor any concern of hers. “Most haciendas are run by an administrador who often lives in Mérida or Campeche or Valladolid, like the owner. He visits the holdings of his employer and sees that the mayordomo is running things at a good profit. The mayordomo lives at a hacienda and sees to its day-to-day operation with the help of overseers called assistant mayordomos. We don’t need those. Our people don’t have to be whipped, because if they work well, they get wages besides what they charge at the store. They elect their own field bosses, and Macedonio, the mayordomo, and Papa do all the managing.”
“But the … what did you say? Nohoch cuenta?”
Jolie patted back a yawn. “I can’t explain it all,” she said, swinging off the ledge like a stretching cat. “It’s time for my breakfast.”
She slipped out of the room, leaving Mercy to wonder how long the girl had been sitting there and watching her. Why was the thought of being watched while asleep so disturbing? Because one was exposed, defenseless?
Mayel pointed to several white native dresses spread on the chest and conveyed by words and gestures that Chepa had sent them for Mercy.
“Gracias,” Mercy said and nodded when Mayel glanced at the door, as if asking permission to go.
Propping up pillows, Mercy luxuriated as she slowly nibbled the crisp, sweet bread and sipped hot chocolate. Except when she was sick, it was the first time she’d ever eaten in bed, and though she didn’t intend to make it a habit, this morning it was most pleasant to pamper her travel-sore body and savor the spicily delicious drink.
She’d best take comfort where she found it—from this indulgence, from Mayel’s joy—for it would be a long struggle to win Jolie, and a different and infinitely harder struggle to keep from being Zane’s woman in the tower. In that she had to fight herself. If he had spoken love words to her, wooed her with sweetness, made it more than lust, she’d have succumbed to him last night, even knowing how deadening such a life would be, cut off from normal contacts, devoted to serving only one need of this stormy, complex, terribly cynical man she loved.
She was lucky that he’d been honest. Of course, that was so he wouldn’t have to feel guilty or responsible for her, but it showed him to have some conscience. And apparently he was a kind and just master, one who toiled on the place with the men causing his prosperity.
Sipping the last of the hot chocolate, Mercy stretched, winced, wondered when the numb feeling would leave her buttocks, and got to her feet. Small knives seemed to jab through her legs, thighs, and shoulders. Thank goodness she hadn’t had to mount and ride today! Although she loved horses, she didn’t care if it was weeks before she got on one again.
She hobbled to the chest, grimacing, and examined the white dresses, fine cotton worked with bright embroidery in broad borders around the skirts, sleeves, and simple round necks. One had flowers, another birds of every color perched among leaves and vines, and on the third shift-like garment fluttered yellow butterflies, some hovering between neck and toe.
With a soft cry of delight, Mercy put two dresses in the armoire and began to dress in the third one.
When she entered the courtyard half an hour later, it was with shyness and the fervent hope that she wouldn’t encounter Zane till she was more accustomed to the airily loose garment.
Her camisole and drawers slightly distorted its flowing lines. Petticoats would have bunched grotesquely. Mercy was sure native women wore nothing at all under the garment, a stupefying thought that had a forbidden seductiveness when she imagined for a second how comfortable and free that would make her.
Utterly shameless, too! It was all very well for women who were used to such unrestricting ease, but, even with her vestigial undergarments, Mercy felt naked, nervous without yards of material swathing her legs, without the confining tightness at the waist, throat, and shoulders.
Feet were another matter, though. She wiggled her toes happily in the sandals that had been placed near the dresses. As a child she had gone barefoot with her father’s approval, though visiting ladies had warned her that her feet would spread to the “size of a fieldhand’s,” and during the war it had been no privation to be shoeless in warm weather. Sandals were an item of native dress she could eagerly adopt, and she added them to hot chocolate, the sweet breads, and fresh tortillas as admirable features of this new life.
Hesitating in the sun-splashed courtyard, she decided to let Chepa know she wouldn’t need more breakfast. Then she should go to Zane’s library-office and see what was suitable for Jolie’s lessons. Surely, after an absence, he’d be out looking over his fields and attending to anything urgent that had come up. Mercy wished for him to see her in the charming butterfly dress, yet she dreaded the way she was sure his gaze would go through the cloth and make her nipples stiffen and thrust against the butterfly wings.…
She mustn’t think that way! It was hard enough to hold him off with her whole will set on it. She couldn’t, if she let herself dream of him, live through in memory her response to his alternately cruel and tender mouth, his hard, overpowering body.
Forcing him from her mind, she moved quickly toward the kitchen, called a greeting, and was welcomed at once by Chepa, who smiled at the dress.
“Muy bonita.” She looked approvingly at the way Mercy had drawn her hair back from her face and knotted it low at the back in a semblance of the Yucatecan style.
Mercy thanked her for sending the clothes and breakfast, using as much Spanish as she could while Chepa suggested, supplied, or corrected words. Then she decided to give Mercy a lesson, touching utensils or other objects and giving their Spanish names.
The kitchen was a large room with a fireplace, several long tables, wall niches ornamented with copper luster, pitchers, and open cupboards that held handsome glazed blue-and-white stoneware. An array of utensils that looked like a torturer’s equipment hung from cast-iron hooks. One wall shelf, incised with floral designs, held an assortment of objects somewhat resembling narrow-handled mallets with decorated round tops.
“Molinillos,” Chepa said. Taking one down, she placed it in a pan and twirled it briskly. “Makes hot chocolate good.”
So that was how it got that wonderful frothiness! Mercy decided to learn the trick, but not today. Chepa was busy, and, besides, Mercy was eager to see the rest of the house and as much as possible of the hacienda. Still, she had a last thing to express.
“Mayel happy aquí,” she said. “Muy, muy bien!”
“Mayel look like daughter of me.” Chepa’s eyes grieved for a moment. “Daughter dead.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!”
“Last, youngest child,” said Chepa, “like mariposa.” She touched an embroidered butterfly on Mercy’s shoulder. “Your papa and mama with the good God?”
Elkanah would have snorted at that question from a minister, but not, Mercy thought, from this aging, simple woman who remembered so wistfully a flown-a
way butterfly daughter.
“Yes,” she said.
“Then heart not ache for home. You like room?”
“It’s … bonita!”
Chepa smiled at what must have been a misuse. “Was of Don Zane’s mother.”
Mercy was glad to hear it. She’d hoped it wasn’t the faithless Consuelo’s, but there was no predicting Zane. She thanked Chepa for showing her the kitchen and went back into the courtyard.
The dining room had a fireplace carved with jaguars at one end, a fine, high chest with many small drawers, more open cupboards gleaming with silver and blown glass, and in the center was an immense table, its trestles carved with deer, javelinas, doves, and pheasants. A dozen chairs, all but two arranged against the wall, had needlepoint cushions and their high backs were carved with the same creatures. The two pulled up to the big table looked lonely. Mercy was glad her first meal had been on the porch.
Outside Zane’s office she listened, heard nothing, then came softly around to peer in the window fronting the veranda. She jumped and smothered a shriek as a warm, long hand gave her bottom what was almost a pat.
“Too tempting to resist,” chuckled Zane. “When you lean forward, you elevate your … uh … interesting portion in a most revealing way.”
“No gentleman would …”
“Have I ever claimed to be a gentleman?” His white teeth flashed in his tanned face. Her flesh still glowed from that brief, fleeting pressure. “I’m a pirate’s son, remember! Do you like your Indian smock? I was thinking of your comfort, but my concern’s been rewarded by a most pleasant sight. It would be even more delightful without those absurd things you have on underneath.”
Flushing hotly, Mercy crossed her arms over her breasts, so conspicuously marked by the butterflies, and she wished her heart wouldn’t pound till it made those same butterflies rise and fall tempestuously.
“I … I’m not here to feed your lascivious fancies!”
“But dear Doña Mercy, how can you prevent it?” His eyes sparkled. If he’d spent a restless, frustrated night, it didn’t show. “Even in those cramping, yet voluminous, dresses you brought from Texas, you could whet a man’s appetite. Now that I can actually see the flow of you from shoulders to ankles, don’t think I won’t be dreaming.”
“Dream all you want, but don’t touch me!”
Though he didn’t move forward, he seemed to loom overwhelmingly close. Mercy stepped back, pleading with a blindly outstretched hand.
He dropped a kiss on it. “Do I frighten you that much?” he asked softly. “Never mind, then. Regain your composure while you look through my books. I must spend the rest of the morning with Macedonio, but perhaps this afternoon you’d like to see the village and learn something about the planting of hemp—that’s our major crop.”
“Can we walk?”
He stared, then laughed. “Yes, if you’d be more comfortable, I must see if I can find you a smooth-gaited mare for when you recover. We’ll have our noon meal on the veranda.”
Nodding, he moved off in his long, easy stride, which was deceptively fast. His taut-muscled thighs were slim, but his shoulders were as broad as they could be without seeming out of proportion. His wife must have been a fool to prefer another man, at least on physical grounds, and Mercy felt instinctively that before her treachery embittered him, Zane would have been an excitingly zestful, yet sensitive, lover.
Would he ever be again? Would he ever trust anyone enough?
Absently stroking the curve his hand had touched, Mercy opened the heavy door and went into the library, which smelled fragrantly of tobacco, leather, and books.
A good smell—his smell. Breathing it in, Mercy closed her eyes for a moment, gave herself an admonitory shake and began to read the titles of the books. Some were in Spanish, but most were in English. There was Carlyle, and also Darwin’s Origin of Species, one of the last books she and Elkanah had read together, discussing its theory of evolution and natural selection, views that had infuriated clergymen, though Elkanah said forthrightly to his Presbyterian friends that he found the faith in a gradual change for the better, considerably more edifying than the doctrine of predestination, with souls damned before they were even incarnate.
Tennyson, Poe, Balzac, Hugo, Dickens, Thackeray, Browning—all the authors one would expect where there was a love of reading, but there were others that surprised her: Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which had stirred such commotion; Thoreau’s Walden; Emerson; John Stuart Mill; and FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat, this last being one of the few non-medical books Mercy had brought with her.
Finding these books that she had read before was like finding comforting old friends in a totally unexpected place. Mercy touched them lingeringly even as she sorted out books she wanted to read as soon as possible to gain more knowledge of Yucatán.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s history would have to wait for her to learn Spanish, as would the de Landa and Cogulludo, but she set aside W. H. Prescott’s The Conquest of Mexico and John Stevens’ travels through Yucatán and Guatemala, with the marvelous engravings by Catherwood.
Now, where should she begin with Jolie? Perhaps she would not plan a curriculum until she’d gained some knowledge of Jolie’s special achievements. Narrative poetry might be a good start—Longfellow or Idylls of the King; or perhaps some of Browning’s character portraits. Mercy decided to look over the books in Zane’s boyhood room before taking any more from the office, and she was rising from the footstool when something moist, hairy, and pliable poked between her arm and ribs.
Gasping, she sprang up, staring at a narrow-nosed creature the size of a very large cat with a fluffy, dark-ringed tail the length of a rust-colored body poised on stubby legs. Its pert, intelligent face had small, round ears. It made a gently inquiring mewling sound, but it showed neither fear nor aggression.
Mercy, after her first alarm, laughed at the thoroughly winsome, puzzling beast. “What are you?” she asked as it moved its tail gracefully to and fro. “You look like a mix of raccoon, possum, monkey, and cat, with maybe a little anteater thrown in.”
“Flora’s a coati,” said Jolie from the door. “She’s very clever and kills snakes.” Somewhat hopefully, gauging Mercy, the girl added, “When coatis get angry, they lash their tails and hiss and leap with their claws and teeth on whatever has upset them.”
“They’d have a hard time leaping without their teeth and claws,” said Mercy, smiling. “What a charming animal! Is she grown up?”
“She had four babies last spring and they still live in part of the old ruins out behind the stables. We hope they’ll stay and keep the snake population down.”
“We had lots of snakes in Texas,” Mercy said. “Coatis would be very popular there. Would you like to come to the room your father used to have and see how we can use it for your lessons?”
Jolie didn’t answer but trailed along, having picked up the coati, which péered over the child’s shoulder while its tail almost brushed the floor.
Leading the way through the large sitting room without giving Mercy a chance to notice more than a massive fireplace and heavy, carved furniture, Jolie went down the hall and opened the door opposite Mercy’s. “When I was little and got lonesome, I’d make believe I had a brother who slept here,” Jolie said. “And I pretended I had a sister in Grandmother’s room.”
“You don’t pretend anymore?”
“I decided it was nicer to have Papa all for myself.” Those violet eyes might have been made of glass, they were so hard. “I got so I didn’t mind the empty rooms between us. But I don’t like for you to be there.”
“No, I’m sure you don’t. But there doesn’t seem to be another convenient room.” Only the tower in the woods, with its high chamber. Mercy glanced around the high-roofed cubicle, trying to get some sense of the young Zane.
The high, narrow bed’s posters were almost as wide as it was. There was a desk and chair, washstand, and shelves along the wall filled with books, birds’ nests, w
ooden whistles, clay flutes, rattles, and all kinds of objects that must have come from old Mayan sites, things like incense burners, effigies, bowls, and carvings. In one corner stood a sort of drum made of a hollow log with a lengthwise slit in the top, and above the desk hung several bows, quivers of arrows, feathered lances, and a number of machetes and knives.
Mercy sighed. It would be a distracting classroom. She’s always be catching glimpses of Zane lugging in some treasure or sprawled on the bed reading or dreaming. But if they put a screen in front of the bed and turned the desk like this, put the globe there …
“Don’t you go moving Papa’s things!” cried Jolie, planting herself and Flora between Mercy and the desk. Flora gave an obliging hiss and swung her tail back and forth.
“Papa will move his own things,” said his voice from the door. “You may help, Jolie, or go to your room.”
After a second’s pout, Jolie put the coati on the window ledge. In short order a screen had been found and the furnishings were shifted, making a small but adequate space for studying. Jolie was thumping idly on the log drum, which even at that level gave out a hollow resonance.
“Go wash,” Zane told her somewhat irritably. “And put Flora outside before she breaks something.”
Jolie gave the peculiar drum a last tap. “If you don’t like this anymore, Papa, why don’t you give it to me?”
“And have you call up your fellow rebels?” He grinned. “Hurry, now, or those panuchos I smelled will be cold before you get to the table.”
“Panuchos!” Jolie ran out with the coati slung over her shoulder like a fur piece. Zane turned to Mercy.
“So you think my old bed should be hidden?” He shook his head, chuckling. “If you knew the dreams I indulged in there in my randy youth, I doubt you’d consent to be in here at all!”
“You seem to have had the usual warrior longings,” Mercy said, glancing at the bows and lances.
“More than longings,” said Zane. “At sixteen I was actually a captain, fighting alongside Colonel Cepeda Peraza for a return to liberal federalism—a restoration of liberties. This was back in 1853. We took the northeast and captured part of Mérida before we were driven out and had most of our commanders shot. Cepeda survived, however, and is in fact living in Mérida now. Anyway, cholera struck our retreating men, the Mayas had flared up again, and after we stopped their advance, those of us who hadn’t died from wounds or the black vomit were glad to go home. Some Mayas who’d fought for us were sold into slavery in Cuba, with the profits going to an old crony of Santa Ana’s.”
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