Slavery. War. Plague. Was it the same everywhere? Mercy could think of no response. After a moment, Zane touched the log drum. “Those months cured me of delusions about glorious battle. There was no more time for buglers to play the oracion over the dead, only the ataque and deguello—that means throat-cutting, no quarter. I’ve beard it was sounded at your own Alamo. But I’ve heard bugles enough for my whole life. And if I hear one of those drums booming through the forests, it disturbs my sleep for longer than the noise warrants.” His gaze touched the books Mercy had selected. “Those will get you off to a good start, though they’ll contain nothing of the War of the Castes or the empire. Perhaps it’s better to learn about ruins, which have, after all, survived the downfall of Mayan civilization, Spaniards, invading Mexican armies, and constant Yucatecan rebellions.”
“Ruins are interesting, but they have no life.”
“Well, you’ll see the village this afternoon,” said Zane. “That’ll be reality enough.”
“Panuchos!” shouted Jolie.
Zane laughed and stood aside to let Mercy precede him.
Panuchos were plump, fried tortillas filled with beans, shredded turkey, onions, and a bland, green paste that Zane said was avocado. These were delicious but so filling that Mercy could barely finish one, and she declined custard and mangos, content to sip tea.
Jolie started on a second panucho, but after a few nibbles she said plaintively, “I’m all full, Papa.”
“So, yes, you may take the rest of your panucho to Salvador, but don’t lure him away from his work and get him in trouble.”
Excusing herself prettily in a way that suggested Zane had taught her better manners than he guessed, Jolie hurried off with a second tortilla wrapped around the panucho for security and warmth.
“Who’s Salvador?” Mercy asked.
“He came close to being a Mayan Christ,” Zane said slowly. “It was the most grotesque thing I ever saw—a three-year-old tied to a tree to die while he was worshipped with incense and drunkenness. When everyone was quite drunk, I got him down and brought him here. I tied a branch of copal, the incense tree, in the bonds that held him, so when the village awoke next day a miracle was proclaimed, and that copal branch is displayed to this day on the altar.”
“But why would they do such a thing?”
Zane shrugged. “Child sacrifice isn’t new among the Mayas. They offered the gods what was pure, virgin, and after the Spaniards brought their faith of a crucified Lord, a number of children were put to death like that. But Salvador’s torment came from different roots. The maestro cantor of the village, who surely was insane, thought to create a Mayan savior for his people, and for this he chose the son of his young sister, Xia, who was already skilled in the use of herbs and in giving cures.”
“She didn’t consent!”
“She was drugged and placed against the foot of the tree. I couldn’t interfere while the worship-orgy was going on because I was alone, on a hunting trip, and I would simply have gotten killed without saving the boy. But sometime later I went back and did as I have told you. Then after talking with Xia enough to be sure she loved her child and hadn’t agreed to the martyrdom, I told her how I’d taken Salvador and that he was now being fostered by Macedonio and his wife. He doesn’t know she’s his mother. It would mean death for both of them if the villagers found out he didn’t turn into a sacred copal branch. Xia’s used the reverence paid to her to become a real power in her town. Two years ago her brother died, and I suspect she put him away with poison.”
“You sound as if you admire her!”
Raising an eyebrow, Zane considered. “I suppose I do—as one admires any beautiful, deadly thing.”
“Is she … beautiful?”
“Like the rarest orchid.” Zane hesitated. “She lived for a while in the tower a few years back when her village was plagued with smallpox and people blamed her for not curing them. When the sickness waned, she returned with enough corn to get the people through the season of no harvest, so she regained her status.”
“You gave her the corn.”
“There was plenty here. Should I starve people because a madman led them to kill a child?” Zane added gruffly, “It wasn’t unselfish. When I’m shorthanded, that’s the village where I hire extra workers. I’ll take you there some day when you feel like riding.” He grinned. “Be sure to act properly impressed if Xia invites you to view the miraculous copal branch.”
“It’s a great pity when miracles depend on the trickery of men like you!” Mercy retorted.
“But what if there’d been no trickery?”
Mercy couldn’t repress a shudder. “I’d rather see Salvador than the copal branch!”
“You’ll meet him this afternoon,” said Zane. “Come to my office in an hour.” He walked with her through the courtyard and left her at her door.
Lying down with a volume of Stevens, Mercy read about his 1843 impressions of Mérida, including a description of a bullfight, and she was grateful Zane hadn’t taken her to one. The tale was fascinating, but she caught herself dozing off. The journey had left her weary, as well as stiff.
Rousing guiltily, she saw by the gold-and-red clock on the mantel that an hour had passed. Slipping into the butterfly gown she’d laid across the chest, she decided her hair was passable, so she slipped on sandals and hurried through the courtyard to the veranda, where she almost collided with Zane.
“Rule number one in tropical climate,” he chided, laughing as he checked her, “never hurry. You’ll just run into those who don’t, and you’ll all wind up in a heap!”
“I didn’t want to be late,” she said, flustered even more by the careless way he slipped his hand beneath her arm.
“Are you trying to make me think you’re that freak, a conscientious female?”
“Women,” she snapped, “would be more responsible if they were given more control over their lives. Why should they be conscientious when legally they’re classed with children and lunatics? Men use every method of bribes and coercion to make women feel trivial and then complain because they sometimes are!”
“Yet you cling to your fetters,” Zane mocked.
“What do you mean?” Mercy demanded.
“That gown would fit naturally and you’d be more comfortable without those absurd undergarments.”
She gasped, blushing, then tried to struggle away from him, but his warm fingers closed more firmly around her bare arm and he smiled jauntily down at her as he brought her through a walk between the main house and the row of buildings on its right.
“At least you’ve the sense to wear sandals, and I suppose we must make allowances for the strange things women are taught.” His dancing, dark gray eyes brushed along her body. “However did you escape corsets?”
“Sir!”
“I’ll show you the factory and drying yards later,” he said, switching smoothly to business as they came out by a small chapel with a graveyard behind it. Oval white huts with shaggy thatches, almost obscured by vines and bushes, were arranged around a well, with a ceiba tree and cross close by. Pigs squealed, turkeys gobbled, chickens pecked about the clearing, and even at this siesta time a few women were working in patches behind their dwellings. Several burros roamed the common and babies napped in hammocks under thatched shelters attached to the backs of most houses. A large front and back door let Mercy see straight through the houses that had no windows.
“Mayas have made huts like this—of wattle and sticks plastered with lime—since back before the conquest,” Zane said. “Materials are always at hand to make another. One reason the Cruzob were hard to defeat was that they could move quickly. Hammocks weigh almost nothing, and they had few clothes or other possessions. They carried corn for food and seed, of course, and as much other food as they could, but they were so poor that this was practically nothing. With a machete, gun, and corn, they could start again almost anyplace.”
“Have any of your workers joined the Cruzob?”
> “The Cruzob fight mostly as village groups under their local village chiefs, or batabs. The only man I know of who went to them married into a Cruzob village, which is unusual in itself. Villagers tend to be clannish and they viewed outsiders with suspicion even before the war.”
“What are those little huts near the larger ones?” Mercy inquired.
“Those are for worship. Each family has a personal cross that’s handed down to the eldest son and kept in its own shrine. Each cross is dedicated to a saint or to the Holy Cross and is believed to have guardian powers. Some are stronger than others. The cross of some fortunate family may grow so powerful that it becomes the main cross for a whole village.”
“It must be a good feeling to have a special guardian.”
“The Mayas needs all the help they can get. A drought, rot, or hail can cause starvation. Workers at La Quinta, of course, don’t have to depend on their crops to live, but corn is such a holy thing to them that I think they’d grow it even if they didn’t need it. They call it Grace of God and believe mankind was created from cornmeal. When priests said that Jesus was the ‘bread of life,’ it was easy for the Mayas to link him with their own maize deity.”
“Does the village exist of itself, or only for the hacienda?”
“It was here when my father raised La Quinta from the stone of ancient ruins. He contracted with the batab for laborers, and though most of the men work for me, they are not required to. Most of them are harvesting their main corn crop right now, but when that’s done they’ll come back to the hemp, or henequén, which requires work all year.”
“You get along with the batab?”
Zane laughed, skin crinkling at the edges of his eyes. “You bet! Macedonio is a batab as well as a mayordomo.”
“Convenient.”
“It does simplify things. But he was elected by the village, not appointed by me. He won’t serve as batab for life, and there’s a Council of Elders and several assistant alcaldes with specific duties. A scribe keeps all the village documents locked in a chest: land treaties, royal grants of common land, quaint, circular painted maps several hundreds of years old, wills, and genealogies. The scribe’s supposed to be elected, but since he’s the only one who can read and write, he usually holds the post for life and passes it down to his son.”
“May I look in the church?”
In answer, Zane escorted Mercy across the village center and into the small church, with its stone floor and crude benches. There was a crucifix at the altar, and along the walls were small shrines with statues of saints so crudely carved and painted that they must have been made locally by someone with more piety and devotion than skill. The exception was a large plaster image of a sweet-faced woman draped in brilliant blue and rose. She had more candles and flowers than all the other saints put together. Zane paused before her with a smile.
“One thing you’ll approve of—the main fiesta here is for Santa Yñez in January. She’s the village patroness. And she has a patron to watch over her offerings and see that her feast is properly celebrated. The patron has twelve helpers to assist in service and guardianship to her, and several other of these saints are potent enough to have their patrons and twelve assistants.”
“But it’s Santa Yñez who watches over the fifth direction?”
“You remember well,” Zane said approvingly. “And every year there is a main fiesta. This one has plenty of liquor, food, music, and fireworks, and when possible there’s a bullfight.”
Mercy couldn’t repress a sound of dismay. Stevens’ description of the bleeding, pitiful bulls made her hope she would never have to see such a spectacle. Zane shot her a strange, testing look.
“Never mind. You’ll enjoy the dancing, at least. Now, let’s go past some cornfields on our way to the henequén fields.”
8
The cornfields were scattered in clearings hacked and burned from the wilderness, the stalks growing wherever a seed found enough soil to root in the thin, shallow, rocky earth. A plow would never work here.
“After the proper prayers and offerings,” Zane said, “a man takes pointed stick and makes holes wherever he can. A field uses up its fertility in three years, so the work of cutting a new field is done in one’s spare time and the burning of the dried wood takes place in the spring. Tricky business. If the wood’s too green, the burn won’t be thorough enough to let sunlight reach the planted crop, but if a man waits too long, the rains may start and the wood can’t be burned. Generally, the H-men predicts the weather and people follow his advice.”
“H-men?”
“It means ‘he who knows.’ He can do some curing and foretell the future with grains of corn or sacred stones, but mainly he’s supposed to help obtain a good harvest. He may study his Count of Days, which shows cycles of weather and events, but I’m sure he relies more on when flying ants swarm or the frogs croak.”
“Do you think that lore came down from the old Mayas?”
“I’m sure it did. Mayan religion is almost totally aimed at producing plentiful crops of corn, and these homespun rites are what linger after the complicated astronomy and theology of the priest kings is forgotten.”
“But how did people plant and harvest during the war?”
“As best they could. There was no time to clear and burn fertile new fields, so they had to sow their seed hastily in worn-out soil and hope enough would come up to keep them from starving. Often they had to choose between eating seed corn and starving when there was no crop or going hungry, even starving, while waiting for the corn to grow. And many Cruzob starved, though the fortunate got by on what corn they could salvage, roots, and berries. During the worst times, there was only a little game because it had been hunted close to extinction.”
Mercy admired the ripened ears of the stalks, which were higher than her head. “Then a crop like this must make everyone happy.”
“Yes, especially since we feel fairly sure the Cruzob won’t attack and steal it. After the harvest is in, each man will put up an altar in his field and offer food and drink to the spirits in thanks for the crop. The gods take the vital, spiritual part of the sacrifice, but after the proper prayers, people can feast on the material remains of the offerings.”
“That sounds like a system that ought to benefit both gods and worshippers,” said Mercy, smiling.
“It’s all a part of tamen, harmony with heaven, which is the Maya’s state of grace. Corn is sacred. Growing it is a religious, as well as practical, act. Grain was sacred, of course, in that without it life on land would cease. The soil that nourished plants was holy, too, then, a first altar. Civilized man got a long way from those simple facts, but he was as ultimately dependent on crops and the animals living off of them as were the Mayas, whose life revolved around the cycles of the buried or resurrected corn.”
They walked now along a path worn through weeds and thick growth that was higher than Zane’s head. He said it was an old cornfield. No breeze could reach them, and the afternoon sun blazed down almost like summer. Mercy was glad to come out of the dense, airless field into a vast clearing.
Rows of blue-green agave with broad-bladed leaves tapering to dagger points grew as far as Mercy could see. Machetes flashed as barefooted men with rolled-up white trousers and shirts worked up and down the field, cutting off leaves, trimming the edges, and piling them into bundles that were carried to the ends of rows to be hauled off by mules that pulled carts along a movable track.
“This is henequén,” Zane told her. “Each plant has forty-two leaves, and each plant is worked every four months, at which time the twelve largest leaves are cut. A worker must count to be sure he cuts that dozen. Henequén requires year-round attention. Besides collecting leaves, weeds have to be kept out, and there’s still the work to be done at the drying yards and factory.”
“Is it a profitable crop?”
“Perhaps the best for Yucatán’s stony soil. I think it’ll eventually be the most important product of the region, but m
any owners won’t try it because it’s seven years before the plants can be harvested. That ties up capital for a long time with no return, whereas sugarcane’s second year’s harvest generally pays all the costs of getting started, and after that it may return annual profits of up to seven hundred percent.”
Mercy stared. “Then why doesn’t everyone plant sugarcane?”
“Because, sweet Mercy, comparatively little soil is good enough to nourish it.” Zane touched a henequén leaf with his boot toe. “This can grow almost anywhere, and as trade expands, so will the need for rope and twine.”
A wave of premonition swept over Mercy. She thought of what she had heard about some Southern plantations, and she remembered Mayel being whipped.
“You pay your workers,” she said. “But if debt-slavery’s so common here, won’t it increase, and won’t the debt-slaves be driven mercilessly, to increase the owner’s profit?”
“Once initial costs are recovered, it’s easily possible to pay a decent wage,” said Zane.
“Possible, but will men who live in Mérida all year care what goes on as long as they have sufficient money to indulge their cultured whims?”
Zane’s mouth thinned angrily. “Do you expect me to change human nature? In time, debt servitude will be forbidden, but I find it strange to hear someone from the South so troubled about slaves.”
That stung, flicking the raw, proud flesh of Mercy’s mingled guilt and defensiveness about her homeland, which she loved, while knowing it had planted the wind of bondage and reaped the whirlwind of defeat and ruin. She turned away, staring blindly.
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