“I teach,” Chepa said.
For the next hour she showed Mercy and Mayel leaves, seeds, roots, and dried flowers, conveying their uses with signs when her English failed, correcting Mercy’s pronunciation of each name till it was recognizable.
“I show plants growing,” Chepa promised. “Then you tell apart better.”
“I’ll have to write it all down,” Mercy said. “What a lot there is to learn!”
“Much more,” Chepa said, an expansive motion of her arms embracing all directions. “The good God made a cure for all hurts.”
Possibly, if one knew what. Mercy was dazzled at the contents of the little cupboard, especially by the painkillers and anesthetics.
Besides toloache, there were various morning-glory seeds, cacti, leaves of the white sapote, and the roots and seeds of several impossibly unpronounceable plants. Epazote, or wormweed, would purge worms, as well as season food; mint-like salvia, borage, and steeped willow leaves were used for fever. The flowers and bark of the Mexican magnolia, yoloxochitl, helped heart ailments, and for the garrapatas, or chiggers, that had so plagued the journey, a dressing of agave gave relief.
There were treatments for gout, colds, pneumonia, diarrhea, constipation, and to increase the flow of mother’s milk. “I can even,” announced Chepa, “pull tooth, no hurt.”
Mercy stared at this. Having a tooth pulled out was such a wretched and bloody experience that no one did it until infection or pain drove them to it. “You mean you give toloache or copal so the person doesn’t feel the pain?”
Chepa shook her head. “No hurt. I show someday.” She giggled, a strange, girlish sound from her regality. “H-men wants to know. Never tell him. He has his things, and I have mine.”
So there was a little professional jealousy there. How Elkanah would have reveled by talking to Chepal Mercy thought a bit ruefully of the medicaments she’d brought with her, naturally assuming she might have to nurse the ignorant peasants. Even so, there might be a few things Chepa would like to add to her pharmacopoeia.
Mercy complimented Chepa’s skill and supplies, thanked her for the instruction, and crossed the court to her room, eager to review her father’s notes and go through her medicinal packets.
She thought she heard a door close as she entered. No one was there, but the cushions on the window ledge looked as if they’d been nestled against. Mercy paused, then got out the small carved animals she’d bought at Tekax. The deer and pheasant she placed close together on the window ledge, then positioned the jaguar in the corner far enough away not to be a suggested threat.
Surely Jolie would like them, and if they weren’t a direct present …
Mercy had still not fully unpacked. She put her few remaining pieces of jewelry in a lacquer box on the chest, except for the black coral necklace Zane had given her. This she fastened around her neck. The sewing materials went on a shelf in the top of the armoire, where her dresses hung with a drooping shabbiness accentuated by the somber beauty of the quetzal dress.
Doña Elena’s dance seemed an eternity ago, yet was less than a week had passed. Had Eric been drunk, to offer her marriages, especially knowing that she’d been wagered by her own husband on the turn of a card? The Viking had seemed sober enough. Perhaps he’d just wanted to annoy Zane.
A sort of chill fire shot through her as she remembered Eric’s searing mouth and his cruelly inescapable embrace. In her heart she knew that his wish to have her was more than an accident, more than a perverse whim to anger Zane. But surely he was in Belize by now, or soon would be, and there was no reason why she’d ever see him again unless they met by chance in Mérida next year.
Mérida. Next year. Both seemed worlds away.
This is the fifth direction, she told herself. This is where you start.
And already she was starting. She had at least a sketchy idea of henequén production, the workings of a village, cochinita pibil, and a treatment for asthma, as well as a glimpse of Chepa’s other remedies. The schoolroom was arranged and some books were selected. Now all she had to do was capture her recalcitrant pupil, who’d rather help her friend cut henequén than behave like the master’s daughter.
At least Jolie was capable of loyalty and affection. How delighted she’d been when Zane hinted that Victoriano, the H-men, might take an apprentice!
Mercy caught her breath in sudden inspiration. If Salvador thought the white man’s learning might be useful, and if Zane would let him study with Jolie, that might be a way of making the studies palatable. Mercy had no wish to sit opposite a glowering, spoiled girl and try to penetrate a locked mind. Even less did she want to have to appeal to Zane to compel a semblance of compliance.
Cheered by hope that Salvador would welcome all the knowledge he could get, Mercy reached the bottom of her pack and took out her father’s letters, books, and a small bundle. The bundle contained her medical remedies: sassafras’ pungent bark; mint, which she knew could be found here; mountain pinks and the bark of dogwood root, for fever; horehound and mullein leaves for croup; garlic for influenza and bronchitis; dried pomegranate rind for diarrhea and dysentery; dandelion roots and yarrow for upset stomachs.
They were like old friends, remembrances of home, of her father explaining their use, and her efforts to ease his patients with them after he was gone. She held up another packet.
Rue.
The next, was rosemary. “… that’s for remembrance.”
And in the last packet were dried violets, sweet-smelling, having many uses. But her mind flew back to Ophelia’s grief for her father. “I would give, you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.”
Mercy put down her head and wept, but it was more purge than grief. These violets might be withered, but beautiful flowers grew here. Though her abilities were slight compared with Chepa’s, and possibly even with Victoriano’s, she would use them and improve, for her father’s sake, if not her own. She would use her life in a way that would make less bitter the waste of the years he could not have, and in spite of his agnosticism and her own doubts, she prayed that he might somehow know. And she wouldn’t be Zane’s mistress unless he loved her and let her do her part at La Quinta. She wouldn’t live shut up in a tower, sealed away from life, for any man, and one who would ask that couldn’t truly care about her, anyhow.
She remembered her father’s favorite words, from Marcus Aurelius: “And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and why, then, do you not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature?”
Feeling a closeness, a sense of communication, as if Elkanah were watching her and smiling, Mercy opened his letters and began to read them.
9
Her father’s letters alternated in their tone: outrage of a man whose colleagues seemed criminally careless and obstinate to excitement over a newly discovered substitute for a medicine kept from the South by the blockade; helplessness in the face of death, maming, and agony.
If I come home, I’ll study hypnotism, for to stop pain is wonderful. Don’t think I’m driven out of my wits, dear Mercy. An Austrian physician named Mesmer used the technique, which goes back to at least Paracelsus. I look at the sick, wounded, and dying, those who cannot escape their torment, and I’d sell my soul to give them ease—not even healing, just an end to pain.
And:
There’s no such thing as “laudable pus.” The hogs who applaud this are surely responsible for much gangrene, probing wounds and operating with dirty hands: They’re the same death-dealers who come from a patient ill with some loathsome or contagious disease and, unwashed, deliver a baby, killing many a new mother with puerperal fever.
But Mercy studied most carefully the notes he’d added to Dr. Francis Porcher’s Resources of Southern Fields and Forests, a treatise published in 1863, at the urging of the Confederate surgeon general, to give substitutes for unobtainable drugs.
To replace quinine for malaria, there was dogwood, poplar, and willow bark steeped in whiskey. Elk
hanah noted wryly that the last ingredient made it a popular medicine. Poke was used for neuralgia, itch, and syphilis. For the almost universal bowel ailments that probably killed more men than any other cause, there was blackberry, sweet gum, and willow.
When scurvy threatened, doctors were advised to ask the men to bring in greens, poke, dandelions, mustard, wild onion, pepper grass, and such. Elkanah noted that he had more faith in this preventive than in most of the cures.
Only the deepening of twilight, till she could no longer make out the words, alerted Mercy to the time and where she was. First she put the books on the table by the chair. Then she tucked the letters and herbs into a small chest by the window. This done, she changed into the flower-embroidered dress, pinned her hair back in a loose knot, and decided it was cool enough for a shawl.
As she entered the courtyard, Zane stood under the arch. His scowl disappeared when he saw her. Mercy’s heart lifted at that. He must have some softness for her, to spend time as he had that day introducing her to the plantation, to refrain from simply exercising his rights as her master. If she were patient, went about her tasks with Jolie, and stuck to her resolves concerning him, wasn’t it at least possible that someday his bitter disillusion might fade and make him risk loving again? If he’d love her, she’d never hurt him. But there was no way, now, to convince him.
“You’re late,” he growled, but there was eagerness in his eyes as he stood back to let her precede him to the table.
The cochinita pibil was succulent. Zane complimented Chepa, echoed by Mercy. The sauce made a tasty flavoring for the rice. Zane told Chepa that after she’d saved enough cochinita for next day, she could give the rest to whatever people in the village had no one to hunt for them. This was evidently the practice of La Quinta, to avoid tainted meat and provide animal flesh for villagers.
Jolie, who’d been subdued during the meal, refused a dessert of spiced custard, but she asked for a second mug of hot chocolate, complaining that her first one hadn’t been foamy enough. “You go and twirl it, then,” Zane suggested.
To Mercy’s surprise, Jolie trotted off happily beside Chepa. “She likes to be in the kitchen,” Zane explained. “It’s where she spent much of her time till last year, when she decided that as a young mistress she shouldn’t behave like a scullery maid.”
Mercy couldn’t help laughing. “So now she cuts henequén! Your daughter isn’t getting to be a prim and proper sit-on-her-hands doll, Zane.”
“Neither are you,” he retorted somewhat grimly. “So it would seem I’ve at least found her a compatible teacher.”
“If she’ll listen to me.” This was as good a time as any, so Mercy plunged in. “Zane, could Salvador study with her? Surely it would be an advantage for you to have a man around who was educated in both Mayan and white ways. If he becomes the leader you seem to think he will, it should be useful to give him the broadest knowledge possible.”
Zane frowned, turning his cup. “Doesn’t it occur to you that Jolie and the boy are getting too old to continue their unusual friendship? Boys only a few years older than Salvador are often fathers.”
It was Mercy’s turn to stare, but she recovered after a moment. “They must feel like brother and sister.”
His mouth twitched. “Incest is an old and honorable tradition, at least among noble or royal lines.”
“You twist everything!”
“I point out facts you’d prefer to ignore.”
Biting her lip, Mercy tried a different attack. “Maybe they shouldn’t be together indefinitely, but I’m concerned with getting Jolie into the classroom.”
“She’ll do as I tell her.”
Mercy gasped with exasperation. “You can send her body, but she can leave her mind in the kitchen or the field—anywhere but a place she detests.”
“It’s up to you to capture her interest.”
“You should know that’s impossible,” flared Mercy, “since she’s as stubborn as you are!”
“And you’re devious, sweet Mercy, for all your plain speaking.” The corner of Zane’s mouth twitched. “You began this gambit by suggesting that Salvador’s education would benefit me. Now it develops that you’re simply trying to wheedle Jolie into the classroom.”
“That’s one reason, but it seems a shame not to teach a child that anxious to learn. Who can tell? He might help bring peace to this country.”
Zane shook his head, as if in mute wonder. “You do argue a case! Now the future of Yucatán hinges on my decision. Try it, then. But I’ll keep an eye on the situation.”
“I’m sure they won’t elope for a few years,” Mercy teased, then winced at the slip the instant it was out. “I … I’m sorry.”
“You may be sure I’ll guard my daughter better than I did my wife.”
“Would you want a woman you had to imprison?”
His eyes reflected the yellow light of the candle, though shadows dimmed his face, so that it gave the impression of being a disturbing, not-quite-human mask.
“Aren’t you imprisoned, my dear?”
The deep, suggestive timbre of his voice made her heart leap so that the flow of blood through her veins felt edged with flames. “You mean I’m your bond-servant?” she almost whispered.
“I mean you sometimes want me as much as I always want you,” he said with a short laugh. “But propriety, the laws you’ve been taught, make you punish us both.”
If you would love me … if you would let me do the work of a human being … She couldn’t bare her feelings to him. Then, indeed, she would be undefended. “I won’t live shut away in a tower like a one-woman harem,” she said. “I’ve a mind and capabilities that will atrophy if they’re not used.”
“I enjoy your mind, contentious as it makes you,” he said. “And what of your capability for joy, for possessing and being possessed? Won’t it wither away if you don’t use it?”
“I’d rather it did than overgrow and crowd out everything else,” Mercy said, though she ached at that thought. Would it be possible to be near him like this for years and still deny him, deny the smoldering, tingling honey-fire that danced through her at the mere sound of his voice?
He made a disgusted sound. “I’ll bet you had heroines when you were growing up!”
“I still do.”
His eyebrows arched up sardonically. “My God, you admit it! You are a freakish wench, though I’m almost afraid to call you that. If I hadn’t won you from your scapegrace husband, I’d vow you came out of a convent.”
“Yet you’ve behaved as if I came from a brothel.”
“I’ve come to believe that’s where most women, by instinct, would be most at home.”
“There’d be no brothels if men didn’t want to escape from women they consider too good and pure to be in them.”
He flinched. “Little sharp-clawed devil! Just who, on heaven or earth, merited your admiration?”
“Joan of Arc,” said Mercy defiantly. “Florence Nightingale. Marie de France, Aspasia. And among men I would name Saint Francis, Jesus, Moses, and Pelagius—and my own father.”
“Of course, your father!”
“Of course!”
“Joan of Arc,” considered Zane. “She was a virgin witch-warrior who chided the king of France and her own judges. Yes, I can see why you’d like her! Florence Nightingale’s a termagant, though I suppose that’s forgivable in view of the lives she’s saved. Aspasia was the whore of Pericles.”
“She was his companion!” Mercy corrected him fiercely. “And her home was the center of cultural and civic life! She helped Pericles write his speeches, and though she was publicly humiliated and tried for her life, without her the Golden Age might have been brass.”
“Oh, no doubt Pericles was simply her mouthpiece and she really composed those lines President Lincoln borrowed so successfully for the Gettysburg Address,” derided Zane. “The attainments of the other lady elude me, but I’m sure you’ll dispel my ignorance.”
“Marie de France
wrote poetry.”
Zane looked startled. “And for that she has a place in your temple?”
“Yes.”
Zane considered a moment. “I don’t know her. Could you remember a few lines?”
“She’s talking to her dead love in the poem I like best. Perhaps he was William Longsword, the bastard of Henry the Second and Fair Rosamund, though Marie herself may have been Henry’s half sister.
“Hath any loved you well down there,
Summer and winter through?”
She continued with the tapestry-like words, shimmering with love and grief.
“There we have it!” Zane exclaimed, leaning forward. “You feel a bit ashamed, but you revere beauty and love!”
“I’m not ashamed!” she retorted. “Love is far different from lust.”
“Some day—or night—you must enlighten me,” he drawled. “But let’s return to your heroes. Why Moses and Pelagius?”
“Both of them took mankind’s part. Moses told God that if He wouldn’t forgive the sinning Israelites, then Moses’ name, too, should be taken out of God’s book. I can’t stand all those wretched religious men who were always ready to send everyone else to hell as long as their own souls were saved! Pelagius opposed Augustine, teaching that men could win salvation through their own efforts and weren’t essentially evil. It’s too bad Augustine won that battle and fastened the millstone of original sin on Western civilization. People might act better if they thought they were better.”
Zane didn’t speak for so long that she thought she had made him angry or had estranged him with her revelation. Strange, she and Philip had never talked like this, and she had missed it, for Elkanah had given her his pungent views on almost everything and listened with questioning interest to her opinions. Tonight, carried away, she’d spoken nakedly of things important to her. Maybe Zane didn’t like that. Maybe he didn’t believe her or thought her a fool.
“What have I brought home?” he said at last. “I begin to understand why you rescued Mayel. How is your waif?”
Bride of Thunder Page 15