“Happy.” Mercy hesitated to compliment him, but she decided it was only fair. “She’s excited about all the things La Quinta doesn’t have—a whipping post, jail, assistant mayordomo, or administrador.”
“I don’t need those,” Zane said roughly. “The production of this plantation is far ahead of those using debt-laborers, and I’ve no wish to let a manager oversee my land and skim off profits.”
He was determined to seem cold-bloodedly practical. Yet he had bought Mayel, the plantation hummed with busy contentment under his direction, and he’d rescued Salvador at some risk to his own life.
Mercy waited just a moment and then raced on, following a thought that had just popped into her head. “Zane,” she said, holding her breath, “do you think it would be possible to include Mayel in the school, too?”
Zane sighed, passing a hand across his brow, then stared hard at her. “Now you want my daughter to study with that Indian wench, as well?”
“That ‘Indian wench’ is a descendant of Mayan royalty.”
“Mayan royalty. Ah, yes.” He sighed again. “And why not?” he said finally. “Perhaps it would provide a more school-like atmosphere. Perhaps it would even divert young Salvador’s attention from Jolie, and hers from him. Yes, go ahead and try it out, Mercy. But don’t forget—I shall keep a sharp eye on the venture.”
Mercy couldn’t stop the smile that stole across her face. “Well,” she said quickly, “Mayel should be pretty busy, then. Chepa wants to teach her about herbs and healing. She says Mayel reminds her of her daughter.”
Zane groaned. “Every scrawny thirteen-year-old with big eyes reminds Chepa of her daughter!”
“What’s wrong with that?” bristled Mercy.
“Nothing,” muttered Zane. “I don’t need to ask how Chepa relieved the boy’s asthma that day, or about the wonders of her cupboard.”
“You must know toloache,” Zane said. “They call it jimsonweed in the United States.”
“But I thought that was poison!”
“Aren’t lots of medicines when used improperly? My father used to say anything that could cure could kill, too.”
Chuckling with that dart, Zane went on to say that Aztec and Mayan physicians had been far ahead of their European counterparts at the time of the conquest.
“For a start, the Aztecs were fastidious. They bathed daily, whereas Europeans might go year in, year out, without more than an accidental dunking in the rain. The streets of Tencichtitlán were cleaned every day by a thousand sweepers, and human waste was collected and transported to farms. The Aztecs forbade the dumping of garbage into the lake or canals at a time when European streets were open sewers and ‘romantic’ Venice stank to high heaven. But the Spaniards changed all that. It was much like the Vandals descending on Rome.”
“Clean habits alone have made deaths from childbirth far less frequent,” Mercy said, surprised and delighted to learn such things from Zane.
Zane nodded. “In fact, mothers had a steambath before delivery and then again not long after. And you know about the pain-killers, which were used in childbirth and for other things, as well: Horrible as human sacrifice was, the victims were certainly drugged so that they felt nothing. Some even danced ecstatically before they mounted the pyramid.”
At Mercy’s shudder, Zane added cynically, “The Spaniards were so shocked by the sacrifices that they imported the Inquisition to carry on the sort they understood—they went about the holy task of slaughtering the majority of Indians in order to convert the remnants. Why be appalled, Mercy? All nations practice human sacrifice.”
“They can’t! They don’t!”
“What else is war?”
“Why, war is … when two sides don’t agree with each other and try to settle a question by force.”
“So men die for federalism, the Union, the Confederacy, the Queen of England, democracy in Greece, or the Republic of Yucatán. That’s not sacrifice?”
“That’s fighting. You were a soldier. You must believe in fighting.”
“Fighting for one’s home, village, or immediate territory is an instinct we have straight from our animal nature. But when we translate this into dying for abstracts or political entities far removed from the victims’ lives, then they are human sacrifices, as surely as if their hearts were torn out on an altar to obtain the blessings of the gods on the nation.” Zane shrugged. “Perhaps it’s necessary, but as long as the strongest of a country’s young men are periodically consecrated to defend some nationalistic posture, we should think of this as what it is.”
“My father didn’t believe in slavery or even care much about the phenomenon of states’ rights. He joined to take care of the sick and wounded.”
“So we might call him a humane sacrifice.”
“I suppose you could say …”
“I wonder if you know that the first warfare was waged in order to get sacrifices for the gods without having to kill members of one’s own group. Early man, it seems, believed that some human life must be offered up to obtain prosperity and safety for the greater number. It was natural enough to prefer to immolate strangers, especially if they disputed a water source or had better land or prettier women.”
“Are you saying that religion was really the first cause of war?”
“I say it’s probable. Then tot up the Crusades, the wars of Reformation, Islam’s conversions by scimitar, and all the murdered heretics—and the pile of corpses doubtless exceeds that of those dead in secular wars. And now that Catholics and Protestants hate each other less bloodily, mankind can battle over political and economic systems, which are the new religions.” He made a gesture of disgust. “You gave me a poem,” he said after a moment in a voice that had gentled. “Shall we walk a little? I’ll give you some singing words from a Mayan prophet, Chilam Balam, who wrote not long after the conquest. Many towns have copies of his works, which they use as scriptures of sorts.”
Would he take her back to the tower? Mercy’s feet slowed as they reached the gate of the rear courtyard, but this time Zane, placing his hand beneath her arm, took her the other way. The moon rose stealthily, veiled by snatches of clouds, and the leaves splattered exotic shadows like those of Marie de France’s poem. The long, quaint, odorous leaves like hands …
They came to a semi-clearing where ruined stone walls gleamed eerily. A serpent’s gigantic head opened massive fanged jaws where it guarded a black overgrown entrance. Before she knew what he was doing, he lifted her easily and enthroned her on the serpent.
“‘My son,’” he said in a strange, deep voice that made her flesh creep, “‘go bring me the green blood of my daughter, also her head, her entrails, her thigh, and her arm … it is my desire to see them … set them before me that I may burst into weeping.’”
“What does it mean?”
“Her blood is wine, the entrails are an empty beehive, and her head is a jar for making wine. This is part of a very long ritual called the Interrogation of the Chiefs.” He spoke now in a normal voice tinged with laughter. “Did you think I was about to make you a sacrifice?”
Primitive, unreasoning fear had flowed through her, there in the ruins with Zone’s face a mask in the silver light and his voice so creepily resonant.
“For all I know, you turn werewolf at certain times of the moon,” she said crossly, trying to slip down.
His arms imprisoned her. “I thought you liked being on a pedestal,” he said mockingly.
“A pedestal’s not of much use if I’m still within your reach!”
“Would you really want to be past it?”
An odd breathlessness choked her. Before she could answer, he turned her palm up and kissed it, his warm lips moving to her wrist, lingering on the pulse.
“I can feel your blood course,” he murmured. “And it isn’t green, but it may be honey-wine. There are other words for you from the works of Chilam Balam: ‘Son, bring me a very beautiful woman with a very white countenance. I greatly desire her. I will cas
t down her skirt and her loose dress before me.’”
His arms closed, bringing her down against him so that to gain her feet she had to slide the length of his hard-muscled body. He was trembling as much as she was. This gave her a thrill of power mixed with fear. If he lost control … did more than woo and blandish …
In the desire and yearning sweetness of the moment, she wished he would follow the words of the Mayan prophet and strip off her clothes and possess her utterly.
He touched her face, caressed her throat and breasts, and kissed her with a violent hunger that aroused an almost unbearable need in her. She yielded her mouth fully, accepting and answering his thrusting, quivering tongue, putting her arms around him for the first time.
If he sank down with her now …
But he tore his lips away, unclasping her hands while he stared into her face. “Come with me to the tower. Oh, sweet Mercy, come to the tower.”
Not a word of love. And the tower had come to mean now the same thing to them both—a place where she would exist for his pleasure, living only to gratify him. And though she craved that pleasure, too, she would not take that road in life.
“No.”
He stared at her, his eyes reflecting the cold, frosty glint of the moon, then roughly took his hands away from her so that she nearly fell. It was hard, hard, to take back her full weight, to smother the sweet flowing of her body and being toward him.
“It won’t work,” he said from between gritted teeth. “I won’t offer you marriage, whatever whore’s tricks you use to drive me crazy!”
Whore’s tricks? Mercy shook with outrage and frustrated desire. “You brought me here! You pulled me into your arms and kissed me and …”
“But you have the mouth as sweet as honey-wine warmed in the sun and the breasts so soft that my hands ache to touch them and the softness where I long to plunge this hard, throbbing sword you create but will not sheathe.”
He spoke softly, as if dreaming, in contrast to his earlier outburst, but Mercy was so hurt and angry that she scarcely heard him. Whirling away from him, blinded by tears, she turned to run down the path, but she stumbled over a vine.
He kept her from falling and imprisoned her arm firmly in his long fingers. The first time he spoke was at her door back at the house.
“Sleep well in your virtuous bed!” With a curt bow, he strode away.
Heedless of the coverlet, Mercy threw herself across the bed and sobbed with wrath and humiliation. Whore’s tricks! How dare he, when he’d suggested the moonlit walk, beguiled her with incantations, and kissed her as he had!
She’d never go to his tower—never!
But there was a heavy, dull ache in her stomach that persisted as she undressed and washed. Savagely, scrubbing the palm he had kissed, she took vindictive satisfaction in the certainty that he was aching, too. And it was supposed to be worse for men. Good! She was glad that something was!
She barely saw him during the next few days, except at meals, when he was formally polite. Chepa had brought three of the best seamstresses of the village to start sewing the materials brought from Mérida, and she had translated while Mercy explained what she wanted. One of her old dresses would serve as a pattern, except for the blue-gray satin dress, which could be styled like the gleaming quetzal gown.
The blue challis for Jolie could be a miniature copy of Mercy’s, though she felt it advisable to disguise this by the use of different trimming and a very broad sash. Jolie was intrigued with the cloth and trimming, and since the women worked in the sitting room, where there was plenty of room and they could chat, she was constantly gleaning scraps for her various dolls, tying those around them in startling gypsy-queen combinations.
“Would you like to make your doll a ball gown out of this?” Mercy asked when she found Jolie eyeing the blue-gray satin. “You’d need to sew and hem it, though, or it’ll unravel.”
“I don’t like to sew,” Jolie sniffed. “Chepa will do it for me.”
“Chepa’s very busy.”
“She does whatever I ask her!”
“But should you ask her?” Mercy asked pleasantly.
Jolie scowled, pouted her Cupid’s-bow mouth, defiantly snatched a jumble of scraps, and flounced out. When Mercy went to her room a little later, the pheasant and deer were gone from the window ledge, but the jaguar had been moved to the center, facing out, as if in a threat. There was no doubt of the positioning’s hostility and virtually no doubt about who’d done it. Staring at the small, snarling jaguar, Mercy gripped her arms close to her body as a sudden chill assaulted her.
The spiteful jealousy of a child—she mustn’t let it upset her. Lessons had to start soon. From that contact, they’d form some kind of relationship, but it looked as if trust would be a long time in coming. As for affection … Mercy sighed.
Gazing at the jaguar, she laughed whimsically and tied a bit of blue ribbon around its neck in a fancy bow. Its snaring countenance now seemed playful.
“School starts tomorrow,” she said to the jaguar, then went in search of Jolie before she was tempted to delay class a few more days.
After hunting through the house and courtyards, Mercy followed Chepa’s suggestion to look for the child in the stables. Built of stone, these were set some distance from the eastern side of the house, with several corrals adjoining. Here, too, were the wagons, and several carriages, which, though they were polished and new looking, didn’t appear to be in use.
Mercy caught a glimpse of silver and leather through a half-door, and she couldn’t resist peering in at pegs holding hackamores; bridles, plain or embellished with silver and precious stones, with bits from cruel spade to gentle snaffle; and dozens of saddles resting on wooden blocks.
Here were double-rig saddles Mercy knew from Texas, Spanish single-rig saddles, a few pad-like English saddles, and several sidesaddles. These were variously either completely devoid of ornamentation or embossed and decorated from moderate to extravagant levels with conchos, nailheads, and stitching that was often of silver or even gold. The stirrups ranged from plain metal or wood to embossed round or eagle-billed ones decorated with rosettes and conchos. A small sidesaddle gleaming with silver had to be Jolie’s. Saddlebags hung in the far corner.
It was a museum of horse gear, well oiled and cared for, the odors of horse and leather pleasantly nostalgic to Mercy, though her father had never owned more than four horses. Far more than any housework, she had enjoyed perching on a sawhorse in the straw-strewn stable, working oil into the saddles and bridles and usually giving her father’s boots a treatment, as well.
Suddenly a long, cinnamon, dark-ringed tail waved beneath her. Mercy jumped back and other jerking tails joined the first one until there were four coatis hissing and spitting.
“Oh,” said Mercy, laughing, though she was careful not to make any abrupt motions. She kept her distance. “You must be Flora’s babies! How handsome you are!”
“They don’t know what you’re saying,” Jolie said rudely, darting from around the building with Flora parading before her. Flora’s half-grown brood retreated to the protection of her soothingly undulating tail. “Do you go around talking to animals?”
“Don’t you?” asked Mercy.
That scored. Jolie’s violet eyes widened, then narrowed. “But you’re grown up!”
“There are all kinds of grown up. I like animals just as much as I ever did.”
“They don’t like you.”
“Flora does.” Mercy bent down and stroked the matriarch between neat little ears. “Her babies were frightened when I sprang out of the way. I think they’ll be friends when they get used to me.”
“They may scratch you with their claws and bite you with their teeth!”
“You’re fond of that idea, aren’t you?” Mercy said. “It sounds like something out of a witch tale.”
“When I grow up, I shall be a witch,” Jolie announced darkly. “I’ll live in the sacred cave at Xia’s village, where the virgin water is,
and have a whole pack of coatis—a jaguar, too.”
“Will they get along?”
“They’ll have to! I’ll command them, and I’ll have magic.”
Mercy remembered waving a paper fan as a child and half-believing she controlled the wind with it. “That sounds a lot more interesting than living in a hut with a cat or two. Maybe you could write a story about it.”
Jolie dug a toe into the dirt. “I don’t have time.”
“You can have lesson time for it,” said Mercy.
Jolie’s golden curls bounced as her head tilted back, defiance in every line of her small body.
“I thought Salvador might like to study with you,” Mercy continued. “If he wants to be an H-men, surely the more he knows, the better.”
“You’d teach Salvador along with me?”
“Yes, and Mayel, too. It’ll be more interesting for you and probably for me, too. Of course, until I learn more Spanish and Mayan, or until Salvador and Mayel know more English, you’ll have to translate, but that’ll be good practice for all of us.” Mercy added frankly, “Since I have to learn two languages, I’ll be studying hardest of all, I imagine.”
Jolie’s brightening face dimmed. “Papa won’t allow it.”
“I’ve already asked his permission.”
“And he said yes?” demanded Jolie incredulously, her blonde brows rising.
Mercy nodded. “We can try it, at least. It was hard to convince your father, and I expect that he’ll stop by sometimes to be sure everyone’s studying. Do you think you can find Salvador and Mayel and tell them we’ll start in the morning after breakfast and study till noon?”
“Victoriano may not like Salvador’s taking lessons with an outsider.”
“Surely you or your father can explain that Salvador will be a much more valuable helper if he knows English and something of the world beyond La Quinta and Yucatán.”
“Then Victoriano may get jealous and want lessons, too,” Jolie said, smiling. She scooped up Flora, and the coati hung over her back like a plump fur stole. “I’ll go ask Salvador. But, mind you, I won’t make him come if he doesn’t want to. And you could tell Mayel yourself, couldn’t you?”
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