He raised an eyebrow. “How would you limit it, my sweet, when you can’t prevent it? You’re too tough-minded to kill yourself for your ‘disgrace,’ and you’d find it damned hard to kill me.”
“I’d get away from here.”
“And swap me for starvation or perhaps slavery in some batab’s hammock at Chan Santa Cruz?”
“If you break your word, whatever happens to me is on your conscience.”
“You think I have one?”
“I know you do.”
He put his hand out deliberately, fondled her breast, and watched her eyes as the nipple tautened and her body flexed involuntarily.
“That gives you the dimmest idea of what else I have,” he said, his face strained and cruel. “I want you till it sometimes crowds everything else out of me, including what you call conscience. Don’t push me too far, Mercy.”
He released her so abruptly that she stumbled backward. He gave her a crooked smile. “Besides,” he finished softly, “I’m not convinced, however you protest now, that once I took you, you couldn’t be resigned to some sweet bondage. Philip was your husband, but did he make you shudder with rapture, beg for more? Did he ever drive you out of that funny, sober, righteous mind of yours?”
She stared at him, shrinking. He whirled away and shouted toward the stables. In a moment a boy reappeared with Kisin. “Tell Chepa I won’t be home for dinner,” Zane called over his shoulder.
Stunned, Mercy watched him vault into the saddle and go back the way they’d come. Where was he riding? Xia’s village? Mercy tripped as she walked back to the house, feeling exhausted, holding her breath to try to quell the throbbing ache in her loins. The black coral he’d given her seemed to jab into her throat.
He had Xia. She had no one. How long could this go on?
She stopped in the sitting room, went around examining and praising the sewing work, and managed to explain the divided skirts she decided to have made from challis and the gray-blue poplin. These must be full enough not to cling, but they shouldn’t be cumbersome, either.
One of the women had arthritic hands, and just that morning they had been bothering her so much that Mercy suggested she stop sewing. Now the woman was stitching more briskly than anybody. When Mercy asked with sign language and a few Spanish words what had happened, the woman smiled and pointed out to the veranda to where some bees hummed around a morning-glory vine. She then touched several red welts on her hands.
“Poison from bee kills poison in hands,” Chepa explained, coming in. “Ants can help, too.”
There was no doubting the cure, though it seemed extreme. Mercy told Chepa that Zane wouldn’t be home for dinner, and, finding it difficult to bear the housekeeper’s troubled expression, she passed on to her own room.
For a while that afternoon, she’d been happy and Zane had seemed to be, as if he felt more for her than the ready lust he’d admit to. It was as if he kept trying to persuade himself that she deserved nothing else, that no woman did. And just as she wouldn’t be his unless he loved her, he wouldn’t lie to cajole her into bed.
He thought, of course, that she was intent on marriage, but hurt and angered as she was by him, she didn’t think he’d use that kind of deceit. If he ever said he loved her, she could believe him.
But his wife had scarred him deeply, so deeply he might never again trust enough to love. Maybe the only way he could feel safe with a woman kept over a long period of time was to lock her in the tower and share with her only his eroticism, not his life. Mercy knew frustration over her might drive him to install some woman there, and she hoped she wouldn’t know about it, though a secret like that would be hard to keep quiet around La Quinta.
Changing into a dress embroidered with birds, Mercy was brushing out her hair when a reflection in the mirror made her gasp.
Turning, she stared at the jaguar on the window ledge. Blood was smeared around its carved fangs, and it was posed with its forefeet on a green-and-red object.
Mercy put down her brush and moved slowly to the window. It was real blood on the small animal, most of it coming off when she picked it up. Its prey was a bird, surely a quetzal, made from clay covered with bits of green and red feathers. There was more blood on the throat.
A grisly little charade. Jolie had gone to considerable trouble to arrange the surprise, and the ribbon with which Mercy had changed the wild cat into a pet one was wadded in the corner, also smudged with blood.
Perhaps it was childish, but Mercy felt uneasy at leaving the tableau. She washed the blood from the jaguar and newly modeled quetzal and perched the bird on the jaguar’s shoulder.
Jolie made a hasty meal of it when she learned that her father wouldn’t be at the table. As she reached for several honeycakes, already on her feet and mumbling excuses, Mercy lightly touched a cut on the end of the girl’s finger.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
Jolie yanked her hand back, as if burned by Mercy. “It’s just a scratch!”
“A jaguar scratch?”
“You’d better be careful!”
“I’m not afraid of such tricks, Jolie, but I don’t like them, either. I don’t want to forbid you your grandmother’s room, but I shall if you keep this up.”
“It’s more my room than yours!”
“In a way, perhaps, but it’s where I’m living.”
“I wish you’d never come,” said Jolie with quiet hatred, her violet eyes narrowed. “You’re in between my room and Papa’s, and now you stole my horse!”
Whirling away, she vanished through the gate, leaving Mercy to sip hot chocolate and brood. Had it been wise to force the issue with the child? It had seemed best to get it over with while Zane was away. He was already irritated with Jolie, and his sudden attempts at discipline were likely to cause more problems than they cured.
But why, Mercy wondered, did she feel so lonely and forlorn because he wasn’t there?
Zane didn’t appear for breakfast, but he came to stand in the doorway during classes and listened with his dark head tilted to one side while Mercy explained that wellborn Chinese girls had their feet bound to make them tiny and admired, though the bandages had a maiming effect and virtually crippled the select victims.
“Corsets are just as bad,” Zane snorted. “How any woman whose waist has been squeezed to sixteen inches can have a healthy baby is beyond me. But the deadliest blight of all is the way we bind minds—tight, tight, no chance to think, and once all sense of proportion is warped and intelligence hugs its fetters, it doesn’t matter much if the body’s twisted, too.”
“It’s interesting that women undergo most of their malformations in order to be more attractive to men,” observed Mercy. “At best, men have some ideal of feminine beauty, and woe to the female in that society who’s too thin or too plump, too tall, short, or shaped differently from what men have decided they want!”
“I’ll be my own shape,” said Jolie, protectively tucking her feet beneath her. “I’m glad you’re back, Papa. I don’t like for you to be away.”
“If you get nervous, you must tell Doña Mercy.”
“I’m not nervous,” she said, dismissing Mercy with a glance of veiled disdain. “It’s just that the house doesn’t feel right when you’re gone.”
“Come, minx, don’t turn an overnight trip into the voyage of Ulysses!” He tousled her shiny hair and left the room.
As he passed, Mercy saw on his muscular brown throat a small oval of tiny, regular marks, and near it was the raised welt of a scratch. Xia, or whomever he’d gone to, had given him a tumultuous night. He could now ignore Mercy till his male tensions started building again; and that thought made her so angry that she would have enjoyed scratching him herself, but not from transports of passion.
When lessons were over, Jolie lingered for a moment. “Would you like to see the old maps and genealogies of the village?” she asked. “This afternoon, the scribe is going to show them to Salvador and me. Victoriano has arranged it.”
“That w
ould be interesting,” Mercy said, startled at the overture. “Yes, I’d like to see them, if you’re sure it’s all right.”
“It’s arranged,” repeated Jolie. She didn’t smile but wore a look of fierce determination. Had she decided, however grudgingly, that she’d better make peace with Mercy? “Salvador and I will wait for you by Macedonio’s at three o’clock.”
“Thank you,” said Mercy, smiling into the taut little face, hoping this would be the start of a tolerance that might warm to friendship. “I won’t be late.”
“Neither will we,” Jolie said. Snatching Salvador’s hand, she pulled him after her.
Zane and Jolie, on good terms again, filled the noontime conversation with a discussion of the colts Jolie had announced she was eager to examine. It really did seem that she had decided to adapt gracefully to the situation, though her gaze flicked hurriedly past Mercy when she looked her way at all.
“I’ll be busy going over accounts with Macedonio this afternoon,” said Zane as they rose at the end of the meal. “But if you wish to ride, I’ll tell one of the men to accompany you.”
“Thank you, but I won’t have time today,” Mercy said. “I’m going to visit the scribe with Salvador and Jolie.”
“He’s showing us the maps and genealogies!” Jolie said.
“Good!” Zane slanted Mercy a surprised but pleased glance. “But I think, Doña Mercy, that I didn’t yet advise you against riding alone. Never do that. If I can’t escort you, I’ll send a reliable man.”
Though Mercy loved solitary jaunts, it wouldn’t have occurred to her to ride alone in this region, but she found the prohibition a trifle galling. Still, with his eyes holding hers, there was nothing to do but nod agreement.
“I’ll meet you at three,” she promised the child, and she went to her room while father and daughter drifted through the courtyard, their laughter floating back.
Mercy watched them through the window, the black head and the gold one. Each was the only blood relative the other had in the world; their closeness was both tender and alarming. That’s how Father and I were, Mercy thought with a surge of pain. Can I ever be that close to another man, ever trust one? At least she could understand Jolie’s possessiveness and give her room and time to accept an outsider. From this afternoon’s invitation, that acceptance might come sooner than Mercy had dared to hope.
Lying down with Stevens’ travels, she read till it was time to join the children.
Sóstenes Pec, the scribe, was a withered old man whose hands shook as he opened the rawhide-covered chest in the village’s public building. He said something in Mayan to Victoriano Zuc, the H-men, and the only Indian male Mercy had yet seen who could be called fat. His skin looked woman-soft, and he had a trilling, rather highpitched, voice.
In Spanish so slow and simple that Mercy could follow the gist of it. Sóstenes explained that he had learned to read and write from his father, who had learned from his father, who had studied with the priests in Tekax. The priests had destroyed all the old Mayan hieroglyphic manuscripts they could find because the hieroglyphs were so bound up with old gods and beliefs. Still, the Spaniards hadn’t tried to replace the Mayan language with Spanish, but had taught the sons of priests and leading families how to write Mayan words in European script, so nearly every village had a scribe who could do this.
Carefully, Sóstenes displayed documents concerning land and then a number of more or less handsomely ornamented genealogies. He spread out his own, painted on very thin bark, which showed a many-branched tree with a man and woman on either side of it. These, he said, were his great-grandparents, and on the branches were written the names of their descendants.
Next he exhibited a round map, also on bark, marking Mérida as Tihoo and showing Mani as the center of the country, according to the old Mayan tradition. Another map showed the village and surrounding region. There were royal grants of common land, several land treaties, and bills of sale.
Victoriano, who either spoke no Spanish or pretended not to, took Salvador to one side with several of the documents and, with Sóstenes’ help, apparently explained to him some important facts about the village. Jolie pressed a small pointed finger on a symbol a short distance from the village on the map that Mercy was studying.
“This is what’s left of a temple with a big jaguar. Would you like to go see it? It’s near a wellspring in a cave that’s supposed to go way down underground, maybe all the way to the sea.”
“How far is it?” Mercy asked, hoping the expedition would be feasible. She was eager to respond to these first hints of acceptance from the puzzling; haughty, yet vulnerable little girl.
“Oh, half an hour, maybe,” Jolie said and shrugged. “We wouldn’t be late for dinner. Salvador’s already been there. We can let him study with Victoriano while we go on.”
“All right.”
Mercy thanked Sóstenes, praising the care that had been taken with the priceless old records. She said goodbye to Victoriano while Jolie, in Mayan, must have explained to him and Salvador where she was taking Mercy.
Flora was waiting outside the council building and greeted them with delighted whimpers, pacing along beside them as they took a narrow path leading out of the village. They passed several cornfields where men were harvesting and one place where an Indian was clearing a new field, alternately using an ax and machete, depending on the size of the tree or bush.
“This all must have been part of the old city,” Jolie said, kicking at the round-edged stones of what had been a wall. “Papa says it covered several miles, but there’s not much left of it now except this jaguar shrine and the tower behind the orchards.” She shot Mercy a weighing glance. “Have you seen the tower?”
“Yes.” Mercy tried to avert questions about the circumstances. “It would be a great place for Rapunzel. Do you know that story?”
“The name of my grandfather’s chère amie was Rosamunda,” said Jolie with disconcerting directness. “He never loved her as he did my grandmother, but Chepa says a man should not live without a woman. Did Papa show you the tower?”
“Yes.” Mercy’s cheeks were hot. It was ridiculous to be interrogated like this by a child, but refusing to answer would make it seem she had something to hide.
Again, that strangely adult violet gaze touched her, then veered away. “Xia lived there once, you know.”
What a grotesque conversation! But the only way Mercy could think of to manage it was to be matter-of-fact, to register no shock for the benefit of those sharply inquiring eyes.
“Yes, so your father said.”
“Did he tell you she was his chère amie?” queried the girl, her eyes narrow violet slits.
Mercy’s breath caught with stabbing pain. “That’s none of my business,” she contrived to say coolly after a moment. “And this is an improper subject, which we’ll not discuss again. However, since you plainly know more about such things than you should, let me assure you that I’ll never live in that tower!”
Jolie nodded and sighed. “That’s what Xia said. She said you’d make Papa marry you.”
Was there no way to end this absurd and wildly indecent exchange? “Your father doesn’t intend to marry,” said Mercy in a crisp tone. “And since I’ve never met Xia, I’m amazed that she’d say such things, especially to you.”
“She doesn’t think I’m a baby,” snapped Jolie. “She knows I can understand things.”
With supreme effort, Mercy held her peace, but she had a vastly uncomfortable flash of how an older woman possessed of a priestess’ lore, if not supernatural powers, could work on the mind and senses of a child like this. If Xia had said those things, and Jolie’s crudities had the ring of truth, the woman had to be in love with Zane. And even if he’d never marry her, she at least had his body, which Mercy must deny.
Jolie scooped up Flora and set her over her shoulder. “There it is,” she said, pointing “See the jaguar? Around on the other side there are signs carved on the stone.”
&n
bsp; The jaguar was really two seemingly male and female heads and torsos connected by one smoothly massive shared lower body. The heads faced in opposite directions. Dominating the rubble of walls and fallen arches, the double beast had evidently been kept cleared of creeping vines and plants by some devotee. A short distance away water gleamed from a limestone grotto that led into a dark hole.
Mercy was moving around to see the glyphs Jolie had mentioned when there was a cracking sound, scrambling, and then a cry.
11
A few feet away, Salvador lay sprawled in a hole, which he had evidently fallen into. A snake with a yellow-marked head so deeply pitted that it seemed to have four nostrils was struggling in a litter of branches and leaves. With a hiss, Flora shot past Mercy and landed on the snake’s back, tearing it open with suddenly lethal claws, ripping out its entrails.
Mercy snatched up Salvador, lifted him clear of the hole, and put him on the ground in front of the jaguar, flinching at the marks on his leg.
“Cuatro narices!” Jolie was wailing. “It’s poisonous!”
“Run for Chepa and your father!” Mercy ordered.
She’d never tended a snakebite, but she remembered a treatment her father had used, repudiating as worse than useless the popular remedy of whiskey. “Don’t let the person run or spread the poison through the blood,” he’d warned. “And get the venom out—quickly.”
“Salvador,” Mercy whispered, “Salvador, be quiet.”
Jolie plunged away with a terrified moan. Mercy had no knife. Suddenly she thought of the sharp black coral around her neck. Slipping it off, she selected the sharpest piece, gritted her teeth, and cut a cross over each fang mark. Clamping her mouth over one incision, she sucked and spat, sucked at the other and spat again, then returned to the first cut.
Salvador didn’t move or cry, but his body was trembling. When she glanced up, his dark eyes watched her with a trust that made her suck again, though by now she should have most of the venom out. Her mouth felt strange. Father had said it was important not to have cuts or sores in the mouth. She spat several times, rinsing with the flow of saliva. She decided to start carrying him. She didn’t know what more, if anything, Chepa could do, but waiting here was just too frightening, and the minutes she could save might be vital.
Bride of Thunder Page 18