Bride of Thunder

by Jeanne Williams

  Lifting the boy, staggering under his weight, she talked to him softly as she labored along the path, assuring him in mixed Spanish and English that most snakebites didn’t kill, and, anyway, most of the poison should be out.

  Sweat had broken out on his face but he smiled. “Gracias,” he whispered. His eyes closed. Mercy plodded on, her back and arms aching, praying for someone to hurry. Flora, having devoured all she wanted of the snake, stalked regally before them.

  Mercy, obsessed till now with trying to treat the bite, began to reconstruct. Salvador must have finished his lesson with Victoriano and run ahead to surprise them, hiding behind the jaguar in the shrine, which was probably a favorite retreat of the children’s. When he’d bounded out, he’d fallen into the hole, where the snake was resting.

  In another second, Mercy would have stepped on that deceptive covering of leaves and branches herself. If she’d been bitten, would Jolie have been so stricken? Would she have run as if devil-possessed for help?

  Mercy pushed such thoughts away. The cornfields were deserted, but the village must be close. She hoped Jolie had called for help as she ran through. Gasping for breath now, Mercy felt so dizzy that she wondered if she’d swallowed and absorbed some of the venom.

  A small calloused hand brushed her cheek. “Lo siento,” murmured the boy.

  “Está bueno,” Mercy encouraged. “Chepa will help.”

  She heard a confusion of voices ahead. Victoriano appeared, followed by Sostenes and a dozen excited women. Victoriano snapped an order that melted away the group, except for the scribe, and he took Salvador from Mercy’s exhausted arms, examining the cuts Mercy had made, scowling, and shaking his head as she tried to explain to Sostenes in garbled Spanish what she’d done.

  If the boy died, it was plain that the H-men would blame her, but before he had a chance to try his remedies, Chepa trotted into the village, moving with astonishing speed for her ample build, and gathered Salvador to her bosom, dismissing the H-men almost as curtly as he had sent away the curious women.

  Victoriano drew himself up and seemed ready to blast the housekeeper when Zane, followed by a white-faced Jolie, strode into the clearing. Again, Mercy told what she’d done.

  “It sounds reasonable;” Zane said. “I’ll carry him, Chepa. You go ahead and make your brews.”

  Easily lifting Salvador, he spoke with courtesy to the H-men and scribe and moved off with such long steps that Mercy and Jolie had to run to keep up.

  “You sucked out the poison,” he said over his shoulder. “Little fool, to take such a chance! Are you sure you didn’t swallow some?”

  “I spat it out.”

  Zane glared at her as best he could while keeping one eye on his route. “You look awful! Chepa will make you some tea, too, and put you to bed! Sucking fer-de-lance venom! Your father was crazy to tell you such a thing!”

  “He thought it worked better than anything else.”

  “For the victim, maybe! But how about you? What if you have a canker or hollow tooth or …”

  “Don’t yell at her, Papa!” Jolie gave his arm an admonishing tug and darted ahead. “I’ll bring some water so Mercy can rinse out her mouth.”

  Relieved of Salvador’s weight, Mercy breathed less painfully, but her head throbbed. Still, she kept up with Zane till Jolie intercepted her with a gourd of water and insisted she swish it thoroughly around her mouth. When this was done, Jolie grasped Mercy’s hand and they hurried to the kitchen.

  Zane held the boy while Chepa measured herbs into an earthenware pot. Water must have been boiling for some other use, for a kettle of it was ready and she poured some of this over the leaves and dried blossoms.

  “Open your mouth,” Zane commanded, scowling down at Mercy.

  “I don’t have any sores,” she said crossly.

  “Open,” he advised, “or I’ll do it for you.”

  He would, too. Rather than be handled like a horse put up for sale, Mercy opened her mouth as she had done when her father was examining a sore throat. She gasped as Zane, still holding Salvador, deftly pulled up the edge of one lip and then the other, scanning her gums and her mouth’s inner flesh before he gave a relieved nod and took away his big but oddly gentle fingers.

  “Doesn’t seem to be any way you could absorb poison, as long as you didn’t swallow it. Sit down and keep still. We’ll tend to you as soon as we’ve got the boy settled.”

  Mayel brought in a lizard, which Chepa cut in half with one swing of a heavy knife. While one side squirmed, she clamped the other on the snakebite and held it in place with a broad twist of hemp fiber, which she entrusted to Mayel while she strained out the pungent tea. Sweetening it with honey, she told Zane to hold the cup for Salvador, then poured a mug of the brew for Mercy. Discarding the lizard poultice, Chepa applied the remaining half and had Mayel keep it tightly pressed to the bite while she looked at the small half-corpse and nodded in satisfaction.

  “Not much poison. Doña Mercy get nearly all.” She beamed. “Good healer. You show me.”

  “I’ll be glad to,” said Mercy with a shaky smile. “This tea is very good.”

  “Make sweat,” said Chepa. “Make sleep.” She took the gruesome bandage off Salvador and handed it and the other piece to Mayel with directions to bury them deep in the ground. Doña Caterina, Macedonio’s wife, and foster mother to Salvador, rushed into the kitchen and was given her foster son, along with nursing instructions. She carried him off, accompanied by Mayel, who bore a pot of the herbal brew.

  “Will he be all right?” Jolie asked tautly. “Will he, Papa?”

  “He should be good as new in a few days,” Zane promised. “You can go see him for a few minutes now and then, but don’t be pestering his mother out of her wits. All he needs now is rest and Chepa’s tea.” Staring down at Mercy, he said grimly. “Now we’ll take care of you.”

  “I’m fine,” she insisted, finishing the bracingly aromatic drink.

  “You’ll lie down, cover up, and have broth or soup tonight,” Zane decreed. “Chepa, help me put Doña Mercy to bed.”

  Before she could evade him, he swept her into his arms and started through the courtyard, trailed by Chepa and Jolie. Feeling ridiculous, Mercy tried to deny the comfort of being cradled against his strongly beating heart.

  “I can walk!” she argued.

  “Not till I say you can.” He placed her on the bed and waited behind the lacquer screen while Chepa helped Mercy out of her dress and into a nightgown and tucked her in snugly with a blanket and extra coverlet from the armoire’s bottom drawer.

  All this time Jolie stood by the window, gazing fixedly at the jaguar. Now she ran to the bed, seizing Mercy’s hands.

  “I … I knew the snake was there! I tried to kill you! If Salvador dies, I’ll get a lot of snakes to kill me!”

  As Mercy stared in shock, Zane grasped his daughter and spun her around. “What did you say?”

  She tried to move her lips several times before any sound came out. “I took Mercy to the jaguar shrine. I knew a cuatro narices was in the hole. It was covered enough to trap it, but a person could crash through.” She shuddered convulsively. “Oh, Papa, beat me! Do something! I feel so wicked!”

  “You didn’t find the snake and do all that yourself,” Zane said in a hoarse voice after a frozen moment during which Chepa gave a disbelieving cry. “Who helped you? Salvador? If so, we should have let the young devil die!”

  Jolie frantically shook her head. “Salvador didn’t know, Papa! He … he likes Doña Mercy. That was one more reason I … I hated her.”

  Zane grasped Jolie and shook her till her golden hair bobbed. “Who was it? Who put the snake there?”

  “Zane!” Mercy cried. “Come here, Jolie. Sit by me and we’ll talk about it till you feel better.”

  “Feel better!” Zane exploded, the curve of his nostrils etched white. “This is no prank! A French convent may be what you need, Jolie, before it comes to prison!”

  “Come here, Jol
ie,” said Mercy again, and this time Zane released her.

  The child clambered up beside Mercy, buried her face on her shoulder, and sobbed heartbrokenly. Zane paced and swore and Chepa seemed to be muttering prayers or invocations.

  “I … I don’t like to tell,” Jolie said at last. “But it was so bad I guess I have to, don’t I?”

  “I think so,” said Mercy. “I can understand your wanting to get rid of me, Jolie, and I don’t think you knew what it would really mean. But a grown-up would.”

  “Xia did it.”

  “Xia!” choked Zane.

  He flexed and unflexed his hands while Jolie blurted out her halting story. She met Xia every week at the jaguar shrine to be instructed in magic. The last time she had spilled out her feelings of jealousy, how much she wished Mercy weren’t at La Quinta.

  Xia had suggested a way to cure that, a way that would seem an accident. “She said if it didn’t kill you, it might frighten you enough to make you go away,” confessed Jolie, avoiding her father’s eyes. “And she said if this didn’t work, there were other ways.…” Sturdy arms tightened around Mercy. “I didn’t really want to kill you!” Jolie wailed. “I … I just wanted you not to be here!”

  No one spoke for a long time. Mercy felt sick at the depth of Xia’s hatred. It was easy enough to understand, shocking as it was, how a clever woman could play on and influence an admiring young girl who was fiercely resentful of an intruder. Jolie didn’t truly comprehend death, but Xia did.

  “I’m leaving your punishment to Mercy,” Zane told his child heavily. “But whatever she says, I’m tempted to send you to school in France, or at least in Mérida. You need control before you do serious damage to yourself, if to no one else.”

  Jolie was mute, though she’d shrunk closer to Mercy at each of her father’s words. Mercy didn’t know what to do. Jolie was remorseful now, but how long would it last in a child who could connive at murder, a child who’d proved an apt pupil of a deadly woman?

  “What do you think, Jolie?” she finally asked.

  “I’ve been bad,” whispered the child. “If Salvador gets well, I’ll try to be very very good. I … I don’t want to be a witch! And I never want to see Xia again!” Her arms gripped Mercy tighter. “Please stay and help me. Help me be good.”

  Mercy held her close and soothed her. “You don’t have to be so good that we’ll think you’re sick,” she said. “But maybe you could help Salvador’s mother while he’s sick and learn to make his tea if Chepa will teach you.”

  “I teach,” Chepa vowed, eyeing her adored nurseling with a severe expression. “Teach plenty!”

  With pathetic dignity, Jolie turned and looked at Zane. “You won’t send me away, Papa? I’ll go if you say so. I’m too bad even to be alive. But I don’t know what I’d do away from you and La Quinta.”

  “It’s up to Mercy,” Zane said.

  That was harsh. Mercy would have given much to spare her small former enemy. “I can’t teach you as much as the nuns, Jolie,” she said, “but I think in a few more months you’ll have greatly improved my Spanish.”

  “Thank you! Mil gracias!” Jolie rocked Mercy with an energetic hug and then went off with Chepa.

  Zane stalked over, frowning as he pulled the covers up tighter around Mercy’s chin. She was growing drowsy from the tea and warmth. “You live up to your name,” he said. “I hope you won’t be sorry.” His dark head was close to hers as he brushed a kiss on her hand, but by the time her dulled senses registered what was happening, he had left the room.

  She slept till Jolie brought her a bowl of soup, followed by Zane with a candle and more tea. “I don’t think I need that at all,” Mercy said, smothering a yawn. “I’m not the least bit sick. How’s Salvador?”

  “Sleeping and a little feverish,” Zane said. “The leg’s swelling some, but Chepa’s poulticed it with toloache and turpentine. The tea will help him sleep and ease the pain.”

  “I’d like to go see him.”

  “Wait till morning.” Mercy started to rebel. Zane stopped her arguments with a sip of the hot, honey-sweetened brew. “Even if all you’re suffering from is a fit of nerves, rest won’t hurt you. And Chepa’s tea will send you off to sleep like a baby.”

  “But …”

  “You think it’s self-indulgent, even sinful, to be in bed when you’re not racked with fever and ague,” Zane chided. His eyes danced and he added so softly that Jolie, who had strayed over to the jaguar in the window ledge, couldn’t hear, “Beds have sweeter uses, but have a lesson now, teacher, in the restorative effects of slumber.”

  This son of a pirate was capable of locking her in, and Chepa’s potion must have had a lingering effect, for, by the time she had eaten her soup and, under Zane’s watchful gaze, drunk the fresh tea, Mercy was glad to accept Jolie’s hug, Zane’s amused wishes for sound sleep, and cuddle back into her nest of pillows. She’d be up in the morning; everything would return to normal, including Zane. But tonight it was lovely to feel his concern and drift off while feeling safe and warm in his protection.

  She was awake at dawn, full of energy. She dressed and before breakfast went to visit Salvador. Jolie was already there, standing by her friend’s hammock, puffs of fatigue around her eyes. She was feeding Salvador bits of fresh pineapple as if he’d been a fledgling, while Doña Caterina baked tortillas on a flat stone.

  Rising to greet Mercy, the mayordomo’s gentle-eyed wife thanked her for helping the boy and made Mercy understand that his fever had subsided and that now he was hungry, a good sign.

  Chepa came in to apply a new dressing and clucked approvingly at the appearance of the leg. It was red and puffy around the fang marks, but Mercy had seen bee stings that looked worse. He balked at the tea Chepa tried to give him.

  “He’d like to have lessons today,” Jolie explained. “Can he, Doña Mercy?”

  Mercy looked at Chepa, who shrugged. “He keep leg up till swelling gone. Maybe lessons good—make him ready to drink tea.”

  Doña Caterina was glad for Salvador to have company while she did the laundry. So it was agreed that after breakfast class would be held by the hammock, after which both Jolie and Salvador would have Chepa’s sedative brew and rest.

  Zane stopped in and somewhat grudgingly approved the plan after a shocked look at Jolie and an almost insultingly thorough inspection of Mercy.

  “I suppose lessons will keep you out of trouble,” he said. “And we can’t keep you drugged all the time But, Doña Mercy, if you’re not too tired this afternoon, I’d like to take you riding.”

  Mercy had hoped to take Castaña for at least a quick canter. A ride with Zane, in his present obliging temper, would be wonderful, dangerously bittersweet, as such joys must be unless he changed his views. She told him she could be ready at any appointed time.

  As they carried the globe and a few books to the mayordomo’s house, Jolie told Mercy that she’d confessed her responsibility for his accident to Salvador and that he’d forgiven her after a hard scolding for trying to get rid of Mercy in such a horrible way.

  “No one else has to know, do they?” inquired Jolie anxiously. “That would be so awful!”

  Relieved that Jolie’s mood of extreme self-flagellation was passing, Mercy refrained from pointing out that ambush with a fer-de-lance wasn’t exactly admirable. “I think everyone knows what they need to,” she said. “Let’s help Salvador get well and forget the whole thing.”

  Jolie glanced up, her brow furrowed. “There’s still Xia.” As a cold glow of warning touched Mercy, Jolie added, “Papa’s going to talk to her, though.”

  So, it seemed, was Mercy. When she met Zane at the stables shortly after lunch, he gruffly asked how long it was going to take her to get some decent riding clothes, said he’d never known a boy so eager to learn that he begged for lessons while he was sick, and then, as Castaña followed Kisin along the road they’d taken the day before, he announced that they were bound for Xia’s village.

  “I
considered quietly wringing her neck,” he said dryly. “But I think knowledge of what she almost did to her son and a few other things I intend to tell her will ensure her good behavior.”

  “But why flaunt me at her?”

  “To grind the point into her so that she won’t forget.” The bleakness in his eyes faded as he grinned. “Besides, I promised to show you that miraculous branch of copal that was crucified in place of Salvador, and I doubt, after this visit, that either of us is likely to visit Xia again.”

  Did that mean he was giving up his mistress?

  “Why are you frowning?” Zane asked.

  Mercy hesitated.

  “Out with it!” Zane said impatiently. “I’d rather tell you the brutal truth about anything than leave you to jump to your own weird conclusions.”

  Smarting at the goad, Mercy said coldly, “When you told me that Xia had taken refuge in your tower, you said she wasn’t … yours.”

  “She wasn’t … isn’t … never could be. Xia belongs to herself and perhaps a dream of power.”

  “But you … you were …”

  “We had each other, if that’s what you mean, but the idea of Xia being any man’s kept woman is laughable.”

  “Indeed?” asked Mercy frostily. “I thought you believed that capacity was universal in women.”

  “Some snake venom stayed on your tongue,” he retorted. “Xia would have maintained an alliance with me, but I need something different from a woman.”

  “Like subjection?”

  His long mouth clamped tight. “You want to quarrel. I won’t indulge you, madam.”

  He sent the gleaming black horse into a canter. Mercy held Castaña back, nursing her wrath, though she felt like crying over the way their relationship, so comforting and close last night, had gone sour. Xia might not have agreed to be his dependent mistress, but she certainly must love him to attempt murder.

  A chill ran down Mercy’s spine, which she stiffened resolutely as she followed Zane down the turn-off to her enemy’s village.