Bride of Thunder

by Jeanne Williams

  He was physically repulsive to her, but she dreaded even more the smell of death and power about him, lives and pain absorbed and fattening him like the food he took. It made no sense, perhaps, after Eric, but she knew she really would rather die than belong to this man. She would rather run off and take her chances in the jungle, or try to kill him, though that would mean being hacked to bits by machetes.

  “The batab was kind to me,” she said firmly. “He told me much about the Mayas. We were friends in the soul.”

  The tatich laughed. “But souls inhabit bodies. Will you say you never pleasured each other amidst the wild thyme?”

  Involuntarily, Mercy glanced at the spy. So he’d been watching even then. She turned proudly to the mestizo. “I’ll say that what’s between the batab and me was for us, for our spirits, and it doesn’t concern the man I wish to marry.”

  “He’ll be a most unusual male if he agrees,” said the tatich dryly. He let honeycomb melt in his mouth as he lay back and studied her, then swallowed and gave a small dismissing shrug. “But if the cross allows its vassal, Dionisio, to keep you, I shall use my influence to get him to offer you for ransom to your dzul. It’s all right for Cruzob to keep white slaves, but it’s not good that they should love them.” His broad face twisted with disgust. “This thing of souls! You would blight his, destroy him!”

  “No!”

  “Yes. It is as our prophet wrote: ‘The dzuls trampled the flowers, and they sucked to death the flowers of others so that their own might live. They killed the flower of Quetzalcoatl.’” The sonorous tone boomed on accusingly. “‘The dzuls only came to castrate our sun! And the children of their children remain among us and we receive only their bitterness.’”

  The tatich brooded, his dark eyes fixed on Mercy, though he appeared to be seeing something else. “You’re honey to the batab now, and he is the sun to open your bloom. But when your honey’s gone and your flower is withered, the bitterness left would unman him. I need whole men. Yes, I will try to persuade the batab to sell you to the dzul—if I accept the alliance. Now, tell me of your country. How are the leaders chosen? And is it possible, as I have heard, that heretics live beside Catholics? Will the black slaves have their own country now that they’re free? And what of the Indians? I’ve heard of the Comanches, very fierce, and the Apaches, too. Some of the Mexican troops that were sent to fight here had also served on those northern frontiers.”

  He had a keen, wide-ranging intelligence. Having apparently decided not to concern himself with Mercy’s body, he feasted on her mind, drawing from her information she’d never analyzed or considered before in depth. Once she believed the sexual danger past, Mercy found herself stimulated and engrossed. She even accepted coffee when the military band was playing sprightly polkas interspersed with religious music at the eight o’clock service. The tatich said that nowadays he often let a maestro cantor celebrate the mass, and that he himself worshipped in his private chapel.

  “I don’t fight now, either,” he chuckled with a sigh. “Too old, too weary. I’ve earned my rest, señora.” He extended his muscular, heavy hand toward the plaza and swept it to indicate the shrine city. “When I think of when God first spoke to us in the little valley yonder! We were starving, beaten, whipped. Ladinos cut down the tree by the cenote, the Mother of Crosses, they defiled our chapel, and looked on us as carrion! We couldn’t plant corn. So many of us died. But the cross saved us, señora. Counting allies, I command an army of eleven thousand, and I have a treasury of two hundred thousand pesos and much rare jewelry and plunder. The ladinos were so routed when they attacked here in 1860 that I don’t think they’ll ever again have the stomach for it.”

  The tata nohoch zul, standing through all their conversation, growled rapidly in Mayan. The tatich responded, laughing, then said to Mercy, “He thinks we should take advantage of the ladino war, let them bleed each other well, as they now do at Mérida, and then fall upon the victors while they’re drunk and happy.” He swayed the hammock gently. “Ten years ago I would have been rallying men. It would be a great chance, perhaps our last chance, to fulfill the dreams we had at first, driving out all the ladinos, leaving them not even Campeche and Mérida. But I’ve fought so many battles, señora. Unless the cross commands it, I won’t march.”

  And the cross can’t command it unless you do, Mercy thought. With all her heart, she was glad that the tatich was disinclined to risk what the Cruzob held in a challenge to the whites.

  The spy spoke again and she recognized the name of Crescencio Poot and the gist of the comment, that the general might have a thirst for conquest even if the tatich didn’t.

  “The general of the plaza is under my orders,” snapped Novelo. “I can send him to the whipping post or the stocks, just as I can do to anyone—from soldier to general!”

  The spy bowed his head. “Indeed, Father, that is your power.”

  Mollified, the tatich resumed his questions. It was noon when he gave Mercy leave to go, telling her to visit him again in the morning. Grateful that the spy ignored her, Mercy went to her hut, ate corn gruel, and tried to rest, but the loneliness was oppressive. Zane at Mérida, Dionisio on the way to Macanche—both seemed terribly far away, while the chief spy was close.

  Getting out of the hammock and fastening her sandals, Mercy decided to see if she would be allowed to leave the city and walk in the woods. She could collect frangipani flowers for a healing ointment, and the flowers and bark of the magnolia were supposed to be useful for a failing heart. She needed to steep some willow leaves in case someone came to her with a fever or headache, and she hoped to find a red morning glory, which, according to the Badianus copy, was a good purgative.

  With a hemp bag to hold her finds, Mercy passed a sentry who ordered her to stop and asked where she was going. She explained in halting Mayan that she wished to gather plants. While the sentry hesitated, a plump young man who resembled a Buddha strolled from the nearest street and told the guard he would accompany Mercy.

  At first, being trailed by a man she was sure was one of the tata nohoch zul’s agents made her nervous, but once they reached the woods, he kept mostly out of sight. The fantastic truth was that she soon forgot him in her pleasure at finding some thistles reputedly useful for fever and an exceedingly beautiful magnolia from which she gathered blossoms and bark.

  She wandered on and found herself by the cornfield where Dionisio had shown her the birds of the yuntzilob. In just these weeks, the corn had broken from the earth and its tender green stalks stirred very gently in the slight breeze. Passing the village as before, she encountered a tortoise among some rocks, but it wasn’t crying now.

  “Did your tears bring the rains?” she asked it softly.

  It moved on, ignoring her, but, glancing up, she saw the skies were overcast, and she quickened her pace, reaching her hut just as the showers started. The unobtrusive young Buddha had melted away. She hoped if she was to be shadowed, he or someone equally invisible would do it, not the tata nohoch zul, who turned her blood to ice.

  She spread out her discoveries to dry, and then there was nothing to do—nothing, and it was a long time till night. She sat in the light by the door and read her father’s worn letters for the hundredth time. Even though she knew the words by heart, they encouraged her. Constantly, in what he did more than what he said, his message was that one must keep trying, help with the load of the world as much as one could, and find some grace and laughter in the struggle.

  The rain had stopped. She put away the letters and decided to go to the slave compound and see if anyone was sick or if she could help with the work. She was no good at making tortillas, but she could carry water or mash the soaked corn into paste.

  She skirted the plaza and the great mortared pile of the church, giving it a curious glance. She’d never been inside, but Dionisio had told her la santísima, the Talking Cross, was kept in a wooden chest, though there were other crosses on the altar. A sentry guarded the sanctuary day and night
. She prayed that the cross would stay mute and never command the holy war that the head spy had plainly wanted.

  As she started to enter the group of buildings behind the church, the Buddha came out of the shadows of the barracks. “You may not mix with the other slaves,” he said in soft, apologetic Spanish.

  “I wanted to see if anyone is sick.”

  “If they are, they’ll come to you.”

  He watched while she went back across the plaza, trying not to show her dejection. She fetched water from the cenote, lingering to at least see other women come and go. The mother of Juanito smiled at her shyly but filled her buckets and hurried away at a harsh word from a sentry. Mercy went slowly back to the hut, which, without Dionisio, seemed bare, alien.

  Putting down the bucket, Mercy sank into the hammock and wept. She hated Chan Santa Cruz—its walls and sentries and tatich and spy! Dionisio would be gone at least ten days. How would she ever stand it? And then, when he did return, what if the tatich refused the alliance?

  What if? What if?

  Maddened by tormenting questions, Mercy pressed her hands to the sides of her forehead, as if she could force them from her mind. This wouldn’t do. She must pull herself together.

  If the Macanche council approved, if the tatich let Dionisio keep her, it wouldn’t be long till she’d be at La Quinta. The siege of Mérida couldn’t go on much longer with the empire fallen. Zane would come home. The months with Eric would seem a dimming nightmare; this strange, bittersweet time with Dionisio would be a dream. After all that had happened, all she had endured, surely she could get through this little time.

  Rising, she found a basket of tortillas and tamales on the cookstone. Arranged by Dionisio? Sent by the tatich? From Juanito’s mother? Mercy didn’t know, but it was nice to have something besides corn gruel and mangoes. She carried the basket outside and ate slowly in the deepening twilight, enjoying the delicate flavor of the tamales, which were wrapped in banana leaves and stuffed with flavored squash and other vegetables she didn’t recognize. Savoring them to the last morsel, she sat on a crude bench, listening to the village sounds, thinking of Dionisio and hoping him safe wherever he’d slung his hammock. Then, turning her thoughts to La Quinta, she visualized Jolie, Salvador, Mayel, Chepa, and the way it’d be when Zane came home.

  Clinging to this image, she went inside, washed in the dark, brushed her hair, and was soon in her hammock. She thought, of the growing corn and how Dionisio would smile to see it. Father, Thou knowest: He who is tender in heaven.… She could almost hear his voice. Settling deeper into the hammock, she pretended he was telling her stories until she fell asleep.

  The days took on a pattern. She spent several hours each morning with the tatich telling him all she could about her country and the world beyond. He was especially interested in England because of Belize, but he found it incredible that a woman ruled such a far-flung empire till Mercy pointed out to him that Belize had been colonized by the English during the reign of one of its greatest sovereigns, Elizabeth, who had encouraged her captains to attack Spanish ships.

  “Can your president be a woman?” the tatich asked.

  Mercy gasped. Such a thought had never occurred to her. “Women can’t even vote,” she said resentfully, for she had thought about this.

  Novelo laughed. “Voting’s not so much, señora. Indians were given the vote here in Yucatán while at the same time they could be forced into debt-bondage and made the same as slaves. But you say former male slaves can vote now in the United States. That makes them better citizens than women?”

  “I suppose it does. But women don’t vote in England, either, although they consider one capable of ruling.”

  When the tatich dismissed her, Mercy did her few chores, rested during the worst heat, and then, if it wasn’t raining, went collecting herbs and plants, always trailed by the Buddha. In the evening, Juanito’s mother brought tortillas and whatever else was being cooked. She was afraid to stay and chat, but she said that Dionisio had asked her to bring the food and had arranged it with the guards.

  Usually, Juanito was with her. He was, she confided, the child of a handsome major who had promised to ransom her when he got enough money or trade goods saved. He lived in a village to the east, but it was almost time again for his month’s duty at the shrine. Maybe this year he’d have her price.

  “You’d rather marry him than go back to your people?” Mercy asked.

  The woman nodded. “He’s good to me. And I’ve been here so long, señora! My family were all killed in the raid when I was taken. I would rather stay with Juanito’s father.”

  “Then I hope he has the money this year,” Mercy said and thanked the woman, who smiled and hurried back to the compound.

  So she had a major. That was next to a general in the Cruzob Army. Dionisio had explained that they had no colonels, skipping from general to major, captain, lieutenant, sergeant, corporal, and soldier. Except for the head spy and general of the plaza, all officers led companies and were elected on New Year’s Day by the men of the company, each company being of a village after the old militia plan.

  The tatich had decreed that no officer could command men of another company, but a few of the more powerful ones did, and since justice was administered at company or village level unless the crime was serious enough for the tatich, some of these commanders dominated a number of villages with their fighting men. That was one reason why the yearly month of guard duty at Chan Santa Cruz was so important, binding each able-bodied adult male to the shrine, faith, and authority of Chan Santa Cruz.

  Would the Cruzob ever try to overwhelm the ladinos again? Or would they be content to draw in more allies, perhaps absorb the Icaiches, and actually rule all of Yucatán except for a thin cresent of the northwest—the centers of Campeche, Mérida, and Valladolid? Would La Quinta remain safe or would Poot decide his debt didn’t extend to his savior’s son?

  Even a general as tough, ruthless, and wily as he couldn’t live forever. But it was almost inevitable that when the central Mexican government gained enough strength, it would crush the rebel state, or at least severely limit its territory. The economic arguments for henequén, sugarcane, and lumber would grow stronger as the need for these products increased. The Cruzob, dependent on corn and constantly busy with clearing and burning new fields to replace infertile ones, couldn’t hold out forever against an unremitting, well-armed, massive force that came prepared to occupy Cruzob strongholds and stay in the jungle as long as necessary instead of being called back to Mérida or Campeche to fight with other ladinos.

  Bonifacio Novelo, himself partly of the ladino world, seemed to know this, for he sometimes discussed the advantages of the Cruzob attaching themselves to the British empire and acquiring that protection while still maintaining effective self-rule.

  “That queen is far away,” he said with a twinkle one morning a week after Dionisio had gone. “She’s never visited Belize, and I don’t think she would come to us. It’s like a mother with many children, no? She can’t watch them all.”

  Mercy’s face must have shown her skepticism, for he pressed for her opinion. “I don’t think the British would want to have trouble with Mexico or the United States,” she said.

  The tatich frowned. “The United States? What have they to do with us?”

  As simply as possible, Mercy explained the Monroe Doctrine. If any country in what the United States considered its sphere of influence was threatened, then the U.S. would intervene. Mexico, she pointed out, was within this sphere of influence. She reminded him that it had been U.S. pressure on France that had played a decisive role in compelling Napoleon III to withdraw troops from Maximilian’s support, and that it had been the U.S. supply of arms to Juárez that had kept his men in the field when they’d otherwise have succumbed to the well-trained and equipped imperial armies.

  “If the United States hadn’t ended the Civil War in time to threaten France and help Juárez, there’s little doubt that the emper
or would be solidly in power by now instead of a prisoner.”

  Novelo chewed on that. “In this case, yes, I think I’m glad your country aided the Indian Juárez. Why should more dzuls come to Mexico? But I don’t like it that your country seems to believe it has the right to keep the dzuh away from us and interfere in alliances that might be good. I speak daily with God. He hasn’t told me that the United States is ordained as our guardian.”

  “You must remember that my part of the country just fought a long and terrible war because it felt the federal government was taking improper power. We lost and are being treated like conquered traitors.”

  “Ah, the conquered are always traitors!” The tatich laughed. “But I understand what you say. Right is what the strongest says it is.” He brooded a while, devouring guava candy. “Isn’t the British empire stronger than the United States? Surely it could win a war.”

  “It didn’t win the last one,” Mercy reminded him. “And it depends a lot on which country would have to transport troops and supplies. I think Great Britain has enough colonies and territory to worry about without making agreements that would lead to war with the United States.”

  The tatich sighed, as if relinquishing a brilliant vision. “I’d be happy for the English to fight your country, but I fear they’d make us their battleground, and when it was over we’d have lost, either way.” He scratched his chest and lifted himself out of the hammock with a flutter of lace-trimmed trousers and surprising grace for so heavy a man. “I must receive the general of the plaza, who’s returning from the north with an interesting proposal. He sent a runner so that we could prepare. You may watch if you please.”

  “You will watch,” said the tata nohoch zul as the tatich vanished into his private section of the palace. “The tatich will later require your judgment of what is offered. Woman and dzul though you are, your acquaintance with the foreign world and ways may serve the Talking Cross. Stay with me.”