The Star in the Meadow (The Spanish Brand Book 4)

by Carla Kelly

  “Send your men out with these broadsides, and come back to the Double Cross with me,” Marco told him.

  Joaquim had no trouble putting his sergeant in charge for the day; spring had come and he wanted to ride. The sun was warm on his back as he and Marco traveled the two leagues back to the Double Cross, with its gray stone walls and guards always on alert. They lazed along, and Joaquim couldn’t help but contrast it to last summer, when they had been desperate to stop renegade Grey Owl.

  “I was pretty certain we were going to die last summer,” Joaquim admitted to his friend as they ambled along.

  Marco glanced his way, as serious as Joaquim had ever seen him. “I was, too, and by God and all the angels, I did not want to die.” He looked down at his gloved hands, resting on the pommel like a beginning rider. “There was a time I would have given up gladly, but not now, not ever again.”

  For the life of him, Joaquim couldn’t think of anything flippant to say, no phrase to turn with a joke and laugh. He knew exactly what Marco was talking about.

  Marco shifted in his saddle to give Joaquim his complete attention. “My friend, find yourself a wife. She will make all the difference.”

  “I’ve looked—discreetly, mind you—but Santa Maria’s ladies are either married, too young, or too old,” he said. “I won’t go younger than sixteen.”

  “Felicia was fifteen, and I was eighteen,” Marco said, smiling at the memory. “Greener than grass! Oh, how I loved her.”

  “Marco, I am almost thirty, nearly as old as you are,” Joaquim reminded him.

  Marco laughed, the traitor. Why was it some men seemed able to find wonderful wives under each creosote bush?

  Marco reached across the short distance between them and touched Joaquim’s arm. “Come with me to Santa Fe this fall, when I take my records and wool clip. You’ll find someone.”

  Joaquim nodded, knowing full well he probably couldn’t justify leaving the district for such an errand as wiving.

  His mood cleared by the time they arrived at the Double Cross. Joaquim breathed deep of the newly turned earth, and watched the sowers broadcasting wheat in one field and planting hills of corn in another.

  Through the open gates he saw three children jumping rope, and recognized Cecilia, the Comanche child that Graciela Tafoya had brought to her marriage with Claudio Vega, Paloma’s brother. And there by the now-flowing acequia stood the three women—Graciela herself, gently rounded of belly, Paloma with Juan Luis to her shoulder, and tall, thin Catalina Ygnacio.

  “I thought Señorita Ygnacio would be slaving over numbers in your office,” he said to Marco, half wanting her to be working hard because she had caused them so much trouble.

  “Catalina? She goes in there now and then, but do you know, I think her father is enjoying himself with my audit. No one is hounding him or belittling him. He hasn’t even asked for his daughter’s help.”

  “There’s something in the water here, isn’t there?” Joaquim teased.

  “Nothing except water skippers,” Marco said, content to stop Buciro and just watch the scene within the gates. “We’re good to each other. It rubs off.”

  Joaquim watched the family through supper in the kitchen, where all business was conducted in the colony. Paloma felt no shyness about opening her bodice and nursing her smallest, leaning now and then against her husband’s shoulder on the bench they shared and gracefully letting him share his supper with her, a bite every other time. She had a beautiful bosom, but Joaquim knew better than to take more than a glance now and then.

  Graciela and Claudio had ended up in the kitchen too, sitting close to each other, with Cecilia on Claudio’s lap because Graciela’s was full of unborn child. Joaquim saw Claudio’s contentment, a far remove from the restless horse trader of only last year, who belonged nowhere.

  Joaquim had ended up next to Catalina, as he had been shyly informed he was to call her, because no one at the Double Cross stood on much ceremony. Soledad had attached herself to Catalina’s other side, and Joaquim watched as Catalina reminded the little girl to finish what was on her plate. She did it gently, barely recognizable as the woman who had paced back and forth in the sala, wringing her hands and telling her story of a deprived life and Señor Moreno’s cruelty to her father. Nothing could change her height and angular lines, but Catalina Ygnacio’s anxious air seemed to belong to someone else now.

  Speaking of Señor Ygnacio, Joaquim watched him, too, seeing a certain wistfulness in the older gentleman, fortune’s fool. He said little, but let himself be carried along by conversation and good food and warmth that came not so much from the fireplace, but from somewhere deep inside, that tender spot Joaquim was only beginning to discover for himself.

  “What do you think of the Double Cross, Catalina?” he asked, when Paloma and Marco were arguing good-naturedly over the last bowl of flan and Papa Ygnacio was starting to nod off, despite the murmur of conversation between Graciela and Claudio, seated next to him.

  “I wish I lived here,” she said, so quiet that he had to lean close to hear her.

  She had only been here a week, but her hair and clothes were already starting to smell of sage and rosemary. He took a deep breath of her fragrance and smelled that essence of woman he had been successfully ignoring for months now, since it had not proved beneficial to his reformation.

  “I wish I did, too,” he whispered back.

  Chapter Ten

  In which the Mondragóns greet a familiar visitor

  Paloma knew it was only a matter of time. Toshua might bluster and look superior, as only a warrior of The People could, but she had seen him tickling Claudito and showing Soledad how to make a whistle out of grass. He would never unbend to admit it, but Toshua was as much the doting grandparent as his wife Eckapeta. He would arrive when they least expected him.

  So he had.

  She had just returned Juanito to his cradle after a prodigious feeding, and felt the urge to leave the bed she shared with Big Man, who snored now—not loud, but loud enough. She stood by his side of the bed, loving him, wishing there were more hours in the day during his busy spring because he needed the time for planting, but also wishing there were fewer daylight hours, so he would come inside sooner.

  The air was cool but not cold, so she didn’t bother with sandals. Besides, she liked the feel of clean, cold tile on bare feet. No point in hunting for a shawl, because no one else was awake.

  She could have used the sleep, but lately, she had started relishing what few minutes she had to herself. She recognized that awkward time when her baby seemed attached to one nipple or the other and she wasn’t even Paloma Vega anymore, just a cow supplying cream, with everyone around her making demands as well.

  She chastised herself, remembering the dark time when every thirty days or so ended in a sparse monthly. For a year she had hoped and then prayed with increasing desperation that her body would be receptive to Marco’s obviously healthy seed, since he had fathered twins with his first wife. This failure was her failure, and it chafed beyond belief.

  Who knew what had changed? Paloma had barely believed it when a month passed, nothing happened, and then another one. In some mystery beyond her imagining and prayers and endless petitions to the Virgin Herself, somehow a baby had taken root and turned into Claudio Mondragón.

  And now there was Juanito, which delighted her because his birth seemed to confirm that the path was open for more. All the same, she couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed.

  She stood in the hall, half asleep, and decided to sit outside on the portal. When she opened the door, she walked to the edge, where she knew the night guard patrolled. One of the archers stopped and looked at her. This had happened several times in the past two weeks, so she knew to wave at him, signaling that all was well.

  With a sigh of relief or gratitude or some strange melancholy she could not identify, Paloma eased herself onto the bench by the door. A half smile on her face, she leaned back against the rough stone and let h
er mind drift to a time when it was only her and Marco. Why had she not appreciated the simplicity of those days before babies, when neither of them thought anything of spending a rare rainy afternoon making love, or even just taking an evening stroll beside the acequia hand in hand, with not a childish demand in sight?

  “Why am I not satisfied?” she asked out loud. “I have what I prayed for, don’t I?”

  No one replied, but she knew someone could have. Some instinct told her she was not alone on the porch, not even alone on the bench. Fear gripped her, that first instinct of any settler teetering on the edge of Comanchería. When her heart slowed down to manageable beats, she slid her hand along the bench, certain she was right.

  She sighed when a rough hand covered hers. “Toshua, you’re too quiet,” she said, not even needing to look.

  “You have lived among The People just long enough to develop a third ear, my daughter,” he said, which pleased her heart. “How are you?”

  She could tell him she was fine, and had a wonderful baby to show him when morning came and everyone began to stir. Would he have believed her? That third ear suggested to Paloma that he would not, and no Comanche tolerates a lie, unless he’s the one telling it.

  “I am tired and a little weary of demands,” she said honestly. “I feel ungrateful, too.”

  “Why, daughter?” he asked.

  “I prayed and prayed for God or a saint or someone to open my womb. Now it has happened, and I am ungrateful. What must the Lord God Almighty think of me?” She wondered how it was she could say such womanly, intimate things to a man living a far harder life than she could fathom. What did Toshua know of God anyway? “A priest would require confession of my foolish thoughts.”

  “Would he listen first?”

  She shrugged. “Some might.” She thought of gentle Father Eusebio back in Saint Michael’s in Santa Fe’s Analco district, the parish church of Indians and servants where she most felt at home. He would listen, suggest, and gently require the smallest of penances, as if those sins weighing on her were lighter than she feared.

  “I am listening,” Toshua told her, and that was all she needed to throw herself into his arms and weep on his bare shoulder. She babbled about her exhaustion, her gnawing fear that she was torn too many ways to fully nurture her other two little ones, not to mention fill Marco’s needs.

  “And your needs?” he asked finally, when she wiped her eyes on the hem of her nightgown and her nose, too. “You have some maybe?”

  “I suppose I do,” she admitted. “I’d like to sit down to a meal without anyone demanding anything of me.”

  “That sounds within reason,” her friend-confessor in the dark told her. “Anything else?”

  She shouldn’t mention such private things, but hadn’t she and Marco spent part of one winter sharing a tipi with Toshua and Eckapeta, and all that meant? “I wish I didn’t have to wait until late when I am almost too tired, but after the children are long asleep, to have a little tipi time with Big Man. Oh, I shouldn’t say such things.” Her face felt hot.

  Toshua must have moved closer, because she sensed his silent laughter. She couldn’t help smiling. In another moment she was laughing too, but quietly. Obviously the guards walking the terreplein hadn’t seen her companion. She didn’t want them to hear laughter and think that Señor Mondragón’s wife had taken complete leave of her senses and was raving to herself on the porch.

  “Daughter, this will pass,” he told her. “You two picked the busiest time of the year for a baby to come. Give yourself the gift of summer and fall, when the leaves drop and night closes in earlier, and children get sleepy-eyed sooner.”

  “Makes perfect sense,” she told him, resolved there was nothing she could ever say to this good man beside her that might embarrass her again. “Bide my time?”

  “Haa,” he told her in Nurmurnah. “Little by little, a small stream turned into that gorge in the ground by Santa Fe.”

  She nodded; she had seen the place he spoke of. “I should keep coming out here for a few minutes in the early morning hours to have my time alone?”

  “That is what Eckapeta did, when our children lived,” he said simply.

  Why did I whine to this man? she thought, teary-eyed, thinking of his own children dead now, one killed by the Dark Wind and the other by an Apache war party. “Toshua, I …” she began, and could say no more. She leaned her forehead against his shoulder. “Forgive me.”

  “What is there to forgive?” he asked. “We only do the best we can, on any given day.” He chuckled again. “At least that is what Eckapeta tells me, and we know she is smarter than all of us. Rest your head on my shoulder, my daughter.”

  Silent, she did as he said. When morning came, she was back in her own bed with her dear husband sitting beside her, still in his nightshirt. She touched his leg and he moved her hand higher, underneath the fabric.

  “The children …” she whispered.

  “Eckapeta and Toshua are walking with them along the acequia,” he said, pulling her hand still higher until she sighed with her own longing and touched him. It had been months now, since her most awkward days of pregnancy. “Juanito is still asleep and I told Emilio to prepare seeds for planting. We have a moment.”

  He was extra gentle with her. She moved cautiously at first, then rested her legs on his. The spark caught and lit and she willingly turned herself inside out for this husband of hers who was doing the same thing for her. If she made more noise than usual, what did it matter? She hugged and kissed her man, enjoying him, savoring him.

  Even when her milk came, it barely mattered. Marco took care of that, too, and she loved him for it. Finally they lay beside each other, legs entwined, breathing deep until their heartbeats slowed.

  “I wondered where you were,” he said at last. “I walked outside and found you sound asleep on Toshua’s shoulder. We had a quiet talk, we two.”

  She thought she might feel foolish and awkward to have this conversation with the man she had just nourished as deeply as he had ever been filled, but she did not. “I need you,” she said simply, “almost as much as I need some peaceful time. Toshua tells me that is not wrong or silly.”

  “He’s right.”

  “I have to wonder, though, because I am a skeptic,” she added. “I don’t imagine women of The People ever have spare time. Was he just humoring me because I am a weak Spanish woman?”

  “I am a skeptic, too. I asked him.” Marco patted her stomach. “He gave me a smack on the head and told me Nurmurnah women like to sit with each other near healing smoke.”

  “I remember doing just that with Eckapeta in the sacred canyon,” Paloma replied. “I didn’t know what it was for. You can smack me, too.”

  Her husband put forefinger to thumb and made the smallest touch against her forehead, with an accompanying pop. They laughed together, but quietly this time, because Juanito was starting to stir.

  When Marco sat up she blushed to see fingernail tracks on his back. She touched the marks. “I should perhaps apologize for scarring you beyond recognition,” she teased.

  “Did I complain?” he asked, amused. “And here I went and swallowed Juanito’s breakfast. What kind of father am I?”

  They fell into each other’s arms and held tight, crying a little, laughing more.

  There was no point in any shyness during breakfast, when Paloma served Toshua and Eckapeta. She passed cornmeal mush to her good friends and sat beside the man who had put the heart back in her during those early-morning hours on the porch. He gave her a wink as he held Claudito on his lap and alternated bites of toasted bread.

  Toshua surprised her by sitting there after the meal was done. She knew he was no fan of idleness, no more than her husband, who was probably wondering why he still sat there himself, when there was corn to plant.

  Toshua wasted not a word, which told Paloma much about what must have been his real reason for this visit. “Marco, I need you to come with me now,” he said.


  Her husband frowned. “My brother, this is the busiest time of my year. There is planting, and young things are being born.” He glanced sideways at Paloma and blushed. “Our young things, too. Believe me, if it were another time, I would follow you without hesitation.”

  It was as if Toshua hadn’t heard a word. “We spent the winter talking and talking in the canyon, we Kwahadi and the Kosetekas and even the Yupe and Yamparika.”

  “Even eastern Comanches?” Marco asked, obviously surprised.

  “Even them, little brother. There have been rumors of peace attempts even in that part of Texas where a man is hot and wet all day because the air seems to rain even when there are no clouds.” Toshua chuckled. “Even their hands are soft in those places. Babies and sissies.”

  His eyes turned serious. “We have moved our ever-growing camp north to that wooded place along Rio Napestle that you Spaniards still fear.”

  “I had heard,” Marco said, equally serious. “I think I would be afraid to come with you. Yes, afraid, Paloma,” he added. “I’ll admit it. It was a killing field of Spaniards fifty years ago. Would I be the only white man among hundreds at this gathering?”

  “Thousands, if you add women and children,” Toshua admitted. He made a sound of his own. “Well, there are white slaves, too.”

  “How easily I could become one,” Marco said. “I am afraid.”

  Paloma watched her husband’s face, which had gone suddenly pale. “Only a brave man would make such an admission, my love,” she told him.

  “You’re too kind,” he replied. He stirred on the bench and put his hand close to her hip. “And there is Paloma.”

  The two warriors regarded each other. Paloma watched them both, painfully aware how much they must have said to each other last night, when she slept so soundly against Toshua’s shoulder and before Marco had carried her back to bed.