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

by Carla Kelly

  “There is an old woman who hides in the barn and only comes out at night,” he said, after considerable thought, which involved scratching his chin. This action seemed to remind him that his nose itched, and then another place that made Paloma turn away in embarrassment when he scratched there, too.

  “At night? Heavens, what does she do here?” Paloma asked, not certain she wanted to know.

  “I think she washes clothes.”

  “At night?”

  “Of course. The brothers do not like to be disturbed with any noise during the day,” Pedro said, as though it made perfect sense. “She drapes the sheets and things over bushes, then scurries away to hide until they are dry.”

  “Go get her right now and tell her I need her in the kitchen,” Paloma said in the firm voice she reserved for Soledad when her dear one was contrary.

  “But I am supposed to watch you here,” Pedro said, and started scratching again.

  “I am not going anywhere,” she assured him. Not now, at least, until we all eat a little better, she thought. Pedro lumbered out the door, pouting as he went.

  Paloma surveyed her domain, dismayed at what years of neglect could do to a kitchen. “I am going to keep very busy,” she muttered. “I will be too tired tonight to cry myself to sleep.”

  Possibly taking her at her word about good food, Pedro returned in what was likely record time for him, towing a woman scarcely four feet tall. She might have been taller, but she was hunched over.

  Too many years bent over a scrubbing board, Paloma thought, reminding herself that when she got home—oh, please God, let her get home—she would make certain that the Double Cross servants varied their workaday routines.

  “I am Señora Mondragón, sent here to straighten up this kitchen,” Paloma said, glossing over an abduction and imprisonment in an adobe hut. No telling how much this old one could absorb, if her life had been spent taking care of the Durán twins. “What is your name?”

  “Maria,” the old one said. “Just Maria. No other name.” She looked through the door she had just entered. “Will we be safe?”

  “From what?” Paloma asked, and she started sweeping mounds of dirt toward the center of the room, which set off a fit of sneezing. “Little piles of trouble like this debris?” she asked, when she could speak.

  “You shouldn’t tease about Comanches,” Maria said.

  “Except for a minor skirmish last summer by a renegade, Comanches haven’t raided here in several years. Here, pile this garbage into one corner. We’ll have Pedro take it out and burn it.”

  Maria stayed where she was, as if rooted to the dirty tile in fear. “They will come and grab us, gut us and eat us!”

  “No, they won’t,” Paloma said gently as she mentally added another black mark to the names of Roque and Miguel Durán. “I need your help,” she coaxed.

  “Los Señores Durán told me I must wash clothes at night, then hide during the day, somewhere deep in the barn where the Comanches cannot find me,” Maria said, her voice low and breathless. “Suppose they come silently while we are working in here?”

  “They won’t,” Paloma assured her. “I’ll watch for them.”

  “You do not know what the Comanches can do!” She looked around, her eyes wild. “There used to be other servants, all gone now. It was Comanches!”

  I think it was braver people than you who ran away, Paloma said silently. Why didn’t you run, too?

  Paloma sat the woman down on a bench, after shuddering and sweeping aside either a ratty toupee or a long-dead muskrat. She held Maria’s hands, sad to feel her tremble. Maria was even more of a victim than she could ever be. “If a Comanche walks into this kitchen, I will throw myself in front of you, and you can scurry away.”

  Such a promise seemed to calm the old one. After a long moment, she nodded. “This pile of junk over here?” she asked, looking around.

  “Yes, that one, Maria,” Paloma said. “I will work here and watch the door for Comanches.”

  To Paloma’s surprise, the three of them worked quietly and well through the morning. By the time when most people would be sitting down to a noon meal, they were still at work, even though Paloma’s stomach growled so loudly that Maria looked her way and giggled, hand over her mouth.

  “That’s it,” Paloma said. “I am making cornmeal now. Don’t groan, Pedro. You will like the way I do it.”

  Before Pedro could stop her, she left the kitchen and started down the hall, looking in each room until she found the bookroom and Catalina, sorting through piles of papers. When she stood in the doorway, Roque leaped up, demanding to know what she wanted.

  “For heaven’s sake, calm down,” Catalina said. “It’s just Paloma.”

  “What do you want? Where is Pedro?” he shouted.

  Paloma put her hands over her ears. “Señor Durán, you are making this difficult! I need you to show me a storeroom where I am hoping you have some food. We are hungry, and we will eat.”

  “Not unless I say so,” he insisted.

  “Then say so,” Catalina snapped at him, “or I will not help you get to the bottom of this pile.” She flashed a broad smile in Roque’s direction. “How will you ever know if the district juez de campo and his father before him have been cheating you for twenty years and more? I can’t work without food.”

  “Catalina, they don’t ch …” Paloma stopped when her friend gave her a slow wink.

  “Very well,” Roque said, already reaching for his bunch of keys. “I am beginning to regret that two stupid fools abducted the wrong person. Ay de mi!”

  He stomped into the kitchen. Maria shrieked, threw her apron up to hide her face, and tried to disappear behind the water barrel when she saw her master. “Forgive me, my lord! She insisted I help clean up this place. We’re watching for Comanches!”

  Roque stared hard at the old woman, then heaved a sigh of vast ill usage and opened the storeroom door. He groaned out loud, as if Paloma had demanded his treasure and one-half his kingdom—all for cornmeal, flour, some rock-hard sugar, and a few spices. He shook the key under Paloma’s nose then flung another key at the surprised Pedro, who had edged his way toward the water barrel with Maria No Other Name.

  “Open up the smokehouse, you useless tonto! Get a knife from the drawer. I suppose there will be no peace if we do not have something besides cornmeal. Close your mouth. Señora Mondragón will think we have no manners.”

  You don’t want to know what Señora Mondragón is thinking right now, Paloma said to herself as she gave a moderately impressive curtsy and thanked Roque Durán for his all-seeing wisdom and general brilliant sagacity in feeding the starving. She muttered the last of that under her breath, but the man was already on his way from the kitchen so it hardly mattered.

  Roque stomped down the hall, hollering something about wanting food and soon. In a few minutes, Pedro staggered into the kitchen under the weight of a slab of smoked pork. He set it on the table most reverently, then opened a drawer with the other key and pulled out a knife. Slicing off a piece for himself, he stuffed it in his mouth. Maria gasped, then came closer, sniffing the mound of meat. The worry in her eyes softened. Paloma had to turn away when the old laundress patted it.

  Without a word, and with a defiant stare in the direction where Roque had disappeared, Pedro sliced the laundress a generous portion, and another for Paloma. Within a few minutes, he had slung a large pot over the firewood Paloma had arranged and lit, and at her direction, dipped water from the barrel into the pot. Soon, but not soon enough for any of them, cornmeal bubbled, and bits of pork sank without a protest below the yellow surface, followed by dried chilis and other spices.

  “It won’t cook any faster if we watch it,” Paloma said. “Maria, you wipe down the cabinets in here, and Pedro, you keep sweeping, but do it away from the fireplace.”

  By the time the cabinets were clean, Paloma set equally clean dishes back on the open shelves. She put her hand on the laundress’s shoulder. “Maria, you have d
one a lovely job here,” she said.

  To her shock, the woman burst into tears and covered her face with her apron again. “No Comanches anywhere, Maria,” Paloma said. “What is troubling you?”

  “No trouble,” the woman managed to say when her tears subsided. “No one has ever said my name before. It is always ‘do this,’ or ‘do that.’ ”

  “It is ‘tonto,’ with me,” Pedro added.

  Pray I never forget this lesson, Paloma thought. Such a simple one. In silence she dished out posole to her helpers, who fell on their food like famished children. Swallowing her own hunger, she prepared three bowls and took them down the hall on a tarnished silver tray that had seen better times, like this entire hacienda and the people within.

  Both brothers sat in the bookroom, their interest focused on Catalina, who pored over the documents before her with the same air of interest that her father showed in Marco’s office. Paloma stood in the doorway a moment, wondering how Señor Ygnacio was holding up in the face of his only child’s disappearance. She thought of her husband and children, searching for Mama. She deliberately tried not to think of her small son, last seen sleeping in a carriage with a dead man lying nearby, and wondered how some people could be so cruel.

  Keep your anger, Paloma, she told herself. Don’t start feeling sorry for these miserable people. She thought instead of Maria, who marveled that someone would call her by name. I remember those days, she thought as she went into the bookroom and handed out the steaming bowls of posole.

  “Where is Gaspar?” she asked. “May I take him a bowl, too?”

  Miguel—she thought it was Miguel—gestured vaguely toward the hall. “Outside somewhere.”

  She turned to go, not surprised that neither brother thanked her.

  “Thank you, Paloma,” Catalina said. “You have fixed us a wonderful meal.”

  “Why, yes, you have,” Roque said, sounding surprised.

  Paloma nodded, reminding herself it was Roque who had the keys bound around his waist. “You are welcome. Now you can do something for us, señores.”

  Two suspicious faces turned her way, not in any way softened by the food before them. She wondered how long it took for some people to ever understand appreciation. She had been nearly five years in Valle del Sol, subject to nothing but kindness on the Double Cross. Something inside her told her not to completely forget the bleak years of sorrow at her family’s ruin, her own subjugation in the house of her uncle in Santa Fe, and the difficulty of life in this poor colony. Better to remember, and in remembering just a little, never turn into Duráns.

  “Señor Miguel, would you allow us to have two blankets for the night? It’s cold.” As hard as it was to tell the twins apart, she had convinced herself earlier that Miguel Duran’s eyes reflected something other than hurt and anger. “Please, señor.”

  “Give me another beautiful curtsy, Señora Mondragón,” he said and laughed at his own wit. “Maybe one for each blanket, and then I’ll think about it. No promises.”

  Paloma saw Catalina’s hands tighten into fists. Paloma looked down at the tiles underfoot, embarrassed to have misread the man’s eyes. Without a word, she did as he demanded, one deep curtsy, then another. With tears in her eyes, she left the room without a word.

  She dished another bowl and went into the courtyard, looking around, wondering if she had the courage to dart up the rickety ladder leaning against the wall, just for a glimpse of the surrounding land. She started for the ladder, then stopped when Pedro opened the door leading to the kitchen garden.

  “Gaspar is in the barn. Where are you going?” he asked, his eyes as hard and suspicious as ever.

  “To the barn,” she said, turning around. She glanced back to see Pedro removing the ladder. I am the tonta here, she told herself, if I thought one bowl of posole would transform captors into saints.

  Unwilling to return to the kitchen, Paloma sat in the barn with Gaspar, watching as he wolfed down the food, and wordlessly held out his bowl for more, like the child he was. She reluctantly returned to the kitchen, where Pedro and Maria still ate, and dished up another bowl for Gaspar and one for herself, filling it to the top. There was no guarantee that any would be left when she returned.

  She ate slowly, touched, in spite of her growing anger at her treatment, as Gaspar made little noises while he ate, much as Claudito would make after a hard day of playing by the acequia. Why were some children more fortunate than others? Why had she and her brother Claudio been left to find their own precarious way through the dangerous society they lived in? Ultimately, why had they been so lucky?

  She felt her anger diminish, to be replaced by gratitude and a growing desire to put this place behind her, but never to forget it.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  In which Paloma is reminded of all the ways a person can starve

  By nightfall, the kitchen was as clean as one Paloma and two addled helpers could make it. While shadows lengthened in the room—shadows that could be seen now because Paloma had washed the two windows—Maria darted from window to window to door, looking for what, only God knew. Paloma mourned inside to see the damage these two brothers had done to keep their servants in line. She thought of her uncle, thankful she had escaped his house before she had turned into Maria.

  She managed to put on a smiling face for Miguel Durán when he brought two blankets into the kitchen and set them on the table with a flourish. He stood back, as though expecting all manner of thanks from her, and Paloma did not disappoint him.

  “You are kindness itself, Señor Durán,” she said, and forced herself to give him a medium curtsy.

  He seemed not to mind a medium curtsy. He sat down at the table, looking around in satisfaction at the clean cupboards and dishes, neatly swept and scrubbed floor, and orderly arrangement of the paltry foodstuffs in the storeroom. He beamed at her in odd delight, as though he knew something exquisitely special, something to upset her world. She had been tormented by bullies in Santa Fe, and knew one when she saw one. So much for kindness itself.

  He leaned back on the bench and Paloma resisted a nearly overwhelming urge to give him a push and send him sprawling. He laced his fingers behind his head and gave her that all-knowing look, as though he were a little boy chanting, “I know something you don’t know.”

  She waited. She knew he would speak.

  “Imagine what that skinny stick has discovered in our bookroom,” he said finally.

  “I cannot possibly imagine,” Paloma said.

  “Guess, or I will take back these blankets,” he told her, picking them up and heading for the door.

  “That my husband and his father have been cheating you for years on payment of your taxes,” she called out in desperation, not willing to endure another cold night.

  “Ah! You knew all along!” he declared in triumph, plopping the blankets back on the table. He gave her a shrewd look. “Or do you just want me to think you know?”

  “You may have it however you choose,” she said simply, and folded her arms as a Spanish gentlewoman would. She gazed at him calmly, thinking of all the ways her husband would see to it that Miguel Durán suffered. As much as she disliked Miguel Durán, even Paloma Vega could not bring herself to imagine what Toshua would do to him.

  “Your husband, our noble juez de campo, has been cheating us out of too many cattle each year,” Miguel Durán said. “When we never respond to his broadsides, he sends his henchmen to take four cattle for taxes.” He clapped his hands suddenly, and old Maria cried out in fright. “Your friend Catalina discovered all this.”

  “You need simply to present your records to the juez and he will treat you fairly,” Paloma said. “That is what everyone else in this district does.”

  “Or I could demand a ransom for you and make him pay and pay,” Miguel countered.

  Lord deliver me from imbeciles, Paloma thought, exasperated. “You are in a position to do pretty much as you please, señor,” she told him.

  Paloma could
tell from the disappointment in his eyes that she wasn’t reacting as he wished. There was something hair-trigger about the man that made her wary. She saw a solution, however temporary, and had no trouble letting tears well in her eyes and slide down her cheeks. All she had to do was think about tiny Juanito in that ruined carriage, and she wept.

  To her relief, Miguel threw up his hands and stomped from the kitchen, slamming the door so hard behind him that Maria cried out. Pedro looked at them both and started to tug at the hairs on his beard.

  When he turned away, the better to ignore them both, Paloma focused her attention on the knife used to slice the smoked pork, which lay next to the blankets. She had wondered all afternoon how to secure it, and Miguel Durán had given her the perfect cover. Her eyes on Pedro’s back, she slid the knife between the folds of one blanket.

  Maria gasped. Paloma frowned and shook her finger at the old laundress, who started to cringe and cower. “Please don’t give me away,” Paloma whispered under her breath. She moved slowly toward the woman, not to silence her—what could she do?—but to touch her shoulder. She placed her hand gently on Maria’s back, felt her tremble, then hugged her.

  Paloma wondered when anyone had ever touched her in kindness, even though she knew the answer already. She embraced the old laundress, then gave her a light kiss on each cheek.

  “Take me with you, when you escape,” the woman whispered.

  “We will do what we can,” Paloma whispered back. “If we cannot immediately, don’t despair. I never forget a kindness.”

  “Nor I,” Maria said.

  Paloma looked around the kitchen, missing the cheerful blue and white tiles in her kitchen, and the conversation and laughter. Her heart turned over as she thought of Claudito and Soledad, each assigned their little meal-time tasks, and their good-natured arguing about knives and spoons. She recalled her odd darkness after Juanito’s birth, and her eagerness to get away from her responsibilities by a visit to her sister-in-law. What I would give to be overworked in my own house right now, she thought, with real remorse. Marco has always been so kind about insisting that I can have more help anytime I want. Why didn’t I listen to him? What was I trying to prove by doing it all?