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

by Carla Kelly

  “It must be bloody,” Paloma said. “Find an old chicken somewhere, anything. Throw the sheet over the garden wall, then go back to the kitchen.”

  “Should I hide in the kitchen?” Maria Brava asked.

  “I would,” Catalina replied. “Hide and don’t come out until we call for you.”

  Maria nodded and went into the laundry room off the kitchen, murmuring to herself. “Sheet, bloody sheet, after dark. Hide.”

  As Catalina watched her go, uncertainty circled over her like a hungry buzzard. “She is a weak link to hang our admittedly puny escape plans on.”

  “She will not fail us,” Paloma said, with some of Maria’s new-found intensity. “We will grab her and run.”

  Paloma kissed her cheek. “We found more carne seca for the twins. Here, you take it. What a shame we cannot poison it. What a lot of trouble they have been for Marco through the years, I will admit, but what fueled this foolishness? Why do people go so strange?”

  “It nearly happened to me,” Catalina said, putting words to her thoughts. “One more unwelcome audit for one more distrustful juez de campo in one more suspicious district, and I could become such a person.”

  “But you came to Distrito Valle del Sol,” Paloma told her with a smile that belied her shrinking frame, her dirty hair—at least she had hair—and her unwashed condition.

  “Paloma, would you faint right now?” Catalina asked. “Immediately?”

  Paloma stared at her. “I may not look like much at the moment, my friend, but I don’t feel like fainting.”

  “Faint so I can have an excuse to get you back to the shed,” Catalina said, then blew out her cheeks with a great sigh. “Where you must use a tin plate to make that hole big enough for tonight’s grand show.”

  Without a word, Paloma slumped down onto the bench, slid to the floor, and collapsed carefully on her side. “Will this do?” she asked out of the corner of her mouth. “Maria, Maria, don’t worry! Just do as we asked for later. I’ll be fine before you know it.”

  Chapter Thirty

  In which La Llorona wails for her children and Paloma sees things

  Convincing Maria Brava to raise a racket of her own—pleading and begging for Paloma to come around—took no convincing at all. I swear we will pay you back with kindness evermore, Paloma thought as she moaned and lay still.

  She heard Catalina run down the hall, calling for help, and listened for the heavier footsteps of the twins. In another moment, she was jerked upright by Roque or Miguel. No, it was Roque, because he wore the keys. She stared at the hasp that bound the keys to his belt and felt relief flood her, even as she moaned and let her head loll. It would only be a moment’s work to push on the hasp and free the keys, which hung together on their own metal ring.

  Someone, undoubtedly Roque, threw cold water in her face. Paloma did what she thought was a masterful display of someone coming out of a faint. She shook her head, then pressed her hand to her cheek. “I don’t know what happened to me.”

  “Maybe the people who live here could feed you a little more,” Catalina said, and glared at Roque.

  “Just help me to the hut,” she gasped, as though worn out nearly to death. “I will rest.”

  His face a study in worry, Gaspar lifted her more carefully to her feet. She staggered and would have fallen, but Catalina steadied her.

  “Here! I can’t be bothered,” Roque said, and unhooked the keys from his belt, handing the ring to Gaspar. “Bring this right back.” He grabbed Catalina by the neck. “You stay here and cook something.”

  “With what?” Catalina asked, hands on her hips, her stare so militant that Paloma wondered where her courage came from. “Hand me the key to the knife drawer and I will hack off a portion of that smoked pork you squirreled away in your room. I saw you take it.”

  Roque swore and yanked the keys back from Gaspar. He looked at the keys and stopped at a short key with a triangle head. Taking a knife from the drawer, he pointed it at Maria Brava, who shuddered and tried to hide her face.

  “Maria la loca,” he taunted. “Flaca, get the meat in my room and bring it here!” When Catalina ran from the kitchen, he said to Paloma, “You women are a great deal of trouble, demanding this and that.”

  Paloma sagged against Gaspar and closed her eyes. When she opened them, Catalina had returned with the smoked pork and Roque was slicing off a hunk. He stuffed it into his mouth while Maria watched his every movement, licking her lips. Roque hacked off more slices for himself and handed the little that remained to Catalina. He put the knife back in the drawer and locked it, then tossed the keys to Gaspar. “Hurry up, you fool.”

  Paloma felt Gaspar’s sigh. She leaned against him for good effect and they moved slowly down the hall.

  “Here now, you have to stand upright,” he told Paloma as they reached the garden gate.

  Paloma pressed one hand against the wall, watching Gaspar find the garden key, a longer key two to the left of the triangle head key that opened the knife drawer. He unlocked the hut and helped her inside, then locked her in. Ear against the wooden door, she listened, hoping he would forget to lock the garden gate, knowing that Maria’s part in the escape tonight was questionable. No luck. She heard the other key turn in the lock.

  That would have been too simple, Paloma thought as she stared into the gloom until she could make out their familiar prison. She smiled to see the skunk looking back at her, ever optimistic. Taking one tortilla from her pocket, she divided it and ate her share quickly, gobbling it down like Soledad or Claudito, hungry for more.

  “This is yours, Señor Francisco,” she said as she divided the tortilla again and again, leaving smaller bites for the skunk. She hunkered down and watched for a moment, thinking of earlier times she had sat so close to Marco in their kitchen, leaning against his arm as he shared his bowl of flan with her.

  “This isn’t getting a hole dug,” she remarked to the skunk, who had begun his early-morning circuit around the shed, seeking beetles and worms. She took the tin plate from under her blanket and stared at it a moment, wishing it would turn into a shovel, then began to dig in the dirt below the hole she had so painstakingly carved from the adobe wall. Unwanted tears sprang into her eyes because the opening looked too small for even a child to crawl through.

  “I will not fail you, Catalina,” she murmured as she dug carefully, hoping not to bend or break the flimsy bit of tin. Why couldn’t the Durán brothers have eaten off something more durable?

  Ay caray, tears again. Paloma set her lips tight against her own weakness, wondering if it was hunger that made her tears fall so often. Would that she could water the ground and make it softer.

  Sitting back on her heels, she stared at the night jar no one had emptied since yesterday, when they were wakened so early with screams from the kitchen. Was that only yesterday? No, it was this morning. Why was she having such trouble remembering things?

  I can’t, she thought. I must. Fighting back more tears, she picked up the night jar and dumped its liquid contents where she needed to dig. She put dirty fingers over her nose until the moisture soaked into the ground, then dug in earnest in the softer soil.

  She dug for hours, days maybe—no, hours—her mind free of everything except the faces of her children. She cried when she could not remember if Juan Luis had blue eyes like hers, or brown like his father’s. The still-rational part of her brain reminded Paloma that he was only two months old now—was it three?—and eye color might change. Her breathing grew labored as she let the tiniest doubt of his survival filter through the fog of her tired mind before thrusting it aside.

  She nearly smiled to recall Soli’s persuasive reasons why bedtime should be later, and Claudito’s interest in making roads among the squash vines in the kitchen garden. She fought back tears to think of Marco’s wonderful laugh and the way he held her so close when they made love. She yearned to tell her dear brother Claudio yet again how much she loved him, and wondered if Graciela had birthed their ba
by by now.

  She dug and prayed for Toshua to give his own persuasive reasons for a treaty to other Comanches. She yearned to feel Eckapeta’s arm around her shoulders and hear her often-stringent comments about raising children to be safe in Indian country. She recalled the pride she felt when she earned the Comanche woman’s praise for … for what? She could not remember.

  She dug and dug until the tin plate bent and snapped, then dug with her fingers until her nails, already brittle, snapped, too. She picked up the sharp fragment of the plate, wrapped a hunk of her dirty skirt around it and kept working. By the time she noticed a difference in the afternoon shadows from the small open space near the eaves, she knew she was close.

  Paloma sat back and stared like an addled woman at the hole she had dug. Señor Francisco nestled close to her, full now—how good that someone was full—from the worms and other soil creatures he had unearthed with his steady digging. She rested her hand on his soft fur, tickling him under his chin, because she knew he liked that. She closed her eyes and thanked San Francisco de Asís for the little beast who had kept her company. Catalina might scoff, but Paloma didn’t care. Not even her friend was going to convince her that the little skunk wasn’t a gift from the saint of simple things.

  Señor Francisco stirred when Paloma’s stomach growled. She placed her hand on her shrinking middle, puzzled that she felt no particular hunger anymore. Maybe that was what happened when people starved to death. She felt oddly detached from her surroundings, wondering—not for the first time—when she would grub like Señor Francisco among the worms and beetles, if they could not escape tonight.

  She sat up, ready to dig some more, when she heard the garden gate swing open. For several seconds, she wondered what to do, before she remembered to cover the hole with their blankets. Stupefied with exhaustion, she rested against the wall. She smiled to think that she couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face, and then laughed softly at herself. Who wanted to see such a skinny arm and bloody tips where fingernails had been? She closed her eyes because the lids felt so heavy.

  “Paloma? Paloma?”

  She wanted—what was her name?—to stop shaking her, so she opened her eyes.

  “I dug … I dug something,” she managed to say.

  “My God, Paloma, we have to get out of here. You’ve eaten nothing all day.”

  “But I dug,” she reminded the tall, thin woman. “Catalina,” she said with some triumph, remembering her name.

  “Yes, you did,” Catalina said. She pressed something in Paloma’s hand. “Eat this.”

  Dutifully, Paloma put whatever it was into her mouth, then sighed with the pleasure of a piece of bread. She ate quickly, following the scrap of bread that seemed like a banquet with a slice of smoked meat. “That is the best thing I have ever eaten,” she announced. “I can probably dig some more now.”

  “No need,” Catalina said. “I believe you have done it, Paloma.” Her arm went around Paloma’s shoulder. “I left them so terrified!”

  Yes, yes, that was it. La Llorona. Paloma sat up, interested. “I hope you scared those monsters to death.”

  Catalina chuckled. “Close, so close. I swayed, I moaned, I raked my fingernails down my face, I tried to gouge out my eyes, I wept, wailed, and sobbed for my dead children. I ran around that disgusting room where the brothers live, looking under this mat, and behind that chest for my lost little ones. You should have heard Roque shriek when I grabbed his foot!”

  Paloma laughed, but maybe a little too long, because Catalina pulled her close. “We’re getting out of here tonight, Paloma. I promise.”

  “Let’s go right now,” Paloma said, and tried to rise.

  Catalina held her more gently now. “We have to wait a little longer for Old Maria—no, Maria Brava—to toss a bloody sheet over the wall.”

  “If she doesn’t?” Paloma asked, alert, her senses sharp again as the fog lifted from her overtaxed brain. “What will we do?”

  She wanted Catalina to tell her that all would be well, wanted to hear some reassurance. Her friend remained silent.

  Paloma dug deep into her heart and soul, deeper than she had ever dug before. Every lovely moment of her life since she had come to Valle del Sol seemed to pass in review. Maybe she was just hungry, maybe her mind was beginning to wander again, but somehow she saw more—three little ones playing by the acequia instead of two, a fourth baby at her breast, full now and flowing with milk. And there was Marco standing by her, his hand on her head as he ruffled her hair so carelessly as he liked to do. She leaned against his leg and he bent down enough to whisper in her ear. “Happy?”

  “Oh, yes,” she whispered back.

  “What?” It was Catalina, recalling her to a reeking hut and starvation and fear that a beaten-down, worn-out laundress might not fulfill her vital part. “What?”

  Paloma tucked the lovely little vision back into her heart. “Catalina, we’re getting out. This hole … you first, or me?”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  In which Joaquim Gasca finally eats in the kitchen, thank God

  “What are we going to tell Marco and Toshua when they return?”

  There, he had said what he knew Eckapeta was thinking. Joaquim Gasca stared at the sandals with the dried blood on them. Marco had tacked them up in the sala as a reminder of how brave his wife was. I can’t find that woman, he thought in shame. Joaquim rubbed his eyes, gritty from yet another day in the saddle.

  “It’s not good to rub your eyes,” Eckapeta said.

  He glanced at his constant companion, Eckapeta the Comanche woman, who rode out with him every morning, her back straight, her eyes looking, looking, and looking some more for some sign they had missed, some great key to the mystery of where two ladies could have vanished. Even Eckapeta seemed tired, her eyes heavy, her back not so straight. He wondered briefly how old she was, and what ghastly things she had seen and maybe even done.

  Failure settled on his shoulders like mud until he wanted to cry out, “Enough!” He couldn’t, though. He was El Teniente Gasca, leader of soldiers, wiser today than he had been for years. If all this was true, why did he feel so desperate right now—so puny, so useless?

  “Eckapeta, I was going to get really brave just a few weeks ago and ask Señorita Ygnacio to marry me,” he said, lowering his voice simply because the idea sounded so preposterous now. “She probably would have said no, but I was going to ask.”

  Eckapeta took his hand in hers, raised it to her dry lips, and gently kissed it.

  He probably could have withstood derisive laughter, a shake of her head, a snort of amazement, but not that. Joaquim got up and went to the door of the sala. He stood in the hall, trying to think of anything except failure. Nothing else came to mind, so he suffered.

  Composing himself because he had to, he walked the short distance to the kitchen, where Perla was serving Señor Ygnacio what looked like turkey cooked in chilis. His mouth watered, but even hunger irritated him. Here he was in a comfortable estancia, contemplating a good meal, and where were those two lovely women?

  The thought of entering the kitchen and sitting down with the father of the lost woman he loved was more effort than he could manage. “Perla, when you get a minute, could you bring some of that to me and Eckapeta in the sala?” he asked.

  Trust Perla to talk back. “Señor, the children are asleep. You can eat and talk in the kitchen. I will leave you alone as I always do.”

  And trust Perla to be so scrupulous about not interfering with their increasingly unhappy conversation. She knew her place on the Double Cross, a modest one. She never pried; she never eavesdropped.

  “I’m too tired,” he said. “Just bring us something in the sala.”

  Dios mio, he had angered Perla. She put her hands on her hips. “Señora Mondragón does not like food in the sala, Teniente,” she said in a voice that expected no argument from a young pup like him.

  “Very well,” he groused, succumbing to those narrowed eyes and
pursed lips. He called to his companion. “Eckapeta, let’s eat something.”

  They dragged themselves into the kitchen. Joaquim nodded to Señor Ygnacio, not able to look the man in the face, not with his daughter still missing. Here he was, Joaquim Gasca, the weakest link in the colony of New Mexico, unable to find a trace of her. He mumbled a greeting and sat down, weary down to his stockings.

  He looked around, still avoiding the auditor’s eyes. “Perla, where is Sancha?”

  “She is making certain Juanito gets to his last meal of the day, Teniente. She will return, and I will leave you all alone.”

  He made some comment and sat up a little straighter, even though he knew the foolishness of trying to impress someone as practical as Perla. Manners dictated that he should speak to Señor Ygnacio, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. Someone so well-versed in life’s cruelties would surely give him a trusting look that seemed to say, I know you are doing your best. Joaquim knew he was doing his best, but that wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t finding two women, one dear to his battered heart and the other one even dearer now.

  While Joaquim waited for Perla to slice turkey and spoon on chilis, Señor Ygnacio cleared his throat and pushed over a familiar sheet of paper. Joaquim looked at it out of dull eyes, recognizing Marco’s handwriting and remembering the list of things to do that the juez de campo had left with the auditor.

  “Let’s see: I did send my men around to remind people to jog their memories about taxes still owed, and ask if anyone had seen … our ladies,” Joaquim said. “We did visit that poor old widow—so she claims—worth more than I am probably, and listen to her whine about bloodsucking taxes ….” He looked up at Señor Ygnacio. “I don’t think I would ever have the diplomacy to be a juez de campo.”

  “Nor I,” Señor Ygnacio replied. “Now this last one ….”