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

by Carla Kelly

  “ ‘Save for last,’ ” Joaquim read out loud and rolled his eyes. “I suppose we can’t avoid it. ‘Check on the Durán twins one last time, ask point blank about taxes owed, and listen to them breathe out fire about the nerve of auditors to come from Santa Fe to drain their bodies of blood.’ Good Lord, no wonder Marco saved it for last.” He pushed the paper away.

  Joaquim leaped to his feet when Perla gasped and dropped the plate loaded with the turkey meant for him. It was on his lips to scold her roundly when he took a good look at her face, normally a pleasant Pueblo Indian hue, but suddenly drained of all color until her skin looked like putty.

  “Teniente …” she began, and sank down to the bench before them, something she had probably never done in her life of service to Spaniards. “Teniente!”

  Joaquim felt Eckapeta grow tense beside him. He took another good look at Perla, whose eyes were wide, her mouth open. “Perla, what do you know?”

  She ignored him, addressing the auditor. “Señor Ygnacio, do you remember my cousin Gaspar, who hung around your office for a few days? It was perhaps … perhaps two or three weeks ago?”

  “A tall, thin fellow who looked mostly starved?”

  The cook nodded, her eyes intense now, as the color returned to her cheeks. “He works for the Durán brothers.” Perla turned and spit into the fireplace. “I do not know worse men—drunkards, addled and mean.”

  She gave her attention to Joaquim now, reaching across the table and grabbing both of his hands. “Gaspar is slow and stupid, but he had so many questions for me about the auditor: how often he went out in his carriage, where he went, when he came back. And then Gaspar left without even telling me adios. Ungrateful cousin.”

  “I didn’t know this,” Joaquim said slowly, even as his mind raced. He heard Eckapeta rise beside him, her hand tight in a fist in the small of his back, ready to push him from the room if he didn’t move fast enough.

  “Señor Mondragón calls them his cross to bear. He said they threatened him more than once, and he just laughed.”

  Joaquim turned to the sound of voices at the kitchen door. Sancha stood there, her husband Lorenzo beside her. “You’ve heard him say this, Sancha?”

  “Often enough,” Sancha continued. “It was almost a family joke. In fact it was! Señor Mondragón’s father had the very same complaint.”

  The silence in the kitchen started to hum in Joaquim’s ears. “Perla, why didn’t you mention this earlier?”

  Perhaps he had spoken louder than he intended. The cook knelt on the floor and held up her hands to him. “Before all the saints in New Mexico, Teniente, I have never seen this note or heard you talk of these matters! Remember? You have always spoken so quietly in the sala, so as not to disturb the children.”

  Joaquim nodded and helped the cook to her feet. “You have done nothing wrong, Perla. Please don’t be distressed.” He kissed her hands, which made Perla burst into tears. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart for speaking now.”

  He ran to the door, Eckapeta right behind him, calling across the courtyard for the corporal still in the bookroom, doing his duty as the auditor’s daily observer. “Corporal Gomez,” he shouted, “attend to me!”

  The corporal came to the door and saluted, his eyes full of questions. Joaquim grabbed his arm. “Didn’t you and Private Ramirez go to all the estancias near Santa Maria to check on anyone who might still have taxes to pay? It was on the list. And you asked about the lost women?”

  “Yes, sir, we did.”

  Corporal Gomez was a short man. Joaquim grasped him by both arms and crouched enough to look into his eyes. “Did you notice anything different at La Estancia Durán? Think!”

  The corporal looked into the distance. Hurry, hurry! Joaquim wanted to shout, but he reminded himself that this was a good soldier.

  Corporal Gomez spoke finally, hesitantly at first, then with more assurance as the memory returned. “One thing, Capitán: Everywhere we went, the hacendados invited us inside and offered a cool drink. You know how people are in this valley. Not at the Durán place,” he said, his voice firm. “One of the brothers came out of the door, closed it behind him, and walked Private Ramirez and me back toward our horses.” He gave a humorless snort. “They weren’t exactly rude, but they didn’t want us near their house.” He shrugged.

  “Saddle your horse and follow us,” Joaquim said over his shoulder as he ran to the horse barn. “Eckapeta, I …” he stopped. The Comanche woman was already in the saddle, her eyes boring into his, as if she were wondering how someone so slow could ever command a worn-out dog, let alone a presidio in His Majesty’s western realm. He wished he knew how to answer her.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  In which La Llorona requires a great sacrifice

  “After you?”

  “No, after you, Paloma,” Catalina said. “I’m so tall … if I get stuck, you can pull me out.”

  “How do I do this? Go in on my back?”

  “I think so.”

  Catalina watched as Paloma lay on her back and pulled herself into the dark opening. It touched her heart when Paloma said a Hail Mary then went in head first.

  “I’m such a lady, Catalina,” she heard from inside the hole Paloma had spent three days digging with a knife, tin plate, and her fingernails. “Good thing Marco can’t see me now.”

  “I remember you told me about adventures once,” Catalina said, trying to keep her voice lighthearted. “Are you having one now?”

  No answer except a distinctly unladylike snort. She almost feared to watch as Paloma, exhausted and in no shape for much exertion, pulled herself through the narrow opening. She heard Paloma grasping the bushes on the other side of the wall, and then she was free of the adobe hut.

  Catalina released the breath she had been holding. Now it was her turn. “Any advice, amiga?” she asked.

  “I thought of something pleasant like Marco making love to me,” Paloma said, and laughed. “You’re on your own there. Think of Joaquim Gasca however you wish.”

  She did and felt her cheeks go red, but it got her into the hole. She eased herself in and held her breath in that same place where Paloma had been silent, that endless moment in the short passage when it seemed a body could not go forward or backward. She felt the beginning of claustrophobia until Paloma grabbed the neck of her dress and yanked. Two more tugs. She dug in her heels, pushed, and was out.

  They sat together in silence, just breathing. Paloma started to laugh as Señor Francisco waddled into the hole they had just left.

  “Do you think he’ll miss us?” she asked.

  A blessed full moon lit the unkempt garden. Catalina looked toward the high gate and sighed with disappointment to see no sheet, bloody or otherwise. She felt Paloma’s hand in hers and gave it a squeeze.

  “Maria Brava will not disappoint us,” Paloma whispered.

  From your lips to God’s ears, Catalina thought. Maybe someday she could ask Paloma Mondragón how she knew the old woman would help them. She will probably tell me to trust more.

  They were silent, waiting. Pray God they wouldn’t still be waiting when the moon set and the sun came up to find them trapped like mice in a cage, scurrying back and forth, trying to find a way out. Stop it, Catalina, she told herself.

  They gripped each other as they heard a sound much like a moan, followed by a sob. “Maria?” Paloma asked. “Maria?”

  Silence, then another moan and weeping. Paloma turned to her. “I know what she is doing,” she said, her voice filled with urgency. “She has not failed us, and we must not fail her.”

  “What …” Catalina said, then stifled a shriek as a wet sheet dropped nearly on her shorn head, thrown with not quite enough force to clear the entire wall. It dangled there, until Catalina jumped as high as she could and grabbed it. She held the sheet out in the moonlight, her eyes wide with fright, then gratitude so deep and binding that she knew she would never be the same again.

  “It’s her own blood,” Pal
oma whispered. “We have to hurry.”

  Fueled by an enormous desperation to get over the wall and see what they could do to help Maria, Catalina backed Paloma against the wall. She crouched down and waited while Catalina knotted the bloody sheet around her waist, then put her foot on Paloma’s thigh and hoisted herself up to the smaller woman’s shoulders.

  With a grunt, Paloma straightened up. “Hurry!” she begged. “I can’t hold you for long.”

  Catalina grabbed for the top of the wall, groping for a handhold, anything to boost her forward and take the strain from Paloma, who was starting to shake. She found the smallest indent in the thick adobe and clung to it. “Just a little more!” she begged, then put one foot on Paloma’s head and swung herself up, to sit astride the wall.

  She let out her breath and took a small moment to breathe in and out, calming herself. “Are you all right?” she called down.

  “Yes, yes,” came a voice from far below. “Toss it down.”

  Careful to maintain her hold on the sheet—dios mio, she could smell the blood—Catalina lowered the untied end to Paloma.

  “I have it,” Paloma said. “God have mercy, how could one woman be so brave?”

  “Hang on tight,” Catalina ordered. “I’m going to walk myself down as far as I can.”

  Terrified, she took several deep breaths then grasped the other end of the tight sheet and walked herself down as far as she could go. How much farther, she couldn’t tell, except that she saw more bushes, and slumped over by the gate, Maria Brava.

  “You are well named, dear lady,” she murmured, then looked up. “Let go now, Paloma. Pray for me.”

  “Always,” came a faint voice and then Catalina dropped to the ground.

  It was closer than she thought, which was a blessing unlooked for. She dropped quickly, landing upright, grateful to be on the other side of that pernicious gate. She gathered the sheet together and crawled to the still figure. She touched Maria’s shoulder gently. “Please be alive,” she whispered. “Please.”

  The old woman groaned and tried to sit up. Catalina helped her, seeing, smelling and then feeling blood coursing down the woman’s arms, where she had gouged herself too deep. A knife lay beside her.

  “I tugged and tugged on that knife drawer until I could just get my hand in,” Maria said, her voice faint. “You needed blood.” She took a shallow breath and another. “Cut some eyeholes. Hurry now.”

  “First I’m doing this.” Catalina raised her filthy skirt and slashed her petticoat into two pieces, which she bound tightly around each of Maria’s arms, even as the woman protested and begged her to stop wasting time.

  Catalina’s fingers shook as she cut eyeholes, then draped the bloody sheet over her head. She looked down through the openings, stunned to see just how much blood Maria had spilled. “I will be such a weeping woman,” she said out loud. “I will do it for you, Maria Brava.”

  She knew her way through the dark hallway and moved quickly, thinking of all the stories she had told to others over the years. Most recently there had been Soledad and Claudito Mondragón, their eyes wide as they clutched their lovely parents, all of them held captive by words she wove. For the first time in her life, she prayed she would someday weave that same magic for her own children.

  There was work to be done. She still held the knife in her hand, but it was slippery from Maria’s blood. She tightened her grip and stopped outside the office door that led into the other room, the one she thought of as the wolves’ den, where two old fools drank and plotted. More than fools—madmen.

  Holding her breath, she opened the door. The office looked much as she had left it—dark now and smelling of bad odors, failure, and disappointed hopes. She walked quickly through and stood at the closed door. “I am now your worst nightmare,” she whispered against the wood as she flung the door open and began to moan and wail.

  The brothers were seated as she had left them before Gaspar took her back to their adobe prison. She darted closer and closer, wailing in a high, singsong voice, hoping they would smell the blood. She raised her arms over her head, making herself into an enormous fantasma, a Weeping Woman of towering proportions. “If you know where my children are, you miserable worms, tell me now or you die!”

  She shrieked over and over, then stopped when she realized the dreadful, addled, half-mad Durán twins were screaming even louder. She clutched the knife tighter, wanting to sink it deep into each man, knowing no one in Valle del Sol would miss them. She raised the knife high and screamed out to every demon who had ever tormented her or scorned her father. She wailed for her mother, long dead of shame and buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave somewhere in Mexico City. She cried for her own lost dreams. She wept for her father, who deserved a far better hand than he’d been dealt.

  Both men were on their knees now, weaving back and forth, begging and pleading for their lives. She laughed then, louder and higher until she reached the gates of insanity. She lowered her voice to a whimper that made Miguel fall forward and lie still.

  She raised the knife high again, then brought it down against the leather belt that held the cowering Roque’s key ring. As he moaned and pleaded for his miserable life, she felt along the ring as Paloma had told her to do and pressed on the little hasp. She put the key ring over her wrist, then turned toward the door.

  She screamed once more for good measure, ending in a maniac’s laugh that made Roque shriek again. She wondered if Miguel had died of fright. “I hope you are dead,” she said softly. “How dare you abduct a mother and force her to leave her baby behind? How dare you cut off my hair? How dare you torment a servant and make her dwell in her own dark places?”

  After leaving the awful room, she let herself out the office door and ran down the corridor. She stopped in fright as an even taller figure loomed in the kitchen doorway. She shrieked and wailed and pushed the figure back with strength summoned from a previously unknown place in her body, until it staggered and fell down. Pedro stared up at her—no, at La Llorona—his eyes wide with terror. She wondered how he had dragged himself from his bed of pain, or even why. She shrieked at him, waving the knife under his nose, then raced on through the estancia until she stood at the garden gate.

  Steady now, she counted two keys over from the triangle-headed key, thrust it in the lock, and sighed with satisfaction as the bolt clicked open. She threw off the lock, pushed open the heavy door, and fell into Paloma’s arms.

  Without a word spoken between them, they turned to Maria. Paloma stopped and grabbed the keys from Catalina.

  “What are—”

  “I’m going to lock this gate and throw the keys over,” Paloma said. “Let them try to find them.”

  Catalina yanked off the bloody sheet and they used it to carry Maria between them. “We’re going out the front door,” Catalina said as they hurried along with their light burden. “Pedro may still be in the kitchen.”

  The moon shone down benevolently as they stood in the courtyard. “Look how peaceful it is,” Paloma whispered, “and the stars are so huge. Oh, Catalina, let’s get out of here.”

  Faithful, slow of mind Gaspar stood at the open door. With a flourish that surprised Catalina, he led out the Double Cross mule that had brought the two of them, bags over their heads and terrified, to this place she never wanted to see again.

  With Gaspar’s help, Paloma climbed onto the mule’s back. She held out her arms for Maria and held her close. Gaspar handed her the rope he had used to make a crude bridle and gave the mule a pat. Paloma dug in her bare heels and the animal started for the now-open gate.

  “Is there a horse for you, Catalina?” Paloma asked.

  “I don’t want anything from this place,” Catalina replied. “Gaspar, are you coming with us?”

  Her heart touched, she choked back tears to see his delighted expression, as though she had offered him a king’s fifth.

  “Really? I don’t have to stay here?” he asked, clapping his hands together like Claudit
o or Soledad.

  “No, you don’t,” she said. “You may have got us in trouble at first, but you helped us out of it.”

  He hung his head and toed at the dirt. “Señor Mondragón might throw me in prison.”

  “Let me handle Señor Mondragón,” Paloma said. “Let’s get out of this place.”

  They made a slow procession, following a road that Paloma, dismay in her voice, said she recognized. “Marco pointed this way once, said crazy brothers lived here, and I was never to stop for any reason.” She sighed, and Catalina heard choked-back tears. “We are only one league from the Double Cross!”

  No words were sufficient after that announcement. They rode and walked in silence, the moon high overhead now and beginning a descent that would lead to another morning in Valle del Sol.

  “I could like it here,” Catalina said.

  “I know I do,” Paloma replied. She sucked in her breath and pointed. “Catalina, look … I know them!” She started to laugh. Catalina listened for any hysteria but heard none. Paloma was made of stronger stuff. “They’re riding so fast. I see Eckapeta and Joaquim, and maybe a soldier, but who is that other man?” Catalina heard the disappointment in her voice. “It’s not Marco.”

  Catalina strained her eyes, then put her hand to her mouth. “I believe it is my father! My goodness, I have never seen him on horseback before.”

  “I do believe we are about to be rescued,” Paloma said.

  Catalina looked up at Paloma’s smiling face, grubby and dirty as her own, and started to laugh. “They’re too late. We saved ourselves.”

  “We did, didn’t we?”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  In which a penitent soul understands herself better

  Paloma had only one question as their rescuers rode toward them, and she asked it of the first rider. “My baby?” she said to Eckapeta, leaning toward the woman who considered all little Mondragóns as her special property, too.

  Eckapeta grasped her hand. “Toshua and I found him. He is alive and well and drinking deep of three different women on the Double Cross. Be easy, my daughter.”