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

by Carla Kelly

  Paloma bowed her head over her patient mule. “I can never repay them, or you,” she whispered into the animal’s mane, then sat up. “You called me daughter.”

  “That is how I think of you,” the Comanche replied simply. “I should have said so sooner.”

  The two sat side by side, their knees touching. Maria stirred in Paloma’s arms, stared at Eckapeta, then quietly fainted.

  “This one does not like to see one of The People riding beside her,” Eckapeta observed.

  “No. She has been terrorized into submission by those dreadful Durán brothers,” Paloma said. “I have so much to tell you.” She thought a long moment. Despite her hunger, filth, exhaustion, and uncertainty about her standing with her husband, who was nowhere in sight, there was something more. Call it quiet pride. “We rescued ourselves.”

  “We looked everywhere,” Eckapeta said. Paloma heard all the dismay and anguish in her voice. Who in the world had ever started the massive lie that Indians were stoic and impervious to emotions? “Too many days of failure.”

  “Be easy.” Paloma hesitated, then knew what to say. “Be easy, Mother. We were abducted by two idiots who somehow made the whole stupid plan work.”

  They stayed close together, Paloma watching as Joaquim leaped off his horse and ran to Catalina, who stood in silence, her ragged, shorn head bowed, afraid to look at the man, who from the tender expression on his face, didn’t care whether she had a single hair on her head or many.

  Paloma watched him take the tall, thin woman in his arms and hold her close until her arms went around him, too. Catalina still wouldn’t look at him, preferring to nestle herself against his chest. If she could have taken off her head and hidden it, she would have.

  “Who would cut off a woman’s hair?” Eckapeta asked. She looked closer. “They did a poor job of it.”

  “Bullies and tormenters,” Paloma replied. She rubbed her arms against a sudden chill only she could feel. “Let us go home.”

  By now, Señor Ygnacio had joined the couple still locked in a tight embrace. Catalina and Joaquim opened their arms and included him in their circle.

  “Go on, ask me,” Eckapeta said, with what sounded like amusement in her voice.

  “Why didn’t my husband ride out here with you?” Paloma asked. “I fear I have offended him greatly by whining and complaining. It was a dark time I do not understand.”

  There, she had said it, putting words to the dread that settled on her when she looked and did not see him, confirming her worst fears. “He is unhappy with me.”

  Eckapeta leaned close and slapped Paloma on the side of her head. “Silly girl! I doubt you could be more wrong.”

  “But why isn’t he here? I have disappointed him.”

  “Tscha!” Eckapeta exclaimed, and gave her another slap. “The People in the canyon—the honey eaters, the antelope-eaters, the timber people, the movers—they have been talking and talking all winter.” She made a face. “Men! They waste time. We could have ended this endless talk-talk, eh, Paloma?”

  Paloma nodded, unwilling to be placated, but unwilling to have another slap to the head that set her ears ringing. She knew it was dark enough that her great good friend would not see the tears on her cheeks.

  “Don’t cry!” Eckapeta scolded. “Hear what I tell you.” She turned her horse to block Paloma’s mule, and observed the interesting tableaux behind them, a smile on her face. “The others are far behind. It appears that your lieutenant will not let go of Catalina. He is a smarter man than I thought at first, when he could not keep his man parts in his breeches.”

  Paloma laughed at that, even as she sniffled and wiped her nose with her fingers. “All of The People got together …” she prompted.

  “Yes! Such a gathering I have never seen. The leaders told Toshua to bring the man who saved The People from the Dark Wind. They would listen to him. They had to hear from a colonist, a white man muy bravo y fuerte.”

  “Marco,” Paloma said. Her heart began to lift.

  “They wanted you, too, Tatzinupi, the woman who carried a child of The People on her back through the sacred canyon.”

  “Really? But I couldn’t have gone.”

  “So Toshua told them. Big Man Down There had given you more seed to carry and you Spanish women aren’t as tough as we women of The People,” Eckapeta said kindly, but with unmistakable pride. “Have a pain on the trail, dismount and bear a child, rest an hour and ride on.”

  “Not for me,” Paloma said. “In this you are my superior.”

  “But not in biding your time and escaping from bad men,” Eckapeta told her. She raised her hand again, but this time it was to caress Paloma’s face. “Save that story for when you are washed and fed and in your bed.”

  “After I have seen Juanito. Eckapeta, I prayed that someone would find him in time.”

  “Someone did,” she said gently. “Your good man took the little one in his arms and went on his knees before the women whose husbands work for him. And let me tell you, he presented every excuse he knew of not to go with my Toshua to the Río Napestle, which is even farther away.”

  “Why there? That is not a good place for Spaniards.”

  Eckapeta shrugged. “Good or bad, that’s where they rode.”

  “But there?”

  “The buffalo are on the plains, and those men who talk and talk like to hunt buffalo.”

  “Surely he would not have taken the time to hunt buffalo,” Paloma said. She ducked when Eckapeta reached out to slap her head again.

  “Don’t be so foolish! He wanted to search for you, so desperate he was to find you. Before all the gods and statues you worship, he did not want to leave you lost.”

  “Then … Ow!”

  “If they want to hunt buffalo, do you think one white man among a lot of The People has much say in anything?”

  “I needed to hear this.” Paloma looked away, unable to bear Eckapeta’s scrutiny. She tried to laugh and failed. “It was a dark time I do not understand, not when I should have been so happy.”

  “I know of dark times, too.”

  Paloma patted Eckapeta’s cheek. “Let’s go home. I’m tired, and poor Maria here is not getting a moment better.”

  The Double Cross had never looked so welcome to Paloma as it did that night. The full moon lighted their way, the familiar strength of the stone walls soothing her battered heart. She reminded herself how careful her husband was to keep her and their little ones safe, and knew how badly his own heart must have been battered, to leave her lost. And truth to tell, if Eckapeta could not find them, Marco Mondragón would probably have come up short, too.

  As much as she resisted the idea, she thought of La Llorona, the weeping woman who lost her children because of jealousy and a broken heart. Like all good colonists, she knew the story by heart. Up until this moment, Paloma had felt the most sorry for the innocent children. Riding so slowly to keep from jostling Maria Brava, Paloma Vega, who knew of dark times, finally understood the Weeping Woman.

  “I was the Weeping Woman,” she murmured under her breath.

  “You may think that, but I do not,” Eckapeta said. “To me, and I am certain to Marco, you are who you have always been, Tatzinupi, the Star.”

  “Star in the Meadow,” Paloma said, thinking of the Vega family branding iron, lost those many years and found in a cave in the Sacred Canyon. Claudio had the iron now, as was his right, as well as the title to the brand.

  “Star,” she repeated. “Eckapeta, I am tired.”

  “We are all tired,” her almost-mother said. “You are whole, though, and you freed yourself. Be proud of that, my Star.”

  Paloma nodded, close to tears. She glanced back to see Gaspar loping alongside the slowly moving horses. I should hate him until I die for his part in this fiasco, she thought, but what would be the point? She remembered her own desperate days that turned into years in the household of her uncle in Santa Fe. She understood how easy it becomes to believe you are stupid or ungr
ateful, if you hear it enough.

  She tightened her arms around the old laundress she held, grateful to the core of her body and soul that the woman had shrugged off her own terrors, pounded into her by horrible men, to reach out just enough to help free two women. “Stay alive,” she whispered to Maria Brava.

  Once through the gates, Joaquim was quick to call for the hacienda’s unofficial curandera, who took one look at Maria, clucked her tongue, and issued her own orders. In minutes, the laundress was off Paloma’s mule and inside one of the little huts within the Double Cross enclosure.

  Eckapeta helped Paloma from the mule and toward her house. Paloma breathed deep of the flowers already blooming in the pots and hanging vases that lined the portal. Her eyes brimming with tears, Sancha took her arm so gently.

  “Just a few minutes and the water will be hot in the bathhouse,” she said.

  Paloma pulled back. “Not yet. Where is my baby?”

  “He is with Luz Montoya, the wife of our beekeeper.”

  “Take me there, please.” Paloma was well acquainted with the stubborn look on Sancha’s face. “Yes, I stink and I am more tired than I have ever been in my life, but I will see my son,” Paloma insisted as they walked along, her housekeeper’s arm about her waist, because she had a tendency to stagger.

  “How is it that no one is asleep on the Double Cross?” Paloma asked, looking around at lamps burning in all the little houses.

  “We knew you would be returning tonight,” Sancha told her. “We didn’t know how we would find you, but the wife of Marco Mondragón deserved our whole attention.”

  Dressed in her nightgown with a reboza around her shoulders, Luz Montoya ushered her inside her front room. Paloma’s eyes went to a crib in the corner by the big bed where the beekeeper sat, his eyes so kind. She uttered something—it might have been words—and hurried to the crib to see two babies, both asleep and both chunky in the way of babies well fed and tended. Paloma touched her son’s cheek. He stirred, opened his eyes, and closed them again.

  “You have my heartfelt thanks, Luz,” Paloma said, still staring down at her sleeping son. “You and the others.”

  “It was our pleasure, señora, our heartfelt pleasure,” Luz replied.

  Paloma turned around and sucked in her breath to see two other women standing in the doorway. “The three of you are my saviors,” she said simply.

  Dropping to her knees, she prostrated herself before these humble mothers of the Double Cross. She spread out her arms and pressed her cheek against the well swept dirt floor. What they had done for Juan Luis Mondragón went far beyond even her most magnificent curtsy, the curtsy for kings and new husbands. She lay flat on the ground before them, even as Juanito’s nursemaids began to sniffle and protest. Gentle hands pulled her to her feet, and she enveloped them in her embrace, all the while apologizing for her unwashed state.

  Mindful of her as only gentle women could be, they sat Paloma down and told her exactly what she needed to do to get back her own milk. She listened to advice about eating lots of food and letting Juanito suck on her empty breasts first thing in the morning.

  “We’ll bring him to you three times a day, but we will keep feeding him until your milk flows, and even after, if you need us,” Luz said. She dabbed at her tears. “I speak for myself, but I have grown quite fond of Juan Luis Mondragón. He is certainly part of me now.”

  “And me,” “And me,” chimed in the other two wet nurses.

  Only minutes later she sat in her bathtub, eyes closed, as Sancha scrubbed her hair over and over, then washed her body, all the while bullying her into eating the posole that Perla spooned into her mouth like a mother bird feeding a chick. When Paloma protested feebly that her stomach was starting to ache, Sancha wisely made Perla stop.

  “A little at a time will do the trick,” Sancha said. “Tomorrow there will be flan for breakfast.”

  “Breakfast?” Paloma asked, interested, even though her eyelids wanted to droop.

  “Breakfast,” Sancha said firmly.

  In her nightgown now and with her old shawl around her shoulders, Paloma made her way to the house. She could barely manage a smile, but there was Catalina, still in the clutches of her father and a certain presidio captain. Already, one of the other house servants had her eyes on Catalina’s ragged haircut. “I can fix this,” Paloma heard as she walked by and gave her friend’s arm a little squeeze.

  Sinking into her own blissful bed, she couldn’t help a frown; it never seemed like her bed without Marco waiting for her, maybe with his nightshirt on, maybe not.

  Sancha tucked her in. “Please, please, my children …” Paloma whispered. “Let them sleep here with me tonight.”

  “I’ll wake them,” the housekeeper said.

  In a few minutes Sancha returned with a little girl, her eyes barely open, and a slightly younger boy. The confusion left his eyes when Paloma held out her arms to him.

  “Mama, you came back,” he said, then crawled beside her without another word. Paloma held him tight, breathing his little boy fragrance, thankful as never before.

  Soledad took a moment longer, assessing Paloma in that intelligent way she had of surveying a situation to see how the wind blew. There would never be any flies on Soledad. “Mama, did they hurt you?” she asked, coming close enough to the bed for Paloma to take her by the hand.

  Did they hurt me? Paloma asked herself, as time and distance already began their work of smoothing rough edges. “A little, but only a little. Maybe I even learned something valuable. Time will tell. I am here, and I am happy to be with you.”

  That was all the reassurance Soledad needed. She climbed onto the bed, too, then crawled around to Marco’s side and cuddled close.

  Paloma’s eyes would not stay open. She listened to their deep, even breathing as her children returned to sleep. Tomorrow there would be Juanito to nurse, to bring back her milk and with it, surely her confidence. If she hadn’t entirely known her role on the Double Cross, she knew it now: to nurture and mother and keep the heart in her husband. And if that darkness ever returned, it would pass.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  In which Joaquim Gasca, noted female expert, learns more about women

  When Catalina Ygnacio woke up, her hands went immediately to her hair. Dissatisfied with herself, she fingered the tight curls and wondered how a woman so put upon could ever face public scrutiny. A house servant with definite skills had carefully trimmed what remained last night as she sat in the cooling bathwater and stared at nothing.

  And why Catalina Ygnacio, most practical and unsentimental of women, had started crying as the servant dried her and dressed her in her nightgown, she could not have said. She sobbed and sniffled until El Teniente Gasca had knocked once on the bathhouse door, then opened it anyway. She had turned her tearful face toward him, crying and pointing at her ridiculous curls. If he had smiled at that moment, she would have never spoken to him again. To her relief, he simply fingered the silly curls and pressed his forehead against hers.

  Of course, nothing else would suffice but that he would take her in his arms and murmur some utter nonsense in her ear about long hair just getting in the way. Getting in the way of what? her practical side begged to know, at the same time as her unexpected tender side let him stroke her back and press closer than would have made Mama comfortable. She knew she was skidding toward eternal ruin as she pressed back and maybe even moved her hips a little.

  The memory of that shameless bit of grinding made her blush. Joaquim’s face had been so serious, and exhausted—every bit as exhausted as she felt. Papa had long since retired to his chamber, a slight smile on his face, so Joaquim walked her to her little room. Since there wasn’t much space to carry on a formal discussion, she did not object when he asked to sit on her bed.

  Catalina had listened to his outpouring of frustration and disappointed hopes after days of looking everywhere, accompanied by a Comanche just as frustrated as he. She carefully watched Joaquim’
s sunburned face—testimony to many days in the sun. Already familiar with his casual way of talking to her, she wondered how much of this was balderdash and how much genuine remorse. She ruled in favor of remorse, because there was pain in his eyes.

  She told him some of their experiences, knowing Paloma would provide more details tomorrow. She should have been embarrassed when her sentences began to slur together, as if someone had removed the spaces between the words. Her last recollection involved pillowing her head on her hands as she turned sideways and someone patting her hip, even stroking it.

  She woke when the sun was high in the sky, with her stomach setting up a racket that made Catalina wonder why everyone in the hacienda hadn’t come running. One knock, and Sancha came into the room, carrying a tray of flan—blessed flan, all jiggly and smooth and crackling with a thin layer of burnt sugar. Like a wine taster, she rolled around the texture in her mouth and sighed with pleasure.

  “Might you wish a visit from El Teniente Gasca?” Sancha asked later as she cleared away the plates and bowls once containing flan, bread, and fruit, with eggs and chorizo.

  “I wouldn’t mind,” she replied, suddenly shy. “Tell me though, how is Paloma?”

  “She woke up long enough to eat, nurse Juanito, say a few words to her children, and drift back to sleep,” Sancha told her, relief mingled with satisfaction in her voice.

  “Good. This ordeal was nearly too much, especially so soon after childbirth,” Catalina said. “I confess I worried about her.”

  Sancha took her hands. “We worried about both of you, and prayed, and worried some more.”

  Someone knocked. Catalina recognized his knock, now, and the fact that after that single rap, Joaquim Gasca was coming into the room, regardless. On her way out, Sancha left the door open enough for the commander of a garrison to enter.

  He was dressed for riding, which dismayed Catalina. Stay with me, she wanted to insist, until she reminded herself that she wasn’t so brazen, at least when they weren’t pressed hip to hip in the darkness, with only most of the Double Cross watching with way too much interest. Didn’t anyone sleep after midnight around here?