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

by Carla Kelly

  He saw the pleasure in her eyes, followed by a mother’s caution. “We are going where?”

  “A place you’ve never been. It’s called Casa de Palo on the bank of Río Napestle, some four days on horseback from here, although Toshua and I did it in two.” He sighed with pleasure when she started on his back. “Oh, a little lower there. Perfect. It will be in the Month-Heading-To-The-Winter-Moon, Yubaubi Mua. November.”

  “There will be so many Comanches,” she said, and he heard her fear.

  “You can’t imagine! Kwihnai specifically requested your presence. Do not fear.” He chuckled. “I admit to considerable terror, surrounded by Comanches on all sides, some of whom probably wanted to experiment with new and interesting ways to murder me slowly.”

  “And you would subject your excellent, charming wife and little ones to such people?” she teased, even though she took his hand in a grip that showed her doubt.

  “Certainly,” he said, and squeezed her hand back. “A woman and children mean we come in peace.” He splashed a little water on her. “Besides, Kwihnai likes you more than he likes me. He said so.”

  “You’re being silly,” she protested, but he heard the pleasure in her voice. It reminded him of something else the old chief had said.

  “In fact—I hope you believe this, because it is true—Kwihnai told me you could take care of yourself. I confess I didn’t believe him, but you and Catalina saved yourselves.”

  “Maybe we both needed to know we could,” his wife told him after a struggle of her own.

  She helped him dry off, then walked with him to Señora Ladero’s house for Juanito’s feeding. She sighed with relief when her milk seemed to pour in this time. Even Juanito opened his eyes in surprise and applied himself more vigorously to his mother’s breast.

  Señora Ladero watched with the interest of a veteran mother of many. After Juanito emptied both of Paloma’s breasts and closed his eyes in complete stupefaction, Pia Ladero gave Marco a shy glance, since he was intruding in the affairs of women, but plowed ahead anyway. “Señora Mondragón, I believe you should take Juanito home now. You have enough milk.”

  Marco watched his wife’s delight in such a homely matter, and reminded himself again that he owed these good servants of his a debt he could not ever repay. He could try, though. Tomorrow, after he finished a lengthy letter to Governor Anza, he would call his servants together and ask their opinion about new homes, just outside the walls this time. There would be more room to expand and no reason to fear Comanches ever again.

  Just the thought of such freedom made him suck in his breath as they walked toward the house, Juanito sleeping on his shoulder and Paloma’s arm linked through his. He glanced in the door of his office and saw Señor Ygnacio, that quiet, mild-mannered fellow, who according to Sancha had kept Soledad and Claudito occupied and productive during the time both their parents were away.

  “Soledad can add little columns now, and Claudito knows his numbers,” the auditor had told him proudly.

  Marco stood there a moment, thinking about all the abuse the little fellow had suffered throughout his life, probably because no one, once they learned he was a former felon, had taken the time to plumb his real value. He shifted a little and saw Catalina Ygnacio there, too. They two were engaged in what appeared to be deep discussion.

  He hesitated; to interrupt or not to interrupt? He glanced at Paloma, who was watching him with what he knew was unalloyed affection. She was a satisfied woman again, able to feed her baby, her children content, and her husband home. Hopefully she would be more satisfied by morning, because he wanted her with all his heart and body.

  And she knows what I’m thinking, he told himself with pleasure, as she held out her hands for Juanito.

  “You look like a man who wants to talk to an auditor,” she said. “I’ll put Juanito down for a nap and see what horrors Soledad and Claudito have gotten themselves into.”

  “And?” he prompted, certain there was more, because he knew that look.

  “You can wait until everyone is asleep tonight, Big Man,” she said as he handed over their sleeping son. “I’ll keep.”

  How could a husband not laugh at that? He kissed her cheek and walked toward his office, where the auditor watched him.

  “Señor, I have read through your audit and can pronounce it excellent,” Marco said without any preliminaries as he came into his own office. “Pardon me if I am interrupting anything.”

  Señor Ygnacio got up from the desk and moved to one of the chairs in front, to sit beside his daughter. Marco sat in his accustomed place. Sancha had already found a small pasteboard box for the entire audit and had bound it with the red tape that all auditors, accountants, and fiscales seemed to travel with.

  “I’ve signed it and you are at liberty to return to Santa Fe,” he said. “You have my grateful thanks for a job well done, and so I will tell the governor in a letter that I wish you will take along, Señor Ygnacio.”

  Father and daughter exchanged glances, and the auditor cleared his throat. “With all respect, Juez, I would rather remain here.”

  Marco leaned back in his chair and eyed the two of them, not surprised by the auditor’s request. Santa Fe had done the man no favors, and his daughter was not returning. “What will you do here, if you remain?” he asked.

  “You mentioned Santa Maria was growing, and that the priest was spending more and more time writing letters for those who haven’t the skill, and reading letters aloud to the same folks.”

  “Father Aloysius has complained to me about such a state of affairs,” Marco said, smiling inside because he knew where this conversation was headed. “I remember our conversation on this subject. You would like to become a sort of scribe for the village?”

  “I would, vuestra merced,” he replied formally, as if Marco were a Spanish don, at the very least. “My daughter seems determined to marry a rake—”

  “Papa …” Catalina began.

  “Of whom I greatly approve,” he hurried to add with a sidelong look at his daughter, a glance so full of pride and love that Marco smiled at the sheer loveliness of it.

  “And when grandchildren come, you would like to spoil them,” Marco concluded, then reminded him, “You work for the crown. I do not know the terms which forced you here in the first place.”

  Señor Ygnacio’s face grew pensive. Catalina took his hand and kissed it. “I was sentenced to an indeterminate number of years in exile, señor. How does one interpret ‘indeterminate?’ ”

  “How, indeed? Let us do this: I will include a separate note to Governor Anza, a man I esteem and who I know esteems me. I will request that you remain here to complete your indeterminate exile, which I will supervise. I do not believe he will tell me no.”

  Señor Ygnacio clapped his hands in delight, then bowed his head. He started to slip from his chair to kneel before Marco, but Marco was faster. He came around his desk and lifted the auditor to his feet.

  “No need for that. I would be unhappy if you left Valle del Sol, for we all have need of you, Señor Ygnacio,” Marco said. “Go ahead and make your plans. I believe there is at least one small house available right now in Santa Maria. Since you will be under my authority and still in the service of the crown, there will be a way for the juez de campo of this district to pay for such housing and salary as you will require. It will go in my 1786 budget.”

  Marco wished Paloma was there beside him to watch Catalina’s eyes soften. Her tongue was still as sharp as ever, but he didn’t mind, because that was Catalina Ygnacio. “Señor Mondragón, will you require him to report to you every six months for a good scold and name calling?”

  Marco flinched elaborately. “No! I get enough scolds and name calling from Paloma Vega. Oh! You mean your father reporting to me?”

  They all laughed. Before he could stop her, Catalina kissed his hand. He admired her short curly hair and told her so, which prompted more blushes and smiles from a woman he thought would never smile. Ever
yone changes on the Double Cross, he thought, remembering what his brother-in-law Claudio had told him only last year. Even I have changed. I hope I am better.

  He assumed his place behind the desk and waved off both Ygnacios, when the auditor said Catalina insisted on a drive to Santa Maria to visit the presidio. “We will take our old carriage,” she told him as she pulled up the hat that dangled on its strings down her back.

  “It’s Friday afternoon,” he warned, then laughed at his own joke. “Look out for drunks.”

  A half hour later, he was still collecting his thoughts for the governor on this whole crazy turn of events when he sat back, uneasy. He tried to shrug off his vague disquiet, but went to the open door, looking over his courtyard.

  Paloma sat by the acequia, Juanito beside her on a blanket and Soli and Claudito splashing in the ditch that Emilio had so obligingly dammed. She beckoned him closer, but Marco shook his head, wondering how foolish he was going to appear if he acted on such a flimsy whim. He changed his mind and hurried toward her.

  “Have you seen Toshua?” he asked.

  “I believe he’s in the horse barn. Care to join us?”

  “Maybe later.” He hurried into the horse barn, all but commanding his eyes to accustom themselves to the dim light immediately.

  He heard a sound behind him and whirled around, hand on … nothing. He didn’t even have a knife at his belt.

  “Brother, you are getting soft,” he heard from the shadows. Already mounted and on his equally terrifying masked horse, Toshua had gathered his reins in one hand.

  “I’m coming with you,” Marco said and looked for his mount.

  “There were two of them, remember?” Toshua said.

  “One is a fool, and the other a madman,” he reminded the Comanche.

  “Are you so certain you know which one is the fool? For idiots, Gaspar and Pedro had no trouble diddling two well-trained trackers,” Toshua reminded Marco. “Do as I say and stay with Paloma.” He left the barn without a backward glance, ducking low, his face intent.

  Marco watched him leave. He raced up the steep steps to the terreplein, where his guards stood with lances always ready. He joined them and watched Toshua gallop toward the old carriage, now a distant plume of dust.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Marco caught a glimpse of a man in the shadow created by the open gate. He looked closer and squinted, cursing his eyes and wishing they were as sharp as in his youth.

  “Call down to Rogelio to close the gate. No urgency in your voice, Manolo,” he whispered to the archer standing next to him. “Hand me your bow and an arrow first.”

  He had trained his men not to ever question him. Manolo casually handed over his bow and plucked an arrow from his quiver, calling no attention to himself. He leaned over the balcony’s edge and told Rogelio to shut the gate, nothing in his voice to indicate alarm.

  Rogelio moved to do as he was asked, just as the unknown figure by the gate stabbed him. Paloma looked up in alarm when Marco shouted to her. She dragged their sleeping son’s blanket behind the bench and jumped into the water to stand in front of their other children.

  Quicker than sight, Marco nocked the arrow against the bow, pulled, and shot the man who had yanked out the knife from Rogelio’s arm and was running toward Paloma. The arrow went straight through his neck. The man fell to his knees as he grabbed at the arrow. With a wrenching cry, he collapsed face down in the dust.

  Marco took the ladder in three steps, waving to Paloma to stay back. By now she had gathered Soledad and Claudito behind her. Eckapeta was running through the kitchen garden to grab up Juanito, still sound asleep.

  Breathing heavily, Marco stood over the dead man. Not caring if the stranger was still alive, he yanked him over and grabbed him by his hair, the better to see him.

  “Who is this I have killed?” he asked out loud. It had all happened so fast. He nodded to Paloma and pointed at the dead man with his lips. Quickly, she set each child on the bank by the acequia, shook her finger at them to stay still and ran to him.

  She stopped a few feet from the body, staring down. Marco watched her expression harden and the color rage back into her cheeks. He sat back on his heels in surprise as she gave the corpse a savage kick to the head, then another.

  “It’s Pedro,” she said. “He ran away with Roque. I never trusted him.” Her hand went to Marco’s head as he knelt beside the body. She pulled him close to her thigh and he felt her tremble. “Thank you, husband. Leave his body outside the gate for the buzzards.” She turned on her heel and walked back to their equally startled children.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  In which blood is shed, to no one’s regret

  It took all Marco’s control to eat dinner calmly with his children, tell them stories—although not as spellbinding as Catalina’s—and get them into his own bed, while Paloma, her face a mask of worry, nursed Juanito and bedded him down in their room, too, with shutters closed and bars down.

  Marco sat in the hall, Kwihnai’s lance in his lap, the lance the old chief had given him last year after he killed Great Owl. Lorenzo and Sancha had taken all the servants into the chapel for safety, and he doubled the terreplein’s usual night guard.

  “We could go underground,” Paloma said, her eyes big in her face. He hated to see her reliving the horrors of her days as a prisoner of the Duráns, but that was life in this place, so close to having no law at all.

  “No need. We will wait this way until Toshua returns,” he said, and patted the space on the bench beside him.

  “I should be with the children,” she said, but her protest sounded lame to his husband ears.

  “No, you should be with me.” His free arm went around her shoulder. “You certainly gave a dead man some sound kicks.”

  “I wanted to spit on him, too,” she said, and he heard all the spark and venom in her voice. But this was Paloma, so he was not surprised when she turned her face into his shoulder a moment later and whispered, “But that would have been really bad manners.”

  “I had my men drag his body beyond the gate and closer to the river,” he said. “We will leave Pedro there for the buzzards.” He let out a great breath. “When I think how close he came ….”

  She patted his chest, then put her hand inside his shirt to stroke him. “I don’t understand this. Pedro feared the Durán brothers, too. Why did he remain trapped under Roque’s commands? Gaspar left. Why not Pedro?”

  He agreed it was a good question. “Look at Maria Brava. She is pretty much healed and working a little bit now for Alicia, our laundress. You told me yourself that Maria still cringes with every sound.”

  “True,” Paloma agreed. She patted his stomach then withdrew her hand, to his disappointment. “Perla tells me that Gaspar might never be truly useful, because he is so certain he knows nothing and can do nothing. They were so beaten down. So was Pedro. I suppose he felt forced to follow that dreadful man.”

  “When I think of all the times my father and I laughed over the Durán brothers …. Bumblers, he called them, when he didn’t call them something worse.” Marco managed a humorless chuckle. “ ‘They’re stupid and harmless,’ he told me, on more than one occasion. I wish I had taken them seriously.”

  “This country is a hard one,” Paloma said. “Oh! That sounds so ridiculous.”

  “It’s true, though,” he agreed. “Some men it makes, some it breaks.” He nudged her shoulder. “And women.”

  They sat in silence in the darkening hall until one of the guards called out the password, “Santiago!” and Rogelio with his well-bandaged arm continued his duty to swing wide the gate. Marco ran to a rifle port across from the bench where they sat and saw an outline of the auditor’s shabby carriage, Toshua riding beside it.

  Motioning for her to remain at the door to their bedroom, Marco hurried down the hall to the main entrance. Lorenzo joined him there, hefting a battle ax that might have come to Tenochtitlán two hundred and fifty years ago with Hernán Córtes.
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  Toshua let himself into the hacienda. He carried a scalp, which he casually draped over a wooden bulto of San Isidro, guardian saint of farmers.

  “Roque Durán waited to strike until the carriage left the presidio to return here,” he said, with no preamble. That terseness alone startled Marco, who knew how well the average Comanche liked to spin out a tale.

  “Are the Ygnacios safe?” Marco asked.

  “I left them in the presidio with Teniente Gasca,” Toshua said. “Roque had no idea.” He rubbed his bloody hands together. “I was waiting for him in the carriage. He was surprised.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Marco replied, grateful not to be on the receiving end of even a menacing stare from a Kwahadi Comanche, let alone a scalping. He knew the Comanche preferred to scalp a man or woman still alive and there was no sound like the sound of flesh tearing away from someone’s head. Just the thought made him shudder.

  “I admit to one disappointment,” Toshua said.

  “I hesitate to ask, but I will,” Marco said.

  “His hair!” Toshua exclaimed, pointing to the statue of San Isidro. “I grabbed hold of it to slice around like I usually do, and it came off in my hand. Do some Spaniards have strange hair?”

  Marco turned away and laughed. “Some Spaniards wear wigs,” he replied, when he could speak again.

  “Are we safe?” Paloma asked, hurrying toward them. She gave a wide berth to San Isidro with his new hairstyle. “What’s so funny?”

  “I’ll tell you later, dear lady. Yes, we are safe,” Marco said. “Lorenzo, you can release your charges from the chapel. I am carrying two children to their own beds.”

  “Dismiss the extra guards,” Toshua said. He yawned and stretched like a banker or a shopkeeper home after a busy day of toting up columns of numbers or wrapping packages. Scratching himself, he left the hacienda. Eckapeta joined him outside the kitchen garden, where she had been concealed among cornstalks, her knife drawn. Arms around each other’s waists, they walked toward the office, their home away from home.