A Lady Bought with Rifles (2 page)

“Don Porfirio Díaz and his
científicos
cannot rule forever,” he told me. “Yaquis are not the only oppressed ones. A few Mexicans are incredibly wealthy, but in spite of the reforms attempted by Juárez after he drove the French from the country, most Mexicans are debt slaves, peons, completely at the mercy of their masters. Unrest is growing all over Mexico. A revolution is coming. It will be terrible.” He took a deep breath. “I'm glad you will not be there.”

Revolution was, to me, aristocrats riding in tumbrils to the guillotine. I could not link it to Mexico and would restively change the subject, ask about my mother and the half-sister of whom I was jealous because she lived with my parents, and saw them every day.

“Do you love her best?” I had blurted once when I was about seven and in tears at Father's impending departure.

“Of course not!” He had swept me up, held my face against his broad shoulder, where I felt so safe, so loved. “But she is wholly Mexican. You are not.”

“Is she p-p-prettier than I?”

“No, little goose!”

“Cleverer?” I persisted, snuffling, trying to find some reason for the hurtful separation.

“Her Spanish is better,” he teased, putting me down. “And I must say that she does not ask questions!” But I sensed that he was uneasy about Reina, that she had something strange about her.

He never visited his relations in Wessex, though he told me once that his brother was dead and the present squire, Father's nephew, had a host of daughters to marry off and was an automobile fanatic. He had bought one of the first Royces back in 1884. This by itself was enough to violently prejudice Father against him, for Father abhorred the internal-combustion engine and all its attendant works.

Father belonged to the Victorian empire, to the time of men like Livingstone, General Gordon, Gladstone, and Shaftesbury, when one-third of the globe's ships had British registry, when Europe was the Englishman's playground, though he made his fortunes in Australia, Canada, the United States, Africa, India, or Mexico. It was fitting that Father died in the same year as Victoria and that he was in England when she died late in January of 1901.

He took me to London for her funeral procession. The whole nation had gone into mourning. Public buildings were swathed in black crape and rather ugly black wreaths hung from doors and windows. Many women were entirely in black and men wore black armbands. Even our hansom driver's whip was tipped with the dolorous color.

Father had rented a hotel room overlooking the procession's route and we watched silently as the famous eight cream horses, the gold and crimson trappings a shout of color, pulled the gun carriage topped by the coffin with its white pall and imperial crown. There were ranks of slow-marching military, arms reversed, and behind the gun carriage followed the new king, Edward, and the royal family, including the Kaiser, who had come from Germany to honor his aunt.

Crowds were half a mile deep where there was space. “She's the only queen most of us remember,” Father said quickly. “She ruled for sixty-four years and seemed the only sure point in a changing world. It will be strange without her.”

He talked a long time that night, as if I were another adult. “A time has passed with the queen,” he said. “Motorcars and lorries are just the beginninig. Heavier-than-air machines, much faster than zeppelins, are being developed. You'll see them flying above, you may even ride in one.”

“So may you,” I teased.

He smiled and shook his head as he brushed back my hair. “No, Miranda. I'll live out my time by the rules I know.”

That was his last visit. He was killed shortly after his return to Mexico and his body was never found in the mine. With his death my ties to Mexico grew more dreamlike than ever. His solicitor said my mother wished to obey Father's wish that I finish my English schooling. So I stayed at Miss Mattison's and caught occasional rumblings from the world outside: the first submarine, the laying of the trans-Pacific cable, the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk. The Boer War finally ended, and in America Henry Ford built a cheap automobile.

We heard of these things tucked away in our peaceful gray flint building in the cathedral close, where one day followed another much like it except for the boredom of Sundays. Then the letter came, the letter with the crucifix that at last called me home.

“Your mother is dying,” wrote a strange scrawling bold hand. “She wants to see you. Come as quickly as you can.” It went on to say that my father's solicitor was being instructed to arrange my passage and pay my final account with Miss Mattison.

Stunned, I gazed at the writing as if my father might have written it from the grave to reunite my mother and me, but the heavy slashing script was not his. The letter was signed Trace Winslade. I was sure my father had mentioned him, but I couldn't remember how.

Miss Mattison and I wept at parting and I promised to write, but as I stepped aboard the Cunard liner, I had a fated certainty that my English life was ending, that I would never return. I had never really belonged there, but would I belong in a place I only dimly remembered, a land of deserts and mountains open to the blazing sun? My mother was a soft voice and perfume, but my memories of Reina were of violent pinches beneath the table, shoves in a dark corridor, being called La Inglesa. Father always had spoken English to me. I had known Spanish as a young child, of course, but had forgotten most of it. Truly, I belonged nowhere, but as I journeyed by ship and train, I longed to have a home, be part of a family.

I was met in Hermosillo by Señor Otero, the family's lawyer, who drove me to Las Coronas, a full day's hard travel. He spoke very little English, but when I asked him why we had an armed escort, he made me understand that Yaquis had been raiding in the area. A slight, nervous little man with a pointed beard, he obviously did not wish to have any more to do with me than necessary, an attitude I found echoed in the servants when we finally reached the hacienda.

Did they distrust me because I had grown up in England? That seemed absurd and determinedly I put it out of my mind as I sat in my mother's darkened room, holding her frail hands while candles flickered on all four sides of the bed and the priest droned.

I had stayed like this for most of three days, leaving only to eat or for a few hours' exhausted sleep. My mother was restless when I was not with her, and though I was overwhelmed with grief and long-stored anger that she had allowed us to be separated, I clung hungrily to these hours—all that I would have of her, all that I could give.

Reina came in and out, pausing by the bed, her lovely face unreadable. She must have had her green eyes and red hair from our mother's French father, an officer in Maximilian's army who, even after his emperor was shot, stayed in Mexico for love either of a woman named Torres or of her domain, an expanse of desert bounded by mountains and sea. Reina was three years older than I. If I could remember how she used to pinch me, surely she must, too, but she made no reference to our shared childhood. She treated me politely, like a stranger.

My Spanish was coming back as long-buried memories unlocked experiences. Reina spoke some English so we could communicate, but when I tried to know her, she turned my efforts away.

“Did you have the letter sent to Miss Mattison's?” I asked on the second day when we chanced to be having breakfast at the same time. I was not only trying to reach my sister, but I was curious about the strong slanting script that had called me out of exile from the sheltered distant world that itself now seemed the illusion.

“Trace Winslade took it upon himself to write. He is a
pistolero
your father sheltered.”

“A
pistolero?
”

“One who uses pistols. A man who lives by his gun. But Winslade, when he is not exceeding his authority, has charge of the Las Coronas horses.” Pride entered her voice. “Our herds are divided by color in the old fashion. They are famous.”

“Winslade is English?” I persisted.

She curled her lip, yet something burned deep in her black-lashed green eyes. “He is
yanqui, tejano
.”

From what I knew of the War Between the States, neither Texan nor Yankee would appreciate Reina's careless equating of the terms, but in spite of Miss Mattison's rigorous instruction, I didn't take issue with my half-sister. I wanted desperately to be friends with her. We would soon be each other's only living near relation, and in this country I was a stranger, isolated by training and language. But Reina ignored me and I rose from the long carved table to go to the dark room filled with incense and prayers I did not understand, servants who bowed their necks to Reina but not to me.

Once I was seated by Mother's bed, it seemed I had never done anything else but lean close to her, clasping the frail hands.

My head throbbed from the oppressive thickness of stale scented air, guttering candles that seemed to gasp for life. Holding the same position made my shoulders cramp. In weary bitterness that welled up before I could check it, I wondered why my mother had wanted me after all these years.

It was too late for us to know each other, too late to laugh, to share. She had called me only to mourn, watch her dying. Why hadn't she let me learn of her death through the same muffled distance that had separated us in life?

Then her eyes opened, saw me, shone with a joy that spread over her tired face. “Miranda,” she whispered, lifting her hand to my hair with obvious effort.

And then I was glad of the long journey, the vigil in this room, welcomed the pain, for at least it gave me my mother. She loved me, whyever I had not been with her. She loved me, I knew it, and now I could never be without that certainty.

“I love you,” I said, and wet her hand with my tears.

Two days later Reina and I stood on either side of the bed as the priest murmured and signed and anointed our mother. When he stepped back, she took Reina's hand and mine, tried to bring them together, but lost all strength. She arched her head and there was a sound in her throat, her fingers spasmed, then relaxed, and her life was over.

My knees would not support me. I leaned on the bed, pressing the thin hand to my face, craving some word, some glance—any of the slight gestures of life that had seemed so weak and futile to me before but now seemed miracles. Beside this utter quiet, this loss of spirit and breath, all of life seemed a wonder.

“Leave her!” Gripping my shoulder, Reina shook me hard. As I stared in confusion, she stormed on. “You wait till Mother is dying and then come to perch by her bed like a vulture!”

The vicious injustice struck me dumb for a moment.

“I wanted to come home!” I managed at last. “Do you think I enjoyed feeling like an orphan?”

Reina's eyes blazed. “You call this home? Not for you, Inglesa! The sooner you go back to England the better for all.”

“I've nothing to go back to,” I said, stunned at the violence of her onslaught. And then before she could attack further, there by our mother's still-warm body, I raised a silencing hand. “Let's not talk about it now, Reina.”

“Good sense.” We both whirled toward the voice from the door.

2

A lean tall man with eyes like the turquoise in my crucifix and skin the color of his leather vest and trousers moved into the room with a surprisingly light tread for a man of his size. He dropped his dusty gray hat on a chest and went to stand by the bed, dark head lowered. The muscles in his gaunt cheeks ridged like cords.

“Madonna,” he said under his breath and bent to her hand, pressing it to his face.

He stayed like that a long time while the priest hovered over him like a bat, all but squeaking, as if protesting the decorum of this man's grief. Reina watched him with an eager, hungry look and I realized it was the first time I had seen her beautiful face reveal anything besides anger or pride.

“Trace,” she said.

He turned slowly, face impassive as a mask, those curious eyes startling as a glimpse of sea beyond the desert. They brushed me swiftly—but even that cursory glance brought blood to my face—and fastened on Reina, who wore a dark-green dress that accentuated her waist, slender without corsets, her high full breasts, and the creamy richness of her skin. Her lips were parted, and even though she had called this man—for he must be the Trace Winslade who had written to me—a
pistolero
, there was no hauteur in the way she looked at him—a beseeching, rather.

“So,” he said to her in Spanish, which I followed fairly well. “You and your sister are fighting before Doña Luisa is even buried. She deserved better.”

Reina flushed, hitched a shoulder toward me. “This one has no right here.”

“She has the right that her mother wanted her to have.” His tone cut like a thin blade.

“Mother is dead.” Reina's voice didn't waver.

“But she left a will,” Trace said.

“I am the eldest! I have lived here, always, taken over much of the running of Las Coronas. You know that, Trace, better than anyone.”

“There is a will,” he said again.

Without another word he left the room. The priest closed Mother's eyes. Reina cast her what I could have sworn was a glance of fury, then flung from the room, her heels clicking on the tiles, as she hurried after the man she had scornfully called a Texan gunman. The priest gave me a distracted frown and followed her.

I moved back to my mother. We were alone. Now I could weep.

Doña Luisa lay in state that day while servants came to pray and mourn. I caught snatches of what they murmured about her—how she had nursed the sick, been godmother to babies, eased the last hours of the dying, been generous with food and drink at
fiestas
. Along with their sorrow, I heard undertones of fear.

“It will be different with La Peliroja,” said Catalina, the majestically fat head cook.