Daughter of Fortune (37 page)

As
her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she could see it was one of the
servants who had bedded down in the chapel at the far end of the
hall. As he turned toward the sound of her voice, she saw that his
throat was slit from ear to ear. The blood glistened in the dim
light and splashed to the floor. Maria put her hand on the man’s
shoulder again and he fell forward.

Maria crawled back to the chest against the far wall and
crouched beside it. Now she heard sounds from the chapel, the
screams of children, the muffled cries of women.

So
it had begun. Maria crawled back to her room, not trusting herself
to stand.
The sounds coming from the chapel were muffled, as if the
large double doors were still shut. Perhaps the dying servant had
crawled out undetected and shut the doors after him. He had bought
her a few precious seconds, and she could not waste
them.

Her
hands shook so badly that she could not light the candle, but it
was just as well. Her hands were bloody, and her dress was damp,
too, soaked with the blood of the man in the hall. She shook
Catarina gently, calling her softly,
“
Despierta, mi
niña
, wake up.”
She said it over and over, her voice low and soothing, her bloody
hand cupped just over the young girl’s mouth in case she should cry
out.

Catarina sat up, rubbing her eyes and looking around her.
Maria hurried to Luz and shook her awake. Luz cried out, and Maria
clamped her hand over her mouth. “Hush, my darling,
querida mia
,”
she said, taking her hand away slowly.

Catarina pulled the blankets up tighter around her
and settled back down. “Is it morning, Maria?”

Maria compelled herself to speak calmly, “You have always
told me that you are an adventurous girl, Catarina. Is this not
so?”

They heard a crash from the chapel. Catarina edged
closer to Maria in sudden fear.

“Never mind, my dear, never mind. I want you to come with
me.
I am going to pick up Luz and carry her to the kitchen.
I want you to hold onto my skirt—don’t let go—and follow me. Can
you do that?”

Catarina nodded, her eyes wide with terror now. Maria shook
her head and put her finger to her lips. “We will find Diego.
Should we do that and surprise Erlinda and your mama?”

Catarina nodded again and got out of bed. Maria
hurried to Luz and picked up the groggy child. “Now take hold of my
skirt,” she told Catarina.

“But Maria, it is wet,” whispered the girl.

“Never mind that,
querida.
Just do as I say.”

Maria pushed open the door. The sounds from the
chapel were still muffled, but as she stood there, the doors
slammed back against the wall with a bang that shook the
hacienda.

“Diego!” Maria said out loud. She put Luz over her
shoulder, stuck Diego’s knife in the waistband of her dress and
felt behind her for Catarina. She guided the girl silently down the
hall, carefully skirting the corpse in the darkness.

She
ran to Erlinda’s room and knocked on the door, which opened before
she lowered her arm. Erlinda yanked her and the children into the
room.
“
Por dios
,”
the widow whispered, her lips to Maria’s ear,
“what is this I am hearing?”

“It
is the Pueblos. Let us hurry!” Maria tugged at Erlinda’s nightgown,
but Erlinda would not move.

“No,”
she said, the fear of the day replaced by a strange look of
resignation. “No. You will never escape with my sisters if you are
burdened with Mama. I will remain here with Mama. Our lives are
over. You and the children have not yet lived.” Erlinda kissed her,
patted Luz’s dark curls, and shoved them toward the kitchen. “Now
go! Find my brother!”

Before Maria could stop her, Erlinda started down the long
hall toward La
Señora’s
room, pausing only to square her shoulders and pat
her hair into place. Maria followed with the children in tow. “I
know, I know,” said the blind woman, as they opened the door. “I
have been listening. We waited too long.”

“Come with me now,” pleaded Maria. “Hurry!”

“I
cannot. I will be a burden. You must take the children and
flee.”

“Erlinda says the same.”

“We have always been of one mind about the things
that mattered.”

“Mama!” Maria cried, forgetting herself.

La
Señora
smiled. “How good that sounds. But no. I will stay here.
Take my girls. They are yours now. Do as I say.”

Maria kissed her, and La Señora caressed her cheek.
“Go quickly. Find my dear son. And do not look back.”

Maria ran down the hall, tugging Catarina behind her. She
heard menacing cries drawing closer, and then Erlinda screamed.
Maria tightened her hold on Luz and did not look back. “Do not let
go,” she whispered to Catarina clinging to her skirt.

When
she reached the kitchen, Maria bolted the door to the hall behind
her, wincing at the scraping of iron on iron. Still towing Catarina
after her, she ran to the outside door and opened the bolts. She
stood there for precious seconds, too afraid to open the door, too
afraid of what might be on the other side of it. Steeling herself
finally, she edged open the door and looked into the kitchen
garden.

The
moon was still up, casting its soft glow on the bean vines and
tomatoes. She saw the reassuring hump of the beehive ovens, and
heard the
acequia
flowing in the distance. She heard two Indians
shattering the doors in the hall with axes.

“Stand here, Catarina,” she ordered, and ran into
the pantry, still carrying Luz, who was wide awake now and sobbing.
Maria grabbed one of yesterday’s loaves of bread and stuffed it
down her dress front.

Catarina stood by the open doorway, her hands covering her
ears. Someone within the house was screaming now. Maria pushed
Catarina into the garden. Luz cried out, a thin wail that seemed to
hang on the night air.

“Hush, Luz! Before God, you must be silent,” Maria
exclaimed, and the girl was still, her fingers in her mouth, her
eyes filled with shock.

Maria ran through the garden. As she looked back,
the chapel end of the hacienda burst into flames. Catarina
screamed, and Maria shook her into silence.

She
dragged the girls to the footbridge and pulled them into the water.
Catarina cried out again, and Luz’s arms tightened like a vise
around Maria’s neck. Maria pulled them downstream to the small play
tunnel the girls had dug in the side of the ditch. She swung Luz
inside, peeling the girl’s arms off her neck.

“Now you, Catarina. Do as I say!”

Without a word, Catarina crawled in after her sister
and clung to her, wet and shaken. Maria pulled the loaf out of her
dress and put it in Catarina’s lap.

“And
now, my darlings, you must be ever so brave.”

The screams were louder now. Erlinda was howling,
pleading, crying, “Diego! Diego!” over and over. The girls drew
farther back into the cave, crowding against the shallow back wall
in their attempt to flee the nightmare.

“Do
not leave us, Maria!” sobbed Catarina.

“I
must. There is not room for me, too. Now listen to me and do not
talk. I am going for help. I am going to find Diego. You must not
leave this cave, no matter what you see or hear. Do not doubt that
I will return for you. You may get hungry, but do not leave this
place.”

Maria reached out for the girls, crying with them.
She hugged them, kissed them, made the sign of the cross over them,
then wrenched herself away, wading back to the footbridge.

The
air was filled with screams. La
Señora’
s joined with her daughter’s. Gulping
back her own tears, Maria climbed the bank, gathered up her sodden
skirts and ran into the cornfield.

What
now? She sank down between the rows of corn. She did not know where
to find Diego, where to seek help. She looked south over her
shoulder. There was no fire at the
Nuñez
hacienda. Diego had said that they
had gone to Santa Fe, but surely not everyone in the large family
had made the trip. Perhaps one or two of the family’s sons
remained. Perhaps they would take in her and the
children.

She stood up and took one last look at the Masferrer
hacienda. Flames licked around the chapel end, spreading toward the
rest of the building. She started for the old Taos road where she
had last seen Diego.

The
road was deserted. She crossed it running and jumped into the brush
beside the trail. Staying in the undergrowth, she followed the road
toward the Nuñez holdings, half a league distant. She picked her
way carefully around the scrub brush and dry tree limbs, thinking
of other saints resting in cottonwood limbs along the nearby creek
bed. “Then intercede for me now,” she said out loud as she skirted
the bare limbs, “and for my girls.”

As
she approached the Nuñez hacienda, instinct compelled her to stay
in the shadows off the trail. All appeared calm. She saw small
lights flickering in one of the barred windows and smiled with
relief. Not everyone had gone to Santa Fe.

But
as she watched, the lights turned into a blaze that roared up along
one entire wall. Maria shrank farther into the shadows. Coming from
the hacienda was the whole Nuñez family. That could not be. Her
hand to her throat, she watched.

The
younger Nuñez daughters were followed by Pueblo braves dressed in
the clothes of their parents. Maria blinked back her tears. By the
light from the burning building, she saw blood on the girls’ faces
where their eyes had been. They were led stumbling and silent to
the road. The older child tripped and fell, and the Pueblos were
upon her, tearing her clothes as she blindly tried to fend them off
with her fists.

Maria turned away, sickened, as the other girl was
tossed from spear point to spear point. She thought of Luz and
Catarina and buried her face in her hands.

“Señorita Espinosa!” a voice whispered.

Maria froze. A hand reached out for her, touching
her hair. She turned slowly.

An Indian woman leaned toward her. Maria peered
closer. Another figure crawled from the shadows of the deep
underbrush. Maria drew in her breath in sudden recognition.

“You
are the girl from the cornfield!” she exclaimed, then looked around
in fear of being overheard. The Indians by the hacienda were paying
no
attention. One of the Nuñez sons was now in flames,
impaled on the gatepost.

She
turned back and put out her hand tentatively to the older woman.
“And you are the mother,” she whispered. “I remember.”

The Indian woman watched Maria for a long moment,
weighing her, measuring her, then spoke to her daughter.

“Señorita,” the
young girl said, “we have been following you. We
have known of this thing for several moons now. My mother could not
forget what you did for my small sister.” She paused, looking back
at her mother. “We have told no one. We would both die if our
people knew.”

The
woman spoke to her daughter, who inched closer to Maria. “Come with
us. We can keep you safe.”

Maria crawled toward them and they drew her farther
into the brush. “But where?” she asked. Her head throbbed from the
screams and laughter of the Indians on the trail.

“To Tesuque.”

Maria shook her head and tried to draw away, but the Indian
mother took her hand.

“You will be safe,” the girl said. “It is the time
of my mother’s uncleanness, and no man enters our quarters. My
mother says perhaps we can get you to Santa Fe.”

Maria looked around her at the tree limbs and thought of
Diego and the saintmaker in one aching rush. Her San Francisco was
in Tesuque. But Santa Fe? It seemed so far away. She nodded and
followed the Indian women away from the road.

They
kept to the streambed east of the road, walking carefully over the
stones. Maria was grateful for her moccasins. She hurried after the
others, her eyes on the clouds over the Sangre de Cristos as they
turned pink with the threat of dawn.

They
were approaching Tesuque when Maria realized someone was following
them. It was only a feeling at first, a feeling that someone’s eyes
were on her. When they stopped, Maria whirled around quickly and
glimpsed a flash of white on the higher bank. She pulled the knife
from the waistband of her dress and walked faster, hurrying to keep
up. Whoever it was made no pretense of silence but strode along
with arrogance.

They hurried into the cottonwood trees before the
pueblo. The ladders from the upper levels had been let down, but
she saw no one.

“Walk between us, Mother says.”

Maria obeyed the girl, matching her steps to those of the
two women, hoping for some trick of fading moonlight to blend her
bloody Spanish dress into their cotton tunics. They crossed the
plaza and climbed the ladder, the mother pulling her up and leading
her quickly into the welcome darkness.

The room was dimly lit with one small torch. Maria
felt her way to the pile of blankets in one corner. “Tell your
mother that your father’s blankets are still without equal. ”

The
young girl smiled and whispered to her mother, who ducked her head
in shyness, then sat down beside Maria.

“We will rest here a moment and then think,’’ the
girl said.

Maria leaned against the wall. She looked at the Indian
mother, who had turned to her still-sleeping baby in another
corner.
I
have no right to endanger their lives
, she thought.