Daughter of Fortune (38 page)

Maria leaned forward to speak to the girl, to tell
her that she would have to leave, when a voice like a snake hissed
at her from the dark doorway leading to the pueblo’s interior.

“Maria. Maria.”

That
was all. Maria closed her eyes and held her hands tight against her
stomach. The mother crawled away from her sleeping baby and looked
at Maria, her eyes pleading, sorrowful. Without a word, Maria rose
and ran out the door she had come in.

The
voice hissed again, then was silent. Waiting. Maria climbed down
the ladder, panic close at her heels. Ahead of her was Father Pio’s
church. The sun was rising. It was time for Mass, but she knew
there would be no Mass this morning. Perhaps there would be no Mass
in this land ever again. She hurried toward the church. Diego had
said that he would go to Father Pio if there was time. Time. She
spit the word out of her mouth like venom. And if only Father Pio
were there, at least she would not be alone.

She slipped inside the chapel, then fell on her
knees in homage to terror.

The chapel was filled with Indians, Indians painted
like Cristóbal, Indians wearing the tall, feathered headdresses of
the
kachinas,
Indians dancing and swaying to a rhythm only
they could hear.

They did not see her. All eyes were on the altar.
Maria stared up at the large crucifix above the altar, the one
Father Pio was so proud of, and blinked her eyes in disbelief.

Father Pio hung from the wooden cross above the altar,
dressed in the robes of this holy day, San Lorenzo Day, the red of
the martyrs. But there was another red as well. His stole and alb
dripped with blood from a hundred knife wounds. Even now the
Indians standing around the altar were throwing knives at him,
while others stood naked below the cross, raising their arms to the
droplets of blood that fell in a gentle shower.

Maria raised her eyes to Father Pio. She could not tell if
he was alive or dead. His tonsured head drooped over his chest. His
hands were riveted to the cross by spears, but his feet dangled
free.

Clutching Diego’s knife in one hand, Maria crawled out of
the chapel. She huddled in the doorway until two Indians in the
plaza disappeared into one of the lower openings. She forced
herself to walk slowly and deliberately across the plaza toward
Emiliano’s workshop. She started to skirt carefully around what
appeared to be a woodpile, but stopped short, her breath coming in
little gasps.

It
was Tirant, lying twisted and stiff with a gaping chest wound.
Maria knelt by the black horse and ran her hand over his hide. As
she patted Diego’s horse in the killing silence of Tesuque pueblo,
she knew that dawn was coming on a more terrible day than she had
ever known. And she was alone.

Where was Diego? Still Maria crouched by the horse, telling
herself to think, to reason her way through the horror that
threatened to block her very breathing. She sat back on her
heels.
If I
cannot find Diego alive here
, she decided,
I will go back to the
acequia
and
stay there with my girls until the Indians find us. I cannot leave
them to die alone
.

She
stood up with unexpected resolution and walked to the ladder. A
loud roar rose suddenly from the chapel, and she looked back to see
the first flickers of fire at the church’s high windows. Indians
were pouring from the chapel now, carrying Father Pio’s clothing
and vestments and smashing the plaster saints in the
plaza.

Maria reached the first terrace. Crouching low, she ran
toward Emiliano’s workshop. She stumbled over Emiliano, lying dead
in the doorway, his eyes open, staring blindly at the lightening
sky.

“Oh,
Dios
,”
Maria whimpered. She picked herself up and groped
for Diego’s knife, which she had dropped. She looked up then and
saw her San Francisco, still standing where she had left him in
the
santero’s
window, his arm extended. Emiliano had hinged on
the other arm, but it was unpainted, waiting for her to finish. She
crawled into the workshop and sank down on the dirt floor. Great
gulping sobs escaped her. She reached up and pulled San Francisco
off the window ledge, hugging him to her. She thought of Luz and
Catarina and rose to her knees. She must go back to
them.

She
heard a rustling noise in the corner of the
santero’s
workshop and turned
toward it, her hand tightening around the knife. A figure rose out
of the pile of buffalo skins, white and moving slowly. Without a
sound, Maria pitched forward on her face, unconscious.

She came to consciousness only a few
minutes later. She had
been
pulled
into the corner near the hides. Someone was stroking her
hair and saying her name over and over. The voice was familiar, but
she feared to open her eyes, feared to look on one more
nightmare.

“Maria
chiquita
,” the voice pleaded, “look at me!” His fingers tapped her
cheek in a familiar gesture. She opened her eyes.

Diego Masferrer wiped her
face with the scarf he usually wore,
dabbing gently at her tears. His face was as grim as her own, with
the same dazed look, the same curious blankness. A large bruise
started at his temple and ran down to the point of his jaw. She
reached up and touched his face. He winced and drew back slightly,
then gathered her closer to him.

“Diego.” She had so much to tell him, but she could
say nothing more.

“It
has begun, Maria,” was all he could say in return. He hugged her
closer to him and she put her arms around his neck.

“Diego,” she finally whispered, “I have been
searching for you.” She touched his face again, and he held her
hand to his cheek.

“What
happened to you?” he asked. “Tell me. I must know now. What of my
family? What of Las Invernadas?”

She started to cry, and he was silent until her sobs
subsided against his chest.

“What
of them, Maria?” he asked quietly. His eyes were full of tears, and
she could not bear to look at him. She turned her gaze toward the
hide painting of San Pedro on the opposite wall.

“I
woke to the sound of Indians killing your servants in the chapel.
They must have surprised the guards on the roof and let themselves
down some way. I only had time to grab Luz and Catarina and hide
them. Erlinda and La
Señora
would not come.” The words were wrenched out of
her.
“
Dios mio
, Diego, they sacrificed themselves to save us.
”

“Hush, Maria,” he said, kissing the top of her
head.

She
had told him what had happened, but she knew she would never tell
him how Erlinda had called his name over and over, pleading for his
help, though she would remember it always.

“We
heard the Indians behind us, so I hid the girls in their play
tunnel in the
acequia.
Then I went for help.” She burrowed closer into
Diego’s shoulder. “But there is no help,” she sobbed.

Diego put his hand to her face and held her tight against
his chest, pulling her farther back into the gloom of the workshop.
The sun was up now, but the room was still deep in shadow. In
answer to her unspoken question, he began.

“I
arrived in Santa Fe around noon, as you would have thought. The
governor would not see me. Refused me, Maria.
Dios
,
he will pay
someday. So I sat there with my Indians—Dios,
my
Indians—in his
anteroom until close upon three o’clock, watching others come and
go. Finally I bashed in his door and threw the Indians into his
office.”

Her hand went to his face, and he kissed her
fingers.

“Ah,
Maria! I forced him to listen to me. It appears he had received
other warnings, one from Santo Domingo, another from the south and
west. But he had no troops to spare. He must guard Santa Fe. Even
Santa Fe is in danger. My mission was futile.

“I
rode Tirant hard, and, fool that I am, I thought Tesuque would
still be safe. I thought we had four days. I went to Father Pio and
tried to convince him to join me at Las Invernadas. ‘Oh, my son,
these are my Indians, my little children’ ” he mimicked. Maria put
her fingers to his lips again, and he stopped. “Ah,
querida,
I
once spoke the same way, but they are not
our
Indians. Emiliano was right.
Pobre
Emiliano. Well, Father Pio would not leave, so I ran to
Tirant and tried to leave the plaza.”

He
stopped, pulling her
closer, reliving the moment. “I suppose they were
hiding in the shadows. The Indians felled Tirant with an ax. I was
thrown off onto my face. But I killed those Indians. Then I ran in
here. Emiliano was already dead, and his workshop ransacked, but I
am thinking now that it might be the safest place in the whole
river kingdom.”

“Not quite, my brother.”

In a single motion, Diego tumbled Maria off his lap
and leaped to his feet. Cristóbal stepped out of the shadows,
laughing softly. He was dressed as Maria had seen him last, in
loincloth with white paint on his body. His legs were red from the
knees down, as if he had waded through a river of blood. Maria rose
up on her knees, her hands clenched in tight fists. She knew whose
blood he had waded through, and who had followed her from the
burning hacienda.

He looked at her, his head tilted to one side in his
characteristic pose. “Maria, how clever you are! Who else would
have thought to hide my little sisters in the ditch?”

Maria jumped up and lunged toward Cristóbal, but Diego held
her back. She leaned over Diego’s outstretched arm, all fear
dissolved by terrible anger. “If you have touched them, Cristóbal
...
” she
hissed.

“You’ll do what?” He held his hand up as if to ward her
off. “I would never bother them now. I will wait until they are
good and hungry, and then I will go back.”

“Cristóbal , you really are a bastard,” said Diego
slowly.

“Oh,
we always knew that, Diego
mio
,” Cristóbal replied quickly. “But do not fear for the
little ones. They are still young, young enough to learn the Indian
ways. I will keep them as mine—just as you kept me as yours, Diego.
Now, Erlinda, ah, Erlinda, she is a different story.
Erlinda
...” He paused, his eyes on Diego. “Diego, she was still calling
for you when my Indians—my Indians—ripped off her arms.”

Maria sank down on the buffalo hides and covered her
face with her hands.

“What about my mother, Cristóbal? Could you find
enough ways to hurt her, she who helped raise you?”

Cristóbal stalked closer to his brother. “I thought of
something entirely fitting. You are not the only clever
one.”

Without another word, Cristóbal threw Diego against the
wall and stabbed him in the arm, digging his long dagger into the
adobe, pinning his
brother to the wall. “And now you will
hold still, my brother,” Cristóbal commanded. “You will die last,
after you have watched me kill your
chiquita
.” He looked at
Maria, a smile on his face, “Or whatever it is I finally decide to
do to her.”

Diego wrapped his fingers around the knife, trying
frantically to yank it from the wall. His face was a mask of pain.
“Cristóbal, you will die for this!” he shouted, and Cristóbal
laughed and turned to Maria.

She
backed up against Emiliano’s workbench, feeling behind her for the
small carving dagger he kept there. Her hand brushed across the
table but she could find nothing. She felt a piece of broken
pottery jab her leg and she clutched it just as Cristóbal turned
around suddenly and kicked Diego. The writhing, bleeding man swore
at him in Tewa.

His
back was to her for only a heartbeat, but Maria lunged at
Cristóbal. He half-turned when he heard her, but she raked the
sharp piece down his bare back. Twice she dragged the broken shard
down his skin before he slammed her away and put his hand to his
back. Maria leaped to her feet and yanked the knife from Diego’s
arm.

Diego gasped with pain and threw himself on Cristóbal,
jumping on his back and wrapping the scarf he still carried tight
around his brother’s neck. Cristóbal clutched at his throat,
clawing at the silk scarf. In a frenzy, he backed up against the
wall and shoved hard, trying to shake off Diego, who pulled
tighter. His hand was slippery with his own blood, but he hung on,
tightening his grip with every second that passed, desperate beyond
calculation.

Maria scrambled to find Emiliano’s dagger, pawing among the
broken pots and bits of splintered wood. In a frenzy she grabbed
Emiliano’s small pot of gypsum and pounded Cristóbal over the head
with it. The white paint oozed over his head and mingled with the
blood from the wounds on his back, turning an incongruous pink.
Cristóbal gasped as he struggled to breathe. The blood vessels in
his eyes broke as Diego hung on grimly.

Then
Cristóbal fell to his knees, his face turning a dark purple. He
tried to rise again, but he could only lurch from side to side like
a
wounded animal, his head drooping lower and lower.

In
one brisk movement, Diego got off Cristóbal and stood up, planting
his knee firmly in the middle of the swaying man’s back. With one
sharp crack that made Maria retch and turn away, Diego snapped his
brother’s spine. Cristóbal went limp, paralyzed. His hands flopped
to his side and he hung from the scarf that Diego continued to
tighten around his neck.