Daughter of Fortune (40 page)

Diego jerked awake at the sound of the tearing
cloth. He groped for his knife, then sat up, watching her. She
handed him his knife, then took the long strip of cloth to the
stream where she washed the material, soaking the blood, dirt and
gypsum paint out of the fabric. The water was cold on her legs and
she was soon shivering.

Maria anchored the material in the stream with a rock and
turned back to her makeshift basin of water, where she dumped in
handfuls of gypsum, stirring it with a stick and trying not to mix
up the mud on the bottom. When the water was white and thick, she
retrieved the material from the stream and laid it in folds in the
gypsum water.

Diego understood what she was doing. He began to work at
the knot on his bloody bandage. His fingers were unsteady, and with
an oath he looked at her, his arm extended.

She
sat down next to him and made him lie with his head in her lap
again. She worked the knot out of the drenched fabric and gently
unwrapped the dirty, blood-encrusted bandage, biting her lip as
Diego groaned and closed his eyes. The wound looked even more
ghastly in daylight, long and ragged where he had struggled against
the knife. The bone was laid bare, the muscles torn.

She
paused for a minute. Diego was shivering uncontrollably. “I am
sorry,
querida
,”
he managed, “but I cannot help myself.”

“Shh, shh, Diego,” she answered, her voice a murmur
like the stream. “I will try not to hurt you.”

When he was still, lying with his eyes closed and
sweat pouring off his face, she dipped a small square of her skirt
in the river water and cleaned the wound, wiping gently around the
lacerated edges. Then she leaned over to her basin of gypsum water
and slowly pulled out the coated fabric. Working as quickly as she
could, she wrapped the gypsum-coated material around Diego’s arm
from shoulder to elbow. The blood quickly soaked through the first
layers, but by the time she finished, the bandage was already
beginning to harden.

Maria leaned back against the rock and looked at Diego. He
opened his eyes and smiled. “Now tuck me in bed with a hot rock and
I will be fine in a day or two.”

“Of course,” she replied, a smile of her own playing
around her lips. “And I will fluff your pillows and bring you hot
chocolate and tortillas. With or without cheese and onions?”

He
considered the matter as she wiped his face. “No
onions.”

“Ah. Will you be a good patient?”

“Probably not. Why should my convalescence make me
any different?”

Without a word, she leaned forward and kissed him on the
lips. His good arm went around her waist and he kissed her back
until he started to laugh.

Maria sat up straight, her face on fire. “I
shouldn’t have done that,” she said, her eyes wide. He lay back
with his head in her lap, laughing softly and wincing every time
his shoulder moved.

“Oh,
Maria, Maria,” he finally gasped, “how strange! We’re probably the
only two
paisanos
left in all of New Mexico, we’re going to starve
to death before noon, and I require Last Rites, but all I want is
for you to kiss me again.”

“Well, I won’t,” she said, her hands on her red cheeks.
“Whatever was I thinking?”

“I am sure I do not know,” Diego replied, “but
perhaps you can show me sometime when I feel better.”

“I
would not dare!” she said, lowering Diego’s head to the grass again
and getting to her feet. He stared at her legs with a smile on his
face, and she tugged at her shortened dress. “I only did it for
you,” she muttered, grateful she still wore his Apache moccasins
that laced to her knees.

“Gracias
, señorita,” he murmured.

She looked around her. The sun was over the
mountains now, although shadows were still heavy in the valley and
the grass was wet with dew. She knew they were less than a mile
from the Masferrer cornfields. They had to reach shelter of some
sort. “If I help you to your feet, do you think you could walk to
the cornfields? We might be safer there.”

In
answer, Diego held out his hand and she pulled him to his feet. He
sank to his knees immediately and she hauled him to his feet again,
her hand tugging at his sword belt. He managed to straighten up,
and they walked slowly along the streambed.

When they came to the point where the stream crossed
the trail, she made him sit down in the shadows while she walked to
the old
Taos road.
Maria knelt by the side of the road in the tall grass and watched
to the north. Indians were coming down the road on horseback. She
had never seen Pueblo Indians riding before. They must have taken
the horses from the dead landowners around Taos. She knelt in the
grass, her mind finally registering the enormity of yesterday’s
revolt. She watched their approach in stunned silence, then backed
down the slope to Diego.

“Well?” he asked, sitting there with his eyes
half-closed.

“Many Indians. They are all mounted, Diego. All of
them.”

He
contemplated some distant-scene beyond her vision. “I wonder how
many dead men, women and children have paid for that ride!” He
struggled to lie down in the weeds and Maria lay down next to him,
watching the road.

All
morning the Indians rode by. Maria started counting the riders, but
gave up after the total passed one hundred. The men and boys were
dressed in loincloths, but most of them carried Spanish shields and
arquebuses. They rode silently, purposefully, heading
south.

Diego watched the riders for several hours, then put his
head down. Maria thought he had fainted. She put her lips to his
ear and whispered, “Diego? Are you all right?”

He
nodded, but would not raise his head until the last group of
horsemen was a cloud of dust in the distance. When he looked at
her, his face was streaked with tears.

When he could finally speak, he looked years older,
and somehow different to her. “Maria,” he faltered, and could not
continue.

She leaned closer, her cheek against his wet face.
“Diego?”

“My
Taos friends, my relatives,” he managed, then shook his head. “The
rancheros up the valley. I recognized their horses, their saddles,
their bridles. Maria, are these people
all
dead?”

“Pobrecito
,”
was all she could say. She patted his back, then
leaned her head on him. As she had listened to the horses and
riders passing she had known that she was hearing the death of an
entire colony. Ultimately, the colonists had belonged no more than
she had.

Diego took hold of her hand, and they sat close together as
the sun rose higher. No words passed between them, for neither knew
what to say. They were alone in the depth of terrible trouble, of
times neither of them could have predicted yesterday, could still
not comprehend today.

The
land around was silent again. With a gasp of pain, Diego pulled his
dagger from his belt and looked at it. “Maria,” he said slowly, “it
would be easier if I killed you and then killed myself. I think we
can expect no other future.”

Without thinking, Maria wrenched the knife from his
hand and held it behind her back. “Listen to me!” she said harshly,
hating herself for speaking with such hardness to Diego, feverish,
bleeding and dazed by the events that had altered his entire world.
“If you think for one moment that I am going to give up, then you
do not know me!” She grabbed his good arm and shook him.

Diego drew back slightly and turned away. He was
silent for long minutes. “
La Afortunada
,” he finally said,
still not turning around to face her. “The Lucky One,” he repeated,
wiping his eyes with the end of his bloody shirt and facing her
again. “I called you that. Do you not remember?”

“I remember,” she whispered. “Maybe that is why I
cannot quit. I will not. It isn’t in me.” She touched his arm. “Not
now. Especially not now.”

He
met her gaze again. “If we live through this, I will always wonder
why I waited so long to love you. Cristóbal was right, of course.
It is possible to be too busy to notice the things that matter. I
wish I could tell him that.”

“Don’t, Diego,” she said. “You did what you had to
do.”

“Perhaps, but I never stopped to think.”

“No.
But could you have stopped being what you are?”

He
smiled and held his hand out for his knife. She handed it to him
without hesitation, and he put it back in his belt. “Perhaps not.”
His eyes clouded over with pain.

“Where does it hurt now?” she asked, her hand on his
forehead.

He
pointed to his heart as his eyes filled with tears. “In my
soul,
querida.
Only there.”

Maria kissed him and held him. When he was calm again, he
looked down the road, then across it to his cornfield. “Let us find
my sisters.”

Maria rose and pulled Diego up. He wrapped his arm
around her waist and they walked across the road and into the rows
of corn. They reached the shelter of the corn as other riders from
the north appeared on the road. Maria pulled Diego down and he
landed heavily on her, gasping when his arm hit the ground. The
cornfield showed evidence of trampling by many horses. Maria
whirled around to face the riders on the road, knowing that if they
decided to cross the field as others had done, she and Diego would
be trapped like rabbits.

But the horsemen passed. Diego sat up, looking
toward the hacienda of Las Invernadas. “I thought you said it was
on fire yesterday,” he said, squinting toward the buildings.

“It was, at least the chapel end of it. Does it
still stand?”

“What I can see of it. Can we not get closer?”

She
pulled him to his feet again, and they crossed the rows of corn,
both of them glancing back to watch for more horsemen on the Taos
road.

The roof of the hacienda was still intact, but
little else remained. “Look over there, and there,” gestured Diego
with his head. “My livestock, my sheep, all dead.”

All
the animals at Las Invernadas had been slaughtered, even the
chickens and ducks butchered and left to rot. The beehives had been
slashed open, the bees left to circle and circle in the ruin of
hive and honey.

“Did
they hate us so much,
querida
?”
Diego asked in dismay. More horsemen
galloped down the Taos road. Diego watched them. “And still they
come,” he murmured as Maria pulled him down.

The
Indians continued to straggle down the Taos road. To Maria’s
terror, several groups skirted the cornfield and prowled through
the half-burned hacienda. But no one stopped, or even glanced at
the cornfield. She was grateful it was only early August, and not
September, when the corn would be ripe and tempting. Maria listened
for sounds from the tunnel by the
acequia,
but all she could
hear were bees humming about the shattered hives at the end of the
garden, and the drone of many flies rising from the slaughtered
farm animals.

The
sky darkened and it began to rain, small pelting drops that laid
the dust of long drought, then fell heavier and heavier on the
thirsty land, running in muddy rivulets toward the
acequia.

Diego looked up at the leaden sky as rain pelted his
face. “Cristóbal’s rain. From his gods, I suppose.”

Maria felt his forehead. He still burned with fever.
He put his hand to hers and brought it down to his mouth, kissing
her fingers. She smiled down at him, trying to shield his gypsum
bandage with her body and shivering as the rain fell on her back.
It was the cold rain of August and she was soon soaked through.

“Let me sit up, Maria,” Diego said finally.

She
put her arm under his neck and pulled him into a sitting position.
He patted his arm. The gypsum came away on his wet hand.

“I must cover your arm,” Maria said. “Turn your
head. I am going to take off my petticoat.”

He
smiled. “No.”

She
didn’t argue, but reached under her dress and undid the string of
her petticoat, wriggling out of it as he watched. “And I thought
you were a
caballero muy elegante
,”
she murmured, her face
red.

“I
never said I was,” he pointed out as she draped the petticoat
around his arm and tugged her soaking skirt as far down as it
would
go.

The rain continued to pour down. They sat close
together, their arms around each other, shivering in the cornfield,
watching the Taos road. When no Indians had passed for some time,
Diego turned to Maria. “Let us take our chances now,
querida.
We need to find my sisters before it grows
dark.”

Maria helped Diego to his feet. She felt under the
petticoat on Diego’s arm. It was dry. She tugged the material
higher up on his shoulder. “Do not lose that,” she ordered. “I want
to put it on again when the rain stops.”

They left the shelter of the cornfield and sloshed
through the muddy field toward the footbridge. “Diego, suppose they
are dead?’’ she
asked, not looking at the irrigation ditch.

“Then
there is no remedy, Maria
querida,”
he replied.

Diego could not go into the water. Maria dropped
down into the
acequia.
It was even colder than the rain. She
waded down the muddy ditch, calling softly, “Luz? Catarina?
Cómo
están
?”