Sherlock Holmes: The American Years (35 page)

By tradition the evening meal is a light one, but when the abbot learned that I had been on the road since before sunrise and had not stopped for the midday meal, he sent his steward for cold meats and some cheeses. I tucked my hands into my sleeves and regarded the plate.

“My people,” I said, “have also not eaten since before sunrise.”

The abbot smiled at this, the first full and open smile he had given me. “I have already instructed them to be fed, Doña Ana. With your kind permission.”

I smiled at him in return, and reached for the meats.

The food was good but simple and very plainly cooked, and the
wine tasted new and harsh. Father Bernardo probed for news from the capital. I temporized, wondering how much I could tell him. Since the days of the expulsion of the Jesuits, Mexico’s formal relationship with the Catholic Church had been uneasy; often our various governments had expropriated church lands. What the government, any government, takes, is unlikely to be returned. Was this priest therefore in favor of Benito Juárez or against him? Juárez was no enemy of the church, but he had raised money by selling confiscated church lands to
hacendados
. It made things complicated both for the clerics and for ordinary citizens.

So we talked about matters of culture. The discussion came around to Sr. Beethoven, who had written at least one Mass of which the priest approved, although he said he himself preferred Bach. Our discussion was cordial and careful on both our parts. I told him that the young señor was, and I tried to blush as I said this, the illegitimate son of my nephew from a visit he had made to the United States, and that I had promised to put him on a boat to New Orleans but he had fallen ill on the road.

The abbot smiled at me. “Fallen ill on the road to Damascus?”

“Hardly, Father, and Veracruz does not qualify as a holy city.”

“Had you arrived earlier, I would have sent you on to the hacienda in the valley below us. It is far more comfortable, and General Pulgón’s hospitality has been praised.”

I raised an eyebrow. “
¿De veras?
By whom?”

The abbot smiled into his wine glass. “He is most generous with us, and we in turn pray for his soul.” He sipped. “The general has mentioned you to me, Doña Ana.”

My shoulders stiffened. This could not be good.

“He has told me of your villages in the north, of the aid you
have given to the Indios. He mentioned schools, I believe, and a hospital?”

I nodded, my lips pressed together.

“And some scheme having to do with
el obispo
Quiroga?”

We looked at each other in silence for a moment. He leaned forward to refill my wine glass. “The valley below was once, of course, a part of our holdings. The general bought it ten years ago. His ways are . . . different from ours.”

I had my own reasons to despise Pulgón, but the monks probably ate only through the general’s charity. I did not care to speculate where the abbot’s heart lay, and only murmured and kept my thoughts to myself, and sent a small prayer to the Virgin.

After the meal I asked to visit the infirmary, which was in a small building of its own, and the abbot brought me there himself. A welcome fire burned in a brazier. I hastened to it, for I had been freezing since we entered the monastery. Two cots were drawn near the fire. In one, a very old monk lay partially propped up, gumming at a piece of bread. My young Englishman lay on the other, thrashing against the blankets, his fever not yet broken. The infirmarian eyed me suspiciously as I touched the boy’s forehead. I picked up a cup of watered wine and held it to the boy’s lips. He managed a few sips.

I asked after herbs. Soon the infirmarian and I were deep in a discussion of worts and balms and reducers of fever. Into this civilized discourse came a tremendous banging at the monastery gates. The abbot and I looked at each other in alarm: Who could it be, this much past sunset? We heard the gate creak open and the clatter of hooves, and shortly after that the gatekeeper came into the infirmary, almost running.

“It is General Tomás Pulgón, he seeks an English assassin who has escaped from the capital!”

The abbot looked at me. I shook my head but held my breath. He carried our lives in his hands: Englishman, me, and my people. The lantern hissed and the gatekeeper shuffled from one foot to another, fingers twisting together. At last the abbot nodded.

“Fra Pedro, take the general to my room and see that he has a glass of brandy. His trip must have been very arduous and I am sure he is thirsty. Quarter his men in the old wing. Tell him I will be with him soon.”

The gatekeeper’s sandals slapped against the stones as he hurried out.

“Pulgón will search,” I began.

“And will find two sick monks in the infirmary,” the abbot said. “Fra Hortensio, I believe you keep a small supply of walnut juice on the shelves. Bring it to me, and more blankets. Señora, you know what to do?”

I nodded, already working the boy free of his clothes. We stripped him and dyed his face, hands, and feet with the walnut juice, dragged a brown cassock over him, and wrapped him in the blankets. He woke and began shouting in English, and the abbot took up a rag and stoppered his mouth with it.

“He is blaspheming,” the abbot said gravely. Fra Hortensio nodded. The boy tried to claw the gag out, so we tightened the blankets around him until he could not move.

By then I was panting, my hair in disarray and my clothing pulled out of order. This would never do: I could not let the general know that I had been anywhere near the infirmary. I did not feel content to leave the boy with the monk, so frowned at him a
moment and decided that, all in all, threats were probably best. The abbot took his leave to attend to the general, and I took the infirmarian aside.

“You know that your abbot wants this young man’s identity hidden,” I said to the monk, who nodded. “Are you under a vow of silence?” He shook his head. “Very well then, I believe that your abbot has put you under one as—as a penance, yes. Do you understand?”

He opened his lips. I held up one admonitory finger, and he closed his mouth and nodded until his head bobbed. There are times when it is very good to be a stern grandmother. I lifted my hem and swept from the infirmary.

I came into the cloister and wrapped my shawl against the shock of the cold mountain air. It was very dark, save for a pale wash of light near my rooms. As I approached I saw a silhouette against the light; a shape with a cap and sword. I shrank back into the shadows. How to explain my presence? The privies were nowhere nearby, so I could not use them as an excuse. What to do?

I felt a hand on my shoulder and jumped only a little, then saw in the dimness that it was yet another monk. He tugged at my arm and I followed him through dark, empty rooms. We passed into the church, a cold space scented with incense. A curtain rustled as we went through it, then the monk led me along a narrow, lightless hallway. After what seemed an eternity, he ushered me through a doorway into a dark room and disappeared. I had no idea where I was until I heard Maria’s voice, muttering a prayer in the next room. Filled with relief, I entered and collapsed into a chair.

I wanted nothing more than to go to bed; a grandmother should not be subjected to such tiring events. But there was still more to
come, for Maria told me that the general had sent a man to take me to the abbot’s rooms. She had put him off as long as she could, but she thought that in another five minutes, he would break into the room. So, sighing with exasperation, I helped her drag off my outer dress and lace me into another one, identically black but less crumpled. She dressed my hair and wrapped my thickest woolen shawl around my shoulders. Then, satisfied that I once again looked like a dignified matron, she opened the door and I swept out, glared at the soldier, and demanded that he lead the way.

As I entered the room, Pulgón rose with insulting slowness and made a sweeping bow, displaying all of his teeth in what was most emphatically not a friendly smile. The years had not improved him: He still looked like a coyote.

“Ah, Doña Ana,” he said. “What a pleasure it is to meet you again, after such a very long time. How long is it, señora? Fifteen years?”

He knew how long it was as well as I did: Fourteen years ago, when he had been a col o nel in a ragtag Conservative army fighting in one of our many revolutions, he had caused my most productive village to be burned to the ground. His claim that we harbored enemies of the state was a transparent lie: He burned down my village because I had refused to give him my hand in marriage. To my great relief, God came to my aid by providing a bloody battle to the south, which sent Pulgón galloping toward Michoacán to see what extortion and misery he could create there. His rise to a position of power in Juárez’s liberal government must have been the result of deep corruption, lamentably nothing new in the history of our poor country.

“General Pulgón,” I said, and pressed my lips together. He was, in truth, no better than a chief of police, but he controlled Mexico City and hence the heart of our country. A cockroach, but a very powerful one.

Father Bernardo offered me a seat far from the window. This room, like all the rooms in the monastery except for the infirmary and the kitchen, had no fireplace. The life of a monk, after all, is dedicated to God and not to the flesh. I drew my shawl more closely around myself as I sat, wishing that the good Father was just a little more worldly and a little less strict.

Pulgón didn’t seem to mind the cold. He strode up and down the room, his hands tucked behind his back, shooting stern glances at me. I waited in silence. Finally he stopped and rocked back and forth, hands still behind his back.

“You know, señora, the peril our country faces from foreign enemies. Even your esteemed son-in-law is alive to the menace of foreign spies and agents of chaos intent upon the overthrow of our revolutionary government and the return of the despicable French, and their English companions.”

This was nonsense, but of course I said nothing. The English and the French trusted each other in the way coyotes trust each other when they desire the same patch of desert. If Pulgón and his Conservative cohorts wanted to use the French to demonize the English, it was only what I would expect of them.

“You would be fond of the French, I believe, since you and their revolutionaries share the same beliefs about the peasantry. Equality and fraternity, indeed. This is dangerous nonsense, señora, as you well know.” He paused and resumed pacing, then rounded on me. “Your actions in the north are known to us, Doña Ana. We
were unable to touch you during the shameful monarchy of that known liberal Maximilian, but those days are past. You would do well to think of your future, and that of your family.”

I seethed inwardly but kept my tone calm as I said, “With respect, General, the days of true and honest liberals are still very much with us.”

Someone rapped at the door. The young lieutenant, the one who had stopped us in the city, entered and saluted. Then he glanced at me and grinned. “Ah, Doña Montalvo.” He bowed so low that the insult was obvious. “How is your poor sick niece Candelaria? We know she is still with you, for your carriage did not stop at any great house along the way. And we know, of course, that you only stop at great houses. Or monasteries.”

I said nothing. The lieutenant chuckled and turned away from me. “We have found him,
mi general
. He was masquerading as a monk in the infirmary. Shall we shoot him?”

Pulgón grinned like a shark. “Eventually, but not immediately, I think. I believe this lady must have had a hand in bringing him here, yes? Disguised, perhaps, as her plague-infected niece?”

I raised my chin. “You make dangerous allegations, General. Benito Juárez is an old family friend. It would not go well with you if we were impeded. Or harmed.”

He gestured this aside, impatient. “Enough. Families more important than yours have proved to be traitors.” He turned toward his aide. “You have rounded up her servants? Very well. You may tell me, señora, precisely what his plans are, and yours. Or I will have your people shot. One by one.”

The abbot’s back stiffened. “My son, take care not to perform violence, or even to offer such, in the Lord’s house. God listens.”

“Then perhaps He will learn something,” Pulgón retorted. “Well, señora? Which is it to be?”

“How can I tell you that which does not exist?” I said. “There is no spy, as you well know. There is no vast English conspiracy, as you well know. I doubt that you act on behalf of any legitimate government. I will tell you nothing, Pulgón. If you intend to shoot my people, you can start with me.” I gave him the same look that caused my grandchildren to quail; not that I expected him to flinch, but how else was I to respond to this dangerous, stupid nonsense? The lieutenant came forward as if to lay hands on me. Father Bernardo’s chair scraped back against the stone floor. I stood, gathering my shawl around my shoulders.

“Tomás Pulgón, you are a snake and your mother would weep tears of blood to see what you have become. Thank the blessed Virgin that she is safely in Her keeping.” Father Bernardo crossed himself, but Pulgón sneered. The lieutenant reached for my arm. I shook him away, leaving my mantilla in his grasp. He dropped it. The abbot picked it up as I walked, my back straight, out of the room. All in all, I thought as Pulgón’s men surrounded me, I was fairly pleased with myself. I had called him a coyote, a cockroach, a shark, and a snake, even if just in my own mind. Surely the Virgin would not allow me to come to harm at the hands of such a menagerie of pests.

They put us into a disused wine cellar. The English boy lay against one of the dank walls, his eyes barely open. His fever had broken, but the cold and damp would surely kill him if we could not flee this room.