Tears of the Jaguar (49 page)

It’s what any good father would do,
Powel had said, when she asked him about the work and expense involved in his daughter’s skating. The phrase seemed loaded now, and Deborah wondered again, were all parents like this, ready to do anything, no matter how destructive, to protect their own?

You’ll never know,
the voice in her head said.

The thought came fully formed, born entire in the moment, and she recoiled from its certainty with defiance that beat back the thrill of despair. She stared at the girl lying in this endless sleep, and wondered why the idea bothered her so much. She wasn’t even sure she wanted children, was certain she didn’t want any now. So why should the thought that she never would feel so upsetting?

“You about done?” said the nurse, reentering the room.

“I think so,” said Deborah.

“You can stay longer if you like.”

“I don’t think so. I have...things to do.”

“Well, it’s nice to have someone other than her father here,” said the nurse, checking the chart at the foot of the bed and monitoring the levels in the IV drips. “I don’t think she really gets to hear any voices other than mine, ain’t that right, girl?”

Deborah, realizing the nurse was talking to the patient, shifted uncomfortably.

“You think she can hear you?” she said.

“Maybe,” said the nurse. “Guess we won’t know till she wakes up. Stay awhile and chat if you like. Read her a magazine or something. Or not.”

She grinned and stepped out.

We won’t know till she wakes up.

If
she wakes up.

Deborah sat down and put her head in her hands. She took a deep breath and then sat up.

“OK,” she said aloud. “You don’t know me, Angela, but I thought I’d stop by. I’m Deborah.” She hesitated, embarrassed, then pressed on. “I’m going to tell you a story about a dwarf magician and his witch mother...”

She talked for about twenty minutes, meandering, doubling back, trying to make sense of the tangled narrative, and each time she did so she apologized for her ineptitude as a storyteller. When she was done, she sat in silence for five more minutes, then she stood up and was about to take a step toward the door when she paused and, on impulse, moved back to the bed. With her right hand she brushed back the girl’s hair, then very gently touched the girl’s sparkling necklace with its single garnet-colored stone pendant.

The Malkin Tower gem. Like the others, it was the color of blood diluted with tears. Her lucky charm.

Deborah touched it with one finger, then reset the pillow and left the room, letting the door thud shut behind her as she walked through the hospital corridor.

Nick Reese was waiting for her outside.

“Is it there?” he said.

She nodded.

“Still?” he asked.

She nodded again, and they walked in silence. The air outside was hot and humid, touched with the scent of the traffic, but she didn’t mind it.

“You have any kids, Nick?” she asked suddenly.

“No, why?” he asked.

“I’m just...No reason,” she said. “Listen, can you give me a minute. I have to call my mother. You know. Family stuff.”

“Sure. I’ll wait over there. Listen,” he added, earnest. “Back in Kabah by the Witch’s House, when I...”

“Tried to kiss me?”

“Right,” he said, looking abashed. “That was the drug. You know that, right?”

“I thought the drug made people paranoid,” she said, arch. “Made them see terrible, terrifying things.”

“Maybe it does different things to different people,” he ventured.

“That’s what we’re going with?” she asked, smirking now.

“For the moment,” he said, smiling back.

“I’ve got to make this call.”

“Right,” he said, taking a step away. “Then maybe we can get that drink?”

She considered him seriously for a moment, then nodded.

“That would be nice,” she said.

He smiled, hesitated, then took a couple of steps backward, turning into his stride still smiling. She watched him go, then took out her phone, took a breath, and still not sure what she was going to say, began to dial. As the phone rang at the other end, Deborah remembered that moment in Uxmal in the darkness of the ruins when the jaguar had gazed across at her and, for a moment, time and distance had fallen away and it was like she was seeing herself. In some ways, they were all alone, all strange and out of place, through the centuries: Edward Clifford. Janet Device. Stroud, certainly. Eustachio with his secret. Maybe even Dimitri.

And you, of course, always prowling the ruins of other people’s lives, peering in and slipping away when they got too close, never quite belonging, always alien as the jaguar or the gemstones you found in the Ek Balam tomb.

She hesitated, unsure what to think of that, but then she heard her mother’s voice saying “Hello?” and the great cat slipped back into the ruins as she became herself again.

THE END

As readers who are familiar with my work know, I rely on historical fact in my novels; though the story itself is strictly fictional, it seems reasonable to try to sketch where reality ends and my own flight of fancy begins. My core characters are, of course, invented, though some figures from the novel’s back story are real enough. The Lancashire witches were as I have described them, as was Lady Anne Clifford, though she had no adopted son Edward, who is my own creation. I was born and raised only a few miles from Pendle Hill and though I was far enough from it to be out of its literal shadow, I grew up surrounded by tales of the witches. Much of what I’ve set down here is derived from Thomas Potts’s (in)famous contemporary account, augmented by more recent scholarly takes on his version of events, but I owe a huge debt of gratitude to local historian John Clayton, who has endured all my questions and whose answers have helped shape the story. The Eye of God on the
tower of Newchurch is real, as are the other details of the landscape, including the Malkin Tower cottages, from which visitors can visit Pendle and environs. I am grateful to the staff at Lancaster Castle for fielding questions.

George Withers and Henry Mildmay were real, as was the breaking up and selling off of the medieval and renaissance crown jewels. With the exception of the coronation spoon that Deborah notes, the present-day collection at the Tower, spectacular and storied though it is, dates from the 1660s and later. Though some pieces were recovered by the state during the Restoration, the ancient crown jewels of England remain lost.

Though the story evolved away from it, my first impulse was to make Thomas Gage a part of the novel. Gage was an Englishman who journeyed to Mexico as a Franciscan friar with Spanish missionaries in the 1620s and 1630s. In England in 1648 he published a problematic but informative book on his travels, immediately before my fictional Edward Clifford set out on a similar course. My primary consultant on Mayan archaeology has been the extraordinarily helpful and patient George Bey, one of Ek Balam’s foremost archaeologists. Without him, and his willingness to share his insight into Mayan culture and fieldwork, this book could not have been written. I’m also grateful to Sarah Werner and Pascale Aebischer; Kathy Reichs for details on bone analysis; Jim Born for firearm tips; Sarah Brew on skating; and to my colleagues at UNC Charlotte, particularly Jen Munroe on Lady Anne, to Carlos M. Coria-Sánchez and Michael Doyle for clarifying points of Mexican law and language, and to Deborah A. Strumsky, Scott Hippensteel, John Bender, and Lee Casperson for insight on crystals and their use in laser technology.

In all things, I take full responsibility for any errors made here. I will post images associated with all the places in the book on my website,
www.ajhartley.net
, where I can also be reached if you have comments.

Lastly, special thanks to my agent, Stacey Glick, and to my wife, always my first reader, and to those others who have given me feedback on the manuscript, particularly Edward Hurst, Ruth Morse, Bob Croghan, and Mark Pizzato, and to my editor Kate Chynoweth, whose insight and patience helped turn my sprawling drafts into an actual book.

As ever, thanks for reading, and best wishes.

A.J. Hartley

About the Author

Photograph © Bill DeLoach, 2005

A.J. Hartley is a native of Lancashire, England, and was born near the town where the witch trials featured in
Tears of the Jaguar
occurred four hundred years ago. He lived in Japan for several years and traveled extensively throughout southern and eastern Asia before moving to the United States for graduate school. After earning his PhD from Boston University, he taught college-level Shakespeare in Georgia and North Carolina. Today he works as a dramaturge, director, theater historian, and theorist in Renaissance drama at UNC-Charlotte, where he holds the Robinson Chair of Shakespeare Studies. He has written fiction for twenty years and is the author of
Macbeth, a Novel
with David Hewson,
Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact
,
Act of Will
,
Will Power
,
The Mask of Atreus
,
On the Fifth Day
, and
What Time Devours
.