Zorro (29 page)

Several of our members have been arrested, so they have a great deal of information. The circle is closing around us. We will have to dissolve the society temporarily.“

“And Don Manuel Escalante?”

“I hope for the good of all that he can find a way to end his days before he is subjected to torture,” sighed Julius Caesar. “They are holding the maestro in a local barracks. It isn’t La Ciudadela, we must try to rescue him,” Diego contended. “Rescue him? Impossible!”

“Difficult, but not impossible. I will need the help of La Justicia.

We will do it this very night,“ Diego replied, and explained his plan. ”It seems madness to me, but it is worth the attempt. We will help you,“ his companion decided. ”It will be necessary to get the maestro out of the city immediately.“

“Of course. We can have a boat with a trustworthy oarsman waiting in the port. I think we can slip through the guards. The boatman will row the maestro to the ship that is sailing at dawn for Naples. There he will be safe.” Diego sighed, thinking once again how badly he needed Bernardo. This was more serious than slipping into Le Chevalier’s mansion. It was no joke to attack a barracks, overcome the guards he had no idea how many there were free the prisoner, and get him to a boat unharmed before the law sank its claws into them. Diego rode to Eulalia de Callis’s mansion, whose layout he had carefully studied every time he visited. He left his horse in the street and crept unseen through the gardens to the service patio, where chickens and small animals were wandering among blocks for slaughtering hogs, laundry troughs, large vats for boiling sheets, and clotheslines hung with wash. In the rear were the carriage house and stables. Cooks, footmen, and servant girls were everywhere, all busy at their chores. No one even glanced at him. He went into the shed, concealed by the coaches, chose one that suited him, and waited, crossing his fingers that no stable hand would discover him. He knew that at five the bells rang to call the servants to the kitchen; Eulalia de Callis herself had told him that. It was the hour when the matriarch offered a treat to her army of retainers: cups of foaming chocolate and bread to dunk in them. Half an hour later, Diego heard the bells ring, and in a trice the patio was emptied of people. The breeze carried the delicate aroma of chocolate, and he felt his mouth fill with saliva. Ever since the family had left for the country, he had eaten very poorly in the de Romeu house. Diego, aware that he had only ten or fifteen minutes, quickly pried the coat of arms off the door of a carriage and took a pair of jackets from their hangers: footmen’s elegant livery of sky-blue velvet with crimson collar and lining, gilded buttons and epaulets. He left behind the lace-collared shirts, white trousers, patent leather shoes with silver buckles, and red brocade sashes that completed the uniforms. As Tomas de Romeu had said, not even Napoleon Bonaparte was outfitted as elegantly as Eulalia’s servants. Once Diego was sure that the patio was empty, he left with his bundle, darting among the bushes, and found his horse. Soon he was trotting toward home. Among the things in storage there he found a battered old carriage too old and fragile to take to the country. Compared with any of those in Dona Eulalia’s shed, it was ruinous, but Diego was praying that with the darkness no one would notice what bad shape it was in. He would have to wait until sunset and calculate his time with care; the success of his mission depended on it. After nailing the shield onto the carriage, he went down to the wine cellar, which the majordomo kept tightly locked a minor hindrance for Diego, who had learned to pick any kind of lock. He opened the door, chose a cask of wine, and rolled it away in plain view of the servants, who asked no questions, believing that Don Tomas had given Diego the key before he left. For more than four years Diego had safeguarded the treasure of the sleeping potion his grandmother, White Owl, had given him as a farewell gift after making him promise that he would use it only to save lives. And that was exactly what he intended to do with it. Many years before, Padre Mendoza had amputated a leg using that potion, and he himself had stunned a bear. He did not know how powerful the drug might be when diluted in that amount of wine; it might not have the effect he hoped, but he had to try. He poured the contents of the flask into the cask and sloshed it around to mix it. Shortly afterward, two accomplices from La Justicia arrived; they put on the white wigs of footmen and the livery from the house of Callis. Diego himself was dressed like a prince in his best coffee-colored velvet jacket with fur collar and gold and silver passementerie lace; his formal starched tie was held with a pearl stickpin, and butter yellow trousers, foppish shoes with gilded buckles, and top hat completed the ensemble. In this attire he was driven by his comrades to the barracks. It was the dark of night when he knocked at a door badly lighted by lanterns. In the ringing voice of someone accustomed to giving orders, Diego ordered the two guards to call their superior officer. He turned out to be a young second lieutenant with a strong Andalusian accent, who was flabbergasted by Diego’s stunning elegance and the coat of arms on the carriage. “Her Excellency, Dona Eulalia de Callis, is sending a barrel of the best wine from her cellar, so that you and your men may toast her tonight,” Diego announced with a superior air. “It is her birthday.”

“It seems a little strange,” the amazed man managed to stammer out. “Strange? You must be new to Barcelona!” Diego interrupted. “Her Excellency has always sent wine to the troops on her birthday, and she has even greater reason now that our country has been liberated from the atheist despot!” Still bewildered, the lieutenant ordered his subalterns to retrieve the cask from the carriage, and even invited Diego to toast with them, but he excused himself, alleging that he had to deliver similar gifts to La Ciudadela. “Soon Her Excellency will be sending you her favorite stew: pigs’ feet and turnips. How many mouths to feed here?” Diego asked. “Nineteen.”

“Fine. Good evening.”

“Your name, senor, please ”

“I am Don Rafael Moncada, nephew of Her Excellency Dona Eulalia de Califs,” Diego replied, and rapping on the carriage door with his cane, he ordered the false coachman to drive on. At three in the morning, when the city was asleep and the streets were empty, Diego prepared to carry out the second phase of his plan. He was banking on the fact that at that hour the men in the barracks would have drunk their wine, and if not asleep they would at least be stunned. That was his one advantage. He had changed his clothes and dressed as Zorro. He carried his whip, a pistol, and his sharp sword. To avoid attracting attention with the sound of horse’s hooves, he went on foot. Hugging the walls, he made his way through the alleyways to the barracks, where he verified that the same guards, yawning with fatigue, were still standing beneath the lanterns. Apparently they had not had their share of the wine. Julius Caesar and two other members of La Justicia were waiting in the shadows of an entryway, disguised as sailors, as they had agreed. Diego gave them their instructions, which included the categorical order not to intervene and come to his aid, whatever happened. Each man should look out for himself. They wished one another luck in the name of God, and separated. The “sailors” staged a drunken brawl near the barracks while Diego, hidden in the darkness, awaited his chance. The ruckus attracted the attention of the guards, who briefly abandoned their posts to check out the source. They found the spurious drunks and warned them to move on or they would be arrested, but the offenders continued swinging blindly at each other, as if they hadn’t heard. Their staggering and the nonsense they were shouting was so comic that the guards burst out laughing, but when they tried to disperse the supposedly drunk men, they miraculously regained their equilibrium and redirected their blows. Caught by surprise, the soldiers did not have a chance to defend themselves. The “sailors” overcame them in an instant, then took them by the ankles and dragged them unceremoniously down a nearby alley to a dwarf-sized door set back from the street, beneath an arch. Diego’s comrades from La Justicia knocked three times; a peephole opened, they gave the password, and a sixtyish woman dressed in black opened the door. They stooped down to go in, to avoid banging their heads against the low door frame, and pulled their inert prisoners into a coal bin. There they left them with their hands bound and hoods pulled over their heads after taking their clothes. The former sailors were quickly transformed into guards and hurried back to the barracks to take up posts beneath the lanterns. In the few minutes it had taken to replace the guards, Diego had gained entrance to the barracks, sword and pistol in hand. Inside, the building seemed deserted; the quiet of the graveyard reigned, and there was very little light because the oil in half the lanterns had burned out. Invisible as a ghost only the gleam of his blade betrayed his presence Zorro crossed through the entry hall. Cautiously, he pushed open a door and peered into the hall used as an armory; it was here the contents of the barrel had been dealt out, because he found a half dozen men snoring on the floor, including the lieutenant. Diego satisfied himself that none of them was awake, and then checked the cask. They had emptied it to the last drop. “To your health, senores!” he exclaimed with satisfaction, and on a playful impulse traced the letter Z on the wall with three strokes of his sword. Bernardo’s warning that Zorro would ultimately take over came to his mind, but it was too late. Quickly, he gathered up firearms and swords, piled them into the chests in the entry hall, then continued his exploration of the building, extinguishing lights and candles as he went. Shadows had always been his best allies. He found three more men felled by White Owl’s potion and calculated that unless the lieutenant had lied, there were eight left. He hoped to find the prisoners’ cells without running into guards, but he heard voices nearby and realized he had to hide. He found himself in a large, nearly empty room. There was nothing to crouch behind, and there was no time to douse the two lanterns on the opposite wall, fifteen paces away. The only things that might be of use were the heavy ceiling beams, but they were too high to jump up to. He sheathed his sword, put his pistol in his waistband, unrolled his whip, and with a flick wrapped the tip around one of the beams, tugged to tighten it, and pulled himself up, as he had done so often in the ship’s rigging and in the Gypsies’ circus. Once there, he coiled his whip and flattened himself along the beam, at ease, knowing that the light of the torches did not reach him. At that moment two men sauntered in, jabbering; judging by their behavior, they had not drunk their ration of wine. Zorro decided to stop them before they reached the armory where their companions lay sprawled in a deep sleep. He waited until they were beneath the beam, then swooped down on them like an enormous black bird, cape flapping and whip in hand. Paralyzed, the men were slow to draw their swords, giving him time to buckle their knees with two swift blows of the whip. “Good evening to you, senores!” he said, making a mocking bow to his victims, now on their knees. “I beg you, please place your swords on the ground… oh so carefully.” He snapped his whip as a warning and drew his pistol from his sash. The men did exactly as he said, and he kicked their swords into a corner. “Perhaps you will assist me, Your Mercies. I assume that you do not wish to die, and for me it would be an annoyance to have to kill you.

Tell me, where is the best place to incarcerate you so that you will not cause problems?“ he asked sarcastically. The soldiers gaped at him in a daze; they had no idea what he meant. They were ignorant conscripts, a pair of peasants who in their brief lives had witnessed horrors, survived the killing of war, and nearly starved. They were not up to riddles. Zorro simplified his question, accentuating his words with snaps of his whip. One of them, too frightened to speak, pointed to the door they had come through. He suggested that they say their prayers, because if they were deceiving him they would die. The door opened onto a long bare corridor that they marched down in single file, the captives ahead and Zorro behind. At the end, the passageway split. To the right was a battered door; the one to the left was in better condition and bore a lock that opened from the other side. He motioned to his prisoners to open the one to the right. That revealed a nauseating latrine composed of four holes in an excrement-covered floor, a few pails of water, and a lantern swarming with flies. There was no way out other than a small opening with iron bars. ”Perfect! I regret that the fragrance is not that of gardenias.

Perhaps in the future you will swab this down more carefully, caballeros,“ he commented, and with his pistol indicated that the terrified men should go in. He bolted the toilet and walked to the other door. The lock on the door to the left was very simple; he was able to open it in seconds with the steel pin he always hid in the seam of a boot to perform his magic tricks. He opened the door with caution and stole down a stairway, reasoning that it led underground, the most likely place for the cells. At the end of the stairway he pressed himself against the wall and glanced around the corner, A single torch lighted a small airless room guarded by one man; he, too, seemed not to have tasted the wine laced with the potion, as he was sitting cross-legged on the ground, laying out a game of solitaire. His gun was within reach of his hand, but he did not have time to pick it up before Zorro leaped toward him and with one kick to the chin tumbled him backward, then with a second kick sent his weapon flying. The stench in the place was so foul that Diego was nearly driven back, but this was no moment for queasiness. He took the torch from the wall and started looking into the cramped, damp, vermin-ridden, pestilent cells where the prisoners were jammed together in darkness; skeletons with the eyes of madmen. There were three or four to a cell so small that they had to take turns standing and sitting. The fetid air pulsed with the panting breath of those miserable wretches. Zorro called for Manuel Escalante, and a voice answered from one of the cells. He raised the torch and saw a man clinging to the bars, so badly beaten that his face was a shapeless purple mass in which no features were distinguishable. ”If you are the executioner, you are welcome,“ said the prisoner, and Zorro recognized his maestro from his dignified bearing and firm voice. ”I have come to free you, maestro. I am the fox. Zorro.“