Bride of the Baja (34 page)

"It may rain for days; it does here in
tierra caliente
. But this isn't the time to discuss the weather. Come here, Alitha, lie next to me. We have plans to make. Where we'll go from Acapulco, where we'll live once we're back in the States. We have a lot to decide."

She shook her head. "No, Jordan," she told him, "we'll make no plans."

He stared at her. "Last night . . ." he said before she interrupted.

"As long as it rains," she told him, "as long as the storm continues, we'll lie together. But once the rain stops we'll ride to Acapulco and everything between us will be the same as it was before last night."

"Alitha, I think you've ridden too long in the moonlight. You've become slightly mad. Nothing can ever be the same as it was before."

"It can and it will."

"I understand what you say but I don't believe you." He drew her close. "I don't want to believe you."

"Wait." She raised the blanket and pulled it over them both, and then he took her into his arms and their bodies met and joined.

Much later Alitha wakened to find Jordan lying beside her, staring down at her.

"I was thinking I've never seen hair so golden or skin so fair or eyes so blue," he said.

She smiled and sat up, the blanket falling away from her breasts as she stretched lazily. His fingers trailed up her legs to her thighs.

"It's still raining," he told her and, when she looked to the window, she saw that he was right. When he knelt above her, she gasped
. When he entered her, she moaned, and when at last he lay sated in her arms, she sighed with pleasure.

The storm lasted for two more days . . .

They rode from the hacienda in the muted light of early morning, through a land refreshed by the rain. The sky above them was a pale blue, the breeze cool and pleasant, the grass and trees a bright green. Jordan looked at Alitha and wondered if she would pass a close scrutiny. Wondered if he would. They both wore the robes and cowls of Franciscans, fashioned from the hacienda's drapes. Crosses hung from their necks. Alitha's face was smeared with mud.

They had traveled only a few leagues when four horsemen galloped from a ravine beside the trail to ride on both sides of them. The leader, black-garbed, with black mustaches curling luxuriantly, stared at them without speaking.

"One who travels in times such as these," he said finally, "must have a great need to reach his destination."

"True, my son," Jordan said in Spanish. "We ride to the village of Acapulco to take passage to the north. We travel to the mission of our brothers at Loreto to bring instruction to the Indians in the doctrines of Christianity."

"A worthy endeavor, surely, father." The rider slowed until he rode beside one of the pack horses. As he reached into one of the packs, Jordan said, "Wait—" but the man thrust his hand inside.

He withdrew it with a yowl of pain.

"I tried to warn you, my son," Jordan said. "We carry specimens to a horticulturalist at Loreto for his cactus garden. We also bring seed and tools for the Indians."

As the rider shook his stinging hand, he stared at Alitha. "Your companion is young for the priesthood," he said.

"Some men see fit to dedicate their lives to God after sampling the pleasures of the flesh, others before. God accepts them all if their hearts are pure."

"Your companion is also very silent. And in need of a bath, perhaps?"

"Padre Juan performs a penance. He will neither speak nor bathe until he reaches our destination in Baja."

"A penance is to expiate sins."

"True," Jordan said. "Padre Juan has the curse, as you no doubt have noted, of great natural beauty. Some women found him attractive and he was tempted. He did not succumb, but a sin of intention can be as great as a sin of commission."

"I would think the young father might have tempted some of the men as well as the women."

"We do not find your jest amusing," Jordan said.

The mustachioed rider slapped the flank of Jordan's horse with his quirt, laughing. "May God go with you both," he said.

"
Vaya con Dios
, my son," Jordan said.

When he looked behind him five minutes later, the four riders were nowhere to be seen.

The lush growth of the jungle had all but completely reclaimed the mule trail leading over the mountains to Acapulco.

"It's the revolution," Jordan told her. "Commerce has been at a standstill since the fighting began in 1810. There have been no ships sailing from Acapulco to Spain and few to the ports of the Pacific."

Alitha nodded, paying little attention to his words as she stared about her at the exotic jungle growth, the flaming flowered shrubs, the arching broad-leafed trees, the delicate beauty of the orchids. Birds flaunting their outrageously colorful plumage flitted from tree to tree over their heads; she heard a raucous squawk and looked up to meet the beady eye of a green and gold parrot.

Soon after they left the jungle they came out on a height overlooking the fishing village of Acapulco "This must be the most beautiful bay in the world," she said. "Look—the white sand, the palms, the thatched huts, the ships in the harbor, the blue, blue sea."

Jordan, however, was frowning. "Only a hermaphrodite brig and a schooner," he said. "I was hoping to find more ships here than that."

As they rode down the mule trail toward the village, Alitha stopped beside a huddled form of a woman at the side of the trail. Jordan didn't notice, his attention on the bay, he rode on.

Dismounting Alitha knelt beside the woman who was shivering despite the warmth of the day. "Are you sick?” she asked in Spanish.

Slowly the woman raised her head to look at Alitha
and nodded. "They threw me out," she said in a low hoarse voice.

"Because you were sick?
Alitha asked

Instead of answering the woman vomited. Some of the spray hit Alitha's face before the woman turned her face away.

Jordan rode up and dismounted as Alitha used her shirt tail to wipe away the vomit from her face. "What the hell's going on here?" he demanded, yanking Alitha to her feet.

When he questioned the woman, he discovered her husband had come off a ship that had since left the bay. He'd been sick and then died.

"Get back on your horse," he ordered Alitha.

"But she needs—"

"Do what I asked. This could be cholera."

Alitha, remembering how it had been when cholera had hit the
Flying Yankee
, looked closely at the vomiting woman, now smelling the stink of feces. If it was cholera. which was likely, she could do no more to halt the dread disease than she'd been able to do then.

As they rode down the mule trail into the village, Jordan glanced from side to side at the walled San Diego Fort, at the outrigger dugout canoes drawn up on the sandy shore and at the Indians who mended their nets nearby.

Studying him, in an effort to put the sick woman from her mind, she noticed his knitted brown. Do you suspect the place is full of cholera?" she asked,

Jordan glanced at her. "Not likely.
But Esteban could well have followed us."

"I don't think he could have recognized you. And if he doesn't know who has the—"

"Don't say the word," Jordan cautioned her, "not even in English. Esteban may have been able to pick up my trail in Mexico City if he had the nerve to return there. I'm certain there were those who suspected I was an American. Carrying what we do in our packs, even a more trusting man than myself would see dangers where none exist."

Jordan led her into the courtyard of a one-story inn and dismounted. When an Indian boy ran to take the reins from him, Jordan spoke to him in Spanish. At first the boy looked surprised, then nodded.

"I told him I'd look after storing our supplies myself," he said to Alitha once the boy had led their two riding horses into the stable. Seeing a gap-toothed Indian watching them from where he sat with his back against the adobe wall of the inn, Jordan lowered his voice. "I'll carry the packs. I'm not about to let them out of my sight."

After eight trips the gold was all stacked on the floor of their room. When he was done, Jordan slid home the bolt on the door and sat on the bed to catch his breath.

"I'll visit those two ships in the harbor next," he told Alitha. "The sooner we're able to find passage out of Acapulco, the better."

There was a knock on the door. Jordan glanced at the packs before he slid the bolt aside and opened the door. The gap-toothed Indian stood in the corridor holding his stained sombrero in his hands. He smelled, Alitha noticed, of garlic. As the man spoke rapidly in Spanish, he looked down at his feet, avoiding Jordan's eyes.

"No," Jordan told him. The man asked a question. "No, no,
gracias
," Jordan said. Nodding, the Indian backed away and Jordan rebolted the door.

"He said his name was Enrico and if there's anything we need, anything at all, he's most humbly at our service. You heard what I told him."

Jordan walked to the window, pushed it open and leaned on the sill to look through the black metal grating toward the harbor. Over his shoulder Alitha saw a golden sun settling toward the sea.

"I'm going out to the two ships while it's still light," Jordan said. "Keep the door bolted. Don't open it no matter who comes, no matter what they may say. When I return I'll knock twice, then once again."

"I understand," she told him.

Jordan took her in his arms but when he leaned forward to kiss her, she turned her head from him. Frowning, he kissed her cheek.

"I'll bring you back food the likes of which you've never seen before," he said, trying to manage a light tone. He released her and walked to the door. "I'll bring coconuts, melons, papayas and bananas," he said. "You'll think you're the queen of some far Pacific isle."

"Godspeed," she told him.

She slid the bolt home behind him and sat on the bed staring at the packs of gold in the corner. Gold. Already Esteban and Jordan had been enslaved by this gold, she thought, and now the yellow metal had made her its prisoner as well.

And on the hillside a woman waited to die of cholera.

Alitha hurried to wash her face. Her stomach growled in hunger, making her remember that she'd brought along a few bits of leftover chicken from the hacienda.

When she retrieved the fragments she tasted a bite first. It tasted okay, so she finished it all
.

Jordan walked quickly along the street fronting the bay. Once out of sight of the inn, he turned from the beach. Ten minutes later he stopped in front of a grilled gateway between adobe walls, rang the bell and waited.

Presently a black-robed sister appeared, nodded to Jordan and opened the gate. She led him through a garden of flowering vines and along dim corridors to the top of a stairs, where she tapped on a rough-hewn wooden door. When a woman's voice bade them enter, the sister opened the door, smiled at Jordan and slipped silently away.

Mother Superior Angelica was alone in the sparsely furnished room. She nodded to a chair. "You seek your friend," she said, looking at Jordan across her bare oak desk.

"I do, Mother Superior. For months, while I've been in Mexico City, I've feared the worst. As you are aware, he once saved my life."

"I have good news for you. Your comrade, Senor Thomas Heath, recovered from the yellow fever. His strength returned, and he left the convent hospital more than a week ago. I must say he is a most determined young man."

"That is good news. When I rode into Acapulco earlier today, I kept a weather eye out for him. I didn't see him in the village then and I haven't seen him since. Do you know where he lives?"

"When he left here, he told us he intended to travel to Mexico City, and I presume he did so. I have heard no more of him since he left here. In the convent, as you know, we receive little news from the outside world."

"Thank you for all you did for Senor Heath. When I carried him here, I thought he was dying. Your sisters have performed a miracle in saving his life."

She smiled. "I must correct you. Only God can perform miracles, Senor Quinn."

Jordan stood up, reached into his pocket and crossed the room to place a pouch on the mother superior's desk. "This is a small offering to help with the work of the hospital," he told her.

"May God bless you. A thousand thanks, Senor Quinn."

"You shouldn't thank me." Jordan smiled. "You should thank God."

After leaving the convent Jordan went directly to the harbor, where he hired a boat to row him to the schooner. The ship, the captain told him, would sail north the next day, intending to trade at the ports along the Mexican coast. Jordan frowned as he listened. The schooner would be of no help—he had to get as far from Acapulco as he could. The brig, though, held out more hope. "She's bound for South America and will visit New York before she sails for London," Jordan told Alitha when he returned to the inn. "We can probably book passage aboard her to the States, though I have to talk to the captain first. He was ashore visiting at a hacienda some miles from here. They expect him back on board to the captain first. He was ashore visiting at a hacienda some miles from here; they expect him back on board tomorrow."