Bride of Thunder (11 page)

Twenty minutes later Mercy had salved the girl's back where the skin was broken and they were back on the
camino real,
the girl, Mayel, perched on a scraggly burro that Don Raimundo had thrown into the bargain. He'd been so glad to get rid of an increasingly troublesome problem that he hadn't been much vexed with Mercy, though he'd warned Zane that the Indian girl would be trouble.

“She can be your maid,” Zane told Mercy somewhat dourly. “I hold you completely accountable for her.”

“But I don't speak Spanish, let alone Mayan!”

“You'll certainly have to learn.”

At least he seemed over his withdrawn mood of the day before. And he had bought Mayel, even if Mercy had knelt for that.

“Who's this Canek that Mayel is so proud of?”

“He was
batab
of Quisteil, a village where a fiesta turned into a riot back in 1761. His real name was Jacinto de los Santos Uc, but he changed it to Canek in memory of the last Itzá king, because prophecies foretold that one of the Itzás would drive all the whites into the sea from where they came. He rallied hundreds of Mayas, but the
ladinos
came down with a crushing force, took Quisteil, and when they caught up with Canek, they marched him and several hundred prisoners to Mérida.”

“Then?”

“In the main plaza he was quartered, his flesh torn with pincers, and the fragments burned to ashes to scatter to the winds. Two hundred of his men got two hundred lashes each and had an ear cut off, while eight more were strangled. But Canek's name was remembered. It was used to inspire the Mayas at the start of the War of the Castes.”

Mercy felt sick. She didn't think she could ever visit that plaza again. Zane shot her a quick glance.

“I'm sorry. But you'd better understand this country. You can see why Don Raimundo was uncomfortable at having a descendant of Canek's refusing to accept her lot.”

“But surely he had other descendants.”

“Doubtless. The difference is that this one
cares
.”

Maybe that was all the difference with anyone, anywhere.

They were amidst small, rolling hills now, taking a side road toward Uxmal. “It's slightly out of our way,” said Zane. “But if you read Stevens' account with Catherwood's wonderful engravings, you'll want to see it. The region is known for fevers, so we won't linger, even though the rainy season seems to be over.”

The trees and vegetation pushed densely toward the path, sometimes overgrowing it till Vicente had to hack away vines with his machete. In any case, they had to duck a lot, for the path was cleared for a walking man, not riders. Mercy was glad when they came out into an open field, then was gripped with awe and a sense of desolation as they gazed toward a towering pyramid, obscured with trees and brush and a complex of lower buildings facing it in a quadrangle, their terraces, foundations, and elaborately friezed facades smothered with vines and weeds that grew rank all over the great field.

Some distance away on an elevation gleamed a long white building like an island rising from a sea of green.

“That's the governor's mansion,” said Zane. “Stevens and his friends stayed there when they were exploring the ruins. They cleared out enough vines and brush to make pictures of the temples, but it doesn't take long for the jungle to take back anything man does.”

Mayel was pointing at the huge, rubble-strewn pyramid, speaking with the sort of delighted shudder children reserve for scary stories.

Zane made some teasing reply and said to Mercy, “She's saying that the witch whose egg-hatched son, The Dwarf, or Magician, raised this pyramid in one night lives in an underground cave near here and will give water to thirsty travelers in exchange for babies, which she feeds to a giant snake.”

“Does she really believe that?” Mercy demanded, studying the girl's face, which, now that she wasn't in pain, showed roguish dimples in both cheeks and chin. Her skin was like dark honey, with slim eyebrows winged up, and there was a delicately Oriental look about her.

“Why not? Aren't the old rain gods in the sixth heaven with San Miguel Arcángel, the lords of the wilds in the fifth, animal guardians with San Gabriel in the fourth, wind gods on the second level? And in the first heaven, just above earth, don't village and cornfield guardians keep watch? And the devil's well mixed with the old earthquake god.” He chucked at her expression. “Be honest. Which is more fanciful—the old faith, or the conquering one with which it's intertwined?”

Any religion that gave animals and wild places guardians appealed to Mercy. She had never liked the concept of salvation or damnation of individual souls to overwhelm the beauty and terror and power of the natural world, like the marvel of wings and the depths of the ocean. Souls, Elkanah used to say, would fare better if their owners worried less about them and more about their responsibilities and challenges in the living world.

She shrugged at Zane's question and stared at the top of the pyramid, its overgrown summit towering against the brilliant sky. “Didn't they practice human sacrifice?”

“Yes, though not on the scale of the Aztecs. Besides, everyone believed the victims went to the highest heaven along with warriors killed in battle and women who died in childbirth.”

“They put women in the best heaven?”

Zane nodded. “The Vikings did the same. They and the Mayas considered childbirth a struggle as valiant and important as any war of man.”

Mercy had delivered a few babies, though most people had felt it was scandalous for a young unmarried woman to attend a birth. It
was
a battle, though casually accepted as the destiny of a woman. Men seemed to prefer to forget that without the agony of women, their own lordly kind could not be perpetuated.

“Good for the Mayas—and for the Vikings, too!” Mercy said so vigorously that Zane laughed without any of that irony that so often embittered his mirth.

They turned their mounts and within a quarter of an hour were at the Hacienda Uxmal, gloomy and seldom visited by its owner, where they got down to stretch and watered the animals before starting back to the
camino real
.

“Tekax tonight,” Zane said encouragingly, as if he guessed how every muscle in her body protested as he helped her into the saddle. “And the next day we'll arrive at La Quinta!”

Mercy was ready. Whatever awaited her there, at least she could get off this animal.

Earlier, Zane had spoken to Mercy about an empty house in Tekax where they could spend the night. Entering its courtyard now, Vicente and Zane unloaded and unsaddled. With her thoughts on the fair they were to attend that night, Mercy watched as Vicente plunked one pack inside the empty house and then turned to Mayel with some direction or other. Promptly, the girl rummaged about among the remaining packs, then brought out the hammocks. Entering the house, Mercy helped her swing these from pegs in several different rooms, and she showed by gesture that she wished Mayel to sleep in her room.

Some Indian boys Vicente had hired to water the animals brought water for the house, and Mayel seemed as glad to wash off the dust of the journey as Mercy was. Mercy salved the girl's back again, though Mayel indicated she was all right now.

Despite having had a full bath in Mérida, two days of traveling had made her feel thoroughly grubby. There would surely be tubs at La Quinta, and Mercy pictured one, filled with warm water, with great longing. She thought she smelled of horses, and, truly, it would be strange if she didn't.

“We'll eat at the fair,” Zane called. “Are you ready?”

“Shall we take Mayel?”

“I suppose so,” he said ungraciously, “though I wouldn't be heartbroken if she ran away.” He added a few words and the girl's face seemed to bloom. From a hemp sack that apparently held all she possessed, she produced a frayed red ribbon and began to loop it where her hair was gathered at the back of her head.

Mercy raised a hand. “Wait!” she said. “
Un momento!
”

She searched in the pack of materials and trimmings, produced a length of yellow satin ribbon, and cut it with scissors from her reticulè. Shaping a huge double bow, she fastened it in Mayel's hair and let her peer into the small mirror Mercy kept with her brush and other necessities.

Mayel's eyes widened. She touched the bow with small, hesitant fingers, then glanced questioningly at Mercy.

“For you,” Mercy said, nodding. She'd learn all the Spanish and Mayan she could, but there was no reason why Mayel shouldn't know some English.

Like a burst of sunlight, Mayel smiled. As if making a momentous resolution, she bent over and would have kissed Mercy's hand, except that Mercy caught her in her arms and they embraced. How good and healing it was to give and get affection untinged by stormy tensions of male and female! Mayel was too old to be Mercy's daughter, but she was the right age to be a sister without the competitiveness of being close in age, and as they held each other, Mercy felt free for the first time in years to love another person without fear of betrayal.

Tekax nestled among wooded hills that became low mountains to the south. Its broad streets were full of whites, Indians, and mestizos on foot and mounted on mules or horses, many of the Indians carrying long straw basket-bags on their backs, full of goods to be sold or bartered.

Besides Indian huts embowered by vines and trees, there were many stone houses in Tekax, and those on the plaza were especially fine, one even having three stories and balconies overlooking the street. The church was magnificent, reached by a great flight of stone steps. People thronged in and out, pausing at a table by the door to buy candles that Zane said would be lit at the altar, blown out, and promptly resold.

Tables arranged against the buildings facing the plaza were laden with rings, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, various cloth, brightly framed mirrors, and all kinds of small trinkets. The plaza was full of stands protected by roofs of leaves and small tree limbs where vendors of seeds, breads, and other food sold their items to a constant press of hungry people.

“Tekax lost three-quarters of its population during the war,” said Zane, steering Mercy and Mayel through crowds of white-clad Indians and conventionally dressed whites. “But it seems to be recovering, though it's too close to the frontier for much comfort.”

“Everyone looks so happy!”

“They are. It's fiesta time. Who can mourn always for what happened ten years ago? But in this very plaza …” He broke off. “I'll tell you later. For now let's find something to eat.”

It may have been cowardly, but Mercy was glad for his decision, just as she was glad she'd seen the plaza in Mérida without knowing what had happened there to Mayel's forebear.

Zane made a path for them from vendor to vendor. After each purchase, he, Mayel, and Mercy retreated toward the church steps to eat their plunder, first delicious tamales wrapped in cornhusks, which served as holders and could be peeled back as the corn-mush-wrapped meat was eaten, then venison roasted with herbs and wrapped in tortillas, and finally Mercy's favorite crisp, thin, sweet bread, this made with a tempting crusty glaze.

As they were selecting this
pan dulce,
Mercy noticed Mayel glancing wistfully at some poisonous-looking candy. To Mercy's surprised pleasure, Zane's gruff words to the girl must have told her to pick something, for she pointed to some
panuchos
and he paid for them with a few cacao seeds, explaining to Mercy that the smallest coin in Yucatán was a
medio,
worth six and one-quarter cents, and cacao seeds had long been used as money, usually five seeds being equal to one-twentieth of a
medio,
though the value fluctuated.

“As you say,” he told Mercy with a reluctant twinkle, “Mayel's not so much older than Jolie. And what longing eyes! Insurrectionists should be made of sterner stuff.”

Mercy felt like saying that he himself wasn't as stern as he pretended to be, but she treasured that hint of kindness too much to challenge him. She loaned Mayel a handkerchief to clean her fingers and they moved with the crowd around the plaza, passing, on the far side, a huge circular scaffolding of poles and vines lashed together in tiers and shaded by palm thatch.

“That's for the bullfights,” Zane said. “Looks like it'd crash down, but it'll hold the crowds through the fiesta, and then the whole thing will be torn down and used for fuel.”

“Bullfights!” exclaimed Mercy. “How horrid!”

“Part of every fiesta.” Zane shrugged. “And the bulls are killed only by accident, though they get bloodied up considerably.”

“It's a beastly amusement!”

“In both senses of the word, though I don't hold with people condemning what they can have little knowledge of.”

They went down a lane to where horses and mules were on sale, but after a careful look around Zane found no animal he wanted.

“Only trotters,” he said in disgust. “I thought I might find a pacer for you, but it seems you'll have to make do with what we can find at La Quinta.”

When this journey was over, Mercy thought it would be a while before she stopped wincing at the sight of a saddle, but she thanked Zane and was not surprised or even much put off by his growling response.

“I like to ride with Jolie, but sometimes I'm too busy. Then it'll be your duty. Anyhow, I want you to have enough occupations for contentment. I warn you now that I will not tolerate a complaining female!” As they reached the plaza, he slipped her a handful of
medios
.

“Most of the things are for Indians, but you might see something you'd like for curiosity's sake or a trinket for your girl.” His keen eyes touched the yellow ribbon. “I see you've already started to spoil her.”

“At least it won't give her a stomachache, as that awful-looking candy may!” returned Mercy. “And—and it's undignified for you to dole out money as if I were a child. I know you don't have to give me anything—I'm sure you mean it kindly—but I'd much prefer a small sum granted monthly, as if it were part of a salary.”