Bride of Thunder (18 page)

They walked now along a path worn through weeds and thick growth that was higher than Zane's head. He said it was an old cornfield. No breeze could reach them, and the afternoon sun blazed down almost like summer. Mercy was glad to come out of the dense, airless field into a vast clearing.

Rows of blue-green agave with broad-bladed leaves tapering to dagger points grew as far as Mercy could see. Machetes flashed as barefooted men with rolled-up white trousers and shirts worked up and down the field, cutting off leaves, trimming the edges, and piling them into bundles that were carried to the ends of rows to be hauled off by mules that pulled carts along a movable track.

“This is henequén,” Zane told her. “Each plant has forty-two leaves, and each plant is worked every four months, at which time the twelve largest leaves are cut. A worker must count to be sure he cuts that dozen. Henequén requires year-round attention. Besides collecting leaves, weeds have to be kept out, and there's still the work to be done at the drying yards and factory.”

“Is it a profitable crop?”

“Perhaps the best for Yucatán's stony soil. I think it'll eventually be the most important product of the region, but many owners won't try it because it's seven years before the plants can be harvested. That ties up capital for a long time with no return, whereas sugarcane's second year's harvest generally pays all the costs of getting started, and after that it may return annual profits of up to seven hundred percent.”

Mercy stared. “Then why doesn't everyone plant sugarcane?”

“Because, sweet Mercy, comparatively little soil is good enough to nourish it.” Zane touched a henequén leaf with his boot toe. “
This
can grow almost anywhere, and as trade expands, so will the need for rope and twine.”

A wave of premonition swept over Mercy. She thought of what she had heard about some Southern plantations, and she remembered Mayel being whipped.

“You pay your workers,” she said. “But if debt-slavery's so common here, won't it increase, and won't the debt-slaves be driven mercilessly, to increase the owner's profit?”

“Once initial costs are recovered, it's easily possible to pay a decent wage,” said Zane.

“Possible, but will men who live in Mérida all year care what goes on as long as they have sufficient money to indulge their cultured whims?”

Zane's mouth thinned angrily. “Do you expect me to change human nature? In time, debt servitude will be forbidden, but I find it strange to hear someone from the South so troubled about slaves.”

That stung, flicking the raw, proud flesh of Mercy's mingled guilt and defensiveness about her homeland, which she loved, while knowing it had planted the wind of bondage and reaped the whirlwind of defeat and ruin. She turned away, staring blindly.

“I beg your pardon, Mercy.” The touch on her hair was so light that she wasn't sure she hadn't imagined it, except that a sort of healing warmth spread through her. “Any person has plenty to account for without being held responsible for the sins of his group or race.”

“As long as people are enslaved or killed or despised because of race or group, the other thing follows,” Mercy said. “But I won't wear sackcloth and flagellate myself for Simon Legree.”

Zane laughed. This time, unmistakably, he did ruffle her hair. “You're expiating your crimes by being Jolie's teacher.”

Jarred into the realization that she was indeed a bondservant, totally dependent on this man's decisions, Mercy moved away from him. That he had so far refrained from physically subjugating her made the way she felt about him all the more dangerous. One could hate and scorn a ravisher. But how to resist a captor whose cage was so spacious and beautiful one never glimpsed the bars, who made her hunger for him till yielding would be even more a giving in to her own desires?

She must fight herself, as well as him. It was easy to think it didn't matter, that such indulgence would harm only herself, and Elkanah was no longer on this earth to care. But to be Zane's plaything, to choose an existence in the tower only to serve his sensual desires and her own—that would be the death of her as a whole person, living and working in the world.

Jolie needed a teacher for many reasons, the least of which was academic. May el should know someone cared about her. La Quinta was a small world where Mercy could work and learn. She wanted life, rather than the self-centered, confined enchantment of being a man's isolated mistress.

But if he loved me … if he loved me and let me stay at the house and be part of La Quinta
…

“What a long face!” teased Zane. “This is hard work, true enough, but nothing like plantations using debt laborers. The stint on those is from two to three thousand leaves a day, and workers are flogged for failing to cut that many, for improper trimming, for being late—for almost anything. That big Chinese coming up the row is Wei, one of the elected foremen. He doesn't beat men, but he checks to see that the trimming is done properly and that the right number of leaves are being cut.”

“If workers are treated so badly, you'd expect them to revolt, especially after the War of the Castes.”

“The plantation workers are mostly tamed by three generations of servitude. As I told you before, not many of them rebelled. It was the wild backwoods Indians or those who had just recently been forced to serve the
ladinos
who hoped to drive the whites out.”

Wei, who towered over the Mayas, came forward, removed his straw hat, and bowed to Zane and Mercy. Zane spoke to him genially, evidently explaining Mercy's presence, for the big man with the braid bowed again before he went back to his inspections.

“Wei is the son of my father's old cabin boy,” Zane said. “He has a pretty young Indian wife and two beautiful children. In a few generations, his bloodline should be indistinguishable. Whether whites care to admit it or not, there's a good deal of Indian blood in some of the best families, and everyone knows how generously white men have passed on their characteristics to their unacknowledged offspring.”

“You sound exactly like my father,” Mercy, said. “He used to make people furious by asking why, if white blood was superior, that a small proportion of black classified a person as a Negro.”

Zane looked genuinely shocked. “That's not exactly what I meant. And I'm surprised he'd talk about such things in front of you.”

“He talked of whatever was on his mind.” Mercy felt a stab of longing. “He thought that even a child could understand a lot. I can't remember his ever telling me that I was too young to ask something or that it was bad to wonder.”

“Then he must have spent an unconscionable amount of time answering questions!”

“He never seemed to mind.”

Zane had stiffened, gazing across the field. “Jolie!” he shouted.

A small figure some distance down the row stepped out from behind one of the big plants, and there was a telltale gleam of metal as she passed a machete to the boy beside her. Her sandaled feet scuffing reluctantly, she came toward her father, head down, lips pouting.

“I want to be able to do whatever Salvador does,” she said, attacking first. “You always say, Papa, that the owner of a plantation should know about and be able to do every kind of work needed to run it!”

“You don't yet own La Quinta, little slippery tongue, and you never will if you hack open an artery with a machete.”

“But …”

“You're not fair to Salvador,” Zane said sternly. “If you got hurt, he'd feel he was to blame, though Lord knows
I'd
never hold him to account for your foolishness. You're getting too old now to follow him around as you did when you were little.”

“You want him to just be another worker,” Jolie accused. “But you know he's different! He wants to be an
H-men
and learn how to produce good crops. That's why he's working even though he's so young!”

“He's eleven,” countered Zane. “Some boys of twelve support widowed mothers and younger children. But I admire his energy.” He called the boy, who came forward quickly.

No taller than Jolie, this child Zane had saved from crucifixion had warm, brown skin, shining black eyes and hair, and the happiest smile Mercy had ever seen, though he seemed worried about his friend and stood defensively in front of her.

Zane spoke pleasantly but firmly. Jolie opened her mouth to protest, but Salvador silenced her with a look and answered Zane quietly. Zane nodded as if content and asked a few questions. Salvador replied in a respectful but decided way, shaking his hair back from his eyes. His face lit up with delight at Zane's next words. Jolie gave a glad cry and hurled herself upon her father, giving him a rather sweaty, dusty hug.

He commanded her to change into clean clothes and stay away from the henequén harvesting, then ordered her off with a kiss. Salvador ducked and seized Zane's hand, and he would have kissed it, but Zane warded him off and, in a gruffly kind voice, told him to go back to his task.

“Amusing, isn't it?” Zane asked as they turned toward huge yards where yellow-white fiber was spread over long rails. “Jolie obeys Salvador and, indirectly, I obey her. So that makes a barefoot eleven-year-old Indian the real power at La Quinta.”

“Hardly that. But what did you say to make them so happy?”

“I said our
H-men,
Victoriano Zuc, has no sons and might be glad to have an apprentice. The ironic thing is that the boy's own mother could teach him more than anyone else. It must be from her that he inherits the tendency.”

“And perhaps the incense he breathed along with prayers when people thought he was dying. Does he know about that? Does he remember at all?”

“I don't know. He had nightmares when I first brought him here and curled up by Macedonio's wife like a whimpering, scared puppy. But Chepa gave him some potions and told him a lot of stories, and I think what he remembered became for him part of a dream or witch tale. He's never seen his mother since then, though, when she took refuge in the tower, she asked me to bring him by so she could look down at him.'

“He's such a handsome, sparkling child. She must wish she could have him with her.”

“They resemble each other. If she tried to pretend he was some orphan she'd found, some jealous or suspicious person might start raising doubts. Then this time neither she nor Salvador would likely get away.”

“Couldn't she take him a long way off, to Mérida or Campeche?”

Zane's eyebrow twitched. “And give up her authority? No. Xia loves her son, but she'll never again willingly be in a position where she'll be at the mercy of others. Men took her son and gave her power—a bitter, loveless compensation, but one she's come to consider her due.”

Prefer influence to her child? Mercy hoped she'd never encounter the woman. She sounded like a beautiful, soul-deadened husk, yet Zane seemed to admire her.

As they passed the drying yards, Zane explained that the thick, long leaves were fed into a rasping machine that shredded them. This rasper, developed after the government had offered a reward to someone inventing a mechanical stripper that could replace the slow, laborious hand-rasping process, separated a powdery, green waste from the stringy fiber, which was hung to dry till it changed from pale green to golden and then was sorted according to quality, bound into bales, and sent by mule cart to Sisal for shipment to Europe and the United States.

A glance inside the factory at chutes, turning wheels, and sharp-toothed machinery was enough to intimidate Mercy. To her, the noisy machine seemed possessed by some malevolent giant insect mind of its own, and the farther away she could stay, the better. They peered into the warehouse, which smelled like rope, and into the store, where several women were buying clothing, blankets, or food.

“Most haciendas charge such high prices that a worker's wages never are enough, and he goes deeper and deeper into debt. The owner gives him credit enough to eat so he can go on working, but never enough to pay his debt and leave.”

“My father used to say that to pay a man only enough to eat and barely survive was almost worse than slavery, since no one felt obligated to take care of such a laborer if he got sick or too old to work.”

They were under the ceiba at the front approach to the house. Zane stopped abruptly. “Damn it! Must you always be quoting your father?”

Recoiling as if she'd been slapped, choked by hurt and anger, Mercy couldn't speak for a moment. When she could, her words came out in a rush in spite of her effort to speak calmly. “I'll never mention him again—to you!”

Hurrying toward the house, she heard his footsteps crunching deliberately behind her, closer with each long stride. She couldn't run. He caught up with her before she reached the steps.

“Forgive me,” he said.

Mercy couldn't reply and inwardly reviled her trembling lips.

“I'm sure your father was a wise and estimable man,” Zane said in a conciliatory tone. “But it's exasperating to have him quoted so often.”

“I doubt you'll ever be the source of such annoyance,” Mercy snapped.

Zane chuckled. “That's probably what irritates me—along with the feeling that you're trying to make me feel as if your father were at my back, with dueling pistol leveled, to make sure I treat his daughter with more propriety than I really want to!”

Mercy had to laugh at that and forget her anger, but after Zane went into his office and she continued through the courtyard, she had to wonder if much of his comparative forbearance didn't stem from having a cherished daughter of his own. For whatever reason, Mercy was grateful.

Chepa called to her from the kitchen. “I make
cochinita pibil,
” she said. “You see?”

A door on the opposite side of the kitchen led into a side yard where a boy was tending a pit of glowing embers a little more than a yard long and about half as wide and deep. On a high table, Mayel was stirring onions, mint leaves, pork rind, and salt into what was obviously the blood of the small pig lying on the bed of banana leaves while Chepa finished drenching it with a mixture of things she pointed out to Mercy: oregano, tabasco peppers, black pepper, the juice of bitter oranges, and a red-orange pulp whose name Mercy knew she could never pronounce.