Bride of Thunder (26 page)

He sent the gleaming black horse into a canter. Mercy held Castaña back, nursing her wrath, though she felt like crying over the way their relationship, so comforting and close last night, had gone sour. Xia might not have agreed to be his dependent mistress, but she certainly must love him to attempt murder.

A chill ran down Mercy's spine, which she stiffened resolutely as she followed Zane down the turn-off to her enemy's village.

Xia had golden skin and eyes, black hair dressed in a high coil, and her smiling cat-like profile was like that of an Egyptian queen. Her sandaled feet were carefully tended, as were her tapering fingers. Her white cotton dress was embroidered all over with hummingbirds and flowers.

She invited them into her house, sending a girl for hot chocolate. Luxury was manifested by a table with two chairs and several handsome chests. On the top of one were books, including several manuscripts in Mayan European script.

Greeting Mercy in beautiful Spanish that made her acutely aware of her clumsiness in that tongue, Xia chatted of the harvest till their hot chocolate was finished, at which time Zane asked if Mercy could see the shrine.

“If she likes.” Xia rose and led the way past the council house and common, where several hobbled burros grazed and the boy who'd taken the horses stood feeding them cornstalks.

This village was about the size of the one at La Quinta. Though sounds of children and hushed voices came from some of the huts, no one came out to stare at the visitors. The little church was cool and dim, its saints along the wall enjoying their offerings. There was the bleeding, crucified Christ and his sorrowing mother. But on the altar lay the object that made this church different, gave it a special sanctity, and brought the devout on pilgrimages.

The copal branch was the length of Mercy's arm, broken off with two stubs jutting out. Flowers were heaped around it, sweetening the thick, musty air.

And for this branch and the power it gave her, Xia had given her son. Mercy gazed at it in mingled fascination and horror. What if Zane hadn't been there that night seven years ago when Salvador hung on a cross! Zane was right. Xia was not a yielding woman … unless, perhaps, with him.

In front of the church Zane turned to the priestess. This time he spoke in Mayan. Xia's slim, sensuous body contracted. Then she stood perfectly still, her face expressionless except for a twitching at the corner of one eye.

When Zane had finished, she asked one question, one question only.

Zane replied in a word.

“Come,” he said to Mercy.

In minutes they were mounted, leaving the ring of huts. Mercy ventured a half-glance around. Xia still stood in the church doorway, her figure as bright as a bedecked idol's against the interior darkness.

“What did you tell her?” Mercy had to ask. Frightening though the woman was, there was something in her stillness that cried out with torment.

Zane looked straight ahead. He'd been courteous in front of Xia, but he was clearly in an evil temper. “I told her she had almost killed her son. I told her to keep away from my daughter. I told her if harm comes to you, even by apparent accident, I'd flay her pretty hide off her body and drape it around that copal limb.”

Mercy sucked in her breath. She didn't ask any more questions, though she suspected that last terse query of Xia's, and his one word, had been the end of their “alliance.”

In a few more days, Salvador seemed as healthy as ever, though two small scabbed pits formed on the bite. Now that Jolie was trying to help Mercy with Spanish and Mayan rather than make her feel stupid, Mercy's progress began to match that of her pupils.

She learned from Chepa, too, almost daily observing a new treatment or helping concoct and administer those she had seen before. Mayel had an aptitude for herbs, and Jolie found it interesting in fits and starts.

When Mercy's divided skirt was finished, Jolie wanted one. She was also pleased with her blue challis dress and insisted that she and Mercy wear their matching outfits for dinner the day they were finished.

“Please, Mercy, do my hair the way you wore yours when you were my age,” Jolie urged. “Only please re member that I'm not a
young
child!”

Repressing a smile at this favorite loathing of Jolie's, Mercy did her best to tame Jolie's thick, wildly curly crown into sedate, long ringlets tied back in a bow. Jolie clapped at herself in the mirror.

“Now I look like someone from your country! Don't I, Mercy? If you didn't know, wouldn't you think I was from Texas, or even New Orleans?”

“Yes,” said Mercy with a twinge. However truthfully she'd told Zane she didn't miss the society of a town, she
did
miss her country, familiar faces, and a sense of belonging. But as she tried to love and remember her father without futile mourning, she was trying to feel like that about her homeland. The day might come when she should go back, but till then she wanted to remember it with love and gratitude, but not the melancholy that would taint life at La Quinta and keep her from being as much a part of it as was possible.

Once, loosely quoting scripture, Elkanah had told her that the Jews in Babylon had been told to pray always for Jerusalem but also to “pray for the city where you are.” The home of the heart and the home of the body—each required a different tribute.

Zane complimented their dresses and Jolie's hair, but he had little else to say. Fortunately, Jolie was at full bubble. Savoring a delicious lemon soup made with chicken broth, Mercy wondered if seeing them dressed alike had called up a memory of his wife. Since the visit to Xia, he'd been so distantly polite that Mercy was beginning to think she'd imagined his concern and kindness after Salvador's accident, or that Chepa's tea had made her hallucinate.

She'd thought she didn't like fending him off, but she liked his cool indifference even less!

Days had developed a pattern now, except for Sunday, when Chepa hustled Jolie and Mayel off to church. There was breakfast, then lessons till lunch, then private time to rest or read, and then learning cures from Chepa or having a ride, often with Jolie, whose Piñata was a plump; taffy-colored little mare with coquettishly long eyelashes. Zane sometimes joined them, but when he didn't Vicente rode behind, armed with a machete and a shotgun.

Mayel filled the bathtub every evening and kept the room dusted, but Mercy didn't really want a maid. So, apart from the time spent in school, the girl was usually with Chepa, who treated her as if she were indeed the daughter she had lost. Mayel, not forced to battle to defend her proud descent from Jacinto Canek, flitted about the house like a diligent butterfly, and her laughter tinkled like a silver bell against Chepa's resonant belly laughter.

After her bath, Mercy put on fresh clothes for dinner. As the nights cooled, dinner was served in the dining room, where a small fire crackled in the fireplace to take away the chill, though the days remained warm. It was not quite warm enough for the native cotton dresses within the shaded house, at least not for Mercy. Chepa and the other women simply added shawls. With a sigh, Mercy reverted to “civilized” clothing, though losing the unmatchable comfort of native dress was compensated for to a degree by the pleasure of having her first new clothes in years. The gray-blue satin dress was done, too, but it hung wistfully in the armoire next to the quetzal gown, awaiting an occasion or the advent of those rare guests Zane had been so emphatic about wishing to impress.

Christmas was coming, though the weather and green foliage made it hard to believe. Last Christmas hadn't been joyful, what with Philip berating her reluctance to leave the States and thus preventing him from accompanying Jo Shelby or the other leaders to Mexico, but Mercy's eyes misted and a lump swelled in her throat when she remembered Christmases before the war. Father's patients had brought turkey and hams, bacon, plum puddings, brandied fruitcakes, and pies, convinced that a wifeless man would have no holiday cheer unless they provided it, which they did with such excess that Father usually gave away most of the largesse to families in need. And there were parties with eggnog and mulled wine and carolers.…

Mercy tried to bring her thoughts back to the present, but memories of Philip lingered perversely, probably because she almost never thought of him consciously. It was as if by that treachery of wagering her fate on a game he had excised himself from her surgically, but the angry hurt that welled in her now made her suspect the betrayal had been so callous, so unspeakable, that she'd merely sealed over the ugly abscessed wound in order to function.

Had he gone back to the States? Or joined Maximilian? Mercy hoped with fervent bitterness that she'd never see him again. She turned her concentration to what she could give the people closest to her at La Quinta.

Jolie had explained that Christmas day was a religious festival here, and that instead of on that day, gifts were exchanged on Epiphany, the Day of the Three Kings, which fell on January 6. But as Mercy had always used Christmas to remember friends—with small gifts like potpourri, dried fruit, nuts from the woods, winter bouquets of grass, pods, and air-dried flowers—she decided to do the same now.

Chepa would get the fluffy shawl, Mercy's one remaining luxury from before the war; ribbons would be perfect for Mayel, along with a necklace from the store; there would be a shirt from the same source for Salvador, plus a book of proverbs and fables in simple English that she was making for him. Jolie was a problem, and for the first time Mercy regretted the absence of fashionable shops. Then she remembered the soft toys of her youth and decided that a plump blue challis coati with button eyes could serve as both pillow and cuddle companion.

As for Zane … Handkerchiefs?

Mercy grimaced at the thought. For a reader, a book was always good, but, again, there were no shops. She'd noticed, though, that his books were marked with scraps of paper or string. If she could find enough bark of the kind used for maps and genealogies, she could make a supply of durable bookmarks, decorated with his initials, or … why not a ceiba, the tree of the center and fifth direction, for the owner of La Quinta Dirección?

Immensely pleased with the thought, she went to Chepa to find out what bark to use. She found her mentor with a middle-aged woman whose jaw was swollen.

“Good you see this,” said Chepa. “Secret in my family. Victoriano want to know. I teach Mayel, instead.” She smiled at the girl, who handed her a small vial. Chepa applied something to the patient's tooth, then spoke to her quietingly. “Now we wait for the tooth to get soft,” she told Mercy. She added with a twinkle, “You no believe.”

“If you can pull teeth painlessly, you could make a fortune in a city!” Mercy said. “What's in the vial?”

“Rattlesnake poison and vinegar.”

“Rattlesnake poison!” Mercy was too close to the encounter with the fer-de-lance to entertain any feeling but dread for serpents. “You put venom in this woman's mouth?”

“On bad tooth.” Chepa's tone was equable. “I use, father use, grandfather, back and back. No one ever die.”

Mercy hoped she wouldn't have to choose between a toothache and this miracle method, but the patient showed no signs of distress or alarm. While they waited, Mercy asked about manuscript bark and was told that the inner bark of the fig tree had been used as paper by the ancients and that there were several of the trees growing near the tower.

Perhaps twenty minutes had passed when Chepa reached into the woman's obligingly opened mouth and wiggled the tooth. Then, without wrenching or tugging, Chepa seemed simply to lift the tooth out. She held it for Mercy to see before she gave it to the patient, who thanked her and obediently sipped the mint tea Mayel handed her.

Mercy shook her head. “Astounding!”

“Very old secret, but I teach you if you want.”

“How do you get the poison?”

“Kill snake. Cut off head, and when really dead, take out fang.”

Mercy shuddered. “Thanks very much, but I'd rather you did the tooth-pulling.”

“Why, Doña Mercy!” came a voice from the door. “You should always learn anything you can! You never know when it'll be useful.”

Eric Kensington filled the entrance so hugely blond and overpowering that even Chepa gasped. But what stopped Mercy's heart before it lunged and speeded, what made her brain whirl as if she were going to faint, was the man beside him.

Philip—Philip, her husband.

12

He smiled, his blue eyes as frank and cheery as a boy's, though the lines in his face seemed deeper. He came forward, his hands outstretched.

“Mercy, love! I've come to take you home!”

How could he? Walk in like this, grinning, actually seeming to think she'd welcome him! So enraged that she felt as if she were flying apart, exploding into thousands of tiny bits, Mercy put her hands behind her.

“You … you're a fool if you think I'd go anywhere with you ever again!” she shouted.

Philip stopped. The pupils of his eyes swelled and he flushed, but when he spoke his voice was soft, cajoling. “That—what happened—was all a wretched mistake, darling. I was drunk. When I came looking for you, you were gone. But now that I've found you, thanks to Kensington, I'll take such care of you as you can't imagine. I know now how much I need you!”

“If you come a step closer, I'll vomit on you!” It wasn't a threat; she was truly sick to her stomach, her whole being full of revulsion.

Philip's lips twisted. “Why, you little bitch!” he said under his breath. “You're my wife, and you'll do what I say!”

“That's enough, Cameron!” Zane's voice cracked like a whip as he thrust past Kensington. He must have been behind them listening. “She
was
your wife, but you made her my bond-slave. Keep your hands off my property!”

Philip spun around, but before he could argue the big Englishman interposed. “I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but this is scarcely the way to settle such an important matter. You've got to put us up for the night, Falconer, unless you want a bad name for being terribly inhospitable, so why don't we go have a drink and discuss this properly?”