Bride of Thunder (28 page)

“I make you some tea,” Chepa told Mercy, then went out through the courtyard entrance.

“Thanks for seeing that I get an early start.” Kensington smiled. “Farewell, Doña Mercy.” His eyes lingered on her so that she felt cold in spite of the heaped covers and began to tremble again.

“Have a safe journey, Kensington.” Zane stared at the Englishman till he bowed a last time and strode away.

Closing the door, Zane crossed to the bed and looked down at Mercy, a muscle twitching in his lean jaw. “It seems you have an eager protector. He could scarcely propose it more plainly than he did in front of me, but I'm sure his old offer of marriage still stands. Now that you have no husband, you should consider it.”

“Do you want me to … to go away?”

“We're discussing what you want,” he said harshly. “Do you want to leave with Kensington?”

“No!”

Bending, he caught her face between his hands. “Why not, if marriage and respectability mean so much to you?”

“I don't love him.”

Zane let her go as if her flesh burned him. “Love! A trumpery word women use to justify whatever they do and break a man to their use! And you won't admit to passion, will you, honest need of the body? No, it has to be love and legal binding and a hook through a man's nose!”

Shrinking back on the pillows, Mercy gazed at him, fighting back tears. He reached for her, then whirled, grasping his hands tightly behind him. “Who'd believe I've had you at La Quinta all this time and not taken you?” he asked savagely. “I can't believe it myself! I'm not made of iron, Mercy. If virtue's paramount with you, you should take Kensington, for if you stay here, someday I might not be able to stop myself.” He'd been speaking with his back to her. Now he turned violently. “Do you understand that?”

“What?”

“If you stay here, tempting me just by your softness, your sweetness, the way you move and walk, sooner or later I won't be able to stop.”

Their eyes met with tingling, frightening, ecstatic shock. If he had lain down with her then, Mercy could not have opposed him, but he went out of the room, as if devil-driven, just as Chepa came in with tea.

“Your room ready now,” she said, holding the cup so that Mercy had to drink. “Don Zane say I have hammock by you for some nights if you afraid.”

Chepa made her finish all the brew. “I want to get up,” said Mercy. “It's nearly daylight. I can't sleep after …”

“Lie down,” Chepa said. “Close eyes. I rub neck and back. Get up then if you want.”

With her face down against sheets that had the clean male smell of Zane's body, Mercy shuddered as Chepa's hands, for a second, reminded her of Philip's. She heard again that stifled choking. But as she tensed, Chepa kneaded at her muscles, working them into place as the herb drink gradually soothed her mind.

She never knew when the stroking ceased.

Her rest was deep and sound. When she awoke, she gazed at the carved headboard a long moment before she realized she was still in Zane's bed and why. Light streamed through the shutters, gilding a huge mahogany armoire, a leather armchair and reading table, and a chest of dark wood inlaid with what looked like bone in a running pattern of incised leaves.

What held Mercy's gaze was the small cabinet with open hinged doors and a curved top that stood in a large wall niche. Inside the cabinet the madonna stood on a crescent moon, wearing a crown of silver, as did her infant son. Behind them was a painted blue sky spangled with stars, and around the niche were painted roses. It was charmingly feminine, the only touch of grace in an austere chamber. Mercy was sure it had belonged to Zane's mother, but she would have expected him to close the doors of the little shrine; she was glad that he had not.

The clock struck eight. Mercy pressed her face and breasts against Zane's pillows for a moment, then remembered he must have slept here with his wife, the woman who seemed to have made love a lying mockery to him.

Mercy grimaced as she slipped from the huge bed and went barefooted to her room. Why had he let one woman determine his view of all the rest? Perhaps he was changing slowly. At least now he wanted a rather permanent mistress instead of occasional satiation with the whores of Tekax or Mérida or whatever strange gratifications he'd shared with Xia.

The door of Mercy's room was open. She hesitated, took a deep breath, and stepped inside. Her bed was immaculate, the torn sheet replaced. There remained nothing to show a man had seized her there in the night.

A pleasantly astringent smell filled the air. A handful of herbs was charring in the fireplace. Chepa's purification? Mercy smiled, but she was grateful.

Vicente and Chepa must have kept their silence, because knowledge of Philip's death never filtered out. Jolie remarked that the big golden man had looked like a Viking, which led to geography, stories of the far-sailing dragon ships, and the possibility that Quetzalcoatl, the fair god expected by the Mayas to reappear on earth, had been, in fact, a Viking.

His name, which meant Plumed Water Serpent, could easily derive from the prow of a typical Norse vessel or wings on a helmet. Though Quetzalcoatl had been just and beneficent, the Spaniards, who'd been taken for him since, were not. And again, Maximilian's blond hair and beard had made some Indians believe he was their returned savior.

Zane happened in during this discussion and said softly from the schoolroom door, “Did you know he burned himself to death along this east coast? I believe it was at Tulum and that he's the diving god shown on the temple mural there, uniting heaven and earth.”

“Why did he do that, Papa?” asked Jolie, her eyes wide.

“He got drunk and dishonored himself so terribly that he believed he must die. So he put on his robe of quetzal feathers and his turquoise mask, which he wore because he was very ugly, and he journeyed to the east. There he set himself afire and his ashes rose to the skies. They say that's when all the brightest birds were created. He descended to the Kingdom of the Dead, and on the fourth day he rose into heaven and became Venus, the Morning Star and the Evening Star, male and female, and god and man.”

Jolie put it into Mayan for Salvador and Mayel, who had been, with eager puzzlement, catching what they could. Then she regarded her father with solemnity. “Is that true, Papa?”

“Some of it, I think. There must have been an ugly fair-skinned stranger who became a good king and tried to end human sacrifice. This made the priests angry and they may have conspired to make him sin so terribly he would want to end his life. His descent into hell and ascent to heaven? Who knows, child? It's the common legend of all great heroes.”

Jolie considered, her golden eyebrows arched. “Mr. Kensington might be a Viking, but I don't think he's good like Quet … Quetzalcoatl.”

“The Vikings also sailed to Russia,” Mercy added. “And they raided England so ferociously that there was a prayer against their fury right along with pleas for protection from battle, murder, and sudden death.”

“That's more like Mr. Kensington,” Jolie said and nodded. Zane had left them. The girl took Mercy's hand and pressed it to her warm little cheek. “You look sad, Doña Mercy. Are you sorry you didn't go with your husband?”

“No.” Mercy's throat felt scalded and she had a flash of Philip when they were young, galloping beside her down the walnut land, smiling as he fed her wild strawberries and kissed her the first time. “No. I couldn't go with him. But I am sad.”

“He wasn't a Viking,” said Jolie. “But he didn't seem old enough to be your husband. He was like a boy.”

Mercy thought that was probably the truest epitaph that could be made for him.

She had nightmares for the next few nights, but Chepa would come from the nearby hammock to quiet her, and by the end of the week it all seemed like a horrid dream. She couldn't be glad about Philip's death, but it had cauterized the wound of his betrayal, cleanly searing it out so that this time as it healed, it healed clean.

Philip was dead. An act of his had brought her where she was, but she'd stayed by choice. She was, more than she'd ever been, in control of her fate. Zane allowed her that power, of course. Even if, as he had warned, he took her now by force, she'd chosen to run that risk rather than go with Eric Kensington.

Zane was seeing to the clearing of some new land for henequén and was gone from morning till night until the sixteenth of December. On that day, work slacked off for the long holiday season, which would last for almost a month until the village's patroness, Santa Yñez, had her fiesta during the third week of January.

On the first night of the nine-day festival of Los Posadas, Mercy went to the village with Chepa, Mayel, Salvador, and Jolie. They followed the procession of pilgrims carrying a litter that held images of Mary riding on a burro, Joseph, and an angel. Singing and carrying candles, the group moved toward the church, where they sang a song begging for lodging at the inn.

From inside the closed door, the villagers posing as innkeepers sang back a refusal to each pleading, till at last the pilgrims said that Mary would be mother of the Holy Child. At that, the innkeepers threw open the door and welcomed in the travelers. The holy figures were placed on the altar and everyone knelt to pray. Then women brought out sweet bread and various cakes and candles. The villagers spilled onto the common, and dancing began to the music of a ukulele-like instrument, drums, and flutes.

The young people danced in pairs, in each the man with his hands behind his back and the girl coquettishly lifting the edges of her skirt as they faced each other. When they passed, they lifted their arms and clicked their fingers rhythmically. Mayel was drawn into the dance. She looked entrancing in a festive embroidered cotton dress that had belonged to Chepa's beloved lost daughter, and a yellow ribbon perched like a great butterfly at the back of her coiled black hair.

Sóstenes and another man brought out a gay paper-and-tinsel star
piñata
and a child was blindfolded and given a stick. He tried to hit the
piñata,
which the men held out of reach on a rope, and after flailing wildly for a few minutes, his place was taken by a girl, then by another boy, till at last a little girl of perhaps four was allowed to hit it, shattering the paper sides so that candy and a mass of small trinkets and toys rained down to be scrambled after by the children.

A
posada
was held each night, but Mercy didn't go again till the ninth night, Christmas Eve, when the villagers, shortly before midnight, said nine Ave Marias and sang to the Virgin as an image of the Infant was placed in the manger on the altar.

There followed a midnight Mass chanted by the
maestro cantor,
an old layman, who knew most of the ritual and presided over the village's religious life. It had been years since a true priest had visited the hacienda, but even before the war, a year or two often passed so that when the priest came, he often baptized children at the same time he married their parents.

A feast was served in the council house. Zane appeared for none of the celebration, though Chepa told Mercy that he had, as always, supplied the
piñatas
and the festive meal.

Jolie was falling asleep as she ate, so Mercy roused her enough to half-carry her home and get her to bed. Covering the girl up to her chin, Mercy gazed down at the smooth angel's face and lightly kissed the golden hair, giving thanks that Jolie had come to accept her, and for being allowed to take part in the
posadas,
even though, at this season, she felt especially far from home.

Blowing out the lamp, she turned to the door and almost collided with Zane, who steadied her with quick, hard hands and spoke softly before she could be frightened, drawing her outside and closing the door.

“You didn't know I was watching, did you?” He had been drinking and his words tended to slur. His fingers dug into her arms as he gave her a shake. “You … kissing my child. Madonna.”

Frightened, Mercy tried to pull away, but he gripped her tighter, then gave a choking little laugh. “Been waiting. Thought when you came in I'd give you my present and brandy … get you drunk, get you to bed. My Christmas present. But I'm drunk.”

“Zane …”

“You always stop me. Why is that? Why do you always do what stops me?”

Weakened by his hands, upset at his drunkenness, Mercy couldn't answer. Suddenly he opened her door and thrust her roughly inside.

“Merry Christmas, Mercy. My big present is leaving you virtuous. But there's something else for you on the bed.”

He almost slammed the door. Shaken, her breasts tingling with arousal till they hurt, Mercy leaned against the wall, clamping her jaw tight to keep from calling after him. She yearned for his mouth, the strength of his arms, the force and sweetness and wildness of his lean, well-muscled body, so racked with need that it threatened to sweep away all reason. But some small whisper of sanity persisted in the storm.

To be his while he thought as he did would mean a sealed existence in the tower, a life apart from that of La Quinta. If she let passion turn her into a slave of his body and her own, she'd betray herself far worse than Philip had done.

Father! Father! …

Elkanah's kind, sad eyes seemed to caress her, helping her ride out the strongest moments of temptation. When she could breathe again, she lit a lamp and moved to the bed.

There on the pillows lay a book bound in red leather. She opened it and read on the hand-lettered title page:
Cures from the Badianus Manuscript, an Aztec Herbal of 1552
. Turning through it, she read of treatments for everything from skin ailments to poor flow of milk after childbirth. There were pages of herbs in color. A magnificent treasure! Mercy touched it lovingly, thinking how Elkanah would have studied it.

Tomorrow she must make sure the gift hadn't been a drunken whim; but for tonight she would sleep with it close to her pillow.