Conquistadora (51 page)

As they finished the
almuerzo
, Bombón announced don Simón, who was so ebullient he seemed about to float through the roof.

“Buen provecho,”
he said upon entering.

“Siña Ciriaca, another place setting, please,” asked Elena when Leonor didn’t.

Simón blushed and bowed. “Very kind,
señorita
Elena, but
gracias
. I’ve already eaten.” He turned to his star pupil. “My dear Miguel, I bring momentous news. Spain’s most illustrious living painter, Maestro Pedro Campos de Laura, has agreed to let you be his student in Madrid.” The schoolmaster could barely contain his joy as Miguel, Leonor, Elena, and even Siña Ciriaca, who’d just removed the meat platter, gaped.

“My goodness, you’re full of surprises, don Simón,” Leonor said.

“Not at all, my dear. Don Simón and I’ve been working on this for weeks.” Eugenio avoided her eyes.

“I know nothing about it,” Miguel stuttered.

“Don Eugenio and I didn’t want to say anything, in case Maestro Campos de Laura didn’t accept,” don Simón explained with a satisfied grin. He was so happy that he was insensible to Leonor’s uncharacteristically stiff posture. “He doesn’t teach, Miguel. This is a great honor and a tribute to your talent.”

“Getting you an apprenticeship with an artist of Maestro Campos de Laura’s reputation wasn’t easy,” Eugenio said solemnly. “Don Simón knows him from Madrid, and I was owed some favors, and when our own governor Izquierdo was recalled to the Peninsula, he met with
el maestro
to persuade him to consider you.”

Miguel looked from Eugenio to Simón to Elena to Leonor. “I don’t know what to say; it’s such a surprise.”

“We always do what’s best for you,” Eugenio said.

“Yes, sir, I understand that. Still—”

“It was so good of you to go through all that trouble, dear,” Leonor interrupted. Everyone except don Simón heard the acid in her voice.

“I have more news, Miguel,” the schoolmaster continued. “Your good friend, Andrés, will also be in Madrid. He was accepted at the law school.”

Leonor pulled a fan from the creases of her skirt and waved it around her face. “It’s warm here, isn’t it? Shall we move to the courtyard?”

Eugenio and Miguel jumped to help Leonor from her chair. She turned her back on her husband and smiled on her grandson. Eugenio backed up a step.

Simón finally noticed that something wasn’t quite right. “Did I say something to offend her?” he murmured to Elena as he escorted her to the courtyard.

“Please don’t worry. She’s been unwell the past few days and we’re all sensitive to her moods.”

“I will let you enjoy this happy news
en familia
. Congratulations,” he said, pressing Miguel’s shoulder.

After the teacher left, Eugenio, Leonor, Elena, and Miguel sat around the painted wrought-iron table, each deep in thought, as Siña Ciriaca poured the coffee. As soon as she left, Leonor stood without so much as lifting her cup. “Eugenio”—she stretched her hand to her husband—“may we speak in private?” Rather sheepishly, he led her up the stairs while Elena and Miguel watched them go until the door to their room closed.

“You knew nothing about this?” Elena asked Miguel as they sat down again.

“Neither Abuelo nor don Simón ever mentioned it.”

“They think it’s a great honor.”

“I hardly deserve it, Elena. There are much better—”

“Don’t say that,
querido
. You’re very talented.”

Miguel knew that he was, at best, a mediocre artist. But he didn’t have time to argue her assessment when they both became aware of the loud voices coming from the upstairs rooms.

“You’d send him away without consulting me?” Leonor asked her husband as soon as he closed the door. She sat on the divan by the window and beat the air with her fan.

“Of course not! I meant to tell you weeks ago, but with all the activities around Ponce de León, and then you weren’t feeling well.” Her skeptical look forced him to change tactics. “Besides”—he sat at the foot of the divan, slipped his fingers under her petticoats, and rubbed her leg—“it wasn’t at all a sure thing. We didn’t want him to get excited about it only to have Maestro Campos de Laura say no.”

“Why can’t he continue his studies here?” She gently but undeniably kicked his hand away.

Eugenio noticed that his waistcoat was open. “He’s gone as far as he can. He needs more advanced instruction,” he said, focusing on the otherwise second-nature task of fastening a button.

“Tell the truth, Eugenio. Why are you sending him away?”

He finally looked directly at her. “Leonor, I’ve not wanted to worry you.”

“You’re keeping something from me.”

“Yes, my dear, I’m sorry, but I thought it was best if I took care of it. Bartolo Cardenales and I have handled the situation.”

“What does Bartolo have to do with this?”

Eugenio took a deep breath. “Miguel and Andrés are involved in activities that could compromise them.”

“I don’t understand. Compromise them with a girl?”

“No, my dear,” he said with a rueful smile. “That’s easy to manage. Unfortunately, our boys admire that firebrand Betances and are involved in one of his secret societies.”

“Those so-called secret meetings in the
botica
are hardly a reason to banish him to Spain.” She squinted suspiciously. “Everyone knows it’s just men hearing themselves talk.”

He hadn’t discussed his plan to send Miguel away because he wanted to avoid this conversation. “No,
mi amor
, it’s more serious than that.”

Her thin eyebrows crept toward each other in the familiar gesture that brooked no half-truths.

“The governor took me for a stroll around the gardens at La Fortaleza a few weeks before the Ponce de León exhumation.” He paced, as if he needed to move in order to think clearly. “It appears that our boys have been meeting with men organizing an armed revolt.”

“By
blancos
?”

“They’re not foolish enough to try to arm the blacks. They’re recruiting
campesinos
, and the plan is still in the early stages. Coded messages were intercepted and the leaders identified, but Andrés and Miguel were spotted with people on those lists. As far as we know, they’re on the fringes, but they could easily be enmeshed in something that can’t be untangled.”

“So your solution is to send them away?”

“The governor’s recommendation, Leonor.”

“It didn’t occur to you to talk to Miguel about this before banishing him from the island?”

“He’s not being banished; he’s being given a rare opportunity to do something he loves. At the same time, we’re distancing him from
associates who might tarnish his good name. He’s seventeen years old, Leonor, and hasn’t traveled beyond the walls of this city except for weekends at our friends’
fincas
and for patron saint celebrations in nearby towns. He’s never had to fend for himself.”

“Why is that wrong? What else would we do with our wealth but to make his life easy?”

“I’m not talking about material things; of course we’d give him every advantage. What I mean is that Miguel is easily influenced. He lacks … a sense of adventure, I suppose.”

“Look what a sense of adventure did for our sons.”

Eugenio grimaced. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. “We can’t protect him so much that he doesn’t know when he’s moving on his own, or is being pushed by others.”

“He’s a boy!”

“He’s a man, Leonor, young, but a man nevertheless. The problem is he’s incomplete. He lacks the confidence of a man who knows his own power. He’s too passive, has never challenged us—”

“So you’re sending him away because he’s too respectful?”

“I’m sending him away so that he can learn to stand on his own convictions and not be so easily swayed by anyone, including me, and especially not by a charismatic man whose activities could land him in trouble. We can’t give him a sense of his own strength without sending him into the world to be knocked about a bit.”

“You resent him for his easy life.”

Eugenio had had enough. “You’ve resisted every suggestion I’ve ever made about what I believe to be best for him.” She started to protest, but he didn’t give her a chance. “I didn’t argue when you and Elena took over his education.” His voice rose, but he didn’t care. He was in the right, and even Leonor’s recent delicate health didn’t keep him from trying to get her to acknowledge it. “I didn’t insist when you refused to send him to military training. I haven’t forced him to learn the intricacies of business. I haven’t interfered in his upbringing except to teach him what I know about how to be a man and to be a positive example for him.”

“Please lower your voice; they can hear you.”

Eugenio wiped his forehead, behind his ears, around his mutton-chop whiskers. The handkerchief was soaked. “Sometimes I look at him, and I’m disturbed by his passivity.” He paced up and down the
chamber, his arms behind his back. “We’ve raised a man, Leonor, who doesn’t know who he is, a man with no goals or ambitions. I feel as if I’ve failed him.”

“So you want him where you’re not reminded you’re a failure?”

Eugenio stopped pacing and looked at his wife’s haggard face. They’d been married almost fifty years, and as she aged, she’d always seemed beautiful, worthy of his love and admiration. They’d argued often, even before they were married, sometimes in loud voices, but he almost always came around to her point of view. There was no one whose good opinion mattered more to him. In their lifetime, however, in none of hundreds of arguments, had she ever said anything so cruel. “You haven’t known me, then, our whole lives, if you think I’m a failure.”

“Forgive me.” She stood to run into his arms, but fell against the divan as if struck. “Oh!” she said, and a look of panic crossed her face as she brought her hands to her chest. He reached her just as her body went slack and she slumped to the floor.

“Miguel! Elena! Come, please, hurry!” He crouched over her, tried to sit her up, patted her cheeks to bring the color to them, but he knew there was nothing to be done.

Eugenio had been to so many funerals that except for Ramón’s, he couldn’t remember most of them. He’d been a pallbearer for soldiers cut down in battle, had attended courtiers felled by lechery and gluttony, had dug graves for villagers silenced by war, famine, and exertion. He worried about his own death so often that his papers were always up to date so that his family would be provided for after his inevitable death. But he never imagined he’d be widowed. He never contemplated a life without Leonor Mendoza Sánchez de Argoso at the beginning and end of each day.

She was the friend of his childhood, the flirtatious
señorita
of his adolescence, the loving and valiant wife who followed him wherever fate led in his pursuit of glory on the battlefield. She was such a part of him that he could not envision life without her.

During her wake, he kept his eyes on her face, now devoid of expression. He’d watched her sleep so often that he expected her nostrils to flare, her lips to purse as if kissing the air, her lashes to
flutter. He wanted her to live. He wanted her to sit up from the satin-lined coffin and organize every aspect of his civilian life. He wanted to feel her lovingly pinning the ribbons and medals on his uniform. He wanted to feel her palms pressing down on the lapels of his jacket until they lay flat. He wanted to feel her fingers quietly flicking a mote of dust, invisible to everyone else, from his shoulder. He wanted to hear her laughter when he said something funny, to hear her singing when she watered the plants in the courtyard, to hear her playing the harp. He wanted her to walk across a room, her step firm and determined yet feminine. He wanted her to dance again, her skirts swinging back and forth like a bell. He wanted her powdering her round shoulders and applying scented cream to her arms. He wanted to touch her hair, soft as cobwebs, to touch her lips and feel her kissing his index finger, to press back the lace around her nightcap and loosen the ribbons on her nightgown. He wanted to touch the parts of her no other man had ever seen or touched. He’d loved her since he was five and she was a few months old, and he didn’t want to live without her.

He wandered through their house, the first real home he’d given her, expecting to see her arranging a curtain or placing cut flowers in a vase. He tried to sleep on their bed only to awaken reaching for her in the night. He sat at the head of the table, Miguel and Elena on either side of him, as always, but when he looked across, he faced an empty space that seemed more desolate than a cloudless sky.

After the wake, after the funeral, after the Masses and the novenas, after reading the letters of condolence and choosing the words to be carved on her tombstone, after choosing the words to be carved on his, and after making sure that Mr. Worthy had everything in order, Eugenio went to bed one night two months after he’d buried Leonor and repeated her last words over and over in a litany of sorrow and despair.

“Forgive me.”

He held the rosary she’d given him so many years ago that he couldn’t remember the occasion and prayed to her for forgiveness, and prayed to God to forgive him for praying to her as if she were a goddess. He couldn’t forgive himself for scheming behind her back to send Miguel to Spain, even though it was for his own good. Miguel needed independence and experience, the company of men, the uncertainties of living on his own.

In the weeks of plotting with Simón, Eugenio had avoided telling Leonor, hoping that the great honor bestowed upon Miguel would convince her that it was the right thing to do for her boy. But she’d lost two sons, and he should have known that if the queen herself summoned Miguel to Spain, Leonor would have resisted sending him far from her watchful care, from her fears and premonitions.

“Forgive me,” he said over and over again, expecting to hear her voice absolving him, knowing he’d never hear her voice again. She’d never wanted to come to Puerto Rico, had suffered what no mother should ever experience in her lifetime. Her heart, broken twice, could not go on beating if she lost her only grandson. “I should have never allowed our sons to convince me to come here when you were so opposed to it.”