Conquistadora (60 page)

“I can’t believe I did that,” she said, looking where the bull fell.

“Very impressive,” he said with a tight smile. “Now I’d better see what’s happened in San Bernabé.” He checked the holstered revolver and cinched the strapped rifle on his back. “Efraín, you come with me, and Indio, take
la patrona
back to the
batey
and stay with her.”

“He needn’t stay. He’s more needed in the fire squads.”

He nodded and ordered a boy to bring a machete for Efraín.

“Severo,” Ana said so that only he could hear. “Be careful. Remember that Conciencia has seen a man on fire. Twice.”

He touched her cheek. “I’ll be careful. Don’t forget that
mala hierba no muere.
”

“If bad weeds don’t die, we’ll both live forever,” she said grimly.

He lifted Ana onto her saddle and watched her go until Marigalante disappeared.

He reckoned it was well past midnight, and the fire in San Bernabé
had been blazing for at least five hours. He turned Penumbra toward the shortcut along the edge of the forest and up the slope that approached the farm from the back. Seis, Siete, and Ocho led the way. The dogs were familiar with this approach because that was how Severo went to call on Luis from Los Gemelos. It was slow and treacherous on the narrow uphill path in the dark. For most of the way, he had to rely on the dogs’ superior night vision to lead them. There were times when Severo had to stop to let his eyes get accustomed to the darkness. He kept one hand on the reins and the other by his revolver. Efraín rode behind him, and even though he’d never given him trouble, Severo knew that a slave at your back with a machete in hand wasn’t to be trusted, no matter how obedient he’d always been. Severo now wondered how long it had been since he’d allowed a man to walk behind him.

They crossed an orchard, and just as they were about to enter the yard, the dogs raced into the bushes, barking wildly. Severo pointed his rifle at a woman carrying a child and dragging another by the hand who ran out of the shadows, screaming as Seis nipped at her heels.

At his signal, the dog backed away, but Siete and Ocho were yapping at more figures emerging from the shadows.

“Where are the others?” Severo demanded, sweeping the dark.

“Gone,” one woman said.

Severo scanned the shrubbery as the dogs flushed out more people. He counted with his rifle barrel as they emerged—five women, seven children, three infants, two bent and slow-moving elders, one of them missing an arm. A tall man with a peg leg almost as thin as his real one led a blind woman. All the able-bodied men were gone. Six men, Severo remembered, not counting Yayo and Quique.

Severo ordered Efraín to dismount and lead the group to the
batey
, the dogs circling them, biting when they lagged or appeared to want to run. He rode ahead.

The farm was in ruins. The barracks were ashes, the warehouses and barns smoldering heaps of lumber. The air was thick with the smell of burned hair and flesh; animals had been left to perish in their stalls. Santos, the overseer, and his sister sat in perpetual watchfulness on the cement steps of the house, their necks slashed. The fire was still blazing inside, and it was obvious that no one could have
survived. Luis, fat and ungainly, had been unable to walk on his own since his stroke several years earlier. His wheelchair was tipped on its side in the yard.

“Severo!”

Luis was cowering behind the cement cistern across from the house. What was left of his torn nightshirt was bunched around his privates, his exposed thighs and legs scratched and bleeding. He was barefoot, but he still wore his nightcap. Since his stroke, his face had frozen into a lopsided, wanton grin that even in his dire state made him look like a huge-bellied satyr. He moaned and held on to Severo, sobbing into his shoulder that they beat him with sticks and left him for dead in a burning house. He dragged himself on his elbows, past the bodies of his caretakers, heaving his useless lower body along the
batey
until he found refuge.

Efraín led the slaves into the
batey
. When they saw the ruins, the women wailed, pulled off their head rags, and flapped their shoulders and torso, as if insects had swarmed them. Their children screeched around them, grabbing for the rags, fearing that all that flapping would cause their mothers to float up into the sky. Their cries nearly drowned out the sound of approaching horses, the jingling of spurs, and the curses of men unsheathing sabers. The lieutenant led four soldiers, and three members of the local militia flanked the sheriff. Behind them, a disheveled Manolo Morales Moreau, who was more used to riding in his pretty calash than on a horse, bobbed and jerked, making Severo Fuentes feel sorry for the stressed animal. When Manolo saw Severo with his father, he dropped ungracefully from his mount and waddled to Luis, who wouldn’t let go of Severo until he recognized that the immense, blubbering man grabbing at him was his son.

“They tried to kill me,” Luis wept as Manolo hugged and kissed him and tried to drag him upright, forgetting that his father’s legs were paralyzed.

A soldier rounded up the slaves and made them sit on the ground with their hands on their heads.

“We caught two men,” the sheriff said to Severo and the lieutenant. “One called Yayo, the other Alfonso.”

“Yayo belongs to Los Gemelos. I’m still missing two more, Jacobo and Quique. Alfonso and as many as another five ran from here.”

“We’ll find them,” the sheriff said.

Another soldier rode up and talked to the lieutenant. “Don Miguel is waiting for someone to escort him—”

“Miguel?” Severo turned to Efraín, who was holding their mounts. “Didn’t you go check on his arrival this morning?”

“The ship wasn’t there,
patrón
,” Efraín said. “I asked, and the harbormaster said no ships would dock today, and to come back tomorrow.”

“There is a mistake. Don Miguel was with don Manolo,” the lieutenant said.

Manolo and a militiaman were trying to lift Luis into his wheelchair. Severo helped them settle the still-distraught old man before questioning his son.

Manolo was breathless from the exertion but between wheezes was able to tell Severo about the ship’s arrival, and finding Miguel on the street, and bringing him home. “When the alarm came, he didn’t hesitate,” Manolo said. “He was riding with us, but next thing I knew, he wasn’t there.”

“He stopped when he saw your fields were on fire,” the soldier said. “He said he was going down there. He was worried about doña Ana.”

Before his last words were uttered, Severo was on horseback, ordering Efraín to follow him down the hill to Los Gemelos.

Teo, Paula, and Pepita, carrying Segundo in a sling, settled in the kitchen with Meri after Ana and the rest left.

“I told her,” Meri said, “about Jacobo. I heard him say—”

“Hush, child,” said Paula. “Don’t talk such nonsense.”

“But I heard—”

“You heard nothing, and you could get a lot of people in trouble with your loose tongue,” Teo said. “No one has said anything about anything. Understand?”

“But I already—”

“Don’t talk anymore,” Paula said. “Get your work and I’ll help you with the hemming. Can you light another lamp, Teo?”

Meri was annoyed. Who did old Paula think she was, telling her what to do? Just as soon as
el patrón
gave her her freedom papers,
Meri was going to tell Paula a thing or two. Always telling her to hush! She should be quiet, the old goat.

Freedom! She’d be free, and as soon as she could, she’d leave El Destino and Hacienda los Gemelos and go away, maybe as far as San Juan. She’d open a dress shop for fine ladies, the patterns taken from the magazines doña Ana hardly looked at but that Meri couldn’t get enough of. She’d make dresses with many tiers on the skirts, and ruffles on the sleeves and collars, like in the pictures. She wished she could take the Singer. Don Severo had brought it a month ago and after doña Ana learned how to operate the sewing machine, she taught Meri, who could now make a simple skirt, blouse, and apron in a day, not counting hand finishing.

Before returning to the kitchen, she decided to see what was happening in the valley so that she could report to the others. The fire in San Bernabé was out. The blaze in the southeast cane fields, however, seemed to be snaking toward the lower
batey
.

She’d never seen anyone else use Ana’s telescope, but she now crouched at the eyepiece, not daring to change the height so that doña Ana would never know. She probed the darkness until she found the lower
batey
. Torches and lamps lit some of the buildings well enough to make out the infirmary and the
casona
. Meri aimed toward the burning fields but passed over them. As she repointed toward the fire, something caught her eye. She focused the lens toward the movement and saw a man dressed in white upon a pale horse. Goose bumps rose up and down her spine.

“El Caminante!”

She looked away, because watching the apparition might curse her. But she had to look again to make sure it wasn’t a vision, remembering that she’d never heard anyone say that El Caminante had a horse. She surveyed the valley once more and saw the man in white again. “How can it be?” she said aloud, as if he could hear her, but just as she said it, El Caminante disappeared into the burning cane.

Ana looked in on the infirmary again, but no injured workers had been brought while she was at the
ingenio
. She returned to the
casona
porch, from where she had a good view over the fields. To her left, the fire over San Bernabé appeared to be out, but along the road
to Guares, a small fire sparked like a target in the night. She nodded, recognizing that Severo had ordered the workers to trench and douse the boundaries of the farthest field to keep the fire from jumping rows, letting the inside burn.

As she watched, a cold wind swirled around her that nearly knocked her down. It whooshed like human hands, pushing her out of the way, and continued through the dusty yard into the cane, clacking and sizzling as it spun toward the burning field. Her ears rang with the sound of unintelligible voices. The hair on her arms, behind her neck, and along her scalp bristled. She heard a neigh, galloping, and yelling as a fiery crown boiled over the cane, hissed, and disappeared.

Suddenly, she was in total darkness. She palmed the porch railing toward the stairs to the yard. Every candle, lamp, and torch was extinguished in and around the infirmary. Below her, someone ran toward the cane, chased by a dog, but she couldn’t tell who it was. Ana was frozen on the top tread, afraid to go down into the yard. She now heard wails and scuffling in her direction. She’d left the rifle inside the house, leaning against the wall, and now backed toward it.

The hounds skulked closer. Two came upstairs to her side. Someone managed to light a torch, and in a few moments candles and lamps were again flashing on the ends of poles. Her next thought was that she was trapped upstairs in the old, splintery
casona
. Did they mean to set the house on fire, like the runaways apparently had done to the canebrakes?

A huddle was forming at the bottom steps of the
casona
, but no one dared come closer, afraid of the dogs.

“Conciencia!” Ana called from the porch.

“The fire called her,” Toño shouted, followed by shrieks.

“A spirit entered her,” Zena said, and began the Lord’s prayer over the weeping.

Ana realized that they were gathering in the yard not in anger but because they wanted to be near her and were seeking her protection. She thought their terror had something to do with the figure that ran into the canebrakes being chased by a dog. And she now knew it must have been Conciencia.

Ana ran to the front porch. She peered toward the road to Guares and was horrified as a column of fire rose from the farthest field.
Her breath left her, and she held on to the porch railing, watching the whirling flames licking the black sky. Over the clapping of the cane, she heard screams, voices, barking, footsteps running away, then finally toward her, with the fateful certainty that disaster had touched her again.

Earlier, just as they sat down to dinner, word had come that slaves had set fire to San Bernabé. Manolo and Miguel rushed to the stables, saddled, and rode out without a thought or a weapon. In the city or
campo
, when the fire bell rang, every man must answer, and by the time they reached the main road there were other men like themselves, dressed for a quiet evening at home but ready to do their duty. They followed the soldiers, whose mission was to quell a possible uprising, while the neighbors and volunteers were charged with putting out the blaze.

By the time they left behind the outskirts of Guares, the moon was a tenuous ember in a muddy sky. Miguel trailed the riders. At the turnoff to San Bernabé a heavy canopy of branches obscured the path, so it was nearly impossible to see where they were going. The soldiers led the way uphill, but Miguel stopped at an overlook when he saw fire in the valley. A soldier stopped alongside him. It was too dark to make out his features clearly, but he had the voice of a younger man still excited about his work.