Daughter of Fortune (28 page)

“But you always tell us to eat everything, Erlinda,”
said Catarina, running a tortilla around the
salsa
on her
plate. '

“I know, my dearest, I know. I will be better in the
morning.”

Catarina turned to Diego, who was leaning on the
table with both elbows, running the rim of his earthenware cup
along his lower lip, but not drinking. “Diego, Juanita Castellano
says that you are in trouble with the governor. What does she
mean?”

He sat up straight then, looking sideways at his
little sister. “
Ay de mi
, Catarina, why are your questions
always so ... piercing?”

Erlinda laughed and Catarina plunged on, encouraged
by her brother’s smile. “Juanita whispered that Maria has got you
into trouble. How could Maria get anyone in trouble?”

“How indeed?” he said, teasing her. Diego threw up
his hands. “
Caramba!
The Inquisition!” he exclaimed as he
stood up. “It is a matter between Maria and me. When I need you,
Catarina, or you, Luisita, to help me with my affairs, I will tell
you.”

His words were hard, but his eyes smiled at his
sisters, and they grinned back. “And now excuse me, all of you. I
will retire to write in my journal. This has been a day of some
event.”

After the dishes were washed and the silver plates
locked back in their cabinet, Maria took the leather bucket from
the hook and walked to the
acequia.
The night air was cool,
the slight breeze chilly on her cheeks. The crickets sawed and
buzzed in the cottonwoods, and the horses made their usual
snuffling sounds in the stable beyond the
acequia,
but
tonight there was little comfort in familiar things.

She wished again they had had the chance to tell the
governor about Popeh. Maria climbed down the side of the ditch to
the water, noting as she dipped in the bucket how much lower the
water was.
If only God would bring us rain
, she thought,
then paused, remembering Diego’s words to Cristóbal in the
pueblo.

“I am afraid,” she said out loud, then looked around
to make sure no one was near. She sat where she was, her knees
drawn up to her chin, her arms tight around her legs, feeling cold
in July.

She thought of her sister again, trying to divine
the reasons for her strange behavior. Diego had said something
about the hardness of the country, and also about the cruelty of
Margarita’s husband. Maria could testify to the hardness of the
land, but the husband? Maria did not know. How little she knew of
men.

But I do know it would be better, much better, to
be loved and then marry, rather than to marry and hope to be
loved
. She knew no one, not one of her friends, who had loved
first. It was a thing not done. She tried to recall Felix de
Guzman’s application for her sister’s hand, but she only knew
stories of the wealth and property that had exchanged hands as
Margarita went from one master to another. That was the way it was,
the way it always was.

She sighed. She would never know what had made
Margarita as brittle as glass, but she knew enough to fear what
Margarita would do now. Maria understood the ways of her country.
As soon as the governor wrote to the viceroy for his advice, and as
soon as the reply came, she would be under the control of La Viuda
Guzman. Instinct told her that Margarita would use her hard. A
hundred times a day she will tell me how grateful I should be for a
sister’s concern, and forget how shocked she was that I should
scrub someone’s floors.

It wasn’t the work that saddened her. She was used
to work now. It was the abiding knowledge that she belonged nowhere
in the river kingdom of New Mexico. She had come as an intruder,
and she remained one, a survivor who never should have lived.

Like a tongue worrying an inflamed tooth, her mind
darted back to Diego, always to Diego, and his words to the
governor.
He would marry me to keep me away from my sister
,
she mused,
but is this right? Is this fair?
And who was to
say, when she was his wife, his property, that he would treat her
any better than Felix de Guzman had treated Margarita?
There
must be love, she thought
, looking across the
acequia
to
the dark fields beyond.
If only he loved me as I love
him
.

Maria stood and picked up the bucket, bending down
for more water. She looked out across the rows of corn and
remembered Cristóbal sitting beside her evening after evening,
saying nothing, thinking his secret thoughts.

Perhaps she should have married Cristóbal. At least
he loved her. She remembered the brothers’ shouting match in the
kitchen and tears came to her eyes.
La Afortunada
,
indeed
, she thought, walking slowly back to the hacienda.
A girl of fifteen with no husband, no prospects and no
dowry
.

Evening prayers were the same, and somehow
different. Diego’s Mexican workers huddled in the back. The young
girls, scrubbed clean, wriggled through their devotions with
giggles and nudges. Erlinda glided in and knelt in her usual place.
She closed her eyes and her lips began to move as she fingered her
rosary. La Señora’s face was troubled, her brown eyes, so like
Diego’s, dark pools of ruffled water. The serenity had vanished
from her, stripped like husk from corn in one swift motion.

Cristóbal’s place was empty, his voice missing as
Diego led them in the psalms. Maria turned anxious eyes to Diego,
then lowered her gaze before he looked her way. Already the room
was full of questions. How unfair it would be to raise another.

Diego’s prayer was the same, the invocations and
blessings on the land and its people. If he paused in his prayer
for the governor and for the viceroy in Mexico City, and those
others in authority, perhaps it was her imagination. He prayed for
the king with his usual fervor. And there he would have ended his
devotions on any other night, but he went on. Although her eyes
were closed, Maria felt everyone in the room lean forward to hear
him, so eager were they all for some solace.

“And now, Father Eternal, bless this house. Watch
over my lands, protect my Indians, my flocks, my herds, my loved
ones.” Diego continued. “Oh, Father,” he began, and paused again.
Maria wondered what father he prayed to. Was it the All-knowing
Father, or his own who had died too soon, leaving heavy burdens on
young shoulders? “Oh, Father, protect us each according to our
needs. Grant Luz peace. Let her know there are those who hold her
dear. Teach Catarina to school her tongue, to know when to be
silent. Give Erlinda a heart to take in even those who would cause
her fear. And help Maria to understand what she is to us.” He
paused and cleared his throat. “Father, help me to know my friends
from my enemies. And teach us love and understanding, for without
them, we are as dust.”

He said amen. They crossed themselves, rising
swiftly from knees accustomed to prayer. Maria could not look at
Diego as he walked to the back of the chapel. Her eyes were wet,
and she wiped them on her sleeve, then extended her arm for La
Señora to grasp.

The Indian servants filed past their master,
kneeling to kiss his hand. Catarina kissed his hand and slipped out
quickly, but Luz kissed his hand and clung to him for a moment.
Diego smoothed back her hair, kissed her, and sent her after her
sister. Erlinda knelt next and rested her cheek on his hand for a
moment. She rose without looking at his face and hurried out.

Maria knelt at Diego’s feet as she did each night
and kissed his hand. Instead of drawing back his hand when she
finished her obeisance, Diego reached forward with his other hand
and cupped her face. There was no one to see him. The others had
gone ahead, and only La Señora remained behind to bless her
son.

Maria looked up in surprise at Diego. He looked down
at her, more serious than she had ever seen him. “I meant what I
said, Maria.” He let go of her and turned to his mother. Maria rose
and hurried out of the chapel.

What did he mean? Was he speaking of his words in
the governor’s office? Of his prayer? Or were they somehow one and
the same thing? Maria slipped into the storeroom off the kitchen
and wiped her eyes on the dishtowel drying there. Luz and Catarina
would want a story before sleep, as always. She could not come to
them in tears.

The children had abandoned their bed for Maria’s
that night. The three of them crowded close together, their arms
around each other. Luz whimpered when Maria blew out the candle,
but by the time Maria had finished her story of the poor girl and
the prince who loved her, embellished this time with jokes and
bumbling suitors, Luz was content. The three of them lay together
in close companionship. Maria believed that she would not rest, not
after the events of the day, but the warmth of the small bodies on
either side of her soon put her to sleep.

It was a night of troubled sleep. Father Efrain put
his head in her lap again, but when she looked down, it was the
face of an Indian with curious yellow eyes that refused to close,
even when she ran her hands over and over his face to shut the
lids. And Carmen de Sosa whimpered and searched for her hair, or
was it Luz, nestling close to her, who cried in her sleep?

Maria woke at dawn, exhausted. The girls still
slept, so she raised herself carefully on one elbow. The sword was
there at the foot of the bed, as she had known it would be. She
stretched and felt the heavy metal with her toes.

She glanced at Catarina’s bed. It was empty, but
someone had slept there all night. Maria got up slowly, careful not
to wake the little girls. She tiptoed on bare feet to Catarina’s
bed, where she sat and felt the indented pillow. It was still warm.
She leaned forward and sniffed the pillow, breathing in the scent
of sage. She put her head down on the pillow and closed her eyes
again. When she awoke, the girls were dressing and the sword was
gone.

Catarina pulled her dress over her head and ran her
fingers in her hair. “Ay, Maria, you are the sleepy one this
morning. I can already smell chocolate from the kitchen.”

Maria sat up and tugged her nightgown down around
her knees. Luz looked at her from the bed where she still lay, both
pillows propped behind her head. “Diego came in here, Maria. Did
you know?” She giggled. “He wasn’t even dressed! He got his sword.
Did you know that he left his sword here?”

Maria smiled. “You ask more questions than
Catarina.”

Luz continued, snuggling deeper in the pillows. “He
told us to be quiet and let you sleep. We promised that we would,
then he pulled your nightgown down around your ankles and covered
you with that rug from the floor.” Her eyes were big. “Why would he
do that?”

“I expect he did not want me to be cold, Luz, and
did not want to wake me,” said Maria, touched and embarrassed at
the same time. “Heavens, let us dress and get to the kitchen. The
sun must he almost up.”

“I am already dressed,” declared Catarina. “Perhaps
I will tell on Luz.”

Maria laughed, “If you go outside this room looking
as if you ran backward through a bush, Erlinda will laugh! Come, my
child, and let me braid your hair.”

The sun was up and warming the patio in the
hacienda’s interior before they finally left their room. Erlinda
was sitting alone in the kitchen. She shook her head over her
sisters. “Mother in heaven!” she exclaimed, “it must be six of the
clock! You three must think you are the viceroy’s children, to lie
in bed after sunrise!”

Luz and Catarina looked at each other and covered
their mouths, giggling behind their hands. Maria stood behind them,
her hands on their shoulders, enjoying Erlinda’s gentle joking. The
morning sun was warm and inviting in the long room, and the
delicious aroma of
piñon
and juniper wood in the fireplace
was pleasing to the senses.

She went to the kitchen door and looked out. Maria
had seen Diego’s Tesuque Indians at other sunrises, raising their
arms to the morning sun, singing a wordless song to it, their
invocation to the dawn as meaningful in its own way as the prayers
in the chapel. The thought struck her suddenly that she would like
to stand in the middle of the garden and lift her arms to the
beckoning sun, praising the bringer of dawn.

“Maria, how like Diego you grow!” Erlinda chided.
“How many mornings have I seen him do just what you are doing. He
surveys his beans and tomatoes, gives some sort of silent
benediction to the ovens and hives. A lord surveying his lands. You
would think he commanded vast domains in this new world.”

Maria turned around. “Life is made up of such small
things, I think. And I do count each day as special.” She sat at
the table, looking down at the plate the Mexican servant girl put
before her. “Besides, I like the morning.”

Erlinda rose from the table. “Perhaps I have lived
too long in this kingdom to appreciate what you and Diego see in
it.” She laughed, brushing her hand against Maria’s cheek. “All I
see here is work to do!”

They worked that morning, weeding the garden, baking
the day’s bread, hauling water from the
acequia
for La
Señora’s bath. After their midday bread and milk, Maria set her
young charges to stitching on their samplers in a comfortable
corner of the patio, and she and Erlinda began to wash the family
silver.

“Maria,” began Erlinda after a long, companionable
silence, “what would you say if I went to Santa Fe to stay with the
Castellanos?”

Maria’s hands were deep in yucca suds and water.
“Erlinda, we would miss you. ”

“And I, you. But while we were there yesterday, Don
Reynaldo and La Señora Castellano asked me to visit them. I
mentioned it to Diego this morning, and he thought you could manage
without me for a while.”