Days of the Dead (10 page)

No wonder Fernando demanded the corner room with locks on its doors, January reflected.

“How I envy your daughter, Doña Imelda! Every time I hear of the preparations for her entry into the convent, my heart swells to bursting with longing.”

“Now, that is only natural.” Doña Imelda’s voice, blaring as a regimental band, purred with satisfaction. “The Bleeding Heart
is
the most exclusive convent in town. I’ve heard the Incarnation is accepting just
anyone
these days. You will come to the ceremony, won’t you?”

“If my father will permit.” The hate in Josefa’s voice was as clear as if she had spat upon his name. “What can one expect from a man who . . .”

Their voices faded, leaving a stain upon the silence of the room.

“Madness has a way of spreading in families,” said Rose at length. “I don’t mean that the children inherit weak minds, necessarily. But everyone’s behavior twists to accommodate the conduct of one member, like beaten horses that shy if a stranger so much as lifts his hand. Things that would be unthinkable elsewhere seem normal. One must either go mad oneself, or flee.”

Hannibal said softly, “Or both.”

“Or both,” Rose agreed. “In any case, Paloma says that on the night of the wedding-feast she slipped out of her bedroom while her mother was praying, and sat in the shadows of the ladies’ courtyard by the gate, listening to Hannibal play. She loves your playing,” she added, glancing across at the fiddler. “If nothing else, you’ve brought the poor child great joy.”

“I’m glad,” replied Hannibal. “I honestly am. But I regret to say that given the choice of being triced up on the stable gate and flogged to death by Fernando, or being hanged for his murder, I’d sooner have sent Paloma joy post-paid from Mexico City.”

“I cannot,” Rose sighed, “find it in me to argue with you. On the evening of the eighth of September, Paloma heard a man whistle on the far side of the wall, and peeked out of her hiding-place in time to see Valla climb the grapevines that cover that wall—they’re centuries old and some of the stems are as big around as a man’s leg. . . .”

“O wall, full often thou hast heard my moans,
For parting my fair Pyramus and me,
My cherry lips have often kissed thy stones. . . .”

Rose picked up Consuela’s fan and tapped Hannibal sharply. “According to Paloma, this isn’t the only meeting she’s witnessed. The most recent one, she says, was ten or twelve days ago: St. Bridget’s day, which her mother celebrated with an all-night vigil of prayer because St. Bridget was a widow. I asked Paloma what the tune was that the rider whistles; she said it was this.”

And Rose whistled—in an unlady-like fashion—a tune known among the Americans as “Pretty Peggy-o.”

“If it was Valla,” argued Consuela, “where was Doña Filomena?”

“Tied up in the wine cellar,” said Hannibal promptly. “Or locked in the stables. Or with Doña Josefa in the chapel, praying that the lovely Valentina wouldn’t accuse her of operating a house of prostitution out of the women’s courtyard and produce forged correspondence to prove it.
Did
you bring in tea?”

“I did.” January stood, opened the chest, and brought out the little Sèvres pot. “According to M’sieu Guillenormand, this tea was Fernando’s special blend. No one in the household was permitted to drink it, and only Werther and Guillenormand had keys to the caddy—not that such locks can’t be easily picked, according to nearly every house-servant I’ve ever talked to. Did Fernando have tea after supper before going into his study?”

“Not before going in,” said Hannibal. “He said he wished to put in more work on his father’s papers that night, but he may just have wanted to get away from Señora Lorcha. But when I went in, there was a tray on the desk. Meissen ware, apple-green-and-white with a gold rim: cup, saucer, pot, water-pot, milk-pitcher, sugar-bowl, slop-jar, and spirit-lamp, with a little gold strainer and a gold spoon to match.”

“Werther took it in,” said Consuela decisively. “I remember him coming out of the study door, silent as a cat, and the look he gave Natividad as he passed her would have taken paint off a fence.”

“That I can believe. My back was to the study door—and I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely sober myself.
What life is then to a man that is without wine?
He must have come into the study with his tray from the
corredor. . . .
”

“Which means,” concluded Rose, “that anyone could have put anything into it while everyone else was at supper.”

“If you can think of a way anyone could have left the supper-table,” remarked January, “without everyone noticing.
Did
anyone leave, Hannibal? Consuela?”

They looked at each other blankly for a moment, then Consuela shook her head. “Except for the servants, of course. They were in and out of the sala.” She frowned a little, as if, for the first time, the thought was moving in her mind that Hannibal might not have murdered her brother after all. “And Franz was not popular among the
indios
of the village. He was like the Inquisition—not for God but for money. He was full of plans to reorganize the villages as they are organized in Prussia. On the day of the wedding-feast, the villagers sent a delegation to Don Anastasio, begging him to speak to my father about Fernando, or to cure my father if he could. Don Anastasio is regarded as something of a
brujo
in the villages, and able to do such things. But it would take a brave servant to enter the study when Fernando was sitting so close to its door.”

“And the door into the
corredor
was bolted from the inside,” added Hannibal. “Franz had to get up and unbolt it, to let me in.” The muscles of his jaw twitched, and he settled back against the bedpost, his arms wrapped around his knees.

“Hence my quest for Don Fernando’s personal cache of tea,” said January firmly. He stowed the tea-pot carefully back in the chest and closed the lid. “I wonder if one of the kitchen-boys could be bribed into stealing us one of M’sieu Guillenormand’s rabbits. Or does someone raise them in the village?”

“Lupe does,” said Consuela. “You should hear her on the subject of French
mariquitas,
for whom an honest hare isn’t good enough. She’ll sell you one for a medio.”

Footmen were still loading Doña Imelda’s luggage—an amazing quantity considering the woman had come only for an overnight stay—into the smaller of her two carriages, when January descended the courtyard stair a few minutes later. The huge quadrangle was filled with not only the mounts of the de Bujerio outriders—stoutly-built Andalusians and Hanoverian warmbloods who towered over the scrawny mustangs of the vaqueros—but with those of the guards who would accompany Don Prospero’s proposed expedition to the pyramids. Circling around beneath the ground-floor arcade to avoid being trampled—or smothered in the fog of dust—January encountered Don Anastasio, coming from the direction of the kitchen with several small bundles of dried herbs in his hands, done up with string. January touched his hat to him; the slim, silver-haired
hacendado
checked his stride and bowed.

“Señor Enero,” he said. “You play a good game of cards—I’m sorry I had not the opportunity to speak to you as much as I would have liked last night, nor to your lovely bride. A most intelligent and educated woman. A pity we do not see more like her in my country.”

January recalled some of Consuela’s remarks about Anastasio’s own wife, and replied, “A pity we do not see more like her in
my
country, Don Anastasio. For she is exceptional—and the view that women are too highly strung to sustain the rigors of an education is hardly limited to Mexico.”

“One would think, in the nineteenth century . . .” The Don shook his head, his glance flickering to January’s face. “Is it true that you were appointed by the British minister to look into the matter of Señor Sefton’s innocence? For I recall when Sefton was first accused, Señora Montero spoke to Sir Henry on the subject and was told that he could—or would—do nothing. And I thought it most curious that an Englishman would appoint an American to such an investigation.”

“It is not for me,” smiled January, “to comment upon the truth or falsehood of what a lady says. If I have anything at all to do with the matter, upon my return to the city it will be true.”

Don Anastasio grinned, teeth very white and strong above a neatly-trimmed beard. “Whatever else may be said of your friend, it has been good beyond expression to hear music properly played. Do you truly believe him to be innocent?”

“I don’t know. Do you truly believe him to be guilty?”

“What makes you ask that?”

“What makes you hesitate in answering?”

The Don said nothing for a time. Then, slowly, he replied, “Truly, Señor Enero, I do not know. Werther Bremer’s grief appeared to me to be entirely genuine—the poor boy was utterly distraught at his master’s death. My common sense tells me that it must have been one of them or the other, for no one else had access to anything Franz consumed after dinner was done. I hope I am not being prejudiced by the joys of educated conversation. . . .” He gestured with the packet he held: January smelled the summery breath of chamomile and comfrey. “Perhaps I am too much a lover of music to believe that a rotten branch can produce such sweet fruit. My wife’s confessor would take me to task on that score, I’m sure. I don’t know how else murder could have been done—but I don’t believe Sefton did it. Not knowingly, anyway.”

“Unknowingly, then?” January had watched Don Anastasio converse with Rose at dinner about botany and the behavior of barometers on the high central Mexican plateau. A
brujo,
Consuela had called him. January was curious what Fernando’s brother-in-law would have observed on the night of the wedding-feast.

“I have heard of men drying the residue of certain poisons onto the sides of wineglasses,” said Don Anastasio at length. “It could be done in a slow oven, after the baking was finished. But Guillenormand is a fanatic for cleanliness, and the glasses that Hannibal carried into that room he took from the sideboard in the
sala.
They would not have had any residue on them, or you can be sure one of the kitchen-boys would have had a beating. Even more so would that apply to Fernando’s tea-cup, which Bremer cleaned himself. It has crossed my mind . . .”

He stepped closer to January, and deeper into the shadows of the arcade, away from the clamor of the men and horses in the court.

“However the poisoning was done, it has crossed my mind that perhaps the best thing to do might be simply to wait for the Days of the Dead, and then spirit your friend out of here on the night of
los niños,
while everyone is at the cemetery.”

“The cemetery?”

“Here in Mictlán, the first night of the feast—the first of November—is the feast of the Saints, the holy ones who dwell with God, and so by extension that of the innocent ones, the children. People bring food to the graves, to share with the spirits of the dead and with one another: tamales, candy, the sweetest of fresh fruits. The graves are decorated with red coxcomb and yellow marigolds
—cempoalxochitl,
the Indians call them,
the flower of twenty,
though why twenty I’ve never understood.”

Beside Doña Imelda’s carriage, Don Prospero was snapping out instructions to Don Rafael. “Have those sheep to the Army by Thursday, you understand. And for the love of God, don’t just send whatever beasts you happen to round up! Sort out the healthy ones and turn them back into the pasture. Those imbeciles that buy for the Army won’t know the difference.”

By his tone he might have been talking to the kitchen-boy, but Don Rafael inclined his head; whether a slave worked in the cane-fields or in the Big House, January reflected, he was still a slave.

“You’re not leaving? Nonsense, your mother will get back to town all right! I’m showing Hannibal’s Moorish friend the pyramids. Vasco!” Don Prospero shouted to the tallest of the vaqueros, a startlingly handsome man with the long braids of an Indian. “Saddle a horse for Rafael here to come with us.”

“I’ve already seen the pyramids, sir. You showed them to me yourself—”

“I know you’ve already seen the pyramids, you blockhead!” flared the Don. His pale eyes glared from beneath the white brows. “Are you so stupid you think you’ve seen all there is?”

“Er—of course not, sir. It’s just . . .”

“Rafael.” Doña Imelda stood beside the carriage door, ignoring the footman who waited, hand extended, to help her in. “It is a long way back to town, and we must be going if we wish to reach there by nightfall.”

“Do people just go to take one look at Rome, eh? Or Venice?”

“Of . . . of course not, sir. . . .”

“Rafael.”

“These are the temples of gods beyond our comprehension!” shouted Don Prospero, flinging out his long arms. “Of seers and priests and warriors who were reading truths in the stars when Spaniards were still hitting one another over the head with sticks! You . . .” He jabbed a finger at Doña Imelda. “Your son will return tomorrow.”

“They are an uncanny place,” Don Anastasio murmured to January, still at his side, “the pyramids of Mictlán.” He turned to look at them, framed by the vast arch of the kitchen-yard gate, tawny-gold cones against a bottomless sky. “Most of the villagers cannot be induced to walk among them—many, not even to speak of them. But sometimes after the Days of the Dead are over, I have found altars there, in the crypts that are bored into their hearts. Little shrines decorated with shells and bits of turquoise and glass, with coins and bunches of tobacco. Places where the idols remain, watching over the cenotes—the holy wells—in the dark. And sometimes it is clear that food is not the only thing that has been given to the spirits, for the lilies and the marigolds before the images are splashed with fresh blood.”

He glanced sidelong up at January, and in his eyes January saw the same uneasiness he had glimpsed the previous night, when Don Prospero had sung the praises of the ancient priests and explained the techniques of cardiosection. “You say you are a physician, Señor. Have you had to do with the diseases of the mad? The diseases of the mind?”