Days of the Dead (25 page)

“What?”

“What can you expect of that vile old man?” Werther’s voice scaled up to almost a cry. “Who but a madman would stipulate that all his money was to be given not to his only son, but to that son’s unborn child? Who but a lunatic would make his
chef
the heir to twenty thousand acres of prime cattle land and a hundred thousand pesos? Or grant thirty thousand pesos, and a thousand acres of land, to a papist convent, a
tomb,
that a half-mad harridan and her daughter might seal themselves into that corrupt sepulchre forever?”

Tears were running down his face again, and he was trembling, so that January offered him his silver flask of brandy, the mere smell of it bringing the little ring of inquisitive
léperos
closer. Werther drank gratefully and sniffled again, and January offered him his clean extra handkerchief as well—which Werther examined before he used, as if he suspected January of fobbing him off with soiled linen.

“Fifty thousand pesos and the town house to that Montero slut!
Herrgott!
My poor Fernando was tearing his hair out, trying to sort out this on top of all the other inanities: the hundreds of thousands of pesos spent on dirty old books, on Greek pots and statues of heathen gods; the mortgages and debts he bought up only to let his debtors go on living as pensioners, with their greedy, degenerate superstitious families! Had my master lived, he would have put all that right. He would have made Mictlán a paying proposition, have cleansed the house of musty books and heathen idols—yes, and leveled those foul pyramids for good building-stone as well!”

Personally January doubted this: it would take Pharaoh and all the children of Israel working under the lash to dismantle those five silent hills. The Conquistadores had certainly never managed it.

Passionately, Werther went on. “No decent country—no true law-court—would have supported such a pile of imbecilities! And then that wastrel musician, that laudanum-swilling tormentor of cat-gut . . .”

“And this will was on the desk the night Fernando died?”

“I tell you, yes!” Werther shrieked—January had never encountered someone who shrieked words like the lesser characters of Gothic novels were always doing. “It lay on the desk with the ledgers and the bills and the promissory notes and the deeds and all the other trash, under the eyes of those insane gods! No wonder my poor Fernando was driven distracted! What a cursed day that Fernando and I ever came to this awful land!”

As January handed him the silver flask again, he reflected that it was no wonder poor Señor dos Cerritos didn’t want to discuss the will. Contemplation of such provisions probably made him want to shriek, too.

And with a hundred thousand pesos and a sugar hacienda at stake, he thought, his belly sinking with dread, it was no wonder Ylario had no doubt that it was Hannibal who’d poisoned his benefactor’s son.

Damn it,
he thought bitterly,
DAMN it . . . !

“He never meant to come back to this country, you know.” Werther wiped his nose and ran a weary hand over his face. His eyes were sunken and he looked like he hadn’t slept or eaten in days. “He wanted to put it behind him, to make a new life for himself in a new world. I don’t know if you understand.”

“Yes,” said January softly, thinking of the gray streets of Paris, and of men who addressed him as “vous” instead of “tu,” like a child or a dog. “Yes, I understand.”

“We were—he was so happy in Prussia. He despised his father, and used to tell the most dreadful tales of him to the other officers. I would hear as I waited on them, for naturally in those days he would not confide in a servant. Which is as it should be—he deserved better company than a servant. In those days he had his friends about him. Only when we were here, and he was alone . . . so alone.”

His voice trembled, and he took one last drink and handed back the flask. “Herr Damiano managed the estates—it was only due to his care that my master’s allowance came to him, and was not all spent on dirty statues and heathen books. When Damiano died, my master knew he must take over the management of things here himself, before all flew to the Devil.”

“And you came with him?”

Werther drew himself up. “I have served Fernando de Castellón since I was fifteen. He was like a brother to me. More than a brother. No one understood him as I did, his moods, his needs, his greatness. Not his father, not Don Anastasio—that sterile scholar of weeds! Not that pinchbeck Napoleon Santa Anna, who would not so much as chide that monstrous old man for keeping his murderer alive about his household, only that he might have someone to play cards with! Not that cowardly whore von Winterfeldt, who thought only to get me out of the country, and not how to avenge my master. . . .”

January reflected wearily upon how everyone seemed to imagine that ministers to a foreign government had
carte blanche
to meddle at will—an impression apparently shared by some of those ministers themselves. What, he wondered, had Bremer imagined von Winterfeldt could have done to a British citizen without Santa Anna’s approval and backing? Marched troops on Mictlán and besieged it?

“Yes, I lied. Fernando was dead when I came into the study at half past ten. Dead and cold. He must have died minutes after that
Scheisskerl
Sefton gave him the poisoned brandy. But I had to lie! No one was doing anything, not even Capitán Ylario, who of all men I thought must understand. ‘I found no will,’ he said, as if Sefton would not have stolen it when he murdered my master!”

His eyes filled with tears again, and he leaned against the crumbling stucco of the arcade, striking it with his forehead like the frantic patients of San Hipólito. “A pettifogger and a coward, like all the rest! A betrayer . . . My poor Fernando! Betrayed by everyone save I alone! By those lazy, thieving pagan servants at the town house, who turned me out! I don’t doubt they were in league with that
Schwartzer
pig El Moro and the scum he commanded, and told them where to lie in wait for me in the alleys beside the town house, so that I dared not even claim my rights! Betrayed by those overdressed cowardly
Affenschwanzen
who were Fernando’s fellow officers, who would not do a thing to avenge him—who would not even take me on!

“And all because I tried to stand by my friend. My poor Fernando trusted me and needed me. He had so much to bear. He was a brave man, Herr Januar, a noble man, and for that nobility alone they poisoned him, as everyone poisons and cheats and mocks the brave!”

His voice broke. Most of the other prisoners in the yard had returned to their own concerns, rolling cigarettos or smoking them, some of them weaving hatbands of horsehair and beads—for sale via the guards, presumably—or making baskets. But a few remained, watching Werther with open incomprehension and scorn; January was aware of the glint in their eyes as they attempted to figure out how this encounter might be turned to their own good.

From his own brief brushes with the law in New Orleans—his own stay or two in the New Orleans Cabildo—January knew there are always men who watch for their chance to prey on those who falter, who are confused or have no friends to watch their back.

And Werther, he guessed, didn’t understand this.

Yet.

He had spent only the tail-end of one night in the prison yard.

“He was of the true nobility, Herr Januar. A Knight of the Holy Roman Empire, descended in pure blood from the days before it was split and decayed, when the true Spaniards and the true Germans stood as one and ruled over the whole of Europe under God. But he was born too late, into degenerate times. Only
I
understood this, understood him. He was good to me,” the young man finished baldly. “Would you not do anything that you could, Herr Januar, to stand beside a friend?”

It has to be one of Butler’s men,
thought January as he walked with sinking heart along the stone passageway to the guardroom. What would a countryside bandit like El Moro be doing, lurking in wait in the alleys of the town to beat up wandering strangers? Not, he reminded himself, that he knew the local customs of Mexican banditry—perhaps it was usual to switch venues like that. But in three nights of listening to gossip at the card-tables, he’d heard complaints about
léperos
and burglars and house-breakers, but never about organized countryside gangs coming in to terrorize the streets.

And he’d heard El Moro’s name mentioned several times, always as a highwayman who preyed on coaches and travelers outside the town.

But somehow he couldn’t picture a black man, slave or free, giving orders to white Texians either, and Bremer had spoken of the black leader commanding men.

He turned back and glanced over his shoulder, where the shadows of the arcade framed the great glaring arch of the sunlit yard. Bleak and desperate in his heart, wondering what the hell he was going to do now. Try to insinuate himself into Butler’s town house tonight? Werther Bremer hadn’t seen anything of John Dillard, anything outside the walls at all. Try to force the truth out of Valentina by threatening to expose her lover?

God knew what counter-charge the girl would come up with.

The evidence is fairly damning,
Hannibal had written. . . . Damning? It was irrefutable. And tomorrow Santa Anna would leave for Vera Cruz, and there would be no rescue the next time Ylario rode out to Mictlán. Hannibal would be lucky if he survived a night in the prison yard before being hustled onto the scaffold.

He could see Werther sitting with his back to one of the arcade pillars, his arms folded around his knees, looking fearfully around him.

Hungry, almost certainly. And perhaps beginning to suspect what would happen once the sun went down.

The temptation was strong simply to walk away. It would be days before Ylario heard his protégé was here. . . .

And Werther, January knew, wouldn’t last days.

A voice in his mind whispered,
It would solve a lot of problems. . . .

But there were things he knew that he could not do.

In the guardroom he dug in his pocket and handed the sergeant five pesos. “Would you see the German boy gets put in a cell by himself?” he said, knowing that such accommodation was available on the upper level of the arcade. “And see that he gets his share of the food. Capitán Ylario will be asking for him, and will want to find him safe and sound.”

Forgive me, my friend,
he thought as he walked down the stone carriageway to the street, his boots echoing in the shadowy vault.
But those of us who work for friendship’s sake must help one another as best we can.

“Well, it explains at any rate why Ylario was so certain of Hannibal’s guilt.” Rose dipped a rag swab into an infusion of the
tecomblate
that Zama had bought for them at the local
botica
and squeezed the astringent wash gently into the wound on January’s arm. “But I’ll take oath Hannibal knows nothing of the will.”

“If it existed at all.” January put a finger on the knot of bandage for Rose to tie. The cut was superficial and had all but closed by the time he’d returned to the Calle Jaral, but the lack of cleanliness prevailing in La Accordada made January willing to go through the pain of reopening and cleansing the flesh. “What Fernando found may have been only a draft drawn up by his father to force him into a marriage any sane man would draw back from. Don Prospero himself may have put it on the fire the minute the room was clear. God knows he’d never have heard the end of it if Doña Josefa learned about the thirty thousand pesos to the convent . . . presumably the Bleeding Heart of Mary.”

“About which you can be sure I’ll ask Sor Maria-Perdita this afternoon.” Rose washed her hands in the second bowl of water on the windowsill of their chamber and tidied up the swabs. “Don Anastasio would know about the will, if anyone would, and he’s certainly not mentioned it—will we see him at Sir Henry’s tonight, do you think?”

“I doubt it. Anastasio has no great opinion of Santa Anna. But he’ll be at the Chapel of the Bleeding Heart this afternoon when Pilar de Bujerio takes her vows.”

“Will you write to Ylario about Werther?”

January nodded with a sigh. “I have to,” he said. “He’ll find out soon anyway. Werther’s testimony about the will won’t make much difference to a judge who’s already made up his mind to put Hannibal on the gallows; at least now we know what we’re up against. I’ll send a note to von Winterfeldt also. Even if, as a Holsteiner, Bremer is no business of the King of Prussia’s, von Winterfeldt may be able to do something for him. Certainly the guards at the prison won’t know the difference between one German principality and another.”

“And I somehow suspect,” murmured Rose, “that one need not fear von Winterfeldt being overly scrupulous about the Principles of Universal Law.”

Coming into the
sala
in search of notepaper, January found his hostess with a basket of marigolds on her arm, arranging the brilliant flowers in a series of terracotta pots on a little table set up in a niche at the far end of the room. Among them, carefully folded, lay an old reboso of faded black and gray; a necklace of red beads with a silver cross; a cheap rosary; a pair of brass earrings.

It reminded January a little of the altars his sister Olympe, and the other voodoo queens of New Orleans, would make to the gods of Africa: images that spoke of their nature, and the things they were said to love, liquor and tobacco and flowers of certain colors.

But this was smaller, and not a place of the worship of spirits of power but of single memories reverently held: four clay toy bulls with the paint nearly all worn off them, a doll whose face had been nearly rubbed away but whose black-dyed sisal hair was neatly braided. A plate of coconut candies lay between two gourds of aguardiente, a double line of tidily-arranged cigarettos, a bowl of spiced peanuts, a plate of tiny skulls wrought of sugar and painted silver and gold.

“They like to be remembered,” Consuela said, glancing back at January over her plump shoulder. “Mama and Teresa and Joselito. It’s not like a big family
offrenda,
not like the one my father will have out at Mictlán, or Don Anastasio’s at Saragosse, as big as a cathedral, for all the various branches of the Avila family going back three hundred years. But Mama would always have one for her mama—my Abuelita Tita—and her mama in turn, and all my aunts and uncles. When you have very little, it’s important that you hold to what you have. And sometimes all you have is the memory of being loved, when there was nothing else.”