Return to Paradise (Torres Family Saga) (6 page)

      
“And look at their reward. My brother dead and his son living in that jungle,” he replied in disgust. “Better we send yon Spanish soldier to Española to console Aaron,” Isaac added, gesturing upstairs to where Rigo lay. “Leave Benjamin to live here in safety with Miriam.”

      
At the reference to Rigo, Miriam felt an odd fluttering of fear. “I could not agree more, Uncle Isaac, but Benjamin can be most stubborn. He wishes us to take his brother to Española. Perhaps if we do go, he will realize we do not belong—that he no longer belongs there,” she temporized, almost to herself.

      
Isaac gave a snort to indicate what he thought of that plan while Ruth rose and called for the serving girl to clear the table.

      
Miriam returned to relieve Benjamin, her feet growing more leaden with each step up the wide stone stairs. The dinner conversation had upset her greatly. Her father continued to live in his dream world, certain that Benjamin would never leave all the wealth, security and comfort of Marseilles to return to a Spaniard-infested jungle, but Miriam knew better.

      
Miriam and Benjamin had met in Padua nearly seven years ago. He had been an advanced student, brilliant and in favor with his professors, while she, as a female and a Jewess, suffered under a double hardship. She had been merely seventeen years old and living away from her father for the first time in her life. Benjamin had taken a lonely girl beneath his wing and guided her, sensing beneath her plain, shy exterior both intelligence and determination. She would always love him for that, as well as for his patience in waiting for her to complete her magisterium. But how long would such a man wait? He had traveled about Italy, learning new medical theories at various universities, studying at the side of practicing physicians of renown. He had even traveled with the fabled Peracelsus on part of that strange man's odyssey. Now he wanted to marry and return home.

      
Miriam did not deceive herself when she looked in the mirror. She saw a strong, angular face framed by unremarkable brown hair that tended to be overfine and limp. Her body was by half too thin and she was as tall as most men. To have a golden, handsome man like Benjamin Torres wish to wed her was more than she had a right to ever dare dream. He was gentle and kind, but above all, he respected her as a woman with a keen mind who had the right to employ it. Together they would practice medicine.

      
But where? Would those intolerant Spanish colonials in the Indies allow a woman such license? She knew his mother Magdalena was a healer among the Tainos and settlers of their jungle plantation or hato, as the natives called it. But Miriam would miss Marseilles and her father, and she would hate the hypocrisy of pretending to be a Christian, even if there were few spying priests in the interior.

      
Yet I am twenty-four years old and virgin. I would have love, have a family of my own.
There seemed to be no answer. She sighed as she opened the door and entered the sick room. Benjamin was asleep in a high-backed wooden chair next to the bed. Golden whiskers on his chin glinted in the flickering candlelight. His eyes looked sunken in their sockets. He needed more rest. Then her gaze strayed unwillingly from Benjamin's beloved face to the dark stranger on the bed. Rigo was resting peacefully at the moment, but she knew the fever still had not broken, even though they had lowered it with Benjamin's strange Indian treatment.

      
Miriam walked quietly across the room and knelt beside Benjamin, touching his hand gently. “You must go downstairs and eat. Aunt Ruth has food waiting for you. Then into your own bed for real rest.”

      
Benjamin awakened to Miriam's earnest entreaty. He must have dozed off. “My stomach does begin to growl, nay, to roar.” He smiled at her and stifled a yawn.

      
“Go, please. I will watch your brother through the night and rest tomorrow before the Sabbath.” She tugged at his tunic sleeve until he stood up.

      
“You already sound like Aunt Ruth cajoling Uncle Isaac, and they have been married for fifty years!” When she would have shoved him on his way, he held her fast in his arms and tilted her chin up with one hand so she had to meet his eyes. “If we do not hurry we will not have fifty years together, Miriam.” He lowered his mouth and gave her a light kiss, then tried to deepen it, but she turned her head with a breathless laugh.

      
“That brief rest certainly restored your spirits.”

      
“When can we announce the betrothal?” he persisted, still not releasing her.

      
“I was just discussing the same thing with your aunt and uncle. They too want it to be soon, but...”

      
“But you are all three agreed we should not return to Española,” he said with frustration evident in his voice. “Miriam, tis my home, a paradise so rare, so beautiful it will rob you of breath.”

      
“So would the Spanish Inquisitors if they found me out,” she replied tartly.

      
“We do not live in Santo Domingo. My family's hato is far in the interior, isolated. There is not a priest in a hundred miles. Twisted jungle trails, steep mountains, tis safe as anywhere. Think you the Jews of Marseilles could not be expelled or worse if King Francois decided to turn his attention from his Italian adventures to Provence?”

      
“My family has lived here for hundreds of years,” she said stubbornly.

      
He dropped his arm and released her. “And mine lived in Spain for a thousand years. The old world holds nothing for us. Return with me to the Indies, Miriam.” With that he turned and quit the room, but his words echoed in her ears as she took a seat wearily beside the bed.

      
She had brought a medical treatise by Gasparo Torella on
lues venerea
, the awful pox that was transmitted sexually, and now raging across Europe. Looking across at Rigo she wondered if in all his travels with the Imperial Army he had contracted the dreaded disease.

      
Remembering his hard dark body lying naked on the bed, she knew he had not. Although his skin was marred by battle scars, it was otherwise smooth and healthy. Deciding it was best not to dwell on such mental images, Miriam began to read the Latin text.

      
Rigo awakened near the midnight hour, straining at his bindings and crying out for water. Miriam, who had been dozing herself, quickly rose and poured some in a goblet, then attempted to raise his head so he could swallow a few sips. She soon realized he was unaware of his surroundings, merely having feverish delusions. He murmured some low, unintelligible words in Castilian as she tried to get the water past his parched lips. Most of it ended up rolling down his chest. She set the goblet aside and took a piece of clean white linen, soaked it and then began to squeeze the moisture from it into his mouth. After a long, patient struggle, she finally succeeded in assuaging his thirst and he drifted back into total unconsciousness.

      
Miriam sat looking at his flushed skin. Should she bathe him with cool linens again?

Chapter Three

      
An hour later when he began to moan and strain against his bonds, she summoned her courage and prepared for the laborious and disturbing process of sponging him with cool, wet cloths. After she had removed the heavy coverlet, Miriam first carefully checked the drain Benjamin had set in the wound. So far no pus had formed, although the stitched area looked red and irritated. She fretted, for all her professors had believed in the “laudable pus” that healed wounds. Of course in many cases the patients died in spite of it.

      
“We have broken so many rules in treating you, Spaniard, what matters it?” she murmured to herself as she began to soak linens in a large copper basin and lay them across his chest, arms and legs. Then, trying not to look, she plopped one piece of wet linen on his lower body.

      
As she worked, refreshing the cloths, Rigo raved in Castilian. Miriam spoke the language poorly, but she had learned from Benjamin's diligent tutelage to understand it well enough. After a few moments she wished she did not.

      
“Mother—mother? Who were you? Royal princess, hah! You died and left me. Indians—dark-skinned savages, cowards...Bartolome says they offer their naked bellies to Spanish steel...cowards! I am no coward. I fight...I fought the boys, even the slavers. They did not take me away in chains. Father...damn you! Damn you for laying with an Indian whore...”

      
Miriam tried to soothe his rantings. He would pause, panting in exhaustion from time to time, then curse Aaron Torres. He relived his abuse from older soldiers when he joined the army, his first blooding in a gruesome battle in the freezing heights of the Pyrenees. All of this before he had been as old as she when she had gone to Padua!
And I fancied myself brave just to live away from my father,
she thought as she murmured low, soothing words to him, trying to calm his struggles.

      
In spite of whatever humiliations had been heaped upon him, he had risen through the ranks of the Imperial Army, in part because his foster brother, Bartolome, had taken the small child under his special care and tutored him. Now Miriam understood how Rigo had learned to read. His reckless bravery in battle combined with his literacy, a rare skill among soldiers, brought him to the attention of one of King Carlos' best generals, a Neapolitan named Pescara. Rigo's words about Pescara were fond and admiring. It seemed he sought other men to replace the father whom he never knew.

      
He also sought women. Miriam's cheeks burned as she listened to him relive his amorous encounters. She slipped a water-soaked linen between his teeth and nearly choked him in the midst of his shockingly lurid descriptions of bedding peasant wenches and highborn ladies. Suddenly he called out for a priest, once again reliving when he took the cannon shot and collapsed bleeding in Pescara's arms.

      
“You have much need of confession, Spaniard, if such could save your blackened soul,” she whispered, slapping several cloths into the water and splashing her gown in the process.

      
Then he began to rant about one woman in particular, Louise. “Louise, come, love, let me—” Miriam's hands flew to her ears as he described in licentious detail what he would do with various parts of her voluptuous body! The depravity of the savage! She looked at the big copper basin filled with water and debated giving him a full bath to aid in the reduction of his fever.

      
“Twould serve as well to reduce that great staff, you rutting beast!” His phallus stood rigidly at attention beneath the wet linen clinging to it.

      
Rigo had been thrashing and tugging at the bindings on his arms and legs for hours. Suddenly he pulled one arm free and attempted to sit up. Miriam quickly threw herself across his shoulders, attempting to restrain his free arm before he did further injury to his side. He buried his face against her neck and his hot lips seared her bare skin above the ruffle of her undertunic. He was nibbling on her as if she were a piece of roast fowl!

      
She shoved him down into the soft pillows but to do so she had to sit on the bed and lean against his naked body. That treacherous free hand reached up and clasped her waist as he murmured, “Louise, darling.” Then before she could calm her pounding heart enough to think straight, his fingers slid deftly up her side and cupped a breast, boldly massaging it as he once more kissed her neck.

      
Lightning bolts streaked through her. She lay immobilized over his hard naked flesh. “So small, you have need of fattening,” he murmured as he fondled the breast through her thin cotton gown.

      
The point of her nipple felt on fire as the hot raw pleasure of the intimate, forbidden caress robbed her of will, of thought. She had never allowed Benjamin such liberties even though he had tried to take them. In all her lonely twenty-four years, Miriam had never been touched like this by a man's mouth and hands!

      
Then his words began to penetrate the haze of newly awakened sexual pleasure.
So small. Need of fattening!
Miriam knew she was tall and plain and not particularly curvaceous, but when he added the additional injury of calling her Louise to the insult of cupping her breast and finding it wanting, she finally reacted.

      
With a burst of energizing anger she pressed her palms against his chest, ignoring the sensation of springy black hair that tufted between her fingers. She shoved with all her might and broke free, then shinnied from the bed to stand panting like a hare run to ground by a wolf! The whole front of her gown was soaked from contact with the wet cloths that had been laid across his torso. Angrily she smoothed her skirts down and stomped around the bed to refasten his arm.

      
Once that task was completed, she went to the marble-topped table across the room and poured a drop of opiate into a goblet. “You will drink this and you will remain quiet the rest of the night, Spaniard, else I will smother you with a goose-down pillow!” she grated out as she stirred the opiate with a small amount of water. When he again began to speak, she pried his jaws open and dropped the mixture neatly to the back of his throat. He coughed until she massaged his throat. Then he swallowed and lay back, spent for the moment. So was his erection, she noted with a smirk of satisfaction.

      
Dawn's pale golden fingers inched their way into the bedchamber, spreading warm light after Miriam opened the drapes. She stood surveying the dark blue waters of the bay in the distance. Isaac's home was situated high on a hill that gave it a view of the busy harbor far superior to that from her father's house, even though Judah Toulon had built his far closer to the docks from whence flowed his living.