Spanish Serenade (49 page)

Pilar let out her pent breath and closed her eyes. Tears threatened to overwhelm her, and she swallowed them down. She felt sick and spent and empty. She had witnessed an execution. She had known how it would be, must be, as surely as Baltasar had known when he gave Refugio his sword and departed. Refugio could have drawn out the agony, could have tormented his old enemy as the wild cat for which he was named might play with a mouse. He had not. He had permitted the don a last chance at escape, a chance to call it even and withdraw from the contest, and even take his stolen property. Don Esteban had not been able to resist a last foul ruse, a last attempt to catch his sworn foe unaware. And so he had died.

He had died, and it was over.

Pilar opened her eyes. Refugio was on one knee in the dust, sifting through it for the emeralds. His movements were deliberate, precise. He cupped the shining stones in his hand, touching them with his long, callused fingers, meticulously counting. A bleak pain settled in Pilar's chest; still, she moved slowly to join him. She sank to her knees, reaching to locate a half-dozen green jewels.

“That's all of them.” Refugio's face was still, his eyes shadowed in the dimness.

Pilar held the emeralds to the light, then bent her head to carefully blow away the dust adhering to them. With them lying on the blue-veined white surface of her palm, she held them out to Refugio.

He reached for her hand, taking it in his. With his closed fingers around the emeralds he held, he put his fist over her palm then released his grasp, adding them to those she had recovered. Removing his hand, he curled his fingers around hers so she possessed the whole shimmering green hoard; then he held them there.

“What are you doing?” she said. “I don't want these.”

“You did once.”

“Not anymore. You're the one who risked your life for them, the one who lost the most; you should have them.”

She tried to push them toward him, but he would not let her. His clasp tightened until she could feel the polished edges of the stones biting into her skin. Abruptly, he released her and rose to his feet with decision. He stepped back.

“I don't want to see them again,” he said. “They are a reminder of things best forgotten. I make you a present of them, a dowry. Now, shall we go?”

“But what of you?” she asked.

He was already turning toward the door. He looked back with one hand braced on the frame. His gray eyes were clouded and his face lined with weariness as he answered. “What of me? Dowries are convenient things, I have no doubt, but I . . . have no use for one.”

24

THE FUNERAL FOR Don Esteban was held the following day. They buried him in the piece of hallowed ground beyond the walls of the hacienda where the charros and their families were laid to rest, and also Charro's grandfather, who had been given the land. The old man had wanted to watch over his mercedes, though later Huerta family members were buried in the cemetery near the Mission San Juan.

It was Señor Huerta who had pointed out that Pilar was now, most probably, Don Esteban's heir. His son was dead and there were no other living relatives of close degree, so her claim should be strong. There was a certain bitter humor in that knowledge. It mattered little to Pilar, however, beyond the fact that there would likely be no one to dispute her possession of the emeralds.

Governor Pacheco had been present at the service. Vicente had been sent to inform him of the death and await his orders as to what he wished in the way of investigation into the affair. It had been a great concession for the governor to come personally to the hacienda, one due to the status of Señor Huerta in the community, Pilar thought. After the ceremony, while the grave was being filled, the governor had convened a hearing. Pilar had not attended for the simple reason that neither she nor any of the other women of the house had been informed of it. It had been of no great duration. The governor, Charro said, had decided after hearing the evidence, that Don Esteban had been killed in an honorable meeting with swords, and that no blame could be attached to Refugio for the tragic outcome. Governor Pacheco had taken a virulent dislike to the don, and was not inclined to waste many minutes of his time in worry over the man's demise. The wonder was not, according to the official, that someone had killed him, but that no one had done it sooner. There had been some suggestion that the death be blamed on the Apaches, with only the arrival of Carranza preventing the usual mutilation of the body. Refugio would not agree. The responsibility was his, and he would not deny it. He had seemed inclined to object to calling it a meeting of honor, but had been prevailed upon to agree to it as the wisest course.

Vicente had been troubled by the findings of the inquiry, though he was glad that his brother was freed from the threat of punishment in the matter. He had felt it necessary to speak to a priest about it. That was not difficult, for the good padre from Mission San Juan had come to the hacienda for the funeral rites and had stayed overnight afterward. The two had sat up until nearly dawn discussing this and a multitude of other theological questions as propounded in Seville, and also the problems of mission life, from persuading the Indians to accept the glories of Christianity to keeping the system of canals that watered the fields open and running. When morning came, Vicente had ridden with the padre back to the mission, as part of his escort. Vicente had not returned. Instead, there had been a message saying that he would return with the priest in two days’ time, when he came to celebrate the wedding mass, but then would make the mission his home. There was need for his help there, and it was possible he would become an assistant friar in training to the priest.

The message was a reminder of how close the wedding was upon Pilar. All that was left was this night and one more, then she would be wed to Charro. Pilar wanted to be happy, to feel some anticipation, but she could not. She was fond of Charro. More than that, she respected him and knew he would be a good husband to her. Still, the thought of the wedding, and the night afterward, filled her with dread.

A dozen times she had started out to find him, to beg off from it. A dozen times she had stopped. She was reluctant to hurt and embarrass him by her refusal to go through with the ceremony after she herself had dragged him into it. She hated to admit that she did not know her own mind, that she had accepted his very tentative offer out of pique and desperation. Moreover, she could not think what else she would do, where she would go and how she would get there over the dangerous roads to San Antonio. If she could not leave, could not command an escort, it would be most uncomfortable staying here to face Señor and Señora Huerta, as well as Charro.

She thought Charro suspected how she felt, for she had caught him watching her with concern in his eyes. He was moody and withdrawn, though he kept close beside her when Refugio was near.

When Charro was not with her, he spent much time with Enrique. The two of them, she thought, missed Baltasar. It was not surprising; they had been together for a long time.

The big man had not reappeared, nor had any sign of him been found around the hacienda by the Indian charros. No one could say where he was staying, what he was doing, how he was living. He could be anywhere. He was used to living off the land. It was possible, too, that he had gone to San Antonio, or that he had ridden away either south toward the Rio Grande or back east toward Louisiana.

Pilar had thought of him often since the night at the jacal. He had done much that was vile, yet he had saved her life by his refusal to kill her. She would never forget the look in his eyes as he left, or his whispered prayer of hope that the band was waiting outside, waiting to kill him.

Baltasar had wanted to die. It was not just Isabel's death and his part in causing it, she thought, but also his betrayal of the man who had been his friend and his leader. So long as he could hold Isabel up as his reason, he could live with it. When she was gone, he could not. She wondered what would become of him, though it seemed likely she would never know.

She could not sleep. It seemed endless ages since she had really slept. She had been so restless this evening that she had not even donned her nightgown when she retired for the night, but still wore the day gown of gray stripes with a black stomacher that she had put on that morning. She had tried to work on a piece of sewing Charro's mother had given her, a petticoat for her trousseau, but soon tossed it aside. Leaving the candles burning on the table beside the bed, she had pulled her chair out onto the balcony. Somehow, it seemed more restful there in the corner where the grapevines grew in a thick, rustling curtain.

The night was calm, the air fresh and dry yet soft. The stars appeared close. The moon hardly moved in its arcing track across the heavens. There was a guard on the platform near the gate, but she thought he was asleep; there had been no flicker of movement from there in some time. Now and then a moth, drawn by the light, fluttered past and into the bedchamber. She could hear the insects flying against the candle's glass shade, bumping into it with a faint musical chiming.

The first notes of the guitar were so soft she was not quite sure she was not hearing the moths against the glass. They grew louder by degrees, but still seemed to be coming from far away, perhaps from a room under the far end of the loggia, perhaps even from outside the courtyard wall.

Then, as she recognized the melody, Pilar felt something hot and tight close around her heart, slowly squeezing.

Why? Why did he have to do it? Did he know what pain that sound brought her, what memories it stirred so that they danced, hauntingly, in her head? That night on the ship, the instant the planes of his face softened before he reached to take her in his arms. The way he knelt to comfort the little boy who had been bitten by the parrot. The feel of his arms around her as he lay with her in the bed at Doña Luisa's house in New Orleans. The look in his eyes as New Orleans burned. The infinite grace of his fall from his horse as he was shot during the Apache attack. The stark timbre of his voice as he bargained for the comfort of her body with promises of pleasure. The careless cascade of green gems, shining in the lantern light.

The quiet strumming came nearer, as if the player was walking at a slow, even pace. It almost seemed that Pilar could feel the chords vibrating deep inside her, drawing out the same sweet resonance as before. At the same time, she knew a burgeoning panic. What if Refugio should come to her? What would she say? What would she do? Would she be able to deny him, to send him away? What would happen if Charro should find him there?

How could Charro not know he was there, when El Leon was announcing his presence, if not his intentions, so clearly with his music?

It might not be Refugio. It could be any man with a guitar who had heard the song he had played and remembered it, or been reminded that he knew it.

No, she knew it was Refugio. No one else played with that combination of precision and hidden fire. No one else could draw out the joy and pathos within the song and make them ring in the air. No one else knew so well how to breach her defenses and, musician and master swordsman that he was, pierce her heart with a single singing note.

She closed her eyes, listening in tight concentration, as if she would memorize every phrase and cadence, every delicate intimation of close-held emotion. She listened, scarcely breathing. She listened and felt, somewhere inside her, the hot gathering of tears.

She could not do it.

She could not marry Charro when every particle of her being could be awakened to hopeless longing by the sound of a guitar. To stand with him before a priest and exchange vows of fidelity and love would be to betray everything she was, everything she felt for Refugio. Where could it lead, except to disaster? For if Refugio came for her, she must go with him. There was nothing that could prevent it except death itself.

Was he coming? Was the music louder, nearer? She got to her feet, drawing farther back among the vines. She could see nothing in the courtyard below except long rectangles of blackness and the faint shimmer of the moon's light among the spattering droplets falling from the fountain. There was no quiet tread, no stealthy movement.

Or was there? Had that been the graceful slide of a shadow along the high wall? She strained her eyes but could not be sure.

If he did come for her, what then? What would become of them? Where would they go? Governor Pacheco might have looked the other way over the death of Don Esteban, but that did not mean he would forget to send to Spain to learn about El Leon. They might have a year, possibly two, and then Refugio would be a wanted man again. They could run away, head farther south in the direction of Vera Cruz or Mexico City, but someday, somewhere, the long reach of the king would touch them and that would be the end.