Conquistadora (9 page)

“What I mean is, I know it hurts,” Ana said, feeling like the child found out.

“What hurts?” Elena flicked tears from her cheeks as if the gesture gave her courage, but Ana heard the rustle of her petticoats within the narrow, corseted frame.

“Elena,” Ana said, trying to soften her words. “Inocente doesn’t want to marry you.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Yes,” Bastoncito said, looking up at La Madona.

Elena fixed her eyes on Ana’s. Oh, yes, she knows, Ana thought. She’s afraid to say it, to think it, even. What we did with each other is not half so bad in her mind as what I’m doing with Ramón and Inocente. The dread in Elena’s face reflected her terror that loving a woman might send them both to purgatory, but loving two men consigned Ana forever to the fires of hell.

Ana felt warmth between her legs, a pulsing desire to kiss that beautiful face, to unlace the tight corset and suck Elena’s pink nipples,
as she used to do under the covers at the Convento de las Buenas Madres. As Elena did to her.

Elena blushed and turned away. “I came in here,” she said, her back to Ana, “to tell you that I’m not angry. It’s not your fault.” She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it to her nose.

She’s splendid, Ana thought, so lovely, so good, so candid. Ana wrapped her arms around Elena’s waist again, from the back this time, and leaned her face against Elena’s shoulder blades. She smelled of lemon and verbena. Elena stiffened inside her corset, but after a second she placed her hands over Ana’s and raised them, slowly, toward her bosom.

“We were supposed to always be together,” she murmured.

“I’m here,” Ana said, turning her around and kissing the top of her breasts.

That afternoon, Ana and Elena joined doña Leonor in her sitting room. “I separated what’s essential from what can be sent later,” Ana told her. “Elena helped. Ramón’s and Inocente’s clothes as well as mine fit nicely in the trunk you so kindly gave me.”

“We’ll send them as soon as possible,” doña Leonor said.

“Thank you.” After a moment, Ana jumped up, startling doña Leonor and Elena.

“¿Qué pasó?”

“I almost forgot! I’ll be right back.” Ana ran from the room.

“She gave me such a start,” doña Leonor said.

Elena smiled. “She has such energy.”

“Is there much to send later?”

“The trunk is full. She’s only taking one formal frock and slippers, two plain cotton dresses specially made, two skirts and bodices to match, and two pairs of leather shoes. She’s also taking her riding costume and boots.” Elena picked up an unfinished shirt from the pile and began stitching. “It’s impressive how well she’s thought it out. It’s as if she’d prepared for this trip her whole life.”

The older woman grunted. “Her whole life … 
Está loca
.”

She was interrupted by Ana’s return.

“Please keep these for me.” Ana handed Elena a black velvet pouch. Inside were a pearl necklace with a diamond pendant, and pearl and diamond drop earrings.

“These are lovely,” she stuttered as she caressed the jewelry. “Why wouldn’t you want to take them?”

“They’re from my great-grandmothers,” Ana said. “I don’t want to risk losing them. Promise me you’ll wear them.”

“Ana, I can’t, they’re too—”

“They look good on you.” Ana held the necklace close to Elena’s face. “Don’t you think pearls are perfect for Elena?” she asked doña Leonor. “Her complexion is … well, they look much better on her than on me.”

Elena was blushing so much that the pearls acquired a whiter brightness. Ana smiled, kissed Elena’s cheek. “Keep them safe until I come back.” Elena put on the earrings in front of a small mirror between the windows. Ana fastened the necklace and admired how the pearls glimmered against Elena’s skin. “Beautiful,” she said. Elena blushed deeper. Ana pushed the curls from her own face to show doña Leonor her earlobes, bedecked with ruby earrings. “I’m only bringing these with me because they were Ramón’s engagement gift. And of course”—she waved her left hand—“I’ll never take off my wedding ring.”

“I should hope not.”

Leonor looked at both girls standing next to each other, one tall and slender, the other smaller, wiry, freckled as a peasant. She didn’t understand what Ramón saw in Ana. Maybe it was her restlessness, so unbecoming in a proper
señorita
. Ana, though not classically beautiful like Elena, had turned Ramón’s head, and because Inocente did whatever his brother did, she turned his as well.

Leonor hadn’t imagined that she’d lose her sons to someone who looked so inconsequential. Until Ramón met Ana, her boys had been devoted sons, seeking her approval for their plans and dreams. Now Ana’s small person dictated every move; her eccentric notion to replicate her ancestor’s exploits determined all their futures. Leonor pleaded, cajoled, cried, even threatened to withhold their inheritance, but Ramón and Inocente wouldn’t budge once they’d decided to come to Puerto Rico. It irked her that the only way to keep her family together was through this girl, this spirited, stubborn, willful girl. And now, after she’d given in, after the long trip across the ocean, after leaving their friends and family in Spain and settling in this outpost, Ana was making her sons go farther, to a godforsaken
plantation that even its owner never visited because it was too far from the capital, too inaccessible. And the only way to keep from losing her sons to an uncertain fate in the jungled interior of this island was to be on this girl’s good side.

“I wish you’d stay here,” Leonor entreated, hiding her resentment behind a pleading smile. “Ramón can come back for you in a couple of months. No one has lived in that house for years. Who knows what condition it’s in.”

“I promised to follow my husband wherever our lives led, doña Leonor, just as you did when you married don Eugenio.”

“I was a soldier’s daughter and knew what it was to move from place to place, following my father’s fortunes. You’ve known nothing but luxury your whole life.”

“I’m aware of the hardships waiting for us,” Ana said. Leonor heard her unsuccessful struggle not to sound condescending. “I’ve read much about the settling of the New World.”

“Your illustrious ancestor was a man, and he, too, was a soldier accustomed to adversity. You’re still a girl.”

“I may be only eighteen, doña Leonor, but I’m stronger than I look.” Ana stood to her full height. “And I’m determined to make a success of the hacienda.” She knelt at Leonor’s feet, covered her hands with hers. “I know you’re worried that I’ll be a burden.…” Leonor tried to pull her hands back, but Ana squeezed them and kissed her fingers. “I promise that I won’t be, that I’ll support them in every way. It’s not mere chance that Ramón and I met, you see.” Ana exchanged a look with Elena, who still stood by the mirror, bedecked in Ana’s jewels. “My destiny was to come to this island, to finish the work my ancestor, don Hernán Cubillas Cienfuegos, started.”

“Ana, that man lived over three hundred years ago!”

“But when I read his letters and journals, it was as if he were speaking to me.”

“It’s madness.” Leonor stood abruptly, leaving Ana kneeling at her feet. “It may be your destiny, but it is not my sons’. They were raised for a different life.” She stood over Ana, looking down at her with such loathing that Ana lowered her gaze. “I’m not afraid to tell you, just as I’ve told my husband and my sons.” Leonor paced, twisting her wedding ring around her finger in quick, nervous
movements. “I don’t want you, Ramón, and Inocente to go to the plantation. Everyone tells us that area is dangerous, that pirates still come ashore, that runaway slaves come from their hideouts in the mountains to plunder. And to kill whites.”

She covered her eyes and seemed to collapse. Elena jumped to her side and helped her to the sofa. She looked at Ana, who shrugged in a “what am I supposed to do?” gesture. Elena nodded toward Leonor, and Ana sat at her other side, waving her hands before her and rubbing her shoulders, as Elena was doing.

“Tía Leonor, I’m sure don Eugenio wouldn’t let Ramón and Inocente go if he thought it was dangerous,” Elena said. “Don’t you agree?”

Leonor’s breath came in short, forced gasps, and she pressed one hand to her heart while, with the other, she fluttered her handkerchief before her face.

“Shall I loosen your stays?” Ana asked calmly.

Leonor turned to Ana as if she’d asked her to get naked in the Plaza de Armas.

“Some water, from the pitcher over there.” Elena motioned with her eyes toward the small, lace-covered table by the door.

Ana poured a glassful and Leonor gulped it down. She grabbed Ana’s hand. “What will you do if one of you is sick or injured? There are no doctors for miles.”

“Inocente has already talked to your doctor, and he’s given us some unguents and taught us how to dress wounds, and I brought a book of home remedies. I’m confident—”

“¡Egoísta!”
Leonor exploded. She stood again and leaned over Ana, who still sat on the sofa. “You only think of yourself. My sons were going to be businessmen until you came along. They were going to an office almost every day. But you’d have them be peons—in a place they’ve never seen. A wild place. You’d have them abandon their family, their future, their country even, all for a fantasy of yours. A fantasy fed by that
maldito
ancestor.”

“Ramón and Inocente want to do this, doña Leonor. It’s not just my idea.” Ana didn’t shrink into the sofa, as Leonor expected. She didn’t bend or give or avoid looking into her eyes. She sat stiffly, challenging Leonor with her posture, but on her face was a bland expression that revealed nothing about what she might be feeling.

“Perhaps once they’re settled, we can go there,” Elena suggested quietly. Ana and Leonor turned to her as if she shouldn’t have been there but were grateful not to be alone in the room.

“Yes, you must!” Ana said after a while with what sounded to both Elena and doña Leonor like false enthusiasm.

“Of course,” the older woman said with a tired, defeated sigh. “We’ll do that. We’ll come visit you at … at, what are you calling it again?”

They left San Juan on a blistering January morning from the same wharf that had received them over two months earlier. Doña Leonor and Elena insisted on seeing them off, and the last time Ana saw them, they were crying uncontrollably as don Eugenio herded them into a carriage. Ramón and Inocente waved from the deck of the
Dafne
long after it was possible for doña Leonor or Elena to see them. Their anxiety for their mother was touching, but Ana was glad to get away from her disapproval and animosity. It galled her, too, how her mother-in-law caressed and kissed her sons as if they were babies, and wept whenever Hacienda los Gemelos was mentioned.

“Who knows when I’ll see you again,” she kept saying, as if they were going to the end of the world, not to the other side of the island. Ana was glad to leave the citadel and the Argosos’ stone and stucco house with the cloying flowering pots in the balconies and Leonor’s brooding glances. Even placid Elena reached a level of hysteria. Ana couldn’t understand it. The departure from Spain hadn’t led to such displays or to so much reproach and constant need for reassurance.

The
Dafne
was a cargo vessel, and other than the crew, Ramón, Inocente, and Ana were the only passengers. The ship smelled of salted
bacalao
and of men too long at sea. They sailed along the northern coast of the island, its sinuous shape to port the whole time. Around midafternoon an ominous cloud raced from the eastern horizon and made straight for them. It engulfed them in heavy rain and strong winds that made the timbers moan like live creatures. This time it was Ana who spent most of the trip in the cramped cabin she shared with Ramón, alternately retching into a bucket and praying that the ship wouldn’t sink to the bottom of the
ocean and prematurely end their adventure. She was dimly aware of Ramón or Inocente applying cold compresses to her forehead, of a cabin boy removing the bucket and replacing it with another, of darkness so complete she thought she’d died, of a sharp ray of sunlight through the porthole that stabbed through her closed eyelids and made her sneeze.

“How do you feel,
querida
?” Ramón asked as soon as she could adjust to the light. After the bouncing and pounding on the waves subsided, she was aware of still being at sea, and her stomach pitched. Ramón jumped for the bucket, but there was nothing to bring up, just the sour, bitter taste of bile in her mouth.

The tempest followed them for a day and a half, then faded into the horizon as swiftly as it had come just as they entered the Mona Passage. They had clear sailing again, but Ana was glad when they tacked toward land and above the thatch roofs she saw a steeple and heard church bells. The
Dafne
didn’t make for port, however; it followed a southeasterly course. Just after dawn the next morning, they sailed into a protected cove with no visible dwellings. Thick vegetation grew to the narrow sandy beach lined with coconut palms.

Ana, Ramón, and Inocente were helped down a rope ladder to a dinghy that bobbed and bounced next to the vessel. When she looked down, she saw the rippling, sandy sea bottom through the clear water. Fish in surprisingly bright colors darted this way and that as the oars hit the waves and the dinghy plied to the beach. There was something furtive about the approach, but one of the oarsmen told them that it was common for travelers to reach littoral destinations this way because of the island’s few deep-water harbors and notoriously poor roads. She peered into the vegetation along the shore, imagining astonished natives watching from behind the overgrowth as they did when don Hernán landed along a similar pristine beach more than three hundred years before her. When she looked toward Ramón and Inocente they were smiling, guessing where her thoughts had strayed.