Michener, James A. (30 page)

alerted the old man to the fact that the young couple were rather more deeply in love than he had anticipated: i had planned to sail back to France, report to my uncles, and return to my job in New Orleans.'

'Why did you change your plans?'

'I wrote my uncles that I had found in Mexico the girl 1 wanted to marry, and that I would seek to go home your way.'

'You may join us,' Don Ramon conceded, without enthusiasm, but the young man realized that to win Trinidad, he must please her grandfather, so he said brightly: 'In Vera Cruz a man at the port told me to ask when I next saw you . . .' And here he took out a worn slip of paper: 'Are you really an Hidalgo de Bragueta?'

Don Ramon straightened as if he were about to salute the king: 'I am indeed.' Then he chuckled: 'Self-appointed, you might say.'

'And what is it? The banker wouldn't tell me.'

'It means that the king himself would have granted me the right to use the title Don, if I lived in Spain.'

'For what?'

'For siring seven sons in a row. No daughters.' But as soon as he said this he added: 'I did have seven sons, and all died, but not one of them gave me the extreme joy my granddaughter does.'

D'Ambreuze rose, stood at attention, and said: 'Don Ramon, I salute you, and I hope that I shall be allowed to give you seven great-grandchildren.'

But Ramon de Saldana was no fool, and he knew well that young men often woo young girls with faithless promises, then leave them in despair, and both he and Engracia began telling Trinidad, when they had her alone, of that endless chain of tragedies in which unsuspecting girls were betrayed: 'There was the Escobar girl in Zacatecas when I was young. This high official of the court in Madrid came out to try a case of thievery from the silver mines . . .' It mattered not who was doing the preaching, the histories were all the same: 'Shortly after my father took command at the presidio in Bejar ... I was just a boy, but I remember this girl Eufemia, sent up from Postosi to stay with her brother, who was our lieutenant, while she had her baby. It was a baby boy, and after Uncle Damian christened him, with her brother attending . . . Well, the lieutenant asked for leave. My father granted it and three months later the young man returned to Bejar with the simple announcement "I killed him," and we were all happy that his honor and that of his sister had been restored.'

In conjunction with his moralizing stories Don Ramon kept a severe watch upon his granddaughter, and this was effective in San Luis Potosi and during the long march north of there. But now,

as the young people approached Saltillo, a magical city even if one were not in love, it was obvious that the lovers had reached a point of commitment; they were determined to marry and they wanted that mutual promise publicly announced, so Don Ramon watched with extra diligence.

As they entered the city and Trinidad saw once more the plaza where she had met Rene-Claude, a frightening thought overtook her, for she remembered that it had been Dorotea Galindez whom he had kissed in Saltillo, and she wondered what might happen when the two met again. But when they reached the inn she heard Dorotea's hearty cry: 'My dearest friend Trinidad! Meet my husband!' So that danger dissolved.

It had been a long day's ride, this final stage to Saltillo, and at midnight Don Ramon was truly fatigued; he slept so soundly that he did not hear Trinidad slip down the tiled hall and out through a window where D'Ambreuze was waiting. They walked back to the plaza where they had met and saw two beggars, their clothes in tatters, sleeping in a doorway. They saw the verger swing shut the gates of the church and wend his way home. They heard the nightwatchman, who would query them if he found them in the streets, and then they discovered an alleyway leading to a sheltered garden, and when they were under the trees Rene-Claude put cupped hands to his mouth as if he were going to shout. Instead he whispered: 'Don Ramon, heaven is my witness that we are not in your castle!' Then he told Trinidad: 'I am free to make you my wife,' and there they sealed their love.

One day south of Bejar, when Don Ramon had about decided that he must soon discuss with Rene-Claude the size of Trinidad's dowry, most of the soldiers galloped ahead to inform the town of the Saldanas' return, and while the reduced caravan was in the process of fording the Medina prior to reentering Tejas, the Apache struck. There were more than two dozen warriors, and Trinidad would have been carried off had not Don Ramon defended her valiantly, but the Apache, having seen how young she was, stopped fighting the soldiers and tried again to capture her, for she would be a prize among the campfires.

But now Rene-Claude, only twenty years old, galloped directly at them, drove them back, and took three arrows through his chest. His horse ran blindly on, taking him closer to the Indians, who sought to take him alive for the protracted tortures they enjoyed, but with his dying strength he struck at them until they had to cut his throat to subdue him.

When the Saldanas brought Trinidad to their house in the church plaza, she passed into a kind of coma, unwilling to believe that her chivalric, loving young man had somehow vanished from the earth, as dead as those shadowy figures who had built the pyramids, and she remained in this condition for several days Fray Ildefonso from Santa Teresa came to talk with her, but she stared right past him and would say nothing. Finally, on the fifth day, he shook her and said sternly: 'Each morning the rooster crows, and you've lost five of his days. Now get up and get dressed.' And he stayed right there in the low-ceilinged room until she left her bed.

When her mother's nourishing meals had restored her strength she ventured into the plaza, but seeing the church at one end and a bed of flowers beside the governor's residence at the other, she imagined that she was back in Saltillo, and sorrow overcame her and she fled back to her room, where she would have returned to her bed had not Fray Ildefonso given strict orders that this must not be permitted.

So she walked like a forlorn ghost through the beautiful rooms of her home and gradually regained control of herself. Rene-Claude was dead, and a large part of her heart was dead, too. But Fray Ildefonso's sagacious counsel helped her to see her inescapable situation: 'You're fifteen years old. Four times that many years lie ahead, and you must use them wisely God intended you to be the guiding spirit of a Christian household, the mother of children who will help build His world. That is your proud destiny, and you must work toward it. Sew, cook for the poor, help at the mission.'

It was repugnant to contemplate the full resumption of life after so grievous a loss, and the idea that she should in the future encounter someone whom she might want to marry was inconceivable, but her common sense affirmed Ildefonso's basic counsel that she must reintroduce herself into the mainstream of life. Few girls of fifteen in northern Mexico had ever seen so clearly the grand design of life, so she squared her shoulders and prepared to take her place within it.

What appealed to her most, after her profound experience at the pyramids, was to work at Mision Santa Teresa, for there she could help the Indian mothers care for their babies. But the new priest in town, this Father Ybarra, who had come north to see if Ithe missions should be closed down, absolutely forbade her to step foot inside Santa Teresa: 'This place is not for women. If God had intended you to enter these precincts, he would have made women friars.'

When Fray Ildefonso explained that this poor child of God needed such work in order to protect her sanity, Father Ybarra,

a member of the secular clergy who had never liked Franciscans to begin with, told the gentle friar to mind his own business, and within a week Fray Ildefonso was on his way back to the college in Zacatecas. In his absence Father Ybarra was even harsher with Trinidad: 'Stay where you belong. Pray Strive to regain God's grace.'

Such orders Trinidad refused to obey, and with obvious distaste Father Ybarra watched her moving about the village as if she were a married woman, and for no specific reason he conceived a great dislike for this girl with the twisted mouth who always seemed to be smirking sardonically at what he said. In church on Wednesdays and Sundays he tried not to look at her, for he was obsessed with the idea that she was somehow allied with the devil. When one of the Saldana servants informed him that in Saltillo on the way north 'some funny business happened on several nights when the young one slipped past the sleeping Don Ramon,' he began to watch her closely, hoping that she was pregnant. He practiced the anathema he would hurl at her from his pulpit when her shame was known— hussy, slut, harlot and wanton featured heavily—and he was disappointed when it became obvious that she was not with child.

As he went about his duties, those assigned him by the viceroy, who had long suspected that expenses of the northern missions were unjustified when compared with the meager results they produced, he also developed an intense hatred for Mision Santa Teresa, whose saintly founder Fray Damian he saw as a charlatan: 'Got himself killed by the Apache ... in their camp . . . fooling around with their women, no doubt.' He convinced himself, because of his extreme dislike for Trinidad, that he must somehow unmask the chicanery of her great-uncle Damian, and he spent much of his energy trying to do just that.

He also convinced himself that Trinidad herself, a loose girl with an irreverent attitude, would come to no good, and several times he considered excommunicating her until she showed proper humility, but he was afraid to do so because of the importance of the Saldanas and their obvious friendship with the Veramendis.

He was in the plaza one morning, watching attentively as Trinidad left her house to meddle in some improper affair or other, when he saw her run across the square and throw her arms about Amalia Veramendi, Don Lazaro's daughter, as if they were old friends. The girls talked animatedly for some minutes, then walked off arm in arm. He wondered what secrets they had.

It was easily explained. Since the day of the Apache attack Trinidad had been unable to mention Rene-Claude's name, but

desperately she had wanted to, and perhaps it was this cruel blockage that had driven her into a depression; now, with a sympathetic young woman about her own age available and interested, she was at last free to talk: 'You can't imagine, Amalia, how wonderful he was.' This was an unfortunate beginning, because Amalia looked sideways at her friend and thought: You'd be amazed at what I can imagine.

Trinidad, unaware of the envy she was creating, burbled on: 'Grandfather did everything possible to humiliate him . . . drive him away . . . said no child of his would ever marry a damned Frenchman. Rene-Claude just smiled, gave Grandfather all the courtesies, and melted him the way the sun melts snow in the Alps.'

Amalia, suspecting that her friend had enjoyed experiences denied her, wanted to explore more deeply, but refrained. With feigned girlish modesty she asked: 'Was it . . . well, is loving a man ... do you have to surrender as much as it seems?'

'Not with Rene-Claude. He said we would be equals. And he behaved that way. Of course, he'd take care of the money and make all the big decisions, and maybe we'd live in Saltillo or maybe New Orleans. He'd decide that. But he asked me always what I wanted, which horse I preferred.'

The girls, each so eager to confide, still shied away from honest questions and answers. 'Is loving a man,' Amalia began, 'well, is it . . . does it . . . ?'

This should have encouraged Trinidad to speak her feelings. Instead, she reflected, smiled at Amalia, and said: it's all right.'

'This new priest, Father Ybarra. He condemns it. He seems very afraid of love.'

'Father Ybarra is a fool.' It was unfortunate that Trinidad said this, even to her trusted friend, because although Amalia was of the same opinion, when she criticized Ybarra to others she repeated not her own judgment but Trinidad's, and when word of this reached the priest's ears, his mind became set: he would settle with the Saldanas, important though they might be.

Things were in this state when a lone stranger came down El Camino Real from the north. No soldier protected him, no Indian guides, no companions. Just a tall spare man in his late twenties, with a head of heavy dark hair, a tooth missing in front, and an apparent willingness to challenge the world. He announced himself as Mordecai Marr, trader out of Mobile with important connections in New Orleans. He led a horse that had gone lame two days out and three overburdened mules laden with goods of

considerable value which he proposed trading from Bejar, or perhaps from the new capital at Chihuahua if a decent road could be routed to that distant city.

Before he had located a place to stay, and there was only a pitiful half-inn run by some Canary Islanders, he asked for the residence of Don Ramon Saldana, and when this was pointed out he walked directly there, tied his horse to a tree and allowed his mules to stand free. Banging on the door in a most un-Spanish way, he demanded of black Natan, who opened it: 'Yo deseo ver Don Ramon de Saldana. Yo tengo letras para el.' He spoke painstaking Spanish but with a barbarous accent, and used the word letras instead of the proper cartas.

When Don Ramon appeared, it was obvious that Mr. Marr expected to be invited in, for he placed his foot against the door so that it could not be closed against him: i have letters to you from the D'Ambreuze family m New Orleans. They heard I was coming.'

Don Ramon was not a man to be forced into extending an invitation, and especially not to anyone like this bold americano, so he spread himself sideways, as it were, until he occupied the entire doorway, then said graciously: i am pleased to accept a communication from the distinguished family I had expected to be allied with mine ' He took the letters and was about to shut the door when Marr grabbed his left sleeve.

'Is it true what they said 9 The Frenchman was killed by the Apache?'

'Yes.'

'I saw them trailing me, two days ago, so I laid low and shot two of them. It's good to carry two guns . . . loaded.'