Spanish Serenade (34 page)

“Then why did you not rescue her, bearing her off across your saddle like some gallant Moorish prince of legend?”

“She did not ask my help. Alas.”

The implication in his voice was guileful. Refugio ignored it, inclining his head in Pilar's direction. “Felicitations. You seem to have acquired a champion. Another one.”

“I'm honored,” she said.

“I thought you might be,” he answered bitingly before turning back to his brother. “But what of the gold? I haven't seen the casket.”

Vicente's face clouded again. He gave a swift shake of his head. “I couldn't take it, of course, once I knew what was in it.”

“You left it?”

Vicente gave a slow nod, his gaze caught by the amusement rising in his older brother's eyes.

“How brief is the reign of champions,” Refugio said, his voice choked with the rise of rich laughter. “The gold belonged to the lady, my gallant, and she had use for it.”

“You left it,” Pilar asked in disbelief. “You left it behind in Don Esteban's house?”

“It — It seemed the right thing to do.” Vicente squirmed uncomfortably on the boat seat, looked to his brother for support. Refugio was unresponsive.

“And the house burned,” Pilar said.

“I believe it did,” Vicente agreed, his voice weak.

Pilar stared at him, then the frown between her eyes faded as her gaze narrowed to the scar on his cheek. She shook her head. “I suppose I have no right to complain. I injured you far more by involving you in my troubles. I . . . should apologize.”

“There's no need. Refugio would never allow me to join him before, but now he can't deny me. I'm grateful to you.”

“He wouldn't allow it?”

Vicente flashed his brother a glance both defiant and warm. “He seemed to think one bandit in the family was enough.”

“It is,” Refugio said shortly.

Pilar and Vicente exchanged a wry smile, then turned away, facing forward once more.

Refugio, thinking of what Pilar had said, watching the determined straightening of her backbone, felt compassion and something more shift inside him. He was sorry for her disappointment, but at the same time aware of a niggling, shameful triumph. She needed him still, and would for some time to come.

After a moment he lifted his voice in a chanson that set an easy, even pace for the paddle. His men picked it up, and they sent the boat skimming north and west, following the river.

It was dark once more when they made camp. Afterward, when they should have been sleeping, they sat around the glowing coals which were fingered by blue flames. It was pleasant to relax from the vigilance needed on the river, their hunger satisfied by a fish stew that Isabel had made from two peculiar-looking fish with whiskers that Vicente had caught using one of Pilar's hairpins. Besides that, the smoke helped to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Around them the night pulsed with the sounds of crickets and peeper frogs and other night creatures. The blue-black sky overhead was dusted with stars. The hunting cry of a swamp panther rang out once or twice, a sound like a woman's scream.

They had passed by the village of Baton Rouge not long after dawn that morning. In the hours since, they had seen little sign of habitation. They knew they must watch for the village and fort of Natchez on its high bluff, but for now it seemed they must be the only humans in this vast near-empty wilderness.

There was something intriguing in that thought for Refugio. It was not like Spain, this land; it was too flat and damp, the vegetation too abundant with its dense thickets of trees and tangles of vines that cut and scratched. There were too many strange animals, from alligators and snakes to pointed-nose, scraggly-furred creatures that carried their young in pouches in their stomachs. Yet the singing solitude had an insidious appeal. He thought he could grow used to the softness of the air and the dense quality of the nights.

Spain had had her day. For all the glitter of the court at Madrid, all the ships that sailed the oceans and the colonies still held in far quarters of the globe, the golden moment of supremacy was past. His country had been in decline for nearly a hundred years.

Spain had founded an empire based on being the best, the bravest, the most intelligent, the most noble. Having established it, the powers at the top had found it perfect. They felt it to be so perfect, in fact, that they refused to change, refused to accept new ideas. They had become narrow in thought and action, suspicious of innovation and bitterly protective of the old ways. The wealth gained in the new world had slipped away, dissipated in wars, lost as colonies changed hands with the signing of treaties. Spain was dying, and men such as Don Esteban, like relatives gathered around a death bed, were feasting on its dwindling estate.

By contrast, this new country seemed rich with possibilities and wide enough to encompass any number of fresh ideas. For the first time in years Refugio, felt little need to look over his shoulder or search the shadows in front of him. Here, for the moment, there was nothing except the night, no danger beyond that brought by nature.

Doña Luisa slapped at a mosquito on her arm. The sudden blow jarred the wooden bowl of cold stew she still held in her lap. It tipped over, pouring greasy gravy down her skirts. She jumped up with a wail, dropping the bowl, then kicking it with the sharp-pointed toe of her shoe so that it rolled into the fire.

“I hate this!” she cried. “I am being eaten alive, my skin is burned so that I could be mistaken for my husband's mulatto mistress. I have nothing to wear except what I stand in, and all I'm given to eat is swill not fit for swine. I demand that you take me back! I will give a thousand pesos, two thousand, to the man who will take me back to New Orleans.”

Refugio bent swiftly to take a stick of kindling and knock the wooden bowl from the flames. He pushed it to one side, where it lay smoldering; they had only one bowl each and there was no way to tell when they would be able to get another.

“You have as much as any of us,” he said to Luisa. “However, if you want to die, we can leave you here. It will be a great deal less trouble than returning to New Orleans.”

“Here! That would be murder!” She gave him a look of angry hauteur.

“Maybe not,” Enrique said, joining the conversation with a sly glance at the noblewoman. “You might be found by an Indian savage and taken into his bed. He would not work you overmuch, except for the daylight hours, nor trouble you for your favors after the first four or five little savages were born.”

Doña Luisa looked at the acrobat under her lashes. “Disgusting.”

“You may find it so at first, but I expect you would get used to it.”

“You are an ignorant little man.”

“And you are vain and spoiled, but I forgive you.”

“I didn't ask your forgiveness!” she cried.

“Isn't it generous of me to give it to you anyway?”

Pilar, sitting with her elbows propped on her knees as she followed the exchange, sat up straight. “Your life is in danger, Doña Luisa, and will be so long as my stepfather remains in New Orleans. He is not a reasonable man in his vengeance.”

“Your stepfather, yes,” the other woman said, curling her lips. “I might have known this was your fault.”

“Don't blame Pilar,” Enrique said in stern tones. “You threw in your lot with us of your own choice aboard the
Celestina
. The reason was the thrill of flirting with danger. It's not our fault if things turned out more dangerous than you expected.”

“Your Pilar might be used to the company of bandits, señor, but I am not.”

“No?” Enrique inquired with irony. “You knew what we were on the ship. That was fine so long as no one else knew.”

“Quarreling,” Refugio said, “can be such sweet enmity. I give the two of you leave to enjoy it, but there is no one to spare to return you to New Orleans, Luisa. Pilar is right. I took you from there to spare you the revenge of Don Esteban. There is no reason to think that the danger has passed.”

She tossed her head. “I can't believe he would harm me.”

“So my sister thought of his son. But come, you are a woman of valor. If it were not so, you would never have embarked for Louisiana. We have need of valor now.”

“I hate being uncomfortable,” Doña Luisa said, slapping at a mosquito. “I despise seeing only water and water and more water.”

“We will leave the river soon enough, and then you may long for water. But you can bear whatever comes because you must, and because you have strength inside that has never been used.”

“You think so?” she asked without looking at him.

“Naturally. It's in your blood, the strength of your ancestors who fought and died on the plains of Spain to oust the Moors and bring holiness to the land, who marched against the Indians of strange lands with their swords in their hands and a prayer on their lips and returned to their mother country with gold in their purses and thanksgiving in their hearts.”

“Yes,” Doña Luisa agreed, sitting down again, a faraway look in her eyes. “Do you know if there is gold in this Tejas country?” Charro, who was sitting behind Doña Luisa, began to shake his head, opening his mouth to speak. Refugio stopped him with a small gesture of one hand. His expression calm, he said, “The illustrious Francisco Vasquez de Coronado marched across the western lands in search of the wealth of the Seven Cities of Cibola. He never found it, but does that mean it isn't there? Does it, when in the lands farther south the Indians once dressed themselves in sheets of beaten gold? There are also rumors of silver.”

“That would be something, to return from this far country with a fortune.” Doña Luisa gave a small sigh.

“Wouldn't it?” Refugio murmured as Charro and Enrique exchanged a droll look.

Doña Luisa said no more, but there was a speculative gleam in her eyes.

“My father had gold,” Isabel said, her voice soft, musing. “I used to play with it, stacking the coins in piles on the table. Then he gambled it all away, and we had nothing. We were thrown from our house and left to wander the street in rags. It was there that Refugio found me. He saved me from two cart drivers who were trying to carry me into a stable.”

“Don't think about it, Isabel,” Baltasar said, his voice rough with weary tenderness. “Don't talk about it, either. Let's go to bed.”

Isabel looked at the big man a long moment, then gave him a sad and tender smile. “Yes,” she said, “I'm ready.”

Refugio watched them go, and his gray eyes narrowed with what might have been a defense against pain. They all sought their blankets shortly afterward.

Refugio lay for long hours, staring up into the night sky. A cynical smile curved his mouth as he thought of the gold he had spoken of to Luisa. Gold. Dear God. He sought in his mind for some hope for the future, much less wealth, and could find none. Ahead lay only the unknown.

Hope was not, of course, a commodity with which he was overly familiar. He had been resigned to a short life for some time. Or so he thought. Circumstances changed. Foolish aspirations were not restricted to dissatisfied widows.

For the moment, however, he was content. It was a sensation both foreign and unsettling. Wakeful, he lay beside Pilar and watched as she slept. He listened to the soft sound of her breathing and reached often to brush mosquitoes away from her face.

It was as they were getting into the boats again the next morning that Doña Luisa looked at Pilar. “How does it happen that you have almost no welts from mosquito bites on your face. I have so many my face feels as swollen as a frog, and the itching is driving me mad.”

Pilar touched her face. “I don't know.”

“If you have some special cream or something that saves you, I think it's mean of you not to share it.”

“It's nothing like that, I promise it isn't. Maybe they just don't like the way I taste.”

Doña Luisa looked skeptical as she stepped into the boat and sat down.

“Really”, Pilar said, “if I had anything to guard against the mosquitoes, I would share it.”

Refugio, turned away to hide his wry smile. They reached the Red River a few days later and turned into this more westward-flowing tributary. On an afternoon just under two weeks from the time they had left New Orleans, they paddled up to the landing at the old military post known as Saint Jean de Baptiste de la Natchitoches.

A warm rain was falling as they pulled the boats up on the shore. It pocked the surface of the river and fell with a soft clatter through the brilliant new, green leaves on the trees. The air had a green cast as the fresh, rich color was reflected from the prismatic raindrops. This was aided by the warm and watery sun that peered now and then through the clouds. Regardless of the heat, however, they were all miserable in their drenched clothing.

They were approached with caution, but with friendliness; any traveler with news from downriver was apparently welcome. Nevertheless, they kept the tale of the burning of New Orleans to themselves. They could give no idea of exact damage or loss of life, and to explain why it had been necessary for them to leave the city before this information became available would be sure to call up questions difficult to answer.

There was something seductive about the sleepy little town with its buildings that were rustic but inviting, its warm hospitality and gentle voices lilting in a patois that mingled French and Spanish, Indian and African words. It seemed that this outpost must surely be too far from New Orleans for interference, far enough for safety. Still, if they could reach it so easily, so could others.