“How is unimportant.” Zorro suggested that Padre Mendoza take the bag to the bishop in Mexico City and report what had happened, the only way to prevent the neophytes from being enslaved. If Spain decided to exploit the oyster banks, they could pay Yaqui Indians, as they had before. Then he asked the missionary to tell Diego de la Vega that his father was free and safe. The priest commented that the young man had been a disappointment; he lacked grit, and did not seem like a son of Alejandro and Regina. Again he asked the visitor to show his face. Otherwise he could not trust his word; all this could be a trap. The masked man told him that his identity had to remain a secret, but he promised the priest that he would not be alone in his work to defend the poor. From now on Zorro would stand for justice. Padre Mendoza laughed nervously; possibly the fellow was an escaped madman. “One last thing, Padre. This chamois pouch contains one hundred and three pearls finer than all the others; they are worth a fortune. They are yours. You do not need to mention them to anyone; I assure you that the one person who knows of their existence would not dare ask about them.”
“I suppose they are stolen.”
“Yes, they are, but in all fairness they belong to the ones who ripped them from the sea with their last breaths. You will know how to use them wisely.”
“If they were unfairly taken, I do not want to see them, my son.”
“You do not have to see them, Padre, but take good care of them,” Zorro replied with a wink of complicity. The missionary hid the pouch among the folds of his habit and walked with the visitor to the courtyard where the lustrous black horse was waiting, surrounded by the children of the mission. The masked man mounted his steed. To thrill the children, he whistled, and his mount whirled and reared; then he pulled out his sword and flashed it, making it glint in the lantern light, and sang a verse that he himself had composed during the idle months in New Orleans: something about a valiant horseman who rides out on moonlit nights to defend justice, punish evildoers, and slash a Z with his sword. The song beguiled the children but increased Padre Mendoza fear that the man was out of his mind. Isabel and Nuria, who had spent most of the day in their room sewing, came out onto the courtyard just in time to glimpse the gallant figure making pirouettes on his black mount before riding off. They asked who the dashing horseman was, and Padre Mendoza replied that if he wasn’t a devil, he must be an angel sent by God to reinforce his faith. That same night Diego de la Vega returned to the mission covered with dust and full of the story of how he had nearly perished at the hands of bandits and so had cut his trip short. He had seen a couple of suspicious characters in the distance and to avoid them had left the Camino Real and galloped into the woods, but he got lost. He spent the night curled up beneath the trees, safe from the brigands but at the mercy of bears and wolves. At dawn he realized where he was and decided to return to San Gabriel; it would have been imprudent to go on alone. He had ridden all day without a bite to eat; he was completely fatigued, and he had a headache. He would leave for Monterey in a day or two, but this time he would go armed and with an escort. Padre Mendoza informed him that his visit to the governor was no longer necessary because an unknown hero had rescued Don Alejandro de la Vega from prison. All that was left for Diego was to recover the family fortune. He kept to himself his doubts about whether this sickly dandy was capable of doing it. “Who rescued my father?” Diego asked. “He called himself Zorro, and he wore a mask,” the missionary said. “Mask? Was he an outlaw, then?” was Diego’s question. “I saw him, too, Diego, and for an outlaw he was not at all bad. I cannot tell you how handsome and elegant he was! Furthermore, he was riding a horse that must have cost an eye from his head,” Isabel intervened enthusiastically. “You always have had more imagination than is good for you,” he replied. Nuria interrupted to announce dinner. That night Diego ate voraciously, despite the heralded migraine, and when he finished he congratulated the chaperone, who had greatly improved the mission fare, as he had known she would. Isabel questioned him mercilessly: she wanted to know why his horses were not worn out, what the purported highwaymen he saw on the road looked like, how long it took him to go from one point to another, and the reason why he had not stayed in another mission only a day’s ride away. Padre Mendoza was so immersed in his own musings that he did not notice the vagueness of Diego’s answers. He ate with his right hand and with his left kept feeling the chamois pouch, thinking how its contents could restore the mission to his former condition. Had he sinned by accepting those pearls stained with suffering and greed? No. Not sinned, certainly, but they might bring bad luck… He smiled at how superstitious he had become over the years. A day or two later, after Padre Mendoza had sent a letter about the pearls to Mexico City and was packing for the trip with Diego, Rafael Moncada and Carlos Alcazar came riding up at the head of a number of soldiers, among them the chubby Sergeant Garcia. Carlos had a disfiguring scar on his cheek, and he was nervous because he had not been able to convince his partner how the pearls had disappeared. The truth was little help in this case, as it only highlighted his sorry role in defending the prison and the treasure. He had chosen to tell Moncada that fifty Indians had burned down El Diablo while a gang of outlaws under the leadership of a black-clad, masked man who identified himself as Zorro ransacked the prison. After a bloody struggle, in which he was wounded, the attackers had overcome the soldiers and ridden away with the pearls. The prisoners had escaped in the confusion. Alcazar knew that Moncada would not be happy until he knew the whole truth and found the pearls. The escaped fugitives were of the least importance; there were plenty of Indians to take their places. The curious shape of the cut on Alcazar’s face a perfect Z had reminded Moncada of a masked man whose description corresponded to Zorro’s, and who had traced a similar letter at the residence of Le Chevalier’s residence and in a barracks in Barcelona. On both occasions the pretext had been to set some prisoners free, as had been the case in El Diablo. Worse, however, on the second occasion he had had the audacity to use his, Moncada’s, name and that of his aunt Eulalia. He had sworn to repay that insult, but he had not as yet laid a glove on him. He was, however, quickly reaching the only possible conclusion: Diego de la Vega was in Barcelona when someone had left a Z on a wall, and as soon as he landed in California someone had made the same mark on Alcazar’s cheek. It was not mere coincidence. This Zorro could be no one but Diego. It was difficult to believe, but it was reason enough to make de la Vega pay for the trouble he had caused. Moncada had ridden at top speed to the mission, fearing that his prey might have escaped, but here was Diego, sitting beneath a grape arbor, drinking lemonade and reading poetry. Moncada ordered Sergeant Garcia to arrest him, and the poor tubby sergeant, who had never lost his unconditional boyhood admiration for Diego, unwillingly started to do his bidding. He was stopped by Padre Mendoza, who declared that the masked man was not even remotely like Diego de la Vega. Isabel backed him up; not even an idiot could confuse those two men, she said. She knew Diego like a brother, she had lived at his side for five years; he was a good young man, inoffensive, sentimental, often ill. There was no touch of bandit, much less hero, in him. “Well, thank you,” Diego cut her off, offended, but he noticed that his friend’s wandering eye was whirling like a top. “Zorro helped the Indians because they are innocent,” said the missionary. “You know that as well as I, Senor Moncada. He did not steal the pearls; he took them as proof of what is going on in El Diablo.”
“What pearls are you talking about?” Carlos Alcazar interjected. He was extremely uneasy; until that moment no one had mentioned them, and he had no idea how much the priest knew about their trickery. Padre Mendoza admitted that Zorro had given him the bag with the charge of taking it to the authorities in Mexico City. Rafael Moncada tried to hide a sigh of relief; it would be easier to recover his treasure than he had imagined. This ridiculous old man would be no problem, he could erase him from the map with one breath; terrible accidents happened all the time. With a preoccupied expression, he thanked Padre Mendoza for his cleverness in getting the pearls and his zeal in caring for them. Then he demanded that the priest hand them over; he would assume responsibility. If Carlos Alcazar, as administrator of the prison, had committed irregularities, he would take the necessary measures. There was no reason to bother anyone in Mexico City. The priest had no choice but to obey. He did not dare accuse Moncada of complicity with Alcazar because one false step would have cost him the most important thing in this world: his mission. He brought the bag and laid it on the table. “This belongs to Spain. I have sent a letter to my superiors, and there will be an investigation of the matter,” he said. “A letter? But the ship hasn’t come,” Alcazar protested. “I have other means, quicker and more secure than the ship.”
“Are all the pearls here?” Moncada asked with annoyance. “How can I know that? I was not present when they were taken, and I do not know how many there were originally. Only Carlos can answer that question,” the missionary replied. Those words added to suspicions Moncada already had of his partner. He took the missionary by one arm and dragged him to a crucifix hanging above a ledge on the wall. “Swear before the cross of Our Lord that you have not seen other pearls. If you lie, your soul will be condemned to hell,” he ordered. An ominous silence fell over the room; everyone held his breath, and even the air grew still. Furious, Padre Mendoza jerked away from the hand that was paralyzing him. “How dare you!” he muttered. “Swear!” Moncada repeated. Diego and Isabel stepped forward to intervene, but Padre Mendoza, stopping them with a gesture, put one knee on the floor, his right hand on his chest, and his eyes on the Christ an Indian had carved from wood. He was trembling with shock and rage at the violence to which he had been subjected, but he had no fear of going to hell, at least not for that reason. “I swear before the Cross that I have seen no other pearls. May my soul be condemned if I am lying,” he said in a firm voice. For a long moment no one spoke; the only sound was Carlos Alcazar’s sigh of relief. His life would not be worth a centavo if Rafael Moncada learned that he had been keeping back the greater part of the treasure. He assumed that the small chamois pouch was in the hands of the masked man, but he did not understand why he had given the other pearls to the priest when he could have kept them all. Diego followed the course of his thoughts and smiled, defiant. Moncada had to accept Padre Mendoza’s oath, but he reminded everyone that he would not consider the matter finished until the guilty party was swinging from the gallows. “Garcia! Arrest de la Vega!” Moncada repeated. The fat sergeant dried his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform and reluctantly prepared to carry out his orders. “I’m sorry,” he blubbered, motioning to two soldiers to lead Diego away. Isabel ran to stand before Moncada, arguing that there was no proof against her friend, but he pushed her aside. Diego de la Vega spent the night in one of the former servants’ quarters of the hacienda in which he had been born. He even remembered whose room it had been when he was living there with his parents: a Mexican Indian woman named Roberta, whose face had been badly burned in an accident involving boiling chocolate. What had become of her? He had not remembered, on the other hand, that the rooms were so wretched: windowless cubicles with dirt floors and unpainted adobe walls, furnished with a straw mat, one chair, and a wooden chest. He lay there thinking, This is how Bernardo spent his childhood, while a short distance away he, Diego, slept in a brass bed with a tulle net to protect him from spiders, in a room crammed with toys. Why hadn’t he noticed it then? The house was divided by an invisible line that separated the family quarters from the complex universe of the servants. The former, generous and luxurious, decorated in ornate colonial style, was a marvel of order, calm, and cleanliness; it smelled of bouquets of flowers and his father’s tobacco. Life seethed in the servants’ area: incessant chatter, domestic animals, quarrels, work. That part of the house smelled of ground chili, baked bread, clothes soaking in lye, garbage. The family’s terraces, with their ornamental tiles, bougainvillea, and fountains, were a paradise of coolness, while the patios of the servants were dusty in summer and muddy in winter. Diego spent countless hours on the straw mat, sweating in the heat of May, with no natural light. He was gasping for air, and his chest burned. He had no way to measure time, but he felt that he had been there several days. His mouth was dry, and he feared that Moncada’s plan was to wear him down with thirst and hunger. At times he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but he was too uncomfortable. There was no room to take more than a couple of steps, and his muscles were cramping. He examined the room minutely, searching for a way to get out, but found nothing. The door was bolted from outside; not even Galileo Tempesta could have opened it. Diego tried to loosen the boards of the ceiling, but they were reinforced: it was obvious that the place was used as a cell. Much later the door of his tomb opened, and the ruddy face of Sergeant Garcia appeared in the threshold. Despite his weakness, Diego speculated that he could stun the good sergeant with a minimum of violence by pressing the place on the neck that Maestro Escalante had taught him when he was being trained in the combat skills of La Justicia. He did not want to get his old friend in trouble with Moncada. He might get out of his cell, but he could not escape from the hacienda; it would be better to wait. The rotund sergeant placed a jug of water and a bowl of beans and rice on the ground. “What time is it, my friend?” Diego asked, simulating a cheerful manner he was far from feeling. Garcia twisted up his face and counted on his fingers. “Nine o’clock Tuesday morning, you say? That means I have been here two nights and a day. How well I’ve slept! Do you know what Moncada intends to do?” Garcia shook his head. “What is the matter? Do you have orders not to talk to me? Very well, but no one told you not to listen, isn’t that right?”