15

Thomas was in the hall and came forward, bowing, as Mercy reached the bottom of the stairs. “I trust madam is rested from the journey,” he said as formally as if he hadn’t, nearly two weeks ago, waited outside an abandoned hut for Eric to finish raping her before that journey started. His sable skin startling against white shirt and trousers, Thomas wore a green sash. Mercy guessed him to be in his twenties, slender but strongly built. He had an aureole of tight-curling black hair and the stern face of a warrior, except when he smiled.

He did so when Mercy thanked him for collecting her books and herbs. “Madam must be at home here,” he said warmly. “Will you have breakfast in the courtyard, or on the terrace, or in the dining room?”

Not the courtyard, with its captive birds. “The terrace,” Mercy decided, involuntarily noting fine paintings that made the broad hall a gallery. The hardwood floor was polished to gleaming. Mercy noticed that two pretty mulatto girls, who dropped curtsies to her, were applying wax to furniture that bore the sheen of unremitting care.

“Would madam perhaps wish to talk with the cook about what she desires?”

“All I want is coffee and a roll.”

Thomas looked stricken. “Pierre hoped, I know, to tempt madam with his crepes.”

She was at war with Eric, not his people. “Tell Pierre I shall be happy with whatever he has at hand,” Mercy said, yielding, and she followed Thomas through a side corridor to a terrace that faced the river and was shaded by palms.

After seating her in a bamboo chair by a bamboo table, Thomas departed and returned quickly with coffee, saying that her breakfast would be served in a few minutes. Then he glided off, reminding Mercy of one of Aladdin’s efficient genies.

She sipped the pungent coffee, stirring in the first cream she’d had since coming to Yucatán because there were no milk cows at La Quinta. The river reflected the sky. It didn’t seem much of a barrier to resentful Mayas, who felt the land claimed by Britain really belonged to them.

Pondering escape, she wondered if she could find her way home even if she didn’t fall prey to swamps, crocodiles, or Cruzob. It seemed unlikely. Unless she found an accomplice, she’d better stay where she was and hope for some other way out of her elegant prison.

With bustling flurry, Pierre swept onto the terrace, shooing a boy ahead of him with a tray. “Madame!” cried Pierre, bowing so deeply she pitied his plump belly. “Pierre Chandel, your most devoted servant!” He kissed her hand so that the waxed tips of his gray moustache pricked her. He had curly gray eyebrows, thick hair of the same color, Delft-blue eyes, and a pink complexion that glowed like a baby’s. “It is my duty—mon plaisir—to prove that there is civilized cuisine even at this barbarous end of the earth. One must improvise, of course; one must substitute. But there are advantages. Wait until you taste ceviche made from conch with fresh-squeezed lemon! Or a dessert of fresh coconuts, pineapples, and bananas, or fresh fruit crèmes, or pig pit-roasted in the native manner! The seafood is a marvel: lobsters of fourteen pounds, stone crabs, shrimp, and such fish! And great turtles and turtle eggs! With lemon, butter, and parsley, the humblest fisherman can dine like a king off an endless variety of sea bounty. And we have geese and ducks, as well as chickens and turkeys. If you had only tasted the smoked goose I prepared at Christmas with side dishes of oysters and shrimp!” He paused for breath and beamed enormously. “But I prattle while you must be famished. Your pardon, madame! You have a particular fancy this morning, or may I surprise you?”

He so obviously craved to do the latter that Mercy smiled. “Surprise me, please, Pierre.” With a flash of fore-knowledge, she added, “But not with too much. A roll and coffee is all I am used to.”

Pierre answered with an eloquent snort, bowed, and rushed away. He must have had mixtures ready for cooking, for in twenty minutes he returned with a retinue of three boys who held trays while Pierre himself arranged the repast on the linen table mat he spread on the table.

“Omelet with slivers of ham and green peppers,” he announced, setting down a covered dish by the heavy, crested silver. “Crepes with toasted coconut and rum sauce, and a fresh fruit parfait. Enjoy it, madame!”

He was gone in the happy oblivion of duty done while Mercy stared at the beautifully served repast with something like horror.

All this work to make one meal for one person seemed almost sinful, though, at least, thanks to the plentitude of fruits, food plants, and fish, she didn’t need to feel she was depriving anyone of food. Some of her father’s patients had lived just as self-indulgently, of course, but she had acquired from him a feeling that no person should consume in worldly goods and comforts more than a reasonable share, and that was based to a degree on what they contributed to the world.

But the food was before her, it smelled tantalizing, and she uncovered the perfectly done omelet. She finished it, ate two of the incredibly thin, delicate crepes, and was finishing with the fresh fruit and coffee replenished from the silver pot when Pierre returned.

His face fell at the sight of the remaining crepe. “Too much rum, perhaps? Madame does not like coconut?”

“They were superb,” Mercy assured him. “But I wouldn’t be able to move if I ate that one. Let me have it later.”

His Delft-blue eyes bulged. “Madame! Á warmed-over crepe is like a dowager trying to be a jeune fille! Never will it happen while I’m in charge of Monsieur Wellington’s kitchen!”

“What, a difference of opinion already?” Eric sauntered through the French doors, pulled up a chair beside Mercy, and poured coffee into the extra cup on the tray. “A tragedy, Pierre?”

“Madame suggested I serve her a warmed-over crepe!”

Eric shook his head. “I share your horror, Pierre, but you must understand that madame lived through a war that must have considerably reduced her gustatory expectations.”

He polished off the crepe while Pierre moaned. “But, monsieur, it is cold now! You cannot possibly …”

“Excellent,” said Eric, using Mercy’s napkin. “I wish to show madame around the house, Pierre, but when I resume my labors with McNulty, she can visit your kitchen and you can discuss her preferences.”

His sensibilities still outraged, Pierre bowed huffily and took himself back to his dominion. “Temperamental, but worth it,” said Eric, grinning. “I could never endure it here without him. However, I’ll have a word with him if he fattens you up too much with his sauces and pastries.” Appraising eyes went over her, as if summing up her attributes. “You could stand a little flesh, but not enough to hide the wonderful modeling of your bones.”

“I’m not a prize racehorse or piece of sculpture,” Mercy said.

“Indeed, not,” Eric agreed with a twinkle, rising and helping her up. “But you won’t stuff yourself in the hope of disgusting me. Quaint little puritan that you look to be in that gray gown, it molds your breasts and trim waist.”

“My father always warned me about the health risks of overeating.”

“Not to mention the artistic ones,” murmured Eric. “Shall we begin with my office, love? You might as well meet McNulty. French cook and Scottish accountant! Took me five years and as many men to hit upon McNulty, but in his way he’s as invaluable as Pierre.”

“You seem well served.”

“I go to great trouble to see that I am,” he replied blandly. “I’m never content till I’m sure I have the best.”

Passing down the hall, he opened the first door on the right and let Mercy precede him into a large book-lined room with a smaller one adjoining, where a freckled man with thinning red hair glanced up from a ledger. His bow to Mercy as he rose was curt. Clearly, he was absorbed in his work and didn’t care to be interrupted.

“Mercy, this is James McNulty,” said Eric. “James, this is Doña Mercy.”

“She’s no more Spanish than I be,” said the wizened man, adjusting his spectacles to view her. “A sonsie lass with Scottish blood, I’m bound!”

“Scottish-Irish,” Mercy admitted, “with a streak of Welsh.”

McNulty nodded approval before he peered at Eric. “Now, sir, there be no way I can sort out the payments to those howling Icaiches for logging rights until you sit down and explain it all to me!”

“In an hour, James, you may go at me till you’re satisfied,” Eric promised.

They left the Scotsman to his work. Eric had three desks in his main office, each surrounded by files and bookcases. “It helps me not to get mixed up,” he said and laughed. “The desk to the right has all the material on logging, sugar’s in the middle, and the left one concerns cattle and domestic matters.”

“Don’t you deal in guns?”

“I’d certainly be wasting a great frontier location if I didn’t,” he said after a moment. “It’s a profitable sideline, but though the estate began as a logging concern, sugar now provides much of the income.” He gazed out at the river. “I haven’t done badly for the black-sheep younger son of a Midlands baronet.”

Mercy grimaced. “Are all younger sons black sheep?”

“It’s the only way they get to amount to anything,” returned Eric imperturbably.

The library was across the hall, with a scatter of pipes and the smell of tobacco to indicate that Eric spent considerable time in a massive leather chair by a reading table strewn with rare editions and periodicals in several languages. There was a glittering array of decanters and bottles on a sideboard, and one wall was fitted to hold rifles, shotguns, and small arms, all well oiled.

Next to the library was a music room. White magnolias were reflected on the polished top of a grand piano and an organ that might have graced a cathedral filled one wall. A violin lay on the blue velvet-cushioned window-seat overlooking the leafy courtyard, and a rosewood harp inlaid with ivory sat by a gilt-legged needlepoint bench. In a large recess behind it was a portrait of a very young woman, her fingers on the strings of a harp exactly like the real one. She wore an off-shoulder gown of dark green satin, and her rich chestnut hair was tied back with a ribbon of the same color.

Mercy’s scalp prickled as she stared into remarkably lifelike eyes that seemed much too sad and wise for such a young face. The hair, the skin, the eyes! It was like looking into a mirror that gave back a not-quite-true reflection that prompted one to look closer and see the face was longer, the mouth classical, and the chin pointed. But Mercy looked enough like the woman in the painting to have been a sister.

“That is Alison.” Eric sent his fingers across the harp strings, eliciting a sound like a cry of pain. “My half-sister.”

“She’s in England?”

“In the family vault. Holy ground—even though she was a suicide.”

Mercy gave a cry, full of pity and a kind of eerie dread, as she stared at the grave, sweet countenance. “Why? Why would she do that?”

“She was going to have my baby.” Eric gripped Mercy’s wrists and made her face him. “Don’t look like that! How can you know? Our mother died when Alison was five and I was three. My father—her stepfather—left us to nannies and servants who generally ignored us when they weren’t actually abusive. Father drank to excess, and females of propriety couldn’t stay long in his employ. So Alison both sistered and mothered me. Each was all the other had to love, to huddle against on lonely nights, or seek comfort from when Father buffeted us about. I was sent off to school, of course, but Alison had a governess, some improvement over the slattern nannies, and music was her joy and deliverance. Even Father would often ask her to play.

“When I was sixteen, I came home at Whitsuntide to find that Father had betrothed her to a man of his own age. Alison was distraught. I held her and promised to think of something. We were innocent till then, but as God may judge me, if there is a God, our loving was as natural and sweet and inevitable as the opening of a flower. Father caught us one day in the attic, where we’d used to play as children. He stunned me with his walking stick and beat me senseless. When I came to, I was gagged, tied hand and foot, and Father’s estate manager and a groom were taking me to Southampton.

“There they paid the captain well to keep me locked in a cabin till the ship reached the West Indies. The captain, honest in his way, delivered a letter from my father that disinherited me in the best sanctimonious style while bemoaning that a poor widower who’d devoted himself to his motherless children should be so disgraced. He enclosed one hundred pounds, adjured me to try to drag myself from the morass of heinous crime, and said if I cared at all for Alison’s peace I would never come again to England, or even try to communicate with her—that she would be married to the worthy Christian gentleman selected for her before I could read the letter.”

In spite of her need to hate Eric utterly, a picture of a battered, despairing boy separated from the only person he loved and dropped into a strange country came so powerfully to Mercy that she almost touched his hand. “Did you ever see her again?”

He shook his head. “It was a month before I got back to the Midlands. My father was so drunk he didn’t even know me. I had to get the story out of the governess who had stayed to take care of him, and share his bed, I would reckon, when he was capable. Alison had told the worthy gentleman about me. That, quite predictably, shocked him into bleating like a sheep, and he hastily retreated. Alison, the governess said, had hoped my father would exile her, too, and that somehow she could find me. But he found another man, this one debt-ridden, ailing, and as old as the first, who, for a sum, would marry her and acknowledge the child. It was to escape him that Alison took arsenic that was kept to poison vermin. My sister, to die that way! But it was my fault, my piggish, selfish fault! She was goodness to me all my life, and that was how I repaid her.”

“You … were very young.”

“So was she—and much more innocent. I had heard talk at school, had been to a few public women.” His gaze turned inward. “I took Alison’s portrait and harp and worked my passage to Sisal, for I remembered hearing that one of my mother’s many brothers was a merchant in Mérida. He gave me a position, and after that I seemed fortune’s darling. But nothing really mattered.”

“Did your uncle and Doña Elena know?”

“My uncle was something of a family skeleton himself for going into trade, and he simply assumed I was a kindred spirit, which was true enough. I’d have smothered in England. We’ve Viking blood in my mother’s line, and it surfaces in every generation. I’ve distant cousins scattered from Canada to Texas and from the Transvaal to New Zealand.”

“I suppose you can’t all stay in England.”

“If everybody had, we’d be standing on each other’s shoulders,” said Eric. “Meanwhile, Belize is a fairly unusual place. Though it’s been claimed by the British since the time of Elizabeth, they’ve always been a tiny minority here. The first to arrive were mainly British Navy men who traveled up the rivers cutting dyewood. Do you know of it?”

Mercy shook her head.

“It’s very valuable wood, the price for which has risen steadily since its discovery by the Dutch in the 1600s. They found it produced a superior, non-running dye. Later, when the settlers came, they were prevented from growing more than subsistence crops of dyewood or anything else, in accord with a treaty with Spain. But all that has changed since Mexican independence and since Yucatecan refugees started bringing in sugarcane cuttings in the late Forties. I have two hundred acres in cane, and McNulty advises that I plant more as soon as the mahogany is cut.”

“Can’t you leave the trees?”

“When they command such a price?” Eric turned abruptly from the harp and led Mercy across the hall to a sitting room furnished with what she thought was Regency with some Chippendale: two striped Grecian couches; plush chairs; a teapoy with brass inlay; a variety of drum, pillar, and claw tables and stands. “Useless room,” said Eric, though he regarded it with a certain contemptuous pride. “The only time it’s used is when the governor visits or when an Englishman accompanied by his wife comes this way, which is damned seldom.”

A large dining room with tapestry-upholstered chairs, a massive oak refectory table, sideboard, and several oak china cabinets took up the remainder of the bottom floor, except for a small room with French doors opening onto the terrace. Two plain comfortable chairs were pulled up to a small round table with a bowl of fruit in the middle of its sparkling white cloth. There were books, pipes, and metal containers, which Eric said contained biscuits, candied ginger, nuts, and other tidbits in case she got hungry between meals. He added, unnecessarily, that he spent most of his waking time here or in his office or library. A walkway led from this room to the kitchen house, a separate structure.

Upstairs was a huge room used for storage, repairs, and sewing. The room was equipped with two Singer sewing machines. Mercy had seen the hand-cranked machine designed by Howe, a Boston watchmaker’s apprentice, which could make two hundred fifty stitches a minute, out-doing what a good seamstress could accomplish in five or six times that length of time, but Eric assured her that these Singers were far superior and that sewing for the whole household was done on them. On their floor, there were two guest bedrooms besides Mercy’s.

“And this is where I sleep,” said Eric, drawing her inside yet another room.

He took her slowly, almost contemplatively, in the canopied four-poster bed, watching her face, with a gentleness more unnerving than his violence. Dear God! Did he try to imagine she was Alison? That story had made it impossible for her to hate him with clean, undiluted purity, but it made her angry with him, too. Instead of making him compassionate, tragedy had turned him into a conscienceless exploiter of people and land. Instead of his love making him respect hers for Zane, it made him pitiless in grasping for a husk of what he’d lost.

As if sensing her rebellious thoughts, Eric again, with his probing, skillful tongue, won from her that involuntary tribute of cresting, blind, shuddering release before he entered her, drivingly this time, and reached a convulsively trembling climax, after which he seemed to doze for a few minutes, one gold-haired bronzed arm flung over her.

“Will you rest?” he asked, his eyes still closed. “Or will you visit Pierre?”

“I’ll see him,” she decided.

They washed and dressed and went downstairs. She wondered if she’d ever understand this man who was her captor.

The kitchen was the most surprising room in the house. Herbs grew in long boxes set on every windowsill. Amidst rows, shelves, and cupboards of enamel, copper, and cast-iron cooking vessels and utensils, bins and barrels and containers of foodstuffs, was a long, heavy table centered with shelves of seasonings, measuring cups, bowls, spoons, and knives. A fireplace situated in a small side room was equipped with spits and grills, but the pride of the cook’s heart was a fearsomely impressive system of fast oven, slow oven, pastry oven, steam closet, hot closet, and bath boiler all in one imposing stove fired in the center.

“The first of this marvelous invention was shown at the great exhibition in Hyde Park in … yes, 1851, I am sure, madame! It cost Monsieur Kensington a small fortune to have it shipped here, but he’s often told me it was worth it, yes!”

The pantry was almost the size of the kitchen and resembled a grocery. All of the tinned delicacies were imported, and there were bins of flour, rice, beans, and sugar. Crocks of butter, cream, and milk were stored in the coolest corner. Next to the pantry was a tile-topped counter for cleaning and dressing game and fowl, with a large basin equipped with a drain.

“You could cook for the queen of England,” said Mercy.

“I could!” Pierre wasn’t one for false modesty. “But this is better. Monsieur Kensington leaves the kitchen to me.” He gestured at the half-dozen helpers who were going about various tasks. There were two boys of perhaps fourteen or fifteen, two young men, and two middle-aged women. “They do what I say, but none can argue over the correct way to prepare faisan à la flamande or galantine de poulard.”

“Neither will I!” Mercy laughed.

Pierre couldn’t quite cover his look of relief. “But madame must be pleased!”

“I’m sure I will be. I like fruit and vegetables, I am very fond of cheese and eggs, and I’ve come to like tortillas.”

“I don’t serve those, not me!” When Mercy glanced at the woman making the flat cakes, Pierre said, “Those are for the servants.”

“Well, maybe I can have one now and then,” Mercy said. “Please make whatever you judge best, Pierre, but remember that I can’t eat as much as Mr. Kensington.”

“When madame has had time to sample my creations, perhaps she will tell me her favorites?”

Time. Mercy thought again of the food of Persephone. But she must endure, and for that she must eat. Of course I will,” she told Pierre. “Thank you for showing me your wonderful kitchen.”

He bowed her out and began calling orders for what Mercy feared was the start of the noon meal. Going back to the house, she stood on the terrace, reluctant either to go to her room or wander about.

What was she going to do here? She wasn’t the mistress of the house and hadn’t the slightest wish to meddle in what was obviously a smooth-running arrangement. She enjoyed cooking, but Pierre was lord of the kitchen, and, anyway, she was determined not to seem in any way to be assuming a permanent and contented place in the mansion.

She could spend some time daily in keeping a journal and recording all she had learned about Yucatán and Belize. Here, as at Zane’s, there was the incredible luck of a good library. She could continue learning Mayan and Spanish, for there were both Mayas and mestizos among the house servants. But these pursuits, interesting as part of a routine, couldn’t be enough.

Since she was a child, Mercy had felt needed and important, keeping house for her father and then, during the war, filling in for him as best she could. Continuing to help the sick while keeping a garden and trying to manage a house and cook meals as Philip liked them had been more than she could sometimes manage. She’d never get in that position again—trying to satisfy an emotionally infantile man who could only demand but never give. At La Quinta, she’d taught the children and learned medicine from Chepa. She’d been useful there, a part of things.

Now the need to work, even if she could find something that didn’t intrude in someone else’s sphere, was frustrated by a resolve not to fit in here, not to become part of Eric’s establishment.

Had she been a painter or writer, she could have been busy without supporting Eric’s ménage, but those weren’t her talents. If she had a gift, at all, a prime concern, it was healing.

She frowned, suddenly arrested. With all that sugar and logging and the people required to maintain the House of Quetzals, there would be sick and injured.

Even if there was a doctor, she could be helpful while learning what he knew. Her father had never had time to follow up on home care, diet, and such things. There’d surely be something she could do. She’d ask Celeste. It wasn’t the kind of thing Eric seemed likely to approve of, but once she learned his routine she could pretty much know what hours would be her own. Those hours could help her remain herself, linking the present with her father and Chepa. But at the moment she was driven to walk down to the river and look away toward La Quinta.

Where was Zane? Was he safe? Would he believe that letter? Even if he didn’t quite, how could he guess what had happened to her? It hurt to be thought faithless, not only by Zane, but by Jolie, Chepa, Salvador, and Mayel.

Strong arms fitted around her, hands cupping her breasts. “So here you are, sweetheart!” Eric turned her around for his kiss. “Let’s see what Pierre has for luncheon. After our siesta, I’ll show you some of the plantation.”

He swept her along with him, but she looked back over her shoulder at the sunlit water and in the direction she hoped to travel again toward the man who was the center of her loving.

The mare brought around to the terrace for Mercy was a pale tan color, so beautiful that in spite of Mercy’s determination not to be blandished by any of Eric’s gifts, she couldn’t restrain a cry of admiration as she stroked the velvety muzzle and touched a mane that would have suited Pegasus, the winged horse of the Muses.

“I’ve seen buckskins,” she said, “but never one this color.”

“She’s a palomino,” Eric explained. “A color, not a separate breed, though there’s lots of Arab in the ancestry. It means ‘like a dove.’ I broke this one in myself, though I had her ridden by a lightweight. Her name is Lucera.”

The saddle was a mellow rust color stitched with gold. Eric helped Mercy into it before he mounted his big bay stallion.

“My land stretches from the river to highlands, from about sea level to over two thousand feet, so it has great variety,” he said proudly. “I have cattle in the regions unsuitable for cultivation, and I have experimented with coffee and tobacco, but sugar is my main crop, apart from mahogany and dyewood.”

“Are your workers slaves?”

Eric shot her an amused glance. “They aren’t likely to leave. They’re all in debt to me. But slavery was abolished in all English dominions in 1840, and the owners in Belize freed their people a year before that. I wonder if you’re aware, delectably self-righteous one, that one of the reasons you Texans wanted independence from Mexico was that their constitution had forbidden slavery.”

“Then why do they still have it?”

“Debt-slavery is at least legally different, though the results are the same. And slavery in Mexico and the West Indies has always been bizarre in that blacks were imported to preserve the Indians, who never stood up well to grueling, heavy labor. My cane fields are worked mostly by refugee Mayas, but I use blacks as much as possible for the mill and refinery.”

They passed gardens and orchards, corrals and sheds, pastures for horses and dairy cattle, and at a distance from the road, in a swampy place, scores of immense black pigs rooted and wallowed. The way twined through stands of trees, new growth, Eric explained, since the original mahogany and dyewood had been felled, used now to fire the boilers, which demanded tremendous amounts of wood in addition to the fibrous refuse of the cane.

“Besides needing lots of workers to plant, cultivate and harvest the cane, it takes more to cut wood and run the mill and refinery. All these people have to be fed, so the community busied with sugar is a small village with a management separate from the rest of the estate. The mayordomo, chief overseer, and refinery master are all ladinos who fled the War of the Castes and know how to get the Mayas to work.”

Remembering the hacienda from which she’d rescued Mayel, Mercy didn’t like the sound of that, and she liked less the sight of the whipping post situated near the store in the clearing around which the workers’ huts and small private plots were scattered.

“I hope that isn’t used,” she said to Eric.

He looked at the post, a lopped-off tree the height of a man, and shrugged. “Surely you’ve heard the adage that the Indian hears through his back. I don’t interfere with Don Gerardo as long as he keeps production up.”

“Why, that’s worse than maltreating people yourself! It lets you profit by such tactics without having to accept direct guilt!”

“I could stand the guilt.” He smiled coldly. “I lack the time. My workers are unusually well fed with plenty of meat, cheese, and eggs. They have Sundays off and the wages are better than average.”

“So, perhaps, are the prices at your store!”

He shook his golden lion’s head. “Mercy, Mercy! I’m a businessman, a proprietor, certainly not a saint, but not the villain you’d like to think me, either. I run a plantation, not Utopia. Indians have never gotten more for their labor than a living. They get a comparatively good one from me. It’s not my fault that they spend more than they earn.”

Thinking of his cook and fantastically equipped kitchen, the daily delivery of seafood, the servants whose purpose it was to keep his house as he wanted it, the quetzals caged so far from their cloud forests, Mercy choked with indignation.

“How can you say that? How can you seem to think so many people exist just to make you rich?”

“I think it because it’s so,” he said without anger. “Do compose yourself, my dear. Here comes Don Gerardo.”

The mayordomo, a handsome middle-aged man with a narrow moustache, greeted them profusely, expressed his delight in meeting Doña Mercy, and his thankfulness that Señor Kensington had returned safely from his journey through the Cruzob-ridden jungles.

“I had prayed the emperor would send armies from Mexico to crush that vermin, but it seems the French troops have all sailed and the emperor cannot even defend himself,” lamented the mayordomo. “Now, with Marcos Canul raiding even British territory, what safety is there? Nineteen years ago I fled Tekax, and now I begin to think I can never go home! Not,” he added hastily, “that I wish to leave El Señor’s profitable employ.”

“If you should, I can replace you,” said Eric equably: “We’ll just have a look at the mill and refinery before riding past the nearest fields, where you will be so good as to accompany us in case there are questions.”

Don Gerardo bowed and declared his pleasure at then further company. Leaving him to have his horse brought around, they proceeded toward the refining center adjacent to the mill, where mules powered hardwood rollers that crushed the cane, sending the juice into troughs that ran to the boilers, kept bubbling by Negroes who kept the fires stoked with wood replenished by loads brought up by glum-looking burros.

The refinery director, Don Manuel, portly and sweating, explained to Mercy, at Eric’s request, how after enough boiling of the syrup, sugar crystals began to form. These were separated from the remaining liquid, which was molasses, and refined into white sugar.

As they rode past the refining kettles and platforms, a smithy, and woodworking shop, Don Gerardo rode up on a handsome sorrel and they approached the fields, which stretched away to the jungle.

The greenish stalks flaunted tassels that grew twice as high as the heads of the men cutting them off at the ground and tossing them into mule-driven carts to be cut into manageable hunks by other men with sharp knives. When one of these carts was full, it creaked back to the mill.

“Cortez probably planted the first sugarcane in this hemisphere,” said Eric. “New plants will come up from the stubble of the cut ones, so I get two or three harvests before replanting.” At a word from him, Don Gerardo called the nearest man, who brought a cutting of several joints. Holding it for Mercy’s inspection, Eric showed her where the dormant eyes, or buds, were. “The eyes are placed downward as the cutting’s planted lengthwise and covered lightly. The eyes root and start new plants in just a few days, but we won’t replant till the rains start in late May.”

Eric started to toss the cutting back to the waiting Indian, paused, and frowned. The young man was dressed in rolled-up white trousers like the other hands, but there was something different about the way he stood and held his head. A gold earring glinted in his left ear. He had a hawk face, sloping forehead, slightly hooked nose, and broad, high cheekbones.

“Who is this one?” asked Eric.

“Señor, he’s batab of one of the small Mayan subgroups, neither Icaiche nor Cruzob.” Don Gerardo tugged nervously at his moustache, then added with venom, “It’s my belief he’s allied with the Cruzob. However that is, perhaps you’ll remember that he and some of his men came to buy guns a few months ago.”

Eric nodded. “It’s coming back. They didn’t have enough money, but this man was afraid that Icaiches would overrun his village unless it had guns.”

“So he asked to stay as hostage for payment.”

“And I said I didn’t need hostages but could use another field hand,” finished Eric, gazing at the tall man, who looked straight back. “I see his people haven’t redeemed him. He was a fool to count on their love.”

“They will come,” said the batab in Spanish. “They are not dzul, whites, to sell anything for money.”

“Dog!” snarled Don Gerardo. “Kiss El Señor’s hand at once and beg his pardon, or you may need to buy a new skin!”

“He owns my labor, not my worship,” said the young batab.

Gerardo raised his metal-tipped braided quirt but Eric stopped him with a shake of his head. “Why begin something that couldn’t end till he’d be too ruined to work for a couple of days? A batab opposed to the Icaiches might be valuable. I’ll think about it.” He studied the Indian in gauging fashion. “What is your name?”

“Señor, I am Dionisio Caamal.”

“We’ll talk again, Dionisio.”

With the slightest inclination of his head, the Indian turned back to his furrow, slicing the two-inch-thick stalk with a seemingly effortless sweep of his arm.

“Señor, with all due respect, insolence cannot go unpunished!” burst out Don Gerardo. “Let me order a whipping for that one, or the workers will all be infected!”

“He may be worth more to me with his pride,” said Eric. “I think, had you used your quirt, he would have cut your throat in the next instant, and, though he would, of course, have died immediately, that couldn’t help you.”

“I have overseen such dogs all my life, señor. He needs to be beaten till he crawls to kiss the lash.”

Eric stared at Gerardo till he glanced down and licked his lips. “Such wisdom and management techniques helped bring on the war that sent you scuttling across the Hondo,” Eric said in a stinging tone. “You will excuse us now. And perhaps you should keep a record of whippings and the offenses. I’ve told you that judicious punishment may be necessary, but I won’t tolerate indiscriminate abuse.” His frosty eyes glared at the mayordomo. “You understand?”

A flush darkened Don Gerardo’s sallow face. “Yes, señor.”

“Good. I’ll expect a report monthly; and if there’s nothing to report, I’ll congratulate you.”

“So long as El Señor doesn’t blame me if production falls off and there are incidents …”

“Ah, but I shall,” said Eric sweetly. “You have authority to punish when necessary. My mayordomo must have judgment; it is what sets him above fieldhands and overseers.”

Don Gerardo bowed with a choking sound as they rode on.

“Will his reports be honest?” Mercy asked.

“I think so. But to be sure, I’ll also ask for such an accounting from the overseer, who’d be very happy to succeed to Don Gerardo’s job.”

“Do you really have a plan for that young batab?”

“It’s possible. I’ll confess the Icaiche raids are too close for comfort, and I hear the militia will be disbanded in a matter of weeks. When that happens, Marcos Canul is sure to come south of the Hondo again. If Dionisio would undertake to kill him, it’d be worth a goodly number of rifles.”

Mercy remembered the proud stance of the batab, the fearless way he had confronted his master and mayordomo. “I don’t think he’ll kill another Maya for you,” she said, “even if they are enemies.”

“You’re a romantic, love. For rifles in this country, men do many things.” As if startled by a sudden unwelcome thought that persisted after an incredulous attempt at dismissal, Eric turned in his saddle to scan her narrowly. “Are you making a hero of him? Listen, my sweet! Mayas rape white women more out of hatred than lust, and, don’t forget, that’s how our handsome young chief would serve you if he got the chance!”

Angered past caution, Mercy laughed in his face. “How do you rape me? With hate? Lust? I tell you, Eric Kensington, that I don’t see any difference!”

“Let me refresh your memory.” Seizing the reins of her horse, he dismounted and tied the horses outside a storage shed they were passing. He brought her out of the saddle, dragged off the divided skirt and her drawers as he carried her inside, spilled her down on a heap of old sacking, and spread her legs apart.

He was so swollen that she felt she would break apart as he entered her and then rocked back and forth with savage, jolting thrusts. “I hoped your first lessons taught you what rape was!” He panted, gripping her wrists. “But since your memory’s bad, doesn’t this seem different from the way I took you this morning and last night?”

“It’s all rape!” she shouted at him, strangling on rage and pain. “It’s all rape because I hate you, hate you …”

A blow from the side of his hand dazed her. “Say you love me!” he gasped, shaking her. “Say you love me!”

Her head lolled. She felt as if her neck were broken, as if it were somebody else to whom this was happening, but from within herself, though her body cringed, she found the strength to cry against the closed, blind look in his eyes. “I hate you! I always will! It’s Zane I love!”

He circled her throat with one hand, and his fingers tightened till the world went black.