18

The sandals she wore were comfortable, but she was not used to steady walking. By the time the sun sent luminous shafts spiraling through the various layers of leaves so that the diffused glow reached her, she stopped by a seeping from the rocks to drink, rest, chew some dried meat, and rub into her feet the ointment she’d brought, a concoction of toloache and oils of turpentine and artemisia. The artemisia healed blisters and cracks, turpentine was an irritant and cleanser, and toloache dulled pain. She was likely to need a lot of it before this trip was over!

Her pack couldn’t weigh more than fifteen pounds, but it seemed to double and triple in weight as the afternoon wore on and the humid heat grew oppressive. Mercy had chosen her divided muslin skirt and blouse as the most practical garments, and the change she carried was the poplin divided skirt and another thin blouse. The skirts were long, somewhat full, and terribly in the way, catching on roots, vines, and taking on the hue of mud.

Tripping as a hem caught on a fallen log, Mercy reached for her knife and was going to hack off the encumbering material at the knee when she remembered that the cloth was some protection from chiggers, mosquitoes, and scratches. She compromised, ripping and cutting away the bottom five or six inches. Relieved of several yards of cloth, which she buried in a hollow tree trunk and felt much freer without, Mercy promised herself a rest and food at the next sight of water.

This was a spring slowed to a trickle by the dry season, but sweet to the taste. She made a hollow to accumulate enough to soak her weary feet, mixed water into the sour cornmeal in her hollow gourd cup, and savored the pungent gruel, rather liking the taste, though she smiled to imagine what Pierre would have said.

The sun was slanting low to the west. She reckoned she’d been walking for most of the past eleven hours and was thoroughly tired. Should she stay all the night near this water?

In the short time she had been resting, all kinds of rustling sounds had seemed to multiply. She heard a scuffling above and a crashing sound as something struck the ground a short distance ahead. A scream pushed to her lips, but she swallowed it as she recognized the monster shape as an iguana, which lay stunned for a moment before it raised its thick, dragon-like body and darted into the brush. It must have been after birds or birds’ eggs and ventured onto a limb too thin for its weight.

Iguanas were harmless and reputed to have excellent chicken-like meat, but the startling materialization of a four-foot-long lizard convinced Mercy that she’d be stupid to stop any sooner than she had to and be devoured by taut nerves and imagining. There were enough real dangers without fantasizing any. So she rubbed in more salve, changed sandals in the hope that differently angled straps would discourage blisters, and started out again.

The sun dipped lower and lower. She was beginning to think she should have filled the waterskin, because she was going to have to stop soon before real darkness, when she heard the sound of water and found a stream welling from the roots of a huge cedar.

She drank gratefully, then secured her hammock out of sight of the trail and far enough from water so that, she hoped, any creatures that wanted to drink would be neither frightened nor tempted by her.

Jaguars weren’t supposed to attack people, but if one got curious and came sniffing around, she’d probably screech and scare it into jumping on her. And spider monkeys could be unpleasant if threatened. She refused to even think about snakes.

Her clothes were sodden with sweat and she felt muddy, as if the dust of travel was glued to her. Undressing, she hung her things to air out over a limb, stood in the stream, and washed all over. She had no towel so she dried by the air, rubbed on some of the resin Chepa recommended to keep off mosquitoes and chiggers, anointed her feet, relieved that she had no blisters or open sores, and decided to sleep in her clean clothes.

In the twilight that thickened swiftly in the forest, she sat in her hammock and slowly chewed spiced dry meat and sipped sour corn gruel. It was highly concentrated food and very satisfying. Spreading her soiled clothes over her pack at the end of the hammock, Mercy covered herself with the light poncho and seemed to fall asleep.

She awoke to stealthy padding and lay frozen as something touched the lowest-hanging part of the hammock, then nudged her hip. Opening her eyes slowly, she could see nothing in the darkness. The nudging came again, reminding her of a rooting pig’s snout.

A wild pig? Peccaries could be dangerous if cornered, but if that was what was inspecting her, she could treat it as she would a barnyard pig at home.

“Scat!” she hissed.

The animal fled, taking with it a flurry of other boundings and slitherings. Mercy tried to sleep, but her nerves responded to every rustle. A long trill came from above her, swelling till it seemed to fill the night, then stopped abruptly. Only then did she realize it was a screech owl. She would have given her change of clothes and half her food for Flora’s protection—and company.

What time was it? Would it never be day? Her muscles ached, but she longed for it to grow light enough to travel again. She thought of Elkanah, how he used to stay by her bed when she was afraid at night or had a bad dream. “We’re all afraid of the dark,” he’d said, not making fun of or shaming her. “But it can be a warm, friendly place, too. All depends on what you feel about it.”

So she thought of Zane, remembered their nights, and tried to imagine the ones they would have—if she got home, if he came back safe from the war, if he still loved her. She forced those fears away and pretended the curve of the hammock was his arm, that his other hand was stroking her.

When she heard muffled sounds by the spring, she told herself it was only shy, small brocket deer. Gradually she slipped into a sleep that lasted till dawn.

She didn’t know how many miles she had come and didn’t remember the frequency of water on the route between the House of Quetzals and Bacalar, so she drank deeply and filled the water bag half-full before starting out, rubbed her feet well with ointment, and dressed in her dirty clothes.

Eating dried meat as she walked along, she told herself it was a good thing she had a few days to get used to the woods before she came to the Cruzob trail, where wild things would take second place in her anxieties.

Eric might return this evening or the next day, but surely even he wouldn’t insist on exhuming a pestilent corpse, and who’d believe a lone woman, a foreigner, would start out through Cruzob territory?

No, he’d believe her dead; there was no one to blame. And if it meant she couldn’t go to Mérida for fear of meeting his Aunt Elena or someone else who knew him, that was a trifle. She must run no risks of his learning that Celeste and others of the estate had helped her get away.

Zane, of course, might want to kill him, but she hoped to dissuade him from that. They’d been separated long enough; there’d been too many dangers. If they were ever reunited, it would be a long time before she’d feel comfortable about his riding to the fields without her. But he’d laugh and kiss her, tell her not to be silly. Only sometimes he’d not leave right away.…

She let her thoughts settle on him and a pulse within her quickened to dream of how it would be. One day was gone—one-tenth of the journey if made by horse, she thought, remembering the trip to the House of Quetzals those months ago. And by foot? Was she one-twelfth of the way home, perhaps? Whatever, today brought the goal closer, and the woods didn’t seem as alarming as they had yesterday, when Pablo dropped the vine curtain and she’d been suddenly by herself.

It was a time of flowering. Besides the many vines, there were copal trees with pyramids of flame-red flowers, wild cotton trees with big poppy-like yellow blooms, rosewood thrusting its pink blossoms high into the air, and many others she couldn’t name.

About mid-morning she found a spring, washed her feet, drank, and filled her water bag with fresh water. A few hours later, hungry and tired, she found a rock hollow that held a fair amount of water accumulated from a drip in a crevice. She washed her drawers and skirt, spread them on a limb that caught the sun while she bathed, mixed corn gruel from the drip, and, clad in clean underwear from her pack, ate and rested. Her washed garments were still wet when it was time to go on, so she rigged a sort of holder from vines and fastened this to the top of the pack so she could walk while the laundry dried. She wanted to save her clean skirt for arriving at La Quinta, and she decided that for now her drawers and chemise were adequate, as well as much cooler.

Late that afternoon, the narrow trail joined one that ran north and south, and which showed mule tracks. She knew she must have now passed Bacalar, and that this was the Cruzob trade route she sought. Mercy’s heart turned over and then beat faster. Though her skirt was still slightly damp, she put it on, then pulled her knife from the sheath to be sure it moved easily. There was nothing else she could do to prepare for the Cruzob, so she turned left and kept herself alert.

Please let there be no Cruzob traveling down to the Hondo or returning. Please let her maneuver past Chan Santa Cruz without detection. It was probably fifty miles to the city of the Talking Cross, and Mercy figured that the next seventy-five miles were the most dangerous, because surely the farther north she got from the city, the less likely she was to encounter scattered Cruzob villages and patrols.

With any luck, five or six more days should get her through the worst part. She was no outdoorsman, but she could move quietly through the woods, and it seemed certain that she’d hear any groups of people before they could hear her. This should give her time to hide off the road. Since it was for trading that the Cruzob went south, they weren’t likely to travel alone.

She was beginning to convince herself of all this when she heard voices. Slipping into the trees, dodging vines, and dropping to a crouch, Mercy scurried behind a thick mass of morning glories and bushes and lay close to the ground as the men came nearer. She couldn’t see through the growth and prayed that they couldn’t, either.

There were at least three voices. Their owners must have been barefoot because she could detect only a faint padding. For some time after the men had passed, Mercy lay with her heart thudding like a scared rabbit’s straining her ears.

At last, when she heard and saw nothing, she got cautiously to her knees and worked her way to where she could see the trail. Empty. And she couldn’t skulk in the brush all day.

But what if they came back?

She’d hear them, wouldn’t she? Forcing her unwilling legs to carry her back to the road, Mercy walked nervously along, glancing over her shoulder every time she thought she heard anything, which was often, and wished she knew better the calls of birds so she could be sure that was really what they were.

One stretch of high grass rippled. Frozen, she stood as if rooted to the trail, then gasped with relief at the curassow’s distinctive curly black crest and yellow knob above the bill. Later on there was a crashing through the trees and she saw a large, thin monkey flash through the limbs and vines, eerily, like a small, hairy man with a tail. Mostly, though, the jungle was quiet, though she had a sensation of secret teeming life.

Twilight was settling in. It was time to look for a camping place. Hoping for water, she went on for a while, but she found none. She knew she’d better find a hidden spot for her hammock while she could still see. She could stretch her water through tomorrow, but if she hadn’t found any by noon, she might have to follow a stream bed to hunt for a spring or natural cistern.

Constantly turning to fix in her mind the major trees she was passing, Mercy got well out of sight of the trail, found two suitable limbs, and slung her hammock. Perched in it, she chewed meat and corn dough, preferring to drink her water plain till she found it brackish from the skin and mixed in enough corn to flavor it: She rubbed salve into her feet and on some scratches on her arm, then brushed her hair and braided it. Since she couldn’t wash, she wouldn’t change to her clean skirt. Stowing her pack at one end of the hammock, she pulled the poncho over her head and dropped out of consciousness, as if leaping from a bridge.

If peccaries rooted around her that night, or monkeys chattered questions, or jaguars sniffed, or snakes glided past, she didn’t even dream of it, but slept till light pressed insistently against her eyelids.

Yawning, stretching, the feel of the hammock oriented her at once. She gazed cautiously around, listening. When nothing seemed unusual, she mixed gruel, broke camp by the simple action of putting her hammock into her pack, fastened on her sandals, and made her way back to the path.

She must be vigilant, ready to run for cover at any moment, and she must watch for water. Either she was getting used to the woods and more confident of surviving, or fear of the Cruzob left her little worry about natural perils, for she began to see thick brush and trees as her refuge now, the trail a focus of danger that she had to follow.

Not as stiff as yesterday, she felt comparatively free of aches after an hour’s travel. Her feet were toughening, too, and she had been tremendously fortunate not to get blisters, for which she credited the ointment and switching sandals.

A brocket deer, dainty and rust colored, sprang across the path. Mercy hoped if something pursued it that the sight and smell of a human would frighten off the hunter. In the sky she saw black vultures circling and caught the sweet-sickish smell of carrion: leavings, probably from some predator’s night kill. Mercy shivered and quickened her steps.

when would she find water? There’d been several dry watercourses, one boggy stretch, and a hollowed rock with mineral rims, showing that it held water some of the time. She’d thought herself lucky to travel before the rains began, but if water became a problem and searches for it added to her journey, she’d rather have waded through mud and been soaked so long as she could drink.

The dried, salty meat made her thirsty, so she left it in her pack at noon and sipped gruel, treating herself also to some honey. There were only a few cups’ worth of water left in the bag. At the next promising place, she’d better leave the trail and hunt for the liquid, which, like air, was so necessary to life that it was taken for granted till there was none.

It was strange how fears changed and shifted. At first she’d dreaded the jungle, then Cruzob, and now the lack of water. But she’d never wished herself back in Eric’s power, and she didn’t think she would even if she perished miserably. She’d rather take her chances with the soldiers of the Talking Cross, though, than die from lack of water. With them there was a chance of living, of getting back to Zane.

She sipped carefully and walked on till she came to a wide slough. It might just go on like this, slimy mire, but there could also be a pure source of water. She had to see.

Leaving the track, she found herself sinking into mud concealed by myriad orchids and other plants. She retreated to firmer ground but kept the mire in sight. Before long she saw a few inches of mucky fluid, but she could have used it only as a last resort, for it looked stagnant and vile enough to precipitate the black vomit, malaria, typhus, and all the other jungle plagues.

Sometimes sinking into ooze above her ankles, she brushed aside mosquitoes that swarmed from stale puddles and pushed through entangling, claw-like branches. Dear God, wasn’t there a rock with a comparatively clean supply of water, a source to feed this morass? Or was it from some underground seepage?

A snake slithered past her like a liquid dagger. She barely choked back a scream. How far should she go on? She must be over a mile from the road. There was no certainty that this bog would lead to good water if she followed it for another day. Water might be up the path, clean, clear, easily reachable, just a bit farther on.

That was the maddening part—not to know. She could turn back from this quest, with water only a little way ahead, or she could waste the rest of the day and be caught by darkness with only a cup of water. A wrong choice could mean death. And she didn’t know. She didn’t know.

Panic rose in her. She took a deep breath, then fought it down. She still had some water left. A person could live several days without any. At the worst, she might drag herself as far as Chan Santa Cruz, where there’d be water if they spared her life. She’d go on for about fifteen minutes. Then, unless prospects improved, she’d go back to the trail.

She started on. In a few minutes, as if to reward her decision, she was staring down at a long, narrow pond fed by a lazy seepage from what seemed to be a cave or grotto almost hidden by massive cypress roots. It would take time, but she could fill the bag there and wash herself, though she’d get muddy again on her way back to the trail.

Moving around the bank, Mercy took off her sandals, put them beside her pack, and waded toward, the rock with her gourd and bag. A log detached itself from the mud of the bank, and another, and another—logs with eyes, with long, slit mouths, logs that swam toward her.

Crocodiles!

Mercy was trapped between them and the grotto. There was no place to scramble up. They were on all sides, a dozen, twenty.… They must have been basking at the banks and edge of the water, so indistinguishable from the mud that only motion could make them take form.

Frantically, she tried to remember what she’d heard about them. They would snap at anything that came their way; they were attracted by motion. She told herself that they were curious rather then hungry or hostile, but if one gave her a questioning nip and her blood flowed … she went ice cold with the terror of what would happen next.

One immense creature was close to her now. Mercy stared at it, believing her end had come. She had only her gourd and water bag, and no weapons except her knife. But one of these might divert them for a minute, give her a whisper of a chance.

She swung the bag back and forth, then tossed it toward the middle of the pond. The nearest crocodile snapped at it, others dived in, and the big monster closest to her churned about. She threw the gourd to encourage it and then splashed for the shore, floundering in water up to her waist, then trapped in mud.

She knew the awful things could move on land. She heard a thrashing behind her. Jerking her knife free, she turned, determined to at least fight the horror before its teeth did what they must. She would give it a slash to the throat or belly if she could thrust that far while she still had an arm.…

There was a crashing sound. The animal convulsed. A man with a rifle fired again. Mercy clambered up the bank, her garments heavy with mud, as another shot resounded. By then the crocodiles were devouring the dead or wounded ones.

Mercy leaned shuddering against a tree. Whoever that man was, he’d saved her from a frightful death. He was dark-skinned; that was all she’d noticed: But she couldn’t see him now. Then she heard the soft sound of naked feet and knew he was coming to her. She couldn’t run, couldn’t get away.

But she still had her knife.

Stand up! she ordered herself. Cruzob or mestizo or sunburned ladino, he’ll treat you better if you don’t act as frightened and helpless as you are. But it’s hard not to look afraid when you’ve just been chased by crocodiles. It’s hard not to look helpless when you’re mud-sodden and thirsty and tired. Try! Swallowing hard, she stepped away from the tree and tried to smile, though she kept the knife in her hand.

“Thank you,” she said in Mayan while the man was still hidden by vines and leaves. She still didn’t know the tongue well and groped for phrases. “I’m lost. Help me home. You will be paid well.”

“I’m already paid.” The reply came in good Spanish as the man came out of the brush.

Mercy stared at him unbelievingly. But there was the golden earring, the hawk face, the tawny eyes.

“Dionisio!”

He smiled. “Ixchel,” he said.

“I … I don’t understand.” He’d sent thanks and she’d thought him kindly disposed, but who could blame any Maya for hating whites?

“Ixchel was our goddess of healing. Since I saw you in the infirmary that day, that’s what I’ve called you.” His smile deepened and she grew conscious of the way the mud and water plastered her clothes to her. “Ixchel was also the goddess of the moon, love, childbirth, and weaving. She had a famous shrine at Cozumel, but now that’s where ladinos send their political enemies. You can’t care much for that right now, though!” Slinging his rifle across his shoulder, he picked up her pack. “You need a place to bathe Come.”

She fastened her sandals and followed him back to the trail, so grateful not to be in some crocodile’s jaws that she scarcely minded the discomfort of the caking mud. He wore a shirt. She knew that beneath it his back must be a mass of scabs.

“How did you get away?” she asked. “How, did you find me?”

“I was looking for you.” He answered the last question first. “It wasn’t hard to follow your sandals off the track.” So much for her faith that she could have eluded Cruzob if they found her footprints. “There’s a well not far ahead where you can cleanse yourself and rest. I’ll tell you then about what’s happened at the estate.”

The crude stone well had a hollowed log trough beside it for watering pack animals. After giving her a gourd of clean, sweet water, Dionisio filled the trough full and told her to bathe.

She did this, left with no choice but to change into her clean things. Dionisio changed the water twice while she washed and rinsed her clothes. When these were spread over a bush, he mixed corn gruel and produced some tortillas, which made the jerked meat much tastier. When they had finished with a bit of honey and dried coconut, Mercy sighed and cut off the cumbersome, voluminous bottom of her divided skirt. Dionisio tucked the cloth into the woven fiber bag he wore over the shoulder that didn’t bear the rifle. He also had a machete and knife.

“Tell me,” Mercy said.

She listened, unable to take it in, then tried to make it real by asking questions. “You say that Canul’s outposts ambushed Eric’s men and most of them were killed? And Eric? Presumed to be among the dead? Ah, Dionisio! And Canul came down to the estate, looted what he could, and set the rest on fire?” Alison’s harp, Alison’s portrait. What a strange way for them to be destroyed after journeying so far. “Canul didn’t kill anyone but Don Gerardo and the overseers?” she said finally.

“No. He said why should he kill Mayas and blacks with whom he had no quarrel, or the fat cook? But the red hair, the man of accounts, he tried to stop the looting and was macheted.”

Poor McNulty. He hadn’t lived by the sword, but by his ledgers. He’d been out of place on the estate, with no stomach for cruelty but no will to stop it, either. But Celeste? Her adored Thomas?

Dionisio didn’t know if Thomas had died in the fight, but he was positive that no women had been killed or raped and that the accountant was the only person to die in the great house. Canul had taken food, the contents of the store, weapons, tools, mules, horses, even some of the black pigs, but he’d left the village standing, suggesting to the people that they might take over the refinery, and if they did well, they should pay him yearly tribute for use of the land and removing their master.

“And you’re on the way back to your village?” Mercy asked.

He nodded. “When it was clear that Canul wasn’t going to slaughter everyone, Francisca knew I’d be leaving. She told me your ‘death,’ which had caused great mourning in the village, was a ruse, and she asked if I’d try to overtake you and help you get to your home.”

“I was certainly never more glad to see anyone in my life!”

He laughed. “I can believe it. If you hadn’t thrown your waterskin and gourd, I might not have been in time.” He glanced at the sky. “Can you walk farther before we stop for the night?”

Mercy glanced at the well, reluctant to leave it. “I have a water bag,” he said. “And I know where water is, providing this dry season hasn’t scorched it all up. I don’t like to stay long at this well.”

“Why?” she asked as she tied her sandals and collected her laundry. Dionisio fastened her clothes to a limb that she could carry over her shoulder while he took her pack, slinging it beside his bag.

“This is where Jacinto Pat was murdered. Pat survived the longest of the three rebel chiefs who began the war, but a jealous man killed him here while he was on his way to Belize for guns.”

“Do you think the well’s haunted, then?”

“It is for me, because if the leaders had listened to Pat, a peace might have been negotiated that would have saved many lives. But they were jealous and called him a traitor. So Pat died, the war went on, and Yucatán lost half its people, all in a few years.”

“Was your village in the war?”

“My uncle was batab then and sometimes he fought alongside the Cruzob, but as much as possible my village stayed aloof. We had never been much bothered by dzuls, and we simply wanted to be left alone.”

Mercy nodded. “That’s probably what most people wanted.”

“Yes. It was the Huits—‘loincloths,’ or untamed Indians—who were having their lands taken or being forced into servitude, losing the freedom they were used to, who were the thrust of the rebellion. They now control the southeastern part of Yucatán, bonded together by the Talking Cross.”

“And Canul with his Icaiches are enemies of the Cruzob?”

“They’re supposed to be, but Canul would rather raid below the Hondo and try to absorb other independent groups like mine. If he could dominate the Macanches, Lochas, and Ixcanhas, he might be strong enough to occupy most of Belize and hold power equal to that of the Cruzob.”

“Yet you wouldn’t kill him.”

“I may kill him in a battle, but that will be clean, not a deceitful trick to serve a ladino.” He said the word like a curse.

What did he mean to do with her? He hadn’t said, though his manner was protective. Mercy screwed up her courage to say, “I’m a ladina.”

He glanced over his shoulder with a smile. “You’re Ixchel.”

Was he serious? A prickle of fear edged her spine. She forced herself to speak lightly. “I’m plain Mercy Cameron, Dionisio. Please, will you help me find my way to La Quinta?”

Halting, he turned to regard her with eyes that were the color of dark honey. She’d had a cat once with eyes like that, a cat that had loved to be held in her arms but that would never stay in the house. “I’ll take you wherever you wish, Doña Mercy, even to Mérida or Campeche, but first I must stop at Chan Santa Cruz to try and arrange for a closer alliance. Canul won’t molest my people if he knows that would bring retaliation from the Cruzob. It was General Crescencio Poot of Chan Santa Cruz who drove the Icaiches out of Chichénha. No one cares to anger him.”

“You mean I’ll have to go into Chan Santa Cruz? Can’t I wait in the forest?”

“Are you so fond, then, of crocodiles?” He laughed. “I’m required to spend a month each year in garrison duty at Chan Santa Cruz. Mine’s overdue because of the bond I gave the dzul, Kensington, for those rifles. Since I want assurances from the Talking Cross, I had better first render my service.” He frowned, scanning her so intently that she blushed. “You’re a woman all the batabs would like in their hammocks. The best way to protect you is to say you’re my captive.”

“But a month! I’d rather go on by myself!”

“I won’t permit that. It’s too dangerous.”

“You mean I am your captive?”

“No. Truly, Ixchel, I am yours. But I must fulfill my obligations to the Talking Cross for the safety of my people.”

“Could you send a messenger to La Quinta, then, to request an escort for me?”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Two difficulties, Doña Mercy: to find a man who would go, and to persuade the Talking Cross to allow outsiders to come for you and depart. I don’t think it could be done, not without imperiling those who helped. A month is not so long. And you’ll learn things that no other ladinos know, except slaves, who’ll finish their years at the shrine city.”

Mercy bit her tongue to keep from saying that she didn’t want to learn about Chan Santa Cruz. “A month seems a very long time to me,” she said. “I don’t know if the people of the estate knew, but Kensington abducted me.”

“It was known. People wondered why he went so far to steal a woman when he had many beautiful ones in his household.”

“Then you should understand that I want to go home. Please take me safely past Chan Santa Cruz and let me travel on.”

He stopped in a small glade, put down their bags, and fired at a ripple in the tall grass. Something leaped, convulsed, then was still.

“A small wild pig,” he said. “Good. We’ll camp here and cook it.”

“But we just ate!”

“When you taste this meat, you’ll get hungry,” he promised. “And we’ll carry the rest to eat tomorrow. Find some big green leaves while I make the fire pit.”

It might be better to give him time to think about her request. Though Mercy was determined not to let him ignore her urgency, she first helped him collect rocks for the hole and then went searching for the largest leaves she could find and presently returned with dozens from a nearby tree.

He had a fire burning inside the rock-lined pit and was apparently dressing the animal over at the edge of the grassy stretch. Bringing it back to the fire, he sprinkled it with a mixture of seasonings from his bag, and wrapped it in leaves. When the fire had burned to ashes and the rocks glowed with heat, he raked out some of them, put more leaves in the pit, nested the pig there, and put on the rest of the leaves, a little earth, the hot rocks, then more earth.

“It’s like pibil,” Mercy said, thinking of Chepa and La Quinta with great longing and growing anxiety.

Had she only traded one captor for another? Could Dionisio intend to leave her, another ladina, in Chan Santa Cruz? She didn’t know what to think, couldn’t gauge his feelings toward her, though she couldn’t deny the man-woman magnetism that flowed between them.

“Pibil requires many more herbs,” said Dionisio. “But the method’s the same.”

Twilight deepened. He hung their hammocks close to each other, as if he guessed that Mercy was beginning to have desperate thoughts of slipping away in the night.

She could stand it no longer. “Dionisio,” she said, “stay at the shrine, since that’s your duty. But let me go home.”

Evidently he’d been thinking, too, for he took a while to answer. She found this reassuring. If he meant to hand her over to the Cruzob, he needn’t be velvet-gloved. “The tatich, Bonifacio Novelo, loves women. No doubt I could win his favor by sending you to his house. Your sweetness might even charm Crescencio Poot, though he’d probably not feel satisfied until he’d cut your throat. I swear that I will not give you to them, nor leave you when I go. But you shall wait with me this month of my service. I owe you my life. That debt can’t be paid by letting you risk death or violation.”

“I tell you, I accept my chances, and I prefer to take them!”

“No. I will serve my time—one month. Then I will take you wherever you wish.”

Mercy abandoned the argument. He sounded honest. But he might be killed or die or succumb to pressures now unforeseen. She’d travel with him till they were near the shrine and then she’d try to get away in the night.

In the darkness, Dionisio grasped her hands. “By my honor as a batab, I will protect you with my head. You will go to this La Quinta, if that’s your desire. But you must promise me not to journey by yourself.”

“Why should I promise?” she demanded angrily. “I haven’t asked you to be responsible! If you’re as grateful as you say, you’d let me do what I want to!”

His laughter was softly amused. “Did your mother let you play in the fire because you cried to touch it? You will not go alone. So, till I can take you, will you agree to be my guest?”

“What if I won’t?”

The long, slender hands grasped hers more tightly. “Then, for your own good, you’ll really be my prisoner. Tonight I’d tie you up, and at Chan Santa Cruz, when I couldn’t be with you, I’d ask that you be closely watched.”

“What gratitude!”

“I grieve at your displeasure,” he said, not sounding grieved at all. “But I prefer your anger to your death. You may consider it till it is time to sleep. Then I need an answer.”

To be tied, have her steps dogged everywhere, have no privacy! Even her captivity at the House of Quetzals hadn’t been that demeaning as far as physical restraints went. “I’m a captive either way,” she said cuttingly. “But I’d rather not be trussed up or spied upon. I’ll stay your month at the shrine if you’ll promise to send me home earlier if a suitable person or escort turns up.”

“Why, yes, I’ll agree,” he said so promptly that she thought perhaps she’d misjudged him, blamed him for being overcautious. “So, now, Ixchel, that’s settled. Let’s be friends. I know you’re eager to get back to your people, but this time with me can be pleasant if you don’t set yourself against it.” He chuckled and released her hands. “A story to tell your grandchildren! How you escaped through the jungle and were the guest of a batab at Chan Santa Cruz!”

Grandchildren! Would she ever have any? Would they be Zane’s grandchildren, too?

“You don’t like to think of growing old?” Dionisio asked.

“I just wonder if I shall!”

“Be sure of it,” he said confidently. “You’re having your adventures now. Calm will follow. You will grow very bored! There’s a man at this La Quinta?”

“Many of them.”

“A man for you?”

“Yes. We are to marry.”

It was a moment before the Maya spoke. “That explains your impatience. He is ladino?”

“His parents were from Louisiana. His father once saved the life of Crescendo Poot, which seems to be why La Quinta hasn’t been raided.”

“A strange ladino, to save the general of the plaza, the man who ordered the massacre at Tekax and many others!”

“This was back before the war started.”

“Ah! Most fortunate, for La Quinta. But you, Doña Mercy—it is said you come from Texas, far to the north, where the Mexicans sometimes made Yucatecans fight.”

“Yes. Texas was part of Mexico, then a republic, then joined with the United States, then allied with the Confederacy—the southern states against the northern ones.”

“It is very dim to our ears. Perhaps I confuse your war with that of Juárez against the French and the emperor. But didn’t your Texas lose its fight?”

“Yes,” said Mercy, and for a time they talked of that war and the one in Mexico and the present revolution in Yucatán.

“Has your man taken sides?” asked Dionisio.

“He served under Peraza in another revolution that lost,” explained Mercy. “And some of his friends had been sent to the penal colony on Cozumel. He felt he had to fight.”

“But you did not?” Dionisio sounded as if he were smiling.

“I didn’t try to stop him, but, I could have wished he’d had a different sense of honor.”

“A man can only have his own. Crush it and he’s nothing.”

Mercy had never thought much about honor herself. She only knew what she would and would not do. It was important to her to live. She’d been Eric’s mistress rather than let him kill Jolie or beat women, but when it came to bearing his child or watching this batab slowly whipped to a pulp, she’d had to take any chance, however desperate.

“So,” pursued Dionisio, “your man may not be at La Quinta. Perhaps at Chan Santa Cruz they may know what’s happening. The tatich has many spies; in fact, there’s a department of them under the orders of the tata nohoch zul, Great Father Spy. But what will you do, Doña Mercy, if you learn at La Quinta that your man is dead?”

“Don’t say that!”

“It happens.”

“I won’t think about it!”

“Of course not,” he said soothingly. “Our dinner should be ready. I think you’ll find it even better than cochinita pibil.”

It was delicious. Mercy told him so and ate with relish after almost three days of jerky and corn gruel. Dionisio gave her water in his gourd and more tortillas.

“What is the Talking Cross?” she asked. “Has it always been among the Mayas?”

“You know that each family has a cross, and each village, some more potent than others. When the tide of war turned against the Mayas in 1850 and they were being hunted down, one band settled at a forest wellspring almost hidden between rocky hills, with a mahogany tree at the entrance to the grotto. On this tree was carved a small cross, no longer than my middle finger. This was the Little Holy Cross from which Chan Santa Cruz got its name. The Mayan leader, José Maria Barrera, set up a wooden cross on a hill just east of the wellspring. When the people prayed, the Talking Cross spoke, God’s voice. The cross was called by them la santísima, which means ‘most holy.’”

“Do you believe all that?”

“Some say it was Mañuel Nahuat, a man who could make his voice come from other places. The cross doesn’t often speak anymore. It usually delivers written messages through a scribe. But in those days it spoke, and the Mayas believed. At its command they attacked Kampocolche in the night and fought desperately till morning. They were defeated.”

“But they still believed in the cross?”

“Those struggling to survive as a people will believe what gives them hope. Ladinos attacked the shrine in 1851, killed Manuel Nahuat—the one some say was the voice—and carried off the cross. But Barrera himself had eluded the ladinos. He discovered another cross. Instead of a voice, he found a scribe to interpret for la santísima. The cross gave the scribe a message for the people, urging them to fight and promising protection. But on the Day of the Holy Cross, May 3, the ladinos attacked again. Barrera lacked guns and ammunition, so he took his men out of the shrine city and let the whites find it empty. There weren’t enough of them to hold such a remote place and they pulled out quickly, but the Mayas they sought were in a serious plight. It was too late to burn new cornfields, so they had to plant old clearings, which wouldn’t produce much. They had to exist on roots, bark, and palm nut milk. And some starved.”

Dionisio fell silent, but after a while he Went on with how Barrera, knowing it was the end of Mayan freedom unless he could encourage and inspire his beaten, hungry people, had built a thatched church with a sanctuary for the cross, which was guarded day and night. It spoke again, and its voice seemed to come from the air.

“Do you believe that?” Mercy asked.

“You’ll certainly never get a miracle!” Dionisio growled. “If you must know, and prefer clumsy facts to mystery, there was a pit behind the altar and a wooden cask was used to make the voice of the man hidden there boom out. My father heard it and he believed while he was there, even though he knew better.”

“What happened then?”

“The Mayas were beaten, they were starving, and yet they gathered around the cross. The ladinos collected every man who could possibly fight and began a clean sweep from the northeast coast to the west, trying to put an end to the rebels once and for all. The ladinos marched on Chan Santa Cruz.

“Most of the able-bodied men had gotten away. Fresh graves were near every cluster of huts, and there were dead people in hammocks and children dying of starvation. Soldiers found the pit and barrel in the church, laughed, and mocked this ‘God-voice’ of the Indians. The ladinos decided the best way to stop the cult was to get rid of the mahogany tree by the grotto, the ‘Mother of Crosses,’ which seemed to spawn new ones when the old ones were captured. This tree was supposed to be able to resist any ax.…” Dionisio’s voice trailed off in the darkness.

“Did it?” Mercy asked.

“The ladinos collected their two hundred famished prisoners and cut it down before them, then asked if it hadn’t fallen like any tree. Maybe it had, the Mayas answered, but the cross had a power no ladino could touch. Clearly, the rebels were defeated, by starvation more than by arms. The ladinos even let their skeleton prisoners go and marched south, taking scattered prisoners, to Bacalar and Chichénha, where they met the flank commanders, who’d had similar luck. The rebels were done, finished. The reserves went home, the regular army went back to camp, and the ladinos fired victory salvos from the cannons of San Benito.”

“But that wasn’t the end,” Mercy protested, fascinated, appalled, pitying, and awed.

Dionisio sighed and continued. Yucatán had’ made peace with the Chichénha Mayas, who were then known as Pacificos del Sur and who were supposed to help keep down the rebels of Chan Santa Cruz. This treaty was signed at the government house in Belize in September, 1853, but in November Indians seemed to swarm all over the frontier.

Town after town fell, outpost after outpost. The militarist regime in Mérida had provoked a revolt by liberal federalists—this was the fight in which Zane had followed Peraza. The army was called north to put down the revolution, stripping the frontier, and cholera, the black vomit struck. Under these conditions, starved, fanatical Mayas could take the exposed settlements and harry the few troops left on the frontier.

In 1854 the army hadn’t marched on Chan Santa Cruz until after the spring harvest, and it had been sniped at and ambushed all the way. When the ladinos finally fought their way to the shrine city, they found a new well in the center of the village and several log troughs. They drank, and before long began the horrible vomiting that led to death while Mayas taunted from the jungle, inviting the attackers to drink deeply of the sweet, healthy waters of Chan Santa Cruz. The new well had been treated with the clothing of cholera victims.

At the end of the week fewer than a hundred soldiers had been able to fight. The commander got the sick and wounded on litters, but he lacked enough men to carry them, let alone fight off the Mayas, who killed everyone except a few who managed to escape into the bush.

Fighting had gone on all summer and fall, with the army pursuing as the Mayas faded into the jungle to harass and attack. Ladino political warring had given the Mayas a chance to capture crucial weapons and supplies. In 1855 the army lost about half its men in action while hundreds more died of cholera.

“So the Mérida government decided the War of the Castes was over,” finished Dionisio. “Since they couldn’t defeat these mad followers of the cross, it was decided to ignore them and concentrate on protecting the frontier. After eight years of war, starving because they couldn’t plant and harvest properly, the Mayas planted and rain swelled the corn ears, and no ladino master of official claimed any part of it. No, and not the ladino church. Wouldn’t you say, Doña Mercy, that the Indians had earned their land and their harvest?”

“Yes. And I thank you for telling me. I don’t like staying in the shrine city for a month, but I’ll never doubt now that it’s holy.”

Through the faith and courage of the people, not through the cross.

Dionisio guided her to the hammocks. “Sleep well,” he told her. “Don’t be afraid. I must serve my time, but my life is wrapped around yours—a shield, till you’re where you wish to go.”

Once she swallowed her disappointment, she knew it was best to wait the month and journey under his escort. Thanking him, she said good night and got into the hammock.

As she shifted into a comfortable position, she felt more peaceful than she had since Eric had abducted her.

Dionisio was close. He knew the jungle; he could protect her. How good to know that, and to sleep.