20

Bonifacio Novelo, one of the few survivors from the early times of the War of the Castes, was priest-king of his people, supreme military and spiritual commander of the Cruzob. He was reclining in a hammock within the arcade of his palace, savoring a sliced mango, and though he didn’t rise at Mercy’s appearance, his smile was affable.

“Be seated, señora,” he invited. “Will you have hot chocolate? Coffee?”

“No, thank you.” Mercy didn’t want to be served by one of the slaves, either white or native, and the thought crossed her mind that slavery in the South would have ended at once if all the dominant race had undergone a stretch of bondage.

The tatich was heavy-fleshed, perhaps sixty, wearing cotton trousers embellished with lace from the knee down, embossed sandals, a brightly striped shirt, and a sash. Around his neck hung an enormous gold cross on a chain of massive links. He had been known twenty years ago as the “assassin of Valladolid.” The blood of hundreds of helpless women, children, and aged victims was upon him, and yet the expression on his handsome weathered face was frank and genial.

“Then you must taste my fruit,” he said. Leaning forward, he pressed a mellow slice against her lips so that she had no polite choice except to eat it.

The tata nohoch zul spoke in such rapid Mayan that Mercy comprehended only that he was summarizing her answers to his questions. The tatich nodded thoughtfully and gave her a smile of great charm.

“You learned your skills from your father?”

“Yes, and from a Mayan woman at La Quinta. She taught me much about herbs.”

“The child you breathed life into—where did you learn that?”

“From my father. But the child wasn’t dead, señor.”

“Some say he was.”

“I was afraid so, too, but I started his breathing by forcing air in and out of his lungs—like a bellows—and it worked.”

Did he believe her? Mercy’s palms were clammy, but she made herself sit in a relaxed fashion, as if this were a social call. It was impossible to guess from the tatich’s bland face what he thought.

“If you were to marry the owner of La Quinta, how did you become a captive of the batab of Macanche, who’s been in Belize?”

Mercy gave the essentials of her abduction by Eric, but she omitted having known Dionisio on the estate, simply saying that she had run off and, freed by the Icaiche raid, he’d come upon her and made her come with him.

“But you, of course, wish to return to your fiancé?”

“Of course.” Mercy didn’t know what more to say without creating problems for Dionisio.

The tatich asked her questions about Texas and about how she came to Yucatán, then roared with laughter when he pried out of her the admission that her husband had lost her to Zane at cards. “For one who looks so young and innocent, you’ve had adventures!” he said. “And you may have more. Many women have wished to marry the batab since his wife died, but it’s said he looked at no one till he turned up with you.” The tatich frowned. “How do you know your fiancé is alive?”

“I hope it very much.”

The huge mestizo shrugged. “It is a pity the ladinos don’t finish each other off. If they hadn’t warred so much, always struggling for power, Campeche against Mérida, one general against another, they could have wiped us out. But now we’re too strong.”

He and the chief spy harked back to former battles, comrades, and foes, both dead and alive. “Cecilio Chi—now, there was a strategist!” sighed the tatich. “He’d fought in Yucatán’s war against Mexico and he knew how to take a city. When we came down on Valladolid late in 1847, he first burned the outlying haciendas, took the cattle, cotton, honey, coffee, and money and sent them to be traded for weapons in Belize. Next he burned the villages and crushed small outposts, but he never tried to fight a large attack; he just melted into the trees till he had the ladinos scattered along narrow trails where a rush with machetes would wipe them out! A real general, Cecilio!”

“Dead for a woman!” said the chief spy with a scornful glance at Mercy. “But at least his whoring wife didn’t outlive him long!”

Talk turned to the present and Mercy learned that Santa Ana, being deported by Juárez, had been taken off a United States steamship near Sisal and ordered shot by Colonel Peraza. Zane’s commander! Apparently Peraza’s advisors (could that include Zane?) had warned him that since the old dictator had been taken from the protection of the U.S. flag, his execution could cause international problems, so Santa Ana’s life had been spared.

“I’d take a machete to that one,” said the tata nohoch zul. “He gave his favorites the proceeds from selling Mayan slaves to Cuba.”

“He will die in his bed,” predicted the tatich and looked accusingly at Mercy. “You of Texas should have killed him when you had the chance.”

“That might have saved Mexico and Yucatán a lot of trouble,” Mercy agreed.

So the fighting was still going on at Mérida. Zane would be there unless he was dead or wounded. Though she mourned his continuing danger, she rejoiced that he probably hadn’t seen her letter or been told about her apparent departure for the United States. With luck, if she got out of Chan Santa Cruz, she might be at La Quinta when he came home!

This was such a heady, dizzying thought that she didn’t realize the interview was at an end. The spy touched her bare arm with his cold machete blade and jerked his head toward the plaza.

“Good-bye,” said the tatich paternally, reaching for another mango and swinging himself gently. “It has been interesting to speak of your country, yes, and interesting to meet such a valuable woman.”

Confused, Mercy protested. “Señor, I’m not rich. I have nothing.”

“Too modest!” he teased, shaking a finger. “You seem to be worth a great deal to at least three men, though it’s likely the Icaiche killed your Englishman. So do we ask ransom from your fiancé? Do we tell your batab the cost of keeping you is a stronger alliance, utter commitment? Or would the prestige of the cross be enhanced by having a healer at the shrine city?”

“I’m not that experienced, señor!” Mercy cried, appalled. “Many of your H-men can do as much or more.”

The tatich smiled. “None of them has restored a child to life. Yes, you might be the most valuable of all to attract rich offerings to the shrine. I will think about it.”

He raised his plump hand in dismissal.

“But, señor …” Mercy began.

The tata nohoch zul gripped her arm and moved her from the arcade. “You’ve been honored to see the tatich. He will consider your best use for the cross.” A smile made those straight lips more cruel than ever. “Whatever your future, woman, it should be interesting.”

He’d enjoy her pleading, which would gain nothing, and stood braced with his legs apart, arms folded, barring her from the tatich, who had killed so many, seen so many of his own die, that any person must be to him little more than a pawn.

She reached the shade of her street, but even as she turned into the hut, she felt the spy watching her, and even within the walls, she felt that he could see her.

“He’s not tata nohoch zul for nothing,” reminded Dionisio when she told him of this uncanny fear after his first outrage at her interrogation had been controlled. “He is a careful man, and”—the batab finished somberly—“he will be watching you … and me.”

“All this because I helped a little boy!”

“It’s necessary to your tamen, your harmony, to heal when you can.” He drew her against him, stroking her hair and shoulders, thinking aloud. “For protection from the Icaiches, my council of elders has been favoring closer bonds with the Cruzob. Anything I negotiate must be approved by them, of course, but perhaps the best thing is for me to go at once to the tatich and offer him a company for guard duty one month of the year and our full support in battle against whatever enemy.”

“You mustn’t involve your people for my sake.”

He stiffened in offense. “I’m a batab. If the good of my people required it, I would machete you myself. That’s my tamen. But a stronger alliance will be, I think, to the benefit of Macanche. I can offer it in good conscience. The tatich knows it must be approved by the council.”

“Do you think he’ll accept?”

Diohisio spread his hands. “Such a binding would be more valuable than any ransom paid in money, especially if the Icaiches grow strong enough to challenge the Cruzob for their old lands. And it’s possible that once the Juaristas consolidate their power, Mexico might help Mérida try to crush Chan Santa Cruz.”

“Then the alliance should be tempting, certainly.”

“Yes. But a healer at the shrine might be even more useful. Besides an increased flow of offerings, the mystery and power of the cross would be enhanced, knitting the empire more closely together, cutting the chance of vassal batabs building their own strength to the detriment of Chan Santa Cruz. The cross united and heartened a defeated fugitive people. But fresh miracles give new life to old ones, true?”

Mercy saw the logic of that. “Dionisio, what do you think he’ll decide?”

“He won’t decide till he’s had time to think over and test the appeal of a mystical shrine healer. He’ll gain this by telling me that he can’t seriously consider an alliance till it’s confirmed by the council, which means that I’ll have to travel to my village and back.”

“I can’t go with you?”

“Unless the alliance is accepted, they’ll never let you out of Chan Santa Cruz. You won’t be able to step from the hut without the tata nohoch zul hearing of it almost at once.”

“What if the tatich decides your people will make the alliance sooner or later, anyway, and he wants to keep me here?”

“I swore to take you to your own place. It may take a while, but you’ll go free, Ixchel, if it takes my life.”

His eyes caressed her from across the room. Before she could move to him, he turned and strode toward the plaza.

Dionisio’s acumen was proved. The tatich did exactly as he’d predicted, withholding a decision until Dionisio could present an official offer approved by the council of elders.

“And he’s delaying all he can,” Dionisio said bitterly. “I asked to go at once to Macanche and serve the rest of my guard time when I returned, but he wouldn’t permit it.”

“I’m glad you’re not going just yet,” Mercy said with a small shudder. “Maybe by the time you leave I’ll have gotten used to being spied on, but right now I’m afraid!”

He took her cold hands, warming them in his. “No need to fear their hurting you. You’re precious as jade, as treasured as quetzal plumes!”

“But what if I’m asked to treat someone I can’t help?”

“The tatich will announce that your medicine was impotent because the cross knew the patient was a sinner or doomed to terrible trials if he lived.” Dionisio chuckled. “Don’t worry. It’s to the tatich’s best interests to stress your successes and bury your failures—quietly.”

“But I hate for people to think I can do more than I really can! Suppose they carried a dead baby in from some far-off village or someone died making the journey who might have lived otherwise? What if …”

Shaking his head, Dionisio hushed her lips with his fingers. “Your father was a wise, good man. Did none of his patients die?”

“Of course, but … he was a real doctor!”

“Oh.” Dionisio’s brow puckered. “You mean he’d accept and do his best for people who he knew were going to die? He could endure their deaths because, perhaps, he made these easier, and there were other people he could help?”

Mercy bit her lip. “I don’t think I’d be a good doctor. Maybe I never can accept that there’ll be those I can’t do anything for. The reason I worked with Juanito so long was that I couldn’t bear to get up and face his mother.”

“A good thing in his case.” Dionisio held her and she wondered why, though he was only a few years older than she, he often seemed so wise, possessed of a fatalistic understanding that made her feel childish and spoiled. “Don’t be troubled, my heart. Until he decides what to do, the tatich won’t make an effort to spread tales of your powers. You won’t suddenly be surrounded by the ailing. Let me give you a thought. It’s from our prophet, Chilam Balam. It helped me heal from Señor Kensington’s whipping, and also when my wife and our child died.” Dionisio’s voice softened. “‘His word was a measure of grace, and he broke and pierced the backbone of the mountains.… Who? Father, Thou knowest: He who is tender in heaven.…’”

She received his gift, this talisman that couldn’t be stolen. Tender in heaven. The words were like him. They lay down in his hammock, sweetly close. He talked to her in Mayan, as he often did, telling her stories—children’s stories of gods, animals, and mortals. For that night, he could have been an older brother, cheering her in the darkness.

Early in June Dionisio’s service was completed and he set out for Macanche with his rifle, machete, bag of corn-meal, and water gourd. “I’ll return as quickly as I can,” he said. “But councils enjoy long arguments and persuadings. Be patient.”

He held her, his arms warm and strong and cherishing. She walked with him to the western way out of the village and watched till he turned at the edge of the forest and raised a hand in farewell before he vanished. Her throat burned and she fought back tears.

He’d be back. There was an excellent chance that the tatich would consider the alliance more useful than a dzul healer, that Dionisio would be able to take her straightaway to La Quinta.

And then?

Then he’d go to his own village. In a year or two he’d marry and have children, just as she hoped to have babies with Zane, at least one with hair and eyes like his. But she’d never forget Dionisio, his forest, his people, and all that he’d taught her.

If Zane could accept—and she wasn’t sure he could—that she’d been used repeatedly by Eric Kensington, he should be able to accept the good and natural thing between her and the batab, though she hoped Zane would never question her till she had to lie or try to explain. Zane was her lover, her man. But she loved Dionisio as she did the sun and flowers and birds, knowing they weren’t hers.

As she turned from the western boundary, the tata nohoch zul stood in her way, his stout, hard belly protruding under his bright sash, his eyes narrow as he smiled.

“You’re sad at your master’s leaving? He’s young and lusty, yes? But save your tears for later. The tatich would speak with you now.”

She fought down the urge to cry out to Dionisio. Braced for almost anything, she followed the chief spy to the long arcaded palace. The supreme leader again occupied his hammock, enjoying fruit, crusty bread with honey, and aromatic coffee. He wore lace-trimmed white trousers still, but this time his shirt also was white, richly embroidered.

He motioned for her to take a stool near the hammock. “The bread is fresh-baked,” he said. “And you like coffee, don’t you?”

The golden-brown loaf-did smell tantalizing but it must have been made by one of the women in the slave compound. Mercy declined it and the coffee, also.

“The batab’s departure has left you too sad to eat?” chided the tatich; devouring alternate bites of honeycomb and mango. “Strange, when you are affianced to another man.” His eyelids drooped and a slow, sensual smile curved his lips. “Possibly you cling to whatever man is closest.”

There was no mistaking the suggestion in the deep, pleasant voice. Mercy went cold. If he wanted her, she was completely in his power. The Cruzob priesthood wasn’t celibate. Under the ladino clergy, villagers had preferred a priest to have one woman so that he’d leave the others alone. There were no moral checks on the Great Father. Mercy stared beyond him, at the execution tree in the plaza, summoning her courage, trying to still her careening thoughts.

He was physically repulsive to her, but she dreaded even more the smell of death and power about him, lives and pain absorbed and fattening him like the food he took. It made no sense, perhaps, after Eric, but she knew she really would rather die than belong to this man. She would rather run off and take her chances in the jungle, or try to kill him, though that would mean being hacked to bits by machetes.

“The batab was kind to me,” she said firmly. “He told me much about the Mayas. We were friends in the soul.”

The tatich laughed. “But souls inhabit bodies. Will you say you never pleasured each other amidst the wild thyme?”

Involuntarily, Mercy glanced at the spy. So he’d been watching even then. She turned proudly to the mestizo. “I’ll say that what’s between the batab and me was for us, for our spirits, and it doesn’t concern the man I wish to marry.”

“He’ll be a most unusual male if he agrees,” said the tatich dryly. He let honeycomb melt in his mouth as he lay back and studied her, then swallowed and gave a small dismissing shrug. “But if the cross allows its vassal, Dionisio, to keep you, I shall use my influence to get him to offer you for ransom to your dzul. It’s all right for Cruzob to keep white slaves, but it’s not good that they should love them.” His broad face twisted with disgust. “This thing of souls! You would blight his, destroy him!”

“No!”

“Yes. It is as our prophet wrote: ‘The dzuls trampled the flowers, and they sucked to death the flowers of others so that their own might live. They killed the flower of Quetzalcoatl.’” The sonorous tone boomed on accusingly. “‘The dzuls only came to castrate our sun! And the children of their children remain among us and we receive only their bitterness.’”

The tatich brooded, his dark eyes fixed on Mercy, though he appeared to be seeing something else. “You’re honey to the batab now, and he is the sun to open your bloom. But when your honey’s gone and your flower is withered, the bitterness left would unman him. I need whole men. Yes, I will try to persuade the batab to sell you to the dzul—if I accept the alliance. Now, tell me of your country. How are the leaders chosen? And is it possible, as I have heard, that heretics live beside Catholics? Will the black slaves have their own country now that they’re free? And what of the Indians? I’ve heard of the Comanches, very fierce, and the Apaches, too. Some of the Mexican troops that were sent to fight here had also served on those northern frontiers.”

He had a keen, wide-ranging intelligence. Having apparently decided not to concern himself with Mercy’s body, he feasted on her mind, drawing from her information she’d never analyzed or considered before in depth. Once she believed the sexual danger past, Mercy found herself stimulated and engrossed. She even accepted coffee when the military band was playing sprightly polkas interspersed with religious music at the eight o’clock service. The tatich said that nowadays he often let a maestro cantor celebrate the mass, and that he himself worshipped in his private chapel.

“I don’t fight now, either,” he chuckled with a sigh. “Too old, too weary. I’ve earned my rest, señora.” He extended his muscular, heavy hand toward the plaza and swept it to indicate the shrine city. “When I think of when God first spoke to us in the little valley yonder! We were starving, beaten, whipped. Ladinos cut down the tree by the cenote, the Mother of Crosses, they defiled our chapel, and looked on us as carrion! We couldn’t plant corn. So many of us died. But the cross saved us, señora. Counting allies, I command an army of eleven thousand, and I have a treasury of two hundred thousand pesos and much rare jewelry and plunder. The ladinos were so routed when they attacked here in 1860 that I don’t think they’ll ever again have the stomach for it.”

The tata nohoch zul, standing through all their conversation, growled rapidly in Mayan. The tatich responded, laughing, then said to Mercy, “He thinks we should take advantage of the ladino war, let them bleed each other well, as they now do at Mérida, and then fall upon the victors while they’re drunk and happy.” He swayed the hammock gently. “Ten years ago I would have been rallying men. It would be a great chance, perhaps our last chance, to fulfill the dreams we had at first, driving out all the ladinos, leaving them not even Campeche and Mérida. But I’ve fought so many battles, señora. Unless the cross commands it, I won’t march.”

And the cross can’t command it unless you do, Mercy thought. With all her heart, she was glad that the tatich was disinclined to risk what the Cruzob held in a challenge to the whites.

The spy spoke again and she recognized the name of Crescencio Poot and the gist of the comment, that the general might have a thirst for conquest even if the tatich didn’t.

“The general of the plaza is under my orders,” snapped Novelo. “I can send him to the whipping post or the stocks, just as I can do to anyone—from soldier to general!”

The spy bowed his head. “Indeed, Father, that is your power.”

Mollified, the tatich resumed his questions. It was noon when he gave Mercy leave to go, telling her to visit him again in the morning. Grateful that the spy ignored her, Mercy went to her hut, ate corn gruel, and tried to rest, but the loneliness was oppressive. Zane at Mérida, Dionisio on the way to Macanche—both seemed terribly far away, while the chief spy was close.

Getting out of the hammock and fastening her sandals, Mercy decided to see if she would be allowed to leave the city and walk in the woods. She could collect frangipani flowers for a healing ointment, and the flowers and bark of the magnolia were supposed to be useful for a failing heart. She needed to steep some willow leaves in case someone came to her with a fever or headache, and she hoped to find a red morning glory, which, according to the Badianus copy, was a good purgative.

With a hemp bag to hold her finds, Mercy passed a sentry who ordered her to stop and asked where she was going. She explained in halting Mayan that she wished to gather plants. While the sentry hesitated, a plump young man who resembled a Buddha strolled from the nearest street and told the guard he would accompany Mercy.

At first, being trailed by a man she was sure was one of the tata nohoch zul’s agents made her nervous, but once they reached the woods, he kept mostly out of sight. The fantastic truth was that she soon forgot him in her pleasure at finding some thistles reputedly useful for fever and an exceedingly beautiful magnolia from which she gathered blossoms and bark.

She wandered on and found herself by the cornfield where Dionisio had shown her the birds of the yuntzilob. In just these weeks, the corn had broken from the earth and its tender green stalks stirred very gently in the slight breeze. Passing the village as before, she encountered a tortoise among some rocks, but it wasn’t crying now.

“Did your tears bring the rains?” she asked it softly.

It moved on, ignoring her, but, glancing up, she saw the skies were overcast, and she quickened her pace, reaching her hut just as the showers started. The unobtrusive young Buddha had melted away. She hoped if she was to be shadowed, he or someone equally invisible would do it, not the tata nohoch zul, who turned her blood to ice.

She spread out her discoveries to dry, and then there was nothing to do—nothing, and it was a long time till night. She sat in the light by the door and read her father’s worn letters for the hundredth time. Even though she knew the words by heart, they encouraged her. Constantly, in what he did more than what he said, his message was that one must keep trying, help with the load of the world as much as one could, and find some grace and laughter in the struggle.

The rain had stopped. She put away the letters and decided to go to the slave compound and see if anyone was sick or if she could help with the work. She was no good at making tortillas, but she could carry water or mash the soaked corn into paste.

She skirted the plaza and the great mortared pile of the church, giving it a curious glance. She’d never been inside, but Dionisio had told her la santísima, the Talking Cross, was kept in a wooden chest, though there were other crosses on the altar. A sentry guarded the sanctuary day and night. She prayed that the cross would stay mute and never command the holy war that the head spy had plainly wanted.

As she started to enter the group of buildings behind the church, the Buddha came out of the shadows of the barracks. “You may not mix with the other slaves,” he said in soft, apologetic Spanish.

“I wanted to see if anyone is sick.”

“If they are, they’ll come to you.”

He watched while she went back across the plaza, trying not to show her dejection. She fetched water from the cenote, lingering to at least see other women come and go. The mother of Juanito smiled at her shyly but filled her buckets and hurried away at a harsh word from a sentry. Mercy went slowly back to the hut, which, without Dionisio, seemed bare, alien.

Putting down the bucket, Mercy sank into the hammock and wept. She hated Chan Santa Cruz—its walls and sentries and tatich and spy! Dionisio would be gone at least ten days. How would she ever stand it? And then, when he did return, what if the tatich refused the alliance?

What if? What if?

Maddened by tormenting questions, Mercy pressed her hands to the sides of her forehead, as if she could force them from her mind. This wouldn’t do. She must pull herself together.

If the Macanche council approved, if the tatich let Dionisio keep her, it wouldn’t be long till she’d be at La Quinta. The siege of Mérida couldn’t go on much longer with the empire fallen. Zane would come home. The months with Eric would seem a dimming nightmare; this strange, bittersweet time with Dionisio would be a dream. After all that had happened, all she had endured, surely she could get through this little time.

Rising, she found a basket of tortillas and tamales on the cookstone. Arranged by Dionisio? Sent by the tatich? From Juanito’s mother? Mercy didn’t know, but it was nice to have something besides corn gruel and mangoes. She carried the basket outside and ate slowly in the deepening twilight, enjoying the delicate flavor of the tamales, which were wrapped in banana leaves and stuffed with flavored squash and other vegetables she didn’t recognize. Savoring them to the last morsel, she sat on a crude bench, listening to the village sounds, thinking of Dionisio and hoping him safe wherever he’d slung his hammock. Then, turning her thoughts to La Quinta, she visualized Jolie, Salvador, Mayel, Chepa, and the way it’d be when Zane came home.

Clinging to this image, she went inside, washed in the dark, brushed her hair, and was soon in her hammock. She thought, of the growing corn and how Dionisio would smile to see it. Father, Thou knowest: He who is tender in heaven.… She could almost hear his voice. Settling deeper into the hammock, she pretended he was telling her stories until she fell asleep.

The days took on a pattern. She spent several hours each morning with the tatich telling him all she could about her country and the world beyond. He was especially interested in England because of Belize, but he found it incredible that a woman ruled such a far-flung empire till Mercy pointed out to him that Belize had been colonized by the English during the reign of one of its greatest sovereigns, Elizabeth, who had encouraged her captains to attack Spanish ships.

“Can your president be a woman?” the tatich asked.

Mercy gasped. Such a thought had never occurred to her. “Women can’t even vote,” she said resentfully, for she had thought about this.

Novelo laughed. “Voting’s not so much, señora. Indians were given the vote here in Yucatán while at the same time they could be forced into debt-bondage and made the same as slaves. But you say former male slaves can vote now in the United States. That makes them better citizens than women?”

“I suppose it does. But women don’t vote in England, either, although they consider one capable of ruling.”

When the tatich dismissed her, Mercy did her few chores, rested during the worst heat, and then, if it wasn’t raining, went collecting herbs and plants, always trailed by the Buddha. In the evening, Juanito’s mother brought tortillas and whatever else was being cooked. She was afraid to stay and chat, but she said that Dionisio had asked her to bring the food and had arranged it with the guards.

Usually, Juanito was with her. He was, she confided, the child of a handsome major who had promised to ransom her when he got enough money or trade goods saved. He lived in a village to the east, but it was almost time again for his month’s duty at the shrine. Maybe this year he’d have her price.

“You’d rather marry him than go back to your people?” Mercy asked.

The woman nodded. “He’s good to me. And I’ve been here so long, señora! My family were all killed in the raid when I was taken. I would rather stay with Juanito’s father.”

“Then I hope he has the money this year,” Mercy said and thanked the woman, who smiled and hurried back to the compound.

So she had a major. That was next to a general in the Cruzob Army. Dionisio had explained that they had no colonels, skipping from general to major, captain, lieutenant, sergeant, corporal, and soldier. Except for the head spy and general of the plaza, all officers led companies and were elected on New Year’s Day by the men of the company, each company being of a village after the old militia plan.

The tatich had decreed that no officer could command men of another company, but a few of the more powerful ones did, and since justice was administered at company or village level unless the crime was serious enough for the tatich, some of these commanders dominated a number of villages with their fighting men. That was one reason why the yearly month of guard duty at Chan Santa Cruz was so important, binding each able-bodied adult male to the shrine, faith, and authority of Chan Santa Cruz.

Would the Cruzob ever try to overwhelm the ladinos again? Or would they be content to draw in more allies, perhaps absorb the Icaiches, and actually rule all of Yucatán except for a thin cresent of the northwest—the centers of Campeche, Mérida, and Valladolid? Would La Quinta remain safe or would Poot decide his debt didn’t extend to his savior’s son?

Even a general as tough, ruthless, and wily as he couldn’t live forever. But it was almost inevitable that when the central Mexican government gained enough strength, it would crush the rebel state, or at least severely limit its territory. The economic arguments for henequén, sugarcane, and lumber would grow stronger as the need for these products increased. The Cruzob, dependent on corn and constantly busy with clearing and burning new fields to replace infertile ones, couldn’t hold out forever against an unremitting, well-armed, massive force that came prepared to occupy Cruzob strongholds and stay in the jungle as long as necessary instead of being called back to Mérida or Campeche to fight with other ladinos.

Bonifacio Novelo, himself partly of the ladino world, seemed to know this, for he sometimes discussed the advantages of the Cruzob attaching themselves to the British empire and acquiring that protection while still maintaining effective self-rule.

“That queen is far away,” he said with a twinkle one morning a week after Dionisio had gone. “She’s never visited Belize, and I don’t think she would come to us. It’s like a mother with many children, no? She can’t watch them all.”

Mercy’s face must have shown her skepticism, for he pressed for her opinion. “I don’t think the British would want to have trouble with Mexico or the United States,” she said.

The tatich frowned. “The United States? What have they to do with us?”

As simply as possible, Mercy explained the Monroe Doctrine. If any country in what the United States considered its sphere of influence was threatened, then the U.S. would intervene. Mexico, she pointed out, was within this sphere of influence. She reminded him that it had been U.S. pressure on France that had played a decisive role in compelling Napoleon III to withdraw troops from Maximilian’s support, and that it had been the U.S. supply of arms to Juárez that had kept his men in the field when they’d otherwise have succumbed to the well-trained and equipped imperial armies.

“If the United States hadn’t ended the Civil War in time to threaten France and help Juárez, there’s little doubt that the emperor would be solidly in power by now instead of a prisoner.”

Novelo chewed on that. “In this case, yes, I think I’m glad your country aided the Indian Juárez. Why should more dzuls come to Mexico? But I don’t like it that your country seems to believe it has the right to keep the dzuh away from us and interfere in alliances that might be good. I speak daily with God. He hasn’t told me that the United States is ordained as our guardian.”

“You must remember that my part of the country just fought a long and terrible war because it felt the federal government was taking improper power. We lost and are being treated like conquered traitors.”

“Ah, the conquered are always traitors!” The tatich laughed. “But I understand what you say. Right is what the strongest says it is.” He brooded a while, devouring guava candy. “Isn’t the British empire stronger than the United States? Surely it could win a war.”

“It didn’t win the last one,” Mercy reminded him. “And it depends a lot on which country would have to transport troops and supplies. I think Great Britain has enough colonies and territory to worry about without making agreements that would lead to war with the United States.”

The tatich sighed, as if relinquishing a brilliant vision. “I’d be happy for the English to fight your country, but I fear they’d make us their battleground, and when it was over we’d have lost, either way.” He scratched his chest and lifted himself out of the hammock with a flutter of lace-trimmed trousers and surprising grace for so heavy a man. “I must receive the general of the plaza, who’s returning from the north with an interesting proposal. He sent a runner so that we could prepare. You may watch if you please.”

“You will watch,” said the tata nohoch zul as the tatich vanished into his private section of the palace. “The tatich will later require your judgment of what is offered. Woman and dzul though you are, your acquaintance with the foreign world and ways may serve the Talking Cross. Stay with me.”

Mercy had come to almost like the tatich, but the tata nohoch zul continued to fill her with dread. Uneasily, she followed him as he detoured around the plaza, evidently wishing to see the approaching party before the official meeting.

Cruzob soldiers were massing in the plaza and the thirty-man band began to play vigorously. Down the street from the outskirts of the village came a woman, moving with regal grace, surrounded by a military escort, carrying something red in her arms. Beside her strode a stocky Maya who reminded Mercy of a scarred tree, but she only glanced at him a second before, startled, her gaze shot back to the woman.

That proud head, slanting yellow eyes, full, flower mouth, that bell-like laughter trilling as she spoke to the eagle-visaged chief! How could it be? Yet, undeniably, terrifyingly, it was.

Xia!