It was not a river, for there were no rivers atop the thin soil of northern Yucatán. Instead, they followed a lagoon, which stretched into the jungle, like fingers gouging the land and slipping inland. Not a river and yet very much like one; the mangrove trees shaded the water and wove their roots together, sometimes so close they threatened to choke the life out of unwary visitors. The water seemed dark green in the shade, then grew more turbid, stained a murky brown by lush leaves and dead vegetation.
He thought he was used to the heath of the south and the press of the jungle, and yet this place was different than what he’d seen before, near Belize City.
Fanny would have hated it here.
The boatmen moved their poles swiftly, like the gondoliers in Venice, steering away from rocks and trees. Hernando Lizalde sat next to Montgomery, looking flushed and uncomfortable despite the fact that the boat had been fancifully equipped with an awning to protect them from the sun. Lizalde lived in Mérida and did not venture far from home even though he owned several haciendas throughout the peninsula. This trip was strange to him, too, and Montgomery gathered he did not like visiting Dr. Moreau often.
Montgomery didn’t exactly know where they were headed. Lizalde had been reluctant to share any coordinates. He had been reluctant in many respects, but the money he’d been offered served to keep Montgomery interested in this venture. He’d worked for low men, for crumbs. Lizalde was yet another bothersome job.
Besides, there was the issue of his debt.
“We must not be far from Yalikin,” Montgomery said, trying to build a map in his head. He thought there were Cubans there, extracting palo de tinte and fleeing the war back on their island.
“We’re at the edge of Indian country. Damn those godless bastards. They grip the shores,” Lizalde said and spat into the water, as if to underline his opinion.
In Bacalar and Belize City he’d seen plenty of free Maya people, macehuales, they called themselves. The British traded with them regularly. The white Mexicans in the western lands, children of Spaniards who’d kept to their kind, had no love for them, and it was no surprise to see Lizalde was ill-disposed to those free folk. It was not that the British liked the Maya for their own sake, nor that they always remained on friendly terms, but Montgomery’s countrymen thought the Maya rebels might help them carve out a piece of Mexico for the Crown. After all, disputed territory could become a protectorate with a bit of negotiation.
“We’ll get rid of that heathen scourge, hack those mangy cowards into pieces one day,” Lizalde promised.
Montgomery smiled, thinking of how the dzules like Lizalde had fled to the coast, boarded a boat, and escaped to the safety of Isla Holbox or else stumbled all the way to Mérida in haste during previous skirmishes against the Maya rebels.
“The macehuales think God speaks to them in the form of a talking cross. It’s not exactly heathen,” he replied, simply because he wanted to see Lizalde’s flushed face grow even redder. He didn’t like the hacendado, even if the man was paying him. He didn’t like anyone. All men were to him worse than dogs, and he reviled humanity.
“It’s heresy all the same. I suppose you don’t properly worship the lord, Mr. Laughton? Few of your kind do.”
He wondered if he meant men in his line of work or Englishmen and shrugged. Piety was not necessary to do his employer’s bidding, and he’d lost any faith he’d ever had long before he ever touched the shore of the Americas.
They took many turns through the mangroves until the water grew shallow and they spotted two lonely wooden poles. There was a simple skiff tied to one of them. This must be what amounted to the landing. A road of bright reddish-yellow dirt ran from there. In the rainy season it would no doubt turn into a muddy trap. But for now it was dry, and there was a clear path through the dense scrub and brush.
One man walked ahead of them, and behind them there were two others, carrying Montgomery’s belongings. If he decided to stay he’d have a few toiletries; the rest might be sent later, though there wasn’t much else to bring. He tended to travel light at all times. The possessions he couldn’t do without were his rifle, which he slung over his left shoulder, the pistol at his hip, and the compass in his pocket. This last item had been a wedding gift from his uncle. It had seen him through British Honduras, through swamps, creeks, rickety bridges, and sharply pointed ridges. Through dampness and swarms of mosquitoes. Through lands rich with limestone and teeming with mahogany, past ceiba trees with buttresses as sturdy as the towers of a castle, their branches festooned with orchids.
Now it brought him here, to Mexico.
They walked until they reached two ceiba trees shading a tall Moorish arch. In the distance there was a white house. The whole of Moreau’s property was surrounded by a huge, tall wall and anchored by those arches. The house and other buildings—he spotted the stables to the left—lay in the middle of this long, walled rectangle where plants grew wild and unkempt.
It wasn’t a proper, grand hacienda by a long shot—he thought it too small for that; the property might pass as a ranch—but it was still a sight. Lizalde had told him the previous owners had thought to run a sugar mill. If they had, their efforts had been poor; he couldn’t spot the telltale chimney stacks. Maybe there was a trapiche in the back, but he couldn’t see that far. There was a shorter, dividing wall at the rear. It had been painted white, like the house. The workers’ housing must be behind that dividing wall, along with other structures.
The Mexican way of building houses, inherited from the Spaniards, involved walls behind walls and more walls. Nothing was easily exposed to the curious eyes of passersby. He bet there was a delightful interior patio behind the house’s strong façade, a cloistered haven of hammocks and greenery amid a row of arcades. The house’s portón itself was tall, nine feet in height, made of wood so dark it almost looked black, contrasting with the whiteness of the house. There was a postigo that could be opened to allow people on foot passage so that the double doors didn’t have to swing open.
Montgomery was proven wrong when a woman opened the postigo to receive them, and they walked across the interior courtyard. There were no lush gardens, nor lazy hammocks. He was presented with the sight of a dry fountain shaded by a fiddlewood tree and empty planters. Unpruned bougainvilleas hugged the stone walls. Graceful archways led into the house proper, and windows with iron grilles looked onto the courtyard. Despite the cloistered quality of Mexican dwellings, the inside and the outside also seemed to mix freely, and above the archways there were carved images of leaves and flowers, evoking the presence of nature. It was a paradox that he enjoyed, this meeting of stone and plant, darkness and air.
The woman told the men carrying Montgomery’s things to wait in the courtyard and then asked the gentlemen to follow her.
The sitting room Lizalde and Montgomery were led into had tall French doors and was furnished with two red settees that had seen better days, three chairs, and a table. Not the finest abode, not the pride of the wealthiest hacendado, definitely more of a haphazardly maintained country manor, but they had a piano. A massive, handwrought iron chandelier was dramatically suspended from wooden beams, drawing the eye, further indicating a certain amount of wealth.
Preposterously, a delicate clock had been placed atop a mantle. It was painted with a courting scene, showing a man in French livery of a previous century kissing the hand of a woman. Cherubs served as further ornamentation, and the top of it was painted a pale blue. It did not match anything else in the room. It was as if the owner of the house had ransacked another property and then hastily tossed the clock into this chamber.
A man sat on one of the chairs. When they walked in, he stood up and smiled. Dr. Moreau was taller than Montgomery, and Montgomery regularly towered over others, a good six feet and two inches in height. The doctor was also powerfully built, with a fine forehead and a resolute mouth. Though his hair was growing white he had an eagerness, a vitality, that did not give at all the impression of a man approaching his golden years. In his youth, Dr. Moreau could have been a pugilist, had he wanted to.
“Did you have a good trip? And would you like a glass of anise liqueur?” Dr. Moreau asked once Lizalde had introduced them. “I find it cools one down.”
Montgomery was used to meaner stuff, to aguardiente. The thimble of liqueur was not his drink of choice. But he would never turn a spirit away. It was his curse. So he downed it with a swift twist of the wrist and set the glass back on a circular ceramic tray.
“I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Laughton. I’m told you are from Manchester? An important city, very large these days.”
“I haven’t been in Manchester in a long time, sir. But yes,” Montgomery said.
“I was also given to understand you have some interest and experience in engineering and are also equipped with a grasp of the biological sciences. If I may say so, you seem a tad young.”
“I am twenty-nine as I stand before you today, which perhaps you may think young, though I might protest at such a claim. As for my experience, I left home at fifteen with the intent of learning a trade and took a ship to La Habana, where my uncle maintained various types of machinery. I became a maquinista, as they call it there.”
He left out the reason why he’d abandoned England: his father’s insidious beatings. The old man had also possessed an affinity for liquor. Sometimes Montgomery thought it was a vile affliction, transmitted through the blood. Or a curse, even though he didn’t believe in curses. But if that was the case, then his family had also transmitted to him their easy way with machinery. His father had understood cotton machinery, belts and pulleys and boilers. His uncle, he knew, too, the way of machines, and young Montgomery had been more fascinated by the motion of a lever than any toy or game.
“How long were you in Cuba?”
“Nine years in the Caribbean, in total. Cuba, Dominica, several other places.”
“Did you fare well there?”
“Well enough.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I’ve moved around frequently. British Honduras suited me for a few years. Now I’m here.”
He wasn’t the only one who’d made such a trek. There were a motley group of Europeans and Americans crowding this part of the world. He’d seen ex-Confederates who’d fled south after the Civil War in the United States come to an end. The bulk of those Confederados were now in Brazil, attempting to establish new settlements, but others had gathered in British Honduras. There were Germans left over from Maximilian’s failed imperial efforts and British merchants plying their goods. There were Black Caribs from Saint Vincent and other islands who spoke excellent French, mulatto laborers who extracted chicle and others who chopped mahogany, the Maya who held tight to settlements by the coast, and the dzules like Lizalde. The upper crust Mexicans, the Lizaldes of the peninsula, would often claim a pure, white ascendancy and some of them were indeed fairer than Montgomery, blue- and green-eyed and mightily proud of this fact.
Montgomery had chosen British Honduras and then Mexico not because of their natural riches, though there were opportunities to be had, and not because this vibrant collage of people attracted him, but simply because he did not wish to return to the cold and the fires that crackled at night in tiny rooms that reminded him of his mother’s death and afterward of Elizabeth’s demise, too. Fanny couldn’t understand it. To her England meant civilization, and his aversion for colder climates struck her as unnatural.
“Tell him about the animals,” Lizalde said, lazily waving his hand in Montgomery’s direction, like a man commanding a dog to do a trick. “Montgomery is a hunter.”
“Are you, Mr. Montgomery? You enjoy the sport?” Moreau asked, sitting down on the chair he’d been occupying before they walked in. He twisted his mouth into a faint smile.
Montgomery sat, too, on one of the settees—all the furniture was in need of a good reupholstering—one elbow on the armrest, his rifle set aside but within easy reach. Lizalde remained standing by the mantelpiece, examining the delicate clock set there.
“I do not do it for sport, but I’ve made a living at it for the past few years. I procure specimens for institutions and naturalists. I then embalm the specimens and prepare them and ship them back to Europe.”
“Then you are familiar with biological matters and certain lab items, taxidermy requiring it.”
“Yes, although I wouldn’t pretend to be formally schooled in this matter.”
“Yet you don’t enjoy it? Many men hunt for the mere thrill of seeing a beautiful animal mounted and stuffed.”
“If you mean to ask if I’d rather have ten dead birds than ten live ones, then no, I don’t enjoy the dead specimens. I am not looking for feathers to pluck and would rather let them lie upon the breast of a scarlet tanager than see them on a lady’s fine hat. But biological sciences being what they are, you need those ten birds and not just one.”
“How is that so?”
Montgomery leaned forward, restless. His clothes were rumpled and a trickle of sweat was running down his neck. He wanted nothing more than to roll his sleeves up to his elbows and splash cold water on his face, yet here he was being interviewed for the job without the courtesy of sparing him five minutes to tidy himself.
“When you are trying to take a look at the world you must make a thorough look of it. If I were to capture one specimen and send it back to London, people might take it as the one and only model of the organism, which would be incorrect since, at the very least, male and female birds often differ to a striking degree.
“So I must send male and female specimens, smaller and bigger ones, scrawny and plump, and attempt to provide a varied sample of their morphology so that the zoologists will arrive at an understanding of the species in question. That is, if I’ve done my job well and provided accurate specimens and the notes that must go with them. I am looking for the essence of the bird.”
“What a splendid encapsulation of it all,” Moreau said, nodding. “The essence of the bird! This is precisely what I attempt to find here with my work.”
“If you permit me to say so, I don’t know what your work entails. I’ve been given little indication of what I might find at Yaxaktun.”
Montgomery did ask around a bit, but the details had been damnably scant. Dr. Moreau was a Frenchman who’d come to the country sometime around the time of the War of Reform. Or perhaps it had been shortly after the Mexican-American War. Mexico was constantly buffeted by conquering forces and internal strife. Moreau was but another European man who’d arrived with a bit of capital and great ambition. But Moreau, despite being a physician, opened no practice and did not remain in a large city for long, as might have been expected of any fellow wishing to establish himself in Mexican society. Instead, he was in the jungle running a sanatorium or clinic of some sort. Where, exactly, was a question mark.
“Yaxaktun is a special place,” the doctor said. “We have no great staff, no mayorales, caporales, vaqueros, or luneros, as you might have at a proper hacienda. You’ll have to do a little of everything.
“Should you take up the post of mayordomo, you’ll be occupied with a number of chores. The old noria is useless. We have a couple of wells, of course, but it would be good to have real gardens and irrigation. The house and ancillary buildings and the grounds, and handling the upkeep of those, should keep you busy enough. But there’s also the matter of my research.”
“Mr. Lizalde said you are helping him improve his crops.”
In passing Hernando Lizalde had mentioned “hybrids,” but only once. Montgomery wondered if Moreau was one of those botanists who liked to graft plants together, who would compel a lemon tree to birth oranges.
“Yes, there’s some of that,” Moreau said, nodding. “The land can be stubborn here. Thin, poor soils. We sit atop a block of limestone, Mr. Laughton. Sugarcane and henequen may grow, and yet it’s no easy feat to farm here. But there’s more to my pursuits, and before I may come to the specifics of my work I must remind you, as no doubt Mr. Lizalde has made clear to you, that your labor here would mean a vow of silence.”
“I signed papers to that effect,” Montgomery said. He’d, in fact, practically signed his whole life away. He’d gone into debt for Fanny, bought her as many dresses and bonnets as he could manage. This debt had been sold and sold again, landing on Lizalde’s lap.
“The boy has been thoroughly vetted,” Lizalde said. “He’s capable and discreet.”
“That may be, but it takes a certain temperament to remain at Yaxaktun. We are isolated, the work is hard. A young man such as yourself, Mr. Laughton, might be better suited to a large city. Certainly your wife might prefer that. She wouldn’t be joining you, would she?”
“We are separated.”
“I know that. But you wouldn’t think of getting in touch with her again, would you? You’ve done so in the past.”
Montgomery tried to maintain an impassive face, but still he dug his fingers into the sofa’s arm. It wasn’t a surprise that Lizalde had included such information in whatever dossier he’d sent to Dr. Moreau, but still it stung to reply.
“Fanny and I have ceased any correspondence.”
“And you have no other family?”
“My last living relative was my uncle, and he passed away years ago. I have cousins back in England, whom I’ve never met.”
He’d also had a sister, once. Elizabeth, two years older than him. They’d gamboled together until he went away to make his fortune. He promised he’d send back for her but Elizabeth had been married off a year after his departure. She wrote often, mostly to tell him about the misery of her marriage and her hopes that they might be reunited.
They’d lost their mother when they were young, and he recalled the long nights in her room, while the fire burned. Henceforth, they had each other. Their father could not be trusted. He drank, and he beat his children. Elizabeth and Montgomery, it was the two of them. Even after she’d married, she thought he was her salvation, and Montgomery agreed to send money for her passage.
But by the time Montgomery had established himself in a solid position he was twenty-one and his sense of brotherly duty had been greatly diminished. There were other matters on his mind, most notably Fanny Owen, the daughter of a small British merchant who made a home for himself in Kingston.
Rather than spend his precious savings on sending for his sister, he’d used that money to buy a house and wed Fanny.
A year later his sister committed suicide.
He’d traded Elizabeth for Fanny and killed his sister in the bargain.
Montgomery cleared his throat. “I have no relative to write to about your scientific work, Dr. Moreau, if that is what you fear,” he said after a moment. “Though I still have no idea what the work may be.”
“Natura non facit saltus,” the doctor replied. “That is my work.”
“My Latin is lacking, doctor. I can jot down species names, not recite pretty phrases.”
The clock struck a note, marking the hour, and the doctor turned his head toward the doorway. A woman and a girl walked into the room. The girl’s eyes were amber-colored and large and her hair was black. She wore one of those bright dresses that were in vogue. It was a ferocious shade of pink, unnatural, bristling with ornamentation and almost glittering with a certain brutal beauty. The dress of a little empress who’d come to hold court. Like the clock, the outfit was misplaced in this room, but Montgomery was beginning to think that was precisely the effect Dr. Moreau wanted.
“Here is my housekeeper with my daughter. Carlota, come here,” the doctor said, and the girl walked to his side. “Gentlemen, may I present my daughter, Carlota. This is Mr. Lizalde and this here is Mr. Laughton.”
The doctor’s daughter was of an age when she could still cling to her girlhood. Soon, though, he imagined they’d make her trade her youthful dresses for the maturity of the corset and the weight of long skirts. That’s what they’d done to Elizabeth, wrapped her tight in colorful velvet and muslin and choked her to death.
Elizabeth hadn’t killed herself. She’d been murdered. Women were butterflies to be pinned against a board. Poor child, she couldn’t know her fate yet.
“Could you tell him what natura non facit saltus means?” the doctor asked, apparently attempting to jest. Montgomery wasn’t in the mood for jesting.
“It means nature does not make leaps,” the girl said.
His tongue still tasted strongly of the anise he’d sipped, and he wondered what should happen if he didn’t obtain this job. He could drink himself a storm back in Progreso, he supposed. Drink and then blindly make his way to another port. South, possibly to Argentina. But he had debts to pay before even entertaining that thought. Debts Lizalde held.