SEVENTY-THREE

RIDING ALONG A street near the main plaza, I caught the silhouette of a woman in black walking in the distance. A vision of the woman in black who disappeared around the corner in Guanajuato after providing me with boots flashed in my mind. Isabella!

I urged Tempest on. Hearing me coming, the woman turned to face me.

“Raquel!”

“Juan!”

We stared at each other until I remembered common courtesy and dismounted to stand beside her.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” I said. “I thought—”

“Yes?”

I grinned at her. “It doesn’t matter. What are you doing in the capital?”

“I live here.”

My eye immediately went to her ring finger.

“No, I have not married.”

I blushed from the shame of my past sins.

She smiled sweetly. “Take refreshment with me. Stories of your adventures have more tongues wagging than the wars in Europe.”

We retired to her house, a small, pleasant dwelling facing the Alameda. She lived alone, served only by an india who came during the day to do her shopping and household chores. She still had property and friends in the Bajío and visited the region each year.

“Living alone suits me,” she said, as she poured coffee for me and chocolate for herself. She had a busy life, teaching girls music and poetry. “I throw in a little education about the world around them, too,” she said, laughing. “But not so much that their parents will think I am ruining them for marriage. I always watch what I say to them about politics, not wanting the Viceroy’s constables to arrest me as a subversive. I also refrain from criticizing the church’s suppression of thought. The Inquisition’s nocturnal knock still hammers on our doors.”

We talked about Guanajuato and about my travels since I left the city. Naturally, I gave her a heavily censored version of how I left the colony as a bandido and returned as a hero. And the subject of how I jilted her, walking out on her when troubles pounded on her family’s door, never came up. I’ve never been proud of my actions, but now in my own mind I can argue she was better off without me. Had we married, the attacks on me—that I was the son of a whore—would have disgraced her.

We talked about people we knew in common. She knew Lizardi and that he was an acquaintance of mine.

“We are members of the same literary discussion group,” she said. She said Lizardi was considered brilliant but unreliable. “He’s tolerated to an impossible degree by his friends. There’s no question he’s very progressive in his political thinking, but we are careful not to talk openly in front of him because he’s known to offer up his friends when he faces the viceroy’s wrath.

“A few months ago the viceroy’s constables played a cruel joke on him. They put him in a cell reserved for those scheduled to be executed in the morning. One of the guards borrowed a priest’s robe and pretended to take his confession. They say he offered the names of everyone he knew who ever spoke derisively of the viceroy in hopes that it would save him from the gallows.”

I started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“Me, my stupidity. I suddenly realized why the viceroy’s men showed up in Dolores when I was there. Lizardi betrayed me.”

“The constables arrested Lizardi en route to Méjico City—after he left you in Dolores—but he didn’t betray you. He informed on the padre instead. He told the authorities about Padre Hidalgo’s illegal activities. They already knew about them, anyway, but I suspect they decided to act out of fear Lizardi would publish stories about the padre’s success.”

“That miserable cur . . . after the padre treated us with such generosity.”

Raquel shrugged. “The padre has forgiven him. The padre’s heart is an infinite repository of unqualified love.”

I started to ask if she knew Hidalgo personally but then remembered that the padre was in her coach when I struck the lépero who had brushed against my horse.

She stared down at my boots.

“I know,” I said, “they’re patched almost beyond further repair, but they have great sentimental value to me. Isabella gave them to me when I was held prisoner in the Guanajuato jail.”

She stared at me for a moment, her lips frozen in a smile. She said, “I can understand your feelings. My own father had a similar pair, which I have always cherished.”

I revealed my plan to contact Isabella, to thank her for the boots and find out whether she was still fired by her love for me.

When Raquel walked me to her gate she made a remark that I puzzled over but didn’t comprehend. “You have changed greatly, Juan de Zavala. You’re no longer the caballero who knows horses better than people. You have traveled widely and picked up knowledge everywhere you have gone.” She paused and met my eye. “You have gained insight into everything but yourself.”