Toward the end of August, Lieutenant Hilario Perea was brought to Santa Fe from Taos. He was imprisoned in La Garita—the diamond-shaped, somber-towered prison on the hill overlooking Santa Fe.
A portion of the dragoons in Santa Fe had declared for the rebels, and the two men who took Lieutenant Perea through the dark gate of the garita had served under him but two weeks before. They were embarrassed by their position and would neither meet his eyes nor speak to him. They showed him to one of the cramped, dirty cells and shut the heavy oaken door on him.
There was nothing to sit on and he lowered himself to the dirt floor, hungry and exhausted, his clothes grimy and filmed with dust. He was still bitter and confused over the shocking change in his life. He had been born of the gente fina, a scion of one of the most aristocratic families in Mexico City; he had received his training at the Colegio Militar, riding with the finest cavalry in the world. He had won the Golden Cross of honor for service with General Santa Anna in the war with Texas. After the cessation of hostilities, Santa Anna himself had ordered Perea to Santa Fe, saying that they needed an officer of his caliber to hold the reins on the restless, rebellious troops of the northern department.
It had been a disillusioning experience. Used to the pomp and glitter of Mexico City, the violence and glory of the recent war, he had found nothing but a squalid outpost and a ragged garrison of untrained, unequipped men who had no right to be called regulars. To him, the whole revolt had been a farce. He did not know how long he had sat steeped in his bitterness and his disillusionment when he heard bare feet slapping against the earthen floor outside. A chain clanked, the bolt was drawn, the door opened.
He blinked his eyes in the dimness. He recognized Teresa Cavan.
Sunlight came through the barred window at his back and fell across her in yellow stripes. She wore a black rebozo like a hood, its long ends pulled across the front of her body by her arms. She had worn no enaguas when he had seen her in Taos; now the flounces of these petticoats, red and blue and yellow, peeped from beneath the hem of her skirt. Her tawny bare feet seemed a primitive paradox to such frilly femininity.
He got hastily to his feet, smoothing his rumpled tunic. He inclined his head gravely, giving her the traditional greeting of the house. For he was a gentleman, and would have been courtly in hell.
“Buenas tardes le de Dios, señorita.”
“Que Dios se los de buenos a usted,” she said, answering with the same grave ceremony. “May God give them good to you.”
He waved her in. “Would that I could celebrate our meeting more graciously. All I can do is thank you for saving my life.”
“You must turn the heart of many señoritas,” she murmured.
He looked into her eyes. They were green, in this light, and they looked hard as stone. “I would be naïve to think you saved me for that reason,” he said.
She moved closer. Her lips, untouched by rouge, were red as coral. They brought back with sensuous impact all the kisses he had ever stolen.
“Then we will not be naïve,” she said. “It is enough that you are alive and can help us now.”
He frowned, suspicious. “How?”
“There is only one man strong enough to bring some order out of this chaos. General Amado has always been a strong centralist. He was seduced into this revolt on false pretenses. He thought Governor Carbajal would merely be held as hostage till the central government recognized our claims. Now that he has been betrayed, he is planning a counter revolution. With one squadron of regular dragoons he could overthrow this rabble and restore the city to its rightful hands.”
Perea could not hide his excitement. “There are squadrons in Chihuahua.”
She shook her head. “They would take too long to reach. As you know, many of the dragoons here deserted and fled to the mountains or Albuquerque. You are the most popular man in the army, Lieutenant. They would rally to you.”
He looked at her in surprise. She was smiling. Her teeth were perfect—small, white, pointed—giving her, in that moment, a strangely savage look.
“Among these dragoons who have declared for the rebels there still must be some friends of yours,” she said. “Who could you trust implicitly?”
“Lieutenant Miguel, Corporal Chavez.”
“Good. Your escape will be arranged. Send a courier to Mexico City immediately, informing them that General Amado is working night and day to defeat our enemies. Bring your troops back as soon as possible.”
Twenty-three, impressionable, an incurable romantic—Perea was completely in her hands. Blindly loyal himself, such evidence of loyalty in another was logical to him. He did not seek further motives. She was offering him a chance to escape, to redeem his pride, to turn defeat into victory. What more could a soldier ask? He took her hand. The satiny warmth of it went through him like a shock.
“Señorita,” he said. “I am your servant.”
A shadow crossed her face, and for a moment the soul went out of her eyes. In a barely audible tone, she said, “I hope you will not regret it…Hilario.”
* * * *
That night Teresa found Lieutenant Miguel and Corporal Chavez in the barracks behind the Palace. She told them she had seen the order for Perea’s execution on the governor’s desk. They were shaken. Though they had declared for the revolution, they were already becoming disillusioned. Perea’s death would make them lose all faith in the insurrectionists. Miguel had been in Perea’s class at the Colegio Militar, and could not let his old friend die.
Thus they plotted the escape. At eight that night Chavez would go on duty as corporal of the guard at the garita. Miguel was to have three horses saddled and ready in one of the alleys under the hill. At fifteen after eight, Teresa was to light a fire at the rear of the Palace. This would give cause for Chavez to send most of his men from the garita to help fight the fire. He and Miguel would then overpower the remaining guards, release Perea, and flee south with him.
At the appointed time, Teresa started the fire in a woodshed. It was separated from the Palace and would not endanger the main structure. But it made a frightening conflagration, filling the whole courtyard with a pall of black smoke. The troops came from the barracks, some in shirt sleeves, others pulling on trousers. The governor and his retinue of Pueblo caciques and alcaldes rushed from the Palace. By the weird light of the flames Teresa saw dark figures running down the slope from the garita. All pitched in to form lines for the bucket brigades.
Teresa stood in the narrow alley between the Palace and the servants’ quarters, watching the turmoil through slitted eyes. The courtyard was filled with shouting, coughing figures that shuttled back and forth like shadows before the ruddy backlight of the fire. When the blaze was under control, Teresa saw some of the men moving back from the shouting mob, coughing and wiping soot from their faces. She made out Amado and Gomez and Villapando, grouped together with some of the caciques.
A man ran through the crowd toward them, shouting wildly that Lieutenant Perea had escaped. This caused a new turmoil in the group. Amado and Villapando entered into a violent argument and then Amado called orders to a dozen of the fire-fighters and they followed him at a run toward the stables. The blaze caught a new bundle of faggots and flared up for a moment, illuminating Teresa by the building. Villapando saw her and came over.
Primitive and savage as he was, Teresa had begun to see a certain nobility in this man. He had led the revolt in a sincere belief that he was breaking the chains that had bound the Pueblos for centuries. Now—confused, disillusioned, completely unequipped to cope with the complexities and intrigues of government—he was battling with his back to the wall to keep from failing his people. For a moment she regretted her own part in the intrigues against him. Yet she could see no other way out.
He stopped a foot from her, a powerful, deep-chested man emanating the smells of soot and of the earth. Ignorant, illiterate, he still possessed a native shrewdness that lay in the deep crevices at the tips of his eyes, in the searching way he looked at her face. He spoke a crude cow-pen variety of Spanish.
“Perhaps this fire was convenient for Perea.”
“Do you think he set it, Governor?”
“Do not mock me, Teresa. I know what you are. Already you have pitted Amado against me. Without you he was nothing. Together you become more dangerous every day. I will not have it.”
She smiled, enigmatically. “What will you do?”
“I will separate you,” he said. “I will remove your reason to help Amado. You want protection from Biscara. I offer it to you.”
It surprised her. “On what terms?”
He moved closer. The fierce expression of his eyes softened. “You will become my wife,” he said. “The cacique of my pueblo will join us in the ceremony of my people.”
Her whole body grew stiff. “I thought you hated me.”
“I do.” His voice was husky, trembling a little. “But I want you too. I can’t understand that. Only with a woman like you could hate and love go together.” He had his hands on her arms now, the hot and callused palms gripping her tightly. This was no Amado with his sly innuendo, no Don Biscara with his suave lechery. This was a man close to the animals, shaken by a primitive passion. “You must give me your answer now,” he said.
His body was pressing against her and his face was so close the hot breath seemed to envelop her. And suddenly it was not the face of Villapando, but the face of that Navajo headman back in the desert, bending over her where she lay behind the thicket of mesquite—a contorted face, a gloating face, a face that haunted her nightmares. Her right hand closed, as if about the handle of a Toledo dagger.
She twisted free and her dress tore in his hand as she slid down the wall. She stopped two feet away.
“I will tell you nothing,” she said. “Nothing.” She saw anger blaze up in his eyes and he started toward her. She said, “There are a hundred men in the courtyard.”
It stopped him. He glanced aside. The mouth of the narrow alley was three feet from his back, with the shouting soldiers still running back and forth across it. His husky breathing abated.
“Very well,” he said. “You have made your choice. I am still hunting Biscara. When I find him, he will be exiled. And you will be exiled with him.”