Part 122 (1/2)

A humorless rasp of a chuckle escaped my lips. ”Your mother and Luis are vipers.”

He shot me a look. Regardless of his candor about his own life, it was not gentlemanly of me to speak disrespectfully of his mother. In other circ.u.mstances he would have called me to the dueling field for such a remark.

”Do not blame my mother. Any mother who birthed a son like me would wonder why G.o.d had d.a.m.ned her.”

The old woman's eyes met mine as we approached, and despite having steeled my nerves, I was jolted. The old matrona sent my anger racing. This woman had sent Ramon to kill Fray Antonio. Overcome by rage, I jerked my arm from Don Eduardo's at the same time the old woman gaped and started up from her seat.

”Wha-what's the matter?” Don Eduardo asked.

An audible gasp of pain emitted from the old woman. She took a step, her face ashen, her eyes wide, her lips trying to form words. She fell forward, collapsing on the floor.

Don Eduardo rushed to her, crying her name. In a second Luis was beside him. I pushed through the crowd that had immediately gathered around her. Lying on the floor, she refused offers of aid and gestured her son and grandson closer to her trembling lips. The old woman whispered her last words. As she spoke, both Don Eduardo and Luis looked at me with as much shock as the old woman had when she recognized me.

I glared back at them, defiantly. I do not know what words were spoken, but I know they were to throw my life into more turmoil. She had whispered a secret to her son and grandson, a terrible secret that had plagued my life from the day I was born. While I had not heard the words, I had felt them. They twisted my heart and raised the hair on the back of my neck.

My eyes went from the two kneeling beside the old woman to a mirror behind them. I saw my own reflection.

And knew the truth.

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO.

The old woman's eyes haunted me in a troubled sleep that came after hours of even more troubled consciousness.

Mateo was not at the rented house when I returned from the viceroy's ball. I had left while the room was still buzzing about the death of the matrona. Elena had tried to ask me a question as I pushed through the crowd, and I had ignored her.

At my house a message awaited me that Mateo had gone to ”comfort” Don Silvestre's daughter. Mateo's idea of comforting the woman was to give her pleasure in bed. And take a bit himself.

A gallery of the dead-Fray Antonio, the Healer, Don Julio, Inez, and Juana-shared my night, invading my dreams and waking moments. Only the Healer seemed at peace. The others were restless because they were unavenged.

But mostly I saw the old woman. The Fates had brought me full circle. Back to the woman who had started it all in Veracruz. I never understood the old woman's hatred for me. I always a.s.sumed that it was a blood feud. But I no longer believed that. Looking at the three of them, the dying old woman with her son and grandson, I had gained an insight into the mystery that had dominated my life. And felt the earth heating up under my feet.

Early in the morning a servant brought me a message.

Don Eduardo was waiting in his carriage. He asked that I take a ride with him so that we might speak. The summons was neither expected nor a surprise. It was just another hand the Dark Sisters had dealt me. I joined him in the carriage.

”Do you mind if we ride along the Alameda?” he asked. ”I enjoy it in the cool of the morning. Quiet and peaceful. So unlike the parade of male egos and female vanities that dominate it in the afternoon.”

I sat quietly, listening to the carriage wheels, not really looking at him nor avoiding his eyes. A strange calmness had grasped me despite my troubled night. I actually felt more at peace than I had felt since I began a fugitive life in Veracruz half a lifetime ago.

”You have not expressed condolences at the death of my mother, but I suppose that is to be expected.”

I met his eye. ”Your mother was evil. She will rot in h.e.l.l.”

”I am afraid, Cristobal, that we, and Luis, shall join her. But you are right about her. I actually hated her myself. One is supposed to love and honor one's mother, but I never truly loved her, nor her, me. She hated me because I was too much like my father, too much inclined to words than actions. He brought her to the New World because he had nearly beggared them in the old. She sent him to an early grave with her hate. When I turned out to be worse than my father, she set me aside in her mind and kept the reins of the family tightly in her fist.

”Have you seen Pedro Calderon's dramatic comedia, La hija del aire?” he asked.

I shook my head. ”I was told of the play in Seville.”