Carla Kelly - [Spanish Brand 01] Read online

  In Which Marco Mondragón Confesses, Argues about Penance and Takes an Unwilling Dog

  San Francisco had never been Don Marco Mondragón’s favorite church. The ornate altar, fancy stations of the cross, and incense that smelled of something much grander than piñon had no appeal to a practical son of Valle del Sol. He preferred the simplicity of San Miguel: hard benches, priests who had probably heard it all but never flinched, and massive walls that had withstood fiery destruction by Indians when they drove out the colonists in 1680. Those walls seemed to draw around him in ecclesiastical comfort.

  As the bridal party approached San Francisco, Marco gave Alonso a pat on his shoulder and leaned closer. “I’m going to San Miguel.”

  “Don’t leave me!”

  Marco gave him another pat. “These are almost your relatives, my friend,” he reminded him. “I’ll be in the church with you soon enough.” It was on the tip of his tongue to suggest that Alonso escape before any more damage was done. He didn’t; it was too late.

  By the time he arrived at San Miguel, the sun was up. Marco sniffed the air, enjoying as always the fragrance of piñon from breakfast cooking fires all over the city. He saw the servants of the Moreno household leaving the old mission church, looked closer, and watched Paloma Vega bringing up the rear.

  His father had told him once of a small boy, probably much his own age, who had been kidnapped by Apaches as a youngster, then recovered after the Reconquista some twelve years later. After that Claudio Reynosa had never belonged in the Indian world or the Spanish world. One day he disappeared. Marco’s father was certain he rode again with the Apaches.

  He watched Paloma, trailing behind the others, like Claudio not at home in either world. She should have been a cherished niece of the Morenos who had survived an Indian ordeal.

  I have much to confess, he thought. I would like to flay Señor Moreno within an inch of his life. I’ll be on my knees for hours when well-deserved penance lands on me.

  The servants stepped politely aside as he approached them on the dirt path, except for Paloma. Hands clasped in front of her, eyes down, she had clearly come from confession. He wanted to say something to her, but he didn’t know what it would be. As she passed him silently with a shy smile, he touched her arm briefly then continued.

  He hadn’t long to wait in San Miguel. Most of the mission’s humble sinners had gone their way, back to tend those cooking fires, froth the chocolate into earthenware cups, stir down the lava of cornmeal porridge and coax eggs and chorizo to cooperate, preparing for another day of serving Spaniards.

  He watched as a mother knelt on the confession bench with her small son. He overheard her gently reminding him of the apples he had thrown at the nesting chicken and the bread headed for her master’s table that had somehow ended up on the floor and was barely dusted off as the child carried it into the dining room. Her hand on his back, she kissed the top of his head when he cried. She was a mother of New Mexico teaching her child.

  Marco swallowed, remembering Felicia doing that very thing with one of the twins and he with the other as they confessed childish sins that surely weren’t sins. They had been teaching them the ways of Holy Church. The last time he had shared those duties with her had been the last time he confessed with his dear ones. It was eight years since they had confessed as a family, guiding their children. The next morning he had saddled up for a typical brand inspection trip and kissed them all goodbye. He had never seen them alive again.

  He had confessed many times since then, of course, but it brought so little comfort, because he ached for his lovely wife and children in a way he knew no priest could possibly understand. He might have been wrong there, he suspected now, as he knelt in San Miguel for confession. Perhaps his own priest had understood his hot tears of anger against God the Almighty in the confessional as well as his eventual resignation as a callus built up around his heart until nothing could hurt him anymore.

  He crossed himself and leaned close to the grill. “It has been five weeks since my last confession, father,” he began, then covered the usual sins of cursing livestock, especially the cow that stepped on his foot; his own use of himself because he was lonely; his unkindness when he struck a teamster who slept on watch and allowed the herd to wander as they came west. He paused, wondering how to phrase this, then blundered ahead. After all, he only came to San Miguel once a year.

  “And forgive me for my anger at Señor Felix Moreno, who does not take proper care of his niece Paloma Vega,” he whispered, his forehead pressed against the grill. “And my anger at my own stupidity for paying a whole peso for a yellow dog and breaking Paloma’s heart. Why did I insist I needed that runt?”

  He cried, something he seldom did, so great was his shame at his sins large and small. He must have been wrong, but some of the callus around his heart seemed to be sloughing away. To his chagrin, it left greater pain than before, because now he felt vulnerable again, and he did not care for that feeling. All this and more he told the priest, reliving again the afternoon when he returned to his hacienda to the sorrowing faces of his servants and the shock of death from la cólera, that cruel visitor.

  Marco sat back on his heels then, appalled at his recitation, almost wishing for the callus again because he understood with perfect clarity now that it had kept agony at bay. Through his tears, he looked at the bleeding Cristo over the altar at the front of the church, the hanging body primitive because it was probably carved by a parish Indian who had attended no school of European Jesus-carving. The man—who knew who he was?—had only carved what he knew of harsh living and suffering in colonial New Mexico. His Cristo, bleeding from every pore, understood his congregation of humble penitents, and even Don Marco Mondragón, who suffered still.

  My sufferings are still not as great as thine, Lord, he thought finally, and felt a measure of comfort he had not expected. “I don’t know what to do,” he said into the grill. “I am thirty-one years old, and I do not know what to do.”

  “About what, my thon?” came the gentle voice.

  “I am lonely,” he said, after a long pause, “but I see no way out of this loneliness.”

  It was the turn of the shadowy priest to be silent for a long moment. “Perhapth you thould lithen to your heart, now and then.”

  “I can try,” Marco whispered back. “My penance, father?”

  “One Hail Mary.”

  Marco gasped. “Father, that is not enough.”

  He heard an enormous sigh from behind the grill. “Do not argue about penanth. That ith two of you today. One Hail Mary,” the priest said firmly, “and don’t cheat and do two, ath thomone did earlier.”

  Marco crossed himself, listened to the rest of the priest’s advice and left the church after two Hail Marys. The priest didn’t have to know.

  Thoughtful now, he walked back to San Francisco. He had spent so much time on his knees at confession that he knew the wedding must have begun. He would just slip into the back of the church and witness the marriage of a childhood friend to a woman that friend was having second thoughts about. He would also try hard not to remember his own marriage, when he could not keep from smiling as he glanced at the equally ecstatic treasure kneeling beside him.

  He glanced at the row of servants standing in the back, and saw Paloma Vega, her own face thoughtful, hands clasped together at her waist in that charming way of Spanish ladies. She wore a different dress, no less shabby than her workaday dress, but with a small bit of lace around the neckline. She was too thin. For a moment, he allowed his traitor mind the luxury of imagining her with a bosom fully fleshed and soft, because someone had taken the expense and trouble to feed her. It was as simple as that.

  He returned his attention to the wedding taking place, where the Spaniards knelt on the bare floor, not dirt as in San Miguel, but polished wood. Someday there might be a stone floor here, but San Miguel would always have packed earth.

  O Dios, one of Señor Moreno’s other unlovely daughters was ge
sturing to him to move forward. He shook his head, but she continued to gesture, each flick of her hand more imperious. To spare the rest of the congregation from such an unseemly spectacle, he finally moved closer to the Spanish side, but still stubbornly not within the Moreno sphere. He belonged there no more than Paloma Vega.

  When the wedding ended and the bell began to toll, Marco looked around. The servants were already gone, hurrying home to put the final touches on the wedding feast to follow. He suffocated in the smell of hair pomade and scented talcum as the Morenos engulfed him in their unwholesome claustrophobia and forced him to walk with them.

  He had not a moment to spend with Alonso, beyond wishing him all success in marriage, quietly grateful that it was his friend and not he who had married into a reprehensible family. At the dinner table, he heard himself deliver a monumentally insincere toast to Alonso and his “lovely” young wife, wishing them long life and many children in Valle del Sol, when he wanted to shout at the new husband to run.

  He did not think matters could get worse, but they did, when the dinner was over and the drinking began. After an hour or two of this, Alonso and Maria would be escorted to a quiet chamber and left to fumble. At the exit, on the verge of his escape, he found Paloma, face pale, tugging along the yellow dog on a rope.

  “Keep him,” he said, as she tried to hand him the rope.

  “You have bought him, Señor,” she reminded him as he writhed inside. “He … he never was mine anyway. Take the rope please.”

  “I can’t.”

  He saw the anger rise in her beautiful blue eyes then as she stepped so close that he could breathe in her fragrance of kitchen odors and piñon. “You must. My uncle will blame me if you do not.”

  Wordless, he took the rope. Delicious goose bumps marching down his spine as he touched her hand at the transfer.

  She stepped back. “I know you will treat him well.” Her eyes welled with tears. “Your feet will not be cold. Go with God.”

  Before he could say anything, she turned and hurried from the dining room. Trece began to whine and tug at the leash. Marco knelt and ran his hand along the trembling dog’s back. Trece looked at him, his eyes reproachful.

  Marco understood dogs. He had dogs at home and they worked for him, loyal animals he enjoyed petting and feeding, when their day’s labor in herd and flock were done. He knew that Trece would eventually come to love him, because that was the forgiving nature of dogs. Trece would finally forget the mistress who had patiently kept him alive when there was no thirteenth teat for a runt. His only duty in the hacienda of Mondragón would be to keep his master’s feet warm, as he had probably warmed Paloma Vega’s feet.

  He knew Trece would forget. Marco Mondragón also knew that, grateful as he was never to have any association with the Morenos again, he would not forget that patient trainer who was too kind and too thin and who deserved better.

  That’s how the world works, he reminded himself as he picked up the struggling dog and left the household of Felix Moreno forever.

  Chapter Six

  In Which the Yellow Dog Does an Impetuous Thing

  Don Marco Mondragón spent a final night in Santa Fe, close to the stockyards, his yellow dog tied up so he could not escape. With great singleness of purpose, Marco rounded up his drunken teamsters and left them in a sodden pile by the corrales. He counted heads, sighed, and searched through Santa Fe’s brothels and back alleys for the rest. He pried them off putas and sobered them all with buckets of water. By morning, most were aware enough to stay in their saddles. The rest he put in the wagon with the supplies, tents and bedrolls for the return journey to del Sol. Winter was coming and he anticipated snow before arrival at his own familiar gates.

  He took time for Mass at San Miguel, kneeling silent and frowning as the little priest with the lisp performed his duties. He wondered why the priest looked on him with such sympathy; surely none of his tearful memories yesterday could have been out of the ordinary to a holy father in a harsh society. Still, there was no denying the kindness in his eyes. It touched Marco, but not enough to erase the lines of worry between his eyes. Felicia used to smooth those marks of responsibility away with her fingertips and kiss him there. Just remembering that bit of long-ago tenderness brought a groan to his lips, which caused the old lady kneeling next to him to put more distance between them.

  Trece was too small to trot along beside his horse, so he carried the yellow dog in front of him as he shook off the dust of Santa Fe for another year. Gradually the pup relaxed and settled against his new master, looking with some interest at the passing scene as Santa Fe’s narrow streets gave way to the open countryside and higher mountains in the purple distance.

  Tightlipped and grim, Don Marco drove his teamsters forward with only the briefest of stops. Andrés, his major domo and a cheerful fellow, had by now stopped trying to annoy him with the kind of chatter that on any other journey would have amused Marco Mondragón. An older servant of his father, Andrés knew him well enough to keep his own counsel when his master was so silent. Andrés also had the perception to keep others from airing any grievances to their master, who was in no mood for petty dealings. When a chorus of moans and other sounds of ill usage started up from the wagon, it was Andrés who silenced the sufferers with a pithy remark or two.

  When they reached the pueblo of Pojoaque in late afternoon, Marco resisted the urge to keep riding. The more miles put between him and those beautiful, uncomplaining blue eyes, the better for his own peace of mind. He had taken the only source of pleasure she possessed, a yellow dog. Someone with more confidence and power would have stormed, raged and lashed him with her tongue. Powerless, Paloma Vega had only thanked him for providing a good home for a beloved pet she only would have lost to another, anyway.

  Miserable, he sat before the campfire in the inn yard, listening to his now-revived teamsters josh with each other and snicker and laugh over their narrow escape from Santa Fe.

  I had a narrow escape, too, he told himself. I never have to see Señor Moreno again.

  There had been no room in the inn for him. His teamsters had not expected the luxury of a bed. It chafed him to be turned away, until he started to protest and realized he would probably sound like that abominable Felix Moreno if he complained to a busy innkeeper.

  “You are full of travelers?” he asked instead.

  “Travelers are as good as donkeys, to sniff the coming of snow,” the keep said. “What, I ask you, Señor, is the attraction of the north?”

  From tall trees to deep canyons, Marco thought of many. Then he thought of the close streets, eye-watering open ditches and offal in Santa Fe. “The air smells good there.”

  An evening’s wallow in self-pity left him sour and pinched in his heart and soul. He tied Trece to a wagon-spoke in the inn yard where his teamsters slept, wrapped himself in a blanket and lay down beside the yellow dog, making no effort to brush aside small pebbles and branches, because he, like a flagellant in a hair shirt, deserved to be uncomfortable. If he could not flog himself with a whip with tin barbs, he could toss and turn all night as pebbles became boulders and branches turned into tree trunks.

  During the next day’s travel, Marco passed from menacing silence to embarrassed discomfort, knowing he had behaved like a spoiled youth before his servants, who deserved his usual capability and good humor. He spoke cautiously to Andrés, who was relieved to see that his foul mood had lifted. It hadn’t; Marco just knew when enough was enough. He turned his anger and disappointment inward, tucking it beside Felicia and the twins.

  The next afternoon brought Española, and his first measure of peace. As always, he felt a certain relief to know that the confluence of the Chama with the Rio Bravo was not far. A few leagues farther and they would veer east toward mountain passes. The trip down had been necessarily slow, with mules laden with wool, and cattle lagging because they missed the open range in del Sol. What had taken five weeks would probably take no more than two, provided snow did not
come too early.

  They passed through Española, came to the confluence, and saw the monastery of San Pedro before them—squat, homely and welcome. His heart lifted to see Father Damiano wave to him from the open gates. He had been chatting with other pilgrims, from the look of their travel-worn clothes. Maybe the good father would have a few minutes tonight to share more of his tales of early days in Valle del Sol, when he was a new priest from Spain, still possessing the odor of sanctity that had not entirely left him. Father Damiano would talk, relieving Marco of the need to say much in return. If those other travelers had sought lodging at San Pedro, Marco might get away with saying nothing at all.

  The sight of the open gate alone was enough to brighten his mood. There had been trips when the gate was closed tight against Apache and Navajo, who still roamed, still threatened, although generally farther away now. And the Comanche? They could strike anywhere.

  His teamsters were equally happy to stop in San Pedro’s sheltering bulk, probably even happier not to face their master’s glum visage for a few hours. The more penitent among them might seek out the confessional and atone for Santa Fe.

  After Vespers came supper, a simple bowl of hominy and beans and San Pedro’s good bread, with honey from the monastery’s industrious bees. Marco had tried to ignore Father Damiano’s searching eyes, but the man knew him too well. The old man had baptized him, had seen him red and naked and squalling. There probably wasn’t much he could hide, so Marco abandoned the effort as they sat together later in the monastery’s sala. Father Damiano has closed the door against the autumn chill so Trece could roam at will, sniffing in the corners, and still going to the door to paw at it and whine for his mistress.

  As Father Damiano toasted cheese, Marco told his story about the yellow dog and the girl with the bright blue eyes, and how it was Don Alonso’s manifest misfortune to now be allied with reprehensible relatives. He repented of buying the little dog sitting by his feet now, resigned to another evening with no Paloma Vega. “But if I had not bought this little fellow, someone else would have,” he concluded, running his fingers through the pup’s thick fur. “That’s what Paloma said, but I think she was just trying to convince herself. Ay de mi, father, what do you do about a woman who wants you to feel better, when you have been the cause of her misery?”