Episode #316

Part Three of Three

Act Four

1820, Santa Elena

Doesn't she ever shut up?

"Oh, Doctor, I just cannot seem to keep from having these palpitations. Do you think it's serious?" Oh, Doctor, I've married a much older man, and he's so boring. You're the only excitement in this dull, dusty town. Take me now.

Vera didn't really say that, of course, not out loud. But that is what she wants. Maybe I should let her seduce me, after all. After she gets what she wants, she'll leave me be, and I will be horizontal in a big, soft bed for an hour or two. Who knows? I might even get some sleep. This is one hell of a headache I've got. Lately, I have noticed that these headaches make me almost blind--my body protesting all those years of abuse, I suppose. And that one mission, the one with the little girl...I have been thinking about it far too much.

With my luck, if I did take Vera up on her offer, Gaspar would come home early and I would have to crawl out the window with my clothes under my arm just in time to meet Tessa coming by for some afternoon gossip over tea. Gaspar. Damn. I only let Vera into my office so I could pump her for information about Gaspar for Montoya and here she is trying to seduce me. Talk about conflicting agendas. Vera's not that beautiful. Nor is she that blonde. What she is after today isn't sex, I don't think. That would be just a side benefit. She's here to spy on me, though I'm not yet sure why. Would Gaspar send her for that, or did Montoya recruit her to keep me honest? Just the thought of this little amateur trying to outmaneuver me makes me smile.

Naturally, Vera misinterprets my expression. She thinks I'm weakening. Inhaling deeply, she thrusts out her chest and leans so far forward that I can see all the way down her cleavage. It's a stirring sight, but I think I can resist the temptation of such false promise any day of the week--even on a Friday. I prefer brunettes, which Vera, of all people, should know.

"Señora Hidalgo, just what do you think you are doing?" I say, more sharply than I would on another day. But on another day, I would feel better.

"Why...I am only trying to be friendly." She pouts.

I frown at her. Come to think of it, agenda or no agenda, this is very strange behaviour from her, considering the miscarriage that she suffered only last fall--and how the baby was conceived in the first place. "And how are you feeling otherwise today?" When I watch her pout wilt, I understand and pity stirs in me. There is an agenda, just not the one I thought she had. I press on. "Have you been having any further pains in your stomach?" She slumps in her chair, looking down, no longer willing to meet my eyes. "Señora, it is important that you tell me if you are still having pain. If you refuse to take the time to recover from your illness last fall, that could affect your health permanently. You might not be able to have another child."

"What does it matter now?" She pulls her shawl over her shoulders, covering herself. All of her earlier flirtatiousness has faded. She sniffles. "I could not have a child before, not one that lived to birth. And poor Gaspar....I do not think he can ever give me a child. He is too old. We are both barren now. It is all my fault." As I watch, she begins to cry, and my own agenda melts away with her tears. So much for that iron nerve I thought I perfected during the War.

What I do next is a very dangerous thing to do. I know I shouldn't go to her, but I just can't sit here and let her cry. I must have been hard enough to be that way once, but not anymore. I get up, come around the table, crouch down and hug her. She folds into my arms and weeps on my shoulder. I think she has been wanting to do this for months--weep, not feel me up. It takes several minutes for her to recover while I wait nervously, patting her back and trying not to fidget. I do not think that Gaspar would understand if he walked in on us at this moment--though, oddly enough, I think that Tessa might respect me better for it. Women. I will never understand them.

I get an idea of how distraught she truly is when she pulls back without trying to take advantage of my embrace. Thank God. She rubs at her wet face. Silently, I disengage myself, go into my room for a cloth, dip it in a bucket of water and wring it out, then bring it back out to her. She accepts it, looking grateful, though I'm sure it doesn't smell very nice. I sit back down across from her and clasp my hands on the table as she wipes off her face. "Gracias, Doctor," she says when she finishes.

"You're welcome," I say, as gently as I can. "Señora...forgive me for being blunt, but why come here and try to seduce me?" She stops in the middle of blowing her nose to stare at me, red-eyed. "While I'm flattered that you thought I might be able to father a baby for you, I am a friend of your husband. Didn't you worry that I would tell Gaspar?" Or Tessa? I almost add. But I have just enough sensitivity in me left not to say that. After all, I am trying to get Vera to help me investigate her husband, who is supposed to be my friend, for treason.

"You would not do that, Doctor," she says, biting her lip. "Of all the men in this hacienda, you and Gaspar are the only ones who wouldn't." And Marcus Grisham, I'll wager, if he hasn't given her away by now. But we let that name hang in the air between us, unspoken. I am far too much his enemy for her to admit her liaison with him to me, and I am not about to admit that Tessa has told me all about it.

"I like you, Doctor," Vera says, taking out her fan. She waves it over her drying face, looking very distracted, so I am startled when she emits a nervous giggle. "I suppose it was rather a bad idea, trying to seduce you. How would I explain a baby to Gaspar who had your eyes?"

I smile ruefully back at her. "I admit, it would be difficult."

She straightens, putting on a smile with the courage of a soldier. No, I really will never understand women. If I had to go through what they do every day, with as little recourse as they have, I'd go stark, raving mad. She pats her hair and pieces back together her sultry, public mask. I do understand about masks. "Well," she says brightly. "I must go find Gaspar at the cantina. He will wonder where I have been."

I stand up to see her out the door. "Please take better care of yourself, Señora. I don't want to see you lose another baby. You could still try again, you know."

She lifts one shoulder and giggles, but doesn't answer. I watch her sashay down the street in the noonday heat shimmer and God, do I worry. But there is only so much that I can do about it and I've just done it all. Besides, my headache is getting worse. I turn and go back inside my office.

There's no point in staying open. It is too hot for patients, certainly too hot for me. Despite my years in Spain and southern France, my blood still yearns for the cold mists of England. I must be punishing myself by coming here. Or perhaps I just can't let go of my years in the army as easily as quitting the service and becoming a physician. The way the shadows fall across the windowsill...when I look at them, I believe, for a moment, that I will look out and see the rolling hills of Spain, not the flat, dusty street of Santa Elena.

I blink, rub my eyes, and just like that, I am back in Alta California. Sleep, then, has finally become my first priority. If I lose my bearings, I will be useless to my patients.

The week began with an accident at the nearby mine--four wounded, one dead. Three women have since given birth. I lost one of them, although I did save the child. I don't know what her chances are without her mother, though. Then, there was the drunk who was run over by a cart, the arrogant young hacienda scion who caught his foot in his stirrup and was dragged by his horse for nearly a mile across scrubland. They both died, of course. Four dead in one week is a lot of bodies, even for a man of my experience. I have been playing catch-up all week, yet steadily losing ground. This terrible, continuous headache found me sometime on Tuesday, and my hands have shaken since yesterday. Today, I am no good to anyone. I think that a siesta is in order.

Feeling twice as old as my age in years, I close and lock my door, then stumble into my backroom to my cot. I lie down, pulling the blanket over my head to shut out the diffuse sunlight that penetrates the gloom. I worry briefly that I will be too tired to sleep. I am so relieved when I feel the familiar sag of the bed as I relax into it with a groan. God, I must be tired. The pleasure of simply lying down and closing my eyes is intense, better than either sex or liquor. I wonder if I used to push myself so hard in the Army just to get this feeling whenever I finished a job. Is mortification of the flesh addictive?

Street noises weave through my dreams, making the afternoon stretch out. Flies buzz in and out of the room. One of my legs hangs over the edge of the bed. I dream about wanting to pull it in, but of course, never do. I hear and feel the world around me, but I am only an observer. I've relaxed into paralysis. Eventually, my hideous headache subsides.

I wake up to cold and darkness. I hear a rustle of cloth, and stare blearily across the room. The Queen of Swords lounges in my chair, arms folded, one leg crossed over the other. "How long have you been sitting there?" I say.

"Long enough," she says, evasive as ever. Well. It is how she stays alive. I love her for the quality, even if it irritates the hell out of me. She stands up, comes over to the bed and lies down next to me. I roll over enough to leave her a space beside me. She was right when she gave this bed to me--it is very comfortable. She pulls the blanket up over us both (I must have kicked it off before, when I was so hot) and snuggles against me. Still lightheaded from the headache, I stroke her shoulder. I can see this will be one of those nights where we don't say each other's names. Fortunately, my headache precludes my responding to her lithe body lying full length along my own. What we did over New Year's was reckless, to say the least. She isn't the only one who is sighing in relief that she has not "bloomed" like her friend Elena since then. What a disaster that would have been.

"You've been working too hard," she says.

"It's my job," I say, too tired to shrug.

"You can't help the town if you work yourself to death." She lays her head on my shoulder. "What is wrong? Is it the War?"

"I don't know. I suppose I've been dreaming about it, these past few days. It is as if it is coming back to haunt me, but I don't know why." I had dreams like that for months after Latham tried to kill me, dreams where he tracked me down from his grave and finished the job. I don't know why it is bothering me now. Perhaps it is the proximity of happiness? Tessa and I have grown bolder in public about our feelings this past month. Some of the doñas say bitchy things, of course, bored as they are. Tessa really shouldn't have encouraged that young idiot, Don Borges, but I don't suppose he ever gave her the chance to put him off. I heard enough from him to deduce that much. After Gaspar and I took him to Montoya to prove the ownership of his hacienda, Gaspar told me he was surprised I hadn't boxed the little fool's ears. I was surprised, too, but there you go. Oh, Gaspar, what am I going to do about you now?

You would think these boys would at least find out about the competition. Their female contemporaries do. Even Tessa, who is hardly the vapid socialite she pretends to be, can give me chapter and verse about who is wooing whom, who is snubbing whom, who is getting married, who is destined to die an old maid.

"You're very quiet," Tessa says. No. The Queen. Have to remember that. Wouldn't do to blurt out the wrong name if Montoya or Grisham burst in here some night.

I nuzzle her hair, sleepy in the aftermath of pain. "Sorry. Thinking."

"About the War?"

"What war?" For a moment, I am so tired that I miss the line of her persistance. "Oh. That war. I don't know. It's always there. Like an old wound. Maybe it just hurts a little more tonight."

"Why?" She seems puzzled, and I cannot blame her. I am puzzled by it, too. "Are you unhappy?"

I try to think about it, which is hard in the face of the confusing scent of her hair. "It's not that. I feel as though I'm...moving beyond it, leaving it behind. But I'm like a ship still tied to the dock. I still have some ropes to cut. If that makes sense." I just don't know which ones they are. I wish I did. And I wish I'd stop remembering that bloody little girl. I don't even know if she is still alive.

"What about you?" I say, risking our silent pact of pretending she is not Tessa when she visits me in town, but I want to change the subject and this needs to be said. "Is that young fool of a don still bothering you?"

She sighs. "Not so much, now. Sometimes. His fiancée still tries to rub my nose in their impending marriage. But since I refuse to play the game, it has become less amusing for her." She chuckles. "And I think poor Simon is just now beginning to discover what kind of woman he is marrying."

I snicker. Lola is no man's idea of a good match. Borges has got himsef into a real predicament with her, and her horrendous mother. "Oh, love, you have no idea. Half the men in Santa Elena breathed a sigh of relief when he announced his engagement." She giggles at that. "I'd offer to kill him for you, but I think you'll enjoy it more, watching him squirm at the altar and beyond. I know I will. I wish he hadn't taken it upon himself to blacken your reputation first, though." That turns my thoughts dark again. Young Señor Borges is very lucky that I am a retired killer.

She shakes her head, her hair brushing my face. "No. The only alternative to rejecting him was marrying him, and I couldn't bear that." She turns her face up to mine. "Are you happy with me?"

I stroke that glorious hair back from her face, stroke the mask beneath. "Yes. You're the best thing that's happened to me for a long time. Since even before the War, I think."

She smiles, putting a brave face on it. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'd kill for you, to keep this." I'm surprised to say this out loud, particularly to a woman that I love. But then, the woman I love is as much a reluctant killer as I am. And I wasn't always so reluctant about it. I wasn't joking when I said I'd kill Borges for her.

"You already have." She shivers and pulls closer.

"El Serpiente, you mean." Damn. As if I need another ghost floating about my crowded head tonight. "Yes, I have. I like to think I've done with all that."

"I know." Her voice is so gentle. What would I do if something happened to her? I think I'd kill myself, if I didn't kill whoever murdered her first. And to Hell with my immortal soul. I am probably a hundred times damned already. "But it's nice to know that the man I love and have risked my life and honour to be with would do the same for me. And has." Shocked, I let my arms tighten around her. "Simon would never have done that for me. He is a butterfly; you are a hawk. I would rather have a husband who would not be crushed by the first ill wind."

I don't know what to say. I sincerely hope that no spy is lingering outside my window tonight. We are being entirely too honest with each other for safety. "Tessa," I say hesitantly, and very, very quietly. "About the War...." She looks up at me. "I have been thinking about it, A lot. You see, there was this little girl...." And she listens while I tell her about Maria, until I talk us both to sleep.

The French soldier leans over me. Even if he believed that I was a Catalan peasant, it wouldn't matter. The village around me is burning to the ground. The French are shooting all the men, and most of the women and children. They are not even pillaging, anymore--just destroying for the fun of it. The thick, smoky air suffocates me. Hot, it's so hot...

The soldier grins at me, showing his rotten teeth. "Tu pensais que tu pouvais nous echapper, heh?" he says, as if I really thought I could escape this nightmare. "Nous allons t'enseigner quelque chose différent."

"AHHH!" I sit straight up, or try to. Tessa pulls me back down beside her, pulling up that damned blanket. I've kicked it off again. I really should get another one. These nights are cold. At least my neighbours won't come running. They are used to hearing me scream in the night. If it's in English, I suppose they reason, it must only be one of my nightmares.

"Shhh, Roberto. It's all right. It was only a dream," she is murmuring in my ear as she covers me up like a child. My mind comes back down from circling the problem of that blanket and I hear her, really hear her. "It's all right, querido. You were dreaming. Go back to sleep."

"The French," I gasp. "Bloody French....They were burning the village...."

"Not anymore, Roberto. It is all over. They are all gone now. You are safe, here with me. They cannot touch you anymore." I think she is saying whatever is coming into her head. I must be frightening her. Not used to such immediate comfort in this mood, I thrash about, but she holds on until I settle. She strokes my hair and whispers to me as if to a nervous horse. Eventually, I do calm down, my breathing slowing, letting her soothe me. How did I ever do without this woman before?

"Go back to sleep," she tells me. And curled up in her arms, I do.

Epilogue

Bloody goats. Why can't they keep it down until after dawn? A goat and her kid are having a mother-and-child reunion right under my window as the room lightens about me. Muttering to myself about kid stew, I roll over and bury my head under the pillow. I'm vaguely aware of being alone again, which is reassuring. It wouldn't do for the Queen of Swords to be caught at dawn in my bed, so she always slips away long before that. Though it's a necessity, I still feel empty when I wake up alone.

The thumping on my door jolts me awake. I am no stranger to someone banging away on my door, far from it, but I don't love the sound, either. It always means an emergency. At least my headache from yesterday is gone. Must have just been a hard day, thank God, and not swamp fever. I raise my head and pull the blanket away, yelling in English in my irritation, "I'm coming! I'm coming!"

The thumping continues, unabated, as I fall out of bed, tripping over the blanket, cursing. At least I slept in my clothes. I grab my bag off my worktable, stumble to the door and yank it open. "Can't you bloody wait until I--"

The bearded, graying man standing on the steps is dead. I am sure of it. I've been sure of it for over five years. He smiles as my mouth falls open and he comes in through the doorway as I stagger back from the door.

"Good to see you, too, Robert," he says in French, rasping the 'r' like the true Frenchman he is. "I thought it would be you."

I gulp like a fish. My eyes must be as wide as an old Señora's best plates. I must be losing my touch, my reflexes. "Pirenne?" I say in the same language, after a moment. I'm waking up fast, though it still takes a moment or two. "But--you're dead."

He smiles. "So are you. At least, that is what my commanding officer told me five years ago. 'Cut to pieces by artillery and good riddance,' he said." He shrugs. "Come, Robert. Men like us don't die, we just change professions." He looks around my office, which seems to shrink in his presence. "And you have changed more than most. New profession. New country. New life...." He smiles. "New woman. I hear that Señorita Alvarado is a very lovely girl."

The words wash over me like cold water, waking me up completely, turning me to ice. "What do you want, Pirenne?"

He cocks his head to one side. "Eh? It was Roger et Robert the last time we met. So many years since, n'est-ce pas? Times change. People change."

I step toward him, just a little threatening, keeping my face blank. "I said, what do you want?"

He folds his arms and laughs. "Why, the same thing you have, Robert. A new life." He looks around, smiling cheerfully. "And I believe I have found it right here in Santa Elena."

Watch for the next exciting adventure, ...En El Foc [...Into the Fire] - Episode #317, starting on March 30, 2003.