Zorro

  “We will leave you a lamp, Moncada, but I advise you not to light it; it will consume all the air. Let’s see, Diego, how long do you calculate that a person can live in here?” Isabel queried, enthusiastic about their plan. “Several days. Enough to meditate at length on the wise proverb that the ends do not justify the means,” Diego replied. After Nuria cleaned and bandaged the cut on Moncada’s arm, they left him with a store of water, bread, and ham. It was unfortunate that he would not bleed to death from that insignificant scratch, was Isabel’s judgment. They recommended that he not waste air and strength shouting, as no one would hear him; the few servants who remained were never in this part of the house. Moncada’s last words before the shelves turned to close the entrance to the chamber, sealing him in silence and darkness, were that they would learn who Rafael Moncada was. They would regret that they had not killed him; he would get out of that hole and find Juliana sooner or later, even if he had to pursue her to hell itself. “Oh, you won’t have to go that far, we are on our way to California,” Diego said in farewell. I regret to tell you that I can write no more, because I have run out of the goose-quill pens I always use. I have ordered more, and soon I will be able to finish this story. I do not use quills from ordinary birds; they stain the paper and rob elegance from the page. I have heard that some inventors dream of creating a mechanical device for writing, but I am sure that such a whimsical invention would never prosper. There are certain activities that cannot be mechanized, for they require fondness, and writing is one of them. I fear that this is turning out to be a long narration, even though I have left a lot out. In the life of Zorro, as in all lives, there are brilliant moments and some that are dark; between the extremes are many neutral zones. You will have noted, for example, that in 1813 very little worthy of mention happened to our protagonist. He dedicated himself to his own activities with neither suffering nor glory, and made no progress in his conquest of Juliana. Rafael Moncada had to return from his chocolate odyssey for this story to acquire a little life. As I said before, villains, however unsympathetic in real life, are indispensable in a novel, which is what these pages are. At first I determined to write a chronicle or a biography, but I am unable to tell the legend of Zorro without straying into the widely scorned genre of the novel. Between each of his adventures are long uninteresting periods that I have omitted to prevent boring my potential readers to death. For the same reason, I have embellished the memorable episodes. I have made generous use of adjectives, and I have added suspense to Zorro’s feats, though I have not exaggerated too greatly his praiseworthy virtues. This is called literary license and, as I understand it, it is more legitimate than all-out lies. In any case, dear readers, there is in my inkwell more story to tell. In the next pages, to be no fewer than one hundred, I believe, I shall relate Zorro’s voyage with the de Romeu girls and Nuria across half the world, as well as the dangers they met in fulfilling their destinies. I can skip ahead, without fear of ruining the end, to disclose that they survive unharmed, and at least some of them reach Alta California, where, unfortunately, not everything is milk and honey. In fact, it is actually there that the true epic of Zorro begins, the saga that has carried his fame throughout the world. So I beg of you, a little more patience, please. PART FOUR Spain, late 1814-early 1815 I now have new goose-quill pens to continue the story of Zorro’s youth. It took our protagonists a month to reach Mexico, and in the meantime I have lost the rhythm of my narration. We shall see whether I can recapture it. We left Diego de la Vega fleeing from Rafael Moncada with the de Romeu girls and Nuria, through a Spain convulsed by political repression, poverty, and violence. Our characters were in a difficult situation, but the gallant Zorro did not lose sleep over external dangers, only the jolts to his surrendered heart. Love is a condition that tends to cloud men’s reason, but it is not fatal. Usually all the patient needs is to have his love returned, and he will snap out of it and begin to sniff the air in search of new prey. As chronicler of this story, I can see that I will have some problem with the classic ending of “and so they were married and lived happily ever after.” In fact, I had best get back to the tale before I fall into a depression. When the hidden door in the library shelves swung shut, Rafael Moncada was alone in the secret chamber. His cries for help were not heard because the thick walls, books, drapes, and carpets all deadened sound. “We will leave as soon as it is dark,” Diego de la Vega told Juliana, Isabel, and Nuria. “And we will take the bare essentials for the journey, as we agreed.”

  “Are you sure there is a mechanism to open the door of that chamber from inside?” asked Juliana. “No.”

  “This joke has gone too far, Diego. We cannot bear the burden of Rafael Moncada’s death, especially not a slow and horrible death in a sealed tomb.”

  “But look at the harm he’s done to us?” exclaimed Isabel. “We are not going to repay him in the same coin, because we are better persons than he is,” was her sister’s categorical reply. Diego laughed. “Don’t worry, Juliana, your suitor will not die of asphyxiation on this occasion.”

  “Why not?” Isabel interrupted, disappointed. Diego jabbed her with his elbow and explained that before they left, he would give Jordi a letter to be delivered to Eulalia de Califs in person, within two days. With it she would find the keys to the house and instructions for finding and opening the chamber. In case Rafael had not been able to open the door, his aunt would rescue him. The mansion, like everything else the de Romeu family had owned, now belonged to that grand lady, who would rescue her favorite nephew before he drank all the cognac. To be sure that Jordi would carry out his mission, he would give him a few maravedis, and the hope that Dona Eulalia would give him more when the note was delivered. At nightfall they left in one of the family coaches, driven by Diego. Juliana, Isabel, and Nuria took one last look at the large house where they had spent their lives. They were leaving behind memories of a safe and happy time; behind them, too, was everything that gave witness to Tomas de Romeu’s passage through this world. His daughters had not been able to give him a decent burial; his remains came to rest in a common grave beside other prisoners executed in La Ciudadela. The only thing they kept was a miniature painted by a Catalan artist in which he appeared young, slim, and unrecognizable. The three women sensed that at that moment they were crossing a definitive threshold to begin a new stage in their lives. They were silent, fearful, and sad. Nuria began to recite the rosary in a quiet voice, and the sweet cadence of her prayers accompanied them for a good distance, until they fell asleep. Up on the coachman’s box, Diego urged the horses along and thought about Bernardo, as he did almost every day. He missed him so much that he often found himself talking aloud, as he had always done with his brother. His silent presence, his unflagging protection, guarding his back and defending him from all danger, was just what he needed now. Diego asked himself whether he alone was capable of helping the de Romeu girls or whether, to the contrary, he was leading them into disaster. His plan to travel across Spain might be another of his hare-brained ideas, and he was tormented by doubt. And like his passengers, he was frightened. It was not the delicious fear that preceded the danger of combat, that cold fist in the pit of his stomach, that glacial tingle at the nape of his neck; this was the oppressive weight of a responsibility he was not prepared for. If something should happen to those women, especially Juliana… No, he would not even consider such a possibility. He cried out, calling Bernardo and his grandmother, White Owl, to come to his aid, but his voice was lost in the night, swallowed up in the sound of the wind and the horses’ hooves. He knew that Rafael Moncada would look for them in Madrid and other important cities, that he would have the border with France watched and every boat that left Barcelona or any other Mediterranean port searched, but he hoped that it would not occur to him to pursue them to the other coast. He planned to outsmart Moncada by leaving for America from the Atlantic port of La Coruna, as no one in his right mind would travel away from Barcelona to take a ship. It would be very risky for a c
aptain to shelter fugitives from justice, as Juliana pointed out, but he could think of no other solution. They would resolve the problem of getting across the ocean when they came to that; first they had to deal with the obstacles they might meet on dry land. Diego decided to go as far as they could in the next hours and then get rid of the coach. Someone might have seen them leave Barcelona. After midnight the horses were showing signs of fatigue, and Diego thought that they were far enough away from the city that they could rest. By the light of the moon, he left the road and headed the vehicle into a wood, where he unhitched the horses and let them graze. The night was cold and clear. All four slept inside the coach, bundled in blankets, until Diego waked them a couple of hours later, when it was still dark, to share a meal of bread and sausage. Nuria then gave them the clothing they would wear for the rest of the journey; the pilgrims’ habits that she had made in case Santiago de Compostela saved Tomas de Romeu’s life: tunics that fell to mid-calf, wide-brimmed hats, long pilgrim’s staffs with a curved end to hold a gourd for collecting water. The girls left on their layers of petticoats to combat the cold, and they all wound themselves in scarves and donned heavy wool leggings and gloves. Nuria had also brought a couple of bottles of a potent liquor that was extremely effective for forgetting one’s troubles. The chaperone had never imagined that those rough robes would be used by the remnants of the family to escape, much less that she would end up keeping her vow to the saint when he had not fulfilled his part of the bargain. To her it seemed a deceit unworthy of a man as serious as the apostle James, but she supposed that he had some hidden design that would be revealed at the opportune moment. At first Diego’s idea had seemed wise, but after looking at the map Nuria realized what it meant to cross the widest part of Spain on foot. It was not a journey, it was an epic. Ahead of them lay at least two months of walking through every kind of weather, eating what they could beg, and sleeping beneath the stars. In addition, it was already November, it was raining constantly, and soon they would wake to find the ground covered with ice. None of them was accustomed to walking long distances, and certainly not in a laborer’s sandals. Nuria allowed herself to curse Santiago under her breath, and, in passing, to tell Diego what she thought about his preposterous pilgrimage. Once they had put on their pilgrim’s robes and eaten, Diego decided it was time to abandon the coach. They all took their own belongings, wrapped them in a blanket, and slung the bundle over their shoulders; the rest they loaded onto the horses. Isabel was carrying her father’s pistol hidden among her petticoats. Diego carried his Zorro disguise in his bundle, unable to part with it, and beneath his pilgrim’s robe he had hidden two double-edged Basque daggers a hand’s span long. His whip hung at his waist, as always. Though he had never before been separated from the sword his father had given him in California, he had to leave it behind because it was impossible to disguise. Pilgrims did not carry weapons. There were scoundrels of every ilk along the roads, but usually no one troubled travelers who were going to Compostela, since they took a vow of poverty for the duration of the pilgrimage. No one could imagine that that modest quartet had a small fortune in precious stones sewn into their clothing. They were no different in appearance from the usual penitents on their way to prostrate themselves before the famous Santiago, to whom they attributed the miracle of having saved Spain from the Muslim invaders. For centuries, the Arabs had been victorious in battles, thanks to the invincible arm of Muhammad, their guide, until a shepherd made the timely discovery of the bones of Saint James abandoned in a field in Galicia. How they got there from the Holy Land was part of the miracle. Those relics had the power to unify the small Christian kingdoms of the region, and were so effective in directing the brave Spanish forces that they drove out the Moors and recovered their land for Christianity. Santiago de Compostela became the most important site for pilgrims in all of Europe. At least, that was Nuria’s story, though hers was slightly more embellished. The chaperone believed that the head of the apostle remained intact and every Good Friday shed real tears. The supposed remains lay in a silver coffin beneath the altar of the cathedral, but in his desire to protect them from the raids of the pirate Sir Francis Drake, a bishop had hidden them so well that it was a long time before they were found again. For that reason the war and the lack of faith the numbers of pilgrims had been greatly reduced; previously they had come by the hundreds of thousands. Those who traveled to the sanctuary from France followed the northern route, crossing through Basque country, and that was the one our friends chose. For centuries, churches, convents, hospitals, even the poorest peasants, offered a roof and a meal to the penitents. That hospitable tradition worked in favor of the small group led by Diego; it allowed them to travel without having to carry foodstuffs. Although pilgrims were rare in that season it was easier to travel in the spring and summer they did not expect to attract special attention; religious fervor had increased since the French had been driven out, and the many Spaniards who had promised to visit the saint if they won the war were fulfilling their vows. It was growing light when they took to the road. That first day they walked more than five leagues, until Juliana and Nuria gave up because their feet were bleeding and they were faint from hunger. About four in the afternoon they stopped at a hut whose owner turned out to be a tragic woman who had lost her husband in the war. As she informed them, the French had not killed him; he had been murdered by Spaniards, who had accused him of hiding food instead of giving it to the guerrilla fighters. She knew who the murderers were she had seen their faces clearly, country people like herself who were using the bad times as an excuse to wreak havoc. They were not guerrillas, they were brutes, and they had raped her poor daughter, who had been mad from birth and never harmed anyone, and taken all her animals. Only a nanny goat that had been off wandering in the hills was spared, she said. One of the men’s nose had been eaten away by syphilis, and the other had a long scar on his face. She remembered them very well, and not a day went by that she didn’t curse them and cry out to heaven for revenge, she added. She had no one but her daughter, whom she tied to a chair to keep her from clawing herself. Her home was a stinking, windowless stone and mud cube that mother and daughter shared with a pack of dogs. This woman had very little to give, and she was weary of having beggars stop in, but she did not want to leave them without shelter. Because Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary could not find a place in the inn, the child Jesus was born in a manger, she said. She believed that refusing a pilgrim was repaid with many centuries of suffering in purgatory. The travelers sat down on the earthen floor, surrounded by flea-bitten dogs, to recover from their exhaustion, while their host cooked a few potatoes on the coals and dug a couple of onions from her wretched garden. “This is all I have. My daughter and I have eaten nothing else for months, but maybe tomorrow I will be able to milk the nanny goat,” she said. “May God repay you, senora,” Diego murmured. The only light in the hut entered through the door opening, which she closed at night with a stiff horse hide, and the glow from the small brazier in which she had roasted the potatoes. While they ate the frugal meal, the peasant observed them from the corner of her rheumy eyes. She drew the obvious conclusions as she took in their soft white hands, their noble features and slim bodies, and remembered that they were traveling with two horses. She did not want to know the details; the less she knew, she reasoned, the fewer problems she would have. These were no days to be asking questions. When her guests had eaten, she gave them half-tanned, smelly sheepskins and led them to a shed where she stored firewood and ears of corn. There they bedded down. Nuria found the shed considerably more welcoming than the hut, with its dog odors and the yowls of the pitiful girl. They chose spaces and skins and got ready for a long night. They were making themselves as comfortable as possible when the peasant woman reappeared carrying a small pot of fat, which she gave them with the recommendation that they rub it on their raw feet. She stood staring at the battered group with a mixture of distrust and curiosity. “Pilgrims indeed. Anyone can see that you ar
e genteel folk. I do not want to know what you are running from, but here is some free advice.