I am for war, Popé said in anger. I will not rest until the Españoles are gone from our land, and their homes and churches burned to the ground.
One by one the other war captains nodded.
Set the date for our attack, the oldest captain said with heavy heart. Each had spoken. Now they would act together.
Popé set the date. August 10, 1680, according to the calendar of the Españoles. He tied knotted cords of yucca and sent them to all the pueblos.
Sonny turned and the time of the dream turned with him. The last knot on the yucca cord was untied and cries of war sounded in the juniper-covered hills and echoed across the ravines of northern New Mexico.
The Pueblo Indians swept down on the Spanish settlements, killing everyone in sight and desecrating the churches. Leaving a trail of death, they descended on Santa Fé. There they surrounded the thousand men, women, and children who were left alive. They cut off the water ditch that fed the city, and they fought off the feeble attempts of the Spanish soldiers to open it. They would starve the Spaniards into submission.
Sonny followed the images of his nightmare, ordering them as he went, and though all was clear, he realized he couldn’t change the course of history.
From the other pueblos word came to Popé. The pueblos of Acoma, Zuni, and Hopi had joined the revolt. Everywhere the warriors of the pueblos burned churches, killed priests, and marched on Santa Fé.
Tossing and turning away from the carnage, Sonny let out a cry. He opened his eyes, and in the dim light, he saw Rita. She touched a cool cloth to his forehead.
“Murder, murder,” he gasped.
“No!” Lorenza pressed him down. “Stay in your dreams! Don’t let Raven control it!”
“Have to,” Sonny replied. He knew he had lost it. Could he return and face the outcome of the violent nightmare?
“My notes,” he whispered. He knew that on Monday, August 12, after two days of siege, Governor Otermin had stepped out of the burning rubble and mud huts to parley with Popé.
Sonny closed his eyes and returned to his dream.
Are you mad? Otermin asked the Indian leader. We have brought the holy faith to you and your people. We have brought our civilization so you might progress. Is this how you thank us?
Since your Oñate came, we have been made to pay tribute and work your fields, Popé answered. You have desecrated our kivas and punished our priests. Now you must leave this land.
This is also our land, Otermin answered. The king himself has sent us to colonize and Christianize this region. This rebellion is against His Most Royal Majesty. If you desist, I will pardon you, but you must return quietly to your homes and be obedient to the law of His Majesty.
Popé laughed. We will no longer be obedient.
Obedience had brought too much suffering. He offered the governor two crosses. One red, one white.
If you choose the white, we will let you leave in peace, Popé said. If you choose the red, we will make war, and all your people will die.
Otermin chose the red, and for three days Popé made war on the beleaguered settlers who had taken refuge in the Palace of the Governors. A force of two thousand Pueblo men ringed the capital. It was only a matter of time before Santa Fé would fall.
“What can I do?” Sonny cried.
Where was Coyote? Where was the guide he needed to take hold of the dream?
There is only chaos and madness, a voice replied, and the Bringer of Curses appeared. Sonny saw the dark figure walking the alleys of the besieged capital.
Two soldiers guarding the back gate of the Palace of the Governors challenged him.
Quién pasa?
Un soldado de Su Majestad, Raven replied.
I don’t recognize you, said the suspicious sentry, drawing close to Raven.
I came with the new group of soldiers to serve Governor Otermin and defend the Villa de la Santa Fé.
What is your name? the second sentry asked.
Antonio de Cuervo.
No! Sonny heard himself shouting, trying to warn the guards. Don’t let him in! But struggle as he would, Sonny could not influence the events of his dream, Raven was controlling the dream.
What are you doing out in the streets? the sentry asked.
I have been scouting, Raven said, drawing closer and lifting his weapon, a curved sword so sharp that when it came down across the first guard, it sliced off his head. Blood spurted and he crumpled to the ground.
Raven struck again, and the second startled guard was disemboweled. Dios mío, he cried as he fell.
Raven walked quickly through the wooden door, leaving it open for the Pueblo warriors.
The smell of death was in the air. Outside the walls of the Palace of the Governors lay the carcasses of dead cows and horses, smoldering in the flames that had spread around the villa. Shrieks of animals and wounded men echoed in the night. The Pueblo men came in the dark and picked up their wounded, and when they found a wounded Spaniard, they took him. Then the cries of the tortured man could be heard far into the night.
Raven moved quickly to the women’s quarters, and all Sonny could do was to follow. In this area of the Governors’ Palace the women of the city and the vicinity were bunched like chickens in a coop. One small room, a cell, had been reserved for Caridad de Anaya, the young sixteen-year-old daughter of don Cristóbal de Anaya from Alburquerque. She had come to marry Hernán Vaca, a young soldier, but the plans had been interrupted by the rebellion. Now the young bride-to-be huddled in the small room that had been set aside by the governor.
Rest and do not trouble yourself, Governor Otermin had told her. This uprising will be quelled in a matter of hours. Then, as I have promised your father, the marriage plans will continue. I will be the padrino, and your father and mother will be here at your side. This madness of the natives is only a momentary thing.
Sonny knew that in Alburquerque the entire family of don Cristóbal, and many other families in the haciendas south of Santa Fé, had been wiped out. One son survived, the young Cristóbal, and documents would later reveal that he would live with the Indians until de Vargas returned thirteen years later.
Sonny groaned. His nightmare had become a whirlwind of destruction, tame mares became the trampling horses of the Apocalypse, and there was nothing he could do. He had entered the correct time, but he could not twist the events.
Coyote! he cried. Where are you?
He saw other colonists from Río Abajo, fleeing to Isleta Pueblo, where they gathered in terror, thinking Santa Fé had surely fallen, with all inhabitants killed.
He saw Raven flinging a door open and entering Caridad’s room. Caridad de Anaya, he called her name. I come to claim you!
No, Sonny shouted again, struggling. But he realized that he was bound by the rules of the dream. If he struggled too much, he would awaken, and there would be nothing he could do to help the girl. Again he looked for Coyote, but he was not to be found.
If he was to stop Raven, he had to be the actor in the dream, not the mere witness. He had to participate within the dream, but he didn’t know how.
He could only watch as Raven lifted the young girl from her bed and carried her away, past the confusion of the new attack on the palace. The natives, led by Popé and other war captains, had discovered the open back door and entered the Palace of the Governors, and the battle was joined within the last sanctuary of the Spaniards.
Raven, carrying a screaming Caridad, hurried past soldiers and natives locked in hand-to-hand combat. Their shouts and the thunder of cannons and harquebuses filled the air, and the cattle and horses that were locked in the palace patio bolted and howled, adding to the confusion as the battle swept around them.
At the same time Hernán, Caridad’s fiancé, entered the cell. Finding her missing, he ran out of the room calling her name. Caridad! Caridad!
Like the Andres Vaca of the earlier dream, Hernán dashed off in search of his bride-to-be. He had come running to protect her when the onslaught began, but he
found Caridad’s room empty.
Caridad! he cried, running into the melee, drawing his sword to fight off the natives now filling the patio. He pressed into the battle, swinging his blade with rage, blaming the Indians for his loss.
The explosion of a cannon filled the dream, and young Hernán Vaca disappeared in the blinding light.
Another line of Sonny’s ancestors were not to consummate their marriage, another ancestral line was cut off.
Sonny stared into the smoke of the battle. The adobe huts of Santa Fé were burning. The fields of corn were burning. An era had come to an end.
The smoke cleared, and Sonny saw Popé standing with the war captains. Governor Otermin lay wounded; two arrows had pierced his face. It was time to abandon Santa Fé.
Eleven days after Popé marched on the capital, the exodus from Santa Fé had begun.
We will kill them when they are out in the open, Popé said.
No, the oldest war captain replied. The bloodletting is done. Let the Españoles leave our land. Let them take their Cristo and his mother with them to their own place, that land across the sea. There let them pray to their Cristo and santos, and to the Lady Divine, who appeared to them and told them the end of their rule was coming. We will remain in our pueblos and honor our kachinas. We are not warriors who like the smell of blood. We are farmers. Let us return to our ways.
Sonny watched as the long line of Españoles, Mexicanos, and some natives, Indians who sided with the Spaniards, straggled down the Río Grande, carrying with them the same yellow silk banner Juan de Oñate had brought with him when he entered New Mexico.
On either side of the river the Pueblo Indians camped and watched the sorry exit of the homeless refugees.
Very well, we will let them pass, Popé said. The battle was won, but even as he watched the pitiful column march south, a vision appeared.
They saw it in the smoke of the burning villa.
Look! one of their medicine men cried. The Spaniards will return. In the wisps of smoke they saw the return of the Españoles.
They had found no gold, no rich mines of silver, only the hard life in the valleys of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. But they would return.
The land will call them, the medicine man said. Already they had raised their sons and daughters on the land, even on to the third generation.
Those who saw the vision recognized its truth.
Let us celebrate, Popé said. Destroy the churches; burn all their holy items as they burned ours. Kill the cows and horses, for they do not belong to our way. Bury the knives and pots made of iron. Burn the sacred books they keep in their churches.
Everything that belonged to the Españoles would be destroyed.
But not forever. The Españoles and the Mexicanos had buried their parents and grandparents in the earth of La Nueva México, and so the blood of the land would call them, the spirit of the land would call them to return.
The people who farmed had learned the ways of the pueblos had also learned the language, the food, and they shared in the dances and ceremonies. Many moved easily from Spanish village to Indian pueblo, some intermarried. A fusion of blood, of memory, of dream. That memory would draw the Españoles back.
Down the Camino Real, Governor Otermin’s bedraggled and frightened exodus came to rest near Sandia Pueblo, a few leagues from the scattered farms that would someday be known as la Villa de Alburquerque.
Why did this happen? Otermin asked an old man they found in the pueblo, one who remained friendly to the Spaniards.
Because you dishonored the way of our ancestors. Because you tried to take away our faith, the old man answered.
It is said that Otermin wept at those words. Others say he only grew more bitter, that he had not learned a lesson.
But Sonny’s concern was with Caridad. What had become of the girl, the young woman he knew was one of his grandmothers?
PART II
SOLSTICE TIME
8
Sonny jolted awake, bathed in sweat. The night’s fever had passed, but he felt sore and weak. The sense of helplessness he had experienced in the dream permeated every muscle.
He sniffed the air. Even the smell of gunpowder seemed to linger in the room.
“Nothing! There was nothing I could do!” he groaned, awakening Chica, who peered from under the blankets. “Raven took her and I just stood there! So much for being master of my dreams!”
He felt anger, then he breathed deep to let it subside. The New Mexico families were connected. You dug into one family tree and found the roots spreading. His parents often talked of the parentela, the relatives whose roots went back in time and spread across the state. One of the Anayas of la Merced de Atrisco in Alburquerque had married into the Bacas of Taos. Distant relatives. Very distant, but relatives. Familia. Was Caridad the daughter of the Cristóbal Anaya mentioned in Fray Angelico’s book?
Congestion filled his sinuses, and Sonny reached for a tissue from the box that lay on his bedside table.
Since when do I have Kleenex next to my bed? he wondered. He looked at the bedspread. A patterned blue comforter, not the old serape he had bought in the Juárez mercado a year ago. He smelled the clean, crinkly sheets. They had felt so good to get into last night, but he had been too tired to notice much more. He looked at the window, where white lace curtains glowed in the light of the morning sun.
Lace curtains he hadn’t noticed before. Rita’s work, he smiled.
“Gracias, amor,” he murmured, and pushed his feet over the side of the bed. Chica crawled out from under the covers, wagging her tail and looking up at him with loving eyes. Seal-pup eyes. Sometimes they reminded him of deer eyes, the brown eyes of a doe he had seen while hunting with Cruz Trujillo high on the Taos Mountains. Other times her eyes were human, so perceptive, understanding, and searching.
“Buenos días, Chica.” He rubbed her ears, the scruff of her neck. “Go do your thing.”
Chica leaped off the bed and disappeared. Moments later Sonny heard her barking outside. In a few minutes she would be back, ready for breakfast.
Groaning, Sonny tested his legs. Yes, the thigh muscles tensed, the strength was there, it was just something in the brain that was still jumbled, not giving the exact commands to the legs. His calves were weak, his toes cold. The cold dip in Frijoles Creek had been a shock to his system, but maybe for the best.
“It’s only a matter of time,” he said, trying to psych himself up. “Stronger than yesterday.”
He looked at the phone. It was going to ring. He shivered with dread.
Reaching out, he touched the bowl, felt its pulse again. There was no bowl in last night’s nightmare, only the carnage of the rebellion.
But he had ordered the dream, the time and place. He just didn’t have the power to be the main actor. Raven could come and go as he pleased in Sonny’s nightmares.
“But I have the bowl.”
Maybe the bowl didn’t mean anything to Raven. He was after the women, not the bowl. Maybe the bowl had been returned to him by Owl Woman.
“Who knows.” He shook off the lethargy he felt.
Taking hold of the wheelchair handles he cautiously raised himself. His trembling legs held and he walked slowly to the bathroom, pushing the chair in front of him and testing each footstep for sign of weakness. He didn’t want to fall.
He used the toilet, took a shower, and dressed. After his shower Sonny thought of shaving. His beard had grown thick during the past two months. Dark. He had asked Rita not to shave it when she volunteered to shave him. It made him look older. He felt older. With the beard he looked like the men in the dreams. Andres Vaca and Hernán Vaca both sported dark beards.
Because the Catholic Church and the Spanish civil authorities kept such meticulous records, he would be able to trace his genealogy. But his Indian grandmothers remained nameless, in many cases unknown. The Church had baptized them and given them Spanish names, Christian names. Their Indian names were erased, as if in erasing the n
ame of the heathen, the Church could make them over in a new image.
The names of the grandmothers were missing, but their blood simmered there beneath the surface. Their native beauty could not be erased. It was there in the color of the people, in Sonny’s brown skin. It was in the beauty he saw in Rita and Lorenza. Dark eyes, flashing smiles, the high cheekbones. It was there in the memory.
“If I keep my Spanish beard,” he said to Chica, “I’ll be a Spanish soldier, just like Andres and Hernán.”
Hell, he didn’t want to be a Spanish soldier. He just wanted to be who he was, or like he used to be, a freewheeling thirty-one-year-old Chicano from the North Valley. He did enough private investigating to pay his rent, take Rita dancing, help some people. Like his greatgrandfather Elfego Baca, el Bisabuelo, had helped people. He had shot it out with badass Texas cowboys to show them they couldn’t push around the poor farmers from the Socorro Valley.
No, he wasn’t Spanish, he was Nuevo Mexicano, a mestizo from the earth and blood of the Hispano homeland, which was also the Pueblo Indian homeland. He was a coyote. The history of the northern Río Grande valley had been washed by many currents, and each flood deposited its sediment in the earth of La Nueva México. The earth held the memory no one could deny. All expeditions to the Río Grande had left their imprint. Now new immigrants were filling the valley, Californians fleeing urban living, New Yorkers with their city accents, from everywhere they came seeking the sun and a slower pace of life.
Sonny turned his chair to the window. Pushing the curtains aside, he looked out. La Paz Lane, that narrow dirt road in the North Valley where he lived, was quiet and peaceful. Last night’s storm had passed, leaving behind it only a glaze of snow and cold. Enough to blow away the smog that settled into the valley this time of the year. The air inversion trapped car pollution, dust from the dirt roads, and the smoke from chimneys under a blanket of cold air. The occasional weather fronts that swept across the valley pushed the smog out of the valley and dropped a coating of snow on the Sandias.
Probably six inches of new snow on the crest, Sonny thought. Enough to get the skiers excited. By midday the temperature would rise into the forties in the valley.