Bridge of Fire, page 20
The years fell away. They were lovers again, passionate, wild, insatiable, shameless, demanding more and more. Francisca’s pelvis rose to meet his penetration and pounding thrusts, her hips twisted, riding with him, a savage, ecstatic joy gripping her as they both clung and strove to the final shuddering release.
“I love you!” she gasped. “Oh, God. I do love you.”
He held her against his muscled chest, where his heart still thudded to the heavy beat of her own. “It has been, will always be, the same for me. It seems, my darling, that we are doomed to love forever.”
She felt rather than saw his smile, and wished for a brief moment that he had not used the word “doomed” before she fell asleep in his arms.
Chapter XVI
Francisca opened her eyes to find Miguel smiling at her.
“My arm’s gone to sleep,” he said in mock complaint, thinking that he would have given his entire fortune and the Espíritu Santo thrown in if once during the bleak years that had separated them, he could have had reason to say the same.
She shifted her head to the pillow, freeing her long, dark fall of hair from behind her neck with a graceful movement of white, rounded arms.
He rose on an elbow and, with a tender hand, spread the silken mass in a fan over the pillow, framing the face that glowed up at him with a shining incandescence.
“Still stiff?” he asked.
“A little,” she replied, tentatively moving her neck from side to side. She had been too ecstatically happy to take more than passing note of her aching muscles. But now she felt the soreness in her thighs, her calves, and backside, and the dull pain that had settled at the top of her spine.
“Negligent of me to forget, was it not? I wonder why. Mmmm?”
Laughter bubbled up in her throat. He bent and kissed her forehead, her lips, pausing there, clinging to her mouth.
“Enough!” he said abruptly, tearing himself away, “or I shall forget again. Now, where did I put that liniment?”
It had an acid sting to it. But, oh, how wonderful it felt, the sure, strong hands moving over her back, kneading the sore flesh and tired muscles.
“Did I hear you right?” Miguel asked, rubbing more liniment on her legs. “You do love me. It wasn’t something you said in the heat of passion?”
“It was—Ouch! Not so hard, Miguel—the truth.”
“And your husband?”
“Ruy was good to me, Miguel. But I never loved him. Aunt Juliana lied to you. She wanted me to marry Ruy because he was of the same faith. I never knew she had sent you away. All I could think of was how you had walked out of that room with only a few cold words.”
“I was a fool, Francisca. I realized it the minute I closed the door that day. But for pride, I would have admitted it at once. But I couldn’t, not then. Not until a week later, when I realized that life without you would be hollow, without purpose, and I went looking for your father,”
“If I’d only known. I thought you didn’t love me, that you had informed on us.”
She heard the abrupt intake of his breath as his hands ceased their movements. He flipped her over roughly, an angry flush staining his face. “How could you think so little of me? Call me a thief, a liar, a brigand, even an ass. But never an informer.”
“Miguel,” she chided gently, touching his cheek, “you are not the only one who can make a mistake.”
Slowly the flush faded from his face as he contemplated the loving smile that lit her soft brown eyes.
Placated almost against his will, he lifted her, gathering her in his arms, holding her close, rocking her. “Francisca, Francisca, how cleverly you disarm me.”
They made love again, a joyful coming together laced with laughter and wild kisses. Yet their passion carried with it an undercurrent of desperate need, as though this were the first and last time they would be locked in this most intimate act.
Afterward, lying side by side, they talked in low voices, interrupting each other in their eagerness to explain away past misunderstandings, amused to find that each had thought the other cold.
Miguel mapped out their future. Escape to Spain. There he would get his wife’s consent for an annulment, then on to Rome, where he would gain an audience with the pope to hasten the procedure. Once married, they would find a place to live, in Genoa, perhaps, or Amsterdam, a seaport in a country that did not persecute people of another religious faith. When all had been settled, Miguel would return to Zacatecas to search for Jorge.
Snuggling close on that chilly, windy morning with the rising sun staining the mountain peaks beyond their window in flushed pinks and bright gold, the future seemed bright and hopeful, the years ahead full of promise.
After two days at Montana Hermosa, they prepared to resume their journey. The horses they had obtained in Puebla were traded for ones bred for the higher altitudes, heavy-coated animals, somewhat smaller than their previous mounts, but surefooted, accustomed to the narrow, winding paths they would encounter.
“You must not overtire them,” Don Luis warned. “There will be no inns or hostelries along the way where you can obtain fresh horses. Also I advise a guide. There is a young man on my estate, Pico, an Indian, native to the mountains, who would serve you well. You are properly armed?”
“All three of us with guns and daggers, and enough powder to carry us through an attack or two.”
“Good.” Don Luis observed his nephew quizzically. “It is none of my affair, but is it absolutely necessary for you to go to Tampico?”
“Yes, Uncle. A man there owes me a great deal of money.”
“Ah,” Don Luis acknowledged. “There is a saying, ’To collect a debt, one would travel the road to Hades.’”
They climbed all of the first morning, urging the horses up through the trees to sheer, dizzying heights, where the wind whipped at their flimsy straw hats and poked icy fingers down the necks of their serapes. The guide was in the lead, followed by Miguel, then Francisca, while the rear was brought up by Alvaro, who led the horse carrying their supplies.
Occasionally they would pass a dwelling literally carved out of the stony escarpment, a crude log hut abutted by a tiny spur of land planted in corn and hot peppers. Once, jogging down to a ravine, they rode through a village, a cluster of log huts with thatched roofs. Barking dogs ran alongside, nipping at the horses’ heels, yellow-fanged, rangy animals who cringed at a flick of their whips. Indian women, some with sleepy, sloe-eyed babies in their arms, came out waving for them to stop, thinking they were peddlers. Riders seldom arrived from the outer world, Pico explained in his broken Spanish. But when they did, the most sought after commodity was salt, bought in dribbles, for the price of salt was dear to these people.
They camped that night in a grove of pines on the banks of a rock-tumbled stream. It was bitterly cold. The fire they built under the lee of a boulder heated their faces and hands, while their backsides remained chilled. They ate tortillas and frijoles, washing them down with strong coffee. Alvaro, producing a guitar, entertained them with Andalusian songs, his weather-beaten features relaxing into nostalgia in the orange glow of the fire. Pico sat a little apart with an expressionless face, gazing into the flames, his high cheekbones making planes of shadow on his dark-skinned face.
Francisca made no protest when Miguel indicated they would share the same blankets. The girl who had once recoiled at the thought of what others would say if she became Miguel’s mistress had found that such things hardly mattered. She had been through too much to fret about convention now. Love was too precious to hide or postpone.
Snuggled close, they warmed each other with slow, burning kisses. Miguel, aroused, tried to restrain himself out of delicacy, for the other two men had bedded down only a few feet from them. But Francisca’s soft breasts pressed against him, her hands caressing the thigh he had slung over her delectably rounded hip, was too much. With a low moan he tugged at her trousers, while she, suppressing a giggle, unfastened his. His fingers found a breast under her shirt, teasing at the nipple until it hardened in his palm. He kissed her lips again, edging his knee between her thighs, rubbing it slowly, sensually against the inner tenderness. Francisca’s hand pressed against his chest, moved to his face, the back of his head, her fingers losing themselves in the crisp red-gold hair. Still on his side, without turning her, Miguel entered the warm moistness with a gliding thrust that brought heat to her face, a pulse beating in her throat. Together they moved, in slow, erotic rhythm, their hearts thudding against each other, a rising excitement gripping both, their need a passionate hunger as they strove to catch the golden ring, and then in one glorious, indescribable moment, they had it in their hands, a triumph that sent them clinging together as they plummeted through space.
The horses were kept at a walk, Miguel husbanding their endurance for the long, difficult journey ahead. The terrain through which they passed was magnificent: peak after peak wearing misty crowns, long rocky slopes, wooded gorges, valleys far below that looked toy like from the heights, rain falling in slanting sheets across a deep barranca, the sun catching the top of a roaring cataract in an arched rainbow. Miguel and Francisca were to look back on those days in the mountains and their nights of love under the stars that hung like flickering lamps over their heads, the pine-scented air, and the feeling of otherworldliness as the happiest they were to know in a long while.
On the fourth night their guide and his horse vanished, silently melting into the darkness while they slept. Why he had gone, where he went, they were never to know. Alvaro, who had been through this section of New Spain years earlier, had only a hazy memory of the way. For the rest they must trust to instinct and to Miguel’s ability to read the stars.
In the late afternoon of the fifth day as they crossed a high, dry mesa, they encountered masses of flies and gnats, attacking both man and beast with a vindictiveness that drew blood. It was useless to try and sweep them away. They only returned a fraction of a moment later, fastening themselves on their faces and hands and every inch of exposed flesh.
“Are you getting tired?” Miguel asked, riding beside Francisca as the road widened.
“No,” she lied, her parched lips parting in a cracked smile.
He reached over and squeezed her hand. “I love you, my darling.”
His smile was drink to her. The blue eyes, so startling in his bronzed face, so full of love, banished discomfort. Miguel loved her. Thirst and weariness were forgotten. At that moment she felt as though she could travel on across an endless desert forever simply on the strength of that tender smile.
Late that day they had passed two riders who warned them of bandits in the neighborhood. When their little company camped that night, they did not light a fire, but ate their food cold: maize cakes and chili peppers that bit the tongue. The men took turns standing guard. Francisca, shivering under her blanket, was glad when Miguel was relieved by Alvaro. As she nestled close to him, his kisses returned the warmth to her limbs.
When he began to undo her trousers, she raised herself on an elbow.
“Miguel—perhaps we should be more restrained. I’ve been thinking, Alvaro…”
When she arched her back in resistance, his arm circled her waist, wrapping her tight, his mouth capturing hers in a hungry, searing kiss. Yielding, boneless, she felt love and desire ripple through her on waves of joy. He kissed the curve of her neck, turning her over, straddling her. His hand pulled the serape over her head, then went to the buttons of her shirt.
“Miguel…” Her voice trailed off as he bared a breast, bringing his lips to the full roundness, his tongue teasing the little nipple.
Naked in his arms, binding herself to him, she rose and fell with his strong, relentless pounding, her body melded to his, her hands clinging to the corded muscles of his back. Each wove an enchantment for the other. The cold mountain mist became a diaphanous veil; the hard ground upon which they lay became a soft bed with silken sheets and down pillows. He brought her to the brink, then retreated, brought her there once more and, the instant before release, pulled away again. Moaning, she tore at his hair, striving for the golden moment, grinding her hips into his pelvis until, with a powerful last thrust, he brought both of them out of their striving into the shattering light.
They were descending now, the horses stepping carefully down the rock-strewn trail, their hooves sending pebbles flying and bounding into the deep ravine thousands of feet below. The path twisted, bending around an outcropping of rock on which a lone tree had managed to take root, growing outward above the blue void below. On the far side of the sharp turn, coming toward them, was a line of tamemes, native porters, toiling up the precipitous trail, bent double under their packs. They carried charcoal, from where to where, Francisca’s party could not guess. As the three of them drew aside, hugging the rocky wall, the tamemes passed silently, single file, without lifting their stoic Indian faces.
Toward late afternoon the trail flattened out, leading through a copse of trees. To the right on a cleared space stood a ruin, a tiered pyramid with steps leading to its flat top. Niches were carved in its sides, at close, even intervals on each layer, giving the impression of a many-roomed, many-storied mansion with open doors. Each niche was crowned by a stone image of a plumed serpent, a snarling jaguar, or a taloned eagle. Weeds grew waist-high about it, seedlings sprouting on the stone steps and in the fissures of the walls.
An eerie, ghostly air hung over it, a haunting silence that made Francisca shiver in the hot sun, and Alvaro cross himself.
“Pagans,” Alvaro said with disdain. “They would have killed each other off if the Spanish hadn’t come to save them from their bloody rites.”
“So we killed them to save them,” Miguel said, irony tinging his voice.
“You know very well that many of their own kind fought with Cortés to overthrow their bloody priests.”
“To their ultimate dismay, perhaps?”
“You speak oddly for the grandson of a conquistador.”
“The truth is never odd, friend. Perhaps toward the end of his life my grandfather might have thought the same. Quién sabe?”
A mile from the ruin they observed a settlement nestled in a shallow valley below the trail. They drew up and sat looking down on the tiled roofs of four or five Spanish houses and the thatched roofs of perhaps a dozen native ones. In the tiny square around which the Spanish houses had been built, a flock of vultures were feeding, while high overhead, two more were wheeling.
“Something’s amiss,” Miguel said. “Let us go down.” No one came out to greet him. A mongrel barked halfheartedly from an open doorway. And then they saw it, fly-covered corpses pierced with arrows or with bashed-in heads strewn about the dusty lanes, slumped in doorways, and hanging from windows. A terrible stench of rotting flesh permeated the air.
They trotted slowly down the street, covering their noses with their kerchiefs. At their approach, cruelly beaked vultures cawed, rising with a flap of black wings.
They drew up in the shadow of a small, rustic church. Miguel dismounted. “Stay here; I’ll only be a minute or two.”
They watched as he entered a house, going from it to a second and third.
“A massacre,” he said on returning, his face grim, “and recent from the looks of it.”
Alvaro, shifting in the saddle, crossed himself again. “God have mercy on their souls.” He looked around, his gaze lingering for a few moments on the trees beyond the houses. “Those savages could not have gone far. Pagan butchers! A curse on them!” His narrowed eyes scanned the carnage-littered street. “This place smells of evil, evil not yet finished. We should not linger, Miguel.”
“I agree. Our friends here deserve a decent Christian burial, but there are too many. It would take days, a week. However, the least we can do is pray for their souls. A small—”
His words were abruptly halted by an arrow whining past his shoulder, embedding itself in the church wall, its tail quivering.
With one easy, graceful movement, Miguel swung into the saddle. And then he was leading them down the street at a furious gallop. Naked brown men erupted from behind walls and trees and, with bloodcurdling yells, sent a rain of missiles after them.
Francisca leaned low, hugging the mare’s neck, her heart pounding with fear. She heard the sound of shots, and a moment later her hat flew from her head. God! Close, too close! Afraid that Miguel or Alvaro might have been hit, she raised her head for a quick look. All right. Miguel in front, Alvaro behind, shooting over his shoulder at their pursuers.
Up they went, clouds of dust rising under flying hooves, the tireless horses streaking along the ascending trail. From behind, the attackers whooped and shrieked, and mingled with these unearthly howls, Francisca could discern the sound of horses in pursuit. An arrow whizzed by her ear, and a second. Wheeling, Francisca followed Miguel as they thundered through the trees, branches slapping her humped back, tree trunks and moss-covered rocks flashing by at a dizzying speed. Then they were out in the open, racing across the cleared space where they had paused earlier, heading toward the ruined pyramid. Suddenly Francisca heard the twang of an arrow that had found its mark. She cried out as her horse faltered, stumbled, and went to its knees.
Miguel, still in the lead, whirled about, galloped back, and leaning over, grasped Francisca’s outstretched arm, pulling her up to his saddle. The shouts behind them quickened, echoing with a note of triumph. But Miguel, exhibiting the kind of horsemanship that had won him accolades on the riding fields of Seville, pranced his horse about, and they were off, driving hard through the tall grass toward the pyramid.
When they reached its base, Miguel dismounted, shouting, “Up to the first platform.”
