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.A few guards loitered in the trees, mostly occupied with smoking cigarettos and flirting with the poblana girls.Gentlemen of Don Rafael’s type strolled among the guns with lady-friends, but January’s eye was drawn to a solitary figure in gray corduroy, half-hidden in the shadows of the cypresses.January dropped back into the trees himself, and circled so as to come behind the man, who was in any case so deeply involved in making notes in a pocket memorandum-book that he didn’t turn until January was nearly in touching-distance.Then he spun, his hand going to the pistol he wore at his waist.“January,” said John Dillard, and relaxed.“Come to see the parade?”“Such as it is,” said January.“I’ve seen better artillery turn-outs at Fourth of July militia parades down Canal Street.”Dillard pocketed book and pencil and held out his hand to shake.“They’re bringing in cannon from Vera Cruz next week, I hear.”“I hear that, too,” agreed January, clasping the American’s hand in his own and wondering how he could unobtrusively bring up the subject of fugitive German valets and Anthony Butler’s slaves.“Those’ll be the cannon they took from the Spanish fifteen years ago: they haven’t been fired or cleaned since then.”The Tennessean’s blue eyes narrowed sharply.“Where’d you hear that?”“At the opera,” said January.“Playing cards at the back of one of the boxes with about half the Mexican officer corps.” Dillard had looked as nonplussed as if January had said he’d been slipped battle-plans at a church-service.“Those cannon are so fouled with rust, I’d be surprised if you can stuff a ball down them, even if the men who’re selling powder to the Army weren’t adulterating it with coal dust and sand.”“Bastards.” Dillard spat, indignant in spite of himself.By the amount of tobacco-juice in the grass, he’d been standing by the artillery park, making notes, for some time.“You’re still outnumbered, though,” said January quietly.“Badly.”“We’ll manage.”“I pray you do.You remember what happened six months ago, when the state of Zacatecas tried to rebel against Santa Anna in favor of the old Constitution of 1824, as Texas is doing now.Not only were all the militia slaughtered, but Santa Anna turned his troops loose on the civilians as well.”“I guess Mr.Houston’ll just have to keep that from happening,” said Dillard, and spat again.“I appreciate you telling me about the cannon and the powder and all,” he added.“I’ll pass that word along to Mr.Butler.They said when I came here it wouldn’t matter that I didn’t speak the language, but Lord—” He broke off, eyes going past January, and he let out a low, bemused whistle.“Well, now, will you look at that?”January followed his glance to the extremely stylish barouche drawn by four matched cream-colored horses to a shady spot on the fringes of the reviewing-ground.In it, Natividad Lorcha fanned herself with spangled yellow silk and followed Santa Anna’s wide-shouldered scarlet form with parted lips and admiring gaze.When the Generalissimo turned her way, she lifted her hand in greeting.Santa Anna made his horse caracole for her, and swept off his plumed chapeau bras.January was about to pass along Rose’s remark about a black mourning corset when realization dropped into place; he asked Dillard, “You know the young lady?” and was astonished at how off-hand his voice sounded to his own ears.Dillard chuckled.“Well, we were never introduced.But I do know the last time I seen her, she was walkin’ out with one of Santa Anna’s best friends.”January nodded wisely, with as much a man-of-the-world grin as he guessed a white man would tolerate about a woman who, if not precisely white, wasn’t black either.“A pretty good friend, I’d say.” Both men laughed.But Rose, when he recounted the conversation to her minutes later, said, “Dillard is Valentina’s lover at the garden wall?”“He has to be,” said January.“Where else would he have seen Natividad and Don Prospero together?”“Then Butler’s slaves—or freedmen, as the case may be.”“.suddenly have a connection with Werther Bremer after all,” finished January softly.“Though why Butler would have sent slaves or former slaves after Werther when he had Dillard and his other secretaries for the job still escapes me.”“Possibly it wasn’t Butler who sent them, but Dillard himself.”“Possibly.Either Dillard saw something or learned something—God knows what—on the night of the murder, or more likely Valentina enclosed a note of some kind with the parcel she passed over the wall.Hannibal isn’t the only man in the Valley of Mexico capable of translating Spanish to English, though there doesn’t seem to be anyone on Butler’s staff endowed with that particular talent.”“That’s very harsh of you, Benjamin,” reproved Rose, angling her head to peer over her spectacles.“You can’t expect Mr.Dillard to entrust his love-letters to the pig-headed rhinoceros.In a way I’m relieved that it isn’t Ylario taking the law into his own hands.”“And he may still be.”“True.But it does leave us with the problem of how we’re going to get around Butler.” She switched effortlessly to Latin as Consuela and Doña Gertrudis, trailed by the faithful Sancho, appeared beside the carriage and climbed in.“How we shall deal with the butler if we cannot find the valet.”By the time January reached the cypress grove near the artillery, Natividad’s carriage was empty.One of the soldiers guarding it—there were six of them, more than were in charge of keeping Texians with memorandum-books from counting the field-pieces in the artillery park—informed him for the sum of a reale that La Señorita had indeed gone to take her comida with the Generalissimo and his officers.With as much of an appearance of leisure as he could muster, January strolled among the picnickers who had now spread themselves out among the cypress-trees around the fringes of the parade-ground, scanning the crowd for sight of Natividad’s mother.He saw no sign of the squat, black-clad figure, though he did see a number of cock-fights, a dog-fight, dozens of assignations, and Don Tulio de Avila y Merced running a faro-bank for an enormous crowd of young officers and gentlemen, with every sign of carrying on into the evening.As January, Rose, Consuela, and Doña Gertrudis returned across the marsh to the town, the smell of smoke and cooking from the Army camp and the drifting music of a dozen bands followed them for miles.Before departing for the review that morning, January had sent a note to Dr.Hernan Pichon at the Hospital of San Hipólito, and Rose had dispatched another to Consuela’s aunt in the Convent of the Bleeding Heart of Mary.Upon their return, they found replies to both these missives, Dr.Pichon bidding them to visit on the following day—Tuesday—and Sor Maria-Perdita arranging for Rose to call on Friday afternoon.In France it was still considered an amusing way to pass an afternoon, in some circles, to visit mad-wards and watch the antics of the lunatics, though this was no longer as fashionable as it had once been.Some of January’s friends in Paris—writers and artists of the Gothic genre, mostly—claimed they did so out of a desire to “more deeply understand the human emotions through the dreams of madmen,” though January suspected this argument as less than honest [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]