Days of the Dead.pdf - Upgrade Systems

"I don't imagine he did," murmured January, "if Fernando had pilfered his mistress."
"Dios, no! That had nothing to do with the matter. It was my father's idea that Franz marry Natividad. .
. ."
"Franz?"
"Fernando. My brother. From the age of ten he had lived in Prussia, where he went to military
school-he was twenty-five when he died. He was a major in the Tenth Berlin Guards, and loved the army
of the Prussians. It was clean, he always said, as if less exalted beings lived in filth and fed upon garbage.
He did not want to come back to Mexico. He only did so this year, after the deaths of our older brother
Don Damiano and Damiano's son Luis from the vomito negro."
"So up until this year," said Rose, "this Don Damiano was your father's heir?"
"Just so," agreed Consuela, dusting dark crystals of sugar from her fingers. "My father was married
three times, you understand-in many ways that is the reason for his command that Fernando marry
Natividad, which Fernando did not want to do at all. Father's first wife was Doña Marcellina de
Medellin, by whom he had Damiano and our eldest sister Josefa, who is now a widow with two children.
After Doña Marcellina's death my father married Doña Maria-Facaltacion de Borregos, a Spanish girl
sent here to a convent during all the fighting in Spain, and she bore him Isabella and Fernando. Later still
he wed Melosia Valenzuela, who became the mother of Valentina, and who ran off one night when Valla
was a little girl with only the clothes on her back, not that I blame the wretched woman in the slightest for
doing so.
"My mother," added Consuela, her voice thinning to a wry edge, "he also attempted to imprison as he
imprisoned poor Hannibal-she was a mantua-maker-and she struck him over the head with a
tortilla-press and made her escape with the connivance of some muleteers. I don't think he ever tried that
sort of thing again with a woman. But you see, because Melosia ran away, Natividad's mother did not
see any reason why Father could not marry Natividad, and so of course to silence her Father arranged
for it that Natividad marry Franz."
While Consuela was speaking, January was marginally conscious of a steady parade of servants past
the open bed­room door. They bore the luggage, bedding, ewers of water, and wood for a bedroom fire
along the corredor. Consuela seemed to employ nearly a dozen servants, far more than even the most
lavishly-kept woman would have in France, let alone in the United States. Having seen the sheer
num­bers of poor in the streets, January guessed there were men and women who would happily scrub
chamber pots for food and a place to sleep in an attic.
No wonder anything in this country, from murder to imported point-lace, could be bought with a bribe.
With raised eyebrows, Rose asked, "And your brother agreed to this-er-arrangement?"
"He had to." Consuela poured herself another cup of coffee, and dropped a chunk of pale-brown sugar
into its inky depths. "He was a colonel in Santa Anna's army, and without my father's money he could not
buy uniforms or guns for his men when they march north to Texas to deal with the Norteamericano
rebels, for of course the Army has no money to pay for such things. Franz does not like women, you
understand, let alone that Natividad is a casco and stupid as a wooden peg."
"So Hannibal is still at the hacienda?" asked Rose. One would never guess to look at her that
twenty-four hours ago she'd been loading rifles in an overturned stagecoach with blood all over her dress.
She had a long oval face and, despite a treacherous dusting of freckles, a naturally serious expression: in