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FIVE
There wasn't much point in opening that subject with Hannibal-not with the damsel in question, her
fiancé, and her prospective mother-in-law all within twenty feet, not to mention Consuela, whom January
had once sus­pected of attempting to murder a rival over an opera im­presario's affections. Moments
later Hinojo appeared in the doorway with the announcement that card-tables had been set up, and
everyone settled down to gamble, the invariable pastime of nearly the entire upper class. Don Prospero
summarily broke into Don Anastasio's scholarly discussion of agriculture with Rose to demand that his
friend partner him at whist. Santa Anna, rather to January's surprise, asked him to make up the fourth at
the table, infuriating Señora Lorcha, who thought that her daughter should have had the position. "A most
lovely young lady," whispered the dictator to January as they took their seats, "but can't tell a spade from
a club." Natividad settled for sitting on Santa Anna's knee and asking questions about his hand ("What
will you ever do with all those hearts?") until he sent her over to help his host instead. January heard
about nothing but cock-fighting and the revolution in Texas for the remainder of the evening.
January rose early the following morning. The room he and Rose had been given lay on the eastern side
of the court, next to Hannibal's and almost directly opposite the main gate. It was massively thick-walled
and would have been considered bare by American standards, at least to Americans who hadn't spent
their first seven years sleeping on a pile of corn-shucks in a slave-cabin. He knelt in the last hard chill of
the lingering night to pray before the cross in the wall-niche, then washed in the dark, moving care­fully
so as not to trip over something and wake Rose. The water in the can beside the door was warm, and he
made a mental note to thank Cristobál. Outside in the court he could hear the muffled clop of hooves, the
voices of vaque­ros as they received their orders from the hacienda's mayor, and the soft chatter of the
indio women as they took up their carding-combs and spindles. Light trickled through the cracks in the
heavy wooden shutters. From the little chapel on the other side of the court, a small bell spoke its musical
note.
When January emerged from his room, it was to see Doña Josefa as she came out of the chapel door,
a thin, sin­ister figure in her black gown and veils, trailed by a smaller, slighter figure who had to be her
daughter, Paloma. They crossed the court and vanished beneath the gallery, through the smaller archway
that led into the realm of the women. The girl, January noted, looked around her with interest at the
horses, the vaqueros, the villagers bringing in firewood through the gates, and the men of Santa Anna’s
bodyguard, and now and then nodded to this person or that, though she dared not stop to speak. Doña
Josefa walked with head down, hands still clasped in prayer.
The chapel door closed behind them. They were the only worshippers.
Hands in the pockets of his short brown corduroy jacket, January walked the whole of the corredor
around the three sides of the court, counting doors and, where possi­ble, glancing into such rooms as
were open at this hour, fa­miliarizing himself with the lay of the land. The rooms on the south side of the
quadrangle contained only the rolled­ up straw mats and heaped woolen blankets of the accomoda­dos,
the footmen, maids, kitchen-boys who lived in the main house rent-free in exchange for their services.
Other than the usual massacred Christ on the wall, there was nothing else in that long dormitory.
Another dormitory contained the beds of the married servants, separated by muslin curtains. The
vaqueros, re­garded as a lesser breed, slept downstairs in the store-rooms along the lower arcade, or
sometimes in the sheds or on the ground among the maze of corrals that stretched behind the kitchen.