Daughter of Fortune Read Online Free PDF Page B

head and
dismounted. He held up his arms for Maria and lifted her down.
    He was a short man, not much taller than she. His
hair was curly and black and stuck out from under the red silk
scarf he wore stretched tight over his head and under his flat
black hat. His face was deeply tanned, his eyes like pools of
chocolate. His beard, cut close to his skin, could not hide the
tiny weather wrinkles around his eyes and lips. He was a young man,
perhaps twenty, but the country had already made him old.
    She looked around her, relieved, yet disquieted to
see the living again. All the men had the same young-old look. She
shivered in spite of the afternoon’s heat. This was a hard country.
She could see it in the faces around her and confirm it in her
soul. The nightmare of the past day had made her old, too.
    Once begun, she could not stop shivering. Her
rescuer took off his short cloak, leather—like everything else he
wore except his shirt—and swung it around her shoulders. She
continued to shiver, the cold coming from deep within her.
    “I have ...” she began, then stopped in confusion.
She had not spoken in more than a day, and her voice was strange to
her ears. “I have a dress ... down by the river.”
    The man tied the cords of his cloak around her neck
and gestured with his head toward the river. One of the soldiers
walked to the water, making a detour around the wagons.
    “What is your name?”
    “I am called ...” She hesitated again, and panic
pushed the cold deeper into her bones. Dios, Dios , who was
she? Was she a person anymore, or did she wander now in some
curious fashion between the quick and the dead, who lay in a
thousand pieces around them.
    The man shook her by the shoulders. The movement
snapped her head up. She looked at him, staring into his eyes, and
he gazed back.
    “I am Maria Luisa Espinosa de la Garza,” she said
clearly, wondering why she wasn't paralyzed with the embarrassment
of staring at a man, a stranger. “I have come north to live with my
sister, Margarita Espinosa de Guzman.”
    The horseman dropped his gaze, and the other men
exchanged glances.
    “Is that how it is? Well, I am Diego Masferrer, a
landowner from north of the villa of Santa Fe.”
    The soldier returned from the river with her dress.
She took it from him, suddenly aware of the glances of the other
men as she stood there in her chemise and petticoat.
    “Perhaps you would go over to that grove of trees to
put on your dress?” Diego took her by the elbow.
    “No!” she shouted at him, shaking off his hand. He
stepped back in surprise. “No,” she said again, this time her voice
low and pleading. “Don’t make me go in there again.”
    Maria clutched her dress to her and started to cry,
deep sobs that shook her whole body. Shaking her head, she picked
her way through the ruined bodies to the only other shelter on the
plain. Standing behind one of the charred wagons, she let the cloak
fall to the ground and pulled her dress over her head.
    She tried to fasten the wooden buttons, but her
fingers shook. Her arms dropped to her sides and she stood there in
the shelter of the oxcart, her head bowed, tears falling.
    “You will be well.”
    It was Diego Masferrer. He had followed her to the
wagon. He stood in front of her and buttoned her dress. He smiled
at her.
    “I have sisters,” he said, “plenty of them.”
    When her dress was fastened, he took out his
handkerchief and made her blow her nose. “That’s better,” he said.
“Now come away from here. Anywhere you say.”
    She walked to the river and sat down on the bank.
The rest of the riders joined them there and sat watching her.
    “Can you tell us what happened?”
    Could she tell them what happened? Maria was silent,
looking at Diego. He sat close to her and she wanted to reach out
and touch his face. After living with phantoms for two days, she
was deeply conscious of the life around her.
    “First, do you have any food?”
    Several of the men got up and