The Foreign Traders
 

Diego de la Vega felt the afternoon sun settle like a weight on his shoulders.  What had begun as an ordinary Sunday had now been utterly transformed.  Ever since news of the signing of the Treaties of Córdoba had reached the pueblo, he, too, had tried to tell himself that a kind of political spring had finally arrived.  He had been as loyal to Spain as anyone in California—and as wary of the insurgents.

He couldn’t have been more than fifteen when he had first heard of the slaughter of hundreds of Spaniards at the hands of a mestizo and Indian mob in Guanajuato, and he had been quite relieved to hear, some months later, that the priest who led that revolt had been caught and executed.  Not that he had blamed the dark-skinned people, for this was the same year when the soldiers in Alta California began pursuing and punishing Indians who ran away from the missions, as well as those who harbored them.  The morenos had a right to be angry.

But he had grown more sympathetic to their struggle when he learned that it wasn’t just a race war.  It included many young well-educated criollos like the one who was now head of state, American-born Spaniards like himself, who believed in the principles of equality and freedom, but who had been banned from political office by the peninsulares, the more conservative Spanish ruling class.  Finally, even he had to admit that despite Spain’s noble intentions of converting the natives to Christianity and establishing stable colonies, she had always been too far away, really, and too involved in her own conflicts, to keep the level of corruption down.

But an independent Mexico, with its wealth of natural resources, and with just a little help from the mother country, might well be able to build a real republic like the one the Yanquis had built.  True—much would depend on educating the populace.  And true also that the institution bound to do most of the educating, Holy Mother Church, still officially resisted the view of man as a noble creature capable of self governance, rather than a sinner who must be governed from on high.  Still, the insurgent priest Morelos had apparently read Rousseau.

Caught up in the spirit of everybody else’s wishful thinking, Diego had even started to let himself imagine that el Zorro might finally be able to hang up his sword, live a normal life, maybe even settle down, or at least quit tearing around the countryside risking his life on a regular basis.  Oh, he had to admit it had been fun, some of it, the excitement, the danger, the satisfaction of outwitting the scoundrels and rogues.  More than once he had joked to Bernardo about being jealous of Zorro.  Most men were.  Women swooned over him; old men sang his praises.  Masked children with sticks for swords climbed scaffolding shouting his name.  But he also knew there were times when Zorro envied Diego—of whom little was expected.  And this was one of them.

Once he was sure the two señoras weren't still watching him, he sent Bernardo to listen in on anything the soldiers outside the cárcel might be saying.  Then he stepped through the door of the inn himself, hoping to learn more about the prisoner.  The innkeeper told him simply that the man had appeared on horseback the previous day and rented a room in exchange for a gold pin set with jewels.  Then he had gone straight to the commandante's office.  Shortly thereafter, soldiers had come to confiscate his possessions, the meager contents of two saddlebags.

“I tell you, Don Diego,” said the innkeeper, shaking his head.  “You just never can tell about those crazy people from el norte.   It is not a very civilized country, from what I hear.  The Indians are still savages.  And the Yanquis, well, I hear some of them are worse than the Indians.”  Diego nodded, as if to give this new theory careful consideration.  Then, thanking the man, he paid for his drink and left.

Next, he decided to visit to the new commandante, a man who was said to have fought with Iturbide’s royalists, though Diego doubted he had seen much action.  He was probably a victim of Spain’s inheritance laws, a second or third-born son whose eldest brother had inherited the family fortune.  He seemed largely motivated by a desire to get rich, get out of the army and live the life of ease he felt he deserved.

To his credit—or perhaps it owed more to a lack of daring—he seemed less susceptible to corruption than some of his predecessors had been.  And while he thought Diego a spoiled, useless fop—probably a bit too much like the undeserving eldest brother—he was also too much on the side of wealth to openly criticize the aristocracy.  His contempt leaked out only in the form of a mild impatience with anything he found too intellectual, since he considered himself a practical man, a man of action—which meant Diego would need an excuse to see him.  But that shouldn’t be too hard to come by.

When he arrived at the comandante’s office, he was surprised to see that Capitan Miguel Acevedo already had visitors.  “Oh, yes, de la Vega,” he said, looking up from his desk, his square face broadening politely to reveal a row of small even teeth.  Then he stood up—something he did not often do when talking to Diego, since he stood nearly a full head shorter—and walked around the desk to greet him.  “Gentlemen,” he said over his shoulder, “this is the young man I was telling you about.  Diego de la Vega, may I present Señor Eusepio Marigál of Monterey.”

“Your servant, Señor,” said Diego politely, bowing his head.

“And Señor Matthew Endicott.”

“A pleasure to meet you both.”

“Señor Endicott has business in the fur trade,” Acevedo added.

“You are from England, Señor?” Diego asked.

“Uh—New York, actually,” Endicott smiled a rather ingenuous smile.  “But my business often takes me to London.  And Paris.” He offered Diego an outstretched hand, then withdrew it again. “Oh, forgive me, I keep forgetting you folks don’t shake hands, do you.  Well, no matter.  I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Señor de la Vega is the son of Alejandro de la Vega,” said Capitan Acevedo.  “Theirs is the largest hacienda in this area, known for its fine wines, cattle and horses, among other things. These gentlemen are interested in contracting for the purchase of hides and tallow on behalf of some buyers in the Oregon territories,” he said, turning back to Diego, who nodded thoughtfully.

“Well, perhaps my father and I can be of some assistance to you, gentlemen,” he said.  “But you must forgive me.  Ordinarily I would invite you to stay with us, but as it happens we are already expecting guests to arrive on business very soon.  Will you be staying long in town?”

“We will be staying for at least a few weeks,” said Marigál.  He was an intense looking man who smiled more with his lips than his eyes, and he seemed to be studying Diego carefully.  The other man, Endicott, idly studied his own well manicured fingernails.  He was handsome and fair skinned with a thick head of light brown hair smoothed back under a grey top hat, his tailcoat and close fitting trousers cut after the fashion of the English.

“Then perhaps we will be able to get together before you leave,” said Diego.

“We will look forward to it immensely,” Marigál replied.  “Oh, but forgive us if perhaps we are keeping you from some business?”

“Not at all,” Diego replied with a shrug as Acevedo turned to him, having remembered by now that Diego was usually something of a nuisance.  “Well,” he went on, “it’s just that, with all this talk of Zorro and with all the soldiers out looking for him, I was wondering if perhaps I shouldn’t stay in town tonight, maybe take a room at the inn?”

Acevedo, he thought, did a pretty good job this time of concealing his disdain.  He simply glanced sideways, then looked down.  “With all the soldiers out patrolling the hills,” he said dryly, “you will probably be safer on this particular ride home than you have ever been before.”

Diego nodded thoughtfully.  “Well, it is all very distressing,” he said.  “I do hope our guests will be safe on the road.”

“I assure you, de la Vega,” said the capitan, his eyes narrowing.  “The road to your hacienda will be as safe as the streets of this pueblo.”  Acevedo was not as easy to needle about his inability to capture Zorro as his predecessors had been, largely since there had been so many of them.  But he no doubt knew that few comandantes had ever left this post for having been promoted.  Diego raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

“I find that most reassuring,” he said, “except that, from what I have been hearing, the streets last night were not too safe either.”  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Endicott glance out the window, trying to hide a barely perceptible smile.

Acevedo sighed deeply, his patience getting a little thinner now.  “There was but one man,” he said, “and we had him securely behind bars within only a few hours of his arrival.”

“Yes . . . I had heard that.  But you know, Capitan, I am a little bit puzzled by some of the things I’ve heard about this prisoner, and I was wondering if you could help me to clarify them.  I’m sure my father will want to know.  I mean, does it not seem strange that a man responsible for the murder of a wealthy patrón, and perhaps even the abduction of his son, would simply ride into town and go straight to the authorities?  Are you sure you have the right man?”

“Obviously, he did not anticipate that there would be anyone in this part of the country who would recognize him,” said Marigál idly as he stood behind the Capitan’s desk, examining a map of California that hung on the wall.

“Oh, I see your point,” said Diego.  “But, do you actually have any evidence of his guilt?”

“We have the stolen jewelry,” said Capitan Acevedo, “and we have the word of a gentleman.  Or would you have us believe that you, of all people, would not trust the word of a gentleman?”

Diego looked up squarely at Marigál.  “I would certainly not wish to call into question the word of anyone at this point,” he said.  “But even gentlemen have been known to be mistaken.”

Marigál’s close cropped brown hair fell forward in little wisps over his high forehead.  That and his straight nose and the way he folded his hands in front of him made him look a bit like a priest.  But something in his soft brown eyes was perfectly cold.  “There is no mistake,” he said evenly, the faintest shadow of a smile crossing his lips.  “But I can appreciate your concern.  I can see that you feel a certain sense of responsibility for those of lesser birth—a noble trait so often lacking in today’s youth.”

Diego ignored the obvious attempt at flattery, but he also saw that there was no point in continuing this discussion. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, as if weighing the intellectual validity of this assessment of himself, “I do have an interest in seeing justice fairly dispensed—as, of course, do we all.  It would not benefit even the aristocracy if any man could be convicted solely on the accusation of another.  You know, I often wish that I had taken the time to study a little more of the law.  A fascinating discipline, really.  For instance, did you know that in the sixth century—”

“Señor de la Vega,” said the Capitan.  “If you have nothing further?  I do have a few other pieces of business to attend to this afternoon.”

“Oh, but of course, please forgive me, Capitan.”  Diego tried not to betray his own amusement at how easy it was to manipulate this man.  But Marigál’s steady gaze kept him from smiling too broadly as he excused himself and stepped back out into the courtyard.

He didn’t have to look very far to find a somewhat agitated Bernardo.  As they left the cuartel and walked back to the hitching post where they had tied their horses, Diego tried to carry on an unobtrusive conversation with the servant—no easy task, since Bernardo often responded with great elaborate feats of pantomime.  Yes or no questions were best.

“I suppose they are still questioning the prisoner?”

Bernardo shook his head, pretended to slam his fist into his open hand a few times, then tilted his head sideways, closing his eyes.

“They’ve killed him?”

No.

“But close to it?”

Bernardo nodded gravely.

“They are not going to have a trial,” said Diego, as much to himself as his friend.  “They are planning to kill him.  That may be why most of the soldiers are being sent out to patrol the hills.  Fewer witnesses to gossip about it afterwards.” Bernardo considered this theory.  Then he saluted and ran his hand quickly across his body from left shoulder to right hip, then cocked his head.

“The commandante?  I do not know if he himself is trying to silence the man.  But he does seem to hold these visitors from Monterey in very high regard.”  Diego swung up into the ornately tooled silver trimmed saddle that adorned his big palomino gelding and headed down a side street that would take them out of town, Bernardo on his blaze-faced bay trailing after.

It had to be, he thought as they headed onto the open road, that either the prisoner was a thief and a murderer—and a very stupid one at that—or Marigál was one of the most cold-blooded liars he had ever seen.  Either way, he was sure the commandante had seen an obvious chance to set a trap for Zorro—making a big show of sending the soldiers out of town while at the same time letting it be known that the prisoner was being questioned about his ties to the outlaw.  As they reined in their horses at the top of a bluff overlooking the de la Vega hacienda, he said as much to Bernardo, who nodded as if he, too, had reached exactly the same conclusion.  Then he made a quick little Z sign in the air and raised his eyebrows.

Diego sighed.  “Yes, I think so.  We have no way of knowing whether this man really does have ties to Zorro, or whether he’s innocent or guilty of anything, unless we talk to him.  Nor will we get that chance, it seems, unless we hurry.  You go saddle Tornado while I deliver this letter to my father.  He’s expecting a message from a business associate from el norte who plans to visit us soon.”  Bernardo frowned.

“Yes,” said Diego, “it will complicate things for us.  But no one knows exactly when the man is supposed to arrive.  So perhaps we will have time to settle this matter before he gets here.  The letter should say.”

Don Alejandro de la Vega sat at the large ornately carved mahogany desk in his library peering over the pages of a ledger, carefully writing numbers in a column and adding them up.  After a moment, he rubbed his eyes, leaned back and ran a hand through his flowing silver hair to sweep it off his forehead.

Looking around him at all the fine books, the paintings, the regency furniture, the tapestries and the art objects they had collected over the years, he sighed.  All the trappings of wealth.  They really could seem burdensome—just as those French philosophers had said, the ones his son kept telling him about.  Sometimes he wished they could just go back to the old days, when they were first getting started.  No tile floors, no elegant lace curtains.

He had spent long hours as a boy helping his own father herd cattle, plant vines and plan how to irrigate their crops. They had laid the tiles together.  Now he was just the bookkeeper.  And Diego—for all his talk of philosophy, he had no memory of the hardships, no way of knowing what a blessing his birth had been to them.  To him, growing up a pampered child, it had all been a lark.  They had given him everything, doted on him.  His mother had been young and beautiful.  He had her looks.  And he should have had many siblings, if only she had lived.

Of course, in many ways Alejandro had to admit he was proud of his son.  He was as well educated as anyone needed to be; he was handsome, good natured, kind and respectful of his elders.  He wasn’t pretentious, a man of his word.  He just didn’t seem to care very much about anything that really mattered.  The vast political changes that swirled around them now interested him only slightly, even though they might well have profound consequences for his future and that of this hacienda.  Instead he spent his time studying poetry and philosophy, literature and music.

Nor was it that he didn’t have any women friends.  His looks had assured him of having plenty of them—at least until they grew bored with his lectures on the subtle differences between the English sonnet and the Italian, or until they noticed how far he would go to avoid any kind of confrontation, or until they saw how hard it was to make him jealous.  Perhaps he had just refused to let himself get too close to any of them.  Perhaps some part of him still believed that, if he did, then tragedy would inevitably strike. I suppose I shouldn’t blame him for not wanting to suffer my fate, he thought.  But one cannot simply live in books.

“Father.”

“Why, Diego, are you all right?”

“Certainly, Father. Why do you ask?”

“Well, you just seem—in a hurry?”

Diego shook his head. “Oh, no.  No.  We just got back, and, well, I knew you would be anxious to see this,” he said, handing over the letter.  Alejandro broke the seal and unfolded it.

“Oh, yes,” he said.  “Our guests are scheduled to arrive tomorrow afternoon.  Well, that’s sooner than I had expected, but good news, eh?  Don Urbino says he is most anxious to acquire two of our little palominos, a matched set if possible.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Diego.  “They are beautiful animals; they always bring a good price.”

His father nodded in satisfaction.  Diego knew that, more than their beauty, the old man took pride in having had the business sense to start experimenting years ago with the breeding of some of their horses.  He had begun by acquiring two purebred Arabian mares from the mission padres, who had originally brought them to the New World as an alternative to the taller Andalusians, the soldier’s horses, with their long necks, their powerful hindquarters and their aquiline heads.  The Arabs were smaller, prettier, more rounded and delicate.

Not many rancheros cared, or even noticed, when the two strains interbred.  Horses were horses.  The vaqueros trained them to run loose in little bands—manadas—of twenty-five or so, including a stallion and a lead mare.  Whatever foals they produced simply added to the general population.  But when their procreation was a bit more carefully controlled, if only by introducing the two Arab mares into the manada of a very fine Andalusian stallion, the result was often a tall, beautifully proportioned yet muscular horse with speed and endurance, large dark eyes and a delicate wedge shaped head atop a long gracefully arched neck—the best example of which was Zorro’s horse, Tornado.

Except for a few big animals like Diego’s gelding, the palominos were often daintier and not as fast, or as good for herding cattle, but people prized them for their beauty.  And by now, their fame had spread, apparently, as far north as San Francisco.  A little closer to home, they also stood as a symbol of the kind of ambition and daring for which the de la Vega men had always been known—at least until recently.

“Our trade with Señor Guzman may prove to be equally profitable,” said Alejandro, “now that trade restrictions have been lifted.  There may be a market, not just for hides and tallow, but for beef,” he added, giving his son a significant look.  Diego sat down in a nearby chair, knowing he would have to stay and hear the rest of the letter, and knowing he would also have to decide, very soon, just how much to tell his father about what had happened in town this day.

“They’re shipping some new oaken kegs for us to try.  All the way from France.  Oh, and it looks as if we had better tell Crescencia to prepare another bedroom.  It seems that the don has been traveling with his soon-to-be bride.  She has never been this far south before.”

Diego started to get up.  “I’ll go see if I can find Crescencia,” he said, thinking that he might just be able to make a quick getaway after all.

“Oh, no, I’ll do that,” said his father.  “But I would like you to ride out to the pastures and pick out a couple of our best horses.  Have them cleaned up and stabled.  And make sure they’re well-broken.  Benito will know about that; he’s been working with them.”

“Well, if that is the case, shouldn’t he be the one to pick them out?  I hardly think I know more about horses than he does.”  Diego tried hard not to look impatient.  He knew it could take hours just to ride out and track down this particular manada.

“Diego, please.  I would like to be able to say that they are our very finest animals, and that you picked them out personally.  I would go myself, but I must finish balancing these books.”  The old man looked up at him, then, and smiled with just a hint of amusement as he gestured at the desktop.  “Unless you would rather do them?”

“No, no—I will go.”  Diego stood up slowly, nodding his head. He knew there was no use trying to get out of this.  Perhaps it wouldn’t take so long.  But why didn’t he just tell him?  More than once, his father had actually urged him to be more like the outlaw.  Would one small bit of candor in a life otherwise filled with disguise and deceit somehow complicate Zorro’s life more than it already was?

Oh, he knew there were plenty of good reasons for maintaining the ruse, not the least of which was that, if Zorro were ever caught, his accomplices probably wouldn’t outlive him.  But was that the real reason, or was it just that he didn’t want his father to see how deceitful he really was—or that, over the years, he had placed more trust in a servant?  He tried as he stood there to make the words come out, but for the hundredth time they caught in his throat.

“Very well, then.”  Alejandro dipped his quill into the inkwell, dabbed it on the blotter, then looked down again at the column of numbers.  “And let me know when you’re done.  I would like to see the animals before our guests arrive.  This evening, if possible.”

“Yes, Father.”

As he headed out into the sala, Diego found Bernardo waiting, a worried look on his face.  He had obviously overheard everything.  “It will be all right, my friend,” he said, trying to sound as reassuring as he could.  “Perhaps it is just as well that we wait for the darkness.  Clearly we will need every advantage we can get.”  But he did not want to think how he would feel if it turned out that the de la Vega pride was worth more than some poor man’s life.