The Investigation

I simply cannot believe Diego would have run off this way," said Alejandro wearily, taking another stiff drink of the brandy Crescencia had brought him.  "Earlier today he looked me right in the eye and told me he was not planning to do anything like this.  I don’t care what Señor Marigál says.  I think I know my own son."

But even as he spoke, Alejandro found himself wondering how well he really did know the son he had sent off to military school in Madrid at age eighteen—the first chance he got, he thought ruefully, just after Spain had finally rid itself of Napoleon.  Though he had written to the boy, how well could he know the young man, the university student, who, apart from one brief summer visit, had been gone a full six years?

Draining the glass, he tried to quench his doubts.  Then he noticed Marbella sitting wide-eyed, shivering like a frightened dog beside the hearth.  "What is the matter with her?" he asked.  "Is she ill?"

"I do not know, Don Alejandro," Crescencia replied; "she has been like this all evening.  She refuses to go to bed.  I think she is just worried about the señorita."

Alejandro studied the girl closely.  "What cause would she have to worry?" he said.  When the housekeeper shrugged, he spoke to Marbella herself.  "Did you know they were planning to run off like this?" he said.  Marbella said nothing.  "Well, speak up, girl," Alejandro snapped.

"Oh, Patrón— "  Marbella shook her head.  "The Señorita Venancio, she was not planning to run away.  She promised she would come back.  She promised, and we lit a candle for protection.  But I let it go out, and then the darkness took her.  Oh, Patrón, it was all my fault."

As Alejandro and Crescencia both came to stand over her, Marbella could no longer contain her tears.  Big sobs shook her whole body as Crescencia sat down beside her on the hearth.  Alejandro squatted down in front of her and stroked her hair as she buried her face in her lap.  When she looked up again, he handed her a handkerchief.

"There, there, girl," he said gently as Crescencia finally took the handkerchief and wiped the girl’s nose for her.  "How could anything of this sort be your fault?  We will find them.  But, please, you must try to tell me."  Gently, he lifted Marbella’s face.  "From what did the Señorita Venancio need protection?  Did she say?"

"No, Patrón."

"But you know, don’t you."

Marbella shuddered.  "From el diablo," she whispered.

Alejandro and Crescencia exchanged glances.

"We will find her," Alejandro said again, after a moment.

"You will find her dead," Marbella replied thickly, her voice suddenly calm enough to startle both of them.  "In the morning, the soldiers will find her," she added.  Then she went back to sobbing.

Alejandro stood up, a thoughtful frown constricting his brow.  Clearly, the girl was disturbed.  But that didn’t mean her fears, however fanciful, were entirely unfounded.  Returning to where he had been sitting at the table, he poured himself another shot of brandy and downed it in one gulp.  "Do you think you can get her into bed?"

"Sí, Don Alejandro."  Crescencia nodded and gathered up Marbella by the shoulders.  "I think so," she said.  "I will stay with her."

"Good."  As he watched them go, the old man started to pour himself another drink.  Then he set the glass aside, picked up the candelario and headed instead for the library.  Once there, he leaned against the edge of the desk and casually sorted through the drawings of el Descanso.  In the morning, he told himself, he would go to San Gabriel and talk to Padre Felipe.  As many times as Diego had been to mass lately, perhaps he had confided something in the priest.

"There’s a cat locked up here somewhere,"  he said quietly to himself.

Bernardo nodded in agreement as he gently replaced the small plug in the eye hole through which he had been watching.  For a moment, he considered going back through the sala, showing himself to Alejandro and trying to explain this whole mess, though he knew he stood a very good chance of being misunderstood.

Finally, he concluded that his absence would probably do more than his presence to reassure the don that at least his son hadn’t run off without his servant.  And maybe that would slow him down a bit.  But if he meant to go looking for Diego, then Bernardo had no time to waste.  He would have to find and free his master before Marigál realized his prey was tracking him, or Diego might never be found.

Bernardo ran back up the stairs to the room behind Diego’s bedroom to grab some clean black clothing that hadn’t been soaked with blood or riddled with bullet holes.  Then he returned to Tornado’s stall, cleaned and re-packed the saddlebags and went to get Oreana’s horse from the stables, hoping he could get the colt to go with him without a fuss, lest someone take him for a horse thief.  Surprisingly, the animal seemed not the least bit jumpy, though he did seem eager to be let out.  But when Bernardo began to saddle him, sure enough, it was Tornado who shook his head and snorted indignantly.

The colt shook his own flaxen mane and eyed the stallion nervously, so Bernardo tied his halter to a hitching post, then went to put his communications skills to the ultimate test.  Slipping inside Tornado’s stall, he ran his hand down the long sleek neck, then patted the crest beneath the silky mane as the horse nuzzled him.  Finally, he reached up to pull the bridle off over Tornado’s ears, leaving just one rein draped around his neck.  But the stallion, his head now free, only raised it higher and grunted, standing his ground.

Bernardo took the loose rein and looped it behind his ears, then turned him around, opened the stall door and led him out.  When they burst through the undergrowth at the outer entrance to the cave, Bernardo let his hand run gently across the horse’s back and over his croup until he was almost touching the open wound.  Then, giving Tornado a look, he let the loose rein fall and nodded toward the open entrance to the canyon.  Tornado didn’t budge.

Finally, Bernardo looked back at him and shrugged.  Then, at last, Tornado lowered his head and began to walk slowly away, still favoring his left hind leg a little.  Bernardo turned back, wincing, and went inside to finish with the colt.  When they finally emerged into the moonlit night, he still felt awful.  But what could he have done?  If the wound had festered under the dirt and the sweat of saddlebags, he might lose the horse without even finding Diego.

Riding to the top of the nearest ridge, he decided to head southeast over the open country of the arroyo to pick up el Camino Real just as it crossed the river at the eastern boundary of the de la Vega lands.  With luck he could get there and rest a bit before daylight, when he would have to start searching for any kind of conveyance that could be used to transport captives.

He hadn’t gone far, though, when he heard the sound of hoof beats coming upon him from behind.  Thinking it might be the soldiers again, he urged the colt into a gallop.  But as he glanced back over his shoulder, he saw nothing, so he decided to circle around to the right and get behind his pursuer, to see if he could tell who it was.  But his pursuer, whoever it was, was not that easily fooled.  The hoof beats suddenly went silent, and when Bernardo finally did complete his turn and start to head southeast again, he found the big black stallion standing right in his path, silhouetted against the indigo sky, the bright moonlight shining in his mane as he rose up on his hind legs and whinnied in sharp defiance.

Bernardo reined in the colt and waited to see what Tornado would do.   But Tornado simply stood there as if he, too, were waiting.  Then, when Bernardo started to go around him, he moved to block the way again, rearing up and shaking his head.  Bernardo shook his head as well.  Could it be that Tornado really was jealous?

He turned the colt again and tried to go around the stallion the other way, but this time Tornado simply lowered his head, flattened his ears against his neck and edged sideways toward them, teeth bared.  The colt backed away from him, showing the whites of his eyes, and it was all Bernardo could do to keep him from turning tail.  Then Tornado stopped again and began nervously pawing the ground.

Bernardo knew he would be taking a big chance.  The stallion could easily flatten him, or just leave him stranded out here, but he didn’t know what else to do, so he eased down out of the saddle, tied the colt to a nearby bush and approached the stallion, holding out his hand.  Tornado walked up to him and nuzzled his chest.  Patting his hard neck, Bernardo frowned.  Then Tornado shoved him back toward the colt again, as if ordering him to mount up.  When he did, the stallion snorted, then headed back toward the hacienda, as if that were all he had needed.  He trotted off a few paces, then turned to look back at them.

Now Bernardo was really puzzled.  After a moment, he started to turn the colt east again, but then Tornado reared up again and whinnied, not sharply this time, but more like a low seismic grunt with high overtones, as if he were trying to imitate the sound of a human voice.

As Bernardo turned the colt back toward him, he nodded and pawed the earth, then took another step or two back toward the hacienda.  Then Bernardo understood.  Rolling his eyes, he shrugged helplessly.  And he thought he had a problem communicating with people!  Soon, Tornado broke into an easy canter, Bernardo and the colt trailing after him, as they all headed back toward town, back to where Tornado somehow knew his master was still being held.

Just before daybreak, they arrived again at the alcalde’s stables, only to find that this time the wagon and one of the big furniture crates were missing.  Bernardo did not know how long ago it had left, of course, but he knew it couldn’t have been too long.  So he headed out of town again, toward the highway, the black stallion still cantering easily alongside him.  And when they came to the crossroads, this time they all headed south.

Don Alejandro rose early—not that he would have been able to sleep anyway, for he was well accustomed to riding out at first light.  But his sleep the night before had been uneasy at best, and this morning he thought he might have to ride a little farther than usual.  He drank black coffee and ate a quiet breakfast while a servant saddled one of his favorite horses, a tall blood bay with a white star on his forehead and no other markings.  Alejandro didn’t care for a flashy mount.  He just wanted one that could cover the distance to San Juan Capistrano in under a day without pulling up lame.  This horse could do that.  But just in case, he had also thought to take the palomino colt he had loaned Oreana, and so the mystery of what had become of her and Diego deepened just a little when he was told that the colt had also disappeared, though Diego’s gelding, it seemed, had not.

Crescencia hovered around him but said little.  She didn’t have to.  And Marbella still seemed quite upset.  All this talk of devils.  Perhaps Padre Felipe could help her.  One could easily get carried away with all that fire and brimstone stuff.  Alejandro wasn’t surprised that she hesitated when he asked her if she wanted to ride with him to San Gabriel.  She probably thought he meant to take her back there and leave her.  Finally, though, she agreed, once he thought to point out the obvious—that since they both wanted to know what had become of Diego and Oreana, they might as well go together.  Even so, like the modest young servant girl she was, she hung back from him all the way to the mission, not saying a word.  One might almost think she was afraid of him as well, he thought.

They had gotten all the way past the pueblo, but not quite to the mission itself, when they came upon a small group of lancers examining what looked to be the remains of a badly burned coach—or what was left of it—sitting right in the middle of the highway.  Only the steel framework and the straps of its undercarriage were holding it together.  The roof of the cab was gone.  The front wheels looked ready to collapse.

As he got closer, Alejandro could see the soldiers were in the process of removing something from what was left of the inside, and as he got even closer, he pulled up his horse and held out an arm, motioning for the girl to stay behind him.  Then he gave his horse the spurs and rode quickly up to where sergeant Garcia was directing the others to lay a blanket-shrouded bundle in the back of a wagon they had brought from the mission.  The smell of burnt flesh and hair was unmistakable.

"Sergeant, what is going on here?" he demanded.

Garcia looked up wearily, his eyes as heavy as his voice. "Buenos dias, Don Alejandro," he said tonelessly.  "I am afraid something horrible has happened.  While we were on our way to the mission this morning, we discovered this coach, as you can see, and inside what appears to be the remains of a young señorita.  She has been very badly burned.  We think she may even have been murdered.  Oh, Señorita, please—"  He waved a chubby hand at Marbella, who had just caught up with them and had started to dismount.

"Murdered? But how?"  Alejandro’s frown deepened as he, too, held up his hand, signaling Marbella to stay put.  "How could she have been trapped inside— "

"We do not think she was trapped," Garcia explained, stepping aside as the two lancers behind him went to the front of the wagon to speak to the mission Indian who sat in the driver’s seat.  "You see, this was in the coach with her."

The sergeant glanced over his shoulder at a heap of badly scorched fabric that had been draped over the railing.  When he held it up by a tattered sleeve, Alejandro could barely make out that it had once been a soft Tyrian purple, and that the richly embroidered bodice with its gold and green ivy pattern had been sliced right down the front.  Glancing up the road, Garcia added, "we found one of her shoes lying over there."

"I see."  Alejandro got down from his horse, then slowly stepped past the sergeant and stood squinting down at the fabric, thinking it looked vaguely familiar.

"Do you recognize the dress, Don Alejandro?"

Running his fingers lightly over the blackened needlework, the old man shook his head, then began to back away.  He wanted to say no, but somehow the word took a long time forming on his lips.  Then he heard Marbella’s quiet voice behind him.

"Last night the Señorita Venancio wore it to the alcalde’s house."

"The Señorita Venancio."  Garcia frowned.  "She has been a guest at your hacienda, no?"

After a moment Marbella added, "He loaned it to her; it belonged to the Señora de la Vega."

Garcia’s eyes got a little wider.  Then he frowned and released a short puff of breath, as if someone had pushed it out of him.  Finally, he glanced nervously down at his fingers.  "It was said she left the dance with Don Diego," he said at last.  "But we found no trace of any other passengers, or even the driver."

Alejandro finally heard himself speak.  "Are you trying to say you think my son had something to do with this—this . . . atrocity?"

"Sergeant," came a voice from the other side of the coach, "should we go ahead and take the wagon or do you want us to keep looking around?"

"Have you found nothing else, Corporal?" said Garcia impatiently.

"Only these, Sergeant."  Corporal Reyes came closer and opened his gloved hand to reveal a few small copper rings seated on thin flat copper discs.  "We found them back there, by the rear of the coach," he added.  "Do you know what they are, Sergeant?"

Garcia shook his head.  "They look like some kind of fittings.  They probably came off the coach in the heat; see how they are scorched."

"They are percussion caps," said Alejandro.  Garcia turned to him, surprised that he seemed by now to have turned even a few shades paler.

"Percussion caps?"  He picked up one of the rings and squinted at it.

"Sí.  They contain a highly explosive compound that detonates gunpowder without using a flint," Alejandro said absently.

"No flint?"  Garcia looked from him to the tiny bits of metal.  "But how can that be?"

"It is a new kind of pistol," the old man snapped; "it strikes no spark; it has no flash pan; I have seen one lately," he added, his voice trailing off.

Reyes and Garcia exchanged glances.

"Sergeant!" yelled one of the men standing near the head of the wagon.  "Are we finished here yet?"

"Sí, Private," Garcia yelled back distractedly.  "Take the wagon; we will be right behind you."

Then he turned back to Alejandro, who added, "It belonged to Don Urbino."

"That would be Señor Guzman. . . ."

"Sí."  The old man glanced up at the wagon as it pulled away, then looked down, shaking his head.  Then he let out a quick sigh.  "But—if it was Don Urbino, then why . . . ?"

"Maybe Don Diego got away," said Reyes hopefully.  "Maybe Señor Zorro saved him."

"Sí," said Garcia, nodding thoughtfully, lips pursed.  He walked over to the coach and picked up the small door that lay beside it, then leaned it against the charred wheel.  "He was here last night," he added, nodding at the neat Z that had been carved on the lower panel.  "We chased him away.  But of course it may also be that el Zorro really is mixed up somehow with this ring of kidnapers.  He did help one of them to escape."

"But Señor Zorro would never do anything like this," Reyes declared in a tone as close as he ever got to being adamant.  "I would bet my last peso on it.  My last centavo."

"Sí, Corporal."  Garcia examined his hands, then wiped them on his pants as he walked back to where Alejandro and the corporal were standing.  "And if God were our judge, I would not care to bet against you," he added, "but who else can really say?  Would you ride with us to the mission, Don Alejandro?" he said as Reyes handed him the reins of his horse.  "It may be that Don Diego is there.  Besides, we must ask you, unpleasant though it will surely be, to see if you can tell whether the lady in the coach really was the Señorita Venancio."

"It was not," said Marbella quietly.  She had never got off her horse, and now she sat looking back at them calmly as they all stared up at her.

Garcia’s brows rose, then fell.  "How do you know this, Señorita?"

Marbella shrugged.  "I just do."

"Señorita. . . ." Garcia handed his horse back to the corporal.  "If you know something about anything that has happened here, then I must insist that you— "

"It is all right, Sergeant."  Alejandro raised his hand to Garcia’s arm.  "She knows nothing.  She never left the hacienda last night.  She was with my housekeeper the whole time."

Garcia nodded.  "Very well," he said, then turned again to mount his horse.  "But this is not a matter to be taken lightly," he added.  "One should not make idle claims."

"It is not her," said Marbella with a shrug.  "You will see."

"Hush, girl."  Alejandro mounted his own horse and started off after the soldiers.

By the time they reached the mission, the lancers had already delivered the wagon and its contents into the hands of the Indian servants and had gathered around the main entrance to talk with some of their cohorts who had just arrived from the cuartel.

One of them claimed that Capitan Acevedo had decided to ask the governor for additional troops to intensify his pursuit of el Zorro, while Reyes and several others continued to insist that, whatever else the masked bandit may have done—and nearly all of it had been for the sake of fighting corruption anyway—he had never been anything less than chivalrous toward women, and that this sort of thing was quite beyond the pale, even for a common thief.  And besides, the woman’s intended husband was now a far more likely suspect.

Most of them seemed to agree with that line of reasoning.  But a few insisted that while el Zorro was far from a common thief, he was an outlaw nonetheless, and there wouldn’t be such a huge price on his head unless he really was a legitimate menace.  He had, after all, killed one of their number—and recently, too—during a jail break.

"El Zorro didn’t shoot him," one lancer snarled at another.  "You were the one who fired— "

No doubt they would have come to blows had Garcia not stepped between them, ordering several men back into town, grabbing one by the scruff of the neck.  But they all grew quiet at Don Alejandro’s approach, studying their boots as he dismounted to greet Padre Felipe, who had finally appeared in the doorway with a tall young priest at his side.

"Don Alejandro, Sergeant," said Padre Felipe, "please allow me to present Padre Luis Sabino, recently arrived from the Mission Dolores."  The young man, a handsome fellow with curly hair, an olive complexion and dark eyes, smiled and nodded politely.

"A pleasure, gentlemen," he said in what sounded a bit like an Italian accent, and Alejandro thought he seemed especially alert, watching everyone carefully.

He nodded—"mucho gusto"—in reply.

"Sí, mucho gusto," Garcia added.

"Please come with us," said Padre Felipe.  The sergeant stepped back, allowing Alejandro to go first.  Marbella quietly trailed the sergeant into the pasillo central, pausing at the edge of a pew to kneel and cross herself before she followed the others out past the chancel and into a dim corridor that led to the mortuary where the withered body lay, still wrapped in the wool blanket.  For a moment, no one spoke.

"Padre," said Alejandro at last, "my son Diego—he has disappeared."

"Sí."  Padre Felipe nodded.  "So I have heard."

The old man looked down, pursing his lips.  "I suppose the gossip is everywhere."

"Such bad news travels quickly."  Padre Felipe looked down at the bundle on the table, then back at the patrón.  "Perhaps we should do this later," he said.  "Would you come and sit down, have a cup of tea with us, perhaps?  A glass of wine?"

"Gracias, no, Padre."  Alejandro sighed deeply.  "Let us just get this over with."

The priest nodded, then gently began to peel away a corner of the blanket.  Garcia winced as a slender hand appeared, then a scorched, blackened forearm.

"I told you it was not her," said Marbella quietly, drawing all eyes back to herself again.

"Señorita," said Garcia, squinting at her, "how could you know this just from the hand?"

Marbella ignored him.  Instead she came shyly to Alejandro’s side and pointed.  "Mire, Don Alejandro.  Look."

Alejandro studied the servant for a moment, then obeyed.  Finally, he squinted, cocked his head and backed away, blinking hard, his lips pressed into a tight line.  "She is right," he said at last, lifting his brows into a shrug.  "Señorita Venancio played the piano.  Those are not the fingers of a pianist; the nails are too long."  Closing his eyes, he turned away.

Garcia and the two padres exchanged glances.  Then they all bent to examine the tiny hand more closely.  "But if it is not the Señorita Venancio," said Garcia at last, "then who is it, and how did she come to be wearing that dress?  And . . . why did her assailant think she deserved such brutal treatment?"

Padre Felipe shook his head and glanced at Padre Luis.  "Maybe these answers will reveal themselves in time, Sergeant," he said.  "But is it not possible that someone is simply trying to ruin the reputation of el Zorro?  Some of your men are now ready to shoot him on sight, are they not?"

"Sí . . . but where is Don Diego?  And why would he have left the dance with this woman, whoever she is?"  The sergeant looked helplessly around the room, as though he wished he could read the answers in the grey stucco walls or the mosaic tile.

"Well," said Padre Luis. "Perhaps he did not leave the dance with this woman.  Perhaps he was never in the coach at all.  Might someone not have . . . borrowed his clothing as well?"

Garcia’s eyes widened as his bushy brows went up.  But then a puzzled scowl settled over his stubbled face again.  "I suppose that could be, Padre," he said.  "But this is all so confusing."

"And that confusion would surely benefit anyone who was trying to kidnap a man as well known in these parts as young de la Vega, no?"

"Sí."  Garcia’s little cloud lifted momentarily, then settled once again.  Padre Felipe gave his shoulder a gentle pat as they walked toward the mortuary door.

"I am sure that if you keep thinking about it, you’ll figure it out, Sergeant," he said, catching the eye of Don Alejandro, who, as he had expected, was studying both him and Padre Luis intently.  "Why don’t you go report your findings to the commandante," he added.  "I believe that Don Alejandro might be ready, now, to have that cup of tea with us."

"Sí, Padre."  Alejandro nodded thoughtfully.  The sergeant nodded, too, and followed them all back down the corridor, past the chapel of the Virgin, where Marbella had already gone to light three small votive candles.

"Gracias, Padre," he said as they came out into the pasillo central again.

"No hay de qué," Padre Felipe replied.  "And Sergeant—you will tell us if you discover who this señorita was.  Someone will no doubt be looking for her as well."

Garcia nodded—"of course, Padre"—and disappeared.  Then Padre Felipe turned back to Don Alejandro and motioned toward the rectory.

"There is much to tell," he said.