One More Confession

The night air felt damp and the breeze smelled of deep ocean brine.  Diego sat quietly on a bunk mounted on the rear wall of the jail cell, leaning his back against the dingy whitewashed side wall, resting one forearm on his knee, the other on the shoulder of the tired girl who had curled up against him, not caring what anyone thought.  Nor did he, up to a point.  After all, the guards had found it entertaining enough this evening just to watch them eat.  But now that the whole presidio had grown quiet, he would be damned if he didn’t at least hold her and brush the hair back from her cheek, though he could barely keep his eyes open.

"Querido," she whispered.  "You are tired, sí?"

"No," he lied, knowing she knew it was a lie.  She started to get up.

"You must sleep.  I will watch— "

"No."

Too weary to struggle, she fell back into his arms without saying any of the things he might have expected her to say—about how, tomorrow, he would risk falling asleep on his feet.  Instead, she caressed his shoulder and said, "This may be the last time I ever get to hold you."

"I do not intend to let that happen," he said grimly.

She nodded and hugged him a little tighter.  Then she said, "I think Señor Endicott was wrong.  I think maybe you have been one of us."

"Maybe."  With a sigh, Diego leaned his head against the wall and gazed into the darkness.  "I do not know.  Technically, I suppose we may both be guilty of everything we’re accused of.  Except the heresy of not believing in witchcraft.  I can no longer claim to be so—enlightened anymore.  It’s just that, what you call sorcery . . . it isn’t at all what I would have thought."  He felt her smile.

"You saw much, yet you didn’t see.  What finally opened your eyes?"

"The bricks."

"Oh, so this was what you were asking me earlier."

"There was no way I could have seen that place before, unless— "

"Unless you really had seen it before, just a few days ago."  Oreana nodded, rubbing her eyes with her fist the way a child would.  Yawning, she added, "Now I suppose you wish to know if we came here bodily or only in our dreams."

Trying not to yawn, Diego brushed his own hair back off his forehead.  "No," he said.  "I think I already know what a foolish question that is."

"Very well," she smiled, "but just in case you’re asked, the church holds that the devil does indeed transport us bodily.  If we were just dreaming, we would be no more than harmless lunatics, more in need of treatment than punishment."  Diego laughed quietly and shook his head.

"An impressive piece of circular reasoning," he said.

She shrugged.  "Hardly unique to medieval scholarship."

"Yet thousands of women died because of it."

"Not so many in Spain as in other countries."  The girl shifted her weight, snuggling against him, then added, "My aunts say the inquisitors in Spain were far more interested in getting rid of Moors and Jews.  Even in New Spain, I hear they burned more Jews than witches, though sorcery was apparently common among the natives."

Diego arched his brows and pursed his lips into a pensive shrug.  "Too common," he said.  "The church could hardly condemn all its newest converts before making sure they knew right from wrong.  The Indians—they are innocents.  But you and I," he chuckled.  "You know, we may well have the distinction of being the last people ever accused of what, today, even the majority of priests think is an imaginary crime.  And how fitting, now," he added dryly, "to learn that it isn’t."

Oreana sighed softly, but the sigh ended in a quiet laugh.  "My apologies," she said.  "But for what it is worth, I suspect it was harder to convince the European intelligentsia that we were harmless than it was to convince you we were not."  Diego almost laughed out loud.

"So now your aunts take credit for combating superstition, eh?"

Oreana giggled.  "Well," she said, "over the years, I am sure many clans cast protection spells.  And, as you yourself pointed out, better to be laughed at than burned.  Perhaps your native sorcerers, too, are just a bit more skillful than you think."  Though she was trying not to talk above a whisper, he had no trouble hearing the mischief in her voice.

She caught his hand and ran her fingers gently over the strips of cloth she had torn from the hem of his shirt to bandage his wrists.  Dark splotches of blood had leached through, but now the cloth was starting to stiffen.  "We should take these off," she said.  "They have served their purpose."  Sitting up, she carefully unwrapped first one wrist, then the other.  "I will ask for more cloth tomorrow," she added.  "With luck, they will put us back in irons."  Then, easing herself back into his arms, she brought his fingers to her lips and kissed them as he traced the curve of her mouth.

"Perhaps you should not do that," he said.

"I never thought these feelings would be so hard to control."

"Nor did I," he confessed, wincing as the texture of her breath rekindled a desire so intense that, though his body might as well be asleep, it dreamt of her.  Then he wondered if she really wanted him or just to ease the longing.  She herself wouldn’t know, of course, never having been with anyone else.  But he knew that what he felt for her went beyond mere lust, and he almost wished she had more experience so he could ask her if she felt the same—though he also knew he might still doubt her even if she said yes.  Finally, he could only laugh at himself.  She did have him fretting like some silly schoolboy, despite what he had told Bernardo.

"You find this predicament amusing?"

As she laid her head down against his chest again, he ran his fingers lightly over her hair and said, "Not in the least.  But it is ironic, eh? that witches have always been suspected of meddling in their neighbors’ affairs and in the affairs of state.  And now, when only madmen and superstitious peasants believe this, you tell me it is true?"

"We meddle no more than your family," she shrugged.  "Oh, we do what we can, but— "

Diego didn’t know how he would have taken this news had he been a little less exhausted.  At the moment he could only laugh.  "And what about California?  Do you have designs on that as well?  Or maybe you now intend to tell me that your aunts masterminded the whole insurgency, as well as the Enlightenment?"

Oreana sat up again and studied him carefully.  "You give us a little too much credit.  Like you, we attribute such things to a higher power."

"A goddess."

"And a god."

As she took a deep breath, then let it out, Diego realized she was doing something to dissipate a level of tension he hadn’t even realized was building between them.  Still he couldn’t resist adding, dryly, "And I suppose he really does have horns?  Perhaps he carries a pitchfork?"

"Not the same god Padre Felipe prays to.  But then, you knew this."

"Umm."  He nodded.

She lifted her hair back over her shoulders, then drew her legs up beneath her, leaning back against the wall at the opposite end of the bunk.  "Our god does not always look the same to everyone," she said.  "Sometimes, he takes on the appearance of an animal—a bull or a stag.  A few days ago he looked like Tornado, eh?  But to me, he looks like an exquisitely handsome young Californiano with a glance that could stop your heart and a smile that could make it start beating again."

Diego looked down but said nothing.  His testiness was gone.

"Our god does not despise women," she went on quietly.  "He does not blame us for all the evils of the world.  He loves our holy mother, and she him.  And that love is magic.  It is the very light and power of creation.  It is what you feel, sometimes, all around us.  It is . . . sacred."

As she looked up at him in the dim light of the torches from the courtyard, he remembered how her angelic features had once reminded him of the image of the Virgin he had seen long ago.  Yet he couldn’t let himself reach for her, even though he could see she wanted him to.  "You really are a priestess, aren’t you."

Her eyes widened a little as she nodded, and he closed his own eyes knowing that, as much as anything, this was why she could never belong just to him.  Her life wasn’t her own any more than Padre Felipe’s life was his, or Zorro’s was his.  Other people were counting on her, too.

"Did your family engineer General Iturbide’s rise to power?"

"No."  Her eyes sparkled softly as she looked away.  And suddenly an even greater sense of loss swept over him with the understanding that she had never really loved him.  She was in love with her god, not with a man.  Not with Diego de la Vega.  For her, love was nothing personal; it was just a form of worship.  "It isn’t like that," she said, getting to her feet.

"Well, I wasn’t sure," he replied carefully.  "I mean, the General’s reputation for cruelty is well known, but of course, for all I know, it might have seemed reasonable to assume that there was no other way to end the fighting.  And he may yet be able to get Spain to honor that treaty, eh?"

"It isn’t like that," she said again.  "You know it isn’t like that."

As he stood up to face her, he knew there was no point in continuing to deny what was really under discussion.  Feeling a little sheepish, he let her fold both his hands in her own.  Then she took his arms and made him look at her.  "Querido—how could you think it isn’t you I love?"  Sighing ruefully, she studied his face.  "I love how your hair gets mussed and falls across your forehead, and how you frown when you concentrate, and how you shrug your shoulders.  I love how you look at me so hard sometimes, and how you pretend to be so innocent, with that sly smile, trying to keep a straight face.  And how you roll your eyes like that."

"If you do not stop talking that way," he said as evenly as he could, "the soldiers may soon have some real entertainment."  As a tired guard walked by outside their cell, irked that he had to be up this late, and apparently for nothing, Diego felt the girl’s eyes daring him to make good on this threat, though she knew both their lives would be at risk.

Then, suddenly, as she continued to look at him, it occurred to him that he was mistaken.  He could just take her.  Some voice in the back of his mind was assuring him that, as incredible as it seemed, if he wanted to, he could just push her back into the shadows of this dingy cell and make love to her until she was breathless—and no one would know.  Not unless he intended them to know.

A power unlike anything he had ever felt before rose up and surged through him, curling his fingers around her arms, until he realized that if he wanted to, he could just go over and walk right out of this cell.  He hadn’t the least idea how it would work, but he could already see himself opening the door and vanishing with her into the night.  Then, though he feared he might go mad from wanting exactly that, it occurred to him that this wasn’t the best way to use this energy.  Better to take control of it, to save it—for it would keep, he was sure of that.  And he was also sure he would need it.  Through sheer force of will, he released her.

Watching his eyes, she nodded.  Then, after a moment, she heaved a shaky sigh and sat down on the bunk again, folding her hands in her lap.  "General Iturbide will not last long," she said quietly.  "What you send out comes back to you, and he has done much harm.  Many wish him dead.  I doubt we could have prevented that, even if we had been willing to try.  Maybe we could have done something to ease a little of the suffering in el Bajio or in la tierra caliente.  If Marigál had not interfered."

"If not for him, you would be in Mexico City, even now, following in the footsteps of your grandmother."

"This is why I was sent to Spain.  For training."

"Who is he?"  Remembering the man he had seen standing beside his father at the dance, the man who had disappeared right before his eyes, Diego knew he had to hear this story before they reached el Descanso.  But suddenly somehow he wasn’t tired anymore.  He sat down again beside her.

Oreana nodded.  "He is a sorcerer, trained by my grandmother," she said.  "His real name is not even Marigál; it is Magaña.  Eusepio Magaña.  He must have changed it when he fled from Spain years ago."

"Then he isn’t really a priest?"

"Oh, sí, he is.  He was, anyway.  As I told you, priests often make good magicians.  They have great discipline.  But sometimes they go crazy with guilt.  They do what they think is sinful.  Then they repent, only to sin again, until finally they come to hate themselves, and those who tempt them—and even their own god for not making them stop."

"You sound as if you have seen many such men."

"No."  She let her gaze drift toward the shadows in the far corner of their cell.  "But my aunts say this is a common affliction among the once-born.  Such men are often the ones most tempted by the darker, more dangerous forms of magic.  They let their pride convince them they can shield themselves from its harmful effects.  But soon they become like demons in their own private hell."

"Like Endicott."

"No, not exactly.  Señor Endicott feels no remorse, or hate.  He kills people the way a boy kills kittens."

"He has killed someone recently."  Diego wasn’t sure how he knew this, but it was almost as if he could smell the scent of death on Endicott’s hands, like the smell of burning flesh.

Oreana bit her lip and nodded.  "He has been damaged," she said, "blinded to the harm he does.  Magaña uses an hechizo to control him."

"A what?"

"A familiar, a spirit."

"Before, you said a ‘creature.’"

"Sí, it is not alive, not in the way we think of life, but it has a life of its own.  It protects him the way a lion protects a kill.  This is why he seems so likeable—why people seem to trust him."

"And how does—Magaña?—how does he control this creature?"

"He created it," she shrugged as if the answer were obvious.  "One might guess he designed it to deflect or absorb the negative energy that would ordinarily come back on him.  It feeds on that energy, even as the energy itself consumes Señor Endicott’s soul, like a flame."

Diego couldn’t help but wince, thinking there might be many things he had never imagined that were worse than dying.  "And your grandmother taught this man how to do this?"

Oreana looked up sharply.  "I am not sure my grandmother would even know how to do it," she said.  "In my family we have never had to shield ourselves from the effects of black magic.  Our law forbids its use.  This is how we have survived, down from the old times."

"Then how would he learn such a thing?"  Diego studied her carefully, knowing that she too could probably hear the voice of the church echoing in the back of his mind, warning him that maybe all such practices were, after all, the work of the devil.

"Well, I do not know, exactly," she said, "but when I told you before that we must be careful who we train, you should know my family paid a great price for this lesson.  To this day, my grandmother tells Magaña’s story as a warning.  She was at court when Carlos Quatro became king.  Soon things fell into corruption and intrigue.  My mother was only a girl, fourteen or so.  Aunt Leticia could not have been more than twelve.  And Aunt Florinda, the eldest, she was sixteen.  Magaña was only twenty but, like you, he had some natural abilities.  He caught my grandmother’s eye at court, and she sheltered him, protected him.  When she left to found her school, she thought she could trust him.  She took him along."

Diego nodded.  One didn’t need psychic abilities to see how the story would unfold.  "So Magaña fell in love with your aunt."

"Apparently it is difficult to avoid such things when teaching boys that age, given the nature of the energies involved."

"Your age, no?"

"Girls are different," Oreana said with a shrug.  "Besides, I was trained from birth.  But with a boy, it is even more important to start young.  I think this is why most families train only their own children.  Better to begin when they are still in the cradle.  But my grandmother—she did not know this.  She had never trained a boy before.  And like you, this one learned very quickly."

"But why train him at all, if she had three daughters?"

Oreana studied her fingers.  "Power," she said.  Then her brows twisted into a plea.  "Well, surely you can see how, together, you and I can raise more power than either of us could alone?  It is the polarity between men and women.  By ourselves, neither of us could defeat Magaña.  Together we stand a chance.  You felt what we can do—just now."

"But your grandmother—she encouraged such feelings between Magaña and your aunt?"

"She encouraged him to love the deity.  It is not the same thing."

"No?"  He studied her carefully.  "I thought you just told me it was."

"It can be."  Her eyes caressed him.  "It is best so.  But one does not teach these things to children, nor is it necessary.  Our goddess is also a mother, and a sister.  The kind of love between brothers and sisters, or between parents and children—this also can be powerful."

Thinking of his own father, Diego nodded.  And suddenly he also began to wonder what the old man had done since the night of the dance.  Had he simply believed the elopement story and resigned himself to wait?  Somehow, despite all the deceptions Diego himself had perpetrated on his father to disguise Zorro’s activities, he had always suspected, and now he feared, that there were limits to what Alejandro would believe.  If he had gone to Padre Felipe, the priest would have told him everything, or at least as much as he knew.  And if Alejandro hadn’t stayed put—a probability, if not a certainty—his life could now be in great danger.

"Magaña became obsessed," Oreana went on.  "He asked for Tia Florinda’s hand.  But my grandmother could see he was far too ambitious and impatient.  She tried to reason with him.  He still had much to learn, but it was no use.  Fearing that ultimately he might just take what he wanted, she sent him away.  But even then he did not give up."

"Some might argue that this was not such strange behavior for a man in love," Diego said with a judicious shrug.

"And so he was," said Oreana, "but not with my aunt.  He was in love with the power you felt between us just now, and with all he imagined he could do with it.  He had not yet learned the humility one needs to be worthy of the sacred marriage.  A priestess may give her love freely.  But she is not to be given to anyone but a true priest of our religion."

"And so with you, eh?"  Diego pressed his fingers into his lips.

She leaned against him again, nodding.  "Such a man does not try to save the world by remaking it in his own image, according to his own sense of how it should be.  He knows the world is our mother, not just the mother of men, but of all living things.  She is already as she should be.  And she always gives us back what we send out.  So he gives his life to her, knowing she will give it back to him threefold.

"Eusepio Magaña was not such a man.  When Tia Florinda rejected him, he tried to seduce my mother.  Finally, my grandmother even tried to bind him with a spell, but it was too late.  Out of spite he joined the priesthood; then he denounced my aunt to the Inquisition.  When she was only nineteen, she was tried for witchcraft and put into a convent."

"But he still continued to practice witchcraft himself?"

"Well, of course."  Oreana sat up to arch her back and stretch her neck and shoulders.  "Such men," she said, "once they have tasted power, they will not renounce it any more than a dog will quit killing sheep.  They will justify what they do by calling it something else, or they will say they use it for good, to hunt us down, the way Magaña is doing, but they will not stop.  He did not denounce Tia Florinda to make her stop either, only to get her away from my grandmother."

"And where did he learn the use of torture?"

"Quien sabe?" she shrugged.  "He may have picked it up from watching the executioners.  He did not learn it from us."

"You said he almost killed her."

"One does not need torture for that."  She leaned against him again as he brushed the hair from her cheek and rested a hand lightly on her shoulder.  Then she added, "Señor Endicott was right: one need only prove the heretic did not really repent—or that she relapsed.  It was easy."

"Because it was true."

"My aunt was as willing as any Christian martyr to die rather than renounce her gods."

Diego couldn’t help but marvel at how, from this angle, a cult he had been taught all his life to think of as the epitome of evil could seem so good, even heroic.  "So how did she ever escape burning?" he asked.

"It was a miracle," said Oreana dryly.  "My father, he was one of the soldiers originally sent to arrest her.  This is how he met my mother.  Eventually he came to see what you have seen.  He did what he could to help.  And my family still had some allies at court, even in the church.

"My grandmother was able to reveal Magaña’s treachery to enough people that soon it was in everyone’s best interests that the matter be forgotten.  And it was for a while.  Magaña fled the country.  Some said he had been excommunicated, but others said no, since the Archbishop didn’t wish to find out who else he might implicate in his confession.  He disappeared, at any rate."

"To New Spain."

"No one would have known him there, or questioned his past.  He would have known enough magic to see to that.  He could have resumed his career as a priest, even become an inquisitor."

"But this all happened before you were born," said Diego, still trying to sort out the story in his mind.  "That night, when you—we—dreamed of him, I thought you had actually met him."

"Sí. . . ."  Oreana let her gaze drift off toward the shadows again as though, in them, she could both envision and conceal some inner darkness.  "Once," she said.  "I was very young.  My grandmother says this was the second time her mistake came back to haunt her.

"By now, Tia Florinda was headmistress of the school.  My grandmother did the books and taught the use of plants and herbs.  My parents helped out however they could.  Then one day he just appeared.  I was outside, in the garden, playing by myself.  No one knew who let him in—one of the servants, perhaps.  But they could not be blamed."

Studying her closely, Diego let his hand fall from her shoulder as he felt the force of her words rise up through him like nausea, lifting his whole expression just a little.  He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing, though he knew just from the way she sat there not daring to look at him that he was right.  His gaze tumbled, then darted around the cell, looking for somewhere else to light—anywhere but on her.

"I–do not understand," he said at last.  "The other night you were . . . you were still a virgin."

The girl was trembling now, and so was her voice.  "He was very careful about the way he touched me," she said.

Diego considered this reply for a moment, deciding he didn’t want any further elaboration, at least not on that matter.  "But why?" he said, his own voice shaking now.  "Why would anyone— "

"To take my life without killing me.  Surely you have heard how sorcerers can do this."

He could only chuckle bitterly at how every silly superstition he had ever heard suddenly seemed to have some literal interpretation, as if a pack of mythical monsters had materialized around him wearing only the most tawdry faces of ordinary villainy.  Then he felt his anger rise.

"After that," she went on, "I would never have had all my power.  Oh, they did what they could to break the spell.  But they knew I would always be too afraid to let myself feel those energies a fully initiated priestess must feel.  They came to California to get me away from him.  But when I got older, they were not surprised to find I had no interest in men.  This was why they sent me back to Spain, to learn what I could from my aunts, and why they would have sent me to Mexico.  A small gift to la Señora.  Better than nothing.  But when Arturo was taken, my mother said it was a sign.  She said la Señora must have another use for my life.  Urbino . . . ."

She winced as the tears began to run down her cheeks.  "I knew he loved me," she said softly, "and I knew I could love him; he wasn’t really such an evil man.  And Mother—she said she could see he would not be a demanding lover, if it came to that."

"But— "

As she brought her palms together and pressed the forefingers into her lips, Diego felt his anger evaporate into the kind of stupor one feels at being struck by a good solid blow between the eyes.  He shook his head.  Then the real blow fell as he saw the full significance of what she was about to tell him.  "When I said that, through you, la Señora gave me back my life," she whispered, "I did not mean the life I had given Urbino.  I meant the life Señor Magaña took from me."

Still unable to look directly at him, she looked a little past him, then shut her eyes and sat there trembling.  He got to his feet, then went slowly to the front of the cell and hung his hands in the crossbars overhead as he let his forehead come to rest against the cool rough iron.

"It was a miracle," she said with just the faintest hint of wry amusement in her voice.

He laughed softly.  Then he realized he wasn’t laughing.  Or maybe he was, it was all so utterly ludicrous—to think that by making love to her, he had practically obliged her not to marry him.

"This was why la Señora brought me to you," she added.  "All the wise words, the sayings of my grandmother, the beliefs of my people.  I learned them all, memorized them all, believed them all.  I was so clever.  But they were only words.  I did not feel them.  Not until I realized how much I wanted you.  It happened so quickly, before I even knew what it was."

He tightened his grip on the bars, then released them, taking a deep breath that forced his shoulders to quit shaking as he felt her standing behind him now.  "Diego . . . ."

"Your goddess has a real streak of cruelty, no?  If I do not lose you to another man, or to a madman, then it seems I must lose you to her."

Without looking, he could feel the deep sob that shook her whole body, then became a fitful sigh.  "This is not my wish," she whispered, "but perhaps it is yours."  Then he realized that he was indeed the one who had turned his back on her—again.

And why wouldn’t it be that way? he thought.  Even if no man had ever before ignited her passion, why should it burn, now, for him alone?  Or could he bear life with a woman born to be a courtesan?  Actually, it might be quite in character for Diego de la Vega, he thought, smiling bitterly to himself.  People might expect to see her cheat on him—and to see him shrug it off, just as he shrugged off his father’s disapproval.  At least it might not astonish them as much as it amazed him now that he was even thinking he could try.

But were there no other alternatives?  Must he either turn to sorcery or learn to share her with the likes of Augustín Iturbide?

"La Señora may seem cruel," she said.  "But if we are cumplido, the good we do comes back to us as well.  She gives us what we need.  And you—you have done much good.  But maybe you don’t really need me.  Maybe you would be better off without me."

As he finally turned around to face her, he wanted more than anything he had ever wanted in his life to drown in her embrace, to lose his mind in the taste of her lips, and to promise her that no matter what, he would always be hers.  But he couldn’t.  He knew he would never love anyone else—or that, even if he did, it would be only because he had seen, in that someone, something of her.  But he couldn’t swear there would never be anyone else—not unless she did.  And she didn’t seem to be in any rush to say it.  Maybe she thought he would always return to her anyway, even if it killed him.  "Oreana, please— "

"We must rest now," she said.

With a nod, he followed her toward the back of the cell and watched her lie down on the dingy bunk, burying her face in her arm.  Then he sank down onto the bare dirt floor at the end near her head and, resting his arms on his knees, his forehead on his arms, leaned against the wall and fell instantly asleep.