The Garden

As many times as he had done this before without even thinking, he thought it felt strange now to actually recognize the ancient guardians of the fencing circle as, one by one, they surrounded him.  But by now, the circle itself was so linked in his mind to Oreana, he couldn’t escape the feeling that without her something was missing.

Nor could he recreate that sense of power he had come to feel in her presence, and while there were no voices to distract him now, he knew this only meant he was on his own.  The outcome of this duel was far from certain.  He aimed his right foot and shoulder precisely at his opponent, letting his left heel find its proper place behind the right.  Then, with no signal but the briefest exchange of glances, it began.

Endicott initiated the first series of passes—quick, simple direct thrusts, no doubt meant to gauge the speed and timing of Zorro’s reactions.  He was probably trying to figure out if he really was facing Diego de la Vega, since Magaña, of course, would not have told him.  His next gambit was to increase the complexity of his attack, trying to draw the stop hit to his wrist so he could hit Zorro’s arm again off the parry.  He was soon cured of that when Zorro began feigning stop hits, then ceding on the parry only to go after him a couple times with an explosive counterattack that nearly caught him on the knee.

Zorro tried to keep his own attacks as varied yet as simple as possible—no sense wasting energy on flashy stunts.  Not that he had never blithely drunk a glass of water or relaxed in a chair while blocking a series of cuts, or let down his guard entirely just to prove he could duck faster than another man could swing.  But Endicott wouldn’t even have wasted the time it took to raise an amused eyebrow before taking advantage of such reckless bravado.

At this level, fencing was more a game of strategy and bluff than physical skill, like a mix of sleight of hand and chess at lightning speed.  There was no other sport like it in the world, Zorro thought.  Nor would even a matador ever face such a cunning or lethal opponent.  Fencing was as much a mistress to him as any woman—deadly, treacherous, yet incredibly beautiful and seductive.  She had always been more or less faithful, at least so far.  And he had not made love to her with the ardor she deserved for far too long.

As his mind slipped deeper into what he was doing, he found it harder to remember that he wasn’t supposed to kill Endicott.  In fact, the closer he came to being killed, the less certain he was that he could resist what was quickly becoming more than a mere temptation.  Once, after chasing the man’s blade just a little too far as he launched an attack, and nearly lunging into a stop hit, he even found himself thinking it might be worth getting hurt, even seriously, just to bring this duel to its ultimate climax, to feel his opponent’s body convulse just a little as his flesh yielded to the blade, to see the intimate look of surrender in his eyes, to hear the quiet catch in his throat as the life began to pour out of him.

Not until he happened to notice Endicott’s silhouette against the bare strip of daylight coming in through the slot in the doorway did Zorro begin to wonder if such thoughts were really his own.  As he continued to squint at his adversary, what finally struck him was that there was nothing more to see.  The dark presence that had once hovered over him was gone.  Then Zorro realized that he already had killed Endicott, just by telling Magaña earlier, before the duel began, that Endicott had killed an innocent girl, something so ugly it would inevitably come back to haunt them both.  Now Magaña needed both Zorro and Endicott dead.  But maybe he didn’t need Zorro dead right away.  For all at once, the outlaw also knew what had happened to Endicott’s shadow.  It was hovering, right now, over him.

He felt the cold steel slice through his shirt sleeve and graze his forearm almost the instant he dared to glance over at his real attacker, but he knew it was the only way to break Magaña’s hold on his mind.  In another instant, after meeting the sorcerer’s eyes, Zorro had gathered Endicott’s blade with his own and made one simple thrust that brought its tip lightly to rest against Endicott’s throat.  Endicott took a moment to drop his sword, but when he did, he seemed less stunned than Magaña.

"I won’t kill him for you," said Zorro quietly as he backed the man toward one of the nearby stalls and yanked down the rope that dangled from the pulley overhead.

But he had barely begun to lash Endicott to the corner post when he heard Magaña reply in a soft lethal voice, "You will really wish you had."  The next instant, the big doors at the front of the blacksmith’s shop swung open, and in stepped two soldiers, each holding one of Oreana’s arms as she struggled between them.  A third lancer trailed behind, holding the bridle of the skittish palomino colt.

Zorro dropped the rope and the sword, and for a moment he thought he might sink down to the floor beside them.  "Sorry, Padre," said the man on Oreana’s right.  "The other one got away, but this one—she fell off her horse.  We think she might have broken her leg.  Do you want us to send for a doctor?" he added, glancing at Magaña’s thigh.

"No," came the quiet response.  "Just bring her over here."

As the two men fought with the girl, half dragging, half carrying her back toward Magaña, their cohort drew his sword and dropped the reins of the jittery animal, who, showing the whites of his eyes, began to dance away from the weapon’s sudden flash.  Oreana looked as if she had been beaten—covered with dust, her cheek bruised, her lip cut, her forearms skinned.  She gritted her teeth trying not to cry out as she struggled to get her legs under her.  Even so, when her eyes met his, Zorro saw them flood with tenderness.  How in the world could she have fallen off her horse?

"Pick up your sword and fight," she said, trying to sound angry.  "Get out of here.  Go!  This isn’t your battle anymore, Señor Zorro.  This is between him and me."  Zorro picked up the sword, making the soldier nearest the door look almost as nervous as the colt behind him, but the masked man made no attempt to go anywhere.

"I freed del Valle," Oreana went on as, at Magaña’s unspoken direction, the soldiers took her over to the cart by the forge and, tipping it up at an angle, tied her wrists to the front posts, her ankles to the rear, stretching her across its bed.  "I made the soldiers leave his cell door unlocked before they brought us here," she added with a quick gasp.  "He should be well away from here by now.  And Don Alejandro has gone for help.  I think he will get it, too.  He said the priests in San Diego know about Señor Endicott.  Silvio told them he killed a girl.  So you see, when the soldiers hear from Corporal Esquivel, they will— "

As she spoke, Zorro noticed that Endicott had carefully wriggled free of his bonds and had by now edged almost past the lancer nearest the door, who hadn’t really been paying any attention to him, being far too preoccupied with the outlaw.  He grabbed both his coat and the pistol, and, leveling it at the assembly, snatched the palomino’s bridle and backed out the door.  "Señor Zorro," he said as he swung up onto its back, "My sincere thanks for the rematch.  You know," he added, "if you are Diego de la Vega, you really must be some kind of sorcerer."

Zorro nodded almost imperceptibly to acknowledge the remark but said nothing.  Only one man stood between him and the doorway now.  But as the others drew their swords, looking to Magaña for direction, Magaña just nodded toward the girl and said, "If Zorro moves, kill her."  Then, with some difficulty, he walked over to the stall beside the one where Zorro now stood, pried the blade of his dagger from the stud in the back and, with a mildly disdainful glance, headed toward the forge again.

"Amateur," he said.

"Please get out of here," the girl pleaded.  "There is nothing more you can do now.  You cannot save me, and if one of them takes my life, at least I will die quickly."

Zorro shook his head.  "I cannot leave you," he said.

"Don’t be a fool," she hissed.  "Do you not understand?  Señor Endicott was right.  A priestess of la Señora was not meant to love just one man.  How could you ever trust me now, anyway?"

"I do trust you," he said.  "You’ve never really lied to me—have you."

The girl’s eyes widened, but tears welled up in them.  "What about del Valle?" she asked.  "How do you know I didn’t—?"

A faint smile caught his lips.  "I just do," he said.  "Besides," he added, nodding at Magaña, "he himself said there were many ways of healing.  Many different techniques, eh?"

"And I have had to learn them all," she smiled painfully, "since I have always been reluctant to use the one he had in mind."

"So I thought."

She nodded.  Then the pain overran her smile.  "But this is still not your fight," she winced.  "You have already won your battle.  Him—he is finished.  Even if they do not catch him now, he will pay for what he has done.  But you—you are Catholic.  You have only one life.  Do not throw it away now.  Not for me."

Suddenly, something odd occurred to Zorro—not a plan, exactly, or even an idea, but more like a sense of deja vu.  "I am not so sure that’s true," he said, glancing down for a moment at the sword in his hand.  "And neither is he," he added, nodding toward Magaña again.  "Are you, Señor."  But it was almost as if someone else were speaking through him, or as if he were speaking on someone else’s behalf.

Magaña’s eyes narrowed as Zorro began to walk slowly toward him.  The lancers stiffened but they seemed reluctant either to kill the girl or to take on this outlaw they had been told was a devil straight from hell, a man who had already killed God knew how many soldiers, as the nearby bodies of their two fallen comrades bore witness even now.

"You thought you had gotten rid of me, didn’t you," Zorro went on, studying the man’s face for any sign of fear or doubt.  "But I found my way back to this world, in spite of all you could do, eh?"

"No . . . ." Magaña shook his head.  "That is impossible," he said, backing up a little.  Then, as the stunned soldiers gave ground, he stepped back to the edge of the cart and bent to raise it so that the girl was lying flat across its bed.  Finally, still holding Zorro’s gaze, he took her right leg and caressed it, twisting it until she cried out.  Zorro froze.

"Let her go," he said.  "I’m the one you want."

"If you are," said Magaña, "then you know the price of her freedom."

The outlaw said nothing for a moment.  Then he sighed and nodded pensively, pursing his lips.  Flipping the saber into his left hand, he stuck its point into the floor at his feet, then knelt down beside it, still resting a hand on its pommel.  Then he bowed his head and crossed himself.  "Forgive me, Father," he said, "for I have sinned."

Magaña smiled faintly.  "You will have a quick death," he said.

As Zorro heard the girl cry out, now in an even deeper pain, he couldn’t help but let his eyes meet hers.  "California needs you as much as she ever needed me," he said.  "Your skills, your abilities—they are a gift from la Señora."  Then, nodding at Magaña, he added, "He was right; you were meant to serve your goddess, not to serve just one man.  And if he kills me, well, my death will bring many people together.  Others will follow in my footsteps.  Besides," he smiled, "I will see you again.  You have my word."

"But I cannot go on without you now," she sobbed.

"Your allies"—he nodded—"you gave them to me.  That was why you fell off the horse, eh?  Now I give them back to you."

"But there is no need for this sacrifice, do you not see?" she said, nodding at the edge of the cart.  "He cannot make me confess.  He cannot send me to hell.  There is no time. . . ."

As he followed her gaze Zorro felt himself gasp, for now that the bed of the cart was lying flat, he could see the drops of blood that before had been running down the boards behind her, and he realized that the point of the sword he had broken in its slats must somehow have gotten stuck between them.  The soldiers must have accidentally laid her on it when they tied her up.

Though he wanted to sink into the floor on which he knelt, somehow he managed to get to his feet, pushing past Magaña even as the man raised a dagger to his throat.  The two lancers also seemed to shake off the stupor that had held them spellbound and moved to surround him, swords drawn, but he didn’t care.  He only wished he could think of something to say to her as he held her eyes, trying to hold whatever life was still in them.  And for a moment, as he looked down at her, it seemed as if the two of them were back again beside the lake, in the warm glow of the moonlight.  As its energy enveloped him once more, he felt the rest of the world begin to darken and recede, as if this had all been just a horrible dream.  Now, he knew, was the time to use this power.  But how?

Reaching into the straw beside her, he found the tip of the blade and carefully dislodged it.  Then, pulling off his glove, he tried to stop the warm flow of blood—so much of it—thinking how it felt unlike anything else, oddly slippery yet sticky to the touch.

"Cut her loose," he heard himself say.  Then he heard other voices, and he felt the girl’s arms fall onto the straw.  She had already passed out, but he bent close to her anyway, trying to think what else to do.  A sorcerer does not specify how a thing is done, she had said.  He just envisions the results.  But all he could envision when he looked down at her was the pale, stiff looking face of his mother—that and the cold distant face of his father.  Please do not let her die, said a voice in the back of his mind, but he had no idea whose voice it was, or to whom the plea was addressed.

Then, suddenly, there were other voices—loud ones—and there was movement all around him.  He saw it as if it were happening in some distant corner of his mind.  Then, a woman’s voice cried out, and he felt a firm but gentle hand take his arm.  As he looked up at her, though he knew he had never seen her before, he also knew there could be no mistaking who she was.  Her long loosely bound hair was just a little darker gold than her daughter’s, except for the streaks of silver that framed her face.  Her dark blue eyes were razor sharp, yet gentle somehow, and the lines that formed at their edges as she studied him did not diminish her beauty so much as establish her right to wield it.  Silently she made her presence known.  Then the world returned.

"I said stand down, private."

"But mi Capitan, this is el Zorro."

"I don’t care if it’s Lucifer himself," came the terse reply.  "Let him go and arrest that man."

Slowly, reluctantly, the two soldiers on either side of Zorro lowered their blades and stepped back exchanging puzzled glances as they moved, now, to surround the padre from whom they had just been taking orders.  He had retreated back toward the chair beside the wagon where Zorro had told him to stay, but he hadn’t dropped the knife.  "Capitan Esquivel," he said, "I think there has been some misunderstanding."

"Well I don’t," said the officer as he handed the reins of his horse to a nearby private, who saluted crisply, then stepped back and stood at attention.  "This Zorro may be the very devil himself, but if he is, then he does deserve his due.  And I’m not about to arrest a man who saved the life of my son—not when innocent Spanish women are being treated like this," he added, nodding at the girl.  "Any objections you may have will be duly noted at your trial, Señor."

Zorro blinked hard and shook his head just a little, as if to clear it, thinking that now surely he must be dreaming.  There in the doorway behind the capitan stood a whole assembly of people, some he knew, others he had never seen before.  First there was Corporal Esquivel, who obviously did have more influence with his superiors than he had ever let on.  Then there was Padre Felipe and, beside him, another priest, a tall, handsome fellow with curly hair, an olive complexion and keen dark eyes.  Beside them stood Silvio, his green eyes shining; he looked oddly confident somehow, even serene.

Bernardo had squeezed in unobtrusively among the soldiers who stood, now, along the far wall, a couple of them busily trying to revive their fallen cohorts while two others guarded a rather scruffy looking prisoner that Zorro soon realized was Matthew Endicott.  Nodding at him, Bernardo gleefully but prudently made his sign for Tornado. Across the room, near the other side of the doorway, smiling and nodding as if to confirm this discreet message, stood Oreana’s little brother Arturo, and beside him an older man whose identity was also easy to guess.  Tall, lean, yet muscular, Oreana’s father looked just like the gracefully aging retired soldier she had described, a venerable older version of his son.

Alonzo del Valle stood just behind them and, beside him, Zorro even thought he saw the girl Marbella.  But the last face he noticed—that of Alejandro de la Vega—reminded him all too vividly that this was hardly the time to start feeling relieved.

Turning back to the woman who stood beside the cart bending intently over the limp body of her daughter, Zorro felt his knees start to give.  He didn’t want to upset her concentration, but then somehow he realized that he and five other men could not have made the slightest dent in it, so he grabbed the rail of the cart to steady himself.  He knew she heard his unspoken question, but he couldn’t help but wince when he sensed she had no answer.  Then he felt another hand fall gently on his shoulder.

"Señor Zorro."  The voice sounded older and more fragile than it ever had before.  He made himself look up.  Then he straightened himself as best he could.

"Señor de la Vega," he said.

"Señor," the old man continued.  "My son Diego—he does not seem to be here."

Zorro nodded.  "Come with me," he said.  "I will take you to him."

As he turned, Zorro saw that the two soldiers on either side of Magaña, his former aides, now his guards, had confiscated his knife and were leading him out of the building as well.  But as the outlaw reached for his saber, still stuck in the floor near the middle of the room, he thought for a moment he might still have occasion to use it.

Magaña had stumbled near the forge, and apparently he had deceived his captors into thinking it was because of the wound in his thigh, but Zorro knew all too well what he was really doing.  He was searching hastily on the floor for the little crescent shaped knife the girl had dropped into Zorro’s hands.  Once he had wrapped it in his handkerchief, he could easily use it to finish her off, or even to silence Endicott.

Zorro knew that by killing this sorcerer, he would be asking for otherworldly consequences so ugly he might well have been better off killing Endicott—or even letting Magaña send him to hell.  And he knew, as the man glanced up at him, a faint cold smile on his lips, that Magaña knew it too.  Struggling to his feet, he said quietly, almost to himself, "Amateur."

Still, Zorro was beyond the point of caring about consequences.  Quickly, he moved to position himself between Magaña and the girl, but when he heard the man cry out, he was sure it was too late, until he saw the knife fall back to the floor.  Then, to his surprise, Magaña fell too, screaming hideously as the puzzled soldiers sank down beside him to see why he was clutching his hand.

He passed out before Zorro could get there, but when the outlaw did bend over them, he noticed the brown spider that had crawled up inside the man’s sleeve, nearly invisible against the plain fabric of the cassock.  Instantly, he reached down and let it crawl onto his fingers, knowing it wouldn’t bite him, but also knowing the soldiers would kill it if they saw it, for it had to be one of the deadliest spiders in the world.  And they would never even begin to figure out how it had gotten here.  Who would believe that Oreana had somehow intended it to be here?  She had brought it all the way from her aunt’s garden in Toledo.

As the capitan and several other soldiers crowded in to see what was wrong, Zorro let the creature go, then backed away, sheathing his sword.

"What was it?" said Alejandro.

Zorro shrugged.  "I am not certain," he said, shaking his head a little as he marveled at how hard it was to quit lying.  But then, as Oreana had said, sometimes the truth was hard to tell all at once.  And then there were some truths that were simply not to be believed.  "The soldiers will take care of him," he added, turning back to the girl and her mother.

"Sí. . . ."  Alejandro nodded thoughtfully.  Then, eyes narrowing, he added in a tone that was at once anxious yet oddly gentle, "But what of my son, Señor?  Is he all right?  Please.  I must know."

Zorro closed his eyes and forced himself to turn back toward the worried man.  Ordinarily, he would have said that of course Diego was fine, just as he had promised.  But at the moment, he knew that that was also a lie.  With some effort, he walked to the stall where he had left his cloak, then wrapped it around his shoulders again and headed for the door, his father beside him.

As the two men left, Bernardo slipped out after them.  A lancer handed the don his horse, and as Zorro looked around for his own mount, he soon noticed the servant, who rolled his eyes and gave a discreet nod to indicate that Tornado was also nearby.  But as Zorro held his friend’s gaze for just a moment longer, they both knew that the next time their eyes met, things would not be quite the same.

Bernardo tried to smile.  He knew he would always be more than a servant to Diego—more, even, than a friend.  But they both knew he couldn’t be a father.  Zorro looked away, then whistled sharply, and Bernardo studied his shoes.  Soon, he felt as much as heard the thud of their horses’ hooves, echoing his heartbeat, as if to take it with them.  At last he couldn’t help but let his eyes go with them too, up the road that led past the mission and into the distant hills.  He only prayed that this time they would both find the person they were looking for.

Bernardo could not have forgiven himself if anything had happened to Alejandro.  So it had been near torture for him to follow Corporal Esquivel and Oreana’s brother back to the presidio night before last, riding all night, arriving Sunday morning at daybreak.  Still, he was glad now that he had trusted Zorro’s orders once again, for it was almost uncanny the way things had worked out.

Once they had reached the presidio, the corporal had left the boy in hiding, as he had said he would.  But Arturo had quickly sensed that he was being watched, and Bernardo hadn’t been able to stay hidden for long.  Soon Arturo had not only found him but had begun to talk to him in a form of sign language so subtle and complex that Bernardo almost couldn’t follow it himself.  He was glad for the words that accompanied the gestures, though at times he feared the boy would realize how much he was relying on them.

Arturo was also less surprised than Bernardo to see Esquivel return Sunday afternoon with assurances of safety.  He probably didn’t like to tell anyone his father was the commandante, Arturo confided, or his comrades would tease him about it.  Still, his testimony, along with Padre Felipe’s and Silvio’s, had helped to convince the commandante that something was amiss in Descanso.

Oreana’s parents had also helped.  Apparently they had just arrived on a ship from Monterey by way of San Pedro.  They had stopped at the de la Vega hacienda just long enough to meet Marbella, they said, and to look at some drawings of the mission.  The mere sight of the boy’s mother weeping as she embraced her son had been more than enough to prompt Capitan Esquivel to lead a military escort to Descanso the very next day to look a little deeper into Marigál’s activities.

The next morning, they had left early.  Then, about an hour before they reached the mission, they had come across Alonzo del Valle, riding north.  His conviction for judizante had also been called into question by now.  And the fact that he then surrendered freely had also gone very much in his favor.

When Don Alejandro had turned up a while later, Bernardo was at once relieved and terrified that he might try to flee.  Fortunately, he had noticed Bernardo and Marbella in the midst of all the uniforms.  Then, once he told the soldiers his own story, they had all quickened their pace.  Meanwhile, Padre Felipe had told Alejandro the story of how Padre Luis had enticed Silvio into a confession booth and, thus, into seeing the error of Magaña’s ways.  The superstitious campesino had apparently not wanted to risk lying directly to God.  But now he seemed not just saved but almost enchanted by this young priest.

Matthew Endicott had been the last person they had met heading north from Descanso, but he had obliged the soldiers to chase him, especially once he noticed Silvio.  Fortunately, the soldiers hadn’t been the only ones chasing him or he might have gotten away.  He had jerked the palomino colt around and started to head east, up into the hills, when he had found Tornado standing right in his path, snorting and pawing the earth.  It hadn’t taken long for the black stallion to make the colt dislodge his rider.  But by the time the lancers had extracted Endicott from the big sagebrush on which he had landed, both horses had disappeared over the nearest rise.

And so the whole company had finally reached Descanso.  But by now, nobody could say whether they had arrived just in time or just a little too late.  One of the young priests who was in charge of the mission had ordered his Indians to help Oreana’s mother while Padre Felipe tried to reassure him that he was not the only priest to have fallen under Magaña’s spell.  Capitan Esquivel stood nearby issuing orders to his men while his son recounted Endicott’s crimes to him in even more detail.  By a hitching post on the other side of the building, the servant girl Marbella listened shyly to Alonzo del Valle’s questions about his father, answering them as best she could, though she knew very little.  Meanwhile, Arturo’s father stood with his arm around his son while they both watched his wife carefully binding her daughter’s wounds.

Watching them all, Bernardo felt a little lost, as if everything he had ever set out to do were somehow finished now.   At the moment, he didn’t even have a horse to tend to.

"Do not worry, Bernardo," said a soft voice beside him.  "Your master will be all right.  Señor Zorro will take care of him."  Watching the boy discreetly sign the words as he spoke, Bernardo smiled and nodded his head.  Then, with a reassuring glance from the boy’s father, he began to help the mission Indians as they carefully started moving Oreana’s limp body out of the blacksmith’s shop and into a more suitable room inside the mission.