The Healers

By the time Zorro reached the canyon where he had left his saddle and saddlebags, he was wondering why Alejandro hadn’t even asked him where they were going or what his son might be doing out here.  Of course, to keep up with Tornado, he had had to push his horse pretty hard; talking would not have been easy.  But now, as they reined in near a small tree beside the riverbank, he didn’t even seem too surprised.

If anything, he seemed a bit fearful somehow—as if he really thought that after all they had just been through, the outlaw might bring him out here now to rob and kill him.  A spark of anger narrowed Zorro’s eyes as he reflected that Alejandro was the one who now held Zorro’s life in his hands, for Zorro could never continue to act without the don’s approval once his identity was known.  Then he realized that he himself was more than a little scared.  His hands had begun to sweat inside his gloves and his heart pounded as he slid down off his horse and stood there, unable even to make himself turn around.  Then he chuckled softly.  Most people actually thought he was brave.

"Diego. . . ."

The name floated quietly in midair for a moment, as if neither of them had actually said it, as if it had always just been there, waiting for the wind to catch it right.  Carefully, Zorro slipped off his gloves, then rested his face in his hand for a moment before he finally took off his hat.  Then he fumbled with the knots at the back of his neck.  As he ran his fingers under the edge of the black fabric to sweep it off his face, he knew his father had come to stand beside him.  "How did you know?" he asked.

Alejandro considered the question carefully.  "I probably should have known all along," he said.  Then he sighed and added, "I know the look a man gets in his eyes when he realizes that he is about to lose the only woman he has ever loved."

Diego tried to shrug.  "It was that obvious, eh?"

"As obvious as the measles," said his father.

Closing his eyes and collecting himself, Diego said nothing for a while.  Finally, trying hard not to let his voice tremble, he looked up into the old man’s face.  "How . . . ?  How does one bear it?"

Alejandro shook his head.  "I don’t know," he said.  Finally, setting his own jaw, he turned away.  "Your mother.  It was—my fault, you know.  Before you were born we lost several children.  It was hard on her.  But I wouldn’t give up.  I had to have a son, to . . . carry on the family name.  To inherit the land.  When you were born, I thought the curse had finally been lifted.  She had been so happy while she was carrying you, as if she had waited all her life to do it.  As if she had been born for no other reason.  I simply couldn’t believe that our first child was destined to be our last.  If I had just stayed out of her bed—"

"But . . . how could you have known?"  More than anything Diego suddenly wanted to take the old man’s shoulders, but Alejandro remained as untouchable as ever.

"When she died," he said, "I couldn’t even bear to look at you.  You looked so much like her."

"And when I returned from Spain . . . you must have thought she had died for nothing."  The words had just slipped out, and they were as much a surprise to Diego as Alejandro.  But when the old man turned around, he couldn’t hide the tears in his eyes.

"I never should have sent you away," he said, searching his son’s face.  "By all the saints!  I do not even know who you are!"

Diego caught a sharp breath, but it quickly escaped him.  He didn’t have the least idea what to say, until his father finally reached up to pat his shoulder, then drew him into an embrace.  Fighting hard to keep the tears from running down his own cheeks, he finally said, "Yes you do, Father.  I am the same man you have always known."  At last the old man shrugged.

"I always did think you would be good with a sword," he offered.

"I won the Royal Competitive Trophy."  Diego shook his head, now trying not to laugh.  "I was . . . the best swordsman in all of Europe."

Alejandro cupped his chin and frowned thoughtfully.  Then he nodded and a faint smile crossed his lips.  "I assume that Bernardo has been helping you."

Diego nodded.

"And what about the girl?"

"Yes, she knew.  She knew all along."

"You told her?  Right after you met her?"

"Well, not exactly.  She just . . . figured it out."

"I see."  Alejandro let his gaze drop, sighing heavily.  "Well, no wonder," he said.  Then he fell silent.

Not knowing what else to say or do, Diego walked over to his saddlebags, unbuttoning his shirt as he went.  Then he began to change into the clothes Bernardo had thought to pack for him.  But even after he had put on the more familiar white linen shirt and the richly embroidered Moroccan brown suit, his father still seemed unsure whether to call him "mijo" or "Señor."

At last, eyeing the black stallion, he said, "We will have to find you another horse to ride."  Clearly he wasn’t used to thinking his son could handle such a spirited animal, or that his son routinely had so much to conceal.  Diego slipped off Tornado’s bridle, then gently patted the hard muscular neck as the animal nosed his chest.

"Tornado will find his own way home," he said.  "And I am certain the mission Descanso has plenty of horses to spare.  We can return later for the saddle and the other things."

Nodding, Alejandro mounted his own horse again, then waited for his son to jump up behind him.  As they rode back to the mission together, neither of them said another word about what they both knew was now troubling them most.

Hours later, Diego sat in the gathering twilight on a stone bench near the door of the upstairs room where they had taken the girl.  Indian women had come and gone with sheets and blankets, towels and basins and bandages.  Padre Luis had been in and out.  But now everything was still.  Only her mother and the servant girl Marbella remained, and he had no idea what they were doing, or what they could do, other than wait.  Still, Doña Evelia had refused to let him in.

He didn’t know how long he had been here either, as though now the whole world had somehow slipped out of time, but he didn’t care.  He would wait as long as it took.  There was nothing else to do.

In a nearby room, the soldiers and the mission priests were still trying to figure out what had happened to Padre Eusepio, who had never regained consciousness and who was now expected to be dead by morning.  While they could see quite well where he had been bitten, they simply couldn’t believe an insect bite could be so deadly.  But Padre Luis had told his fellow clergymen some rather disturbing things about Magaña, and they were worried that perhaps this was a sign from God, or even a warning.  He had seemed like such a pious man.

Matthew Endicott would probably not outlive Magaña by more than a week.  He had already been sent back to San Diego under heavy guard, facing murder charges, and Silvio’s testimony would probably send him to the gallows—and thence to whatever horrible judgment awaited him, either in hell or someplace worse.

Silvio had clung as steadfastly to Padre Luis as Marbella clung to Oreana’s mother, and Diego hadn’t been at all surprised to learn that she and Padre Luis were old acquaintances.  Oreana had said her family had some allies within the church.  He was probably a sorcerer too, Diego thought, for it made perfect sense that even the good ones would try to infiltrate an institution so determined to destroy them.

Still, of course, they were just as proficient as Diego himself at concealing the truth of their identities.  Doña Evelia had studied him carefully when his father had introduced him as the young man who helped Zorro rescue her son.  But she hadn’t let down her own guard, even for a minute, when he had tried, privately, to reassure her that her daughter had told him certain things.

"My daughter has a vivid imagination, joven," she had said.  "Just like her tia Florinda."  Then she had shaken her head sadly and added, "You know, my mother used to claim that this nervous condition has cursed our family for generations.  The doctors have told us it is some form of hysteria, but there is little they can do.  We had prayed that our girls would be spared, but"—she shrugged—"Mas se perdió en el diluvio, (1) eh? God teaches us to be grateful for what we have."

And why had she and her husband even come to Descanso?  How had they found out their daughter was here? he wondered.  But the woman had simply replied that they hadn’t heard from the girl, or from Magaña, in so long that they had started to worry.

They had meant to come to Los Angeles anyway.  But when they had arrived at the de la Vega hacienda, Marbella had told them what had happened and had shown them the drawings of Descanso.  They had just decided to catch the next ship.  Luckily, the ship that had brought them from Monterey had still been anchored in the San Pedro harbor.  "One only wishes the circumstances of our journey could have been different," she added.  "Shocking, is it not?—the lengths to which such evil men will go, preying on the superstitious fears of simple people, turning them against their betters."

And her performance had been so convincing that for a time Diego began to think maybe she really was telling the truth.  Maybe he really had gotten just a little too carried away in the girl’s fantasies, and now he was as crazy as she was.  Only after he had gone off by himself had he started to remember all the things he had seen, things he couldn’t deny or explain any other way: the flash flood, the adobe bricks, Endicott’s shadow—even the way he had finally convinced Magaña to let her go, by intimating that he was someone else, someone who, in another lifetime, Magaña had fought before.

Had that been just a spur-of-the-moment bluff?  Not even he was sure.  But clearly there had been a someone else, someone even Magaña had feared.  If it wasn’t Diego de la Vega, who was it?  Ultimately he had concluded that while Oreana’s way of describing the world might not sound rational to everyone, it was entirely too self-consistent to be mere hysteria, and in the end he was struck with how candid—and how trusting—she had actually been with him, taking him into her confidence as she had.

After a while, Diego had visited the chapel of the virgin, but it hadn’t really helped, since he hadn’t been able to make a full confession in over two years.  And now he had, not just one secret life, but two—neither of which he felt he could really discuss or renounce, albeit for the sake of others.  Later he had spent a long time walking on the beach, listening to the cry of sea birds and watching the pelicans spear the water’s surface like folding parasols.  After a while, he had even stripped off his clothes and waded out into the deep surf, but not even the soft embrace of an immense ocean could melt this pain.  So now there was simply nowhere else to go, nothing else to do.  He would wait here until it was over, one way or another, as long as it took.

A while ago, after the angelus had sounded, his father had brought him a plate of food, but he hadn’t felt hungry.  A while after that, an Indian woman had come to take it away untouched.  Now his father returned to sit on the bench beside him, gazing out over the railing of the veranda, across the courtyard to where the flicker of the torchlight below cast ghostly shadows against the ghostly figures in the frescos that adorned the second story walls, telling the story of the founding of this mission.  Plumed savages knelt humbly before the cross under the guidance of a pious Spanish priest.  Crops were planted, crafts taught.  The Virgin presided over everything.  In all likelihood, the artist who had painted the scene had himself been an Indian.

"You should go to bed, Father.  You look tired."

Alejandro pressed his lips into a wry smile but said nothing.  He just folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the wall.  "It has been a long day," he said at last.  Diego ran a hand through his dark wavy hair, brushing it back off his forehead.  Then he let the hand fall back to clasp the other one where it hung between his knees.  He was about to reassure his father that he would be all right when, suddenly, the door to Oreana’s room swung open and he wasn’t so sure anymore.  Doña Evelia was looking at him differently now, as if she were really seeing him for the first time.  The tenderness in her eyes gave him chills.

"Come quickly, joven," she said.

Anxious yet wary, he didn’t know what else to do but get to his feet.  His father rose, too, though he realized he hadn’t been invited in.  He only stood aside, trying to put everything he felt into a single glance as he let his hand come to rest on his son’s shoulder.  Diego nodded.  Then, setting his jaw, he stepped past Doña Evelia as she shut the door behind him.

The room wavered a little as the draft from outside set the candles flickering.  To his left on a mat on the floor, Marbella sat quietly, cross-legged, looking almost as though she were praying, he thought, palms pressed together, held at about the level of her heart, a small rosary draped over her thumbs and wrists.  But she seemed utterly oblivious to anything around her.

"Prayer, too, can be a potent form of magic," said Doña Evelia in a gentle yet resonant voice.  "Provided one learns to do it correctly."  Diego studied the woman as she moved past him on the right to lead him toward the bed on the other side of the room.  She looked down, then up at him again and said, "I am sorry about not trusting you before; I did not know."

"Believe me, I do understand your need for discretion."

"She did not want to tell me," the woman added.  "Not even me.  She said she had given you her word."

"She is quite stubborn."

"Well trained."

"Yes, of course."

Doña Evelia smiled faintly.  "Stubborn, too," she said.  "But she could not keep the truth from her own mother.  She loves you, joven.  Very much, I think."

Suddenly it struck Diego that, apart from the hair, his own mother might have looked more than a little like this, had she lived.  When he had last seen her, she had been just three or four years older than he was now, and when he thought of her, he usually thought of the even younger image that hung on his wall.  But by now she would have been over fifty.  Surely, faint lines would have begun to appear on her forehead too.  Her cheeks and jowls would have started to sag.  Her lips might not be so full anymore.  But the eyes would have been the same.  Even then, there had been something wistful and wise in the way she had looked at him sometimes, as if she, too, had known from the start that all human life was far too brief.

He was almost afraid to look down at the fragile heap of limbs beneath the thin cotton sheets.  The girl’s face was sunburned and bruised, but it was nearly as pale as the soft white muslin that bandaged her forehead.  "I know you would die for her," said Doña Evelia gently.  "And she knows it too.  The two of you"—she shook her head—"you are far too much alike, both in such a rush to get yourselves killed.  But now . . . now you must do something a little harder, eh?  Now you must live for her."

The woman’s words alone might have brought him to his knees.  But as he sank down on the edge of the bed, she only nodded, turned and walked away.  He fumbled for the girl’s fingers, wincing when he found them at how cold they were.  Then he brought them to his lips, where they came to life, caressing his cheek, tracing the stray curls that fell across his forehead.  Her voice sounded paper thin as she smiled and tried to say his name.

"Do not talk," he said, brushing a stray wisp of hair from her eyes.

"Hold onto me," she whispered, ignoring his instructions.

Carefully, he slipped his arm under her shoulders, trying not to hurt her, though he knew they had probably given her something for the pain.  "Please do not leave me, Querida," he said.

With some effort she managed to take him in her arms as he buried his face in her hair, and as his shoulders began to tremble, she whispered, "I will never leave you.  I will haunt you, I promise."

He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually let himself cry—at least not the way women wept.  He knew it had to have been before his mother died, since he hadn’t cried then at all, and everyone had told him how brave he was, though he hadn’t felt brave.  In fact, he hadn’t felt anything, even in the midst of everyone else’s anguish.  Not until they put her in the earth had he started to think he might really never see her again, but even then, what good was crying? Far better to comfort than be comforted.  Better to protect than be protected.

Now, though, he couldn’t seem to stop crying, as if he were a child again, as if every bit of sorrow he hadn’t felt then amounted to an unpaid debt that had suddenly come due with interest, so that he really didn’t know which woman he was crying for, or even if it mattered, since mostly, he knew, he was crying for himself.  Her arms tightened a little as she clung to him.  Then he felt her slip away, and a part of him died too.

But the anguish didn’t die.  In fact, if anything, it turned to anger.  He had always believed that striking a woman was a cowardly and shameful thing to do, but now, as he happened to look up at Doña Evelia, he thought he could see how a man might be tempted.  She stood there quietly beside Marbella, studying him with a kind of detachment he himself might have trained on insects, as if her own daughter’s death meant nothing to her.  Why, he wondered, hadn’t she let him in just a little bit sooner?  She wouldn’t have needed to reveal any secrets—she wouldn’t have had to say anything at all about magic—just to give him a few more minutes to say goodbye.

But even as he tried to swallow these bitter thoughts, he was afraid he might choke on the one that next came bubbling to the surface.  For suddenly he knew he was thinking too much like a Catholic.  This woman was not a sentimentalist.  She hadn’t expected him to wallow in self pity, or to say a tearful farewell.  If not for what the girl had told her about him, she wouldn’t have let him in at all—and she hadn’t done it just because he was Zorro, either.  She had let him in only because she thought he could do something not even she herself could do.

Her eyes widened just slightly, as if to verify what she saw dawning on his face.  But as he looked from her to the girl and back, he hadn’t the least idea even how to begin.  Desperately, he tried to remember everything Oreana had told him—about raising power, about making things happen just by imagination and sheer force of will, about the polarity between men and women.  But how could he even think of her that way at a time like this?  If there was even a spark of life still left in her, it was so faint that, putting an ear to her chest, he couldn’t detect it.  He shook his head, utterly perplexed.  "How. . . ?"

The reply was clear but so soft he wouldn’t have been sure Doña Evelia had actually said it aloud, except that he thought he saw her lips tremble a little.  "You know how to find her," she said.  "You know where she went.  Go to her.  Bring her back."

The candles began to glow like spots before his eyes as a strange darkness flooded the rest of the room.  He felt a little dizzy, but by now he knew exactly what was happening, and he could see that while Doña Evelia was not actually making it happen, she was somehow bending his raw anger and frustration into another more useful shape that merged with Marbella’s concentration, swirling around him until he felt like the calm eye of a storm.  The Watchers took their places at each of the four quarters.  Then, suddenly, he imagined that he was standing on the bank of a lake at the base of a tall willow with rough black bark, moonlight falling in dappled patches through its rustling leaves and onto the tender spring grass at his feet.

Looking around, he felt more than heard himself call her name, but no one answered.  The silence rang in his mind.  Quickly, he strode to the water’s edge, not wanting to see what he knew he would find there, just below the smooth dark surface.  The soft filaments of her hair dissipated like seaweed in a tide pool, her dark blue eyes gazing up at him, pale lips parted as if she had been singing.

Wincing, he blotted out the image.  It wasn’t real; it was just an illusion, a horrible dream.  Then, as he turned around, he saw her standing like a ghost beneath the tree, almost as pale as the white chemise she wore.  But she didn’t seem to see him at all.

Going to her, he took her wrist.  "You are not dead," he insisted, but she said nothing.  Then suddenly they were standing inside a jail cell in San Diego.

"You cannot save me," she whispered.  "I have lost too much blood."

Feeling his fingers start to curl around her arms, he narrowed his eyes at her.  "How do you know?" he said.  "You are not even conscious."  As she looked up at him, her eyes grew dark, and her lips began to tremble.

"I have seen men die," she said.

"Perhaps."  He shrugged faintly.  "But so have I—some of them even at the point of a sword.  The wound was not that deep."

As she searched his face, he thought he could feel her start to remember the intense rush of desire they had shared in that place, a feeling she had called the light and power of creation, the sacred source of all magic.  Then it faded like a sigh.  "You cannot stop the turning of the wheel," she said.

Diego shook his head.  "Perhaps I cannot work miracles," he said.  "But you and I—together, we can do things that neither of us could do alone.  You know this.  You said so yourself.  It does not have to end this way."

She reached up to caress his cheek, but then as he started to kiss her, she pulled away, and he found that they were standing once again on the hillside where he had found her on the astral plane, near the spot where he had kissed her before.  "You are better off without me," she said, turning her back on him.

He came to stand behind her and took her shoulders as he had when she had stood holding the edge of the cauldron in her family’s ancestral temple, gazing into the steaming liquid to search for Alonzo del Valle.  "Even if that were true," he said, "I still do not see how it would mean you had to die."  And he was not surprised to see that suddenly they were inside that very circle of stones again, but he had an uneasy feeling about where this conversation was headed.

"We could never marry in your church," she said.  "My family would not hear of it.  And even if we could, it would only mean trouble—for both of us."

"Are you so certain of that, Querida?"  He turned her around to face him again.  "Have you so little faith?"  Studying her eyes, he added, "It’s Magaña, eh?  You believe all those things he told you—all that poison he made you swallow.  You think there is no way to overcome our religious differences, but clearly some priests have done it.  We both pray to la Señora.  How do you know she isn’t the same for both of us?  Or maybe you really believe I could tire so easily of having a friend who understands what my life has been like.  Who knows all of my darkest secrets and who just . . . likes me anyway?"

Oreana backed away, shaking her head.  He thought he knew what was coming next, but he could tell his words were having an effect.  "You said you loved me," he insisted.  "Was that all just a lie?  Were you really just using me to raise the power you needed for your spells?  Because that isn’t how it felt."

"No . . . I do not think so," she said as she slipped in between two of the large upright stones.  "But then, I am not Oreana.  Oreana is dead.  I am only a figment of your own imagination."

Her words struck him smartly, like a slap in the face, bringing him to his senses so fast he barely caught a glimpse of her this time as she disappeared into the darkness.  Blinking hard, he brought the whole room into focus again.  Nothing had changed.  She was still lying limp in his arms while her mother stood quietly beside Marbella, looking carefully at something, though he wasn’t at all sure it was him.  And suddenly he wondered what had ever possessed him to think that this lunacy was anything more than a desperate exercise in wishful thinking.

He shook his head as the anguish began to well up inside him again, and he was just about to get to his feet and walk out the door when suddenly it occurred to him that this was precisely what Eusepio Magaña would have wanted him to do.  Their battle wasn’t over yet.  Even in death, he still had a hold on the girl, and he wasn’t about to let her go.

Diego took a slow breath and felt the muscles of his face melt into a sort of expressionless composure.  Did Doña Evelia know what she was asking?  To defeat an expert swordsman like Matthew Endicott was one thing.  But to go after a formidable and far more experienced sorcerer like Magaña—and on his own court?

Despite all the intense impromptu training he had received, Diego still felt he was playing with forces beyond his comprehension and control.  Even if he did find his way into the garden in Toledo, he knew now it had to be a trap.  And if Oreana really had lost the will to live, he might never get out of there by himself.

The space between him and Doña Evelia seemed to shine the way darkness glittered when you rubbed your eyes.  Still, in his mind’s eye, he felt her gaze.  "If you cannot go through with this, joven, no one will think the less of you," she said.  For a moment, the softness in her voice made her seem almost like an ordinary woman.  "I assure you that I will understand," she added.

"Gracias."  Diego nodded, but he made no move to get to his feet.  With a quick prayer, he crossed himself and shut his eyes again.

"I will help you all I can," she said.  "And, yes—I too hope that your god will do the same."