Daughter of Fortune by Carla Kelly Read Free Book Online Page A

to
them. The ground was dry and barren, but the air was cooler and the
land covered with piñon pines and scraggly juniper. Maria
sniffed the air. How sharp and pleasant was the smell of the trees,
how unlike the recent odors of death.
    The steady climb continued, and then after hours of
seeking, she saw fields of corn and beans, newly planted and tended
by Indians, who looked up when the horsemen rode by, then turned
back, silent, to their stooping work. Maria noticed the veins of
irrigation ditches outlining each field. Then in the distance she
saw a church’s stubby spire made of wood, then another. She pointed
toward the nearer church.
    “You have found San Miguel,” Diego replied. “In the
middle of Analco. It is the Indian parish, the church of the
Indians brought originally from Mexico by our grandfathers.” He
pointed toward the other spire. “And that is San Francisco, named
after our worthy patron saint. Our town is named la villa real
de la Santa Fe de San Francisco. A lot of name for something so
small, eh, chiquita ?”
    She did not answer. They rode slowly through Analco,
a collection of mud huts on narrow streets surrounding the church
of San Miguel. Maria craned her neck for a glimpse of something
better.
    There was nothing better. The closer they rode to
Santa Fe, the lower her heart sank. Santa Fe, la villa real de
la Santa Fe de San Francisco, was a jumble of adobe houses, all
the color of the red earth around them. The streets were narrow and
dirty, the penetrating smell of piñon wood smoke everywhere.
It was so small.
    Diego sensed her disappointment. “And what did you
expect?” he asked.
    “I ... I ... don’t know, really,” she faltered.
“Something more.”
    “I have never seen your Mexico City,” he said. “We
are an outpost, nothing more. A fort on the frontier. All the
grandness here is in the name. I suppose we have little to
recommend us.” He paused and chuckled. “Could you not have found
relatives somewhere else?”
    The riders slowed their horses to a walk as they
passed the church of San Francisco and entered a plaza straggly
with weeds and empty of people.
    “It is the dinner hour.”
    Dinner. People sitting down at tables. Napkins.
Tablecloths. Food in plates and bowls, food that did not have to be
broken in small chunks and soaked to softness. Conversation. “It
has been so long,” Maria murmured. Her eyes filled with unexpected
tears. How long had it been since she had sat down to a meal with
family and friends?
    Diego shifted in his saddle as he said his farewells
to the accompanying riders. “We will have to rouse the governor
from his table, Maria chiquita ,” he said as he dismounted.
“Let us enter the courtyard of the palace.”
    A palace? Maria scrubbed the tears from her eyes and
looked around. Surely there could be no palace in this place. With
an ache of homesickness, she remembered the tall buildings of
Mexico City, and the mighty Aztec temples, most of them torn down.
Mexico City was a town of plazas that welcomed with trees and
cooling fountains.
    Diego laughed at the bewildered expression on her
face and pointed to the north. “Our palace,” he said.
    Maria stared at the long, low building with stunted
towers on either end. The zaguan —vestibule—was open, brass
cannons pointing out on both sides of the massive gates. She shook
her head and Diego laughed again.
    “What is that? You are not impressed?”
    Diego was wrong. She was impressed, not by the
beauty of this building but by its solidity. There was none of the
grace of height and form she remembered from the city of her birth.
The walls here were thick and squat and solely functional, but they
had been whitewashed with gypsum— yeso —and the particles
sparkled in the afternoon sun. This primitive frontier outpost had
been built to last and she was impressed in spite of herself.
    As Diego led his horse through the gates of the
palace, his long spurs clunked on the hard-packed earth,