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  A Lady Bought with Rifles

  Jeanne Williams

  For Foster

  “In our dreams, at least, we are fabulous and free.”

  One

  Miranda

  1

  The small turquoise crucifix called me home, or rather, to my mother, for the distant place of my birth, a hacienda in northwestern Mexico, was alien and strange as the deserts of the Arabian Nights. Miss Mattison, our headmistress, had shown me that corner of Mexico on a globe, south of Arizona Territory, bordered on the west by a sea stretching to Baja California. So far away. Across the ocean and most of North America.

  At least I was not the only pupil at Miss Mattison’s whose parents were abroad. Probably a third of the girls had fathers scattered about the empire in commerce, government service, or the military, and mail from Australia, Canada, Africa, and India was as common as that from Sussex.

  In spite of our prayers for men fighting the Boers, several girls were orphaned when their fathers died in South Africa. I felt like an orphan my last few years at the school, for though I had a living mother, she could not write in English. Father was killed in a mine accident when I was fifteen. After that I had no letters from Sonora, only packets.

  Jewelry I could not wear at school, fans, beautifully embroidered hand-sewn chemises, nightdresses, drawers, petticoats, and camisoles, these so daintily worked that our needlecraft teacher handled them with awe and asked leave to show a nightdress to the class. Once, from a box of linen handkerchiefs embroidered with flowers, I found one with an eagle driving curved talons into a hare. A crumpled paper slipped from the folds. “De Reina,” it said. This only gift my half-sister had ever sent both fascinated and repelled me. I put it at the bottom of my drawer where I kept my mother’s notes on top, though they all said the same thing.

  “Te quiero, Miranda. Te quiero, hijita.” I love you, Miranda. I love you, little daughter. How I cherished those small perfumed bits of paper! And how I wondered why, if they loved me, my mother and father had sent me so far away.

  It was because Father insisted I have an English upbringing, of course. The youngest son of a Wessex squire, he had refused to go into the Army as his parents wished. After a bitter family quarrel, he had gone to Mexico to work for British rail interests, saved his money, become partner, then full owner of a gold mine, and married the lovely young widow of a wealthy rancher. Doña Luisa Dubois de Anza had defied her relatives to marry the tall Englishman, but she would not leave her country, so my father stayed on in Mexico, though he brought me to Miss Mattison’s when I was five.

  He visited me every few years, but when I begged to come home, he would say I must have an education that would fit me for life in England if I married there. If I asked to come for just a visit, my father would say perhaps next year. That year never came.

  Still, apart from missing my parents, I was content at Miss Mattison’s. Father wanted me to have an English background, but of a special, almost eccentric kind. In the school library hung the motto: “The truth shall make you free.” With all Miss Mattison’s heart and soul, she clung valiantly to that, though she now and again lost pupils because we studied Darwin’s Origin of Species and Mill’s On Liberty and The Subjection of Women.

  While most English schoolgirls were learning to read, write, do simple arithmetic, speak some French, embroider their petticoats, and paint timid watercolors, we were reading Tolstoy, Zola, Hardy, Lecky’s History of European Morals, Carlyle’s French Revolution, and Sir James Erazer’s Golden Bough.

  Miss Mattison’s girls also had the advantage of her brother’s outspoken views. A prominent though controversial London physician, Dr. Mattison, when visiting his sister in Sussex, gave her pupils lectures, meant to inform and encourage though they were also frightening since his fierce blue eyes, ruddy moustache, and gruff voice intimidated girls who seldom saw men other than tradesmen, gardeners, and the rector. On one occasion he propped a bolster up in front of the class and labeled its midparts LUNGS, HEART, LIVER, STOMACH.

  Around these he placed a whalebone corset, laced it with vicious jerks, and then glowered at the class as the maltreated bolster, squeezed almost in half, sagged against the brass-inlaid teapoy where his sister kept the makings of her one indulgence.

  “Torture and insanity!” he proclaimed. “All for a wasp waist! Young women, if you value your health, never let vanity or sheeplike conformity imprison your vital organs. We condemn the Chinese custom of bound feet; how much more crippling to constrict lungs and heart!” His cheeks puffed out as his voice boomed louder. “Observe the corset forces upward what it does not squeeze. This, with the fact that to breathe at all, the victim must literally pant, causes a continuous heaving of the upthrust bosom, which—”

  “Brother!” Miss Mattison rose quickly, pink to the roots of her faded blond hair. “Thank you for a most instructive lecture. Now, girls, those of you who have your compositions done may bicycle or play tennis till tea.”

  Though she felt certain subjects were too delicate for young ears, Miss Mattison believed in developing body as well as mind and had rejoiced when the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896. Unless there was a downpour, we bicycled or took long walks every day, led by Miss Mattison in her cherished old Bloomer suit. Besides tennis and archery, we had weekly riding lessons from a local stable.

  As well as being warned of the dangers of tight lacing, we knew more about our physical functions than most women. Dr. Mattison left the Lancet and other medical publications in the library, and though a few older girls insisted that a woman’s flow stopped when she was pregnant because the blood went to nourish her baby, most of us knew that the curse or “the flowers” accompanied the casting off of the unfertilized ovum.

  And we knew that Queen Victoria’s accepting chloroform to ease the birth of Prince Leopold back in 1853 had popularized its use as an anesthetic and that Joseph Lister had used antiseptics as early as 1867 though his rules of hygiene were still not always followed by careless doctors, even after Florence Nightingale proved during the Crimean War that simple cleaniness could save countless lives.

  “Be sure, young women, this concerns you more than romantic dreams or Latin verbs!” thundered the doctor. “If you aren’t careful of your physician, one with dirty hands could leave you with childbed fever that can kill you or permanently disease your female organs.”

  I couldn’t imagine doing whatever it was that got babies in the first place. Certainly I would have been terrified to share a bed with a man like the doctor. I was glad to escape his urgent warnings and lose myself in the books of Dickens, Victor Hugo, Rider Haggard, Oscar Wilde, H.G. Wells, and Arthur Conan Doyle. I was proud that my father had contributed several important volumes to the well-stocked library: John James Audubon’s Birds of North America, with its beautiful color plates, and Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico. He had also donated a stereoscope with hundreds of cards showing animals, birds, and other countries.

  For Sunday reading, after services in the old gray Saxon church, there was Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress, John Donne’s sermons and meditations, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and other edifying books. Sunday was a day we yawned through once we had acquired the ability to sit through services without squirming. It was not a time for “worldly” pleasures, though it was hard to think of anything at Miss Mattison’s school that fitted that description.

  Oh, but when Father came, I knew delight! We would go by train to London and be borne by elegant hansom to the Savoy, where we had a suite of two bedr
ooms, sitting room, bathroom, and W.C. After the austerity of school and my narrow lumpy mattress, pile carpets, Japanese wallpaper, gold frieze, carved mantels, and walnut furniture seemed overpoweringly grand. I would just be getting able to sleep in the big smooth postered bed when Father’s visit would be over and he would leave me at Miss Mattison’s to remember the fairy-tale time we had shared. Luncheon on the terrace overlooking the Embankment, the famous Savoy Dinner or Opera Supper after a play, ballet, or opera. I loved Gilbert and Sullivan, and as I grew older, Father took me to Wilde, Ibsen, and Shaw. And there was the National Gallery, the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew as well as the aquarium in Regent’s Park.

  But better than the opulent food, the luxurious suite, plays, pantomimes, ballet, and opera was being with my father, reveling in his undivided attention. I thought he was the most handsome man in the world with his chestnut hair and moustache, deep blue eyes, and erect figure.

  When I was too weary to go to the public rooms, Father had tea brought to our suite—scones, pâté, dainty egg and cucumber sandwiches, lobster salad, walnut cake, and chocolate cake. We would feast sumptuously while playing chess or while Father talked of Las Coronas, the hacienda, or the mine, which had so much pyrite gleaming from the slope that it actually looked like a golden mountain though the real ore was hidden deep inside.

  Some of his miners were Yaqui Indians and he spoke of them with increasing concern because the Mexican government was killing or deporting them by hundreds and turning their ancestral lands over to Mexican and United States’ colonizers. So far, Father had managed to protect his workers, but he was terribly worried about what was happening in Mexico.

  “Don Porfirio Díaz and his científicos cannot rule forever,” he told me. “Yaquis are not the only oppressed ones. A few Mexicans are incredibly wealthy, but in spite of the reforms attempted by Juárez after he drove the French from the country, most Mexicans are debt slaves, peons, completely at the mercy of their masters. Unrest is growing all over Mexico. A revolution is coming. It will be terrible.” He took a deep breath. “I’m glad you will not be there.”

  Revolution was, to me, aristocrats riding in tumbrils to the guillotine. I could not link it to Mexico and would restively change the subject, ask about my mother and the half-sister of whom I was jealous because she lived with my parents, and saw them every day.

  “Do you love her best?” I had blurted once when I was about seven and in tears at Father’s impending departure.

  “Of course not!” He had swept me up, held my face against his broad shoulder, where I felt so safe, so loved. “But she is wholly Mexican. You are not.”

  “Is she p-p-prettier than I?”

  “No, little goose!”

  “Cleverer?” I persisted, snuffling, trying to find some reason for the hurtful separation.

  “Her Spanish is better,” he teased, putting me down. “And I must say that she does not ask questions!” But I sensed that he was uneasy about Reina, that she had something strange about her.

  He never visited his relations in Wessex, though he told me once that his brother was dead and the present squire, Father’s nephew, had a host of daughters to marry off and was an automobile fanatic. He had bought one of the first Royces back in 1884. This by itself was enough to violently prejudice Father against him, for Father abhorred the internal-combustion engine and all its attendant works.

  Father belonged to the Victorian empire, to the time of men like Livingstone, General Gordon, Gladstone, and Shaftesbury, when one-third of the globe’s ships had British registry, when Europe was the Englishman’s playground, though he made his fortunes in Australia, Canada, the United States, Africa, India, or Mexico. It was fitting that Father died in the same year as Victoria and that he was in England when she died late in January of 1901.

  He took me to London for her funeral procession. The whole nation had gone into mourning. Public buildings were swathed in black crape and rather ugly black wreaths hung from doors and windows. Many women were entirely in black and men wore black armbands. Even our hansom driver’s whip was tipped with the dolorous color.

  Father had rented a hotel room overlooking the procession’s route and we watched silently as the famous eight cream horses, the gold and crimson trappings a shout of color, pulled the gun carriage topped by the coffin with its white pall and imperial crown. There were ranks of slow-marching military, arms reversed, and behind the gun carriage followed the new king, Edward, and the royal family, including the Kaiser, who had come from Germany to honor his aunt.

  Crowds were half a mile deep where there was space. “She’s the only queen most of us remember,” Father said quickly. “She ruled for sixty-four years and seemed the only sure point in a changing world. It will be strange without her.”

  He talked a long time that night, as if I were another adult. “A time has passed with the queen,” he said. “Motorcars and lorries are just the beginninig. Heavier-than-air machines, much faster than zeppelins, are being developed. You’ll see them flying above, you may even ride in one.”

  “So may you,” I teased.

  He smiled and shook his head as he brushed back my hair. “No, Miranda. I’ll live out my time by the rules I know.”

  That was his last visit. He was killed shortly after his return to Mexico and his body was never found in the mine. With his death my ties to Mexico grew more dreamlike than ever. His solicitor said my mother wished to obey Father’s wish that I finish my English schooling. So I stayed at Miss Mattison’s and caught occasional rumblings from the world outside: the first submarine, the laying of the trans-Pacific cable, the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk. The Boer War finally ended, and in America Henry Ford built a cheap automobile.

  We heard of these things tucked away in our peaceful gray flint building in the cathedral close, where one day followed another much like it except for the boredom of Sundays. Then the letter came, the letter with the crucifix that at last called me home.

  “Your mother is dying,” wrote a strange scrawling bold hand. “She wants to see you. Come as quickly as you can.” It went on to say that my father’s solicitor was being instructed to arrange my passage and pay my final account with Miss Mattison.

  Stunned, I gazed at the writing as if my father might have written it from the grave to reunite my mother and me, but the heavy slashing script was not his. The letter was signed Trace Winslade. I was sure my father had mentioned him, but I couldn’t remember how.

  Miss Mattison and I wept at parting and I promised to write, but as I stepped aboard the Cunard liner, I had a fated certainty that my English life was ending, that I would never return. I had never really belonged there, but would I belong in a place I only dimly remembered, a land of deserts and mountains open to the blazing sun? My mother was a soft voice and perfume, but my memories of Reina were of violent pinches beneath the table, shoves in a dark corridor, being called La Inglesa. Father always had spoken English to me. I had known Spanish as a young child, of course, but had forgotten most of it. Truly, I belonged nowhere, but as I journeyed by ship and train, I longed to have a home, be part of a family.

  I was met in Hermosillo by Señor Otero, the family’s lawyer, who drove me to Las Coronas, a full day’s hard travel. He spoke very little English, but when I asked him why we had an armed escort, he made me understand that Yaquis had been raiding in the area. A slight, nervous little man with a pointed beard, he obviously did not wish to have any more to do with me than necessary, an attitude I found echoed in the servants when we finally reached the hacienda.

  Did they distrust me because I had grown up in England? That seemed absurd and determinedly I put it out of my mind as I sat in my mother’s darkened room, holding her frail hands while candles flickered on all four sides of the bed and the priest droned.

  I had stayed like this for most of three days, leaving only to eat or for a few hours’ exhausted sleep. My mothe
r was restless when I was not with her, and though I was overwhelmed with grief and long-stored anger that she had allowed us to be separated, I clung hungrily to these hours—all that I would have of her, all that I could give.

  Reina came in and out, pausing by the bed, her lovely face unreadable. She must have had her green eyes and red hair from our mother’s French father, an officer in Maximilian’s army who, even after his emperor was shot, stayed in Mexico for love either of a woman named Torres or of her domain, an expanse of desert bounded by mountains and sea. Reina was three years older than I. If I could remember how she used to pinch me, surely she must, too, but she made no reference to our shared childhood. She treated me politely, like a stranger.

  My Spanish was coming back as long-buried memories unlocked experiences. Reina spoke some English so we could communicate, but when I tried to know her, she turned my efforts away.

  “Did you have the letter sent to Miss Mattison’s?” I asked on the second day when we chanced to be having breakfast at the same time. I was not only trying to reach my sister, but I was curious about the strong slanting script that had called me out of exile from the sheltered distant world that itself now seemed the illusion.

  “Trace Winslade took it upon himself to write. He is a pistolero your father sheltered.”

  “A pistolero?”

  “One who uses pistols. A man who lives by his gun. But Winslade, when he is not exceeding his authority, has charge of the Las Coronas horses.” Pride entered her voice. “Our herds are divided by color in the old fashion. They are famous.”

  “Winslade is English?” I persisted.

  She curled her lip, yet something burned deep in her black-lashed green eyes. “He is yanqui, tejano.”

  From what I knew of the War Between the States, neither Texan nor Yankee would appreciate Reina’s careless equating of the terms, but in spite of Miss Mattison’s rigorous instruction, I didn’t take issue with my half-sister. I wanted desperately to be friends with her. We would soon be each other’s only living near relation, and in this country I was a stranger, isolated by training and language. But Reina ignored me and I rose from the long carved table to go to the dark room filled with incense and prayers I did not understand, servants who bowed their necks to Reina but not to me.