Zorro

PART THREE

Barcelona, 1812–1814

I cannot give you any further details about Diego’s relationship with Amalia. Carnal love is one aspect of Zorro’s legend that he has not authorized me to divulge, not so much out of fear of being the butt of jokes or accused of lying as from a sense of gallantry. It is common knowledge that no man that women flock to boasts of his conquests.

Those who do, lie. And besides, I take no pleasure in prying into others’ intimate moments. If you are expecting spicy pages from me, you will be disappointed. All I can say is that in the period when Diego was disporting himself with Amalia, his heart was given wholly to Juliana. So what were those embraces with the Gypsy widow like? One can only imagine. Perhaps she closed her eyes and thought of her murdered husband, while Diego abandoned himself to a fleeting pleasure with his mind a blank. Those clandestine meetings did not muddy the limpid adoration the chaste Juliana inspired in Diego; his emotions were compartmentalized, parallel lines that never crossed. I suspect that that has often been the case throughout Zorro’s long life. I have observed him for three decades, and I know him almost as well as Bernardo does, which is why I dare make that statement. Thanks to his natural charm which is more than a little and his awesome good luck, he has been loved by dozens of women, usually without inviting it. A vague hint, a look out of the corner of his eye, one of his radiant smiles, is ordinarily enough to make even women with virtuous reputations invite him to climb to their balcony at questionable hours of the night. However, Zorro does not fall for them he prefers impossible romances. I would swear that as soon as he jumps from the balcony to terra firma, he forgets the lady he was embracing only moments before. He himself does not know how many times he has fought a duel with a vindictive husband or offended father, but I have kept count not for reasons of envy or jealousy, but because of my thoroughness as a chronicler. Diego remembers only women who tortured him with their indifference like the incomparable Juliana. Many of his feats during those years were frantic attempts to attract that young lady’s attention. When he was with her, he did not play the role of the faint-hearted fop that he adopted to deceive Agnes Duchamp, Le Chevalier, and others. To the contrary, in her presence he fanned out all his feathers like a peacock. He would have done battle with a dragon for her, but there were none in Barcelona, and he had to settle for Rafael Moncada. And now that I have mentioned him, it seems only fair to do justice to the man. Every story must have a villain. In fact, his wickedness is essential, for there are no heroes without enemies of their own stature. Zorro was fortunate to have a rival like Rafael Moncada; otherwise I would not have much to tell in these pages.

Juliana and Diego slept beneath the same roof, but they led separate lives, and there were few reasons for them to meet in that mansion with so many empty rooms. Only rarely were they alone, because Nuria watched Juliana and Isabel spied on Diego. Sometimes he waited hours to catch her alone in a corridor and walk a few steps with her without witnesses. They happened upon one another in the dining room at dinner hour, in the salon during harp concerts, Sundays at mass, and in the theater when there was a play by Lope de Vega or Moliere, writers who delighted Tomas de Romeu. In church as well as in the theater, men and women were seated separately, so that Diego had to be satisfied with observing the back of his beloved’s neck. He lived in the same house with her for more than four years, pursuing her with a hunter’s dogged determination, without a single episode worthy of mention, until tragedy struck the family and the scales tipped in Diego’s favor. Up until then, Juliana had responded to his siege with so little emotion that it was as if she didn’t see him but he needed very little to feed his illusions. He believed that her indifference was a stratagem intended to mask her true feelings. Someone had told him that women do such things. He was pitiful to see, poor man; it would have been better had Juliana loathed him. The heart is a capricious organ that can make a sudden turn, but warm, sisterly affection is nearly impossible to reverse.

The de Romeu family made occasional trips to Santa Fe, where they owned a semi-abandoned property. The patriarchal home was a square building on the point of a cliff, where the grandparents of Tomas de Romeu’s deceased wife had ruled over their children and their peasants. The view was magnificent. Once those hills had been covered with vineyards that produced a wine comparable to the best of France, but during the war no one had tended them, and now nothing was left but dried-up, insect-infested runners. The house itself was taken over by the famous Santa Fe rats, well-fed, bad-tempered vermin that the campesinos had been known to eat during times of hardship. With garlic and leeks, they are not half bad. Two weeks before going there, Tomas would send a crew of servants to smoke out the rooms, the only way to make the rodents retreat temporarily. Those excursions were less frequent now; the roads had become too dangerous. One could feel the hatred of the country folk in the air like hot breath, exhalations of bad omen that raised the hair on the back of one’s neck. Tomas de Romeu, like many landowners, scarcely dared leave the city, say nothing of trying to collect rents from his tenants, for fear of having his throat slit. In the country Juliana read, played her music, and tried to charm the campesinos like a fairy godmother to gain their affection, with little success. Nuria criticized the climate and complained about everything.

Isabel entertained herself painting watercolor landscapes and portraits. Have I told you that she was a good artist? I think I forgot to mention that an unpardonable omission, seeing that it was her only talent. On the whole, her art won more sympathy among the humble than all Juliana’s charitable works. She could capture a remarkable likeness, but she made her subjects better-looking than they were, giving them more teeth, fewer wrinkles, and a dignified expression they seldom possessed.

But let us go back to Barcelona, where Diego kept busy with his classes, La Justicia, the taverns where he met with other students, and his swashbuckling adventures, which was his romantic way of referring to his escapades. In the meantime Juliana was living the idle life of young women of the period. She could go nowhere, not even to confession, without a chaperone. Nuria was her shadow. Neither could she be seen talking alone with any man under sixty. She went to balls with her father, sometimes accompanied by Diego, whom they introduced as a cousin from the Indies. Juliana showed no sign of being in any hurry to marry, despite the long line of eager suitors. It was her father’s responsibility to arrange a good marriage for her, but he seemed incapable of choosing a son-in-law worthy of his marvelous daughter. In two years Juliana would be twenty, the allowable limit for finding a fiance; if she was not engaged by then, the odds of her marrying would plummet month by month. With his unquenchable optimism, Diego was making the same calculations, and he concluded that time was working in his favor: once Juliana saw that she was withering on the vine, she would marry him to keep from becoming an old maid. He tried to use this curious argument to convince Bernardo, the one person patient enough to listen to his constant ranting about his desperate love.

As 1812 came to a close, Napoleon Bonaparte met defeat in Russia. The emperor had invaded that enormous country with his Grande Armee of nearly two hundred thousand men. The invincible French armies operated under an iron discipline, and they moved at a forced march, much more quickly than their enemies because they carried very little weight and lived off the land they conquered. As they advanced toward the interior of Russia, towns emptied, their inhabitants evaporated, and farmers burned their harvests. With every advance, Napoleon left behind scorched earth. The invaders triumphantly marched into Moscow, where they were welcomed by apocalyptic flames and the isolated fire of sharpshooters hidden in the smoking ruins, ready to die killing. The Muscovites, imitating the example of the brave farmers, had burned their possessions before evacuating the city. No one was left to give the keys of the city to Napoleon, not a single Russian soldier to humiliate, only a few tired prostitutes resigned to entertaining the conquerors now that their usual clients had decamped. Napoleon found himself isolated in the midst of a mountain of ashes. He waited, not knowing what he was waiting for, through the summer. By the time he decided to return to France, the rains had begun, and soon the soil of Russia would be covered with snow as hard as granite. The emperor could never have imagined the terrible trials that his men would have to bear. Added to harassment from the Cossacks and ambushes by farmers, they suffered hunger and a lunar cold that none of his soldiers had ever experienced. Thousands of the French army were turned into statues of eternal ice and left stationed along the ignominious route of the retreat. Soldiers were forced to eat their horses, their boots, at times even the corpses of their comrades. Only ten thousand men, defeated and disillusioned, made it back to their homeland. When he saw his destroyed army, Napoleon knew that the star that had shone so brightly in his prodigious ascent to power was beginning to fade. He had to pull back the troops occupying a large part of Europe. Two-thirds of those sent to Spain were recalled. At last the Spanish could glimpse a victorious end after years of bloody resistance, but that triumph would not come until sixteen months later.

That year, during the same period that Napoleon was licking his wounds after the disastrous retreat to France, Eulalia de Califs sent her nephew Rafael Moncada to the Antilles on a mission to expand her chocolate enterprise. She planned to sell cocoa, almond paste, preserved nutmeats, and refined aromatic sugar to chocolatiers in Europe and the United States. She had heard that all Americans had a sweet tooth. Her nephew’s mission was to weave a network of business contacts in important cities from Washington to Paris.

Moscow was put on hold, since it was in ruins, but Eulalia was confident that as soon as the smoke of war cleared, the Russian capital would be rebuilt in all its previous splendor. Rafael set out on an eleven-month tour, plowing oceans and pounding his kidneys on horseback, all to establish the aromatic brotherhood of chocolate imagined by Eulalia.

Before he left for the Antilles, and without saying a word of his intentions to his aunt, Rafael requested an audience with Tomas de Romeu. He was not received in the de Romeu home but on the neutral terrain of the Geographic and Philosophic Society, of which the older man was a member. The club ran an excellent restaurant on the second floor, and Tomas de Romeu’s admiration for France did not extend to its exquisite cuisine. No canary tongues for him he preferred robust Catalan dishes: escudella, a soup to raise the dead, esto fat de toro, a stew with the firepower of a bomb, and the divine butifarra del obispo, a blood sausage blacker and fatter than most. Rafael Moncada, facing his host across a mountain of meat and fat, was a little pale.

He barely tasted the meal because he had a delicate stomach and was nervous as well. He laid out his personal circumstances to Juliana’s father, from his titles to his financial solvency.

“I deeply regret, Senor de Romeu, that we had to meet on the unfortunate occasion of the duel with Diego de la Vega. He is an impetuous young man, and I myself, I must admit, am often inclined to impulse. We had words, and ended up on the field of honor. Happily, there were no serious consequences. I hope that the incident does not weigh negatively in the judgement you hold of me, sir,” said the candidate for the role of son-in-law.

“Not at all, caballero. The purpose of a duel is to cleanse a stain. Once two gentlemen have fought, no rancor remains between them,” de Romeu replied amiably, although he had not forgotten the details of that particular match.

With the dessert, post re de music, filled with so many dried fruits and nuts that they stuck in one’s teeth, Moncada expressed his desire to ask for Juliana’s hand as soon as he returned from his journey. For a long time, without intervening, Tomas had observed the strange relationship between his daughter and her tenacious suitor. He found it difficult to talk about emotions, and he had never made the effort to approach his daughters. Woman’s talk flustered him, and he preferred to delegate that to Nuria. He had watched Juliana toddle down the stone corridors of his icy home when she was small, had noticed when her permanent teeth came in, and had watched her shoot up in a spurt and navigate through the graceless years of puberty. Then one day she stood before him with little-girl curls and a woman’s body, her dress bursting at the seams. At that point he ordered Nuria to have a proper wardrobe made for her, hire a dancing master, and not let his daughter out of her sight. Now here he was being accosted by Rafael Moncada, among other well-placed caballeros, asking for Juliana’s hand in marriage, and he did not know what to say. Such an alliance would be ideal; any father in his situation would be pleased; but de Romeu did not like Moncada, less because of differences in their ideological positions than for the disturbing gossip he had heard about the man’s character. The generally held opinion was that marriage is a social and financial arrangement in which sentiment plays little part that part of marriage irons out over the years but de Romeu did not agree. He had married for love, and he had been very happy, so much so that he never found a woman to take his wife’s place. Juliana was like him, and to make matters worse, she had filled her head with romantic novels. He was held in check by the enormous respect he had for his daughter. He would have to twist her arm to get her to marry someone she didn’t love, and he did not feel capable of doing that; he wanted her to be happy, and he doubted that Moncada was the man who could achieve that. He would have to report their conversation to Juliana, but he didn’t know how; her beauty and virtue intimidated him. He felt more comfortable with Isabel, whose obvious imperfections made her much more accessible. He realized that he could not put things off, so that very night he communicated Moncada’s proposal to her. She shrugged and without missing a stitch in her embroidery commented that many people had died of malaria in the Antilles, so there was no need to hurry a decision.

Diego was happy. The journey of his dangerous rival presented him with a unique opportunity to gain ground in the race for Juliana’s hand. The girl showed no reaction to Moncada’s absence, but neither did she seem to note Diego’s advances. She continued to treat him with the same tolerant and distracted affection she had always shown, without demonstrating the least curiosity about his mysterious activities. She was similarly unimpressed with his poems. She could not imagine that the teeth like pearls, emerald eyes, and ruby lips of those verses were to be taken seriously. Looking for more excuses to spend time with Juliana, Diego joined dancing classes and turned out to be an elegant and spirited dancer. He was even able to convince Nuria to rattle a bone or two to the tune of a fandango, although he could never get her to intercede with Juliana; on that point, the good woman was always as insensitive as Isabel. Hoping to capture the admiration of the women of the house, Diego cut candles in half with his fencing foil, with such precision that the flame never wavered and the parts of the candle remained in place. He could also extinguish them with the tip of his whip. He perfected the sleight of hand he had been taught by Galileo Tempesta, and performed true miracles with cards. He also juggled lighted torches and escaped unaided from a trunk closed with a padlock and chain. When he ran out of tricks, he tried to impress his beloved with his adventures, including some he had promised Bernardo and Maestro Manuel Escalante never to mention. In one moment of weakness, he hinted about the existence of a secret society to which only a select number of men belonged. Juliana congratulated him, thinking he was referring to a student club that wandered through the streets playing love ballads. Juliana’s attitude was not one of disdain she was fond of Diego nor of malicious ness of which she was incapable: it was merely the effect of the novels. She was waiting for the hero from her books, courageous and tragic, who would rescue her from everyday boredom, and it never occurred to her that that person might be Diego de la Vega. Or Rafael Moncada.

Every day it became more evident that the end of the war was near.

Eulalia de Callis was impatiently preparing for that moment while her nephew secured their business affiliations outside the country. Malaria did not resolve Juliana de Romeu’s problem with Moncada, and in November 1813 he returned, wealthier than ever because his aunt had allocated a high percentage of the bonbon business to him. He had been successful in the best circles in Europe, and in the United States he met no lesser a personage than Thomas Jefferson, to whom he suggested the idea of planting cacao trees in Virginia. As soon as he brushed off the dust of the road, Moncada communicated with Tomas de Romeu, repeating his intention to pay suit to Juliana. He had been waiting for years, and he was not inclined to accept another evasion. Two hours later, Tomas summoned his daughter to the library, the place where he settled most of his affairs and clarified his existential doubts with the help of a glass of cognac, and transmitted her suitor’s message to her.

“You are at an age to marry, my dear daughter. Time passes for everyone,” he argued. “Rafael Moncada is a true gentleman, and upon the death of his aunt he will become one of the wealthiest men in Catalonia. I do not judge people by their financial position, as you know, but I have to think of your security.”

“An unhappy marriage is worse than death for a woman, Father. There is no way out of it. The idea of obeying and serving a man is terrible if there is no trust and affection.”

“That grows after you marry, Juliana.”

“Not always, sir. Besides, there are your needs and my duty to consider. Who will care for you when you grow old? Isabel does not have the temperament for that.”

“For God’s sake, Juliana! I have never suggested that my daughters should look after me in my old age. What I want are grandchildren, and to see you both well placed. I cannot die in peace without leaving you protected.”

“I do not know whether Rafael Moncada is the man for me. I cannot imagine any kind of intimacy with him,” she murmured, blushing.

“You are no different from other girls in that respect, daughter. What virtuous young woman can imagine that?” Tomas de Romeu replied, as embarrassed as she was.

That was a subject he had never expected to discuss with his daughters.

He supposed that at the right moment Nuria would explain what they needed to know, although the chaperone probably was as ignorant about such matters as the girls. Juliana did not choose to tell her father that she talked about those things all the time with Agnes Duchamp, and that she had learned everything she needed to know in her romantic novels.

“I need a little more time to decide, Father,” Juliana pleaded.

Tomas de Romeu had never missed his departed wife so badly; she would have handled the problem wisely and with a firm hand, as mothers do. He was weary of so much hot and cold. He spoke with Rafael Moncada to ask for another postponement, and Moncada had no choice but to agree. Then Tomas ordered Juliana to talk things over with her pillow, and told her that if she did not have an answer in two weeks’ time, he would accept Moncada’s proposal, and that would be the end of that. It was his last word, he concluded, though his voice quavered as he said it. By then Moncada’s long offensive had reached the level of a personal challenge; people were talking about it in the stateliest salons and in the servants’ patios as well, how this young girl who had no fortune and no titles was humiliating the best catch in Barcelona. If his daughter kept asking him to put it off, Tomas de Romeu would be facing a serious confrontation with Moncada, but undoubtedly he would have continued to find excuses had a strange event not precipitated the outcome.

That day de Romeu’s two daughters had gone with Nuria to dispense charity, as they always did the first Friday of the month. There were fifteen hundred acknowledged beggars in the city, and several thousand indigents that no one took the trouble to count. For five years, always on the same day and at the same time, Juliana, flanked by the stiff figure of her chaperone, could be seen visiting houses of charity. Out of a sense of decorum and a wish not to offend with a display of ostentation, they covered themselves from head to foot in mantillas and dark coats and visited the barrio on foot. Jordi waited for them with the trap in a nearby plaza, combating his boredom with his flask of liquor. These excursions took all afternoon; in addition to succoring the poor, the women visited the nuns who ran the hospices.

That year Isabel had started to accompany them. At fifteen, she was old enough to learn compassion instead of wasting time spying on Diego and fighting a duel with herself before a mirror, as Nuria put it. They had to walk through narrow alleyways in barrios of raw poverty, where even the cats were on guard to keep from being caught and sold as hares. Juliana submitted with exemplary rigor to that heroic penance, but it made Isabel ill, not simply because the sores and boils, the rags and crutches, the toothless mouths and noses eaten by syphilis frightened her, but because that form of charity seemed a cruel joke.

She believed that all the duros in Juliana’s purse would do nothing to help the enormity of the misery.

“To do nothing is worse,” her sister would reply.

They had begun their round a half hour before and had visited only one orphanage when as they came to a corner, they saw three dangerous-looking men coming toward them. The men’s eyes were barely visible because they were wearing kerchiefs around their faces and hats pulled down to their eyebrows. Despite the official ban on wearing a cape, the tallest of them was wrapped in a cloak. It was the dead hour of the siesta, when very few people were about. The alley was bounded on either side by the massive stone walls of a church and a convent; there was not even a door recess to take refuge in. Nuria began to scream, but one of the rapscallions silenced her with a slap on the face that knocked her to the ground. Juliana opened her coat and tried to hide the purse with the money as Isabel glanced around, searching for a source of help. One of the footpads grabbed the purse, and another was just about to tear off Juliana’s pearl earrings when he was stopped by the sound of a horse’s hooves. Isabel yelled at the top of her lungs, and an instant later no other than Rafael Moncada made a providential appearance. In a city as densely populated as Barcelona, his riding to the rescue was little less than a miracle. Moncada needed only a glance to appraise the situation, to unsheathe his sword and confront the lowlifes. Two of them had already pulled out their curved knives, but two slashes of Moncada’s sword and his determined manner made them hesitate. Their rescuer looked enormous and noble on his steed: black boots gleaming in silver stirrups, tightly fitting, snow-white trousers, dark green velvet astrakhan-trimmed jacket, long sword with its rounded gold-engraved guard. From that vantage, Moncada could have dispatched more than one adversary without trying, but he seemed to enjoy intimidating them. With a fierce smile on his lips and his sword glinting in the air, he could have been the central figure in a battle painting. The aggressors huffed and panted as he goaded them mercilessly from on high. The horse, whirling in the midst of the fracas, reared, and for a moment it seemed that it would throw its rider, but Moncada merely gripped tighter with his legs. It was a strange and violent dance. In the center of the circle of daggers the steed circled, whinnying with terror, as Moncada reined it in with one hand and flourished his weapon in the other, surrounded by ruffians looking for the moment to sink their knives into him but not daring to step within his reach. Nuria added her yells to Isabel’s, and soon people came out to look, but when they saw iron gleaming in the pale light of day, they kept their distance. One boy went running to get the constables, but there was no hope that they would get there in time to help. Isabel took advantage of the confusion to yank the money purse from the hands of the cloaked man, then grabbed her sister by one arm and Nuria by the other and urged them to run. She could not move them; they were glued to the paving stones. The whole episode was very brief, but the minutes dragged by in the unreal time of nightmares.

Finally Rafael Moncada swatted one of the men’s dagger from his hand, and with that the three attackers realized that they would do better to retreat. The rescuing caballero made a sign of pursuing them but stopped when he saw how upset the women were and leapt from his mount to calm them. A red stain was spreading down the white cloth of his trousers. Juliana ran to take comfort in his arms, trembling like a rabbit.

“You are wounded!” she cried when she saw the blood on his leg.

“Only a scratch,” he replied.

All the commotion was too much for the girl. Her vision clouded, and her knees buckled, but before she hit the ground, Moncada’s waiting arms swept her up. Isabel grumbled impatiently that this was all they needed to complete the picture: her sister swooning. Moncada ignored her sarcasm and, limping slightly but never stumbling, carried Juliana to the plaza. Nuria and Isabel followed, leading the horse and surrounded by a crowd of curiosity seekers, each of whom had an opinion about what had happened and all of whom wanted to have the last word on the subject. When Jordi saw that procession, he jumped from the driver’s seat and helped Moncada get Juliana inside the carriage. Loud applause burst out among the onlookers. Seldom did anything as quixotic and romantic happen in the streets of Barcelona; there would be something to talk about for days. Twenty minutes later, Jordi drove into the patio of the de Romeu home, followed by Moncada on horseback.

Juliana was sniffling from nerves, Nuria was counting with her tongue the teeth loosened by the blow to her face, and Isabel was shooting sparks and holding on to the purse.

Tomas de Romeu was not a man to be impressed with aristocratic surnames in truth, he hoped to see them abolished from the face of the earth or with Moncada’s fortune because he was open-handed by nature but he was moved to tears when he learned that this caballero, who had suffered so many rebuffs from Juliana, had risked his life to protect his daughters from irreparable harm. Although he professed to be an atheist, he fully agreed with Nuria that divine providence had sent Moncada in time to save them. He insisted that the hero of the day come in and rest while Jordi went for a doctor to tend his wound, but Moncada preferred to retire discreetly. Except for an occasional sharp intake of breath, nothing suggested that he was injured. Everyone commented that his sangfroid in the face of pain was as admirable as his courage facing danger. Isabel was the only one who showed no signs of gratitude.

Instead of joining in the flood of emotion flowing from the rest of the family, she merely clicked her tongue several times with disgust, something that was ill received. Her father sent her to her room and told her not to stick her nose out until she apologized for her vulgarity.

Diego had to listen with disciplined patience to Juliana’s detailed account of the assault, in addition to speculations about what would have happened had her savior not intervened in time. Nothing so dangerous had ever happened to the girl before. The figure of Rafael Moncada grew in her eyes, adorned with virtues that she had not perceived until then: he was strong and handsome, he had elegant hands and wavy hair. A man with good hair has a head start in this life. She suddenly noticed that he resembled the most famous torero in Spain, a long-legged, fiery-eyed man from Cordoba. This suitor, she decided, was really not so bad. With all the excitement, however, she was running a fever, and she went to bed early. That night the doctor had to sedate her, after applying a tincture of arnica to Nuria’s face, which had swollen like a squash.

In view of the fact that he would not see his beauty at dinner, Diego, too, retired to his rooms, where Bernardo was waiting. For the sake of decency, the girls were not allowed in the wing of the house where the men had their rooms, the one exception being the time when Diego was convalescing from the wound he suffered in the duel, but Isabel had never paid much attention to rules, just as she did not fully obey punishments her father set. That night she ignored his order to stay in her room and appeared in Diego’s and Bernardo’s without warning, as she often did.

“Didn’t I tell you to knock? One day you are going to find me naked.”

Diego scolded.

“I don’t think that would be such a memorable sight,” she replied.

She plopped down on Diego’s bed with the smug expression of someone who has something to tell but won’t say it, waiting to be begged; Diego successfully refused to play her game, and Bernardo was busy tying knots in a rope. A long minute went by, and finally her eagerness to tell them was too great. In the unladylike language she used out of Nuria’s hearing, she said that her sister must be a dumbass not to suspect Moncada. She added that the whole thing smelled of rotten fish; one of the three attackers had been Rodolfo, the giant from the circus. Diego jumped up like a monkey, and Bernardo dropped the rope he was knotting.

“Are you sure? Didn’t all of you say that those ruffians had their faces covered?” Diego protested.

“Yes, and besides that, he was wrapped in this cloak, but he was huge, and when I grabbed the purse I saw his arms. They were tattooed.”

“It might have been a sailor, Isabel. Lots of them have tattoos.”

Diego contended.

“They were the same ones the giant has, I am absolutely sure, so you’d better believe me,” she answered.

From there to deducing that the Gypsies were involved was but a step, which Diego and Bernardo immediately took. They had known for a long time that Pelayo and his friends did Moncada’s dirty work, but they couldn’t prove it. They never dared bring the subject up with the giant, who was very close-mouthed and would never have confessed to them. Neither did Amalia respond to Diego’s subtle questions; even in moments of greatest intimacy she guarded the family’s secrets. Diego could not take a suspicion of that nature to Tomas de Romeu without proof, and if he did, he would have to confess his own connections with the tribe. He decided, nevertheless, to take action. As Isabel said, they could not allow Juliana to end up married to Moncada out of mistaken gratitude.

The next day they managed to convince Juliana to get up out of bed, control her nerves, and go with them to the barrio where Amalia usually posted herself to tell the fortunes of the passersby. Nuria went with them, as was her duty, though her face looked worse even than it had the day before. One cheek was purple, and her eyelids were so swollen that she looked like a toad. It took less than half an hour to find Amalia. While the girls and their chaperone waited in the carriage, Diego, calling upon an eloquence he did not know he possessed, urged the Gypsy to save Juliana from a terrible fate.

“One word from you will prevent the tragedy of a loveless marriage between an innocent young girl and a heartless man. You must tell her the truth,” he pled dramatically.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Amalia replied.

“Oh, yes, you know. The men who attacked the girls were from your clan. I know one of them was Rodolfo. I think that Moncada set the stage to look like a hero in front of the de Romeu sisters. It was all arranged, wasn’t it?” he insisted.

“Are you in love with her?” Amalia asked, with no malice.

Caught off guard, Diego had to admit that he was. Amalia took his hands, studied them with an enigmatic smile, and then wet the tip of a finger with saliva and traced the sign of the cross on his palms.

“What are you doing? Is this some kind of curse?” Diego asked, frightened.

“It’s a prediction. You will never marry her.”

“You mean that Juliana is going to marry Moncada?”

“That I do not know. I will do what you ask, but have no illusions that woman must live out her destiny, just as you must, and nothing I say will change what is written in the heavens.”

Amalia climbed into the carriage, nodded to Isabel, whom she had seen several times with Diego and Bernardo, and took her seat across from Juliana. Nuria held her breath, frightened, because she believed that Gypsies were descendents of Cain, as well as professional thieves.

Juliana dismissed her chaperone and Isabel, who complained but got out of the coach. When they were alone, the two women looked one another over for a long minute. Amalia made a detailed inventory: the classic face framed by black curls, the green cat’s eyes, the slender neck, the short fur cape and hat, the delicate kid boots. For her part, Juliana studied the Gypsy with curiosity; she had never seen one so close before. If she had been in love with Diego, her instinct would have warned her that this was her rival, but that thought never crossed her mind. She liked Amalia’s smoky scent, her prominent cheekbones, her full skirts, the tinkling of her silver jewelry. She thought she was beautiful. Impulsively, she removed her gloves and took Amalia’s hands in hers. “Thank you for talking with me,” she said. Disarmed by Juliana’s spontaneity, Amalia decided to violate the basic rule of her people: never to trust a gadje, especially if it endangered the tribe.

In a few words she described the dark side of Moncada; she told Juliana that, yes, the assault had been planned, that she and her sister had never been in danger, and that the stain on Moncada’s pant leg was not from a wound but from a piece of sheep gut filled with chicken blood.

She said that once in a while one or two men of her tribe did jobs for Moncada, usually unimportant things; only in a handful of instances had they done something bad like the attack on Count Orloff. “We are not criminals,” Amalia explained, and added that she was sorry that the Russian and Nuria had been struck; violence was prohibited in their law. And as the real coup de grace, she informed Juliana that it was Pelayo who had sung the serenade because Moncada was as tone-deaf as a duck. Juliana listened to the entire confession without a single question. The two women nodded and said goodbye. Amalia left the carriage; then Juliana burst into tears.

That same afternoon Tomas de Romeu formally received Rafael Moncada, who had informed him in a brief note that he found himself recovered from loss of blood and hoping to pay his respects to Juliana. That morning his footman had delivered a bouquet of flowers for her and a box of almond nougats for Isabel, delicate, modest attentions for which Tomas gave the suitor good marks. Moncada arrived dressed with impeccable elegance, leaning on a cane. Tomas welcomed him in the main salon, dusted in honor of his future son-in-law. He offered him a glass of sherry, and once they had taken a seat thanked him again for his timely intervention. Then he sent for his daughters. Juliana looked strained, and was wearing a dark dress more appropriate for a nun than for an important occasion like this. Her sister Isabel’s eyes were blazing, and the corners of her lips lifted in a mocking smile; she held Juliana’s arm in such a strong grasp that she seemed to be dragging her along. Rafael Moncada attributed Juliana’s ravaged countenance to nerves. “It is no wonder, after the terrible experience you have been through ” he began before she interrupted to announce in a trembling voice, but with iron conviction, that not even dead would she marry him.

After hearing Juliana’s emphatic no, Rafael Moncada left the house fuming, although still in control of his good manners. In his twenty-six years he had encountered a few obstacles but he had never failed in anything. He was not going to give up. He still had a few tricks up his sleeve: that was what social position, money, and connections were for. He had refrained from asking Juliana for her reasons; intuition warned him that it would be very bad strategy. She knew enough to have doubts, and he could not run the risk of being exposed. If Juliana suspected that the assault in the street had been a farce, there could be only one reason: Pelayo. He did not think the man would have dared betray him there was no profit in it for him but he might have been careless. There were no secrets in Barcelona; the servants had a much more efficient information network than the French spies in La Ciudadela. Just one wrong word from any of the conspirators and it would have reached Juliana’s ears. He had used the Gypsies on various occasions precisely because they were nomads; they came and went with no interchange with anyone outside their tribe; they had no friends or acquaintances in Barcelona; they were discreet out of necessity. During the time that he was away on his journey, he had lost contact with Pelayo, and in a certain way he was relieved.

Dealings with such people made him uncomfortable. When he got back, he thought that he could start with a clean slate, forget the peccadilloes of the past and start anew, detached from the underhanded world of hired skullduggery, but his vow to be a new man lasted barely a few days. When Juliana had asked for another two weeks to respond to his proposal of marriage, Moncada suffered a panic very rare in him; he prided himself on dominating even the monsters of his nightmares.

During his absence he had written Juliana several letters, which she had not answered. He attributed her silence to shyness; at an age when her contemporaries were already mothers, Juliana behaved like a schoolgirl. In his eyes that innocence was the girl’s best quality; it guaranteed that when she did give herself to him, she would do so without reserve. But with the new postponement his certainty faltered, and that was when he had decided to put on some pressure. A romantic exploit like one of those in the books she treasured would be his most effective move, he calculated, but he could not hope that the opportunity would happen on its own he had to speed things up. He would get what he wanted without harming anyone; it would not actually be deceiving her, because should footpads attack Juliana or any other decent woman he would rush to their defense. It did not seem necessary to explain those arguments to Pelayo, of course; he simply gave the orders and they were carried out without a hitch. True, the scene the Gypsies staged was briefer than he had planned because the knaves broke and ran after a few minutes, when they feared that Moncada’s sword was overly enthusiastic. That had not given him time to act with the dramatic splendor he had envisioned, which was why when Pelayo came to collect, he felt it was fair to haggle over the price. They argued, and Pelayo ended by accepting the lower amount, but Rafael Moncada was left with a bitter taste in his mouth; the man knew too much, and he might be tempted to blackmail him. Definitely, he concluded, it was bad for a man of that stripe, who respected no law or moral code, to have power over him. He must get rid of him as quickly as possible, him and his whole tribe.

As for Bernardo, he was very familiar with the tight network of gossip that people of Moncada’s class were so in fear of. With his tomblike silence, his dignified Indian ways, and his willingness to do favors, he had endeared himself to many people: the women in the market, the stevedores in the port, the artisans in the barrios, and the coachmen, lackeys, and servants in the homes of the rich. He stored information in his prodigious memory, divided into compartments as if in an enormous archive that contained orderly facts and lists to use at the proper time. He had not stored the night he had met Juanillo in Eulalia de Callis’s courtyard under “blow received” but, rather, under “attack on Count Orloff.” He had kept in contact with Juanillo, and in that way followed Moncada’s movements from afar. The footman was not very bright, and he detested anyone who was not a Catalan, but he tolerated Bernardo because he never interrupted him, and he knew that the Indian had been baptized. Once Amalia acknowledged Moncada’s dealings with the Gypsies, Bernardo had decided to find out more about him. He made a visit to Juanillo, taking as a gift a bottle of Tomas de Romeu’s best cognac that Isabel had slipped to him when she learned that it would be used for a good purpose. The footman did not need liquor to loosen his tongue, but he was grateful nonetheless, and soon he was telling Bernardo the latest news: he himself had carried a missive from his master to the military chief of La Ciudadela, a letter in which Moncada accused the tribe of Gypsies of smuggling contraband weapons into the city and of conspiring against the government.

“Those Gypsies are eternally cursed because they forged the nails for Christ’s cross. They deserve to be burned at the stake. Give them no mercy, that’s what I say,” was Juanillo’s conclusion.

Bernardo knew where to find Diego at that hour. He headed straight for the open country outside the walls of Barcelona, where the Gypsies had their filthy tents and beat-up wagons. In the three years they had been there, the camp had taken on the look of a village of rags. Diego de la Vega had not renewed his trysts with Amalia because she was afraid that she would endanger her own fate forever. She had been saved from being executed by the French; that was more than enough proof that the spirit of her husband Ramon was protecting her from the Other Side. It was not a good idea to provoke his anger by continuing to bed a young gadje. It was also in her heart that Diego had confessed his love for Juliana to her; in that case they were both being unfaithful: she to the memory of her deceased husband, he to the chaste maiden.

Just as Bernardo had supposed, Diego had gone to the camp to help his friends set up the tent for the Sunday circus, which that day would not be in a plaza, as usual, but right in the camp. They had several hours yet, since the spectacle would not begin until four. When Bernardo arrived, Diego and the other men were singing a tune that Diego had learned from the sailors on the Madre de Dios while heaving on the ropes to tighten the canvas. He had sensed his brother across the distance and was expecting him. He did not need to see Bernardo’s troubled expression to know that something was amiss. The smile that was always dancing on his lips vanished when he heard what Bernardo had learned from Juanillo. Immediately, he called the tribe together.

“If this information is accurate, you are in grave danger. I wonder why they haven’t arrested you before this,” he said.

“That must mean that they plan to come during the performance, when we are all together and they have an audience,” Rodolfo theorized. “The French like to set examples; this will keep people frightened, and what better way than to use us.”

They began gathering up the small children and animals. In silence, with the stealth of centuries of persecution and nomadic living, the Gypsies tied up bundles of things they could not do without, climbed onto their horses, and in less than half an hour had ridden off in the direction of the mountains. As they left, Diego told them to send someone the next day to the old cathedral. “I will have something for you,” he told them, and added that he would try to entertain the soldiers and give them time to get away. The Gypsies lost everything.

Behind them they left a desolate camp with its sad circus tent, wagons without horses, still-smoking bonfires, abandoned tents, and a sprawl of pots and pans, mattresses, and rags. In the meantime, Diego and Bernardo were parading through nearby streets, beating on drums and wearing clown hats to attract potential showgoers and lead them back to the circus. Soon there was a goodly number of spectators waiting beneath the canvas. When Diego appeared in the ring dressed as Zorro, with mask and mustache, he was greeted with impatient whistles. As he juggled three lighted torches, passing them between his legs and behind his back before tossing them up again, his public did not seem too impressed and began to shout crude remarks. Bernardo took away the torches, and Diego asked for a volunteer for a trick of great suspense.

A husky, pugnacious sailor came forward and, following instructions, stood a few paces away with a cigarette in his lips. Diego snapped his whip on the ground a couple of times before flicking the tip. When the volunteer felt the air whistle by his face he reddened with anger, but as tobacco flew through the air and he realized that the whip had not touched his skin, he and the crowd bellowed with laughter. At that same moment someone remembered the story that had circulated around the city about a certain Zorro who dressed in black and wore a mask and who had dared get Le Chevalier out of bed to save some hostages. “Zorro? A fox? KfoxT flashed through the audience, and someone pointed to Diego, who made a deep bow and then scurried up the ropes toward the trapeze. At the precise instant that Bernardo gave the signal, Diego heard the horses’ hooves. They had been waiting for that. Diego did a somersault on the bar of the trapeze, dropped, and hung by his feet, swinging through the air above the heads of the audience. Instants later a group of French soldiers burst into the tent with drawn bayonets, led by an officer bawling threats. Panic broke out as people tried to escape, a moment Diego seized to slide down a rope to the ground. Several shots were fired, and a monumental panic ensued as spectators, shoving to get out, stumbled into and over the soldiers. Diego slipped away like a weasel before they could lay a hand on him, and with Bernardo’s help cut the ropes that held up the tent. The canvas dropped onto the people trapped inside, soldiers and public alike. In the confusion the two milk brothers jumped onto their horses and set off at a gallop for Tomas de Romeu’s home. On the way, Diego shed the cape, sombrero, mask, and mustache. They calculated that it would take the soldiers a good long while to fight their way out of the tent, realize that the Gypsies had fled, and organize a party to give chase. Diego knew that the next day the name of Zorro would again be on everyone’s lips. Bernardo threw Diego an eloquent look of reproach; his arrogance could cost him dear, since the French would be moving heaven and earth to find this mysterious Zorro. The brothers reached their destination without incident, went inside through the service entrance, and shortly afterward were having chocolate and biscuits with Juliana and Isabel. They did not know that at that moment the Gypsy camp was going up in smoke. The soldiers had set fire to the straw in the ring, which burned like dry under, reaching the ancient canvas in only minutes. The following day at noon Diego took up a position in a nave of the cathedral. Gossip about the second appearance of Zorro had made the complete rounds of Barcelona and come back to his ears. In one day the enigmatic hero had captured the people’s imagination. The letter Z had been scratched with a knife on several walls, the work of small boys inflamed with the desire to imitate Zorro. ”That is just what we need, Bernardo, many foxes to distract the hunters.“ At that hour the church was empty except for a pair of sacristans changing the flowers on the main altar. It was dark and cold, and quiet as a tomb; the brutal sunlight and noise of the street did not penetrate that far. Diego sat waiting on a bench, surrounded by statues of saints and breathing the unmistakable metallic scent of incense that had impregnated the walls. Timid, reflected colors filtered through the venerable stained-glass windows, bathing the interior with unreal light. The calm of that moment brought memories of his mother. He knew nothing of how she was; it was as if she had vanished. It surprised him that neither his father nor Padre Mendoza mentioned her in their letters, and that she herself had never written him two lines, but he wasn’t worried. If something bad happened to his mother he would feel it in his bones. One hour later, when he was about to leave, convinced that no one would be coming to the rendezvous now, the slim figure of Amalia materialized like a ghost. They greeted one another with their eyes, without touching. ”What is to become of you now?“ Diego whispered. ”We’re moving on until things calm down. Soon everyone will forget all about us,“ she replied. ”They burned the camp; you have nothing left.“

“That is nothing new, Diego. We Roma are accustomed to losing everything; it has happened to us before, and it will again.”

“Will I see you someday, Amalia?” She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “That I do not know, I do not have my crystal ball.” Diego gave her everything he had been able to gather in the few hours since he had seen her: most of the money he had left from an allowance his father had sent and also what the de Romeu girls had been able to contribute once they knew what had happened. From Juliana he had also brought a package wrapped in a handkerchief. “Juliana asked me to give you this as a remembrance,” said Diego. Amalia untied the handkerchief to find a delicate pearl diadem, the one Diego had seen Juliana wear several times; it was the most valuable jewel she owned. “Why?” Amalia asked, surprised. “I suppose it must be because you saved her from marrying Moncada.”

“That may not be certain. Her destiny may be to marry him anyway ”

“Never!” Diego interrupted. “Juliana knows now what a swine he is.”

“The heart is fickle,” Amalia replied. She hid the jewel in a pouch tucked among the folds of her full over skirts wagged her fingers at Diego in a gesture of farewell, and faded into the icy shadows of the cathedral. Instants later she was running through the alleyways of the barrio toward the ram blas Shortly after the exodus of the Gypsies, but before Christmas, a letter arrived from Padre Mendoza. The missionary wrote every six months to send news of the family and of his mission. He would report, for example, that the dolphins had returned to the coast, that the year’s wine was acid, that soldiers had arrested White Owl because she assaulted them with her staff while defending an Indian but through Alejandro de la Vega’s intervention had been released. Since then, he added, they had seen no sign of her. Padre Mendoza’s precise and energetic style moved Diego much more than that of Alejandro de la Vega, whose letters were sermons salted with moral advice, little different from the tone Alejandro always used with his son. This time, however, Padre Mendoza’s brief missive was addressed not to Diego but to Bernardo, and the flap was closed with sealing wax. Bernardo broke the seal with his knife and sat down near a window to read it. Diego, who was watching from across the room, saw him pale as his eyes followed the missionary’s angular writing. Bernardo read it two times and then handed it to his brother. Yesterday, the second day of August of the year eighteen-thirteen, a young woman of White Owl’s tribe came to visit me at the mission. She brought her son, who was a little more than two, a boy she called simply “Nino.” I offered to baptize him, as was proper, and I explained that otherwise the soul of that innocent child would be in danger, for if God decides to take him he will not go to heaven but spend eternity in limbo. The girl declined to have him baptized. She said she would wait for the father to return so that he can choose the name. She also refused to listen to my teachings about Christ or come to the mission where she and her son would live a civilized life. She gave me the same reason: when the father of the boy returns, she will make up her mind on that question. I did not insist, because I have learned to wait patiently for the Indians to come here of their own accord, otherwise their conversion to the True Faith is a mere coat of varnish. The name of the woman is Lightin-the-Night. May God bless you and guide your footsteps always, my son. Embracing you in the name of Christ Our Lord is Padre Mendoza Diego handed the letter back to Bernardo, and both sat in silence as the daylight faded from the window. Bernardo’s face, usually so expressive in mute communications, seemed sculpted in granite. He began to play a sad melody on his flute, taking refuge in it to avoid explaining further. Diego did not ask for clarifications, he felt his brother’s pounding heart in his own chest. The time had come for them to go separate ways. Bernardo could not continue to live like a boy; his roots were calling him, he wanted to return to California and assume his new responsibilities. He had never felt comfortable away from his home country. He had lived several years counting the days and hours in that city of stone and icy winters because of the loyalty that bound him to Diego, but he could not do it any longer; the hollow in his chest was expanding into a limitless cavern. The absolute love he felt for Lightin-the-Night now had taken on a terrible urgency; he hadn’t a shadow of a doubt that the child was his. Diego accepted his brother’s unvoiced arguments though a claw was ripping through his gut, and answered with a burst of words that issued from his soul. You will have to go alone, my brother; it will be several months before I graduate from the School of Humanities, and during that time I intend to convince Juliana to marry me. First, however, before I declare myself and ask Don Tomas for her hand, I must wait for her to recover from the disillusion inflicted by Rafael Moncada. Forgive me, brother, I am very selfish; this is no time to bore you once again with my fantasies of love. We need to talk about you. All these years I have played around like a spoiled child while you have been sick with longing for Lightin-the-Night, even without knowing that she has given you a son. How have you put up with so much? I do not want you to go, but your place is in California, there can be no question about that. I understand now why my father, even you, Bernardo, have always said that we have separate destinies. I was born with wealth and privileges you do not have. It isn’t fair, because we are brothers. One day I will be owner of the de la Vega hacienda, and then I will be able to give you the half that belongs to you. In the meantime, I will write my father and ask him to provide you with enough money to make a home with Lightin-the-Night and your son, wherever you want you do not have to live at the mission. I promise you that as long as I am able, your family will never lack for anything material. I don’t know why I am crying like a baby, it must be that I am already missing you. What will I do without you? You have no idea how much I need your strength and your wisdom, Bernardo. The two young men embraced, first emotionally and then with forced laughter; they prided themselves on not being sentimental. A phase of their youth had ended. Bernardo could not leave immediately, as he would have liked. He had to wait until January to catch a merchant ship that would take him to America. He had very little money, but the captain allowed him to pay his passage by working on board as a sailor. He left Diego a letter asking him to beware of Zorro, not merely for the risk of being discovered, but also because the character would end by taking him over. “Never forget that you are Diego de la Vega, a flesh-and-blood person, while that Zorro is a creature of your imagination,” he wrote in the letter. It was difficult for him to say goodbye to Isabel, whom he had come to love like a younger sister; he was afraid he would never see her again, even though she promised a hundred times that she would come to California the minute her father gave her permission. “We will see each other again, Bernardo, even if Diego never marries Juliana. The world is round, and if I travel around it one day I will come to your house,” Isabel assured him, blowing her nose and wiping away a torrent of tears. The year 1814 dawned filled with hope for the Spaniards. Napoleon was weakened by his defeats in Europe and the internal situation in France. In January, Le Chevalier ordered his majordomo to pack up the contents of his mansion not an easy task, since he had furnished it with princely splendor. He suspected that Napoleon had very little time left in power, and in that case his own destiny was in danger; in his position as the emperor’s trusted confidant he would have no place in any future government. Not wanting to upset his daughter, he presented the journey as a promotion in his career: at last they were returning to Paris. Agnes threw her arms around his neck, delighted. She was bored with the somber Spanish, the muted bells, the dead streets during curfew, and especially, she was tired of having garbage hurled at her carriage, and being snubbed. She loathed the war, the privation, the frugality of the Catalans, and Spain in general. She threw herself into frantic preparations for the journey. In her visits to Juliana’s home, she chattered excitedly over the prospect of the social life and diversions of France. “You must come visit me in summer, that is the most beautiful time in Paris. By then Papa and I will be in a suitable residence. We shall live very close to the Louvre palace.” In passing, she also extended their hospitality to Diego; in her opinion, he could not possibly go back to California without having known Paris. Everything important took place in that city: fashion, art, and ideas, she said. Even the American revolutionaries had been formed by France. Wasn’t California a colony of Spain? Ah! Then they must win their independence. Perhaps in Paris Diego would get over his finicky ways and his headaches and become a famous military man like that one in South America they called the Liberator: Simon Bolivar, wasn’t that his name? Meanwhile in the library, Le Chevalier Duchamp was sharing his last cognac with Tomas de Romeu, the closest thing to a friend he had had during his stay in that hostile city. Without revealing any strategic information, he gave Tomas an overview of the political situation and suggested that he might want to take advantage of the moment to take his daughters abroad. The girls were at a perfect age to discover Florence and Venice, he said; no one who appreciated culture could afford not to know those cities. Tomas replied that he would think about it. It was not a bad idea… perhaps in the summer. “The emperor has authorized the return of Ferdinand VII to Spain. That can happen at any moment. I believe it would be just as well if you were not here at that time,” Le Chevalier hinted. “Why is that, Excellency?” Tomas de Romeu replied. “You know how much I have celebrated France’s influence here, but I also believe that El Deseado, the desired one, as the people call him, will mean an end to the guerrilla warfare that has lasted six years now; that will allow this country to reorganize. Ferdinand VII will be obliged to govern under the liberal Constitution of 1812.”

“So I hope, my friend. For the good of Spain and of yourself.” Shortly afterward, Le Chevalier Duchamp went back to France with his daughter Agnes. Their convoy of carriages was intercepted at the foothills of the Pyrenees by a band of fervent guerrillas, among the last remaining. They were well informed; they knew the identity of the elegant traveler, and they knew that he was the eminence grise of La Ciudadela, the person responsible for countless tortures and executions. They were not able to take revenge, as they intended, because Le Chevalier was traveling with a contingent of armed guards, who met the guerrillas with ready muskets. The first salvo left several Spaniards in a pool of blood; more perished by sword. The encounter lasted fewer than ten minutes. The surviving guerrillas scattered, leaving behind several wounded, who were impaled on French blades without mercy. Le Chevalier, who had not moved from his carriage, and who had seemed more bored than frightened, would have had no reason to remember the skirmish had a stray bullet not wounded Agnes. It struck her in the face, destroying one cheek and part of her nose. The horrible scar would change the girl’s life. She closed herself in her family summer home in Saint-Maurice for many years. At first she sank into the absolute depression of having lost her beauty, but with time she stopped weeping and began to read something more than the sentimental novels she had shared with Juliana de Romeu. One by one she read all the books in her father’s library, and then asked for more. During the solitary afternoons of her youth, cut short by that wild musket ball, she studied philosophy, history, and politics. Later she began to write under a male pseudonym, and today, many years later, her work is known in many parts of the world… but that is not our story. We need to return to Spain and to the period that concerns us. Despite Bernardo’s advice, that year Diego de la Vega found himself involved in events that would change him into Zorro forever. The French troops abandoned Spain, some by ship, others by land, moving like a shambling beast harassed by the insults and stones of the people. In March, Ferdinand VII, El Deseado, returned from his golden exile in France. Led by the long-awaited monarch, the royal cortege crossed the border in April, entering the country through Catalonia. Finally the people’s long struggle to drive out the invaders had ended. At first the nation’s jubilation was uncontainable and unconditional. From the nobility down to the last peasant, and including most of the intellectuals like Tomas de Romeu, the nation celebrated the king’s return, happy to overlook the major character flaws that had been in evidence since he was a youth. It was supposed that exile would have matured that less-than-brilliant prince and that he would have returned cured of his jealousy, pettiness, and passion for court intrigue. That was not the case. Ferdinand VII was still a weak man who saw enemies everywhere and surrounded himself with fawning courtiers. One month later, Napoleon Bonaparte was forced to abdicate. The most powerful monarch in Europe succumbed, defeated by an imposing coalition of political and military forces. Added to rebellion in conquered countries like Spain was the alliance composed of Prussia, Austria, Great Britain, and Russia. He was deported to the island of Elba, though he was allowed to keep the now ironic title of emperor. The day following his abdication, Napoleon tried, unsuccessfully, to kill himself. In Spain, within weeks, the general elation over the return of El Deseado turned to violence. Isolated by the Catholic clergy and the most conservative wings of the nobility, army, and public administration, the restored king revoked the Constitution of 1812, along with liberal reforms, within the period of a few months, sending the country back to the feudal era. The Inquisition was reinstituted, as were the privileges of the nobility, clergy, and military, and a heartless persecution was unleashed against dissidents, opponents, liberals, Francophiles, and former collaborators in the government of Joseph Bonaparte. Magistrates, ministers, and deputies were arrested, twelve thousand families had to seek refuge across the border in foreign countries, and the repression expanded to such a degree that no one was safe; the least suspicion or unfounded accusation was reason enough for being arrested and executed without further formalities. Eulalia de Callis was in her glory. She had long awaited the king’s return to regain her former privileged status. She did not like the insolence of the masses, or the disorder; she preferred the absolutism of a monarch, however mediocre. Her watchword was, Everyone in his place, and a place for everyone. Hers was at the top, naturally. Unlike other nobles who had lost their fortunes in those revolutionary years because they had clung to tradition, she had no scruples in adopting bourgeois methods for accumulating wealth. She had a nose for business. She was richer than ever, powerful, with friends in the court of Ferdinand VII, and she was eager to see the systematic elimination of the liberal ideas that had placed a good part of what sustained her in jeopardy. Even so, some of her former generosity was hibernating in the crannies of her corpulent humanity; when she saw the great suffering around her she opened her coffers to help the hungry, without asking their politics. She ended up hiding more than one family in her summer homes, or finding some way to smuggle them into France. Though he did not need to, since his situation was already exemplary, Rafael Moncada immediately joined the army corps of officers, where his titles and his aunt’s connections guaranteed a rapid ascent. It lent him prestige to announce to the four winds that at last he was able to serve Spain in a monarchical, Catholic, and traditional army. His aunt agreed; she was of the opinion that even the most stupid man looked good in a uniform. Tomas de Romeu came to understand what fine counsel his good friend Le Chevalier Duchamp had given him when he suggested he take his daughters abroad. He summoned his accountants for the purpose of reviewing the state of his holdings and discovered that his income was not sufficient for them to live decently in another country. He also feared that if he were too far away, the government of Fernando VII would confiscate what few properties he had left. After having broadcast his scorn for material rewards for a lifetime, now he must cling to his possessions. The idea of poverty horrified him. He had never worried much about the systematic reduction of the fortune he had inherited from his wife; he had assumed that there would always be enough to support him in the style to which he was accustomed. He had never seriously considered the possibility of losing his social position, and he could not imagine his daughters deprived of the comfort they had always enjoyed. He decided that the best solution would be to go somewhere and wait for the wave of violence and persecution to pass. At his age, he had seen a lot. He knew that sooner or later the political pendulum would swing in the opposite direction; it was all a question of making himself invisible until the situation stabilized. He could not consider going to his family home in Santa Fe, where he was too well known, and hated, but then he remembered some land his wife had owned on the road to Lerida, a place he had never visited. This property, which had produced no income, only problems, might now be his salvation. It lay on hills planted with ancient olive trees and sustained a few very poor and backward families. It had been so long since they had seen a patron that they believed they didn’t have one. On the estate was a frightful house in near ruin, constructed sometime around the year 1500, a massive cube sealed up like a tomb to protect its inhabitants from the dangers of the Saracens, soldiers, and bandits who had laid waste to the region for centuries. Tomas, however, quickly decided that it was preferable to prison. He could stay there a few months with his daughters. He dismissed most of his servants, closed half the mansion in Barcelona, left the other half in the care of his majordomo, and set out in a large number of coaches, many carrying basic items of furniture. Diego witnessed the exodus of the family with a sense of doom, but Tomas de Romeu soothed him with the argument that he had never held a position in the Napoleonic administration, and also that very few people knew of his friendship with Le Chevalier. There was nothing to fear. “For once I am happy not to be an important person,” he said, smiling as he said goodbye. Juliana and Isabel had no idea that they might be in danger, and left as if they were heading for some strange vacation. They barely understood their father’s reasons for taking them so far from civilization, but they were used to obeying and asked no questions. Diego kissed Juliana on both cheeks and whispered into her ear not to despair, their separation would be shortlived. She answered with a puzzled glance. Like so many things Diego hinted at, this one was incomprehensible. Nothing would have pleased Diego more than to accompany the family to the country, as Tomas de Romeu had asked. The idea of spending some time far from the world and in Juliana’s company was very tempting, but he could not leave Barcelona. The members of La Justicia were very active; they had to use every resource in aid of the mass of refugees trying to leave Spain: hide them, find transport, get them into France by way of the Pyrenees, or send them to other countries in Europe. England, which had fought Napoleon so fiercely until he was defeated, now supported Bang Ferdinand VII and, with few exceptions, offered no protection to the enemies of his government. As Maestro Escalante had reported to Diego, La Justicia had never before been so near to being discovered. The Inquisition had come back stronger than ever, given full powers to defend the faith at any price, and since the dividing line between heretics and opponents of the government was blurred, anyone might fall into their grasp. During the years the Inquisition had been abolished, the members of La Justicia had become careless in matters of security, convinced that in the modern world there was no place for religious fanaticism. They believed that the days of burning people at the stake were gone forever. Now they were paying the consequences of their excessive optimism. Diego was so absorbed in the missions of La Justicia that he stopped attending the School of Humanities, where education, like everything else in the country, was censored. Many of his professors and companions had been arrested for expressing their opinions. In those days, the pompous rector of the Universidad de Cervera proclaimed before the king a phrase that defined academic life in Spain: “The last thing we espouse is the unfortunate mania for thinking.” In early September, a member of La Justicia who had hidden for several weeks in the home of Maestro Manuel Escalante was arrested. The Inquisition, being an arm of the church, preferred not to spill blood. Their most frequent methods of interrogation were to disjoint their victims on the rack or brand them with red-hot iron. As predicted, the miserable prisoner gave up the names of those who had helped him, and shortly afterward, the fencing master was arrested. Before he was dragged into the constables’ sinister coach, he had barely enough time to advise his servant, who carried the bad news to Diego. At dawn the following morning, the former pupil was able to confirm that Escalante had not been taken to La Ciudadela, as was normal in the case of political prisoners, but to a barracks in the port, from which they intended to take him to Toledo, the forbidding center of the bureaucracy of the Inquisition. Diego immediately contacted Julius Caesar, the man with whom he had dueled in the tabernacle of the secret society as a part of his initiation. “This is very grave. They may arrest all of us,” said Caesar. “They will never make Maestro Escalante confess,” Diego declared. “They have infallible methods they have developed over the centuries.

Several of our members have been arrested, so they have a great deal of information. The circle is closing around us. We will have to dissolve the society temporarily.“

“And Don Manuel Escalante?”

“I hope for the good of all that he can find a way to end his days before he is subjected to torture,” sighed Julius Caesar. “They are holding the maestro in a local barracks. It isn’t La Ciudadela, we must try to rescue him,” Diego contended. “Rescue him? Impossible!”

“Difficult, but not impossible. I will need the help of La Justicia.

We will do it this very night,“ Diego replied, and explained his plan. ”It seems madness to me, but it is worth the attempt. We will help you,“ his companion decided. ”It will be necessary to get the maestro out of the city immediately.“

“Of course. We can have a boat with a trustworthy oarsman waiting in the port. I think we can slip through the guards. The boatman will row the maestro to the ship that is sailing at dawn for Naples. There he will be safe.” Diego sighed, thinking once again how badly he needed Bernardo. This was more serious than slipping into Le Chevalier’s mansion. It was no joke to attack a barracks, overcome the guards he had no idea how many there were free the prisoner, and get him to a boat unharmed before the law sank its claws into them. Diego rode to Eulalia de Callis’s mansion, whose layout he had carefully studied every time he visited. He left his horse in the street and crept unseen through the gardens to the service patio, where chickens and small animals were wandering among blocks for slaughtering hogs, laundry troughs, large vats for boiling sheets, and clotheslines hung with wash. In the rear were the carriage house and stables. Cooks, footmen, and servant girls were everywhere, all busy at their chores. No one even glanced at him. He went into the shed, concealed by the coaches, chose one that suited him, and waited, crossing his fingers that no stable hand would discover him. He knew that at five the bells rang to call the servants to the kitchen; Eulalia de Callis herself had told him that. It was the hour when the matriarch offered a treat to her army of retainers: cups of foaming chocolate and bread to dunk in them. Half an hour later, Diego heard the bells ring, and in a trice the patio was emptied of people. The breeze carried the delicate aroma of chocolate, and he felt his mouth fill with saliva. Ever since the family had left for the country, he had eaten very poorly in the de Romeu house. Diego, aware that he had only ten or fifteen minutes, quickly pried the coat of arms off the door of a carriage and took a pair of jackets from their hangers: footmen’s elegant livery of sky-blue velvet with crimson collar and lining, gilded buttons and epaulets. He left behind the lace-collared shirts, white trousers, patent leather shoes with silver buckles, and red brocade sashes that completed the uniforms. As Tomas de Romeu had said, not even Napoleon Bonaparte was outfitted as elegantly as Eulalia’s servants. Once Diego was sure that the patio was empty, he left with his bundle, darting among the bushes, and found his horse. Soon he was trotting toward home. Among the things in storage there he found a battered old carriage too old and fragile to take to the country. Compared with any of those in Dona Eulalia’s shed, it was ruinous, but Diego was praying that with the darkness no one would notice what bad shape it was in. He would have to wait until sunset and calculate his time with care; the success of his mission depended on it. After nailing the shield onto the carriage, he went down to the wine cellar, which the majordomo kept tightly locked a minor hindrance for Diego, who had learned to pick any kind of lock. He opened the door, chose a cask of wine, and rolled it away in plain view of the servants, who asked no questions, believing that Don Tomas had given Diego the key before he left. For more than four years Diego had safeguarded the treasure of the sleeping potion his grandmother, White Owl, had given him as a farewell gift after making him promise that he would use it only to save lives. And that was exactly what he intended to do with it. Many years before, Padre Mendoza had amputated a leg using that potion, and he himself had stunned a bear. He did not know how powerful the drug might be when diluted in that amount of wine; it might not have the effect he hoped, but he had to try. He poured the contents of the flask into the cask and sloshed it around to mix it. Shortly afterward, two accomplices from La Justicia arrived; they put on the white wigs of footmen and the livery from the house of Callis. Diego himself was dressed like a prince in his best coffee-colored velvet jacket with fur collar and gold and silver passementerie lace; his formal starched tie was held with a pearl stickpin, and butter yellow trousers, foppish shoes with gilded buckles, and top hat completed the ensemble. In this attire he was driven by his comrades to the barracks. It was the dark of night when he knocked at a door badly lighted by lanterns. In the ringing voice of someone accustomed to giving orders, Diego ordered the two guards to call their superior officer. He turned out to be a young second lieutenant with a strong Andalusian accent, who was flabbergasted by Diego’s stunning elegance and the coat of arms on the carriage. “Her Excellency, Dona Eulalia de Callis, is sending a barrel of the best wine from her cellar, so that you and your men may toast her tonight,” Diego announced with a superior air. “It is her birthday.”

“It seems a little strange,” the amazed man managed to stammer out. “Strange? You must be new to Barcelona!” Diego interrupted. “Her Excellency has always sent wine to the troops on her birthday, and she has even greater reason now that our country has been liberated from the atheist despot!” Still bewildered, the lieutenant ordered his subalterns to retrieve the cask from the carriage, and even invited Diego to toast with them, but he excused himself, alleging that he had to deliver similar gifts to La Ciudadela. “Soon Her Excellency will be sending you her favorite stew: pigs’ feet and turnips. How many mouths to feed here?” Diego asked. “Nineteen.”

“Fine. Good evening.”

“Your name, senor, please ”

“I am Don Rafael Moncada, nephew of Her Excellency Dona Eulalia de Califs,” Diego replied, and rapping on the carriage door with his cane, he ordered the false coachman to drive on. At three in the morning, when the city was asleep and the streets were empty, Diego prepared to carry out the second phase of his plan. He was banking on the fact that at that hour the men in the barracks would have drunk their wine, and if not asleep they would at least be stunned. That was his one advantage. He had changed his clothes and dressed as Zorro. He carried his whip, a pistol, and his sharp sword. To avoid attracting attention with the sound of horse’s hooves, he went on foot. Hugging the walls, he made his way through the alleyways to the barracks, where he verified that the same guards, yawning with fatigue, were still standing beneath the lanterns. Apparently they had not had their share of the wine. Julius Caesar and two other members of La Justicia were waiting in the shadows of an entryway, disguised as sailors, as they had agreed. Diego gave them their instructions, which included the categorical order not to intervene and come to his aid, whatever happened. Each man should look out for himself. They wished one another luck in the name of God, and separated. The “sailors” staged a drunken brawl near the barracks while Diego, hidden in the darkness, awaited his chance. The ruckus attracted the attention of the guards, who briefly abandoned their posts to check out the source. They found the spurious drunks and warned them to move on or they would be arrested, but the offenders continued swinging blindly at each other, as if they hadn’t heard. Their staggering and the nonsense they were shouting was so comic that the guards burst out laughing, but when they tried to disperse the supposedly drunk men, they miraculously regained their equilibrium and redirected their blows. Caught by surprise, the soldiers did not have a chance to defend themselves. The “sailors” overcame them in an instant, then took them by the ankles and dragged them unceremoniously down a nearby alley to a dwarf-sized door set back from the street, beneath an arch. Diego’s comrades from La Justicia knocked three times; a peephole opened, they gave the password, and a sixtyish woman dressed in black opened the door. They stooped down to go in, to avoid banging their heads against the low door frame, and pulled their inert prisoners into a coal bin. There they left them with their hands bound and hoods pulled over their heads after taking their clothes. The former sailors were quickly transformed into guards and hurried back to the barracks to take up posts beneath the lanterns. In the few minutes it had taken to replace the guards, Diego had gained entrance to the barracks, sword and pistol in hand. Inside, the building seemed deserted; the quiet of the graveyard reigned, and there was very little light because the oil in half the lanterns had burned out. Invisible as a ghost only the gleam of his blade betrayed his presence Zorro crossed through the entry hall. Cautiously, he pushed open a door and peered into the hall used as an armory; it was here the contents of the barrel had been dealt out, because he found a half dozen men snoring on the floor, including the lieutenant. Diego satisfied himself that none of them was awake, and then checked the cask. They had emptied it to the last drop. “To your health, senores!” he exclaimed with satisfaction, and on a playful impulse traced the letter Z on the wall with three strokes of his sword. Bernardo’s warning that Zorro would ultimately take over came to his mind, but it was too late. Quickly, he gathered up firearms and swords, piled them into the chests in the entry hall, then continued his exploration of the building, extinguishing lights and candles as he went. Shadows had always been his best allies. He found three more men felled by White Owl’s potion and calculated that unless the lieutenant had lied, there were eight left. He hoped to find the prisoners’ cells without running into guards, but he heard voices nearby and realized he had to hide. He found himself in a large, nearly empty room. There was nothing to crouch behind, and there was no time to douse the two lanterns on the opposite wall, fifteen paces away. The only things that might be of use were the heavy ceiling beams, but they were too high to jump up to. He sheathed his sword, put his pistol in his waistband, unrolled his whip, and with a flick wrapped the tip around one of the beams, tugged to tighten it, and pulled himself up, as he had done so often in the ship’s rigging and in the Gypsies’ circus. Once there, he coiled his whip and flattened himself along the beam, at ease, knowing that the light of the torches did not reach him. At that moment two men sauntered in, jabbering; judging by their behavior, they had not drunk their ration of wine. Zorro decided to stop them before they reached the armory where their companions lay sprawled in a deep sleep. He waited until they were beneath the beam, then swooped down on them like an enormous black bird, cape flapping and whip in hand. Paralyzed, the men were slow to draw their swords, giving him time to buckle their knees with two swift blows of the whip. “Good evening to you, senores!” he said, making a mocking bow to his victims, now on their knees. “I beg you, please place your swords on the ground… oh so carefully.” He snapped his whip as a warning and drew his pistol from his sash. The men did exactly as he said, and he kicked their swords into a corner. “Perhaps you will assist me, Your Mercies. I assume that you do not wish to die, and for me it would be an annoyance to have to kill you.

Tell me, where is the best place to incarcerate you so that you will not cause problems?“ he asked sarcastically. The soldiers gaped at him in a daze; they had no idea what he meant. They were ignorant conscripts, a pair of peasants who in their brief lives had witnessed horrors, survived the killing of war, and nearly starved. They were not up to riddles. Zorro simplified his question, accentuating his words with snaps of his whip. One of them, too frightened to speak, pointed to the door they had come through. He suggested that they say their prayers, because if they were deceiving him they would die. The door opened onto a long bare corridor that they marched down in single file, the captives ahead and Zorro behind. At the end, the passageway split. To the right was a battered door; the one to the left was in better condition and bore a lock that opened from the other side. He motioned to his prisoners to open the one to the right. That revealed a nauseating latrine composed of four holes in an excrement-covered floor, a few pails of water, and a lantern swarming with flies. There was no way out other than a small opening with iron bars. ”Perfect! I regret that the fragrance is not that of gardenias.

Perhaps in the future you will swab this down more carefully, caballeros,“ he commented, and with his pistol indicated that the terrified men should go in. He bolted the toilet and walked to the other door. The lock on the door to the left was very simple; he was able to open it in seconds with the steel pin he always hid in the seam of a boot to perform his magic tricks. He opened the door with caution and stole down a stairway, reasoning that it led underground, the most likely place for the cells. At the end of the stairway he pressed himself against the wall and glanced around the corner, A single torch lighted a small airless room guarded by one man; he, too, seemed not to have tasted the wine laced with the potion, as he was sitting cross-legged on the ground, laying out a game of solitaire. His gun was within reach of his hand, but he did not have time to pick it up before Zorro leaped toward him and with one kick to the chin tumbled him backward, then with a second kick sent his weapon flying. The stench in the place was so foul that Diego was nearly driven back, but this was no moment for queasiness. He took the torch from the wall and started looking into the cramped, damp, vermin-ridden, pestilent cells where the prisoners were jammed together in darkness; skeletons with the eyes of madmen. There were three or four to a cell so small that they had to take turns standing and sitting. The fetid air pulsed with the panting breath of those miserable wretches. Zorro called for Manuel Escalante, and a voice answered from one of the cells. He raised the torch and saw a man clinging to the bars, so badly beaten that his face was a shapeless purple mass in which no features were distinguishable. ”If you are the executioner, you are welcome,“ said the prisoner, and Zorro recognized his maestro from his dignified bearing and firm voice. ”I have come to free you, maestro. I am the fox. Zorro.“

“Good idea. The keys are near the door. And on your way, it would be wise to tend to the guard; he is beginning to come to,” Manuel Escalante calmly replied. His disciple found the key ring and opened the maestro’s barred door. The three prisoners who shared his cell rushed out, pushing and scrambling like animals, maddened by a mixture of terror and gut-wrenching hope. Their rescuer stopped them with his pistol. “Not so fast, caballeros; first you must help your comrades,” he ordered. The menacing aspect of the large pistol had the virtue of restoring some of the men’s lost humanity. While they struggled with keys and locks, Zorro shoved the guard into the empty cell, and Escalante took his gun. Once all the cells were open, the two of them led away those pathetic, ragged specters, uncombed and covered with dried blood, filth, and vomit. They went up the stairs, down the corridor, across the empty room where Diego had jumped from the beam, and got as far as the armory before coming upon a group of guards alerted by the noise from the dungeon. They had come prepared, swords in hand. Zorro fired the single shot of his weapon, hitting one of the guards, who dropped like lead, but Escalante found that his own musket was not loaded, and he had no time to do it. He gripped it by the barrel and erupted like a tornado, swinging blows in every direction. Zorro had drawn his sword, and he too attacked. He managed to hold back the onslaught long enough for Escalante to pick up one of the swords that had been taken from the men Zorro had locked in the latrine. Between the two of them, they created more noise and harm than a battalion. Zorro had plied his foil every day since he was a boy, but he had never had to use it in a serious fight. His one duel to the death had been with pistols, and had been much cleaner. He found that there is nothing honorable in a real combat, where rules count for nothing. The only standard is to win, whatever the cost. The blades did not ring in an elegant choreography, as they did in fencing classes, but were aimed directly at the enemy to run him through. Gentlemanly conduct was forgotten; blows were ferocious and gave no quarter. The sensation he experienced as steel pierced flesh was indescribable. He was suffused with a blend of unholy exaltation, repugnance, and triumph; he lost all notion of reality and was transformed into an animal. The cries of pain and bloodstained clothing of his adversaries made him grateful for the techniques gleaned from his associates in La Justicia, as infallible on the Circle of the Master as in all-out, hand-to-hand combat. Afterward, when he had time to think, he appreciated the months of practice with Bernardo, when he was so worn out after finishing that his legs barely held him. In the process, he had developed very quick reflexes and peripheral vision: he sensed instinctively what was happening behind his back. In a fraction of a second he was able to parry the simultaneous moves of several opponents, judge distances, calculate the velocity and direction of every thrust, defend himself, attack. Maestro Escalante showed himself to be as effective as his former student despite his age and the terrible beating he had suffered at the hands of his torturers. He did not have the younger man’s agility and strength, but his experience and calm more than compensated for those deficiencies. In the heat of the fray, Zorro was sweating and panting, while his maestro was brandishing his sword with the same decisiveness but with much more elegance. Within a few minutes the two of them had disabled, disarmed, or wounded every guard. Only when the field had been won did the rescued prisoners dare come near. None had had the courage to help their rescuers, but now they were more than willing to drag the vanquished guards to the cells that they themselves had occupied only minutes before, insulting and punching them as they pushed them inside. Only after their victims were gone did Zorro recover his senses and look around him. There were pools of blood on the floor, blood spattered on the walls, blood on his sword… blood everywhere. “Holy Mother of God!” he exclaimed, frightened. “Come along, we cannot stop to think about this now,” said Maestro Escalante. They left the barracks without encountering resistance. The freed prisoners disbanded and scurried through the dark streets of the city. Some were saved by fleeing the country, or hiding for years, but others were captured again and tortured before they were executed, in an attempt to extract details of how they had escaped. Those men were never able to tell who the daring masked man was who had set them free because they didn’t know. They heard nothing but his name, Zorro, which explained the Z scored on the wall of the armory. A total of forty minutes had passed between the moment the supposed drunks distracted the sentinels in front of the barracks and the time Zorro rescued his maestro. The comrades from La Justicia were waiting in the street, still wearing the guards’ uniforms, and they conducted the fugitive to the port. When they said goodbye, Diego and Manuel Escalante embraced for the first and last time. At dawn, once the soldiers had recuperated from the effects of the drug and could reorganize and tend to the wounded, the hapless second lieutenant had to report to his superiors. The one thing in his favor was that even with all that had happened, none of his men had died in the clash. He informed them that from what he had been told, Eulalia de Callis and Rafael Moncada were implicated because the fateful cask of wine that had intoxicated his troops had been a gift from them. That same afternoon a captain, escorted by four armed guards, presented himself before the suspected culprits, though he was extremely obsequious and nothing but flattery rolled from his tongue. Eulalia and Rafael received him as they would a vassal, demanding that he apologize for disturbing them with his nonsense. The lady sent him to the carriage house to see for himself that their coat of arms had been ripped from one of the carriages, proof that the captain deemed insufficient, though he didn’t dare say so. Rafael Moncada, arrayed in the uniform of the king’s officers, was so intimidating that the lieutenant did not ask explanations of him. Moncada had no alibi, but with his social position he did not need one. In the blink of an eye the suspects were cleared of suspicion. “The officer who allowed himself to be deceived in that manner is a dithering imbecile and should receive harsh punishment. I demand to know the meaning of that Z slashed on the wall of the barracks, and the identity of the bandit who dared use my name and that of my nephew for his villainy. Is that clear, officer?” Eulalia spit at the captain. “Have no doubt, Excellency, that we will do everything possible to clear up this most unfortunate incident,” he assured her, retreating toward the door with deep bows. In October, Rafael Moncada decided that the moment had come to be more autocratic with Juliana, since diplomacy and patience had not given results. Perhaps she suspected that the incident in the street had been his work, but she had no proof, and the persons who could furnish it, the Gypsies, were long gone and would not dare return to Barcelona. In the meantime, he had investigated and found that Tomas de Romeu was insolvent. Times had changed; that family was no longer in any condition to make demands. His own status was exceptional, and the one thing he needed to hold the reins of his destiny in his hands was Juliana. True, he did not have Eulalia de Callis’s approval to court the girl, but he decided that he was past the age to be ordered about by his domineering aunt. However, when he tried to send a letter to Tomas de Romeu to request an appointment, it was returned; Romeu had already left the city with his daughters. No one knew where he had gone, but Moncada had ways to find out. By coincidence, Eulalia had that very day summoned him to set a day for her to introduce him to the daughter of the duke and duchess de Medinacelli. “I am sorry, aunt. However suitable that union might be, I cannot be a party to it. As you know, I love Juliana de Romeu,” Rafael announced with all the firmness he could muster. “Get that girl out of your head, Rafael,” Eulalia warned. “She never was a good match, but now marrying her would be social suicide. Do you think she would be received at court when it is known that her father is a French sympathizer?”

“I am prepared to run that risk. She is the only woman in my entire lifetime who has ever interested me.”

“Your life has barely begun. You want her because she has snubbed you, not for any other reason. If you had won her, you would be bored with her by now. You need a wife of our station, Rafael. That girl is barely good enough to be a mistress.”

“Do not speak that way of Juliana!” Rafael exclaimed. “And why not? I say whatever I please, especially when I am right,” the matriarch replied in a voice that brooked no disagreement. “With the titles of the Medinacelli and my fortune, you can go far. Ever since the death of my poor son, you have been my only family; that is why I look after you like a mother. But my patience has its limits, Rafael.”

“As far as I am aware, your deceased husband, Pedro Fages, may God hold him in his sacred bosom, had no titles, or money, when you met him, aunt,” her nephew accused. “The difference is that Pedro was courageous; he had an impeccable military record, and he was willing to eat lizards in the New World if that is what it took to make a fortune. Juliana, on the other hand, is a spoiled little minx, and her father is a nobody. If you choose to ruin your life with her, you cannot count on me for help, is that clear?”

“Very clear, aunt. Good day.” Moncada clicked his heels, bowed, and left the salon. He looked splendid in his officer’s uniform, with the tasseled sword at his side and his boots gleaming. Dona Eulalia did not change expression. She knew human nature, and she was confident that towering ambition always wins out over deranged passion. Her nephew’s case would be no exception. Only a few days later, Juliana, Isabel, and Nuria came rushing back to Barcelona in the family coach, with no escort but Jordi and two footmen. The sound of hooves and the noise in the courtyard alerted Diego, who was just getting ready to go out. The three women were covered with dust, and looked drained. They came with the news that Tomas de Romeu had been arrested. A detachment of soldiers had burst into the house, leveling everything in the place, and had taken him off without giving him time to pick up a coat. All the women knew was that he was accused of treason, and that he was being taken to the dreaded Ciudadela. When Tomas de Romeu was arrested, Isabel had assumed the management of the family because Juliana, who was four years her senior, simply crumpled. With a maturity she had never shown until then, Isabel gave orders to pack up the necessities and close the country house. In less than three hours she and Nuria and her sister had hurried to Barcelona, pushing the horses to the limit. On the way they had time for the realization to sink in that they did not have a single ally. Their father, who, they believed, had never harmed anyone, now had nothing but adversaries. No one was going to compromise himself by lending a hand to a target of government prosecution. The one person whom they might go to was an enemy, not a friend, but Isabel did not hesitate one minute. Juliana would have to prostrate herself at the feet of Rafael Moncada, if it were necessary; no humiliation could be too great when it was a matter of saving their father, she said. Melodramatic or not, she was right. Juliana herself admitted that, and afterward Diego would have to accept the decision; not even a dozen Zorros could rescue someone from La Ciudadela. No one could escape from that fort. It was one thing to worm his way into an unimportant barracks commanded by an inexperienced second lieutenant; it was something else to confront the king’s troops in Barcelona. Nevertheless, the idea that Juliana was going to Moncada to beg horrified Diego. He insisted on going in her place. “Don’t be naive, Diego,” Isabel replied firmly. “The one person who can get anything from that man is Juliana. You have nothing to offer him.” Isabel herself wrote a letter announcing that her sister would call, and sent a servant to take it to the house of the persevering suitor, then instructed her sister to bathe and dress in her best clothes. Juliana was insistent that only Nuria accompany her, because Isabel lost her head too easily, and Diego was not one of the family. Besides, he and Moncada hated each other. A few hours later, still with deep circles under her eyes from the fatigue of the trip, Juliana knocked at the door of the man she detested, defying norms of discretion established centuries before. Only a woman with the most questionable reputation would dare visit an unmarried man, even if accompanied by a strict chaperone. Though the winds of autumn were already blowing, beneath her black mantle Juliana wore a gauzy yellow summer dress and short jacket embroidered with bugle beads; her curls were covered with a bonnet the color of her dress, tied with a sash of green silk and trimmed with white ostrich plumes. From a distance she resembled an exotic bird, and when she came near, she was more beautiful than ever. Nuria waited in the vestibule while a servant led Juliana to the salon where the smitten suitor was waiting. Rafael watched Juliana float in like a naiad in the quiet afternoon air, and he knew that he had been awaiting this moment for four years. The desire to make the girl pay for past humiliations nearly won out, but he sensed that he should not go too far: that fragile dove must be at the limits of her endurance. The last thing he had imagined was that the fragile dove would be as skillful in haggling as a Turk in the market. No one ever knew exactly the course of their negotiations; afterward Juliana explained only the basic points of the agreement they reached. Moncada would arrange for Tomas de Romeu to be freed and she, in exchange, would marry him. Not a gesture, not a word, betrayed Juliana’s emotions. A half hour after she went in, she came out of the salon with perfect calm, walking beside Moncada, who was lightly holding her arm. She made a peremptory gesture to Nuria and went straight to the coach, where Jordi was dozing with exhaustion on the coach box. She left without a single glance at the man to whom she had promised her hand. For more than three weeks, the de Romeu girls awaited the results of Moncada’s efforts. The only times they had left the house were to go to church to pray to Santa Eulalia, the saint of the city, to help them. “We need Bernardo badly!” Isabel commented more than once during that time; she was convinced that he would have been able to find out what condition her father was in, even get a message to him. What could not be done from higher up, Bernardo frequently achieved through his connections. “Yes, it would be good to have him here, but I am happy he’s gone.

Finally he is with Lightin-the-Night, where he has always wanted to be,“ Diego assured her. ”Have you had news of him? A letter?“

“No, not yet. It takes a long time.”

“Then how do you know?” Diego shrugged. He could not explain how what the whites in California called the “Indian mail” operated. It worked infallibly between Bernardo and him; since childhood they had been able to communicate without words, and there was no reason why they could not do it now. An ocean might separate them, but they stayed in contact as they always had. Nuria bought a length of rough dark brown wool and stitched some pilgrim’s robes. To reinforce Santa Eulalia’s influence in the heavenly court, she also appealed to another saint, Santiago de Compostela. She promised him that if he freed hex patron, she and the girls would make the pilgrimage to his sanctuary on foot. She had no idea how far that would be, but she assumed that if people went from France, it could not be far. The situation of the family was at its lowest ebb. The majordomo had left without explanation as soon as his patron was arrested. The few servants left in the house went about with long faces, and they replied to any order with insolence because they had no hope of collecting back wages. The only reason they didn’t leave was that they had nowhere to go. The money counters and pettifoggers who looked after Don Tomas’s affairs refused to see his daughters when they came to ask for money for everyday expenses. Diego had no way to help; he had given almost everything he had to the Gypsies. He was expecting money from his father, but it had not arrived. In the meantime, he resorted to more earthly contacts than those Nuria was pursuing to find out what shape the prisoner was in. La Justicia was no help now. Its members had dispersed, the first time in two centuries that the secret society had suspended its activities; even at the worst moments in their history they had been able to function. Some of its members had fled the country; others were hiding, and the least fortunate among them had fallen into the grasp of the Inquisition, which no longer was burning its prisoners at the stake; now they simply disappeared without a trace. At the end of October, Rafael Moncada came to speak with Juliana. He looked defeated. In those three weeks, he reported, he had discovered that his power was more limited than he had supposed. At the moment of truth he found that he could do nothing to move the heavy bureaucracy of the state. He had ridden at top speed to Madrid to intercede before the king in person, but His Excellency had shuffled him off on his secretary, one of the most powerful men at court, with the warning not to bother him with any more of his nonsense. Moncada had made no headway with the secretary, however eloquent his plea, and he did not dare bribe the man; a mistake would be very costly. He was notified that Tomas de Romeu, along with a handful of traitors, was to die before a firing squad. The secretary added that if Moncada threw down the gauntlet to fate by defending a vulture, he might regret it. The threat was clear. Upon his return to Barcelona, he had barely taken time to bathe before hurrying to tell the whole story to the girls, who wrung their hands as they listened, but were strong. To console them, Moncada assured them that he was not giving up; he would keep trying through every means to have the sentence commuted. “In any case, you ladies will not be alone in this world. You can always count on my esteem and my protection,” he added, looking grieved. “We shall see,” Juliana replied, without a tear. When Diego learned of the most recent developments, he decided that if the heavenly Eulalia had not been able to do anything for them, he would have to go to the terrestrial Eulalia. “That senora is very powerful. She knows the secrets of half the world. Everyone is afraid of her. Besides, in this city money counts above everything else. The three of us will go talk with her,” said Diego. “Eulalia de Callis does not know my father and, from what they say, she detests my sister,” Isabel warned him. But he had to try. The contrast between that excessively adorned mansion, reminiscent of the most luxurious homes of the gilded age of Mexico, and Barcelona sobriety in general and the de Romeu house in particular was staggering. Diego, Juliana, and Isabel were led through enormous salons with frescoes and Flemish tapestries, oils of noble ancestors, and paintings of epic battles. There were liveried servants at every door, and maids dressed in Dutch laces taking care of horrid Chihuahua dogs, who cast their eyes down when anyone of a higher social status passed by. I am referring to the maids, of course, not the dogs. Dona Eulalia received her visitors on the canopied throne in the main salon, decked out as if she were going to a ball, though as always she was in strict mourning. With her layer on layer of fat, her small head and beautiful eyes shining like olives through their long eyelashes, she looked like an enormous sea lion. If the elderly senora hoped to intimidate them, she succeeded. The young people were choking with shame in the cottony air of this mansion. They had never been in a situation like that; they had been born to give, not ask. Eulalia had seen Juliana only from a distance, and she was curious to examine her more closely. She could not deny that the girl was attractive, but her looks did not justify her nephew’s lunacy. She looked back in memory to her own early years and decided that she had been as beautiful as the de Romeu girl. Besides her flaming hair, she had had the body of an Amazon. Beneath the fat that now impaired her ability to walk, she held intact the memory of the woman she had once been: sensual, imaginative, filled with energy. It was not for nothing that Pedro Fages had loved her with inexhaustible passion and had been envied by scores of men. Juliana, in contrast, had the look of a wounded gazelle. Whatever did Rafael see in that pale, delicate girl who surely would have all the fire of a nun in bed? Men are a parcel of fools, she concluded. That other de Romeu girl, what was her name? She was the more interesting of the two. She seemed not at all timid, though her looks left a lot to be desired, especially in comparison with Juliana. The child had the bad luck to have a celebrated beauty for a sister, she thought. Under normal circumstances she would have at least offered sherry and tidbits to her visitors. No one could accuse Eulalia of being stingy with food her house was famous for its cuisine but she did not want them to feel comfortable, she needed to keep the upper hand for the bargaining that undoubtedly lay ahead. Diego started by explaining the girls’ father’s situation, not omitting the fact that Rafael Moncada had ridden to Madrid for the purpose of interceding for him. Eulalia listened in silence, observing each of them with her penetrating eyes and drawing her own conclusions. She could guess the deal that Juliana had made with her nephew; otherwise he would never have risked his reputation to defend a liberal accused of treason. That stupid move could cost him the favor of the king. For a moment she was happy that Rafael had not achieved his objective, but then she saw the tears in the girls’ eyes, and her old heart betrayed her once again. It often happened that her common sense and her good judgment in business ran afoul of her sentimentality. Emotion had its price, but she dispensed money with grace; her spontaneous fits of compassion were the last remaining vices from her lost youth. A long pause followed Diego de la Vega’s plea. At last the matriarch, moved despite herself, told them that they had a very exaggerated notion of her influence. It was not in her power to save Tomas de Romeu. She could do nothing that her nephew had not already done, she said, except bribe his jailers to give the prisoner special considerations until the moment of his execution. They must understand that there was no future for Juliana and Isabel in Spain. They were daughters of a traitor, and when their father died they would be daughters of a criminal with a dishonored name. The crown would confiscate their wealth and they would be put out in the street, unable to live in this or any other country in Europe. What would become of them? They would have to earn their living embroidering sheets for brides or as governesses for other women’s children. Of course, Juliana might persist in enticing some gullible man to marry her, including Rafael Moncada himself, but she was confident that at the hour of making such a grave decision, her nephew, who was not totally devoid of brains, would weigh in the balance his career and social position. Juliana was not on the same level as Rafael. Furthermore, there was no greater nuisance than a too-beautiful woman, she said. No man should marry one; they attracted all kinds of problems. She added that in Spain, beauties without fortunes were fated for the stage or to being kept by some benefactor. Everyone knew that. She wanted with all her heart for Juliana to escape that fate. As the matriarch was building her case, Juliana was losing the control she had striven to maintain throughout the hideous interview, and a river of tears washed down her cheeks and bosom. Diego decided they had heard enough, and wished that Dona Eulalia were a man, so he could have thrashed her right there. He took Juliana and Isabel by the arm and without so much as a goodbye propelled them toward the door. Before they got there, the voice of Eulalia stopped them. “As I said, there is nothing I can do for Don Tomas de Romeu, but I can do something for you girls.” She offered to buy the family’s properties, from the ruined mansion in Barcelona to the remote abandoned lands in the provinces, at a good price and with immediate payment. That way the girls would have the capital they needed to begin a new life somewhere far away, where no one knew them. She told them that she could send her notary the next day to examine the titles and prepare the necessary documents. She would arrange with the chief military officer in Barcelona to allow them to visit their father one last time, to say goodbye and to have him sign the papers of the sale, a transaction they should complete before the authorities intervened and confiscated everything. “What you intend, Your Excellency, is to get rid of my sister so she will not marry Rafael Moncada!” Isabel accused, trembling with fury. To Eulalia the insult was a slap in the face. She was not accustomed to having anyone raise her voice to her; no one had done that since her husband died. For a few seconds she couldn’t breathe, but over the years she had learned to control her explosive temper and to appreciate the truth when it was right under her nose. Silently, she counted to thirty before she answered. “You are in no position to refuse my offer. The deal is simple and straightforward: as soon as you get the money, you leave,” she replied. “Your nephew blackmailed my sister into saying she would marry him, and now you are blackmailing her not to!”

“That’s enough, Isabel, please,” Juliana murmured, drying her tears. “I have made a decision. I accept your offer, and I appreciate your generosity, Excellency. When may we see our father?”

“Soon, child. I will notify you when I arrange the interview,” said Eulalia, well satisfied. “Tomorrow at eleven, we shall receive your accountant. Good day, senora.” Eulalia kept her part of the bargain. The next morning at eleven o’clock on the dot three lawyers appeared at the residence of Tomas de Romeu; they went through all his papers, turned out the contents of his desk, checked through his slapdash accounting, and made an approximate evaluation of his holdings. They reached the conclusion that not only did he have much less than it appeared, but he was up to his neck in debt. As things were, the income for the girls would not be adequate to maintain them at their current level. The notary, nevertheless, had brought specific instructions from his pa trona When she made her offer, Eulalia was not thinking of the value of what she would acquire but, rather, of what the two girls would need to live. That is what she offered. To them it seemed neither too much nor too little. They had no idea even of what a loaf of bread cost, so they were not capable of comprehending the sum that the matriarch was prepared to give them. Diego similarly had no experience with finances and had nothing at that time to help Juliana and Isabel. The sisters accepted the stipulated amount without knowing that it was twice the value of their father’s properties. As soon as the lawyers prepared the documents, Eulalia obtained permission for a visit at the prison. La Ciudadela was a monstrous pentagon of stone, wood, and cement designed in 1715 by a Dutch engineer. It had been the heart of the military might of the Bourbon kings in Catalonia. Thick walls crowned by a bastion at each of its five angles encircled its vast grounds. From its height, it dominated the entire city. To construct the impregnable fortress, the armies of King Philip V had demolished entire barrios, hospitals, convents, twelve hundred houses, and several nearby forests. The massive edifice and its dismal legend hovered over Barcelona like a black cloud. It was the equivalent of the Bastille in France: a symbol of oppression. Inside its walls it had housed many armies of occupation, and thousands and thousands of prisoners had died in its cells. Bodies of the hanged were dangled from its bastions as an example to the citizenry. According to a popular saying, it was easier to escape from hell than from La Ciudadela. Jordi drove Diego, Juliana, and Isabel to the main gate, where they presented the safe-conduct pass Eulalia de Califs had obtained for them. The coachman had to wait outside, so the three young people went in on foot, accompanied by four soldiers carrying rifles and fixed bayonets. The path ahead was ominous. Outside, it was a cold but splendid day with blue skies and clear air. The sea was a silver mirror, and sunlight painted festive reflections on the white walls of the city. Inside the fortress, however, time had stopped a century before, and the climate was an eternal winter dusk. It was a long walk from the heavy entry gate to the central building, but no one spoke a word. They went into the forbidding prison through a side door of thick oak studded with iron and were led down long passageways in which echoes returned the sound of their footsteps. Air whistled past them, and they smelled that peculiar odor of military installations. Humidity seeped from the ceiling, tracing mossy maps on the walls. They went through several open doors, but each one swung shut behind them. They had the sensation that every time one slammed, they were farther from the world of free men and known reality, venturing into the entrails of a gigantic beast. The two girls were trembling, and Diego could do nothing but wonder whether they would come out of that accursed place alive. They came to a vestibule where they had to stand and wait for a long time, watched by soldiers. Finally they were shown into a small room in which the only furnishings were a rough table and several chairs. The officer who received them glanced at the safe-conduct to confirm the seal and the signature, though it was doubtful that he knew how to read. He handed it back without comment. He was a smooth-shaven man of about forty, with iron gray hair and strangely blue, almost violet, eyes. He spoke to them in Catalan to advise them that they would have fifteen minutes to speak to the prisoner, and that they must not go near him but stand three paces away. Diego explained that Senor de Romeu had to sign some papers and would need time to read them. “Please, sir.” Juliana fell to her knees with a sob that caught in her throat. “This is the last time we will ever see our father. I beg you, let us hold him once more.” The officer stepped back with a blend of disgust and fascination; Diego and Isabel tried to get Juliana to stand up again, but she was nailed to the ground. “In God’s name! Get up, senorita!” the soldier exclaimed in a voice of command, but almost immediately he softened and, taking Juliana’s hand, gently pulled her up. “I am not without heart, child. I am a father, too. I have several children and I understand how painful this situation is. Very well, I will give you half an hour, and you may be alone with him and show him your documents.” He ordered a guard to bring the prisoner. During that time Juliana was able to regain control of her emotions and prepare herself for the meeting. Shortly after, Tomas de Romeu was led in by two guards. He was bearded, dirty, and emaciated, but they had at least removed his shackles. He had not been able to shave or wash in weeks, he stank like a beggar, and he had the wild eyes of a crazed man. The meager prison diet had reduced his bon vivant paunch; his features had sharpened, his aquiline nose looked enormous in his greenish face, and his once ruddy cheeks were covered by a scrawny growth of gray beard. It took his daughters a few seconds to recognize him and throw themselves, weeping, into his arms. The officer and the guards left. The pain of that family was so raw, so intimate, that Diego wished he were invisible. He squeezed against the wall and stared at the floor, totally undone. “Come, come, girls, calm down. Don’t cry, please. We have very little time, and there is much to do,” said Tomas de Romeu, wiping away his own tears with the back of his hand. “They told me that I have papers to sign.” Diego succinctly explained Eulalia’s offer, and handed him the documents of sale, with the plea that he sign them and conserve his daughters’ paltry patrimony. “This confirms what I already know.” The prisoner sighed. “I will not leave here alive.” Diego made it clear to him that even if a pardon from the king arrived in time, the family would have to leave the country in any case, and they could do that only with cash in their pockets. Tomas de Romeu took the pen and inkwell Diego had brought and signed the transferal of all his earthly possessions to the name of Eulalia de Califs. Then he calmly asked Diego to look after his daughters, to take them far away where no one would know that their father had been executed like a common criminal. “In the years I have known you, Diego, I have come to trust in you as I would the son I never had. If my daughters are in your care, I can die in peace. Take them to your home in California. Ask my friend Alejandro de la Vega to care for them as if they were his own,” he pleaded. “We must not despair, father dear. Rafael Moncada assured us that he will use all his influence to win your freedom,” Juliana moaned. “The execution has been scheduled for two days from today, Juliana.

Moncada will do nothing to help me, because it was he who denounced me.“

“Father! Are you sure?” the girl cried. “I have no proof, but that is what my captors told me,” Tomas explained. “But Rafael went to the king to ask for your pardon!”

“Do not believe it, daughter. He may have gone to Madrid, but it was for other reasons.”

“Then it is my fault!”

“You do not bear the blame for the evil others do, child. You are not responsible for my death. Courage! I do not want to see any more tears.” De Romeu believed that Moncada had not denounced him for political motives or to avenge Juliana’s rebuffs, but that it was a cold calculation. At their father’s death his daughters would be alone in the world and would have to accept the protection of the first person to offer it. There Moncada would be, waiting for Juliana to fall like a turtledove into his hands; that was why Diego’s role was so important at this moment, he added. Diego was about to fall to his knees, say that he adored Juliana and she would never fall into Moncada’s power, and ask for her hand in marriage, but he swallowed the words. Juliana had never given him the slightest indication that she returned his love. This was not the moment to mention it. Besides, he felt like a charlatan; he could not offer the girls a modicum of security. His courage, his sword, his love, were of little value now. He realized that without the backing of his father’s fortune, he could do nothing for them. “You may be at peace, Don Tomas. I would give my life for your daughters. I shall watch over them always,” he said simply. Two days later at dawn, when the fog from the sea covered the city with a mantle of intimacy and mystery, eleven political prisoners accused of collaborating with the French were executed in one of the courtyards of La Ciudadela. A half hour earlier a priest had offered them extreme unction so that they might depart this world cleansed of sin, like newborn babes, as he phrased it. Tomas de Romeu, who for fifty years had railed against the clergy and the dogma of the church, received the sacrament with the other prisoners and even took communion. “Just in case, Father, it can’t hurt,” he commented jokingly. He had been sick with fear from the moment the soldiers had come to his country home, but now he was tranquil. His anguish had disappeared the moment he was able to say goodbye to his daughters. He slept the following two nights with no dreams, and passed the days in good spirits. He had surrendered himself to his approaching death with a placidity he had not possessed in life. He began to be pleased with the idea of ending his days with a shot, rather than gradually, ensnared in the inevitable advance of decrepitude. He thought of his daughters, delivered from their fate, hoping that Diego de la Vega would keep his word. He felt more distant from them than ever. In the weeks of his captivity he had been letting go of memories and emotions and in doing so had acquired new freedom: he had nothing left to lose. When he thought of his daughters, he could not visualize their faces or hear their voices; they were two motherless children playing with dolls in the dark rooms of his home. Two days earlier, when they visited the prison, he was astounded to see the women who had replaced the little girls in high-buttoned shoes, pinafores, and little topknots that he remembered. “Be damned,” he said when he saw them, “how time flies.” He had told them goodbye with a light heart, surprised by his detachment. Juliana and Isabel would make their lives without him; he could no longer protect them. From that moment on he was able to savor his last hours and observe with curiosity the ritual of his execution. Before dawn on the day of his death, Tomas de Romeu received Eulalia de Callis’s last present: a picnic basket containing a bottle of superlative wine and a plate of the most delicious bonbons in her chocolate collection. He was authorized to wash and shave, watched by a guard, and was given the change of clothing his daughters had sent. He was elegant and undaunted as he walked to the site of the execution; he took his place in front of a bloody post, to which he was tied, and refused a blindfold. The man in charge of the firing squad was the same blue-eyed officer who had greeted Juliana and Isabel in La Ciudadela. It was he who delivered a bullet to de Romeu’s temple when he ascertained that though half his body had been shattered by the shots, he was still alive. The last thing the condemned man saw before the coup de grace exploded in his brain was the golden light of dawn through the fog. The officer, who was not easily moved, having suffered the war and the brutality of the barracks and prison, had not been able to forget the tear-stained face of the virginal Juliana, kneeling before him. Breaking his own rule of separating duty from his emotions, he went to give her the news in person. He did not want the daughters of the prisoner to learn through other means. “He did not suffer, senoritas,” he lied. Rafael Moncada learned of Tomas de Romeu’s death at the same time he found out about Eulalia’s strategy to get Juliana out of Spain. The former was part of his plans, but the latter provoked a paroxysm of anger. He was careful, nonetheless, not to berate his aunt; he had not given up the idea of winning Juliana without losing his inheritance. He regretted that his aunt was in such good health; her family was noted for its longevity, and he had little hope that she would die early, leaving him wealthy and free to determine his destiny. He would somehow have to arrange for the matriarch to accept Juliana willingly; it was the only solution. The worst thing he could do would be to present the marriage as a fait accompli she would never forgive him but he had in mind a plan based on the legend that in California, when she was the wife of the governor, Eulalia had transformed a dangerous Indian warrior into a civilized Christian Spanish damsel. He could not suspect that that person was the mother of Diego de la Vega, but he had heard the tale several times from the mouth of Eulalia herself, who was infected with the vice of trying to control others’ lives and when she did, boast of it. Moncada was hoping to talk her into taking the de Romeu girls into her court as protegees, seeing that they had lost their father and had no other family. To save them from dishonor and see them again accepted in society would be an interesting challenge for Eulalia, just as that Indian had been in California more than twenty years ago. When the mother-to-the-world opened her heart to Juliana and Isabel, as in the end she did with almost everyone, he would bring up the matter of the marriage again. However, if that intricate plan failed there was always the alternative suggested by Eulalia herself. His aunt’s words had made an unforgettable impression: Juliana de Romeu could be his mistress. Without a father to look out for her, the girl would end up being kept by some protector. No one better than himself for that role. Sterling plan. That would allow him to take a wife with social position, perhaps even La Medinacelli, without giving up Juliana. Anything is possible if done discreetly, he reasoned. With this in mind, he presented himself at the residence of Tomas de Romeu. The house, which had always seemed rundown, now looked abandoned. In a few months’ time, since the political situation had changed in Spain and Tomas de Romeu had sunk into his worries and debts, the residence had taken on the defeated and needy air of its owner. Weeds had invaded the garden, and ferns had dried in their pots; there were chickens and dogs, horse manure, and garbage in the main patio. Inside, dust and shadow ruled; the drapes had not been opened or a fire lighted in the fireplaces for months. The cold breath of autumn seemed trapped in the inhospitable rooms. There was no majordomo to answer the door. Nuria appeared instead, as dried-up and cross-looking as ever, and led him to the library. The chaperone had tried to take the place of the majordomo and was doing everything possible to keep the near-foundering de Romeu vessel afloat, but she had no authority in dealing with the rest of the domestics. Nor did she have much money to work with; they had put away every last maravedi for the future, the only dowry Juliana and Isabel would have. Diego had taken Eulalia de Callis’s notes of payment to a banker that she herself had recommended, a man of scrupulous honesty, who gave him the equivalent amount in precious stones and gold doubloons, with the advice to go home and have the girls sew the treasure into their underskirts. That was how Jews had preserved their money during centuries of persecution, he explained. Jewels and gold were the only things that could easily be carried and that had the same value in every country. Juliana and Isabel could not believe that that handful of small colored stones represented everything the family possessed. While Rafael Moncada was waiting in the library, surrounded by the leather-bound books that formed the private world of Tomas de Romeu, Nuria went to get Juliana. She was in her room, exhausted from weeping and praying for her father’s soul. “You have no obligation to speak to that heartless man, Juliana,” said the chaperone. “If you want, I can tell him to go to hell.”

“Hand me the cherry red dress and help me do my hair, Nuria. I do not want him to see me in mourning, or looking crushed,” the girl decided. Shortly afterward she appeared in the library, as dazzling as in her best times. In the flickering light of the candles, Rafael could not see the eyes reddened by tears or the pallor of sorrow. He sprang to his feet with his heart galloping, verifying yet one more time the unbelievable effect that maiden had on his senses. He expected to find her beaten down by sorrow; instead, there she was, as beautiful, haughty, and exciting as ever. When he could speak, he told her how deeply he regretted the horrible tragedy that had befallen her family, and reiterated that he had left no stone unturned in his quest to aid Don Tomas, but it had been for naught. He knew, he added, that his aunt Eulalia had counseled her and her sister to leave Spain, but he did not think that was necessary. He was convinced that soon the iron fist with which Ferdinand VII was strangling his opposition would loosen its hold. The country was in ruin; the people had suffered too many years of violence and now were clamoring for bread, employment, and peace. He suggested that Juliana and Isabel should henceforth use their mother’s maiden name, since their father’s was irrevocably stained, and that they should stay out of sight for a prudent amount of time, until the murmuring about Tomas de Romeu subsided. Perhaps then they could reappear in society. In the meantime, he would offer them his protection. “What exactly are you suggesting, senor?” Juliana asked defensively. Moncada repeated that nothing would make him happier than to have her for his wife, and that his previous offer still stood, but that given the circumstances it would be necessary to maintain appearances for a few months. He would also have to deal with Eulalia de Callis’s opposition, but that was not an insurmountable problem. Once his aunt had the opportunity to know Juliana better, she would change her opinion. He supposed that now, after such devastating events, Juliana would have given serious thought to her future. Although he did not deserve her no man on earth fully deserved her he would place his life and his fortune at her feet. At his side, she would never want for anything. Even though the wedding would have to be postponed, he could offer her and her sister comfort and security. His was not an empty offer; he begged her to give it due consideration. “I am not asking for an immediate answer. I fully realize that you are in mourning and that perhaps this is not the moment to speak of love“

“We shall never speak of love, Senor Moncada, but perhaps we can talk business,” Juliana interrupted. “I lost my father because you denounced him.” Rafael Moncada sucked in his breath and felt blood pounding in his temples. “How can you accuse me of such villainy! Your father dug his own grave, with no help from anyone. I shall forgive that insult only because you are overcome with grief.”

“How do you plan to compensate my sister and me for the death of our father?” Juliana insisted, with clearheaded fury. Her tone was so disdainful that Moncada could not control his temper. It was ridiculous, he decided, to continue to feign an ineffectual chivalry. Apparently Juliana was one of those women who respond better to male domination. He took her by the arms and, violently shaking her, spit out that she was in no position to negotiate, she should be thanking him; perhaps she did not realize that she could end up in the street or in prison with her sister, just like her traitorous father. The military had been alerted, and only his timely intervention had prevented their arrest, but that could happen at any moment; only he could save them from poverty and jail. Juliana tried to pull away, and in the struggle the seam of her sleeve ripped, revealing her shoulder, and the pins flew out of her hair. Her black hair caressed Moncada’s hands. Unable to contain himself, he grabbed a fragrant, silken fistful, pulled Juliana’s head back, and kissed her hard on the mouth. Diego had been spying on this scene from the partly opened door, quietly repeating, like a litany, the advice Maestro Escalante had given him in his first fencing lesson: never fight with anger. However, when Moncada threw himself on Juliana and forced a kiss, it was too much for Diego; he burst into the library with his sword in his hand, puffing with indignation. Moncada released Juliana and pushed her toward the wall as he drew his sword. The two men faced one another, knees bent, swords in their right hands at a ninety-degree angle to their bodies, the other arm lifted high to maintain balance. The moment he adopted that position, Diego’s fury evaporated, to be replaced by absolute calm. He took a deep breath, expelled it, and smiled with satisfaction. At last he was in control of his impulsive temperament, something his maestro had emphasized from the beginning. No losing his breath. Tranquility of mind, clear thinking, firm arm. That sensation of cold running down his spine like a wintry wind must precede the euphoria of combat. In that state, the mind ceased to think logically and the body responded reflexively. The finality of the rigorous training of La Justicia was that instinct and skill direct one’s movements. The two men crossed swords twice, feeling one another out, then Moncada initiated the attack with a lunge, from which Diego retreated. From the first feints, Diego was able to evaluate the class of opponent he was facing. Moncada was a very good swordsman but Diego was more agile and more experienced; it was not for nothing that he had made fencing his first priority. Instead of quickly executing a riposte, he feigned clumsiness, retreating until his back was to the wall, on the defensive. He parried attacks with apparent effort, as if desperate, though Moncada had not been able to touch him anywhere. Later, when he had time to evaluate what had happened, Diego realized that, without planning it, he was playing the part of two different persons, determined by the circumstances and the clothing he was wearing. That lowered his enemy’s defenses. He knew that Rafael Moncada scorned him; he himself had encouraged that by affecting the mannerisms of a dandy when he was around. His motives were the same they had been with Le Chevalier and his daughter Agnes: a mode of defense. In their pistol duel Moncada had seen Diego’s courage, but conveniently had tried to forget it. Later they met on several occasions, and each time Diego reinforced the negative impression his rival had of him, in that way lulling the unscrupulous Moncada into a false security. And now he had decided to employ cleverness rather than heroics. On his father’s hacienda, Diego had seen foxes dance to attract lambs, and when the innocents’ curiosity brought them closer, they were devoured. Adopting the tactic of playing the buffoon, he threw Moncada off, confusing him. Until that moment Diego had not been conscious of his dual personality: one part Diego de la Vega, elegant, affected, hypochondriac, and the other part El Zorro, audacious, daring, playful. He supposed that his true character lay somewhere in between, but he didn’t know who he was: neither of the two nor the sum of both. He wondered, for example, how Juliana and Isabel saw him, and concluded that he did not have the least idea. Perhaps he had overplayed the theatrics, and had given them the impression he was a poseur. But there was no time to ponder those questions now. Events had become very convoluted and required immediate action. He would assume that he was two persons and turn that to his advantage. Diego raced around among the tables and chairs of the library, pretending to escape from Moncada’s attacks and at the same time provoking him with sarcastic comments, as blows rained and steel sparked. He succeeded in enraging him. Moncada lost the cool head he made so much of. He was breathing heavily, and the perspiration running down his forehead was blinding him. Diego judged that now he had his rival on the run. Like a bull in the ring, he first had to tire him. “Take care, Excellency, you might hurt someone with that sword!” Diego cried. By then Juliana had somewhat recovered, and she shouted for them to put down their weapons, for the love of God and respect for the memory of her father. Diego made another halfhearted thrust or two, then put down his weapon and raised his hands above his head, signaling for a truce. It was a risk, but he was sure Moncada would not kill an unarmed man in front of Juliana. He was wrong; his adversary was upon him with a shout of triumph and the momentum of his full weight. Diego dodged the blade, which grazed one hip, and in two leaps was at the window, taking cover behind the heavy floor-length velvet drapes. Moncada’s sword pierced the cloth, loosing a cloud of dust, but it caught in the fabric, forcing the entangled swordsman to struggle to withdraw it. Those few instants gave Diego the advantage, and he threw the curtain over Moncada’s head and leapt up on the mahogany table. He plucked a leather-bound book from a shelf and hurled it, striking his adversary in the chest; he stumbled and nearly fell, but quickly straightened and charged again. Diego avoided two thrusts and shot off several more books, then jumped to the floor and crawled beneath the table. “Truce, truce! I do not want to die like a chicken,” he whined in a tone of frank burlesque, huddled beneath the table with another book held like a shield to defend against the maddened Moncada’s blind attacks. Beside a library chair was the ivory-handled cane Tomas de Romeu had used during his attacks of gout. Diego used it to hook Moncada’s ankle. He pulled sharply, and Moncada sat down on the floor, but he was in good shape and he jumped up and renewed his attacks. By then Isabel and Nuria had come in answer to Juliana’s screams. Isabel needed only one look to take in the situation; believing that Diego was soon for the cemetery, she picked up his sword, which had gone flying into the far corner of the room, and without hesitation confronted Moncada. It was her first opportunity to put into practice the skills she had acquired in four years of fencing in front of a mirror. “En garde,” she called out, euphoric. Instinctively, Rafael Moncada’s blade clashed against Isabel’s; he was certain that his first move would disarm her, but he encountered a determined resistance. Then, despite his brutalizing rage, he reacted, realizing the madness of dueling with a girl, particularly the sister of the woman he hoped to conquer. He dropped his weapon, which fell noiselessly to the carpet. “Do you plan to murder me in cold blood, my girl?” he asked sarcastically. “Pick up your sword, coward!” His only answer was to cross his arms over his chest, smiling scornfully. “Isabel! What are you doing?” Juliana interceded. Her sister ignored her. She placed the tip of her sword beneath Rafael Moncada’s chin, but then did not know what to do. The absurdity of the scene was revealed in all its magnitude. “Slitting the gentleman’s craw, as he doubtlessly deserves, will cause some legal problems, Isabel. You can’t go around killing people. But we must do something with him,” Diego interjected, taking his handkerchief from his sleeve and flicking it in the air before wiping his brow with an affected gesture. That distraction gave Moncada opportunity to grab Isabel’s arm and twist it, forcing her to drop the sword. He pushed the girl with such force that she sailed across the carpet and banged her head on the table. She dropped to the floor, slightly stunned, as Moncada whirled to confront Diego with her weapon in his hand. Diego immediately retreated and dodged several thrusts from his enemy, looking for a way to disarm him and engage in hand-to-hand combat. Isabel’s head had cleared; she picked Moncada’s sword up off the floor and with a cry of warning tossed it to Diego, who caught it in the air. With a weapon he felt secure, and he recovered the bantering tone that had sent his adversary into such a frenzy a few moments before. With a swift lunge he drew blood on Moncada’s left arm, barely a scratch but in exactly the same spot he himself had been wounded during their duel. Moncada grunted with surprise and pain. “Now we are even,” Diego said, as he executed an attack that flicked Moncada’s sword from his hand. His enemy was at his mercy. With his right hand he clasped the wounded arm just at the tear in his jacket, now stained with a thread of blood. He was beside himself, with rage more than fear. Diego touched the tip of his sword to Moncada’s chest, as if to run him through, but instead smiled amiably. “For the second time, I have the pleasure of sparing your life, Senor Moncada. I hope this will not become a habit,” he said, lowering his sword. There was no need for discussion. Both Diego and the de Romeu girls knew that Moncada’s threat was real, and that the king’s minions could appear at the door at any moment. It was time to travel. They had prepared for that eventuality ever since Eulalia bought the family properties and Tomas de Romeu was executed, but they had thought they would walk out the front door, rather than flee like criminals. They gave themselves half an hour to get away, leaving with what they had on plus the gold and precious stones that, following the banker’s suggestion, they had sewn into pouches tied around their waists beneath their clothing. Nuria surprised them with a plan to lock Moncada in the hidden chamber in the library. She took a book from its place, pulled a lever, and the wall of shelves slowly turned upon itself, revealing the entrance to a room whose existence Juliana and Isabel had never known about. “Your father had a few secrets, but none that I didn’t know,” Nuria told them. The secret room was tiny and windowless, with no exit other than the door disguised by the shelving. When they lighted a lantern, they found cases of cognac and the favorite cigars of the master of the house, shelves with more books, and some disturbing paintings on the walls. On closer view they could see a group of six ink drawings representing the crudest episodes of the war, quarterings rapes, even cannibalism, which Tomas de Romeu had not wanted his daughters ever to see. “How horrible!” Juliana exclaimed. “These are by the maestro Goya! They are very valuable, we can sell them,” said Isabel. “They do not belong to us. Everything in this house belongs to Dona Eulalia de Califs now,” her sister reminded her. The books, in several languages, were on the blacklists of either the church or the government, all banned. Diego picked up a volume at random, and it turned out to be an illustrated history of the Inquisition, with extremely realistic drawings of their methods of torture. He slammed it shut before Isabel, who was peering over his shoulder, could see. There was also a shelf devoted to erotica, but they had no time to examine it. The tightly sealed chamber was the perfect place to leave Rafael Moncada locked up. “Have you lost your minds? I will die here of starvation or suffocate from lack of air!” the culprit protested when he realized what they intended to do. “His Excellency is right, Nuria. A gentleman as distinguished as he cannot survive on liquor and tobacco alone. Please bring him a ham from the kitchen, so he will not go hungry, and a towel for his arm,” said Diego, pushing his rival into the chamber. “How will I get out?” the captive whimpered, terrified. “There must be a hidden mechanism in the chamber for opening the door from inside. You will have more than enough time to discover it, most esteemed senor.” Diego smiled. “With persistence and luck you will be free in less time than the crow of the cock.”

“We will leave you a lamp, Moncada, but I advise you not to light it; it will consume all the air. Let’s see, Diego, how long do you calculate that a person can live in here?” Isabel queried, enthusiastic about their plan. “Several days. Enough to meditate at length on the wise proverb that the ends do not justify the means,” Diego replied. After Nuria cleaned and bandaged the cut on Moncada’s arm, they left him with a store of water, bread, and ham. It was unfortunate that he would not bleed to death from that insignificant scratch, was Isabel’s judgment. They recommended that he not waste air and strength shouting, as no one would hear him; the few servants who remained were never in this part of the house. Moncada’s last words before the shelves turned to close the entrance to the chamber, sealing him in silence and darkness, were that they would learn who Rafael Moncada was. They would regret that they had not killed him; he would get out of that hole and find Juliana sooner or later, even if he had to pursue her to hell itself. “Oh, you won’t have to go that far, we are on our way to California,” Diego said in farewell. I regret to tell you that I can write no more, because I have run out of the goose-quill pens I always use. I have ordered more, and soon I will be able to finish this story. I do not use quills from ordinary birds; they stain the paper and rob elegance from the page. I have heard that some inventors dream of creating a mechanical device for writing, but I am sure that such a whimsical invention would never prosper. There are certain activities that cannot be mechanized, for they require fondness, and writing is one of them. I fear that this is turning out to be a long narration, even though I have left a lot out. In the life of Zorro, as in all lives, there are brilliant moments and some that are dark; between the extremes are many neutral zones. You will have noted, for example, that in 1813 very little worthy of mention happened to our protagonist. He dedicated himself to his own activities with neither suffering nor glory, and made no progress in his conquest of Juliana. Rafael Moncada had to return from his chocolate odyssey for this story to acquire a little life. As I said before, villains, however unsympathetic in real life, are indispensable in a novel, which is what these pages are. At first I determined to write a chronicle or a biography, but I am unable to tell the legend of Zorro without straying into the widely scorned genre of the novel. Between each of his adventures are long uninteresting periods that I have omitted to prevent boring my potential readers to death. For the same reason, I have embellished the memorable episodes. I have made generous use of adjectives, and I have added suspense to Zorro’s feats, though I have not exaggerated too greatly his praiseworthy virtues. This is called literary license and, as I understand it, it is more legitimate than all-out lies. In any case, dear readers, there is in my inkwell more story to tell. In the next pages, to be no fewer than one hundred, I believe, I shall relate Zorro’s voyage with the de Romeu girls and Nuria across half the world, as well as the dangers they met in fulfilling their destinies. I can skip ahead, without fear of ruining the end, to disclose that they survive unharmed, and at least some of them reach Alta California, where, unfortunately, not everything is milk and honey. In fact, it is actually there that the true epic of Zorro begins, the saga that has carried his fame throughout the world. So I beg of you, a little more patience, please.