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the
guard, who was seated in the empty window, looking out at the
morning. Diego waved to him and then went from man to man, shaking
them awake. Maria got to her knees. Her whole body ached from
sleeping on the gravel and bits of adobe littering the ground, but
she was warm. The attitude of the guard at the window told her they
had nothing to fear at the moment. She sat back cross-legged on the
ground and leaned against the wall, feeling a contentment wholly
out of proportion to her circumstances, feeling safety in the
presence of these hard men from Santa Fe.
    But I will have to say goodbye to him—to them—in
Santa Fe, she reminded herself silently. I owe them so much.
    Maria performed her ablutions in a puddle of
standing water behind the adobe building, wondering as she splashed
muddy water on her face if she would ever be really clean again.
She thought of the tin hip bath that used to hang in her dressing
room in Mexico City. Surely her sister Doña Margarita had a
bathtub, perhaps even some clothing besides the everlasting brown
serge— jerga —she had been wearing for six months.
    She dried her face on the hem of her dress and
joined the men for more hardtack and jerky. One of the soldiers
gave her a handful of dried apple. The linty bits of fruit tasted
better than anything she had eaten in months. She smiled at the
soldier, who blushed and turned away, a grin on his face.
    Diego lifted Maria onto his horse and then mounted
behind her again. It was still a tight fit, but after sleeping next
to him in the adobe shelter, Maria did not feel the constraints of
yesterday. What was it her mother used to say? “Necessity is the
soup that helps the food down,” she said out loud, as if reciting
from a primer.
    “Qué es, chiquita ?” Diego asked.
    She repeated the proverb and Diego laughed. “Yes,
Maria chiquita , and let me tell you another dicho —‘One must cut the cloak to fit the cloth.’ This is our
motto, as you will discover.” He must have felt rather than heard
her sigh. “As perhaps you have already discovered.”
    She said nothing more, closing her eyes against the
brightness of the morning sun. She did not even have cloth to cut,
only the dress she sat in and the shoes one of the men had
retrieved from the grove of trees. Her only hope was that at the
end of this dreadful journey her sister was waiting. Her sister and
her sister’s husband who would become her protector.
    She sat up straighter, narrowly missing Diego’s chin
again. “What do you know of Doña Margarita Espinosa de Guzman?” she
asked.
    He was silent for a moment, and when he finally
spoke it seemed to Maria that he chose his words with particular
care. “You do not remember her?”
    “Not well. I was so young when she married and moved
here.” She laughed softly to herself, and Diego leaned toward her,
his hat brushing her hair.
    “Qué es, chiquita?” he asked.
    “During Margarita’s wedding I threw up all over the
chapel, and she boxed my ears after the ceremony.”
    He laughed. “You cannot be her favorite sister!”
    " Al contrario, Señor ,” she said, “I am her
only sister, she my only living relative. Why else would I have
come to this sinkhole?” She paused, embarrassed. “Señor, I did not
mean to insult your colony.”
    Diego nudged her with his shoulder. “A sinkhole it
may be to you, Maria, but some of us like it. Tell me of your
sister.”
    “You probably know her better than I do. She was
almost nineteen when she married Felix de Guzman, and glad enough
to find a man, I think.”
    She felt him chuckle, his good humor restored.
“ Chiquita , there are those who would say that Felix de
Guzman was a poor substitute for a man.”
    Again doubts assailed her. “And pray, Señor, what do
you know of him?”
    “He was a cabrón ,” he said quickly.
    Maria gasped.
    “Forgive me, Maria. That was a dreadful thing to
say.” He thought for a moment. “But I do not know how I can improve
on it.”
    Her