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the dark fluid and glinted in the garnets on her rings. “Since it was clear to all by then that my father was going to be locked up, leaving Franz truly in charge to do as he pleased, Hannibal tried to bolt again before supper but did not get even a mile. He was badly frightened, and with good reason. When Santa Anna arrived I know he asked him for protection and an escort back to town, but Santa Anna said that he would not go against the wishes of his dear friend Don Prospero. I think the situation amused him, and he would not intervene. He is cruel that way.”
    “Would Santa Anna have simply stood by and let Franz . . . Fernando . . . mistreat . . . a British citizen?” asked Rose uneasily.
    “That I don’t know, Señora. Santa Anna seeks to please my father because my father paid his debts for him. The general’s favor and his friendship are the reasons my father is still rich when most of the other old landowners are bankrupt from taxes and forced loans and losing all their men to the Army. But he is cruel, Santa Anna, and sly. He has no particular affection for Hannibal, and as I said, the situation amused him, like watching a cock-fight, or a bull being baited.”
    A corner of her lush mouth turned down. “I cannot say that supper was a meal notable for its sparkling conversation. M’sieu Guillenormand, my father’s chef, was beside himself for fear that the dinner would be called off altogether or that Santa Anna would go back to the city without sampling his efforts. Guillenormand said that it was just like my father—which of course it was—to go mad just when he, Sacripant Guillenormand, was on the point of serving up a dinner that would make his fame forever, as if anyone could make himself famous forever for doing anything in Mexico City these days. It was like something out of Molière or Goya, with Fernando glaring at Natividad, and Natividad’s mother looking daggers at Fernando, and Josefa watching Natividad’s mother to make sure she didn’t slip away and marry her daughter to my father when no one was looking, and the two mad-doctors trying to make polite conversation with the priests. . . . Josefa ate nothing but dry bread, to prove her sinfulness, and M’sieu Guillenormand threatened to kill himself on account of that, as he had done many times before. Franz got up and announced he was going back to the study to try to make sense of my father’s papers; we all heard him bolt the study door. Hannibal took the brandy bottle and two glasses from the sideboard and went out to the door that opens from the study into the
corredor.
    “And three hours later my brother’s valet found my brother dead.”

THREE
    They left Mexico City as soon as it was light enough to see. Consuela and Rose rode in an old-fashioned traveling-coach shaped like a tea-cup and slung on leather straps that made it sway like a ship in a gale, while January rode beside them, surrounded by an armed assortment of male servants and profoundly thankful not to be in the heaving coach itself. Though Rose had evidently been deemed sufficiently respectable to play
dame de compagnie
to a lady going to the home of her father—either that, or Doña Gertrudis, like John Dillard, objected to riding in a coach with
los negros—
both women were accompanied by their maids.
    “Of course Rose must have a maid,” Consuela had declared after siesta yesterday while supper was being laid on the table. “Your Padre Cesario was absolutely right. And you, Señor Enero, must have a valet.” To January’s protest that it would not be possible to locate servants of any kind—much less reliable ones—before departing for Mictlán in the morning, Consuela had replied with an airy wave of her hand and the words “We will leave that to Sancho. Sancho is my footman and he knows everyone in town. He will get you servants.”
    He had, too. For Rose, the wiry, rather wolfish Sancho had located—and vouched for—a slim, dark zamba girl named