Chapter 25 – Back in jail
"No! Stop it!" Don Alejandro cried, struggling with the soldiers, trying to get through. "Hijo de puta!"
The soldiers pushed him back with the muskets and he fell to the ground. While he stood up, cursing, the men in the crowd charged forwards then, engaging with the soldiers, until one of them fired his musket, hitting someone in the chest. Everybody stopped struggling for a moment, shocked, and while some people tended for the fallen man, the rest charged again with renewed rage.
"Please, please, amigos, calm down! Stop! Let's not turn this into a blood bath, please!" Mendoza said addressing the crowd, trying to prevent a full-blown revolt. "Lancers! Hold your fire!"
Ramón laughed, delighted, and lifted his arm to hit Victoria again, but Esteban grabbed his wrist from behind, twisting Ramón's arm behind his back until he dropped the whip. The alcalde turned his head then to see who was holding him.
"You! How dare you! Let go of me!"
"With pleasure!"
Esteban pulled from the alcalde's twisted arm until it cracked, and then he let go of him, kicking his rear end to send him flying to the ground. Ramón fell heavily, howling in pain, holding his fractured arm with his left hand.
"Son of a bitch! I'll have you hanged for this! Lancers, arrest this man!"
Before he could unsheathe his sword, a few soldiers surrounded Esteban, aiming their muskets at his chest, so he lifted his hands then, surrendering.
"Alcalde, are you alright?" Mendoza said, kneeling by his side while the crowd cheered at Esteban.
"No! Get me the doctor! And prepare the gallows! He'll hang tomorrow morning!"
While most of the soldiers retreated slowly into the garrison walking backwards, with their muskets still aiming at the menacing crowd, three soldiers took Esteban to a cell, persuading him to walk with a musket barrel stuck on his back. On entering the cell, while one of them took his sword, he made a desperate attempt to escape, hitting one of the soldiers, but the others reacted quickly. One hit his abdomen hard with his musket butt, and while Esteban bent forward another one hit the side of his head. They closed the door then, leaving him on the ground writhing in pain, out of breath but still conscious.
In the meantime, another two soldiers helped the alcalde to walk inside while Mendoza freed Victoria from her bonds.
"Take her back to jail!" Ramón cried on its way to the garrison as the crowd kept closing in, shouting but keeping the distance from the muskets.
"Vamos, señorita, you have to come with me," Mendoza said, but Victoria was too weak with the shock to stand, and she stumbled on her feet.
"I'll carry you," Mendoza said, taking Victoria in his arms. "I am so sorry, señorita. This should not have happened. Forgive me, please, but I have to take you back to the cell now."
"It's too late to apologize, Sergeant," she said, bitter, but she let him carry her.
When they got inside the jail he was going to leave Victoria on her own cell, but when he saw Esteban lying on the floor in the adjacent one, he stopped by the door and ordered the closest soldier to open it. Once inside, he set Victoria gently on the floor, back on her feet.
"There. You take care of each other now. I'll see what I can do, all right?"
"Get us out of here, please!"
"If I can, I will. Private, give the señorita a bowl with fresh water and some cloths to clean their wounds! Inmediatamente!" he ordered before he left.
ZZZ
"I can't believe this," Don Alejandro said. "This cannot possibly be happening!"
The raving crowd banged at the garrison's doors once again, as pointlessly as the last time. Esteban was back inside, and this time the alcalde was going to hang him at the gallows, as he had warned he would do if he interfered again. But, how could his nephew stay away when that bastard was flogging Victoria, of all things?
"We should have let him bring the gun. If he was going to end up hanged, regardless, at least he could have blown that bastard's brains out," Don Emilio said.
"Let's not lose our heads here. There must be something we can do." Don Alejandro produced the piece of paper again, now creased and dirty, stained with footprints because people had trodden on it when he had fallen to the ground. "He has to acknowledge this as legally binding and abide by it. This looks legal enough to me," he said, waving it.
"Let's find a lawyer who can tell us for sure."
"My lawyer lives in Santa Paula. It's going to take too long to get there and back. Let's go back home first to check if Diego can help. He has a few books on legal matters."
ZZZ
"Esteban, are you alright?" Victoria asked.
"Give me a moment," he said, whimpering when he tried to get on his knees, still holding his upper abdomen, out of breath. Eventually, he managed to kneel, and with Victoria's help he stood up. Then she guided him to the bench at the bottom of the cell, where they both slumped.
Esteban rested his head on the wall, avoiding touching it with his sore back. Then, while still breathing heavily, he glanced at Victoria sideways.
"Are you alright?"
"Yes. Only thanks to you, I think."
The soldier Esteban had punched before came inside the cell carrying a bowl with water.
"Bring it here, thank you," Esteban said from the bench.
"You come and get it yourself, cabrón," the soldier said, with a nasal voice and a bleeding nose. He left the bowl and the rags by the door and locked the cell again, lifting his middle finger.
"Asshole," Esteban muttered.
"Don't worry, I'll get it," Victoria said.
"No, stay there. I'll get it, and I'll clean your wound first."
He stood up and walked to the door unsteadily to get the bowl, careful not to tip the water on the way back.
"Lie on the bench now, please."
"But your head is bleeding. Let me clean that first," she said, touching his forehead, close to his temple.
"Don't worry about it. Lie down."
She stretched on the narrow bench then, displaying her injured back. She had a long, deep gash across it, nearly reaching her neck, and the fresh blood dripping from it had stained her dress. When Esteban saw it he cursed loudly again, and the rage made his hands shake, tipping some water off the bowl.
"That son of a bitch! I am going to kill him!"
He kneeled by her side and gently pushed her raven hair out of the way. Then he dipped a piece of cloth in the water and carefully dabbed the bleeding wound with it. Victoria hissed in pain then, and he stopped.
"I'm sorry, Victoria. I don't want to hurt you, but it's better if we clean this now."
"I know, carry on. Don't worry if I moan, because I can't help it: it stings so much. And I only have one lash; I cannot imagine how sore you must have been with twenty like this."
"A little, yes." Like hell, it felt like hell, nearly as bad as it is right now, he thought while he carried on dabbing Victoria's wound. His own gashes at the back were really sore again, and were bleeding so much the dressings had soaked through and his white shirt showed blood stains, but he hadn't noticed it.
Victoria tried to be brave, gritting her teeth until he finished, not complaining any more.
"Now I would need some of that ointment Diego made for me. It worked really well for the pain on the lashes. It is a mix of aloe vera, bee's wax and a few other things."
"He is so clever, isn't he?"
"Yes. By comparison, he makes me feel like a fool most of the times," he said, helping Victoria up to sit down on the bench. "I'm so glad he looked better this morning."
"What's wrong with him?"
"We got food poison yesterday. I was really sick when he came back to the hacienda in the morning, and he stayed with me while Zorro thwarted the alcalde's plans to flog those farmers. And then he got very sick himself, developing a very high fever last night. Doctor Hernández said the food poison has gone into his system and he might take a few days to recover. I was lucky; Diego prepared an herbal drink that stopped the sickness right away."
"I'm sorry to hear he is sick. I didn't know."
"How could you? You were here last night."
"Come on, let me clean your wound now."
She stood up and got the bowl, and the same as he had done, she dabbed a dripping piece of rag on the bleeding cut on his head. Then she left the bowl on the bench and used her fingers to part the hair to do a better job. He closed his eyes and let her get on with it, enjoying the touch of her fingers and the close proximity of her warm body, inhaling her scent.
Right when she had finished, they heard the alcalde's voice approaching, shouting to the lancers about building the scaffold for the gallows. He came into the jail space then, and stopped by the cell's door with his right arm on a sling, with his face red with fury.
"I told your uncle he should keep you on a short leash! But he didn't, and now you are going to pay for this!" he shouted, pointing at his arm. "You'll hang in the morning! Better still, I'll hang you both!"
"We should have a fair trial!" Esteban said, standing up. "We haven't done anything!"
"Shut up! You are both accomplices of the outlaw Zorro, and that is enough to see you dead! Lancers, follow me!"
When all the soldiers got out and they were left alone, Victoria stood up as well and started crying, faltering, and Esteban embraced her. She cried on his chest then, clinging on to his shirt, desperate.
"I don't want to die!" she said, sobbing. "I'm too young to die!"
"Shhh… Nobody is going to die. He can't do that," he said softly, trying to soothe her, caressing her hair. She gradually calmed down, until she stopped sobbing, feeling ashamed of her sudden outburst.
She felt secure in his arms, comforted in the same way she was when she had been in Diego's. But, when he started to kiss her head softly, and he then continued to leave a trail of kisses on her tear-soaked face until he found her mouth, she knew she had to reject him, but she couldn't. Her body betrayed her and she responded to the kiss, which was a gentle, tentative, wet and slow kiss, not demanding, nothing to do with the passionate ones she had shared with Zorro the other night. The same as his embrace, that kiss was strangely comforting, under the circumstances. It was more like kissing a brother rather than a lover. But in the end, when his tongue parted her lips to explore her mouth, she recovered her senses and her pride and broke the embrace, looking at the floor in shame.
"This is wrong, Esteban. Please, don't make me do this."
He tried to kiss her again, but she moved her head out of the way.
"Don't."
"Don't worry. I won't ask you to do anything you don't want, or you are not prepared to do. But if the alcalde is right and this is my last day alive, I have to take the chance and let you know: I love you. I have loved you from the first time I saw you at the tavern, the day I arrived here in Los Angeles. For me, it is a real shame you are engaged to Zorro, and I wish you weren't. I really do."
"You know, sometimes I wish I wasn't, but I am. And I love him, so please, don't try to kiss me again."
"I understand. I won't. I'm sorry."
She was shivering then, trying to reposition the dress that overhung at the front now that the back had been ripped. Esteban saw the blanket in the adjacent cell, on the bench, so he stretched his arm through the bars to grab it. He covered her shoulders with it, trying not to touch her wound, and they both sat on the bench again. She didn't want to be kissed, but she still wanted to be comforted, so when she leaned on his shoulder he passed his arm around her and held her tight against his body, and she snuggled in the blanket, seeking his warmth.
He closed his eyes and smiled then, resting his head on the wall again. Despite the pain in his back, it felt like heaven to be holding her like that.
ZZZZZ
AN – I am sorry about the maiming but I can't help it, because it kind of writes itself into the story to boost the angst and the misery. Maybe I need "maiming rehab" or something. Next time, because for now they are already hurt, including the alcalde. Oops.
Once again, thanks for reading and thanks for the nice reviews. And special thanks to those introvert readers who have broken the barriers of shyness and are talking now. Cheers!