Chapter 36 - Epilogue
A/N: To avoid any confusion about the timetable I'd like to make clear that the dates I stated are based on the time Diego and Victoria returned to Los Angeles what can be considered the end of the story. Three years later means three years after their return and twenty years means twenty years after their return when Beatriz would be about twenty years old. So, the dates should not be added. I found it easier that way instead of another five years later, another five years later...
The next scenes are supposed to be a glimpse into the future of the family with their children at different stages and to finish the arc with de Soto. Initially, I wanted to end the story with de Soto, but then I changed the girl from chapter 24 into a boy. This way the epilogue became much longer than I initially intended, but in my mind the story wasn't really finished with the birth of their first child.
Three years later ….
"Are the children alright, Victoria? What did Doctor Hernandez say?" Diego inquired after the doctor left the hacienda.
"Yes, it was a normal course of the chickenpox. They will be running around again in no time," Victoria explained, tired.
"Then we can leave them for a few days!" Diego declared.
"Leave them?" Victoria stared at him, incredulously. "They have just recovered. They need me!"
"Victoria, for the last week you have hardly slept, and you have been constantly nursing them. You're exhausted, and you won't get any rest waking every night to the wailing of a child. José and Beatriz will be fine without us. Father has agreed to look after them for the next three days, and the nanny is there too. They will be fine!"
"Do you think so?" Victoria asked, reluctantly. "Where do you want to go?"
"We will spend two nights at our old hacienda. It's only a few hours drive, and we can return any time." Diego suggested. "It may be the last chance to stay there before Felipe returns from Spain and it will be his."
"I'd love to stay there again...," Victoria warmed up to the idea, thinking of the months they had lived there after their marriage.
"I have already ordered your maid to pack your bag for a few days, and we only need to go!" Diego grinned.
"You have planned this thoroughly, it seems. You're still a schemer, Diego," Victoria smiled.
"You will come?" Diego smiled. "A few days without children, just the two of us?"
"I can't say no to that, Diego." Tenderly, she kissed him on the cheek.
Z Z Z
In the night at their old hacienda Victoria woke up out of habit, listening for the wailing of a child. Then she realized that she wouldn't hear anything. Her children were sleeping at the de la Vega hacienda with their doting grandfather and a nanny to take care of them. It was wonderful not having to get up in the night to calm a crying child, though she missed them anyway. She cuddled closer to her sleeping husband, grateful to him for making her take a break and give her time recover from the nursing of the children. Diego had taken his share as well, when the children were sick and crying a lot for their parents, and needed the time away as much as she did.
In his sleep Diego put his arm protectively around her as he had done since the first night they had spent together. For the first time in years, Victoria thought again of the nightmares that had troubled her while they had lived here after their wedding. For months, they had haunted her and only Diego's presence had calmed her. That had changed after the birth of Beatrix. Then there was a child to take care of in the night, because it was hungry or teething or had bad dreams, and her own nightmares faded into the background and were no longer relevant.
During their stay at the hacienda without their children Diego and Victoria enjoyed the time they had together, relaxing and making love and forgetting the day-to-day problems for a short while.
Upon their return two days later, Alejandro welcomed them in front of the hacienda with the two children. One-year-old José couldn't yet walk alone and held onto the hand of his grandfather while Beatriz started to run to them as soon as they had climbed out of the carriage.
"Mamá, Papá, I missed you," she embraced her mother's legs, before she turned to her father.
"Will you carry me into the hacienda, Papá?" she begged him.
"Aren't you already too old for being carried around, Beatriz?" Diego teased her a bit, crouching down.
"Just into the house, please," she begged, putting her small arms around his neck, smiling happily, when Diego took her on his arm and lifted her up.
Victoria had already taken José on her arm, who clung to his mother, waving at his father with his small fist.
"I kept the children occupied by reading to them and bouncing them on my knees," Alejandro explained. "They asked for you from time to time, but were easily distracted."
"Thank you, Father," Diego said. "It was good to be away for a few days, but we missed the children, too."
Z Z Z
Five years later...
Diego's daughter Beatriz was five years old when she made her first attempts on playing the piano, pressing the keys and listening to the sound.
"Papá," she went over over to the couch where her father was reading and tugged at his sleeve, pointing at the open instrument, "please, teach me to play the piano."
"Beatriz, you know that I can no longer play with my right arm," Diego explained, regretfully.
"But, you can use your left hand! You can show me how to play!" Beatriz insisted. "You promised José and Francisco to teach them swordplay when they are old enough, and I want to learn to play the piano! Grandfather has problems bending his fingers because of his age, and Mamá never learned to play! Please!"
Diego sighed. Unable to refuse his daughter her wish, he sat down beside her on the piano stool and showed her how to put her fingers on the keys. Diego rummaged through his notes and pulled out some sheets with simple notes. As she tried the first simple melody with her right hand, Diego accompanied her, playing accords with his left hand on the lower keys.
"That sounds wonderful!" Beatriz exclaimed. "I can play the right hand, and you play the left hand, and together we can play."
"You have to learn to play with both hands, Beatriz," Diego grinned.
"I know," she said, "but I still want you to play with me!"
After an hour she got tired, and Diego stacked the note sheets on a pile, looking through them for simple melodies that were suited for teaching. Among them, he found a few pieces that could be played with the left hand only. Tempted after the years he hadn't touched the piano, he started playing. Soon, Diego forgot everything around him, immersed into the music, playing for himself.
He didn't notice Victoria at the open door, with their one-year-old son sleeping on her arm, who had come looking when she heard the unfamiliar sound of piano music.
"Papá is playing," Beatriz went over to her mother and whispered. "Isn't it wonderful? And he's going to teach me, too!"
Victoria knelt down and hugged her daughter, so much like her father with her striking blue eyes and her black hair, grateful to her for making Diego play the piano again. "Yes, it's wonderful, Beatriz. I never thought he'd start playing again."
Silently, the two listened to Diego's play, smiling to each other. When Beatriz's three year old brother José came yelling for them, they quietly closed the door behind them, so Diego wouldn't be disturbed.
Z Z Z
Diego had thought that Beatriz would soon tire of learning to play the piano, but she was quite persistent in asking for more lessons. There was nothing she liked better than to play music and have her father teach her, or even better, play with her.
Diego enjoyed playing the piano with her, and over the years they became quite practiced in it - Beatriz playing the right hand and Diego the left. With a lot of practicing and persistence, encouraged by his family, Diego even managed to play some parts with his right hands.
Z Z Z
Ten years later...
"There is a visitor at the door, Papá, asking for you," Beatriz informed him, annoyed about the interruption of her piano lesson.
"Who is it, Beatriz?" Diego asked.
"I don't know him. It's an old man in shabby clothing that I have never seen before."
At the door Diego addressed the man curiously. "Buenos días, Señor, what can I do for you?"
"Don Diego, it's been a long time," the man coughed heavily. "You haven't changed much in the last ten years and almost look the same."
"Should I know you, Señor?" Diego stared at the stranger, but after a moment he recognized him. "De Soto! I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you at once."
His old foe had changed considerably in the years he hadn't seen him, appearing much older than his true age. His body was thin and gaunt, and his skin color had an unhealthy shade. The hair, that had been white at an early age, only added to the appearance of an old man.
As alcalde he had always taken good care of his clothing, dressing in fine suits and wearing silk ties. Now, he wore only rags.
"What happened to you? Do you want to come in and have a refreshment?" Diego offered.
"No, I'm on my way to the harbor in San Pedro, but I wanted to see first, how you fared the last years. Was that your daughter who opened the door? She looks a lot like you!"
"Yes, that was Beatriz, my eldest." Diego heard her call from the library. "She's impatient with continuing her piano lessons."
"Piano? You? I thought your arm was stiff?" De Soto asked, surprised, pointing at Diego's arm.
"It partly is, though I have regained some control over it. Not enough for playing demanding pieces of music with it, but I have my daughter now," Diego smiled at the thought of Beatriz.
"Where have you been in recent years? I never heard anything from you after they transported you to Mexico City for your trial."
"The new government wanted to make an example and create a precedent. They sentenced me to ten years work in the silver mines. It was hard work and my lung has suffered. I won't have much time left." He coughed again heavily. "I became free again only recently."
"And, you came back to Los Angeles?"
"Yes, I wanted to see it again before I leave for Spain. Friends, who owed me a favor, paid the ship passage for me. I hardly recognized the pueblo with all the new buildings and shops. And, I wanted to see the man who brought that all on me. Who robbed me of my life and made me become like this." De Soto pointed at himself.
"I'm sorry, de Soto, for what you had to endure, but it was your own ambition and your greed for glory that brought you to this," Diego corrected him.
"If you had been a fair and just alcalde, there would have been no need for Zorro. But, you wanted to gain glory by catching Zorro, using all means, even imprisoning innocent people. All this would have been unnecessary," Diego pointed at de Soto in his rags and at his own arm.
"You could have had a good life here in Los Angeles, being the acclaimed alcalde of a growing community, but you threw it all away in your obsession to catch Zorro and return to Madrid. Don't blame me for your choices! You caused your own downfall." Diego said pitifully.
"I don't need your pity!" de Soto rebuked him, angrily. "I don't think we have anything more to say to each other, Don Diego. You have everything you want while I end as the loser. I should have made the connection between you and Zorro much earlier. That's what I regret the most. That I let you fool me until it was too late. If only I'd known sooner, it would have been different, because you would be dead now instead of living happily with your family in this expensive house wearing an elegant silk suit, and I would have lived in Madrid instead of suffering in the mines."
"A servant can take you to the harbor," Diego offered. "Are you sure you don't want any refreshment?"
"I don't want any charity from you, Don Diego," de Soto rejected him. "A farmer waits for me down the road to take me to the harbor on his cart."
De Soto turned around and slowly walked away from the hacienda, stopping often because he had to cough heavily.
"Who is that man?" Victoria asked, as she came from the inside of the hacienda, catching Diego staring at de Soto's back as he walked away.
"It is de Soto." Diego looked at him thoughtfully.
"De Soto? Where has he been the last years? What did he want?"
"He was sentenced to work in the mines, and now he blames me for his misery. He has learned nothing in the last years. The man is irredeemable." Diego shook his head.
"I'm sorry to hear that. I wish he would have found his peace," Victoria said compassionately.
"In one thing he was right, it all could have been different if he had caught me." Diego pondered.
"It's in the past, Diego. We were lucky that everything went so well. If the injury hadn't stopped you from riding as Zorro, you could have been killed on any of your next rides, but you stopped riding and survived, and I got you."
"No, I got you, Beatriz and our four boys, José, Francisco, Sebastian and Juan," he smiled. "That was the best that happened to me. Not long ago I dreamed that I had no injury and that I was back riding as Zorro. When I woke up, I felt sad that it had only been a dream, but then I felt you in my arms. I thought of our children, sleeping down the hall, Felipe and his family, and of my father, who will be celebrating his 61st birthday soon. Then I realized that I couldn't be happier. I would never exchange a lonely life as Zorro for what I have now with you and our family. You're my dream come true." He drew his wife into his arms for a tender kiss. "Uh, I felt that," he drew apart to stroke over her child belly. "She was kicking!"
"She? Why do you think it's a girl?"
"Don't you think, that after four boys, it's time for another girl? A little Elena who you can teach cooking and everything else?"
"So, you and Father can spoil her as you do with Beatriz?"
"I don't spoil her," he protested. "I was raised to treat women with respect and take good care of them." He took his wife's hand and kissed it, looking deeply into her eyes.
"You'll never change, Diego," Victoria laughed. "That's why I love you."
"And I love you, Victoria." This time he could kiss his wife without interruptions.
Z Z Z
Elena Felicidad de la Vega was born three months later. She inherited not only the brown hair and brown eyes from her mother but also her fiery temper and love for cooking. When she didn't spend her time in the kitchen, she liked to watch her brothers while they were learning swordplay from their father or fighting over the right to be Zorro in their role plays.
Beatriz cajoled her brother José to secretly give her fencing lessons until their father found out about it. Though Victoria didn't agree with a woman wielding a sword, Diego decided to teach Beatriz properly and allowed her to participate in the fencing lessons he and Felipe gave her brothers.
Z Z Z
Sixteen years later...
Diego and his father were sitting in the study in discussion of some matters of the hacienda when six-year-old Elena stormed in.
"Elena, what's wrong?" Diego asked, surprised at the interruption.
"I only wanted to ask you not to be angry with Sebastian and Juan. It was all my fault that they had a fight with the Montero brothers."
"The Montero brothers? They are a few years older than your brothers. Why did they fight?"
"I was playing with my friend Ana Mendoza near the tavern and her little sisters were playing with some marbles her father had bought them. Then Eduardo and Alfonso Montero wanted to take them. I told them that they had no right to do that and that the marbles weren't theirs. They only laughed at me, but when I started to yell, Sebastian and Juan came to defend me and they fought with Eduardo and Alfonso."
"So, it was your fault your brothers got into a fight?" Diego inquired.
"Si, Papá, but I couldn't let the Monteros take the marbles. It wasn't right, was it? You and Mamá always say to do what is right, don't you?" Elena stared at her father expectantly.
"This one will be trouble, Diego!" Alejandro grinned at his son. "She reminds me a lot of her mother. Always stepping forward without thinking about the consequences."
"I'm no trouble, Grandfather," Elena scowled at him. "Ana's sisters are too timid to say something and someone had to protest!"
"Can I tell Sebastian and Juan that you aren't angry at them, Papá?"
"No, I'm not angry at them for defending you, Elena," Diego sighed.
"Gracias, Papá," she quickly kissed him on his cheek before she rushed out again, leaving her father and grandfather to their work.
Z Z Z
Twenty years later...
Beatriz didn't listen to her father calling her as she watched the ship leave the port of San Pedro. Her brother José had left for Spain to go to the university and she wouldn't see him for four years. Not wanting her father see her crying, she excused herself, pretending to go back to the carriage, but instead she wandered off aimlessly. After a few minutes of walking she found herself in an unfamiliar area of the port, and she had no idea how to get back to the carriage.
When she turned around, she saw two shabby looking men closing up on her, who must have followed her.
"A fine Señorita in this part of town?" One of the men leered. "Maybe you'd like to join us for a walk?" The man grabbed her by the arm.
"Take your hands off me!" Beatriz demanded. "I won't accompany you anywhere, and now let me pass by!" Beatriz tried in vain to shake off the hand, angry that she had gotten herself into this situation, and she hadn't even her rapier with her.
"And if we insist on your company?" the man sneered. "What will you do then?"
"I'll shoot you!" Beatriz pulled a small pistol out of the folds of her skirt and pointed it at the thug, who released her arm at once.
"Let the Senorita go!" A voice came from behind her. Turning around she saw a young officer wearing the uniform of the Mexican Army. Upon his sight, the two attackers let her go and vanished into one of the side alleys.
"Thank you, Señor, for coming to my rescue though there was no need." She put her pistol back into her pocket. "Would you be so kind to tell me the way back to the port?"
"De nada, Señorita! Allow me to escort you there."
With a slight bow Beatriz accepted his offer, and a few minutes later they arrived at the carriage, but her father wasn't in sight.
"It would be better if I stayed with you until your father comes back to make sure you're safe," the officer stated, concerned to leave a young woman on her own without protection.
"Don't worry, Señor, I can take care of myself," Beatriz declined, reaching into the carriage to a retrieve a light rapier. The way she held it convinced him that she knew how to handle it.
"Beatriz, where have you been? I was concerned and started searching for you." Diego approached the carriage, worried about his daughter.
"I'm sorry, Father. I got lost, but this Señor guided me back," she explained.
"Captain Manuel Jimenez, Mexican Army," the officer introduced himself.
"Diego de la Vega, and this is my daughter Beatriz. Thank you for escorting her back." Diego introduced himself.
"De nada, Señor. It was a pleasure. But you must excuse me now. I need to catch the coach to Los Angeles." With a slight bow the captain wanted to leave.
"There's no need to hurry. The coach has just left, Captain. You have missed it." Diego told the captain, who made an unhappy face.
"Then I'll have to find another means to get to Los Angeles."
"We are going to Los Angeles, and there's enough space in our carriage for another person," Diego offered. "We brought my son to his ship for Spain, and you can take his seat."
"Thank you, Señor de la Vega. I am grateful for this offer. It wouldn't be good for me to start my new post arriving late."
After the officer's luggage was stored on the carriage, the captain joined them inside.
"You are coming from Mexico and are now stationed in California?" Beatriz inquired.
"I trained at the military academy in Mexico and was stationed at two posts in Mexico, but now I'm returning to California as captain of the garrison in Los Angeles."
"You are from California? But not from Los Angeles?"
"I grew up in San Gabriel, which is not too far from Los Angeles."
"You are very young for being a captain." Beatriz stated.
"I'm twenty-five. I always wanted to be the best fighter in Mexico, and I was the best at school, allowing me to graduate early. I studied under Don Miguel, who was one of the best students of Don Felipe de la Vega, the famous fencing master from California, who taught in Mexico City for some years. Have you heard of Don Felipe?"
Beatriz rolled her eyes. "Not another one!"
"Did I say something wrong?" the captain asked.
"No, it's nothing. I have four brothers, who all want to be the best swordsman in California. My eldest brother left on the ship for Spain today for his education. He will compete with you for the title when he returns," she grinned, "and I guess he has a good chance. He is the best of our family and even managed to beat my uncle once."
"Manuel Jimenez from San Gabriel?" Diego interrupted the conversation. "Is your father a tradesman?"
"Yes, he is. Do you know him, Señor de la Vega?"
"No, not really, but I think I traveled with him some years ago," Diego smiled. "It must be nearly twenty years now. Did you want to be stationed in Los Angeles to be closer to home?"
"No, I asked for a post in Los Angeles. You have probably heard of Zorro, the legendary swordsman from the Los Angeles area. I wanted to be close to the place where the legend began and maybe learn something about the man."
"Don't tell me you want to be like Zorro," Beatriz asked, annoyed.
"I always admired the man, though I never met him. There was another man who had an even greater impact on me. When I was little boy, I traveled with my parents, and when our coach was attacked one of the passengers saved us, though he could fight only with one arm. I decided I wanted to be like him and not like Zorro."
"Only one arm, Captain?" Beatriz glared at her father who hid his grin behind a hand. "You must tell me more," she prompted the captain, though she already knew the story from her mother's telling. It was her brothers' favorite bedtime story.
The young captain started to tell of the event that had changed his life, though he had the impression that he was doing something wrong. Instead of being impressed by the hero he spoke of, the young woman was more bored than fascinated by the best swordsman in California, as if it was a tale she had heard before. But he had the feeling that this beautiful, self-confident woman with the bluest eyes he had ever seen was worth the effort to find out why she wasn't impressed by hero tales.
The End