Chapter 38
Felipe had gone to the secret cave shortly after the end of the meal, sure to find Diego there. And indeed there he found him, sitting at the desk, half dressed in Zorro's clothes and half in his own: in the darkness of the cave, the bright white of his shirt contrasted strangely with the black of his pants which merged with the surrounding shadows. Only a small oil lamp was lit, standing on the table not far from him; it cast on the immediate surroundings a shy and flickering glow, verging more on a wavering halo than on a reassuring brightness.
Slumped on a stool, his elbow on the wooden table, Diego was sitting with his head leaning on his hand, half lowered, half-tilted to the side. Eyes lost far inside and staring into space, he didn't even budge when Felipe came in.
The young man knew since the morning, since Diego returned from the pueblo, that something was wrong. What had he learned there? Another machination by the alcalde? Other troubles to be expected? This would explain why at least Diego was putting on the Fox's black outfit. But not why he stopped right in the middle of it. Was the situation, whatever it was, so complicated that he was at a loss for a plan to solve it? But then why didn't he tell him anything? So far, they had always been stronger together before difficulties and adversity, so why was he therefore avoiding him since midday?
Or... problems with the adoption procedure?
At this thought, Felipe's throat constricted. However often he told himself that whatever officially occurred or not, nothing would change either the nature of the affection they had for each other or their personal relationship, since the day Diego had expressed the desire to make him his son in the eyes of the law and of everyone, Felipe had grown fond of that idea, had cherished it, and he surprised himself by looking forward to the day when all would finally be realised. Like a confirmation. Something that couldn't be taken from them. The fulfilment, the materialisation of this link between them. And of the bond he had also woven over the years with Don Alejandro, who for quite some time now served more as a grand-fatherly figure to him than as a patrón.
But for now, seeing Diego slouched and dejected, Felipe was even more worried for him than for himself: what could be weighing so heavily on him? What was making his shoulders slump that much?
Admittedly, the weight of their secret was huge, and Felipe himself knew that only too well – he too was paying the price for it everyday – but so far, Diego had always more or less put up with it, putting on a brave face. At least, if he sometimes felt a bit down or had bouts of frustration and anger, he had always overcome them and had never let things get him down to the point of not even trying to appear strong in front of him. For him.
But now that Diego looked overwhelmed, Felipe felt it was his turn to be strong for both of them. But for that purpose, he needed to know what exactly was going on. To support him, he needed to know what Diego was faced with.
Felipe stepped forward and, softly, gently, he raised his own hand and laid it on his shoulder. Startled, Diego jumped slightly: apparently he hadn't heard him come down in the cave. He looked up at the young man and saw questioning written all over Felipe's face. Diego then tried to compose a more neutral expression before turning his head and abruptly getting up to walk to the stall and brush Tornado again, just for countenance and composure's sake. For far too long, he thought, he had been involving Felipe in his grown-up problems; he didn't want to pour out once again the overflow of his heart's frustration in the attentive and sympathetic ear of a young boy who was in no way responsible for the romantic troubles – the same ones time and again – he was struggling with.
But Felipe, knowing Diego very well after all these years, did not let himself be fooled by this nonchalance that looked so false compared with the sight he got of him when he entered the cave a few seconds earlier; slowly, he walked up to Diego who now had his back to him, and again he gently put a hand on the shoulder of the man he already almost saw as his father.
At first Diego stopped short what he was doing, his arm in mid-air, the brush still in his hand, but he didn't turn around. Feeling that he was about to resume his task – a quite useless one, moreover, Tornado's hair being already as shiny as an army horse's on a day of military parade – Felipe intensifying the pressure of his hand on Diego's shoulder, squeezing it a little bit more between his fingers, as if to both insist and reassure him.
Vanquished, Diego finally slowly turned towards him, an unreadable expression on his slightly tense face. With an almost imperceptible nod, Felipe invited him to confide in him. Diego then dropped the mask of indifference that he made forced himself wear on the young man's arrival and let out a heavy sigh, his head a little down.
Then he breathed in deeply before finally speaking:
"It's Victoria," he simply blurted out.
Oh, Felipe then thought, Victoria, of course. As always, when his morale is low. Felipe promised to himself, once again, to be very cautious not to let himself ever fall in love.
With a squeeze on the shoulder, he encouraged Diego to go on.
"We had... words, this morning," he added. "It wasn't pretty" he then murmured.
Adding nothing more, he then walked back to the table, collapsed onto his chair and let out another sigh.
Felipe waited, but nothing more came out of Diego's mouth. What happened – apart from the usual – to get Diego to appear so affected?
Diego read the silent question in the young man's eyes and he looked away.
Meanwhile, the gears in Felipe's mind were running at full speed: if something that bad indeed occurred at the tavern earlier in the day, why had señorita Alacen acted tonight at dinner as if nothing had happened?
Had he promised Diego not to tell anything? But even in this case, she would surely have showed some awkwardness, some discomfort towards him or in his presence, and yet she had been in quite the same mood as the night before and the morning at breakfast, without anything seeming to affect her.
Then Felipe remembered that as soon as she came back to the hacienda, she had gone to bed without showing up for lunch or even the whole afternoon... After all, had she been made so uncomfortable by a dispute between Diego and Victoria that she had preferred to keep to herself and see no one?
But that didn't make any sense... The señorita was a total stranger to Diego and Victoria, so a quarrel between the two couldn't affect her to this point. And she seemed quite comfortable and carefree tonight... No, really, this track couldn't be made heads or tails of.
Felipe was still very puzzled, and this time he clearly asked Diego what happened. The latter then ran his hands over his face, sliding along the edges of his nose and lingering on the chin, before breathing in again.
"Victoria did..." he began. "At the time, I thought she had guessed my– our secret, but no. She told me... she reproach me... Ffff, I think this is really the end of even our friendship. And after all, I resent her as well."
Felipe pointed a finger at Diego and quickly signed a short question.
"What do you mean, 'what have I done?' What makes you think that I'm the one who has done something, in this matter?"
Felipe put his hands on his hips, tilted his head to the side and raised an eyebrow. 'Oh, because you're going to tell me that you have nothing to do with all this?' was he 'telling' him.
"But no! She... She imagined things all on her own. To think of what she dared to accuse me of!"
Felipe felt that this time it was really serious, and he stopped teasing him. Again, he asked Diego what happened, questioning him about what Victoria said that upset him that much.
Diego stared at the floor. This really wasn't stuff for youngsters his age, he thought. The boy was, after all, only nineteen. And it would remind Felipe exactly what himself had been accused of only four days earlier... But on the other side Diego was feeling heavy-hearted and needed to confide in someone. He then decided to provide him with the beginnings of an answer.
"Victoria... she said... she reproached me to... to want to take adv-... accused me of... Señorita Alacen... Victoria told..."
He paused, not wanting to say more. He looked up at Felipe, but the young man seemed completely lost.
"Victoria thinks... she accused me of trying to..."
He couldn't bring himself to utter these words aloud. But Felipe was still as much in the dark as moments before.
"... to..." Diego went on.
Another pause. Then softly, almost in a whisper, he finally let out:
"...to abuse the señorita."
Felipe opened wide bulging eyes. He then pointed a finger at Diego. 'You?' that gesture meant. This surprising bit of explanation left him more than puzzled. Then he made the sign that referred to Victoria and pointed his index finger to his temple, in a clear sign that, according to him, she had totally lost it.
"Of course, she is mistaken..." Diego saw fit to clarify.
But whaton earth had given Victoria this false impression? Felipe wondered. A question he immediately asked Diego.
The latter suddenly seemed rather embarrassed.
"Uh...!" he simply answered, making a helpless gesture with both hands.
Felipe insisted. Well, this absurd idea had not spontaneously grown in Victoria's spirit, just like that! There had to be something, a misleading appearance, just like what happened with himself and the señorita four days earlier on the Camino Real...
Diego took a sponge that was lying on the table and threw it angrily to a sidewall. Then, a bit hesitantly, he answered:
"Let's say... perhaps I... made her... drink a little..."
Victoria? Felipe couldn't believe it.
"No," Diego corrected with a hint of annoyance, "Señorita Alacen!"
Her? Felipe hadn't found a simple sign to refer to her yet, so he didn't express his amazement by repeating what Diego had just told him, but he was no less astounded.
But...what for? he finally managed to ask Diego. Indeed, why on earth want to have her drunk?
Diego didn't answer right away and suddenly he stared very suspiciously at Felipe. Almost... accusingly. In the young man's eyes, this really took the cake! To throw him a look of undeserved reproach, when he was only trying to understand and help! When Diego, for his part, had made a convalescing, wounded, tired and weakened young woman drink, a woman who was just emerging from a long unconsciousness interspersed with fits of delirium, and Felipe didn't refrain from telling him so.
He saw Diego's face slowly fall bit by bit right before his eyes, as and when he was reminding him of the señorita's condition, and he asked him his question again: why had he attempted to get the young woman drunk?
Diego sighed.
"I was only trying to get her to talk," he admitted. "That's all."
Butwhat about? Felipe asked, surprised.
Here, Diego's features hardened again; he got up from his chair and stared down at the young man.
"What do you think?" he barked rather harshly.
Felipe took a step back before this tone and this change of attitude. Seeing this, Diego regretted his fit of temper: usually, he never behaved like that toward Felipe. He sat back and asked him in a somewhat gentler tone:
"Are you sure you have nothing to tell me, that the señorita could tell me too?"
But by the look that came along with this question, Felipe felt that it was a purely rhetorical one: Diego seemed to vaguely know something, but if he had to resort to this less-than-glorious way to try to get the señorita Alacen to talk, it therefore meant that at least in the morning he still didn't know what it was. And since he hadn't come to see him since he came back from the pueblo, it meant that he still did not know...
And for the time being Felipe preferred that it should remain so. While a certain desire to yield to Diego's prodding and poking, to unburden his conscience to him, to confide in him was starting to burgeon in his heart – after all, he told himself, the admission he had to make wasn't that dreadful! – he rejected the idea as soon as it came to his mind: in Diego's current state of annoyance, this wasn't a good idea. His sudden fit of temper a few seconds earlier was a reminder of that.
Felipe therefore resolved to act all innocent, trying to be as persuasive as he could. Over the years he had gotten the very well practised at concealing, deceiving, fooling everyone around him, lying – no, not lying! All he'd been doing all these years was at most masking the truth, acting, wasn't it? Yes, Felipe had become very good at acting, and when he told Diego he had no idea what he was talking about, he thought he was so natural and nonchalant in his denials that he almost convinced himself.
Anyway, this painful scene told him something else: señorita Alacen hadn't spoken. Despite Diego and his cleverness, despite the wine, she had kept the promise she had made to him and managed to hold her tongue: he now has an increased respect for the stranger.
And what Diego had just told him now clearly explained why she had spent most of the day sleeping... No, she didn't have a relapse, as he had previously feared: she had simply been sleeping off her wine!
Seeing Diego's look still set on him, Felipe prudently decided to bring the conversation back to the subject that truly concerned his soon-to-be father: Victoria Escalante.
What would hedo, now that they had fallen out?
"I need to see her, to talk to her."
To set things right? To discuss calmly? Probably, Felipe thought.
As soon as tomorrow morning? he asked Diego.
"No, right now" the latter answered.
Oh.
Felipe pointed a questioning index at Diego's half-unbuttoned white shirt and at the black trousers he had donned.
"Yes Felipe, dressed as Zorro."
Stupid, the young man reflected without betraying his thought. Diego was the one who had a problem to settle with Victoria, not Zorro! He was the one who had to confront her, to try to have it out face to face with her to settle a problem that Zorro, for once, could do nothing about!
But for far too long Diego had gotten used to hide behind Zorro to step in whatever, as soon as a problem occurred, and now that this wasn't about public disturbance or abuse of power by the authorities anymore, but a personal hitch between him and the woman he loved, he didn't find in him the courage to openly fight for himself, with his mask off. To plead his own case. To fight for himself, as himself. To face Victoria and all the possibly hurtful things she might tell him.
He was hiding, running away, just like this afternoon which he had spent God knows where, alone, like a wounded animal; and he was holing up, like tonight when he had taken refuge in his underground lair right after dinner.
Out of cowardice, a crestfallen Felipe acknowledged, disillusioned to see his hero crumble, to discover that he was basely and plainly... human. One is always unforgiving when seeing one's living myth collapse, when one discovers that a once worshiped father is actually a man like any other, with the same weaknesses and pettinesses as others.
And Felipe sure was unforgiving when he inwardly called Diego a coward. Coward. The very qualifier that he never would have believed he'd associate with him. But now he was finally opening his eyes and discovered that yes, Diego de la Vega, who feared neither soldiers, nor the iron of swords, nor the fire of muskets, nor the alcalde's threats, Diego de la Vega was afraid of Victoria Escalante. Shrank from her. And felt the need to hide behind Zorro's mask to dare talk to her.
Well, what good would that do to him to hear her tell her masked Fox all the low opinion she had of Diego de la Vega? To hear her repeat how much he, Zorro, was different from this Don Diego whom definitely couldn't be counted on? A few kisses given to Zorro might be an ephemeral bandage on Diego's wound, but they also threatened to deepen, worsen and inflame the wound they would cover...
It was stupid, absurd and ludicrous. And Diego, or at least the oh-so rational and logical part in him couldn't ignore it was. And yet, every time he went back there, just like the bug attracted by candlelight came and burned its wings on the flame.
Love turned the most sensible of men into a complete idiot. And worse, it made him careless, reckless, disregarding dangers.
No, really, Felipe again vowed to himself while watching Zorro ride away in the night, he would never let himself fall in love!