Chapter 2. Changes

A few days later, all three de la Vegas went to the pueblo. Market day was approaching, and Victoria wanted to go over the spice stocks in order to know what Pilar needed refilled. The woman was progressing at a fast pace and was now almost as good a cook as Victoria, but it was still up to the new Doña de la Vega to oversee that there were enough supplies in the pantry and basement.

She was just finishing talking to one of the suppliers when Padre Benitez stood in the kitchen's doorway and asked her to spend a moment talking to him. While they were walking across the pueblo's square, he asked about the hacienda and plans for the tavern, but, when they crossed the gate leading to the garden of the church, he suddenly stopped.

"How do you feel as a wife, daughter?" He asked.

"Happy, Padre." Victoria smiled, though with a bit of effort. "I never thought I'd be so happy again!"

The friar replied with a smile, but his eyes remained alert. He stared intently at the woman's face until she turned her head. She understood that the Padre did not believe her assurances.

After a moment of awkward silence, the priest indicated the path he wanted them to take.

"I'm asking because I know you have sustained heavy wounds on your soul," he said as they walked into the garden. "They can still torment you."

Victoria nodded silently. She had talked about it with the Padre several times, the last time just before the wedding itself. His questions, though very delicate and careful, made her understand how lucky she had been despite all the nightmare she had been through. The friar had once been to an area where soldiers had suppressed a rebellion and knew that she could have suffered worse mutilations. On her soul, mind and body.

"I left it behind," she replied after a moment's thought, and added. "What happened doesn't even haunt my dreams. Though…" she thought for a moment, "I know from don Alejandro that I shouldn't get too close to brandy, as it might awaken bad memories. But I guess that's all there is… I am married to Diego in every way, and I don't feel either fear or disgust towards him, as you feared."

The Padre breathed deeply.

"Good, my child. I know you had to say goodbye to your old dreams, so I'm glad you have found a safe haven. Diego is a good man."

"The very best, Padre. But…" Victoria hesitated for a moment. Diego did not tell her if the priest knew about his secrets, so she preferred not to mention that her dreams of getting married and start a family with Zorro came true, albeit in such an unexpected and painful way. There was, however, something she wanted to share with the friar. He helped her return to Los Angeles, and now he could help too.

"I'm afraid, Padre," she confessed. "There are times when I feel anxious and can barely contain it."

"What are you afraid of?" The priest stopped walking, and looked at her carefully.

"That I'll lose…" She broke off and turned her head. All her fears were so meaningless that she was ashamed to admit them. It seemed inappropriate for her to doubt Diego's love and care. However her husband and his father kept telling her that she should confide in them if she finds herself afraid or worried about anything, and the Padre, himself,hadn't just asked out of vain curiosity. "That my whole life, this new one, in the hacienda, will fall apart in an instant," she confessed.

"Zorro will not ask you to leave Diego," Benitez observed gently. "I know you loved him, but..."

"No, I'm not afraid of Zorro," she denied. "I am afraid that Diego and I might miss our chance for a life together. And I'm afraid of people..."

"People?"

"Yes, people. Oh, I tell myself that now that there is no alcalde, no one will accuse me anymore, no one will condemn me, but… I am still afraid."

The priest nodded.

"No wonder you feel this way, after everything that's happened to you, my child," he said in a soft, soothing voice. "You have experienced pain, humiliation, loneliness, and despair, and the people around you have been the source of your suffering. So you are afraid it might happen again, even if you know it won't. Over time, your wounds will heal completely and your fear will pass. You can already see that it has no basis whatsoever. And," the Padre smiled reassuringly "it is good that you told me about it. I will keep my eyes and ears open to protect you and Diego from a similar attack. As for you, put your trust in your husband's care and love."

"I trust him, Padre. Diego loves and cares for me..."

She fell silent. Benitez was staring at her with concern, and she realized that her words did not sound as they should. That they were evidence of her insecurity and weakness, not a joyful confession of something she was so sure of.

"But not everything is as it should be," the friar said slowly. "Can you recognize what's going on?" He asked gently.

"Diego's heart is heavy, Padre, and I don't know what it is or how to help him."

They had reached the end of the path through the garden, so the priest turned back toward the church.

"He killed a man," he reminded her. "It leaves a mark. His concern for you and the pain he shared with you are one thing, but still there is death."

"No! It's not it!" Victoria protested. "I don't think Diego feels guilty about the death of the alcalde! Not after that..."

She broke off as Padre Benitez shook his head.

"I have no doubt that he may have not felt guilty about what had happened before. However, he is a good man and undoubtedly finds it difficult to come to terms with the knowledge that he has taken someone's life. And what is happening around him in the pueblo right now may not be helping him."

"What are you talking about, Padre?" Victoria felt a twinge of familiar fear. "Are people going to turn against Diego now? They can't turn against him! After all, if not for him..."

"They're not rejecting him. Rather, they admire him for what he's done. Perhaps they value him more than they value even Zorro!"

This surprised Victoria. She knew that Diego was widely respected and liked, but he tried to make himself seem the opposite of the black-clad outlaw. His reluctance to fight and the demonstrated avoidance of any trouble caused many pueblo residents to lament the weakness of don Alejandro's son. And he was certainly not looked upon and talked about with such admiration as Zorro.

"Why?"

"It was Diego who did what Zorro had tried to for years. He freed Los Angeles from the tyrant. That is reason enough for many people to be respectful of him more than ever before."

Victoria froze. That had never crossed her mind.

"Does... Does Diego know about it?" She choked out.

The Padre looked at her intently, clearly surprised by her reaction.

"I don't know," he replied. "But I have no doubt that he finds it hard to be respected for taking a life."

"Dios!" She gasped, struck by what had just come to her mind.

Zorro has been respected by all of Los Angeles for what he has been doing all these years. People trusted him and even the soldiers were willing to count on his help. On the other hand, Diego, the one who was known to everyone in the pueblo, was treated with a mixture of sympathy and indulgence, but also, more than once, he had been accused of being overly cautious, not to say cowardice. He endured it patiently, ignoring not only all the taunts from other acquaintances, but also her own remarks and those of his father, because he knew that this was the only way to protect himself from being exposed. But now, after those few weeks together, she knew how difficult it was sometimes for him, how much he had to sacrifice to protect them, how much he was risking. The thought that, in the eyes of the people, Zorro's many years of struggle could mean less than one tragic duel, was terrifying.

Victoria was about to ask if the Padre had mentioned that in his conversation with her husband, when she noticed a boy hesitantly shifting from foot to foot in the garden's gate, as if he was afraid to interfere with the priest's conversation with doña de la Vega. The monk noticed what had caught her attention.

"Oh, that's Faustino!" He recognized him. "Something must have happened..." he worried.

Indeed, Faustino brought bad news. His father's house, a small farm situated a few miles from Los Angeles, was attacked by two bandits. Someone might say that they robbed little, only a dozen or so pesos, but that was all the farmers had. Moreover, the attackers were not satisfied with taking those modest savings. Looking for money, they demolished the interior of the house, beat the farmer and his wife, and did not spare the children present in the house. Before leaving, they also killed a piglet and most of the hens in the henhouse, then emptied the pantry of flour and beans. What they failed to load onto the horses, they destroyed as if out of sheer malice.

Faustino was in Los Angeles at the time, at the blacksmith's, and his father merely thanked God that, the day before, their old gelding had become lame, forcing him to go on that trip. If it weren't for that, the boy would have been beaten, as well, and he might have even died if he had tried to defend the family. Without him, the farmer and his wife would have certainly been unable to travel the miles from the doctor.

X X X

That day, the de la Vegas returned to the hacienda in the late afternoon. Before the Padre and Victoria calmed the frightened, crying children, before Dr. Hernandez treated the wounded enough to tell the sergeant about the attackers, and before Mendoza sent the soldiers on patrol, the siesta had already passed. Diego tried to find an excuse to return to the hacienda earlier so that Zorro might go in search of the bandits, but the caballeros called a hurried conference at the inn at which he had to be present. The sense of betrayal he felt for a moment when his father hissed in his ear that he could not vanish at that point, as was his custom, was gone when he heard a worried sergeant report what his subordinates had so far found out. Mendoza had cause for concern. There was a second raid on a distant farm, and, this time, the desperados were more brutal than before. The soldiers looked for strangers but, so far, to no avail.

Finally, the discussion of where else to track down the bandits was over. Nothing specific had been identified, apart from Diego's idea that the caballeros should raise money for Dr. Hernandez to heal the wounded. Meanwhile, Faustino's family was safely housed in the rectory, where Padre Benitez promised to host them until they recovered.

Diego was silent all the way back from the pueblo and, as soon as they entered the house, he went to the library.

"Must you go?" Victoria touched his arm before he put a hand on the fireplace's mantle.

"I have to. You heard the discussion. We didn't agree on anything." Diego clenched his hand into a fist, struggling to suppress the outburst of anger at the thought of the lost time.

"I know but…"

"Two farm robberies are two too many," he replied. "The third may result in someone's death."

She could only nod. She might have been afraid for Diego now that she knew what he was doing, but she understood how much Zorro was needed. After all, the greedy alcalde was not the only threat to Los Angeles and its surroundings.

"Mendoza is barely coping and the soldiers are not good at tracking," Diego continued. "I'll find them and tell the sergeant where to send the patrol, nothing more," he told her.

X X X

Zorro was leaving, surprised by how much relief he felt when he covered his face with a mask. The black clothes seemed to restore balance to the world. The new don Diego de la Vega, surrounded by the fear and respect of the people, the alcalde's murderer ceased to exist, and Zorro had a task ahead of him, and few hours of daylight to fulfill it. Tornado galloped, huffing pleased that he had left the cave, and its rider tried to organize his thoughts before they reached the raided farm.

Following the bandits was not difficult. The slain piglet had been bleeding for a long time, and a string of dried stains was drawn from the farm through dry meadows. And, if that was not enough, where the robbers passed through the bushes, there were chicken feathers hanging from the branches.

Zorro followed the trail, trying to guess what was driving the attackers. There were rarely such brutal attacks and pointless destruction in the Los Angeles area, but what was more puzzling was the amount of food the attackers seized. A piglet, a dozen hens, sacks of flour and beans were provisions for several, maybe even a dozen people. It was also disturbing that, although the robbers were riding away from the plundered house, as soon as it had disappeared from their sight, they slowed down and took their time to make their escape. This could mean that the two bandits were part of a larger group. In any case, it was a mystery that occupied Zorro's mind and allowed him to forget about Diego de la Vega's problems.

Eventually, at dusk, he stopped seeing hoofprints. The trail led him far away from the roads and buildings, to the area where garrison patrols, wanderers, and hunters rarely ventured. Zorro stopped near the top of a hill, looking around and listening to see if something would tell him where he should go. He hoped the pursued weren't far away. The track, while he could still see it, was very fresh.

The darkness before moonrise covered everything like a thick veil, making it possible to distinguish only the contours of trees and brush. The wind had stopped; only the ubiquitous cicadas could be heard. The distant knock was so faint that Zorro barely heard it through the noise of the insects. He strained his hearing, not sure if it was a real sound or an illusion. And again! Now he was sure. The noise was too steady for it's source to be any animal. Someone was chopping wood nearby.

Zorro moved slowly towards the source of the sounds. That he was going in the right direction he was sure a moment later, as he heard human voices. He was still too far away to make out the words, but undoubtedly someone was talking, or rather arguing fiercely. He discovered where these people were when he stared intently at the dark canopy of the trees and saw a faint glow from the fire below.

The encampment was located in the valley and Zorro initially wanted to leave Tornado in the bushes on its edge so that the presence of his stallion would not disturb the other horses. But the stench of burnt feathers he felt as soon as he entered the bushes convinced him that even though the mounts in the camp had been trained to raise the alarm, they would not be able to smell anything right at that moment. The nauseating odor also suggested that he had just caught up with the hunted bandits, because hunters, whites or Indians, usually did not burn the feathers of their prey.

The fire burned unexpectedly brightly, turning the thicket into a tangle of shadows. This allowed Zorro, whose eyes had become accustomed to the dark, to slip through the trees without a murmur, like a ghost, avoiding places that might reveal him with rustle or crackle of dry branches. Not that it was necessary, because the people in front of him argued so vehemently that they would have had hard time hearing even a unit of marching soldiers.

When he finally looked out from behind the tree, he saw a fire, flames shooting high, devouring the branches with a crackle. Next to the fire, a row of chicken carcasses, stuffed on sticks and blackened by the flames, revealed what was the source of the stench and the cause of the argument. A little farther on, a gutted piglet was hanging from a branch, waiting for its turn. On the other side of the camp, the two horses, irritated by the smell of burning, continued to snort and twirl restlessly, tugging at the straps that had been attached to the tree.

Slowly, the two men grew silent and were finishing the burnt dinner in unison. Their soiled clothes and messy stubble showed they had been avoiding the pueblos for a long time, and the way they lit the fire showed that neither of them was a hunter or a vaquero.

"Jorge, go see about the piglet!" One of the bandits rested the pole on the forked branch, checking that it wouldn't twist.

Jorge shook his head.

"I told you to wait for the embers, chico," he snorted. "You just burned the chickens."

"Was I supposed to pluck the feathers?"

Zorro adjusted his grip on the whip. He could see sacks, saddles, and blankets thrown on a pile a few steps away; two sturdy cutlasses and a musket leaned against the trunk of a nearby tree. Of all their weapons, Jorge and his companion were only carrying knives at the moment. If he didn't let them reach the guns, he wouldn't have to reach for the sword.

Jorge leaned over the fire, manipulating the long stick to reduce the flames. His companion got up and cut the piglet off the branch. Both of them had their backs to him at this point.

It was just what Zorro had been waiting for.

The whip wrapped around Jorge's neck with a crack and pulled him back. The other man turned, surprised by the noise, with the piglet in his hands, and screamed as he saw through the beams of sparks the black figure that had just lifted his companion into the air. It had to be admitted that the bandit was not a coward and, despite the momentary horror, he let go of his load and jumped over the fire to help in the fight.

However, it did not help much. For Zorro, the two opponents in the small space of the valley were not a threat. With a blow to the jaw, he threw Jorge under the nearest tree to receive the attacker with another blow of the whip. He cut his legs off and knocked him over onto a pile of burnt hens. The man jumped up with a curse only for Zorro to push Jorge, who was just getting up, on top of him. Now they rolled on the ground together, hands waving disheveledly and kicking blindly. Before they could get up, one of them hit the end of a branch immersed in fire with his shoe. Shafts of sparks flew up and bits of heat scattered around. The bandits must have found them, because they screamed in unison, not from anger, but from pain.

Zorro jumped to them, picked Jorge by the collar, and threw him aside with another blow to the jaw. The second desperado managed to get up, but Zorro was prepared for his attack. A punch on the stomach, another on the neck, and the man fell limp to the ground, crushing his stunned, painfully groaning companion.

The fight was over. Zorro only needed to collect the defeated men and what they have stolen. He could not return the hens or the piglet to the farmers, but at least the flour and beans were to be returned to their pantry. And Diego de la Vega could come up with something that would also help the farmers get back their livestock.

It took Zorro so long to ride back to Los Angeles with one horse laden with stolen supplies and the other carrying prisoners that it was early morning when he was riding between the buildings. Mendoza, unbuttoned and unshaven, was yawning at the well, but the remnants of sleep evaporated almost immediately when he saw the black-clad rider and the load on the mounts he was leading.

"Madre de Dios! Señor Zorro!" He exclaimed.

"These are the people who attacked the Vanegas family yesterday." Zorro bent down in the saddle to attach the reins of the first horse to the cart standing by the fountain. "There are also the supplies they stole from them. Take care of them, Sergeant!"

"Gracias, señor Zorro!" Mendoza was smiling as widely as Zorro had never seen him smile. "It's good that you showed up. I thought that when don Diego killed the alcalde you wouldn't be coming here anymore."

Zorro froze.

"What did you say, Sergeant?" He finally choked out.

Mendoza must have believed that Zorro did not know about de Soto's death, because he smiled even wider.

"The alcalde is dead, señor Zorro. He wanted to interfere with Señorita Victoria's wedding and forced don Diego to duel; and he killed him."

Zorro shook his head in bewilderment, feeling that he was about to fall from the saddle, hearing how relieved Mendoza spoke of de Soto's death. But no, this relief was not for the death of the alcalde. The sergeant, delighted that the outlaw had delivered his attackers, wanted to tell him as much as possible about what had happened in Los Angeles in the last few days. Moreover, he wanted to assure Zorro that his beloved Victoria had found refuge as doña de la Vega, and her husband even went so far as to duel to ensure her safety.

A moan from one of the captives interrupted Mendoza's story.

"Gracias, Sergeant, for all the news!" Zorro pulled Tornado's reins. "Take care of them now and see to it that those supplies are returned to the owners! Oh, they might not be alone. It would be best if the soldiers went looking for their accomplices."

He cut Mendoza's thanks and headed for the pueblo exit, riding slower than ever before. And the fact that he did not have to hurry to leave, because no one was going to chase him, made him realize that the changes also affected Zorro.

TBC.