Days of the Dead

Hacienda Mictlan Outside the City of Mexico September 16, 1835 Amicus Meus, Enclosed with this missive you'll find a draft for what I hope is sufficient money to pay your passage here by the speediest available transport. My host at the moment is being so good as to hold the minions of Justice at bay, which is quite generous of him given that I am widely supposed to have murdered his only son. Were Don Prospero de Castell-n even marginally sane, I would probably already have been executed--the evidence is fairly damning. By remarks the Don has made, however, I have the uncomfortable conviction that after the first of November--the second at the latest--he will fall in with the popular view, not that I killed the fellow, but that I deserve to be punished for the deed. In company with most of the rest of the household, he believes that young Fernando will re-visit the house, along with various other deceased relatives, at that time, the only difference between his belief and that of his daughters and their families being that he thinks he will be able to ask the murdered man outright--and receive an answer in no uncertain terms--about what ought best to be done with yours truly. The local constabulary is also in fairly steady attendance. If ever I have earned your regard or affection, please come and engage in a few sleuth-hound tactics. I am at a complete loss to imagine how anyone but myself could have made quietus for young Fernando--who certainly deserved what he got--and if you do not prove otherwise, I shall soon be forced to begin suspecting myself. Please come. I am in fairly desperate straits, though, as I said, I believe I shall be safe enough until the Days of the Dead. Your friend, Hannibal Sefton Postscriptum: I don't know whether they still garrote heretics like myself here, or hygienically shoot them as they do in the countryside. You understand that I don't really like to ask. Benjamin January folded up his friend's letter after its perhaps seventy-fifth reading in the three weeks since its arrival on the morning of his wedding, settled back against the jolting seat of the Vera Cruz diligencia, and wondered--again--if he was going to make it to Mexico City alive, and if he did whether Hannibal would still be alive when he got there. At every inn en route, the innkeepers had whispered darkly about "bandits in the mountains," prompting the passengers of the diligencia to ride with rifles cradled in their arms and pistols at their belts: their fellow-passenger Mr. Dillard of Tennessee seemed to take January going armed as a personal affront. But then, Mr. Dillard had not ceased glaring at January since the coach had pulled out of the baking, vulture-haunted streets of Vera Cruz. "You're not gonna let nigras ride inside, are you?" Dillard had demanded of the driver. "They paid for their ticket like everybody else," the driver had retorted in a nasal Yankee twang. "Something he's permitted to do in this country, which has had the courage to strike down the foul abomination of slavery . . . unlike some nations which purport to be free." "Damn Whig abolitionist," had snarled Dillard. "Godless fleshmongering Democrat," the driver had replied. It had not been an auspicious beginning to a journey that rapidly got worse. In addition to the threat of bandits--which had not, in four days of travel, so far manifested itself--there was the more clearly present threat of the inns themselves, ancient, filthy structures of adobe-brick, primitive beyond belief and inhabited by nests of scorpions and centipedes as well as the more usual fauna of chickens, pigs, and village dogs. There was the food--mostly greasy tamales, inadequately cooked beans, and the national staple of tortillas, unleavened corncakes cooked on an open grill. Born in the slave-quarters of a cane plantHambly, Barbara is the author of 'Days of the Dead', published 2004 under ISBN 9780553581621 and ISBN 0553581627.