no one will see it. Only the sergeant and I know of its existence.”
“Keep me out of this, please, Senor Zorro,” babbled Garcia, terrified.
“As for the pearls, you have no worry, because I will take care of the problem. When the authorities ask about them, Sergeant Garcia will tell the truth, that Zorro took them.”
He picked up the bag, went to the window, and whistled. Moments later, he heard Tornado’s hooves in the courtyard; he bowed and exited through the window he had prepared. Rafael Moncada and Sergeant Garcia ran after him, yelling for the soldiers. Dark against the full moon, they saw the black silhouette of the mysterious masked man astride his magnificent steed.
“Hasta la vista, senores!” called Zorro, ignoring the bullets whizzing around him.
Two days later Rafael Moncada sailed on the Santa Lucia with his numerous pieces of luggage and the servants he had brought from Spain for his personal service. Diego, Isabel, and Padre Mendoza accompanied him to the beach, partly to make sure that he left and partly for the pleasure of seeing the fury on his face. Diego asked in an innocent tone why he was leaving so suddenly and why his throat was bandaged. To Moncada, the image of that foppishly dressed young man who sucked anise pills for his headaches and carried a lace handkerchief did not fit the image of Zorro, but he clung to the suspicion that they were one and the same person. The last thing he said to them as he stepped into the boat that would take him to the ship was that he would not rest a single day until he unmasked Zorro and had his revenge.
That same night Diego and Bernardo met in the caves. They had not seen each other since Bernardo’s timely appearance at the hacienda to save Zorro. They went by way of the small door in the fireplace of the house, which Diego had reclaimed and was beginning to repair following the abuse of the soldiers, with the idea that as soon as it was ready he would bring Alejandro de la Vega back to live there. For the moment, his elderly father was convalescing, looked after by Toypurnia and White Owl, while his son cleared up his legal situation. With Rafael Moncada out of the picture, it would not be difficult to persuade the governor to lift the charges. The two young men were ready to begin the task of converting the caves into Zorro’s den. Diego asked how Bernardo had been able to show up at the hacienda, gallop a long distance pursued by Garcia’s men, leap from the cliff, and simultaneously appear at the door in the fireplace. He had to repeat the question because Bernardo seemed not to fully understand what he was talking about. He had never been at the house, he gestured; Diego must have dreamed that episode. He had jumped his horse into the sea because he knew the terrain and knew exactly where to make the leap.
It had been a black night, he explained, but the moon came out, lighting the water, and he was able to get a bearing on the shore.
Once he reached land, he realized that he could not demand any more of his exhausted horse, and he turned him loose. He had to walk several hours in order to reach the San Gabriel mission by dawn. He had left Tornado in the cave much earlier for Diego to find; he was sure his brother would manage to escape once he distracted his captors.
“I tell you, Zorro came to the hacienda to help me. If not you, who was it? I saw him with my own eyes.”
Bernardo whistled, and Zorro emerged from the shadows in all his splendor: black clothes, hat, mask, and mustache, with his cape over one shoulder and his right hand on the grip of his sword. Everything that distinguished the impeccable hero was there, down to the whip coiled at the waist. There he stood, flesh and blood, lighted by several dozen wax candles and two torches, proud, elegant, unmistakable. Diego was speechless, while Bernardo and Zorro smothered their laughter, savoring the moment. The mystery lasted for less time than they would have wished, because behind the mask Diego had recognized a pair of crossed eyes.
“Isabel.” He laughed. “It can only be you!”
The girl had followed him when he went to the cave with Bernardo the first night they landed in California. She had spied on them when Diego gave his brother the black outfit and planned for there to be two Zorros in place of one. She had decided that three would be even better. It was not difficult to gain Bernardo’s cooperation; she always got her way with him. Helped by Nuria, she cut the black silk that had been a gift from Lafitte and sewed her disguise. Diego argued that Zorro’s task was man’s work, but she reminded him that she had rescued him from Moncada’s hands.
“More than one defender of justice is needed because there is so much evil in this world, Diego. You will be Zorro, and Bernardo and I will help you,” Isabel concluded.
There was no choice but to do as she asked, because as her final argument she threatened to reveal Zorro’s identity if they excluded her.
The brothers put on their disguises, and the three Zorros formed a circle inside the old Indian medicine wheel the brothers had laid out in their youth. With Bernardo’s knife they each made a cut on their left hands. “For justice!” Diego and Isabel exclaimed in unison, and Bernardo signed the appropriate words. At that moment, when the mixed blood of the three friends dripped onto the center of the circle, they thought they saw a brilliant light surge from the depths of the earth and dance in the air for a few seconds. It was the okahue that grandmother White Owl had promised.
PART SIX
BRIEF EPILOGUE AND FINAL PERIOD
Unless you are very inattentive readers, you have undoubtedly divined that the chronicler of this story is I, Isabel de Romeu. I am writing this thirty years after I met Diego de la Vega in my father’s house, in 1810, and many things have happened since then. Despite the passing of time, I am not afraid that I will set down serious inaccuracies because all through my life I have taken notes, and if I have memory lapses, I consult Bernardo. In the episodes in which he was present, I have been obliged to write with a certain rigor; he does not allow me to interpret events in my own manner. I have more freedom in other places. Sometimes my friend drives me out of my mind. They say that the years make people more flexible, but that is not true in his case.
He is forty-five years old and is as rigid as ever. I have explained in vain that there is no such thing as absolute truth, that everything passes through the filter of the observer. Memory is fragile and capricious; each of us remembers and forgets according to what is convenient. The past is a notebook with many leaves on which we jot down our lives with ink that changes according to our state of mind. In my case, the notebook resembles the fantasy maps of Captain Santiago de Leon and deserves to be included in the Encyclopedia of Desires, Complete Version. In Bernardo’s case, the book is as exciting as a brick. In the end, that exactitude has at least served him in bringing up several children and wisely overseeing the de la Vega hacienda. He has multiplied his fortune, and Diego’s, who is still obsessed with dispensing justice, in part because he has a good heart, but more than anything because he so enjoys dressing up as Zorro and stirring up his cloak-and-dagger adventures.
I have not mentioned pistols, because early on Diego discarded them. He believes that in addition to being inaccurate, firearms are not worthy of a courageous man. All he needs in a battle is Justine, the sword he loves as he would a bride. He is a little too old for such childish behavior, but apparently he will never settle down.
I imagine that you are curious about the other characters in this story; no one likes to be left wondering after having read so many pages. Isn’t that true? There is nothing as unsatisfactory as a book that does not tie up the loose ends, that new tendency to leave books half finished. Well, Nuria has white hair; she has shrunk to the size of a dwarf, and her breathing is noisy, like a sea lion’s, but she is healthy. She does not plan to die; she says that we will have to kill her with a stick. Not long ago we buried Toypurnia, with whom I had an excellent friendship. She never came back to live among whites; she stayed with her tribe, but from time to time she visited her husband at the hacienda. They were fine friends. Nine years before, we had buried Alejandro de la Vega and Padre Mendoza, both of whom died during the influenza epidemic. Don Alejandro’s health was never completely the same following his experience in El Diablo, but he rode his horse over the hacienda up till the last day of his life. He was a true patriarch; they do not make men like him anymore.
