The Secret of Zorro
An Old Enemy
Chapter Four
by Ella Christian @1999-2001
Contact author at EllaChristian@aol.com

Chapter Four
Uncertainties, Unknowns

The sudden silence in the Tavern was chilling.  

"What is the matter?"  Carlos Matteo asked, mystified.

"Do you not see?" Alejandro exclaimed.  "You are describing Enrique Monastario!  He has blue eyes and rides a great white stallion!  He was seen here last night!"

"But, that is impossible," Carlos said.  "I saw his papers, they say Mordante."  He looked around. "Surely it is a bizarre coincidence!"

"How much time did you spend with him?"  Diego asked.  "What did you talk about?"

Carlos frowned, reconstructing the morning in his mind. Then he shrugged. "He stayed an hour or so, we worked out our transaction based on the letters of credit and gold pieces he carried..."

"Where were his letters from?" Francisco Bocca asked.

"From Mexico City!" Carlos replied. "His credentials were impeccable, his banking papers were all in order..."

"It sounds as if he were planning to make a purchase," Miguel Cahuenga observed.

Heads nodded all around.

"So you completed a sound transaction.  What else did you talk about?" Diego asked him.

"We had coffee, we talked..."

"About what?" Diego asked again.  "Did you...tell him about your family, your life here?"

"Capitan Monastario thinks that Don Diego is Zorro," Corporal Reyes explained, trying to be helpful.  Diego looked down momentarily.  Elizabeth could tell he was restraining himself from reacting to Reyes.  He looked again at his father-in-law.

"Thinks Diego is El Zorro!" Carlos chuckled.  "Well, he must be credited with imagination!"

Again Diego looked down.

"Carlos, we have reason to fear this man," Alejandro said, "or at least to respect his strength and question his motives for returning to Los Angeles.  Tell us what else you talked about!"

Carlos shrugged.  "He was very intelligent, he negotiated well...we talked about our families...."

"He doesn't have any family," Corporal Reyes volunteered, still trying to be helpful.

"Oh, yes, he does!" Carlos contradicted.  "He has a wife and a little boy in Mexico."

Diego looked up again.  "A wife?" he repeated.  "A child?"

"Si," Carlos confirmed.  "They live near Mexico City.  Seņor Mordante is trying to establish himself in southern California and then bring them here to live with him.  He feels the climate is better here."

Diego rolled his eyes in disbelief.  "What did you tell him about your family?" he asked.

"I told him how Elizabeth and I came here, and that she married into a fine family, but mostly I talked about Esperanza!" Carlos answered.

Alejandro and Diego exchanged an alarmed glance. Elizabeth stayed very still, her eyes on her husband.

"Did you tell him who Elizabeth was married to?" Alejandro asked.

Sergeant Garcia rose up from his seat and strode over to Elizabeth's father.  "Don Carlos," he said, "you do not know the Capitan the way we know the Capitan."

"He was a skunk," Corporal Reyes stated.

"If you told him that Don Diego is Doņa Elizabeth's husband, he could do her harm," said the Sergeant. 
"Or little Esperanza.  He left our pueblo very bitterly when the viceroy refused to listen to his accusation about Don Diego."

It began to dawn on Carlos Matteo that he may have unintentionally put his family in danger.  He thought hard about the conversation with the charming stranger that morning.  "He...asked," he said slowly.  "He asked what family Elizabeth married into.  And I said, 'oh, do you know the families of Los Angeles?'  He said that many of the fine families in Los Angeles were families known in Spain and Mexico.  I asked him what families he knew were in Los Angeles and he referred to the Cahuengas, the Boccas, the..." he paused sorrowfully and then said, "the de la Vegas."  He looked around at everyone until his eyes rested on Diego.  "Si, I told him Elizabeth married you.  He had no reaction, he only said, 'ah, de la Vega.  Don Alejandro is well known in Mexico City.'"

Diego slapped his hand furiously on the table, causing everyone to start. 

"He did not seem violent," Carlos said, thoroughly taken aback at Diego's display of temper.

"Was he wearing a sword?" Diego asked, unable to mask the anger in his voice.

Carlos thought.  "He was wearing a sword when he was on the horse, but he removed it and secured it to his saddle when he came into the house."

Diego sighed.  Sergeant Garcia patted his shoulder.  "Do not worry, Don Diego, we will protect your family if Monastario does anything to hurt them."

"And how will you know that, Sergeant?" Diego asked.  "Are you going to send lancers to live at Rancho de la Vega?  Establish an outpost there, perhaps?"  He looked again to his father.  "We need to go home," he said.  He got up and went over to Elizabeth, who was still holding Esperanza.  The baby saw her father through the corner of her eye and tried to reach for him.

"Are you getting sleepy, little one?" he asked her as he took her from Elizabeth.  Esperanza yawned and pressed her head against his shoulder.  Diego patted her back gently.

"Oh," Clementia said weakly, for the scene of father and drowsy daughter in the Tavern was so tender she thought she was going to cry.  "How could Monastario hurt a little baby?" she asked.

"It is hard to say what he might do," Diego said, rubbing Esperanza's back to soothe her as she half-whimpered with her tiredness. She began yanking at his lapel, her small fingers picking at the embroidery on his jacket.  Diego shifted her slightly in his arms, and began patting her back again.  She lay her head against his shoulder again and her eyes closed.  "He lost his commission over his failure to unveil Zorro and I am sure it has caused him untold bitterness," he said quietly.

"But, he said he had a family of his own, surely that has tempered his attitude!" Carlos said. "He spoke of them with great affection."

"If he has a family!" Diego shot back, making the baby start.  He cuddled her again for a moment and then looked at his father-in-law and said, more quietly,  "Do you not understand that this man is a liar who will do anything to secure his position and his wealth!?"

Elizabeth got up and, sidling around her husband, went over to her now-disconsolate father.  "You did not mean to do anything wrong, Daddy," she said, putting her arm around him where he sat.  "Did he give you good money for that land?"

"Si," Carlos said sadly.  "Very good money."

"Then we shall celebrate soon," Elizabeth said, squeezing his shoulder.  She looked at Diego, who stood near the door with Esperanza.  She looked around at everyone else.  "We have to believe he has changed," she said.

Everyone shifted in their seats and made small comments, including several people noting that she would not say that if she had ever met Monastario when he was Commandante of the pueblo.  
"No, it is possible," she insisted.  She went to Diego.  "We can go home now.  It will be safe."

Diego's brow went into a furrow.  Esperanza sighed on his shoulder.

"I will send a pair of lancers to escort you home," Sergeant Garcia offered.  

"And I will go with you, too," Carlos said.

Elizabeth held up her hand.  "No, it is not necessary for the lancers, Sergeant," she said.  "Unless you want to send them along to help us forge the La Brea creek!"

Though he was deeply alarmed, Diego did nothing to intercede with his wife's unexpected reaction to her father's announcement.  He wished, however, that he had his sword with him.  They bid their farewells to everyone and, with Alejandro and Carlos, went to the stable for their carriage.  The rain had, for the moment, ceased.

"I am not sure this is prudent," Diego said to Elizabeth quietly.  They were ahead of, and thus out of earshot, of their fathers.

"It will be all right," she said as she checked on Esperanza, who was falling asleep in Diego's arms.  

"What makes you think so?" he asked.

"I am listening to Tornado," Elizabeth replied.   "He is like your father."

"What do you mean?"

"He is usually right."

******

They got home without incident, accompanied most of the way by Carlos and all the way by Alejandro. The rain was intermittent but never more than light and showery, which allowed them to ford the creek without difficulty.  They discussed the best course of action in light of the news of Carlos's unintended sale to Monastario.  Elizabeth maintained they should let sleeping dogs lie, but Diego would have none of it. 

"I am going up into those hills tomorrow, to see if I can find him," he stated. "I want to know what he is up to."  He looked over at her, and then added, "I will get Windhawk to go with me, and Long Lash.  They know those hills better than anyone. Anyone.  If he is up there they will find him, if they do not already know where he is."

"I will not worry so much if they are with you," Elizabeth said. 

"Do you think I cannot handle Monastario myself?" he asked, a little indignant.

"I do not think you will find him at all," Elizabeth said.  "If he wanted to be found, he would have been by now.  With all this rain I think it is better for you to go up there with someone else, and Windhawk is the best possible person."  She looked at him steadily. "You must tell Soaring Bird to bring Little Feather and Willow down here, while you are away.  I have not seen her in many months."     

"I do not think you grasp the full magnitude of the danger with him, darling," Diego said, referring back to Monastario.  Elizabeth's sudden indifference to the whole situation worried him.

"And I think all of you are creating a ghost that does not exist, of your old enemy," Elizabeth answered back.  "A man came into town who looked like and reminded you all of the commandante you all hated, and my father sold that man some land.  I think that is all it is, Diego."

"But everyone who saw him thought it was Monastario!" he protested. "I would know that footstep anywhere."

She shrugged, and then grinned at him.  "If he is as dangerous as you say, he would have done something by now.  You will be up there in the hills chasing someone who is already on his way back to Mexico. He has a family now, darling.  Think about how much having a family has changed you. Can't the same be true for Capitan Monastario?" She waved her hand.  "We should forget about him and go on with our lives.  But go, Diego, satisfy your worry.  Just go with Windhawk, and do not cross any narrow gullies after a big rain.  You are more likely to get caught by a flash flood up there than by Monastario."

"You do not know him, Elizabeth," Diego said.

"And I do not know if you do, anymore," she replied.

******

Later that night they were changing clothing in their room at home, Esperanza asleep at the foot of their bed, Elizabeth suddenly gripped the bedpost strangely.  Diego had his back turned, but when she made a strange gasping sound he turned to look at her and saw that she was very white.

"Liz?" he said, alarmed.  He came to her and took her arm, helping her sit in her chair before the fireplace.  "What's the matter?"

"I don't know," she said.  "Something just came over me."

 "Perhaps you got a chill after last night."

She sat there for a moment, still feeling faint and a little nauseous.  "No, that is not what I feel," she said.

"Then what is it?" he asked.

"I have felt this way once before," she said, remembering.

"When?"

She looked up at him.  "At the cabin, after we...." she paused.  "Oh, Diego, it was that afternoon when you caught the fish and I almost fainted on the cabin porch."

He frowned, trying to remember what she was talking about.  Then his eyes widened, as the memories of that afternoon came flooding back.   "I remember," he said softly.  He got down on his knees beside her, his hand coming to rest on her forearm.  

"I was...I have always believed that was when I was conceiving Esperanza," she said.

He nodded.  "Si that is what you have always said." He brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear.  The gold earring she was wearing shimmered in the firelight. 

They were quiet for a moment, looking at one another.  Diego got up and lifted her into his arms, and then sat down in his own chair, holding her in his lap.  "Do you think that is what is happening?" he asked her gently.

"I don't know," she said, taking a breath, her hand going over her belly.  "I only know I have felt exactly like this only that one time.  And..." she looked over at Esperanza, then back at him.  "Oh, Diego," she said.  "This could be the very beginning of a new baby."

He smiled at her, his hand going to her cheek.  "Not the very beginning," he said.

She smiled back, half-laughing.  "Well, close."  She took his hand and put it where hers had been. 

"Do you really think it is possible?" he asked, feeling a sense of wonder at the thought that they might have another child coming.

"Of course it is possible!" she laughed at him.  Then she sobered.  "The doctor told me to wait at least a year."

"It has been almost a year," Diego said, though he felt a shiver of worry deep down.  It is still too soon, he thought.    

She laid her head on his shoulder. "It is February, Esperanza's birthday is at the end of April...it really is not a year."  She shut her eyes.  "It will be a couple of weeks before we know."

He was quiet for a little while, absorbing the possibility.  Then he asked, "How sure do you think you are?"

"I remember this feeling," she said.

They sat there for a few moments. He put his lips in her hair.  "We cannot let ourselves be afraid, sweetheart, and perhaps you are just feeling those tamales we had for dinner."

She laughed, but shook her head.  "I know what those tamales feel like." She looked up at him.  "I think I am pregnant." 

"Oh, Liz," he said softly.  He lowered his head and gave her a long, tender kiss. Her hand came to his cheek as she kissed him back.  They kissed again several times.

"Do you want another baby?" she whispered to him between kisses.

"I will love any baby you ever have with all my heart," he whispered back, continuing to kiss her. Finally he paused for breath but kept rubbing his nose against hers.  Then something occurred to him.  "Huh," he said.

She opened her eyes and looked at him. She smiled. "Are you thinking what I am thinking?" she asked.

"Only if you are thinking that if you are pregnant then we need not..."

She nuzzled his neck. "Si," she said softly.    

 "The other night was not exactly a well-considered decision to add to the family, but if we are in the process of doing so..." he continued.

"I needed you," she interrupted.  "It had been two weeks!"  She shoved the center of his chest with the palm of her hand. "You were torturing both of us!"  

"Don't remind me," he said softly.  "I was being stubborn and foolish."

"Si," she agreed.  She kissed his neck. 

He rubbed his hand over her dress gently.  "Barely made," he said softly.  "Oh, my, a new baby.  We are not used to the old one yet!"  

They chuckled together, looking over at their sleeping daughter. Her tousle of dark hair was curling and starting to gather around her face in curls.  

"This one is so pretty and such a little sweetheart.  I cannot imagine what the next one will be like," Diego said.

"Perhaps this time I shall give you a son," Elizabeth murmured.  "You said you wanted many children."

Diego laughed.  "I did say that, didn't I?"  He looked into her face again. "But I want you to be all right," he said. He kissed her again.  "Liz, you are more important to me than anything, do you understand that?"

"Our children are the most important thing," she said.

"Our child is absolutely important," he said to her. He lifted her face so that their eyes met.  "But I do not want her growing up without her mother. And I am a selfish man; I do not want to be without a wife.  The one I now have.  I nearly lost you when you had her." He paused, momentarily feeling choked.  "If you are pregnant I will have ten doctors on hand for the next birth, and I will pamper you shamelessly every day for the next nine months."

Elizabeth stroked his chest over his shirt, trying to reassure him.  "I will be careful, Diego, I do not want anything to go wrong this time, either."  She shook her head.  "The problem is that we do not know what went wrong the last time.  Not even Soaring Bird could explain it.  And I have asked her, she does not know if it was a freak thing or if it is something about how I am built.  Everything else was fine...." she paused.  "Except for being so sick at the beginning."

"Perhaps that will not happen this time."

"Perhaps," she said, not feeling very confident.  

"So you think we will know for certain in a couple of weeks?"

"That is when my period will come, if I have not conceived."

He thought for a moment.  "We are going to take up the fencing lessons in the morning anyway."

"Oh, si, of course."

"But perhaps we should wait about Blanca, until we know.  I do not want you being thrown from the horse if you are newly pregnant."  He groaned.  "At the rate we are going we are never going to have that horse ready for you to ride, but we will have a dozen children!"

Elizabeth laughed.  "First it was Esperanza, now it is...." she looked at him in wonder.  "Who will it be this time?" she asked.  "We called her 'little baby,' what will we call this one?"

"Sweetheart, let's make sure there is one before we start calling it something."

She nodded.  "You are right." She put her arms around his neck and settled her head back onto his shoulder. They were quiet for a while.  Then Elizabeth said, "Diego, you will not be hard on my father, will you, for selling that land?"

Diego squirmed slightly, reminded of her father's sale.  "It was an innocent mistake," he conceded.  "But he may have to take it all back, if I do not like what I find with Monastario."

"If you find him, and if it was him," she said into his shoulder.

"It was him," Diego said.

They sat there for a while longer, and then Elizabeth pulled herself up and found that she felt fine. Whatever it was that made her dizzy had passed.  Diego unhooked all her buttons on her dress, and helped her step out of it.  She turned around and looked at him, her hands resting on his slender waist.  "Darling, before you undress, put Esperanza in her room."

He frowned.  "Shall I give her to my father again tonight?"

Elizabeth shook her head.  "No, I want her to sleep in her own room, she will be all right."

"I shall ask Bernardo to sleep nearby," Diego said, going to the bed and lifting the baby up.  She shifted but did not awaken.  "Oh, you are going to be an angel for me tonight, are you?" he whispered to her.  He winked at Elizabeth and took Esperanza out.  While he was gone he quietly instructed Bernardo to make sure at least two vaqueros were up all night watching over the entrances to the hacienda.  

On returning, Diego found his wife lying in bed under the sheets, the candles blown out and only the firelight flickering in the room.  He pulled his clothes off and got into bed.  Without even thinking, he stretched out over her.  

She took his face in her hands.  "Diego, I do not really feel like making love tonight, I just want to be here with you."

He sighed.  "Then I think I need to get off of you, darling..." he rolled away from her reluctantly and sighed again.

"Sometimes I just need to be with you," she said softly.

He turned onto his side.  "It seems as if we just had her," he said of Esperanza.  

"I thought as long as I was still nursing her that it was much less likely to happen," she mused.  "But then, I am nursing her less now...." Elizabeth giggled.  "Do you know what she did today, when I had her in the courtyard?" she asked.  

"What?"

"She crawled over to me and grabbed my shoe and said, 'Shoe.'"

"She talked?'"

"Well, she has been talking for a while, we just can't understand what she says!  But I think she was telling me she had my shoe."

Diego laughed.  "Our child's first word," he said.  "Shoe! Perhaps she was trying to say, 'move this, I want that leaf under your foot.'"

Elizabeth laughed.  "You are right, I do not know what she was saying, that is just what it sounded like."  She turned onto her side and snuggled against him, letting him spoon her.  They cuddled up tenderly.

"You are so funny," he whispered to her.  "I wake up and we are in this position in the middle of the night because you waggle your way up against me in your sleep."

"It isn't me," Elizabeth laughed.

"What do you mean?"

"It isn't me.  It is you."

"What?" Diego said, always having credited her with finding himself in this position having not remembered getting there.

"It happens a lot.  I am lying here in the middle of the night and you are asleep and you reach over and pull me into your arms.  I don't think you ever wake up." She giggled.  "I always cooperate."

"I do it?" he said.

"Si, darling, you are the one who makes it happen."

"I have always thought it was you."

She laughed softly again.  "Maybe it is both of us," she said.  "But mostly it is you."

"Then I am a smarter man than I thought," he whispered to her.

******

Elizabeth slept deeply that night. She dreamed she was sitting beside a cool lake that was teaming with silvery fish that leapt out of the water and danced in the sunlight briefly before disappearing again. Diego was in the dream.  He kept trying to catch a fish with his hands and each one he grasped kept slipping away. Elizabeth was watching and hoping he would finally bring home their dinner, but the dream was never resolved.

It was sometime after dawn but long before the sun was fully risen that she felt Diego stir beside her. "I am sorry to wake you up," he said, "but I cannot go back to sleep and I do not want to leave this bed, so I thought I would occupy myself...."

It was some time later, after they had given themselves to one another and then dozed again for a while, that he sat up on one elbow and looked over at her.  Then he brushed a little of her hair away from her face and smiled.  "You are so beautiful," he sighed.  "It is so good with you." He was silent for a while, just looking at her. She was still a little flushed, but looked relaxed and deeply satisfied.

"You made me forget about the baby," she said softly.

"Which one?" he chuckled.  "The possibly new one or the old one we are still getting used to?"

"Both of them!" she giggled.  She sat up and then rested her head on his chest.  "Oh, Diego, do you really think we will have a new baby?"

"You keep asking me that, as if I am the one who would know such a thing! If there is a new baby, it is inside you, not me!"

She nudged his chest with her head.  "I guess we will just have to wait and find out," she said.    
  
He stroked her head gently.  "I guess we will."

******

By 9:00 the young de la Vegas had greeted their daughter, eaten breakfast, and rather mysteriously retired back into their room.  Excepting Bernardo, no one in the hacienda knew that in fact they had disappeared from their room down into the secret passage to Tornado's cave, and out into the muddy box canyon.  There, Diego handed his beloved a epee and, as he first had months ago in the mountains, commanded her to salute him with her weapon.  Thus began their fencing lessons in earnest, with Bernardo looking on.  Elizabeth finally concentrated on it and worked hard with Diego for over an hour.  The servant later observed, as he helped Diego pack for his journey to see Windhawk, that if she stuck with it, Doņa Elizabeth was going to become formidable with her sword.