Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [198]
Before returning to the kitchen, she decided to see what was happening in the valley so that she could report to the others. The fire in San Bernabé was out. The blaze in the southeast cane fields, however, seemed to be snaking toward the lower batey.
She’d never seen anyone else use Ana’s telescope, but she now crouched at the eyepiece, not daring to change the height so that doña Ana would never know. She probed the darkness until she found the lower batey. Torches and lamps lit some of the buildings well enough to make out the infirmary and the casona. Meri aimed toward the burning fields but passed over them. As she repointed toward the fire, something caught her eye. She focused the lens toward the movement and saw a man dressed in white upon a pale horse. Goose bumps rose up and down her spine.
“El Caminante!”
She looked away, because watching the apparition might curse her. But she had to look again to make sure it wasn’t a vision, remembering that she’d never heard anyone say that El Caminante had a horse. She surveyed the valley once more and saw the man in white again. “How can it be?” she said aloud, as if he could hear her, but just as she said it, El Caminante disappeared into the burning cane.
Ana looked in on the infirmary again, but no injured workers had been brought while she was at the ingenio. She returned to the casona porch, from where she had a good view over the fields. To her left, the fire over San Bernabé appeared to be out, but along the road to Guares, a small fire sparked like a target in the night. She nodded, recognizing that Severo had ordered the workers to trench and douse the boundaries of the farthest field to keep the fire from jumping rows, letting the inside burn.
As she watched, a cold wind swirled around her that nearly knocked her down. It whooshed like human hands, pushing her out of the way, and continued through the dusty yard into the cane, clacking and sizzling as it spun toward the burning field. Her ears rang with the sound of unintelligible voices. The hair on her arms, behind her neck, and along her scalp bristled. She heard a neigh, galloping, and yelling as a fiery crown boiled over the cane, hissed, and disappeared.
Suddenly, she was in total darkness. She palmed the porch railing toward the stairs to the yard. Every candle, lamp, and torch was extinguished in and around the infirmary. Below her, someone ran toward the cane, chased by a dog, but she couldn’t tell who it was. Ana was frozen on the top tread, afraid to go down into the yard. She now heard wails and scuffling in her direction. She’d left the rifle inside the house, leaning against the wall, and now backed toward it.
The hounds skulked closer. Two came upstairs to her side. Someone managed to light a torch, and in a few moments candles and lamps were again flashing on the ends of poles. Her next thought was that she was trapped upstairs in the old, splintery casona. Did they mean to set the house on fire, like the runaways apparently had done to the canebrakes?
A huddle was forming at the bottom steps of the casona, but no one dared come closer, afraid of the dogs.
“Conciencia!” Ana called from the porch.
“The fire called her,” Toño shouted, followed by shrieks.
“A spirit entered her,” Zena said, and began the Lord’s prayer over the weeping.
Ana realized that they were gathering in the yard not in anger but because they wanted to be near her and were seeking her protection. She thought their terror had something to do with the figure that ran into the canebrakes being chased by a dog. And she now knew it must have been Conciencia.
Ana ran to the front porch.