Beautiful Blood

Once Cerruti was seated in the cantina, he grew unresponsive to questions and stared into space, his lips moving silently. Relieved to see this, yet concerned for his well-being, Rosacher helped to clean the blood away and forced him to drink a glass of rum. Several of the men talked about forming a party to go after Frederick and the woman, Yasmin, but Rosacher dissuaded them, relating his “experiences” of the previous night and telling them that the creature was too fast and powerful for them to go off half-cocked. The headman of the village dispatched a rider to Alta Miron so as to inform the king and Rosacher made no attempt to interfere with this. He had abandoned his misgivings about killing Carlos, feeling that the die was cast, and thought that if the king could be brought to Becan, it would not only make their task easier, it would be proof that Griaule’s will was at work here.

After the furor had subsided and many anecdotes had been told about where this and that person was and what they had been doing when Yasmin was taken, Rosacher led Cerruti to the longhouse and helped him into a hammock. Though the night was humid, almost as warm as the day, Cerruti shivered and complained feebly of the cold. Clearly, he was in shock. Having no medicine, all Rosacher could do was keep him warm and talk to him. The headman had set guards with torches and machetes about the village in case Frederick returned, some of them standing watch beside the longhouse, and he was thus forced to keep his voice low, but he enjoined Cerruti to hang on, saying he needed him in order to direct Frederick, and finally managed to elicit some coherent responses.

“It’s my fault for lying with her,” said Cerruti at one point. “I wouldn’t have done, if I’d thought Frederick was about.”

His sweaty face, a pale orange in the dim, flickering light, was a mask of anxiety and anguish.

“He can’t abide women around me,” said Cerruti. “Or maybe it’s just women and I got nothing to do with it.”

Rosacher cautioned him once again to lower his voice. “Can you tell if he’s still out there?”

“Oh, he’s out there. He never goes far.”

“Will he do the job for us? Can you still control him?”

Cerruti nodded, or it might have been a shiver. Rosacher asked the question again.

“He’ll do your killing.” Sweat beaded on Cerruti’s brow. His skin was ghastly pale and the shadows in his eyes looked moist and feverish. “He’ll do your killing and more, don’t you worry.”

+

Cerruti’s fever abated during the night, his temperature went down and his heartbeat grew regular. He slept late in the morning and was able to eat a breakfast of tortillas, rice and beans in the cantina. The villagers had cleared away the wreckage of the hut, restoring a semblance of normalcy to their home. Chickens and pigs foraged in the dirt, grubby children sucked on mango pulp, and hobbled beside a banana tree, a donkey that Frederick had passed over in favor of Yasmin stood placidly, chewing on a stalk of sugar cane.

+

After breakfast, Rosacher cautioned Cerruti against speaking about Frederick and retired to his hammock, hoping to sleep for an hour or two; but his mind was agitated and sleep would not come. Having to care for Cerruti had suppressed his anxieties and, relieved of that duty, he thought of all that could go wrong. He wondered if Frederick, as Alonso had suggested, had been responsible for the death of the mother and child in Dulce Nombre—it did not seem so implausible now. And what did that say about Cerruti’s ability to control his pet? Rosacher suspected that Cerruti’s control was subject to Frederick’s inclination and doubted that the task before them could be accomplished with anything approaching ease. Would Frederick go after any woman who came close to Cerruti…and what if the king had women in his retinue, a distinct possibility. These and other related concerns pressed in on him until at last he sank under their weight and lapsed into a sleep troubled by dreams in which he lay awake, worrying about this and that.