While she let her friend help her, Idolina smiled, savoring in advance the succulent tidbit of news they were going to share. We’d see if Julia would dare mock her now, telling her she was a child, that she knew nothing of the world, that her conversation irritated her! She would marvel, yes, she would marvel to learn that Idolina knew, the secrets of the very Indians the foreign woman always saw as remote and inaccessible.

But when Idolina conveyed Teresa’s story to Julia, she didn’t marvel over it. Her eyes grew large with surprise and fear.

“So they’ve gone back to their old ways.”

Did Fernando know? Why hadn’t he told her? Did he want to cover for the Chamulas? Or to betray her?

He hates me, Julia thought bitterly. He doesn’t want to hold on to any of the things I have achieved.

She looked around her with the painful acuity of a farewell. The spaciousness, the solidity of this room, one among the many at her disposal in her house. The furnishings, in which wealth and taste were combined. The power of commanding an unconditional and submissive staff of servants. The security of having more than enough money to meet their needs. The prestige of being the wife of a civil servant and the mistress of a rancher. She had found in Ciudad Real the end point of a hazardous peregrination she did not want to recommence. And this stupid girl put her arms around her neck, urging her not to go away soon because she could not, really she could not, go on living with her family, not in this town, or . . . !

Julia passed her hand over Idolina’s head to calm her down.

“You’ll see, everything will come out all right.”

But she was afraid. And when Leonardo came to see her that night, she told him about the cave at Tzajal-hemel.

XXV

CHAPTER XXV

LEONARDO ASKED QUESTIONS, wanted details. Julia invented them. The more care she took to deflect suspicion from Fernando, the more he thought about rash confidings, secrets poorly kept. He pretended to believe her in order to get her to say more, and he thanked her for the warning with the promise of some dangling gold earrings that had caught La Alazana’s eye as she was strolling through the silversmiths’ district.

When their conversation was over, Leonardo went straight to the Palacio Episcopal. He needed some advice before notifying the civil authorities of the facts. His Excellency begged heaven to grant him patience when he learned that the lesson administered by the imprisonment of the Indian women had been in vain. In addition to being stubborn, the Chamulas were now heartened by the impunity the government was publicly guaranteeing them.

“The Holy Scriptures said it well,” Don Alfonso concluded.

“There is a time for war and a time for peace.”

“Precisely,” Leonardo concurred. “And now is the time for war.”