Doctor Spencer, I thought automatically, feeling protective of the title I'd fought so hard to earn. But neither title seemed right. It fit awkwardly like trying to cram one of Lin-Fong's little shoes on to my big feet. I waved a green-stained hand. "Nikita. Just call me Nikita."

Her tongue clicked. Her head shook once. A brief negation. "Not proper."

"Please. It would please me."

"Ni-ki-ta." The high-low way she said it sounded like the song of a bird. She repeated my name and laughed.

"Do you know herbs?"

"Ginger for heat. Melon-rind for cool. Yes, yes. I know. Had to. Chinese medicine from the Heavenly Kingdom. Make better. Stronger. White ghost medicine make sicker. The high-hat doctors bled the Don. Take all his chi away. He grow weak, weaker. Then a little stronger when they leave him alone. Better until they come again. It start all over."

"What starts?"

"Demons," she said. She turned to the left and spat suddenly on her clean kitchen floor. Startled, I moved to wipe it up. She stopped me. "For luck," she explained.

I straightened up again, wiping my hands on my apron. "So what's this about demons?"

Nodding, Lin-Fong pointed to her belly. "Fire demons. Too much. He ..." She drew a line from her belly up to her throat, then her hands fanned up and out from her mouth. "Over and over. Demons want out. That's good. I help. Give this." She opened a cupboard by her stove, and rummaged around the shelves. Giving a glad cry, she pulled out a small bottle and handed it to me.

I tilted it to one side. The dark oily liquid slowly moved. "What's this?"

The bottle uncorked with a small pop. I waved my hand over the open top and cautiously sniffed. Sharp. My nose wrinkled. "Cascara. Cripes." Poor Don Miguel. No wonder. His housekeeper had been regularly dosing him with castor oil, a known irritant. Well by now I'm sure he was thoroughly purged of anything evil; internally cleansed of absolutely anything at all. I corked the bottle again.

"No more," I said, searching for a way not to offend Lin-Fong. No matter how well-intentioned, this had to stop. "The demons. You forced them out, but they come back stronger. Grow angry. Need to find a balance. Let's do something differently. Let me take care of Don Miguel now."

"Of course. Duty of wife ... Or concubine." She bowed her head, but not before I caught her look of skepticism. She turned her back on me, and returned to the stove. Briskly she shook the wok and stirred the food.

I picked up the cleaver once more. There was something behind that look. Something wrong, something she wasn't telling me. "Is there anything else I should know about Don Miguel? Or about his ... uh, demons?"

"No, no. I no say more. Bad luck to speak. I speak. Make happen." She shook her head more vehemently this time so those butterfly earrings danced again.

"Lin-Fong, please. You know men. They'd rather die than talk. Go to their graves silent. Especially Don Miguel. He needs your help. I need your help. Please tell me. What else has happened? What else have you tried so far?"

"I rid demons. Try different things. Make offerings. Burn incense. Write healing prayer on kite, then let it go up in the sky to the gods. But gods no listen. No help him. No help at all." Lin-Fong poured water into the wok. It hissed viciously, a fragrant cloud of steam rising to the ceiling. "He worse."

"How?"

"The fire demons. Was bad. Now worse. Used to be ... just his belly. His dawn tien. But now they go to his head. Make him crazy. Talk like demon. Not him."

"What do you mean?" I didn't understand Lin-Fong. Maybe it was the language problem again. The capitán - crazy? He'd been charming, seductive, mysterious. But crazy? Definitely not. I'd never met a saner person who made me insane.

Lin-Fong looked worried. As she stirred her pots, she seemed to be mulling it over; making some decision; perhaps weighing her loyalty to the Don versus confiding in me. She was about to speak when the screen door creaked opened, then slammed against the house.

"Ma-Ma! Ma-Ma!" piped a small voice from the back door.

Lin-Fong let loose a torrent of Cantonese that sounded rata-tat-tat loud - almost angry - but I could see from her expression that wasn't so. I heard children reply, then the thump-thump of feet running towards us. Something scraped along the floor. The sounds grew louder, turned the corner, then the children burst into the kitchen, carrying a giant red rectangular kite between them. There was the shy little girl from the breakfast table. The boy I recognized right away. "Li-Chu! How are you? Joh sun."

The cabin-boy's moon-face lit up. "No, no, Missy. Joh sun means 'Good morning'. It's almost night. You say Joy geen. Good day."

I repeated the phrase.

"Good, good. Almost good as Adana." He pointed to the quiet dark-eyed girl next to him. Her long black braids hung to the small of her back. At the tips of her braids, the pink silk ribbons tied were still crisp bows, and her pinafore was spotless. She held the other end of the kite. There was a big hole in one corner. Bits of bamboo struts poked through like broken bones. Ugly mess. A regular compound open fracture.

"What happened?" I asked.

Adana's eyes suddenly turned glossy with tears. She sniffled as Li-Chu led them over to a low table by the window. Careful as undertakers with a deceased, they respectfully laid the kite down. "Pedro let Adana fly kite. This once, she try it. It go high, high, higher than ever. Then wind shift. Sw-o-o-oop. It go Boom! Crash! Bust. Spec-tac-u-lar." Adana's lips quivered as a tear threatened to spill over the edge of her eye.

"Awww, don't cry. Pedro will fix it. You can fix it, can't you?" asked Li-Chu of a slight olive-skinned man who trotted into the room. He carried a large box kite in one hand. Its tail was bunched in his other hand.

"Sure. I fix it. I can fix anything. I do it. I can do it myself," Pedro answered eagerly in a loud voice more suited for outdoors than inside the house. He was tall. He walked fast with his shoulders hunched forward, his arms swinging widely as if he didn't know where his body was or what it was doing. His left hand barely missed the bowl of jam at then end of the table. He suddenly smiled. "Pan dulce. My favorite. Goody goody." Suddenly Pedro let go of the kite tail so that the knotted rags plopped on to the middle of the floor. Then he picked a cake, and dunked it into the jam so that blobs flew everywhere. He took a big bite, chewing with his mouth half open.

"Pedro. Your shirt," murmured Lin-Fong.

The front of his shirt was mis-buttoned. The middle gaped open, and each of the buttons above or below it were offset by one. "I did it. I did it myself," he said, standing a little too close. He looked me over. His eyes were round and dark-brown like fresh chocolate cakes, made glossy by curiosity. "Hola. Hi, hi. Who are you?"

"I'm Nikita."

Pedro finished off his cookie in two more bites. He licked his fingers. Jam wreathed his mouth. "You're a lady. Señora or señorita? I like señoritas better, but the señoritas don't like me. They don't play with me. They all play with my cousin."

"Your cousin?" I asked.

"Miguelito. Only he's not little Miguel any more. He's big 'Miguel' now because he's the Don, you know. Don Miguel. I'm just Señor Pedro. Only you can call me 'Pedro' like everyone else does. No one calls me señor. I'm not scary."

"No, you're not." I smiled. He smiled back. It was wide and without guile, showing all of his jam-stained teeth. So this was the younger Cabrillo cousin, the one they always talked about in hushed voices. They said there was something funny about him, and now I knew why. He was still a child in a man's body. His mind had simply stopped growing.

So his father was the old Don Cabrillo, and Pedro should have inherited the title and the lands when his older brother had died. But Pedro hadn't. Instead, the inheritance had passed to Miguel. And now I understood. Pedro wasn't capable. He was, well, different. I watched him eat directly out of the bowls. He chewed on the chopped white mushrooms as if they were candy. Then he wiped his hands on the sides of his pants, making little cloud puffs of sugar as he walked over to the damaged kite. Hands on hips, he examined it carefully.

"Can you fix it, Tio Pedro?" asked Adana tremulously, her voice barely above a whisper.

Nodding, he reached into a wooden carryall on top of the table. He removed a glue pot, brush, and scissors; then laid them out in a precise arrangement. Next he sorted through a bundle of bamboo sticks, checking their length, testing their flexibility. Humming off-key, he replaced a strut, then a second. It was a delicate operation, deftly performed. His clumsiness seemed to vanish completely as he mended the kite. We watched in awe.

Next to me, Li-Chu whispered, "You should see Pedro's kites. He's got a centipede, and a swallow-tail, and a giant square one. Even bigger than this. That giant one picks you up and you can fly on it."

"On it? You mean that you can fly it. Not the other way around. People can't fly," I said, trying not to imagine it.

"No, no. It picks me up," corrected Li-Chu excitedly, hopping on one foot to the next. He almost danced around the table. "I flew. Like a phoenix. A dragon. Up, up in the air. I could see everything. Ev-er-y-thing! All small. Houses look like rice. And people! Even big people look like teeny tiny bugs."

Judas. I shut my eyes for a moment but I could still see it. The nausea grew. Swallowing hard, I glanced at Lin-Fong for confirmation.

She nodded grimly. "It is Chinese. From the Heavenly Kingdom," she reluctantly admitted.

"Heavenly all right. It will send you straight to heaven if you break your neck," I replied. Li-Chu groaned. Adana's eyes widened as she looked from me to him, then at the kite that lay innocently on the table. She took a step backwards as if it were a deadly weapon.

Pedro stopped his mending. He looked up at me. "You don't like kites, señorita?"

"I do like kites. I would love to fly one. I'd be honored if you let me. It's just that I don't want to go up in the air. I like to keep both my feet on the ground."

"So true," a new voice said softly behind me.

I almost jumped. Don Miguel. He was back. Damn the man. Quieter than a cat. He was always sneaking up on me. I would do well to remember that. Cautiously I stepped aside, turning around with a calmness I didn't feel.

"Some chaw? "offered Lin-Fong, already with a teapot in hand. She held out a small cup without a handle.

With a small smile of thanks, Miguel took the oolong and sipped, rifling one hand over his windblown hair. So he'd been outside again, God knows where. His black coat and trousers were impeccably clean, but his boots still had traces of street mud and something green and slimy like the duckweed that grew low on the pilings. What had he been doing below the docks? I wondered just how I could trick him into telling me. I searched his face for a clue, any clue. Came up empty-handed as usual. Just another day, nothing out of the ordinary for Don Miguel.

"Another kite? Good." He stepped up to the table and listened politely to Pedro's long meandering story about the kite crash and every detail of its repair. He made the appropriate sounds of approval as he bent over and examined the fresh paint with Pedro. The two men stood together, heads side by side. They looked related - the same height, build, coloring. But there any similarities ended. The cousins carried themselves completely differently. Pedro seemed all soft and open and child-like; whereas Miguel had been hardened into an adult, all his innocence chiseled away by time and circumstance. In all the essentials, he seemed completely different. And his sanity? Was that different too? After all, how well did I know him? Not very well, and not for very long. I could count our encounters on the fingers of one hand; hardly a sound basis for diagnosis. Perhaps I'd missed something or hadn't seen its signs yet.

Remembering Lin-Fong's claim, I examined Miguel even closer. He seemed lucid. Didn't say much, but what he did say made sense. There was no sign of wildness in his clear steady gaze. If Miguel had any demons, they remained hidden. I couldn't find any hint of madness like his cousin. Perhaps Miguel was only better at disguising them. I'd met highly functioning patients like that before. You'd never know when their melancholia or dipsomania would hit. Folks were like tides. Madness ebbed and flowed. Some were on quicker cycles. Others had long dry spells before another high tide would hit. He would bear watching. Close watching.

I stepped away, then noticed that I wasn't the only one watching him. Hanging back a little, Adana looked owlishly up at him. She offered him a shy smile, then bobbed a quick curtsey. "Papa."

Papa? Cripes, what was this? Surprise hit me like a misdirected reflex hammer. Thonk! right on the temple instead of my knee. I felt a little dizzy, taking it all in. So Miguel was a father too. What other secrets did he carry, did Major Wolfe neglect to tell me about? I glanced from daughter to father. Both had a darker complexion, but otherwise there was no resemblance. There was no sign of Don Miguel in that small girl. Perhaps Adana took after her curiously absent mother instead of the silent, removed father now standing before me.

It bothered me. I admit it. How could Miguel be her father? He didn't act like one: no familiar touch or a special secret grin like Pop used to give me and Monte. Miguel only gave her a patient reserved look, slightly inclining his head to one side. The barest acknowledgement of Adana. Yet I knew that man could charm anyone female on land or sea. He didn't appear to be even trying. Not even with his own child. How peculiar. Something a little sad and sour twisted in my belly like a bite of green apple. I didn't know who I felt more sorry for right then: the father or the daughter.

I didn't have much time to puzzle over it, because the next thing I knew, Lin-Fong was clapping her hands together, and shooing the children out of the kitchen. "Come, come. Wash up. Chop, chop. Dinner's earlier today."

"Ah, that's right. Schedule's moved up. The State Ball tonight." Miguel drained the last of his cup, then set it down on the table. He looked consideringly at me with an intimacy that made me uncomfortable. Then finally, when I thought I couldn't bear it any longer, Miguel turned to his cousin. "Going?"

Pedro frowned, wetting his brush between his lips. Then he dipped the perfect tip into the paint, retouched the kite some more. "No, no, no. Grown-ups talk and talk and talk. Dance, eat. More talking. I don't like it. No games."

"Not the kind you like," Miguel agreed.

"Are you going, señorita?"

"Me?" I sputtered. "Why me?"

Miguel took my hand, sniffed the knuckles. He looked curiously at my green-stained apron, then back at me. "Why not?"

"Because ... Because I don't belong."

"Afraid?" asked Miguel.

"Of course not." My spine stiffened as if it were suddenly made of iron and whalebone. I never backed down from a challenge. No Spencers ever did. I wasn't going to be the first.

"Good. You are quite ... capable. Surely it is no more daunting than some of the things you do so well," Miguel said, referring to my medical skills but implying a different kind of skill all together. I flushed in response. "Come, querida. Don't be shy. Step out. Flowers cannot blossom in the dark. They need light. And please ... no maidenly protests about nothing to wear." He smiled a little wickedly as if that alternative would be just fine with him.

I almost jerked my hand away from him, but remembered - just in time - my role, the wide watchful eyes of Pedro upon us. I suffered Miguel's kiss on my hands, pretended to like the warm sensation that remained there - on my flesh - after he was done. I smiled prettily up at him. "As you command, Miguel. You are the capitán after all."

"No, niña. You are. The capitán of my heart." And he bowed low over my hand.

###

I stood outside his ... our bedroom, feeling as ridiculous as could be. I mean, here I was, dressed like a lady, but right now I was sweating like a hod carrier underneath all this powder and petticoats. My shoulders might be bare (as well as more bosom than I cared to think about), but below that, I was smothering in layers and layers of lavender chiffon. Maybe I looked like a fluffy little cloud but inside I felt as humid as a thunderhead. Worth gown. Schmorth gown. Paris fashions? More like Paris torture. It was too much, way too much. I couldn't stand it. How did women do this? I was convinced that the corset had shoved my intestines - large and small - somewhere near my ears. Permanently. Now my lungs were completely compressed. A total bilateral pneumonectomy. All I could take were these pitiful shallow breaths like one of those black lung-ers from the coal mines.

Who was I trying to kid? I wasn't a lady, never really claimed to be. I was ignorant of or just ignored most of those lady rules. They hampered me like this blasted single hoop petticoat I was wearing right now. They were silly rules, tripped me up half the time. It was easier to do what made sense to me instead of what made sense to society. Now for instance, take this rule: "A lady should always be fashionably late." Forget that. I was unfailingly prompt for appointments and hospital rounds. Never could understand the reason behind making a gentleman wait for me. Why wait? Time was a'wasting like pouring water in the sand.

I could hear the seconds ticking away as Miguel made me wait for him to finish getting ready for the ball. Wait in this get-up? Who was I kidding? I couldn't wait a moment longer! Impossible. It was already an hour past our agreed-upon departure, and I'd worn a stripe down the rug from my pacing. Something was wrong, seriously wrong. Don Miguel didn't strike me as a procrastinating type.

I tried again, almost shouting through the door. "The landau is ready. Been waiting for us. Let's go."

There was only silence from the other side. I knocked harder on the door. "Miguel!" Again I raised my hand, ready to knock some more, but the door finally swung open. I stopped just in time before accidentally striking Xi, who stood on the other side of the threshold. From his great height of seven feet, he looked down at me with a bland impassive expression that would have rivaled his master's. He held up ten fingers and nodded meaningfully.

"Ten more minutes? That's what you said half an hour ago. Now where is Miguel?" I asked, shouldering Xi aside. I stepped into the bedroom. And then it hit me. That smell. No matter how much you wash away or how long you open the windows to air something out, there is no disguising the rank acid smell of a sickroom. I recognized it in a second. Poor Miguel. And here I'd been irritated instead of concerned. Guilt washed over me. I should have known something was wrong. I grabbed Xi's long cotton sleeve. "Where is he? Take me to him."

"No need ... I'm here." Miguel walked out of the dressing room into the bedroom with his usual athletic stride. There was no sickly hitch or hesitation. His evening clothes were stark black elegance from the line of his jacket to the pressed pleats of his trousers. The white wings of his collar were crisp and pointed at almost mathematically precise angles. But above his tie, his face looked a little grimmer, his color a little off. Still no jaundice. Good.

I pressed my hand against his forehead for a brief second as he continued moving forward without breaking a step. No fever. Not clammy either. The hair at his temples felt damp as if he'd recently splashed water on his face. He passed me by. "What is it? How long have you been this way?"

He made an impatient sound as he walked quickly to the outer door. With each step, he seemed to add a layer of determination, then another, so that by the time he had crossed the room, all the layers had hardened into a black lacquer that obscured any sign of illness. He looked shiny and new, the picture of health. Was this the same man?

I almost blinked. "Stay still, will you? Come on. Just for a second. You're not well. I can see that. We don't have to go. Let's send the landau back. Call it off."

"No," he said quietly.

"No? Are you nuts?" Immediately I regretted my choice of words. Never tell a crazy person that they're crazy. Just makes them good and mad. I could tell by the way his eyes widened. He opened the door with deliberate care, then ushered me out.

"Hey, hey. No pushing," I said.

"Your fan? Warm tonight. These affairs are usually crowded. You'll overheat." He was ruthlessly shepherding me down the hallway as if trying to make up for lost time. I had to pick up my skirts and trot faster in these darn slippers to keep up with him. He added, "You need gloves."

I groaned. "See. I'm always forgetting something. I can't do this."

"You can." His hand closed over my arm. Five points of kid leather pressing down, commanding me forward. "Let's go."

"Well, at least tell me if you're lightheaded. If you've been puking, you can get dehydrated real fast. Need to push fluids. Not alcohol, mind you. No wine or beer or anything stronger. That will dry you up even faster. You'll konk out. Things like water or juice or lemonade are fine. Lady drinks. You can tank up on those," I said vengefully, knowing that men abhorred those insipid refreshments. The temperance movement had not been popular in these parts. "Feeling dizzy at all?"

"Only when I'm with you, querida. Only with you," he said with a low purposeful intent that made me feel funny inside. Instead of him, I was the dizzy one now; dizzy with dread and anticipation. And that look: dark, direct, and dangerous. Definitely dangerous. Somehow I knew that this was one ball I would never forget. Don Miguel would definitely make sure of it.

Continued in Red Sky At Night

All non-LFN characters copyright (c) Bonnie Bo 2000. The right of Bonnie Bo to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her. All rights reserved.

Author's Notes

"Adana" is the feminine version of "Adan," which is the Spanish form of Adam. Means "from the red earth."

Aphrodisiacs: Truffles produce "a musky chemical that is also secreted in the male pig's saliva and prompts mating behavior in the sow ... The biological role of this boar sex pheromone might explain the efficient interest of pigs in search of this delicacy." The pheromone is also similar to the one secreted by humans. McGee, On Food and Cooking.

"Truffles were well known to the Romans as a powerful aphrodisiac. Book VII Apicus' "De re coquinaria" mainly deals with delicacies believed to have aphrodisiacal properties, and includes six ways of preparing truffles. Most highly rated were the Libyan truffles, but also truffles from Cyrene and Thrakia were much appreciated. Pliny speculates about the origin of truffles and assumes they might be the result of a thunderbolt. However, with the fall of the Roman Empire the magic properties of truffles fell into oblivion and were rediscovered only in the late eighteenth century. This time the interest focussed on the French truffles, Tuber melanosporum, and the erotic powers attributed to it were remarkable. Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, in "Physiologie du goût" (published 1825, one year before his death at the age of 71 years) devotes six pages to the erotic properties of truffles. He provides an example of how a lady narrowly escaped being seduced by a guest she had fed a hen stuffed with truffles, and he concludes: 'Truffles are no perfect aphrodisiac, but in certain cases they can make women more yielding and men more amiable'." Johan's Guide to Aphrodisiacs

Black Point Cove is where Fort Mason and Aquatic Park currently stand. It was named for the black scrub laurels that once grew there. I chose this location for Don Miguel's home because from there you can see a spectacular almost 360 degree panorama of the San Francisco Bay (if it's not foggy ...). That visibility becomes important later on in the series.

Blood-letting: from the time of the ancient Greeks to the late 1800's, blood-letting was believed to release disease from the body. There were four methods: cutting the veins, opening arteries (very dangerous), scarification, and leeches. My source: Henry Clutterbuck, M.D., Member of the Royal College of Physicians. "On the Proper Administration of Blood-Letting, for the Prevention and Cure of Disease," (London, 1840) [Random historical note: George Washington was bled to death by his physician.]

Kites: were invented by the Chinese, dating back to 475 B.C. They were originally used to signal troops. A large rectangular kite enabled men to hang-glide and spy on enemies.

Medicine during the Civil War: Even though germs hadn't been discovered yet, the importance of cleanliness was well-known to ancient Hindi, Alexandrian, and Chinese healers. That knowledge was lost during the Dark Ages, and wasn't reintroduced to Western medicine until the mid 1800's (Lister, handwashing, carbolic acid, clean water). Unfortunately, it took even longer before antisepsis was widely practiced in the United States. Civil War soldiers were twice as likely to die from infectious diseases than from battlefield wounds. Walter's story is based on accounts like this (this being one of the least gruesome ...)

"At Gettysburg the wounded-many thousands of them-were carried to the farmsteads behind our lines. The houses, the barns, the sheds, and the open barnyards were crowded with the moaning and waiting human beings and still an unceasing procession of stretchers and ambulances was coming in from all sides to augment the number of the sufferers... Most of the operating tables were placed in the open where the light was best, some of them partially protected against the rain by tarpaulins or blankets stretched upon poles. There stood the surgeons, their sleeves rolled up to the elbows, their bare arms as well as their linen aprons smeared with blood, their knives not seldom held between their teeth, while they were helping a patient on or off the table, or had their hands otherwise occupied; around them pools of blood and amputated arms or legs in I heaps, sometimes more than man-high. As a wounded man was lifted on the table, often shrieking with pain as the attendants handled him, the surgeon quickly examined the wound and resolved upon cutting off the injured limb. Some ether was administered and the body put in position in a moment. The surgeon snatched his knife from between his teeth, where it had been while his hands were busy, wiped it rapidly once or twice across his blood-stained apron, and the cutting began. The operation accomplished, the surgeon would look around with a deep sigh, and then-"Next!"

And so it went on, hour after hour, while the number of expectant patients seemed hardly to diminish. Now and then one of the wounded men would call attention to the fact that his neighbor lying on the ground had given up the ghost while waiting for his turn, and the dead body was then quietly removed. Or a surgeon, having been long at work, would put down his knife, exclaiming that his hand had grown unsteady, and that this was too much for human endurance-not seldom hysterical tears streaming down his face.

-Bancroft and Dunning, eds., The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz

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