Free Days of the Dead by Barbara Hambly

going to wipe the Texian rebels from the face of the earth. I doubt that if Fernando had cried out at the top of his lungs he’d have been heard.”
    He winced, sickened with pity for even a man who would almost certainly have had him killed. “But I doubt he had the breath to cry out, once the poison started to work. His face was so swollen, I’m not sure I would have recognized him if it hadn’t been for his hair and his uniform. He looked like he’d died of suffocation, mouth gaping, tongue sticking out—his hands were still tangled in his collar, one of those ghastly military ones designed to protect you from inadvertently
breathing
in battle. The room was quite bright. Fernando couldn’t abide what he called the ‘medieval dark’ of candle-light and had a patent Argand lamp on the desk and two more in his room; he’d brought them from Germany.”
    From somewhere in the courtyard a voice wailed in French, “The President? Here? And no one has thought to tell me this until now, now, when there is nothing to eat for dinner but that pitiful roasted deer, those wretched
vols-au-vent,
and only
three jellies
to offer! It is enough to slay oneself, to fall upon one’s sword. . . .”
    The chef, thought January. Presumably, the one who had counted on the wedding-feast to make his reputation . . .
    “How did Franz look when you spoke to him directly after supper?”
    “He didn’t look well,” said Hannibal. “But of course, for twenty-four hours he’d been trying to make sense out of Don Prospero’s financial papers, not a task
I’d
care to undertake sober.”
    “Consuela tells me he threatened you earlier in the day.”
    “And so he had.” Hannibal sighed and took January’s flask for another sip of brandy. “You have to understand that the day had started with Don Prospero standing stark naked in the courtyard, conversing at the top of his lungs with an invisible Jaguar-God. Don Anastasio tried to quiet him and got a
mano
thrown at him—one of those rock pounders that the Indian women grind corn with. By pretending to be Quetzalcoatl, I managed to get Don Prospero back upstairs and into his room, with Father Ramiro telling me all the way I should be garroted as a heretic, but that was followed almost immediately by Señora Lorcha’s attempt at a sneaky wedding—there’s a door from Natividad’s room into Don Prospero’s, and Señora Lorcha had stolen the padlock key. Fernando and his two mad-doctors arrived in time to put a stop to
that,
so I understand his being snappish. After supper I went to see him, quite frankly to see if he’d call off his father’s thugs long enough for me to make it back to Mexico City. I mean,
he
didn’t want me here,
I
didn’t want to be here, so it should have been possible for us to find
some
kind of common ground.”
    “I take it,” said Rose, “that matters did not work out that way.”
    “No,” sighed Hannibal. “No, they didn’t. You see, the amorous Valentina . . .”
    Within the
sala,
a rifle cracked. The next instant, the two gentlemen in European tailcoats burst through the door and pelted toward the stairs—January noted that one was fair and tall and the other dark and awkward-looking and taller still; both had mustaches and the fair one wore a monocle. Both ran like men who had long ago concluded that it was beneath their dignity to run and had recently changed their minds and were out of practice—they collided at the top of the stairs in a shower of notebooks, pencils, and high-crowned beaver hats, and nearly scratched each other baldheaded trying to be the first one down.
    “Drs. Laveuve and Pichon,” identified Hannibal in the tone of a gamekeeper helpfully identifying various sub-species of pheasants for the uninitiated guest. “Pichon is one of the chief physicians at San Hipólito, the biggest hospital for the mad in Mexico City; Laveuve runs a private clinic for those unfortunate enough to be both wealthy and