The Lastoc of the Annumpi: Hernando's Hideaway

Chapter 3

Don Hernando awoke in his dark library, the old house creaking softly around him. His hand reached out and grasped the sherry glass with a practiced motion. He drew it to his lips and drained the remains of the drink his daughter for poured for him hours ago. He had been furious when he downed the first swallow. Furious at the effrontery of Don Cupido and furious at his own impotent rage. His anger had washed away on the sherry and the sleep, but the frustration remained gnawing at his stomach. His father would have struck the insolent boy across the face and dismissed him disdainfully. His grandfather would have run him through where he stood. For the son of a jumped up merchant to demand to marry his daughter. Unthinkable! But he, desperately hanging on to this old family home and these diminished holdings, too often had to endure Don Cupido’s insufferable rudeness. 

He was old, old and failing. He had never recovered from the death of his beloved young wife. It would be the work of the next generation, of Maria and her husband, to reclaim the family’s honor or lose it altogether. Everything balanced on the slender shoulders of Maria. Don Hernando sighed and pulled himself to his feet. The old man, bowed and worn by too many lonely, difficult years, shuffled across the room and poured himself another sherry.

Earlier that evening, Don Cupido had burst into the library as Don Hernando was organizing his collection of manuscripts from local historians. The young man had been drinking again and had forced his way   past Mrs. O’Brien, the cook. In Don Hernando’s reduced household Mrs. O’Brien, the butler’s widow, or one of her many children and grandchildren, would answer the door. The O’Brien family, solid local folks whose Irish name traced its descent to a Wild Goose who settled in South America, looked after Don Hernando and Donna Maria, his only child, more out of human concern and respect than from a monetary arrangement. These days they rarely got paid, but they shared the food and had a roof over their heads. In those circles of society that don’t talk about society, many referred to the house as the “Casa O’Brien.”

Don Cupido had plopped down in Don Hernando’s favorite chair, swilled several sherries and, yet again, demanded Donna Maria marry him. Don Hernando winced as the boy unbuttoned the waist button of his pants and belched. Don Hernando explained once again that his daughter had refused to even consider marriage to the fine young gentleman.  

   

       “It is not her choice,” bellowed the drunken youth. “You indulge your headstrong daughter. It is not right. Be a man and order you daughter to marry me.”

   

       “I cannot and I would not,” said Don Hernando softly, his glaze lowered, his head pulled down into his hunched shoulders as if expecting a blow that must be borne.

Don Cupido did not hear the old man. He was fidgeting in the chair and looking about the room.  His eyes settled on a delicate chair with an embroidered seat that stood to his left. He swiveled in his chair and hooked a muddy boot around a leg of the delicate chair and pulled it in front him. He grunted in satisfaction and raised his dirty boots to rest on the small chair.

“If your damn boots touch that chair, I will kill you.”

The old house was hushed. It had not heard that steely tone of command since the days of the first Don. Don Cupido froze. He paused, his legs extended over the flowered cushion. Then he pivoted and lowered his feet to the floor. 

“It is time you left my house,” snapped Don Hernando rising to his feet. An unaccustomed tone of command had shaped his words into weapons. “Get out.”

Don Cupido arose and adjusted his clothing. He eyed Don Hernando as if he had never seen him before. 

“I’ll be back, old man,” he said as he walked toward the door. “My family gets what they want. You know that. Most of what you had is now ours. And I want your daughter. Tell her, old man, that my patience with her little games is running out.”

Don Hernado shouted after him,”Donna Maria will never marry you. She will never marry a drunken fool. Stay away from us. Stay away from daughter.”

His last words trailed off as the spirit of the old family honor and glory that had filled Don Hernado, that had lifted him up, slipped away and weariness poured in. The old man’s legs began to tremble and he collapsed into a chair.

When the sound of Don Cupido’s slamming of the front door reached the library, a door built into the far wall of the library slid open. A slim young woman slipped through the door. It must have been her carriage, her graceful walk that revealed her gender, because she was dressed as no other young woman you might see. She was dressed like a hired man. She wore heavy boots that had been hurriedly scraped almost clean with various sticky organic substances still clinging to them. Her pants and shirt were made of a brown, tough weave with plenty of pockets, more designed for wear than for style. She wore scarred, supple leather gloves with reinforced stitching. Her head was covered with a broad-brimmed woven hat the obscured her face.

She tore the hat and gloves off and threw them on her father’s desk. Her dark hair was thick and wavy, but cut unfashionably short. Her hurried across the library to her father.

“What’s wrong, poppa” asked Donna Maria. “I heard yelling.”

“Don Cupido,” said her father in a listless voice his daughter had to lean down to hear. 

“Again? He was drunk I suppose. No, don’t answer, of course he was.” Maria made sure her father was comfortable and then went to the cupboard and poured him a sherry.

“Rest, father, you’re exhausted. I need to go and change and then we can talk.”

“Thank you, my dear,” said Don Hernando as he took a sip of sherry. “I think I will rest for a bit and then I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“Alright, poppa, but I’ll check on you later. I need to clean up and change and then I’ll be back. I have a lot to tell you about today.  I think I know what’s wrong with Eugusto.”

Her father was already asleep in his chair, the sherry glass dangling loosely from his relaxed hand. Maria carefully lifted the glass and placed it on a side table by the chair. Then she gently placed his dangling arm in his lap and kissed his forehead. Maria gathered up her gloves and hat and then turned to leave. On the way out she noticed that her mother’s chair had been moved. Maria picked up the delicate chair and moved it to its accustomed place on the left side of her father’s.

**********

Lemuel’s hut in the reeds was only two miles from Don Hernando’s manor, but the path wound through the tall grass and reeds so the going was slow. Picking your way through the ocean of grass was nearly impossible, especially if you were not familiar with the hidden paths. It was difficult even so. As he carefully made his way through the grasses whose seed heads towered over him Lemuel wondered, not for the first time, if those born Annumpi had an easier time. He did the best he could, but even after all this time he wasn’t sure he’d mastered the trade.

On the way home, Lemuel stopped off at various hiding places and gathered supplies - peat, eggs, flour, salt, honey. He arrived at his home with his arms full and his stomach empty. He placed his supplies on a shelf carved in the rock that made the back wall of the hut. He tossed the peat onto the fire stone and struck a spark with flint that ignited the kindling. Above the fire stone on the back wall was carved “Hernando’s Hideaway,’ the name he gave his hut when he discovered that he was on the rear, unusable section of Don Hernando’s land. He had briefly considered paying rent to the Don, he seemed like a good man, but there was no mention of paying rent in “The Lastoc of the Annumpi.” Besides, once all this land belonged to the Annumpi and their herds of spoltal. 

Lemuel sat on  a reed mat and leaned back against the stone wall. He scanned the three reed walls and the thatch roof three feet above his head. Everything looked tight. He reached for his journal and wrote the date on the top of the page. He paused and considered the date, his brow knitting as he struggled to recall a dim memory. He reached back over his shoulder and drew down his first journal, now tattered and soiled. He opened the battered old book and looked at the the first entry.

    “I am going to be an Annumpi and I and seasick.”

It was dated seventeen years ago to the day. 

   “Seventeen years,” he thought, “I was seventeen when I left and now, just like that, I’m seventeen years older.” He shook his head and set about making supper. He drew water from the spring outside the hut and checked that his only bottle of beer was still wedged between the rocks just below the surface. He returned to the hut and put a black iron skillet on the fire. He poured a few drops of oil into the pan and cracked three eggs onto the sizzling oil. The eggs began to set, so he tossed in a few chunks of game sausage, wild onions, and two herbs he called spear and shovel for their shapes. He had no idea  what their names were, but he liked the taste. Finally he plopped his last two pieces of unleavened bread on top to lightly toast them.

While he watched his dinner sizzle and pop and eagerly drew in the smells of the cooking food, he smiled. He knew that tomorrow, after seventeen years, he would finally be an Annumpi. It was time for the next part of his life, the third seventeen years. In the first he was lonely and invisible among his family in Devers. For the second, he was lonely and invisible in the grasses and wetlands of the Annumpi. But in the third, the third, he would still invisible, but that’s alright, for he would be lonely no more. Tonight he had found Eugusto, his spoltal. 

Eugusto was being held in the sideyard of Don Hernando’s manor. He was being held prisoner, his leg in chains, but tomorrow Lemuel would free him. After all this time, seventeen years, Lemuel thought, all this time learning to be an Annumpi, I have finally found my spoltal. 

***********

Don Cupido rode away from Don Hernando’s house angry, frightened, and thirsty. Thirst won out. It usually did with the young Don. His anger at Donna Maria’s refusal was mixed with fear at the expected violence of Don Hernando. For years now the Cupido’s had been stripping away Hernando’s property and wealth an old Hernando had stood by ineffectually. What had gotten into the old fool? 

And what was that thing stuck in his saddle? That odd little-two headed dart. He had sensed danger in the clearing, but he had to admit that he’d been drinking a bit, so maybe it wasn’t, you know, really there. But the dart was real. Was is meant to hurt him? A warning message? But from whom? About what? Don Cupido resolved all his questions the way he uusally did. He got a drink. Several, whenever possible. 

To Hell with it all, he thought, as he rode up to the inn. A small boy stepped out of the shadows and Don Cupido tossed him a nickel. “Check him all over, boy. Carefully. Let me know if you find anything odd.” The boy nodded and led the horse around back to the stableyard. Don Cupido entered the inn fully intending to obliterate an evening’s worth of bad memories.