De la Vega did not have a lot of time for his family, busy as he was with running the town, his hacienda, and business affairs, and with settling disputes, of which there seemed to be no shortage among the townspeople. Every Tuesday and Thursday, without fail, he went to Pueblo de los Angeles to fulfill his political obligations, a prestigious burden with more duties than satisfactions but one he refused to give up out of a sense of service. He was not greedy, he did not abuse power, and authority came naturally to him, but he was not a man with grand vision. He never questioned the ideas he had inherited from his ancestors, even though sometimes they were not appropriate to the reality of America. To Alejandro, everything came down to a question of honor, pride in being who he was an exemplary Catholic hidalgo and in holding his head high. He worried that Diego, too tied to his mother’s apron strings, to Bernardo, and to the Indian servants, would not assume the position that was his by birth, but he reasoned that the boy was still very young, there would be time to guide him. He told himself he would start directing his son’s manly formation as soon as possible, but that moment always got put off; there were other more urgent matters to attend to. Sometimes the desire to protect his son and make him happy moved him to tears. His love for the child perplexed him; it was like being stabbed in the heart. He outlined lofty plans for him: he would be brave, a good Christian, loyal to the king like every male de la Vega before him, and wealthier than any of his relatives had ever been: the master of vast, fertile lands with a temperate climate and abundant water, where nature was generous and life was sweet, not as it was on the barren estates of his ancestors in Spain. He would have more herds of cattle, sheep, and swine than King Solomon; he would breed the best bulls and the most elegant Arabian horses; he would become the most influential man in Alta California; he would be governor. But that would be later. First he had to grow up, go to the university or to military school in Spain.
De la Vega anticipated that by the time Diego was old enough to travel, Europe would be in better shape. Peace was too much to expect, since there never was peace on the old continent, but he could hope that level heads had prevailed. The news they were receiving was disastrous. He explained all this to Regina, but she did not share his ambitions for her son, and cared even less about problems on the other side of the ocean. She could not conceive of a world beyond limits she could travel to by horseback, say nothing of worry about events in France. Her husband had told her that in 1793, precisely the year they were married, King Louis XVI had been beheaded before a mob screaming for revenge and blood. Jose Diaz, a friend of Alejandro’s and a ship’s captain, had given him a miniature guillotine, an awesome toy he used to cut off the tips of his cigars and, in passing, illustrate how the heads of nobles had rolled in France, a terrible example that to Alejandro’s way of thinking could sink Europe into absolute chaos. That little machine seemed a tempting idea to Regina, for she speculated that if the Indians had it, whites would respect them, but she had the good sense not to share those musings with her husband. There was cause enough for bitterness between them; it wasn’t smart to add another.
She was shocked by how much she had changed. She looked at herself in the mirror and could find no trace of Toypurnia; she saw only a woman with hard eyes and clenched lips. The need to live in a world foreign to her, and to stay out of trouble, had made her cautious and underhanded; she rarely confronted her husband, she preferred to act behind his back. Alejandro de la Vega never suspected that she was talking to Diego in her own tongue, so he was unpleasantly surprised when the first words out of his son’s mouth were in the Indian language. If he had known that his wife used each of his absences to take the child to visit his mother’s tribe, he would have exerted his authority.
Whenever Regina appeared in the Indian village with Diego and Bernardo, grandmother White Owl abandoned her chores and devoted herself completely to them. The tribe had been reduced through mortal illness and by the number of braves who had been recruited by the Spanish; barely twenty families remained, more miserable every day. The grandmother filled the young boys’ heads with myths and legends of her people; she cleansed their hearts with the smoke of the sweet grass she used in her ceremonies and took them with her to pick magical plants.
As soon as they were able to stand firmly on their two feet and hold a stick, she had the braves teach them to fight. They learned to fish with sharpened wands, and to hunt. She gave each of them a whole deerskin, complete with head and horns, to wear during the hunt; that was how they would stalk a deer. They waited, motionless, until their prey wandered near, and then shot their arrows. The growing presence of the Spanish had made the Indians submissive, but when Toypurnia-Regina was around, their blood was fired with the memory of the war of honor she had led. Their awed respect for her was translated into affection for Diego and Bernardo. They treated both as their sons.
It was White Owl who took the boys to explore the caves near the de la Vega hacienda. She taught them to read the symbols carved on the walls a thousand years before, and showed them how to use them as a map. She explained that the caves were divided into seven sacred directions, a basic map for spiritual journeys, which is why in ancient times initiates had gone there to seek their own centers, which ideally should coincide with the center of the world, where life originates.