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The first days after Diego and Ricardo returned each to their own homes turned out to be a bit lonely for Anna Maria. The company bothe men had provided during those weeks had spoiled her, and that without considering the emotions that had been accumulated with Ricardo’s plan to offer Zorro an amnesty.
With Leonor and Rosarito both far from Monterey, Ana Maria soon found herself spending most of her day with her cousin, who took the opportunity to tease her about their shared love disappointments with Zorro. Her comments always embarrassed Ana Maria, making her reflect about her attitude in regards to Zorro. Really, what had she been thinking when she believed that Zorro would unmask himself publicly for her? In retrospective, it seemed imprudent at best.
One of her favourite activities turned out to be writing to Diego. His words made her feel accompanied in a way that strolling around with her cousin couldn’t get. Sometimes, she could almost feel as if Diego were sitting with her in the living room, having one of their typical conversations. It helped her to focus her thoughts and ignore the pitiful looks that some folk of Monterey threw at her when she walked around the square or the market.
With her father’s imminent return, Anna Maria found herself looking for ways of forgetting about her feelings for Zorro and move on, so that her father wouldn’t notice her melancholy. Anna María was set on not letting a failed love story dictate the rest of her life.
With that in mind, Anna Maria began her morning rides once again, the exercise lifting her spirits for the rest of the day. Her paths usually took her to the Mission outside town, where the Father usually let her rest and offered a refreshment.
One of those mornings, when she arrived at the Mission, she saw something that made her heart skip a beat and then start wildly beating. Grazing around the building was Zorro’s horse.
Not being able to resist it, she approached the animal, which seemed to recognize her, because when Anna Maria started petting his side, it left out a pleased huff.
“Ah, Miss Verdugo. I see you have found our guest.” Said the Father behind her.
Turning to the priest, she smiled softly. “Has it been here all this time? I had thought Zorro would take it with him...
“Oh, you can rest assured he most certainly wanted to. But a horse like this would be easily recognized and could bring him trouble when trying to maintain his identity a secret.”
Anna Maria nodded silently. What the Father was saying made much sense, but imagining Zorro being forced to abandon his steed only managed to sadden her. She had had the opportunity of seeing the bond of those two in more than one occasion and surely Zorro, back in Los Ángeles, missed the animal.
“Do you thin, Father, that it’ll let me ride it?”
---
Anna Maria grew quickly used to adding little rides with Phantom around the Church. The horse seemed to enjoy it as much as her. From time to time, guilt about being the one who could be riding the horse and not his true owner invaded her.
When that happened, Anna Maria returned to her uncle’s estate and sat in the library to write long letters for a man whose face she didn’t know and to whom she would never get to give them to. And when that didn’t comfort her, she took a new blank page and started a new letter for Diego.
Finally, winter arrived in Monterey, and with it, her father. Anna Maria returned to the Verdugo estate, getting her father up to date about town’s affairs and with everything that had happened since his departure. Don Gregorio found all that Zorro issue slightly amusing, advising her to, the next time she decided to fall in love, do it with someone more accessible.
On her own, days later, Anna Maria would blush and deny having thought of Diego at her father’s words. After all, Diego had been, and still was, an excellent friend and Anna Maria refused to think of him as a consolation prize.
Her rides with Phantom had to be reduced, when Anna Maria spending long hours with her father during the day, which saddened her once again, having found in the horse a source of calm.
The priest had suggested, in the end, that Anna Maria take the horse with her. That way she wouldn’t have to lose time riding to the Mission. Although she wasn’t completely convinced, Anna Maria ended up accepting the offer.
---
Moving outside the estate’s terrains with Phantom was not an option. If someone saw her riding on the horse that, as everyone in Monterey knew, belonged to Zorro, it would only attract more problems in the long term. If she noticed Phantom getting anxious to go out, she simply came up with an excuse to visit the mission and leave him to roam freely there.
Keeping the animal hidden from the servants and the cowherds, even her father, turned out to be an overwhelming task, making her wonder if Zorro suffered like that with whichever was his mount back in Los Ángeles.
Her curiosity had, more than once, tempted her to write to Diego and ask him about Zorro’s adventures, but Diego never mentioned those in his letters and Anna Maria thought it unfair to make all their conversations circle around the mysterious gentleman.
But spending time with Phantom only increased her need of answers and, without being able to stop herself, she ended up adding, at the foot of one of her letters, a small question about the kind of horse Zorro had at Los Ángeles.
The weeks in between her question and Diego’s answer were particularly cold, forcing Anna Maria to stay inside her home for most of the day. Because of that, at the first opportunity she found, she went out to ride with Phantom, who looked like he had missed her. When she got back with her hair tousled and her cheeks red, she found an envelope addressed to her.
With her heart beating wildly, she took the letter and went quickly upstairs, to her room. Breaking the seal with the letter opener, she held her breath. The first lines, as all the other letters did, began with Diego’s neat cursive y the typical courtesies expected from a gentleman writing to a young lady.
But as Diego got through his anecdotes and comments about Anna Maria’s, his stylized handwriting turned into fast block letters, as if he could not wait to write down his thoughts. It was a small habit that always made Anna Maria smile. For a moment, she forgot why she had been waiting that letter so anxiously, distracted by the funny way in which Diego had decided to retell Sergeant Garcia and Corporal Reyes latest misadventure.
There was something in his way of making a story so amusing, something that not always translated well in person, as if he were hiding a part of himself when spending time with other people. But that filter seemed to disappear in his writing, certain turn of phrases reminding her of Ricardo’s jokes and Zorro’s jests at soldiers.
Eventually, Diego had reached her question and stopped his answer. Anna Maria could see it in the way the new sentence began with Diego’s neat cursive once again. Diego had left the letter unfinished for some reason when faced with Anna Maria’s question and had only continued it long after.
I’m not familiar with our friend Zorro’s business, began the paragraph. Anna Maria could almost hear a slight touch of irony. The few times we have run into one another, he was busy running away from a group of lancers. Nonetheless, and there his writing had begun to relax again, from Sergeant Garcia’s numerous stories, I know it is a magnificent specimen, black as night.
The picture of Zorro riding a completely black horse instead of the contrast of Phantom’s white known around Monterey was a bit weird for her . After Diego’s answer, there were a couple of lines crossed off, as if he had added something else but had finally decided not to say it. Anna Maria frowned. That was unusual for Diego.
The letter continued just a couple of lines more, with Diego posing his own questions for Anna Maria. It’s good to know that Mister Verdugo had returned without trouble. How was Anna Maria enduring winter?, among other questions about her day to day life. Finally, Diego ended the letter wishing her well, as usually did and signed with his full name.
Anna Maria, after rereading the letter several times, looked at herself in the mirror of her dressing table, her fingers softly caressing Diego’s signature, without her noticing. There was something in the letter that rubbed her the wrong way. What had Diego decided not to tell her?
Pursing her lips, she walked to the window with the letter in her hand. She knew asking about Zorro hadn’t been her best idea, she had only more questions now and the slight suspicion that Diego knew more than what he said.
That day was strangely sunny, a crisp breeze chilling her bedroom. Anna Maria raised the letter and immediately noticed the paper turned see through. A new idea appeared in her mind and she searched, with the paper still against the light, for the lines Diego had delicately crossed off.
She knew there was a possibility of not achieving anything doing that, but luck was on her side, because, even with some difficulty, she managed to read the words His name is Tornado.
His name is Tornado.
It was clear about of whom Diego was speaking of. But, why not telling her the name of Zorro’s steed?
---
The next morning, her doubts had only increased. Disturbed, she saddled Phantom and set out for the mission.
His name is Tornado.
No one in Monterey knew that Zorro’s white horse was called Phantom, except for two people: her and the Father. Zorro had mentioned it to her a long time before and she had never forgotten it, treasuring the small piece of knowledge among so many secrets.
How did Diego know the horse from Los Ángeles’s name if, by his own words, had never seen it except from a distance? Knowing the name of Zorro’s mount was not common knowledge.
Her mind had quickly begun to remember every moment shared with Diego. During her father’s kidnapping, Anna Maria had been, more than once, unfairly harsh on Diego. His calm demeanor and his rational way of handling the situation had altered her, but in the end, with her father safe and the bandits caught, Diego had accepted her apologies and they had started a firm friendship.
Diego had not talked about Zorro, then. Anna Maria remembered that quite clearly.
But she had talked about Diego with Zorro.
‘Because they both advised me in the same manner.’ She answered herself. ‘But I couldn’t see it back then.’
The weeks after her return, spent walking around with Ricardo and Diego, hadn’t cirlced around Zorro either until Ricardo had decided to get him involved in the whole affair. Even then, Diego had not talked too much about him, except when he was making fun of Ricardo’s attitude.
‘Could it be that Diego hadn’t seen a rival in Zorro?’ Ricardo had clearly considered them both, Diego and Zorro, a threat when it came to courting her. At that moment, Anna Maria had been simply relieved by Diego’s support when Ricardo had insisted with the Zorro debacle.
His name is Tornado.
Diego had been unsure about Zorro showing up to claim the amnesty until he had talked about it with Anna Maria. Back then, she had thought he had been letting her go so she could be happy.
His name is Tornado.
Zorro had finally not appeared. and neither did Diego. Her hands tightened around Phantom’s reins.
But that wasn’t true, not really. Zorro had showed up late and used the moment to bid her farewell. Diego would be returning to Los Ángeles just a few days later.
Zorro had told her she would be able to see his face if she only looked about her. Anna Maria hadn’t understood him, then.
His name is Tornado.
Stopping Phantom abruptly, Anna Maria took a deep breath, closing her eyes a couple of seconds.
Now she began to understand.
---
It had been several days since the last letter he had sent Anna Maria. Diego didn’t normally minded it that much, used to having to wait to read her answers.
But in her last letter, Anna Maria had asked about Zorro. And Diego had been questioning his own answer since then.
Eventually, his father had appeared at the estate with an envelope in his hand. Not saying a word, Diego had hidden in the library to read it. A quick look over revealed Anna Maria hadn’t insisted on asking about Zorro and, already calmer, Diego began to read more carefully.
Anna Maria had written about Monterey mild winter, about her father’s return, among other stuff related to her routine When Diego felt sure that everything had just been a false alarm, he reached the last fragment of the letter.
After much thinking about it, I believe a completely black horse, as Tornado must be, goes much better with the nightly aesthetic of our mutual friend, but I must admit that Phantom’s mane is one of my favourite things when riding to the mission, the sun reflects so prettily against it, wouldn’t you agree, Diego?
Perhaps when you come back to Monterey to visit me, I’ll manage to convince you of taking me for a ride on his back, I think he tries to avoid going very fast to keep me safe. Don’t worry, he’ll be safe with me until you choose to return.
Don’t take too long, anyway, I believe he misses you.