We had set the world on fire.
Closing my eyes, I put my head in my arms and listened to the cadence of another firing squad marching to its post.
I had seen war on two continents, witnessed common people with uncommon passions bare their chests to the murderous blaze of musket volleys, felt the earth tremble beneath my feet from cannons roaring death, saw the sun blackened by roiling clouds of black-powder smoke . . . and lay in fields of crimson death . . .
So much pain. So much death.
Again, the muskets cracked, and I returned to the window. “Aim true when I stand before you, bastardos! I spit on death!”
Eh, no man of good sense wishes to die, but I will depart this life knowing my name and deeds will not die with me but will thunder through the ages. Men will write songs about my final hours. Women will weep at the injustices heaped on me and at my indomitable courage as I fought mano a mano with Death, spitting in the Reaper’s eye a thousand times and never knowing fear.
“Don Juan de Zavala was mucho hombre,” they will shout as tears blind their eyes.
Perhaps no songs will be written or tears will flow, but a man can dream of such things in his last moments, no? And I am mucho hombre. No man in New Spain sits taller in a saddle, drops a hawk on the wing with a single pistol ball, parries a blade, or satisfies a woman’s secret desires better than I. Nor has any man, the viceroy has proclaimed, committed more crimes against God, King, and Church.
Soon they will send a priest in to take my confession, to cleanse my soul. That will take much time, no? I have seen many things, have left my mark on many places, fought wars on two continents, and loved many women.
For certain, confessing all my transgressions will take countless hours. And it wouldn’t be the first time a priest granted my sin-blackened soul forgiveness while an executioner readied his tools. But they made an error in assuming that I have a soul to save or to lose; I’m a gallows bird, born with a hangman’s noose around my neck, my feet on a trapdoor ready to drop.
But the darkest stain on my soul has been to rot in this godforsaken cell of a dead, drunken monk while my captors tried to pry a secret from me. Neither the tedious interrogation of constables, the angry decrees of judges, nor the inquisitor’s bone-cracking instruments of torture loosened my tongue. But prison walls have also prevented me from taking vengeance on one of the devil’s own. And it is this unfinished business that arouses my passions, not the bullets that will be racing for my heart.
Regardless of my crimes, I am a man of honor: I’ve never stolen from the poor, taken a woman against her will, or killed an unarmed man. I had been a gachupine, what the common people call a “wearer of spurs,” but unlike others of that ilk, I had not used my spurs on those weaker than me. I’ve lived by the code of the caballero, a path of machismo and knightly honor. And I have been a Knight of the Aztec Nation, a discipline that carries with it the same duty of honor and courage as that of a caballero. Those codes demand that I not face my grave until I avenge the stain on my honor.
Know this to be true: Before I die, someone else will give up the ghost, one who betrayed me and the amigos I fought beside. When that deed is done, I will happily face the muskets of the firing squad, perhaps even catching the bullets in my teeth and spitting them out.
How did it come to be that Don Juan de Zavala—gentleman and caballero, a man as skilled on the dueling fields as in a woman’s boudoir—was caged like a beast in a dank cell to await the drumbeat and lockstep of a firing squad? How a man with worldly lusts and passions, a notorious rogue of infamous deeds, came to march shoulder to shoulder with a priest who had a dream to make all people free? How my bloodied sword came to fight side by side with his sacred cross? How did a caballero become an Aztec knight?
If the truth be told—and some would say that I have often been a stranger to truth—while the good padre mourns the loss of a nation, my regrets are of a more carnal nature. I will miss lying in bed and watching a woman’s naked bosom gently rise and fall while she sleeps, smoking a fine Havana cigarro, sipping good Jerez wine, feeling the wind in my face and the power of a great stallion between my legs . . . Ay, I’ll miss so many things.
But enough . . . regrets are for old women, and one thing I will not regret leaving behind is the strange nightmare vision of my own death that has taunted me so often in my sleep—To die once is enough; to die a thousand nights is punishment from the devil himself.
Would you like to know how the village priest became a fiery revolutionary and an outlaw-rogue a visionary idealist? Like a priest in the confessional booth, do you wish to hear my sins? About the men I have killed, the women I have loved, the fortunes I have made . . . and stolen?
Mine is a long tale, one that will take us from this colony called New Spain in the Americas to the ancient cities and battlefields of the mighty Aztecs, to the wars of Napoleon in Europe and back again. And it can only be told by one who has been there.
Come then, be my confessor. Lend me your ear as I take you to golden places you have never heard of, introduce you to women and treasures you have never dreamed of, as I lay bare my soul and reveal secrets not known outside the grave.
This then, is the true confession of the Jaguar Knight, caballero, and rogue, Don Juan de Zavala.
SON OF A WHORE
THREE
Guanajuato, New Spain, 1808
AT TWENTY-FIVE YEARS of age, blooded horses, bloodier blades, perfumed petticoats, and fine brandy were my life’s sole passions. An earlier quarrel with my uncle, who managed my affairs, had left me oddly uneasy, even wary. But as I prepared for bed, I had no reason to believe that La Fortuna, the shadowy goddess who spins Fate’s Wheel and holds the rudder that directs our lives, had any plans for me other than the life I had been leading.
Caballos and mujeres, pistolas and espadas—horses and women, pistols and swords—were all that mattered to a young caballero such as myself. I prided myself not on the knowledge found on the pages of a book—in the manner of priests and scholars—but on my ability to stay in the saddle and wear out my mount, whether it be an outlaw stallion or a passionate woman.
In ages past, knights-errant jousted for dominance over other knights and for lady love. Armor and lances yielded to muskets and cannons, but a tradition of machismo to win the respect of men and the admiration of women by a display of fighting and horsemanship endured. A man who could shoot hawks on the wing from the saddle of a charging stallion or brave El Toro’s horns at the moment of truth was El Hombrón—a man capable of defending a woman’s honor as well as watering the sweet garden between her legs.
Although raised in New Spain since I was a babe, I was not born in the colony. My first cry for attention came in Barcelona, that jewel of Catalonia on the eternal Mediterranean, not far from the magnificent Pyrénées and the border of France.
My heritage runs deep in Spain. My father had roots in both Catalonia and Aragón in the north, while my mother was born of ancient lineage in Ronda, an Andalusian town of the south. Known as Acinipo in Roman times, Ronda was a Moorish stronghold until our Most Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella conquered it in 1485.
My birth in Spain made me a gachupine, a grandee, even though I was raised in the colony. Pure-blooded Spaniards born in the colony were criollos. Even if criollos could trace their bloodlines to the noblest of Spain, they were socially inferior to gachupines. The poorest muleteer from Madrid or Seville, who came to the colony a mewling, puling babe, considered himself socially superior to a rich criollo mine owner with a coat of arms blazoned on his carriage doors.
No caballero rode taller in the saddle than I, not only because my blood wasn’t tainted by birth in the colony but also because my skill with horses, my daring with women, my deadliness with gun and sword blazed throughout the Bajío, that rich land of cattle haciendas and silver mines northwest of the capital.
My contempt for books and poems, for sages, scholars, and priests only enhanced my fame. I never put pe
n to paper except to send a message to the majordomo at my hacienda—a day’s ride from Guanajuato—concerning the condition of my mounts.
With no head for business—neither hacienda finance nor the merchant’s trade—I left my fortune in the hands of Uncle Bruto. I never thought about money except to send my bills—for saddles and boots, pistols and blades, brandy and brothel whores—to my miserly uncle, who had over the years derided me as a spendthrift.
My father’s younger brother, Bruto had managed my affairs since I was a babe orphaned by the death of my parents. Still there was no love lost between Bruto and me. I called him “family” only because he was my uncle. A taciturn man whose passion was pesos—my pesos because he had no fortune of his own—he loathed my extravagance as much as I despised his parsimony.
My father had come to the colony after purchasing a royal monopoly on the sale of mercury, the liquid mineral also known as quicksilver. Crucial to the refining of silver and gold, it separated the precious ore from the dirt and the dross. Almost as lucrative as the mining itself, its sale was far less risky than mining claims, which often played out or never showed color.
After establishing the business in Guanajuato, my father returned to Spain for my mother and myself. In the traveling party was Uncle Bruto. After landing in Veracruz, we journeyed across the hot, coastal swamps where yellow fever, the vomito negro, festered. Both my parents succumbed to the contagion.
My uncle bundled me up, hired an india teat nurse, and brought me to Guanajuato. At one year of age, I fell heir to my father’s business. Bruto has been running the enterprise for me now for over twenty years. The quicksilver license has made me a very rich young caballero.
But how rich? That question roiled my sleep. Yesterday I questioned Bruto about the extent of my fortune, and he upbraided me, as if I did not have the right to ask.
“Why do you want to know?” he shouted. “You want to buy another saddle? Another prized stallion?”
My interest was in fact noble: the desire for a noble title. I want to hear the words in my ear, “Buenos días, Señor Count,” or “Buenos tardes, Señor Marqués.”
Not for my ego but for my lust. I needed the title to capture the heart of the most beautiful woman in all of Guanajuato, or as I believed, in all the world. Like me, Isabella Serrano was a gachupine, born in Spain and transported here before she reached her fifth birthday. She was more dear to me than the sun and the moon, more precious than all the pesos in Christendom. She loved me more than life itself, of that I was certain. But her family demanded that she marry a titled grandee. Her beauty, they believed, could win her the title Lady of the Realm.
The injustice of it—that I should not have the coat of arms that Isabella desired—was beyond bearing. Titles were not simply a matter of birthright; not all persons bearing noble titles were swathed in a coat of arms at birth. New Spain has many “silver nobles,” former mule drivers and shovel merchants who hit pay dirt in the silver mines or financed some other lucky fool who struck the mother lode. I, the finest caballero in all of the Bajío, deserved a title more than they.
Here in Guanajuato, the first Count de la Valenciana, Señor Antonio Obregón—the discoverer of the world’s richest silver vein and founder of the city’s largest family fortune—purchased his title from the king with his vast wealth. The Count Valenciana, the Marqués de Vivanco, the Count de Regla, and the Marqués de Guadiana were but a few of the many who purchased a title by contributing to the king’s coffers. Pedro de Terreros, a former muleteer, told the king that if His Most Catholic Majesty came to New Spain, his horse would never touch dirt during the long journey from Veracruz to Méjico City but would prance upon silver ingots Terreros would lay along the entire path. He then backed his boast up, buying the title of count by contributing two warships, one with 120 guns, along with a 500,000-peso “loan” to the royal person.
Still I believed I had a chance.
I was well informed by the viceroy’s gachupine deputy that forty men in New Spain had purchased titles. Even men with indio blood rose to nobility, though they often claimed lineal descent from the coupling of conquistadors and Aztec royalty. The Count del Valle de Orizaba claimed blood-lineage to Montezuma himself.
I did not know how much a title would cost, but I knew they were still available because European wars had bled the royal purse white. The wars started by that Corsican upstart Napoleon had racked Spain like the Grand Inquisition. Our navy had not recovered from a British victory over the joint Spanish and French fleets near Trafalgar that sent most of Spain’s fleet to the bottom, but Spain was at war again, this time united with France. The king needed bullets and bread for his soldiers, both of which required dinero, and a jackass could see that the royal treasury was bare.
“Is this not the time to buy me a title?” I asked my uncle. “When the king is eager to sell? Do you not want to see me well married? Isabella was born in Spain.”
“Her father trades in corn,” Bruto said, through gritted teeth. “In Spain he was a clerk for a grain merchant.”
I held my tongue and didn’t remind Bruto that in Spain he had kept accounts for a toolmaker before my father brought him to the New World.
“Isabella is the most beautiful woman in the city, a prize for a duke.”
“She’s an empty-headed flirt. If you weren’t so—”
He stopped when he saw the fury in my eyes. Another insult to my beloved and I would have drawn my blade, opened his chest like the Aztec priests of old, and ripped out his penny-pinching heart. He took a step back, his eyes widening in shock at the look on my face. I kept a rein on my rage, but I shook my fist at him.
“I’m taking control of my own fortune. I’m going to buy a title.”
He retreated down the hallway, and I stormed out of the house. I went to an inn where I gathered with friends most nights to drink, play cards, and, when drunk enough, mount the tavern putas.
I drank much and thundered my murderous rage at my uncle’s refusal to let me spend my money as I desired. After I returned home, José, Bruto’s personal servant, brought me a goblet of the brandy my uncle kept for his private use. Bruto had never shared his private stock of fine Jerez spirits, so I believed he sincerely sought peace.
“Your uncle asks that you accept this brandy as a symbol of his affection for you,” José said.
I was not in a forgiving mood. José left, and I stared at the goblet. Even drunk, however, I knew I should make amends with Bruto. I knew nothing about the quicksilver trade and less about managing finances. After I had purchased a title and married Isabella, I had planned to return management to him.
I called José back. “Thank my uncle for the brandy. And take this one to him,” I handed him back the same goblet, pretending it had come from my own stock. “Tell him I ask that he also join me in a drink to seal the family love and blood loyalty I bear him.”
I went to bed, still much disturbed by the earlier disagreement. Bruto and I had few quarrels. Our views of life differed, but we rarely clashed. His interests were in ledgers and pesos, mine were swords and guns, horses and whores. Our preoccupations kept us from colliding. Other than to complain about my spending, he seldom even spoke to me.
True, I was a loner, and perhaps that affected my relationship with Bruto. But it didn’t explain the lack of familial warmth between us, the subtle undercurrent of ill will that I sometimes sensed. But only once did true animosity toward me slip out.
As a boy, bleeding from a cut, I had run into the house. Sleeping in a chair, Bruto snapped awake.
“Get away from me, you puta’s bastardo,” he shouted.
To call me a whore’s son was not just an insult to me and my mother but also a grave offense to my father, who, were he alive, would have avenged the slight with a blade. It wasn’t just Bruto’s words that were hurtful; I also felt hatred in his heart. I never understood the source of his animosity. Withdrawing into myself, I never sought his help again.
The only othe
r time we had a serious disagreement was when, at age fourteen, he sent me to study for the priesthood. ¡Ay! Don Juan de Zavala a priest?
Besides those who heard God’s call, the priesthood was a refuge for the younger sons of the affluent. In the church they would have income and position when the family property was transferred to the eldest son. To send the firstborn—and in my case, the only born—to a seminary to study for a life in the church would have left the Zavala family fortune heirless. Only those called upon by God were driven to such a radical act, not that I fear serving God; with horse reins in my teeth, a red-hot smoking pistol in one hand, and a Toledo blade in the other, I would happily dispatch God’s enemies to everlasting hellfire.
But serving Him with prayers, alms, and abstinence was not in the cards. The seminary prefect cashiered me after unfortunate incidents: I horsewhipped a fellow seminarian who branded me a sodomite after I described my lurid deflowering of a servant girl. Turning white as a winding sheet, the youth raced straight to the prefect to inform on me. When the prelate attempted to whip me, I brandished a Toledo dagger, offering to castrate him like a steer if he bloodied my back.
I went to confession after each transgression, repented for my sins, made a good act of contrition, deposited a few pesetas in the church poor box—along with a pouch of gold for the priest—and then recited a dozen or so Hail Marys. My soul was cleansed, and I felt redeemed—and privileged to transgress again. Finally, I was sent home. Bruto showed his disappointment but made no further attempt to geld me.
All I acquired from my short-lived preparation for the priesthood was an unusual ability to learn languages: I mastered Latin, the tongue of priests, and French, the language of culture, quickly, by ear, simply from hearing them. I already spoke the Aztec dialect of the vaqueros on my hacienda.
I had just dozed off when I heard a disturbance in the house. I got out of bed and went into the hallway, as my uncle’s servant, José, came out of my uncle’s room with a chamber pot.
Aztec Rage Page 2