Aztec Rage

by Gary Jennings

  I shrugged. “They’ll lose. From what I have heard, the army of the padre swells more every day. The rumors are that it’ll be one hundred thousand strong when it reaches here.”

  “Over a hundred thousand Aztecs: a mindless multitude, not soldiers. What will happen when the fighting goes street by street?”

  I already knew, but I had avoided confronting it. The same thing that happened in Spain when the people fought invaders: violence and chaos, the rape of the entire city.

  Lizardi said, “In my opinion, when his rabble face thousands of regular troops and cannon fire, they’ll show the feather and run, just as they did at Monte de las Cruces. Everyone knows the padre mainly uses his indios as cannon fodder.”

  I didn’t correct Lizardi on how the battle in the mountain pass went. I already knew that when Trujillo limped back to the capital with a fraction of his command left, the viceroy had announced the battle as a great victory for the royals.

  “Does the viceroy plan to send an army out to meet the padre’s forces before they reach the city?

  “How would I know? Am I a moth at his ear?”

  Lizardi was more of an ankle-biting flea, but I let that pass in lieu of some flattery that might open his lips.

  “They say on the streets that you know what the viceroy will do before he does it, that he reads your pamphlets for instructions on his next move.”

  Shallow fellow that he was, he beamed at the outrageous lie and saluted me with his mug of wine. “True, I could run this war better than anyone. The viceroy sent Trujillo with only a couple thousand men to delay the padre’s advance toward the city. Trujillo has proclaimed a great victory, but I have heard that the padre’s rabble army routed him handily. In all modesty, I made a suggestion that buzzed around the city and has caught the viceroy’s attention in a much more urgent way.”

  “Which was?”

  “To kill the padre, of course.”

  “The ten-thousand peso reward—”

  “No, no, no,” he shook his head, “that reward’s for fools. They offer it in the hope someone standing close to the padre will suddenly stab him or shoot him. The chances of his inner circle betraying him are about as likely as the pope canonizing me. The reward was just for show.” Lizardi leaned close and spoke in a whisper. “The viceroy has hired an assassin to go in disguise and get close enough to the padre to kill him.”

  “Do you know what disguise?”

  “Who knows? My source for all this is a cousin who works as a personal notary for the viceroy. The viceroy tells him things in order to have them recorded for the history of his viceroyalty. He doesn’t tell him everything, but he believes the lethal blow against Hidalgo is to come from one of his own compañeros.”

  “Does the assassin have a name?”

  “That’s all I know; that it will be someone close to him.”

  I wanted more information about this heinous plot, but after two jugs of wine, I learned little else, which meant I had gotten everything he knew and most of what he could make up. The only other thing of significance I got out of The Worm was the assassin’s motive: money. And the reward, Lizardi heard, was staggering: one hundred thousand pesos! A large fortune, an amount the viceroy didn’t dare make public, for it showed how panicked he was about the insurrection.

  Lizardi did have more information about the viceroy’s other actions concerning the rebels. “He has issued a decree that anyone taking up arms against his authority be shot within an hour of capture.”

  “Doesn’t give anyone a chance to prove innocence, does it?”

  “Pleas of innocence or mercy are irrelevant. The peons hate all Spanish, and if they are not part of the revolt now, they might be in the future. But he has made an offer of a pardon to any rebel who shifts his loyalty to the government.”

  Sí, the viceroy would give me a pardon . . . and then hang me and others like me as soon as the padre was defeated.

  He said, “You know what the padre’s calling it, don’t you? A reconquest. Do you know how that terrifies us? When Cortés conquered the Aztecs, he completely destroyed their government, religion, even their culture, leaving them without books and schools, taking away all their land and stealing and raping their women, before loosening diseases that killed ninety percent of them.”

  Lizardi stared at me with both disgust and horror on his face.

  “What will happen to us if they win?”

  I had to leave the city, to warn the padre of the possible assassination plot and advise him of the viceroy’s defenses and troop movements.

  I hurried to rejoin the padre’s army, leaving behind a city racked with confusion and fear.

  NINETY-SIX

  I MET UP with the army midday at Cuajimalpa, having made good time on the road from the capital. Cuajimalpa was an “old” region in terms of human occupation in the New World; the name itself was of indio origin. During the centuries before the Spanish conquest, succeeding indio empires had ruled it. Marina believed the name had something to do with trees. She was no doubt right. It was a forest region of Las Cruces Mountains with an elevation higher than that of Méjico City. Here, wood was cut for the capital and water was sent down by aqueduct.

  Hidalgo, Allende, and the other generals occupied an inn and buildings that ordinarily served diligences, the carriages that took passengers across the mountains via the Méjico City–Toluca road.

  The sky was misty as I neared the first outpost of the padre’s army. I found the clean, cool, wet air of the higher altitude refreshing after a couple days of smelling the capital’s manure, open sewers, and dung-smoke fires. At the top of a rise, I turned in the saddle and looked back at the capital. A ray of sunlight broke through the clouds to give the city a flickering, shadowy glow, like the reflection of candles on a gilt altar. No one has ever called Juan de Zavala a man of God, but at times like this I have borne witness to the eerie beauty of my Master’s touch.

  Méjico City rested on the bone pile of a mighty pagan city, its great cathedral and viceroy palace on sacred grounds where Aztec temples and Montezuma’s royal quarters had once stood. Like Cortés’s men, I now stared at the distant city in fear and wonderment. I had marched with the army hundreds of miles, sat at countless campfires, plotted with my friends, and had spied on cities to ascertain their weakness. Against my will, I had come to care about our army and its fate.

  Once, when Rachel and I discussed the hurricane of fire and blood that was descending upon the city, she told me about a great bird in ancient Egypt. Called the “phoenix,” it had bright red and gold plumage and a melodious cry. During any age, only one of the magnificent birds lived, though it counted its lifetime in centuries. As the end of its existence approached, its nest burst into flames, consuming the bird. Then, miraculously, from the pyre sprang a new phoenix.

  “From the ashes of old civilizations rise new ones,” Rachel had said. “Most of the countries of Europe were once colonies of the Greek and Roman empires. From time immemorial, indios in the New World battled and destroyed each other, each new empire a little different than the one it displaced. The Spanish destroyed the indio nations and substituted their own laws and customs. Now it is time we americanos destroy Spanish dominance and launch a new epoch.”

  I shook off my fears and urged Tempest on. I realized that educated people like Rachel knew best, that they had learned things from books that were more worldly than what I had learned in the saddle. They knew that to make way for the americanos, the Spanish had to be driven out. And they knew that it was necessary to destroy the great city in the valley so that a brave new world could rise from the ashes.

  Ay, what does it matter to me? I believe in nothing. The city treated me like dirt. It was no concern of mine if it was destroyed.

  But I couldn’t shake a feeling of anxiety when I thought about the city.

  Word of my return had traveled faster than my stallion’s hooves. Marina was standing in front of the house the padre used as his quarters. Her arms we
re folded and her expression one of mock scorn.

  “So the viceroy didn’t hang you,” Marina said. “There are even officers in our own army who believe you should be swinging from a gibbet instead of in and out of the beds of women you seduce with lies.”

  I slipped off of Tempest and gave the reins to a vaquero whose duty it was to care for officers’ horses. After I instructed him on how to care for the great stallion, I turned to Marina. I gave her a sweeping salute with my wet hat. “I have missed you, too, señorita. I will permit you to feed the emptiness in my stomach before you satisfy other urges that my absence has instilled.”

  “You can put a rein on your urges. The padre wants to see you immediately. “ She squeezed my arm as I stepped onto the porch. She whispered, “He wants to see you before his generals return from their artillery inspection.”

  “Did you miss me?”

  “Only when my feet were cold at night.”

  The padre greeted me warmly. We sat at a table and shared a jug of wine as I told him of what I had learned in the city. Marina fed me salted beef, cheese, and bread to calm my growling stomach and joined us at the table.

  He listened patiently as I reported everything I had seen and heard, except for the rumor that an assassin had been hired to strike him down. With so many other problems on the table, the padre would wave away a threat to his life. I wanted to get the other matters out of the way before I had a serious discussion about safeguards that must be taken to protect him.

  “War to the knife,” he said, after I had finished. “Isn’t that what General Palafox told the French commander when he demanded the surrender of Zaragoza?”

  “Yes, a fight without quarter, to the death.”

  “And the fighting went on from house to house, man to man—”

  “Woman to woman, not to mention the bravery of the maiden María,” Marina said.

  I nodded. “Yes, and even children picked up rocks and cast them down on the invaders.”

  “War to the knife,” he repeated. He stroked his chin and looked beyond me, out the window to where children were playing. “People defending their homes against invaders. The courage of my fellow Spaniards fills me with pride. Too bad the common people of Spain can’t decide our fate. They would understand our need to escape the heel of the gachupines.”

  “You say that the viceroy is concentrating his forces inside the city,” Marina asked, “and will force us to fight our way in? He won’t come out and fight us as our army approaches?”

  “I doubt he’ll face us in the field,” I said. “He hopes one of the royal forces he’s ordered to his defense will attack us from the rear as we besiege the city. By keeping his troops inside the city, he will also force us to take it street by street—”

  “House by house—”

  “Yes, padre. As you know, the city teems with criollos and gachupines who view us as their foe. They have heard of those incidents in which the indios lost control—”

  “Those incidents were trivial,” Marina snapped. “How many times have the Spanish hanged a hundred Aztecs picked at random to frighten thousands?”

  “I’m not justifying their beliefs, Señorita Sharp Tongue, I’m merely relating them. The battle for the capital will differ from that of other cities we’ve taken. The viceroy already has an army of thousands under his command, and every Spaniard with the courage to fight will swell the ranks. We’ll have to take the castle and cannon mounts at Chapultepec and fight our way to the heart of the city, perhaps to the viceroy’s palace itself.”

  “And what are our chances of success?” the padre asked.

  “He’s a defeatist,” Marina warned.

  “Everyone who doesn’t agree with you is a defeatist. But, yes, padre, we can win. We must, however, go in with resolve. The battle could take many days. Our men must not leave the fight to harvest their maize.”

  “My people have taken the bloody blunt of every battle,” Marina said.

  I grinned at her rising ire. “As they must do so in this one. But they should be told the battle might last days. What is your opinion, padre? Do you doubt we can take the city?”

  He splayed his fingers on the table and stared down at them as he spoke. “Never in the history of the New World, not even during the days of great Aztec empires, has an army the size of this one marched to battle. We lost twenty thousand to desertion after the last battle and already more than that have joined us. In two or three days, I am certain we will have far beyond a hundred thousand indios in our ranks. As we push our way into the city, more will join us from the surrounding areas in never-ending waves. In the region around the capital, live a million and a half people, and most of them are indios. By the time we storm the viceroy’s palace, I suspect we will have over two hundred thousand in our ranks.”

  He paused and stared at us, his countenance calm but his eyes ablaze. He spoke in a hoarse whisper. “If so, nothing will stop them. Tens of thousands of indios will reconquer the city that once dominated their civilization, a tidal wave of rage and retribution avenging centuries of humiliation at watching their women being raped, at having their land stolen, their backs broken by the whip, and their souls shattered by bondage in the mines and haciendas. The viceroy has made a tragic error in garrisoning the city. He should march out and do battle. He forces us to fight our way into the city, demanding that we hurtle a hurricane of rage down every street of the capital. Once the battle begins and the indios see their comrades fall beside them . . .”

  “It will be like the alhóndiga,” I finished for him, “only instead of a few hundred angry indios taking revenge on the defenders, it will be hundreds of thousands.”

  The padre’s features cracked with emotion. “Once their Aztec rage ignites,” he whispered, “nothing will stop their bloody revenge.”

  “Santa María,” Marina crossed herself.

  I left them to check on Tempest and make sure the vaquero I gave the reins to earlier had rubbed him dry and fed him properly. I also needed fresh air. The discussion about the upcoming battle had increased my strange uneasiness about an attack on the capital.

  The poor padre carried in his heart his love not only for the indios but for all people. And he couldn’t escape his fate: his soul would be scarred by those who fell fighting for the revolution and by all those who fell fighting the insurgents.

  I was approaching our makeshift stable when I saw a coach with a heraldic shield on its door.

  The door to the coach opened and a man, laughing, stepped down. Behind him, joining him in their private joke, laughing gaily, was my darling Isabella. Had the earth opened beneath my feet and swallowed me, I would not have been more surprised. She saw me, too, and after a moment of stunned surprise, she smiled.

  “Señor Zavala, so nice to see you again.”

  From her tone, we might have last seen each other at a social ball rather than at an ambush of murder and deceit. But right down to my toes I felt the bell-like chiming of her voice, stirred by her lush red lips, her white satin skin . . .

  I kept my composure by removing my hat and holding it close to my chest and bowing like a peon before his master. “Señora Marquesa.”

  “This is Don Renato del Miro, my husband’s nephew.”

  “Buenos días,” I said.

  He didn’t reply but just took my measure. My hand instinctively went to my sword; he had insulted me. I was too far beneath him for a civil greeting. I knew him well, though this was the first time I had set eyes upon him. It was his type that I was so familiar with. He was tall and well proportioned, a rich, idle Spaniard but one who was physically fit. His clothes were of the finest cloth, his boots as soft as a fawn’s ass. I knew from the way he carried himself that he would ride well, handle a sword and pistol expertly, and no doubt was doused with expensive perfume that gave him a sweet smell.

  I knew him because he was so much like me . . . when I was a gachupine. He was a caballero, no doubt about it, but not an alameda dandy. He was not hard f
rom life in the saddle as I was, but he moved as one who was quick on his feet and just as quick with a knife, especially when your back was turned. I had instantly sensed something slippery about him . . . I knew an hombre malo when I saw one. I had had much practice at it.

  Isabella said, “You must pardon us, but we have a meeting with the padre.”

  I gave the nephew a dark look as he swept by me. It was unworthy of me to think of such a thing about Isabella, but I had to wonder whether something other than a family bond had brought them together. Her sparkling eyes and the lightness in her step belied concern for her hostage husband. Was it jealousy on my part? Did my heart still ache for this woman who had lured me into an ambush?

  Ay, you wonder why I didn’t throw myself on the ground and grovel at the sight of her? You think me that weak? That spineless? Eh, I’m a tough hombre and tough hombres don’t grovel.

  Besides, the ground was muddy.

  When I finished rubbing down Tempest, I lay in the horse shed on fresh hay near the corral and smoked a cigarro. I was sucking on a wine jug when Marina found me there.

  “The gachupine puta you desire is talking to the padre.”

  “I lust only for you, and don’t call her names. She’s a lady.”

  “And what am I? An india slave you sate your lust on but don’t consider a woman of refinement?”

  “You’re an Azteca princess, the embodiment of Doña Marina herself. I love you from afar only because I’m a lowly lépero.”

  “You’re a liar . . . about everything except being a lépero. Aren’t you interested in knowing why she’s meeting with the padre?”

  I blew smoke rings. “Isn’t it obvious? Bandidos who swear fealty to our cause hold her husband ransom. She wants the padre to intercede.”