Aztec Rage

by Gary Jennings

  “The fraud won’t help them,” Raquel said. “The force of ideas the padre unleashed have spread to all of New Spain. We are at war with the gachupines, and nothing will stop us until we have driven them from our shores.”

  “Where will you go now? Back to the capital?”

  “Not yet. Juan set a last task for me to complete. When I visited him in his cell, he whispered the location of the marqués’s bullion. It’s strange, Josefa, that the revolution will be financed by a gachupine’s gold, stolen by a notorious bandido.”

  Doña Josefa nodded at the bulge in Raquel’s abdomen. “Let us hope the child you carry will grow up in a nation that respects the rights of people.”

  “Juan never knew who his father and mother were. Our child will know that his mother and father fought to create a nation in which all people were free and equal and that his father gave his life in the struggle. If we fail, he will carry on the fight.”