by neetha Napew
I became aware of something as he spoke. "Eléna asked you to speak to me. She told you of my love for her."
"Yes. She loves and respects you enough to want to ensure that you live a long and happy life. That will not occur if you antagonize Luis with attention toward her. She will not dance with you tonight, nor see you again except in public. This is to protect you."
I started to tell him that I did not need her protection when he grabbed my arm.
"Ah, my mother has spotted us talking. Come along and meet her." He guided me toward an old woman seated in a chair across the room. "You will learn more about Luis in a few minutes with her than pondering for a year."
I followed along, but my attention was drawn to Eléna. She was dancing with another partner, and I smiled at her as she swirled by. She gave me a small smile and quickly turned her head. It took a moment to clear my head and remember that his mother was the old matrona who wanted me dead.
"My mother probably wants to meet you because Luis has mentioned you unfavorably. Don't be offended if she seems like she is sizing you up for the scaffold. She has worked as hard for this marriage with Eléna as Luis has."
Could I have avoided the confrontation? Yes. But after spending half of my life fleeing from the old woman's unnamed wrath, I permitted my feet to move forward.
A humorless rasp of a chuckle escaped my lips. "Your mother and Luis are vipers."
He shot me a look. Regardless of his candor about his own life, it was not gentlemanly of me to speak disrespectfully of his mother. In other circumstances he would have called me to the dueling field for such a remark.
"Do not blame my mother. Any mother who birthed a son like me would wonder why God had damned her."
The old woman's eyes met mine as we approached, and despite having steeled my nerves, I was jolted. The old matrona sent my anger racing. This woman had sent Ramon to kill Fray Antonio. Overcome by rage, I jerked my arm from Don Eduardo's at the same time the old woman gaped and started up from her seat.
"Wha—what's the matter?" Don Eduardo asked.
An audible gasp of pain emitted from the old woman. She took a step, her face ashen, her eyes wide, her lips trying to form words. She fell forward, collapsing on the floor.
Don Eduardo rushed to her, crying her name. In a second Luis was beside him. I pushed through the crowd that had immediately gathered around her. Lying on the floor, she refused offers of aid and gestured her son and grandson closer to her trembling lips. The old woman whispered her last words. As she spoke, both Don Eduardo and Luis looked at me with as much shock as the old woman had when she recognized me.
I glared back at them, defiantly. I do not know what words were spoken, but I know they were to throw my life into more turmoil. She had whispered a secret to her son and grandson, a terrible secret that had plagued my life from the day I was born. While I had not heard the words, I had felt them. They twisted my heart and raised the hair on the back of my neck.
My eyes went from the two kneeling beside the old woman to a mirror behind them. I saw my own reflection.
And knew the truth.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO
The old woman's eyes haunted me in a troubled sleep that came after hours of even more troubled consciousness.
Mateo was not at the rented house when I returned from the viceroy's ball. I had left while the room was still buzzing about the death of the matrona. Eléna had tried to ask me a question as I pushed through the crowd, and I had ignored her.
At my house a message awaited me that Mateo had gone to "comfort" Don Silvestre's daughter. Mateo's idea of comforting the woman was to give her pleasure in bed. And take a bit himself.
A gallery of the dead—Fray Antonio, the Healer, Don Julio, Inez, and Juana—shared my night, invading my dreams and waking moments. Only the Healer seemed at peace. The others were restless because they were unavenged.
But mostly I saw the old woman. The Fates had brought me full circle. Back to the woman who had started it all in Veracruz. I never understood the old woman's hatred for me. I always assumed that it was a blood feud. But I no longer believed that. Looking at the three of them, the dying old woman with her son and grandson, I had gained an insight into the mystery that had dominated my life. And felt the earth heating up under my feet.
Early in the morning a servant brought me a message.
Don Eduardo was waiting in his carriage. He asked that I take a ride with him so that we might speak. The summons was neither expected nor a surprise. It was just another hand the Dark Sisters had dealt me. I joined him in the carriage.
"Do you mind if we ride along the Alameda?" he asked. "I enjoy it in the cool of the morning. Quiet and peaceful. So unlike the parade of male egos and female vanities that dominate it in the afternoon."
I sat quietly, listening to the carriage wheels, not really looking at him nor avoiding his eyes. A strange calmness had grasped me despite my troubled night. I actually felt more at peace than I had felt since I began a fugitive life in Veracruz half a lifetime ago.
"You have not expressed condolences at the death of my mother, but I suppose that is to be expected."
I met his eye. "Your mother was evil. She will rot in hell."
"I am afraid, Cristóbal, that we, and Luis, shall join her. But you are right about her. I actually hated her myself. One is supposed to love and honor one's mother, but I never truly loved her, nor her, me. She hated me because I was too much like my father, too much inclined to words than actions. He brought her to the New World because he had nearly beggared them in the old. She sent him to an early grave with her hate. When I turned out to be worse than my father, she set me aside in her mind and kept the reins of the family tightly in her fist.
"Have you seen Pedro Calderón's dramatic comedia, La hija del aire?" he asked.
I shook my head. "I was told of the play in Seville."
The Daughter of the Air was said to be Calderón's masterpiece. It was the story of the Babylonian warrior queen, Semiramis. Her greed for power led her to conceal and imprison her own son when it came time to ascend the throne. She then assumed the throne herself, dressed as a man, impersonating her son.
"If my mother had been able to get rid of me and wear my face, she would have done so."
"Murder you? As she has tried to murder me?" The words were wrapped in bitterness that suddenly welled up in me.
"I have always been weak." He spoke not to me but to the open window of the carriage.
"Why was it so important to murder me? Why was it so important that Fray Antonio had to be murdered to find me?"
"Fray Antonio,"—he shook his head—"a good man. I didn't know my mother was involved. When I heard he was murdered by the boy he raised, I assumed the truth of the accusation."
"Assumed the truth? Or hid behind it?"
"I told you I was not a good father. To Luis. Or to you."
I knew he was my father when I saw my reflection in the mirror while he and Luis were kneeling at the side of the old woman. Looking from their faces to mine had brought home the truth of the disturbance that had plagued me each time I looked at their faces.
"It doesn't make any sense. I am your son, but I'm also just another mestizo bastard in a land full of such bastardos. To have lain with my mother, Maria, and made her with child... that's no more than what thousands of other españols have done. Why would this bastardo create enough hate to spawn murder?"
"Your mother's name was Verónica, not Maria." He spoke the name quietly.
"Verónica." I rolled the name off of my tongue. "Was my mother Spanish?"
"No, she was india. Very proud india. My family—your Spanish family—is related to royalty. My grandfather was a cousin to King Carlos. Your mother was of royalty, too, indio royalty. Her blood traced back to one of Montezuma's sisters."
"Eh, that's wonderful. But that does not make me a prince of two races, but merely another bastardo without land or title."
"I was deeply in l
ove with your mother, a lovely flower. I have never seen another woman who had her natural beauty and grace. Had she been born in Spain, she would have ended up as the concubine of a prince or duke." He had stopped talking to me and had gone back to talking to the window.
"Tell me about my mother."
"She was the only woman I ever loved. She was the daughter of a cacique of a village on our hacienda. Like most other hacendados, we were rarely at the ranch. But after my father died, when I was twenty years old, my mother exiled me to the hacienda for a time. She wanted to get me out of the city and what she considered corrupt influences, to get me away from books and poetry and make me what she considered to be a real man, un hombre. There was a man at the hacienda, the majordomo, whom my mother considered to be just the person to turn her boy into a wearer of big spurs."
"Ramon de Alva."
"Yes, Ramon. Then, just a hacienda manager. Eventually one of the richest men in New Spain, a man not just with the viceroy's ear, but who knows the dirty secrets of half the noble families in the colony. And from what I've heard, one who has filled Don Diego's pockets many times."
"Little of it honestly gained."
Don Eduardo shrugged. "Honesty is a gem with many facets. It sparkles differently for each of us."
"Try telling that to the thousands of indios who died in the mines and the tunnel project." There was still poison in my words, but my own heart was slowly softening toward the man who was my first father. He did not seem to harbor malice. Instead, his greatest sin was that he looked away—and walked away—from evil.
He grinned with resignation. "As you can see from the human toad who sits beside you, not even the renowned Ramon de Alva could create a miracle and make a decent man of me. My mother wanted me to love the smell of gold, while I instead sniffed roses. It was not saddle leather I wanted between my legs but the soft touch of a woman. Obeying my mother's command, I went to the hacienda and came under the tutelage of Ramon. To my mother's eternal horror, instead of getting me away from trouble in the city, I carried it with me like an old trunk. I opened that trunk the first time I saw your mother.
"Verónica was coming to church the first time I saw her. As the hacendado, it was my duty to greet the flock as they came for Sunday service. I was standing next to the village priest when she came forward with her mother."
"The village priest was Fray Antonio."
"Yes, Fray Antonio. The fray and I became close, like brothers, during my time on the hacienda. He had an interest in the classics as I did. I had brought almost my entire library with me, and I gave him a number of books as a gift."
"They were branded with your initial. The same books that the fray used to teach me Latin and the classics."
"Bueno. I am glad they saw good use. As I was saying, I was standing by the church door when Verónica came forward. When I looked into her eyes that first time, my heart was torn out of my chest faster than any Aztec priest ever ripped the heart from a sacrifice victim. We live in a world in which who we choose to marry is decided upon rationally, but there is no rational judgment involved in who we love. I was completely helpless. I saw her. I loved her. The fact that she was an india and I was a Spaniard with a centuries-old title mattered not. No alchemist, no sorcerer, could have concocted a potion that put me deeper into a state of love enchantment than I went into the moment I saw her. I even told Ramon about my affection for the girl."
My father shook his head. "Ramon encouraged my feelings for her. Not in an honorable way, of course, but in the way Spaniards look at india girls, with the eye in their crotch. He never really understood me, or my affection for Verónica. I truly loved her, worshipped her. I would have been content living on the hacienda for the rest of my life at the feet of your mother. Ramon never understood because he is not capable of love. Nor was my mother. Had their ages been closer, he would have made a fine consort for her. They would never have married because of their different social positions, but they could have lain in bed at night and excited each other with their passions of greed and corruption."
Don Eduardo turned back to the window. "Fray Antonio, poor devil. He should never have been a priest. He had the sort of loving heart toward all people that makes a saint, but he also had desires that were human. He was a friend and companion to Verónica and me as we trod the road of young love, discreetly leaving us alone in green meadows when we lay down to consummate our feelings for each other. If the fray had been more Spanish and less a humanist, tragedy would have been avoided."
"It should be some comfort to him in his martyr's grave that he was too good a man," I said, not hiding the sarcasm in my voice.
He turned back to me, his sad and lonely eyes moist. "You want me to take responsibility for the fray's death. Yes, Cristóbal, it is just another one of many mortal sins I shall answer for. Did you ever wonder how you came to be named Cristóbal?"
I shook my head.
"One of your late great-great-great-ancestors was a Cristóbal. Of all the marqués' in our bloodline, he was the one I admired the most. After his death, no other marqués in our family was given his name because he had left a stain on the family honor. He married a Moorish princess, a blood taint that took two centuries to purge."
"I'm honored," I said, without feeling. "How appropriate that another with a blood taint should bear the name."
"I understand your feelings." He peered closely at me. "You have led a rare life, perhaps the most unusual in the history of the colony. You have walked the streets as an outcast and ridden in a carriage as a caballero. You must know things about the peoples and places of New Spain that the viceroy and his advisors cannot even imagine."
"I know so little about life that I actually believe in the ultimate goodness of people. Fortunately for mankind, the world is not entirely composed of people like you and your mother."
My words seemed to strike a chord with him. Hurt was expressed in his eyes and lips. "I am the harshest critic of myself. Not even Luis or my mother were able to point out my deficiencies better than I have been able to myself. But coming from you, my son who is a stranger, it cuts me deeper than from the others. I sense that you have seen so much of life that you have knowledge and wisdom beyond your years, and that you see my faults more clearly than they do because you are so innocent yourself."
"Innocent?" I laughed. "You know my name is Cristóbal. But I am also known as Cristo the Bastardo. Liar and thief are my better qualities."
"Yes, Cristóbal, but which of your many wrongful deeds were not done under coercion? You have the excuse of ignorance and necessity to justify your actions. What excuse do those of us who were born to luxury have for our excesses? Our greed?"
"Eh, thank you, Don Eduardo." I shrugged. "I am relieved that I am a more honorable scoundrel than the rest of you."
He turned back to the window. It provided less animosity than me.
"I was young and foolish. Not that much has changed. Today I am just more older and foolish, but in a different way. In those days my head was full of love, and I thought that nothing else mattered. But, of course, it did. As nature would have it, the consummation of our love resulted in a child. Such a fool I was. Such a fool. My mother was visiting at the hacienda when you were born. You were only hours old when I told her and Ramon the news.
"I still remember the horror spreading across her features as I told her. For the first time in my life, I had felt power in dealing with my mother. When she understood what I had done, she turned purple. I actually feared that she would fall dead on the floor. In one of the those strange twists of fate that have plagued our lives since that day, she dropped dead at the sight of you, the child she thought she had killed."
"How did Maria come to be called my mother?"
"My boyish glee at shocking my own mother had worse consequences than I could ever have imagined, consequences that would have taxed the mind of the devil to conjure. My mother immediately sent Ramon out to kill Verónica and the baby."
"Holy Mother of God."
"No, unholy mother, my unholy mother. Ramon went out to kill her and the baby. One of the servants overheard my mother's plans and ran and told Fray Antonio. The good fray was resourceful, if nothing else. Another woman had given birth within hours of Verónica birthing you."
"Maria."
"Yes, Maria. She gave birth to a stillborn child. It was said to be the fray's child. I don't know; I suppose it was. Like you, it was a boy."
"Verónica switched babies."
"Yes, she switched babies. She gave you to Maria and took the dead baby. She ran into the jungle with the dead baby and Ramon pursuing her. She came to a cliff overlooking a river. With Ramon almost to her, she threw herself and the baby over the cliff."
With tears flooding my eyes, I reached over and slapped Don Eduardo. He stared at me with the same sort of shock I had seen on his mother's face when she saw me standing next to him and recognized me.
"And what did you do while my mother was sacrificing her life for your sins? Playing cards? Drinking wine? Wondering what india girl you could use to shock your mother with again?"
He stared at me in agony, a whipped dog. I could imagine the rest of the story. A hurried marriage to a suitable woman of Spanish blood. The birth of an heir.