Aztec Blood a-3

by Gary Jennings

  I was quiet for a long time after listening to Ana. Closing my eyes, I imagined what it must have been like for Mateo—and the two lovers. The shock of discovery. Fear as the wronged man bloodies his sword. The hapless woman on the floor.

  The thoughts depressed me, and I was relieved when Ana asked me to move my massaging farther up her body.

  ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE

  Seville was enlightening for me. I even learned how to see through a servant without seeing the person. But my heart tugged more and more toward New Spain. I had given up the notion that Eléna would ever be mine. Like Calisto and Melibea, we could not resist fate and custom. She would be married to Luis, bear his babies, but would never achieve her dream of being fully realized as a poet and writer of plays. Grasped in Luis's tight fist, she would slowly wither into a dried-up old woman whose dreams had turned to dust.

  Hopefully, I would be able to make her a widow.

  Some days I would go down to the docks and watch the ships come and go. Their destinations were to different places in the Spanish Empire, scattered about the four corners of the world, but in my own mind each was sailing for Veracruz.

  The matter hung so heavily on me that Ana complained I was no fun, telling me not to come around until I learned how to laugh again. I suspected that the Italian count, who was courting her, had more to do with her comments than my love-struck moodiness.

  My desire to return home came to a head when a familiar name became the talk of Seville: Catalina de Erauso, the woman-man who'd escaped from a convent and become a soldier for the king.

  Listening to the tales of her in cantinas and the theaters, I separated in my own mind some of the fact from fiction. While the stories told of her incredible adventures as an army lieutenant and her many duels and escapades, they left out the fact that she had led a bandit gang that robbed the king's silver, and that she wore men's clothes to seduce women.

  She passed through Seville to appear before the king in Madrid. He awarded her a pension and paraded her before the court as a heroine of the Spanish Empire. She was returning here to set sail for Italy, where she would be received by the pope. I sent a note to her at her inn, asking if she had spent all the silver she'd stolen in Zacatecas.

  She would not know who sent the note until she faced me. Even if she recognized me, I was not worried she would report me to the king's officers as an escaped mine slave. While she would stick a knife in my back if she had the opportunity, she would not want me questioned about my activities in New Spain for fear of exposure of her own criminal acts.

  My message was returned with word that she would meet me at her inn. I was to accommodate her by having a carriage at our disposal, at my expense, of course. Had this woman-man forgotten that she had once tried to murder me?

  Catalina came out of the inn dressed in a nun's habit, but I was having none of it. For one thing I'd never known a nun with crisscrossing knife scars creasing her face, one with a nose reddened from decades of drink, broken and rebroken so many times it looked like a badly busted knuckle. The nuns I'd known typically had their front teeth. A nun's eyes, fixed on Eternity, were serenely beatific. This nun had the stare of a sheep-killing dog.

  If you're a Bride of Christ, I muttered to myself, I'm the pope.

  She did not recognize me when I presented myself to her in front of the inn. It was too many years, too many lives ago for her to identify me as the mestizo boy who'd robbed a temple for her. And she had gotten only a brief glance at me when I saw her through the window. In my mind there was no risk in confronting her about Luis and much to gain.

  "I need some information about Luis de la Cerda. My brother spied on you when you met with him last in New Spain. You spotted my brother watching you through a window at an inn in the silver country."

  I saw the bulge of a long dagger under her habit. She looked at me with a blank face, but her eyes perceptibly narrowed. No doubt her mind buzzed with thoughts of cutting my throat.

  "The man who saw me through that window was arrested by the Inquisition."

  "Arrested and sent to the mines, where he died. He told me about you and Luis before he died."

  "But his brother seems to have prospered."

  "God protects His own," I said, modestly, "and rewards them." I pulled out a pouch bulging with gold ducats. "I want you to tell me about the silver robberies. I want to know how you came to get involved with Luis and the name of everyone else you were involved with."

  "Why should I tell you anything? For a little gold? I would get it as a reward if I turned you into the Holy Office."

  "You would get more than that for a reward. I wonder how the pope would receive you if he knew you lusted for the flesh of women?"

  Her narrowing eyes now widened in surprise. She still had not identified me as the mestizo boy who robbed temples. I did not want her to make that connection, but I needed to frighten her.

  "And the king? Would he give me a pension or a hangman's noose if he was told you robbed not only his silver but ancient tombs?"

  Her face would not maintain the stoic countenance. Her lips twisted into a feral sneer. "A man whose tongue has been cut out tells no tales."

  I chuckled. "Sister, such impure thoughts must not come from your holy lips." I turned around and gestured at two men in a cart following our carriage. "I see that you hired two felons to murder me. Do you see the four men in the king's uniform on horseback behind them?"

  I waved my hand back at the horsemen. They rode forward and stopped the cart. They were dragging the two men off of the cart when I turned back to her. Her right hand was hidden in the folds of her habit.

  I threw her the pouch of gold. "Put away your dagger. The brother to that pouch will be yours if you give me the information I request."

  Her mind worked like a slow-witted dog with sharp teeth. Her first instinct was to rip with the teeth. Only after that passed, did her mind evaluate the situation.

  "Why do you want this information?"

  "Revenge on those who wronged my brother."

  A blood feud was a simple, honorable circumstance that any Spaniard would understand.

  She smiled at me. During the voyage from the New World the seamen had landed a denizen of the sea whose smile was a sharp-toothed grin. Catalina, even when pretending to be friendly, had that same razor-fanged smirk.

  "Perhaps the good Lord will help me remember those days when I helped convey the king's silver, but for now I am in great need of something."

  She instructed the driver to take us to one of the twisting alleys left over from the days when Seville was a Moorish city.

  "Why are we going there?" I asked.

  "An acquaintance has fallen in love with a very lonely widow. But the widow needs some encouragement to consummate the relationship."

  I did not need the ashes of an owl to divine that Catalina herself was the person lusting after the lonely widow.

  "What kind of encouragement do you seek?"

  "A love potion."

  Shades of Snake Flower.

  The narrow streets, where the love witch's shop was located, could not accommodate our carriage, so we continued our travel on foot. The driver did a double take when he saw Catalina. A nun had entered the carriage; a short, husky caballero left it. I told the driver to wait for us. We left her nun's habit on the seat.

  The love witch was a dark, elderly woman, seething with shadowy mysteries and esoteric secrets. In her little shop, reeking of incense and awash in alchemist's jars full of unnamed things, she might have seemed intimidating, at least by Seville's standards, but compared to Aztec love witches, who gleefully cut off pieces of penes, she was a babe in arms.

  From theater talk, I knew that love magic was the rage in Spain and practiced openly without interference from the Inquisition.

  Catalina, who identified herself as Don Pepito, explained the problem with the lonely widow. Gold quickly exchanged hands, one of the coins from the pouch I had given "Don Pepito," and the l
ove witch immediately recommended ways to spellbind the widow.

  "You may have to try several different spells," she said, "because people are affected differently. The most successful for widows is the enchanted lamp oil wick."

  She explained that the man would "gather" some of his semen. I assumed after stimulating himself. I hid a grin behind my hand. Catalina would not like this remedy.

  A lamp wick was soaked in the semen and burned in the widow's presence. "She is driven to instant uncontrollable desire when she breathes in your male essence, while you are invoking the sacred—"

  "I don't like that one. Give me another incantation."

  The love witch held out her hand for another gold coin.

  "When you are in the widow's presence, without her seeing what you are doing, you stick your hand in your pants and pull on your pubic hair. You recite, 'Come to me, hot as an oven, wet as a...' "

  We left the love witch several gold coins short but Catalina armed with incantations.

  Catalina told me of her involvement in the silver robberies.

  "I was arrested for a minor offense and sentenced to hang," she said.

  I did not ask what sort of "minor" offense would result in a death sentence.

  "Instead of dancing on the gallows, I was sold by the constable to a man who, rather than putting me to honest labor, offered me criminal employment."

  "Who was the man?"

  She did not know.

  "Describe him."

  She did and I was certain that it was not Ramon de Alva. I didn't mention his name. If she betrayed me, I did not want everyone I sought vengeance upon to be aware of my mission.

  "The crime they forced me to commit was robbery of the silver trains. A messenger from the mint would bring me the schedule for shipments, and I would lie in wait with my comrades."

  "Who else did you come into contact with?"

  "The man your brother saw me with at the cantina. His name is Luis. That is all I know about him."

  "You have not earned your second pouch of gold. I need more information."

  "Do you wish me to lie?"

  "My desire is that you dig into your memory and tell me more about the man named Luis. I want to know if you ever saw him in the company of the man who paid the constable for your release."

  She thought for a moment. "No, I never saw them together." She stopped and faced me. "My memory is coming back. If you give me that second pouch of gold, I will tell you the name of the person who bought my freedom."

  I gave her the pouch.

  "Miguel de Soto."

  Eh, the man who bought and sold workers for the tunnel project, Ramon de Alva's brother-in-law.

  Catalina hurried away from me, perhaps to pull her pubic hair for the widow, but I did not bother calling after her. I had made a connection between Luis, Alva, the silver robberies, and the tunnel project. It was not evidence I could go to the authorities with. With my sins, real and imagined, I could not have gone to them if God had been my witness.

  My mind flashed to little Juana naked on a rack being examined by devils in priest's robes, and the courageous don being marched toward his fiery death.

  It was time to return to New Spain.

  Mateo was out of the city. I knew that he was elated about being back in Spain, among his own. I would not disturb him, but leave word with Ana. I would miss my compadre, but in the great circle of life, perhaps we would meet again.

  I had heard that one of the lobo ships that ply the Caribbean was sailing soon for Cuba. From there I could get passage to Veracruz.

  PART SIX

  ...he wanted nothing but a lady, on whom he might bestow the empire of his heart...

  Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote

  ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

  The voyage from Seville to Veracruz took three weeks aboard a dispatch boat. Sent ahead of the treasure fleet, the boat was to notify New Spain that the fleet had set sail.

  Two years had passed since I watched Veracruz fade from view and drop beneath the horizon line. Now the snow-capped volcanic cone of Citlaltépetl, the highest mountain in New Spain, appeared apparitionlike above that same horizon's rim, a white solitary finger, beckoning me to God only knew what.

  New Spain had been a hard master, killing almost everything I'd cared about. The only woman I would love—a creature of radiant grace and poetic sensibility—was sentenced to a marital servitude as thoroughly abominable, for someone of her sensitivity, as my own years in the colony's dungeons and mines.

  Still, New Spain was my home. Staring at that white, beckoning finger of volcano, my heart begrudgingly softened. Seville was a proud and grand city, one of the cornerstones of a great European empire, but my heart and soul were bound to the New World with hoops of steel. That hard, benighted land had brought my Aztec ancestors sustenance, had made me who I was and what I might become. And despite its whips and racks and dungeons and mines, it had taught me courage, loyalty, friendship, honor, even learning. Against all odds, I had prospered. I was returning home a rich and cultured gentleman.

  Yes, I was returning home.

  The pleasure of my return, however, was tempered by my debt of retribution. I did not want eye for an eye but a head for an eye—and the revenge I sought for the killers of Fray Antonio, Don Julio, and his family never left my side, not once, not for a heartbeat. Bloody revenge was my closest companion, my most intimate ally.

  As soon as I resolved to return, my dreams of vengeance took wing. A scheme had burned in my brain since departing Veracruz, and now it flowered... relentlessly... incessantly... like the fatal nightshade. Like the Healer's snake trap and Don Julio's blood rite, I saw a way to bring these murderers to terms—and destroy them root and branch.

  As the dispatch vessel dropped anchor in the channel between the island fortress of San Juan de Ulúa and the city, my twenty-fifth birthday came around. I spent the morning of that birthday interviewed by a customs officer and an inquisitor from the Holy Office. I had been careful to bring nothing with me that would offend anyone. The only book in my baggage was a history of the life of San Francis, a genuine history, not the type I once printed with a saintly title and a salacious text.

  Before leaving Seville I had chosen a name and background for myself but abandoned both at sea. A better opportunity arose in the guise of a young man close to my own age. The third son of an impoverished Spanish nobleman, he had fled Spain to avoid the priesthood. He jumped ship when, after being blown off course, we briefly dropped anchor off an idyllic isle. His plan for life was to spend his days on the island, basking in the sun in the arms of native girls. Don Carlos, a name I found suitable, was an easygoing rascal who had been talkative about his family and history during our weeks together. I soon knew the name of his father and mother, brothers and sister, family history, and status in the community. On the pretense of planning to purchase a New World house that would evoke a fine Spanish style, I had him draw me a floor plan of his family home and coat of arms.

  Well-dressed, respectable, well-mannered, with no contraband but with the unmistakable arrogance of an hidalgo, I quickly passed muster. I granted each official the modest gratuity that only the truly honest render.

  A ship's tender carried me to the jetty. I saw that the merchants were already piling their goods on the dock. The silver treasure was already in the city, stored in a locked room in the alcalde's palace—or would be here soon. The treasure fleet was not due for a week, but ships had been spotted from the island fortress in the bay with a spyglass. God had blessed it with favorable winds. Soon the fleet would arrive, unload, and then commence reloading.

  For my stay in Veracruz, I chose the inn at the main plaza, the very one that I had once fought for the right to beg in front of. None of the harbor léperos who pleaded with me for alms were familiar to me. That was not a surprise—the life span of a lépero is often brief. I had left Veracruz as a boy of fifteen, and now I was a man almost twice that age. Léperos are frequently swept away
by life in the gutter, enslavement in the mines and cane fields, as well as the waves of vómito fever and the other pestes that plague the city.

  I tossed the beggars a few coppers. It would have amused me to reward them with some silver, but such benevolence would have drawn both suspicion and thieves. Not that I feared recognition. I had left Veracruz as a boy. During my subsequent years in Mexico, I favored a heavy beard and long hair. Clean-shaven, facially scarred, my hair not only short but streaked prematurely gray, I was not the same person as Cristo the Bastardo. I was Don Carlos, a hidalgo, the son-of-somebody, seeking his fortune in the New World, perhaps by marriage to the daughter of a rich merchant who was willing to give a fat dowry to add the son-of-somebody to the family tree.

  But beyond mere clothes, money, and hair, I would not be recognized. Two years in Seville had taught me not to act like a Spaniard but to be one. As the Healer would say, I now "smelled" like a gachupin. The color of my skin was darker than many Spaniards, but the Iberian Peninsula had hosted so many peoples—from Romans and Visigoths, to Moors and Gypsies—for so many centuries that its people's skin color ranged from white-as-milk to café con leche. The disparity in skin color was only one reason why bloodlines, not appearance, determined people's worth.

  As with all travelers in this region, I was anxious to get out of the hot, humid, sickly city and into the cool mountains beyond the dunes. But first I would need a horse, pack animals, servants, and supplies.

  I arranged with the innkeeper for a room overlooking the plaza and to take my dinner in my room. He offered me the services of a mulatta of fine proportions, but my mind was too full of memories to seek carnal pleasures. Not far from here I had watched de Alva cut the life out of Fray Antonio and a young girl, with a poet's soul, who dreamed of reading and writing like a man and who had risked her life to hide a beggar boy, solely because he recited poetry.

  After I established myself in Ciudad Mexico with a house suitable for a gentleman of not immodest means and a staff of servants, I would replace my Veracruz horse with one of the bloodline of the conquistadors' Fourteen. And I would present myself on the Alameda, not as a silk dandy, a criollo full of masculine pride because their only glory had been parading up and down the greenway, but as a wearer of spurs who had lived life and sported action.