Aztec Blood a-3

by Gary Jennings

  "Sí, the true circumstance of my crimes. Why don't you let me know those circumstances."

  He nicked ashes off the end of his tobacco roll. "What you did, of course, was protect the family honor."

  "I beat my fiancé's father with a candlestick and stole her dowry."

  "Ah, Bastardo, you believe everything you hear, and so does Don Silvestre. A friend writes him from Spain and says young Don Carlos is a thief and a blackguard. He believes it. But now another friend, me, has come and told him the truth."

  "What is the truth? Will you tell me before I put my sword in my throat."

  "The truth is that you took the blame for your older brother."

  It stunned me. I repeated the words carefully. Than a second time, savoring them. "I took the blame for my older brother—to protect the family name."

  I paced back and forth, feeling the words, getting into the mood of the comedia that Mateo was constructing. "Eh, my brother, the heir to the title and the family fortune, the possessor of our family's good name and honor, is a scoundrel. He violates my bride-to-be and steals my dowry. What is the honorable thing to do? If I kill him, as he so well deserves, the truth will come out, and our proud family name will be ruined. No, there is only one thing for me to do. I am the younger brother, heir to nothing, possessor of nothing. I assume the blame for my brother's foul deeds, save the family honor, and incur the punishment."

  I bowed and saluted my friend with my hat. "Mateo Rosas, you are a true genius. When you told me you had constructed a comedia for the don, I saw only disaster. If we presented this play in Mexico City and Seville, we would be hailed as heroes of the quill and paper. This play would gain us the fortune we never acquired—at least legally."

  Mateo tried to appear modest. "Don Silvestre accepted the story as readily as Moses accepted the word of God. It is now chiseled in stone in the old man's mind. He was embellishing upon it as I explained it to Eléna."

  Did I hear him right? Did he just say that he had explained it to Eléna? Did he also whisper it in the viceroy's ear? Amigos, was I correct in my assumption that Mateo would someday get me hanged if I was not duly punished for my own crimes?

  "Bastardo, you better have some of this wine. Your face was the color of death, and now it is turning to fire."

  "When did you see Eléna?"

  "This afternoon, when she came to Don Silvestre's after your meeting with the viceroy."

  "Why did she go to Don Silvestre's?"

  "To talk to the old man about you. She wanted the details of your crimes, to see if she could assist you in gaining pardon."

  "And you told her this tale about taking the blame for my brother after you had convinced the don?"

  "Actually, the inspiration for the tale came when I saw the lovely Eléna. Bastardo, you have supreme taste in women. She is a little delicate and intelligent for me, with a little more above the neckline and a little less below it than I prefer, but her eyes would conquer the soul of Eros himself."

  "Explain exactly what occurred. Do not leave out any details. When I murder you, I want to have no feelings of guilt."

  "This beautiful woman came in. She pled her case before me and the don, telling us in every detail how you had fought off a dozen pirates—"

  "A dozen?"

  "Some number like that. As I listened to her, I realized she loved you."

  "Don't say that; I can't stand the hurt."

  "We must face the truth. We have come back for revenge, but hate is only on one side of life's coin. The other side is love. When I heard the love in her voice, I knew I had to ensure that her love did not go unfulfilled. Did you know that my comedias always had happy endings? Eh, it's the truth. In matters of love, tragedy is so ubiquitous that I wrote only endings in which love triumphed."

  "What did she say when she learned I had taken the blame for my brother?"

  "She cried, Bastardo, she cried from joy and relief. She said that she knew that you were a good and honorable man from the very moment she looked into your eyes."

  "¡Ay de mí!" I sat down and buried my face in my hands. The angel was so blinded by my saving her that she saw a half blood lépero as a man of honor. If she knew the truth about me, she would run in horror.

  "And Don Silvestre? He did not deny the story?"

  "He embellished upon it himself. It caught the old knight's fancy. And come to find out, the older brother was a scoundrel, too. But his black deeds were always washed away to save the family honor. It was right and proper to the don that a younger brother would make such a sacrifice. He got so caught up in the tale, he began to imagine that every black deed Don Carlos stood accused of was done in the name of honor. Your innocence, however, must never be disclosed, not if you are to protect the family name. I did, of course, agree that the viceroy should know. Eléna rushed to tell him the news."

  I groaned. "And Luis. She will tell Luis. And she will tell her maid, who will tell the maid next door..."

  Mateo shrugged. "And in a few weeks we will be gone."

  "But Eléna will be left with the scandal. Today I deliberately insulted Luis by implying I was romantically interested in Eléna. While I angered him, I was no serious threat as the disgraced Don Carlos. Now I am doubly a hero. I sacrificed myself for my brother and almost threw down my life for Eléna. When she tells Luis that I am twice the hero, he will see me as a threat."

  Mateo shook his head. "The viceroy would never let you marry Eléna even if you had repelled that entire pirate attack singlehandedly. You are still the third son of a minor family. Luis will be a marqués when his father dies. Socially, his claim to nobility is as strong as the viceroy's. That's why he is forcing her to marry him. It is Luis's pride that will make him kill you, not the threat to his marriage. Of course, if he finds out you are meeting Eléna, he will kill you sooner rather than later."

  Another knife went into my gut. "Tell me that you have not done something as foolish as setting up an assignation with her."

  He said nothing. I waited until he'd drained another goblet full of wine.

  "What did you do?"

  "Luis is a swine."

  "What did you do?"

  "The girl wishes to talk to you, to beg for forgiveness in ever doubting you. If you handle the matter right, you will partake of her favors before Luis gets the chance."

  "Are you loco? Do you think I would use Eléna to avenge myself on my enemies?"

  "You ask if I am loco? You have come back to New Spain to kill her husband-to-be and perhaps destroy her uncle, who raised her as a daughter. And you think you can do these deeds without damage to her?"

  He got up from sitting on the edge of the fountain. "Bastardo, I will have to work very hard, very hard indeed, to write a happy ending to the tragic-comedia that you have begun."

  ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN

  The meeting Mateo had set up between Eléna and myself was arranged at the house of Don Silvestre's widowed daughter. Mateo said the widow, who was only a few years older than me, rarely used the house; she spent most of her time at the household of her father. The widow had many charms, Mateo told me, alluding to the fact that he would ensure she did not wither from lack of love.

  I was nervous as I waited in the courtyard. An elderly india and her husband appeared to be the only servants at the house. On a small table, they had set out sweetmeats and wine. Darkness had fallen and they illuminated the area around me with candles. Protected by high walls, the location was private. A perfect place for a rendezvous with another man's woman.

  I felt as if I had stepped onto a stage featuring the doomed lovers, Calisto and Melibea, if not an even more tragic comedia called Romeo and Juliet, a play Mateo said was written by an Englishman named Shakespeare. The quandary Mateo spoke of, that I could not destroy the others without harming Eléna, weighed heavy on my heart. The Fates were casting lots for my soul.

  I heard the carriage outside and tensed with anticipation.

  When she came through the gate, I got
up slowly from where I had been sitting at the edge of the fountain. She had changed into a black dress and Wore a long, silk shawl over her head and draped down her shoulders. I had half expected her to wear a mask as was so common among the ladies of the city when traveling to an assignation, but no one would have recognized her with the shawl anyway.

  "Doña Eléna." I bowed.

  "Don Carlos."

  To give my hands something to do, I gestured at the table of sweetmeats. "Our hostess is not at home, but she kindly provided a table of delicacies."

  "I have met Doña Teodora. She is a good woman who cares well for her elderly father."

  "I understand you were with the father today."

  She came to me, holding out her hand. "Oh, Carlos, I am so happy you are not the scoundrel others claim you to be. Your sacrifice to protect your family name was that of a martyred saint."

  I took her hand and kissed it.

  "Eléna, I have to tell you the truth"—at least part of it—"I am not the person you think I am."

  "I know that."

  "You do?"

  "Of course. The man I met at Don Silvestre explained about your brother."

  "No, no, it's not just that, it's..."

  "Yes?"

  It was impossible. If I told her the truth, she would run screaming from the house. But I hated living a lie. My entire life had been a lie, and with her I wished to lay my soul naked.

  "There are things about me that I cannot reveal, things that you would never understand, some that would make you hate me. But there is one truth that you may depend upon. From the moment I first saw you, I loved you."

  "And I, you."

  She said it so simply, I was caught by surprise.

  "Did you want me to hide my feelings?" she asked.

  "It's impossible for us, you're betrothed to another."

  I was holding onto her hand. I drew her closer and she pulled away. She walked around the courtyard for a moment.

  "Don't you find it strange," she said, "how we of the higher class of society have less freedom? Our possessions, even our names, entrap us. A man and a woman of common blood can love and marry whom they like." She turned and faced me. "My uncle can make me marry Luis, but he can never make me love him. I do not hate Luis, and I believe he truly loves me. He has refused offers of marriage from families whose daughters have larger dowries and certainly fairer looks. But for me, marriage to him would be a prison. That's why I was willing to go to another type of prison, a convent, where at least I would have had the freedom to read books and write what I have the vanity to call poetry."

  "Your poems are the songs of angels."

  "Fine words, Don Carlos, but I hardly think you have heard of my poems all the way in Spain. My poems have been rarely published even in the colony."

  "You do yourself an injustice. I was given this book to read when I was sailing from Seville."

  I showed her a book of poems I had printed for her.

  She shook her head, her eyes glowing. "I wrote that years ago. There must be a book or two still in existence. And it made it all the way to Seville?"

  "To the whole world. I'm certain there is a copy right now in the queen's boudoir in Madrid."

  "More likely on the Inquisition's evidence table. Who gave you the book?"

  "I don't know the man's name. He was reading a book in a cantina and offered it to me when he learned I was to take a sea voyage." Eh, amigos, do lies flow like honey off my tongue?

  I heard a noise at the wall bordering the street. A head popped into view for just the briefest moment before the man dropped back down. I ran out the gate, but the man was on a horse galloping away before I was able to seize him.

  Eléna came out behind me. "I recognize him. One of Luis's servants set to spy on me."

  She left without further word. Concerned for her reputation, I did not try to stop her. Under ordinary circumstances, I would soon be receiving Luis's seconds to deliver the challenge for a duel, and I would welcome the opportunity to kill him. I suspected, though, that the challenge would not come. Not because Luis feared me, but because of the scandal it would create so soon after I had saved Eléna.

  I stood for a moment in the courtyard and closed my eyes, listening again to her saying that she loved me. But who did she love? The martyr-hero Don Carlos? Or the poor lépero boy grown into a notorious bandit?

  ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY

  We used the hired coach to pick up the old caballero and take him to the party. I was very nervous, more than I had been in any other social situation in my life. Mateo had thoroughly investigated the arrangements for the party and had a plan for every contingency. He was still caught up in the idea that we were all actors in a play that he had written. He even had written in a part for the lépero boy, Jaime, to play that night.

  "If the old man recognizes that I am not Don Carlos, what will we do?" I asked, as the carriage wheels brought us closer and closer to Don Silvestre's door. I already knew his answers. I had bemoaned the questions over and over, and finally he was just responding with curtness.

  "Murder him."

  "And Isabella? If we encounter the Bitch of Babylon?"

  "Murder her."

  Fine advice, none of which he and I were mentally capable of carrying out, although I would be sorely tempted in regard to Isabella. Mateo had learned that the Church had agreed to annul her marriage to Don Julio, and the woman had married a Zacatecas silver king within a year of the don's death. Naturally, she had a house, not only in the City of Silver, but in the capital. As best as Mateo could discover, she had the Ciudad Mexico house torn down and was in the process of building a palace built to rival the viceroy's. He assumed that she would stay in Zacatecas during the renovations, but he was not certain. As for myself, I was certain that she would be in the party's reception line, ready to clutch her chest and scream the moment she saw us.

  Mateo doubted she would recognize either of us. He had removed his beard and left only a rather large mustache. Like me, his hair was closely cropped. The putas at the tavern where we had been staying had dyed his hair and mustache red. With a red eye patch, red hat, red doublet, and red pants, he was as inconspicuous as a peacock in a flock of pigeons.

  "Flamboyance defines my disguise," he said earlier, as I gawked at the clothes he intended to wear to the viceroy's ball. "I learned the art of disguise when I had to play several roles in the same play. If Isabella sees me, she will not recognize me for the don's friend."

  "You will hide in plain sight?"

  "Exactly so."

  Eh, we had seen Mateo on stage, had we not, amigos? He is a fine actor—sometimes. Other times he commits the actor's sin of overdramatizing his role. Like everything else about Mateo, there was no middle ground. When he was good on stage, he was the best. And when he was bad, Dios mio, he incited riots.

  If the Book of Fates determined that Isabella would be at the party, I hoped Isabella would, as usual, be too caught up in herself to recognize us.

  "I will kill myself if I am exposed before Eléna."

  Mateo twirled one of the ends of his mustache. "Compadre, your problem is that you do not accept women for what we really need them for. You want her to be puta and angel. I'm happy with just the woman of sin."

  When we pulled up in front of the gate to Don Silvestre's house, I waited inside the coach while Mateo went to fetch the don. I tapped my knee nervously with the tip of my dagger, more inclined to cut my own throat than the old man's if he exposed me.

  The only light at the gate was a large candle in a bronze and glass holder. It threw no light more than a couple of feet, but I skulked inside the dark coach anyway.

  Despite my apprehensions, there had been one encouraging event. Miguel de Soto had shown up unexpectedly at my door. Profusely begging my pardon, he said his unnamed associates were cutting me in as a partner. But the ante had risen: I needed fifty thousand pesos to buy in.

  Provoking Luis had tipped the scale. Realizing the vic
eroy would never permit him to kill me in a duel, he wanted to break me financially then put a dagger in my back. It was an enormous amount of money, and I agreed to only thirty thousand. I gave him three thousand pesos in gold ducats to show good faith and told him I would have the rest in a few days. Handing over the gold, I asked for more details concerning my investment.

  "The price of maize is soaring," he said.

  It was. Maize had all but vanished in the markets—when the warehouses were full. My new servants grumbled about it. No doubt it cut into the profits they made cheating me on food purchases.

  "My partners own the maize in the warehouses. I control its distribution."

  They were keeping it out of the marketplace—literally starving people—in order to drive the price up. When the price reached its peak, they would flood their brokers with grain and reap a prodigious profit. I had suspected this, but to hear it put bluntly increased my quandary about harming Eléna. Evil manipulation of the staple could not be done without the knowledge and assent of the viceroy.

  When I heard Mateo and the don, I peered out the coach window, tense. Mateo let the old man go through the gate first and hung back to fasten it.

  Don Silvestre came alone toward the coach, and I opened the door.

  "Carlos—" he began.

  Someone shot out of the darkness and pawed at the old man's face. The don tried to grab him and the assailant shoved him back, sending him staggering back on weak knees. Mateo caught the don as he fell backward.