He was showing me a science tome banned because it was written by a English Protestant when we discovered that Isabella was listening. On that occasion he had also the opportunity to draw her into the discussion or explain the contents of the cabinet and had not.
I put away my doubts and fears about Isabella. What could come of it? She was the don's faithful wife, was she not?
SEVENTY-SIX
The Velez hacienda and its main house were larger than Don Julio's. To my lépero eyes, the house was a palace. En route Isabella told me that the hacendado, Don Diego Velez de Maldonato, was a very important gachupin in New Spain.
"It is said that he will someday be viceroy," she said.
Don Diego was not at the hacienda, but Isabella assured me that she socialized with him frequently in Mexico. Socializing with prominent people seemed to be important to her.
"There will be families from two other neighboring haciendas," Isabella said. "The gathering is hosted by the majordomo of the don's estates. You would learn much by sitting at his feet and listening to him. He is not just a majordomo for Don Diego, and brilliant in all forms of commerce, but is considered the best swordsman in New Spain."
We arrived at the great house late in the afternoon. As soon as the coach pulled up, we were greeted by several women, all of whom, like Isabella, were absentee owners of haciendas and their daughters. Their husbands followed in their wake.
I was bored, dusty, and stiff from the long ride and was introduced to Don this and Doña that, but none of the names stuck. Isabella had been in a state of hibernation during most of the carriage trip and came alive the moment the coach pulled up in front of the house.
She introduced me as Don Julio's young cousin without much enthusiasm. Without expressly stating it, her tone deplored having another of the don's poor relatives in the house. The moment she implied my penurious circumstances, the warm attention I was getting from the mothers suddenly turned to frowns and their daughters' smiles became cold as a frog's flesh. Once more she had made me feel like dirt.
Ah, Doña Isabella, what a woman! It was no wonder the don was captured by her wiles—nor that he stays as far away from her as possible. Mateo claims that some women are like the poisonous black widow spiders—they, too, have beautiful bellies, but they devour their mates. And Isabella was a master spinner of webs.
But I was not as dismayed as some poor relative would have been; inside I was laughing at the fact that the great lady had been escorted by a lépero. Until I heard a voice from the past.
"It's so good to see you, Isabella."
Life is a crooked road for some of us, twisting over dangerous cliffs and vertiginous crags, with sharp rocks waiting below.
The Church tells us we have choices in life, but I sometimes wonder if the ancient Greeks were not right, that there are playful—and sometimes spiteful—gods who weave our fate and wreak havoc in our lives.
How else could one explain that I had fled my enemy five years ago, ran from his dagger and his killers, only to find myself in the same house with him?
"Don Julio's cousin."
She introduced me with so much disdain that Ramon de Alva, the man who cut the life from Fray Antonio, barely glanced in my direction. She would never know the debt of gratitude I owed her.
We were given time to freshen our clothes and bodies before dinner. News of my pecuniary status must have preceded me because the room I was given was a servant's bedroom that was smaller than most gentlemen's clothes closet. The room was dark, cramped, insufferably hot, and well-seasoned with the smell of the stable underneath.
I sat on the bed with my head on my lap and pondered my fate. Would Ramon de Alva recognize me if I looked him squarely in the eye? My instinct was that he would not. I was five years older, a very important group of years that took me from adolescence to young manhood. I had a full beard. And I had been introduced and was dressed as a Spanish gentleman and not a lépero street urchin.
The chances of him recognizing me were small indeed. But any chance at all set my heart trembling in my chest. My best ploy would be to stay completely out of harm's way.
I had already ascertained that all of the guests were friends of Isabella's from the city and were making their annual visit to their haciendas. We were only staying one night and would leave very early to make it back while the sun was still in the sky. I only had to stay out of sight for the few hours it took to dine and engage in the drinking and mindless social chatter that ensues.
To stay away from dinner would be to stay away from Ramon de Alva and the chance he would carve me with his sword in front of his guests. An ingenious plan unfolded in my mind: I would be too sick to attend dinner.
I sent a servant with my regrets to Doña Isabella that my stomach was upset from traveling and that I wished permission to stay in my room. Of course, if she insisted, I told the servant, I would attend her at dinner.
He returned a few moments later with Isabella's reply: She would manage without me.
I was ravenous and I told the servant to bring a plate of food. He looked at me in surprise and I told him it was a stomach ailment that food would cure, but my doctor had told me I had to lie down when partaking.
Collapsing on the bed, I thanked San Jerome for having extended his mercy.
I had sworn to achieve revenge on the man, but this was neither the time nor the place. Any action I took against him would reflect back on Don Julio and Mateo. While my passions urged me to strike down the man, even if I had to give my life in the fracas, my good sense dictated that I would not repay the kindness of my friends by bringing misery into their lives. New Spain was a big place, but the Spanish population was not large compared to the land. Ramon de Alva was going to come back into my life again. I would have to bide my time until the opportunity for cutting him down without destroying those who had shown kindness to me presented itself.
I fell asleep with the smell of manure in my nose and the sound of music from the party in my ears. Awakening hours later, I sat up in the dark room. The party noise was gone. Looking at the moon, I adjudged that I had slept past midnight.
I was thirsty and left the room in search of water, walking quietly for fear I would rouse the house and call attention to myself.
Earlier I had seen a well located in a small patio off the main courtyard of the compound. Our carriage was parked next to the courtyard. No doubt the well was used for the stables, but in my life I have drank worse than stable water.
I paused at the bottom of the steps from my room and savored the cool night air for a moment. Keeping my step soft, I located the well in the moonlight and drew water from it, pouring a bucket over my head after I had drank my fill.
Going back and sweating in the room was not inviting—it was as hot and humid as an indio's sweat hut. An alternative was our coach. The coach offered better air, and a seat that was no harder than the straw bed in the room. I climbed aboard. I had to scrunch down on the seat, but at least I could breathe.
Sleep was darkening my mind when I heard whispered voices and a giggle. Fearful that I would expose my presence in the carriage if I moved too quickly, I carefully unwound my body and sat up to peer outside.
Two people had entered the little courtyard. My eyes were adjusted to the dark, and I was able to quickly identify them from their clothes: Isabella and Ramon de Alva.
The blackguard took her into his arms and kissed her. His lips slipped down to her breast area, and he pulled apart her bodice to expose the white breasts that I had once seen.
The man treated a woman like a dog in heat. He threw her on the ground and tore at her clothes. Had I not observed that she had come voluntarily with him and that she enjoyed his hard touch, I would have grabbed my dagger and flung myself on him to stop him from raping her.
Her undergarments flew as he flung them away. When he had exposed the dark area between the glistening whiteness of her thighs, he dropped his own pants and fell upon her. He inserted his pene betwe
en her legs, and both of them began to pump and pant.
I slowly lay back, cringing as the springs of the coach squeaked. I shut my eyes and put my hands over my ears to shut out the sounds of their dog noises.
My heart bled for Don Julio. And for myself.
What terrible thing had I done to cause this evil man in black to come into my life again.
The next morning I got a handful of tortillas from the kitchen rather than joining the guests at breakfast. Coming down the great hall of the house, I saw a portrait on the wall that caused me to stop and stare.
The person in the painting was a handsome young girl, about twelve years old, not yet in the flush of womanhood, but in that late stage of balancing on the line between child, girl, and young woman.
I was certain that the young woman in the picture was Eléna, who had smuggled me out of Veracruz. As I stared at the picture I realized that in the coach the older women had referred to her uncle as "Don Diego."
¡Santa Maria! No wonder I had encountered the beastly Ramon de Alva. It had been said in the coach that de Alva was employed by her uncle.
The resemblance of the girl in the picture to my savior in the coach was too great for there to be any mistake. A servant came by and I asked, "This girl, is she Don Diego's niece?"
"Yes, señor. Very nice girl. She died of the pox."
I left the house and made my way to the coach with tears in my eyes. Had de Alva crossed my path, I would have thrown myself on him and ripped out his throat with my dagger. While no sense could be made of such logic, I blamed de Alva even for the death of Eléna. In my eyes he had taken two people I love from me and was dishonoring a third. I again swore an oath to someday take vengeance on him in a way that would not harm Don Julio or Mateo.
My heart now knew why this land called New Spain was a land of tragedy and tears as well as gaiety and song.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
After Isabella returned to the city, Don Julio took Mateo on an undercover assignment with him, and I languished at home with boredom and jealousy.
"You are in charge of the hacienda while I am gone," Don Julio told me, "a heady assignment for one so young—and tempestuous."
I begged to go, but the don's ears were deaf to my pleas.
As I was helping Mateo load his gear on a pack horse, he talked about the task.
"Don Julio is not interested in the ordinary crime that plagues the country, petty highwaymen who rob a bishop's purse or a merchant's goods. The don reports directly to the Council of the Indies in Spain. He is given assignment when there are threats to public order or the king's treasure."
I already knew this about the don, having learned it during the time we pursued the Jaguar cult. And I had slowly put together the fact that his converso status was one of the reasons the Crown used him. He was easier to control since he always had the accusation of Judaism hanging over him.
"There is talk that pirates are planning to launch an attack on the silver stockpiled for the treasure fleet. My job will be to hunt out information in inns where men drink too much and boast to barmaids and whores. For a few well-placed coins, and a few well-placed kisses, the women repeat what they heard."
"Where will you be going?"
"Veracruz."
I realized that I was being left behind because the don worried that I would be recognized by someone in Veracruz. Once again my past had become an unspoken issue between us. Until Mateo or Don Julio raised the subject, I would not embarrass or belabor them with my problems. Harboring one wanted for murder could get both to the gallows—with me as their companion.
The pirate attack turned out to be just another rumor that plagued the treasure fleet. Mateo came home with another scar. This one was called Magdalena.
I never told Mateo about Isabella's tryst with de Alva. I was too embarrassed for the don to share the information even with Mateo. I also knew that if I told Mateo, he would have killed de Alva. Not only was the man's death to be my sport, but I feared setting Mateo upon the man who was called the best swordsman in the land. Mateo would have insisted upon fighting him fairly because he would be doing it for the don. I had no intention of fighting honorably.
The hacienda ran itself, I soon learned, and my efforts at making it run more efficient almost always caused the indios to slow down or stop work. Rather than make more of a fool of myself, I retired to the don's library to increase my knowledge and ease my boredom for the month that Mateo and the don were gone.
The don said I soaked up knowledge like a sponge.
"You are developing into a Renaissance man," he once told me, "a man who has knowledge of not just one discipline, but of many."
My face lit up that day like the noon sun. Don Julio himself was a true Renaissance man, a possessor of knowledge of art, literature, science, and medicine. He could set a broken arm, expound upon the Peloponnesian wars, quote Dante's La divina commedia, chart a course on land or sea with stars and planets. I was intensely proud of the don, whose genius as an engineer had made him the designer of the great tunnel project that was one of the wonders of the New World.
With the don's encouragement, I devoured books like a great whale swallowing a school of fish in one gulp. Fray Antonio had, of course, already given me many lessons in the classics, history, and religion. But the fray's library had been small, less than three dozen volumes. Don Julio's library was one of the largest private libraries in New Spain and contained over fifteen hundred books. It was a cornucopia, a horn of plenty, for a person with an insatiable appetite for knowledge.
I read and reread not only the great works that had been contained in the fray's library, almost all of which the don had also, but practical books like Father Agustin Farfan's treatise on medicine, the works of the great pharmaceuticist Mesue, the ninth-century Arabic doctor at the court of Harun-Al-Raschid at Bagdad, the secrets of surgery revealed by the Spaniard Benavides, Sahagun's history of the indios, and Bernal Díaz del Castillo's history of the conquest.
The don's library was stuffed with the works of Galen, Aristotelian science, and Arabic doctors; writing of the Greek philosophers, Roman lawgivers, and the Renaissance poets and artists; tomes on engineering and the cosmos. Of the most fascinating works were those of the technique of surgery to put a nose on a person after it was cut off, the story of the sinful French disease, also called syphilis, and Ambroise Paré's battlefield surgery techniques.
A surgeon in Italy had developed a procedure to replace the noses of those who had had them cut off. Don Julio said that the surgeon was motivated by the plight of a young woman from Genoa whose nose had been cut off by some soldiers who were enraged at the resistance she offered to the rape they were conducting.
Gaspare Tagliacozzi, the Italian surgeon, died about the time I was being born. He had studied a Hindu method of surgery in which a flap of the skin of the forehead was draped down and shaped to form a nose. The upper part of the flap, still attached to the forehead, was left attached until the nose part grew on the flesh. The Hindus had developed this art from necessity—many Hindu woman lost their noses for real or imagined infidelities.
The Hindu method left a large, pyramid-shaped scar on the patient's forehead. Tagliacozzi developed a method of using the same amount of skin but obtaining it from under the forearm. Because the forearm was mobile, a frame was built around the person's head to hold the forearm against the nose area until the forearm flap of skin attached itself to form a new nose.
He also performed similar operations for repair on the ears, lips, and tongue.
As for the young woman from Genoa whose defense of her virtues caused the loss of her nose, it is said that the operation was a complete success, except that in cold weather her nose developed a rather purplish hue.
Tagliacozzi relates his techniques in De Chirurgia Curtorum Per Insitionem, published a couple of years before his death, a copy of which in Spanish found its way to the don's library.
One of the worst contagions on the face of th
e earth is commonly called syphilis, or the French disease. It is said that the disease got its name from the shepherd Syphlius, who insulted Apollo; the angry god inflicted upon Syphlius a loathsome disease that spread like wildfire.
Syphilis has struck the hearts of every man and woman in the New World and the old. Acquired through copulation, many men have carried it home to their wives. The priests chide us that syphilis is a disease of sin, put on earth by God to punish the promiscuous, but what sin does an innocent woman commit who gets this dreaded affliction because the husband she has no control over carries it home from a whore or an amorous adventure?
For those who do not shake it in its early stages, there is no cure for the disease except death. For some the death comes slowly, eating away the life of the person; others are carried away mercifully—but painfully—quickly. One out of every two persons who get the contagion dies from it.
The treatment is as horrible as the frightful, raw, painful rash and ulcers that cover an infected person's body. When the sores are present on the body, the infected person is placed in a barrel or tub with mercury in it. A tub ordinarily used for the salting of meat so that it would last longer was often utilized. Tub or barrel, the container was large enough to contain the body of a man and so it was used for sweating out the malady and fumigating syphilitics. The contents of the container, man and mercury in powder or liquid form, were heated.
It is said the cure kills as many as the disease. Many of those who survive the cure have tremors of the hands, feet, and head along with frightening grimaces, death's head skull grins.
Don Julio told me that alchemists, who supplied the mercury compound to barbers and others who gave the treatments, finally realized their dreams of turning mercury into gold by the treatment of syphilis.
Some claim Columbus's men brought the dreaded disease back from America. On their return to Spain, many of them chose to become mercenaries and had hurried to join King Ferdinand of Naples, who was defending his kingdom against King Charles of France. After Naples fell, the Spaniards entered the service of the French king and carried the disease along with them to France. Because of its early prevalence in the French army, it earned the common name of the "French disease."
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