Aztec Blood

by Gary Jennings

  The indios deny that the disease is a New World one and claim that the Spaniards brought it with them and that it killed as many indios as the peste and vomitó.

  Who knows? Perhaps both are right—the Lord acts in mysterious ways.

  Another wonderful story of medicine fascinated me, that of the French battlefield surgeon, Ambriose Paré. This was another man who died not too long before my birth.

  When Paré was a young army surgeon, the common way to stop bleeding of a gunshot wound was to cauterize it with boiling oil. The black powder used in cannons and smaller weapons was considered poisonous; boiling oil was applied to eliminate the poison, stop the bleeding, and cure the wound. Applying hot oil to a wound was extremely painful to the soldiers who were already suffering great pain.

  During a period of heavy casualties, Paré ran out of oil and improvised, applying a salve made from egg yolks, rose essence, and turpentine. To stop the bleeding, he took the radical step of sewing closed the damaged arteries. To his surprise, and the surprise of the surgeons working around him, his patients almost all survived, while the death rate on those who had boiling oil applied was exceptionally high.

  Like many heroes of medicine and science, Paré was not immediately proclaimed a hero. Careful to give the Inquisition its due, he always denied he had cured the men. To avoid a charge that he was in league with the devil, after every treatment, he said, "I dressed his wound; God healed him."

  It is from Paré that Don Julio learned the technique of removing a musket ball or arrow with the person in the same position as when the object entered.

  Alas, the price of fame and success: Paré's fame grew, jealous surgeons tried to poison him.

  After reading of Paré's skills and knowledge and seeing Don Julio's educated application of medicine, I was struck by how miraculous it was that Fray Antonio was able to perform surgery with little knowledge of anatomy and kitchen utensils for instruments. Eh, no doubt the Lord was guiding his hands.

  Thinking about the miracles the fray performed, the tale of another medical miracle came to mind. Suffering from a gangrenous left leg, a farmer named Roberto fell into a coma at the door of a church. In his unconscious state, he dreamt that saints had come and removed him to a hospital. The saints performed an operation to amputate the leg below the knee and performed the same operation, postmortem, on a patient who had died in an adjoining bed. They sewed the leg from the dead man onto the farmer. When Roberto awoke the next day, he discovered he had two sound legs.

  When he returned home from the hospital, Roberto told his family and friends about the incident. Each time he told them that he had been the recipient of a miracle, that saints themselves had sewed the leg of a dead man to replace his amputated one, people scoffed. When they did, he lifted up his pants to prove his story.

  One of his legs was white, the other black.

  The man on the bed beside him had been africano.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  While I swam in a sea of knowledge, I lived in a world of ignorance and fear. It was dangerous to display any sort of knowledge outside of the tight circle formed by Don Julio, Mateo, and myself. I learned this painful lesson from Don Julio, whom I am sad to say claims that I am the only friend he has ever had who incites him to violence.

  The incident occurred when a woman Don Julio had treated died in a town a day's ride from the hacienda. I accompanied Don Julio to the woman's home, where she was being prepared for burial. The woman was not of a great age, about forty years old, which is about what I calculated Don Julio's own age to be. And she had appeared to be in good health immediately prior to her expiration.

  To further complicate matters, she was a wealthy widow who had recently married a younger man, who had a reputation as a profligate and womanizer.

  Upon arrival at the house, Don Julio sent all but the alcalde and her priest out of the death room and examined the body. He suspected arsenic poisoning because of the smell of bitter almonds from her mouth.

  The priest announced that the woman had expired from sinfulness because she had married so soon after the death of her husband and to a man whom the Church frowned upon.

  I laughed at the priest's prognosis. "People don't die from sin."

  The next thing I knew I was nearly knocked across the room by a blow from Don Julio. "Young fool! What do you know about the mysterious workings of God?"

  I realized my folly. This was the second time in my life that I had gotten into trouble for exposing medical knowledge.

  "You are correct, padre, the woman died of her sins," Don Julio said, "in the sense that she brought into her own house the scoundrel who poisoned her. Like almost all poisons, it will be extremely hard to prove that he administered it. However, with the permission of the alcalde, and the blessing of the Church, I would like to lay a trap for the killer."

  "What trap do you wish to lay, Don Julio?" the alcalde asked.

  "The bloodguilt?"

  Both men murmured with approval. I remained quiet, in ignorance and humility.

  "If I could get the padre and your excellency to prepare the husband by sowing the seeds of his fear..."

  When the two left the room to converse with the husband, Don Julio said, "We have to hurry."

  He began to examine the body. "The palm of her hand has a cut, probably when she broke this cup in her pain." The cut was a jagged one, but there was little blood in it.

  Pieces of the cup were on the table next to the bed and on the floor beside the bed. He examined the cup part, sniffing them.

  "I suspect that the poison came in this cup."

  "How will you prove it? What is bloodguilt?"

  "Bloodguilt is an old wives' tale, but one that many people believe." He took a copper tube and a small, round copper ball out of his medical case. I had seen him put liquid in the ball and attach the tube in it for insertion in the back side of a person's body when he was applying medicine to that place. "When a person dies, for some strange and unknown reason, blood sinks to the lowest part of the body. As she is lying on her back, the blood will gather all along her back, behind her legs, and so forth."

  "Why?"

  He shrugged. "No one knows. Many doctors believe that it is part of a process in which the body is drawn toward the earth for its burial. As you know from the books in the library that you read with my permission—and those you read by stealth—there are more mysteries than answers in life."

  "The sinking of the blood—that is bloodguilt?"

  "No. Help me turn her a little." He took his dagger from his belt. "I'm going to draw blood."

  He filled the ball with blood and inserted the tube, keeping the device upward so the liquid would not run out. Pulling back the woman's sleeve, he sat the device on her bare arm, keeping his finger over the end so the blood would not run out.

  "Here, put your finger where mine is."

  I traded places with him, keeping the end of the tube sealed while he pulled the sleeve down until the ball and tube were covered.

  "When you remove your finger, blood from the hidden container will slowly flow into her palm. To someone just entering the room, it will appear that the wound to her hand is bleeding."

  "Why would the wound bleed?"

  "Many people believe wounds to a body will bleed if the person's killer comes close. When that happens, the killer is unveiled. That is the bloodguilt, the blood of the victim pointing to the killer."

  "Is this true? Does the blood really flow?"

  "It does when you arrange for it to flow, as we just did. I sent the fray and the alcalde out to arouse the husband's fears about the bloodguilt. It is time to call them back with the husband in tow. When the husband steps into the room, remove your finger and step back, and I will point out that the palm is bleeding."

  A moment later the husband ran from the room in terror. The last I saw of him, he was babbling incoherently as the alcalde's men tied his hands behind him. I did not attend his hanging; I had seen enough death in my lif
e.

  On the way back to the hacienda, Don Julio instructed me on the proper way to deal with medicine with a priest.

  "The medical lore of a priest is found in the Scriptures."

  "Scriptures have medical information?"

  "No. That is exactly my point. To most priests, a doctor does not heal—God does. And God is stingy about how many He saves. If a doctor saves too many, the suspicion may arise that he is in league with the devil. When you challenged the priest, you were right in your knowledge, but wrong in your wisdom. It is dangerous for any doctor to demonstrate too much medical knowledge or effect too many cures. When the doctor is a converso, as I am, and as others believe you are, familiars from the Inquisition may pull you from your bed in the middle of the night if you expose too much medical skill."

  I apologized profusely to the don.

  "The same approach must be taken in regard to your knowledge of indio healing herbs. The herbs are often more effective than any European medicine, but care must be taken not to arouse the ire of priests or jealous doctors."

  Don Julio told me something that I found shocking: He sometimes proscribed remedies that he knew were nonsense—but appeased patients and priests.

  "There is a concoction called mithradatium that has several dozen ingredients and is believed to be a cure-all for everything, including poison. One of the main ingredients is the flesh of a viper on the theory that a snake is immune to its own poison. I find the medicine not only a fraud, but often harmful. When I administer it, I do so in such a weak dose that it can do no harm.

  "Our doctors have more knowledge of poisons that kill people than of drugs to cure illness. The fools will often ignore an indio remedy that has been known to cure and apply something that has no medicinal value. The viceroy himself and half the grand men in Spain have bezoar stones to put into their drinks because they believe that the stones are an antidote that absorbs poisons."

  "Bezoar stones? I have not heard of this antidote," I said.

  "They're stones found in the organs of dead animals. Men who plot the course of nations, kings who rule empires, often will not drink anything unless their bezoar stone has been placed in their cups."

  "They keep one from being poisoned?"

  "Bah! They're useless. Some even have horns they believe are from unicorns. They drink from the horns or stir their drinks with the horns in the belief that the horns can neutralize poisons."

  I shook my head in wonderment. It was for this very type of men that the Healer's snake trick was suited.

  The don went on, not hiding his disgust.

  "When the archbishop was dying a few years ago, men who were called the best doctors in New Spain were at his bedside. One of the medicines given to him to help him sleep and reduce his pain was mouse dung, the droppings of mice." He shook his head as if the fact still did not fit well into his brain. "I am certain this foul substance helped speed the poor man to his reward in heaven."

  After listening to the don, I realized that he and the Healer were not as far apart in their medical practices as one might suppose.

  Or in their cunning. Bloodguilt was no doubt the Spanish equivalent to an indio snake trap.

  One era in my life closed and another opened when I was twenty-one years old. I had dreamt a thousand times of seeing the New Spain city that was called a wonder of the world, a city of canals and palaces, of beautiful women and grand caballeros, of champion horses and golden carriages. The day finally came when I was to see the Venice of the New World.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  "We're all going to the city," Don Julio informed us one day.

  Mateo and I exchanged looks of surprise.

  "Pack all of your personal possessions. I will instruct the servants what to take of the household. Cristo, you are to supervise packing of the library and some other items I will point out. Mateo and I will leave tomorrow for the city. You will follow with my sister and niece after you get everything packed and loaded. You will have to hire extra mules to carry the loads. Inez and Juana will go as far as possible by carriage and then by litter when the coach can go no farther."

  "How long will we be in the city?" Mateo asked.

  "I don't know. Perhaps forever. Perhaps we will be buried there."

  I had never seen the don so grave and introspective. Beneath his sober demur, I sensed anxiety and urgency.

  "What is the urgency, Don Julio?" I asked. "Is Doña Isabella ill?"

  "My wife is still healthy enough to spend two pesos for every one I earn. No, it's not the doña. The viceroy commands my presence. The heavy rains of the past few weeks has resulted in flooding parts of the city."

  "What of the drain tunnel?" Mateo asked.

  "I don't know what's happened. Too much water for the tunnel, cave-ins; I won't know until I inspect it. I designed the tunnel to handle heavy rainfalls."

  While I was concerned about the don's tunnel problem, I was elated that we were going to the great city. The years spent on the hacienda had turned me into a seasoned gentleman—in my own eyes—but the hacienda was a place of cattle and corn. Mexico! The name itself glittered with excitement for me.

  I could see from a look Don Julio gave me that he had considered leaving me on the hacienda. I, too, feared the dark shadows in my past, but so many years had passed that I no longer kept an eye on my back. Besides, I was no longer a mestizo boy but a fine Spanish gentleman!

  Mateo, too, was eager to get back to city life. And it was safer for him. The don said that the audiencia member who would have caused problems for Mateo had returned to Spain. But the excitement we felt was tempered by our concern for Don Julio. Mateo expressed some of my own fears that night after dinner.

  "The don is worried, more than he allows us to see. The command from the viceroy must be serious. The tunnel was the most expensive project in New Spain's history. We know the don is a great man, the best engineer in New Spain—the tunnel must be a marvel."

  Mateo tapped my chest with the tip of his dagger.

  "But, Bastardo, let us hope that the tunnel the don designed is the tunnel that got built."

  "You believe the workmanship was faulty?"

  "I believe nothing—yet. But we live in a land where public offices are sold to the highest bidder and mordida buys any favor from a government official. If the tunnel fails and the city is severely damaged, the viceroy and his underlings will not accept the blame. Who better to blame than a converso?"

  A fortnight after the don and Mateo departed, I set out on horseback for the city with a train of mules behind me. In my eagerness, I had the servants pack quickly; but while I moved with the speed of a jaguar, Inez dragged her feet like a prisoner setting off for an execution. The prospect of living with Isabella rankled. She did not want to leave the hacienda; but even with a loyal staff of indios, the don feared for the safety of two Spanish women alone.

  "I would rather be murdered by bandits than sleep in the same house with that woman," Inez declared.

  Personally, I would have slept under the devil's roof for the chance to see Mexico.

  I rushed Inez and Juana through their packing, with Inez making excuse after excuse for her slow progress. When the two were packed, we set out, two women, myself, and a train of mules and tenders. I had been at the hacienda for three years. I came as a mestizo outcast and left as a Spanish gentleman. I could ride, shoot, use a sword and even a fork! I could not only herd cattle but had learned the miracle of how sun and water nourished the land.

  Another stage of my life was about to begin. What would the gods hold for me this time?

  EIGHTY

  I first saw the grand city from atop a hill in the distance. It shimmered on a lake like a fine jewel on a woman's bosom.

  Mexico! I asked myself, as the conquistadors had before me, Was it real?

  Juana spoke to me from her litter carried by two mules.

  "Bernal Díaz del Castillo, the conquistador who wrote a history of the conquest, described what the conquist
adors thought when they first saw Tenochtitlan. He spoke of enchanted things... 'great towers, temples, and buildings rising from the water.' Cristo, we, too, must ask ourselves if these things we see now, the City of Mexico towering from the ruins of Tenochtitlan, are not a dream."

  The towers and temples below were not Aztec, but were marvels of the world anyway, at least the small part of the world my eyes had set upon. Mateo claimed that he had loved and fought in half the great cities of Europe, and the city we call Mexico was as tall and proud as any of them. Churches and palaces, homes so large the great house at the hacienda would have fit in their courtyard, wide boulevards, canals, green fields, and lakes. Causeways ran from the shore to the city, one meeting a great street. But no! Not a street like those in Veracruz or Jalapa, but a grand avenue long enough and wide enough to set both of those miserable towns upon it. Six carriages could travel it abreast. Even the narrower streets could easily have allowed three carriages side-by-side.

  In the heart of the city I made out a large square that I knew was called the Zocalo, the main plaza. It was the largest and most important square in the city, distinguished by fine buildings like the viceroy's palace and the cathedral that was still being improved upon.

  And the canals! As if an artist had drawn them with his hand directed by God. The lake and canals swarmed with canoes and barges, supplying the city like a fleet of water bugs, while the broad causeways streamed with coaches, litters, horsemen, and pedestrians.

  Joaquin, Don Julio's indio valet, who served him both at the hacienda and the town house, accompanied us. He pointed at the main plaza. "The largest marketplace is in the square. There are many shops besides the places of the Church and viceroy. The great houses of the nobles and rich merchants are on adjoining streets."