Aztec Blood

by Gary Jennings

  Their leader, a husky africano, who had lassoed me from the back of a mule, bent down and grabbed my face with his hand, twisting it so he could examine my mine slave brand.

  He grinned with pleasure. "Just as I thought, an escaped mine slave. But the brand is not readable. What mine did you escape from?"

  I did not answer. He let me go and stood up. He gave me a kick. "It doesn't matter. He's strong and healthy. Any of the mines will pay us a hundred pesos for him."

  I knew he was right. They would pay a hundred pesos and consider it cheap. A black slave would cost them four times that much.

  ¡Ay de mí! I had forgotten an important lesson in life, one the fray always preached. When things are too good to be true... they are not true. Only a fool would have been duped by the little india with the donkey. I should have seen from the length of her stride and the swing of her arms that the old crone was a man.

  I had blown up a mine, shattered a mountain, survived a river at full flood, escaped certain death only by the personal intervention of God, bedded down a beautiful india saint... only to stumble—no!—race into the hands of slave hunters.

  The donkey "woman" caught up with us.

  "I get credit for the capture!" he shouted to the others. "I get the bonus dinero." He ran up to the man who had examined my face and whom I took to be the leader of the band. "Yanga, I get the bonus dinero for making the capture. Isn't that true!"

  The name jolted me.

  "I caught him with my rope," the man called Yanga said. "You let him get away."

  "But I was the bait that lured him out of hiding!"

  I paid attention to the man as the donkey man argued with him. Could it be the same Yanga whom I had aided years ago? What about the maroon bandit leader named Yanga?

  After the two men resolved their differences, Yanga announced that it was too late to head for a mine; that they would make camp on the spot. Supplies were unpacked and a fire started for dinner. I eyed Yanga until my staring caught his attention.

  He gave me a kick. "Why do you stare at me? You try to poison my soul with the evil eye, and I will cut you into little pieces."

  "I know you."

  He grinned. "Many people know me. My name is sung all over New Spain."

  "Your name was ridiculed when I last saw you, the night I saved your life." I had actually saved the man's testicles, but for most men it was the same thing. He was older and his beard was streaked with white, but I was convinced it was the same man.

  He stared down at me narrowly. "Explain yourself."

  "You were tied to a tree along the Jalapa road. A plantation owner was going to relieve you of your testicles. I cut you loose, and you removed his instead."

  He muttered something in his native tongue that I did not understand. He knelt beside me again and stared at me. I could see that he was trying to subtract the years and the beard from the face.

  "Ridiculing you as a prince," I went on, "he boasted of castrating you in front of his other slaves, so they would understand the consequences of disobedience, what would happen to them if they disobeyed. You were beaten, then tied to the tree. The man threw a rock at you and told you to eat that for dinner."

  His face revealed that my guess was right; he was the Yanga of the Jalapa road. "Life is a circle," the fray used to say. "If one has enough patience, everything that goes by him once will return. The chinos in China on the other side of the world believe that if you wait by a river long enough, the body of your enemy will float by. Like the body of your enemy, the good deed you do today, the evil you sow, everything comes full circle."

  I started to say something else, and he hushed me. "Quiet. Don't let the others hear such talk."

  He left and did not return for another hour. When he came back, he had food for each of us. He loosened my left hand so I could eat.

  The others were gathered around the campfire, exchanging boasts and dreams about what they would do with the prize money they would collect for capturing me. From their talk I understood that they had bagged a few indios and an africano mine slave in the past, but none had been as big and healthy as I was. Ay, I wish they had seen me before the india farm woman had fattened up my body and soul.

  "How did escaped slaves come to be slave hunters?" I asked.

  "I have fought the gachupins for seven years," he said. "Over those years my band grew to more than a hundred. We could not live by thievery alone but needed food and families. That meant that we could not flee as fast from danger. We made our village high in the mountains, and when the soldados came, we drove them back into the jungle. But we always paid a price. And each time we fled, our village was burned, and we had to find another home.

  "Finally the viceroy offered us peace. We would be forgiven our past crimes and would be declared freedmen. In return we had to return all escaped slaves that came our way. The plantation owners pay little for this service, but the mines continually run out of workers and pay well."

  Eh, it's a brutal world, is it not, amigo? Avaricious slave owners flog and rape their human "property." The españols mistake a pig stampede for an africano rebellion and hang innocent blacks out of ignorance and fear. Ex-slaves, who once fought to be freed, now hunt other slaves for a bounty. A short time ago I was going to rob an old india of her donkey and goods.

  "Returning me to the mines is a death sentence," I said, testing the waters.

  "What did you do to get sent to the mines?"

  "I was born."

  Yanga shrugged. "Death cures all ills. Perhaps dying quickly in the mines is more merciful than dying on the outside."

  "And perhaps I should not have risked my life for your manhood. I did not save a man anyway but a woman."

  He hit me across the head so hard I blacked out for a moment. He retied my hands. Before he left, he gave me another kick.

  "You get to eat only because we want to kept you fat until we are paid for you. But don't speak your bad words to me again. The mine owners will not miss your tongue when we sell you back to them."

  The men around the campfire laughed at my punishment.

  I lay very still, bringing the world back into focus. The man had fists the size of cannonballs. And maybe harder.

  However, when I rolled to my side, I felt a knife tucked between my ribs and my right arm. The rope Yanga had retied around my left hand had enough slack in it for me to grasp the knife.

  The maroons drank and sang and argued late into the night. Eventually they passed out. If they had selected a sentry, he was passed out too—and snoring. They were all snoring. I cut myself free, picked up my manta and retied it around over my shoulder. I crept over to the mules, who knew me by now and did not spook.

  There were four mules, still saddled and bridled in case the maroons needed to mount up in a hurry. I cut the reins and cinches on three of them. As soon as I was in the saddle of the fourth, I let out a yell that would have awakened people in the Place of the Dead, and booted the mule's ribs with my heels. I left the shouts of men behind me. Hopefully, by the time they rounded up their mules, I would be long gone.

  ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

  Thus began an era of my life in which my name became famous once again in New Spain. Famous for charity? you ask. For works of scholarship? Amigos, you joke with me, of course, when you ask such questions. You know that the first time I became famous in the land it was for two murders I did not commit. Do you expect anything less from me? This time it was as a bandit leader that lips spoke my name and tongues wagged my fame.

  Not long after I escaped Yanga's slave hunters, I began my new life. And why not? I was a man of property, possessing a mule and a steel knife. But I could not eat the mule I needed to carry me, and a knife is not a sword. Furthermore, I lacked money.

  Finding an ax along the road gave me an idea. I would become a woodcutter, and on the Zacatecas road I had my first chance.

  I spotted a very fat priest traveling by mule litter. He must have been an important fray, perhaps t
he prior of a church or convent in the mining capital. His litter was transported by two mules, front and back, with an indio walking beside each animal with rein in hand. Ten more indios, armed with knives and spears, marched with the litter.

  Not too far in front of the priest's procession was a large mule train. The priest no doubt camped with the muleteers at night for added protection and traveled near them by day. But at the moment his litter and indios had dropped behind the mounted mule train, because they were climbing a steep hill, and his indios on foot could not keep up.

  I was one man armed with a knife against a dozen indios. If I attacked them, they would impale me like thorns in a maguey branch. But I possessed a secret weapon: my axe.

  The sun had set below the rimrock, casting the road below in shadowy twilit gloom, when the comedia began. As the priest's procession approached the top of the hill, his indios were forced to stop. At which point they heard the chopping sounds. No houses were evident, so the chopping was a little strange. To the fray, of course, the chopping sounds were nonetheless insignificant, but to an indio steeped in superstition, Night Ax, the headless apparition, evoked nothing less than hell on earth. During childhood their parents told them continually that if they weren't good children, Night Ax would come for them. They, in turn, passed the same threat on to their children: Night Ax stalking the evening forests, pounding his chest with his ax as he looked for victims.

  As the chopping continued, I studied the indios from my hiding place uphill. The indios looked at one another, clearly distraught. Each of them had chopped wood on almost a daily basis. They understood that the ax wasn't splitting wood but... spilling blood.

  The procession came to a halt. The priest, oblivious to the drama, continued to sleep, his head slumped forward. I mounted my mule and came out of hiding at a swinging gallop, the ax in hand, my blanket covering my head—with holes punched out for my eyes—making me appear in the deepening dusk as a headless, ax-swinging fiend.

  The indio bodyguards ran. The ones guiding the mules dropped their reins and quickly followed suit. The startled mules even took off running. I intercepted the lead animal, reaching down to get its reins. With the priest in the litter shouting and waving frantically, I led the mules off of the road and into the forest.

  When I had gone far enough to elude would-be rescuers, I halted the mules. When I dismounted, the fat priest climbed out of the litter. He was the kind of priest that Fray Antonio hated, the ones with silk and lace and heavy gold chains.

  "God will punish you for this!" he screamed.

  I confronted him with my knife, putting it against his big belly. "God punishes me, fray, with the likes of you—priests who grow rich and fat and wear silk while poor people starve. How many indio babies starved for this silk shirt?"

  I now poked his throat with the steel blade.

  "Don't kill me!"

  "Hey, amigo, do I look like a killer to you?"

  From the look on his face, I'm afraid I did.

  But while I left his life intact, yes, I must confess I robbed a priest—very thoroughly. I took not only his jewelry and money, I made him strip naked and appropriated all his silks and linens, along with a pair of exquisite calfskin shoes. I honestly believe that Fray Antonio, Fray Juan, and most of the priests of New Spain, men who conquered an empire of the soul with faith and guts, would have secretly cheered the man's downfall.

  "Fray, when they ask you who did this foul deed, tell them it was Cristo the Bastardo who robbed you. Tell them I am a prince of mestizos and that no Spaniard is safe with his gold or his women while I am alive."

  "You can't leave me alone in this wilderness! I have no shoes!"

  "Eh, padre, if you have led a good life, the Lord will provide. Consider the lilies of the field, who neither toil nor do they spin."

  When I left, he was standing barefoot and naked by his litter damning me to hell in a language that was most un-priestly.

  So began the new career of Cristo the Bandito. I was so successful at my newfound trade that soon I had a half-dozen highwaymen assisting me. I am sad to say that not all of my new friends were as scrupulous and efficient as I. Those who could not avoid a sword or musket ball with my fabled alacrity or who showed their bad judgment and lack of character by trying to steal from me, I quickly dismissed or killed. In fact, the first mestizo trash who tried to cut my throat for a larger cut of the till, I killed. I then lopped off his right ear and wore it on my sword scabbard as a warning to future miscreants. Not that it did much good. Within weeks I had three more ears hanging—a vivid rebuttal of the ancient maxim espousing honor among thieves.

  We moved quickly, hitting the same piece of road several times in succession, then riding like the wind to an entirely different part of the country. To keep from arousing suspicion, I became a guitar merchant, using the trick that Don Julio had us use when we were tracking the naualli magician. A few guitars make a tall load on a mule yet they are very light, so the mule can, if required, depart in a hurry.

  Do you think it was exciting to be a bandito? It was wait in ambush, hit and run, keep on the move, stay one step ahead of the viceroy's soldados, drink too much, love too little, guard your back against comrades who would knife it in a heartbeat if there was one maravedí or the arms of a half ugly woman in it for them. Ay, for me it was worse. While I admit to having the larcenous soul of a lépero; unlike the riffraff I rode with, I have been a gentleman, a scholar, a wearer of spurs.

  Never far from my mind were my memories. Painful memories. Fray Antonio—tortured and slaughtered for protecting me. The Healer, who taught me how to be proud of my indio heritage. I thought of Don Julio, who saved my life, made me a gentleman—and then I thought of the holocaust that took him and his family before my eyes. Of my compadre, Mateo, who saved me from killers, taught me the theater, made me a man, and who either perished crossing the great ocean or died of fever in the Filipinas' jungles. And of a woman with radiant eyes and a smile like the rainbow's end, who wrote with poetry of soul, saved my life twice, whom I loved with all my heart but would never know, let alone, possess... and who, wed to a monster, would never know peace.

  Throughout everything, all I wanted to do was turn my horse toward the City of Mexico, plunge a dagger into Ramon de Alva, and pray for one last glimpse of the woman I loved. But it was not to be. Not that I had given up on my revenge. The time was not ripe, that was all. Alva had grown even richer and more powerful since the don's death. He was now heralded as one of the most powerful men in New Spain. None of which meant he could not die, but when I did exact my vengeance, it would not be by way of an anonymous blade. That would be too kind. I wanted his fortune, his women, his pride, then his life. Death was not enough—not for what he had done.

  I tried not to think of Eléna. Marriages among the rich and noble were arranged by family heads, whose words were law. By now she would be sharing Luis's life and bed. The thought of her in his arms was a knife in my heart, like the one Ramon thrust into the fray and twisted.

  Still I had pride—even as a bandit. Eh, what the devil! I assumed I would die soon. Why not spread my name across the length and breadth of New Spain?

  Among other things, I brought originality to the ancient profession of banditry. The way I invoked the Night Ax in my robberies was a singular example. My favorite techniques, however, were typically more grandiose, often conjuring explosive effects for which I owed an inestimable debt to Don Julio, Mateo, and I suppose my abysmal stint in the mine. From all three I had learned the art of black powder detonation.

  No one had seen anything like it before. Explosions placed in mountain passes, bringing down half a mountain on a mule train's protectors. Bridges blown with guards still crossing, leaving carriages and pack trains behind them still on the trail. Black powder bombs, hurled by hand, stampeding horses, indios, and Spaniards alike, convincing them all that troops and artillery were on the offensive.

  But my favorite raid had been on the wife of Veracruz's
alcalde—the same woman whose witch's teat I had so meticulously titillated so many years ago. The alcalde was long dead—gored to death while challenging a bull on foot. His widow, however, had lost none of her cold beauty, had left Veracruz, and resided in the City of Mexico, to which she was returning after a visit to a hacienda.

  We attacked just as the carriage was stopping for the noon meal. The lady was still inside the carriage when one of my men climbed aboard and took the reins. I jumped up to take her jewels and encountered my old friend. As the carriage rocked and swayed from the ruts in the road, the woman assaulted me verbally.

  "You filthy animal! Get away from me!"

  "Filthy?" I smelled my clothes under my arm. "I am not unclean. I bathe more than your Alameda friends do."

  "What do you want? Take this!" She took off her least valuable ring and handed it to me. "That ring means more to me than life itself. It was given to me by my sainted husband before he died."

  "It is not the cold jewels you wear on the outside, but the hot gem of your love I seek."

  "My love? No, por Dios!" She crossed herself. "You are going to rape me."

  "Rape? Never. Do I appear to be less than a gentleman than the dons who curry your favor on the Alameda? You have mistaken me for an ordinary bandit, possibly that villain and murderer Cristo the Bastardo. But I am a gentleman. I am Don Juan Tenorio of Seville, son of the king's chamberlain." Eh, I am sure Tirso de Molina would forgive me for borrowing the name of the rogue he gave birth to with his quill and ink.

  "You are a liar and a blackguard."

  "Ah, yes, my beautiful one, I am those things, too." I kissed her hand. "But we have met before."

  "I've never met a bandit before."

  "Oh yes, you did, my love. During one of your husband's early bull-fighting performances."

  "Nonsense. My husband was an important man. You would not be permitted in our presence."