"It was not your husband who permitted me. It was you who invited me under your dress."
She stared deeply into my eyes, mesmerized by the hint of familiarity she saw there.
"The last time you stared so intently into my eyes, you gave me a kick that made me fall and nearly break my neck."
She gaped. "No! It can't be!"
"Yes. I remember that day very well." I put my hand on her knee and slowly worked it up her thigh. "I remember that you wore no... oh, you still do not."
Her witches teat was still there, as diamond-hard as an aroused garrancha. After my hand found it, I slipped off of the seat and knelt between her legs. I pushed up her dress to expose her naked parts. Her legs spread, and my head descended into her innermost recesses. I playfully tongued that oh-so-titillating teat. It was as delicious as it had been years before.
My tongue was intently exploring a deeper, even more depraved domain when a shot was fired. My bandit comrade let out a yelp of pain and fell dead from the driver's seat. The horses bolted and we had a wild ride until soldados had caught up with the carriage.
A moment later one of them jerked open the door to the carriage.
"Are you all right, señora?"
"Yes."
"Did they harm you?"
"No, I am untouched."
"There was one who jumped into the carriage. Where did he go?"
Ah, that was the question. Where I had gone was under her dress. She was not wearing one of those dresses big enough to hide an elephant under. But with a blanket over her lap and my legs and feet under the seat, I was reasonably hidden. Until she turned me in, and the soldados dragged me out of the coach and chopped off my head.
"Where did he go?" she repeated. I could hear the question in her voice. Not as to my whereabouts—I was still between her legs. But whether I should lose my head.
"He's gone," she said, "leaped from the carriage."
The soldados escorted the carriage to an inn. The alcalde's widow refused to get out of the carriage. She told an officer she wanted to stay aboard and "rest" in privacy. Eh, amigos, it was no rest for me. She kept me busy until I escaped into the dark night.
To this day I do not know whether she protected me because she did not want to be exposed herself... or because she loved my tongue.
ONE HUNDRED AND THREE
In truth, the big robberies were very few and very far between. For the most part my life was a dangerous, ill-trod mountain path, trailing sheer cliffs and split by forks. In my second year as a bandit, I came to one of those forks.
New Spain was a big land, but like Rome, all roads eventually lead to Ciudad Mexico. If one stayed around the main roads, or in my case, committed acts of banditry along them, one would eventually encounter one's past, just as I had met the alcalde's wife. It occurred on one of those roads, which was little more than a trail through a mountain pass.
When the treasure fleet arrived from Seville and the galleon with the riches of the Orient from Manila, my amigos and I made sure we got some small piece of the riches. Ay, it was not an easy task, and by that second year of banditry those pieces were getting smaller. More soldados were patrolling the roads now due to my fame, and especially patrolling the roads when the treasure fleets were in. Everyone on the roads proceeded with extreme caution. The silver trains were heavily guarded. Travelers joined in massive caravans, like those of the Arabian deserts. With each month the pickings had grown increasingly slim.
In those hard times we often had to content ourselves with easy targets—well-to-do travelers foolish enough to travel alone. Most often these solitary wayfarers were well-mounted and relied on their animals to outrun any bandits. But this one time the traveler journeyed by litter and was such a sitting duck I wondered if it was a trap, such as the one Yanga had sprung on me.
We saw the litter from where we had been camped the night before. It had been more than two weeks since we had stolen anything significant and even that had been only a merchant hauling cocoa beans to Acapulco. My three men were grumbling, and I was going to have to add more ears to my collection if we did not relieve some fat merchant of mucho dinero. I decided we could not pass up such an easy target.
We studied him from above and determined his sex by a protruding arm. A very foolish man, was my basic impression. The litter was carried by two mules and two indios guided them, but that was all. He was unprotected.
Eh, amigos, perhaps our luck was changing.
We came down like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, waving our swords, our war screams terrifying. The two indios naturally fled, but rather than some plump priest or merchant climbing out of the litter, a caballero flew out of it with his sword flashing. My best bandito, who got to the litter ahead of me, lost his horse and his life. As I charged, the caballero leaped on my dead amigo's horse and wheeled to face me. When I saw his face, I was so shocked I nearly lost my life. I steered my horse just in time to avoid Mateo's sword.
"Mateo! It's Bastardo! Your Bastardo!"
"Santa Maria," he whispered. Then he roared with laughter. "Cristo! Didn't I teach you how to be a better thief?"
His hair was streaked with gray as was his beard. He was almost as gaunt as I had been after I escaped from the mines. When he told me his story that night around the campfire, I saw why.
"The trip west across the great Southern Sea, the one you called the Western Sea, is hell afloat. Acapulco to Manila is three times farther than Veracruz to Seville. It takes several months to make the trip. Many died aboard. The return trip along the famous monk-navigator Urdaneta's route is even farther and takes over four months. Many more died. When we were told that the viceroy sent the lice of New Spain to the Filipinas to die, we were lied to. They were sent to die at sea."
"And Manila? What of it?" I asked.
"A pretty place but not a great city, a place to lie in the shade and wait to grow old and die while a native girl fans you with a palm leaf. For a man like me who loves the excitement of comedias and the romance of the Alameda, Manila was barren."
We camped high in the mountains to ensure that we would not be surprised by soldados. The two of us sat up most of the night around a fire in a cave talking about our lives and adventures.
Already weakened from months in the hands of the Inquisition, Mateo had barely survived the voyage across the great sea. In the Filipinas, he was sent to a country farm to act as an overseer; but as soon as his strength returned, he was in much demand by the viceroy in Manila as a swordsman.
"My days as a prisoner ended. I fought Malay pirates, yellow devils, tougher than the most bloodthirsty pirates terrorizing the Spanish Main. I killed a hundred of them and saved a chino princess. Her father gave her to me in marriage and my own kingdom. But the princess had a jealous suitor with a big army, and I ended up escaping with just the crown jewels to keep me warm. I went to China, the land of the chinos, and stood upon a great wall that is long enough to enclose all of Spain. I visited an island where the people call themselves Japonés and their warrior class, called samurai, are the toughest fighters on earth. I came back to New Spain with enough wealth to buy the entire City of Mexico and turn it into my personal hacienda."
My compadre had not changed, had he? Still the liar and braggart. Samurai warriors and winning a kingdom! But there were always a few beans of truth in his pot of frijoles. His last adventure was the most truthful.
"I arrived in Acapulco with my pocket full of priceless gems. There was a card—"
"—game and a woman and some wine. How much do you have left?"
"I used my last peso to hire that litter. I didn't have the dinero to buy a horse. And you, amigo? How much treasure have you accumulated from leading a gang of notorious banditos?"
I cleared my throat. "I, uh, have some cocoa beans."
He groaned out loud and long. "Bastardo, you learned nothing from all of my teachings."
"No, that's not true. I did learn much from you. All of the wrong things."
The next day we set out on the trail toward the Valley of Mexico. The Manila galleon road had not been profitable, and we headed for the other side of the valley. On the Jalapa-Veracruz road we looked for our fortunes to change with the arrival of the treasure fleet.
"If I had significant funds, I could return to the City of Mexico by paying a 'fine' to one or two of. the viceroy's underlings," Mateo said.
"I have a handful of cocoa beans," I said.
"It would take a handful of gold. I heard of the black legend of Don Julio even in Manila."
We had not talked much about the don. The subject was too painful. It was unspoken between us that we would kill Ramon de Alva.
"But you," Mateo said, "you could not show your face in the city even if you had a mountain of gold. The first thing I heard when arriving at Acapulco was to beware of Cristo the Bandito. There are many Cristos, but still I hoped against hope that this Cristo would turn out to be my old friend the Bastardo."
Mateo's plan for us was to continue robbing until we had enough dinero to leave New Spain for Seville. To him, Seville was the queen of cities.
"We need to get out of New Spain for a couple of years. We dare not confront Alva until we can walk down the Alameda and the main plaza without fear of being arrested."
We did not discuss these plans in the hearing of my three men.
While I joined Mateo's enthusiasm for a trip to Seville, his concept was that we would take our New World fortune back to Spain and live like kings. So far we had accumulated only a handful of cocoa beans. The more I had robbed, the more my fame spread, the more precautions the rich merchants took.
"One advantage to robbing arrivals from the treasure fleet," I told Mateo, "is that for most of them it is their first time in New Spain, and they do not always follow the advice of more experienced travelers. We should be able to pick up a fat purse or two in a week's time."
"Bah! What would we do with a couple of purses? A few hands of cards? A couple of putas for a night? For this we risk the gallows everyday?"
"No," I expounded, "for this you keep a little food in your belly, and you sleep with one arm out of your blanket and your sword in your hand. The life on the road is not for a gachupin, I know that. Whatever we get, you can have my share, too. Maybe it will be enough to buy your way back to the capital."
Mateo slapped me so hard on the back, I was nearly knocked off my horse. "Eh, compadre, I have hurt your feelings. It is for both of us that I want to acquire wealth. Instead of many small attacks, we must make one big theft that gives us enough dinero to fulfill our needs. Being a gentleman and caballero is expensive."
"The only way we could get enough money in one robbery would be to attack a silver train. But they are heavily guarded," I said. "In the past when troops were needed for war with the Chichimecas, the viceroy did not have enough soldados to protect all of the silver trains, and he used trickery to deceive robbers. Now the silver trains are so well-armed that even with black powder bombs, it would be suicide for a small group like ours to attack one. We would have a better chance of walking into the mint in Mexico City and carrying out an armful of silver bars."
"You would have a better chance of stealing gold from heaven than the mint's silver," Mateo observed. "The place has no windows on the ground floor, the upper windows are barred, and the place is encased with thick walls. It's said to be guarded more dearly than a sultan's harem."
The pickings on the Jalapa road continued to dwindle, which did nothing to improve anyone's temperament. Mateo, who was the most averse to our hit-and-run robberies and to the life of the bandito in general, was unrelentingly sarcastic about a change in strategy.
"I will find a rich widow who will provide me with the lifestyle of a gentleman in return for my services in bed. I would get you employed in the household, of course. You can be my servant, empty my bedpan, and shine my boots."
What an amigo!
The first attack Mateo and I made together was clearly a bad joke from the gods. Our victims turned out to be a troupe of actors from Madrid. Mateo refused to rob them, telling me it would be sacrilegious for us to plunder fellow thespians. Our three fellow brigands balked at Mateo's refusal to rob the actors and would not concur until Mateo turned his sword on them.
The acting troupe incident only increased Mateo's dissatisfaction with the highwayman's life. In truth, it stirred in both of us the urge to return to the stage. Mateo agreed to only one more robbery, after which he would seek other ways of filling his purse.
Our luck changed when we spotted stragglers making the journey from the treasure fleet along the Jalapa road. We roared down on them, a Spaniard in a mule litter, his Spanish servant on a donkey, and a host of indios to serve as guards and servants on foot.
We discovered that rather than a rich merchant, the man was an official from the Council of the Indies in Spain.
"A mint inspector!" Mateo exclaimed with disgust "Instead of mint money, we capture an inspector who oversees that the mint is operating correctly."
We kept the mint inspector and his español servant tied up while we pondered whether we might be able to obtain ransom for the man. The inspector was to present his papers at the mint in the capital, do a complete inspection of all aspects from its security to the quality of its coin-stamping, and then proceed to Lima, Peru, for an inspection mere, after sending a report back to the council.
"The possibilities of getting ransom are slim," Mateo said. "From the papers outlining his authority, he is making a surprise inspection of the mint. No one, not even the mint director or the viceroy, knows he is coming. Worse, if we ask the viceroy to ransom him, he'd probably refuse and hope we kill the inspector. With communications only through the treasure fleet, it would be a year or two before the council found out its inspector was dead and another year or two before another one arrived. The viceroy would benefit because no inspector would come all the way to New Spain to make an inspection and not make sure he found deficiencies that needed to be corrected."
"We need to sleep on the matter," I told him.
Wrapped in our mantas, we lay down with our alternatives in mind. Cut the throats of the two captives and leave the bodies where they would advertise the futility of resisting us. Attempt to obtain a ransom. Or let them go.
I awoke in the middle of the night with a way to use the mint inspector in an entirely different way. I awoke Mateo.
"When we questioned the inspector, he claimed that he has no relatives or friends in New Spain who could ransom him."
"Eh, you woke me up to tell me what I already knew?"
"The man who appears at the mint with the Council of the Indies authority in his hand will be accepted as the inspector."
He grabbed me by the throat. "I am going to rip out your throat if you do not get to the point."
I knocked his hand away. "Listen, you dolt, the mint is filled with enough silver to buy a small kingdom. It can't be stormed, but you could walk into it with the inspector's papers!"
He shook his head. "I have not had enough wine or pleasure with a woman to keep my head clear. My mind and ears are playing tricks on me. I thought perhaps you said I could walk into the mint with the inspector's papers."
"Mateo, no one knows the inspector. His only identification is the council's letter of authority. If you present the paper, you are the inspector."
"Bravo Bastardo! A brilliant plan. I present the papers of this inspector; I have you along as my servant. We walk into the mint. We fill our pockets—no! We lead in a mule and load it with silver bars and walk it out. Is that the loco plan you have devised?" He fondled his dagger.
"Ah, Mateo, Mateo, you jump to conclusions too quickly. I have not finished my plan."
"Then tell me, whisper into my ear exactly how we are to take the treasure from the mint once we are inside."
I yawned, suddenly very tired. Turning my back on him, I crawled back into my bedroll. When I was comfortable, I said, "I have only figured out a way to ge
t into the mint. We do not even know what it looks like inside. Once we are in there, we can figure out how to take the treasure with us."
Mateo said nothing. He lit a tobacco twist and smoked it. That was a good sign. Much better than him fingering his dagger and looking at my throat.
The next morning he gave me his verdict.
"Your idea of using the mint inspector's papers is foolish and stupid. It is exactly the sort of loco idea that has gotten me close to the gallows so often."
"Then we will do it?"
"Of course."
ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR
We studied the mint inspector and his servant at great length, making them walk and talk.
"This is how an actor prepares his part," Mateo said, tapping his head. "Makeup and costume do not make an actor. It is the mental attitude." He gestured at the mint inspector. "Notice that when this worthless dog of a bureaucrat talks to you, how he lifts his nose as if disdaining your lowly odor? How he walks stiffly like he has a stick up his ass? Now watch this." Mateo paced back and forth for a moment. "What do you see, Bastardo?"
"I see a man with wary eyes, watching for a surprise attack, one hand on his sword, his step bold."
"Exactly! But the creature I am to impersonate has spent his life in the safe haven of the king's treasure. He is a man of numbers, not action. He has permanently stained his fingers with ink and has a callus between his fingers from holding a quill. His eyes are bad from reading documents in candlelight, and he has to bend down close to read anything. But of the greatest importance, because he carries the king's authority in a matter more dear to the king's heart than the treasure to be found in his mistresses' bed, the little swine of an inspector is caught up with his own importance. Hiding behind the king's authority, having stained his hands with ink rather than blood, he has the audacity to be rude to even caballeros who could slice him into pieces."
Now that Mateo pointed out the man's characteristics, I could see the truth of his statements. And his own acting ability. I remembered, too, how impressed I had been when I saw Mateo on the stage as the mad prince of Poland.
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