Aztec Blood

by Gary Jennings

  I was impressed by Cervantes's mastery in blending dark pagan superstitions with the Spanish people's heroism in resisting the Roman invaders. In one scene the earth opened and a demon appeared and scurried away with a sacrificial lamb. Marquinio the Sorcerer, a black lance in one hand, a book of magic in another, summoned a dead youth from the Place of the Dead. The lad speaks to the people of their duty and their fate. They must destroy their city, denying Rome both victory and spoils. Neither gold nor gems nor women must fall to the invaders.

  Ana pointed out an interesting little man in the audience. "Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, one of your fellow colonists. He came here from New Spain to study law and theology and ended up writing plays. One of his plays, The Truth Suspected, will open next week."

  Ruiz was a bowlegged hunchback with a flame-red beard. He had the blazing stare of a religious fanatic, the body of a dwarf, and the curled upper lip of a starving wolf.

  I said as much to Ana.

  "His hunger is for fame and glory, but his body precludes both the battlefield and the dueling field. So he puts all of his energy into his quill and garrancha."

  "His what?"

  "He believes he's a great lady's man."

  "Santa Maria." I crossed myself. "Poor devil."

  "Poor women! They say he is hung like a bull."

  After the play, Ana and I relaxed in her Roman bath. I rubbed her feet while she smoked hashish. She had offered me the Moorish dream smoke early in our relationship, but it gave me a headache. Perhaps my Aztec blood was requited only by the dream-making of flower weavers.

  "Tell me about Cervantes and Mateo," I pleaded.

  "Mateo was a young autor, the manager of a travel troupe, and—"

  I interrupted. "The troupe of actors you ran away and joined?"

  "Exactly. As you already guessed, he was my first lover. Not the first man to enjoy my body, but the first I wanted to make love to me."

  I smiled at the thought of the two hellions in a theater and in bed. Dios mio, it would have been a volcano colliding with a tidal wave.

  "So why does he hate Cervantes?"

  "Cervantes was a writer of plays, but he had not gained the fame that was to come after the publication of Don Quixote. Mateo was the manager of a troupe of actors and desired to have his own plays performed. He showed some of his plays to Cervantes."

  "The tale of a knight-errant," I asked, "an old hidalgo who jostled with windmills?"

  "I never knew exactly what Mateo's comedia plots were about. He said Cervantes spoke well of them, and for a while they were friends."

  "Close enough that Mateo might have poured out his heart to Cervantes? Told him of all the adventures and misadventures he had known in the pursuit of wine, women, and glory?"

  "Yes, Mateo's told me that too, that the old man 'borrowed' our friend's adventures; and I have no reason to doubt him. Mateo's life would fill many books. But it is also true that while Mateo's plays about knights and dragons and beautiful princesses were popular with audiences, they were everything that Cervantes loathed. In Don Quixote he parodied Mateo and his writing mercilessly."

  "So Cervantes 'borrowed' his life and ideas and presented them with mockery."

  "Mateo hasn't forgiven him."

  "For certain," I said, "Mateo goes muy loco whenever the name of Miguel Cervantes is mentioned."

  "If he knew that you and I went to see La Numantia..."

  "Sí, he would remove an ear from each of us. And, Ana, you said to me once that Mateo was not a picaro, but a gentleman. Of course, he told me his whole life story during our wanders and battles with pirates, but I wonder if he told you the same tale—"

  "He told me nothing. I learned it from one who knew Mateo when he was a marqués."

  A marqués! A nobleman above a count and below a duke. A great personage. Even those who bore an empty title because their estates had been lost or confiscated could sell themselves in marriage to a very rich widow or merchant's daughter.

  "You know the tale from Mateo's own lips," she said. "He was an orphan at five, his father dying in battle and his mother taken by the plague. His father, the marqués, was a general for the king, one with a fine reputation. After the death of his parents, Mateo was raised in the house of his cousin, a count. At a very early age, he was pledged in marriage to the count's daughter, who was a year or two older than him. When Mateo was seventeen, a servant awoke him and informed him that a man had been seen sneaking into the house. Grabbing his sword, he made a search for the intruder. The intruder turned out to be his closest friend. He found the man in the arms of his betrothed.

  "Por Dios, can you imagine the scene, Cristo? The hot-blooded, idealistic young nobleman, raised in the tradition of hombria, that a man must be honorable and his honor is inexorably linked to the honorable behavior of the women in his life. He finds his wife-to-be making love with his good friend? Can you guess what happened next?"

  I knew Mateo too well to have to guess. "He killed the man, of course."

  "Cristo, had he simply killed the man, he would be a marqués today instead of a picaro. He killed not just the friend but his betrothed. She got in the way of the fighting men and was slain. Ay, men and women throughout the land praised his act of honor, but it was the old count's only child. To save his own family's honor, he saw to it that Mateo became a hunted man."

  I was quiet for a long time after listening to Ana. Closing my eyes, I imagined what it must have been like for Mateo—and the two lovers. The shock of discovery. Fear as the wronged man bloodies his sword. The hapless woman on the floor.

  The thoughts depressed me, and I was relieved when Ana asked me to move my massaging farther up her body.

  ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE

  Seville was enlightening for me. I even learned how to see through a servant without seeing the person. But my heart tugged more and more toward New Spain. I had given up the notion that Eléna would ever be mine. Like Calisto and Melibea, we could not resist fate and custom. She would be married to Luis, bear his babies, but would never achieve her dream of being fully realized as a poet and writer of plays. Grasped in Luis's tight fist, she would slowly wither into a dried-up old woman whose dreams had turned to dust.

  Hopefully, I would be able to make her a widow.

  Some days I would go down to the docks and watch the ships come and go. Their destinations were to different places in the Spanish Empire, scattered about the four corners of the world, but in my own mind each was sailing for Veracruz.

  The matter hung so heavily on me that Ana complained I was no fun, telling me not to come around until I learned how to laugh again. I suspected that the Italian count, who was courting her, had more to do with her comments than my love-struck moodiness.

  My desire to return home came to a head when a familiar name became the talk of Seville: Catalina de Erauso, the woman-man who'd escaped from a convent and become a soldier for the king.

  Listening to the tales of her in cantinas and the theaters, I separated in my own mind some of the fact from fiction. While the stories told of her incredible adventures as an army lieutenant and her many duels and escapades, they left out the fact that she had led a bandit gang that robbed the king's silver, and that she wore men's clothes to seduce women.

  She passed through Seville to appear before the king in Madrid. He awarded her a pension and paraded her before the court as a heroine of the Spanish Empire. She was returning here to set sail for Italy, where she would be received by the pope. I sent a note to her at her inn, asking if she had spent all the silver she'd stolen in Zacatecas.

  She would not know who sent the note until she faced me. Even if she recognized me, I was not worried she would report me to the king's officers as an escaped mine slave. While she would stick a knife in my back if she had the opportunity, she would not want me questioned about my activities in New Spain for fear of exposure of her own criminal acts.

  My message was returned with word that she would meet me at her inn. I was to
accommodate her by having a carriage at our disposal, at my expense, of course. Had this woman-man forgotten that she had once tried to murder me?

  Catalina came out of the inn dressed in a nun's habit, but I was having none of it. For one thing I'd never known a nun with crisscrossing knife scars creasing her face, one with a nose reddened from decades of drink, broken and rebroken so many times it looked like a badly busted knuckle. The nuns I'd known typically had their front teeth. A nun's eyes, fixed on Eternity, were serenely beatific. This nun had the stare of a sheep-killing dog.

  If you're a Bride of Christ, I muttered to myself, I'm the pope.

  She did not recognize me when I presented myself to her in front of the inn. It was too many years, too many lives ago for her to identify me as the mestizo boy who'd robbed a temple for her. And she had gotten only a brief glance at me when I saw her through the window. In my mind there was no risk in confronting her about Luis and much to gain.

  "I need some information about Luis de la Cerda. My brother spied on you when you met with him last in New Spain. You spotted my brother watching you through a window at an inn in the silver country."

  I saw the bulge of a long dagger under her habit. She looked at me with a blank face, but her eyes perceptibly narrowed. No doubt her mind buzzed with thoughts of cutting my throat.

  "The man who saw me through that window was arrested by the Inquisition."

  "Arrested and sent to the mines, where he died. He told me about you and Luis before he died."

  "But his brother seems to have prospered."

  "God protects His own," I said, modestly, "and rewards them." I pulled out a pouch bulging with gold ducats. "I want you to tell me about the silver robberies. I want to know how you came to get involved with Luis and the name of everyone else you were involved with."

  "Why should I tell you anything? For a little gold? I would get it as a reward if I turned you into the Holy Office."

  "You would get more than that for a reward. I wonder how the pope would receive you if he knew you lusted for the flesh of women?"

  Her narrowing eyes now widened in surprise. She still had not identified me as the mestizo boy who robbed temples. I did not want her to make that connection, but I needed to frighten her.

  "And the king? Would he give me a pension or a hangman's noose if he was told you robbed not only his silver but ancient tombs?"

  Her face would not maintain the stoic countenance. Her lips twisted into a feral sneer. "A man whose tongue has been cut out tells no tales."

  I chuckled. "Sister, such impure thoughts must not come from your holy lips." I turned around and gestured at two men in a cart following our carriage. "I see that you hired two felons to murder me. Do you see the four men in the king's uniform on horseback behind them?"

  I waved my hand back at the horsemen. They rode forward and stopped the cart. They were dragging the two men off of the cart when I turned back to her. Her right hand was hidden in the folds of her habit.

  I threw her the pouch of gold. "Put away your dagger. The brother to that pouch will be yours if you give me the information I request."

  Her mind worked like a slow-witted dog with sharp teeth. Her first instinct was to rip with the teeth. Only after that passed, did her mind evaluate the situation.

  "Why do you want this information?"

  "Revenge on those who wronged my brother."

  A blood feud was a simple, honorable circumstance that any Spaniard would understand.

  She smiled at me. During the voyage from the New World the seamen had landed a denizen of the sea whose smile was a sharp-toothed grin. Catalina, even when pretending to be friendly, had that same razor-fanged smirk.

  "Perhaps the good Lord will help me remember those days when I helped convey the king's silver, but for now I am in great need of something."

  She instructed the driver to take us to one of the twisting alleys left over from the days when Seville was a Moorish city.

  "Why are we going there?" I asked.

  "An acquaintance has fallen in love with a very lonely widow. But the widow needs some encouragement to consummate the relationship."

  I did not need the ashes of an owl to divine that Catalina herself was the person lusting after the lonely widow.

  "What kind of encouragement do you seek?"

  "A love potion."

  Shades of Snake Flower.

  The narrow streets, where the love witch's shop was located, could not accommodate our carriage, so we continued our travel on foot. The driver did a double take when he saw Catalina. A nun had entered the carriage; a short, husky caballero left it. I told the driver to wait for us. We left her nun's habit on the seat.

  The love witch was a dark, elderly woman, seething with shadowy mysteries and esoteric secrets. In her little shop, reeking of incense and awash in alchemist's jars full of unnamed things, she might have seemed intimidating, at least by Seville's standards, but compared to Aztec love witches, who gleefully cut off pieces of penes, she was a babe in arms.

  From theater talk, I knew that love magic was the rage in Spain and practiced openly without interference from the Inquisition.

  Catalina, who identified herself as Don Pepito, explained the problem with the lonely widow. Gold quickly exchanged hands, one of the coins from the pouch I had given "Don Pepito," and the love witch immediately recommended ways to spellbind the widow.

  "You may have to try several different spells," she said, "because people are affected differently. The most successful for widows is the enchanted lamp oil wick."

  She explained that the man would "gather" some of his semen. I assumed after stimulating himself. I hid a grin behind my hand. Catalina would not like this remedy.

  A lamp wick was soaked in the semen and burned in the widow's presence. "She is driven to instant uncontrollable desire when she breathes in your male essence, while you are invoking the sacred—"

  "I don't like that one. Give me another incantation."

  The love witch held out her hand for another gold coin.

  "When you are in the widow's presence, without her seeing what you are doing, you stick your hand in your pants and pull on your pubic hair. You recite, 'Come to me, hot as an oven, wet as a...' "

  We left the love witch several gold coins short but Catalina armed with incantations.

  Catalina told me of her involvement in the silver robberies.

  "I was arrested for a minor offense and sentenced to hang," she said.

  I did not ask what sort of "minor" offense would result in a death sentence.

  "Instead of dancing on the gallows, I was sold by the constable to a man who, rather than putting me to honest labor, offered me criminal employment."

  "Who was the man?"

  She did not know.

  "Describe him."

  She did and I was certain that it was not Ramon de Alva. I didn't mention his name. If she betrayed me, I did not want everyone I sought vengeance upon to be aware of my mission.

  "The crime they forced me to commit was robbery of the silver trains. A messenger from the mint would bring me the schedule for shipments, and I would lie in wait with my comrades."

  "Who else did you come into contact with?"

  "The man your brother saw me with at the cantina. His name is Luis. That is all I know about him."

  "You have not earned your second pouch of gold. I need more information."

  "Do you wish me to lie?"

  "My desire is that you dig into your memory and tell me more about the man named Luis. I want to know if you ever saw him in the company of the man who paid the constable for your release."

  She thought for a moment. "No, I never saw them together." She stopped and faced me. "My memory is coming back. If you give me that second pouch of gold, I will tell you the name of the person who bought my freedom."

  I gave her the pouch.

  "Miguel de Soto."

  Eh, the man who bought and sold workers for the tunnel project, Ram
on de Alva's brother-in-law.

  Catalina hurried away from me, perhaps to pull her pubic hair for the widow, but I did not bother calling after her. I had made a connection between Luis, Alva, the silver robberies, and the tunnel project. It was not evidence I could go to the authorities with. With my sins, real and imagined, I could not have gone to them if God had been my witness.

  My mind flashed to little Juana naked on a rack being examined by devils in priest's robes, and the courageous don being marched toward his fiery death.

  It was time to return to New Spain.

  Mateo was out of the city. I knew that he was elated about being back in Spain, among his own. I would not disturb him, but leave word with Ana. I would miss my compadre, but in the great circle of life, perhaps we would meet again.

  I had heard that one of the lobo ships that ply the Caribbean was sailing soon for Cuba. From there I could get passage to Veracruz.

  PART SIX

  ...he wanted nothing but a lady, on whom he might bestow the empire of his heart...

  Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote

  ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

  The voyage from Seville to Veracruz took three weeks aboard a dispatch boat. Sent ahead of the treasure fleet, the boat was to notify New Spain that the fleet had set sail.

  Two years had passed since I watched Veracruz fade from view and drop beneath the horizon line. Now the snow-capped volcanic cone of Citlaltépetl, the highest mountain in New Spain, appeared apparitionlike above that same horizon's rim, a white solitary finger, beckoning me to God only knew what.

  New Spain had been a hard master, killing almost everything I'd cared about. The only woman I would love—a creature of radiant grace and poetic sensibility—was sentenced to a marital servitude as thoroughly abominable, for someone of her sensitivity, as my own years in the colony's dungeons and mines.

  Still, New Spain was my home. Staring at that white, beckoning finger of volcano, my heart begrudgingly softened. Seville was a proud and grand city, one of the cornerstones of a great European empire, but my heart and soul were bound to the New World with hoops of steel. That hard, benighted land had brought my Aztec ancestors sustenance, had made me who I was and what I might become. And despite its whips and racks and dungeons and mines, it had taught me courage, loyalty, friendship, honor, even learning. Against all odds, I had prospered. I was returning home a rich and cultured gentleman.