Aztec Rage

  From talk in the streets and at the inn, I learned that the marqués was a typical Spanish nobleman, full of macho vanity and pretentious superiority. I knew his type well, having rubbed shoulders with men like him in my gachupine days. His notorious vanity reminded me of the tale of two haughty gachupines who entered a narrow alley in their carriages at the same time. Proceeding in opposite directions, both men refused to back their carriages up, each insisting that the other back up. Come nightfall, each was still there, refusing to leave his coach.

  Friends brought in food and also stocked their coaches with blankets and pillows, and the two Spanish peacocks settled in to outwait the other. As days passed, the incident became a cause célèbre that attracted thousands to the area. After five days of the nonsense, the viceroy intervened and ordered the two to back up, each matching the other’s speed.

  A real man would have settled the matter with hombrada—a manly deed or an act of valor—and my way would have been on the dueling field with sword or pistol.

  Isabella chose for our meeting a stone cottage, a house that once belonged to a family who tended the park’s gardens. The park had been a project of Viceroy Iturrigaray, but after the viceroy was sent back to Spain in disgrace for toying with the notion of making the colony his own fief, the park and the keeper’s house had been abandoned. I knew something of it because I had visited the area earlier in the day to ensure I knew the way; the meeting with my love was set for sunset, and I didn’t want to be late. I admit that I’d hoped for a bed in the abandoned house.

  When I reached the dirt path that ran down the middle of the park, I saw her carriage parked beside the house. I hurriedly urged Tempest into a gallop.

  Isabella was leaving a copse of trees as I came near the house. I dismounted and tied Tempest to the hitch rack by the front door but didn’t rush to her. I suddenly experienced fear of rejection.

  She joined me in the front of the hitch rack. She appeared oddly disconcerted. “You’re early, Juan.”

  I shrugged. “It gives us more time together. Dios mío, Isabella, you have grown even more beautiful.”

  Her melodious laugh sent a tingle up my spine. “And you look more the renegade and bandido than ever.”

  “No, you said I was a lépero, remember?”

  “That, too.” She fluttered her fan in front of her face. “I will say this, you certainly are more manly. You always were a handsome rogue, but now you look like a man of steel. No wonder you frightened those caballeros at the paseo.”

  “Isabella . . . my love . . . I have never stopped thinking about you.”

  She slowly moved back toward her carriage where her driver was waiting. I didn’t want her near the carriage where we would be in eye- and earshot of her driver. “Would you like to take a walk? Or peek inside the house?”

  “No, I can’t stay long.”

  As she neared the carriage door, I grabbed her arm and said, “Look,” nodding toward my feet.

  Her fan fluttered again. “Look at what?”

  “At my boots.”

  “Your boots?” She shrugged. “You seem obsessed with them. Can’t you afford a new pair? I hear you’re quite wealthy. Perhaps you couldn’t afford to bring me a gift, either?”

  What an imbecile I was! I had not brought her a gift. I should be showering her with jewels.

  “I’m sorry, forgive me. But look, don’t you recognize the boots?”

  “Why are you so interested in those worn boots?”

  “They’re the ones you gave me when I was in jail.”

  She laughed, but there was no music in it, only derision. “Why would I give you boots?”

  “I—I thought—” My tongue stumbled. My meeting with her was not going well. I had dreamt of this moment for hundreds of nights, and now I felt like I was sinking into quicksand.

  She climbed into the coach and pulled the door shut behind her. I stared at her dumbfounded.

  “You can’t go, we just—”

  “I’m late for a social engagement.” Her eyes were as flat as a Gila monster’s, her voice was hard and distant.

  The carriage lurched, and I noticed the driver had paused his whip crack to stare beyond me. Jumping to his feet in the box, he cracked his whip over the coach mules loud enough to wake the damned, and they hit their collars like battering rams.

  Glancing over my shoulder to where the driver had been looking, I realized that a line of horsemen had crept up on me: five of them, masked, with swords drawn. I was unarmed except for a boot knife; my sword was on Tempest.

  I ran for the horse as the riders charged. As the first one neared me, I suddenly turned and shouted, waving my knife and free hand. The caballo spooked, veering into other horses. Had a man done that to Tempest, the stallion would have pounded him into the ground, but these paseo ponies were not warhorses.

  Just as I jerked Tempest’s reins off the hitch rack, a rider attacked me, swinging his sword. I went under the stallion’s belly. Tempest spooked and turned, kicking at the rider’s horse when he brushed his rump. Now all five riders were joining in. Surrounded by five milling horses and sword-swinging men, Tempest was not in a good mood. A half-head taller than their unblooded ponies, Tempest pounded them mercilessly with his iron-shod hooves. I hung onto the rein for dear life as Tempest kicked and bucked and shied bites at the other mounts with his teeth. I got my sword out of the scabbard, but the blade went flying as I tried to mount the stallion. Clutching his pommel, I finally swung on. Tempest and I galloped into a nearby copse.

  A rider loped toward me. Leaning down from the saddle, he slashed at me with his sword. My boot knife was still miraculously in my fist, and at the last second I deflected the blow. Glancing off my thigh, the sword still drew blood. Meanwhile the horseman galloped past. Turning, he prepared to attack me from another angle.

  Suddenly another horseman charged me out of nowhere, and I quickly reined Tempest in behind a tree. Charging past, his horse stumbled, and they both went down in a stand of trees thick with undergrowth, the horse’s tack tangling in bushes. Holding on to the pommel, I swung down and grabbed a short, thick limb. When he saw me coming, he remounted his still-tangled mount, and, raising his sword, he braced for my attack. The limb went flying by him, but the second it took him to duck, however, gave me time to drag him from his saddle.

  He hit the ground hard, and I dropped on him, my knee collapsing his gut. The air went out of him in a whoosh. I dispatched him with his own sword. Taking it in my teeth, I swung onto Tempest. It wasn’t a good military sword—one made for truly lethal combat—but a fancy rapier, the kind the paseo dandies carried for show. In my skilled hand, however, it could decapitate a pig.

  I would need that skill. Two of the horsemen were charging me. They were still handicapped by the thick brush and forest. One horseman pointed a pistol straight at me, so dead-on its muzzle looked as wide as my open grave. He fired, but his aim was off from the movement of his mount. Instead of hitting me in the chest, the ball hit my leg. Reversing his grip, he continued on, never breaking stride, swinging his pistol’s barrel like a battleaxe. I countered with the rapier. He screamed as I lopped his arm off at the elbow.

  The scream caused the other three attackers to stop and regroup. I didn’t care. I spurred Tempest toward the closest rider. Turning to run, his horse panicked, reared, then bucked, throwing him. He was all alone now. His two companions were in full retreat, abandoning their comrade, galloping out of the wood as fast as they could.

  I wheeled the pony and went back at the man who was on the ground. He ran, dodged around a tree, but I still ran him down. As I approached, he was afoot, trying to duck the downward sweep of my blade. Trying to behead him, I swung and missed. He looked back at me as he bolted, arms flailing, screaming in horror . . . and ran straight into a tree.

  He lay at the tree’s base, still as death, knocked unconscious. I left him there—horseless, weaponless, out cold.

  Heading back into town, I found no sign of the ri
ders or of Isabella’s coach. The wounds in my leg were bleeding, the slash the more severe of the two. The pistol ball had been a graze. I tied a bandana over the slash wound. My wound was not as serious as that of the man whose arm I chopped off. He was dying, not only because his friends had abandoned him without stopping the bleeding but also because a cut or amputation at a joint was a death sentence.

  I had no sympathy for the man. He was a cowardly dog. He and his worthless amigos had attacked me five to one. My death would have been murder, plain and simple. Attacking a lone man in a pack, like coyotes, is inherently dishonorable. I had not seen their faces, but I knew who they were or what they were: paseo dandies.

  That I would be attacked by a gang of cowards angered me. But what made me sick to my marrow was not their treachery or the painful wound to my leg, it was Isabella’s betrayal.

  ¡Ay de mí! The woman I loved had lured me to a meeting where I was to be murdered. How could she have committed this crime? The only motive I could see for Isabella cooperating with the cowardly swine was that her husband forced her. Her husband must have done terrible things to her to force her betrayal?

  Even as I struggled to excuse her, however, the awful statements she had made still rang in my ears, breaking my heart. Ridiculing the boots she had given me. True, her husband’s carriage driver was within earshot and would no doubt be reporting even now everything she’d said to me back to her husband. Still the cruelty of her words and the derision of her laughter tore at my soul.

  But then I remembered the way she looked coming out of that copse, walking toward me in front of the cottage: the golden hair, that gorgeous smile, those utterly unforgettable eyes . . .

  “Isabella!” I shouted at the night. “What did they do to you?”

  I wisely did not return to my house nor did I try to run for it. I had lost too much blood. Instead I went to the one woman in this world who had the least reason to help me but who I knew also had a true heart.

  Raquel hid Tempest in a friend’s stable. “Andrés Quintana Roo, a member of a literary club I belong to, is hiding your horse,” she said, when I awoke the next morning in her bed.

  “I have ruined your blankets.” The bleeding had stopped but not before soiling her bed.

  “Blankets can be washed.” She hesitated. “Your house has been burned. The official word is that you were crazy and attacked innocent, unarmed criollos.”

  “And then burned down my own house.”

  “Yes, that, too.”

  “Did I murder any widows and orphans?”

  “The rumors teem like lemmings.”

  “You’re being evasive. Tell me what’s being said.”

  She sighed and refused to meet my eye.

  “Say it. I can take it; I’m much man.”

  “For so much man, you have so few brains. The gachupines have spread a story that you tricked Isabella out into the country with a threat that you would murder her husband. That the caballeros came along and found her struggling with you—”

  “As I tried to rape her.”

  “Sí, as you tried to rape her. They came to her aid, unarmed, and you attacked them. You killed two of them, seriously injured another, and then fled before they could catch you.”

  “Raquel, in your entire lifetime, have you ever seen a caballero go anywhere without a weapon?”

  “I don’t believe a word of the story nor do some others. But most people believe the worst. If you’re caught . . .”

  “I’ll have no trial, no chance to defend myself.” Nor would there be any money to purchase “justice” with. The viceroy would seize my bank credits.

  I couldn’t stay with Raquel. I’d bring only misery upon her if they caught me at her house. She was willing, but I wouldn’t put her at risk.

  “You can’t ride your horse out of the city. Tempest is too recognizable, too conspicuous. I have discussed it with friends at my literary club—”

  “With Lizardi?”

  “No, we’re all aware of his loose lips. Tomorrow my friends will disguise Tempest, and a group of them will ride out of the city with one of them mounted on the stallion. They’ll leave him at a rancho of a friend of mine.”

  “Warn them to have the best rider on Tempest.”

  “They already know that. His bad temper is as notorious as yours. Getting you out of the city won’t be difficult. Leona Vicario will pick us up in her carriage. You can lay down inside until we are across the causeway. She and her family are known and highly regarded throughout the city.”

  “Are they searching carriages and wagons?”

  “No. Everyone believes you fled in one direction or the other, anywhere but back into the city. But we can’t risk someone spotting you by accident.”

  “These friends of yours, the book readers, why would they help me?”

  She hesitated again. “A new wind blows through the colony, one we hope will blow away the old and bring in the new.”

  “You mean revolution?”

  “I don’t know what I mean. But understand this: You have experienced personal injustice and have witnessed firsthand the social wrongs committed against other people. Still you have never taken any side but your own. I told my friends that someday you would take a stand and that when you did, all the power and anger of the toughest hombre in New Spain would be with us.”

  Leona Vicario reminded me a great deal of Raquel. Like Raquel, she was courageous, highly intellectual, and outspoken. They both pelted me with questions about conditions in Spain. Leona burst out crying at my descriptions of the atrocities committed against the Spanish people and the heroics of families defending their homes against the invaders.

  We didn’t discuss in the coach where I’d be heading, but Raquel had made a suggestion earlier. “Go to Dolores,” she said. “The padre will be happy to see you.”

  “No, I’d bring trouble to the padre’s door.”

  “Trouble is already at his door. I told you about the winds blowing in the colony; some of them are ill winds. He may soon need a strong sword at his side.”

  As usual, she spoke in riddles and mysteries. I knew something was brewing, but she’d tell me no more.

  When we got to the rancho, I gave both Leona and Raquel great hugs for their rescue of me.

  “Understand this, beautiful ladies: I have little left in this world of material value, but thanks to you, I still have a sword and a strong arm to use it. If you ever need me, send me a message. I will come to you. Your enemies will be my enemies. I will fight for you, and, if need be, I will die for you.”

  “You may find, Juan de Zavala, that someday your offer will be accepted,” Leona said. “But hopefully not the dying part.”

  Raquel walked me to the corral and stood by as I saddled Tempest.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” I said.

  “You already did. You said that you would fight and even die for me. Other than giving his love, a man can pay a woman no higher honor.”

  I looked away, embarrassed. She knew why I couldn’t profess my love for her.

  I mounted the stallion. He walked slowly out of the yard. When I turned to wave for the last time, she was rounding the corner where her coach was, a lovely figure in a black dress turning a corner.

  It struck me like a thunderbolt from hell. I froze, breathless, then galloped Tempest up to her. She turned at the door of the coach.

  “What is it, Juan?”

  “Thank you for my boots.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “You can thank my father. He would have wanted you to have them. Did you know he really admired you?”

  “Raquel—”

  “No, it’s the truth. He had no respect for the caballeros, who did nothing but dress like fops and parade up and down the paseo. He said you were different, that you could ride better than a vaquero and shoot better than a soldier.”

  I left her with tears on her cheeks. Tears welled in my eyes too, but I assure you, only because the wind had blown dust into
them. I am hombrón, and men like me don’t cry.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Dolores

  TWO YEARS HAD passed since I had last ridden into the Bajío town of Dolores. Back then the church curate had still believed he could free the Aztecs from their bondage by teaching them Spanish crafts. In truth, I missed the old man.

  As I approached the town, I realized that I also missed Marina. My head had been so fogged by thoughts of the beautiful but shallow Isabella for so long, I hadn’t looked closely at the two strong, courageous women—Raquel and Marina—who had helped me at my lowest ebb and in my greatest peril.

  I was over my infatuation with Isabella, yet every time I thought of her, a fist squeezed my heart. I couldn’t accept that I had misjudged her so dreadfully . . . or that I’d been that great a fool. I still couldn’t believe that she had willingly betrayed me. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced her husband had coerced her. Why else would she do it? It wasn’t possible that she hated me enough to want me dead. It was that gachupine bastardo husband of hers.

  So while I had left the capital with my tail between my legs, I was not finished with the marqués. Someday I would return and settle the matter.

  According to Lizardi, the viceroy’s men not only had destroyed Padre Hidalgo’s indio enterprises, they also had forbidden the padre to reopen them under pain of imprisonment. As I drew closer, I could see that the padre’s vineyards and mulberry trees were gone; weeds thrived where grapes once grew. Nor were the stacks of pottery and raw materials in front of the building that once produced ceramics.

  An indio taking his siesta jerked awake at Tempest’s approach and hurried into the building that had once been the winery. His body language intrigued me. He had shot me a startled glance, like a watchman looking out for intruders.

  Why would the padre need a watchman? Was he back in the business of indio industries? I shook my head. I didn’t know what was going on, but I did know that the priest had all the cojones the gods ever made. He had defied the gachupines once, and he might be defying them again. Raquel had even hinted he was up to something unusual, something that could bring the padre into a conflict with the viceroy again.