Aztec Rage

  As soon as they were out the door, I said, “No problem, padre. I escort these people across hundreds of miles of territory patrolled by roving bands of highwaymen and royal army patrols. If I don’t get caught and murdered by bandidos or the viceroy’s men, I pay off this López, who calls himself a general, and hope he doesn’t get suspicious and fry my feet over an open fire to find out where the rest of the money is. Assuming I fool him and obtain the marqués’s freedom, I still have to learn the location of the hidden gold and seize half of it before Don Humberto and his nephew can murder me. Then, after dodging the roving bands of bandidos and royal soldiers for hundreds of more miles, I return with the gold.”

  I was immediately embarrassed. “The mission is insignificant compared to what you have to deal with every day.”

  “We all have our duty to perform. Yours is as dangerous as those soldiers who receive the first volley from the enemy’s muskets. I’m asking if you will do this mission, Juan, not commanding you to do so. I’m sure you can understand the importance of the marqués’s gold to our cause.”

  I shrugged. “A hundred thousand pesos is a lot of money. By coincidence, it’s the same amount the viceroy is offering for your life.”

  “If I could give my life and spare our people the horrors of war, I would cheerfully deliver myself to his assassin.”

  “When do you want us to leave for León?”

  “In the morning, but not directly to León. The most direct route to the north would take you into the arms of royal forces. I need to get a personal message to José Torres, who is operating somewhere near Guadalajara. This amazing man was nothing more than an uneducated laborer who asked me to permit him and a few followers to seize Guadalajara. At first I was taken aback, but something about him caused me to have faith. I’ve heard that he has had some success against royal forces in the area. I will give you a message to deliver to him. Hopefully, you will be able to locate him.”

  “This General López—”

  “A bandit and murderer with no alliance to our cause but not a stupid man. A diamondback rattles before it strikes; López doesn’t. And watch your back with the marqués’s nephew. He needs us now, but under his breeches he’s a gachupine. Once the gold is recovered, your death would profit him greatly.”

  The padre didn’t mention Isabella. I didn’t know if Marina had told him of our history but decided not to bring up the subject. I was confused as to what my own feelings were.

  Father Hidalgo gripped my shoulder. “Juan, when I said you were my right hand, I didn’t express all that you have meant to me. You have been my eyes and ears, and I’ll sorely miss you. But your mission is important. The marqués’s gold can buy us cannons and muskets.”

  I paused at the door while he made one more observation.

  “The capital is a transcendently beautiful city. Such beauty is singularly rare and eternally precious. It would be a great sin to destroy God’s gift.”

  NINETY-NINE

  ISABELLA AND RENATO waited for me outside.

  “I will need a good horse,” Renato said, “and a spare. Bring me the best mounts in the camp, and I will select the ones I want. My saddle and—”

  I wasn’t certain if it was the look on my face or the look of alarm on Isabella’s face as she reached out and grabbed his arm. “Renato—”

  I stepped closer to him, causing him to take a step back. “Listen, Señor Nephew, your life’s blood is not hemorrhaging from your throat, and cojones still tremble between your legs only because the padre asked me to help Isabella. But you’re irrelevant to this mission. If you continue to annoy me, I’ll cut out your liver and feed it to a cur.”

  Isabella stepped close enough for me to smell her sweetness. “Juan, you must forgive him. He’s from Spain and is not aware that you were . . . are . . . a caballero. Please do not take offense. I need your assistance. Will you give it to me?”

  “The last time I answered your call I was nearly murdered.” I grinned. “But I am under the padre’s command. I’ll assist in getting your loving husband back into your arms and his gold for our cause.”

  “Gracias, Juan, that’s all I wish.”

  “We leave at dawn,” I told them. I jerked my head toward the corralled horses. “Find mounts for yourself and be prepared to pay for them. We’ll use the six mules attached to your carriage.”

  “Use for what?” Renato said. “They’re needed to pull the marquesa’s coach.”

  “She won’t be traveling by coach.”

  “She can’t ride a—”

  “Do I appear dense to you? Or are you simply so stupid you have no understanding of how we must travel?”

  He stiffened, and his hand went to his dagger. Isabella grabbed his arm again. I prayed he would draw his blade.

  “Renato, you must apologize to Juan,” she said.

  She couldn’t have humiliated him more had she smacked his face.

  “It is all right, Señora Marquesa.” I laughed. “When I require an apology, I’ll beat it out of him.”

  “Renato!“ She grabbed his dagger hand. “Stop it!”

  He took a deep breath, and then underwent a complete metamorphosis: his eyes glazed over as if he had been sniffing loco weed, and he smiled.

  “My apologies, . . . señor.”

  His words sickened my stomach. I’d never sung with the angels, but I hadn’t slithered like a snake, either. A man of honor would have pulled his weapon. To swallow my insult while harboring murderous rage was deception, not honor.

  “We can’t take your coach,” I told her. “It’s too slow and would attract bandidos. You’ll ride in a litter so we can leave the main road. If we stay on the road, a royal patrol or band of bandidos will quickly waylay us. Two of your carriage mules will be used to straddle the litter; the others will carry supplies.” I nodded toward the inn. “The landlord has a litter out back. Buy it from him.”

  I left the two of them and found Marina, standing by the stable.

  “I need four vaqueros,” I told her, “good riders who have proven themselves in battle and who can use a machete for something more than chopping maguey. I need—”

  “Your needs have already been answered, Señor Lépero. The padre told me to look to your supplies and honor guard this morning. I have twelve men for you, all skilled with horses and weapons and blessed with courage. They all have muskets, the oldest and rustiest that we have, but only one ball each.” She grinned. “You see, the padre learned much about guerrilla warfare from you.”

  “How is it, señorita, that I seem to always be the last to know what course my life will take?”

  She smiled, sweet and sour. “Perhaps it is because you do not know how to deal with life yourself. You approach life much like an enraged bull bleeding from the banderillas impaling its shoulders. You stomp wildly around, blindly; no one knows what man you will gore or what woman you will mount.”

  I left her after agreeing I would ride out to a lake and take a bath before I crawled into bed with her later. When I returned from my bath, I gave Tempest extra feed and explained to him that we would be heading north in the morning.

  “Talking to your horse?”

  Isabella had entered the shed behind me. She shook her head. “That always annoyed me when you courted me in Guanajuato. I never knew whom you loved the most, the horse or me.”

  Tempest answered for me with a whinny. I stroked the side of his neck. “Horses are much more loyal than women.”

  “Yes, I know. You can starve them, beat them, ride them until they drop, and all they require is a few handfuls of grain. Women require much more.”

  “Some women require even more than other women,” I murmured.

  “And what do you have to offer a woman, Juan Zavala? One day you were the grandest caballero in Guanajuato and the next you were a murderous bandido. Word comes that you died in the Yucatán, and then you return from the dead as a hero of the war in Spain. Rather than leading a peaceful life, on your return you app
roach a married woman, embarrassing me and humiliating my husband, who would suffer sure death if he called you out.”

  “You lured me into a trap.”

  “They said they would beat you to restore my husband’s honor. What did you expect me to do? How many women are entitled to conduct their own affairs? Make their own decisions? I did what my husband told me to do because I’m a good wife.”

  I threw the feed bucket against the wall. “They disgraced me in Guanajuato and nearly murdered me in Méjico City, and I was at fault? Maybe I’m responsible for your husband’s capture, too?”

  She frowned at me. “Of course you’re responsible. The humiliation you dealt caused business problems for him. Men who had done business with him for years suddenly called in his loans, so he went to Zacatecas to sell his mining interest.”

  ¡Ay! The woman was saying that I was the source of her problems, the loss of her husband and fortune? The accusation was so unexpected, I didn’t know what to say.

  She came closer. “Whatever happened in the past must be forgotten. We must start over again. Back in the capital they say that this revolution the padre has started will change the face of the colony, no matter who wins. Things will change for us, too, Juan. Help me free my husband, recover my fortune, and we shall be together forever.”

  Later that evening, I took Marina with a pent-up passion that had raged in me for years. Spent, I rolled off her and lay gasping for breath. I saw the flash of the knife blade in the light of the single candle burning in the room. I jerked back, and the blade barely missed my throat but caught my ear. I rolled away from Marina and onto my feet, clutching my cut ear.

  “I’m bleeding.”

  “I’m sorry I missed your jugular.”

  “Have you gone loco?”

  She threw the knife aside and slipped back under the blankets.

  “If you call me Isabella again, I will cut off your cojones and shove them down your throat.”

  ¡Ay de mí!

  ONE HUNDRED

  WE AWOKE TO shouting outside.

  “We’re under attack!” Marina cried.

  Only after pulling on my pants, did I grab my pistol and sword. After all, to die without pants on would be a great indignity.

  I ran outside to find Marina. She had armed herself with a machete before pulling a blanket over her nakedness.

  As we stood there in the hut’s doorway, half-naked and well armed, the padre’s aide-de-camp, Rodrigo, ran to us. “Come, there’s trouble.”

  When we hurried to the padre’s quarters, we discovered that neither were we under attack by the viceroy’s army nor were the criollo officers revolting.

  “Poison,” the padre said. He spoke the word softy, as if it were hard for him to pronounce. “Someone has attempted to poison me.”

  He pointed at a plate on the table. “It was in the beef.”

  We followed his gaze. The dog that had adopted him lay on the floor, dead.

  “I gave him a piece of beef,” the padre said.

  “I fed the padre late,” his aide explained. “He wasn’t hungry, but finally I convinced him he must take food or ruin his health.”

  “Who prepares his food?” I asked.

  “His cook.”

  The cook was in his tent. He lay face down behind maize sacks. I knelt beside the body and turned it so I could see his face. His throat had been slit.

  “Dagger,” I said. “Someone slit his jugular.”

  No one had seen the attack on the cook. The padre’s aide had found the tray on a table already there. He thought the cook had gone to relieve himself.

  No one had seen anything suspicious. Whoever killed the cook and poisoned the padre’s food had disappeared into the night.

  When I returned with Marina to her tent, I saw Isabella and Renato standing outside the carriage. Something bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  Awakening in the middle of the night, I realized what it was. When I had insulted Renato, he hadn’t reached for his sword or pistol; he had grabbed for his dagger.

  The cook had been killed by an expert knife man.

  At first light I saddled Tempest and told Isabella, Renato, and the vaqueros that our route to Guadalajara would take us back over the mountain pass. “We will be less likely to face the viceroy’s troops in the high rocks.”

  After checking our stock and supplies, I made sure that Isabella’s litter was properly hitched to the two mules. When we were ready to move out, I paused beside Renato, who was preparing to mount his horse.

  “We must have peace between us, señor,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  “But be aware that I know you’re a swine and that I’ll no doubt kill you before this mission is over.” The devil must have put these words on my tongue.

  As we left, the great, unwieldy multitude that was the padre’s army was awakening like a big, sleepy, undulating beast. I waved to Marina and the padre. They stood on the front step of the padre’s quarters and watched us leave.

  I suspect the great Aztec horde was puzzled at turning away from the capital. The criollo officers were unhappy to abandon it. Having rubbed shoulders with those of greater book learning than myself, I had, in my own opinion, sharpened my mind against theirs in the way a whetstone hones a blade. Even so, I didn’t know if the padre’s retreat was wise.

  I knew in my bones that what had occurred in those few moments yesterday in which the padre had by force of personality saved a great city from being sacked, would be discussed and debated by scribes and historians for many lifetimes. It was as critical a moment as that when Caesar pondered crossing the Rubicon, when Anthony and Cleopatra lay in bed and discussed stealing an empire, when Alexander the Great pondered what he should do when he was informed that his father had been assassinated and the throne was contested. Jesus Christ experienced such a moment when he made the fateful decision to go to Jerusalem during Passover. Cortés had cast the dye when he ordered his own ships burned at Veracruz to strand his army on dangerous ground and force them to conquer or die.

  Eh, I was beginning to surprise myself by my command of politics and history.

  Turning in the saddle, I saw that Isabella and the bastardo nephew were staring at the horde of half-naked indios preparing for their march.

  “Look at that multitude, you gachupines,” I shouted at the two of them over my shoulder. “Look at the peons you have spat upon because you thought God stood at your side. But they have God on their side now, and theirs is a terrible god of rage. They frighten you, don’t they? They should, amigos, because they want what you have. Remember them well, because the next time you see them, they’ll be burning your houses and rustling your haciendas . . . They’ll take your silver and gold and the land you stole from them . . . They’ll whip your backs and bed your women!”

  I spurred Tempest and shot on ahead.

  ONE HUNDRED AND ONE

  THE GUADALAJARA REGION was a long, hard ride from the encampment at Cuajimalpa. I drove our band on at a fast pace, trading our tired horses and mules along the way for fresh mounts, replacing the ones that went lame or simply wore out. I had mortified Isabella when I told her she couldn’t bring her carriage or maid, but she endured the trip’s hardship and boredom without complaint.

  My problems with Renato subsided. We were both too occupied with the demanding pace to bump heads. Still I hadn’t forgotten the way he caressed his dagger. And the more I was around him, the more suspicious I became of him. Besides his love of daggers, something else bothered me. He was a good rider, as good as I. While riding was second nature to a caballero, I found some of his mannerisms alien, such as the way he used a knife when he ate, how he was able to sit on his haunches and eat a plate of food as if he’d spent his life on the trail. I finally decided that what bothered me was his uncharacteristic hardness; wealthy young caballeros were notorious for their physical softness, not their survival skills.

  I wondered whether he was really a young man o
f great wealth or a seasoned soldier of fortune hired to protect Isabella, kill her husband, defraud Hidalgo . . . and murder me.

  I kept one man riding point a mile ahead of us and another scouting the rear, watching out for royal patrols and bandidos. Each time they spotted a large group of men in our area, we left the road. Besides my worthless life, I carried nearly twenty pounds of gold as ransom money—more than enough to tempt most men.

  When we were a day’s ride from Guadalajara, we heard that Torres had taken the city. I was amazed that a man unschooled in the military arts—and in his case also illiterate—could capture an important city.

  Upon arrival, I permitted Isabella to check into an inn for the night. Instructing Renato to purchase fresh mounts for our trip to León, I immediately went to the government buildings at the city center to find José Torres, the rebel leader who had made himself master of the city.

  I had been to Guadalajara only once, when I was fifteen and accompanied Bruto on a business trip. While silver-rich Guanajuato dominated the Bajío, Guadalajara was the largest city in the western region. Its wealth and prominence came not from mining but from its position as the region’s marketplace for agriculture and its commercial center.

  Torres had captured a real prize. Although the city of Guadalajara had a population of only about thirty-five thousand—about half of the number in Puebla and Guanajuato—the intendancy of the province was composed of over half a million souls, making it the third largest province in the colony. The administrative region of the intendancy extended to the Pacific Ocean and all the way along the coast north to the two Californias.

  In many ways, Guadalajara and much of the Bajío had developed differently from the Valley of Méjico in the heart of the colony. Lacking the teeming indio population of the tradition-bound central plateau, the Guadalajara region developed a farming and ranching culture. Much to the displeasure of the gachupines, these small landowners were more independent in both attitude and deed than the peons of the central valley.