Текст книги "Aztec Blood"

Автор книги: Gary Jennings

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"Every decade since the conquest has seen torrential rains and flooding of the city," the don said. "Most of the valley went underwater during one unusually wet season a few years ago, and the city was nearly abandoned—only the cost of rebuilding an entire city kept us from moving Mexico to higher ground."

It had long been envisioned that a canal and tunnel be built through the mountains to drain off the rainwaters before the city floods. Don Julio, noted for his engineering skills, was commissioned to design the project.

"As you both know, I drew up the plans for the project, a canal that ran six miles from Lake Zumpango to Nochistongo, with four miles of it cut through the mountains."

"Were those plans followed?" Mateo asked.

"The size and position of the canal and tunnel were to my specifications. But instead of shoring up the tunnel with iron-supported timbers and lining it with masonry-hardened brick, the walls of the tunnel were composed of mud-and-straw bricks similar to those used to construct a house." Don Julio's face twisted with grief. "We did not know the constitution of the mountain, which turned out to be subject to cave-ins. I did not get involved in the actual construction, but I am told many indios died digging the tunnel. Their smothered screams will haunt me when I am burning in hell for my part in this disaster."

Unfortunately for the indios, the mountain was not composed of rock but of loose and crumbling earth. I had heard that fifty thousand indios had died digging the tunnel, but rather than increase Don Julio's grief and guilt, I merely looked away.

"As you know, the rains were high this year, not as bad as they have been in the past, but above the normal rainfall. There was minor flooding."

I felt instant relief. "Minor flooding! Then the situation is not as drastic as we thought."

"It is worse. Because of the cave-ins, the tunnel was unable to carry waters that were only slightly above normal. A severe storm may result in the whole city flooding."

"What can be done?" Mateo asked.

"That is what I am working on. There is already an army of indios clearing the debris from the cave-ins and patching the violated areas with masonry bricks and using wood beams to shore up. But by the time we attack one weak point, there is a cave-in a few feet away."

"What can we do to assist?" Mateo asked.

"At the present, nothing. I need to know more about how the tunnel was constructed, and I do not need your help in doing the tests. It will be months before I know anything, and even then I may never be able to determine exactly what went wrong. But if what I suspect is true, I will have need of your skills. In the meantime, I have received a commission from the Council of the Indies to investigate possible insurrection against His Majesty's authority.

"The viceroy contacted the council and requested assistance in regard to rumors of a plot by africanos, slaves, mulattos, and the like to revolt and kill all of the Spanish and make one of their own choosing king of New Spain."

Mateo scoffed. "There has been such talk since the day I arrived in New Spain. We Spanish fear the africanos because they outnumber us."

Don Julio shook his head. "Do not so easily discount rebellion. Several times in the past the africanos have risen up against their masters, burned plantations, murdered the owners. When one group in a plantation rebelled, others nearby joined. Fortunately, the insurrections have always been put down—brutally—at an early stage, before enough africanos could unite to resist the soldados sent to correct the situation. One reason is that they have never had a leader capable of uniting them into an organized military unit. But such a man may exist, and word of his accomplishments has spread like wildfire among the blacks until he has the status almost of a god."

"Yanga," Mateo said.

"Yanga!" I almost jumped out of my chair.

"What's the matter, Cristo? Why does the name surprise you?"

"Well, I—I heard of a slave named Yanga, a runaway. But that was many years ago."

"This Yanga is a runaway, I believe from the Veracruz area; but Yanga may be a common name among africanos. You have been tucked away at the hacienda for so long, you didn't hear the growing stories about the man. This particular Yanga escaped from a plantation. He made his way into the mountains and over a period of years he gathered other runaways, what we call cimarrones,enough to form a small band of highwaymen, maroons,who preyed on the roads between Veracruz, Jalapa, and Puebla.

"Yanga claims to have been a prince in Africa. Regardless of his heritage, he has a knack for organization and fighting. His band is now said to number over a hundred. They maintain a village in the mountains. When the viceroy's troops finally reach the village, after suffering many casualties, Yanga's men set fire to the village and disappeared into the jungle. A few weeks later they had another village high in the mountains from which they terrorized the roads below.

"They have a fearsome reputation, not only among us Spanish, but the indios. They steal indio women and conduct what has become to be called 'mountain marriages,' in which the women are forced—sometimes with eagerness on their part—to marry them. Recently a merchant, his son, and his indios were attacked near Jalapa by maroons. The runaway slaves took a strongbox containing over a hundred pesos. The merchant's young son was killed in the attack, his head cut off, along with some of the male indios. Several of the indio women were carried off. It's said that one of the maroons grabbed a baby from a woman's arms, smashed its skull on a rock, and carried off the woman on a stolen pack animal.

"This attack was supposed to have been done by Yanga's men, but Yanga gets blamed for so many attacks that he would have to be in three places at the same time. And the stories grow and grow of the savageness of the maroons until one has to wonder whether those parts of the tales grew in the telling, too. About the time this attack was occurring near Jalapa, a hacienda near Orizaba was attacked, and the Spanish majordomo was killed, along with indios. Survivors said that after the majordomo fell to the ground, a slave split open his head with a machete, then scooped down and cupped out blood with his hands and drank it. That attack, too, of course, was attributed to Yanga."

We were all silent for a moment. I hoped, of course, that the Yanga of the maroons was a different man than the Yanga I had helped free, but I remember the plantation owner chortling over the slave's claim that he had been a prince. But even if it were the same man, I would feel no guilt over his actions. The greedy hacendados created maroons, not me.

Don Julio stared at a corner of the ceiling and pursed his lips. When he spoke, it was as if he had read my mind.

"It seems as if the Lord gives us back twofold the evils that we sow. Spanish men outnumber Spanish women twenty-to-one in New Spain, thus the natural outlet for a man's sexual needs is native women. Male slaves also have sexual needs, and the africano men also outnumber the slave women twenty-to-one. The only women to fill this shortage are india. We revile the offsprings of these matings, by Spaniards and slaves, as less than human, not because they do not walk and talk and think like us, but because in the deepest part of our soul, our greed for New World treasure has inflicted these inequities.

"The second generation of settlers in the New World was already experiencing slave revolts. Africanos owned by Diego Columbus, son of the Discoverer, revolted and killed Spaniards on the island of Hispaniola. Yet thousands, tens of thousands more slaves were imported since then. Was there no lesson to be learned from this inauspicious beginning with slavery?

"But enough of philosophy. I have need of men who can go out on the streets and investigate, not philosophers. Cristo, it's been many years since you were a thief and a beggar. Do you still have the talent?"

"I could swindle a widow out of her last peso it you have such a need, Don Julio."

"Your assignment may be more difficult, and dangerous, than swindling widows. I want you to go back on the streets as a lépero. You will keep your eyes and ears open as you mingle with the africanos. Listen to their talk; watch their actions. I need to know if this talk of revolt is bravado from pulque-loosened tongues or if an actual revolt is being planned."

"I've had experience with africanos in Veracruz. That experience tells me that those in this city are unlikely to express their desires to a lépero."

"I don't expect them to confide in you. Just keep your eyes and ears open. Most of these africanos and mulattos speak a corrupt tongue among themselves because there is no one language a large number of them share. They speak a little of various africano tongues, some Spanish, and words picked up from indios. You can better understand what they say than Mateo or me."

"But wouldn't it be better if you hired a slave or a mulatto to mingle with them and report their words?" I asked.

"I've done that. Mateo will be dealing with several we've paid to report. But the viceroy will not take the word of an africano. Nor would he take the word of a lépero who, in his eyes, is more untrustworthy than even a slave. He would only listen to a Spaniard, and I have two—my young cousin and an overseer from my hacienda."

"Besides supervising the africanos you've hired, how else can I serve you in this investigation?" Mateo asked Don Julio.

"Keep Cristo alive. He is new to the city, and I fear that his lépero survival instincts may be as eroded as the walls of the tunnel. Also, think about going into the pulque business."

"Pulque?"

"What do you think africanos drink? Fine Spanish wines?"

"But it would be illegal for a slave to drink pulque." The foolish remark came from me, and I got an amused and incredulous stare from each of them.

"Murder, banditry, and insurrection are also illegal," Don Julio murmured.

"So is being an unsavory lépero," Mateo said, "yet the streets—and this house—harbor such trash. But, Don Julio, what do you have in mind about this pulque business?"

"Two things are certain to close a man's eyes and loosen his tongue—a woman and drink. You find both in a pulqueria. I have it on good authority that there are a thousand pulquerias in the city, if one counts all the old women who sell from a jug outside their front door. There are no doubt a number of them operating clandestinely who serve africanos exclusively. You will rent one of these establishments, or buy it if necessary. You will uncover others and send our hired africanos into them to drink and listen."

"How do I locate such a place?"

"Cristo will soon learn of them from street talk, but there is an easier way. They would not be owned by africanos, only run by them. Most illicit profits in this city pass through the hands of us Spanish. I will give you the name of a man, a Spaniard, very respectable on the surface. He no doubt will be able to arrange for your needs in regard to a pulqueria."

"Is he associated with the Recontonería?" I asked.

Don Julio shook his head in wonderment. "An hour in the city and already you know the name of the organization that controls most of the corruption. I am no longer worried that you have lost your skills as a miscreant."

As Mateo and I were leaving the room, the don asked, "How do you find your rooms? Isabella chose them especially for the two of you."

I exchanged looks with the picaro. "Very fine, Don Julio; they are excellent."

He struggled to keep his lips from cracking with a smile. "Feel privileged that you are only abovethe stable."

EIGHTY-THREE

Mateo rubbed his hand together with zeal as we made our way back to our grand suites over the stable. "Adventure, intrigue, who knows what this assignment will hold for us, amigo. I smell romance and danger in the air, a woman's lace, a dagger at my throat."

"We've investigating a revolt of slaves, Mateo, not a duke's love affair."

"My young friend, life is what you make of it. Mateo Rosas de Oquendo can make a golden ring out of pig's tail. I will show you. Tonight I will take you to a place where you can get the hacienda dust off your garrancha. You have been lying with india village girls so long that you have forgotten what it is like to rub your nose between the breasts of a woman who doesn't smell of tortillas and beans."

"What is this place, Mateo? A convent of nuns? The viceroy's wife's bedroom?"

"A casa de las putas, naturally. The best in the city. Do you have any pesos, amigo? They have a game of cards there called primera that I am a master at. Bring all your money, and you will enjoy every woman in the house and still go home with your pockets full."

I glowed in the brilliance of Mateo's camaraderie. What a friend! He was not only going to take me out to enjoy the riches of a woman's body but would ensure that my pockets were full when I returned home.

There are times, however, when I should slap myself when I get caught up in Mateo's enthusiasm for life and love. Times when I should remember that enough money has passed through Mateo's hands in his lifetime to fill one of the king's treasure ships—without any of it sticking to his fingers.

The first hint that this night might not be as enriching as he promised was when he asked me for my money pouch on the way to the house of gambling and prostitution.

"For safekeeping," he told me, "and profit. I know this card game like I know my mother's face."

New Spain, like Old Spain, is a very Christian country. We thrive upon righteousness and piety. Our conquistadors carried the sword and the Cross. Our priests braved torture and cannibalism to bring the Word to heathens. But we are also a very lustful people with romance in our hearts and a certain practicality when it comes to matters of the flesh. Thus we find nothing inconsistent about having as many whorehouses as churches in the city.

The House of Seven Angels was the best, Mateo assured me. "They have mulattas who are the color of milk and chocolate, whose breasts are fountains that gods would yearn to be suckled upon, whose pink place is as sweet and juicy as a ripe papaya. These women have been bred for bloodlines like the finest horses—for the shape of their haunches, the curve of their breasts, the length of their legs. Cristo, Cristo, such females you have never encountered outside of the spells you were in when the Healer worked his magic potions."

"Are there Spanish women, too?"

"Spanish women? What Spanish woman would be in a whorehouse? Must I cut your throat to teach you respect for the women of my country? Of course there are no Spanish women, although some of the houses are owned by Spanish women, who run them with the permission of their husbands. A Spanish whore would get a hundred offers of marriage her first day in New Spain. There are a few india for those whose luck at the gambling tables was bad. But they do not compare to the mulattas."

An africano almost as big as the front gate of the House of Seven Angels let us in after Mateo flipped him a reale of my money. I memorized the arrogant way Mateo sneered at the man and the contemptuous manner in which he flipped the coin, as if money grew from the lint in his pockets.

The reception area of the house had four card tables set up with men crowded around each.

"Wander around, select the puta who tickles your pene the most. I will run your pesos up so we can each have the best women."

The women of the house were in a room off to the left. They sat on benches padded with red silk cushions. Another slave, almost as large as the one outside, guarded the entry. One could look, but no touching until the financial arrangements had been agreed upon.

Mateo had not lied about the quality of these women. Mulattas like I had never seen, women whose legs could wrap around a man's waist and nearly reach the ceiling after he mounted her. Off to the side were several india girls, of a more delicate nature than the girls I knew, who developed powerful arms and legs from working in the fields and rolling tortillas, but to me they were as pulque is to a fine Spanish wine. I had had pulque, now it was time to taste another intoxicant.

Several of the women had half masks covering their face. I did not know whether the masks were meant to ape the fashion of well-to-do ladies—or if the women believed their faces were less attractive than their bodies.

One of the masked women, an india, smiled at me. I suspected she wore the mask because she was much older than the other girls, probably in her late thirties, old to be in whorehouse, although she was still firm and reasonably attractive. Her body was pleasant, but lacked the eroticism of the other women.

I asked the guard about her.

"She's a bondservant, sold to the madam by the magistrate after she was arrested for theft."

Criminals were sold for harsh punishment, men even to the mines, but I was shocked that a woman could be sold into prostitution.

"It was her choice," the guard said. "She could have sewed clothes in an obraje labor shop, but she asked for prostitution because she is allowed to keep extra money given to her by the customers and the work is easier. At her age she would have been better off in a house with only india putas. The owner of this establishment keeps her for only one reason—men who lose at the tables."

I pointed at a particularly lusty wench, a mulatta who I intended to mount and ride as if she were one of Cortes's fourteen famous horses. "That is the one I will sample as soon as my friend is finished playing."

"Good selection, señor. The finest puta in the house, but she is also the most expensive—and there is usually a small token paid to me because she is my wife."

"Naturally," I sniffed, trying not to sound provincial by being shocked that he was renting out his wife.

Pleased that I had made my choice and looking forward to a tryst with a creamy goddess of love, I sought out Mateo at the tables. As I approached he rose from a table with a black look on his face.

"What's the matter?"

"Santo Francisco did not guide the cards to me tonight."

"How did you do?"

"I lost"

"Lost? How much?"

"Everything."

"Everything? All of my money?"

"Cristo, not so loud. Do you want to embarrass me?"

"I want to kill you!"

"All is not lost, my young friend." He fingered the cross I wore, the one that Fray Antonio told me was my only memoir of my mother. I had removed the false coloring to expose its beauty. "This fine, holy necklace would bring enough pesos to get me back into the game."

I slapped away his hand. "You are a knave and a blackguard."

"True, but we still need to raise money."

"Sell your horse, the one Cortes rode."

"I can't. The beast is lame. As will be the scoundrel who sold him to me when I catch him. But I wonder if the madam would give me a few pesos for him? She can sell him to the indios for meat."

Walking away from him, I was so angry, if I had had the courage—and the insanity—I would have drawn my sword and asked him to step outside.

The guard was still at the doorway to the harem. I showed him a silver ring with a small red stone that I had gotten in my travels with the Healer.

"This is a powerful ring; it brings luck to those who wear it."

"Give it to your friend who plays cards."

"No, uh, he doesn't know how to use the magic. It is worth ten pesos. I will give it to you for time with the tawny beauty." My tongue refused to refer to her as his wife.

"The ring is worth one peso. You can have fifteen minutes with a one-peso girl."

"One peso! That is thievery. It is worth at least five."

"One peso. Tenminutes."

I was desperate. I needed the smell of a woman's perfume in my nostrils as a nosegay to get me through the night of smelling manure in my room at the don's house. Besides, I had stolen the ring after refusing to pay a peso for it.

"All right. Which girl."

He pointed to the oldest india, the masked woman who had selected prostitution over sewing in a labor shop. "Her name is Maria."

"You are a handsome boy. Do you have more money?" she panted.

I lay flat on my back on a hard bed with her bouncing atop me like she was riding a horse after it stepped on hot coals.

"Oh, you are a beast– pant! pant!—you have the pene of a horse, the thrust of a bull– pant! pant!How much money will you pay if I make your juice come twice?"

We only had ten minutes and while I was capable of exploding juice from my virile part in seconds, I needed to last the full ten minutes to get my peso's worth. She talked continuously from the moment I hurriedly took off my breeches, mostly about how much more money she should get from me. While I had modestly flattered myself as one of the great lovers of New Spain, she was leaving me with the impression that she was more interested in the size of my pocketbook than the precious jewels I carried in my pants.

"You are a fine, handsome boy. It's too bad you don't have more money."

She stopped panting. The ten minutes were almost up.

"More! I need more! I've been holding it, now I need to spend it."

"You have one more peso?" she asked.

"I have nothing!"

She started rocking again and reached down and took hold of the cross I wore. "A beautiful necklace. I'm sure the madam would let you have me all night for this."

"No!" I slapped her hands away from it. I could feel the stirring in my pene, the power building up, ready to gush. "It belonged to my mother," I moaned, thrusting.

"Perhaps God wants me to have it. My own son had one like it."

"Ask him for his."

"I haven't seen him in years. He lives in Veracruz," she panted.

"I lived in Veracruz. What's his name?"

"Cristóbal."

"My name is Cristo—"

She stopped cold and stared down at me. I stopped thrusting and stared up at her. Two dark eyes in the mask stared down at me. The volcano between my legs was shaking my whole body, ready to erupt and pour lava into her.

"Cristóbal!"she screamed.

She leapt off the bed and ran from the room. I lay numb, my volcano slowly shrinking. Maria. My mother's Christian name was Maria.

I struggled into my clothes and staggered out of the room to find Mateo. My mind and body were in the grip of a growing sense of horror.

EIGHTY-FOUR

I left the House of the Seven Angels feeling cold and depressed. Mateo was waiting for me in the courtyard. He sat on the edge of the fountain, flipping his dagger. His face told the story of his luck.

"I lost the horse. When the madam finds out he's lame, she'll send her underlings to rip off my privates, stick them in my mouth, and sew my lips shut." He noticed my dejected state. What had occurred was too horrible to reveal, too heinous to share even with a good friend, too infamous to acknowledge even to myself.

He slapped me on the back. "Don't feel so bad. Tell me the truth. You could not get your garrancha up, eh? Don't worry, compadre. Tonight you could not get your sword up, but tomorrow, I swear, when a woman passes within ten feet of you, your sword will reach out of your pants and slip into her."

Morning came and I stayed in my hard bed in my stinking room, refusing to leave, hoping that miasma from the stables would kill me. I had found my mother and then—no! It was too awful to think about. She had not seen me since I was a young boy. Today, I was just a bearded young stranger to her, but a good son would have recognized his own mother. Like Oedipus, I was damned and doomed, tricked by the gods, and deserved only to stick needles into my eyes and spend my days as a blind beggar, tormented by my sins.

Midday I sent a servant to the House of Seven Angeles to ascertain the price of Miaha's freedom. The servant returned with news that the woman had fled during the night, leaving the madam unpaid for her bond debt.

There would be no use searching for her on the streets of the city; she would not be foolish enough to run from her legal bond master and stay around the city. Besides the horror of the act we had committed, my appearance in her life would have ignited anew the troubles that had driven us from the hacienda when I was a boy. As an india, she could disappear forever into the land.

Among his many babblings, Fray Antonio claimed I had no mother. From that I took it to mean that Maria was not my mother. But last night she had claimed me as her son. ¡Ay de mí!I felt so miserable.

Late in the next afternoon Mateo took me to go to the Alameda. "The don's horses are well enough for pulling a carriage or working cattle, but we can't ride such animals on the Alameda. We would be laughed off of the green."

"Then what will we do?"

"We walk, as if our servants were tending our horses while we stretched our legs."

"Perhaps the señoritas will not notice our poverty."

"What! A Spanish woman not knowing the amount of gold in a man's pouch? Would God not notice the man who murdered the pope? I said that we would walk, not that we would fool anyone."

We strolled along the cool greenery, watching the champion horses and champion women. How envious I was of everything! To be born and raised basking in the reflection of silver and gold—rather than rags and straw. I had chosen the best clothes that the don had handed down to me and a dress sword he had given me. What I had thought on the hacienda was a fine blade with a fancy basket hilt was little more than a kitchen knife on the Alameda. My confidence began to fade as I suspected that people saw the lépero under my clothes.

No matter how I thought of myself as the peacock, there was always something to give away my lack of breeding. Even my hands betrayed me. The hands of the proud men on the Alameda were as soft and delicate as a woman's. They probably had never even lifted on a pair of breeches. My hands were hard and callused from working cattle. I kept them closed, hoping no one would notice that I had used my hands for honest labor.

Women saw my ordinary clothes and lack of a horse, and their eyes slid past me as if I was invisible. But Mateo grabbed their attention no matter how worn the heels of his boots or how frayed the cuffs of his doublet. He had an arrogance about him, not the haughtiness of a dandy, but an aura of danger and excitement that told a woman he was a scoundrel who would steal her heart and jewels but leave her smiling.

I noticed that some of the women and men wore masks, full-face ones and the type that only covered the upper half of the face.

"Fashion," Mateo said, "it is all the rage. New Spain is always years behind Europe. Masks were the fashion ten years ago when I fought in Italy. Many women even wear them smeared with oil to bed, believing it eases the wrinkles on their faces."

As we walked Mateo told me that he had already been working on the investigation for Don Julio.

"I contacted the man that the don says acts for the Recontonería. He is a strange little man, not at all the cutthroat or with the appearance of blackguard, but more the type who counts sheep and writes down the pounds of wool for a merchant. The don says he is merely a go-between for several notables in the city to whom the pesos taken from illegal pulquerias, whorehouses, and control of the marketplace ultimately passes."

Mateo was describing his negotiations with the man for a pulqueria when I saw a familiar figure. Ramon de Alva rode high in the saddle, a big man on a big horse. I cringed first at the sight of him and then straightened my spine. I was not a young picaro on the streets of Veracruz, but a Spanish gentleman with a sword strapped to my side.

Nothing got past Mateo, and he followed my gaze.

"De Alva, the right hand man of Don Diego de Velez, one of the richest men in New Spain. Alva's said to be rich as Croesus himself, also the best swordsman in the colony—except for myself, of course. Why do you stare at this man as if you wished to put your dagger in his gullet?"

At that moment Alva stopped beside a carriage. The woman in the carriage was wearing a half mask, but I recognized the carriage. Isabella, laughing gaily at something Alva said, carrying on her flirtation and the don's disgrace in plain sight for all the notables of the city to see.

Someone snickered off to my left. A group of young hidalgos were watching the exchange between Alva and Isabella. The one who snickered wore a gold doublet and breeches with red and green slashes that made him look like a bright jungle bird.

"Look at Alva with the converso's wife," the canary said. "We should all let her do our penes in the viper way. What else is a converso's wife good for?"

I flew at the yellow bird and punched him in the face. He staggered backward.

"You are a woman," I told him, uttering the worse insult one could give an hombre, "and I'm going to use you as one."

He snarled and went for his sword. I grabbed for mine– and my hand fumbled with the basket on the hilt!My sword was only half drawn when the yellow bird lunged with his for my throat.

A sword flashed between us and, the bird's sword was countered. Mateo followed with lightning thrusts that cut the hidalgo's arm. The man's sword fell to the ground, and his friends drew their swords. Mateo was quickly on them, and soon all three were in full retreat.

From across the Alameda, the horn of the viceroy's soldados blew.

"Run!" Mateo shouted.

I ran behind him into a residential area. When there were no sounds of pursuit, we walked in the direction of the don's house.

Mateo was angrier than I had ever seen him and I kept silent, shamed at my failure. He had warned me not to play the fop and wear a fancy sword, but I had done so and would now be bleeding to death on the Alameda if it were not for his quick blade.

When we were near the don's house and his face was no longer the color of the Smoking Mountain when it spit out fire. I mumbled my amends.

"You warned me about the basket guard. I was too concerned with playing the dandy than being the swordsman that you taught me to be."

"Triedto teach you," he corrected. "I told you that as a swordsman, you are a dead man. I am not angry about your foolish attempt at swordplay. I am enraged about the position you put the don in."