Текст книги "Aztec Blood"

Автор книги: Gary Jennings

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

Not that she seemed to care. She squirmed and gyrated, and her private parts became even hotter and wetter until my own garrancha grew, became muy excitado,throbbing uncontrollably.

Now the terrible fear was being replaced by something else: unbearable pressure. I had experienced these feelings before, and once a friendly puta, whom I'd slept beside one night at the house of the poor, had showed me how to touch it to relieve the pressure.

"Magnifico!" The crowd proclaimed as the alcalde "killed" the bull with his sword.

The more they screamed, the harder the señora locked onto the back of my head, the more my mouth and tongue worked at her source of joy.

"You have seen, amigos, the technique of fighting a bull with one's feet on the ground. I tell you that someday bullfights will no longer be from horseback. Our Portuguese friends say that will never happen, but mark my words—it will be hombre against el toro, facing the charging animal with nothing but his courage and cape to protect him."

He threw the cape-table cover back on the table, and servants rushed to put it back in place. As the audience applauded, the woman's thighs and private parts were vibrating voraciously against my face.

I knew that my throbbing garrancha belonged in there. Although the fray expressly forbid any misconduct in the house of the poor and put up a blanket to partition off an area whenever a woman stayed, I had seen a lépero atop a puta pumping with his rump in the air, just as Don Fernando had mounted Miaha. My position now, on my knees with my head between her legs and her half-standing behind the table, made that impossible.

Unsure how to continue her pleasure, my coyote instincts took over, and I did what I felt was natural. I stuck my tongue into her hot, sultry opening.

It was a mistake.

She moaned and squirmed and a salacious shudder ran through her. God only knows what expression she had on her face. As I waited to be dragged out from under her dress and my throat slit, slowly, ever so slowly, her spasms began to subside. Panicking, I slipped out from under her dress as the alcalde addressed her.

"Mi amor, my love, your face is hot and flushed with excitement. It never occurred to me that you would get so excited by my performance!" The alcalde's voice was awed and gleeful at his wife's sexual excitement.

I lifted the tablecloth enough to make eye contact with the woman. Sweat lines from our antics were visible as trenches in the thick beauty powders on the sides of her face.

I held the note so she could take it. I smiled at her to show her that I was pleased to have given her pleasure. She allowed me a small, mischievous smile, half grin, half grimace, then lifting her knee, booted me in my face back through the wide opening in between the boards. On the way down I bounced and banged, careened and caromed off every cross beam, support joist, and shoring timber on my way down, hitting the ground with a resounding thump.

Slowly I rose and crawled out from under the pavilion. I hurt in many places, but mostly in my soul. The rogue was nowhere to be seen. As I limped away, I considered my experience. I had made two important discoveries about women. They had a secret spot where they could be touched to give them pleasure. And once they had had their pleasure, a kick in the face was all you could expect.

I had gone only a short distance when the crowd parted for a coach. I saw a chance to ply my trade. But as I trotted toward the coach, an old woman in black stepped out of it and paused, looking down at me as she was being helped by attendants. Her raptor's eye caught mine, and an icy hand squeezed my heart.

The woman drew back in shock, but the surprise quickly left her face and alarm took over. I had once observed the same sort of reaction from a man bitten by an iguana—first the recoil in surprise, then revulsion, then anger as he beat the iguana to death.

I had no intimation as to why this aristocratic Spanish doña found me so loathsome, but my lépero instincts put wings on my feet. I raced into the cheering crowd as the archbishop reached tierra firma and bent to kiss the dirt.

I never looked back until I was clear of the crowds and well up an alley too narrow for a coach to follow. Even in the alley I felt naked and exposed, as if the sun itself were spying for this woman.

  THIRTEEN

I went home to the House of the Poor, skulking along side streets, convinced the Angel of Death was everywhere. The hospice was empty. Fray Antonio and his charges, who would that night sleep on the floor's piled straw, were with the crowds honoring the archbishop. Soon the waterfront reception would move to the alcalde palace. The buena gente would attend the festivities inside, while in the plaza Veracruz's citizens, along with those in town for the treasure fleet, would celebrate through the night and into the next day. To miss the greatest celebration of my lifetime was deeply disappointing, but my fear outweighed my eagerness.

The Casa de los Pobres was little more than a large, rectangular room. One corner was blanketed off for the fray. Behind the hung blanket were his private quarters—a bed of straw in a wood frame, a small table with a reading candle, a chest with his personal effects, and several shelves for his modest library. The books weren't much—a few religious tomes, the rest classics from Greek and Roman antiquity. No doubt the local church and the alcalde had more books. Perhaps a few wealthy citizens as well, but it was a substantial collection of libros in a city where the vast majority of the people could not read their own names, let alone buy books.

My greatest pleasure was to sit in the fray's draped-off bolt-hole and read, but today I entered it to hide. I sat on his bed with my back to the corner and gathered my arms around my knees. Veracruz's streets had honed my survival instincts to a razor's edge, and I had felt stronger emotions emanating from the old woman than mere malice.

Fear.

Had I—or the parents I never knew—done anything to her? The fray never indicated any such thing, so her hatred, by itself, was inexplicable. But her fear? Why would an aristocratic, all-powerful matrona, the dowager of a great house, fear a lépero boy who cadged alms to earn his bread?

It was not the first time I had been mistaken for another. The day Don Francesco had beaten me within an inch of my life, his guest had claimed to recognize my true paternity. Perhaps the old woman saw the same similarities.

From time to time I'd questioned the fray about my father's identity, but he denied all knowledge. Once deep in wine he said my father had been a wearer of the spurs, but then grew angry, perhaps for having said too much.

But the old woman, like Don Fernando's guest before her, saw something in my face, knew what she saw, and it put me at risk. I now feared what she saw might cost me my life.

I tried to put the woman out of my mind, but I could not stop thinking about my parentage. That my mother might have been a thief and a whore made no special impression on me. We so-called "Children of the Lord" were notorious for base parentage. That my father might have been a wearer of spurs was also of no significance. The gachupins ceaselessly debauched our women, watching them drop their bastards without remorse, with contempt rather than love. To them, we were a slander against their stock and blood. They demonstrated their hatred in the laws they enacted againstus, their own offspring. We bastardos had no rights in society. We could not inherit from our fathers; we were not even recognized as their children. Not just the streets of Veracruz– ¡Bueno Dios!—one end of New Spain to the other, swarmed with the bastardos of Spanish hombres. If anyone had proven to a gachupin that I was his son, he would have stared right through me as if I'd never existed, because under the eyes of the law I did notexist. Our gachupin masters could use and abuse us at will.

Sometimes one heard the expression "son of a gun" applied to street children because their mothers were whores who did not know which men impregnated them. The term was first applied to the children born to prostitutes on ships. Large war galleons often carried putas to service the crew. When the women were about to give birth, they were laid next to one of the ever-burning braziers near the big guns, which had to be continually available to ignite the black gunpowder. Their propinquity to the cannons earned the appellation of "son of a gun."

Being the bastard son of a gachupin gave me no more rights than had I been the son of a gun.

And now I had met two people who apparently hated me for my parentage, as if I was responsible for parents I had never met, as if my very existence fomented blood feuds, as if Ihad committed the sins of my forebears.

Ayyo, perhaps the fray would tell me why this woman hated me. Perhaps he would find some way to take care of this problem. I knew he would if he could. Fray Antonio was a good man. He helped everyone. His only sin was that he was too good. After he was defrocked, he turned to the secular community for help. He talked a well-to-do merchant out of a rundown building in the heart of the mestizo barrio. In his spare time he solicited money, food, clothing, and medicine from the wealthy. He provided all that and lodging, too, to the poor.

In other words, like myself, he begged.

Once I accompanied the fray to these great houses and watched the contortions heperformed wringing alms from parsimonious grandees. No, he did not twist his arms out of their sockets, but he twisted money out of their coffers, telling them all the time, with a serene smile and saintly eyes, that God hated doubt money but loved a cheerful giver and how the golden road to heaven was paved with loving largesse.

His doctoring skills were schooled in necessity, not academy, he often said. His surgical instruments consisted of carpentry tools and kitchen utensils. His medical knowledge he'd gleaned from a volume of Galen of Pergamum, a Greek physician a century after Christ. Translated from Greek into Arabic, then into Latin, Galen's works were frowned on by the Church for their Moorish taint, but they were the best guide the fray possessed. Occasionally, a real doctor—at the fray's behest—provided help and instruction. Beyond that all the fray had to go on was his experience in treating those whom other doctors spurned.

"I received my degree," the fray sometimes said, "from Galen and the School of Necessity."

The House of the Poor was no palace of the poor—just rough, unpainted boards nailed onto raw, unfinished timbers. I slept in the common area with those who were too starved or sick to find shelter elsewhere. Piles of straw and a few ragged blankets served as our beds. The fray had a few good blankets for when the nights turned cold, but he kept them hidden. The poor stole anything they could get their hands on.

But most nights the heat caused the very air to sweat, so much so it was hard to breathe in the hospice, though in truth it was hard to breathe anywhere on the tierra caliente except the cool, enclosed gardens of the rich. When it rained, which was often, water seeped throughout the main room. When it became too wet, I slept on the long table on which Veracruz's starvelings took their evening meals each night. When the weather was bad and people could not beg, we had more mouths to feed.

In one corner was a small fire pit. An indio woman came in each day and prepared tortillas and frijoles at the pit, which, along with occasional corn mush, were the only nourishment the fray could afford. Smoke from the open fire covered the ceiling, eventually working its way through the cracks between the roof and the walls.

Only the bookshelves were safe from the rain.

I turned and studied the titles on those shelves. A hacendado had given him most of them when he'd been the priest at a village church. There was the tome on medicine, a few religious works, notably San Augustine's The City of God,but most of the books were the classics of Greece and Rome. My favorites were Plutarch's Bioi paralleloi (Parallel Lives)in which he explored the character and noble deeds of Greece and Rome's greatest soldiers, legislators, orators, and statesmen; Homer's Iliadand Odyssey;Virgil's Aeneid;Dante's Divine Comedyand Aesop's Fables.

Other than what the fray and his books taught me, my possessions consisted of the dirty, ragged pants and shirt I begged in, and the only marginally cleaner garments and sandals I wore to church. The pants and shirt were made of coarse-spun indio cotton and maguey, the sandals were hemp. To save wear on the sandals, I only wore them inthe church.

Then there was my silver cross. The fray confessed one night, steeped in drink, that the crucifix did, in fact, belong to my mother, and that it had been given to her by my father. It was the only article of theirs I owned. The cross was pure silver, red stones adorning each corner. One would not expect "an india whore" to own so fine an ornament, but then my father was alleged to have been a wearer of spurs.

A lot of good it did me. If I wore the cross publicly, I'd be killed for it or jailed as a thief. It wasn't even safe in the hospice. To disguise its worth, the fray finally covered it with pitch, and I strung it from my neck on a piece of hemp.

I fingered the blackened cross and thought of the fray. Had he been defrocked for fighting Church corruption? For opposing its exploitation of the indios and its oppression of the mixed bloods? Or had he fallen from churchly grace through his taste for wine and ladies of the night, as others have intimated?

To me the questions were fatuous. He did more good than anyone in all of Veracruz, and he had given me something, at great personal peril, even pure-blood Spaniards seldom enjoyed: the world of classical literature.

Nor had he neglected our more contemporary authors. The fray's priestly friend, Fray Juan, was a lover of such writers, most of whom were banned. He would loan the fray their illicit writings, which the fray concealed in a secret cache, and so through him I perused the books and plays of Miguel Cervantes sub rosa.

I knew Cervantes to be the creator of Don Quixote, the restive knight errant who tilted at windmills, and the fray had reluctantly permitted me to read the borrowed book. However, he forbade my reading the other banned authors—such as Lope de Vega and Mateo Altman—even though Fray Juan often brought their books to him. I, of course, perused them when he wasn't around.

I was asleep one morning when Fray Juan, greatly excited, visited and hid for the fray a copy of the book called Guzman de Alfarache.I asked Fray Antonio later why the book had to be hidden.

"Books like Guzman de Alfaracheare read only in Spain," he told me. "The Inquisition has banned the importation of them into New Spain because the Church believes that indios will be corrupted by such fare. Not even we pure-blood criollos are permitted to read them, for we, too, can be corrupted."

The fact that few indios read did not enter into the matter. And at fifteen years old, to be "corrupted" had a different meaning than that the fray put on the word.

A day later, when I was alone, I satisfied my curiosity.

The fray's "rabbit hole" was a secret storage hole under his bed with a trapdoor over it. Anything of value we kept in it—away from the thieving street people. Usually there was nothing in it except a few blankets. The blankets were donated to the fray for when the weather turned bitter. Sometimes when we did not have enough money to buy maize for the evening meal, he sold one of them.

I opened the trap and removed Fray Juan's book.

I sat with my feet dangling in the hole and began reading the book, which, to my surprise and pleasure, dealt with the adventures of a young rogue who found himself homeless and on the street of life. As I said, when I met the rogue, Mateo, my own Guzman de Alfarache,I learned much of Guzman's ways, of which I will apprise you later.

  FOURTEEN

By late afternoon Fray Antonio had not returned to the house, which was not surprising. The fray loved festivals, and this one was unprecedented. The arrival of both the treasure fleet and the great man were a cause for jubilation, and a carnival atmosphere was everywhere. Furthermore, the church, which overlooked the main plaza, was packed with parishioners, and the archbishop himself had conducted the service. So the plaza teemed with congregational overflow as well as onlookers, all of them welcoming the archbishop. True, Veracruz had known many religious festivals, but this one, everyone agreed, was unique.

I knew I should have climbed down the rabbit hole and pulled the trapdoor shut. But I could not shake the memory of that menacing old woman. I needed the fray to explain my unsettling plight.

I donned a straw hat and an indio manta, a blanket tied over the right shoulder and under the left arm. Like the huipil blouse and skirt worn by the india and half-caste women, hundreds of male figures in the rough cotton shirt, pants, and woven maguey mantas would throng the plaza. That abundance offered more protection against discovery than any disguise I could conjure.

What a celebration! As I came onto the main square, the revelers roared. I heard their music, singing, and laughing voices a block away. Because the people of New Spain lived lives of hardship and uncertainty, when they had a fiesta at which to sing, dance, and drink, they did so with a passion. It did not matter whether the celebrations were religious or secular. Purveyors of pulque, sherry sack, and Jamaican rums lined the walkways around the square. Everyone partook. People too poor to feed their children parched corn imbibed as if they were heir to the Fleet's fortune.

A Caribbean rum, dubbed "kill-devil," was new to Veracruz. Decocted from sugarcane, this Luciferian liqueur stole the souls of all who did not sport the big spurs and hence could not afford the brandies of Spain. Well, not exactly all. I tasted it once and swore it would sear a hole in a crocodile's behind.

Cook fires blazed everywhere, boasting baked tortillas, boiling beans, red roasting chilis. Peddlers hawked bananas, papayas, sugarcane, and skewered mangos, skins peeled. Singers and guitarists worked the square, serenading lovers, cadging coppers.

Priests and nuns also packed the square, and as I squeezed through the crowds, I searched for Fray Antonio. He was nowhere to be found. He would not be at the archbishop's reception. Neither defrocked priests nor mendicant clerics were welcome, and the fray was both.

I stepped atop the low stonewall of a plaza fountain to get a better view and stared out over a floating sea of heads. Many were the shaved pates of friars, all of which looked alike.

A group of juglares, street actors who sang and danced, tumbled, and did magic tricks, were performing nearby. Their repertoire was rudely risqué, and I could not take my eyes off them.

My contortionist tricks paled beside theirs. One juglare unsheathed an arm-length sword, announcing he would swallow it. Tilting his head back, raising the inverted blade high overhead, he slid it inch by inch into his groaning gullet—until he'd swallowed three-fourths of his sword.

As I gaped in wide-eyed wonderment, I suddenly realized I was dangerously exposed. Hopping off of the fountain, I lost myself in the bustling crowd, head down but eyes up, searching for the fray.

I searched without luck. The only people I recognized were, incredibly enough, the dwarf and his four friends, two women and two men. He stood on a barrel while the others gathered around him. The rogue who'd slipped me two reales to messenger the love note was also there. A crowd gathered.

"Tomorrow, amigos," the dwarf roared with disconcerting power, "we of the acting group, La Nómadas, will perform for your personal delectation one of the noblest extravaganzas ever to grace the boards of Seville, Madrid, and Cadiz."

The group of actors gathered around the barrel cheered and stamped, clapped and brayed, as if their lives depended on it. The dwarf shyly raised his hands for silence.

"At that time the great autor, Mateo Rosas de Oquendo, legendary poet, swashbuckling swordsman, player par excellence, playwright extraordinaire, the toast of Church and Crown worldwide, will present one of the finest dramas ever to adorn the stages of Europe, England, and New Spain."

Ah, the man was a distinguished poet, swordsman, and actor! And he was my amigo and benefactor. I wondered how I could exact further emoluments from this rakish rogue.

Mateo took a deep bow, swirling his cape with garish flair. Applause detonated from assembled thespians, and the dwarf continued his pitch.

"Amigos, for your dauntless delight, at no cost but your pleasure and praise, the great autor will recite for you el canto de mi Cid."

A storm of applause and enthusiasm swept through the crowd. And it was no wonder. El Cid was the preeminent hero of the Spanish people, and The Song of My Cidwas his epic saga.

Even poor léperos knew fragments of it. The poem recalls the Cid's life and triumphs. A Castilian knight who lived over four hundred years ago, his deeds were deified throughout both Spain and New Spain, as if that very morning he'd beat back the Moorish hordes. In an age of chaos, when Spain was rent by feuding Christian kings and petty Moorish states, when war was continuous and peace a madman's dream, the Cid—also called El Campeador, the Champion—was the Perfect Knight Exemplar, who never lost a battle.

While Hernan Cortes was everywhere revered for sacking New Spain and slaying my ancestors by the millions with a ragtag band of barely five hundred men, even El Hernando paled before El Cid. The Champion was no mere man, but a mortal god.

The dwarf dropped from the barrel, and the rogue called Mateo leaped atop it. Whirling his cape with almost preternatural aplomb, he addressed the crowd.

"There is none among you whose veins do not burn with the blood of Spain, whose hearts do not thunder like barbary steeds, when told how the Cid—betrayed by enemies at every turn—was banished forever from hearth and Crown."

A murmur of assent arose from the audience even though many were of mixed blood. I was less entranced than most. I too knew the poem—and his entire history—by heart. His name was actually Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar. Mio Cidwas a Spanish-Arabic derivation of "My Lord," in honor of his noble birth and accomplishments. He was banished from court because of jealousy: He defeated a Moorish army without the king's authorization and then invaded Moorish Toledo. Neither his august family nor the king's niece, his wife, could save him.

"The poema de mio Cid begins with the champion's exile, exiting the shattered gates of his castle in compliance with the king's orders. Sixty men follow him."

Mateo performed the poem in the declamatory style, depicting betrayal and exile in starkly powerful cadences:

He turns to see the ruined hold, the tears fall thick and fast,

The empty chests, the broken gates, all open to the blast,

Without raiment are the wardrobes, reft of mantle and of vair,

The empty hollow of the hall of tapestry is bare.

No feather in the falconry, no hawk to come to hand,

A noble beggar must the Cid renounce his father's land.

Mateo paused as the dwarf and the actors around the barrel fanned out, their hats held out for contributions from the crowd. Mateo noisily cleared his throat. "It's parched and needs to be wetted if I am to persevere."

When enough money had flowed into the hats to buy whatever would wet the actor's voice, he continued, describing how the flight of a Raven was an ominous sign that they were exiles. His life was in a wreck from the lies and deceit of others, but someday he would have his revenge.

Mateo was handed a large goblet of wine. He took a long drink, tilting back his head as the sword swallower had done. He did not stop till he was sucking air, and when he upended the goblet it was empty.

"More wine for the 'Poema del Cid,' " the dwarf shouted, as he and the others of the troupe waded into the crowd with their hats.

Mateo drew his sword and gestured dramatically with it as he recited the poem.

The sixty lances of the Cid rode clattering through the town;

From casement and from turret top the townfolk look down.

Sad were their hearts and salt in their eyes as Rodrigo rode by;

"There goes a worthy vassal who has known bad mastery."

And many a roof that night had sheltered Rodrigo and his band

But for the dread in Burgos of the king's heavy hand.

The missive broad with kingly seals had run throughout the town;

"Who aid the Cid in banishment, his house shall be cast down."

I listened while the Cid and his small band slew Moors, sacked cities, and slaughtered Christian traitors. In a tumultuous battle with the count of Barcelona, who opposed him with Christian knights and a Moorish host, El Cid won the Kingdom of Valencia.

Mateo recounted how the Cid spurred his mighty war horse, Babieca, against the dreaded Moorish horde of King Bucar:

The good blade shears the Moor in twain, down to the saddlebow;

So perish the Algerian lord—may every Moor die so!

The Cid had won the great sword Colada in battle with the Moors and then, in the battle against King Bucar, he added a second great sword, Tizon.

While listening to the poet master's impassioned tones, I chanced to study a balcony overlooking the plaza. A group of notables, doñas and caballeros, were on the balcony of the building next to where Mateo was giving his performance. An old woman in black was among them, staring down.

My blood ran cold.

I felt what King Bucar must have felt when the sharp blade of Colada sliced him down the middle.

I melted back into the crowd, risking only a shy, over-the-shoulder glance. Her eyes were locked on Mateo as he recounted the end of the poem.

So in Navarre and Aragon his daughters both did reign,

And princes of his blood today sit on the thrones of Spain.

Greater and greater grew his name in honor and in worth;

Until at last at Pentecost he passed away from earth.

Upon him be the grace of Christ, Whom all of us adore.

Such is the story, gentles, of the Cid Campeador.

Darkness was falling. I gave up my search for the fray. Fleeing the plaza, planning to return to the House of the Poor, I did not think the old woman had spotted me in the crowd. From the balcony I was just one more straw hat in a sea of such hats, but her mere presence in the plaza felt like a garrote strangling me.

What if I was being followed? Glancing over my shoulder, I veered from the hospice, sticking to the side streets. Hiding under cover of night, I was angry and frightened. What had I done to this doña? In my brief years on Veracruz's cruel streets I had suffered many adversities, but a gachupín dowager's blood vengeance was not one of them.

My only hope was Fray Antonio. Although criollo born, he was of pure Spanish blood. Compared to léperos such as myself, he was a king.

Life in the House of the Poor had moments of excitement. One never knew what to expect from street people. Three weeks before the archbishop's arrival, I arrived home after dark and heard laughter from inside. There I found Fray Antonio with a prostitute and her pimp lover. The woman lay on the table. Her left leg was black and swollen. They were plying her with pulque in hopes that she might pass out.

"She cut her foot weeks ago and the poison has spread," Fray Antonio said. "If I don't cut it off, she will die."

The woman did not have the money for the local surgeon barber who normally performed bleedings and medical amputations when he wasn't cutting hair. Fray Antonio, however, was not without medical skill. The street people preferred the skills and medicaments of our indio healers but did allow that Fray Antonio's powers surpassed those of most Spanish doctors. In any event Fray Antonio was now her last best hope.

The woman was drunk, snoring, flat on her back, and they were about to amputate her leg. The fray had a saw, an iron blade, and a pot of boiling oil heating on the coals. After they sawed off the leg, he would cauterize many of the veins with a hot blade. The raw stump he would char with boiling oil.

The fray tied her arms and legs, torso and neck to the table. He placed a thick wood stick between her teeth, and tied it tight behind her head. All the while her lover trembled convulsively, his face green as a jalapeño.

When the fray began to saw, the puta's screams rang through the night like screams of the damned. Blood detonated, and the man fled the hospice in terror.

"I can't blame him," the fray said.

Then he turned and looked at me. His hands were shaking, his face sweating. I was ready to give up, too, but he threw back a cup of pulque, then poured one for me.

"Cristóbal, you have to help or the woman will die."

He only called me by my proper name when he needed something urgent.

"The saw has to be steady, the cut even."

He gave me two small pieces of wood. "Hold these straight. I will pass the saw through them as I cut."

I had assisted in medical procedures before, but I had never seen a limb cut off. I held the two pieces of wood just above the knee, and the saw ripped through the woman's flesh. Her blood covered us both. When the fray hit her femur, it sounded as if he was tearing through a log. She passed out in shock, and at last her wailing ceased. When the leg was amputated, the fray removed the severed limb and dropped it on the floor at my feet. The fray quickly tightened the tourniquet and began to cauterize the severed veins with the red-hot knife.

After searing the stump with seething oil, he covered the convulsively unconscious woman with a blanket, saying to me, "Clean up."

He staggered out the door, no doubt to dull his mind with more pulque. I stared at the ashen-faced, comatose woman—and at the bloody piece of leg. What was I supposed to do with it?