Aztec Rage (75 page)

I came back to the present with words in my ears. My eyes and ears slowly made a connection with a voice and body. Tempest had stopped. I realized people stood around the stallion and were staring up to me.

“You are seriously injured, señor.”

It wasn't a question.

The world began to swirl around me, and I fell into a black, boiling, bottomless pit.

Not one fine house in all of New Spain would have taken in an injured stranger. However, I didn't heal in a house but in a peon's hut in a small Aztec village. These simple, unpretentious people had taken in a stranger.

When I was well enough, I checked my clothes and gear. Nothing was missing, and they had washed my clothes.

I had no knowledge of how much time I had spent in that hut while the specter of death hung over me. It could have been days or weeks. I had a hard time communicating with the woman and her husband who cared for me. They didn't speak Spanish.

I was on my feet, a little unsteady, but determined to round up Tempest who was hanging around the village somewhere, when I heard horses galloping into the village. Thoughts of escape slipped away as the hut was surrounded, and I was told to come out of the hut.

I stepped out and blinked under the power of the midday sun. A dozen men on horseback surrounded me.

“Identify yourself!”

I recognized the uniforms: royal militia. The speaker was a lieutenant. I knew his type: like Allende and the Aldama brothers, he was a criollo caballero. But he was fighting for the viceroy.

I had been captured by the enemy. Next I would be dancing for the hangman.

The lieutenant pointed his pistol at me. “State your name!”

“My name?” I lifted my chin and straightened my shoulders. “Señor, you are addressing Don Renato de Miro, nephew of the Marqués de Miro.”

That afternoon, I retold my story to Captain Guerrero, the commander of the unit, as we chewed on meat and bread washed down with wine. I went over what had happened to me, telling the same story I had given his lieutenant. Guerrero was another criollo officer. As the marqués's nephew, I was a gachupine of noble blood, making him my social inferior.

“The infamous bandido, Juan Zavala, ambushed my uncle and me. After murdering my beloved uncle, the blessed Don Humberto, he stole his gold.”

“The beautiful Isabella?” Captain Guerrero asked, pouring us both another cup of wine.

I crossed myself. “Murdered by the bandido.”

“No! Not Isabella. Did he first—”

“You know his evil reputation.”

He shuddered. “That mestizo devil will pay for violating a Spanish woman. When we capture Zavala, I will personally squash his cojones with thumbscrews and gouge out his eyeballs with my dagger.”

I prayed that bandidos had captured and killed Renato and Isabella. I gave the officer a blow-by-blow account of my heroic battle against the bandido Zavala and his murderous band of killers, making sure I gave him the same story that I gave his subordinate.

He listened, commiserating as one caballero to another, and brought me up to date on the padre's war of independence.

“We have retaken Guanajuato and driven out the turncoat Allende and the other traitorous officers.”

I pretended elation at the news, but each new defeat of our forces was a kick to my stomach. Things had not gone well since the padre refused to turn the horde loose on the capital.

The consensus among Calleja's officers was that the padre had gone to Guadalajara and that Allende would rejoin him there to regroup.

I listened, ate, drank, and was about to tell the captain I needed to move on when an orderly entered and whispered in his ear.

The captain raised his eyebrows. “As you know, General Calleja was your uncle's close friend. The general has spoken fondly of Don Humberto. He would never forgive me if I didn't notify him that we'd found you. He's instructed me to send you to him, so you can tell the story of his amigo's murder at the hands of the cutthroat Zavala. A full military escort will ride with you, assuring you a safe journey for your meeting with the general.”

¡Ay! He might as well have sentenced me to the scaffold. But I smiled bravely. “Where is the general?”

“Guanajuato.”

I smothered a groan. Life is a circle, no? How long would I last in that fair city before someone pointed out that I was the brigand Zavala? On the good side, I had my beard back and long hair, had lost much weight, and my clothes looked like they had been slept in and befouled, all of which was true. Even Tempest had trimmed down because of sparse graze. We looked like we had gone through a war in a pig sty and lost. But I should not have been frightened of someone recognizing me, because things soon got worse.

“General Calleja will want to know all the details of the terrible crimes, so leave nothing out.” He gave me a glance. “And since your family is one of the noblest in New Spain, no doubt he'll want to discuss the marqués's estate in his report to the viceroy. Did the marqués have children? Or are you his heir?”

I shrugged and tried to look as if I wasn't ready to foul my pants. I didn't have the faintest idea of the composition of the marqués's family. I still wondered whether Renato was the man's nephew or a paid assassin, hired to kill the padre and help Isabella recover the gold. But whatever Renato was, as the marqués's close friend, the general would know I was an imposter.

Why is it that when my feet are in the fire, someone throws lamp oil on the flames?

The captain refused to let me ride Tempest, which sent my suspicions soaring. They didn't want me on a horse that could leave their own eating its dust. Furthermore, he accompanied me and the escort for the entire journey to Guanajuato.

The last time I saw the city, I was part of a triumphant army that had killed hundreds of Spaniards in the granary. Now as I entered Guanajuato there were grim reminders that the gachupines had retaken the city. Bodies hung from makeshift gallows along the busiest street.

The captain said, “This is just the beginning. By the time we finish, the only rebels in Guanajuato will be dead ones.”

We paused near the alhóndiga. The air was thick with blood and revenge. Panicked prisoners were hurried out of the granary, which was now a jail, a priest beside them mumbling forgiveness in Latin as the men were shoved against a wall. As soon as the priest stepped aside, the prisoners were shot. Their bodies were hurriedly dragged aside to make room for the next stampede. The dead left behind brains and bone, guts and blood, on the cobblestones. Bodies were stacked like logs off to the side.

“They'll be carted off to a mass grave,” the officer said.

“Their trials must be quick,” I said.

Very quick, I thought. Calleja had not been in the town long enough to have conducted legal proceedings.

He laughed. “God conducts our trials. We don't have the time, men, or inclination to spend months weeding out the miscreants. Instead, the general has ordered a lottery. If his men draw your name, they arrest and execute you out of hand.”

With a straight face I said, “In the early days of the Inquisition, when inquisitors believed there were heretics in a town but couldn't discover the guilty ones, they would order everyone killed. Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, told the troops, ‘Kill them all. God knows His own; he'll sort out the souls of the innocent from the wicked.' “

He howled and slapped his thigh. “That's very good, Don Renato. I'll repeat your words to the general. He'll be pleased to know his methods are sanctioned by the church.”

People watched the executions from the rooftops of houses on the hillside, whole families gathering together as if watching a play. They had watched the battle for the alhóndiga, too. And again the jeers were for the defeated.

Calleja was in the office of Riano, the governor who had died defending the alhóndiga granary.

I was brought into a waiting room adjoining the office, and for an hour I watched a steady stream of officers and civilians go in and out. No one did a double take at me or shouted my name. Fortunately, most of the people who would have recognized me were gachupines and wealthy criollos who were now dead or had fled to the capital.

I knew a bit about the general, whom some people called a chino—behind his back. Calleja wasn't Chinese, but people called him that because his skin had a yellowish tone from jaundice. Félix María Calleja del Rey's reputation as a soldier was discussed many times by Bruto and his friends around the dinner table during my youth. Calleja was reputed to be an ill-tempered little man, much given to punctilious military airs. They said his two great loves were flattery and cruelty. But despite his hard edge and demanding nature, he was considered a good soldier and was popular with his troops.

He was born into a distinguished family in Medina del Campo in old Castile. As a young man, he had seen action as an ensign in a failed campaign against the dey of Algiers. He had come to New Spain about twenty years ago and served in frontier units until Madrid ordered that the colonial militia be divided into ten brigades. Calleja was given command of the brigade at San Luis Potosí, where he married a wealthy woman in the city and became the most notable gachupine in the region.

The padre, in his eternal wisdom, had foreseen that the general would become his chief nemesis. Almost as soon as the cry of independence was
made from Dolores, the padre sent a troop of horsemen to Calleja's hacienda at de Bledos to arrest him. Calleja narrowly escaped and made it to San Luis Potosí. However, because so few ready troops were available, he needed a couple months to gather together enough men, arms, and supplies to field a sizable army.

At the moment, the ill-tempered military man didn't look pleased to see me.

I gave a humble bow. “Don Félix, it is such a pleasure—”

“You are a thief and a liar.”

He knew who I was. I was doomed!

“You are a disgrace, a man with no honor, no honesty, no integrity, no decency.”

What could I say? Did he not know me well? Was one of the gallows I saw in the town square waiting for me?

“Your uncle, bless his soul, told me all about you.”

Bruto discussed me with Calleja?

“His death has only magnified your sins.”

“Don Calleja—”

“Silence! You're no better than a maggot.” Trembling, his hand shook next to a pistol on his desk. He stared at the pistol, his face convulsing. The man was going to shoot me dead!

He struggled to control himself. “You disgust me, you cowardly dog. I'd hoped our paths would never cross. Now we finally meet because of your sainted uncle's death. That you should be alive when your esteemed uncle and august aunt are dead is an affront to God Himself.”

Sainted uncle and . . . august aunt? Bruto never married. I had no aunt.

“What have you to say for yourself?”

“I . . . I don't like me much myself—”

“Silence! You have no excuse for letting that lépero dog Zavala kill your family.”

I opened my mouth, and the little dictator told me to shut it.

“And letting him defile your beautiful aunt. A peon ravishing a woman of Spain. A real man would have died fighting to protect her honor.”

I tried to agree but nothing came out.

“I'm sending you to the capital under armed guard. You're fortunate it won't be in chains. You came to the colony with a wicked reputation from Spain, a disgrace to your honorable family. Your uncle told me many times of your bad deeds. If our beloved nation was not struggling against the French, I have no doubt you would be rotting in the king's jail.
Get out of my sight!
“

I was almost out the door when he said, “I'll recommend to the viceroy that you be placed in the front line of the defense of the capital. Having lived without honor, you will at least die honorably.”

· · ·

Life was good. Don Humberto did have a nephew after all, freshly arrived from Spain, and as wicked as hell. I still wasn't sure Isabella's thug-friend was the real nephew, but at the moment I didn't care. Whoever Renato was, wherever he was, his name had kept me alive . . . at least for the moment.

That night I had a sumptuous meal at an inn, bedded a puta, then another, and another. I felt beloved of God. Perhaps He had forgiven my many transgressions. A sneaky suspicion entered my mind that He might be saving me for a more terrible fate, one befitting my many sins, but for the moment life was good.

The next morning I joined a company of dragoons escorting a messenger with a communiqué for the viceroy. If I stayed with them until Méjico City, I would truly end my days on the scaffold. I had Tempest between my legs and waited for my chance to escape.

We were two days out of Guanajuato when I got permission from the lieutenant commanding the dragoons to bring back a cow we saw in the distance for dinner. He sent two dragoons with me. I left the dragoons convulsing in their own blood and took their horses with me as I rode off to rejoin the padre.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE