Aztec Rage (8 page)

“A changeling,” the alcalde told me.

Un niño cambiado por otro
. A child changed for another.

Bruto had come across an ocean, not just accompanying the man and woman I was told were my parents, but relying upon their royal license for the wealth he himself intended to also gather.

Bruto told the alcalde that when his brother and brother's family died, the legal right to the license would die with it and revert back to the royal treasury. To keep the license in the name of his brother's family, he bought an infant about the same age as the year-old Juan and passed him off as his nephew.

The child of a whore.

I was not Juan de Zavala, Bruto told them.

I was not a gachupine—not a caballero born in Spain, a wearer of spurs—but an Aztec whore's child, lower than lépero street trash.

“Bruto didn't know what race your father was.”

It made no sense. I was Juan de Zavala. That is the only name, the only identity I knew. I wasn't someone else just because a dying man claimed it.

“It's revenge,” I shouted at the night.

That's what it had to be. Bruto was angry because I was dismissing him, menacing his livelihood.

How could they take the word of a dying man against my own?

“The portrait speaks the truth,” the alcalde had told me.

Bruto had hidden in his quarters a portrait painted weeks before Antonio and María de Zavala boarded a ship for the New World with their child. Antonio and Bruto both had light hair and eyes. María had golden locks and green eyes, as did the child in the portrait.

Did I mention that my eyes and hair are dark brown? My skin light olive?

As I left the house, more Zavala family vultures were arriving, those beggar-bastards both Bruto and I hated. They came to squabble over their shares of
my house, my possessions, my money
.

I left with the clothes on my back. I went to the stable to have Pablo saddle Tempest, and the vultures followed me with a constable who escorted me to the front gate without the horse. When I turned to say something, the gate was slammed in my face.

“Peon!”
I heard a cousin shout from the other side of the gate. A few hours earlier, I would have drawn my sword and split him down the middle, but I was too numb, too mentally paralyzed to defend my pureza de sangre, too dead inside to be horrified. It made no sense. My feet moved me away from the house, my mind reeling, my eyes filled with panic but seeing nothing.

If Bruto was right, if I wasn't Juan de Zavala, what was my name? How could a few words take away my name, my entire persona? It was stealing my soul.

“I know who I am!”

A dark chill settled over me. I found myself in front of the inn I usually came to at night to drink and gamble with other young caballeros. My feet had instinctively brought me there.

I went inside, suddenly relieved. I knew men here, a friendly innkeeper. I would be able to talk about this insanity, clear the fog and confusion that was keeping me from thinking, from reasoning out what I had to do.

They were there, three caballeros at a table, my chair empty. I went right to the table and sat down, shaking my head.

“I have a tale to tell you all,” I said, “one you will not believe.”

No one said anything. When I looked at Alano across from me, he turned his head. The others turned their heads as I tried to catch their eyes.

All three of them got up and moved to another table, leaving me sitting by myself. There was not a sound in the inn. I sat frozen, unable to get my mind or my legs to work.

The innkeeper came up, wiping his hands on his apron. He, too, did not meet my eye. “Perhaps you should leave, Señor. This is not the right place for you.”

Not the right place.

It took a moment for his words to register, for me to understand why it was not the right place. Spaniards frequented the inn. He was telling me to go to an inn where peons gathered.

I rose in anger.

“Do you think me not so white as yourselves?”

TEN

B
ACK ON THE
street, my anger evaporated, leaving me drained. Dazed and confused, I couldn't maintain even simple rage. The fight had run out of me. I walked aimlessly, going nowhere, letting my feet guide me again. I didn't know what to do, where to turn. Where was I to sleep? Eat? I would need a change of clothes. Already I was becoming cold. I needed a warm cloak, a fireplace, food in my stomach, brandy to heat my blood.

An inn was across the street, one had I had never been in before. I crossed and entered. The smells of sweat, pulque, and greasy food—smells that would have offended me hours ago—filled the tavern. I sat down at a table, weary.

The inn keeper came over immediately.

“Señor?”

“Brandy, your best.”

“We don't have brandy, señor.”

“Then wine, Spanish wine, none of your vinegar. Give me good wine.”

“Of course, señor, we have fine wines.”

He had recognized me as a gentleman from the cut of my clothes. I glanced around. I had come to an inn that was a step or two above a common pulquería. A pulquería was the bottom of the barrel, serving pulque, the cheap, smelly Aztec “beer” peons got drunk on. This place was more respectable, a place perhaps where indios and mestizos who held actual jobs as clerks and shop assistants came. Pulque was still served but so was cheap wine, too bitter for Spain and consigned to our colony. Forbidden to grow grapes and produce wine, New Spain had to take whatever Spain sent.

As soon as he set a jug and goblet down, I poured and drank. It was not good wine, but I needed a drink too badly to complain. “Bring me a good slice of beef, none of your gristle, mind you, the best in the city. Potatoes and—”

“I'm sorry, señor, we only have beans and tortillas and peppers.”

“Beans and tortillas? That's garbage for the poor.”

He said nothing, but his mouth tightened.

I just shrugged, puzzled at his reaction. “If that's all you have, bring it to me.”

After he walked away, I realized I had insulted him. I had never insulted a peon before, not knowingly. How can one insult a peon? my card-playing compañeros would have asked.

The goblet shook in my hand.
¡Ay!
Bruto had said I was of the lower classes.

No! It's not true.

The alcalde was wrong: I was a Spaniard. The pieces to the mystery suddenly fell into place. My cousins had schemed this fraud to steal my property, to cheat me of my rightful—

But what about Bruto?
Bastardo!
I should have put a knife to his throat, cut out his tongue before he spoke such lies.

I took a silver case from my belt and took out a cigarro. Using a piece of the bundle of straw sitting by the fireplace, I lit the tobacco and returned to my table, wishing I had put Bruto's feet to the fire and tortured the truth out of him.

The innkeeper brought me my food: a plate of corn tortillas, a bowl of beans, some peppers, and, from somewhere, he had drudged up a bone with a fatty chunk of beef on it. Garbage! I wouldn't feed the swill to pigs.

I struck the tray with my arm, sending it flying off the table. It hit the floor, breaking the clay bowls and splattering on the pants of the innkeeper.

He looked down at the mess on the floor and on his pants and stared up at me, his mouth agape.

My stomach was in knots. My mind felt as if it had been twisted and wrung out by strong hands. I started to walk out but was stopped by the innkeeper.

“You haven't paid.”

I stared at him stupidly. I never paid for anything. Innkeepers sent the bills to my uncle. I felt my pockets. I had no pesos, which was not unusual, I rarely carried money. “I have no money.”

He stared at me as if I had just told him I'd raped his mother.

“Send the bill—” It suddenly struck me that there was no place to send the bill.

“You must pay.”

He grabbed my arm as I started around him. I hit him, and he staggered back, banging into a table and knocking its plates and goblets onto the floor. For a moment the room was silent. Then two dozen men stood and faced me. I was ready to take on every one of them.

Daggers appeared in a dozen hands. Some had machetes as long as my arm. One had a rusty ball-and-cap pistol.

I saw something in the corner of my eye. I started to duck as I realized a piece of iron pipe in the innkeeper's hand was coming at my head. My reactions were too dulled. A light exploded behind my eyes, burst into a hundred fiery fragments, which in turn detonated into smaller slivers and shards that smoked, sizzled, and faded.

ELEVEN

M
Y HEAD FELT
as if Tempest had kicked it. I came to, lying on the inn floor, blood flowing down my face. People milled around me. I tried to rise, but a voice in the fog told me to stay down and kicked me in the ribs. I stayed down. The fog had lifted a little by the time two constables arrived. Listening to the innkeeper's story, they booted me in the belly and bound my hands behind my back.

“You're lucky they didn't kill you,” a tall, uniformed constable said, as they led me to the jail. “If you had not been dressed as a caballero, they would have cut your throat and left you in the gutter. Do you think you can cheat an honest innkeeper of his due? An innkeeper works hard for his money; he's not a worthless dandy like you.”

“He's no caballero,” his partner said. Shorter and stockier, his uniform was dirt-smeared, rumpled, and his foul, floppy-soled boots had not been blacked in decades. He wore his beard and hair disheveled, and, like his partner, he wore a short sheathed sword strapped to his belt. He shook a heavy wooden truncheon in my face. “He's a stinking lépero who robbed and killed to get those fancy clothes, then cheated a poor, hardworking innkeeper.”

I had paid the innkeeper many times over, him and whoever else had plundered my possessions while I was unconscious. The silver buttons on my jacket and pants were gone. So were my silver belt buckle and cigarro case.

Smart people, no? I should have thought of it myself: One button alone would have provided a fine meal and night's lodging without the necessity of being beaten by a mob. Now the law was marching me to jail, my hands bound behind my back, a rope lashed to one ankle, its other end to the taller constable's wrist. If I tried to run, he would jerk the rope and drop me like a vaquero toppling a tethered steer. Then his partner would club me into unconsciousness.

We passed few people on the street because it was dark. For that I was thankful. When we arrived at the jail, the constables tied my ankle-rope to an iron ring and stepped aside. I watched curiously as each pitched a copper coin at a line scratched on the floor a dozen feet away.

The winner was the short, stocky unkempt constable. Grinning at me, he sat on a bench and began pulling off one of his boots. “Take your boots off.”

“Why?”

“I won them.”

I stared at him like the innkeeper had stared at me when I told him I had no money. “You can't win my boots, you puta-bastardo.”