Aztec Rage (80 page)

For the first time in my sordid life I made love
with love
, with all my heart and soul and mind. I like to think Raquel knew at last how much I loved her. Now. Then. Always. No regrets.

¡Ay! It was better than a Havana cigarro and bottle of brandy, better than hunting jaguars on horseback and closing in for a final shot from the saddle, better than a bright spring morn with the sun coming up like thunder, the grass lush and green beneath your toes, your hated foe dead at your feet on the field of honor.

Before she left, I held her close and whispered a secret in her ear.

Alone with my thoughts, I knew what I had to do. When the guard opened the judas window and shoved in a bowl of beans, I said, “Tell the commander of the guard I want to see him.”

“Of course, I'll tell the captain that the Prince of Léperos commands his presence,” he howled with derision.

“Do it now, cabrón. Tell him I wish to cleanse a secret from my soul.”

When the commander arrived, I said, “Have Doña Isabella come to me.”

“You're insane. Why would she want to see you?”

I grinned and blew smoke at his face through the judas window.

“Tell the señora that there is something she needs to know about her husband's treasure.”

As a child, when I was sick or bedridden with broken bones, I would try to think about what it felt like to be perfectly well. As I waited for Isabella, my mind played that same sort of game. I lay back and thought about the good times in Guanajuato when I was a young caballero driven by the power of horseflesh beneath me and a woman's touch.

Had Bruto's deathbed confession not shattered my world, what would life have been like? ¡Ay! I would have fought—and died—as a rich gachupine at the alhóndiga alongside Riano and his son, Gilberto. I shuddered at the image. To have died clutching my gold, slain by men who fought for the right to walk the same street as me, would have been to die without honor. To fight for
things
or the privilege of
spurring
others confers not honor, only opprobrium.

For the first and only time in my life, I had done something right. I had real honor, not the unearned respect that a caballero demands but the realization that I had stood up and fought for something that was right.

Stretched out on my bed, my back against the wall and my feet on the floor, I mulled over my many sordid achievements as well as the petty injustices I had suffered over the years when the door opened and Elizondo stepped in. Isabella was behind him. She stopped before entering.

“You have something to say?” the turncoat officer asked.

“I have nothing to say to you. My words are for Isabella alone. Wait outside.”

“She will not speak to you alone.”

I shrugged. “Then leave, both of you; and call the executioner. I'm ready to ascend to my heavenly throne and accept my crown.”

Elizondo laughed. “The only crown you will get will be the hood placed over your head before you're shot in the back.”

“The memory of your madre's moans as I gave her pleasure will comfort me in the grave.”

“I wish to speak to him alone,” Isabella said.

Elizondo hesitated. I knew what both of them were thinking: Isabella didn't want me to speak in front of Elizondo. If I revealed the bullion's location and he heard me, he'd grab the gold for himself. And if I told no one, it would be lost to them both forever.

The officer shrugged and waved her in. “I'll be right outside. The door will be open. Yell if he bothers you.”

“Juan wouldn't harm me.” She gave me a smile as radiant as the rainbow's end.

Ah, how that smile scintillated! No woman had lips as luscious, eyes as exquisite. She was truly a woman to launch a thousand ships . . . burn the topless towers of Ilium.

I closed my eyes and took a deep whiff of her perfume as she sat on a stool beside my bed. It was intoxicating. The indios call pulque “400 rabbits” because too much of the drink can make a man's mind race in many different directions. Isabella's scent was infinitely more intoxicating than the finest brandies in the world. I was living proof. It stripped me of my good sense and robbed me of my resolve.

I opened my eyes. She sat still as a statue, as if posing for a painting. I shook my head. “Isabella, I want to hate you. I want to crush you under my heel, but you bewitched me the first time I saw you.”

She sighed. “Poor Juan. Life has not been fair to you. They took me away from you and made it impossible for us to be together. It was the blood, of course. I truly cared for you, wanted to marry you, but when they revealed that your blood was not Spanish, it became impossible.”

“Tell me, Isabella, have you ever seen my blood?”

“Your blood? Of course not.”

I reached over to the wall and sliced open the palm of my hand on a rough edge of stone. I showed her my hand.

“I've never understood this thing about blood. You see the color of mine? I have killed many men, gachupines and Frenchmen among them, and their blood was always the same color as mine. Even the blood of your husband—a man with a centuries-old title of nobility—was no redder than mine.”

I reached across, took her hand, and forced her fingers into my blood. “Look at it, Señora Marquesa. Is the color any different than what you bleed each month? Is it any different than the blood Marina bled when your lover shoved his dagger into her gut?”

I pulled her close to me. She stiffened and pulled back.

“You promised to tell me where the gold is,” she said.

“Sí, I will keep my promise.”

I pulled her to me and whispered in her ear. I told her exactly where her husband had hidden the treasure. Ay! Her perfume was even more intoxicating when I held her against me.

After I finished whispering, she looked into my eyes. Her lips were only inches from mine. Her warm sweet breath fanned my face as she spoke.

“You have spoken the truth?” she asked.

“The truth, exactly as your husband told it to me.”

She sighed again. Her lips brushed mine, and I felt a wave of desire that curled my toes.

“I'm sorry, Juan. I know you've always loved me.” She leaned back a little and stared into my eyes again. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Smiling, I said, “You can die soon.”

I grabbed her throat with my right hand and squeezed her windpipe with all my strength, lifting her from the stool. She tried to scream, but it came out as little more than a whispered gasp.

“For Marina,” I whispered.

I pulled her to me, face to my face, lips to my lips. Tears ran down my cheeks. I still loved this woman. I would have died for her.

I would die because of her.

My grip crushed her larynx and the bones in her throat. By the time Elizondo and the commander of the guard beat me to my knees and ripped my hands from her throat, Isabella lay still on the floor.

Even dead, she was beautiful.

ONE HUNDRED AND TEN

T
HEY CAME FOR
me while it was still dark. The men who took me out of the jail were not the regular guards. They gave no greeting, and I offered them no resistance. I was finished with my work on earth. I didn't fool myself with the delusion that the gates of heaven would be thrown open for me. But perhaps the devil could use another swordsman and crack marks-man, no?

Outside, still chained, I was placed in a wooden cage atop a cart. It was a cage for wild animals, and I suppose that was how they thought of me. As the cart rolled out of the prison courtyard, I noticed something odd for the first time: none of the men were in uniform. From their clothes and horses, I took four to be criollos, the other four peons.

When they took me from the prison, away from the courtyard where the firing squad did its business, I knew I would meet my end on the gallows. It was to be expected. In the eyes of the gachupines, hanging was the least honorable way to die, so that was to be my fate. But I didn't deem hanging dishonorable. I knew who and what I was. I didn't know who my father and mother were, but I knew that in my veins ran the blood of the Aztec.

I had traveled with a scholar to the forgotten cities of ancient empires and had seen the wonders of Spain. I had witnessed great bravery on the battlefields of two continents from unarmed criollo priests who led
charges carrying banners to simple peons who tried to stop the carnage of cannons by stuffing their straw hats into the barrels.

I thought of myself not as a disgraced gachupine or as the son of an india whore, but as something entirely different. I realized that it was not the gachupine in me that made me the finest caballero in Guanajuato; a man wasn't judged by his bloodline but by his deeds. By fire and blood, I had achieved a rebirth: my own
reconquista
.

The gachupines were wrong when they said the colony's atmosphere made us inferior to those born in Europe. To the contrary, the air we breathed and the dirt we trod made us as strong and diverse as any people under the sun. The padre had proven that to the chagrin of the gachupines when he instituted Aztec crafts that were as good as anything made in Spain, and he had proved it again on the battlefield when untrained, crudely armed revolutionaries flung themselves at cannons and muskets in the cause of freedom.

The night was dark, but the moon took the edge off the darkness when it poked through the clouds. During one of those brief illuminations I realized the criollos now had covered their faces. They were not wearing masks but had their hats pulled down and bandanas pulled up.

I stared at the scaffold as the cart rumbled by it. A shudder crept up my spine. I was on my way to be executed, but we had passed the gallows. And why were the men now hiding their faces? But I could see that the men who had taken me from my cell were on a mission of death; it was obvious in their grim silence.

In a moment of moonlight, I saw the embroidered insignia on an armband of a criollo: a cross with a horizontal sword, adorned by a smaller cross and a crown.
Hermanos del sangre
. Brotherhood of the Blood. Spaniards who banded together in unauthorized “posses” to track down and punish wrongdoers, particularly highwaymen. A brotherhood of death, they specialized in swift, roadside “justice.” Bandits plagued New Spain's roads, so to most the Brotherhood was a necessary evil created by the viceroy's failure to safeguard the roads. And the punishments they rendered would have made the viceroy himself cringe.

When we came up to the hillock at a fork in the road leading to Chihuahua, I knew why they had taken me out of the prison: I was not to be hanged or shot.

The realization hit me like a thunderbolt from hell. Hanging and shooting were honorable deaths for revolutionaries and common criminals, but I was no common criminal. I was an Aztec bandit who murdered a gachupine woman. If a caballero prided himself on anything, it was the protection of women, those of his same blood and class, of course. And I had violated the most important taboo: I had loved and murdered a woman of their class.

They were issuing no ordinary punishment but one that would send a message to every Aztec and mestizo in the land: Do not touch our women, or you will pay the ultimate price.

They were going to crucify me!

I laughed aloud, startling the men as the cart pulled to a stop at the bottom of the hill. I was still roaring with laughter as they pulled me from the cage. None of them understood.

I had lost again to Isabella. My downfall had begun in Guanajuato with me arguing with Bruto over my wish to marry her. I had been driven out of Méjico City and turned back into a bandido because of my love for her. Now, even from the grave, Isabella had reached out to claw my soul.

“She's a bitch from hell, the devil herself,” I shouted. “I executed her for the murder of my amiga. She murdered her own husband!”

They didn't know what I was talking about and didn't care. The criollos didn't touch me. Instead, their underlings dragged me up the hill, where they ripped off my clothes and boots.

The workers nailed a hefty wood beam crossways onto a tree. Spread-eagling my arms to the crossbeam, they lashed my wrists to it. One of the peons stood by with hammer and spikes.

A criollo stepped forward and began reading a list of my crimes. Some of the charges I recognized; others were new to me. Only one fact made a deep impression upon me: They were unsure whether I was a full-blooded Aztec or a mestizo, words they had created to deride those of us born in the New World. That stuck in my head as the man with the spikes stepped forward to do his duty.

I locked eyes with the man who was to nail me to the cross.

“Did you hear that slander? These Spaniards don't know what to call me.”

I grinned at him.

“I am
mejicano
, señor, just like you.”