Aztec Fire

by Gary Jennings

  Nearly a mile and a half higher than coastal cities like Veracruz, the city was in the southern part of the Valley of Mexico. Mountains cradled the valley in all directions. Two volcanoes, Ixtacihuatl and Popocatépetl—both over seventeen thousand feet high—stood sentry duty in the distance.

  Nowhere in the colony were the distinctions between the races more pronounced, either. The stronghold of the royal government, the city was the seat of the viceroy and the archbishop, populated by more pure Spanish than any other city in the colony, with more of the Spanish being gachupines than anywhere else.

  I needed to find an inn that would accommodate a poor peon like myself, one that I could melt into with others and not attract attention.

  Iturbide asked me to tell his servants of my location in the city so he could arrange a shooting demonstration of my marksmanship for wealthy men in the city. I resisted staying within reach of Madero and his spies however. As much as I would be taken for just another peon, I also had an identifying facial scar.

  Still I accommodated him in the hope I could make contacts that might help me locate Maria.

  Mexico City stood on the ruins of Tenochtitlán, the island capital of the Mexica Aztecs. But the lakes in the region were now more than half-gone. The water around the city was mostly marshes choked with vegetation and garbage. A few canals still remained and these were the roadways that hundreds of indios traversed each morning. To bring their goods to the markets, they stood in their canoes and pushed them through the shallow channels with long poles.

  In the midst of an army of commerce, I crossed on the causeway, shouldering my way past mules stacked high with goods, flocks of sheep, cattle, and the two-legged beasts of burden, indios with loaded packs on their backs, tump-lines of tightly woven maguey stretched taut against their foreheads.

  Soldiers had erected and manned barriers, but they appeared bored and uninterested in the long lines of people and goods entering. To keep from standing out, I attached myself to the rear of a herd of milk cows as if I were driving them into the city. I struck up a conversation with a mestizo on horseback who was actually herding the cows. He told me that the animals would be distributed to various squares and the milk sold fresh from the udder.

  The heart of the city, the Plaza Mayor, dwarfed any that I’d seen in other towns. I estimated the square to be over two hundred paces in each direction. The viceroy’s palace, government buildings, and great cathedral lining the enormous square were bigger and infinitely more impressive than others I’d seen. In the center was an equestrian statue of Charles IV of Spain—a magnificent tribute to the dull-witted king who had turned Spain over to Napoleon in return for a rich pension that never got paid.

  The arrangement of buildings in the square and homes down the broad, straight streets was similar to other flat cities I’d seen, but the streets were much wider, the buildings larger and grander.

  The two- and three-story houses were often twice the height of houses in other towns because each level was as much as fifteen or twenty feet high. The ground-floor area was typically entered through thirty-foot-high gates. Without looking inside, I knew the courtyards would have magnificent shrubs, flowers, and fountains. Although some cities at this altitude harbored winter snows, the Valley of Mexico was temperate year round—a land of perpetual spring except for rainy periods when the air was sultry.

  As in Veracruz, there was so little snow, the houses had flat roofs. Many roofs had flowers draped down the sides of the house.

  The fronts of the houses were of various hues—white, crimson, brown, or light green. They were gessoed through a process known as distemper, though in Chapala we had always said such buildings were whitewashed regardless of the color the painters spread on.

  Scriptural verses about Jesus or the Holy Virgin Mother adorned many front gates.

  A grand and bustling metropolis, the streets teemed with africanos, mulattos, mestizos, and indios, many of whom worked as servants in the grand houses, their own sleeping quarters above the stable. Gentlemen on horseback, their massive black saddles trimmed with silver and turquoise, in black thigh-length riding boots heeled with five-inch silver rowels, and women of luxury in gilt carriages moved along the streets among half-naked peons with just serapes pulled over their shoulders, their wives wearing the long woolen scarves called rebozos.

  And everywhere the city’s underclass—its hordes of beggars, its notorious lepéros—bundles of rags whose cries and whines would drown out an artillery barrage.

  I found a room at an inn that catered to peons. The place reminded me more of a stable than a sleeping place for people.

  From the bar talk that evening at a pulquería, I learned that the city was a vast den of gambling iniquity. The fever gripped men and women, rich and poor, priests and beggars alike. Besides the countless illegal gaming houses, the viceroy licensed many legal ones, with the Crown taking a portion of all proceeds.

  Luis will be pleased, I thought.

  I began my hunt for Maria in the city, not because I expected to find her there, but because the city was the crossroads of all news, rumors, and innuendo—not just commerce and politics.

  I sought information the only way I knew how—asking questions and listening to talk in pulquerías, striking up conversations with peons who had gathered to drink and talk on street corners. I couldn’t ask for Maria by name, but asked about female rebels and learned the names only of those that had been hunted down and killed by the viceroy’s police and spies. I knew I had to move on—to the China Road—but I delayed for several days, hoping that Luis would reach the city. We had agreed that each day we would go to the Plaza Mayor at noon to find each other, but he hadn’t shown up.

  Pamphlets that supported or opposed the government could be found and I sought them out, particularly looking for one written by El Revolucionario. I didn’t find it, but I found something interesting in another pamphlet—one which noted that the insurrectionists, who still held an island on Lake Chapala, were supplied by the legendary munitions-maker, the Alchemist.

  I read the pamphlet several times. The article blazed with the sort of searing pronunciamentos that Maria penned. This writer, however, had moderated their style … perhaps in order to avoid the viceroy’s gibbet or the Inquisition’s dungeon.

  None of this meant that Maria had written the piece. Maria might have merely influenced the writer. Still the piece rang with overtones of her old style. It struck me that the pamphleteer might have studied her old pamphlets and copied her style, modifying them for his own purposes.

  The pamphleteer called himself El Pensador Mexicano, The Mexican Thinker. The reference to Mexico was to the city, and that gave me hope I’d find him on the streets.

  Pamphleteers didn’t advertise their movements or whereabouts because they would most certainly be arrested at one time or another. I wandered in the business districts two full nights before I found this self-proclaimed thinker, a seedy character selling pamphlets on a street corner—and not very successfully.

  “May I buy a pamphlet, señor?” I asked politely.

  The weasel-looking creature stared at me as if I had insulted his mother’s chastity.

  “My works are not for illiterate peons to wipe their asses with,” he said.

  He turned and hurried away.

  I followed him from a distance across the street and down another, waiting for my opportunity. I was sure he genuinely thought I couldn’t read and did plan to use his pamphlet to wipe myself, and I was quietly furious at his insult. He sought not universal rights but the empowerment only of criollos such as himself.

  Could he be working undercover for the rebellion? No … treating me as dirt had come too naturally to him. He could hardly be supporting a movement that demanded equal rights for peons.

  I followed him down a dark and deserted street lined with closed shops. He mounted a stairway on the side of a store that sold feed and seed that led to a room above.

  Not a criollo with d
inero in his pockets, I thought. His living quarters were a step up from living above a stable … but barely.

  After I saw the loft’s window light up from an oil lamp, I went quietly up the stairs. It would be unusual for most people to lock a door at night, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to knock or enter quietly. I decided I would start out my relationship with this pamphleteering wretch on a basis that would guarantee his sincere and heartfelt cooperation.

  I kicked open the door.

  The man was standing next to a table cutting cheese. He gaped at me and threw the knife down. “Don’t murder me!”

  I sighed. “Señor, I have some questions to ask you. If you answer them correctly, I will not cut off your head. If you don’t …” I pulled my knife out.

  “I have no money.” He reached into his pocket. “Here, this is all I have, some coppers and a reale.”

  “I don’t want your money.” I moved forward, and he backed up until I cornered him. “I want answers.”

  “Answers to what?”

  I took the pamphlet I’d examined and shook it in his face. “This piece on the Lake Chapala insurrection. Who wrote it?”

  “I wrote it.”

  I kicked him in the knee with my boot heel. He yelped and started falling. I jerked him back up and stuck the point of the knife under his chin.

  “Listen to me carefully. I’m not going to repeat myself. Tell me where you got the Lake Chapala story.”

  “A pamphlet I found.”

  “The name of the pamphlet?”

  “El Revolucionario.”

  “How long ago was it written?”

  “A month, two months, I don’t remember.”

  I sucked in a breath. Pulling him over to the table, I forced him into a chair. Leaning against the table, I dangled the knife in front of him.

  “Now, señor, tell me where I can find this pamphleteer Revolucionario.”

  “I don’t know, honestly, I don’t know. You’re from the viceroy, aren’t you? One of Madero’s men. To tell you the truth, I didn’t believe any of that nonsense about Lake Chapala, I just quoted it to show how stupid the—”

  “Shut up. Tell me about El Revolucionario.”

  He shrugged and threw his hands up. “I don’t know anything. It’s another pamphleteer, like me, but I’m loyal to the viceroy—” He stared at me. “You are from Madero?”

  “I ask you for the last time, tell me about El Revolucionario.”

  “I know nothing, but the name and that its political thoughts are radical. I’ve heard the pamphlet is published by Guerrero’s movement. In fact, that—no, it’s too ridiculous.”

  “What’s too ridiculous?”

  “I’ve heard rumors that a woman writes and prints the pamphlets, but that’s ridiculous. No woman could write such—of course, you understand, señor, the entire pamphlet is trash. I spit on it.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “So now I am a señor? Perhaps even a patron? What was I when you insulted me on the street?”

  “You didn’t have a knife then.”

  I leaned down close to him. “I don’t need a knife to kill an insect like you. I could squash you under my boot heel.” I looked around the room. Pamphlets were stacked everywhere. “Do you have any more El Revolucionario pamphlets?”

  I could tell from the way he looked at me that he was changing his mind about my political alliance. He shook his head. “I had a couple, but I sold them.”

  “You sold someone else’s pamphlets?”

  “I was hungry. My writing brings much praise but little dinero.”

  I suspected his praise also suffered malnutrition.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Señor José Joaquin Fernández de Lizardi.” He spoke the name proudly, as if he was introducing a person of distinction. His eyes narrowed. “You’re not one of Madero’s spies. They all know who I am.”

  I grinned. “Selling them information?”

  He sniffed. “I’ve been arrested many times. I even spent time in the viceroy’s jail.”

  “For what? Stealing the words of real revolutionaries?”

  “Peon, I don’t have to—”

  I jumped at him and buried the point of my blade between his legs in the wood of the chair. “You know what a eunuch is? A man-steer. Call me a peon again, you worthless worm, and I’ll cut off your cojones and shove them down your throat.”

  When I stepped back, he stared at me and made the sign of the cross on his chest.

  “Why did you do that?” I demanded.

  “You remind me of someone I once knew. A mal hombre. A loco devil. He had an impulse to cut off a man’s cojones, too.”

  I grinned again. “Good. Remember that when you answer my questions. Tell me about El Revolucionario. How long has it been since you saw one of the pamphlets?”

  “Weeks. But that’s how long it takes to get copies here from the China Road area. Why are you so interested in this pamphlet?”

  “It’s libeled me. I want to find where it’s printed to pay the writer a visit. I’ll be disappointed if it’s not a man I can turn into a steer.”

  “Ha! I knew it. The filthy rag has attacked many of our finest citizens, even liberals like me. But I plan on bringing the writer to bay.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  Lizardi tapped his head. “The pamphleteer stays on the move, moving the press from one location to another, buying paper from different sources, dropping off the pamphlets at different locations to be distributed. But there is one thing that every printer in the colony needs and there’s only one source for it.”

  “Which is?”

  “Ink. Printer’s ink. It’s imported from Spain and there’s a royal monopoly on it, not just for the money its sale brings, but to keep track of who’s using it. The only way to get the ink is to purchase from the royal warehouse here in the city. I told my cousin who works for the viceroy’s administrator of police affairs that they should track shipments of ink that go to the insurgency area.” He jumped up from the chair and limped excitedly around the room. “You see, there aren’t more than a dozen presses in all of the insurgent area and one of those is not an established printing business because it keeps being moved.”

  I shrugged. “So you find out the name of the rebel press. How does that help?”

  “The ink order, they buy the ink from the royal warehouse and it’s shipped to a store in the China Road region licensed to handle shipments.” He wagged his index finger. “When the rebel printer comes to pick the ink up at the store—”

  “Constables will be waiting.”

  “Yes, exactly. A brilliant ploy, no?”

  I smiled and nodded my head, but I felt like gutting the bastardo.

  “Where is this ambush to take place?”

  “Taxco, the silver mining town.”

  Taxco was not far from where Luis and I were captured and I saw Maria last. Invaluable to the viceroy for its silver, it was under royal control although guerrilla forces roamed the surrounding rural areas.

  “When did you give this inspired idea to your cousin?”

  “Just last week. They are expecting a shipment of ink from Veracruz any day now, so the next shipment of ink for Taxco should leave the capital in three or four days. In another week, the viceroy’s men will have the rebel’s most important pamphleteer in their hands and I will get my reward.”

  I was tempted to give him a different kind of reward but held my temper and left.

  If I thought it would have done any good, I would have retrieved my horse from the stable that moment and rode toward Taxco to find Guerrero’s forces and hopefully Maria. But it would have been futile. The rebels could be anywhere in the China Road area.

  On the way back to my room, I made up my mind to leave in two days and reach Taxco a day ahead of the shipment. That would give me time to look for Maria if she was in the town. And I would still have a chance to connect with Luis. Two pairs of eyes on the lookout in Taxco would
be better than just my own.

  I shook my head. Maria, Maria, you provocateur.

  That she was important enough for the viceroy to set a trap to catch her showed she had done well for the revolt.

  That made her important enough to be tortured in a royal dungeon before being turned over to the Inquisition.

  Was she married? In love with another? What would she say when she saw me? Spit in my face and call me a coward who had deserted the revolution? I laughed out loud. That was my Maria, for a certainty. She would wave aside the two years of danger and struggle, slavery and war, pirates and cannibals, and berate me for not having done what she wanted me to do.

  ONE HUNDRED

  WHEN I REACHED the inn, a short-bearded man in a black frock coat and hat was waiting for me.

  “Señor Colonel Iturbide commands your presence,” the man said.

  “It’s foolish for you to stay in that filthy inn when there’s room in the stable,” the colonel told me. He sat behind his desk in a leather chair fit for a king.

  I stood before the desk in his study, my hat in hand. A bottle of fine Jerez brandy was on a tray next to silver goblets. I could smell the aroma of Havana cigarros in an open box within reach of my hand.

  No offer of a smoke, a drink, and the sharing of tales of women, horses, and the hunt came. I just stood and humbly nodded my gratitude at the chance of sleeping with horses and carriage mules after saving his life.

  He didn’t know any better. He was not raised to give thanks to the lower classes when they lay in the mud to be stepped on so he didn’t have to dirty his boots. He had been an officer in the militia since boyhood. Criollos didn’t expect to die in battle—they expected their underlings to take the musket shots.

  “Tomorrow we’re going outside the city with a group of hunters. You’ll demonstrate your marksmanship to them, give several of them pointers. That will start your introduction. I guarantee that by evening, I will have requests from half of them for your services.”