Aztec Fire

by Gary Jennings

  He was right on all accounts.

  “I’ll find out what happened to her,” he said. “You stay off the streets. Now that they have her, they will be expecting you to come to her aid. They’ll stake her out like you did those tortillas to lure Victoria.”

  Luis was able to check around the city and use silver to palm to find out what happened to her.

  She’d been taken to the Inquisition dungeon.

  In Mexico City, the Inquisition’s headquarters was both infamous and familiar—Luis was able to quickly find out where it was headquartered.

  “It’s common knowledge on the streets that the Inquisition’s headquarters is in a palatial building across from the Dominican compound people refer to simply as ‘the convent.’ The hounds of the church have been led by Dominicans since that devil Bishop Torquemada first started burning the unfaithful at the stake.”

  “Convent” did not refer to a place just of nuns, but was used to indicate a compound where either monks or nuns lived.

  “There’s also a church on the grounds,” Luis said. “Along with the secret prison.”

  The holy office, I’d been told by my padre-uncle, was not only concerned with heresy and other capital crimes, but punished minor offenses such as witchcraft, the casting of spells, bigamy, polygamy, sodomy, and the possession of pornographic and other prohibited books.

  After Luis left to get a good look at the Inquisition’s premises, the landlord of the house we had rented, a supporter of the rebellion, told me what he knew about the place where the Inquisition conducted its secret interrogations and torture.

  “The paved court in front of the church has a large flat stone with a square hole in its center. That’s where the stake victims were tied to when they were either whipped or burned in an auto-da-fé,” he said.

  “Auto-da-fé” meant act of faith.

  An act by the Church to horribly burn at the stake men and women who dared deny its authority or its claimed monopoly on the bounties of God.

  The Holy Office of the Inquisition was situated across from the church square.

  “It’s said there are underground cells that prisoners drown in when the water rises. Rather than using some common sense that any deep hole dug in the city will eventually fill with water, these demon priests call the drowning an act of God.”

  I cut him off when he started to tell me about the Inquisition’s interrogation methods, but I already had heard about them. The tortures were notorious throughout the colony but rudimentary. One consisted of attaching the victim to a rack and shoving a funnel down his throat into which were poured jugs full of water. I’d heard survivors say that the water torture was so painful almost no one could endure it.

  My uncles believed that a most profitable venture of the Inquisition was the persecution of wealthy Jewish widows who claimed to have converted to Christianity. The widows were vulnerable and more likely than their late husbands to fail to keep up a pretense that they had really converted. The women were tortured into confessing to imaginary satanic crimes, which in turn gave the Inquisition the right to confiscate their estates. Typically the Crown received a third of the plunder, the Church a third, the Inquisition a third.

  I knew that the Inquisition had always been hard on women. My padre-uncle had been clear on that score. Claiming they exposed sexual acts that deviated from simple procreation, they tortured women cruelly, justifying their torture on the grounds that they were elevating marital moral standards. All the while the Inquisitors would attempt to force confessions of oral, anal, and satanic sex, lesbian encounters, promiscuity, bestiality, and bigamy out of the tortured women.

  Such confessions were predictably unreliable.

  From the woman’s point of view an Inquisitorial experience was little more than sexual sadism, pornographic voyeurism, and financial freebooting hiding behind churchly black hoods and religious regalia.

  The words “sadistic pornography” seemed to my padre-uncle especially appropriate to a scene in which men, masked in the attire of institutional respectability, stared closely at the naked female body bent and twisted, listening to and recording in writing the moans, cries, and pleas for mercy. Meanwhile the cords stretching their body on the rack were gradually tightened and pitchers of water slowly poured down the throat.

  The accused might also be tilted with her head toward the ground and her feet in the air while the torturer poured water into her mouth to simulate drowning with the water torture technique.

  Because of my padre-uncle I understood what Maria was going through at that very moment.

  The priests were torturing her about the whereabouts of her comrades-in-arms.

  Even though she was under the viceroy’s sentence of death, I knew she would refuse to tell them anything.

  That was Maria.

  By the time Luis returned, I had already decided how the two of us would attack the Inquisition jail and make the rescue. And I was desperate to get started.

  “We can use the same kind of smoke screen that I used in—”

  He shook his head emphatically. “I rode by the place in the carriage of a widow with an eagerness for me to divine her future love life from the tarot. You can forget about a direct assault to rescue Maria.”

  “I can’t let them—”

  “They already have done with her what they want to do. Now you can only get her killed in an escape attempt that will fail.”

  PART XXVI

  Tenochtitlán, 1520

  They came on in battle array, the conquerors, with dust rising in whirlpools from their feet. Their iron spears shone in the sun; their pennons fluttered in the wind like bats. Their armor and swords clashed and clanged as they marched; they came on with a loud clamor, and some of them were dressed entirely in iron …

  Their great hounds came with them, running with them; they raised their massive muzzles into the wind. The dogs raced onward, before the column; they dripped saliva from their jaws.

  —Aztec description of Cortés’s army, recorded by Bernardino de Sahagún in Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España

  NIGHT OF SORROWS

  Several thousand Aztecs were killed by Alvarado who had been left in charge of the city while Cortés was away. When we returned, Alvarado told Cortés that he had attacked the people while they were holding a festival in order to take them while they were unprepared because he feared they plotted an attack on the Spanish forces.

  Montezuma had helped calm the people after a great rage erupted, but his own people had turned on him and hit him with stones.

  I have already told about the sorrow that we felt when we saw that Montezuma was dead.

  When the Aztecs beheld him thus dead, we saw that they were in floods of tears and we clearly heard the shrieks and cries of distress that they gave for him, but for all this, the fierce assault they made on us never ceased, and then they came on us again with greater force and fury, and said to us, “Now you will pay for the death of our King and Lord and the dishonor to our Idols.”

  When Cortés heard this he said we should sally out from the city over the causeway and that the horsemen should break through the Aztec squadrons and spear them with their lances or drive them into the water.

  Cortés ordered his steward to bring out all the gold and jewels and silver. More than eighty friendly Tlaxcalans and eight horses were loaded with gold and much gold still remained piled in heaps in the Hall.

  When we were spotted racing for the causeway, Aztec priests beat drums from atop the great pyramid. Thousands of their warriors came at us from the plazas and canoes as we fought to the causeway.

  On the causeway we met many Aztecs armed with long lances. Cortés and the captains and soldiers who passed first on horseback, so as to save themselves and reach dry land, spurred on along the causeway and they did not fail to attain their object, and the horses and Tlaxcalans laden with gold also got out safely.

  So ended la Noche Triste, the Night of Sorrows.

 
; —Journal of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Conquistador

  HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE

  Mexico City, 1821

  I PUSHED MY way along crowded streets toward the central plaza, dressed in the traditional uniform of an Aztec warrior, a Jaguar Knight.

  I’d been thinking for some time about the name given to the Spanish retreat from the city after a surprise attack and massacre of indios—the Sad Night. Cortés managed to get away with most of his men and most of his hoard of stolen gold and to live another day to defeat our indios with his superior weapons and knowledge of war.

  The celebration on the streets was part of an annual festival reenacting the night three hundred years earlier when Cortés and his band of men fled Tenochtitlán—today’s Mexico City—largely because his lieutenant Alvarado had indiscriminately massacred indios en masse.

  After the massacre, the Mexica Aztecs drove the Spanish and their allies out of the city and had pursued them on a dark, rainy night, the famous Noche Triste, Night of Sorrows, June 30, 1520.

  The only reason why it was called a “sad night” for the Spanish is because the victors write history.

  Three hundred years later my indio compatriots were still roweled and raked bloody by the sharp spurs of the gachupines.

  But on this one day Aztec warriors, such as myself, could dress in full regalia, while brilliantly attired militia troops marched, the wealthy and their ladies watched from balconies, and the streets were thronged with excited crowds, food vendors, and begging-thieving leperos.

  Meanwhile other “Aztec warriors” glided across the lake and landed on the shore in boats …

  The heart of power and privilege in the city resided in the Plaza Mayor. Flanked by the great cathedral and the palace that first housed the conqueror Cortés, for centuries it had housed the viceroys of New Spain. On the north side of the great plaza was its colossal cathedral, and on the east side the viceroy’s palace. Dominating the middle was the equestrian statue of Charles IV, the incompetent King of Spain who died two years before.

  I moved anonymously through the crowd, just another indio dressed up in warrior garb. Standing on the steps and leaning against the wall of a building, I could see over the crowd. I could even see the viceroy approaching a pavilion that had been set up so he could view the festivities.

  Fearful I might be recognized—even though my features were concealed—I tensed. I was on a dangerous mission. If I were spotted by the viceroy’s secret agents, I’d be killed on the spot.

  Still, I was moved. Caught up in the spirit of the times and the celebration, the teeming mob of Aztecs reminded me how far our people had come—and how close we were to Padre Hidalgo’s dream of freedom that he shouted eleven years before.

  We were planning to turn the world upside down. The Christian God and Quetzalcoatl only knew how many will die before it was over … and all hell was about to break loose.

  I saw a familiar face in the crowd—an old enemy.

  Madero of all people was coming down the street right toward me.

  He didn’t recognize me because of my indio outfit … and passed me by like I wasn’t even there. Gachupines pride themselves at seeing through indios.

  I had to stop myself from killing Madero where he stood. It was too soon to kill him.

  I had something more important to do.

  HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX

  TODAY WAS MORE than a religious festival. It was an execution as well—the viceroy was going to hang four rebels. Three of them weren’t really rebels. They were murderous bandidos who well deserved to hang.

  The fourth one, however, was my beautiful, blessed, and beloved Maria.

  The prisoners were held in iron-barred cages on carts lined up at the gibbets. Maria’s was the first in line.

  I couldn’t see her from where I was, but I knew she was there, trapped like an animal, frightened, terrified.

  The viceroy wanted to make an example out of her. After all, there were precedents: Iturbide and other commanders notoriously did not shrink from executing women.

  Word had already reached the capital that Iturbide had turned renegade and united with the rebels. He was marching on the city. As he did, support for the viceroy was evaporating. The wealthy criollos who constituted the foundation of royal power were slipping out from under the gachupines as they came to realize that radicals in Madrid could take away their privileges in the colony.

  The viceroy was putting on a spectacular show for the people of the city—not out of love for the people, I was certain, but to flaunt them with the might, majesty, and power of their gachupine masters and intimidate them into slavish subservience.

  His heavily armed, uniformed military had already marched en masse into the Plaza Mayor to guard and patrol the celebration, to let us know we were still under the gachupines’ spurs and heels.

  The viceroy and his high-ranking entourage sat in a canopied pavilion erected for them near the center of the Plaza Mayor so that they would have a 360-degree view of the celebration and parade. The parade was already in full swing with long lines of women trooping by, dropping large bundles of flowers—hundreds of which had been strewn at the base of the pavilion in honor of the viceroy.

  Other batches of flowers had been deposited under the statue of Charles IV.

  It was part of the insanity of how we dealt with our leaders that statues of even the most careless, uncaring, and stupid could be immortalized by monuments.

  I went up a side stairway of a building that I had left my horse tied behind. I took two muskets with me and a length of rope concealed in a rolled rug, and got myself into position.

  Disguised as an officer of the guard, Luis was suddenly in front of the viceroy’s pavilion on horseback. I could not repress a terse smile when he honored the viceroy’s august assemblage with a flamboyant sweep of his captain’s cap.

  I could not hear his words from that distance, but I knew what he was saying: He was telling the viceroy that if he did not obey his every command, Luis would have him and the cream of gachupine and criollo society in the pavilion blown to holy hell … Your Excellency …

  I saw the shock on the viceroy’s face as he was told he was sitting on a powder keg. The officers around him were already going for their weapons.

  I had to give the viceroy credit—he was a man who thought fast. Shooting Luis would not solve the problem of sitting on a powder keg. And Luis was too well dressed and mounted, the rebel army advancing too close, for him to assume that it was an idle threat.

  The viceroy shot up from his seat and gave a command for the soldiers to stand down.

  Luis had told the viceroy he would give him a demonstration of how earnest he was about the threat.

  I had already braced my musket on a small wood gable by the time Luis waved his hat a second time. Pulling the trigger, my bullet hit the “bunch of flowers” under the statue of that imbecile, Charles IV. The big bouquet actually concealed a tightly packed pouch soaked in pitch and filled with gunpowder. When the pouch and inflammable pitch-soaked packing ignited, the bouquet blew, blasting Charles IV and his horse into pieces.

  I switched the empty musket for the loaded one.

  As people milled about in fright, Luis remained rock-steady in front of the viceroy—utterly fearless as he pointed at the garlands of flowers that completely surrounded the pavilion.

  I smiled sardonically knowing that Luis’s next communication to the viceroy was to point out that the pavilion was a small island in a sea of gunpowder.

  The viceroy must have also suddenly realized that the pavilion was surrounded by hundreds of fierce-looking Aztec jaguar-warriors in full battle regalia—warriors who had lost their initial sense of panic and understood that something was happening they had never seen before: The main gachupine in the colony, a man with the power of a king, and all the lackeys and bastardos that courted him were in terror of a single rebel.

  Once again I saw the viceroy shouting orders. From the actions I saw officers tak
e, the soldiers were still being ordered to stand down.

  Luis spoke again and I knew he was telling the viceroy he only wanted Maria, that the viceroy could hang the others twice if he so chose. They were murderous criminals who deserved nothing more than a dropping trap, a taut noose, and a farewell of “May God Have Mercy on Your Soul.”

  Nodding his agreement, the viceroy stared at Luis in stunned silence as Luis trotted his mount over to Maria and ordered a constable to open the cage.

  A priest wearing the sign of the Inquisition on his robe stepped between Luis’s horse and the cage. I couldn’t hear what the priest said, but apparently Luis didn’t like the comment because he lashed out from the saddle and caught the priest under the chin with the toe of his boot.

  My heart beat wildly as I saw Luis reach down and help Maria swing onto the mount with him.

  I forced myself not to look at Maria, not to wonder what they had done to her, but to turn back to watch the viceroy.

  From his facial expressions and the frantic words I knew were being thrown at him by those around him, I knew the viceroy was on the verge of ordering the troops to open fire, calling what others were telling him was a bluff.

  Already soldiers had started removing bunches of flowers away from the pavilion.

  Luis raised his hat again …

  Squeezing the trigger, I fired at a bunch of powder-packed flowers sitting atop the base holding royal, noble, and church flags.

  Sympathetic detonations blew up the other rigged bouquets. The base exploded and the forest of flagpoles toppled.

  The viceroy’s facial expression told the story: He shouted and the guards stood down again.

  As soon as Luis and Maria were out of musket range, I shot into the bunch of flowers at the pavilion. The powder blew, setting off a chain reaction of blasts. They didn’t kill anyone on the pavilion but the smoke and fire created panic.