Aztec Rage

by Gary Jennings

  “What’s the matter?”

  Full of gloom, he crossed himself again. “I’ve been sentenced to Manila, too.”

  “So? We were facing the hangman, and we have been saved. Now we can—”

  “Are you so stupid?” He collapsed next to me, rubbing his face with his hands.

  “What’s wrong with Manila?” I demanded.

  “It’s a death sentence.”

  I shook my head. “¡Mierda del toro! Manila is a Spanish colony like New Spain—”

  “No, not like New Spain. A jungle, nine or ten thousand miles from here, a journey that many prisoners never survive. Chained in the ship’s sewage-filled hold, the prisoners spend half their time wallowing in bilge, the other half fighting off rats. The survivors are sold into slavery on jungle plantations where fevers, snakes, and spiders kill more men than the Veracruz corridor when the vomito negro lies in wait.” He laid back on his straw pad and closed his eyes. “Then there are the wild savages who eat human flesh.”

  “Something will turn up.”

  “Our bodies. They will cross the galleon captain’s palm with silver, and as soon as the ship leaves port, our throats will be slit and our bodies thrown overboard.” He stared at me, terrified. “We’re not meant to survive the voyage.”

  I guffawed. “I see you are no longer just a bookworm and pamphleteer of ideas but a tomorrow-teller, like Europe’s gypsies.”

  An india servant who once tended to me when I was small, told me that her people believed the most intelligent creatures in the world were the worms that burrowed in books. I had never seen a bookworm, but this was how I viewed Lizardi, as a worm of knowledge.

  “Juan, you don’t understand guile because you were raised in a silk cocoon here in Guanajuato, cosseted by money and consumed solely by your desires. You’ve never dealt with the politics of the capital, where the viceroy and the archbishop have dissenters strangled in their cells at night.”

  He sat up and locked eyes with me. “They have to get rid of us, can’t you see that? They don’t want either of us to have a public trial, to give me a forum to criticize their corrupt regime, to suffer the embarrassment of your acceptance as a gachupine. What better way to get rid of us than a sentence to Manila? Everyone knows no one returns from the exile. And if we die en route to those distant islands . . . not an eyebrow would be raised.”

  My instincts were screaming that he was right. They would cut our throats and feed us to the fishes before we were a league out to sea.

  It was a death sentence, not a reprieve.

  “Señor,” I said, “we are doomed.”

  He nodded. “You are finally beginning to understand life in New Spain.”

  EIGHTEEN

  SEVEN MORE DAYS passed, each one an agony of hard labor. My mysterious benefactor, whom I knew in my heart was Isabella, financed my private cell and sustenance. Lizardi still had not heard from his family, and I shared the bounty with him, telling him that I considered him the brother I never had, that I was repaying him for having shared his with me. These statements were not exactly true; he had only shared with me out of fear that I would harm him, and had the worm been my brother, I would have arranged a mortal accident for him. I shared with him because I knew in time he would be up again and I would be down. Eh, Don Juan the Caballero was learning to scheme like prison scum.

  I could not truly love Lizardi as a brother because he carried a sense of racial superiority about him: He was a Spaniard and I was a peon. I still did not think of myself as of the lower classes—I was certain that I was indeed the real Juan de Zavala and that my uncle, in his final illness, had contrived the changeling story in revenge for the poisoning. As he lay dying, no doubt he assumed I had deliberately poisoned him.

  Lizardi’s attitude rankled me. He was especially contemptuous of my intelligence, conveying at every turn that I was intellectually inferior. Sometimes he treated me as if I were a naughty child, too immature for serious thought. It wasn’t lost on me that I had treated my servants in the same way.

  As the days went by, my hands, feet, and muscles hardened from the work. Thick shoulder and thigh muscles, and hard hands that evinced hard labor were unfashionable among caballeros. A slim silhouette on horseback was the fashion.

  We had returned from a day’s work and were finishing off my food and wine basket, when the trustee called Lizardi out. The trustee spoke to him privately. As Lizardi returned to our cell, I could see in the distance he was grinning, but when he approached the cell, he wiped the grin off his face and frowned.

  “What news did you get?” I asked the worm.

  “My family has forsaken me. We are doomed to the Manila galleon.”

  I patted his arm. “As long as we go together, it is all right with me. I have come to think of you as the brother I never had. To share death with my brother would be fitting.”

  He was a rotten liar. His news had been good, but he didn’t want to share it with me. The only good news I could think of was that he had arranged some way to avoid the Manila death sentence, perhaps by betraying me in some manner. He was a puzzlement to me: a man with the courage to offend the viceroy and church with fiery words but a physical coward.

  I waited until late at night, when the only sounds were the snores and mutterings of other prisoners, before I made my move. I held him down and gagged him to keep him from shouting. I pinched his nose shut so he couldn’t breathe. When he started turning purple, I released his nose.

  “If you make a noise, I’ll smother you. ¡Comprénde?”

  Still holding him pressed down, I whispered, “Mi amigo, you hurt my feelings when you lie to me. You received good news and yet you deceived me. Now I must hurt you.” Holding him down with an elbow, I took an insect out of a jar that a fruit spread had come in. I dropped it in his ear. He began to wiggle and squirm. I let him turn over and slapped the side of his head to dislodge the insect. It fell out and scrambled away.

  “Do you know what that was, worm? The kind of vermin that burrows into your ear and into your brain. I have a jar full of them. Now tell me what the trustee said, or I will pour them into your ears and let them eat your brains.”

  I was certain I saw the whites of his eyes even in the darkness. I almost broke out laughing. I loosened the gag and let him catch his breath.

  “What good news do you have? Your father has agreed to help you?”

  “Sí, but—”

  “Shhh, not too loudly. What’s being done?”

  “Another will take my place.”

  “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter. One of these disgusting creatures will be José Lizardi for a day. He will be paid, I will replace him.”

  I nodded. “Ah, you will exchange places. He will be put on a wagon for Acapulco and the Manila galleon, you will be sent to work in the streets. At the end of the day, you will be released as an ordinary drunk who has fulfilled three days of work. That is it, no?”

  “Sí.”

  I released him.

  “You are a disgusting animal,” he groaned, digging at his ear. “You are violent and dangerous. I truly believe you murdered the man who thought he was your uncle.”

  “Believe this, señor—I will murder you if you betray me again.”

  “How have I betrayed you?”

  “Have I not protected you? Shared my bounty with you? Thought of you as my own blood and brother?”

  “I’m not your brother. I’m a criollo, not a peon.”

  “Keep slandering my blood and you’ll be a dead criollo. We’ll see what color your blood is as it gushes out your throat.”

  “I can bring the trustee down on you with one shout.”

  “That’s all you would be able to do. And it would be your last shout because I’ll rip out your tongue.” I leaned closer. “And gouge out your eyes with my thumbs.”

  “Animal,” he muttered.

  “Have you thought about what you will do on the street? You can bribe your way out of a jail, but w
here will you go once you have your freedom? Fool that you are, you wouldn’t make it out of the city.”

  “I’ll make it.”

  I could tell from his voice that he had doubts. “You will be freed at dusk. Do you think you can stay in an inn for the night and leave the city the next day? You’re a stranger in town, you’ll be easily spotted by the constables. You can’t escape without a horse. And you don’t know the city well enough to escape even if you had a horse. I have horses here in the city, ready and waiting.”

  He was quiet for a long time. Then he asked, “What do you want?”

  “Fund both of our escapes. I will see you well mounted and put you on the road to Méjico.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “I kill you.”

  My tone surprised me and chilled Lizardi. It left no doubt I would go through with the threat.

  In the shadow of the gallows, life seemed less sacred.

  “José de Lizardi! Juan de Zavala!”

  Two léperos stood in front of me, and I jabbed them each in the back, whispering “That’s you two.”

  They had been lifted out of the gutter three days ago. We chose them because the guards would release them today, and even sober, their wits were dim, their vision blurred, their brains befuddled by decades of drink.

  In exchange for a few pesos and the promise of much more, including a trip to Méjico City and a tour of its pulquerías they agreed to our take our places. The capital was a fabled place to these two, léperos who had never ventured far from Guanajuato’s gutters.

  That I was a changeling again did not escape my notice.

  I grinned at Lizardi as the men were led out, chained in a tumbrel for the trip to Méjico and from there on to Acapulco and the Manila-bound galleon.

  “I hope they like fresh ocean breezes,” I said, “and can swim well.”

  “The jailers at the capital will know they’ve been duped.”

  “We’ll be on our horses and on our way by then.”

  A few minutes later, we lined up with the nearly hundred other prisoners. Since we were assumed to be common drunks, no one slapped leg irons on us.

  This time we were dispatched to a pasture outside of town, where the mule trains transporting goods encamped. Mules transported almost all goods, whether imported or exported, throughout the colony. The only other transport system was the backs of indios.

  At the pasture, we were to shovel manure into the back of wagons. The manure was hauled to local farmers and rancheros to use as fertilizers. In times past, the stench would have bowled both of us over, but in truth we smelled worse than manure and the fact that this was our last day in hell compensated for the stink.

  An hour before darkness, the guards lined us up for the trek back to the city.

  “We should return here tonight and steal the mules for our escape,” Lizardi whispered to me as we walked.

  “I told you, we’ll leave on my horses.”

  “I don’t understand how you could still have horses if you—”

  “Horses are my specialty. You just think about the next pamphlet you’ll write when you return to the capital.”

  Dusk had fallen by the time we reached the heart of the city. When the guards stopped for a smoke break, Lizardi and I were released with the other drunks.

  “Where are we going?” Lizardi asked.

  “To a pulquería with this trash. You have pesos the trustee passed you from your family?”

  “Yes, but I’m not going to buy that poisonous Aztec drink.”

  “If an alarm is sounded, a pulquería will be the last place they would look for two Spaniards.”

  He glanced at me for including myself as a Spaniard but wisely did not correct me. “What about our horses? When do we—”

  “After dark, so we won’t be spotted on the streets.” I slapped him on the back. “Stop asking questions, worm. We are free. Enjoy it. Tomorrow they may catch us and hang us.”

  We left the pulquería well after nightfall and walked down the deserted streets of the city. Lizardi had been antsy, but I insisted we not leave sooner. The streets where the rich lived were guarded at night by watchmen who walked along carrying a candle in a lantern. While the lantern offered little light, it identified the watchmen as the homeowners who could call for help in case of trouble. The watchmen did not come on duty until ten o’clock. We still had an hour to get to my horses before that time.

  “Where are we going?” he whispered. “I still don’t understand how you could have horses if everything was taken away from you.”

  “We’re taking them back.”

  Lizardi stopped cold. “What are you saying?”

  “We’re going to steal two of my horses.”

  “Steal? I thought perhaps your woman had arranged horses. I’m not going to steal a horse, that’s against the law.”

  That was a laugh. “I see you would rather be hanged for being a bookworm than a thief.”

  “I’m not stealing a horse.”

  “Then adiós, amigo, go your own way.”

  “You can’t abandon me; you said you thought of me as your brother.”

  “I lied.”

  “We have pesos. Why not buy two mules?”

  “We need good horses, ones that will outrun constables if we’re chased. Have you thought about the roads out of town? Unless you travel in a large group, you’re easy prey for bandidos. Our horses must outrun them, too. Before I was jailed, I had the finest horses in the city. We are going to my house to get them.”

  “But they won’t let us just walk in and take them. You said your cousins had taken over your house and they hate you.”

  “They’re at the table supping now, attended by servants. Only one man tends to the stable. When night falls, he leaves the house and goes to a pulquería where more of his kind congregate. The horses will be ours to saddle and lead out.”

  He mumbled a prayer as we continued down the street.

  “Have courage, worm. Don Juan de Zavala, gentleman and caballero, will protect and defend you.”

  NINETEEN

  THE LIGHT SHONE from the house’s second-floor windows, but, as I predicted, the downstairs was dark. The servants were upstairs attending the swine who stole my property.

  I led Lizardi through the back gate to the stable doors as if I owned the property, which in my own mind, I still did. Four horses were inside. Two, which I didn’t recognize, probably belonged to my cousins. The other two I knew intimately: Tempest and a smaller gelding I named Brass, after his color.

  We saddled my two mounts. At first Tempest shied away from me, stamping from the strange smell I brought with me, but I soon calmed him down with the purr of my voice and a caress of my hand.

  I grabbed two machetes from the tack room and a long knife for myself. Pistols and muskets I had kept upstairs in the house, but I kept a bag of black powder hanging in the tack room. I hooked it onto my saddle horn. The only spurs available were vaqueros’ iron rowels, which we put on.

  I had Lizardi mount first. “I’ll lead my horse to open the street gate and close the gate after we get through. Keep your horse at a slow walk on the street. We don’t want to attract attention.”

  I led Tempest to the stable doors and opened them. And stopped in my tracks. A big black mongrel faced me. The beast growled, barked, and came at me with snapping, slavering teeth. Tempest reared up. I couldn’t reach my knives to dispatch the cur. The dog backed away from the stallion, but howled loud enough to wake the damned. As I mounted Tempest, the dog continued his barking fang-bared attack. My recurring nightmare about the hounds of hell had reached back and bit me.

  I gave Tempest the spurs, and he leaped forward. As we shot out the stable doors, a man came running down the stairs to the house, carrying a musket.

  “Stop! Thief!”

  He leveled the musket at me, and I jerked the reins, sending Tempest at him. He got out of the way, the musket going off, the ball flying skyward. I turned Tempest and took
him to the gate, with the hellhound now snapping at Lizardi. I kicked the street gate open and flew out, struggling to keep control of the stallion. Lizardi suddenly shot out of the gate, the dog barking at the rear hooves of his horse and biting his flanks. Wheeling around, I returned to the cur. Unlimbering a machete, I sent his soul back to hell, where I’m convinced I will meet him again.

  Tempest flew down the street, passing Lizardi’s horse.

  Street dogs by the score began a chorus, like all the banshees in Hades howling to get out. People flocked to doors, porches, and windows. As our horses galloped on the cobblestones, their horseshoes struck sparks, and they barely maintained their footing. I had to pull Tempest in, to keep him from slipping and going down.

  Now a second dog, a densely spotted monster big as a mastiff, was giving chase. Leaping up beside me, he missed my leg but bit through the bag of black power. Ripping it open, its contents covered the canine’s face, causing the cur to drop back.

  I spurred Tempest north out of the city, and Lizardi followed. Behind me I heard him yell, “You son of a whore, this is not the way to Méjico City! You lied to me again. You have no honor! You’re a lépero devil!”

  Ay, I could see that this was to be my fate in life: to have a hound of hell constantly howling at my heels and to lie my way through life. While the circumstances of my departure from the city had not been entirely to my satisfaction, I had no intention of heading toward the capital. The most heavily traveled road in New Spain, it would also be the most watched. Instead, I headed in the opposite direction.

  Besides, our uproarious departure would rouse legions of constables—the human equivalent of hellish hounds—and I was starting to suspect that the worm, like myself, was born under an unlucky star.

  We rode a league north by the light of the moon until we were stopped by the gates of a mining hacienda. I turned us east, and we rode another league. When the terrain became too dark and rough to risk a fall by a horse, I told the grumbling Lizardi to halt and bed on the ground with his horse blanket.

  “This ground is harder than the stones we slept on in jail,” he whined. “It’s cold, and we have nothing to eat.”