Before the person could recover, I grabbed the cloak and jerked off the hood to reveal a pale pretty face and golden locks. I got a whiff of perfume. Immediately, the pistol came up in her hand, and I stumbled back as she fired, replacing the perfume scent in my nostrils with the acrid stench of black-powder smoke. The ball wheezed by me. I kept going back until, tripping on a bush, I fell on my rear.
She ran, yelling in French for help to whoever was waiting back at the carriage. Leaping to my feet, I raced through the brush to my mule.
As I rode back to the encampment, many thoughts buzzed in my head, but none of them made sense. Obviously, Carlos had made a copy of something the engineer had done and had delivered it to the woman. But why had he gotten angry and thrown the papers on the ground? Who was this mystery woman with golden locks, a cocked pistol, and the will to use it?
I felt like everywhere I stepped since Uncle Bruto had died was a pile of cow manure. Now once again there was some intrigue going on.
The most provocative thing about the situation was not Carlos’s deeds or motives but the lingering scent of the woman’s perfume in my nostrils. I recognized her scent. It was called Lily of the Valley. My darling Isabella and some of her friends in Guanajuato wore it. The sweet female scent caused a bulge in my pants, although once in a while, rather than sweet perfume, the lingering stink of her black-powder smoke burned my nostrils.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Cuicuilco
WE DEPARTED TEOTIHUACÁN, abandoning both the gods and the ancient dead, on the road that would take us south. Méjico City was about a dozen leagues from the City of the Dead. In most countries a league was three English miles, but in our lands it was slightly less. In any event, the road to the capital was well traveled, and many sturdy, heavily laden indios, burden baskets strapped to their backs, tumplines taut against their foreheads, walked the entire thirty-two miles to the capital. And since our expedition served many interests and purposes, we stopped at almost every town so the scholars could collect data and study artifacts. Our journey would stretch to several days.
“We’re not going into the capital,” Carlos told me, as we set out from Teotihuacán. “We visited there earlier. Going around the city, we will visit the town of San Agustín de las Cuevas. We will examine the pyramid at Cuicuilco, which is less than a league from San Agustín. Our expedition leaders also wish to meet with the viceroy, having missed him during our earlier visit. He’ll be at San Agustín for a festival.”
I didn’t care where or why we traveled as long as I was a muleteer on the expedition. I had been to the capital several times but, unlike many wealthy gachupines, didn’t own a house there. Bruto didn’t favor the capital’s pretentious social life and neither did I, preferring to spend my time outside Guanajuato on my hacienda, working with the vaqueros, or in the wilderness, hunting.
As for the town, I knew the festival by reputation, though I had never been there. I feigned ignorance when Carlos spoke to me about the festivities.
“San Agustín, I am told, is a quiet village all but the three days of the year when the capital’s gentry come to gamble. The viceroy will bet on the cocks, perhaps even enter his own birds in the competition.”
I didn’t volunteer that besides the capital’s wealthy, St. Agustín would swarm with thousands of thieves and léperos, putas, pícaros, tradesmen, and merchants who came for the visitors’ clinking jingling coins. Nowhere in all the colony did gold, silver, and copper change hands so promiscuously as during the three days of the festival.
I had never mentioned to Carlos his meeting with the woman in the carriage. Nor did he indicate he knew of my attempt to assist him. The woman probably thought I was a highwayman.
The road leading to San Agustín was congested. We veered off to establish our campsite before entering.
“The town inns are full,” Carlos said, “we’ll camp here. I’m staying with a friend from Barcelona who has a house on the other side of town. You can assist me by carrying my overnight pack. After that, you’re free to enjoy the festival.”
Yes, free unless I was recognized by a visitor from Guanajuato. But that was not likely—or so I hoped. I had a beard and long hair and was dressed as a muleteer. Spaniards invariably ignore peons, as if they were used furniture or browsing cattle.
As we made camp, a rider showed up. Our men gathered around him. I was out of hearing range, but I saw him speak to the men, then depart for another camp site.
“What did he say?” I asked Carlos.
“News from Spain, something incredible. A mob at Aranjuez, where the king has a palace near Madrid, forced the abdication of King Carlos. They placed Prince Ferdinand on the throne and nearly killed Godoy.”
He saw the lack of interest expressed on my face. I didn’t find politics exciting, and news from Spain was usually a couple of months old; things had often changed by the time we heard about an event.
“Events in Spain mean little to you, but be assured, they affect us all. Many people in Spain distrust Carlos. He’s incompetent, and the queen’s lover, Godoy, who was once nothing but a young palace guardsman, runs the country. By allying Spain with Napoleon, Godoy had antagonized those who spurn French influence.
“Napoleon boasts that he will rid Spain of a corrupt government run by an imbecilic king and the queen’s lover. After ridding Spain of the church’s tyranny and its Inquisition spies, Napoleon says he will establish a more enlightened regime, introducing intellectual freedoms.” Carlos spoke low, in a whisper. To utter such words, even to a servant, was to risk imprisonment. Torturing the servant to get a confession of the master’s guilt is an old trick of dungeon masters.
Why did I suspect that our Carlos also favored a French influence in Spain’s affairs? His mysterious visitor had obviously been French.
When we finished making camp, I walked Carlos into town, carrying his bag. He slung a small pouch from his shoulder. I held out my hand to take it from him, but he shook his head. “I’ll carry it myself,” he said.
On the way into town, Carlos could not get the recent events in Spain out of his mind.
“Imagine it,” he said, almost muttering to himself, “people mobbed the streets, took the crown from a king, and installed his son. I always believed our people to be too cowed by church and crown to oppose tyranny or religious oppression, but they did.” Grabbing my arm, he stopped and looked me in the eye. “Juan, don’t you see the importance of these events?”
“Of course, señor,” I said, in complete ignorance as to the significance of replacing one tyrant with another.
“The French Revolution started the same way twenty years ago. People packed the streets, first in small, brave bands, demanding liberty and bread. As their courage and numbers grew, they stormed the Bastille, deposing a weak, corrupt king and installing their own government.
“You’re indifferent to who governs you and your people, Juan, but to the rest of us a king is society’s bedrock. Kings don’t govern, as viceroys and prime ministers do; they are the government. Our people long for security in the now and in the hereafter. They turn to their king for one and their priest for the other. From the king they get their bread on the table and protection from thieves and rampaging armies. Their priest is God’s messenger, ministering to their birth, marriage, death, and their place in the hereafter.
“Deposing a king is like a child killing his father—”
He suddenly broke off. Veering toward a quiet alleyway, I followed beside him, steering him through the growing mob, converging on the town square.
He spoke again, his voice a low quizzical mutter: “Spain is a country of much greatness—for a thousand years, we have been the western bulwark against the infidel Moors who sought to conquer Europe and stamp out Christianity’s flame. The English boast of their Magna Carta and the rights it bestowed on the English people. But Spanish kings granted those rights to us long before the Magna Carta. The British and French boast of their empires, but the sun never sets on
Spain’s colonies, and we are still the greatest empire on earth, encircling the globe, encompassing more territory than even that conquered by Genghis Khan. Spain was the first place where literature and art flowered after the Renaissance, where the first novel was penned.
“But look at us now,” he whispered angrily. “After centuries of atrocious kings in which the nobility has strangled economics and the church has castrated thought, we are condemned first to an imbecilic king and now perhaps to his son, who is said to be both imbecilic and tyrannical. We are condemned to inquisitorial hounds who suppress any thought outside the strictest confines of church dogma.”
He stopped and grabbed my arm. “But the people have spoken. They have smashed the chains imprisoning their thoughts and have mobbed streets as in France, striking sparks that can inflame the world. Do you know how hard it is to extinguish the fires of truth? Do you see how important the events at Aranjuez are?”
“Sí, señor, very important. Now we must make our way through this crowd, or you will arrive at your friend’s house for breakfast instead of dinner.”
Returning to the main street, we headed toward the town square. Passing an inn, a lavishly accoutered coach pulled by six fine mules drew up beside us. As we approached, I sensed Carlos stiffening.
A coat of arms was emblazoned on the side of the coach door. I wasn’t sure it was the one I’d seen the night I watched Carlos pass the engineer’s papers to the woman with golden locks, but the question was soon solved. Garbed in an exquisite dress of black Cathay silk, her ivory skin and long honey-hued hair dazzlingly adorned with gaudy glittering jewels, the golden goddess descended from the coach.
Poor Carlos! Stumbling like a bumpkin, he bounced off the person next to him. Grabbing his arm, I steered him on. As we approached, the woman’s eyes slid by us without a flicker of recognition. But she was the one.
It wasn’t the golden hair or the ivory skin that betrayed her or the carriage and six with its coat of arms or Carlos’s lost composure but what I sniffed as I walked by: lily of the valley. The scent filled my nostrils, and my manhood burgeoned in my pants as she swept by.
THIRTY-NINE
AS SOON AS I had deposited Carlos at his amigo’s casa, I returned to the main square. A guard was posted at the door of the inn. I showed him a silver coin, a half reale.
“My patrón saw a beautiful woman with golden hair get out of her coach and enter the inn a while ago. He wishes to know her name.”
“Your patrón has a good eye,” he said, palming the coin. “Camilla, Countess de Valls. She’s French but married a Spanish count. I have heard her husband is dead and that he left her with mucho dinero.”
A man on the street passing paused when he heard the word French and jabbered at the inn guard. “They’re trying to steal our country.”
The speaker moved on, and I asked the guard, “My patrón will desire to have a small token of his appreciation delivered to the countess. In which room is she staying.”
“All deliveries are to be deposited with me.”
I flashed another silver piece, this time a full reale, and lowered my voice. “My patrón is an important man with a jealous wife. He will want to make a discreet visit himself.”
“Up the back stairway. Her room is at the corner of the building, the room with a balcony, there,” he pointed. “But the countess will be out this evening. Her coach is returning after dark to take her to the viceroy’s ball.”
I gave him the coin. “If my patrón finds the backdoor unlocked when he comes tonight, another silver piece will join his brother in your pocket.”
Thinking about the French countess, I slowly made my way through the crowd pressing into the main square. From Bruto’s occasional dinner table political discussions and the many discussions I’d overheard among the expedition members, I now knew for certain that Carlos played a dangerous game.
Many in New Spain feared the French or British would invade the colony. Combined with Napoleon’s boasts that he would liberate the Spanish masses, people in the colony saw foreign spies under every rug.
That I should involve myself in the scholar’s intrigues was madness, but I could not get the woman’s scent out of my head. I have heard of aphrodisiacs that drive men mad and turn their minds to jelly—the very effect the countess’s scent had on me. But her presence also stirred an emotion as old and vital as lust—my survival instinct. For better or worse, I had cast my lot with Carlos. In hopes of escaping New Spain, I now considered accompanying him on the entire expedition. It would take me as far south as the Yucatán and perhaps ship me to Havana, where they would dock en route back to Spain. I still had my eye upon the Cuban capital as a refuge from the colony. And I couldn’t afford to have the machinations of this French countess spoiling my plans.
Carlos’s intrigues with the countess had placed him in extreme jeopardy. If the viceroy even suspected Carlos of scheming against the crown, he would end up on the wrong end of a rope . . . after the viceroy’s jailors had loosened his lips with persuasions only the devil himself would employ.
And if Carlos’s tongue was loosened sufficiently, his faithful retainer—namely, me—would join him rack by rack, noose by noose, stake by stake. To protect myself I had to probe the countess’s plot and keep my friend from harm—a difficult task, considering how the scent of her petticoats aroused memories of things past . . . stirring my garrancha as well.
The rest of the afternoon I wandered the festival. In celebrating the Fête of Pascua—what the British call Whitsunday—St. Agustín commemorated the Holy Spirit’s sanctification of the disciples, after Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension. The church called that day the Pentecost and celebrated it on the Sunday that falls on the fiftieth day after Easter. In St. Agustín, however, the holiday gained an added dimension. This event, holy among the most Catholic of peoples, existed in St. Agustín almost solely as an excuse for intemperate gambling, most notably cockfights and monte, a popular card game.
The city fathers emptied the main square—the Plaza de Gallos (Plaza of Cocks)—and set up seating so that the viceroy and notables could watch cockfights. Standing in the rear, lowly peons like myself could watch, too. By midafternoon, the plaza was packed with people, wagering frantically on various games of chance but most frantically on the cockfights.
I don’t consider cockfighting a sport, a contest in which men fasten sharp steel spurs to the chickens’ feet for the purpose of murdering their feathered opponents amid shrieking explosions of feathers and guts, blood and balls. Yet its popularity among all classes of people cannot be denied. Even women crowded around the roosters, many of them smoking cigarillos and cigarros. The wealthier women were lavishly attired in extortionately expensive gowns, gaudy gold rings, and glittering jewels.
I understand our love of el toro. A man entering a bullring wagers he can keep his own belly from being ripped open by several thousand pounds of horned fury spawned in hell. But where is the sport watching chickens slice each other to ribbons?
I spent a few minutes, pretending to be interested in the cockfights, then, working my way through the throng, I drifted back to the inn.
I waited near the inn until the countess’s coach took her to an evening ball. Having changed from black silk into a fawn-colored satin dress with a beige-black mantilla—the light scarf women in the colony and Spain wore over their heads and shoulders—she was now adorned with diamond earrings that almost touched her shoulders and a necklace of pear-shaped pearls. New Spain was a place where women and diamonds were inseparable, where no man, down to the lowest mercantile clerk, entered into marriage without giving his wife diamonds. Even the beauty of rubies and sapphires were not judged to be as exquisite as that of diamonds.
As I feigned interest in the gambling, I watched the countess’s balcony window. She would have a maid, of course, and I waited until I saw the lamp go out in the countess’s room, calculating that the maid would return to her room or, more likely, come out onto t
he streets to enjoy the festival.
After a couple of hours of losing at cards, I saw the lamp light go out. I casually strolled to the back of the inn, intending to enter the countess’s room and wait for her return.
As promised, the back door was unlocked, and, as one would expect, the room door was also unlocked, except for a sliding-door bolt that one could throw before going to sleep. No one would ever have considered leaving jewels or money in an inn room, so no one needed locks while they were away.
The room was dark. The countess, however, had lit a small, long-burning oil lamp, which provided enough illumination for her to light the other lamps and candles when she returned. The room smelled sweet, like the countess. Sí, as weak as I am when it comes to petticoats, the smell warmed my blood more than the cockfights heated the blood of the aficionados below.
I discovered the prize almost immediately: the pouch Carlos had insisted on carrying to his friend’s house earlier. Inside was a paper drawing. In the dim light I could not discern much detail, but it was clearly the layout of a fortification. I shook my head. “Carlos, you are a fool,” I said aloud.
What I held in my hands was more deadly than a hangman’s rope. Hanging was considered too gentle a punishment for treason—and spying on your own country was an even more heinous crime than being a foreign spy. Before they put the noose around your neck, they made sure every part of your body had suffered the tortures of the damned.
I lit the corner of the paper with the lamp and burned it in the fireplace. “Why, Carlos?” I asked. The fool risked both our necks by playing the spy, even if he was not aware of the risk to me. I knew from our conversations that he was an afrancesado, one of those Spaniards who was attracted to the ideals of the French Revolution: liberty, equality, and fraternity. But spying was different from intellectual discourse.
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