Aztec Rage

by Gary Jennings

  “We are members of the same literary discussion group,” she said. She said Lizardi was considered brilliant but unreliable. “He’s tolerated to an impossible degree by his friends. There’s no question he’s very progressive in his political thinking, but we are careful not to talk openly in front of him because he’s known to offer up his friends when he faces the viceroy’s wrath.

  “A few months ago the viceroy’s constables played a cruel joke on him. They put him in a cell reserved for those scheduled to be executed in the morning. One of the guards borrowed a priest’s robe and pretended to take his confession. They say he offered the names of everyone he knew who ever spoke derisively of the viceroy in hopes that it would save him from the gallows.”

  I started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “Me, my stupidity. I suddenly realized why the viceroy’s men showed up in Dolores when I was there. Lizardi betrayed me.”

  “The constables arrested Lizardi en route to Méjico City—after he left you in Dolores—but he didn’t betray you. He informed on the padre instead. He told the authorities about Padre Hidalgo’s illegal activities. They already knew about them, anyway, but I suspect they decided to act out of fear Lizardi would publish stories about the padre’s success.”

  “That miserable cur . . . after the padre treated us with such generosity.”

  Raquel shrugged. “The padre has forgiven him. The padre’s heart is an infinite repository of unqualified love.”

  I started to ask if she knew Hidalgo personally but then remembered that the padre was in her coach when I struck the lépero who had brushed against my horse.

  She stared down at my boots.

  “I know,” I said, “they’re patched almost beyond further repair, but they have great sentimental value to me. Isabella gave them to me when I was held prisoner in the Guanajuato jail.”

  She stared at me for a moment, her lips frozen in a smile. She said, “I can understand your feelings. My own father had a similar pair, which I have always cherished.”

  I revealed my plan to contact Isabella, to thank her for the boots and find out whether she was still fired by her love for me.

  When Raquel walked me to her gate she made a remark that I puzzled over but didn’t comprehend. “You have changed greatly, Juan de Zavala. You’re no longer the caballero who knows horses better than people. You have traveled widely and picked up knowledge everywhere you have gone.” She paused and met my eye. “You have gained insight into everything but yourself.”

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  I WAS ONCE again a caballero.

  I paid Lizardi to find out when Isabella paraded in her coach on the paseo and purchased with great care the finest caballero’s clothes available. Staring into my bedroom mirror, I combed my hair straight back, parting it in the middle and tying it off with a ribbon of spun silver. Clean-shaven, I didn’t favor a mustache but in the style of the day flaunted wide sideburns that covered half the side of my face.

  I chose a white shirt made of the best linen and had it trimmed with silver thread. My black hat was low crowned, rising about four inches off my head into a flat crown. Rather than a simple silver trim, I had the leather band that circled the bottom of the crown clustered with pearls. Under my hat, with the sides showing because I wore my hat in a rakish cock, was a black handkerchief.

  Jacket and breeches followed the black and white of the rest of my outfit. I permitted fine detail on the deerskin coat and breeches but only in silver and only of a subtle pattern. Even my waistcoat was made of silver silk, with a brocaded pattern that was subtle because the weave was silver thread.

  I dressed in grim colors. Unlike the dandies who paraded on the alameda and paseo, and unlike the way I had dressed when I was a caballero in the Bajío, I chose black and silver. I stayed away from bright colors.

  Lizardi shook his head when he saw the finished product. “You look more like a killer than a caballero.”

  “Good,” I said.

  I rode out on the paseo, tall in the saddle but torn inside. Raquel had been polite, but I had sensed her disapproval of my adulterous intentions.

  Lizardi had been more blunt:“You’re insane.”

  When I spotted Isabella’s carriage, I approached her casually, but my heart raced. The carriage stopped while Isabella and a woman sitting across from her conversed with two women in another coach. All eyes turned to me as I rode up to the side of her carriage.

  I saluted her, touching my fingers to my hat brim. “Señora Marquesa.”

  She fluttered her fan before her face and stared at me as if I was a complete stranger. “And whom do I have the honor of meeting, señor?”

  “An admirer from the distant past. One who has crossed an ocean twice since the last time he laid eyes on you.”

  She laughed. “Oh, yes. I recall you were once a boy in Guanajuato. I remember seeing you on the paseo there. Your horse is familiar.”

  That brought a titter from the women.

  “I’ve heard that a peon from that town made a name for himself fighting the French. My husband, the marqués, is a great patriot of Spain. If you are that person who contributed to our Spanish cause on the continent, perhaps he will employ you as a vaquero on one of our haciendas.”

  My face became hot. I indicated my boots. “These boots have not just crossed oceans, they’ve stomped through jungles, swam rivers full of crocodiles, and fought wars. I’ve kept them because they remind me of the woman who blessed me with them in my hour of need.”

  Isabella laughed her gay, melodious bell-tinkle of a laugh, which, from the first time I heard it, rang in my heart and sang in my soul. “I heard you came back as rich as Croesus, but that must be a false story if you can’t afford new boots. Perhaps I can get my husband to buy you a new pair of boots if you go to work for him. Those are in a terrible state.”

  She ordered her driver to move on. I sat still and watched the carriages move away. What a fool! I had been stupid to approach her in public, riding up to her in front of her friends. What else could the poor woman do except pretend that I meant nothing to her? She was a married woman and could not afford even the hint of scandal.

  But the realization that I had acted foolishly did little to soothe the hurt and humiliation I felt.

  Peon. The word was a knife slashing to my heart.

  A horse neighed behind me, and I turned in the saddle. Three young caballeros on horseback faced me.

  “A lépero dressed as a gentleman is still gutter scum,” the one in the middle said. “Such sons of whores are not permitted to ride on the paseo. If you come here again we’ll take whips to you. If you speak to our women again, we’ll kill you.”

  A black rage roared through me. I spurred Tempest, galloping straight at the three riders. They parted before my charge, but I still caught one of them by the throat and pulled him from the saddle. I attempted to throw him to the ground, but his left rowel hooked his saddle’s latigo. His horse bolted, dragging him up the street at a full gallop. I wheeled Tempest and turned on another one foolish enough to pull his sword on me. I was without my own saber but feared no dandy’s blade. I drove the great stallion full-tilt and straight at him. His own mount shied, spooked by Tempest, who was half a head taller. I unlimbered the triple-plaited quirt—the one with the shot-loaded whip-spring buttstock—that I kept lashed to the pommel by its wrist loop. As the caballero tried to gain control of his horse, I rode up behind him at full gallop. Whipping its triple-plaited lash around his neck, I slipped its wrist loop around my pommel.

  Tempest and I had roped hundreds of longhorns, and he knew the drill. Halting hard, he rocked back on his rear legs and dug in. The caballero flew from his saddle, clutching his throat in pain-wracked terror, crashing onto the street like a collapsing bridge. With his face turning purple, I shook the lash off his neck but only after I’d dragged him a couple of dozen yards.

  When I wheeled Tempest to the third insolent dandy, the caballero
turned tail and ran, which was a mistake. Not only did he prove himself a coward—a tale that would sweep the city within hours and follow him to his grave—but in yielding his horse’s rump he gave up his own.

  I came up behind the horse at a hard lope and grabbed his mount’s tail. Jerking it up, I gave Tempest the spurs. A bull-throwing sport, Tempest, my vaqueros, and I had done it to my hacienda bulls in the Bajío. The maneuver throws the animal off balance and flips it. In this case, the horse flipped onto its back with the rider still on board, pinning him underneath.

  Leaving the three caballeros in my wake—vanquished, humiliated, and in excruciating pain—I rode out of the paseo. Two dozen pureblooded Spanish horsemen watched me go, but none dared call me out.

  As I passed Isabella’s carriage, my love stared at me with wide eyes. I saluted her one more time.

  Lizardi met me at an inn later for food and wine and to advise me of the city’s reaction to my actions in the paseo. He left soon after stuffing himself, because he had a meeting to attend but then gave me his assessment.

  “You will be dead within a week.”

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  RAQUEL KNEW THAT the discussion at her literary circle that night was going to be about the sensation Juan de Zavala had caused at the paseo.

  To hide their true purposes, the group called themselves the Sor Juana Literary Society. While they in fact met and discussed books, they also frequently used their meetings for discussions of political and social issues that were on the prohibition lists of the viceroy and cardinal. The members were of like political minds. The Enlightenment and the great revolutions in France and the United States had shaken all of them intellectually.

  Some clubs used the names of saints for their clubs, but Raquel and her close friend, Leona Vicario, thought it was hypocritical to name their society after a saint when one of its purposes was to debate and complain about the restrictions in free thought the church wrought. Instead they chose the name of Méjico’s great poetess.

  Andrés Quintana Roo, a bright young lawyer who was attracted intellectually and romantically to Leona, considered Sor Juana’s name for their society as a joke on the church. “She wrote her resignation from intellectual life in blood because of criticism from the church,” he said.

  Eleven members of the society were present that evening, including the self-proclaimed Mejicano Thinker. As Raquel had intimated to Juan, the members put a reign on their political tongues on the occasions Lizardi showed up. Tonight, however, the talk was more personal than profound.

  “All of the homes of the city tonight are discussing the actions of Zavala,” Quintana Roo speculated.

  None of them knew that Raquel had once been betrothed to Juan, not even Lizardi. Juan had told Raquel that he had never mentioned to the writer that he knew Raquel.

  “The gachupines are very upset,” Leona said. “The junta in Cádiz has offered the colony full political representation, but the viceroy and his peninsular minions have ignored their decree, not wanting their colonialborn to have rights equal to theirs. But this adventurer, Zavala, has caused them no end of worry. A peon who first is a hero of Spain and who then humiliates three caballeros who assaulted him in the paseo? The gachupines will not—cannot—let such rebelliousness go unpunished.”

  Lizardi said, “The gachupines fear that Zavala, by demanding an equal place at their table, will inflame and inspire peons everywhere.”

  “Four caballeros he has offended,” Leona said. “He approached the wife of the Marqués de Mira besides humiliating the three caballeros. It’s a major embarrassment for the marqués because it is known that his wife, Isabella, permitted Zavala to woo her when they both lived in Guanajuato. Had a Spaniard approached her, it would have been grounds for a duel.”

  “I’ve heard the marqués is in financial difficulty, not only as a result of his bad investments but also his wife’s extravagances,” Lizardi said. “The woman overindulges her expenditures—and her lovers. It is rumored that Augustín de Iturbide, a young officer in a provincial regiment, is her current lover.”

  “Iturbide’s a Spaniard; so the marqués can look the other way about that affair,” Leona said, “but he can’t with a public affront by a peon. And he can’t challenge Zavala to a duel; a Spanish nobleman can’t fight a peon. It would be a socially unacceptable match.”

  “He would also lose,” Quintana Roo said, “as will anyone else who calls Zavala out. The man is said to be indomitable with gun and sword.”

  “But the marqués must have his honor restored,” Lizardi said, “as well as the caballeros Zavala humiliated. They will have their revenge.”

  Raquel knew that that was the conclusion of everyone in the room and probably every Spaniard in the city, and it ripped her heart. Even as he made a fool of himself over another woman, her feelings didn’t change toward him.

  “Zavala will pay,” Leona said, “and it won’t be on the dueling field.”

  “He will be assassinated,” Lizardi said.

  “You mean murdered.” After Raquel spoke the words, she got up and left the house.

  SEVENTY-SIX

  HUMBERTO, MARQUÉS DEL Mira, entered his wife’s bedroom and came up behind her as the maid finished dressing her. Isabella wore a silver silk dress elaborately embroidered with spun gold and lavishly festooned with jewels. While Isabella admired her own golden mane of lustrous waist-length hair, her maid draped a black mantilla over her head and shoulders. Isabella viewed herself in her dressing mirrors approvingly. Light blonde hair was all the vogue now, and Isabella had imported from Milan an alchemic elixir that had turned her tresses a dazzling gold.

  Marriage had been good to Isabella. When she was an unwed girl in Guanajuato, she had been thin. Since marrying, she had gained ten pounds, which had filled her out in the right places, making her even more stunning.

  Studying his wife, Humberto felt pride of ownership, the same sort of pleasure he felt when he contemplated his palatial home and his stable of thoroughbred horses. He considered Isabella the most beautiful woman in the colony, a wife fit for a Spanish nobleman, even for a king.

  Scion of a noble family that had fallen from royal favor before his birth, Humberto came to the colony to use his social status to regain his family fortunes. He was only twenty-two years old when he married a wealthy widow twice his age. Unfortunately, the widow had lived another quarter of a century, so he was forty-seven before he came into full control of the large estate left by her first husband, a gachupine who used his position as an assistant to the viceroy to make a large fortune speculating on—and manipulating—the corn market.

  Humberto’s strong point were his dress, speech, mannerisms, and presentation of himself as a nobleman. He knew nothing about the management of money and had wisely left the widow’s fortune in her control. She had managed to make a modest increase in it during her lifetime, but since her death and his remarriage to the beautiful Isabella the fortune had deflated. Unwise investments on his part coupled with his wife’s extravagant lifestyle and gambling losses had substantially reduced his income and assets. He had not shared his financial woes with Isabella because it was not a proper matter for a man to discuss with his wife. Anyway, she knew less about financial matters than he did.

  “You are stunning, my dear,” he told Isabella. “But it is not the clothes. You would be the most beautiful woman in the colony even if you were dressed in rags.”

  “You are too kind, Humberto. Did the jeweler send over my new necklace? I want to wear it to the theater tomorrow night.”

  He winced at the mention of the jewelry. He was having a difficult time covering the purchase. “It’s coming mañana.”

  He gestured for her to send her maid out. After the servant left, he said, “I’m sorry you’re being asked to meet with this hombre.” He puffed his chest up. “I’d put a bullet through his heart on the field of honor, but as you know, the viceroy has instructed that no Spaniard is to stain his hands with the man’s taint
ed blood.”

  She sighed. “It’s just so strange. Juan was a fine caballero one day, a peon the next. But I suppose that was God’s wish. Darling, would you have the jeweler make diamond earrings to match my new necklace?”

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  MY GREAT DAY had finally come. A bribe to her maid had gotten a note into Isabella’s hands, and she wrote back, agreeing to meet me. The parchment contained her rose scent. The smell of it brought back visions of Isabella in her carriage in Guanajuato and her sparkling laugh . . . and of Juan de Zavala, caballero, Prince of the Paseo, riding tall.

  Bruto, may you rot in hell, a hammer pounding your cojones over and over again.

  No, instead, on my deathbed, I’ll pray to God for just a few minutes in a room alone with him.

  The meeting place she selected was away from the city, on Chapúltepec Hill, an hour’s ride west of the heart of the city. Chapúltepec meant “Hill of the Grasshopper” in the barbaric Aztec tongue. Rising a couple hundred feet, it afforded an astonishingly detailed view of the city and valley of Méjico from its summit: the canals and causeways, dying lakes, innumerable churches, houses, great and small, priestly seminaries and convents for nuns, and the two great aqueducts that snaked across the plains. An Aztec temple once stood on the hill. A summer palace for the viceroy was built there, but everyone knew the structure was actually a fort, a place for the viceroy to retreat to when the political climate got too “hot.”

  As I rode toward the meeting place, I thought about Isabella’s husband. During my time in Spain, I had grown to admire much about the Spanish and the culture they gave the colony. But I respected the people, not their rulers and landed gentry. After the gachupines had spurned me as a leper in the colony, and after watching upper-class Spaniards in Europe hoard and hide their fortunes while common people who owned nothing but their courage fought Napoleon tooth and claw—”to the knife”—without their help, I had neither respect nor awe for Spain’s ruling class.