Aztec Blood

by Gary Jennings

  The woman did not have the money for the local surgeon barber who normally performed bleedings and medical amputations when he wasn't cutting hair. Fray Antonio, however, was not without medical skill. The street people preferred the skills and medicaments of our indio healers but did allow that Fray Antonio's powers surpassed those of most Spanish doctors. In any event Fray Antonio was now her last best hope.

  The woman was drunk, snoring, flat on her back, and they were about to amputate her leg. The fray had a saw, an iron blade, and a pot of boiling oil heating on the coals. After they sawed off the leg, he would cauterize many of the veins with a hot blade. The raw stump he would char with boiling oil.

  The fray tied her arms and legs, torso and neck to the table. He placed a thick wood stick between her teeth, and tied it tight behind her head. All the while her lover trembled convulsively, his face green as a jalapeño.

  When the fray began to saw, the puta's screams rang through the night like screams of the damned. Blood detonated, and the man fled the hospice in terror.

  "I can't blame him," the fray said.

  Then he turned and looked at me. His hands were shaking, his face sweating. I was ready to give up, too, but he threw back a cup of pulque, then poured one for me.

  "Cristóbal, you have to help or the woman will die."

  He only called me by my proper name when he needed something urgent.

  "The saw has to be steady, the cut even."

  He gave me two small pieces of wood. "Hold these straight. I will pass the saw through them as I cut."

  I had assisted in medical procedures before, but I had never seen a limb cut off. I held the two pieces of wood just above the knee, and the saw ripped through the woman's flesh. Her blood covered us both. When the fray hit her femur, it sounded as if he was tearing through a log. She passed out in shock, and at last her wailing ceased. When the leg was amputated, the fray removed the severed limb and dropped it on the floor at my feet. The fray quickly tightened the tourniquet and began to cauterize the severed veins with the red-hot knife.

  After searing the stump with seething oil, he covered the convulsively unconscious woman with a blanket, saying to me, "Clean up."

  He staggered out the door, no doubt to dull his mind with more pulque. I stared at the ashen-faced, comatose woman—and at the bloody piece of leg. What was I supposed to do with it?

  FIFTEEN

  At the House of the Poor I crept across the main room without lighting a candle. Rather than sleep in the big room, I went into the fray's enclosed corner and lay down on his bed. I lay there for over an hour, unable to sleep, when I heard men entering the house. No voices. They were trying to be quiet, but the straw gave them away.

  Neither Fray Antonio nor our rope-sandaled street people had come in, men wearing boots had entered. I heard the jingle of spurs. A third man had entered, a wearer of spurs. That did not inevitably mean the man was a gachupin. Indio, mestizo, and africano vaqueros wore spurs as well, but they favored working rowels of honed iron. These were the silver spurs of a caballero.

  The old woman had sent a gachupin and two helpers for me.

  ¡Así es! So be it.

  The fray's rabbit hole was almost filled with blankets. I quickly removed enough to make room for me and slipped in, pulling the trapdoor and its rug over my head. The trapdoor would not completely close, but unless one was looking for it, it was unlikely they would spot it.

  Through a crack in the opening, I saw someone enter with a lit torch. A Spaniard, about forty years old. From his clothes, it was obvious that he was a caballero, a gentleman and swordsman.

  "No one here," he said. His voice was aristocratic, with that tone of cold command. Here was a man used to issuing orders.

  "No sign of the boy or the priest in the main room, Don Ramon."

  The second voice was that of an indio or mestizo vaquero, a horseman who drove cattle and sheep, perhaps even an overseer who commanded the hacienda's workers.

  "They must all be at the festival, Don Ramon," he said.

  "No way they can be found in that crowd," the don answered, "and anyway I have to get back to the reception. We will return in the morning."

  A guest at the alcalde's reception itself. Truly a very big wearer of spurs.

  I waited in the rabbit's hole until long after the crunch of boots had faded from the house. Climbing out of the hole, I crawled over to the blanket curtain and peeked into the darkness of the main room. Nothing moved. Still the fear that someone had stayed behind to watch kept me from going through the door. Instead I opened the wicker shutter that covered the window opening behind the fray's bed and climbed out into the alley. From the position of the moon, I estimated I had been in the rabbit hole for a good two hours and had been home from the festival for more than three.

  I crept down the alley until I was two blocks from the House of the Poor, then positioned myself where I could watch the street leading to its front door. I was certain the fray would make his way home along this street.

  I sat down with my back to a wall staring up the alley. Soon people came streaming back from the festival, many of them raucously inebriated.

  Near dawn Fray Antonio and a rowdy group of neighbors staggered down the street. I rushed out and took the fray aside.

  "Cristo, Cristo, what's the matter? Have you seen a ghost? You look like Montezuma upon learning that the Plumed Serpent, Quetzalcóatl, had claimed his throne."

  "Fray, there is great trouble." I told him about the woman in black and the man named Don Ramon, who had searched the House of the Poor.

  The fray crossed himself. "We are lost."

  His panic fueled mine. "What are you talking about, Fray. Why do these people wish me harm?"

  "Ramon is the devil himself." He grabbed my shoulders, and his voice shook. "You must flee the city."

  "I—I can't leave. This is the only place I know."

  "You must leave now, this moment."

  Fray Antonio pulled me into the darkness of the narrow alley. "I knew they would come someday. I knew that the secret could not stay buried forever, but I did not think you would be found this quickly."

  I was young and scared and ready to cry. "What have I done?"

  "That does not matter. All that counts now is flight. You must leave the city by the Jalapa road. A steady stream of pack trains is hauling goods from the treasure fleet to the fair. There will be horsemen as well. You will not be noticed among the other travelers."

  I was horrified. Go to Jalapa by myself? It was several days' journey. "What will I do in Jalapa?"

  "Wait for me. I will come. Many people from the city go there for the fair. I will take Fray Juan with me. You stay near the fair until I arrive."

  "But, Fray, I don't—"

  "Listen to me!" He grabbed my shoulders again, his fingernails dug into them. "There is no other path. If they find you, they will kill you."

  "Why—"

  "I can't give you answers. If anything is to save you, it might be your very ignorance. From this moment on, do not speak Spanish. Speak only Náhuatl. They are looking for a mestizo. Never admit that you are one. You are indio. Give yourself an indio name, not a Spanish one."

  "Fray—"

  "Go—now! Vayas con Dios. And let God be your protector because no man will lift a hand to help a mestizo."

  SIXTEEN

  I left the city before dawn, walking quickly, sticking to the shadows. There were already a few travelers on the road, mule and donkey trains loaded with goods from the ships. I had not been far down the Jalapa road in years and what lay ahead for me was the unknown. While I was capable of taking care of myself on the streets of Veracruz, that was the only life I now knew. My confusion and dismay was aggravated by fear of the unknown and unfamiliar.

  The Jalapa road trailed southwest out of the city, then cut across the sand dunes, swamps, and inlets before it slowly rose up the side of the great mountain range. Once the hot sands and swamps were passed, the trail asc
ended into the mountains. The heat of the tierra caliente slowly cooled.

  Jalapa was a village high enough for travelers to escape the miasma that rose up from the swamps and annually killed one-fifth of Veracruz. Still the village's chief function was as a resting place on the road from Veracruz to the City of Mexico—except, of course, when the treasure fleet's fair was held.

  I did not find carriages and wagons traveling all the way to Jalapa, though some would journey part of the way. The mountain roads would not accommodate them. People traveled by horse, mule, or Shank's mare. Or, in the case of the very wealthy, by litter-covered chairs suspended on two long poles. In the city a litter was commonly carried by servants, but over the mountains the poles were harnessed to mules.

  At the time of the fair, long columns of the pack animals, piled high with goods, made the journey. Leaving Veracruz, I took a position behind a mule train in the hopes of being thought of as one of the mule tenders. The arriero, the Spanish muleteer in charge of the pack train, rode a mule at the head of a train of twenty mules. Four indios were spread out along the line of the animals. The indio at the rear glared at me. Indios did not like mestizos. We were a living reminder of the Spaniards, who routinely defiled their women. Their hatred of these gachupin rapists they masked with feigned stupidity and heavy-lidded, empty-eyed stares.

  I followed the pack train out of Veracruz, and all through the morning, the air heated up. By noon the dunes were a scorching inferno. In fact, a stone cliff, cutting through the sands, bore a hand-carved inscription, EL DIABLO TE ESPEREA, the devil awaits you. I didn't know whether the message was meant for all travelers or if it was a special warning to me.

  I left the House of the Poor without my straw hat, and now I walked with my head hanging down, the sun burning a hole in my brain, sick with dread. I had crossed the dunes before with Fray Antonio when we'd visited a village church on a nearby hacienda. As we crossed the burning dunes and walked through the foul stench of the swamps, having no finely scented nosegays, we tied rags across our faces to keep out the vómito fever. Fray Antonio told me tales of the "people of the rubber," who were even more ancient and more powerful than my Aztec ancestors.

  "There is a legend," he said, "that the people of the rubber were giants who were created by the mating of a woman and a jaguar. You can tell from the statues they left behind, heads taller than a grown man, that they were a mighty race. They built a mysterious civilization called Tamoanchán, the Land of the Mist. Precious Feather Flower, Xochiquetzal, an Aztec goddess of love, resided there."

  Fray Antonio did not believe in giants created by the union of a woman and a jungle cat, but he told the story with flair, waving his hands in dramatic emphasis.

  "They are called 'people of the rubber,' because they constructed hard rubber balls from the sap of trees in that area. They organized teams and played each other in walled arenas the size of jousting fields. The object was for each team to knock the ball into the area behind the other team without using their hands. They could only propel it with hips, knees, and feet. The ball was so hard that it could kill if it struck a person on the head."

  "Was anyone killed playing the game?" I asked.

  "Every time. The losing team members were sacrificed to the gods at the end of the game."

  He told me no one knew where the rubber people had gone. "My bishop said that they were vanquished by God because they were heathen sinners. But when I asked why God did not destroy all other heathen sinners worldwide, he became angry at me."

  Yes, my trip to the hacienda with the fray had been a happy one. On this journey fear and melancholy were my staunchest companions.

  SEVENTEEN

  At midday the mule train stopped near a pulqueria to rest the animals and cook a noon meal. Other mules trains and travelers were already there.

  I still had the two reales that the rogue poet had given me and some cocoa beans. The beans were a traditional form of money among the indios and were still used by them as currency. In fact, they had disdained the first Spanish coins, finding it difficult to place a value on something they couldn't eat or plant. Even though copper and silver coins were now in common use, the cocoa bean was still prized by the indios. Chocolate, a drink made from the beans, was the drink of kings.

  Fermented pulque, the drink of the gods, was also highly valued. Cheaper and more plentiful than chocolate, Fray Antonio believed it was the indio's salvation, because it dulled their senses and made their lives more bearable.

  The pulqueria consisted of two thatched, mud-walled huts with two indio women cooking over an open fire. They served pulque from large, earthen jars. I had ten cocoa beans, enough to put a Veracruz whore on her back for as many minutes, and after much haggling I purchased a huge tortilla packed with pork stew and peppers for six beans. I told the woman she harvested the violento peppers in a volcano's molten heart.

  I could have gotten a cup of pulque for the other four beans but also knew I could later have all I wanted for free.

  I lay in the shade of a tree and ate the tortilla. I'd been up all night, but still I could not rest. Fray Antonio's frightened face haunted me. I was quickly on my feet and back on the Jalapa road.

  In another hour the road wound around a sugar plantation. The endless expanses of sugarcane were not indigenous to New Spain but had been planted along the coasts by the Spanish. The cutting and refining of the cane was impossibly brutal, indisputably dangerous—all of it performed under temazcalli sweat hut conditions. Fantastic fortunes were born out of that cane, true, but no one worked those fields voluntarily. In the end the sugar trade came down to one irreducible determinant, slavery. The indios failed miserably as slaves, their death rate in the plantations and the mines so catastrophic that Crown and Church both feared their extinction. Only the africano bore up against such lethal servitude.

  Two africanos accompanied the Cortes expedition of 1519—Juan Cortes and Juan Garrido—but turning jungles into sugar and mountains into silver required armies of slaves. Those glittering jewels, gilt carriages, fine silks, and splendid palaces that the gachupins so greedily lusted after, to say nothing of the Crown's foreign wars, were paid for in slave blood.

  When the Spanish king inherited the Portugese throne in 1580, chained africanos, whipped and starved by Portugese slavers, arrived in New Spain by the thousands. They were brought to work the sugarcane haciendas after the Spanish discovered they could "grow" gold in the form of sweet sugar.

  Yes, the sweet tooth of Europe made slavery inescapable.

  As I walked past the cane, I saw men, women, and children, all africanos, working the fields. Up the road I neared el real de negros, the fenced-off slave quarters, a cluster of round huts with conical roofs made of straw.

  I knew from Beatriz that slaves, even in their quarters, had almost no privacy. They lived communally, sharing the huts regardless of sex or marital status, surrounded by pigs and chickens. The owners wanted them to breed but discouraged family dwellings, fearing that privacy encouraged talk of rebellion, especially when slaves were sold to other hacendados. Consequently, few married even though the owners sought additional stock. Healthy slaves brought a price at auction.

  On the sugar plantations slaves worked interminable hours with almost no free time. During busy periods the mills ran twenty-four hours a day and slaves worked until they dropped, often napping near their job so that the overseer could kick them to their feet and back to their jobs.

  The plantation owners considered black slaves incomparable beasts of burden. Africanos were not only bigger and stronger than indios, but they survived the suffocating heat, back-breaking labor and deadly fevers that annihilated indios by the millions.

  "But our blacks are likewise victims of that myth that each of them can do the work of four Indians," Fray Antonio told me when we had walked along the docks a few days ago and watched slaves piling sugar bags. Like the mestizo mine slave, each of the sugar plantation slaves had been branded like cattle with a hot i
ron with the initials of their owner. Most of the brands were on the shoulder. When I saw a brand on the face, I knew the slave had tried to escape once and was being marked as someone to watch. "As a result overseers drive them four times as hard as indios," the fray continued. "They often drive these wretches mad. Many take their own lives. Others forswear children, abort those they do conceive, or resort to infanticide, sparing their children lives of living hell. Some rebel, which only leads to brutal reprisals by their owners.

  "Many turn deeply melancholic, refusing water or sustenance, until they die. Others cut their throats. Those who endure keep the institution running."

  Still Spaniards feared africano rebellion like the wrath of God.

  I understood their fear. While indio docility had increased after the Mixton War, africano rebellion had never subsided.

  Diego Columbus, the son of "the Great Discoverer," had endured the very first slave uprising when africanos on one of his Caribbean plantations rose up and slaughtered Spaniards. Each subsequent decade saw an africano uprising followed by savage reprisals from the wearers of spurs. And as the africano population grew disproportionate to that of the pure-blood españols, that fear spread.

  Slaves were forbidden to assemble in numbers larger than three—public or private, day or night. The penalty was two hundred lashes each.

  Fear kept me watching my back trail. The road was no longer able to handle a carriage but ay! who knows? Perhaps that predatory dowager would overtake me with eagle wings and raptor claws.

  The ancient Greeks believed three goddesses determined our destiny. Not just the length of our days and years, but the breadth and depth of our misery. Those three shadowy women, whose hands and wheels spun the skein of fate, had allotted me more than an ordinary share of struggle, strife, and, yes, pleasure.

  Again I posed as one of the drivers, attached myself to the rear of a mule train, and tried to avoid the dung. The sun slipped behind the mountains, casting shadows on the trail. Soon I would have to find a safe place to sleep. While the Spanish kept the towns and villages on a tight rein, on the roads and trails, banditry reigned. The worst of these bandits were my fellow mestizos.