Yes, I was returning home.
The pleasure of my return, however, was tempered by my debt of retribution. I did not want eye for an eye but a head for an eye—and the revenge I sought for the killers of Fray Antonio, Don Julio, and his family never left my side, not once, not for a heartbeat. Bloody revenge was my closest companion, my most intimate ally.
As soon as I resolved to return, my dreams of vengeance took wing. A scheme had burned in my brain since departing Veracruz, and now it flowered... relentlessly... incessantly... like the fatal nightshade. Like the Healer's snake trap and Don Julio's blood rite, I saw a way to bring these murderers to terms—and destroy them root and branch.
As the dispatch vessel dropped anchor in the channel between the island fortress of San Juan de Ulúa and the city, my twenty-fifth birthday came around. I spent the morning of that birthday interviewed by a customs officer and an inquisitor from the Holy Office. I had been careful to bring nothing with me that would offend anyone. The only book in my baggage was a history of the life of San Francis, a genuine history, not the type I once printed with a saintly title and a salacious text.
Before leaving Seville I had chosen a name and background for myself but abandoned both at sea. A better opportunity arose in the guise of a young man close to my own age. The third son of an impoverished Spanish nobleman, he had fled Spain to avoid the priesthood. He jumped ship when, after being blown off course, we briefly dropped anchor off an idyllic isle. His plan for life was to spend his days on the island, basking in the sun in the arms of native girls. Don Carlos, a name I found suitable, was an easygoing rascal who had been talkative about his family and history during our weeks together. I soon knew the name of his father and mother, brothers and sister, family history, and status in the community. On the pretense of planning to purchase a New World house that would evoke a fine Spanish style, I had him draw me a floor plan of his family home and coat of arms.
Well-dressed, respectable, well-mannered, with no contraband but with the unmistakable arrogance of an hidalgo, I quickly passed muster. I granted each official the modest gratuity that only the truly honest render.
A ship's tender carried me to the jetty. I saw that the merchants were already piling their goods on the dock. The silver treasure was already in the city, stored in a locked room in the alcalde's palace—or would be here soon. The treasure fleet was not due for a week, but ships had been spotted from the island fortress in the bay with a spyglass. God had blessed it with favorable winds. Soon the fleet would arrive, unload, and then commence reloading.
For my stay in Veracruz, I chose the inn at the main plaza, the very one that I had once fought for the right to beg in front of. None of the harbor léperos who pleaded with me for alms were familiar to me. That was not a surprise—the life span of a lépero is often brief. I had left Veracruz as a boy of fifteen, and now I was a man almost twice that age. Léperos are frequently swept away by life in the gutter, enslavement in the mines and cane fields, as well as the waves of vómito fever and the other pestes that plague the city.
I tossed the beggars a few coppers. It would have amused me to reward them with some silver, but such benevolence would have drawn both suspicion and thieves. Not that I feared recognition. I had left Veracruz as a boy. During my subsequent years in Mexico, I favored a heavy beard and long hair. Clean-shaven, facially scarred, my hair not only short but streaked prematurely gray, I was not the same person as Cristo the Bastardo. I was Don Carlos, a hidalgo, the son-of-somebody, seeking his fortune in the New World, perhaps by marriage to the daughter of a rich merchant who was willing to give a fat dowry to add the son-of-somebody to the family tree.
But beyond mere clothes, money, and hair, I would not be recognized. Two years in Seville had taught me not to act like a Spaniard but to be one. As the Healer would say, I now "smelled" like a gachupin. The color of my skin was darker than many Spaniards, but the Iberian Peninsula had hosted so many peoples—from Romans and Visigoths, to Moors and Gypsies—for so many centuries that its people's skin color ranged from white-as-milk to café con leche. The disparity in skin color was only one reason why bloodlines, not appearance, determined people's worth.
As with all travelers in this region, I was anxious to get out of the hot, humid, sickly city and into the cool mountains beyond the dunes. But first I would need a horse, pack animals, servants, and supplies.
I arranged with the innkeeper for a room overlooking the plaza and to take my dinner in my room. He offered me the services of a mulatta of fine proportions, but my mind was too full of memories to seek carnal pleasures. Not far from here I had watched de Alva cut the life out of Fray Antonio and a young girl, with a poet's soul, who dreamed of reading and writing like a man and who had risked her life to hide a beggar boy, solely because he recited poetry.
After I established myself in Ciudad Mexico with a house suitable for a gentleman of not immodest means and a staff of servants, I would replace my Veracruz horse with one of the bloodline of the conquistadors' Fourteen. And I would present myself on the Alameda, not as a silk dandy, a criollo full of masculine pride because their only glory had been parading up and down the greenway, but as a wearer of spurs who had lived life and sported action.
The greater portion of the money we took from the mint was still buried. I would take only my share and leave the rest for Mateo. After I was settled in my new identity, I would write and ask if he wished me to send his share on the next voyage of the treasure fleet. By that time he would be very broke, despite the large amount we had brought to Seville.
As the sun fell behind the western peaks, I stood by the window of my room overlooking the plaza, drinking a goblet of good Spanish wine. It felt strange to be drinking good wine in a well-appointed room in Veracruz.
Of course, I still had a plan for revenge—that thought was never far from my mind—one that would appeal to the greed and venality of men like Ramon and Luis. This time I would not kidnap and torture nor would I kill them surreptitiously. That would only end their earthly travail. They had stripped Don Julio not only of his life, but his honor, money, and even family. They would suffer in a like manner. To lose honor and position was more painful to a proud Spaniard than to lose his head.
My revenge would also be a personal quest to unravel the mystery of my birth.
Sleep came to me in troubled fragments. My dreams were cruel monsters from my troubled past.
While the sun was still struggling to rise, trapped by Aztec gods below the Eastern Sea, with gray half light wavering on its horizon line, I heard the rumble of massed footfalls on the plaza cobblestones. For a moment I thought I was reliving, in a dream, the night the City of Mexico mistook stampeding swine for rampaging slaves and slaughtered guiltless blacks like they were devils loosed from hell.
Musket shots exploded, echoing off the plaza walls, and I jumped from my bed. Grabbing my sword and dagger, I ran to the window.
Black powder blazed from muskets, and glittering swords flashed in the dim predawn. Dark figures, scores of them, attacked the alcalde palace fort across the plaza.
Was it war? I wondered. But then realized that it was less likely war than attacking pirates, here to rape and loot as they had done in a dozen cities in the Caribbean and along our coast. The ships that had been spotted were not the treasure fleet but an invading force.
While the marauders attacked the palace fort, others dashed into buildings and homes. I barred the door and wedged a chair under the handle. It would not keep out determined men but would delay entry. Hanging my money pouch from a cord around my neck, I dressed quickly and put a dagger in a belt scabbard and another in a secret sheath in my boot. I grabbed my sword and slipped out the window onto a ledge a couple of feet wide. My room was on the top floor, and from the ledge I made my way to the roof.
On the roof I had a good view of the city. Daylight was spreading, and I could see Veracruz was under attack by as many as two or three hundred men. Men—whose only uniforms we
re pirate motley—invaded homes in small units, while a larger force attacked the alcalde's palace. His guards offered only token resistance, firing their muskets perhaps once or twice before running.
The fort was barely a musket shot from shore. I could see men lined up on the walls, but no boats filled with soldados disembarked. The corsairs had confiscated their longboats with their own dinghies.
Shouting, screams, musket fire, and explosions rang in the early dawn. As I hid on the roof, people ran into the presumed safe haven of the church without realizing that blackguards respected no sanctuary. Others tried to flee in carriages and on horseback. Most were stopped by the freebooters, shot from their mounts or dragged screaming from their coaches.
I saw a carriage rushing from one of the wealthier districts into the plaza in a mad dash for the alcalde's palace. Careening around the corner, it nearly overturned. The indio handling the reins was thrown from the driver's seat. Panicking from the gunfire, the horses galloped into the middle of the square, the carriage wheels rumbling across the cobblestones.
A pale, frightened face appeared in the carriage window.
"Eléna!" The name tore from my lungs in a hoarse scream.
A pirate stood in the path of the oncoming horses and fired a shot. The startled horses reared, then bolted as other buccaneers grabbed their harnesses.
I was already leaping from the roof to the top of the arcade overhanging the sidewalk and from there to the ground.
Four freebooters dragged Eléna from the coach and were ripping off her clothes. She was screaming, clawing, biting, swinging furiously at them.
At a dead run I hurled my dagger into the back of one of the buccaneers, and as the man next to him turned, drove my sword into his throat I jerked it out and parried the sword of the third man. Stepping out of the circle of death, I switched hands, taking my sword into my left hand and dagger in the right, leaped at the man. Feinting toward his face, I hamstrung him.
A blade slashed my left arm. I cried out in pain and dropped my blade. The last man standing had sliced my upper arm to the bone. As I swung around, off balance and open to the next blow, Eléna pulled something from the folds of her dress.
His sword came up to whack off my head when Eléna struck him in the back with something. He gaped at me in wide-eyed surprise. When he turned to face her, he had a jeweled dagger protruding from his back. I relieved him of his sword as he fell to his knees. Other blackguards were now running toward us.
"Into the carriage!" I yelled to her.
Climbing aboard, I grabbed the reins with my good hand, throwing my sword on the boards at my feet. Holding the reins with my knees, I jerked the driver's whip from its holder and lashed out at the horses. A pirate cannon had been rolled into the plaza, and now it boomed, smashing the main gate of the government palace. More from the cannon than my whip, the horses bolted. I hung onto the reins with my one good hand as the terrified horses thundered across the plaza, scattering privateers in their path.
A marauder leaped aboard by grabbing onto the carriage door. Eléna screamed, and I leaned down with the sword and swung at him. I missed but he released his hold and fell.
"Eléna! Are you all right?"
"Yes!" she shouted up.
We raced out of the plaza and down a residential street. After a few blocks we hit the road to Jalapa. My pain was intense, and I was dizzy from loss of blood, but knowledge of who my passenger was redoubled my strength.
When we were safely down the road, I brought the horses under control and slowed them to a walk. They were soaked from sweat and ready to fall. I was soaked in blood and sweat, weak from the loss of blood, and I was slowly fading as the horses came to a stop.
"Are you injured?" a voice called up.
This voice of an angel was the last thing I heard when a black cloud swept over me, and I was tumbling, tumbling, tumbling into a bottomless pit.
ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN
"Señor, señor, can you hear me?"
Was it the voice of an angel—or a siren? One of those half-woman creatures who seduced sailors to their doom with the sweetness of their song. The question ran through my mind as I hovered between light and dark. As light returned to my mind, I realized I was still silting on the driver's bench. Eléna had climbed up beside me.
"I'm trying to stop the bleeding," she said. A piece of white linen, blood-soaked, was tied around my arm, and she was tearing another piece off of her petticoat.
My mind was still foggy, but my medical training came to play. "Put it above the wound," I instructed her. "Take something... the handle to one of your combs. Twist the cloth with it so it tightens against my arm."
As she tightened the cloth, her eyes came up and met mine, the eyes of my personal angel. Darkness was falling again for me. In a daze I was sure I heard the clop of horse's hooves and the swaying of the carriage.
As light came to my eyes and things took shape, I found Eléna still at my side. She was holding the reins, and the horses slowly led the carriage. Funny, I thought, I'd never seen a woman handle reins, and for a moment I wondered if I was dreaming again. But, of course! This was a woman who could not just read and write, but who wrote poetry and plays! "And who stabbed a pirate with a dagger?"
"What did you say?" she asked.
I did not realize I had spoken aloud. "I said—I wondered where you got the dagger that saved my life."
"A friend told me that prostitutes carry a dagger to defend themselves. I don't see why a prostitute should be more effectively protected than a lady."
She pulled back on the reins and spoke gently to the horses, telling them to stop.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"A league, perhaps two, from the city. You have been slipping in and out of consciousness for the past hour. There is a sugarcane hacienda owned by an acquaintance perhaps another hour ahead. The road is firm enough for carriage wheels. We will go there for shelter and the treatment of your wound."
I was still weak, and my arm was in agony. I loosened the linen tourniquet she had twisted above the wound and tightened the one that pressed on it.
"The wound needs to be cauterized with hot oil," she said.
"No, oil harms the flesh even more. The French doctor, Paré, proved that. If it does not stop bleeding, the veins that leak will need to be stitched."
"You're a doctor?"
"No, although I have some medical knowledge. My fa—uncle, was a doctor and on occasion I assisted him."
She gave me a long look, a searching stare that took me in my entirety. "Have we met? Perhaps in Mexico City? A reception?"
"No, I just arrived in New Spain for the first time on the dispatch boat. But I thank God that he permitted me to meet you now."
"Strange..."
"You think you know me? Perhaps someone who looks like me?"
"You seem a little familiar, in a way I feel but cannot express. Also you called me by my name earlier."
Fortunately she had turned to pull back on the reins as she spoke, or she would have seen the shock on my face. I pulled my features back into control and smiled at her when she turned back to me.
"Your name was shouted by someone near the inn when you were being pulled out of the coach."
"Someone must have recognized me."
"Do you live in Veracruz?"
"No, in Mexico. I've been visiting friends."
"Your husband is back in Veracruz..."
"I am not married." She was silent for a moment. "From your look I can see that you wonder why I am not married when I am past the age that most women marry. My uncle expects me to marry, but I have been undecided whether I will marry a man or God."
"You mean you are considering becoming a nun?"
"Yes, I am in discussions with the prioress of the Sisters of Mercy."
"No!"
"Señor?"
"I mean, well, you shouldn't become a nun. There is so much to life—"
"The spirituality of the convent I would
never find in marriage."
I almost blurted out that she could write plays and poetry outside of a cloister, but then held my tongue. I could not reveal that I knew too much about her. Disclosing my true identity would win me nothing. Nor was the absence of a husband any reason to buoy my spirits. She was still the daughter of a great house of Spain and could only marry an equal. There would be few social equals in all New Spain. Luis was of that rank. My intuition told me that she would rather enter a convent than marry him.
Again, she probed my soul with her eyes.
"Señor, I do not know why you risked your life for me, but for reasons only you and God know, I am not ravished or dead. You will find my uncle, the viceroy, very grateful."
Don Diego Velez had been appointed viceroy a year ago when I was in Seville. Ramon de Alva was closely associated not only with Luis but with Don Diego. Considering the way governmental services and positions were bought and sold, Don Diego was probably involved in the tunnel debacle. If so, bringing down Alva and Luis would destroy Eléna.
"Is the pain worse, señor? Your features darken."
"No, señorita, but for a moment I remembered a friend and was sad."
She smiled knowingly. "I see. You left behind on the peninsula a piece of your heart. I hope, señor, that like so many of the men who come to the colonies, you did not leave her heartbroken."
"I can assure you, señorita, mine is the heart that was torn."
"Perhaps now we are friends, we could be less formal and use out names. Mine, as you know, is Eléna..."
¡Ay de mí! I could have given all the gold in Christendom to have said to her that my name was Cristo the Bastardo; that I had loved her the first moment I saw her nearly a dozen years ago on a Veracruz street. But it was "Don Carlos," a young hidalgo, whom she took to the sugarcane hacienda.
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