Aztec Rage Page 3

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Your uncle has stomach problems. He’s been vomiting.”

  “Should we call a doctor?”

  “He insists that none be called.”

  If he was not sick enough for a doctor, it was no concern of mine. I still smarted from his wicked utterances about my beloved Isabella. I wondered whether God was torturing him for his foul words.

  That night I suffered one of the nightmares that had plagued me since childhood. In every violent dream, I found myself not a Spanish grandee but an Aztec warrior, fighting—and dying—in bloody battle. Years ago, while drinking too much with the vaqueros at my hacienda, I had in jest consulted an india witch who told me that my nightmares were not dream-sleep but nighttime visitations from the ghosts of Aztec warriors who had died while fighting the Spanish. Fool that I was, I believed the old woman at the time, but as the dreams became less frequent and finally stopped, I realized the dreams were created by the many stories I had heard about the wars between the Spanish and the Aztecs.

  But of late the nightmares had come back, more violent than ever. On this night I had seen myself in Mictlan, the Aztec underworld, where the dead must endure the trials of nine hells before their souls are extinguished.

  ¡Ay! I erupted from sleep drenched in sweat and with a heavy sense of dread. Packs of hellhounds had snarled at my heels, murderous beasts my priest had warned me would drive my sin-blackened soul to Fire Everlasting. I’d even felt the flames sear my flesh. Trying to return to sleep, I tossed and turned, my thoughts crowded with those baying hellhounds snapping at my heels.

  In the morn I got out of bed, leaving those hellhounds under the covers, I hoped. But irritation dogged me. My manservant, Francisco, had not yet brought my morning cup of cocoa, invigorated with chili, herbs, and spices, nor had he emptied my chamber pot. I found him in the kitchen kneeling on the floor next to Pablo, my vaquero, engaged in casting copper coins at a clay plate across the room.

  The indio groveled. “My apologies, patrón. I didn’t know you had awakened.”

  He was lazy and had corn mush for brains, though the men of his Aztec race were known for being hard workers.

  As I left the kitchen I stopped and studied the new india kitchen maid. I agreed with my fellow gachupines that indias were dutiful and delightfully concupiscent.

  I have been told that these Aztec women do not favor the male of their own species, because the men make them work in the fields all day, even while heavy with child. Later, while her man relaxes with his amigos and putas in the evening, the india must prepare dinner and work into the night to prepare the tortillas and other food for the next day’s breakfast.

  Life is so harsh for indias, my priest claims that many indias kill their own girl babies at birth to spare the girl the terrible burdens that she will carry through her lifetime as a woman.

  She looked shyly at me. I found her pleasing. I knew she was not married, so I marked her fine figure in my head for later. Now I had to meet Isabella on the paseo.

  My head swarmed with plans to capture a title and Isabella. But no man can fight his destiny, eh? We can’t stand before the galloping horse of Fate and make her stop. She’s a fickle nag, no? We can shout and struggle, conquer and kill, but Señora Fortuna rules the mast and controls the rudder directing our lives as we brave her storm-tossed sea of chance.

  Still, I had not counted on that foul puta to tip the scales and send that blood-crazed pack of baying hounds on my trail, howling for my hide.

  FOUR

  IN MY ROOM, after I sponged off, Francisco helped me dress in my finest riding clothes. My hat was black, with a large brim and a very flat, low crown. The crown and brim were both laced with gold and silver worked into an elaborate mesh. My shirt was white silk, with a high collar, under a short jacket of black with silver thread and calico patterns. My breeches were covered with leather chaps emblazoned with dozens of silver stars. Boots made in the colony were among the best in the world, and I wore only the finest. Of cinnamon color, the leather was cut in relievo in an elegant pattern by indios who spent weeks on a single pair. From my shoulders, held on with a silver chain, was a cloak, raven black and laced with silver.

  I thought highly of myself, but Isabella said my complexion was too dark against her alabaster skin, my brown eyes too common compared to her dazzling emerald orbs. Eh, my crooked nose came from being thrown by a horse at the age of seven; my forehead scarred from butting heads with a bull when I was playing matador at the age of eleven. My hair was black and came down as thick sideburns almost to my chin. Because of my looks, when I was small, the vaqueros called me El Azteca Chico, the Little Aztec.

  “You are no beauty,” she told me, when we were introduced soon after her family moved here from Guadalajara last year. “If I didn’t know you were born in Spain, I would take you for a lépero!”

  Her comparison of me to the street trash of the colony caused her girlfriends to squeal like piglets being tickled. Had a man jested thus, he would have tasted my blade. When Isabella so mocked, I melted like a timid boy.

  I left the house and went into the courtyard, where Pablo was waiting with my horse. I checked the stirrup length and cinch. As usual, they were exact.

  As my personal vaquero, Pablo was the finest cowboy at my hacienda. I kept him in the city most of the time to help train and exercise my horses. A mixed-blood mestizo, he had neither the bronze complexion of Aztecs nor the lighter shade of Europeans. I didn’t care if Pablo had claws and a tail if my mounts prospered under him.

  Pablo had saddled my favorite stallion, Tempest, the one I always rode when courting Isabella. Its former owner claimed that Tempest was a direct descendant of Cortés’s fabled mounts, the sixteen warhorses that enabled Cortés and his men to conquer a kingdom and carve out an empire. But almost every horse trader in New Spain claimed his horses hailed from that sacred stock, most notoriously from Cortés’s own warhorse.

  Tempest was sloe-black, with an inky sheen that blazed like blueblack fire in the noonday sun. His tack was even more ornate than my caballero attire. An elaborately decked-out ebony saddle with expansive stirrup leathers and a broad black pommel, it was richly embellished with silver, treasure more precious than a peon saw in a lifetime. He was skirted by a “Cortés shield” of thick black leather, all of it heavily embossed. The shields dated from the age when every caballero’s mount was a warhorse.

  I only burdened Tempest with fancy tack when I rode him into the city to visit Isabella. When I rode him into the llano to hunt, we only wore and carried what we needed.

  Before I swung into the saddle, I waited while Pablo dropped to his haunches and heeled my boots with spurs that had three-inch Chihuahua rowels of hammered silver, burnished to a mirror gloss—spurs fit for a gachupine.

  Pablo had the bridle knotted across the pommel. As was the custom, my bridle was small, but the bit large and powerful so the horse could be stopped abruptly, even when racing, though that was not always easy with Tempest; he earned his name.

  I saw my uncle’s servant come out of the house. I yelled at him as he hurried for the gate to the street as if one of the hounds I dreamt about was snapping at his heels.

  “José! How is my uncle?”

  He threw me an odd look, gawking as if I were a stranger instead of one of his masters, then disappeared through the gate. The fool never answered my shouted question. He would pay for his impertinence later, though I knew how cantankerous my uncle can be. He had probably sent José on an errand and told him to move double quick or he’d get a beating. José got more beatings than any other servant in the house. But why José would ignore me was a mystery. Certainly I was not known for sparing the rod. His rudeness fueled the gloom that had already blackened my morning.

  After riding through our compound’s gate, I headed toward the paseo and the lovely Isabella. I hadn’t gone far when I was accosted by a lépero, a disgusting gutter rat, the kind that beg and steal on the streets whe
n they are not passed out from cheap drink. Léperos are human maggots with the social standing of lepers. These peons were addicted to pulque, a foul, stinking indio beer made from the cactuslike maguey plant.

  “Señor! Charity! Charity!”

  The lépero grabbed at my horse’s polished silver saddle flap with a filthy hand. I struck the creature’s hand with my riding crop. He staggered back against a wall. ¡Ay! He had smeared his filth on the flap. I raised my crop to scare him away when someone shouted.

  “Stop!”

  An open carriage had pulled up behind me. The person who shouted the command—a priest—leaped out and rushed toward me, holding up the skirt of his robe so he wouldn’t trip as he ran.

  “Señor! Leave that man alone!”

  “Man? I see no man, padre. Léperos are animals, and this one placed his filthy hand on my tack.”

  I let the lépero escape without striking him. The priest glared up at me. He was hatless, a man somewhere in his fifties, showing his age, with a ring of white hair circling his bald pate like the crown of a Roman emperor.

  “Would you kill one of God’s children for a smudge on your silver?” he asked.

  I sneered down at him. “Of course not. I would have merely cut off the offending hand.”

  “God is listening, young caballero.”

  “Then tell Him not to let street trash touch my horse.” I could have told the priest that I would not have inflicted serious injury on the street trash—the code I lived by did not permit me to harm someone who could not fight back—but I was in no mood to be lectured.

  As I maneuvered Tempest around the priest, I noticed for the first time that a young woman was in the carriage.

  “Buenos días, Don Juan.”

  I nudged Tempest with my spurs to hurry him along even as I replied, “Buenos días, señorita.”

  I trotted away as quickly as the far reaches of politeness permitted.

  ¡Ay! My gloomy premonitions on awakening this morning were all coming too true. She was none other than Raquel Montez, a young woman I tried my best to avoid. The priest who loved léperos probably thought I had no conscience, but in truth I rushed away from Raquel because I am a very sentimental hombre.

  Well . . . not exactly sentimental, but I am not devoid of compassion, at least toward women. Perhaps because I was given a succession of wet nurses rather than my mother, I found it more difficult to deal with women than men. While I would be the first to draw my sword if an armed man insulted me, I didn’t know how to treat women, except to please them with the tool only a man possesses.

  In the case of Raquel, I rushed away because I cringed under her wounded-doe eyes. What sins did I commit against her? Did I despoil her? Abandon her to a cruel fate after stealing her virginity? ¡Ay! Her grievances are many and all true, but the fault was not mine, at least not entirely so. Marriages in the colony, among people of quality—like those in Spain herself—are financial arrangements, taking into account the bride’s proffered dowry and the groom’s prospects for a family inheritance. The relative social position of the bride and groom are also critical.

  Raquel was once my betrothed, in fact, the only woman to whom I have ever been set to wed. As shocking as it may sound, I was promised to her despite the fact she was a mestiza.

  Raquel’s father was Spanish born, of a good family that long hailed from Toledo, a town on the Tagus River, not far from Madrid. Toledo is an ancient city with a worldwide reputation for producing fine swords and daggers, a profession that had thrived there since the time of Julius Caesar. The younger son of swordsmiths, he came to the colony to seek his fortune. He soon shocked his family by marrying an attractive young Aztec girl.

  The poor soul. He not only wed outside his bloodline, but the young woman did not even bring a dowry to the marriage bed. One can imagine the consternation of his family: The fool married for love when he could have wed a gachupine or wealthy criolla widow and kept the pretty india as his lover.

  He became a merchant of daggers and swords, selling blades shipped to him by his family. Only moderately successful at that trade, I am told he lacked the ruthless rapacity and relentless greed to garner truly great wealth. However, Señora Fortuna smiled upon him and rewarded him with an interest in a small but profitable silver mine, which he had grubstaked for the prospectors. The sudden wealth and a marriage connection made by his family in Spain opened the door to an even more profitable venture: the quicksilver license.

  Sí, the same royal license that was the basis of my own fortune. The king held a monopoly on the right to sell quicksilver. In turn, the right was granted by royal license to a merchant in each mining area to supply the mines with the substance. For over two decades, Bruto had kept control of the license in Guanajuato. Now we were threatened with its loss.

  “Just as bad,” Bruto explained, “the king’s quicksilver agents can pit us against each other in a bidding war and bleed us both dry.”

  By “bidding war” my uncle meant paying bribes, of course, a war of the ubiquitous mordida, “the bite” that bureaucrats expected for doing their duty. Bruto obviated the threat by arranging a marriage between the Montez and Zavala families. The betrothal sent a shock through the city’s highborn: a gachupine marrying a mestiza . . . only loco passion or financial desperation could impel such a marriage arrangement!

  It was a shock to me, too. Isabella had not moved to Guanajuato at this time—she came the following year—so my love for Isabella did not play a role in my reaction. My first response was fury. I asked my uncle how long he expected to live once I had shoved my dagger into his throat. Not only was Raquel a mestiza, but she also wasn’t a great beauty in my eyes. It was true that the men of the colony held a common belief that the mixture of Spanish and Aztec blood produced women of exceptional grace and beauty, but that did not make her acceptable as my wife.

  When I started to list my objections to Uncle Bruto, he cut me off. “Do you enjoy your fine horses?” my uncle asked. “Thoroughbreds that a duke would envy? The wardrobe of a prince? Your card games, expensive wines, imported cigarros, and whores every night with your amigos? Tell me, muchacho, would you rather get a job as a muleteer? Because you will be working with your feet in manure if Raquel’s father is granted the license.”

  ¡Ay de mí! Such a fall from grace was unthinkable. I agreed to the match. And decided I would also get to know the señorita, though with an arranged marriage knowing your bride-to-be well before the wedding night was not considered prudent.

  While not possessing attributes that I prized, Raquel was a woman of many talents. Educated not only in the ways of running a household and serving her husband, she had studied art, literature, science, mathematics, music, history, even philosophy—all the things I despised.

  “I read and write poetry,” she told me, as we walked in her family’s garden during my first visit. “I’ve read Sor Juana, Calderón, Moratin, and Dante. I’ve studied Juvenal and Tacitus, play the piano, corresponded with Madame de Stael in Paris, read Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, in which she proved that the education system deliberately trains women to be frivolous and incapable. I’ve—”

  “¡Ay María!” I crossed myself.

  She stared at me openmouthed. “Why did you do that?”

  “What?”

  “You made the sign of the cross and spoke the name of the Holy Mother.”

  “For certain, I always seek the protection of heaven when I am in the presence of the devil.”

  “Is that what you think of me? A devil?”

  “Not you. The devil’s servant is the person who permitted you to delve into such nonsense.” I’d heard that her father was permissive toward his children. I was stunned by the damage his permissiveness had done to the poor girl’s mind.

  “Do you think because a woman has a brain and uses it for something besides household chores and babies that she’s a demon?”

  “Not a demon, señorita, but a woman who is
damaging her mind.” I shook my finger at her. “That is not my opinion alone; all men share the view. Music, philosophy, poetry—those are the interests of priests and scholars. Women have no business contemplating such matters.”

  Everyone knows that a woman’s mind is not capable of dealing with matters outside the family and household. Like peons, women are of limited intellect, not estúpido, of course, but mentally incapable of comprehending politics, commerce, and fine horses—the things most important to society.

  “Women should read books and study the world,” she said.

  “A woman’s place is in the kitchen and in a man’s bed.”

  She shot me a look of angry determination. “I’m sorry, señor, that you find I will be an unsuitable wife.”

  She left in a huff. I went after her and used my best charms to soothe things over, the grim specter of laboring in a stable still snapping at my heels.

  We rode out the crisis, and soon I courted her in the proper way. After I presented her with a gold and pearl necklace, I stood under her balcony on Saturday nights to serenade her with love songs and a guitar.

  We avoided talk of her book learning. Secretly, I feared the harm done to her tender mind by those mountains of words and ideas was already beyond repair. Could I undo the damage? Could she still perform her duties as a wife?

  I discussed my fears with my drinking compañeros, and we all concluded that the problem was her father: He was a weak-willed fool, filled with too much book learning himself. His library of over a hundred volumes had clearly muddled both their minds.

  Some dandies at the paseo struck another blow at my composure when they derided Raquel for sometimes riding horses. Now, mind you, women have been known to ride caballos. Revoltingly mounted on a ridiculous contraption known as a sidesaddle, some headstrong women have humiliated themselves on the paseo. One sometimes glimpsed women of the lower classes, the wives of vaqueros and rancheros, seated on a horse or mule in front of their husbands, while he holds her waist with one hand and the reins with the other. But Raquel had ridden a horse like a man, wearing split skirts and petticoats. ¡Dios mío! Now the whole city was mocking me.