Aztec Rage Read online

  IN DURANCE VILE

  ELEVEN

  MY HEAD FELT as if Tempest had kicked it. I came to, lying on the inn floor, blood flowing down my face. People milled around me. I tried to rise, but a voice in the fog told me to stay down and kicked me in the ribs. I stayed down. The fog had lifted a little by the time two constables arrived. Listening to the innkeeper’s story, they booted me in the belly and bound my hands behind my back.

  “You’re lucky they didn’t kill you,” a tall, uniformed constable said, as they led me to the jail. “If you had not been dressed as a caballero, they would have cut your throat and left you in the gutter. Do you think you can cheat an honest innkeeper of his due? An innkeeper works hard for his money; he’s not a worthless dandy like you.”

  “He’s no caballero,” his partner said. Shorter and stockier, his uniform was dirt-smeared, rumpled, and his foul, floppy-soled boots had not been blacked in decades. He wore his beard and hair disheveled, and, like his partner, he wore a short sheathed sword strapped to his belt. He shook a heavy wooden truncheon in my face. “He’s a stinking lépero who robbed and killed to get those fancy clothes, then cheated a poor, hardworking innkeeper.”

  I had paid the innkeeper many times over, him and whoever else had plundered my possessions while I was unconscious. The silver buttons on my jacket and pants were gone. So were my silver belt buckle and cigarro case.

  Smart people, no? I should have thought of it myself: One button alone would have provided a fine meal and night’s lodging without the necessity of being beaten by a mob. Now the law was marching me to jail, my hands bound behind my back, a rope lashed to one ankle, its other end to the taller constable’s wrist. If I tried to run, he would jerk the rope and drop me like a vaquero toppling a tethered steer. Then his partner would club me into unconsciousness.

  We passed few people on the street because it was dark. For that I was thankful. When we arrived at the jail, the constables tied my ankle-rope to an iron ring and stepped aside. I watched curiously as each pitched a copper coin at a line scratched on the floor a dozen feet away.

  The winner was the short, stocky unkempt constable. Grinning at me, he sat on a bench and began pulling off one of his boots. “Take your boots off.”

  “Why?”

  “I won them.”

  I stared at him like the innkeeper had stared at me when I told him I had no money. “You can’t win my boots, you puta-bastardo.”

  He swung his truncheon at me but I was ready for him. Slipping under his swing, I rammed him with my head. But even as he toppled backward, his partner was yanking my ankle rope, causing my left leg to shoot straight up in the air and my body to flip forward. Standing on the back of my neck, the tall constable immobilized me until his companion found his own feet and clubbed me into submission.

  With pain in a dozen places and sure all the bones in my body were broken, I lay still and bleeding as my boots were removed and the silver trim stripped from my breeches.

  I was barefoot and coatless when they led me into the cell block. Clanging a pipe against the iron bars, they summoned a trustee from the cells below.

  Shaken, bleeding, knees trembling, I asked the taller of the two constables, “All this over a plate of frijoles and tortillas?”

  He shook his head. “You’ll hang for the murder of Bruto de Zavala.”

  “Murder? You’re mad.”

  “He poisons a man and says you’re crazy!” his partner howled.

  A trustee arrived. They unshackled my hands, unfastened the ankle-rope to my ankles, and opened the iron-barred gates.

  “Lighten him up for the hangman,” the constable wearing my boots said, shoving me through the gate. “He prefers them thin so their necks don’t break with the fall.”

  The trustee led me down a dark, dank, stone-walled corridor. He stopped before opening a second gate. He was a mestizo with an unkempt beard and a dead eye.

  “Have any dinero?”

  I stared at him, mute, expressionless.

  “Coppers, anything?” he asked.

  “Your thieving friends took it.”

  “Then give me your pants.”

  I swelled with rage. “Touch my pants and I’ll kill you.”

  He just stared at me for a moment, no real expression on his face. Then he nodded.

  “First time in jail. You’ll learn . . . You’ll learn.”

  He let me pass peacefully, then banged me on the back of my head with his fist. I staggered forward and turned to defend myself but he had closed the gate with him on the other side.

  “I know who you are,” he said. “I saw you prancing down the street on your great white horse, proud like a king. I stepped into the gutter to beg the price of a cup of pulque.” His voice became a hoarse whisper. “Without even glancing at me, you lashed out with your whip.” He touched his face. A scar ran down his brow and onto his cheek. The whip had struck his eye, blinding him. “You’ll learn,” he said.

  As he turned away, I gripped the bars and shouted at his back. “I don’t have a white horse!”

  He spoke without turning, and I barely caught his words.

  “You’re all the same.”

  I stood for a moment, gripping the bars, hanging on for support, my knees weak, my stomach volcanic with fear. Behind me was another dark stone-walled room. I pushed away from the bars and took steps down to a chamber ill lit by a single candle. I made out men, perhaps twenty of them—indios, mestizos, all poor trash and stinking léperos—some sleeping on the bare stone floor, others standing up. The place stank of sweat, piss, feces, and vomit. Some were half-naked; others wore foul and dirty rags.

  A group of five or six gathered before me, vultures looking for carrion. One stepped forward, a husky indio, short but broad. I remained two steps up, the commanding heights.

  “Give me your pants,” he said.

  I stared at him for a moment, then looked beyond him. As he glanced over his shoulder, I lashed out with my foot, my heel hammering his chin. I heard the crack of his jaw and teeth. He staggered backward and went down, banging his head on the stone floor.

  I stepped down, into that pit of hell. The flocking vultures broke up and backed off. Finding a space against a wall, I sat on the floor, my back against the wall. I leaned back and watched the man I had hit. He had gotten into a sitting position, holding his face, the fight gone out of him. Another man eyed him . . . for what? A piece of food he had hidden? For his filthy, ragged pants? Or just the notion that he might have something?

  Animals, I thought. They’re animals. I knew I must never show fear or weakness around them.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I was exhausted and aching, stunned by hunger and fatigue. My eyes burned, my head throbbed.

  He poisoned a man . . .

  How did such an insane accusation come about? How could they accuse me of poisoning Bruto? What possible—

  ¡Dios mío! I realized what must have happened. Bruto had sent me brandy, which I had returned, saying it was a gift from my own stock. There was poison in the brandy!

  In an attempt to poison me, Bruto had poisoned himself.

  It thundered at me like the charge of a bull. Bruto had raised me for a single purpose: to ensure his management of an estate that brought him money and prestige. As long as I devoted myself to horses and whores—and delegated my finances to him—his life’s dream was secure. And then I threatened to take it all away from him.

  Just the night before, I had told him in the heat of anger I was seizing control of my assets, dismissing him. I didn’t mean those words; I had no intention of acting on them, but he didn’t know that.

  Bruto would lose everything he’d worked for. I owned the quicksilver license, the hacienda, and the house in town. If he had any assets of his own, I didn’t know of them.

  More pieces fell into place. Years ago he had had me sign a will in which he was my heir. The document had meant nothing to me, I had signed it without even reading it. But he would have l
ost that status when I married Isabel.

  And the seminary school he sent me to in my youth . . . no wonder he tried to turn a born rogue into a man of the cloth. Had I become a priest and never married, he would have remained my sole heir and had a free rein forever over my assets.

  He had tried to poison me with the gift of brandy—and ended up drinking it himself when I returned it.

  Bruto had been slain by his own hand.

  I started to get up from the jail floor, anxious to dispel the charge that I had poisoned my uncle. I sat back down. Who was I to tell? The snoring indio sleeping off too much pulque on my right? The lépero dog I had kicked in the face? The trustee who imagined that I had blinded his eye?

  I would wait till mañana. I knew nothing about the law, but I understood that the viceroy didn’t hang men until they were tried. Wasn’t I entitled to an abogado, a lawyer? I wasn’t sure of exactly how they did their work, but I knew lawyers advised people and spoke for them in court.

  Regardless, now I knew the truth, and I would have a chance to explain it. The world was reasonable, was it not?

  Once I was out of this jail I would . . . I shook the thought off like a dog shaking off water. I had no idea of what I would do, where I would go. Isabella! I did have her, one true unswerving friend who would help me. When she learned of my plight, she would come to my aid.

  Like most women, she had no money of her own, but out of love for me, I was sure she would pawn her jewels. The loss of fortune and the accusations against me, including the foul lie that I had impure blood, would shock her at first, but her love for me would prevail.

  The realization that I had someone who cared for me outside the stone walls of the prison buoyed my spirits. I was certain that Isabella would charge to my rescue with the same passion that the French girl Joan once led an army.

  TWELVE

  THE GRAY LIGHT of morning filtered through small, barred windows high up on the stone wall. The windows were large enough to let in night’s cold, damp air but too small to air out the stench. Three latrine buckets lined against a wall. The buckets smelled no worse than the men around me.

  I spent a bad night on the hard stone floor, awakening over and over, cold, miserable, in pain. In the light of dawn, I saw that it wasn’t a single chamber. One end had a small, barred cell, big enough for two men to stretch out in. A young Aztec occupied it alone. He pulled a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine from a basket.

  “Who’s that?” I asked a nearby man.

  “The son of a cacique,” he said.

  A cacique was the headman—in the old days literally the chief—of an indio village. With a little fast dealing, the heads of large villages could acquire significant fortunes.

  “He stabbed another man. His family keeps him well. He’ll leave soon.”

  I got the idea. His family paid the guards and trustee to make life comfortable for the man until he received the “justice” that his family could afford to pay.

  The prisoners began forming a line into the corridor leading out of the cell.

  “What’s the line for?” I asked a mestizo.

  “Food.”

  I got in behind him. My stomach was in knots. I wasn’t hungry, but I needed to keep up my strength.

  “When do we see our abogado?” I asked.

  He stared stupidly at me.

  “An abogado who will defend us, when do we see one?”

  He shrugged. I realized he didn’t know what I was talking about. He probably didn’t know what a lawyer was. I would have to wait and ask the guards.

  “How do you get a message out?” I asked an indio behind me. I had to let Isabella know I was being held.

  “Dinero,” he said.

  “I have no money.”

  He nodded down. “You have pants.”

  True, not only did I have pants, and some of the men did not, but even after being stripped of silver, my pants were of high quality. But I would give up my life before my pants.

  The one-eyed trustee was at a small table at the front of the line. He slopped a watery corn gruel into clay bowls. Two guards stood talking and smoking nearby.

  I stepped out of line and approached them. “Señors, I need your assistance. I—”

  “Get back in line!”

  They grabbed their truncheons.

  I backed up. “I just need to ask—”

  “In line or you go to the stocks.”

  “Shut up,” the other one said, when I started to speak again. “Prisoners speak only when spoken to.”

  “Madness,” I muttered, back in line.

  “It is not so bad, señor,” someone behind me said. “They’ll feed us, then we’ll work cleaning the streets. After a few days, they let us go.”

  They would not let me go after a few days, not a man accused of murdering an important man, a gachupine. But I said nothing to the indio, who had probably been scraped off the street for public drunkenness.

  When I came up to the table, I picked up a clay bowl and held it out for the half-blind trustee to fill with the gruel. The concoction looked disgusting, a thin, slimy, yellow liquid.

  The trustee gave me a toothless grin. And poured the ladle of gruel on my pants. I hit him with the bowl, breaking it across the side of his head. As I came around to hit him with my fists, I knocked over the pot of gruel. I saw the guards approaching and backed up, throwing my hands in the air.

  “He attacked me!” I yelled.

  They clubbed me to the ground.

  I was dragged back into the guard area, my hands chained behind me, to a set of triple stocks, a heavy wooden frame with holes for the head, hands, and ankles. They had me sit on a small stool behind the stocks. They opened the contraption and put my ankles in first, bolted a wood yoke over them. After locking my wrists and my neck into another yoke, I was entrapped in all three areas. Then they kicked the stool out from under me. My body weight bent my neck, almost to the breaking point.

  “We’ll remove the neck stock in an hour if you keep your mouth shut. Open it again, and it goes back on, and it’ll stay there until your neck is stretched as long as your leg.”

  THIRTEEN

  MIERDA!” I YELLED.

  “Eh, how true, how true,” the trustee said. “The excrement from animals, isn’t that what you call us, Señor Caballero? Those of us who eat frijoles and tortillas and live in huts you wouldn’t use for your horses?”

  After two days in the stocks, certain that I was permanently deformed into the shape of a horseshoe, I was sent back to the cell, to the tender ministrations of the cyclops trustee. My first assignment was to empty the excrement from the three latrine buckets into a barrel, which was hauled away and dumped somewhere outside the city. After emptying their foul contents, I had to scrape the buckets clean with a spoon and rinse them with a little water.

  María, Madre de Dios, have mercy on me! The stench, the filth. The closest I had ever gotten to a bucket of excrement in my life was using a chamber pot that the servants kept clean and fresh.

  I had to lug three buckets at one time, two of them awkwardly with one hand. As I staggered under the weight, the two that were unbalanced slopped and spilled, splashing onto my bare feet.

  Outside, by the jail’s back entrance, I emptied the buckets into a waste barrel sitting in a donkey cart while a nearby guard watched. Using a wooden spoon, I scraped the sides of the buckets, poured a little water in them, splashed it around, and poured the slop into the barrel. I used dirt to wipe the splash off my feet and hands.

  Two men came by, well-dressed merchants, no doubt on their way to visit a government office as my uncle frequently had done. I had seen one of them before, the manager of a mine who purchased quicksilver through my uncle, but I didn’t know his name. Giving me a wide berth, they placed handkerchiefs over their noses. The man I had met before glanced at me, perplexed, as if he thought he knew me.

  I said nothing because a guard stood by, musket at the ready. I’m sure if I had spoken to
the two men he would have butt-stroked the back of my head.

  Three days after I was released from the stocks, another unruly prisoner relieved me of bucket duty. The guards then lined me up with the other prisoners to meet an official.

  The official sat behind a small, crude desk and made notes on paper with quill and ink as he spoke to each of us in turn. Finally, it was my turn.

  “Name.”

  “Juan de Zavala. Are you my attorney?”

  He looked up at me. “You have money?”

  “No.”

  “Then you have no attorney.”

  “Who are you?”

  He sniffed a nosegay, a scented pouch that relieved the smell of me and the other prisoners. “Your tone is offensive, but I know who you are. I’ve been warned about you. A murderous Aztec who once masqueraded as a gentleman. You’re here because you killed a man who’d befriended you.”

  He had an empty look, cold and unfeeling, a piece of stone with no marks on it.

  “None of that’s true. Please hear my side of it. I’m innocent, but no one will listen.”

  “Shut up and answer my questions. I’m a notario, my job is to take your explanation of why you committed the crime. It will be presented to the judges of the audiencia. They will decide your fate.”

  A notary was a clerk who legalized papers, gave oaths, performed clerical duties of filing governmental papers, and took statements from those charged with crimes. They were typically criollos, which, given the dominance of gachupines in New Spain, meant they were not of great importance. However, at this moment, the man was as crucial to my survival as the musket at my shoulder when I faced a charging jaguar.

  “Will I be permitted to speak to them? The judges? To tell them what happened?”

  He waved away my questions with his hand. “I will report to them, and they will decide how to proceed. New Spain is a nation of laws, and the courts are just, but you’ll taste the whip end of the system if you’re a troublemaker. I’m informed by the jailors that you’re a violent man who wreaks violence even in jail.”