Gary Jennings - Aztec Blood

Mateo doubted she would recognize either of us. He had removed his beard and left only a rather large mustache. Like me, his hair was closely cropped. The putas at the tavern where we had been staying had dyed his hair and mustache red. With a red eye patch, red hat, red doublet, and red pants, he was as inconspicuous as a peacock in a flock of pigeons.

"Flamboyance defines my disguise," he said earlier, as I gawked at the clothes he intended to wear to the viceroy's ball. "I learned the art of disguise when I had to play several roles in the same play. If Isabella sees me, she will not recognize me for the don's friend."

"You will hide in plain sight?"

"Exactly so."

Eh, we had seen Mateo on stage, had we not, amigos? He is a fine actor—sometimes. Other times he commits the actor's sin of overdramatizing his role. Like everything else about Mateo, there was no middle ground. When he was good on stage, he was the best. And when he was bad, Dios mio, he incited riots.

If the Book of Fates determined that Isabella would be at the party, I hoped Isabella would, as usual, be too caught up in herself to recognize us.

"I will kill myself if I am exposed before Eléna."

Mateo twirled one of the ends of his mustache. "Compadre, your problem is that you do not accept women for what we really need them for. You want her to be puta and angel. I'm happy with just the woman of sin."

When we pulled up in front of the gate to Don Silvestre's house, I waited inside the coach while Mateo went to fetch the don. I tapped my knee nervously with the tip of my dagger, more inclined to cut my own throat than the old man's if he exposed me.

The only light at the gate was a large candle in a bronze and glass holder. It threw no light more than a couple of feet, but I skulked inside the dark coach anyway.

Despite my apprehensions, there had been one encouraging event. Miguel de Soto had shown up unexpectedly at my door. Profusely begging my pardon, he said his unnamed associates were cutting me in as a partner. But the ante had risen: I needed fifty thousand pesos to buy in.

Provoking Luis had tipped the scale. Realizing the viceroy would never permit him to kill me in a duel, he wanted to break me financially then put a dagger in my back. It was an enormous amount of money, and I agreed to only thirty thousand. I gave him three thousand pesos in gold ducats to show good faith and told him I would have the rest in a few days. Handing over the gold, I asked for more details concerning my investment.

"The price of maize is soaring," he said.

It was. Maize had all but vanished in the markets—when the warehouses were full. My new servants grumbled about it. No doubt it cut into the profits they made cheating me on food purchases.

"My partners own the maize in the warehouses. I control its distribution."

They were keeping it out of the marketplace—literally starving people—in order to drive the price up. When the price reached its peak, they would flood their brokers with grain and reap a prodigious profit. I had suspected this, but to hear it put bluntly increased my quandary about harming Eléna. Evil manipulation of the staple could not be done without the knowledge and assent of the viceroy.

When I heard Mateo and the don, I peered out the coach window, tense. Mateo let the old man go through the gate first and hung back to fasten it.

Don Silvestre came alone toward the coach, and I opened the door.

"Carlos—" he began.

Someone shot out of the darkness and pawed at the old man's face. The don tried to grab him and the assailant shoved him back, sending him staggering back on weak knees. Mateo caught the don as he fell backward.

"Thief!" Don Silvestre yelled. "He took my eyepiece!"

I shot out of the carriage and joined Mateo and the carriage driver in a pursuit of the thief. It was hopeless, the thief had disappeared. To my relief Jaime the Lépero had played his role well.

I exchanged looks with Mateo as we hurried back to where the don was waiting by the carriage. This was the test. Taking a deep breath, I walked straight up to the old man and gave him an abrazo, a great hug.

"Don Silvestre," Mateo said, "how regretful it is that you two meet after all these years in the midst of this dreadful theft."

"My eyeglass, he took my eyeglass—and it was my only one. Only God knows when I can get a replacement."

"I heard that an eyeglass grinder had come aboard the last treasure fleet and took samples of glasses to the mining country," Mateo said. "We shall look into it, eh, Carlos."

"Carlos." The old man patted my face with his palm.

"We shall not let this tragic theft ruin the reunion of you and Carlos," Mateo said. "Off to the viceroy's palace," he told the driver, "the entire city is awaiting the guest of honor."

Mateo kept up a continuous flow of chatter all the way to the palace. What little I said was in such soft tones, the half deaf don missed most of it. Along the way, Mateo lit a tobacco twist with a candle kept lit in a glass enclosure on the side of the carriage. He deliberately held the candle up to illuminate my face in the dark coach. The ball would be brilliantly lit, and we were better off testing the don's eyesight here than in front of a hundred people.

"What do you think, Don Silvestre?" Mateo asked. "Has Carlos changed much since you saw him as a teenager?"

The don leaned forward and squinted at me. "The spit and image of his father," the don said. "I would have picked him out of an army of a thousand as his father's son."

I had to resist the impulse to cross myself and thank God aloud for making the old caballero so vain he would not admit to the infirmities of old age.

One test had been passed. But I knew the Dark Sisters who weaved our fates were not to be so easily appeased. A strange feeling gripped me as we passed through the palace gates. I had always wondered who I really was. Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, asks in the Odyssey: "Does any man truly know who his father is?" I had asked such questions my whole life long, about my father, my mother, and a loco old matrone who dressed in black and sought to drink my blood.

Well, the fray often said God's greatest gift was unanswered prayers, and at last I understood the wisdom in that dictum.

Now I feared God would answer those questions.

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE

I had attended the ribald parties of Seville's theater people, but this was the first grand society ball I had attended. We were greeted by an officer of the guard who stepped smartly in his magnificent uniform as he escorted us to the palace entrance. There, aides to the viceroy were waiting to accompany us to the ballroom. Both aides looked askance at Mateo's crimson garb and eye patch. Mateo's hard-edged swordsman comportment shined through the silk clothes. Had he not been with me, the guest of honor, no doubt they would have been more inclined to call the capitán of the guard before permitting him into the ballroom.

The hall mirrors leading to the ballroom glittered from the candlelight and torches as well as reflecting the brightly trimmed uniforms of the honor guards lining the way.

At the end of the hall, we passed through open doors into a three-story ballroom that could have housed several residences comparable to my rented one, grounds included. Like the mirrored hallway, it blazed with candlelight and torches. The ceiling, fittings, and moldings glistened with silver and gilt, and for a moment I was stunned by the ballroom's magnificence. I found it hard to feign the arrogant indifference of a hidalgo.

Several hundred people drank and talked and strolled around the floor. Still, every eye turned to me as I paused at the top of the sweeping marble staircase leading down to the ballroom floor. I had never in my life felt so out of place, and I was sweating from every pore.