Gary Jennings - Aztec Blood

My hands were quickly tied by soldados.

The viceroy's aide glared down at me. "Take this bandito to the dungeon. He has many questions to answer."

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR

Did I not tell you life is a circle? I began this secret tale after I was given quill and paper by the capitán of the guard. After using my mind to journey out of the cell as I recall my memories, and revealing my innermost secrets, I am still in the cell. Unlike what Mateo can do when he creates his plays, I cannot write a role that permits me to walk through the iron bars.

I have been stalling the capitán, even telling him some of my tales, to keep from being returned to the untender mercies of the Inquisitor priest who seeks God's favor by inflicting pain on others. I saw Fray Osirio often while I was writing this history of a life of lies. Like a vulture waiting for a wounded animal to die, he often waddled back and forth and flapped his wings outside my cell, waiting for the command that he could attach hot pincers back on my flesh.

Ay, all tales must have an end. And it would not be honorable of me to have you come this far, sharing these little inconveniences and tribulations that seem to dog my heels, without being with me when the cards dealt me by the Fates are finally turned face up. Eh, amigos, there is money on all the hands on the table, is there not? Sí, I can understand if some of you are betting against me. For good reasons, there are those among you who would like to see this thief and liar end his days hanging from a gallows with his heels kicking. But no matter what hand you are backing, you will want to be there to see if you win your bet as to my fate.

With that in mind, I have stuck a good quantity of the viceroy's fine thick paper inside my shirt to hide it. My intention is to put down the words in stolen moments at the hidden places where life would take me.

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE

Do you remember my amiga, Carmelita? The puta in the next cell who supplies me with mother's milk for my secret writing? I received my last cup from her today. She is to have her baby at any moment, and they have taken her to a convent to drop it. The guards say that after she is through nursing the baby, she will return to prison and her punishment. What do you want to bet that she will be pregnant again when she returns. Eh, I know she's going to a convent... but stranger things have happened, no?

This was the second dungeon I had been in, and despite the painful reminders from the viceroy's torturers of my many trespasses, it is far superior to the black pool that the Holy Office maintained. A dark, ugly place, in the hands of the viceroy I was at least at ground level, so my cell was dry. And because there were bars rather than iron doors, my cell was not as dark as that black Hades maintained by the inquisitors.

Had they not insisted upon dragging me from my cell and applying tortures that only el diablo himself could have devised, I might have found my time waiting for the ultimate punishment bearable.

As it was, whenever I was not occupied writing the secret story of my days, or thinking—and worrying—about Eléna, I fantasized about how I would deal with Fray Osorio from Veracruz, who had tortured me with his devilish instruments. Of special interest to me was a device that I had heard the capitán of the dungeon guard boast about, one that he said existed in Madrid's Saladero, that infamous of all prisons, and that he has asked the viceroy to obtain. The capitán called this demonic contrivance the "Bull of Phalaris," and claims that it tickled the fiendish fancy of every torturer who used it.

The bull is said to be a great hollow, bronze statue. Torture victims were shoved into it through a trapdoor and roasted by a fire built underneath. Their shrieks were heard from the bull's mouth, making it seem that the bull was bellowing. The capitán claimed that Perilaus, the designer of this fiend's delight, was the first person to experience his own creation and that Phalaris, it's commissioner, was ultimately roasted in it.

Many a night as vermin ate at my wounds and sores, in the privacy of my mind I put Fray Osorio into the bronze bull and built a fire beneath. I would not build a large fire, but a small one, just enough to roast the fray slowly as I listened to the sweet music of his screams.

Are these not grand thoughts for a dungeon rat, who does not know what day it is? I had been unconscious so often that I had lost all track of time. By my estimate it was more than a month after my incarceration that I received my first visitor, other than torturers. No doubt the visitor had paid a bribe for the privilege of visiting the colony's most notorious criminal, coming caped and hooded to hide his identity.

When I first saw the dark figure approaching my cell, my immediate reaction was that it was Mateo. I had been writing when the person approached. I leaped from my stone bench to meet him at the bars, my quill still in hand. But it was not my compadre come to rescue me.

"Are you enjoying your stay with your brother rats and cucaraches?" Luis asked.

"Very much. Unlike my two-legged brother, they are not consumed with hate and greed."

"Don't call me your brother. My blood is pure."

"Perhaps someday I shall see the color of it, I suspect it is yellow."

"I don't think you will live long enough to spill my blood."

"Did you come here for a reason, brother?"

His face was a map of hate. His eyes were meaner than a cornered rat's, his lips pulled back with contempt.

"The marriage bans are being published. While you rot in this dungeon, or trade it for a grave, I will be married to Eléna."

"You can force her into marriage but never to love you. No one could love you, no one except that evil old woman who bloodied her hands with the lives of anyone who stood between her and her greed."

"Eléna will love me. You don't think she could really love a mestizo, do you, a lady of pure blood loving a thing with tainted blood, a creature like you who is hardly human?"

"Eh, my brother, it cuts deep, doesn't it? You know she loves me and that you can only possess her through her uncle's coercion. Is that what you want, brother? To possess a woman by fraud and force? Is rape your idea of love?"

He visibly trembled from the rage toward me that boiled in him.

"How does it feel to know you have to buy her from her uncle because she cannot stand you. What is the viceroy's share of your maize scheme? How many children will die of starvation because of your greed?"

"I came here to tell you how much I hate you. You have been a black shadow in my life since I was a boy. My grandmother told me of my father's folly, that he had put a stain on one of the proudest families of Spain by marrying an india girl."

A bolt of shock hit me. ¡Santa Maria! Don Eduardo had married my mother! I understood now, I was not a bastard. The marriage legitimized me. No wonder Luis and his grandmother had always feared me. Eduardo, dreamer and poet that he was, had not taken advantage of my mother but had married her, creating a mestizo who was legally heir to a noble house with ties to royalty.

"You fear me because I'm the eldest son," I said. "By law I'm heir to the title when Eduardo dies." I threw back my head and howled with laugher. "I possess everything you ever wanted, the grand titles, the houses, and haciendas, everything that you take pride in—even the woman you desire!"

"You possess nothing but the mierda you lie in and the vermin that eats your flesh."

He said nothing for a moment and then took a piece of paper out of his pocket.

"As a peace offering to my bride-to-be, I agreed to come here and deliver a message to you. She is still grateful for the services you performed in Veracruz."