“What did the alcalde do?”
“Threw me in jail.”
A silent pall settled over the table.
The hacendado asked, “The servant girl, she was an Aztec?”
“Yes.”
He scoffed. “Then what was there to complain about? She was her master’s property. Perhaps she was resentful that she did not bear his bastard.”
Rising in her chair, Marina caught a look from the padre and sat back down. Diego stared down at his plate, his face working in anger.
“This is my dinner table,” Hidalgo said, “and all of you are my guests. Everyone is welcome to express themselves at this table, and I will express myself, too: I hope that this young man enters the priesthood and proves to the church that the Messiah is in all people, including indios, and that we are all God’s children and that God does not condone the enslavement or abuse of His children.” He nodded at the novice. “I hope you can demonstrate to the church that men of your race make fine priests, but whichever path you follow, I am sure you will grace it with dignity and righteousness, with honor and love. Your name already is divinely blessed: Rayu, the Nahuatl word for ‘thunder.’ ”
As I said, Dolores was a very strange place.
Before dinner, Lizardi learned from a discussion with the visiting priests that the padre had once been head of a college. The Inquisition had sanctioned him, however, and he’d lost his seat for his liberal beliefs and his spirited life, which included, it was whispered, gambling and affairs of the heart. But, do we judge a man for his good deeds or his youthful indiscretions?
The hacendado slammed his fist on the table. “You’re too damn tolerant, Padre.” He glared across the table at Marina. “In my entire life, I have never heard anyone permit peons and women to speak their minds on important subjects. You sow insurrection. Men have gone to the rack and the stake for less, even priests.”
The padre was undeterred. Instead of shying away from controversy, Hidalgo, indeed the entire table, exploded into another dangerous discourse.
Ignorant of such matters—in fact, not having the vaguest idea what they were talking about—I wisely kept my mouth shut. But for the first time in my life, I had seen caballeros in a different light. No, I suppose it really started back when I was on the streets, hungry and dirty, working like an animal while the “quality” people passed me by, not giving me as much consideration as one would a stray dog. I saw that this old caballero was not the equal of the priest, the novice, and for that matter the women at the table in anything, even his knowledge of horseflesh. I had no doubt Marina knew more on that subject than he did.
I cannot say that I agreed with the padre’s radical notions, or that I truly believed that women should speak their minds in the company of men, or even that a woman should be permitted to improve her mind, as Marina and Raquel had, but I didn’t like the way the hacendado tried to bully Marina and Diego. I was even more affected by the realization that the two Aztecs were more than a match for him.
“Don’t criollos treat peons the same way gachupines treat criollos?” I asked, almost without thinking, breaking my meticulous silence. My remark had been reflexive, and I was guilty of a horrific heresy, which had escaped my lips before I could retrieve it. That statement also provoked a tumultuous debate.
During a pause in the discussions, the hacendado leaned over to me and said, “Brother Juan, I came into town to see the doctor, but he’s a quack. He tried to give me medicine I would not swill to my pigs. The padre tells me you are a trained healer. If you can cure me, you would not find me ungenerous.”
“What is your condition, señor?”
He reached grabbed his crotch. “I have a hard time passing water. Tonight I’ve drank a goodly quantity of wine and brandy, I have the burning urge to pass water, but when I attempt it, it’s a dribble.” He nudged me and gave me a knowing look. “I confess, Brother, I have enjoyed too many india whores.” Grinning, he quickly crossed himself.
He had spoken within Marina’s hearing, and I saw fury flash across her face. Averting her eyes, she turned her attention to the others.
I felt her anger as my own. Bruto said my mother was an india whore, and I, the son of a whore. What was a whore to a caballero? A woman he took—by force if he so chose—because he could. Rank and privilege conferred on him that right. Nothing else. And those who exposed his rank wrongdoing, he punished brutally.
“Are you in pain right now?” I asked.
“Terrible pain.”
“Then come with me.”
I stood up. “Padre, your meal was a feast for kings, but Señor Ayala and I have some serious business to transact. You will excuse us, I’m sure.”
On the way out Lizardi grabbed my arm and pulled me aside.
“What are you doing?”
“He needs treatment. I’m going to give it to him.”
“You know nothing about medicine.”
I grinned at him. “You instructed me this morning.”
“You’ll get us hanged!”
“Can they hang us twice?”
In the room the padre had assigned to me and Lizardi, I selected the proper instrument from our medical bag. I went down the hallway to the hacendado’s room and knocked on the door.
He answered the door, and I gave him what I considered to be a professional frown.
“I am ready, señor,” I said.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Lay down on the bed. And pull down your pants.”
TWENTY-FOUR
WHEN I CAME out of the room, Lizardi, the padre, Marina, and the two visiting priests were huddled in the hallway. I quietly closed the hacendado’s door behind me.
Padre Hidalgo stared askance at the door. “We . . . Brother Juan, we heard the screams of Señor Ayala. Is he—”
“You killed him!” my “lay brother” blurted out, white-faced with fear. Ready to bolt, Lizardi’s eyes were wide and his legs shaking as he shifted from one foot to another.
I raised my eyebrows. “Killed him? Am I an executioner or a healer?” Without waiting for an answer, I went on. “Señor Ayala is resting comfortably. I think his screaming wore him out.”
I smiled at Marina. “I believe, señorita, you had promised to show me the garden.”
She hadn’t made such a promise, but she reacted graciously. “My pleasure, Brother Juan.”
We were nearly out the back door when the padre shouted a question at me. “Brother Juan, what treatment did you give him?”
Lizardi looked ready to detonate. “What did you do to him?”
“I simply gave him the appropriate treatment for his condition.” I grinned. “I ran a steel rod up his penis to remove an obstruction.”
Marina showed the good grace not to laugh until we were in the garden.
“Is he going to die? His screams were horrible.”
“He won’t die.” I hoped. “But he will hurt like hell.”
She picked a rose and smelled it as we walked along.
“You are a very strange person, Brother Juan.”
“How so?”
“If I may be so bold, you confuse me. Your horse . . .”
“Given to me by a hacendado who says he threw him once too often. Not the horse of a monk, but as you know, we live on the sufferance of others.”
“I suppose the hacendado gave you caballero boots also.”
“Of course, a poor man like myself couldn’t afford such finery on his feet. My customary footwear is sandals.”
I stopped, staring at her in the moonlight.
“Does that satisfy your questions, señorita?”
“One more.”
“Sí?”
“You look at a woman as a man looks at a woman. I thought lay brothers had a vow of chastity.”
“That depends on the brother.”
“But shouldn’t they still strive for something less than naked lust?”
I sighed. “I haven’t been a Bethlehemite for
long, unlike Brother Alano, who, I sometimes think, was born in his monkish robes. I call myself a fraud because I came to the calling in a different way than most. A love affair sent me to the charitable brotherhood.” I took her hand and pressed it against my chest. “I was in love with a woman who was far above me socially. She returned my love. Her family found out and demanded she cease our relationship. When she told them she would never give me up, I was forced to flee her father’s paid assassins. Locking her in her room, he told her that I had perished under their blades. She believed the lie and . . . and . . .” I couldn’t go on. I choked up.
“No, señor . . . She didn’t . . . ?”
I nodded. “Yes. She couldn’t live without me. She plunged a dagger into her heart. Afterward, I had few choices. I could join the brotherhood . . . or join her. Now, when I see you, I want to rend these monkish robes, be a man again, and taste a woman’s lips.”
I pulled her closer to me, her lips a kiss away from mine.
“Señorita, my heart has—”
“Brother Juan, I must talk to you!”
I almost jumped out of my monk’s habit. It was Lizardi.
“Not now,” I snarled.
Marina pulled herself away from me.
“I must go,” she said.
She fled, and I grabbed Lizardi by the throat. “You miserable little worm, I should crush your throat and rid myself of you.” I shoved him back. “Why are you panicking?”
“The hacendado. You killed him.”
“No, I didn’t.”
In truth, I wasn’t sure. I shoved the thin silver tube up his penis and punished him for insulting Diego, Marina, and my mother. I hurt him; he screamed. But kill him?
“Are you sure he’s dead?” I whispered.
“I opened his door and peeked in. The candle by his bed was lit, and I could see him on the bed. I heard no noise, no whimpering. That thing you shoved into him—”
“You said it was to clear the penis.”
“I told you it was to clear water blockage, but we don’t know how to use it. He may have bled to death, or perhaps the pain killed him. He was just lying there, dead I think, with that hideous tube sticking up.”
I rubbed my chin. “¡Ay de mi! You have gotten us into another fine mess, amigo.”
“Me!”
“If we leave now, this late at night, we’d arouse suspicion. We can’t go without awakening the stableman, without the padre and everyone else knowing it. We must escape in the morning at first light. That would arouse the suspicion of no one. We’ll just tell them we must continue our journey. We will be gone before they find his body.”
“And if they find it first?”
“Is this the first patient to die under the care of a physician? We will examine the body and announce that his heart gave out. We will be saddened, but it was God’s will. When his widow comes, we will be kneeling beside the body, opening a path to heaven for the soul.”
“You’re a madman. I’m sorry I ever got involved with you. I should turn you in and—”
I grabbed him and jerked him close, pulling out my dagger and putting it between his legs. “Listen carefully, amigo. Inform on me to the authorities, the buzzards will breakfast on your eyeballs.”
TWENTY-FIVE
A RESTLESS NIGHT without a woman at my side and listening to Lizardi snoring on the bed we shared left me in such a foul mood that I was ready to run one of those silver catheters up a particular part of his body and not where I stuck it in the hacendado.
The sun was barely peeking from the east as I pulled on my boots and grabbed my saddlebag. “Let’s go before the rest are up. We’ll wake the stableman for our horses and tell him to give our thanks to the padre after we are gone. We’ll have him tell Hidalgo that we were called away on a medical emergency.”
“Can we eat first?”
“We eat on the way, whatever we can kill. Unless you’d like to stick around and have breakfast with the hacendado’s spirit and the hangman.”
We slipped out of the room and hurried down the corridor and around the corner . . .
“Señors!”
I froze. Lizardi gasped. He looked ready to faint.
Padre Hidalgo and the two visiting priests were in the corridor outside the room the visiting priests had been given. The priests had their bags in hand, too, getting as early a start as Lizardi and I, but of course, they were not sneaking out like thieves. Or murderers.
“Pa—Pa—Padre,” Lizardi stammered. “We were just le—le—”
“Leaving,” I interjected. “A medical emergency, you see; we must leave immediately.”
“I’ve heard nothing about it,” the padre said.
“Nor have we . . . I mean, not until a little while ago.”
“But what of the hacendado? How is he?”
“God’s will,” I said. “It was out of our hands. The Lord acts in mysterious ways.” I crossed myself.
The padre stared at me. “You don’t mean . . .”
I nodded.
He crossed himself and muttered something in Latin. The other two priests dropped their bags and knelt. One of them began uttering a prayer for the dead.
Lizardi and I exchanged looks, then dropped to our knees. I didn’t know the words but quietly mumbled nonsense that I hoped sounded like what the priest was saying.
“What’s the matter? Somebody die?”
My blood froze. I slowly turned.
Mother of God!
The ghost of the hacendado stood in the corridor. The specter had a blanket wrapped around him. The blanket stopped at the ghost’s bare knees. From that point down to his toes, he was bare.
Padre Hidalgo stepped next to me and addressed the apparition.
“Señor, we were praying for you. Praise the Lord, amigo, we thought you were dead.”
“Dead? Dead! Yes, I’m a ghost!” he shouted, laughing like a loon.
I was still kneeling as the hacendado came up and stood beside me.
“Señor Doctor,” he said, “my water comes out in a fine stream, but can you take this damn contraption from me?”
He opened his blanket to reveal the silver catheter sticking out of his penis.
TWENTY-SIX
WITH THE HACIENDA owner alive and well, we had no need to flee. The “medical emergency” quickly evaporated.
My desire for Marina intensified, so I visited her rancho. Small but comfortable looking, the casa had three rooms, a tile roof, and a pleasant garden. She was not around, but I could see her horses in the distance. They grazed in the field. Good stock, they were not purebloods—certainly not of Tempest’s champion lines—but the kind of tough, wiry ponies vaqueros favored.
The sun was high and oppressively hot, as I made my way toward a fragrant frangipani tree beside a pond a hundred paces from the house, its boughs festooned with flamboyant flowers and blossoms.
I leaned under its shaded canopy. Enjoying a cigarro, I thought about Marina. The woman had been on my mind since I first laid eyes on her. I’d gone so long without a woman, thinking about Marina’s secret places stirred my desire. Something in her eyes bespoke a sensual hunger that no man had sated, never even brought to full arousal, never truly challenged. Before the day was out, I would rouse her longing from its lair and uncage her savage beast.
Water splashing in the pond distracted my thoughts. Peering through the bushes I saw the naked back of a woman in the water. She had the rich brown coloring of an Aztec, long unbraided black hair flowing down her back . . . the woman of my desire.
I watched in secret as she enjoyed her swim. Annoyed with each other, two birds shrieked and flapped excitedly. Marina tensed and looked my way. I ducked down and watched her through lower bushes. She gave no sign she had spotted me and relaxed in the water once again, lifting her face and upper body to the sun. My eyes savored her nakedness. I dared not move, afraid of causing her to stop. She lazily scooped handfuls of water in a slow and sensual rhythm over her ample breasts and roseat
e nipples, exuberantly erect in the cool water. The fires of lust levitated in me, desperate to be quenched. I quietly moved closer.
When she emerged from the pond, I came out from the bushes. Wrapped in a white lightweight cotton covering, the thin flimsy cloth only accentuated the lavish curves beneath.
“So, you have been spying on me.”
I grinned. “I was just in the same area at the same time you were.”
“Then why were you hiding behind the bushes?”
“At first, I didn’t want to scare you. Then I couldn’t help but look. I’ve hungered for you from the first moment I saw you.”
I didn’t wait for her to respond but quickly pulled the thin covering from her body. Stepping forward, she slapped the right side of my face, hard. My right cheek burned hotter than the hinges of hell.
Blinking back tears, I saw that her right hand held a beautifully crafted brass-and-ivory–handled dagger with an ornate four-inch hilt. A twelveinch blade, honed razor-sharp, scintillated like Satan in the noonday sun.
“What is that for?”
“In case you think to rape me.”
“Rape you? Señorita, I don’t rape women. After I am through making love to them, they bless me for sharing my manhood with them, despising me only when I leave, cursing only my departure and my agonizing absences.”
She stood there naked before me, knife in hand. Staring at me, perplexed, she made no attempt to cover her private parts.
I held up my hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I will make you a deal. If my lovemaking is not the best you have ever had, you may cut off my cojones, my garrancha too, and feed them to your pigs.”
She shook her head slowly, as if she was trying to puzzle out my soul. She finally said, “You are very sure of yourself, señor.”
“No woman has ever complained.”
She laughed at that one, and I gave her a boyishly charming grin.
“And how many women have you taken to bed?” she asked in a challenging tone.