Her brandy didn’t taste any stronger than the one I had had in the bar, but it seemed to affect me faster, making my tongue stick and my whole body numb almost as soon as I’d downed a swallow.
She came closer to me, so close I felt the warmth radiating from her red lips and her handsome bosom.
“My ex-lover could storm in here in a jealous rage. May I count on you, Sir Knight, to defend and protect me?”
I tried to say again that I would cut out his heart, but my tongue was so stiff it sounded like baby babble.
She steered me to the open window. I almost fell over before I got to it.
As she helped hold me up I tried to put my arms around her, but she pushed them aside.
She was becoming a blur to me and I tried to focus on her. My head was becoming heavy to hold up. I wanted to get to the bed and lie down and close my eyes.
“You need a good rest, my brave knight, because you will be jostling with another in the morning.”
Her hand dug into my gold pocket.
“I’m going to keep this safe for you.”
Some primeval instinct told me that a woman who would stick her hand in my front pants pocket to remove my gold was no lady, but I felt as if my hands were tied behind my back and my legs were stuck in place.
“Nooo—” came out of me, but she still came out of my pocket with my sack of gold coins.
I tried to grab it from her but my hands were clumsy and uncoordinated and she easily pushed them aside.
A jumble of words came off my tongue as I tried to tell her that she was taking my gold but she just kept whispering soothing things in my ear.
I started laughing, giggling. Nothing that was happening made any sense. I put my arms around her again, not tightly because I couldn’t bend them, just flopping them onto her shoulders.
She leaned away as I put my weight against her and then she suddenly pushed me back.
I felt the window sill just below my buttocks and stared at her stupidly as she gave out a cry of exertion as she shoved me with both hands.
I went out the window backward, falling into a black void.
THIRTY-SIX
I CAME TO life with a seagull on my back and sand in my mouth.
Lying facedown on the sand behind the hotel, the tide was working its way up my legs. I got my eyes open just enough to recognize that it was bright daylight, and the glare hurt.
My head felt as if it had been lain on an anvil and pounded with a sledgehammer, my guts had a hole burned in them, and an ugly bile was working its way up my throat and into my mouth.
I wasn’t sure if I was alive or if this was hell. Those were the only two choices for a horse thief.
I crawled a few feet and then got to my knees and started to stand up. Getting to my feet wasn’t going to happen and I dropped back down, first to my knees and then pitching forward, flat on the sand again, and then I felt myself falling again, dropping into the black void even though I knew that I was on the ground.
* * *
I woke up to screams. It took a second to realize that it was the squawk of seagulls fighting over a fish while a couple of the city’s ugly black vultures stood by patiently as they waited for me to give up the ghost.
I rolled over to a blaze of blinding sun that felt like I’d been stabbed in the eyes. I tried to think, to get my thoughts in order about who I was and what had—
My gold! I reached for it and the pocket was flat. The sack was gone. Panic started pumping strength back into my limbs.
The bitch who called me her knight had drugged and robbed me before she shoved me out a window. The fact that my neck wasn’t broken and I wasn’t a feast for the vultures that were as common as flies in the town was nothing short of miraculous.
I would have been better off with a whore—at least I would have seen it coming.
The bitch had my ranchero money. My hard-earned money it had taken me so long to gather from the mares I stole. I thought she was a lady, but she was a common thief—no—no, I was a common thief; she was a woman and of the gachupin class and had no right to steal.
I dragged myself up, getting onto my feet, unsteady but burning with rage.
She’d give me back the money or I’d kill her.
Hell—I’ll take back the money and kill her anyway.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“SHE’S GONE,” THE india maid cleaning rooms on the top floor told me.
She didn’t know where, so I went back downstairs and questioned the man who tended the bar and rented rooms.
“Gone,” he said.
“I know she’s gone and she’s taken my money with her. Tell me where she went before I—”
He reached below the counter and brought up a machete.
“Just tell me where the countess went,” I said, more civilly.
He howled. “Countess! She got past customs without the custom master realizing she’s an actress and picaro bitch.”
An actress and a picaro. An evil combination, worse than a common thief. I crossed myself. “Picaro” was the name Spaniards gave a type of traveling rogue, a vagabond who made their way by stealing, swindling, and cheating at gambling when they weren’t taking advantage of women of means. But I had never heard of a female picaro.
And an actress! The woman was truly the daughter of el diablo. Actresses and actors conducted themselves with such wanton debauchery that they were not permitted burial in church cemeteries for fear they would contaminate consecrated ground.
“Tell me where the bitch went and I will bring back her head so it can be shipped to Spain.”
He spit on the floor. “She hasn’t gone far. She was arrested as she tried to leave the hotel in the middle of the night. She drugged and stole money from the governor’s cousin. When he tried to get it back, she and a male accomplice attacked him and threw him down the stairs. They have her in the cell at the governor’s palace and are searching for her partner.”
He mimicked holding up a rope that was strangling him. “They’re searching with a rope in their hands.”
I cleared my dry throat and ordered a mug of pulque, not eager to go out onto the street. I wondered if I was going to be hanged for something I didn’t do, rather than for the many crimes I committed. Well, I did throw him down the steps, but I had been tricked into doing it. More important, I wondered what happened to my gold after Isabella or whatever her name was had been arrested.
Was my gold seized by the governor? That seemed to be a real possibility. If it was seized, how would I claim it? No mestizo has that kind of money, except perhaps El Mestizo himself. Not that the governor would be in any hurry to return it. Whatever he seized, he sent a portion of it to the king in Madrid and kept the rest.
It was becoming more evident that the chances of meeting up with a hangman were growing the longer I stayed in Vera Cruz. If they didn’t hang me for beating and robbing the governor’s cousin or for my many crimes, they would do it simply because I was a half-blood who could only have come by that much money illegally. Which was not a bad assumption.
I had to make sure the governor had the gold because the countess might have hid it before she was grabbed. The woman had the liquid tongue of a lépero when it came to lying and deception. God only knows what she told the governor in his jail—or his bed.
She may even have a male partner who had it.
And there was one other very good possibility—she may still have the gold on her. I doubted that jailers would search a woman prisoner. Women in jail were rarer than mestizos with a pocketful of gold. There would be no reason to search her, and it was probably forbidden by the church anyway.
If she still had the money or had hid it, why would she tell where it was?
Giving that one some thought, I came up with what I considered a clever ploy. I would tell her that I’d give half of it to her—at least I’d lie and say I would. No—I’d tell her I would use half of it to buy her freedom.
Ayyo! What I’d do if I got the gold is
slip a coin to the hangman so he tied the noose loosely so she suffered a long time.
When I got to the stable I discovered I didn’t have the money to pay Rojo’s stall bill. I had only a few coppers in my pocket. But I quickly came up with a solution. The silver-studded saddle and harness I bought the horse paid the bill and got me some silver pieces and plain tack after I bargained with the stable master. He got the better of the deal, but I wasn’t in any position to complain.
I also overheard the stable master telling a customer that a posse had left town looking for the man who attacked the governor’s cousin, heading down the road that led over the mountains to the capital. He thought that they wouldn’t go far in the heat, that they were just making a show for the governor and would be back soon.
Not wanting to raise suspicion by asking questions, I left the stable and slowly made my way up the street toward the center of town where the governor’s palace was located.
I didn’t know what a palace was supposed to look like, but I had been told that the house and administrative seat of the governor of Vera Cruz was not one of the grand palaces in the colony. Even though it was a block long, it was a simple wood structure, two stories high, with a wall that went around the building and the interior courtyard, which made it like most of the homes in the colony except that it was larger.
The structure was built to ward off pirate attacks, rather than for aesthetics, but from what I could see it lacked the solid-looking fortifications that the fortress on a small island in the bay had. The lower floor was part of the wall, and there were no windows at that level.
I didn’t know if the building had a dungeon or above-ground jail cells.
When léperos came out begging, I spotted a boy that looked smarter than the rest of them. Street kids knew more than the mayor of a town, so I showed him a copper and asked what he had heard about the woman that had been arrested.
“They’re holding her in a guardroom inside.”
The boy explained that there was a freestanding guardhouse shack outside the walls at the entrance and another one inside the walls that was part of the building itself. It had barred windows. The bars were placed not to keep someone in, but to keep invaders out. So few women were ever arrested, there would be no regular cell for one.
The guardhouse next to the front gate was not there to defend the palace, but to collect a fee from those who wanted an audience with the governor. No defense of the palace or the town was needed unless suspicious ships were spotted.
“She pays for food to be passed to her through the bars.”
That was typical—jail food was not provided and the prisoner either had some coins or sold a possession to get food.
Now I knew where she was, but the fact she was close to the guardhouse was a problem—I was a wanted man. It would be a little obvious if a mestizo paid her a visit.
I thought about dressing as a lépero and was sure I could pull it off—once a lépero, always a lépero. But I passed on the idea. The thought of buying the clothes off the back of one of the filthy, diseased creatures was too disgusting. Besides, if I had to make a fast getaway on Rojo, he might balk at the stench.
I smelled food as I passed an inn and it gave me an idea.
THIRTY-EIGHT
WEARING A LEATHER apron and a kitchen hat, and carrying a dish heaped with fish, string beans, and papaya, I walked across the square to the barred window on the wall of the governor’s palace.
“Señorita, your food.”
Her face popped up between the bars. She was beautiful, even imprisoned. Eh … the witch would probably share the governor’s bed tonight and be free in the morning.
“I already got my—”
She stopped as she recognized me.
“You!”
“Sí, the man you stole from and tried to kill.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“The Lord Himself intervened.”
“He’ll change his mind when he finds out you’re a horse thief.”
That caught me by surprise.
“They know all about you.” She said it as a taunt. “It didn’t take long for them to figure out that you sold stolen horses.”
The horses I sold in Vera Cruz were not stolen; it was their parents that were stolen, but I didn’t bother to explain.
“Eh, woman, it was hard work—not like the quick, treacherous way you took a man’s money.”
“Why have you come here?”
“I want my gold back!”
She laughed. “Come in and get it.”
“Hand it out and I will give you half of it when you get out. I’ll use some of it to buy your freedom.”
Ayyo! The lies were badly formed and spoken even worse. My lépero’s liquid tongue had stiffened before an even better liar.
She stared at me and I knew what captured her attention—getting out. She didn’t believe I would give her half; it was too farfetched that I would share my own money with her, but she was in and I was out and how she could use me to get her released was giving her thought.
“Tell me, mestizo, how would you get me out of here if I gave you back your money?”
“I would buy your freedom with it.”
She shook her head. “That won’t work. The governor would simply seize you and the money.”
“I would break you out.”
“How? The bars are steel.”
I looked over the bars. They were steel, but were held in place by wood. And not strong wood at that. Vera Cruz was on the hot sandy coast and the nearest forests were on the mountains. It never got cold in the area so building materials were not substantial and dry-rotted quickly.
“I have a strong horse,” I said. “I’ll tie a rope around the bars and jerk them out. You lean out and I’ll pull you out onto my horse. It’s a big stallion that would carry us both as we were babes.”
That plan seemed to give her some thought and I enlarged upon it.
“The outside guard post is left unmanned at dusk when visitors are no longer allowed in. We would be out of the city before any of the guards in the palace realized what had happened.”
“And what do you get out of this?”
“My gold back. Half of it.” I grinned with as much sincerity as I could muster when I wanted to reach through the bars and strangle her.
“You help me escape and it is all yours.”
“You still have it?”
“Of course.”
“Show it to me.”
“Get me out of here and I will stick it back in your pocket on our way out of town.”
I shook my head. “No, you have to show me the gold. I can’t trust you after what you did.”
“Oh! How it hurts to hear you say that; coming from a common horse thief, it wounds my heart.”
“I’m going to leave you in there to rot.”
“Be back with your horse and rope at dusk. I’ll be waiting for you.”
“I won’t do it.”
“Of course you will.”
I glared at her, completely dumbfounded as to her logic. Did she think that I was a puppet on a string? That she merely wiggles a finger and I jump the way she wanted me to?
“Why do you think I will help you when you won’t show me the gold?”
“Because you are a thief with no other options.”
THIRTY-NINE
SHE WAS LYING about giving me back my money, of course. But she told the truth about one thing: I had no other options, at least none that got back the price of my ranchero. There was only a small chance that she had the gold, perhaps concealing it by sticking it down her dress into the crevice between her ample bosom, and even less of a chance that if that was true, she wouldn’t stick a blade in me before we got out of town.
Assuming that by divine intervention I managed to avoid a dagger in my back as we rode off into the sunset with Rojo, I would probably end up being used by the governor’s guards and posse as target practice.
Gritting my teet
h, I got my horse and a strong rope and sat in the shade of a tree along the main street to keep myself in plain sight under the theory that no one would suspect I was a wanted man.
With the way my luck had been running, the rope would be used to hang me.
* * *
Falling light of dusk gave the city a golden look, hiding some of its ugliness, as I returned with a rope.
I rode Rojo slowly up the main street and into the central square, making my way with the horse at a walk. I was not in a hurry because I had no confidence in what I was doing. I had argued with my common sense and lost because desperation overrode my survival instincts.
As I got close to the window, I sat higher in the saddle and got the rope ready to loop it through the bars.
I was only a dozen feet away when I saw her, not at the barred window but suddenly appearing on a balcony above.
“That’s the man who harmed the governor’s cousin!” she cried out.
The ugly face of a man suddenly appeared at the barred window where she should have been, and a pistola slipped between the bars.
I ducked in the saddle and gave Rojo a kick and a shout at the same time the gun went off.
The bullet went wild and so did the horse as the gunshot startled him. He took off at a fast gallop as men with muskets suddenly appeared on the flat roof of the palace and began firing.
Rojo ran as if all the hounds of hell were snapping at his hooves.
I hung on, crouching down in the saddle, expecting a musket ball at any moment to end my miserable life or Rojo to catch one that sent him tumbling and smacking the ground with enough force to break all of my bones.
I turned the stallion as soon as I cleared the main square when a group of horsemen came down the street to cut me off.
The posse had come back and had gotten into position to cut me off from the main road out of town.
I kicked and yelled for Rojo to sprout wings if he had to and held on as the stallion went between buildings and jumped a fence and then another.
As night fell I no longer heard the sound of muskets or the hooves of a pursuit.
Miles out on the sandy road that led up the coast before turning inland toward the mountains, when I felt it was safe, I finally pulled up Rojo and let him walk.