I should have burned Antonio de los Rios’s papers rather than use them to identify myself.
Or eaten them.
FORTY-TWO
“YOU WILL FIND that the social life in Mexico City lacks the sheer magnitude of that in Madrid, Don Antonio, but not the brilliance,” Don Domingo said. “The largest and richest city in all the Americas, Mexico is the queen of the New World and a glittering gem in our mighty king’s possessions.”
Señor Domingo del Riego leaned over and gave me a wink and a smirk. “As the heir to one of the largest fortunes in the colony, many an artful mother will be parading daughters for you at the ball that the viceroy will hold in your honor.”
I smiled, but beneath my pleasant exterior I was burning with pure animal panic. I could barely restrain myself from running to the nearest hole and hiding.
Ayyo! Juan the Lépero, horse thief, bandido, and only God knows my many other sins, sat in a carriage with one of the most powerful men in the colony—and on his way to the biggest and richest city in the Americas where the most powerful man in the colony wants to entertain him.
This miserable lépero in a gachupin’s clothes was one lucky devil, no? But I didn’t feel lucky. I was certain that following the ball, I would be hanged as an imposter.
If I had seen a hole big enough to hide in, I would have squeezed into it. Ayyo! I would rather face a test of my shooting skills than my social manners.
Since meeting Señor Riego I had managed to keep from being exposed as an imposter and fraud through sheer luck and the fact that I was such a lying bastardo. I didn’t know how my artful verbal dancing was going to conceal that I knew so little about so much. So far I had mostly smiled a lot, nodded my head repeatedly, and made brilliant listening responses such as “hum” and “aah” while I found out tiny pieces about who I was—or at least pretending to be. Fortunately, the man loved to talk, words gushing from him like water rushing over rapids.
I had learned that I was the nephew and heir of a deceased sword and dagger merchant who greatly increased his wealth a few months before he died by financing a muleteer who claimed to have received the location of a silver lode from an indio whose tribe had kept the site a secret.
“I’ve heard he roasted the informant over a campfire until the man gave up the spot,” Don Domingo said with a chuckle.
I suspected the indio whose feet got roasted wasn’t as amused. However the muleteer got the location, the silver was there, and the fortunes of “my” uncle, Ramos de los Rios, climbed.
The good part was that even though I had met Uncle Ramos once in Spain before he came to the New World seeking a fortune, he was now dead. Had his ghost been in the carriage with us, I would have kissed his feet for having conveniently gone to the hereafter before I arrived claiming to be his heir.
A second piece of luck was that my relatives in the capital were cousins who had never met me. Eh, but there was another bullet to dodge—I had an elderly uncle in Guadalajara who had met me in Spain and was expected to come to Mexico City for a visit. Perhaps he would be in the city waiting as the coach pulled up. I kept that nightmare tucked behind the stiff smile I had painted on my face as I tried to hide my ignorance behind the hums and aahs.
“Although you have not met your cousin Don Carlos de Rueda, I am sure you are aware of his position in the colony,” the viceroy’s aide said.
“Naturally,” I muttered, wondering what the hell was his position. Spanish upper-class men added the honorific “don” to their names, so that told me nothing except that he was rich.
“His wife died, of course, a fine lady. Did you meet any of her family while you lived in Madrid?”
“Hum,” I muttered, giving the matter great thought as I stalled and wondered what the right answer would be.
“Of course,” Don Domingo said, “the name Cortés, while famous in Spain, lacks the incredible power it has in the colony.”
I was so surprised I couldn’t manage a listening response.
“Being married to a daughter of the conqueror had many benefits for Carlos.”
That would make Carlos’s wife a sister of El Mestizo. Whose horse, which I stole, was hitched to the back of Riego’s coach at the moment.
“Had she had children before she died, they would have shared the Cortés bloodline and Carlos could have relied upon her family, the richest in the colony, for support when he suffered his losses trying to manipulate the price of maize. Don’t you agree, Antonio?”
“Hum,” I nodded. It wasn’t just a question. Riego had a sly look when he tossed it out. What was he getting at?
“I’m certain that your cousin Carlos is most pleased and gracious about the fact that your uncle chose you as his heir rather than him.”
“Aah.” I got it. Riego was telling me that this Carlos was royally pissed that the uncle had cut him out and put me in. Even a lépero understands that when you’re broke, you’re going to hate the person who got rich at your expense.
“I’m sure my dear cousin Carlos will light a candle at the cathedral to celebrate my miraculous escape from death,” I intoned, giving the statement as much sincerity as I could but conveying just a hint of facetiousness because I was getting the feeling cousin Carlos was not an amigo of the viceroy’s aide.
I detected the hint of a chuckle under Riego’s breath.
“Amigo,” he said, “you will hear gossip in the capital that I am angry at your cousin for selling me a lame horse, but that is nonsense. As a gentleman, I know for certain Carlos would never deliberately cheat me.”
“Aah.” So that was why Riego was doing a not-too-subtle character assassination of Carlos, a horse deal that went sour because Carlos misrepresented the quality or condition of a horse—a not uncommon occurrence in horse trading, a business only slightly more ethical than robbing coaches. But you could cheat a man at cards or steal his mistress and be less likely to be called out onto the field of honor than you would if you cheated him in a horse trade, because all men, from fat merchants to léperos like me, thought of ourselves as caballeros and thus experts at horses.
Not that Riego was the type to settle the matter in a duel. He appeared more likely to use his quill and ink on paper to extract his revenge.
“I bought the animal with the understanding that a horse in the bloodline of the conqueror’s own warhorse would have the strongest possible limbs. For it to have turned lame after a short time was unacceptable. Don’t you agree, Antonio?”
“Absolutely.” I actually did agree with him. Everyone in the colony had heard of El Reye, the most magnificent stallion in all New Spain.
Something Riego had said was ringing a bell in my head, but I had so many strange things coming at me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
FORTY-THREE
I KEPT THE conversation on horses, a subject I knew more about than the viceroy’s aide.
“The stud fees on a horse carrying the bloodline of the conqueror’s own warhorse must be extremely high,” I said, not volunteering that the stallion hitched to the carriage also had the bloodline of the conquest warhorses, though not the coveted lineage of the horse Cortés rode at the battle of Otumba.
“For a certainty. El Reye is the most valuable horse in New Spain, perhaps in the world. I suspect there are none more valuable even in the king’s stable in Madrid. The stallion not only carries the bloodline, but has the grace, stamina, and lines of a great horse.”
“Sí, such a horse would be very valuable,” I said.
“Worth as much as a good-sized hacienda. And Carlos needs all the stud fees he can get now that he lost so much money.”
Riego explained that Carlos had attempted to make an enormous profit on maize by buying large quantities of the grain and holding it back from sale, thereby creating a shortage.
“Merchants had made large amounts of money manipulating the price in that manner before, but this was the first time a caballero who was considered part of the aristocracy of the colony att
empted it. It would have worked except that poor people who starved the moment the price rose rioted and the viceroy allowed the emergency maize reserve to be sold, thus bringing down the price to less than what Carlos had paid.”
I only half-listened to Riego as he yanked on somewhat jealously about speculators in maize, beef, and other commodities who were able to make profits by manipulating the supplies, but what incredible arrogance Carlos had displayed in believing he was capable of the same.
I had a more important subject on my mind, remembering the conversation in a room at the inn in Oaxaca nearly four years ago about a problem with a prize horse and something Héctor had said:
“Don Carlos de Rueda is the brother-in-law of the marquis,” Héctor had boasted.
Ayyo! Life was a circle, and I had gone full circle around and come back to face someone I saw in Oaxaca years ago.
I turned my features away from the viceroy’s aide so he couldn’t read the consternation I’m sure my expression was exposing. It was unlikely that Carlos would recognize me as the stable boy who had served him. No—it was impossible. He was a gachupin—a low-caste stable boy would no more remain in his memory than the street trash his carriage rumbled over.
He would not see me as I was that day—a worker dressed in clothes one step from rags and wearing sandals that left me little more than barefoot—but as I was now dressed, in clothes of silk and fine wool.
I was uncomfortable in the clothes not only because of the richness of the materials and tightness of the fit—Antonio was my height though less solidly built—but because of the style. These were the clothes of the wealthy merchant class who rode almost always in carriages, not of caballeros who wore clothing suitable for riding a horse even if the men only rode on the paseo in the hopes of attracting the attention of señoritas.
To the indios and mestizos, the word “gachupin” simply referred to a Spaniard who metaphorically raked their backs with sharp spurs by taking the food from their mouths while working them hard and paying little. But the original wearers of spurs were the conquistadors, men who earned their spurs in battle. That was the kind of gachupin I wanted to be.
Ayyo! In the merchant’s garb, I felt like a wolf wrapped in silk.
I also worried that my smell would expose me as a lépero to the viceroy’s aide. A thousand times I’ve heard gachupins say that we of the lower classes smelled worse than pigs as they covered their nostrils with nosegays to block out the stench.
In the hope that it would hide my lépero odor, I had put on perfume I found in Antonio’s toilette box. I also discovered that Antonio’s clothes in his trunks smelled from rose petals and cinnamon and other herbs in little pouches laid among them.
The gachupins were so concerned about their smell that they even gave their clothes a scent. I suppose they thought that their excrement smelled sweeter than everyone else’s, too.
I was getting more nervous and antsy as the man rambled about things I knew nothing about, but escape wasn’t possible. At least, not at the moment because the aide’s coach was escorted by a dozen soldiers, each armed with a harquebus.
“When we near the capital, I will send a speedy messenger ahead to let your relatives know you are arriving. They will want to gather at your uncle’s home—your home now—to welcome you.”
“Excellent,” I thought, really excellent—another chance to be exposed, another nail in my coffin.
Ayyo! The first chance I had, I would jump on Rojo and leave my relatives and Mexico City in my dust.
Another problem perhaps even more urgent than whether I would be hanged as an imposter throbbed in my head, one that had my finely honed survival instincts screaming that I had better watch my back.
Cousin Carlos had money problems. He had not only failed at manipulating the price of maize, Riego told me, but had tried to recover his losses at cards, a sure disaster for a desperate man.
Carlos had big money problems in a society where failing to pay debts resulted not only in loss of social stature but debtor’s prison. And he was next in line to inherit a fortune that would save him from the mire he appeared to be drowning in.
To avoid humiliation and possible imprisonment, would Carlos resort to murder?
I had met the man in circumstances that revealed his true character. Hiding behind the drapes, I had quickly learned that he was deceitful to his wife, her family, and to horse buyers, which in my eyes made him a step lower than the swine I tried to turn into a respectable gang of bandidos.
I had already deduced that the bandidos that attacked Antonio de los Rios’s carriage had set out not just to rob, but to kill—shooting coachmen that had not even bothered to raise their weapons, and not wearing masks, showed that they did not intend to leave anyone alive. The target had to be Antonio and not just his possessions because there was no reason to kill—the man was running away from his possessions when he was shot.
The killings had not made sense to me on the road to Vera Cruz when my blood was still hot and my machete bloody, but rocking back and forth in the gachupin carriage it made great sense to me now because I knew Carlos had the motive to hire assassins to kill Antonio.
I had only a vague impression as to what Carlos had looked like when I saw him in Oaxaca and had not seen him mounted on a horse, but I had noted that the man riding away from the massacre on the Vera Cruz road had been dressed better than the bandidos.
One thing was wrong with connecting Carlos to the killing of Antonio—the man watching the attack from the ridge was not Carlos. I am better than most at judging not only horses but a man on one, and I am certain that Carlos was a bigger man than the horseman on the ridge.
But that didn’t alter my belief that what I witnessed was a deliberate murder rather than just a robbery. What had the officer told me about the bandidos—he had seen them before, that they were the sort of trash that would slice a throat for a piece of silver?
I knew the type well from my own time spent hanging around pulquerias, listening to the talk, watching the scum that could be hired to kill, steal, or do anything else except a day’s labor.
I also knew the type well enough to know that they were too smart to kill someone unnecessarily—as I repeatedly told my lépero highwaymen, killing caused more trouble than it was worth.
For sure, the two bandidos who attacked the coach of Rios were not so stupid to have wantonly killed just to rob. The only reason to have made murder the goal was that they had been paid to do so. Even if the third man was not Carlos, an important gachupin like Carlos could have sent an emissary to hire killers.
Ayyo! Once one’s conscience has been whetted from bloodletting, spilling more blood would not be as difficult as the first time. Besides, the killer can always cast off the sin by going to confession and doing penance, along with giving a nice gift to the priest who granted it.
I had a burning question that I wanted to ask the viceroy’s aide, a man who seemed to know everybody and everything about the colony by the way he babbled nonstop about who was making or losing money or having love affairs: Who else would want to murder Antonio besides a money-hungry relative? Was there a line of people who wanted the man dead? Perhaps because of some old blood feud or because Antonio had stuck his pene into someone else’s woman?
Did I step into the shoes of a dead man only to join the man in the grave?
PART 6
MEXICO CITY, NEW SPAIN
A.D. 1569
FEAST OF THE CONQUERORS
Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo in his account of the Conquest wrote that following the final battle against the Aztecs, Cortés’ soldiers held a drunken celebration in which conquistadores got up on table tops and boasted of the great wealth they had grabbed.
Some said they would only buy gold saddles for their horses, while the crossbowmen boasted they would now use golden arrows.
Full of wine and bravado, the men then raped the Aztec women who had been captured in the battle.
—Bernal
Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España
FORTY-FOUR
WHEN WE CAME out of the foothills, I saw Mexico City spread out on an expanse of water and was awed. Oaxaca, Vera Cruz, and Xalapa, the biggest cities I had been in, were villages compared to the sprawling city posed on a vast lake.
“I’m happy to see you’re impressed,” the viceroy’s aide said. “It is said that the capital is the most European city in the Americas, that because of the canals, it’s like Venice. Have you been to Venice, señor?”
“Hum,” I said, as if I was trying to remember whether I’d been there. I thought it was a planet.
Riego dived right in to talking about the city’s history without pinning me down to whether I’d been in Venice.
“You know, of course, that the city’s built on the bones of the Aztec capital called Tenochtitlán. After the conquest, Cortés had the pagan temples and the great palaces of Montezuma and his high nobles razed and used the stone blocks for building the city.”
“Which is why the streets are so straight?”
“Exactly. Unlike other cities that spread out in different directions without any planning, Cortés had the city laid out. He insisted it be the capital for a number of reasons, including its prestige as the largest city in the Americas before the conquest. Also because the conquistadors were quite fascinated with the city from the moment they saw it, probably from about the same spot you observed it today. Enchanting, they called it, an island crowded with great towers and temples rising from the lake. They wondered if the city was real or whether it was a dream.”
About the same feeling I had, except for me the city was poised to be a nightmare.
“The soil is so saturated with water, no one can be buried belowground in the city,” Riego said. “The island it sits on was much smaller when the Aztecs first made it their capital. They increased the size of it with floating gardens called chinampas that eventually became landfills.