That jolted Diego. “That’s him. What his name?”
“Juan the Lépero.”
“Where do I find him?”
“I don’t know, señor, I haven’t seen him in two years, three years, maybe more.”
“You still hear about him on the road?”
“No, señor, nothing since he stole my money and my own fine horse. Maybe he’s dead now.” Cerdo made the sign of the cross. “In hell, I hope.”
Diego turned to walk away, and Cerdo whined behind him.
“I helped you—buy me from the hangman!”
“Vaya con el diablo, you stinking swine. Hopefully you’ll meet your amigo with the big horse there.”
Diego set back on the road to Vera Cruz, to return to the location where he had arranged the ambush. He wasn’t a particularly bright man, more doggedly determined when told to do something than inventive, but his gut was telling him something was wrong. He was trying to fit all the pieces together and so far had not been able to do so.
It took him most of the day to reach the spot along the road where he had stayed on his horse and observed the attack.
He ran it through his head again: Antonio de los Rios jumping from the coach and running toward the cliff, a masked man suddenly appearing, attacking his assassins with deadly accuracy while the gachupin went over the cliff, probably carrying a pistola ball in his body.
Diego led his horse down to the spot where he was certain that the Spaniard had gone over. There was no ledge. And it was a long, sheer drop to the rocky river below.
Could a man have survived such a fall? Yes, if he plunged feetfirst into the pool of water directly below, missing the rocks. But even if he had hit the water and survived, it raised another question.
How did he get back up to the carriage, where he was when the army patrol found him?
It wasn’t possible to climb back up at the location he had fallen over because it was a cliff, though there were other places that a man could use to get back up to the road. But it would take some time.
The notion that the bandido who had intervened could be posing as Rios had not occurred to Diego; for a thief to pass himself off as a wealthy gachupin was too bizarre for Diego to conceive. He was too much a creature of a highly structured society to think that a common highwayman and a gachupin could be the same person.
He headed back up the road in the direction of the capital, with a question to ask a condemned man. He wanted to ask Cerdo the Lépero what his amigo with the chestnut stallion looked like.
As Diego headed back in the direction of Xalapa, a man crawled out of the bushes farther down the road from where Rios had originally gone over the cliff.
His clothes were filthy, ragged, and bloodied from his climb up the slope. He got himself onto his feet with a cry of pain and a branch he used as a crutch and shouted at the mounted man as loud as he could.
Diego heard the shouting behind him and turned in the saddle, glancing back, and then around, suspecting the man was a decoy in an ambush.
He didn’t see anyone else but left in a full gallop, sure that it was a trap set by bandidos. Even if it wasn’t, Diego wouldn’t have helped the man anyway—he was obviously a filthy lépero.
Behind him, eating his dust, Antonio de los Rios fell to his knees and wept with his head hung over.
He was still on his knees when a mule train carrying goods from Vera Cruz came up the road behind him.
EIGHTY-FIVE
“HE WAS HANGED an hour ago,” the officer at the outpost jail told Diego when he asked to see Cerdo. “The other prisoners begged us to do it because he stunk so bad.”
Grumbling at his own carelessness at not having questioned the lépero, and knowing that he would taste the whip if he told Carlos of his negligence, he went looking for the officer, Capitán Lopez, who led the patrol that found Rios after the attack.
He found him at the post cantina. He bought the man a bottle of cheap wine and asked about the incident, giving the officer a piece of eight rather than an explanation as to why he was asking questions.
“Were Rios’s clothes wet? Dirty from a climb up the hill? Was he injured from a fall into the river?”
All the answers were no.
“And you never saw a man with a big chestnut stallion, more red than brown?”
“Only Señor Rios.”
“Señor Rios? He has a chestnut?”
“A fine animal, one of the biggest stallions I’ve seen. And as red a coat as I’ve seen. The stallion had been hitched to the carriage for the journey from Vera Cruz.” Capitán Lopez stared at Diego. “Señor, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
Diego mumbled something and left the cantina, once again cursing himself for his stupidity. He remembered something Carlos had said about Antonio the day Carlos had gone to welcome the heir to the city. Carlos told Diego that Rios had not only cheated him out of the inheritance, but that he couldn’t even sell him a horse because he had brought a good one with him from Spain.
He hadn’t thought about it at the time, but now it struck him: there was no horse hitched to the carriage at the time his assassins attacked. And while Diego was a bit dense when it came to people, he knew horseflesh. The bandido who intervened had had a chestnut stallion—and there was no possibility that there were two outstanding chestnut stallions on the road that day.
EIGHTY-SIX
WHEN THE COUNTESS Isabella opened the door to her room at the inn, she stared down the barrel of the pistola I was holding.
“Buenos días, Countess, come in, come in,” I said, pulling her in and pushing the door shut behind her, “we have much to talk about.”
She shook her head sadly. “You again. Frankly, you have become something of a bore. If they hanged you, my life would be so much simpler.” She smiled sweetly. “Yours, too.”
A blade popped out of her right sleeve and she shoved it in my gut. It stuck there. We both looked down at it.
I grabbed her wrist, twisting it, bringing the blade out, then removed the strap holding the spring weapon from where it was tied on just above the wrist.
“Strong stomach,” she said.
I grunted as I looked at the deadly little blade. She certainly knew how to go for the gold. I had sold gold candlesticks and some swords of Uncle Ramos’s for gold coins to use when—not if—I had to leave the city in a hurry. She had stabbed the treasure belt I had tied around my waist.
I hit her with my open palm, sending her careening to the bed. It wasn’t a hard slap, just enough to sting.
“That was to get your attention.”
“Bastardo!”
“Countess, did you know how mean it is to gut a man? If you cut my throat, I’d die quickly. But to die slowly from a gut wound? From a blade up your sleeve? Mi Dios, I’ve known bandidos twice your size who are less vicious than you are.”
“Leave or I’ll start screaming.”
I tossed her a ruby broach I’d taken from Ramos’s jewel box.
She looked at the piece of jewelry and then examined me with the eye of a cunning fox. One with sharp teeth.
“The clothes of a gentleman,” she said. “Soft leather boots, the best pistola, a sword with a Toledo blade. Hmmm. Señor, you are getting more interesting all the time.”
“I see you’re warming to my charm.”
“Truthfully, I would like to win your heart—so I can slice it into little pieces. Do you know what you cost me?”
“What I cost you?” I struggled to keep my composure and didn’t manage it. “You robbed me of the money I had saved to buy a ranchero.”
“Money you had stolen. The Vera Cruz governor took all the money I had collected on the way over and in that little miserable town, just because you beat up his nephew.”
“Cousin.”
“Whatever. I didn’t need your help, you country bumpkin. If I hadn’t convinced the governor of my innocence—”
“Convinced him while lying on your back with your legs spread.”
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She shook her head with regret. “You are becoming a bore. What is it you want in return for this little trinket?”
I held up an even bigger broach, this one with a ruby surrounded with pearls. It got her attention.
“Help me out, you get this one, too.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You get this.” I held up my pistola.
“Tell me what you want. And how you got the fancy clothes and weapons.”
I gave her a more or less truthful account of why I wanted to bring Carlos down because of his murderous schemes, who Nina was, and how I needed her to convince Nina to reveal Carlos’s scheme.
“She needs to know her love has been betrayed.”
“And how am I to do this? Order a dress from the woman and say, oh, please betray your lover to me while you’re hemming my dress?”
“I leave that entirely to your devious tongue. I’m sure you have talked men out of their pants on two continents and can manage to create a betrayal by a lovesick woman.”
“So, if I help you and you keep this inheritance you spoke of … you will be grateful to me, no?”
“Eternally.”
She didn’t have to tell me she would blackmail me for a piece of my inheritance the moment I was solidly in the saddle. I knew that already. And I didn’t have to tell her that I wasn’t planning to stick around to be blackmailed by her or hanged by the viceroy, whichever came first.
EIGHTY-SEVEN
“I’M DOOMED,” I told Mercedes when I met her the morning after enlisting the countess. “This came last night.”
I gave her the letter I’d received. It was a message that the uncle from Guadalajara was coming for a visit. I didn’t tell her that I had the majordomo read it to me.
“The message is two weeks old,” she said. “Our ridiculous royal post works so well, people arrive before their missives. He could already be in the city.”
“I don’t even know what he looks like, or I’d waylay him and cut his throat.”
Mercedes crossed herself. She had been doing that a lot since I came into her life.
“I don’t like it when you talk that way. You must give up your old ways and learn to live in civilized society.”
“Civilized society? Have you looked around lately? Innocent people are being grabbed off the streets and tortured—and this is how a civilized society acts?”
She brushed away my question with a wave of her hand. “The message says he’s going to stay with Carlos.”
“He could be there by now, Carlos and him talking to the constables or on the way to my house with that Muñoz demon.”
“You must leave the city.”
I shook my head. “Not until El Mestizo is released. I went to the bishop in charge of the Inquisition here in the colony this morning. I let him know I would be very generous with the church if El Mestizo was released.”
“What did he say?”
“That only a higher authority could grant such a request. And he didn’t mean God. That leaves Muñoz, who would rip off his mother’s fingernails if it would get him praise, and the viceroy, who would have to justify the release to the king. The Inquisitor looked at me as if I was next on the rack and told me that I should show my faith with the donation anyway.”
“What are you going to do? And I hesitate to ask you that question because whatever your plan is, I’m sure it will violate the laws of God and the king.”
El diablo, too. It was a good question, although I needed more than a plan—I needed a miracle.
“The countess and I are paying a visit to Nina Alvarez this morning,” I said. “Even if I find out Carlos’s secret, I’ll be on the run from now on because I won’t be able to fool the uncle unless he is blind and deaf.” Or dead, I added silently to myself. I didn’t mention that I had packed a few things from the house and had two mules loaded and ready to go at a stable on the other side of the causeway.
“On the run,” she repeated.
“I’ll head north. That’s where men go who have the kind of problems I have. There’s new territory being opened up and settled, and a person can breathe without some royal administrator or encomienda owner breathing down his neck. No one looks at your pedigree, because they need every man and woman they can get. And they need horses, ones I’ll provide.”
“I’m going with you.”
“Never. You cannot become a fugitive. Even if no one bothered pursuing me because they had Carlos’s crimes to deal with, it’s a rough life, not one for a woman whose hands have never been dirtied.”
“My hands are as strong as any other woman’s, and I can stick them in mud just fine. Let me tell you something, Antonio, Juan, or whatever name you are using at the moment: I am utterly disgusted with the life I have here, where, even if Carlos is no longer a threat, I will be married off to a man I don’t love and spend the rest of my life wavering between utter boredom and quiet desperation.”
I couldn’t see Mercedes in “quiet” desperation.
“I want to go to a place where I can read a book without shocking everyone around me, where I can ride a horse and do other things that men find pleasure in but are forbidden to women.”
Ayyo! I had a female rebel on my hands.
I gave her a hug, pulling her close to me to feel her warmth and strength. “Two things I must do before I leave. Get El Mestizo free. And I have to see that Carlos has a rope placed around his neck. I may not survive either task.”
“I’ll help you. I’m having lunch at Carlos’s again today with his sister. I’ll find out what I can.”
EIGHTY-EIGHT
I PRETENDED TO be Countess Isabella’s bored, arrogant dandy of a brother, sitting in a chair and smoking a tobacco twist while she selected the fabric and talked about the style of the dress … “One to be worn during my pregnancy,” she told Nina Alvarez.
The seamstress had been curious about Isabella Ramirez—she left off the countess title, of course. In the chatter that went on during the selection of materials and fitting, the countess made her moves against the other woman like a master swordsman, using her words and gestures to slowly cut and then widen the wounds.
Isabella began by getting Nina’s sympathy, revealing that her family had once been wealthy, “Really Puebla aristocrats, financially at least, but I felt abandoned by my own friends when my father lost his fortune.”
I could see that Nina was sucking it in, barely restraining herself from telling her own life story.
The countess went on to tell her that after the fortune was lost, she ended up being promised in marriage to a very old man who bailed her father out of debtor’s prison.
“Fortunately, he died—my betrothed,” she said, “unfortunately, before the wedding vows had been uttered.”
The two women got a laugh out of that one, and I smiled and continued to look around, hoping to appear to be a worthless brother who had been unable to renew the family fortunes while my sister sold her body to an old man.
Nina finally shared with Isabella her own background as a privileged girl who turned to sewing for the rich after her family fortune was lost. “But it’s been a good life,” she said, “and an honest one, but lonely.”
“I was lonely, too, but a wonderful man who became my lover changed everything,” Isabella said.
Isabella went on to describe how her lover had been in terrible financial straits and that she had helped him.
“I did a terrible thing,” Isabella said, pretending to be embarrassed. “I flirted with a silver-mine manager who was deep into his cups and got him to reveal that a new discovery had been made. My lover was able to buy a share, and now he is financially secure again.” The countess blinked her eyes demurely. “You think I’m terrible, don’t you?”
“Not at all, how marvelous of you,” Nina said. “And you must not be embarrassed by what you did. I will confess to you and to God that I have done even worse and feel that I have not committed a mortal sin because I did it for love of
a good man.”
I choked on my tobacco twist at hearing her call Carlos a good man.
Isabella pretended to feel faint and had to sit down while Nina got her cool water. Isabella gave me a small smile, full of menace. “Your gold chain—give it to me or I’ll walk out now.”
What a scheming, greedy bitch! She strips me of my hard-earned wealth even as she plays another woman for the fool.
I quickly slipped off the chain and gave it to her.
I bit hard on the tobacco, getting bitter juice. If I had had the countess as a bandido partner, I’d own a hacienda by now. But wait—no, I was wrong. More likely I would be buried in an unmarked grave and she would own the hacienda.
Isabella now had Nina’s complete sympathy. They sat together and whispered while I pretended I didn’t hear what was being said.
“I’m worried about you,” Nina told the countess. “You carry your lover’s baby, but he may not honor his commitments to you now that he has used you to get the information he wanted.”
“No, Carlos would never do that.”
The name gave Nina a little start, just a blink, but the name was a common one.
“In fact, Carlos had been pursuing the dowry of a rich young woman here in the city because he was so desperate for money, but he will no longer go through with that plan. Just today he arranged for my father’s release from prison so our wedding can be announced. I do feel sorry for the young woman being rejected, but I’m sure Mercedes de la Cruz will find another to wed.”
My stomach wrenched as I saw Nina Alvarez first appear stunned and then begin to unravel as Isabella slashed her with lies about how Carlos treated her with respect and reverence despite their difference in social class.
“He’ll marry me even though I’m the daughter of a failed merchant and without a dowry because he truly loves me. He says I am the only woman he has ever loved, that he never loved his wife or a merchant woman who had done small favors for him over the years.”
“No!” Nina was shaking, ready to collapse.