“Is something the matter?” Isabella asked with sickening sweetness.
I sat, mortified, my head turned away, unable to watch, fighting the urge to jump up and stop the torture. I reconciled my conscience thinking about El Mestizo being tortured in the Inquisition dungeon and how much murder and betrayal had come from Carlos because, with Nina’s help, he had been able to maintain a fraud for years.
“I’m the one!” Nina said, “I’m the merchant woman he’s casting off.”
It was my turn, and I jumped into it without enthusiasm.
“Carlos is an unequaled caballero,” I said. “Why, the man owns the finest stallion in all the world, in the bloodline of the conqueror’s warhorse itself, said to be the fastest horse in the colony. He sold me—”
“A fraud!” she shouted, almost in hysteria. “The great stud died years ago, and I have sewn a chest patch for the stallion that looks like the true one.”
She grew quiet for a moment, looking at me, then at Isabella, realizing from our cold countenances that neither of us was any longer caught up in emotion about Carlos.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, quietly.
“You owe us a favor, Nina,” I said. “You’ve been played for a fool. It’s time you started looking for a man who would truly love you, instead of one who just wants to use you.”
EIGHTY-NINE
MERCEDES SMILED POLITELY and sipped her chocolate drink made with ground cacao beans and peppers as Tía Beatriz and Carlos’s older sister smoked stinking tobacco twists and gossiped about other women in the colony.
She hated every moment of these chatty gossip events. She even found going to balls a bore. The closest she had come to enjoying the city’s social life were carriage rides in the paseo, and that was mostly because they got her out of the house and into nature.
If she could, she would have spent all of her free time outdoors—around exciting people like Juan rather than people who take delight in picking apart the character or woes of others or spend their lives concerned with what they should wear to the next ball.
With the two older women engrossed in their petty gossip, she slipped away to walk in the garden.
Juan was never far from her thoughts, and he dominated her mind now. Love was not supposed to be part of the equation for a young woman of her class. That was a fact of life that her father had recently been reminding her of. For those of her class, a marriage was arranged based upon financial considerations.
After marriage, a woman would bear children and take care of the home, while her husband dominated every aspect of their lives. Because wedlock was not based upon love, it was considered permissible for a man to have affairs and even to have children outside the marriage, as long as he did not legally “recognize” them as his, thus making them heirs.
A woman having an affair was considered a great sin both to the husband and to God.
When Mercedes mentioned such inequalities to her paseo girlfriends, they howled with laughter at her ridiculous notions that there should be more opportunities for a woman in life other than being chained to the house in marriage or a convent.
Expressing these thoughts to her father and aunt had caused both of them to turn red and appear ready to suffer apoplexy.
Juan, though, seemed to lack any preconceived notion that a woman wasn’t permitted to enjoy life outside the strict confines of the house. She wondered if it was because he had not been raised in a home with a family and a set of social rules.
Whatever the reason, his attitude was attractive to her—as was everything else about him, from the top of his head down to his feet.
Mercedes had been admiring a bougainvillea plant clinging to a wall next to the open doors of Carlos’s smoking room when she heard excited voices inside.
“This is not Antonio—the portrait looks nothing like him,” Carlos said.
“Nonsense, I had the portrait of him and his family commissioned when I was in Madrid. Señor, I certainly know my own nephew.”
“But—but uncle—”
She heard Carlos gasp.
“We have been duped!” Carlos shouted.
* * *
A few minutes later Mercedes’s aunt and Carlos’s sister looked up from their revelry of rumor and innuendo as Carlos stormed up to them, red in the face and shaking with excitement.
“Where’s Mercedes?”
“Why … I don’t know, dear,” his sister said, “she was here a moment ago.”
“She left in her carriage, señor,” a servant said.
THE HORSE WAS EVERYTHING
The horse was an essential element of colonial life in New Spain. Its blood lines were always traced back to the fourteen famous horses in the Conquest …
To go about on the same level with the commoners, to court the ladies on foot, or even to affirm his lineage were all equally thinkable …
The horse was everything. Mounted on one, a gentleman could take part in jousting and catching the ring, he could find his rank in the cavalcades and in the retinue of the powerful, he could travel and pay visits …
—Fernando Benítez, The Century After Cortés
NINETY
THOUGHTS ABOUT THE magnitude of the fraud Carlos pulled off for years crowded my thoughts as the countess and I left the seamstress shop. A small white patch on a horse’s chest and keeping the horse from close observation had kept Carlos in rich stud fees—and brought into question the royal bloodline of thousands of horses throughout the colony, with the scandal even reaching to Europe.
Meticulous records of the bloodline of a colonial family’s valuable horses were as carefully maintained as the lineage of the family. For many families, even wealthy ones, horses ranked among their most prized and valuable assets. The colony was a land of caballeros, and horses were the pride and joy of them all.
The viceroy would have to answer not only to the king, whose own stables included horses of the conquest bloodline, but also to the thousands of caballeros in the colony who bought, sold, and mated horses based on the fraud.
The countess interrupted my thoughts with a cold splash of greed and avarice.
“I’ll have my things sent over from the inn as soon as I get back there,” she said.
I knew exactly what she was talking about, but I pretended to be dense about it, which was not difficult for me. “Sent over?”
“To our house, of course.”
“Our house? Are we going to be married, countess?”
“Not yet.” She got close, within kissing distance. “We’ll have to wait to see how things turn out with you as Antonio first before we make a decision like that. In the meantime, we will take everything of value from the house and even sell it while we wait for the viceroy to release your inheritance.”
“I must concede to a wiser and more clever plan than anything I could have come up with. You have everything planned out.”
“It was foolish of you to have thought otherwise,” she said.
The carriage stopped at her inn, and I assisted her down. Still smiling, I waved as the carriage rolled away to take me back home.
Actually, I had not thought “otherwise” about the countess’s capacity for greed but had figured that she would quickly make a move to take over “my inheritance” completely. As soon as she cleaned out the house, I would find myself in that unmarked grave I always see when I look deep into the woman’s eyes. If el diablo had a daughter, she would be it.
About now an unsigned message composed for me by Mercedes was being delivered to the viceroy’s aide, informing him that staying at the inn was a notorious actress and temptress who was recently incarcerated in Vera Cruz and now has been fleecing local men.
Cries for assistance from me would come from her cell in the viceroy’s jail, to which I would promptly reply that I was making arrangements to buy her freedom. It would take a few days before she realized that I was the one behind her woes. She would then try to use my own criminal background to get her out of jail, but by then I wo
uld have headed north, leaving the city in my dust. I hoped.
It was a cold, cruel world we lived and died in, with some of us handling the cruelties better than others. If I had not turned her in to the viceroy for what she did to me, I would have done it for what she did to Nina Alvarez.
The countess was a vicious bitch, and I could see that she enjoyed destroying the other woman, going beyond mere revelations about Carlos’s scheme to slicing her up emotionally.
Back at the shop, I had finally grabbed the countess by the arm and pulled her from the shop, leaving Nina sobbing behind us. There wasn’t an ounce of pity in the countess, a fact I knew well; it was a miracle I had survived our first meeting.
I had no great sympathy for the seamstress because she had lost Carlos; he would discard her as soon as he didn’t need her. But Mercedes said she had worked hard and fought to make a living as a woman, so she didn’t deserve to be ground into the dirt.
I put aside thoughts of women except Mercedes, because now I had to get El Mestizo released before he was tortured to death and get myself too far from the hangman for his noose to reach.
NINETY-ONE
“CARLOS IS CONVINCED that you’re a bandido,” Mercedes said.
Smart man. We were in her carriage on the way to the convent at Chapultepec.
“The uncle from Guadalajara hasn’t seen Antonio since he was a boy,” she said, “but he has a family portrait that he showed Carlos and—”
“And Carlos said I don’t look like Antonio.”
“I also heard him tell the uncle that he had received a message from a man he sent to Xalapa to get information. Something about the bandido having a chestnut stallion and Antonio didn’t have one.”
We had met outside the city, and I hitched Rojo to the carriage for the ride to Chapultepec. Before we reached the convent, I was going to leave the carriage and Mercedes was to turn around and return to the city. It was the viceroy’s day to tend his rose garden at the convent, and I was going to pay him a visit—one that most likely would turn out to be a battle for my life as I fled his wrath and guards.
“You must tell the viceroy the complete truth,” Mercedes said. “He is a good man; he will do the Christian thing.”
I merely nodded.
Eh, “the Christian thing” would also include hanging me as quickly as possible. And the “complete truth”? Mercedes was too young and had been too sheltered to realize that even the most indisputable facts were subject to interpretation—the greatest minds in the world could not even agree upon whether the sun flew around the earth, as the church claimed, or the earth around the sun. Truth was what the man with the biggest gun said it was, and it only lasted until another bigger gun rewrote it.
El Mestizo had already warned me that, no matter what evidence was presented to the viceroy, Carlos—as the true heir to a big fortune—could buy his way out. Mere murder had a price, but what Carlos had done to the bloodlines of horses was a worse crime to the gachupins because it would cost so many so much.
The viceroy was also hardly going to listen to the truth from me. Once I revealed to him that I was a mestizo bandido, it wasn’t likely that the viceroy would let me get much farther. He would have me silenced quickly and permanently because I was a threat to the colony and his tenure as its lord and master.
But I had to get across to the viceroy that if he acted expeditiously against Carlos with a permanent solution—summary execution after taking El Mestizo’s place for a bit of torture—it would keep a flame away from the powder keg Carlos had created.
“As soon as El Mestizo is released, I am going to disappear,” I told Mercedes.
“I’m going with you—”
“No, I told you, there are too many hardships.”
“You can’t tell me what to do.”
That was probably true. Her father had tried it and failed. Carlos, too. But she had never spent days in the saddle or worked with her hands until they were raw and her back ached.
I didn’t say anything because I knew it would do no good. I would go north and make a suitable life and come back and get her even if she had married in my absence.
“Ah, señorita, living like a gachupin has been a burden on my shoulders. Life was so much simpler for me when all I had to worry about was begging for food.”
* * *
I dropped some gold coins into the collection box again as I entered, hoping I would be able to buy my way into heaven.
The viceroy was on his knees with his back to me trimming a rosebush when I came up behind him. I pulled my bandana up to cover most of my face as I approached him in the deserted garden.
He started to turn as he heard me approach.
“Sister, I’m glad you’re—”
The cold feel of steel against his ear shut his mouth.
“Don’t turn your head, señor, or speak, because my finger is very nervous on the trigger. You have never seen me and will never see me again, but listen carefully because you must right a wrong and avoid a scandal that would ignite the wrath of the king…”
NINETY-TWO
CARLOS INTERCEPTED THE viceroy’s aide coming out of the government center as he pulled up in his carriage with his Guadalajara uncle.
“He’s an imposter!” he told Riego.
“Who’s an imposter?” the surprised aide countered.
“Antonio de los Rios—only he’s not Antonio; he’s the bandido who shot the other highwaymen.”
Riego gaped at Carlos. “What madness are you shouting?”
“Look.” Carlos grabbed the painting of the Rios family that the uncle had brought. “This is Antonio.”
Frowning, Riego peered closely at the boy Carlos pointed at in the background of the painting of the Rios family.
“It’s a child,” Riego said.
“But—but you can see he’s not Antonio.” Carlos was so angry and excited, he stuttered.
“Señor Rueda, you are being offensive. It appears that you are so overwrought about your personal problems and not getting the inheritance that it has affected your mind.”
“Can’t you see that he doesn’t have the mannerism of a gentleman? Did you know he shoes horses?”
“I understand El Mestizo also has learned the art to protect his valuable mounts from incompetent shoers,” the aide said.
Carlos was ready to explode. He knew Riego didn’t like him and would find reasons not to rule in his favor.
“Everything about him is slightly askew,” Carlos said. “I learned from his servants that he doesn’t use his fork and knife as they are accustomed to seeing people of quality use the utensils. He even sometimes addresses them as if they were equals instead of servants.”
“I don’t know what to say about Señor Rios’s table manners or the way he talks to servants,” the aide said, haughtily, “but he carries papers that give him ownership of the Rios estates. Frankly, señor, I would be careful with my opinions about the young man who has become heir to an estate that you also desired. I would hate to meet him on a field of honor. Don’t forget, he killed two bandidos while defending himself.”
“You don’t understand—there’s the red horse.”
“Red horse?”
“The chestnut with red coloring, you fool. My man Diego said the bandido who came to Antonio’s aid had the chestnut horse, but that the carriage didn’t have a horse hitched to—”
Carlos abruptly shut up. Saliva from his mouth ran down the corner of his mouth. He had called the second most powerful administrator a fool and just intimated that Diego had been at the scene of the attack.
Don Domingo stared at Carlos, his own mouth agape.
The attention of the men was suddenly diverted to a guardsman of the viceroy who had galloped up to the palace.
“Señor Riego! An urgent message from the viceroy! An order for arrest and seizure of a stallion.”
“The arrest of Don Carlos de Rueda and seizure of his stallion, El Rey, is ordered forthwith,” the aide read a
loud.
When the aide turned back to speak to Carlos, the man was gone.
“Where’d he go?” he asked the uncle.
The elderly man shook his head. “I don’t know.” He pointed at the line of horses hitched at the posts in front of the palace. “He took one of the horses.”
Riego shouted orders at the palace guards to find Carlos, sending them to Carlos’s city house.
The uncle stared dumbfounded at Riego. “How does Carlos’s man know so much about the horses of Antonio and this bandido?”
Riego ignored him and stared at the viceroy’s message again, trying to make sense of what had happened. As he gathered his wits, a wagon piled high with maize pulled up and a thin young man with a bad leg crawled down from it.
Still in shock by the sudden events, Riego merely stared at what appeared to be a filthy beggar approaching him with a bad limp.
Pulling himself up straight, the emaciated beggar said, in an upper-class voice, “Señor, I am Antonio de los Rios of Madrid, here before you by the grace of God and his majesty the king.”
NINETY-THREE
RETURNING TO THE city in her carriage, Mercedes had just reached the causeway when she told her driver to turn around.
“Do you know how to find the ranch of El Mestizo?” she asked her driver, who was also the house stableman.
“Sí, señorita.”
“Take me there.”
She wasn’t going back to the city. Not now—probably not ever.
She had been struggling with the decision to leave and go with Juan because she had a good concept of what being on the run with him would be like—all she had to do was look at the hardships of people around her to comprehend that life would be hard and harsh if she left the safe cocoon where she had been born and raised.
But it was her one chance at happiness and to experience infinitely more of the world than she would be able to locked and stuck away in an arranged marriage.
She would not miss her father, although she loved him as a daughter should. But there was not a great deal of warmth in their relationship, and sometimes she felt as if she were an item on his ledger of goods, but she knew he cared for her and she cared for him.