His wife’s serious illness had made it even more difficult for them to meet in the city. Under ordinary circumstances, little comment would be made when a man takes a mistress, but Carlos feared that the marquis would be offended because of his sister’s serious condition.
Nina wondered if Carlos would marry her if his wife passed away. She had hinted about it, but had not gotten a response. Despite her yearning, it was doubtful that such a match would be made because of her lower social position. She was of the merchant class, while Carlos was a wealthy caballero and related by marriage to the most noble family in the colony.
Nina was a rarity among even the merchant class because she was a woman who made a living on her own. Few jobs were open to women other than as servants or laborers washing clothes in laundries, sewing, or weaving.
Known as the best seamstress in Mexico City, she designed gowns for the wealthiest women in the colony. It provided her a good living, though she eyed many of the women with resentment, especially the wives and daughters of the merchant class to which she herself had once belonged.
Her father had lost his wealth and took his own life after speculation on a silver mine made his family homeless and put him in debtors’ prison. Silver—which made the colony the richest in the empire and created many a great fortune—had cost more men their lives and fortunes than card games.
Nina was famous for her fine, fancy weaving, creating intricate patterns with her small fingers. She knew that Carlos also delighted in her tiny fingers and quick tongue when it came to their lovemaking.
Impatient now, she went to check the hallway again to see if her lover had managed to slip away from the bishop’s company.
TWENTY-ONE
AS THE GAME below progressed and the stack of pieces of eight coins on the hacienda’s owner’s side of the table shrunk while the stacks increased on the ranchero’s side, I could see that the hacienda owner’s temperament grew meaner at about the same rate as his losses.
The match wasn’t about the number of silver coins. Rather, the coins were used as chips, and when the hacienda owner lost his last chip, he had to turn over a paper giving ownership of the two horses back to the ranchero.
I was surprised when the hacienda owner calmly handed over the paper when his last silver piece was lost.
The elated ranchero, bubbling with joy, bowed and profusely thanked the man. In response, the hacienda owner slipped his quirt off the hook on his belt and hit the ranchero in the face with it, slicing open the side of his face from hairline to jaw.
Ayyo! I had run on the streets with léperos who were finer human beings than that bastardo.
I left my position at the railing, resisting the temptation to drop a heavy clay flowerpot down on the hacienda owner because it would have also brought hell into the ranchero’s life. At least he had his horses back and knew never to trust gachupins.
As I entered the room, the door to the hallway began swinging open and I dived to the floor next to the bed. I froze for a second in pure terror that I was about to be discovered and about to have my gut sliced open with a gachupin’s blade, then scooted under the bed.
I heard footsteps walking across the room, but not the sounds of a man’s heavy foot.
In the dim light I could see the bottom part of a woman’s dress and shoes as she moved across the room, turning off the lamps and then pulling the curtains, until the darkness in the room was relieved only by a single candle next to the bed and a little lamplight coming through the open door of the dressing room.
She was either very romantic or a damn bat, and I didn’t care which as I lay motionless with my heart pounding, expecting to be discovered at any moment, her screams sounding an alarm that an intruder had invaded the room.
If I got out of this without my neck stretching on the gallows, I would be paying the indio servant a visit and taking back the coin I gave her for information about the room’s occupant—she hadn’t told me that the man’s wife had accompanied him.
The woman stopped moving. I saw her feet turn halfway around—in my direction. Had she spotted me under the bed?
I looked down at my own feet in sudden fear that they were exposed. Relieved that they weren’t, I lay as still as possible, and waited, hoping I wouldn’t have to sneeze or cough—dust under the bed from the coal bed warmer was tickling my dry throat.
What was she doing? I felt the beads of sweat forming on my forehead and under my arms. Being caught in a room with a Spanish woman would mean the end of me—quickly. The chief constable would simply turn me over to the mob of gachupins who came to the jail with a rope.
I could see that her feet still stood planted on the floor, but now I heard the swishing movement of a dress.
Impatient, I slowly inched my head farther out to see why she halted in the middle of the room.
Ayyo! The woman had stopped in front of a full-length oval mirror on a stand. Swaying seductively back and forth, she hummed a little song as she examined her figure in the mirror.
She glided her hands along the tight-fitting bodice that accentuated her ample breasts and round figure, admiring herself in the full-length mirror, before she finally began to undo her layers of clothing, removing first her silk dress and then the mountains of petticoats underneath. Her shoes were the last to come off.
Madre de Dios! She stood totally naked now, except for a strand of pearls around her neck, and a distinguishing mark on one of her breasts that I couldn’t quite make out.
Watching her voluptuous body moving in the faint light had awakened the private part between my legs. I wanted to spring out from my hiding place underneath the bed and have this sultry woman.
She had a presence of self-assurance and assertiveness about her, unlike the young señoritas that I had seen in the city, all of whom appear too innocent and naive. I doubted if this woman had any trouble enticing men to give her what she wanted in exchange for giving them the pleasure they desired.
How long would I have to hide underneath the bed and have her torment me like this? I had no control in the growth of my manhood, and it was beginning to ache pressing against my pants because I couldn’t make an adjustment that would have made it more comfortable.
There was nothing I could do but wait in agony, even though my body screamed for me to dive out and shove my pene into this woman so I could satisfy my lust.
The woman finally went into the dressing room.
I knew this was my chance to escape. I slipped out from under the bed but hesitated a moment. I had to get across the room and the door to the hallway without being seen or heard.
The problem was the candle next to the bed. It gave off just enough light to reveal that there was a stranger in the room if she stepped out of the dressing area.
I pinched out the candlelight, turning the room almost completely dark.
The path to the door was clear of furniture, and I moved soft-footed on the floor. Reaching the door, I quietly opened it, and shut it as I saw a man and woman topping the stairway across the hallway.
The latch scraped as it dropped into place—it sounded as loud as a church bell. I didn’t breathe, didn’t move.
“I’m coming, darling,” came from the dressing area, and the bedroom was cloaked in darkness as she extinguished the lamp in the dressing room.
She was a damn bat!
I headed for the window I had climbed through from the vines earlier and hit a table, knocking something off and onto the floor.
And then she was on me. It was too dark to see her and I smelled her before I felt her grab my clothes. She put her arms around my neck and kissed me, hard, her mouth eagerly kissing my neck, my cheeks, my lips again, and I realized as she pressed against me why she had turned the room completely dark—she was still bare-ass naked, her body hot and moist from the bathtub.
“Oh, darling, I missed you … your arms around me—”
She guided my hands to her full breasts, and I squeezed them as she pulled my head down to h
er chest.
I had to pretend I was her man. What else could I do?
I kissed the big luscious mounds, first one, then the other, taking each nipple in my mouth and caressing it with my tongue.
She undid the front of my pants and her hands slipped down.
“I know how much you love my nimble fingers,” she said.
Ayyo! I almost jumped out of my pants as she grabbed my swollen stalk with one hand while her other hand squeezed my cojones until I had to force back a gasp that wouldn’t sound like her husband.
“My darling … you feel even bigger and harder than you ever have been before,” she whispered seductively.
Suddenly my pants were half off and she was on her knees, taking my engorged stalk in her mouth, keeping a firm grip on it as she sucked, up and down, again and again … Ayyo! The pumping was making me dizzy and ready to explode in her mouth when—
The door unlatched!
I broke off the mouth pump immediately and ran for the window, pulling up my pants on the way as best I could.
I heard her scream behind me as I flew into the drapes and pulled up the window.
It was the wrong window—no vine and a sheer drop to the ground three stories below!
“Get out of here!” she shouted to the person who entered the room.
“Pardon, señora, coals for the bed!”
I was confused and crazed with panic.
Staying in the drapes, I moved toward the window where the vine came up, freezing in place when I heard her pulling aside the drapes.
I couldn’t see her but I knew she was checking out the window, looking to see if her phantom lover was below, muttering to herself in sheer bewilderment.
The door being unlatched sounded again, and I hear her exclaim, “Carlos!” as her bare feet patted away from the window and drapes.
“That damn door latch was jammed,” a man said. “What’s the matter, Nina? You look like you saw a ghost.”
“I—I—”
“What’s happened? You’re ready to faint.”
“The—the coal man, he brought coals.”
“Coals?”
“For the bed. He opened the door and I was waiting for you—as I am now.”
Carlos chuckled. “Well, you made his day exciting, perhaps his whole life, since he will be talking about the naked woman he saw. I’m just happy you weren’t seen by anyone of significance. If my wife’s relatives found out—but enough, come to me, do those things with your fingers and tongue that I love so much.”
Ayyo! I agonized as I heard his shouts of glee about how much joy those fingers and tongue brought him.
TWENTY-TWO
I STOOD PERFECTLY still, for an eternity it seemed, knees locked, my swollen stalk already deflated, as the man greedily spent his passions under the woman’s erotic touch.
When it came for her turn to be satisfied, he apologized for not being able to perform his manly duty.
“It’s been a trying day with my wife’s relatives,” he alibied.
“I think it’s the sheepskin you cover your pene with to collect your manhood. I wish you didn’t wear it.”
“Darling, you know why. I have to make sure I don’t impregnate you. It wouldn’t matter if you were an indio, but you are Spanish and a Spanish bastardo is much harder to deal with and keep quiet. I don’t want a problem with the marquis. He already complained to me that I am not doing enough to make sure his sister is comfortable.”
“It’s her last illness, isn’t it? Then we can be—”
“Don’t start that again. You know that I will have to marry a woman whose dowry can maintain my lifestyle. You are a seamstress and have no dowry. What you do for my stallion has kept me in gold so far, but as the animal grows older, suspicions will arise.”
I found the conversation strange and wondered what he meant by her keeping him in gold because of his stallion.
As their conversation droned on I found my head nodding and nearly lost my balance as I started to fall asleep.
When I finally heard them both snoring, I gently raised the window behind me. Gently wasn’t enough because it made a screech. I jerked it up quickly and prayed that I was going out the window that had the vines.
I went through almost headfirst, grabbing hold of a vine, swinging back against the wall, barely getting a grip to break what would have been a plunge to my death.
Cursing came from above as the man stuck his head out the window, but I didn’t look up as I scrambled halfway down the wall before I let go and dropped to the ground.
I hit the dirt that the pig had softened with its hooves and droppings and rolled in pig shit, getting to my feet and running like hell away from whatever or whoever might be running after me.
TWENTY-THREE
THE NEXT MORNING as dawn broke I left the stable eating a tortilla filled with carne, eggs, and peppers and headed for the corral outside of town where horse traders gathered to make deals and buyers of unbroken mounts paid to have their new purchase carry a rider for the first time.
I led a horse beside me that had been stabled and that the owner wanted taken to a trader.
Since that time of being discovered under the hooves of a stallion and finding a home as a stable boy, I had learned much about horses and people. I had learned that there were good people and bad people, and more sinners than saints.
I had a natural affinity with horses right off, but had to learn how to recognize and treat their maladies and injuries, when to put them down to keep them from suffering if they were no longer able to function, and the craft of horseshoeing, an art that Atlas himself would have found more perplexing and demanding than holding up the sky.
Anything I earned, of course, went to the stable owner, so I had owned nothing but the clothes on my back and a few copper coins that jingled in my pocket. But I ate well, slept soundly with a roof over my head, and enjoyed living, working, and breathing with horses.
Things had changed during the past few months, but I still hung on to my job and the stable stall where I slept.
Perhaps because he had no family of his own, Gomez had begun to treat me with some of the respect and endearment a father gives a son. He had told me that his only family was a sister whom he disliked intensely and that when he died, the stable would go to me.
“I went to the lawyer and signed a paper giving you the stable after I pass,” he told me one night after he had returned from the inn with a bellyful of wine.
The lawyer had argued with him, he said, telling him that people would be angry if the stable came into the ownership of a lépero.
“But I don’t give a damn what they say. I want you to have it,” he said.
Gomez passed beyond sorrow six months ago after he got kicked in the head shoeing a mule. Within a day, his sister and her husband, Héctor, came and took over the stable as the new owners.
A Spanish friend had also been told of Gomez’s wish in giving me the stable. The friend took me to the lawyer and had me sit outside when he went in to talk to the lawyer. A few minutes later the town mayor arrived and gave me a dark look as he went into the lawyer’s office.
When Gomez’s friend returned a short while later his attitude was gruff and even angry toward me.
“Go back to the stable and do your work. It will never be yours. A lépero can’t own such a thing.”
I am not completely stupid about the ways of the world, and I knew the man spoke the truth. The ownership of the stable had been decided based upon blood, not Gomez’s wishes.
The notion that I could have owned the stable had never been real to me, anyway. I had never possessed anything more than the clothes on my back and the dirt between my toes.
When Gomez told me that he would leave the stable to me, in my mind it only meant that I would continue to have a place to live and work after he was gone. But when the new owners arrived, I quickly learned the difference between owning a stable and working there.
Gomez knew every aspect of the
business and worked hard alongside me, whether it was shoeing or shoveling, feeding horses or treating their problems—it didn’t matter what the task was, he carried part of the load.
The sister and her husband were lazy and stupid. What she did best was eat, and her husband had mastered the art of drunkenness so well he got in that state even during the workday.
They knew nothing about horses and less about running the stable except to have their hands out to collect the money and keep their tongues wagging to give me orders and complain that I wasn’t working fast enough.
I didn’t mind the work, but hated working for people who were more greedy and stupid than the swine—two-footed and four-footed—I had once slept alongside on the streets.
Since the drunken husband took over, I was appalled over the way he treated the horses. Héctor had never owned a horse and knew nothing about how to handle a horse except with a whip.
When I tried to show him how to lead a horse correctly, he raised the whip to hit me.
I took it from him, jerking the whip out of his hand. He fired me, but his wife was a little smarter than he was—she told me I could still work at the stable, but must learn to obey or take a beating.
I didn’t tell her I would not be beaten—nor did I point out that the only reason they kept me on was that they knew nothing about running the stable, and, while it would be easy to hire an indio to shovel manure, they would not easily find a master of horseshoeing and animal doctor to replace me.
What grieved me most was the way Héctor cheated the horses, and their masters, with feed.
The owners wanted their fine horses fed corn. Héctor charged for it, but fed the horses cheaper grains, even buying feed at a bargain price that was dried out or mildewed and charging for the better feed.
I loved horses and would have put up with el diablo to work with them, and that was about how I felt about dealing with the new owners of the stable.