Aztec Rage (43 page)

T
O MY SURPRISE
, I was not taken to a dungeon but to the city's military headquarters. A frenzied facility, staff officers and couriers came and went, always in a hurry, some bristling with self-importance, others with worried expressions as they brought word of the war's progress. Officers took me down a stone stairway into the bowels of the building and shoved me into a dark room. The door slammed behind me, and I was in complete darkness. I hadn't seen anything in the room except stacks of papers, as if the room was used for storage of records. I made myself comfortable on the papers and tried not to think about my predicament. Not thinking about it was as easy as forgetting to breathe.

Was I to be taken out and summarily shot? If I were given the chance to explain myself, I might buy some time. I could confess to being a fraud—as well as a notorious colonial bandido and murderer—rather than a spy and traitor. That might buy me a few hours while they decided the best way to execute me.

I don't know how long they kept me in the storage room. I awoke when I heard the lock clicking.

“Come with me,” an officer said. He spoke with the arrogance and authority of a soldier who had spent his military career in staff assignments rather than facing an enemy in the field. Two soldados flanked him.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Hopefully to hell.”

“When we meet there, I'll be mounted on your wife, giving her a taste of a real man.”

The devil must make me say these things. The officer stood perfectly still, frozen in place. His face went pale. The two soldiers gawked.

The officer's pale color faded, and his face went red. “You—You—I'll have you—”

“Whipped? Hanged? You wish to redress the insult? Give me a sword, amigo, and we will settle the matter of your wife's affection for my manhood.”

“Put him in chains!”

A moment later I was taken into a room on an upper floor of the headquarters building—chained. Behind a desk sat an officer, this one in a uniform that told me he outranked the dog I had insulted. Unlike the pansy, this one looked like a man who would have my male member cut off and stuffed down my throat if I spoke ill of his wife or daughters.

“Unchain him and leave,” the ranking officer told the men who had brought me in after the young officer had conferred with him in private. He glared at me as soon as we were alone. “I should put you immediately before a firing squad for your insults to my lieutenant.”

I sneered. “He's a woman.”

“He's my son.”

Santo mierda!
“I apologize, Señor General.” I didn't know his rank, but calling him a “general” sounded like a good start. “I find that when I am falsely accused of crimes, I must defend myself against whomever is closest. Your fine young son was unfortunately the closest target available when the door opened.”

“And exactly what crimes have you been falsely accused of?”

“I'm not a spy!”

“And why do you find it necessary to defend yourself against such a charge?”

“Well I—I—”

“Perhaps you come prepared to defend against such a charge because you are in fact guilty of it. Is that the case, Señor Galí?”

Frantic strategies for getting my foot out of my mouth flew through my head, but none reached my tongue. I tried a lie. “The soldiers last night, one of them called me a spy.”

“You're lying. They didn't know why they were arresting you.”

“Sí, I am lying.” I leaned forward and spread my hands on his desk. I could not fool the man, so I resorted to the truth . . . or at least a small piece of it. “I have been an admirer of France, an afrancesado, as they say. I believed that some factions in Spain restricted free speech—even the freedom to think—and those are still my feelings. But now I spit on the French!” I banged my fist on the desk. “When the people of Madrid rose up and fought the invaders with their bare hands, I could no longer call myself an admirer of the French. I am first a patriot of Spain. Give me a sword, señor, and you will see French blood running down our gutters.”

He stared at me and pursed his lips. “A report from the viceroy in New
Spain names spies who conspired to send to the French plans for our fortifications.”

“I know of this matter. While on a scientific expedition in the colony, two of our people were arrested as spies.”

He grinned like one of the sharks I ate in Termino. “Your name is one of those accused.”

I made the sign of the cross and gestured to the heavens, somewhere above the cracked plaster ceiling overhead. “Señor General, may God strike me dead if I lie. I swear to you, I know nothing of these foul deeds except what I heard.” I hoped the good Lord realized there was more than a little truth in what I said.
“Personally, I had never spied!”

“I suspect you're lying. Something about you shouts to me that you're a bad hombre. Before you were brought before me, I expected you to be a timid, frightened scholar, a man of books and ideas. Instead, you have a foul mouth, you challenge an officer to a duel, and you lie as easily as if you were raised by gypsies.”

“I come from a good Catalán—”

“Which is the only reason you are alive.”

I looked at him in puzzlement. “Señor General?”

“I am a colonel, not a general. My name is Colonel Ramírez, so please stop inflating my rank. You come from Barcelona, where you're known to have French sympathies, perhaps even to have been a spy for the French before you went to the New World.”

“I—”

He held up his hand. “Please stop thundering your innocence. There were suspicions about you, not proof, from the colonial authorities. But now that I've met you, I wouldn't be surprised if the accusations had included acts of murder, banditry, blackmail, blasphemy, and the defilement of women, to say nothing of treason. So let's not waste time with protestations, which will simply tighten the noose I wish to loop around your neck.”

I involuntarily felt my neck and cleared my throat.

He shark-grinned again. “Yes, that very neck. But you may be able to save it if you cooperate.”

“What do you want of me?” I assumed he wanted me to implicate my alleged coconspirators. I didn't know any, except for the countess, and I was ready to name her and make up a few others just to make it sound good.

“You have qualities that we need at the moment. You're from Barcelona, and you speak Catalán and French fluently.”

“Sí, most excellently.” I was suddenly elated. They wanted me to translate for them! What a soft job that would be, especially when the alternative was to be ripped apart by a team of horses. My mastery of both languages was questionable, but I could fake it.

“We need you for a mission,” he said.

“A mission?”

“We must obtain information from Catalonia. We need a man who can travel to Barcelona and beyond, to Gerona near the French border.”

“Gerona?” I squeaked. I knew enough about the geography of Spain to know that Cádiz was near the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula and Gerona was hundreds of leagues away, beyond Barcelona, near the French border on the northern edge of the country. In between, several hundred thousand French troops ravaged the country. The French occupied Barcelona and were storming the gates of Gerona.

His grin tightened. “I can see that your passionate feelings of patriotism immediately ignited when I mentioned the need of your country. As you said a moment ago, just give you a sword and French blood would run in gutters.”

“Of course, General—Colonel—Naturally my first thought was to ask myself . . . what can I do for my country? And I'm sure there are many valuable things I can do,” I cleared my throat, “right here in Cádiz—”

“Your choices are to go north or be executed immediately.”

I nodded and smiled. “Naturally, the atrocities those French bastardos have committed has inflamed my patriotic fervor. I am eager to go north for my country. What exactly is it you want me to do?”

“Several things. The first step is that you will be transported to Barcelona by boat.”

“By boat? What of French warships?”

“The British are our allies, and their ships dominate the sea.”

“What happens after I reach Barcelona?”

“You will find out the next step after your arrival there.”

Icy fingers ruffled the hackles on my nape.

He read concern on my face. “I told you your choices. Cooperate and make up for your treasonable conduct, or find yourself summarily executed. You have been chosen because we know who you are, what you are, and where you will be. If you disobey orders, you'll not survive until the next dawn.”

He got up and stood at the window, his hands clasped together behind him. “These are dark days, señor. Men and women die each day as heroes from one end of the country to the other. Sometimes they die alone, other times with hundreds of their fellows falling beside them. Tailors and shoemakers, kitchen maids and housewives are fighting the invaders. The names of their cities are sung and heralded across Europe as citadels of courage and determination by a people who will not surrender in the face of murderous aggression by a foreign invader.” He swung around and glared at me. “When I thought you were a spineless but idealistic scholar, I doubted you would be of any use to me. Now I can see that you are an opportunist who would sell his soul to the highest bidder . . . and I am that bidder.”

“What have you bid, Señor Colonel?”

“
Your life.
I see in you the incarnation of human corruption, a worthless, scheming, lying, violent, drunken, fornicating swine. If you survive this mission without our own people cutting your throat and hanging you up to bleed like a stuck pig, I will be unpleasantly surprised.”

What could I say? That I was not a French sympathizer, but merely an ordinary bandido and murderer?

I stood and puffed out my chest. “Rest assured, Colonel, I will accomplish this mission in the name of the people of Spain.”

“I would rather send the rawest recruit than someone like you who can't be trusted, but you two are all we have.”

I blinked. “Two?”

“Your compadre is going with you.”

“What compadre?”

“The one who saved your life in the Yucatan when the savages were attacking: Fray Baltar.”

María Mother of God.
The inquisitor-priest was alive.
I crossed myself for real.

Justice is dead in this world. I have known that since Bruto slandered me on his deathbed.

That good-hearted, idealistic Carlos should die at the hands of savages, while that mongrel hound of Satan's Inquisition should live was evidence of God's negligence that day in the Yucatán.

I would have to remedy the situation.

FIFTY-EIGHT

B
EFORE I LEFT
, the colonel mentioned that Fray Baltar had not attended our first meeting because the cardinal was awarding him a holy medal for his “bravery” in the Yucatán. While I had escaped by shipping out through Sisal, the priest had gone in the opposite direction, getting to the southern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula near Tulum. There he boarded a coastal boat that took him south to Cartagena, where he caught a Cádiz-bound ship.

He had first told the authorities that no one survived the expedition,
despite his heroic efforts to save them.
When he found out “Carlos” had survived, he took credit for his escape from the savages. I suspected he had deliberately avoided the meeting at the colonel's out of fear that “Carlos” would have exposed him as the cowardly cur he was. Thank God he had not been there to unmask me. But the issue was still coming to a head; we had to meet with the colonel tomorrow.

Colonel Ramírez obligingly told me of the location of the monastery where my “compadre” was staying. The colonel released me with orders to meet him and Fray Baltar at his office the next day. There, he would give us final instructions.

I found my way to the religious complex. I took up a position at an inn window, ordered food and wine, and watched the priests coming in and out of the church grounds. Most of them crossed the street for a cup of wine, and I noticed one occasionally disappeared upstairs with one of the inn's putas. I learned from a barmaid that by dinnertime, the place would be crowded with priests, as would the upstairs.

The landlord brought me a fresh jug of wine after I had finished the first. I asked him if the priest, who was the “hero of the Yucatán,” favored his premises, and he assured me the man was a regular visitor.

He asked if I wanted a woman.

“Send your most beautiful one over,” I told him. The putas I'd seen were ugly enough to make a wolf drop a pork chop, but one could still hope.

“I am Serena,” the woman told me, as she swaggered up to my table. “You wish to go upstairs? I will cost you two escudos.”