Aztec Rage (55 page)

H
UMBERTO, MARQUÉS DEL
Mira, entered his wife's bedroom and came up behind her as the maid finished dressing her. Isabella wore a silver silk dress elaborately embroidered with spun gold and lavishly festooned with jewels. While Isabella admired her own golden mane of lustrous waist-length hair, her maid draped a black mantilla over her head and shoulders. Isabella viewed herself in her dressing mirrors approvingly. Light blonde hair was all the vogue now, and Isabella had imported from Milan an alchemic elixir that had turned her tresses a dazzling gold.

Marriage had been good to Isabella. When she was an unwed girl in Guanajuato, she had been thin. Since marrying, she had gained ten pounds, which had filled her out in the right places, making her even more stunning.

Studying his wife, Humberto felt pride of ownership, the same sort of pleasure he felt when he contemplated his palatial home and his stable of thoroughbred horses. He considered Isabella the most beautiful woman in the colony, a wife fit for a Spanish nobleman, even for a king.

Scion of a noble family that had fallen from royal favor before his birth, Humberto came to the colony to use his social status to regain his family fortunes. He was only twenty-two years old when he married a wealthy widow twice his age. Unfortunately, the widow had lived another quarter of a century, so he was forty-seven before he came into full control of the large estate left by her first husband, a gachupine who used his position as an assistant to the viceroy to make a large fortune speculating on—and manipulating—the corn market.

Humberto's strong point were his dress, speech, mannerisms, and presentation of himself as a nobleman. He knew nothing about the management of money and had wisely left the widow's fortune in her control. She had managed to make a modest increase in it during her lifetime, but since her death and his remarriage to the beautiful Isabella the fortune had deflated. Unwise investments on his part coupled with his wife's extravagant lifestyle and gambling losses had substantially reduced his income and assets. He had not shared his financial woes with Isabella because it was not a proper matter for a man to discuss with his wife. Anyway, she knew less about financial matters than he did.

“You are stunning, my dear,” he told Isabella. “But it is not the clothes. You would be the most beautiful woman in the colony even if you were dressed in rags.”

“You are too kind, Humberto. Did the jeweler send over my new necklace? I want to wear it to the theater tomorrow night.”

He winced at the mention of the jewelry. He was having a difficult time covering the purchase. “It's coming mañana.”

He gestured for her to send her maid out. After the servant left, he said, “I'm sorry you're being asked to meet with this hombre.” He puffed his chest up. “I'd put a bullet through his heart on the field of honor, but as you know, the viceroy has instructed that no Spaniard is to stain his hands with the man's tainted blood.”

She sighed. “It's just so strange. Juan was a fine caballero one day, a peon the next. But I suppose that was God's wish. Darling, would you have the jeweler make diamond earrings to match my new necklace?”

SEVENTY-SEVEN

M
Y GREAT DAY
had finally come. A bribe to her maid had gotten a note into Isabella's hands, and she wrote back, agreeing to meet me. The parchment contained her rose scent. The smell of it brought back visions of Isabella in her carriage in Guanajuato and her sparkling laugh . . . and of Juan de Zavala, caballero, Prince of the Paseo, riding tall.

Bruto, may you rot in hell, a hammer pounding your cojones over and over again
.

No, instead, on my deathbed, I'll pray to God for just a few minutes in a room alone with him.

The meeting place she selected was away from the city, on Chapúltepec Hill, an hour's ride west of the heart of the city. Chapúltepec meant “Hill of the Grasshopper” in the barbaric Aztec tongue. Rising a couple hundred feet, it afforded an astonishingly detailed view of the city and valley of Méjico from its summit: the canals and causeways, dying lakes, innumerable churches, houses, great and small, priestly seminaries and convents for nuns, and the two great aqueducts that snaked across the plains. An Aztec temple once stood on the hill. A summer palace for the viceroy was built there, but everyone knew the structure was actually a fort, a place for the viceroy to retreat to when the political climate got too “hot.”

As I rode toward the meeting place, I thought about Isabella's husband. During my time in Spain, I had grown to admire much about the Spanish and the culture they gave the colony. But I respected the people,
not their rulers and landed gentry. After the gachupines had spurned me as a leper in the colony, and after watching upper-class Spaniards in Europe hoard and hide their fortunes while common people who owned nothing but their courage fought Napoleon tooth and claw—”to the knife”—without their help, I had neither respect nor awe for Spain's ruling class.

From talk in the streets and at the inn, I learned that the marqués was a typical Spanish nobleman, full of macho vanity and pretentious superiority. I knew his type well, having rubbed shoulders with men like him in my gachupine days. His notorious vanity reminded me of the tale of two haughty gachupines who entered a narrow alley in their carriages at the same time. Proceeding in opposite directions, both men refused to back their carriages up, each insisting that the other back up. Come nightfall, each was still there, refusing to leave his coach.

Friends brought in food and also stocked their coaches with blankets and pillows, and the two Spanish peacocks settled in to outwait the other. As days passed, the incident became a cause célèbre that attracted thousands to the area. After five days of the nonsense, the viceroy intervened and ordered the two to back up, each matching the other's speed.

A real man would have settled the matter with hombrada—a manly deed or an act of valor—and my way would have been on the dueling field with sword or pistol.

Isabella chose for our meeting a stone cottage, a house that once belonged to a family who tended the park's gardens. The park had been a project of Viceroy Iturrigaray, but after the viceroy was sent back to Spain in disgrace for toying with the notion of making the colony his own fief, the park and the keeper's house had been abandoned. I knew something of it because I had visited the area earlier in the day to ensure I knew the way; the meeting with my love was set for sunset, and I didn't want to be late. I admit that I'd hoped for a bed in the abandoned house.

When I reached the dirt path that ran down the middle of the park, I saw her carriage parked beside the house. I hurriedly urged Tempest into a gallop.

Isabella was leaving a copse of trees as I came near the house. I dismounted and tied Tempest to the hitch rack by the front door but didn't rush to her. I suddenly experienced fear of rejection.

She joined me in the front of the hitch rack. She appeared oddly disconcerted. “You're early, Juan.”

I shrugged. “It gives us more time together. Dios mío, Isabella, you have grown even more beautiful.”

Her melodious laugh sent a tingle up my spine. “And you look more the renegade and bandido than ever.”

“No, you said I was a lépero, remember?”

“That, too.” She fluttered her fan in front of her face. “I will say this,
you certainly are more manly. You always were a handsome rogue, but now you look like a man of steel. No wonder you frightened those caballeros at the paseo.”

“Isabella . . . my love . . . I have never stopped thinking about you.”

She slowly moved back toward her carriage where her driver was waiting. I didn't want her near the carriage where we would be in eye- and earshot of her driver. “Would you like to take a walk? Or peek inside the house?”

“No, I can't stay long.”

As she neared the carriage door, I grabbed her arm and said, “Look,” nodding toward my feet.

Her fan fluttered again. “Look at what?”

“At my boots.”

“Your boots?” She shrugged. “You seem obsessed with them. Can't you afford a new pair? I hear you're quite wealthy. Perhaps you couldn't afford to bring me a gift, either?”

What an imbecile I was! I had not brought her a gift. I should be showering her with jewels.

“I'm sorry, forgive me. But look, don't you recognize the boots?”

“Why are you so interested in those worn boots?”

“They're the ones you gave me when I was in jail.”

She laughed, but there was no music in it, only derision. “Why would I give you boots?”

“I—I thought—” My tongue stumbled. My meeting with her was not going well. I had dreamt of this moment for hundreds of nights, and now I felt like I was sinking into quicksand.

She climbed into the coach and pulled the door shut behind her. I stared at her dumbfounded.

“You can't go, we just—”

“I'm late for a social engagement.” Her eyes were as flat as a Gila monster's, her voice was hard and distant.

The carriage lurched, and I noticed the driver had paused his whip crack to stare beyond me. Jumping to his feet in the box, he cracked his whip over the coach mules loud enough to wake the damned, and they hit their collars like battering rams.

Glancing over my shoulder to where the driver had been looking, I realized that a line of horsemen had crept up on me: five of them, masked, with swords drawn. I was unarmed except for a boot knife; my sword was on Tempest.

I ran for the horse as the riders charged. As the first one neared me, I suddenly turned and shouted, waving my knife and free hand. The caballo spooked, veering into other horses. Had a man done that to Tempest, the stallion would have pounded him into the ground, but these paseo ponies were not warhorses.

Just as I jerked Tempest's reins off the hitch rack, a rider attacked me, swinging his sword. I went under the stallion's belly. Tempest spooked and turned, kicking at the rider's horse when he brushed his rump. Now all five riders were joining in. Surrounded by five milling horses and sword-swinging men, Tempest was not in a good mood. A half-head taller than their unblooded ponies, Tempest pounded them mercilessly with his iron-shod hooves. I hung onto the rein for dear life as Tempest kicked and bucked and shied bites at the other mounts with his teeth. I got my sword out of the scabbard, but the blade went flying as I tried to mount the stallion. Clutching his pommel, I finally swung on. Tempest and I galloped into a nearby copse.

A rider loped toward me. Leaning down from the saddle, he slashed at me with his sword. My boot knife was still miraculously in my fist, and at the last second I deflected the blow. Glancing off my thigh, the sword still drew blood. Meanwhile the horseman galloped past. Turning, he prepared to attack me from another angle.

Suddenly another horseman charged me out of nowhere, and I quickly reined Tempest in behind a tree. Charging past, his horse stumbled, and they both went down in a stand of trees thick with undergrowth, the horse's tack tangling in bushes. Holding on to the pommel, I swung down and grabbed a short, thick limb. When he saw me coming, he remounted his still-tangled mount, and, raising his sword, he braced for my attack. The limb went flying by him, but the second it took him to duck, however, gave me time to drag him from his saddle.

He hit the ground hard, and I dropped on him, my knee collapsing his gut. The air went out of him in a whoosh. I dispatched him with his own sword. Taking it in my teeth, I swung onto Tempest. It wasn't a good military sword—one made for truly lethal combat—but a fancy rapier, the kind the paseo dandies carried for show. In my skilled hand, however, it could decapitate a pig.

I would need that skill. Two of the horsemen were charging me. They were still handicapped by the thick brush and forest. One horseman pointed a pistol straight at me, so dead-on its muzzle looked as wide as my open grave. He fired, but his aim was off from the movement of his mount. Instead of hitting me in the chest, the ball hit my leg. Reversing his grip, he continued on, never breaking stride, swinging his pistol's barrel like a battleaxe. I countered with the rapier. He screamed as I lopped his arm off at the elbow.

The scream caused the other three attackers to stop and regroup. I didn't care. I spurred Tempest toward the closest rider. Turning to run, his horse panicked, reared, then bucked, throwing him. He was all alone now. His two companions were in full retreat, abandoning their comrade, galloping out of the wood as fast as they could.

I wheeled the pony and went back at the man who was on the ground. He ran, dodged around a tree, but I still ran him down. As I approached,
he was afoot, trying to duck the downward sweep of my blade. Trying to behead him, I swung and missed. He looked back at me as he bolted, arms flailing, screaming in horror . . . and ran straight into a tree.

He lay at the tree's base, still as death, knocked unconscious. I left him there—horseless, weaponless, out cold.