Aztec Rage (39 page)

That evening as the indios worked up an appetite, dancing and drinking jungle beer, I used the piece of flint I had removed from Carlos's leg to cut the vines that were used like rope to hold the cage together, opening up
one side. I urged Carlos and the inquisitor-priest to follow me, and we crawled to the mountainous supply of corn and discarded husks near the cages.

I used the flint again, this time with the metal of my belt to ignite the dried husks. We quickly spread the fire, which a fortuitous breeze whipped into an inferno. Indios from all around raced to it. Dressed as Mayan warriors, we melted in with them, making our escape through the drunken confused masses.

We were away from the main body of indios and about to break into the dense jungle when Fray Baltar bumped into a sentry. The indio stared at him. The priest turned and pointed at Carlos and me. “There!” he shouted in Mayan. Ay! I should have followed my first instinct and slit the priest's throat.

Carlos and I ran into the darkness, into the jungle, with the sentry trailing us with his spear. Under cover of the brush, I suddenly whipped around and went low, letting the guard fall over me. He rolled, raising his spear as I leaped on him. The blade sliced me across the left shoulder, but when he twisted onto his hands and knees to rise, I got on his back. Tightening my forearm around his throat, I shoved a knee in his back and broke his neck.

But now more indios were thrashing through the foliage. I grabbed Carlos by the arm. “Run!”

We ran, tripping and falling along the way, making slow progress. Luckily the savages behind us fared no better and were hopelessly confused as to where we were. I pulled myself loose from the clinging bush and continued leading Carlos deeper into the thickets.

When Carlos could no longer run, I helped him up a tree and climbed up after him. We sat high in the branches and listened to the shouts and footfalls of the indios. The sky opened up, and a great downpour engulfed the jungle, concealing us and our trail. Hopefully, soon the indios would tire of sloshing in the water.

We stayed in the tree until the break of light, uncomfortable but occasionally dozing. I had not heard any movement for hours and decided it was time to climb down.

Carlos fell the last ten feet. His leg wound had ripped open, he was trembling from malaria, and I discovered he had another wound in his back. He had taken an indio arrow there, and I didn't realize it until I examined him in the light of day. !Ay! His shirt and pants were soaked with blood. He had lost too much blood to go on. My own wound was superficial . . . as long as it did not become infected.

“Go,” he said. “Hurry, they may still be hunting for us.”

“I won't leave you.”

He grabbed the front of my shirt. “Don't be the fool you have always believed
I
am. I know who
you
are, Don Juan de Zavala.”

“How—”

“In Teotihuacán, the constables asked for a man by that name. I knew from the description it was you. Besides, you strutted like a damn caballero. And those boots,” he whispered.

I grinned. “Then for certain I cannot leave you. I have to get you to Mérida so you can claim the reward.”

He coughed, and blood spilled from his mouth. “The only reward I will get is a season in hell for betraying my country,” he said with great pain. He hung on to my shirt, pulling me down. “You must go there . . . to my city, Barcelona. Take my ring, my locket . . . give them to my sister, Rosa. Tell her that I was wrong . . . what she's done is not a sin . . . It's God's will . . . the path . . .”

He never told me what God had willed for his sister before he coughed one last time and his life left him in a single protracted sigh.

I dug a hole as best I could and covered him with limbs. The animals would find him, but I didn't think he'd mind. He had given up the ghost, and now his only care would be for his soul. I took Carlos's rings, locket, identity papers, and money pouch. I said good-bye to my amigo-scholar, saluting him for his courage and his ideals, and fled into the jungle.

I knew that Mérida was somewhat east of the ruins, several days journey even for a man in good health. As I pushed through the jungle, thickets ripped at my flesh, opening my shoulder injury, giving me a bleeding wound. I was baked by the heat, soaked by great downpours of rain, and starved. I grew weaker and even more miserable when I came down with fever. Staggering through the jungle, I was hardly aware of who I was or where I was. Finally I fell to the ground and was unable to rise. My mind slipped its moorings, and I vanished into a black void.

When I awoke, the earth was trembling. Strange noises filled the air. I panicked, believing that the earth was opening up, that a volcano was exploding under me. I pushed myself up and saw a horned beast charging. I crawled out of its way and found shelter behind a tree. The “horned beast” was followed by dozens of others—cattle—being herded by vaqueros.

One of the vaqueros spotted me and almost fell off his horse. He shouted in surprise.
“Fantasma!”

“No!” I shouted, “not a ghost, but a Spaniard!” And then I passed out again.

FIFTY-TWO

I
AWOKE IN
a hut outside the casa of a hacienda. The owner lived in Mérida, and the majordomo was visiting him. The majordomo's wife, a lonely angel of mercy, tended to my wounds. As soon as I was strong enough to sit up, she climbed into my bed to assure that my manhood was intact.

When I could stand, a vaquero helped me onto a mule. Riding behind him, he took me to the nearest village. The only doctors in the entire Yucatán were in Mérida and Campeche, so the village priest ministered to my injuries as best he could.

He believed me to be Spanish, one Carlos Galí, a gentleman and scholar from Barcelona. Word had come of the ill-fated expedition. The priest knew of no other survivors.

For a week I lived in a village hut, one room built of upright poles, with a steep roof of thatched palm leaves. I slept in a hammock and drank water from a pot, after waiting for the insects to sink to the bottom.

A quiet village, it was little different from many others the expedition had passed through. During the hot afternoons, siesta time, indios swung in hammocks in the shade of their huts while a man in a doorway thrummed a homemade guitar. Dogs, chickens, and naked, dirt-encrusted children played in the street.

When I was able to travel, four village men transported me to Mérida on a hand-carried “coach” of cut poles, horses and mules being more valuable and expensive than men. The villagers laid two poles side by side, three feet apart, connecting the spread poles to crossbars at each end with unspun hemp. They secured a grass hammock between the poles. When they finished, the four men raised it to their padded shoulders.

On the way to Mérida, we passed large carts loaded with hemp and drawn by mule teams. Hemp, which would be later woven into rope, was the region's staple crop.

Mérida was an attractive town with well-constructed buildings and large houses with balconies and patios, some two-storied with balconied windows. Many houses were built of stone and were only one tall story high.

Like most colonial towns, Mérida had a large plazuea in the center that measured over two hundred paces in each direction. The plazuea featured a church, the bishop's palace and offices, and a palace for the governor and his officials. Mérida's main streets, which radiated out from the square were lined with homes and businesses. Nearby was the Castillo, a fortress with battlements of dark gray stone.

One of the city's more unusual features was its carriages. I had seen similar vehicles in Campeche and was told they were unique to the Yucatán. Called calesas, they were the only wheeled carriages in the city, large wooden structures, commonly painted red, with bright, multicolored curtains. The awkward-looking vehicles were drawn by a single horse with a boy riding it.

When they plied the alameda, the carriages each carried two or three ladies, Spanish of course. The women rode without hats or veils but had their hair trimmed with flowers. They comported themselves with a modesty and simplicity that women lacked in the larger cities to the north. The many india and mestiza women on the streets—always unpretentious, often pretty—again lacked the sophistication of the women in the larger cities, such as the capital and Guanajuato, but made up for it with their sincerity and simple charm.

Mérida welcomed me as a hero. They believed I was Carlos, and since the king authorized the expedition, they also believed the viceroy would reimburse the local government for any bills I incurred.

After a week in Mérida, I was transferred by diligencia, a calesa coach, to Mérida's seaport, Sisal. The trip would take a full day, and I was anxious to get away from the city. News traveled slowly to Mérida, which was at the far end of the colony, but I heard many stories of French conspiracies to seize New Spain. I was now Carlos, the man I knew to have spied for the French. I was anxious to leave before they hanged me for his crimes . . . or my own were exposed.

No ships were departing for Havana. My next best choice, though by no means a perfect one, was Spain itself, and at Sisal the ship's tender transported me to a Spanish-bound vessel.

Spain,
in many ways, was like saying “heaven.” As a colonist, I was raised in the belief that the Iberian Peninsula, home to Spain and Portugal, and the Garden of Eden were one and the same. However, I would have boarded the ship with more enthusiasm if I hadn't feared for my European reception.

War raged in Spain with the people of Spain battling the dreaded Napoleon, one of history's greatest conquerors. And I was going to Spain in the guise of Carlos Galí, a scientist on an expedition of monumental scientific importance . . .

A man who had made a heroic escape from a horde of cannibals . . .

And who was a French spy.

The Spaniard is brave, daring, and proud; he is a perfect assassin. This race resembles no other—it values only itself and loves only God, whom it serves very badly.

—General de Beurnonville,

Army of Napoleon

FIFTY-THREE

Madrid, Spain, May 2, 1808

A
S PACO, A
twelve-year-old street urchin, left his slum hovel and walked up the street, he gnawed at a small morsel of fatty meat on a bone, given to him by a neighbor whose chamber pots he emptied. His mother was dead, and he was mostly on his own. He lived with his father, who shoveled manure in a stable, but his father was at best an absentee one who often failed to return home after work. Paco was accustomed to going out in the morning to find his father sleeping off a drunk in the gutter.

The boy was tall and gangly for his age, almost as tall as most men, but rail thin because he rarely had enough to eat. As he walked toward the central plaza, the Puerta del Sol—Gateway of the Sun—people converged on it from all directions. From the plaza, the mass of people moved up Calle Mayor and Calle Arenal, streets that led toward the royal palace.