Our plan included a pile of dirt and rocks to fill the tunnel with once we finished so it would not be noticeable to someone entering the rear area of the stage. But Enrique was not supposed to fill it until
Leperos were not intelligent beasts, but unlike the indios who released the mint inspector prematurely, they could do simple arithmetic. Dividing the treasure four ways gave them a greater share than dividing it five ways. I did not know if trapping me in the mint was Enrique's idea or he had schemed with the other two. The move was too clever for Enrique to have planned. I suspected that the three banditos had decided to kill Mateo and myself after the robbery, and the opportunity to eliminate me suddenly arose.
The dirt and rocks thrown into the other side rose the water level on my side until it came up to the floor. I could not even get into the tunnel and try to dig through because I would drown.
The door to the rest of the mint was locked. Only the mint director had the key. When it was unlocked, he would find me in their treasure room with a rather large hole in the floor and a good portion of the treasure missing.
Even the Inquisition would be outraged because their box of gems was gone. The only controversy would be whether the viceroy had me drawn and quartered or the Inquisition burned me at the stake.
I was completely trapped.
ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN
The explosions outside had stopped. That meant I would be abandoned momentarily. The plan was for us to move out as soon as the play was finished. We had a donkey cart standing by. Under the pretense of putting our costumes in it to take back to the inn, we would load the treasure aboard and start back toward the inn.
But halfway back we would detour.
It would not be possible to get the cart off the island across the causeways because it would be searched. So we had bought an indio boat to load the gold and silver aboard. We would take it across the lake ourselves where we had horses waiting.
Mateo would not willingly abandon me, but what was he to do when the lepero swine told him the tunnel had both filled with water and caved in? I knew how Mateo's mind worked. Once I was captured, he would do something to help me. Perhaps try to ransom me with the treasure. Or bribe the jailers.
But he would never get that chance. The moment the gold and silver were loaded on the boat, they would knife him in his back.
I sat down on the floor and gave the matter some thought. I could make another hole in the floor and tunnel out. I had no shovel and, in truth, while the ground was soft enough to be dug with a spoon, it would take a shovel to get me out by morning. I could use the iron bar and my hands, but the digging would go so slow, the water would probably fill the hole as quickly as I cleared it, and I had no bucket to empty it.
Ay, curse the classical education the fray gave me. An unpleasant comparison with my own perilous situation came to me from those books I'd devoured with my eyes and mind so long ago. King Midas had a love for gold. He was known to the Greeks for his greed and foolishness. He had an opportunity to exercise both of his vices when he captured Silenus, a satyr who was the companion of Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy. To gain Silenus's release, Dionysus had granted Midas a wish. The king's wish was that everything he touched turn to gold. But Midas of the golden touch soon regretted his wish. He had to touch food in order to eat it, and it turned to gold.
Eh, the gold was all gone, but I had plenty of silver to eat.
If I could not dig my way out, the only other exit was through the door. The door was thick, locked, and iron plated. But wait—it was iron plated on the outside. There had been no reason to plate the
I examined the door with candlelight.
A slender crack existed between the door and the frame. Wiggling back and forth with the iron bar, I would be able to widen it. If I could break away enough of the wood, I would be able to push back the metal locking device with the bar. But I would not have the noise from the explosions to cover my prying. And the guards would no longer have their attention drawn to the play.
During the inspection, we had failed to ask where the guards slept. I tried to remember if I had seen beds anywhere, but nothing came to mind. It made sense that one would sleep on the ground floor and the other on the upper floor. But when it came to the Spanish bureaucracy, common sense and common practice were not always the same.
There was also the front door to consider, but it would be an easier task than the vault door. It was held by two iron bars rather than a lock, because a lock would not be strong enough. If the front door of the mint was to be attacked, it would be by battering ram from the outside. But inside, the bars were easy to slip aside.
I had no choice but to attack the storage vault door immediately, praying that the two guards would drink a little wine or beer and discuss the play before going to bed.
Using the bar, I broke away wood, making as little noise as I could. When the bar scraped the iron lock, my excitement increased, but it would only scrape. I could not get the lock to slide back. Anxiety took the place of excitement, and panic threatened to overwhelm me. Aaaak! I jabbed the iron bar in deep enough to kill the door and jerked the bar to the side. The lock broke, and I swung the door open. But I had made enough noise not only to wake the guards, but the twenty thousand sacrificial victims of the last great Aztec human feast.
I ran down the mint hallway for the front door, the cool air on my sweaty face. Pushing aside the door bars, I heard a shout behind me. A club smacked the door as I flung it open and rushed out. I ran by the corral. It was deserted.
Shouts followed me, but I paid no heed to them as I ran down the street and around a corner. I had to make it to where the boat would be loaded before Mateo got a knife in his back and I was captured by soldados.
Three men were beside the boat when I came running up to it. They were shadowy figures to me in the darkness. I could not tell if Mateo was among them.
'Mateo!' I shouted.
'Bastardo! You made it.'
Bravo! Mateo was still alive.
'Did you think that—' I heard footfalls behind me and spun out of the path. Enrique was behind me. His dagger caught air as I twisted away.
My own dagger was in my hand, and I charged against him, shoving it into his gut. He grunted and stared at me. I could see the whites of his eyes and smell sour salsa on his breath as he gasped.
I jerked the knife out and stepped back. Another of the banditos was on the ground in a gathering pool of blood. Mateo's sword flashed in the moonlight, and the other one caught the blade on the side of his neck. The wounded man staggered backward and fell into the lake.
'Are you all right?' I asked Mateo.
'A scratch to my back. I suspected Enrique's story was false. When I started to question him with my blade, he ran into the darkness.'
Horses hooves and shouts filled the night air.
'Andale!' Mateo said. 'We have a lake to cross.'
After we reached the other side of the lake where our horses were pastured, Mateo was philosophical about the loss of our three comrades in arms.
'We would have had to kill them even if they did not try to stab our backs. After we divided the treasure, they would have soon been captured with their share because they would have exposed their wealth to others. It would have been a waste of thievery to give treasure back to the viceroy after we so cleverly stole it.'
We packed most of the Holy Office's confiscated gems and enough gold ducats to fulfill our needs to be gentlemen of quality for a lifetime. The rest of the booty, a great quantity of gold and silver and the remainder of the jewelry, we placed in a cave, carefully concealing the existence of the cave with rocks and brush.
We rode for Veracruz, hoping our booty would not be found by an indio who thought he'd stumbled onto Montezuma's lost mine.
We had booked passage with a lobo boat that crisscrossed the ocean in between the annual voyages of the treasure fleet.
Our destination was Seville, the queen of Cities.
ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT
