Aztec Blood

With the mask-breastplate in hand, I crawled backward out of the passageway. My heart beat in my throat. I was crawling back into a hangman's noose. Don Julio, Mateo, and the soldados gathered around to view the treasure piece.

'Magnifica. It is a fine piece,' Don Julio said. 'It will be sent to the viceroy. He will send it to Madrid for the king the next time the treasure fleet sails.'

On instructions from Don Julio, Mateo looped a rope around my neck with a wooden device where the knot should be. 'If you try to run, the rope tightens it around your throat and strangles you. It's a trick I learned when I was a prisoner of the bey of Algiers.'

'Why do you save my life just to get me hanged? You must tell the don the truth. I am innocent.'

'Innocent? Perhaps not completely guilty this time, but innocent?'

There was still no word between us that Mateo had cut off a man's head for me. It was not something I could reveal to my advantage, or I would have done so.

'You betrayed Sancho,' I said to him.

He shrugged. 'One does not betray her. You merely take action to avoid her treachery. Were either of us to expect any reward from her but a dagger in the back? Eh, amigo. Don Julio has one of these ropes around my neck, too; you just can't see it. But he is a man of honor and of his word. If I am faithful to him, it will not strangle me.'

'Who is he? I thought he was a doctor.'

'He is many things. He knows of surgery and medicines, but that is just a small part of his knowledge. He knows how these monuments came to be built and why the sun comes up in the morning and goes down at night. But the main concern for you is that he is the king's agent who investigates plots to steal the king's treasures and other intrigues. And he can have a man hanged.'

'What is he going to do with me?'

Mateo shrugged. 'What do you deserve?'

Ay, that was the last thing I wanted the don to pass judgment on.

FIFTY-EIGHT

I spent the night tied to the tree, a blanket thrown over me to ward off the cold. My anxiety and restrained posture made the night one of agony and worry. I knew how to deal with the Sanchos of this world. But this mysterious leader of the soldados was no one I wanted to tangle with. The next day before the noon meal, men from Oaxaca came to repair the temple.

Don Julio's angry curses drifted over me as I sat like a dog tied to a tree, the fiendish collar around my neck. His venom was directed at the absent Sancho for damaging the ancient monument. He ignored the fact that it was his own man Mateo who had blown the hole in the wall. He instructed the indios on making repairs with a mortar made from straw and dirt similar to the adobe used to build houses with. He did not like defacing a great stone monument with mock adobe, and cursed that the art of building stone temples was dead. The temporary sealing would have to suffice until indios skilled in working with stone could be brought from the City of Mexico.

Don Julio and Mateo sat down under the tree with me and took their midday meal.

'Take the rope off of him,' Don Julio said. 'If he runs, kill him.'

I ate salted beef and tortillas in the shade of the tree and listened to Don Julio. I had come out second best when I tried to fool him at the fair because I said too much. This time I would select my lies carefully.

'What's your name, your real name?' he asked.

'Cristo.'

'And your family name?'

'I have none.'

'Where were you born?'

I made up a name for a village. 'It's near Teotihuacan.'

He went on to ask me about my parents and my education.

'Ay de mi, my father and mother both died from the peste when I was young. I was raised in the house of my uncle. He was a very learned man. He taught me how to read and write before he died. I am all alone in the world.'

'What about that fake healer. You told Mateo and Sancho he was your father.'

I almost groaned aloud. I needed to keep my lies consistent. 'He's another uncle. I call him my father.'

'When we spoke at the fair for the Manila galleons, you said that Jaguar Knights would drive the Spanish from New Spain. Who told you that?'

Before I could answer, he told Mateo, 'Draw your sword. If he lies, chop off one of his hands.'

Eh, another person who expects me to lie and wants to butcher me. What is it about these gachupins and chopping up people?

He asked the question again.

'I offended an indio magician, one who tells the course of an illness or other matters by casting bones. I poked fun at him when he was performing his magic. When I was leaving, someone I did not get a good look at told me that I would be killed when the Jaguar Knights rose.'

'That is the only thing you know about the Jaguar Knights?'

I hesitated only long enough for Mateo to draw his sword. I hastened with my tale, having seen what the man could do with a sword.

'I witnessed a terrible thing.' I told them about the night I accidentally came upon a sacrifice ceremony.

'Interesting,' Don Julio murmured. He seemed hardly able to contain his excitement. He said to Mateo, 'I believe the boy stumbled onto the nest of the fanatics we seek.'

'This magician must have frightened him greatly for the boy to believe he was actually attacked by a were- jaguar.'

'What's a were-jaguar?' I asked.

'A man who changes into the shape of a jaguar. In Europe, there are many legends of werewolves, men who become wolves. Among the indios, there is a belief that certain people have the ability to change into jaguars. In the Veracruz area where the People of the Rubber flourished an eon ago, there are many representations in statues and etching of were-jaguars.'

'Today it is the nauallis who shape-change,' I said.

'Where did you hear that word?' Don Julio asked.

'From the Healer, my uncle. He, too, is a powerful magician, but he does not practice the dark magic. He says the change is made when a naualli drinks an elixir like the divine ointment.'

'What does your uncle know about this naualli?'

'He doesn't like him. My uncle is a great healer, famous and welcomed in all of the indio villages. He told me that except for trips to fairs and festivals, the naualli stays in small villages in the area between Puebla and Cuicatlan. The town where the sacrifice took place is only a day from there. The naualli is known as a black magician. He can do killing curses. Put a curse on a dagger so that when you give it to an enemy, it stabs them. Of course I don't believe any of these things,' I added hastily.

Don Julio asked many more questions, starting again with the first time I saw the naualli and going over everything I saw from when I watched the mock battle between the indio knights to the cut on the naualli's face.

When I was drained of information, Don Julio smiled at me. 'You have an amazing memory. No doubt that is the secret of your ability with languages and with scholarly matters when you never went to school. You're a mestizo, of course, not an indio.'

I shot a glance at Mateo, but as usual, his eyes revealed nothing.

'A mestizo, but you can affect the manners and speech of an indio.' Don Julio patted his beard. 'And a Spaniard. If you had been dressed as a Spaniard when I talked to you among the ruins, I would have not doubted you were born in Seville or Cadiz. Mateo, you could have used this young man in your acting troupe before the viceroy sent them to the Filipinas.'

Mateo visibly shuddered at the mention of the dreaded islands. Ah! I understood the hold Don Julio had on the picaro. Troublemaking Spaniards were not sent to the northern mines, but were vanquished to a place equally feared, a land Spaniards in New Spain without humor called the Infierno. The trip across the Western Sea that took a couple of months was so terrible that only half the prisoners on a galleon survived. After they landed, half of those