Aztec Blood

heavily, it came under threat of flood, and in some years flood waters overwhelmed the city. The tunnel was built to direct the waters out of the lake to keep the city from flooding. It was the greatest engineering project in New Spain or anywhere else in the New World.

?Ay de mi! it would ultimately drown us in tragedy.

My presence with the family had to be accounted for. I could not keep up the pretense of being indio with Don Julio and the people around him. A major problem, besides my skin color and features, was the fact that I was growing a heavy beard even in my late teens. Indios had little hair on their faces. Mateo tried to convince me to shave the beard, telling me that senoritas preferred a clean-shaven face that they could rub against. But I had already been stripped of my indio disguise to become a Spaniard. I kept the beard. Neatly trimmed beards, especially sharply pointed goatees with mustaches, were the fashion of gentlemen, but I kept my beard full and long to hide my face. I also believed it made me look older and wiser.

Juana, Don Julio's niece, joked with me about the beard, asking what crime—or what woman—I was hiding from.

Don Julio was silent on the subject of my beard. He was equally silent about the mestizo boy from Veracruz who was wanted for heinous crimes. Don Julio and Mateo continued to treat the subject as they had done so earlier—with complete silence.

My suspicion was always that Don Julio knew even more than he let on. Once when I hurried into his library in the great house of the hacienda to speak to him, he was standing by the fireplace looking at a piece of paper. As I approached, he threw the paper into the fire. As it burned, I saw that it was an old reward notice for a mestizo known as Cristo the Bastardo. Fortunately, Cristo was a nickname for Cristobal, and the latter was a popular name among Spaniards and indios.

As I said, I believed part of the reason Don Julio took me in as family was because he also bore a blood taint. One day when I was defending my life against Mateo as he taught me how to fight with a sword, I asked him why someone would call Don Julio a Jew.

'Don Julio's family were originally Portuguese Jews. In order to stay in Portugal soon after the discovery of the New World, many Jews converted to Christianity. Both conversos, those who converted willingly and Jews who only converted for appearances, were tolerated for the blood money they paid until King Filipe of Spain inherited the throne in Lisbon. When pressures increased, many conversos and secret Jews, marranos, came to New Spain. Don Julio came here over twenty years ago and since has brought many family members with him. Conversos are frequently suspected of being secret Jews. And even if the conversion to Christianity was faithful, in most people's eyes they carry the blood taint no matter how long ago their family had converted.'

I knew something of the fate of Jews and Moors in Spain from Fray Antonio. At almost the same time that Columbus was sailing from Spain to discover the New World, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ordered the Jews to leave Spain.

'Before the banishment,' Mateo said, 'Jews and Moors were not only the wealthiest merchants, but the most educated people on the Iberian Peninsula. They were most often the doctors and merchants found in every town of any size. But every Jew and Moor in Spain and Portugal was forced to either convert to Christianity or leave. When they left, they were not allowed to take their gold or jewels. My Christian blood runs deep, but I can sympathize with Jews and Moors who had to face death or exile over their religious beliefs.'

As one whose own blood was deemed tainted, I, too, found sympathy in my heart for people who could not prove purity of blood, limpieza de sangre. With my knowledge of languages, literature, and medicine, had I been indio, Don Julio could have held me out as an example of what the indigenous peoples were capable of, sort of a tamed and erudite noble savage. But as a mestizo, a carrier of the blood taint, it would not amuse but infuriate the gachupins.

The don could have had me keep up my indio disguise or even revert to the mestizo that I was. But he knew that I would never be able to advance and display the talents and scholarship he recognized in me. So I became a Spaniard.

The don introduced me as the son of a distant cousin who came to stay with him when both my parents were carried away by peste. Because the don was a gachupin, a wearer of spurs, people would assume that I, too, was born on the Iberian Peninsula.

One day I was a social outcast and the next a wearer of big spurs.

SEVENTY-THREE

'Parry left!' Mateo shouted at me as he delivered a rain of blows.

Learning how to be a gentleman was harder than learning how to be a lepero, I soon discovered—and more painful.

'You are fortunate, Senor Bastardo,' Mateo said, 'that you dwell in the Empire of the Spanish.'

Mateo used the tip of his sword to flick an imaginary object off the front of my shirt. I also had a sword, but other than using it as a club to bludgeon with, I had no idea what to do with it.

'The Spanish are the Masters of the Sword,' Mateo said, 'and all the world knows it. The English swine, may San Miguel burn their souls and cast them down to hell, use short, thick swords to deliver blows in the hope that they will beat their opponents to death. The French are dainty fighters, all lace and perfume. They wish to love their opponents to death. The Italians, ha, the Italians, those arrogant bastards full of hot wind and bravado, they almost succeed at being Masters of the Sword because of their speed and cunning, but they lack knowledge of the secret that makes Spaniards the greatest swordsmen on earth.'

Mateo put the tip of his sword to my throat and lifted my chin an inch.

'I have been sworn to secrecy upon penalty of death by all the chivalric orders of Spain never to divulge this secret to anyone who does not have Spanish blood in his heart. You, my little bastardo-half-breed, are Spanish in a queer sort of way. But you must also swear an oath to God and all of his angels that you will never reveal this secret to anyone else because every man in the world wants to be a Spanish swordsman.'

I was thrilled that Mateo had honored me with a secret of such magnitude.

He stepped back a couple of paces and drew an imaginary circle on the ground.

'The Circle of Death. You enter it with the Dance of the Blade.'

I stared down at the ground where his sword had passed. Dancing? Deadly circles? Had Mateo been imbibing the don's wine again?

'The first thing you must understand is that there are two types of sword fighters, the quick and the dead.' His sword flashed as a blur before my eyes. 'What type of sword fighter are you, Bastardo?'

'The quick!' I slashed out with my sword like I was chopping down a tree. The sword flew out of my hand, and Mateo's sword was at my throat. The tip of his sword was under my chin; his dagger pushed against my gut. He put pressure on my chin with his sword and I stretched onto my tiptoes. Blood ran down my neck.

'You are dead, Chico. I ask God to grant you one more life so that I can teach you to fight with a sword, but when your training is over, there will be no more mercy. The next man you fight will either kill you—or be killed.'

Mateo released the pressure on my throat.

'Pick up your sword.'

I scrambled to get the blade, wiping blood from my neck.

'Stand before me with your feet together. Now take a step toward me. Extend your sword as far as you can and mark a spot in front of you and to each side.'

After I scored the dirt with my sword, Mateo drew a circle around me, more to the front than to the back.

'That is the circle of death. It is not one circle, but a thousand, moving with you, moving with your opponent. It is liquid, like ripples in water, constantly moving, constantly changing, flowing toward you, flowing back.'

Mateo faced me and stood at the edge of the circle. 'The circle begins at the point you can reach across and inflict a wound or death on your opponent. From here I can hit your face, your chest, your stomach.' He moved slightly to the left. 'From either side I can get the sides of your body. I move a little more and I can slice the hamstring behind your leg. Remember, Chico, the circle is fluid—it changes with every step.

'And it belongs to both of you. When you face another swordsman, one or both of you will close the space between you. When you get close enough to strike, the circle is created for both of you.'

Along with the physical combat, Mateo gave me much verbal instruction about the uses of swords.