THIRTY-THREE

MY PLAN, AFTER I left the hacienda—with a live dog strapped to the chest of a dead man—was to head northwest, in the direction of Zacatecas. I had hunted in the Zacatecas area and in the wild country north of it before. At some point, the people at the hacienda would join the viceroy’s constables in their search for me. The less populated, ill-protected North was the logical route for a fleeing bandido to take.

Zacatecas was the second richest silver-mining region in the colony. Money flowed there like beehive honey, and the town was wilder and more untamed than Guanajuato. I might even flee farther north; it was hundreds of leagues to the Río Bravo and the settlements beyond. Towns were often weeks apart, and one could journey for days without seeing strangers. With saddlebags full of stolen silver one could stay lost forever.

Yes, going to Zacatecas was a fine plan, and one I carefully avoided. Instead, once I left my tracks for a route north, I did a wide circle of the area surrounding the hacienda and headed south. Zacatecas was the first place my pursuers would look. Even worse, many of the mine owners and suppliers had visited our hacienda and knew my face. They would recognize me the first time I walked down a Zacatecas street.

Other dangers abounded as well. En route to distant settlements like Taos and San Antonio, a lone rider had to fear not only bandidos but also wild indios, some of them still practicing the cannibalism favored by their ancestors. I had hunted with care when I went into those areas, more wary of two-legged beasts than the four-footed kind.

I also knew the unsettled areas of the south and east well, probably better than the constables searching for me. I had hunted the territory that stood at the edge of the great region of mountains and high flatlands we call the Valley of Méjico. I also knew what lay east beyond the mountains: the torrid disease-ridden wet-hot coasts, where, when it rained, the ocean itself seemed to fall from the sky, hot enough to melt a man to the bone. But down that coast also lay the colony’s main port, Veracruz.

Hernán Cortés founded a town called La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz (The Rich Town of the True Cross) when he first landed on the east coast of the colony back in 1519. Eh, he didn’t name the town for its “untold riches” since all he had found was swamp and sand. He named it instead after his conquistador dreams, the lust for worldly riches.

Once I was in Veracruz, I would find a way to get on a ship taking me perhaps to Havana, queen of the Carribean.

I had to get out of the colony. I doubted now that if I was captured, I would be sent to the Far East on that infamous Manila galleon. The constables would hang me from the nearest tree. Escape through Veracruz was the only way out.

To get there I would have to cross mountains, descend into the hot zone to the coast, and follow the coast south to the port. Besides the hazards of constables and bandidos, I would have to traverse the coastal areas where mosquitoes and crocodiles abounded, and countless victims died from the dreaded vomito negro lurking in the stinking swamps.

Contemplating that trip, I recalled Bruto’s claim that the black vomit transformed me into a gachupine in the first place. If his tale of deceit was true, what would the real Juan de Zavala have become had he lived? More important, what would I have been if he had lived?

Was my mother truly an Aztec puta—a whore? Just because she sold her baby did not necessarily make her a whore or even a bad person. The world was hard on poor women with children. Even harder for a woman with a child outside the marriage bed. She might have sold her baby to give the child a better life.

That lying bastardo Bruto said my mother was a whore, but was he telling the truth? He deliberately set out to disgrace and destroy me after I threatened to take control of my estate. I was certain he lied to bring me down after his plan to poison me and steal my estate went astray.

By the time I had ridden another hour, I was sure he had lied. I had adapted so well as a gachupine my mother had to have been one, or at least a highly placed criolla. No doubt she had become pregnant with me as a result of a love affair with a titled gachupine, a count or marqués, and had permitted Bruto to switch me for the dead baby so I would have a good future.

The main road from the capital to Veracruz ran from Puebla to Jalapa and then down to the coast. Along the coast, the road ran through the sands, wetlands, and swamps that made the torrid region infamously unhealthy. Not always a carriage route, the road in the mountains was at times little more than a mule trail. Yet it was also the most widely traveled road in the colony since most of the colony’s imports and exports traversed it.

I was reluctant to take the road since it was also frequented by the viceroy’s constables. An alternative was to negotiate precipitous mountain passes, then journey to the coast north of the Jalapa path. I had hunted in those rugged mountains and once went all the way down to the coast. That coastline featured no ports and no ships. The few plantations there grewjungle produce: bananas, coconuts, sugar, tobacco.

Negotiating the steep, narrow mountain passes, the tropical rainstorms, and the disease-ridden swamps along the sweltering coast would be difficult and dangerous. Still I would encounter very few people en route, mostly indios with donkeys and an occasional string of pack mules transporting plantation produce up the mountains and trade goods, such as clothes, utensils, and pulque, back down.

Recalling my previous trip down the coast, I came across the ancient indio ruins of Tajín. I remembered the name from the many boring hours I’d spent listening to Raquel as she lectured me on the glories of the indio civilizations that existed before Cortés landed. The city was now overgrown, but I could make out stone structures. Raquel said that the ancient indios had played a dangerous game in courts like this, a sport played with a hard rubber ball in which the losing team was often sacrificed to the gods.

And I remembered something else about the Tajín area: Along the coast, I had encountered a military post with only about a dozen men, but the crown was bent on fortifying the coast. Other posts may well be deployed with few travelers besides myself to pique their curiosity.

The coast was no good for me. I had no good options. But the thought occurred to me that the least likely place they would look for me was in plain sight, along the crowded roads that led to the capital and Veracruz.

I devised a plan that would have evoked the admiration and envy of Napoleon himself. Disguising myself as a lowly tradesman, I would vanish into the ranks of itinerant tradesmen traversing the roads: indios weighted down with burden baskets, their backs bent, tumplines taut against their foreheads; mestizos hazing donkeys or mules, their backs likewise piled high; and criollo merchants on blooded horses or in sturdy carriages. Mule trains carrying silver or maize often had a thousand or more pack animals. They banned together for protection, and I could easily “lose myself” among them.

But I couldn’t hide Tempest. The constables would be looking for me mounted on a fine bluish-black stallion. As Marina pointed out, I hadn’t fooled her when I rode into Dolores on the great stallion. To escape detection, I would have to wear the clothes of peons and ride a donkey or mule, the mounts most suited to that class.

Clothing was no problem. Under my monk’s robe I wore clothes Marina gave me that had belonged to her deceased husband. I could change my appearance by merely casting the monk’s robe off. I rubbed my face. I would be glad to get rid of my beard.

But Tempest was not just my horse; he was the winged Pegasus that carried me away from danger. More than that, he symbolized the life I’d lost but swore I would retrieve. I breathed only because of Tempest’s speed and courage.

After I had put two days between myself and the Dolores hacienda, sticking mostly to wilderness, I knew I couldn’t keep riding the stallion. I lassoed a mule in a pen on a rancho that raised the animals for work at the mines. I also bought a suitable saddle for a mule from another rancher along the way. After I had the mule saddled and determined that he was not going to be ornery and refuse to let me ride him, I took Tempest aside.

“I’m sorry,” I told him sadly. “You have been my amigo and savior, but now we must part. Someday we will be partners again.” I turned him loose into a pasture with other mares and left.

Astride a mule and dressed as a peon, I was no longer Juan de Zavala, caballero.

The next day, I bought a load of clothing—mostly serapes that were little more than pieces of cheap blankets—from a mestizo, taking his already packed mule in exchange for mine and the price of the merchandize. It meant I had to walk, but almost all peon merchants except muleteers of long trains walked in order to use every animal they had to carry merchandise.

The one thing I refused to give up were my caballero boots. They were a gift from my beloved Isabella, and I would have sliced off pieces of my flesh before I would part with them. In my heart, I knew that someday I would return, with a fortune and perhaps even that coveted noble title Isabella so fancied. And the first thing I would do is show her that I still wore the boots she had given me. I made one concession however and did not clean them, hiding their quality under layers of dirt.

With my mule, merchandise, and humble attitude, I headed south, toward a place Raquel had described to me. Not that she and her scholarly friends knew much about it. No one did. A place of the dead, where ghosts, gods, and ancient mysteries resided.