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.