ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT

Mountains Where the Cougars Lurk, 1541

MY SOUL FLEW with the night wind, carried along as the breeze moaned and whistled through the mountains. My people believe the wind’s eerie song was the wail of spirits as they are swept to the Underworld. Their weeping was an evil omen to those who heard it because it attracted Xipe, the Night Drinker who drinks the blood of sinners during the hours of slumber.

Ayya! I had no fear of the vampire’s thirst—my life’s blood had been left on the battlefield when I brought down the Red Giant and the great warhorse he had ridden. Don Alvarado had broken his neck when he hit the ground, but taking his life had also cost my own. My journey now was to Mictlan, the Dark Place, where the skull-faced Mictlantecuhtli reigned. But the Dark Place was not where souls came to rest—it was a vast, gloomy Underworld divided into nine hellish regions that had to be traversed during a four-year journey fraught with violent trials.

In the golden days when the gods of the Aztecs ruled the heavens, a warrior who fell in battle did not suffer the torment of the nine hells. Instead, the afterlife was a pleasant one. He ascended to the House of the Sun, one of the thirteen heavens, and traveled across the sky with the Sun God from dawn to dusk, as an honor guard for the fiery spirit. During the hours of darkness, they engaged in mock battles for enjoyment. There was feasting and the companionship of comrades and women. Women who died in childbirth, people who drowned or were struck by lightening, and those who went willingly to the sacrifice slab also found a place in the thirteen heavens, though not one so grand and privileged as that of the warrior.

After four years in the heavens, they were transformed into birds with rich plumage and descended back to earth, flitting from flower to flower, partaking of the nectars.

But Aztec gods no longer ruled the heavens. The Christian deity called the Almighty was King of Heaven. Aztec souls—and Aztec people—were now consigned to hell.

The daunting trials in Mictlan I must endure in the afterlife that awaits me dominated my thoughts as I flew into a crack in the mountain. The first eight hells in the Underworld are physical challenges—I must make my way between two mountains clashing together, swim a raging river, crawl among deadly snakes and hungry crocodiles, climb a cliff with jagged edges as sharp as an obsidian blade, survive a frozen wind that cuts like knives, battle raging beasts and eaters of hearts. After four years, if I survive and find my way to the ninth hell, there I will prostrate myself before Mictlantecuhtli, the King of Terrors.

If he finds me worthy, he will give me the Peace of Nothingness by turning my soul into dust and scattering it on the sand and dirt in the parched land that lies to the north . . . that place called Chihuahua.

Chihuahua, 1811

ELIZONDO’S AMBUSH WENT off as planned. As the main army slowly brought up the rear, one after another, the revolutionary leaders were ambushed and captured as they approached the wells.

Two of the leaders displayed great courage. Father Hidalgo, warriorpriest that he was, tried to fight. He drew his pistol to engage the enemy, but the horsemen with him, seeing they were outnumbered and out-gunned, pleaded with him to put down the weapon.

Allende also showed rock-hard courage. Refusing to surrender, Allende fired off a shot at Elizondo before he was overpowered. But his recklessness cost the life of his son, Indalecio. The twenty-year-old was killed when bullets struck the carriage he rode in.

The leaders of the revolution were herded across the desert, like shackled cattle led to slaughter, to the governor at Chihuahua. The purpose was to keep the padre far away from the heart of the colony for fear its indios would rise up in his support.

As for me, I was an inconsequential criminal of no importance, except for the hope that I would reveal where the marqués’s treasure was located. Sí, it didn’t take long for my captors to find out that I had not delivered the treasure to the padre. So rather than executing me immediately, the fate of so many lesser revolutionaries, I was taken in shackles with the padre, Allende, and the others as an animal is led to its abattoir.

For six hundred miles we slogged across a barren, parched wasteland to Chihuahua. Chained hand and foot, we marched, day after day, week after week, our bodies aching, our mouths and muscles burning.

It broke my heart to see the padre tormented as a common criminal. He was older than the rest of us—twice as old as most of us—and the trek was hardest on him. Allende and I had a determination and machismo that kept us from complaining, but we couldn’t match the padre for sheer courage. He had a moral strength and an iron will that none of us possessed.

Someone with an unofficial interest in my welfare accompanied the military expedition to Chihuahua. Isabella rode in the coach with Elizondo as his “special guest.” My former love had obviously recruited a new inamorato to assist her quest for the gold. How long would this bitch flog my soul with sharp spurs and a barbed whip?

Chihuahua: home of a breed of small dogs with a big bark and snapping jaws. A provincial town of about six thousand cradled in a valley nearly a mile high, it was in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by desert. It was a mining center but on a smaller scale than Guanajuato. Its northern location made it a natural place to sympathize with the revolution, but that movement was now in chains.

We were marched in shackles down the main street, paraded in dust and rags, worn and beaten bloody for all to observe. The governor issued a warning to the populace: watch the prisoners being paraded but show no support.

I was not angry at my humiliation; whatever disgrace I suffered, it was less than I deserved. But my heart burned for the padre.

They watched silently, these common people whose hearts and dreams the padre had fired by his vision of freedom for all but who were now disillusioned. Despite the prohibition against emotional displays, sobs and tears poured out as the padre staggered down the street—like the rest of us—in wrist shackles and leg irons, weak with pain from the deprivation of our desert crossing. But like Christ shouldering his cross, the padre did not falter. Squaring his shoulders, he kept moving forward, refusing to show any weakness, still inspiring us all.

I silently mourned Marina’s death, the brave sacrifice she had made for me. I was grateful that she had not lived to see the padre in chains.