Aztec Blood - Jennings Gary (книги онлайн бесплатно серия .txt) 📗

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 who survived the voyaged died in the first few months from fevers, snakes, and pestilence as bad as that found in the jungles of the Veracruz coast and Yucatan.

Eh, the rope that jerks my amigo Mateo is banishment to this espanol hell on the other side of the great waters. He and his actors really must be muy mal hombres to deserve such a fate. And the women? Were they doing the deshonesto zarabanda dance for Filipinas crocodiles? What was the actress letting into her tent at night now?

"Only your generosity and kind spirit has kept me from joining my amigos, Don Julio. Because of your brilliance, insight, and wisdom, you recognized that I was as innocent as a newly ordained priest." Mateo spoke without a trace of sarcasm.

"Si, as innocent as the two mestizo tomb robbers we will be hanging—and this one whose fate has not yet been decided."

I smiled humbly at Don Julio. "My kindly old uncle is half blind and nearly helpless. I must care for him, or he will perish."

"Your uncle, if that's what he is, is a fake and a fraud who has cheated people from Guadalajara to Merida. You are also an incorrigible liar and thief. Even facing a rope around your neck, you dared to lie to me about the fact the treasure mask was in easy reach. Had I accepted your story, you would have returned to break into the tomb again to recover it. Do you deny this?"

"Don Julio," I whined, "you are a prince among—"

"Be quiet while I decide your punishment."

"I think the little scoundrel should get a hundred lashes," Mateo said. "It would teach him to have respect for the king's law."

"And how many lashes would teach you to respect the law?" Don Julio asked.

Mateo pretended to be examining a scuff on his boot.

The don cursed the workers at the wall and went to them, shouting that their ancestors were turning over in their graves at the sight of their sloppy work.

I glared at Mateo. "A hundred lashes, eh, amigo. Gracias."

"I'm not your amigo, you little street cur." He showed the point of the sword. "Call me that again, and I will cut off one of your ears."

Dios mio. Still the desire to slice me up.

"Your pardon, Don Mateo. Perhaps I will tell Don Julio that you told me to hide the treasure so you could come back for it later."

Mateo stared at me for a moment. I thought for certain that my ears were lost. His face convulsed and then he burst—into laughter. He slapped me on the shoulder so hard that I went over sideways.

"Bastardo, you are a man after my own black heart. Only a true rogue would have thought of such an outrageous lie. There is no doubt that someday you will come to a bad end. Eh, but the stories you will be able to tell before they hang you."

"You will both end up making your last confession to a priest when you have a rope around your necks." Don Julio had returned from threatening the indios with everlasting damnation if they did not do better work. "But in the meantime, I have an assignment for both of you."

Mateo looked crestfallen. "You told me—"

"I told you that a very bad transgression against the king would be worked off if we caught that bandito Sancho. Do you see her in chains?"

"We saved a great treasure for the king."

"I saved a great treasure for the king. You were not told to use black powder."

"Sancho insisted that—"

"You should have refused. You did great damage to a temple that has resisted harm since Julius Caesar talked to the Sphinx. It has occurred to my suspicious mind that you used the black powder to quickly get into the temple before I arrived with soldados."