It is now time to put down my pen. As a high nobleman of Spain and New Spain, I am now a man of the sword and not the quill.
¡Vaya con Dios, amigos!
AFTERWORD
The major historic events related in the novel occurred during the seventeenth century in Mexico, then known as New Spain. Incidents such as the manipulation of the price of maize resulting in the food riot in which the viceroy's palace was attacked, the pirate raid on Veracruz, the Jaguar Knight murder cult, and the adventures of the nun-bandit Catalina de Erauso were of this period.
Eléna, of course, was inspired by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Beautiful, brilliant, a bastarda ("daughter of the Church" was how her birth certificate put it), the great poetess threatened to disguise herself as a man and sneak into a university because women were not permitted an education.
The author has been liberal in presenting the chronology of the events.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gary Jennings was known for his intensive research, which often included rigorous and sometimes hazardous travels—exploring every corner of Mexico for his Aztec novels, retracing the wanderings of Marco Polo for The Journeyer, joining nine different circuses for Spangle, and roaming the Balkans writing Raptor.
Copyright © 2001 by Eugene Winick, Executor, Estate of Gary Jennings
ISBN: 0-812-59098-8