Without a word I turned and ran through the cutbank. The river was a good fifty feet below, but I never hesitated. I hit the water like an Aztec altar stone—except this altar stone bobbed to the surface, the white, frothing current carrying me downstream. Above the river's roar, I still could hear Ramon shouting for his overseer.
THIRTY-TWO
With no place else to go, I followed the fray's instructions and waited for him by the fork in the road. At last he came along on mule back. Fray Juan was not with him, nor had my friend loaded his panniers. His face was frightened.
"You killed a man, cut off his head."
"I didn't kill him." I told the fray all that had happened.
"It doesn't matter. They blame you. Get on." He helped me climb on behind him and whipped the mule.
"Where are we going?" I asked, bouncing on the mule's back.
"Back to Veracruz."
"You said—"
"A Spaniard is dead, and you are blamed. I have no friend who will offer shelter to a mestizo wanted for such a killing. They will hunt you down and kill you when they find you. There will be no trial for a mestizo."
"What am I to do?"
"We have to go back to the city. Our only hope is for me to find the doña before she leaves the city and try to convince her that you will cause no harm. You must hide with your lépero friends while I try. If all else fails, I will put you on one of the boats that carries goods down the coast to the Yucatan, the land of the Mayas. It is the wildest part of New Spain. You could disappear into the jungles there, and an army would not find you. I will give you what money I can. My son, you will never be able to come back to Veracruz. There is no forgiveness for a casta who kills a Spaniard."
The fray was in hysterical panic. I didn't speak the language of the Mayas, and I knew nothing about jungles. I would end up being eaten by savages if I stepped foot into a Yucatan jungle. In a city I could at least steal food. In the jungle, I would be food. I told him so.
"Then go into the indio areas where you understand the Náhuatl tongue or similar dialects. There are hundreds of indio villages."
I wasn't indio; villages would reject me. Because of his fears, I was hesitant to express my own fright. Leaning forward against his back, as the mule went down a hill, I felt a shudder go through the fray's body.
"I should never have raised you. I should not have tried to help your mother. It has cost me my priesthood and now, perhaps, my life."
How had helping my mother cost him his priesthood? And why were Ramon and the doña after me?
I asked him, these questions but he only said, "Ignorance is your only hope. Mine, too. You must be able to honestly say you know nothing."
But I was not convinced that my ignorance would shield me. Had it not been for Mateo, I would have died where I stood in ignorance and blood.
He prayed a great deal on the long road back. He spoke hardly a word, even when we camped. Hiding in the bushes, we camped far, far from the trail.
An hour's walk from Veracruz, we stopped.
"Travel only at night," the fray said, "and enter Veracruz under cover of darkness. Stay off of the road and hide when it is light. Do not come to the House of the Poor until I send for you."
"How will you find me?"
"Stay in contact with Beatriz. I will pass a message through her when it is safe."
As I turned to leave him, the fray slipped off the tired mule and hugged me. "You have done nothing to deserve any of this—unless you can be blamed for being born. ¡Vaya con Dios!"
Y el diablo, I thought grimly.
As I headed into chaparral, words trailed after me that were to haunt me for the rest of my life. "Remember, Cristo, if they find you, nothing will save you!"
THIRTY-THREE
I was tired from the hard ride. I was tired of hiding in bushes. I was sick to my soul from fleeing strangers and from being condemned for secrets I knew nothing about. I had gotten only a couple of hours sleep the night before, and I laid down and fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the ground.
I awoke to darkness, the song of night birds, and the rustle of predators that kill by the light of the moon. Still thoughts nagged me. Ramon and the old matron clearly did not live in Veracruz. Had they, I would have recognized them. Apparently the archbishop's arrival had brought them. Therefore, I reasoned, Ramon and the old matron lived some distance away, perhaps as far as the City of Mexico.
Whatever events had spawned the terrible hate the old matron had for me had happened long ago, of that I was certain. The fray had intimated that the events went back to before my birth. In those days he was a priest on a great and powerful hacienda, one larger than Don Francisco's, the hacienda we left when I was about twelve. His priestly robes would protect him from all harm because the Church would have investigated and punished any who harmed a priest.
Yet events of the past had cost him his priesthood. He also said only ignorance of these events could protect me. But the fray himself was not ignorant. And he no longer had the protection of the Church.
What would save him?
I set out on the road. I wanted one more conversation with the fray. He was clearly in danger. Perhaps he and I should leave Veracruz together. After seeing him, I would then go to Beatriz's. She was probably not back from the fair, but I could hide in her place. No one would look for me there. I had nothing to eat and no wish to stay alone in the wilderness.
The road was deserted—no travelers journeyed at night, and it was too close to the city for camps. The moon reflected off the dunes with brilliant luminosity, throwing off enough light for me to spot the snakes that slithered from the swamps.
By the time I reached the town, hunger gnawed at my stomach like a rabid wolf. Worse, I felt a blood-chilling drop in temperature. Then the wind sprang up, whipping my hair across my face, almost blowing my manta off. El norte was on the way.
A good el norte had the strength to knock down buildings, strip ships from their moorings, and blow them back to sea. Here in the dunes, wind-whipped sand would strip the skin from your hands and face. El norte was nothing anyone would wish to be caught in, and yet here I was, utterly exposed.
First I had to speak to the fray, before I went to Beatriz's room, a dingy little cubbyhole in a squalid building close enough to the water to suffer its fetid summer stink and the fury of hell when el norte blew. Her landlord was a former household slave who had been freed by a woman who manumitted all of her slaves upon her death. Having suffered the pain and misfortune of slavery had not made him a more understanding person when he bought his own house and rented pieces of it. But I was certain I could sneak in without him seeing me. Beatriz's hovel might hide and shelter me for the night, but there would be little or nothing to eat in it. She cooked her tortillas and beans every day on the ground outside, and I would find nothing there the rats had not sampled first.
I was on the edge of town, and the wind was now racketing through the Veracruz streets with cyclonic gusts, sweeping away the dirt and dregs that had accumulated since the last great blow.
By the time I reached the House of the Poor, clouds had blotted out the moon and turned the night black. The wind ripped at my clothes, and flying sand stung my face and hands.
I flew through the door yelling, "Fray Antonio!"
A single table candle lit the room, most of which was shrouded in shadows. I didn't see that Ramon and two other men were there until it was too late. The fray was seated on a stool with his arms and wrists trussed up behind his back with thick, hemp rope. A piece of the same heavily knotted hemp gagged his mouth tight. One of the men held the fray while Ramon beat him with the leaded buttstock of his wrist quirt. The fray's lividly distended face was covered with blood and contorted with pain. A third man apparently watched the door because the second I entered it slammed shut, and he grabbed me by the arms.