"Get out of here, lépero—"
That was all the guard got out before Mateo put him out with a blow from the hilt of his sword.
"Quick now," Mateo told Jaime.
The boy and the prostitute left to attract the attention of the men in front of the warehouse, while Mateo and I broke the lock on the back door. With the lock off, I dumped on the ground the contents of a sack I had been carrying. It contained a dozen torches dipped in pitch. Mateo lit straw and used it to light a torch. From it we lit the others.
The earth floor was blanketed with chaff and husks, and corn dust was thick in the air.
"Ah, Chico loco," Mateo said, grinning, "this place is a tinder box ready to blow!"
Even as we lit the torches, these remnants and leavings began to ignite, and by the time we threw the blazing brands into the corns sacks, the floor was aflame. I counted us lucky that all that air-borne corn dust hadn't exploded like gunpowder, blowing us all to Mictlan. By the time we left the warehouse, everything was burning. The floor chaff and corn-sack conflagrations were converging into lakes of fire.
We fled that inferno for our lives, tongues of flame licking the sky.
Returning to the house where we were holed up, darkness was falling. Behind us the sky was filled with explosions of shooting flame and high, twisting coils of billowing smoke as the huge warehouse turned into a single hell-fired holocaust.
By now Jaime would be telling people that the viceroy's guards had been seen starting the fire. So would other street people paid to spread the story.
"What if the city burns down?" I asked Mateo.
"Mexico is not a city of wood hovels like Veracruz. It will not burn down. And if it did"—He shrugged—"it would be God's will."
He was in a jolly mood by the time we were back at the house. I had to argue to keep him from going to a cantina to find trouble and a card game. Still something about the night's work had left me uneasy.
I awoke in the middle of the night, my paranoia as much afire as the warehouse had been. I went into Mateo's room and shook him awake.
"Get up. We're leaving."
"Are you loco? It's still dark."
"Exactly. The viceroy's soldados will be here soon."
"What? How do you know?"
"How do I know the sun will rise in the East? It's in my mind and my blood. I used to be a lépero. This well may be running dry for Jaimie, but not if he sells us to the viceroy. We're worth a fortune to the little beggar."
He looked at me for a long moment and then flew out of bed. "Andando!"
We left dressed as poor street people.
We were walking away from the house, when a group of soldados on foot and on horse converged on the house.
Under ordinary circumstances, we would have been challenged on the street because we were out past the ten o'clock curfew the viceroy mandated. On this night people were still on the streets because of the celebration following the parade and an extra attraction: The warehouse still glowed and smoldered from the fire.
We had to get off the street and had no place to go. I led Mateo to a place where the door was always open: A House of the Poor.
This one was larger than the dirt-floored hovel in Veracruz. Each of us secured a bed with a straw mattress rather than just straw flung on the ground.
ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY
The next morning we stayed in the House of the Poor until the streets were alive with people. The day had special significance to me. It was the day of Eléna's wedding to Luis. Rather than the formal wedding involving all of the great families of the colony, the wedding was to be a simple affair in the viceroy's chambers. The archbishop would preside.
"Your face looks like Montezuma's after he discovered Cortes was not an Aztec god."
"It's Eléna's wedding day. She may be getting married at this very moment."
"It is also the day of reckoning for us. The viceroy's men will be on the streets looking for us. We will not last long if our plan to start a riot does not work."
Jaime the lépero knew some of our sins, but nothing of our plans. As for Ramon, Luis, and the viceroy, they might conclude that I'd fired the warehouse, but they would not know about my larger plans.
We went onto the streets dressed as léperos, our swords hidden under ragged cloaks. We headed for the marketplace where maize would be sold. What we found there was turmoil. A large crowd had gathered before the stalls of the maize sellers. The dealers were literally auctioning off the maize to the highest bidders. And the bidders were the servants from the wealthiest families in town.
"Nothing will be left for us," I heard people mutter.
"It's not fair!" Mateo shouted. "My babies will starve! Food and justice!"
"My family's hungry!" I roared. "What can I feed them? The soles of my shoes?"
"The viceroy's men fired the warehouse to raise prices!" That from someone, I imagined, who had been paid by us.
A group of ten guards from the viceroy's palace stood by at the edge of the crowd, uneasy. They were outnumbered by fifty to one. An officer on horseback watched me and Mateo.
"We will all starve!" Mateo shouted. "It's the viceroy's fault. He eats fatted calves while our children cry and die in our arms!"
"I need food for my babies!" an old hag yelled. The woman looked many years from having birthed any babies, but I took up her cry and soon other women were shouting for food.
Arguments broke out between the food sellers, and people demanding they be sold maize at an affordable price. Pushing and shoving ensued and tempers flared. The crowd was already enraged, and with each new indignity, the fury grew, people gathering strength from others around them. People who would normally scurry away like whipped dogs from a spur wearer's whip were shouting for food and justice.
The officer ordered his men to follow him as he cut through the crowd in a straight line for Mateo and me. We pried stones from the pavement and let them fly. The crowd parted as the officer quickened his horse. My stone went wide, but Mateo's hit the man's helmet. As he came up to us, Mateo pulled the officer from the horse.
A musket went off and the old hag crying about her imaginary babies fell to the pavement.
"Murder!" Mateo shouted. "Murder!"
The cry was picked up by a hundred voices. Violence spread like the fire in the warehouse. As the other soldados came forward, pushing their way through the crowd to try and reach their officer, people grabbed them. The last I saw of the viceroy's men was a mob of street people beating them.
The anger and frustrations, not just of a food shortage, but a lifetime of being treated as little more than curs, erupted like a volcano. People attacked the stalls of the maize merchants.
Mateo climbed onto the officer's horse and raised his sword. "To the viceroy's palace," he shouted, "for food and justice!"
He helped me up behind him on the horse. The mob followed us out of the marketplace, growing bigger with every step it took. Soon it was a thousand strong, then two thousand as it poured into the main plaza, looting merchant shops.
A wild frenzy seized the crowd as it neared the palace.
"Gold!" Mateo shouted and pointed at the palace. "Gold andfood!"
The cry was picked up by the mob and shouted by thousands of voices.
The palace was not a fortress. The city had no walls, and the palace walls were designed more for privacy than protection. The city was in the center of New Spain, a week's journey at least for any invading force. No one had ever challenged the city, so there had been no need for a fortress.
The viceroy's gates offered little resistance to the mob. A cart filled with paving stones being used by laborers to repair ruts was grabbed and slammed through the gate; nor did the vastly outnumbered palace guards, who melted away at the sight of two thousand angry people marching at them, offer resistance. Not even the futile shots that would have been fired at foreign invaders were expended at the crowd.