"That bench!" Mateo shouted at those who followed us to the front door of the palace, "we'll use it to knock down the door!"
A dozen hands lifted the heavy wooden bench and sent it crashing against the tall double doors. Two more times it was rammed before the doors flew open. Mateo and I rode the horse into the palace, followed by an army of looters.
While the mob surged down the great hall, we dismounted and went up the stairway. Coming out of the viceroy's chambers at the top, I saw a group of people: The viceroy, archbishop, and aides were hurrying down the upstairs hallway. Behind them came Ramon, Luis, and Eléna.
"Eléna!" I shouted.
The three of them turned to us. Mateo and I saluted the two men with our swords.
"Go!" Mateo yelled. "Run like women from their husbands' penes. Return with a rolling pin to fight us."
Ramon stared down at us calmly. "You two have caused me a great deal of trouble, but killing you will be worth something."
He came down the hallway with Luis beside him as we went up the stairs. I stole one frantic glance at Eléna in her wedding dress before we met the two swordsmen.
Mateo was a step ahead of me and immediately engaged Ramon as I squared off against Luis. The sound of our striking blades played above the sounds of the mob below. We heard musket shots. Apparently the viceroy's guards had decided to take a stand.
Luis's features were contorted with hate yet also a strange sort of glee.
"I'm going to show my new bride how a gentleman handles lépero scum," he said.
His swordsmanship was dazzling. He was far better than I would ever be. I could not believe my own rage had sucked me into this. I would be cut to pieces in front of Eléna. Only raw hate kept me going, giving me speed and strength and cunning I never dreamed I had. Still it was not enough. He slashed my forearm, cut my right shoulder, and reopened the wound I had gotten from the Veracruz pirate.
"I am going to carve you into pieces, not kill you quickly," Luis said. "I want her to see every drop of your tainted blood spill."
His blade sliced my knee. I was bleeding in four places, and he was backing me up with sword work I could never hope to match. He touched his newly shaved cheek with his sword—the cheek I had impaled with my writing quill.
"Sí, you cut my face so I would look like you, and I hate you even more for that," he said. He backed me against a wall, and his blade cut my other knee. My leg collapsed, and I went down on one knee.
"Now your eyes and then your throat," he said.
He suddenly expelled air from his mouth as if he had been struck in the back and lost his breath. He stared at me with wide eyes and then slowly turned around.
Eléna was standing behind him.
As he turned, I saw the dagger in his back. It had not gone in far and, he shook it off.
"Bitch!" he screamed.
I leaped forward and hit him with my shoulder. He flew backward and hit the railing. I kept my momentum going and hit him again. He burst through the railing and fell to the floor below. I staggered to the edge and looked down. He was on his back, still alive, moaning and moving his arms and legs, but nearly unconscious. The pox marks on his face were not visible from the top of the stairs. With his shaven face and cheek scar, it was as if I was looking down at myself.
Luis had made the same mistake that the pirate had: He had underestimated a woman.
"Eléna." I held out my hand to her. She grabbed me around the waist and I leaned on her for a few seconds before pulling away. "I must help Mateo."
The picaro was faring no better with Ramon than I had with Luis. Mateo was a better swordsman than I, an extraordinary bladesman for certain, but Ramon was said to be the best sword fighter in all New Spain.
As I limped toward the action, Mateo suddenly moved into the circle of death, lunging at Ramon. Ramon's blade swung around to Mateo's neck, and Mateo's left arm went up and caught the blade against his forearm. At the same time Mateo stuck his dagger in the man's abdomen.
The two stood face-to-face, almost nose to nose, Ramon staring at Mateo in wide-eyed disbelief, unable to accept that he'd been bested, let alone killed. Mateo's thrust had set the man onto his tiptoes.
Mateo twisted the dagger.
"This is for Don Julio."
He twisted the dagger again.
"For Fray Antonio."
He stepped back and faced Ramon, who rocked back and forth on his heels, the dagger still stuck in him. He grinned at Ramon and held up his forearm, pulling back his sleeve to expose the metal guard on the arm. "I regret that I am no gentleman."
Ramon collapsed.
Musket sounds became epidemic, and the mob was pouring out of the palace in retreat from the palace guards.
"Take him out of here," Mateo told Eléna. "Get him to the stables and into a carriage. Get him away from here."
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"I have an idea." He whispered to Eléna, not letting me hear.
Before we went out the door I turned back and saw Mateo bending over Luis. He stood up and shouted to guards coming down the hallway.
"Here! Take this man! It's Cristo the Bandito!"
ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE
Eléna commandeered a coach and frightened coachman, instructing him to take us out of the city. We went to a hacienda owned by Luis. It was the closest place where we could find shelter and help with my wounds.
"Luis rarely visited the hacienda. He had only recently acquired this one and seldom visited any of them."
"The people there, they'll know I'm not Luis."
"The servants and vaqueros would not know you from Luis. If we say you are Luis, they will not question it. The majordomo was recently fired. Luis frequently fired majordomos."
She wrapped a piece of petticoat around my face after staining it with blood from my other wounds. "There. I could tell them you were the viceroy, and they would not know the difference."
She refused to tell me what Mateo had whispered to her.
She doctored my wounds again, just as she had after I was wounded in Veracruz. I lay in bed all day, healing.
To me it was a temporary sojourn from reality. I expected at any time that the viceroy's men would be coming to get me. Mateo had erred in not killing Luis. The idea that he would turn the man over to the guards and they would accept the fact that Luis was Cristo the Bastardo was nonsense. There was a physical resemblance but the moment Luis recovered his senses he would tell them who he was.
I cursed Mateo for his stupidity.
Several days later Eléna came to the room. She looked a little distraught.
"He is dead."
"Who?"
"Cristo the Bastardo. My uncle had him almost immediately put to death as a lesson to the rioters."
"You mean Luis? But... how? How could they not believe him when he told them who he really was?"
"I don't know."
She cried, and I held her in my arms.
"I know he was the devil," she said, "but I blame that evil grandmother of his as much as I do him. I never loved him. In truth, he was not really even likable. He had no true friends, which was one reason I tried to be his friend. But he has been with me almost all of my life. And no matter how he talked, I know that his love for me was real."
There was more news. Mateo had been rewarded by the viceroy. He was a hero of the city, having almost single-handedly driven the mob from the palace and capturing Cristo the Bastardo after the bandit killed Ramon de Alva.