It was Mateo, the picaro who had put on the play at the Jalapa fair.
The mean-spirited Spaniard spoke to Mateo, and the two looked up at me with inquiring eyes. There was no explosion of recognition in the picaro's eyes. It had been three years since I had seen him, a long time ago for a skinny beggar boy who was fifteen at the time. I had no idea whether he recognized me. The last time I saw him, he had cut a man's head off for me. Perhaps this time he was going to cut my head off.
Fearful that I had exposed myself, I left the stage and pretended to walk along the rows of merchandise lined up for sale. Mateo and the other Spaniard followed slowly behind me. I ducked down behind bales of wool and crawled along until I reached the end and then ran low down another line of merchandise. I peeked up and saw Mateo looking around, trying to find me. I did not see the other man.
Running low along the merchandise, I saw a chance to make a dash to the heavy brush outside the perimeters of the fair. When I stood up to run, a rough hand grabbed me by the back of the neck and spun me around.
The Spaniard jerked me close to his face. He stank of sweat and garlic. His eyes bulged a little, like fish eyes. He put his knife under my throat and pressed until I was standing on my tiptoes and staring at him wide-eyed. He let go of my neck and smiled at me, keeping the pressure of the dagger under my chin. He held up a peso with his free hand.
"Do you want your throat cut or the peso?"
I couldn't open my mouth. I motioned at the peso with my eyes.
He released the knife from my throat and handed me the peso.
I stared at the peso—a veritable fortune. I had rarely had a silver reale in my hand, and a peso was worth eight reales. An indio would work a week for less. Men were sometimes killed for less.
"I am Sancho de Erauso," the Spaniard said, "your new friend."
Sancho was the friend of no one, of that I was certain. A large man but not tall, bulky, there was no piety in his eyes, no mercy in his face. The picaro Mateo was larcenous but had the manners and airs of a rogue and gentleman. Sancho had no pretense of being a gentlemen—or even human. He was a cutthroat, a man who could share with you a meal and a glass of wine and then kill you for dessert.
Mateo found us. No recognition showed on his face or in his eyes. Could he really not remember the boy he had killed a man for? Yet what would be his motive for not recognizing me? Perhaps he regretted his act and feared that I would expose him as the real killer. Perhaps he was going to kill me. And it was possible that like so many Spaniards, an indio or mestizo was as distinguishable to him as one tree from another in a forest of trees.
"What do you want of me?" My tone to Sancho was subservient, an indio speaking to a master who wielded a heavy hand.
Sancho put his arm around my shoulder, and we walked along together with Mateo on my other side. My nose was close to Sancho's armpit, and it smelled worse than a sewer hole. Did the man never bathe? Or wash his clothes?
"My friend, you are most fortunate. I need a small favor. You are a poor, miserable indio with no future except to break your back for the gachupin and die young. For this little favor, you will earn so much money you will never have to work again. No more stealing, no more whoring your mother and sister. You will have money, women, and not just pulque to drink, but the best Spanish wines and Caribbean rum."
The man was evil, el diablo and Mictlantecuhtli in one. His voice had the texture of Chinese silk, his face the charm of a rattlesnake smiling. His sincerity was as genuine as a puta's lust.
"We have a small task for you, something that only a slender youth who can twist his body like a corkscrew can do. We have to travel a few days to get to where you will perform your task. In less than a week you will be the richest indio in New Spain. How does that sound, amigo?"
It sounded like I was going to be roasted over a flame while wild dogs gnawed on my cojones. Still, I smiled at the bully. Elevating him to a man of respectability, I added the honorific "don" to his name. "Don Sancho, I am a poor indio. When you speak of great wealth, I thank all the saints that you will let me serve you."
"I don't like the looks of this one," Mateo said. "Something about him strikes me wrong—his eyes—he looks more conniving."
Sancho stopped and faced me, looking for the conniving in my eyes. "He's the best we've seen." He moved in closer and I forced myself not to be repelled by the smell. His grabbed me by the throat, and I felt his knife against my groin.
"The old man with the snakes, is that your father?"
"Sí, señor."
"You can run fast, Chico, but the old man can't. Each time you annoy me, I will cut off one of his fingers. If you run away, I will cut off his head."
"We have to travel south, to Monte Alban in the valley of Oaxaca," I told the Healer later. "Spaniards have hired me to do a task. They will pay me well."
I told him that Sancho wanted me to retrieve something he had lost. I couldn't tell him what the task was because I did not know, but as was his custom, he asked no questions. At these times I had the feeling that rather than a lack of curiosity, he knew exactly what was happening. No doubt a bird had been listening to the conversation and reported to him.
It was hours before the fair would close for the night, and I spent the time wandering around, looking at the many wonders, trying to figure a way out of the trap. There was no acting troupe in evidence, and I supposed that they had separated company with the poet-swordsman or by now had taken their turn on the gallows.
Mateo seemed grimmer than when I had first seen him. And his clothes were not as fancy and well kept. Perhaps the last several years had not been good to him. I had not forgotten that I owed him my life.
As I wandered about the fair, a commotion broke out and a crowd gathered. During an archery contest, a man, an indio, had been shot by an arrow that went astray. People surrounded him to stare, and I squeezed in close to watch. The man's friend knelt beside him and started to pull out the arrow. Another man stopped him.
"If you pull out the arrow that way, you will tear his insides and he will bleed to death."
The speaker, a Spaniard about forty years old and dressed like a wealthy merchant, knelt and examined the wound. I heard someone call him "Don Julio" when he instructed men to help him move the injured man.
"Move him over here. Stand back," he told those of us crowding around.
Always fascinated by medicine, I helped Don Julio and two others move the wounded man behind the line of merchant tents so he would be out of the sight and path of people.
Don Julio knelt and examined the arrow wound.
"What position were you in when you were shot?" Don Julio spoke Spanish with a slight accent, and I recognized that he was probably Portuguese. Many Portuguese had come to the New World after the Spanish king inherited the throne of that country.
"Standing up."
"Were you straight up? Standing tall? Or bent a little?"
He groaned. "Maybe bent a little."
"Straighten out his legs," he told us.
When we had the man's legs straight, he had us do the same for the upper body. Once he had the man in the position that most likely reflected what he was like when the arrow struck, Don Julio carefully examined and probed the area when the arrow met the flesh.
The man's friend impatiently snapped, "Pull it out before he dies." He spoke in the rough Spanish of rural indios.
I answered the man. "He has to remove it in the same line that it entered, or he will create a bigger wound."
By removing the arrow in the same path it entered, he would reduce tearing more flesh. The man already had a wound that would probably kill him no matter how carefully the arrow was removed. Increasing the size of the wound would reduce his chance of surviving.