Despite his brutal manner and threats, Sancho had that feminine softness I imagined eunuchs had.
"As a boy younger than you, I sailed in the fleet of Medina Sidonia, who commanded the great Armada that fought the English in the northern waters. We were beaten by the weather, the wind howled like a mad dog, driving my ship ashore. I washed ashore and spent the next years in the guise of a French boy who had run away from his Scottish master. I joined a traveling group of actors on the road, first as a helper with their trunks and later as an actor and writer of plays.
"The English theater is not as brilliant as our Spanish one. They had a few modestly competent playwrights, one Will Shakespeare, another named Christopher Marlowe, but they lacked the genius of Spanish masters like Lope de Vega and Mateo Rosas de Oquendo. History will remember Mateo Rosas and sing his praise along with Homer long after the names of others have been blown away as dust."
I never knew if he was joking or boasting... or just plain drunk. His own peculiar "modesty" caused Mateo to often refer to himself as if he was talking about an entirely different person.
"I was captured by the Moors, by the Bey of Algiers himself, black heathen infidel devil that he be. I was tortured and starved until I made my escape."
I had heard this story before about an author whose name was sung more alongside that of Homer than Mateo's. Miguel Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote,had been captured by the Bey of Algiers and spent time in a Moorish prison. I had once spoken Cervantes's name in the presence of Mateo years prior and had nearly gotten my head lopped off. Only the devil knows why I do such stupid things, but I decided to demonstrate a little innocent knowledge to test a suspicion that Mateo borrowed other men's ideas just as casually as he did their purses and women.
"The priests at the church who taught me Spanish used to speak of another author of books and plays who had been captured—"
I suddenly found myself lying on the ground with a ringing in my head. Mateo had delivered a blow to my head.
"Never speak the name of this person in my presence," he said. "In a prison cell after enduring heinous tortures and deprivations, I revealed to this swine the story I would write about a knight-errant upon my return to Spain, the story of mylife. He stole my life and published it before I got back—except, of course, he purloined my grandest accomplishments and held them up to ridicule, depicting my life before the entire world as the lunatic folly of a ridiculous buffoon. He stole my life, Chico. Eh, I admit I've done things the world deems dishonorable. Yes, I have helped myself to the coffers of the rich, drunk the wine of life to the bottom of the bottle, gambled my days, my years, my youth, my fears, my hopes, my dreams, my very soul far into mañana's dawn—and never looked back. I've killed men and seduced women. But some things I have never done. I have never stolen from a friend. I have never stolen a man's life. Now the world sings the praise of this thief, and none knows the name of poor Mateo Rosas de Oquendo." Mateo gave me a kick. "Now do you understand?"
Monte Alban crowned hills nearly fifteen hundred feet above the valley of Oaxaca and the city of that name. The hills were bare, almost bald of trees, and did not distract from the majesty of the ancient stone edifices.
Like other temple cities in New Spain, the example of Teotihuacan, the Place of the Gods, had been followed in building Monte Alban, a city dedicated to worship. The ancient stone structures were laid out in a rectangular plaza on the leveled mountaintop; about half a league long, the terraced plaza had pyramid temples, an observatory, ball court, and palaces.
Like so many of the holy places of my indio ancestors, Monte Alban was shrouded in mystery, a place of the gods, which more people visited than actually resided in. It was not Aztec, but Zapotec. South of the Valley of Mexico, the Zapotecs were not defeated by the Aztecs until about fifty years before Cortes's conquest. Beaten in battle, but not completely conquered, the Zapotecs and Aztecs were at each other's throats right up to the time of the conquest.
Today Monte Alban was devoid of life, the droppings of pack animals passing through and grass that had been crushed underfoot the only signs that anything but time had trespassed on the sacred grounds. At these ghostly stone cities of my ancestors, I got a sense of the forlorn, as if the people had left behind some of their sadness when they abandoned the city to snakes and tarantulas.
After the conquest, the people of the Oaxaca area traded masters as Cortes was granted tribute rights from indios. Granted the title of Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca and over twenty thousand tribute-paying indios, his actual feudal holdings came to be the size of some European kingdoms.
We made camp and later I walked among the ruins with the Healer. I felt a familiar chill breeze, the wind that I had felt in a cave below the Temple of the Sun in Teotihuacan.
"The gods are not pleased," the Healer said. "No good will come of this. These men have come here not to praise the gods but to offend them."
FIFTY-SIX
The Healer and I camped away from the others. We were not alone on the hillside. A merchant from the fair had camped some distance from us with his peculiar merchandise: four prostitutes. He had rented them out at the fair and was returning to Oaxaca with his merchandise. I heard Sancho tell the man that he would use one of the putas.
While I knelt beside our fire preparing the midday meal for the two of us, I watched Mateo and Sancho walk to an enormous temple pyramid, the largest in the city. The pyramid glowed golden under the high sun. They carefully examined a side of the structure. I could not see a door where they stood. The sound of their voices, but not their words, carried to me. From their gestures and words, I had the impression that they were in disagreement upon how to enter the temple. And I made out the words "black powder."
I looked over at the Healer, who was quietly leaning back against a tree, smoking his pipe. His eyes were half-closed and his face as impassive as a pond on a windless day. I felt bad about misleading him, but there had been no other choice. Since arriving at Monte Alban, the "simple task" the españols had planned for me was becoming clear in my mind.
The two settled whatever differences they had with regard to the temple. Mateo gestured for me to join them. I trotted over.
Sancho indicated the spot they had been examining. Relief on the wall showed a god emerging from the jaws of a sacred jaguar. "Behind that wall is a sealed passageway. We opened it once at another spot, but a cave-in occurred when we resealed it. Now we're going to create another opening. The passageway leads down to the tomb of a Zapotec king who died about the time Pilate was crucifying Christ. In his tomb is his death mask with part of a breastplate attached. The object is solid gold and encrusted with gems and pearls."
Sancho paused to let the information sink in. I had already guessed that he was a tomb robber.
"Why didn't you get it out the last time you tried?" I asked.
"Ah, amigo, you are one smart man." Sancho put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a hug. I had a hard time keeping myself from gagging. "We should have had it in our hands, but there was treachery. We sent someone down, a man a little bigger than you, and he never came back."