The greater portion of the money we took from the mint was still buried. I would take only my share and leave the rest for Mateo. After I was settled in my new identity, I would write and ask if he wished me to send his share on the next voyage of the treasure fleet. By that time he would be very broke, despite the large amount we had brought to Seville.
As the sun fell behind the western peaks, I stood by the window of my room overlooking the plaza, drinking a goblet of good Spanish wine. It felt strange to be drinking good wine in a well-appointed room in Veracruz.
Of course, I still had a plan for revenge—that thought was never far from my mind—one that would appeal to the greed and venality of men like Ramon and Luis. This time I would not kidnap and torture nor would I kill them surreptitiously. That would only end their earthly travail. They had stripped Don Julio not only of his life, but his honor, money, and even family. They would suffer in a like manner. To lose honor and position was more painful to a proud Spaniard than to lose his head.
My revenge would also be a personal quest to unravel the mystery of my birth.
Sleep came to me in troubled fragments. My dreams were cruel monsters from my troubled past.
While the sun was still struggling to rise, trapped by Aztec gods below the Eastern Sea, with gray half light wavering on its horizon line, I heard the rumble of massed footfalls on the plaza cobblestones. For a moment I thought I was reliving, in a dream, the night the City of Mexico mistook stampeding swine for rampaging slaves and slaughtered guiltless blacks like they were devils loosed from hell.
Musket shots exploded, echoing off the plaza walls, and I jumped from my bed. Grabbing my sword and dagger, I ran to the window.
Black powder blazed from muskets, and glittering swords flashed in the dim predawn. Dark figures, scores of them, attacked the alcalde palace fort across the plaza.
Was it war? I wondered. But then realized that it was less likely war than attacking pirates, here to rape and loot as they had done in a dozen cities in the Caribbean and along our coast. The ships that had been spotted were not the treasure fleet but an invading force.
While the marauders attacked the palace fort, others dashed into buildings and homes. I barred the door and wedged a chair under the handle. It would not keep out determined men but would delay entry. Hanging my money pouch from a cord around my neck, I dressed quickly and put a dagger in a belt scabbard and another in a secret sheath in my boot. I grabbed my sword and slipped out the window onto a ledge a couple of feet wide. My room was on the top floor, and from the ledge I made my way to the roof.
On the roof I had a good view of the city. Daylight was spreading, and I could see Veracruz was under attack by as many as two or three hundred men. Men—whose only uniforms were pirate motley—invaded homes in small units, while a larger force attacked the alcalde's palace. His guards offered only token resistance, firing their muskets perhaps once or twice before running.
The fort was barely a musket shot from shore. I could see men lined up on the walls, but no boats filled with soldados disembarked. The corsairs had confiscated their longboats with their own dinghies.
Shouting, screams, musket fire, and explosions rang in the early dawn. As I hid on the roof, people ran into the presumed safe haven of the church without realizing that blackguards respected no sanctuary. Others tried to flee in carriages and on horseback. Most were stopped by the freebooters, shot from their mounts or dragged screaming from their coaches.
I saw a carriage rushing from one of the wealthier districts into the plaza in a mad dash for the alcalde's palace. Careening around the corner, it nearly overturned. The indio handling the reins was thrown from the driver's seat. Panicking from the gunfire, the horses galloped into the middle of the square, the carriage wheels rumbling across the cobblestones.
A pale, frightened face appeared in the carriage window.
"Eléna!"The name tore from my lungs in a hoarse scream.
A pirate stood in the path of the oncoming horses and fired a shot. The startled horses reared, then bolted as other buccaneers grabbed their harnesses.
I was already leaping from the roof to the top of the arcade overhanging the sidewalk and from there to the ground.
Four freebooters dragged Eléna from the coach and were ripping off her clothes. She was screaming, clawing, biting, swinging furiously at them.
At a dead run I hurled my dagger into the back of one of the buccaneers, and as the man next to him turned, drove my sword into his throat I jerked it out and parried the sword of the third man. Stepping out of the circle of death, I switched hands, taking my sword into my left hand and dagger in the right, leaped at the man. Feinting toward his face, I hamstrung him.
A blade slashed my left arm. I cried out in pain and dropped my blade. The last man standing had sliced my upper arm to the bone. As I swung around, off balance and open to the next blow, Eléna pulled something from the folds of her dress.
His sword came up to whack off my head when Eléna struck him in the back with something. He gaped at me in wide-eyed surprise. When he turned to face her, he had a jeweled dagger protruding from his back. I relieved him of his sword as he fell to his knees. Other blackguards were now running toward us.
"Into the carriage!" I yelled to her.
Climbing aboard, I grabbed the reins with my good hand, throwing my sword on the boards at my feet. Holding the reins with my knees, I jerked the driver's whip from its holder and lashed out at the horses. A pirate cannon had been rolled into the plaza, and now it boomed, smashing the main gate of the government palace. More from the cannon than my whip, the horses bolted. I hung onto the reins with my one good hand as the terrified horses thundered across the plaza, scattering privateers in their path.
A marauder leaped aboard by grabbing onto the carriage door. Eléna screamed, and I leaned down with the sword and swung at him. I missed but he released his hold and fell.
"Eléna! Are you all right?"
"Yes!" she shouted up.
We raced out of the plaza and down a residential street. After a few blocks we hit the road to Jalapa. My pain was intense, and I was dizzy from loss of blood, but knowledge of who my passenger was redoubled my strength.
When we were safely down the road, I brought the horses under control and slowed them to a walk. They were soaked from sweat and ready to fall. I was soaked in blood andsweat, weak from the loss of blood, and I was slowly fading as the horses came to a stop.
"Are you injured?" a voice called up.
This voice of an angel was the last thing I heard when a black cloud swept over me, and I was tumbling, tumbling, tumbling into a bottomless pit.
ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN
"Señor, señor, can you hear me?"
Was it the voice of an angel—or a siren? One of those half-woman creatures who seduced sailors to their doom with the sweetness of their song. The question ran through my mind as I hovered between light and dark. As light returned to my mind, I realized I was still silting on the driver's bench. Eléna had climbed up beside me.
"I'm trying to stop the bleeding," she said. A piece of white linen, blood-soaked, was tied around my arm, and she was tearing another piece off of her petticoat.
My mind was still foggy, but my medical training came to play. "Put it above the wound," I instructed her. "Take something... the handle to one of your combs. Twist the cloth with it so it tightens against my arm."