Loco, you say. The fact that I have spent so much of my life at the tender mercy of torturers in dungeons may shade your opinion of my abilities as a criminal. Ayya ouiya, as the Healer would say. Even my own opinion of my criminal abilities was low. The treasure that we sought was for more than silk doublets and gilt-adorned coaches, it was for revenge. And this lowly lepero still had some tricks.

Feeling secure in my monk's garb, my face half hidden by the cowl, I took a walk in the great city. I feared confronting Elena and Luis, so I avoided the Alameda. I strolled the main plaza under the arches and across the wide, stone-paved square. Memories strolled beside me, especially those of a dark-eyed girl for whom I had once spread a manta on a puddle and whom I had once chased down an alley out of love of her poems.

My feet brought me back to the side street, where I had run the print shop and sold profano and deshones...o...b..nned books. It was still a print and bookshop, and I went inside. The proprietor asked me if I needed help.

"Gracias, but I would like to look at the books you offer."

His stock of books took up five wall shelves. While I examined them, a customer entered. He loudly asked for a certain religious tome, a book of the lives of saints, and the printer answered in a loud voice he would get him a copy. Nothing changes, does it, amigos? If I was not wanted from one end of New Spain to the other, I would have had some fun telling the two men that I was from the Inquisition and insisted upon inspecting the "book of saints."

My eye caught the t.i.tle of a book that was familiar to me. It was Gaspare Tagliacozzi's De Chirurgia Curtorum Per Insitionem, published in Italy in 1597. Tagliacozzi was the surgeon who learned the secret of the Hindu doctors who were able to reconstruct noses and cover scars by taking skin from one part of the body and putting it on the affected area. I pulled the book off the shelf and examined the front edge.

Don Julio's initials were burned into it.

My hands shook so bad I nearly dropped the book. Tears burned my eyes.

"Have you found something you like, fray?"

Getting my emotions under control, I bargained for the book and left the store.

That night I showed the book to Mateo at the inn where we were staying. He pushed it away and went to the inn's cantina to get drunk.

ONE HUNDRED AND SIX.

We were all nervous the night of the play. The play itself was not expected to curry audience favor. Because of the religious theme, the mosqueteros would grumble but would fear to shout down Mateo too loudly as he stood on the stage and spoke of G.o.d's revenge.

Mateo was to narrate the tale. Two of our banditos would help Mateo present the play. Our bandit-thespians would repeatedly drop dead on the stage and set off explosions of mock thunder and manufacture lightning by pa.s.sing a torch in front of a large mirror.

Another would be working the tunnel with me.

Eh, did I catch you by surprise? Tunnel, you ask? Si, just as you thought, the explosions were our admission into the mint. But did you think we were going to blow our way into the building? We were not that loco. The guards would certainly be on the second floor or on the roof watching the play, but an explosion against a wall would shake the whole building. The explosions would be used to attract the attention of the guards inside the building and make noise to cover our clandestine activities.

True, the walls were thick, the windows upstairs barred, but amigos, did I not tell you that the lower floor was wood? Do you not. remember that the dirt of the city is so soft and moist you can dig it with a spoon? The dirt was hauled away in the same wagons that brought our wood for the stage.

The entire tunnel was only seven or eight feet long and less than three feet wide. Hardly a challenge to a human mole like myself who had tunneled through a hard-rock mountain and had squirmed down the narrow pa.s.sageway of an ancient tomb to rob it. The tunnel led from a covered hole behind the stage, under the wall, and into a room-the room noted during our inspection, where the gold and silver were stored until they were taken to be a.s.sayed or processed.

Our biggest fear was that it would fill with water.

In these situations I sometimes feared that the Aztec G.o.ds would repay me for desecrating their temple at Monte Alban.

When the play commenced, I looked out from the curtain for Elena. Most plays were performed during the day, but this time we needed the darkness. The stage was ablaze with candles and torches, so the audience could see Mateo and the other actors struck by thunderbolts.

I knew that the subject matter would not interest her, but since so few plays were presented, I hoped she would appear out of simple curiosity. As a lady of quality, she would have sat in a window or balcony of a building, fronting the lot. In the darkness I could not distinguish any of those people. I could not see much of the audience. They sat shrouded in darkness while the stage was ablaze with light. But my eye caught two familiar figures in the front roll-the mint inspector and the mint director's a.s.sistant.

I realized that the indios had drastically miscounted the days.

Ay! It only got worse. Mateo, d.a.m.n his thespian soul, was of course not one to put on a simple performance, but was determined to win accolades. As he strutted back and forth on the stage, his cowl had slipped down and his face was exposed.

Madre de Dios! The mint inspector had spent days with us when we wore no disguise. He could see Mateo's face now. My heart thumped in my throat as panic gripped me. I could not run without warning my friend, but each time I hissed his name the explosions drowned me out. I would have had to light the black powder under his feet to get his attention anyway-he was so overtaken by his role as the voice of G.o.d that he would pay no attention to me.

My eye darted to the mint inspector to see if he was on his feet denouncing Mateo. To my astonishment, the man was calmly sitting and staring up at the stage as if nothing was wrong. Eh, perhaps there was nothing wrong. In his eyes. The man was blind as a bat, was he not? I watched him intently. Nothing in his expression revealed that he found anything amiss. He stared blankly up at the stage, his head moving to follow Mateo's dynamic strutting.

But what if the servant was in the crowd? He had good eyes.

And how many others could identify the picaro who was supposed to be sweating or buried in Manila?

I ran for the hole behind me. Enrique, my bandito helper, was waiting. We used a bucket tied to a rope to reduce the water in the hole so I would not drown if my progress was slow.

Taking hold of an iron bar and a hooked pole, I crawled into the hole. The tunnel was already filled with water, but I wiggled through it quickly and into the darkness on the other side. I could see nothing, but quickly felt where the joints were. I timed my prying to the explosions at the comedia, quickly tearing out enough of the floor so I could squeeze into the room. From inside the room, the explosions were amazingly muted.

Using a flint and steel and a small vial of oil, I lit a fire and used it to light candles in the room. I knew from the inspection that the walls of the room were about a foot thick, double the thickness of the other interior walls of the mint. The door was closed and bolted by the mint director when he left at night, deterring the night guards from gaining access. I could light the room and move around without fear of disturbing the guards, who were undoubtedly watching the play from the upper windows.

I fished into the water with my hook and brought out a heavy leather sack filled with empty bags that Enrique extended to me with a hooked pole from his end. I filled the empty bags with gold, most of it from chests filled with coins, because it was many times more valuable than silver. Filling a sack, I pushed it down into the water of the hole and splashed the water to signal Enrique to pull it out. When I had sent five sacks of gold out, I turned to the silver and filled six more with silver coins and bars.

A black metal box with its key inserted caught my eye. I opened the box, and it took my breath away. It was filled with gems, diamonds, rubies and pearls. A paper inside the box listed the inventory of the valuables and the name of the owner: Holy Office of the Inquisition. There was also a list containing the names of the previous owners-people who had been tried and convicted by the Holy Office and who had had their property confiscated.

I locked the box, put the key in my pocket and placed the box in my last sack. After the sack was pulled through, I got down on my stomach to wiggle back through the tunnel. It was now more than half filled with water. As I started down I realized something was terribly wrong. Dirt and rocks were being thrown in from the other side.

Our plan included a pile of dirt and rocks to fill the tunnel with once we finished so it would not be noticeable to someone entering the rear area of the stage. But Enrique was not supposed to fill it until after I emerged.

Leperos were not intelligent beasts, but unlike the indios who released the mint inspector prematurely, they could do simple arithmetic. Dividing the treasure four ways gave them a greater share than dividing it five ways. I did not know if trapping me in the mint was Enrique's idea or he had schemed with the other two. The move was too clever for Enrique to have planned. I suspected that the three banditos had decided to kill Mateo and myself after the robbery, and the opportunity to eliminate me suddenly arose.

The dirt and rocks thrown into the other side rose the water level on my side until it came up to the floor. I could not even get into the tunnel and try to dig through because I would drown.

The door to the rest of the mint was locked. Only the mint director had the key. When it was unlocked, he would find me in their treasure room with a rather large hole in the floor and a good portion of the treasure missing.

Even the Inquisition would be outraged because their box of gems was gone. The only controversy would be whether the viceroy had me drawn and quartered or the Inquisition burned me at the stake.

I was completely trapped.

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN.

The explosions outside had stopped. That meant I would be abandoned momentarily. The plan was for us to move out as soon as the play was finished. We had a donkey cart standing by. Under the pretense of putting our costumes in it to take back to the inn, we would load the treasure aboard and start back toward the inn.

But halfway back we would detour.

It would not be possible to get the cart off the island across the causeways because it would be searched. So we had bought an indio boat to load the gold and silver aboard. We would take it across the lake ourselves where we had horses waiting.

Mateo would not willingly abandon me, but what was he to do when the lepero swine told him the tunnel had both filled with water and caved in? I knew how Mateo's mind worked. Once I was captured, he would do something to help me. Perhaps try to ransom me with the treasure. Or bribe the jailers.

But he would never get that chance. The moment the gold and silver were loaded on the boat, they would knife him in his back.

I sat down on the floor and gave the matter some thought. I could make another hole in the floor and tunnel out. I had no shovel and, in truth, while the ground was soft enough to be dug with a spoon, it would take a shovel to get me out by morning. I could use the iron bar and my hands, but the digging would go so slow, the water would probably fill the hole as quickly as I cleared it, and I had no bucket to empty it.

Ay, curse the cla.s.sical education the fray gave me. An unpleasant comparison with my own perilous situation came to me from those books I'd devoured with my eyes and mind so long ago. King Midas had a love for gold. He was known to the Greeks for his greed and foolishness. He had an opportunity to exercise both of his vices when he captured Silenus, a satyr who was the companion of Dionysus, the G.o.d of wine and ecstasy. To gain Silenus's release, Dionysus had granted Midas a wish. The king's wish was that everything he touched turn to gold. But Midas of the golden touch soon regretted his wish. He had to touch food in order to eat it, and it turned to gold.