So perish the Algerian lord-may every Moor die so!

The Cid had won the great sword Colada in battle with the Moors and then, in the battle against King Bucar, he added a second great sword, Tizon.

While listening to the poet master's impa.s.sioned tones, I chanced to study a balcony overlooking the plaza. A group of notables, donas and caballeros, were on the balcony of the building next to where Mateo was giving his performance. An old woman in black was among them, staring down.

My blood ran cold.

I felt what King Bucar must have felt when the sharp blade of Colada sliced him down the middle.

I melted back into the crowd, risking only a shy, over-the-shoulder glance. Her eyes were locked on Mateo as he recounted the end of the poem.

So in Navarre and Aragon his daughters both did reign,

And princes of his blood today sit on the thrones of Spain.

Greater and greater grew his name in honor and in worth;

Until at last at Pentecost he pa.s.sed away from earth.

Upon him be the grace of Christ, Whom all of us adore.

Such is the story, gentles, of the Cid Campeador.

Darkness was falling. I gave up my search for the fray. Fleeing the plaza, planning to return to the House of the Poor, I did not think the old woman had spotted me in the crowd. From the balcony I was just one more straw hat in a sea of such hats, but her mere presence in the plaza felt like a garrote strangling me.

What if I was being followed? Glancing over my shoulder, I veered from the hospice, sticking to the side streets. Hiding under cover of night, I was angry and frightened. What had I done to this dona? In my brief years on Veracruz's cruel streets I had suffered many adversities, but a gachupin dowager's blood vengeance was not one of them.

My only hope was Fray Antonio. Although criollo born, he was of pure Spanish blood. Compared to leperos such as myself, he was a king.

Life in the House of the Poor had moments of excitement. One never knew what to expect from street people. Three weeks before the archbishop's arrival, I arrived home after dark and heard laughter from inside. There I found Fray Antonio with a prost.i.tute and her pimp lover. The woman lay on the table. Her left leg was black and swollen. They were plying her with pulque in hopes that she might pa.s.s out.

"She cut her foot weeks ago and the poison has spread," Fray Antonio said. "If I don't cut it off, she will die."

The woman did not have the money for the local surgeon barber who normally performed bleedings and medical amputations when he wasn't cutting hair. Fray Antonio, however, was not without medical skill. The street people preferred the skills and medicaments of our indio healers but did allow that Fray Antonio's powers surpa.s.sed those of most Spanish doctors. In any event Fray Antonio was now her last best hope.

The woman was drunk, snoring, flat on her back, and they were about to amputate her leg. The fray had a saw, an iron blade, and a pot of boiling oil heating on the coals. After they sawed off the leg, he would cauterize many of the veins with a hot blade. The raw stump he would char with boiling oil.

The fray tied her arms and legs, torso and neck to the table. He placed a thick wood stick between her teeth, and tied it tight behind her head. All the while her lover trembled convulsively, his face green as a jalapeno.

When the fray began to saw, the puta's screams rang through the night like screams of the d.a.m.ned. Blood detonated, and the man fled the hospice in terror.

"I can't blame him," the fray said.

Then he turned and looked at me. His hands were shaking, his face sweating. I was ready to give up, too, but he threw back a cup of pulque, then poured one for me.

"Cristobal, you have to help or the woman will die."

He only called me by my proper name when he needed something urgent.

"The saw has to be steady, the cut even."

He gave me two small pieces of wood. "Hold these straight. I will pa.s.s the saw through them as I cut."

I had a.s.sisted in medical procedures before, but I had never seen a limb cut off. I held the two pieces of wood just above the knee, and the saw ripped through the woman's flesh. Her blood covered us both. When the fray hit her femur, it sounded as if he was tearing through a log. She pa.s.sed out in shock, and at last her wailing ceased. When the leg was amputated, the fray removed the severed limb and dropped it on the floor at my feet. The fray quickly tightened the tourniquet and began to cauterize the severed veins with the red-hot knife.

After searing the stump with seething oil, he covered the convulsively unconscious woman with a blanket, saying to me, "Clean up."

He staggered out the door, no doubt to dull his mind with more pulque. I stared at the ashen-faced, comatose woman-and at the b.l.o.o.d.y piece of leg. What was I supposed to do with it?

FIFTEEN.

At the House of the Poor I crept across the main room without lighting a candle. Rather than sleep in the big room, I went into the fray's enclosed corner and lay down on his bed. I lay there for over an hour, unable to sleep, when I heard men entering the house. No voices. They were trying to be quiet, but the straw gave them away.

Neither Fray Antonio nor our rope-sandaled street people had come in, men wearing boots had entered. I heard the jingle of spurs. A third man had entered, a wearer of spurs. That did not inevitably mean the man was a gachupin. Indio, mestizo, and africano vaqueros wore spurs as well, but they favored working rowels of honed iron. These were the silver spurs of a caballero.

The old woman had sent a gachupin and two helpers for me.

Asi es! So be it.

The fray's rabbit hole was almost filled with blankets. I quickly removed enough to make room for me and slipped in, pulling the trapdoor and its rug over my head. The trapdoor would not completely close, but unless one was looking for it, it was unlikely they would spot it.

Through a crack in the opening, I saw someone enter with a lit torch. A Spaniard, about forty years old. From his clothes, it was obvious that he was a caballero, a gentleman and swordsman.

"No one here," he said. His voice was aristocratic, with that tone of cold command. Here was a man used to issuing orders.

"No sign of the boy or the priest in the main room, Don Ramon."

The second voice was that of an indio or mestizo vaquero, a horseman who drove cattle and sheep, perhaps even an overseer who commanded the hacienda's workers.

"They must all be at the festival, Don Ramon," he said.

"No way they can be found in that crowd," the don answered, "and anyway I have to get back to the reception. We will return in the morning."

A guest at the alcalde's reception itself. Truly a very big wearer of spurs.

I waited in the rabbit's hole until long after the crunch of boots had faded from the house. Climbing out of the hole, I crawled over to the blanket curtain and peeked into the darkness of the main room. Nothing moved. Still the fear that someone had stayed behind to watch kept me from going through the door. Instead I opened the wicker shutter that covered the window opening behind the fray's bed and climbed out into the alley. From the position of the moon, I estimated I had been in the rabbit hole for a good two hours and had been home from the festival for more than three.

I crept down the alley until I was two blocks from the House of the Poor, then positioned myself where I could watch the street leading to its front door. I was certain the fray would make his way home along this street.

I sat down with my back to a wall staring up the alley. Soon people came streaming back from the festival, many of them raucously inebriated.

Near dawn Fray Antonio and a rowdy group of neighbors staggered down the street. I rushed out and took the fray aside.

"Cristo, Cristo, what's the matter? Have you seen a ghost? You look like Montezuma upon learning that the Plumed Serpent, Quetzalcoatl, had claimed his throne."

"Fray, there is great trouble." I told him about the woman in black and the man named Don Ramon, who had searched the House of the Poor.