The Spanish generally referred to all of the indios of New Spain as "Aztecs," even though there were many indio tribes-the Tarasco, Otomi, Totonac, Zapotec, Maya, and others, often with their own language.

I grew up speaking both Nahuatl, the Aztec tongue, and Spanish.

As I mentioned before, in my own veins was the blood of Spain and the Aztecs. Because of that mixture, I was called a mestizo, a name that meant I was neither espanol nor indio. Fray Antonio, the village priest who had much to do with my upbringing and education, said that a mestizo was born into a border place between heaven and h.e.l.l where dwell those whose souls are deprived of the joy of heaven. While the fray was rarely wrong, in this case he had misjudged the d.a.m.nation of mestizos. Rather than limbo, it was a state of living h.e.l.l.

The fray's church was built on the spot where there had once been a small temple devoted to Huitzilopochtli, the mighty Aztec tribal war G.o.d. After the conquest the temple had been torn down and its stones used to build a Christian temple on the same spot. From then on the indios gave praise to the Christian Savior rather than the Aztec G.o.ds.

The hacienda was a small kingdom in and of itself. The indios who worked the land grew maize, beans, squash, and other food stuffs, horses, cattle, sheep, and swine. Workshops created almost everything that was used on the hacienda, from the shoes for horses and plows for tilling the soil, to the rough carts with wooden wheels used to haul the harvest. Only the fine furnishings, china and linens of the great house used by the hacendado, Don Francisco, came from outside the hacienda.

I shared the hut of my mother, Miaha. Her Christian name was Maria, for the blessed Mother of Christ. Her Aztec name, Miahauxiuitl, meant Turquoise Maize Flower in our Nahuatl tongue. Except in the presence of the village priest, she was called by her Nahuatl name.

She was the first mother I knew. I called her Miaha, which was what she preferred.

It was common knowledge that Don Francisco lay with Miaha, and everyone believed that I was his son. The b.a.s.t.a.r.dos dropped by indias after intercourse with Spaniards were not favored by either race. To the Spaniard I was just an increase in his stock of dray animals. When Don Francisco looked at me, he saw not a child but a piece of property. The don proffered no more affection toward me than he did to the cattle grazing in his fields.

Accepted by neither Spanish nor indios, even children spurned me as a playmate, I learned early that my hands and feet existed solely to defend my mixed blood.

Nor was there sanctuary for me in the hacienda's main house. The don's son, Jose, was a year older than myself; his twin daughters, Maribel and Isabella, two years older. None of them were permitted to play with me, although they were allowed to beat me at will.

Dona Amelia was unrelentingly venomous. For her I was sin incarnate-living proof that her husband, the don, had stuck his garrancha between the legs of an india.

This was the world I grew up in, Spanish and indio by blood, but accepted by neither-and cursed by a secret that would one day shake the foundations of a great house of New Spain.

"What is this secret, Cristobal? Tell it to us!"

Ayyo, the dungeon master's words appear on my paper like black ghosts.

Patience, Senor Capitan, patience. Soon you will know the secret of my birth and of other treasures. I will reveal the secrets in words the blind can see and the deaf can hear, but at present my mind is too weak from hunger and deprivation to do so. It will have to wait until I have regained my strength from decent food and sweet water....

The day came when I saw with my own eyes how a person like me, who carried the blood taint, was treated when they rebelled. I was more than halfway through my eleventh year when I came out of the hut I shared with my mother carrying my fishing spear when I heard horses and shouting.

"Andale! Andale! Apurate!" Hurry! Hurry!

Two men on horseback were driving a man before them with whips. Running and staggering, the horses breathing down his neck, their powerful hoofs hammering at his heels, the man came toward me down the village path.

The hors.e.m.e.n were Don Francisco's soldados, Spaniards who protected the hacienda from bandits with their muskets and used their whips to keep the indios working the fields.

"Andale, mestizo!"

He was a half-breed like me. Dressed as a peasant, he was lighter of skin and taller than an indio, reflecting the infusion of espanol and indio blood. I was the only mestizo on the hacienda and the man was a stranger to me. I knew there were other mestizos in the valley. Occasionally one pa.s.sed through the hacienda with the burro trains that bring supplies and haul away hides and the crops of maize and beans.

A horseman rode up beside the mestizo and quirted him savagely. The man staggered and fell, belly down. His shirt was torn and b.l.o.o.d.y, his back a ma.s.s of bleeding whip marks.

The other soldado charged with a lance and shoved the pole in the man's backside. The man struggled to his feet and staggered down the village lane toward us. He lost his footing again, and the hors.e.m.e.n wheeled, resuming their attack with whip and lance.

"Who is he?" I asked my mother as she came up beside me.

"A mine slave," she said. "A mestizo who has escaped from one of the northern silver mines. He came to some of the workers in the field asking for food, and they called the soldados. Mines pay a reward for runaways."

"Why are they beating him?"

It was a stupid question that required no answer from my mother. I might as well have asked why an oxen is whipped to pull a plow. Mestizos and indios were dray animals. Forbidden to leave the haciendas, they were the property of their Spanish masters. When they strayed, they were whipped like any other animal that disobeyed its master. The king's laws actually protected indios from being put to death, but there was no protection for half-bloods.

As the man got closer, I saw that his face was marred by more than blood.

"His face is branded," I said.

"Mine owners brand their slaves," Miaha said. "When they're traded or sold to other mines, more brands are burned on. This man was branded by many masters."

I had heard of this practice from the fray. He explained that when the Crown gave the conquistadors their original land grants, they also granted them tribute-paying indios. Many of these early settlers branded their indios. Some even burned their initials into the foreheads of the indios to ensure that they could not stray. The king finally forbade the branding of encomienda indios and it came to be used only for the forced laborers and criminals who work in the dreaded silver mines.

From the indios who had come out of their huts, I heard the word casta hissed as an insult. The insult was intended as much for me as the mine slave. When I looked toward the group, one of the men caught my eye and spat upon the ground.

"Imbesil!" my mother said angrily.

The man melted into the group to avoid my mother's ire. While the villagers may have viewed my tainted blood with repugnance, my mother was india pura. Of more importance, they did not want to antagonize her because it was known that Don Francisco slept with her from time to time. My own position as the supposed b.a.s.t.a.r.d of the grandee won me nothing-there was no blood-tie to Don Francisco that was recognized by him or anyone else.

The indios also believed in the myth of sangre puro, the purity of their own blood. But I represented more than tainted blood to them. A mestizo was a living reminder of the rape of their women and the ravaging of their land.

I was just a boy and it cracked my heart to grow up surrounded by contempt.

As the man was herded toward us, I got a closer look at the agony twisting his features. I had once watched men in the village beat a crippled deer to death with clubs. I saw in the man's eyes the same feral anguish.

I don't know why his tormented eyes locked on mine. Perhaps he could see his own corrupted blood in my lighter skin and features. Or perhaps I was the only one whose face was expressing shock and horror.

"Ni Thaca!" he shouted at me. We are also human!

He grabbed my fishing spear. I thought he was going to turn and fight the two soldados with it. Instead he shoved the spear against his stomach and fell on it. Air and blood bubbled from his mouth and the wound as he writhed in the dirt.

My mother pulled me aside as the soldados dismounted. One of them flogged the man, cursing him to h.e.l.l for cheating them out of a reward.

The other drew his sword and stood over the man.

"His head, we can still get something for his head and branded face. The mine owner will post it on a stake as a warning to other runaways."

He chopped at the dying man's neck.

FIVE.

Thus i grew from baby crawling in the dirt to a young boy running in the dirt, neither brown nor white, neither espanol nor indio, welcomed nowhere save the hut of my mother and the little stone church of Fray Antonio.

My mother's hut also welcomed Don Francisco. He came each Sat.u.r.day afternoon, while his wife and daughters visited the dona of a nearby hacienda.

At those times I was sent away from the hut. No village children played with me, so I explored the riverbanks, fishing and inventing playmates in my mind. Once I returned to the hut to retrieve my forgotten fishing spear and heard strange noises coming from the draped-off corner where my mother's petat, her sleeping pallet, lay. I peeked through the reed curtain and saw my mother lying naked on her back. The don knelt over her, making wet, sucking noises with his mouth on one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. His hairy hind end glared at me, his garrancha and cojones swinging back and forth like those of a bull about to mount a cow. Frightened, I fled the hut and ran to the river.

I spent most of my days with Fray Antonio. In truth, I found more love and affection from the fray than I did Miaha. While Miaha usually treated me with kindness, I never felt the warm, pa.s.sionate bond between us that I saw with other children and mothers. Deep down I always felt that my mixed blood made her ashamed of me before her own people. I once expressed this feeling to the fray, and he told me it was not my blood.

"Miaha is proud to be thought of as having the don's child. It is the woman's vanity that keeps her from showing her love. She looked into the river once, and saw her own reflection and fell in love with it."

We both laughed over comparing her to the vain Narcissus. Some say he fell into the pool and drowned.