The fray taught me to read almost as soon as I was able to walk. Because most of the great cla.s.sics were written in Latin and ancient Greek, he taught me my letters in both languages. The lessons always came with repeated warnings: I was never to let anyone, espanol or indio, know that I had such learning. The lessons were always conducted in the privacy of his room. Fray Antonio was a saint about everything but my education. He was determined to shape me into a scholar despite my mestizo blood-and when my mind did not grasp quick enough, he threatened to quicken my learning with a whipping stick but in truth, he never had the heart to strike me.

Such learning was not only forbidden to a mestizo; Spaniards were seldom lettered unless they were destined for the priesthood. The fray said that Dona Amelia could barely write her name.

Eh, the fray, at his personal peril, had educated me "beyond my means," as he put it. Through the fray and his books, I knew other worlds. While other boys followed their fathers to tend the fields as soon as they could walk, I sat in the fray's small chamber at the back of the little church and read Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid.

But all must labor on a hacienda. Had I been indio, I would have joined the others in the field. But the fray chose me as his helper. My earliest memories were of sweeping the church with a bound-twig broom, a full head taller than I, and dusting the fray's small collection of leather-bound books and codices of Scripture, cla.s.sics, ancient annals, and medicine.

Besides ministering to the souls of all on the haciendas in the valley, the fray was the chief source of medical advice. Spaniards from many miles and days of travel came seeking his medical attention, "as poor and ignorant as it is," he said, rather truthfully. Indios, of course, had their own shamans and witches to combat sickness. In our small village we had a witch-sorceress who could be called upon to put a curse on an enemy or drive off disease-inducing demons.

At an early age I began accompanying the fray as his servant on his medical missions to those who were too ill to come to the church. At first I only cleaned up after him, but soon I was able to stand by to hand him medicines or instruments as he worked on patients. I watched him mix his elixirs and later was able to make the same concoctions. I learned to set broken bones, dig out a musket ball, suture a wound, and restore the humors of the body through bloodletting, although always in the guise of a servant.

All these arts I mastered by the time I was spouting hair under my arms and between my legs. Don Francisco never took notice of my skills until I was almost twelve years old and made a mistake of revealing what I had learned.

That incident was to set off a chain of events that changed my life. Like so many times, changes came to me not with the tranquillity of a lazy river but with the volcanic bursts of those mountains the indios call fire mountains.

It occurred during the examination of a hacienda majordomo, who complained of abdominal pain. I had not seen this Spaniard before but knew from others that he was the new manager of the hacienda that was the largest in the valley. It was owned by Don Eduardo de la Cerda, a hacendado I had also never seen.

Don Eduardo de la Cerda was a gachupin, a wearer of spurs, so-called because he was born in Spain itself. Don Francisco, though of pure Spanish blood, had been born in New Spain. Under the rigid social code, Don Francisco, for all his purity of blood and ownership of a large hacienda, was legally a criollo because of his place of birth. Criollos were below gachupins on the social scale because of where they were born.

Well, amigos, to the indios and mixed bloods, there was no difference between a gachupin and a criollo. The spurs of both drew blood equally.

One day, the fray had been called to the main house to administer to the majordomo, Enrique Gomez, who had been visiting with Don Francisco when he became ill after the noon meal. I came with the fray as his servant, carrying the leather bag in which he stored his medical tools and main jars of potions.

The majordomo was lying on a cot when we arrived. He stared intently up at me as the fray examined him. For some reason my features had attracted his curiosity. It was almost as if, despite his pain, he recognized me. This was an unusual experience for me. Spaniards never noticed servants, especially mestizos.

"Our guest," Don Francisco told Fray Antonio, "flinches when you press his stomach. He has strained a muscle in his abdomen, probably from lying on too many of Don Eduardo's india maidens."

"Never too many, Don Francisco," the majordomo said, "but perhaps too tough and too tight. Some of the women in our village are harder to mount than a jaguar."

From the smell of the man's breath as he had pa.s.sed by me earlier, I realized that his stomach contents were boiling from chilies and spices he had consumed. The Spanish had adopted indio cooking, but their stomachs were not always in agreement. He needed a potion made from goat's milk and jalapa root to clean out his innards.

"It's an ache in his stomach from the noon meal," I blurted out, "not a muscle."

I realized my mistake immediately by the flush of anger on Don Francisco's face. I had not only refuted his diagnosis but had insulted the food of his household, literally accusing him of poisoning his guest.

Fray Antonio froze with his mouth agape.

Don Francisco slapped me hard. "Go outside and wait."

With my face stinging, I went outside and squatted in the dirt to await the inevitable beating.

In a few minutes Don Francisco, the majordomo, and Fray Antonio came outside. They looked at me and appeared to argue among themselves in whispers. I could not hear the words, but I could tell that the majordomo was making some contention about me. The a.s.sertion seemed to create puzzlement in Don Francisco and consternation in the fray.

I had never seen the fray in fear before. But today apprehension twisted his features.

Finally, the don motioned me over. I was tall for my age but thin.

"Look at me, boy," the majordomo said.

The man took my jaw in his hand and twisted my face from one side to another as if he were looking for some special mark. The skin on his hand was darker than the skin on my face because many pure blood Spaniards had olive-colored skin, but skin color meant less than the color of blood.

"You see what I mean?" he said to the don, "the same nose, ears-look at the side profile."

"No," said the fray, "I know the man well, and the resemblance between him and the boy is superficial. I know of this thing. You must trust my word."

Whatever contention the fray was making, it was apparent from the don's expression that he was not trusting it.

"Go over there," Don Francisco said to me, indicating a corral post.

I went to it and squatted in the dirt while the three men had another animated conversation and kept looking back at me.

Finally, all three went back inside the house. Don Francisco returned a moment later with a rawhide rope and a mule whip.

He lashed me to a post and gave me the worst beating of my life.

"Never again are you to speak out in the presence of a Spaniard unless you are told to. You forgot your place. You are a mestizo. You must never forget that you have tainted blood and that those of your type are lazy and stupid. Your place in life is to serve people of honor and quality."

He stared at me intently and then twisted my face from side to side as the majordomo had done. He uttered a particularly foul curse. "I see the resemblance," he said. "The b.i.t.c.h laid with him."

Flinging me aside, he grabbed his whip and rushed across the stepping stones to the village on the other side of the river.

My mother's wails could be heard throughout the village. Later, when I returned to our hut, I found my mother huddled in a corner. There was blood on her face from her mouth and nose, and one of her eyes was already swelling shut.

"Mestizo!" she yelled and struck me.

I recoiled in shock. To get a beating from others was bad enough, but to have my own mother blaspheme my mixed blood was unbearable. I ran from the hut to a rock hanging over the river. I sat and cried, stung more from my mother's words than the don's beating.

Later the fray sat down beside me.

"I'm sorry," he said. He handed me a piece of sugarcane to suck on. "You must never forget your place in life. Today you revealed medical knowledge. Had they known you read books... I can only shudder at the thought of what the don might have done to you."

"Why did the don and the other man look at me so strangely? What did he mean when he said my mother had lain with someone else?"

"Cristo, there are things you do not know about your birth, that you can never be told. To reveal them would place you in danger." He refused to say more to me, but he gave me a hug. "Your only sin is that you were born."

The fray's medicine was not the only kind practiced on the hacienda. The villagers and their sorceress had their own remedies. I knew the wide-leafed plants found in a few places along the riverbank had spiritual healing power over wounds. Feeling sorry because my mother had taken a beating for what I had done, I pulled a handful of these out, soaked them in water, and took them back to our hut. I spread them across my mother's cuts and welts.

She thanked me. "Cristo, I know it is hard on you. One day many things will be revealed to you, and you will understand why the secrecy was necessary."

That was all that she said.

Later, while the fray was still with the don and the majordomo, I sneaked into the fray's room and prepared a mixture of powder from his potions and applied them to my mother's face to reduce the pain. I knew the village sorceress used a potion of jungle herbs to cause sleep because she believed that good spirits enter the body during sleep and fight disease. I also believed in the healing power of sleep, so I went to her to obtain the herb to induce sleep for my mother.

SIX.

The hut of the sorceress was outside the village in a grove of zapote trees and bushes that had not been cleared for cornfields. A two-room mud hut with a maguey-thatched roof, it told the world it was the home of a witch-sorceress by the feathers and animal skeletons draped around the doorway. An eerie-looking creature that could only exist in a nightmare-the head of a coyote, the body of an eagle, the tail of a snake-hung above the doorway.