Sancho tied my hands and feet. His mestizos carried me into his tent and dumped me on the ground. I lay on the ground for a couple of hours, trying to work my joints loose to slip out of the ropes, but Sancho had tied me securely.

He came into the tent at dusk.

"I have arranged for one of the putas to visit me, but I am tired tonight. I want to play with her, but not stick my pene into her. Comprende?"

I nodded. But I did not have the faintest idea what he was talking about. If he was too tired, why pay a wh.o.r.e for favors?

"If your pene will not turn into a garrancha, there is a potion I can get for you that will give it power."

He kicked me-hard. Several more times. Eh, telling a wearer of spurs that his pene is not as long and hard as a sword was an unusual-and ill-timed-moment of honesty on my part.

"I am going to explain what you are to do when I come back with the woman. I will explain only once. Then I will untie you and leave the tent. If you attempt to run away, not only will my mestizos cut off your head, but I will track down the old man and cut off his. Listen carefully for your duties with the woman. If you fail my instructions, I will cut off your pene."

Ojala! G.o.d grant that someday this ugly ox feel my spurs!

Sancho had instructed me to be hiding under a blanket near the bed when he returned with the woman. They came with much laugher and singing, both very drunk. Sancho brought her into the tent, the two of them staggering. It was dark in the tent, a single candle glowed, barely breaking the darkness, but even in the dim I could see that she was not a young puta, but one old enough to be my mother. I took her to be mestizo rather than a full-blooded indio. The moment he had her inside, he began undressing her. Giggling, she tried to undress him, but he knocked away her hands. He stripped her naked and kissed and touched her in many places. He did not appear tired to me. I hoped that the excitement had put some power in his pene, and he would not need me.

Turning her around, he put her down on the bed on her chest with her feet on the ground and her b.u.t.tocks arched up.

He waved to me. I silently groaned with reluctance. But aware I was dealing with a madman, I quietly slipped out from under the bed.

When he held her down and kissed her, I obeyed his instructions.

I inserted my pene into her tipili.

Sancho breathed heavy and grunted, pretending he was doing ahuilnema on the woman, as I pumped.

Dios mio!

FIFTY-SEVEN.

Sitting on the ground with my back to a tree that I was tied to, I watched their preparations. Since first light they had been at the wall. The mestizos used an iron rod to poke a hole into the wall and then kept increasing the depth of the hole but not the width. The hole was barely big enough to stick my foot in, much less my whole body. Did these tomb robbers expect that I could shrink my body down to the width of my leg?

Mateo spent some time stuffing something into the hole. After he was finished, the mestizos piled wood and blankets against the hole. I watched all this in ignorance of what they were doing. Mateo poured a trail of something on the ground. It looked like the black powder I have seen soldados stuff into the barrels of their muskets.

He knelt and lighted the end of the trail. Smoke rose from the powder as the fire moved to the wall. The smoke seemed to go out the moment it hit the stuffed hole. Than an explosion erupted, m.u.f.fled by the wood and blankets. When the smoke cleared, a small hole in the wall became visible.

Mateo cursed. "These d.a.m.n indios knew how to build so that bad hombres like us can't get in. I put enough black powder in to sink a galleon, and it barely damaged the stone."

After the two mestizos cleared the rubble, they dug again with their iron poles. Periodically Mateo used more black powder to lessen the resistance. By midday they had made a small tunnel several feet long through a block of solid rock. It was just wide enough for a slender contortionist to snake into. From the discussions between Sancho and Mateo, I learned that it had taken days and a large number of indios to work loose a great block enough for their previous helper to squeeze in. The activity had drawn the interest of authorities from Oaxaco. With Mateo's black powder, they had made an opening in a few hours.

I had heard many stories of tomb robbers from the fray and on the streets of Veracruz. Everybody knew someone else who had an acquaintance possessing a secret map to where Montezuma hid his treasures from Cortes. Or a similar tale about the tomb of a king of Texcoco, whose incredible riches were discovered by robbers who were turned to stone by the ghosts and spirits guarding the tomb.

It was well known that it was bad luck to break into the burial places of the notables of the past. It raised the wrath of G.o.ds. People who defiled the ancient holy places were cursed and came to a bad end, if the Spanish didn't punish them first. When I was seven years old, two men were hanged in the valley where I was born, thieves who'd broken into an ancient tomb in search of treasure.

Ay de mi! what had I become involved in? If we were caught by the authorities, I would be hanged along with the rest of them, or worse, sent to the northern mines. If I found the treasure, my reward would be to have my throat cut. If I failed to find the treasure, I would pray for a quick death on the gibbet.

After the noon meal, Sancho and Mateo untied me and took me to the opening.

"After a few feet, this hole leads to a pa.s.sage down to the tomb," Sancho said. "Your task is a simple one. You crawl down the pa.s.sageway, get the breastplate, and crawl back. Comprende?"

"If it is so simple, why didn't your helper bring it to you?"

"I told you, we had to suddenly seal the opening."

"You couldn't have waited a moment for him to crawl out with the treasure?"

Sancho hit me. I stumbled backward and hit the ground hard. He threw his hands into the air. "Chico, Chico, see what you make me do? You ask too many questions. When I hear too many questions, my head hurts."

He led me to the opening. "When you are down there, fill your pockets with gems. I will let you keep all you find."

Eh, this hombre is generous, no? He would cut off his mother's nose if he could find a buyer.

He hung a sack with four candles and a small torch around my neck. He handed me a lighted candle. "Don't use the torch until you reach the tomb itself."

He tied part of a long coil of rope around my waist. The purpose of the rope was to guide me back if the pa.s.sageway became a maze.

Before I stuck my head into the opening he grabbed me and gave me a powerful hug. "Amigo, if you don't find the treasure, don't come out," he whispered.

I crawled into the dark hole with grave misgivings. It was not midnight in the hole; it was as black as Mictlan, the underworld, as dark and silent as a grave. The air was as chill and unstirred as the breath of the dead. It smelled like the breath of the dead, a putrid, stagnant odor, like the bodies rotting in the Veracruz river where africanos and mestizos were thrown to save on burial effort.

The fray was right, I was raised badly. Trouble was waiting for me everywhere I went. While other mestizos are keeping warm and dry as household servants or at least mercifully dying at an early age, clutching a cup of pulque in the gutter, I am always tempting fate by taking a jaguar by the ear.

What would I find in this grave of ancient kings?

What would find me?

I had nothing with which to defend myself against the spirits of the temple but my ignorance.

The pa.s.sageway was too small for me to continue crawling on my hands and knees. I lay flat on my stomach and pushed along, using my arms and elbows. My arms and legs were immediately cut and sc.r.a.ped as I crawled over the stone block that the hole had been blown through.

I prayed there was nothing in the tomb that became excited by the scent of fresh blood.

After a few feet of the rough hole that felt like I was crawling over obsidian spear heads, I was in another pa.s.sageway. I could see only a few feet in front and was glad for the rope I was tethered to. No bigger than the blasted hole, it had been hewed an eon ago and was much smoother. I left one candle along the way and used it to light another. The candles barely broke the darkness.

Despite my youth and vigor, it was hard work dragging my body along on elbows and legs. Soon I was breathing hard not only from the exertion but an overwhelming sense of dread. The cold, rank, almost unbreatheable air and the dead blackness of the coffin-tight tunnel spooked me. Either the narrow pa.s.sage was designed to discourage tomb robbers, or the early Zapotecs were as thin and lithe as snakes. The pa.s.sageway twisted and turned nonsensically. If I encountered any danger and had to crawl backward, a feat ever more difficult than my excruciatingly painful forward progress, I would make the temple my tomb, just as my processor-

Ay! I came to a pair of feet.

I hoped the dirty feet belonged to the decayed body of the man Sancho had sealed in the pa.s.sage and not some ancient specter waiting for an intruder to happen along.

The dim candlelight exposed dirty feet that appeared more likely to belong to the recently departed than someone entombed an eon ago.

I was faced with a dilemma. I could crawl backward all the way out, and have Sancho cut my throat, or I could attempt to crawl over the body.