Don Julio asked many more questions, starting again with the first time I saw the naualli and going over everything I saw from when I watched the mock battle between the indio knights to the cut on the naualli's face.

When I was drained of information, Don Julio smiled at me. "You have an amazing memory. No doubt that is the secret of your ability with languages and with scholarly matters when you never went to school. You're a mestizo, of course, not an indio."

I shot a glance at Mateo, but as usual, his eyes revealed nothing.

"A mestizo, but you can affect the manners and speech of an indio." Don Julio patted his beard. "And a Spaniard. If you had been dressed as a Spaniard when I talked to you among the ruins, I would have not doubted you were born in Seville or Cadiz. Mateo, you could have used this young man in your acting troupe before the viceroy sent them to the Filipinas."

Mateo visibly shuddered at the mention of the dreaded islands. Ah! I understood the hold Don Julio had on the picaro. Troublemaking Spaniards were not sent to the northern mines, but were vanquished to a place equally feared, a land Spaniards in New Spain without humor called the Infierno. The trip across the Western Sea that took a couple of months was so terrible that only half the prisoners on a galleon survived. After they landed, half of those who survived the voyaged died in the first few months from fevers, snakes, and pestilence as bad as that found in the jungles of the Veracruz coast and Yucatan.

Eh, the rope that jerks my amigo Mateo is banishment to this espanol h.e.l.l on the other side of the great waters. He and his actors really must be muy mal hombres to deserve such a fate. And the women? Were they doing the deshonesto zarabanda dance for Filipinas crocodiles? What was the actress letting into her tent at night now?

"Only your generosity and kind spirit has kept me from joining my amigos, Don Julio. Because of your brilliance, insight, and wisdom, you recognized that I was as innocent as a newly ordained priest." Mateo spoke without a trace of sarcasm.

"Si, as innocent as the two mestizo tomb robbers we will be hanging-and this one whose fate has not yet been decided."

I smiled humbly at Don Julio. "My kindly old uncle is half blind and nearly helpless. I must care for him, or he will perish."

"Your uncle, if that's what he is, is a fake and a fraud who has cheated people from Guadalajara to Merida. You are also an incorrigible liar and thief. Even facing a rope around your neck, you dared to lie to me about the fact the treasure mask was in easy reach. Had I accepted your story, you would have returned to break into the tomb again to recover it. Do you deny this?"

"Don Julio," I whined, "you are a prince among-"

"Be quiet while I decide your punishment."

"I think the little scoundrel should get a hundred lashes," Mateo said. "It would teach him to have respect for the king's law."

"And how many lashes would teach you to respect the law?" Don Julio asked.

Mateo pretended to be examining a scuff on his boot.

The don cursed the workers at the wall and went to them, shouting that their ancestors were turning over in their graves at the sight of their sloppy work.

I glared at Mateo. "A hundred lashes, eh, amigo. Gracias."

"I'm not your amigo, you little street cur." He showed the point of the sword. "Call me that again, and I will cut off one of your ears."

Dios mio. Still the desire to slice me up.

"Your pardon, Don Mateo. Perhaps I will tell Don Julio that you told me to hide the treasure so you could come back for it later."

Mateo stared at me for a moment. I thought for certain that my ears were lost. His face convulsed and then he burst-into laughter. He slapped me on the shoulder so hard that I went over sideways.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.do, you are a man after my own black heart. Only a true rogue would have thought of such an outrageous lie. There is no doubt that someday you will come to a bad end. Eh, but the stories you will be able to tell before they hang you."

"You will both end up making your last confession to a priest when you have a rope around your necks." Don Julio had returned from threatening the indios with everlasting d.a.m.nation if they did not do better work. "But in the meantime, I have an a.s.signment for both of you."

Mateo looked crestfallen. "You told me-"

"I told you that a very bad transgression against the king would be worked off if we caught that bandito Sancho. Do you see her in chains?"

"We saved a great treasure for the king."

"I saved a great treasure for the king. You were not told to use black powder."

"Sancho insisted that-"

"You should have refused. You did great damage to a temple that has resisted harm since Julius Caesar talked to the Sphinx. It has occurred to my suspicious mind that you used the black powder to quickly get into the temple before I arrived with soldados."

Don Julio was no one's fool. And I had not been wrong in my a.s.sessment of Mateo. Like Guzman, Mateo was unable to resist the temptation to acquire a treasure. All picaros shared the same fatal flaw: the soul of a knave.

Mateo looked hurt. "Don Julio, on my honor-"

"A dubious oath. Listen to me, amigos, like a priest I will grant you forgiveness for your sins; but unlike one, I can also keep you from the gallows-if you obey me and do the work I set out for you. These Knights of the Jaguar, as they style themselves, are well known to the viceroy. They are a small but violent group of indios who are determined to kill all Spanish and take control of the country."

"Give me a hundred men, and I'll bring you the heads of all of them," Mateo said.

"You couldn't do it with a thousand. You would never find them. The knights do not conduct themselves in the open. In the daytime they are simple indio farmers or hacienda workers. At night they are a murder cult that band together to kill Spaniards and indios who do not oppose Spanish rule."

"They have killed Spaniards?" Mateo asked.

"At least ten, perhaps more."

"I have never heard of such a thing!" Mateo said.

"The viceroy is withholding the information to keep people from panicking and spreading the fame of the cult. We are still dealing with scattered groups, but they must be stamped out. With the right leadership, an indio revolt could spread like wildfire. This naualli, despite his age, may be such a leader. We could have a widespread revolt on our hands, another Mixton War."

"Then let's roast the black magician's feet over a hot fire until he tells us the names of his knights," Mateo said.

"Amigo, you are so Spanish in your thinking," the don said. "That is exactly what the conquistadors did to Cuitlahuac, Montezuma's successor, after Tenocht.i.tlan fell. They tortured him to find out where gold had been hidden. It didn't work after the conquest, and it would have even less effect today. These are no ordinary indio warriors, but fanatics. You," Don Julio indicated Mateo, "I am sure are familiar with the story of the Old Man and the Mountain. But," he smiled at me, "despite your wide range of knowledge, you may not be acquainted with this tale."

"I have not heard of an old man and a mountain," I said.

"Hundreds of years ago Christian armies went to the Holy Land to free it from the Infidels. During one of these crusades, a leader of a Muslim sect, Rashid ad-Din, sent his followers to murder his Arab enemies and Christian leaders. Because he had a mountain fortress, we called him the Old Man of the Mountain.

"Our people called his followers a.s.sa.s.sins, a corruption of an Arabic reference to them being hashish smokers. Marco Polo, a traveler from Venice, learned that the a.s.sa.s.sins used hallucinatory substances before committing their heinous crimes. While their minds were slaves to these drugs, the a.s.sa.s.sins believed that they had traveled to Allah's Garden of Paradise. They then set out to murder their enemies, knowing they would be caught and killed themselves. But they believed that after they were killed, having completing their murder a.s.signment, they would return to paradise.

"The Aztecs were even more adept at the use of drugs that control another's mind. One of the Jaguar Knights whom we managed to capture had taken drugs before his crime. Even under the most severe and enduring torture, he revealed little to the viceroy's men. The fact was that his mind was so altered by the drugs that he no longer knew the difference between his real existence and a place he called the House of the Sun."

"The House of the Sun is heaven beyond the eastern waters," I said. "When an Aztec warrior dies in battle, rather than going to the underworld, his spirit goes to this paradise."

Mateo tapped his sword on his boot. "This naualli may be the Old Man of the Mountain to these indios."

"Exactly," Don Julio said.

"And you want me to take this thieving little devil," Mateo waved the sword at me, "and find this pract.i.tioner of the black arts and get the truth from him."

"Almost. I want you to catch him in the act so we can hang him."

"I understand perfectly. But, of course, as a Spanish gentleman, I do not understand the language or the customs of these people. This fine young man should be sent to find this naualli. After he does, he can send for me. I will await his message at your house in the City of Mexico..."