"No, I've been reading history. The Romans sometimes flooded the arena and put on gladiatorial sea battles with warships."

"Did you plan to put this comedia on in Rome? Has the pope given you San Pedro's to flood?"

"You are such a doubter of genius. Have you looked around and seen that Ciudad Mexico is surrounded by water?-not to mention a dozen lagoons in and around the city."

"Explain this madness to me."

"We take great risk for small profit printing deshonesto plays and books and selling them. It occurred to me that we could put on our own comedia and make our fortune."

Mateo's eye lit up. "I will write the play! An English pirate rapes-"

"No! No! No! Everyone from Madrid to Acapulco has seen that story. I have an idea for a play-"

His hand brushed his dagger. "You don't want me to write the play?"

"Yes, of course, but based on a different story." That fortunately needed very little dialogue, I added silently to myself. "What is the greatest moment in the history of New Spain?"

"The conquest, of course."

"Besides those famous horses whose blood you invest in, Cortes had a fleet of warships. Because Mexico, Tenocht.i.tlan, was an island with a causeway that could be easily defended by the Aztecs, Cortes had to attack the city over water. He had timber felled and beams cut and built a fleet of thirteen boats; installed them with masts, rigging, and sail. While the boats were being prepared, he employed eight thousand indios to dig a ca.n.a.l by which the boats could be launched on the lake."

Mateo, of course, knew the story better than me. Cortes put twelve rowers aboard each vessel, along with twelve crossbowmen and musketeers, a total of about half of the conquistadors in his army. None of the conquistadors wanted to be rowers, and he'd had to coerce men with sea experience to man the oars.

He equipped each boat with cannon taken from the ships that had carried him to New Spain and put the boats under the command of captains. He invested himself as admiral of the fleet and led an attack on the city as the rest of his force and indio allies attacked the causeway.

The fleet of little warships was countered by an Aztec armada, over five hundred war canoes, hosting thousands of warriors. As the two fleets closed the distance between them, Cortes knew all would be lost if the good Lord did not give them a fresh breeze to propel their ships into battle with such speed that they would not be overwhelmed by the enormous number of Aztec war canoes.

The Hand of G.o.d did enter the battle. A breeze came up that sent Cortes's ships crashing through the Aztec armada with a ferocity only matched by the fierceness of the conquistadors themselves.

"How did you plan to pay for the thirteen ships and five hundred canoes, not to mention several hundred conquistadors and five thousand Aztec warriors?"

"We need but one warship and two or three canoes. A lake barge can be turned into a warship by adding some false lines of timber and wooden cannon. Indios with canoes can be had for a few pesos each night."

Mateo had the nervous intensity of a jaguar on the prowl. He paced, seeing himself as the man who won an empire.

"Cortes would be the main player," he said, "fighting with the strength of ten demons, killing a dozen-no!-a hundred of the enemy, exhorting his men not to waiver, in his most desperate moment, on his knees, calling upon G.o.d to deliver wind."

"Naturally only a fine actor like yourself could pay the conqueror."

"There is a company of players in the city, stranded, their bellies getting thinner each day," he said. "They could be had for a place to sleep and a little wine and food until our boat is prepared."

"I leave matters requiring artistic judgment to one who has performed before royalty in Madrid. I will occupy myself with mundane matters of getting the warship built, printing announcements, and the selling of tickets."

And, praise G.o.d, collecting enough money to become the gentleman I had always wanted to be.

Preparations for the play proved to be easier than I had imagined. The viceroy's office and the Holy Office were more than willing to license a play that extolled G.o.d and the glory of Spanish conquerors. All of the negotiations were done in my persona of a print shop a.s.sistant commissioned by the fict.i.tious autor of the play. Because of our connection to the don, we decided not to use our real names.

Late at night, while I was printing up handbills advertising the play, I heard the telltale drop of a package through the back door slot and I again rushed to the alley.

The poet was nearly to end of the alley when a dark figure jumped out in front of him. The poet screamed and ran back toward me.

A woman's scream.

Terrified, looking back where an attack was expected, the poet ran nearly into my arms. I grabbed the mask from the person's face.

"Elena!"

She stared at me wide-eyed. "You!"

She spun around and ran back down the alley, flying around Juan the lepero whom I had posted in the alley.

No wonder the words of the poet had so inflamed my heart-they flowed from the heart and hand of the woman I loved! That Elena was the author of the poetry was a shock. That she was capable of writing poetry in no way surprised me. As a young girl she had talked of disguising herself as a man to write poetry.

The drudgery of typesetting the poems had been rewarded by a moment in which we stood only inches apart.

What did she mean when she had exclaimed, You! Shock that she had seen the lepero again who had accosted her on the street? Or did she recognize me as the youth from Veracruz? I toyed with the word, "you," listening in my mind to her speaking it, sometimes in a tone of familiarity, other times a tone of derision creeping in.

Finally, sighing, realizing my thoughts of someday courting Elena were more fanciful than Mateo's battles with dragons, I sat down with the papers she had delivered.

The material she left were not in fact poems but a play. Called Beatriz de Navarre, it was the tale of a woman with a jealous husband. He suspects her of infidelity after finding what appears to be a love note.

Determined to catch the two lovers red-handed, he spies on his wife's every move. He had truly loved his wife and their love had been pa.s.sionate before his suspicions arose. But with suspicion eating at him, he treats her coldly, keeping his doubts to himself so he can catch her in the act. His wife reaches out for him but is rejected.

While lurking outside his wife's bedroom, he hears her telling someone how much she loves him, using very erotic language. Enraged, he breaks down the door. He finds no one but his wife in the room and a.s.sumes her lover has fled. Still in a rage, certain that the woman has been unfaithful to him, he draws his sword and thrusts it through her heart.

As she lies on the floor, her life slowly draining from the wound in her chest, she whispers to her husband that she has always been faithful to him, that she loved him, and had been immortalizing her love for him in a poem. She had been afraid to show it to him because he had forbidden her to even read poetry, much less write it.

After her last breath escapes from her, he picks up papers on the table where she had been writing. Reading the poem aloud, he realizes that the words he overheard outside her door were not to a man in her room, but a lover in her heart-she had been reading aloud the poem.

He had doubted her because he never realized that a woman was capable of placing her heart on paper in a poem. Women had neither the inclination nor the need to experience literature.

Heartbroken by having spilled the blood of his beloved, he kneels beside her and begs forgiveness, then plunges a dagger into his own heart....

Was I touched by the play because it was penned by a certain young woman in a carriage who saved my life and yearned to get an education? Perhaps, but the language, the words of the love poem Beatriz wrote to her husband, was also quite appealing to me. Elena the poet had a talent for bringing words between lovers that were poignant, provocative, and, yes, with an eroticism that t.i.tillates the ear and private places.

Another one of the ideas that seize my mind and soul and bring the hounds of h.e.l.l yapping at my heels came to me, an idea even more outrageous than Mateo's tales. I would put on a play that would tickle the fancy of Homer and Sophocles. From the money earned from Cortes's spectacular sea battle, I would produce Elena's play. Not in her name, of course, but one I would make up to protect her. And I would have to devise a way to let her know that the poor lepero boy she had helped had repaid her by giving her everlasting glory-in anonymity.

Of course, I would have to trick the Holy Office and the viceroy to get the play performed and not let Mateo know I had stolen money to put on someone else's play. He would carry through his threat to flay me and rub my raw flesh with salt if he knew.

Eh, amigos, I had nothing to risk. I would simply replace the money I diverted from our play with the admissions sold for Elena's play.

The thought of the sacrifices I would be making for love choked me up as I reread the play.

NINETY-ONE.

We chose a lagoon near the Alameda for the reenactment of the lake battle between Cortes's fleet and the Aztecs. Handbills advertising the play had been distributed throughout the city, and criers proclaimed the magnificence of the play in every plaza.