...engendered in some prison, where wretchedness keeps its residence, and every dismal sound its habitation...

Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote

NINETY-EIGHT.

I did not journey to the northern mines on a pure-blood horse but on the floorboards of a mule-drawn prison-train, coffle chained to the wagon bed. I shared my corner of the wagon bed with a sambenito from the auto-da-fe who had gotten a hundred lashes and two years at the mines for sodomy. My sentence was for life; but since few survived more than a year in the mines, a life sentence was no great matter.

I waved good-bye to Mateo as I was taken to the prison-train. He would soon leave the Inquisition prison himself for his ocean voyage to Manila in the Filipinas, the place of banishment for New Spain's undesirables. Between the tropical fevers and the warring natives, the Filipinas was likewise regarded as a death sentence.

A dozen other men were chained with me, but other than the sodomite and myself, they were all petty criminals sold to the mines by the civil authority. The term of service for each was no more than a year, and most expected relatives to suborn their early release. One of them, a mestizo sentenced for stealing a sack of maize to feed his family, was making his second trip to the mines. The first had been a six-month's stretch for an overdue debt. Rather than extending the due date or adding on additional interest, the creditor had had him arrested, jailed, then sold to a mine for the amount of the debt.

At times the terrain was too steep and rugged for the wagon to carry us, and we had to get out and walk, our legs coffle chained one prisoner to the other. For the most part, though, we bounced in the rocking wagon, our backs an agony of whip welts, our spines jolted out of place by the hard shocks of the springless wagon.

The mestizo reminded me of the mine slave who'd been murdered before my eyes when I was a boy. I told him about the incident, and he told me stories of the mines. They were not pretty tales, but I needed to know all I could about my new prison. I had sworn to avenge my family and was determined not to die in a mine.

"We will be beaten on arrival so that we learn submission," he told us, "but not beaten so severely that we cannot work."

My back was still raw from the auto-da-fe's flogging-the one the crowd felt was not ruthless enough. The crowd's opinion notwithstanding, I knew even then I would carry those scars for the rest of my life-however long that was.

"For those with a life sentence, or who are slaves, they brand their faces just in case they try to escape," the mestizo said.

I can still see the brands that scarred the face of the mine slave when he was killed before me at the hacienda. One of the brands was a small "S" that probably was the initial of a Sanchez or Santos or a dozen other potential "S" names who owned the mine.

"Africano slaves and those given life sentences work the most dangerous job-breaking ore out of the mine face."

The mestizo looked at me as he spoke because everyone in the wagon knew of my life sentence. His coloring was almost the same as mine; but I was known as a Spaniard, a converso, and carried myself as one, and he gave no indication whether he knew we were both of mixed blood.

"The ore is broken out with iron picks then loaded into burden baskets with shovels," he said. "Cave-ins occur constantly, and many slaves die the first time their pick strikes."

Don Julio had told me that the mine owners do minimal timber-shoring because of the expense. Vast quant.i.ties of timber were required in the smelting process, and the wood had to be hauled over great distances. It was cheaper to replace workers than pay for timber.

We reached the hacienda de mina in slightly under two weeks. It overlooked a high, sheer cliff top, and a river ran through its land, bringing reliable water to this otherwise barren waste. However, it was quickly apparent that this hacienda was not a typical land estate, supported by crops and livestock. The gate swung open, and we entered a vast, smoking, self-sufficient compound, dedicated to wresting silver from an uncooperative mountain, then forcing the unwilling metal from the reluctant rock, which only grudgingly gave it up. The excavation of tunnels, the mining ore, and hauling it out-thousands upon thousands of loads-and then the refinement of that ore, separating the silver from the unprofitable dross, was what the hacienda de mina was about.

We entered the compound's soaring walls in chains and shackles. All the while I scrupulously studied everything-the black, gaping mouth of the mine shaft; the thunder of the stamping mill; the fuming roar of the refinery; the clanging, filthy, smoke-shrouded blacksmith shop; the long, malodorous, soot-fouled prisoners' barracks. Towering above us, the mine owner's huge, high, ma.s.sively walled house, gessoed a stark white against so much squalor and darkness.

I contemplated the compound's surrounding whitewashed walls of thick adobe brick with special care. One day I would scale those soaring white walls and leave this obscene h.e.l.lhole forever.

Indios came out of the hole in the ground like enslaved ants, one after another, sacks and burden baskets slung over their backs and tumplined across their foreheads, which, according to the mestizo, averaged a hundred pounds apiece-four-fifths the weight of the wiry men who carried them.

The ants dumped their loads in a pile near the stamping mill. I could see only a little of it as I was marched toward a barrack, but I was familiar with the process from reading the book Don Julio had written on the mining industry.

The rock and dirt carried out of the mines was crushed in the stamping mill then spread into large heaps across a stone-paved courtyard called a patio. Water was added to the minerals until they became muddy. Then an azoguero, a refiner, mixed mercury and salt into the mud. The mud was spread into thin cakes that were stirred and left to "cook." Later the silver was washed and heated until the mercury separated out. This amalgamation process took weeks to months, depending on the skill of the mixer and the grade of the silver.

Mercury, or quicksilver, was vital to the mining process, and the king held a royal monopoly on it. Most of it came from the Almaden mine in Spain.

In the outdoors area, where meals were taken, we were a.s.signed to work crews. Each crew was overseen by an africano slave.

The man I was a.s.signed to was several inches taller than I. He was powerfully built, had survived a decade of overseering mine slaves, and currently commanded a dozen or so. His body was scarred from innumerable mining accidents. He invariably reminded me of Rome's arena gladiators. His name was Gonzalo.

"Take off your shirt," he told me, whip in hand.

I removed my shirt. The scars on my back were red but no longer bled and were healing.

The whip lashed the back of my legs. I cried out, startled from the pain. Two men grabbed my arms and held me as he beat me five more times across the calves and the backs of my thighs.

"You are here to work, not to be flogged. I whip you so that you will work harder. I did not whip your back because it has not healed. I don't want you hurt so much that you can't work. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"As long as you work, you will be not be whipped-too often-and will be given decent food so you can work hard. If you try to escape, you will be killed. This is not a jail. You earn more time in jail for attempting to escape. Here you will be killed. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"If you are lazy and do not work, I will flog you worse than the familiars at the auto-da-fe. The second time I will cut off your ear. When you go below, you will see a nailing post where we impale the ears. Do you know what will happen the third time?"

"You will cut off my head."

Gonzolo grinned and struck me across the face with the b.u.t.tstock of his whip. Blood squirted down my cheek. "You are right, but it is not good to be right too much. You are a work animal, not a man. When you talk to me, you must keep your eyes looking down so I know you respect me."

Indio dog handlers brought their mastiffs closer, snarling h.e.l.l-hounds with snapping jaws.

"Some plot to escape from the sleeping house in the middle of the night. We had one man try that. He dug a hole through the house wall and ran for the hacienda wall. The dogs ate well that night."

He hit me again on the back of the legs.

"Do not attempt to hide any silver; you have nothing to spend it on. The first time you are caught hiding silver, you will lose an ear. The second time your head."

The whip lacerated my legs below the knees.

"Take him to be branded."

The two men held me as a blacksmith shoved a glowing hot iron with the initial "C" about the size of the first joint of my little finger. I flinched away from the iron and instead of a perfect "C," it smeared the letter across my cheek on the same spot where I was bleeding from the whip handle.

And so I began my life as a mine slave. Branded and flogged, I was allowed to eat and sleep only because dray animals need food and rest to work. The sleeping house was a windowless mud-brick building with only one door. Its purpose was imprisonment, and it succeeded admirably. No beds or rooms, it was just a long, narrow room with straw and scattered blankets on the floor.

There were two twelve-hour shifts down below plus more work topside, moving ore from the stamping-mill piles to where it was amalgamated on the patio. When one crew came in from its twelve-hour shift, the men ate, then went into the barracks, where they slept until it was time for their shift.

The crew I was a.s.signed to shared the same sleeping s.p.a.ce and blankets. When one crew left, another found a blanket in the straw and slept. We had no personal possessions except the clothes we wore. When our clothes rotted off, a ragged shirt or pants was provided from a pile gathered from men who had already died.

Each day we filed into the shaft head and descended by ladder from one tier to another, down to the main tunnel. In the mine, it was dark, damp, cold, dusty, and dangerous-and then, as we descended, it became so infernally hot that the sweat flooded from us in cataracts, and men dropped dead from lack of water. Our only light came from candles and small torches, and once beyond their glow we vanished into darkness.

Because of the darkness, escape would be easy; but there was no place to run to. The only way out was topside, where guards and dogs awaited.

Being a lifer, I spent part of my time working on blasting crews. We chipped and hammered and dug holes several feet deep into the mine face, then packed in the black powder-the same explosive used in cannons and muskets. We poured a line of black powder, lit it, and ran like h.e.l.l.

A recent innovation, we were not adept at it, and given the lack of shoring timber, blasting carried with it serious problems. Whereas it did loosen a lot of rock-a single blast broke up more rock than a dozen men could loosen in a day with picks-it also loosened tunnel walls throughout the mine. Suffocating clouds of dust and debris blew through the tunnels with hurricane force, and cave-ins were commonplace. Men were routinely buried alive.