Read Online Aztec Rage by Gary Jennings - Free Book Online Page B

in the brandy!
    In an attempt to poison me, Bruto had poisoned himself.
    It thundered at me like the charge of a bull. Bruto had raised me for a single purpose: to ensure his management of an estate that brought him money and prestige. As long as I devoted myself to horses and whores—and delegated my finances to him—his life’s dream was secure. And then I threatened to take it all away from him.
    Just the night before, I had told him in the heat of anger I was seizing control of my assets, dismissing him. I didn’t mean those words; I had no intention of acting on them, but he didn’t know that.
    Bruto would lose everything he’d worked for. I owned the quicksilver license, the hacienda, and the house in town. If he had any assets of his own, I didn’t know of them.
    More pieces fell into place. Years ago he had had me sign a will in which he was my heir. The document had meant nothing to me, I had signed it without even reading it. But he would have lost that status when I married Isabel.
    And the seminary school he sent me to in my youth . . . no wonder he tried to turn a born rogue into a man of the cloth. Had I become a priest and never married, he would have remained my sole heir and had a free rein forever over my assets.
    He had tried to poison me with the gift of brandy—and ended up drinking it himself when I returned it.
    Bruto had been slain by his own hand.
    I started to get up from the jail floor, anxious to dispel the charge that I had poisoned my uncle. I sat back down. Who was I to tell? The snoring indio sleeping off too much pulque on my right? The lépero dog I had kicked in the face? The trustee who imagined that I had blinded his eye?
    I would wait till mañana. I knew nothing about the law, but I understood that the viceroy didn’t hang men until they were tried. Wasn’t I entitled to an abogado, a lawyer? I wasn’t sure of exactly how they did their work, but I knew lawyers advised people and spoke for them in court.
    Regardless, now I knew the truth, and I would have a chance to explain it. The world was reasonable, was it not?
    Once I was out of this jail I would . . . I shook the thought off like a dog shaking off water. I had no idea of what I would do, where I would go.
Isabella!
I did have her, one true unswerving friend who would help me. When she learned of my plight, she would come to my aid.
    Like most women, she had no money of her own, but out of love for me, I was sure she would pawn her jewels. The loss of fortune and the accusations against me, including the foul lie that I had impure blood, would shock her at first, but her love for me would prevail.
    The realization that I had someone who cared for me outside the stone walls of the prison buoyed my spirits. I was certain that Isabella would charge to my rescue with the same passion that the French girl Joan once led an army.

TWELVE
    T HE GRAY LIGHT of morning filtered through small, barred windows high up on the stone wall. The windows were large enough to let in night’s cold, damp air but too small to air out the stench. Three latrine buckets lined against a wall. The buckets smelled no worse than the men around me.
    I spent a bad night on the hard stone floor, awakening over and over, cold, miserable, in pain. In the light of dawn, I saw that it wasn’t a single chamber. One end had a small, barred cell, big enough for two men to stretch out in. A young Aztec occupied it alone. He pulled a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine from a basket.
    â€œWho’s that?” I asked a nearby man.
    â€œThe son of a cacique,” he said.
    A cacique was the headman—in the old days literally the chief—of an indio village. With a little fast dealing, the heads of large villages could acquire significant fortunes.
    â€œHe stabbed another man. His family keeps him well. He’ll leave soon.”
    I got the idea. His family paid the guards and trustee to make life