Don Martín was different. His early childhood memories were of his mother, Malintzin, or doña Marina as the Spaniards called her, twice a prisoner, ever a survivor, the bravest of women, as all men said. When he was eight years old, his father took him to Spain and left him there to become a page to Prince Philip, and he then learned the meaning of the word alone. He grew up a “half-breed Indian” in the eyes of those who surrounded him in the Spanish court. Silent, distant, he survived, but he was not stunned when humanity turned its face away from him. If anyone had ever looked past him,
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