Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  The day after my return, I was waiting for a class to begin, when young Prince Willow approached me. After welcoming me back to court, he said casually, “My father would be pleased to see you in the throne room at your convenience, Head Nodder.”

  At my convenience! How courteously the highest noble of the Acólhua summoned to his presence this lowly foreigner who had been battening on his hospitality. Of course I left the classroom and went immediately, almost running along the building’s galleries, so that I was quite breathless when at last I dropped to one knee at the threshold of the immense throne room, made the gesture of kissing the earth, and said, “In your august presence, Revered Speaker.”

  “Ximopanólti, Head Nodder.” When I remained bowed in my position of humility, he said, “You may rise, Mole.” When I stood, but stayed where I was, he said, “You may come here, Dark Cloud.” As I did so, slowly and respectfully, he said, smiling, “You have as many names as a bird which flies over all the nations of The One World and which is called differently by every people.” With a fly whisk he was wielding he indicated one of several icpáltin chairs ranged in a semicircle before the throne and said, “Be seated.”

  Nezahualpíli’s own chair was no more grand or impressive than the stubby-legged one on which I sat, but it was raised on a dais so that I had to look up at him. He sat with his legs not formally crossed under him or knees up in front of him, but languidly stretched out to the front and crossed at the ankles. Though the throne room was hung with feather-work tapestries and panel paintings, there were no other furnishings except the throne, those low chairs for visitors—and, directly in front of the Uey-Tlatoáni, a low table of black onyx on which reposed, facing him, a gleaming white human skull.

  “My father, Fasting Coyote, set that there,” said Nezahualpíli, noticing my eyes upon it. “I do not know why. It may have been some vanquished enemy over whom he delighted to gloat. Or some lost beloved he could never stop mourning. Or he may have kept it for the same reason I do.”

  I asked, “And what is that, Lord Speaker?”

  “There come to this room envoys bearing threats of war or offering treaties of peace. There come plaintiffs laden with grievances, petitioners asking favors. When those persons address me, their faces may contort with anger or sag with misery or smile in feigned devotion. So, while I listen to them, I look not at their faces, but at the skull.”

  I could only say, “Why, my lord?”

  “Because there is the cleanest and most honest face of man. No paint or disguise, no guile or grimace, no sly wink or ingratiating smile. Only a fixed, ironic grin, a mockery of every living man’s concern for urgencies. When any visitor pleads that I make a ruling here and now, I temporize, I dissimulate, I smoke a poquíetl or two, while I look long at that skull. It reminds me that the words I speak may well outlast my own flesh, may long stand as firm decrees—and to what effect on those then living? Ayyo, that skull has often served to caution me against an impatient or impulsive decision.” Nezahualpíli looked from the skull to me, and laughed. “When the head lived, for all I know, it was that of a babbling idiot, but dead and silent it is a wise counselor indeed.”

  I said, “I think, my lord, that no counselor would be of use except to a man wise enough to heed counsel.”

  “I take that as a compliment, Head Nodder, and I thank you. Now, was I wise to bring you here from Xaltócan?”

  “I cannot say, my lord. I do not know why you did.”

  “Since the time of Fasting Coyote, the city of Texcóco has been famed as a center of knowledge and culture, but such a center is not necessarily self-perpetuating. The noblest of families can breed dolts and sluggards—I could name a few of my own get—so we do not hesitate to import talent from elsewhere, and even to infuse foreign blood. You seemed a promising prospect, so here you are.”

  “To stay, Lord Speaker?”

  “That will be up to you, or to your tonáli, or to circumstances that not you nor we can foresee. But your teachers have given good report of you, so I think it time that you became a more active participant in court life.”

  “I had been hoping for a means to repay your generosity, my lord. Do you mean I am to be given some useful employment?”

  “If it is to your liking. During your recent absence, I took another wife. Her name is Chálchiunénetl. Jadestone Doll.”

  I said nothing, wondering confusedly if he had for some reason changed the subject. But he went on:

  “She is the eldest daughter of Ahuítzotl. A gift from him to mark his accession as the new Uey-Tlatoáni of Tenochtítlan. She is a Mexícatl like yourself. She is fifteen years old, of an age to be your younger sister. Our ceremony of marriage has been duly celebrated, but of course the physical consummation will be postponed until Jadestone Doll is grown more mature.”

  I still said nothing, though I could have told even the wise Nezahualpíli something about the physical capabilities of adolescent Mexíca maidens.

  He continued, “She has been given a small army of waiting women, and the entire east wing as apartments for herself, for servants’ quarters, private kitchen; a private palace in miniature. So she will lack for nothing in the way of comfort, service, and female companionship. However, I wonder if you might consent, Head Nodder, to join her retinue. It would be good for her to have the company of at least one male, and he a brother Mexícatl. At the same time you would be serving me: instructing the girl in our customs, teaching her our Texcóco style of speech, preparing her to be a consort of whom I can be proud.”

  I said evasively, “Chálchiunénetzin might not take kindly to having me appointed her keeper, Lord Speaker. A young girl can be willful, irrepressible, jealous of her freedom….”

  “How well I know,” sighed Nezahualpíli. “I have two or three daughters of about that same age. And Jadestone Doll, being the princess daughter of one Uey-Tlatoáni and the queen wife of another, is likely to be even more spirited. I would not condemn my worst enemy to be the keeper of a mettlesome young female. But I think, Mole, that you will find her at least pleasant to look upon.”

  He must have pulled a concealed bell rope some while before, for he gestured and I turned to see a slim girl in a rich ceremonial skirt, blouse, and headdress, coming slowly but regally toward the dais. Her face was perfection, her head held high, her eyes demurely lowered.

  “My dear,” said Nezahualpíli. “This is Mixtli, of whom I have spoken. Would you have him in your retinue, in the role of companion and protector?”

  “If my Lord Husband wishes it, I comply. If the young man agrees to it, I shall be pleased to regard him as my elder brother.”

  The long-lashed eyelids lifted, and she looked at me, and her eyes were like unfathomably deep forest pools. I found out later that she habitually put into her eyes drops of juice from the herb camopalxíhuitl, which greatly enlarged her pupils and made her eyes lustrous as jewels. It also forced her to avoid bright lights, even the light of day, when her dilated eyes saw almost as poorly as mine.

  “Well, then,” said the Revered Speaker, rubbing his hands with satisfaction. I wondered, with some misgivings, just how long he had conferred with his counsel skull before deciding on this arrangement. To me he said:

  “I ask only that you provide brotherly direction and advice, Head Nodder. I do not expect you to correct or chastise the Lady Jadestone Doll. It would, in any event, be a capital offense for a commoner to raise either his hand or his voice against a noblewoman. Nor do I expect you to play the jailer or the spy or the talebearer of her confidences. But I would be pleased, Mole, if you devote to your lady sister what time you can spare from your schoolwork and studies. That you serve her with the same devotion and discretion with which you serve me or the First Lady Tolána-Tecíuapil. Now go, young people, ximopanólti, and get acquainted with each other.”

  We made the proper obeisances and left the throne room. In the corridor, Jadestone Doll smiled sweetly at me and said, “Mole, Head Nodder, Mixtli. How many names
do you have?”

  “My lady may call me whatever she pleases.”

  She smiled even more sweetly, and put a delicate tapered fingertip to her pointed little chin. “I think I shall call you …” She smiled still more sweetly, and said with a sweetness like the taste of sticky maguey syrup, “I will call you Qualcuíe!”

  That word is the third person singular jussive of the verb “to fetch,” and is always pronounced forcefully and commandingly: “Fetch!” My heart grew heavy. If my latest name was to be Fetch!, my misgivings about this arrangement seemed justified. And I was right. Though she still spoke in that maguey syrup voice, the young queen dropped all semblance of demureness, docility, and submissiveness, and said, very queenlike:

  “You need not interrupt any of your daytime classwork, Fetch! However, I shall want you available in the evenings, and on call if necessary during the nights. You will please move all your effects into the apartment directly across the hall from mine.” Without waiting for me to say any word of acquiescence, without herself saying any polite word of leave-taking, she turned and walked away down the hall.

  Jadestone Doll. She was named for the mineral chalchíhuitl, which, though it is neither rare nor of any intrinsic value, was prized by our people because it was the color of The Center of Everything. Unlike you Spaniards, who know only the four directions of what you call the compass, we perceived five, and designated them by different colors. Like you, we had the east, north, west, and south, respectively referred to as the directions of the red, black, white, and blue. But we also had the green: to mark the center of the compass, so to speak—the place where a man was at any given moment, and all the space above that spot as far as the sky, and all below it as far as the Míctlan underworld. So the color green was important to us, and the green stone chalchíhuitl was precious to us, and only a child of noble lineage and high degree could appropriately have been named Jadestone Doll.

  Like a jadestone, that girl queen was an object to be handled most respectfully and carefully. Like a doll, she was exquisitely fashioned, she was beautiful, she was a work of divine craftsmanship. But, like a doll, she had no human conscience or compunctions. And, though I did not immediately recognize my feeling of premonition, like a doll she was fated to be broken.

  I must admit that I rather reveled in the sumptuousness of my new chambers. Three rooms, and the sanitary closet contained my own private steam bath. The bed in the bedroom was an even higher than ordinary pile of quilts, over which lay an enormous coverlet made of hundreds of tiny squirrel skins bleached white and sewn together. Over the whole was suspended a fringed canopy and from that hung almost invisible, fine-meshed net curtains, which I could close around the bed to keep out mosquitoes and moths.

  The one inconvenience of the apartment was that it was far distant from those others which the slave Cozcatl had in his charge. But when I mentioned that to Jadestone Doll, little Cozcatl was abruptly relieved of all his other duties, to attend solely to me. The boy was ever so proud of that promotion. Even I felt rather the pampered young lord. And later, when Jadestone Doll and I were in disgrace, I would be glad that Cozcatl had always been by me and was loyally ready to testify in my defense.

  For I soon learned: if Cozcatl was my slave, I was Jadestone Doll’s. On that first evening, when one of her maids admitted me to her grand suite, the young queen’s first words were:

  “I am glad you were given to me, Fetch!, for I was getting unutterably bored, cooped up in seclusion like some rare animal.” I tried to make a demurrer regarding the word “given,” but she overrode me. “I am told by Pitza”—she indicated the elderly maidservant hovering behind her cushioned bench—“that you are an expert at capturing the likeness of a person on paper.”

  “I flatter myself, my lady, that people have recognized themselves and each other in my drawings. But it is some while since I have practiced the craft.”

  “You will practice on me. Pitza, go across the corridor and have Cozcatl collect the implements Fetch! will require.”

  The little boy brought me some chalk sticks and several sheets of bark paper—the brown, the cheapest, uncoated with lime, which I used for rough drafts of my picture writing. At my gesture, the boy went to crouch in a corner of the big room.

  I said apologetically, “You know of my poor eyesight, my lady. If I may have your permission to sit near you?”

  I moved a low chair over beside the bench, and Jadestone Doll held her head still and steady, her glorious eyes on me, while I did a sketch. When I was done and handed her the paper, she did not glance at it, but held it over her shoulder to the maid.

  “Pitza, is it I?”

  “To the very dimple in the cheek, my lady. And no one could mistake those eyes.”

  At which the young queen condescended to examine it, and nodded, and smiled sweetly at me. “Yes, it is I. I am very beautiful. Thank you, Fetch! Now, can you do bodies, too?”

  “Well, yes, the articulation of limbs, the folds of garments, the identifying emblems and insignia …”

  “I am not interested in the outward habiliments. I mean the body. Here, do mine.”

  The maid Pitza gave a muted shriek and Cozcatl’s mouth dropped open, as Jadestone Doll stood up and, without coyness or hesitation, stripped off all her jewelry and bangles, her sandals, her blouse, her skirt, and finally her single remaining undergarment. Pitza went away and buried her flushed face in the draperies by the window—Cozcatl seemed incapable of movement—as the young queen again reclined on the bench.

  In my agitation, I dropped some of my drawing materials from my lap to the floor, but I managed to say, and in a voice of severity, “My lady, this is most unseemly.”

  “Ayya, the typical prudery of a commoner,” she said, and laughed at me. “You must learn, Fetch!, that a noblewoman thinks nothing of being nude, or of bathing, or of performing any function in the presence of slaves. Male or female, they might be pet deer or quail, or a moth in the room, for all that their seeing signifies.”

  “I am not a slave,” I said stiffly. “My seeing my lady unclad—the queen of the Uey-Tlatoáni—would be accounted a criminal liberty, a capital offense. And those who are slaves can talk.”

  “Not mine. They fear my own anger more than that of any law or any lord. Pitza, show Fetch! your back.”

  The maid whimpered and, without turning, slid her blouse down for me to see the raw welts inflicted by a knout of some sort. I looked at Cozcatl, to make sure that he also saw and understood.

  “Now,” said Jadestone Doll, smiling her maguey syrup smile. “Come as near as you please, Fetch!, and draw me entire.”

  So I did, though my hand trembled so that I had often to rub out and redraw a line. The tremor was not entirely because of my dismay and apprehension. The sight of Jadestone Doll stark naked would, I think, have made any man tremble. She might better have been named Golden Doll, for gold was the color of her body, and its every surface and curve and crevice and bend and hollow was as perfectly rendered as by a Toltécatl dollmaker. I might also mention that her nipples and their areolas were dark and generous in size.

  I drew her in the pose she had assumed: full length on the cushioned bench, except for one leg negligently trailing onto the floor; her arms behind her head to give an even more piquant tilt to her breasts. Though I could not help viewing—I might say memorizing—certain parts of her, I confess that my prudish sense of propriety made me blur them somewhat in the drawing. And Jadestone Doll complained about that, when I gave her the finished picture:

  “I am all a smudge between the legs! Are you squeamish, Fetch!, or merely ignorant of female anatomy? Surely the most sacrosanct part of my body deserves the most attention to detail.”

  She got up from the bench and came to stand spread-legged before me, where I sat on my low chair. With one finger she traced what she now displayed and painstakingly described. “See? How these tender pink lips come together here in front, to enfold this little xacapíli nub which is like a
pink pearl and—ooh!—most responsive to the lightest touch.”

  I was perspiring heavily, the servant Pitza had practically enshrouded herself in the draperies, and Cozcatl appeared permanently paralyzed in his crouch in the corner.

  “Now quit your prissy agonizing, Fetch!” said the girl queen. “I did not intend to tease you; rather to test your draftsmanship. I have a task for you.” She turned to snap at the maid. “Pitza, stop hiding your head! Come and dress me again.”

  While that was being done, I said, “My lady wishes me to draw a picture of someone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of whom, my lady?”

  “Of anyone,” she said, and I blinked in puzzlement. “You see, when I walk about the palace grounds or go into the city in my chair, it would be unladylike of me to point and say that one. Also, my eyedrops can dazzle me so that I might overlook someone really attractive. I mean men, of course.”

  “Men?” I echoed stupidly.

  “I want you to carry your papers and chalks wherever you go. Whenever you encounter some handsome man, put his face and figure on paper for me.” She paused to giggle. “You need not undress him. I want as many different pictures of as many different men as you can provide. But no one is to know why you are doing it, or for whom. If you are questioned, say you are merely practicing your art.” She tossed back to me the two drawings I had just done. “That is all. You may take your leave, Fetch!, and do not come back until you have a sheaf of pictures to show me.”

  I was not, even then, so dense that I did not have an inkling of what Jadestone Doll’s command portended. But I put that out of my mind, to concentrate on doing the task to the best of my ability. My main problem was in trying to guess what a fifteen-year-old girl might regard as “handsome” in a man. Having been given no other criteria, I confined my surreptitious sketchings to princes and knights and warriors and athletes and other such stalwarts. But when I returned to the queen, with Cozcatl carrying my stack of bark papers, I had whimsically topped them with a drawing I had done from memory—of that bent, crooked, cacao-brown man who had so oddly kept reappearing in my life.