Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  Since there was not a single work in which there was not to be seen rank superstition and delusions inspired by the Devil, we commanded that the thousands upon thousands of volumes and scrolls be made a heap in this city’s main marketplace, and there had them burned to ashes, and the ashes dispersed. We submit that such was the fitting end for those pagan mementos, and we doubt that there remain any others in all the regions of New Spain thus far explored.

  Be it noted, Sire, that the Indian onlookers at the burning, though almost all of them are now professed Christians, unashamedly showed a disgusting degree of regret and anguish; they even wept whilst they gazed upon the pyre, as they might have been so many real Christians watching the desecration and destruction of so many Holy Scriptures. We take that as evidence that these creatures have not yet been so wholeheartedly converted to Christianity as we and Mother Church would wish. Hence this most humble servant of Your Very Pious and Devout Majesty still has and will have many urgent episcopal duties pertinent to the more intense propagation of the Faith.

  We beg Your Majesty’s understanding that such duties must take precedence over our acting as auditor and monitor of the loquacious Aztec, except in our increasingly rare spare moments. We also beg that Your Majesty will understand the necessity of our occasionally sending a package of pages without a commentary letter, and sometimes even sending it unread by us.

  May Our Lord God preserve the life and expand the kingdom of Your Sacred Majesty for many years to come, is the sincere prayer of Your S.C.C.M.’s Bishop of Mexico,

  (ecce signum) Zumárraga

  QUINTA PARS

  MY little slave boy Cozcatl welcomed me back to Texcóco with unfeigned delight and relief, because, as he told me, Jadestone Doll had been exceedingly vexed at my going on holiday, and had taken out her ill humor on him. Though she had an ample staff of serving women, she had appropriated Cozcatl as well, and had kept him drudging for her, or running at a trot, or standing still to be whipped, all the while I had been away.

  He hinted at the ignobility of some of the errands and chores he had done for her, and also, at my prompting, finally disclosed that the woman named Something Delicate had drunk corrosive xocóyatl upon her next summons to the lady’s chambers—and had died there, foaming at the mouth and convulsed with pain. Ever since the suicide of Something Delicate, somehow still unknown outside those precincts, Jadestone Doll had had to depend, for her clandestine entertainments, on partners procured by Cozcatl and the maids. I gathered that those partners had been less satisfactory than what I had hitherto provided. But the lady did not immediately press me into service again, or even send a slave across the corridor to convey a greeting, or give any sign that she knew or cared about my having returned. She was involved with the Ochpanítztli festivities, which of course were in progress in Texcóco as they were everywhere else.

  Then, when that celebration was over, Tlatli and Chimáli arrived at the palace as scheduled, and Jadestone Doll occupied herself with getting them quartered, making sure that their studio was supplied with clay and tools and paints, and giving them detailed instructions regarding the work they were to do. I deliberately was not present at their arrival. When, a day or two later, we accidentally met in a palace garden, I gave them only a curt salute, to which they replied with a diffident mumble.

  Thereafter I encountered them quite frequently, as their studio was situated in the cellars under Jadestone Doll’s wing of the palace, but I merely nodded as I passed. They had by then had several interviews with their patroness, and I could see that their earlier exultation about their work had dissipated considerably. They were, in fact, now looking nervous and fearful. They obviously would have liked to discuss with me the precarious situation in which they found themselves, but I coldly discouraged any approaches.

  I was busy with a job of my own: doing one particular drawing which I intended to present to Jadestone Doll when she finally should summon me to her presence, and that was a difficult project I had set myself. It was to be the most irresistibly handsome drawing of a young man I had yet done, but it also had to resemble a young man who really existed. I made and tore up many false starts and, when I at last achieved a satisfactory sketch, I spent still more time reworking and elaborating on it until I had a finished drawing that I was confident would fascinate the girl queen. And it did.

  “Why, he is beyond handsome, he is beautiful!“ she exclaimed when I gave it to her. She studied it some more and murmured, “If he were a woman, he would be Jadestone Doll.” She could pay no higher compliment. “Who is he?”

  I said, “His name is Joy.”

  “Ayyo, and it should be! Where did you find him?”

  “He is the Crown Prince of my home island, my lady. Páctlitzin, son of Tlauquécholtzin, the tecútli of Xaltócan.”

  “And when you saw him again, you thought of me, and you drew his likeness for me. How sweet of you, Fetch! I almost forgive your deserting me for so many days. Now go and get him for me.”

  I said truthfully, “I fear he would not come at my behest, my lady. Pactli and I bear a mutual grudge. However—”

  “Then you do not do this for his benefit,” the girl interrupted. “I wonder why you should do it for mine.” Her depthless eyes fixed on me suspiciously. “It is true that I have never mistreated you, but neither have you cause to feel great affection for me. Then why this sudden and unbidden generosity?”

  “I try to anticipate my lady’s desires and commands.”

  Without comment, she pulled on the bell rope and, when a maid responded, ordered that Chimáli and Tlatli be brought to join us. They came, looking trepid, and Jadestone Doll shoved the drawing at them. “You two also come from Xaltócan. Do you recognize this young man?”

  Tlatli exclaimed, “Pactli!” and Chimáli said, “Yes, that is the Lord Joy, my lady, but—”

  I threw him a look that shut his mouth before he could say, “But the Lord Joy never looked so noble as that.” And I did not mind that Jadestone Doll intercepted my look.

  “I see,” she said archly, as if she had caught me out. “You two may go.” When they had left the room, she said to me, “You mentioned a grudge. Some squalid romantic rivalry, I suppose, and the young noble bested you. So you cunningly arrange one last assignation for him, knowing it will be his last.”

  Pointedly looking beyond her, at Master Pixquitl’s statues of the swift-messenger Yeyac-Netztlin and the gardener Xali-Otli, I put on a conspirator’s smile and said, “I prefer to think that I am doing a favor for all three of us. My lady, my Lord Pactli, and myself.”

  She laughed gaily. “So be it, then. I daresay I owe you one favor by now. But you must get him here.”

  “I took the liberty of preparing a letter,” I said, producing it, “and on a royally fine fawnskin. The usual instructions: midnight at the eastern gate. If my lady will put her name to it and enclose the ring, I can almost guarantee that the young prince will come in the same canoe that delivers it.”

  “My clever Fetch!” she said, taking the letter to a low table on which were a paint pot and a writing reed. Being a Mexícatl girl, of course she could not read or write, but, being a noble, she could at least make the symbols of her name. “You know where my private acáli is docked. Take this to the steersman and tell him to go at dawn. I want my Joy tomorrow night.”

  Tlatli and Chimáli had waited in the corridor outside, to waylay me, and Tlatli said in a quavering voice, “Do you know what it is you are doing, Mole?”

  Chimáli said, in a slightly steadier voice, “Do you know what could be in store for the Lord Pactli? Come and look.”

  I followed them down the stone stair to their stone-walled studio. It was well appointed but, being underground, lighted day and night by lamps and torches, it felt very like a dungeon. The artists had been working simultaneously on several statues, two of which I recognized. The one of the slave, I Will Be of Greatness, was already sculptured full length, life size, and Chimáli had started painti
ng the clay with his specially concocted paints.

  “Very lifelike,” I said, and meant it. “The Lady Jadestone Doll will approve.”

  “Oh, well, capturing the likeness was not difficult,” Tlatli said modestly. “Not when I could work from your excellent drawing and mold the clay upon the actual skull.”

  “But my pictures show no colors,” I said, “and even the Master Sculptor Pixquitl has been unable to recreate those. Chimáli, I applaud your talent.”

  I meant that, too. Pixquitl’s statues had been done in the usual flat colors: a uniform pale copper for all exposed skin surfaces, an unvarying black for the hair, and so on. Chimáli’s skin tones varied as do those on a living person: the nose and ears just the least bit darker than the rest of the face, the cheeks a little more pink. Even the black of the hair glinted here and there with brownish lights.

  “It should look even better when it has been fired in the kiln,” said Chimáli. “The colors meld more together. Oh, and look at this, Mole.” He led me around to the back of the statue and pointed. At the bottom of the slave’s clay mantle Tlatli had incised his falcon symbol. Under that was Chimáli’s blood-red handprint.

  “Yes, unmistakable,” I said, without inflexion. I moved to the next statue. “And this will be Something Delicate.”

  Tlatli said uncomfortably, “I think, Mole, we would prefer not to know the names of the—uh—models.”

  “That was more than her name,” I said.

  Only her head and shoulders had yet been molded in clay, but they stood at the height they had stood in life, for they were supported by bones, her articulated bones, her own skeleton, held upright by a pole at the back.

  “It is giving me problems,” said Tlatli, as if he were speaking of a stone block in which he had found an unsuspected flaw. He showed me a picture, the one I had sketched in the marketplace, the portrait head I had first drawn of Something Delicate. “Your drawing and the skull serve me nicely for doing the head. And the colótli, the armature, gives me the body’s linear proportions, but—”

  “The armature?” I inquired.

  “The interior support. Any sculpture of clay or wax must be supported by an armature, just as a pulpy cactus is supported by its interior woody framework. For a statue of a human figure, what better armature than its own original skeleton?”

  “What indeed?” I said. “But tell me, how do you procure the original skeletons?”

  Chimáli said, “The Lady Jadestone Doll provides them, from her private kitchen.”

  “From her kitchen?”

  Chimáli looked away from me. “Do not ask me how she has persuaded her cooks and kitchen slaves. But they flay the skin and scoop the bowels and carve the flesh from the—from the model—without dismembering it. Then they boil the remainder in great vats of lime water. They have to stop the boiling before the ligaments and sinews of the joints are dissolved, so there are still some scraps of meat we have to scrape off. But we do get the skeleton entire. Oh, a finger bone or a rib may come loose, but …”

  “But unfortunately,” said Tlatli, “even the complete skeleton gives me no indication of how the body’s exterior was padded and curved. I can guess at a man’s figure, but a woman’s is different. You know, the breasts and hips and buttocks.”

  “They were sublime,” I muttered, remembering Something Delicate. “Come to my chambers. I will give you another drawing which shows your model in her entirety.”

  In my apartment, I ordered Cozcatl to make chocolate for us all. Tlatli and Chimáli roamed through the three rooms, uttering exclamatory noises about their finery and luxury, while I leafed through my assortment of drawings and extracted one that showed Something Delicate full length.

  “Ah, completely nude,” said Tlatli. “That is ideal for my purposes.” He might have been passing judgment on a sample of good marl clay.

  Chimáli also looked at the picture of the dead woman and said, “Truly, Mole, your drawings are skillfully detailed. If you would leave off doing only lines, and learn to work with the lights and shadows of paint, you could be a real artist. You too could give beauty to the world.”

  I laughed harshly. “Like statues built on boiled skeletons?”

  Tlatli sipped at his chocolate and said defensively, “We did not kill those people, Mole. And we do not know why the young queen wants them preserved. But consider. If they were merely buried or burned, they would disintegrate into mold or ashes. We at least make them endure. And yes, we do our best to make them objects of beauty.”

  I said, “I am a scribe. I do not prettify the world. I only describe it.”

  Tlatli held up the picture of Something Delicate. “You did this, and it is quite a beautiful thing.”

  “From now on, I will draw nothing but word pictures. I have done the last portrait I shall ever do.”

  “That one of the Lord Joy,” Chimáli guessed. He glanced about to make sure my slave was not within hearing. “You must know you are putting Pactli at risk of the kitchen lime vats.”

  “I devoutly hope so,” I said. “I will not let my sister’s death go unpunished.” I flung Chimáli’s own words back at him: “It would be a weakness, a sullying of what we felt for each other.”

  The two had the grace at least to lower their heads for some moments of silence before Tlatli spoke:

  “You will put us all at hazard of discovery, Mole.”

  “You are already at hazard. I have long been. I might have told you that before you came.” I gestured in the direction of their studio. “But would you have believed what is down there?”

  Chimáli protested, “Those are only city commoners and slaves. They might never be missed. Pactli is a Crown Prince of a Mexíca province!”

  I shook my head. “The husband of that woman in the drawing—I hear he has gone quite mad, searching to discover what became of his beloved wife. He will never be sane again. And even slaves do not just disappear. The Revered Speaker has his guardsmen already seeking and making inquiries about the several mysteriously missing persons. Discovery is only a matter of time. That time may be tomorrow night, if Pactli is prompt.”

  Visibly sweating, Tlatli said, “Mole, we cannot let you—”

  “You cannot stop me. And if you try to flee, if you try to warn Pactli or Jadestone Doll, I will hear of it instantly, and I will go instantly to the Uey-Tlatoáni.”

  Chimáli said, “He will have your life along with everyone else’s. Why do this to me and Tlatli, Mole? Why do it to yourself?”

  “My sister’s death is not upon Pactli’s head alone. I was involved, you were involved. I am prepared to atone with my own life, if that is my tonáli. You two must take your chances.”

  “Chances!” Tlatli flung up his hands. “What chances?”

  “One very good one. I suspect the lady herself has the sense not to kill a prince of the Mexíca. I suspect she will toy with him for a while, perhaps a long while, then send him home with his lips sealed by a pledge.”

  “Yes,” Chimáli said thoughtfully. “She may court danger, but not suicide.” He turned to Tlatli. “And while he is here, you and I can finish the statues already on order. Then we can plead urgent work elsewhere….”

  Tlatli gulped the dregs of his chocolate. “Come! We will work night and day. We must be finished with everything on hand, we must have reason to ask leave to depart, before our lady wearies of our prince.”

  On that note of hope, they dashed from my chambers.

  I had not lied to them, but I had neglected to mention one detail of my arrangements. I had spoken truly when I suggested that Jadestone Doll might balk at killing an invited prince. That was a very real possibility. And for that reason, for this particular guest, I had made one small change in the usual wording of the invitation. As we say in our language, of one who deserves retribution, “he would be destroyed with flowers.”

  The gods supposedly know all our plans, and know their ends before their beginnings. The gods are mischievous, and they delight t
o potter with the plans of men. They usually prefer to complicate those plans, as they might snarl a fowler’s net, or to frustrate them so the plans come to no result whatever. Very seldom do the gods intervene to any worthier purpose. But I do believe, that time, they looked at my plan and said among themselves, “This dark scheme contrived by Dark Cloud, it is so ironically good, let us make it ironically even better.”

  The next midnight, I kept my ear close against the inside of my door until I heard Pitza and the guest arrive and enter the apartment across the corridor. Then I cracked my door slightly to hear better. I expected some exclamation of profanity from Jadestone Doll when she first compared Pactli’s brutish face with my idealized portrait. What I had not expected was what I did hear: the girl’s piercing scream of real shock, and then her hysterical shrieking of my name: “Fetch! Come here at once! Fetch!”

  That seemed rather an extreme reaction in anyone meeting even the abhorrent Lord Joy. I opened my door and stepped out, to find a spear-carrying guard stationed just outside it, and another across the hall beside my lady’s door. Both of them respectfully snapped their spears to the vertical as I emerged, and neither tried to prevent my entering the other apartment.

  The young queen was standing just inside. Her face was twisted and unlovely, and nearly white with shock. But it gradually went nearly purple with fury as she began screaming at me, “What kind of comedy is this, you son of a dog? Do you think you can make filthy jokes at my expense?”

  She went on like that, in full voice. I turned to Pitza and the man she had brought—and, for all my mixed feelings, I could not help bursting out into loud and sustained laughter. I had forgotten about Jadestone Doll’s drug-caused nearsightedness. She must have come running through all the rooms and halls of her apartment, to embrace the eagerly awaited Lord Joy, and she must have got right upon the visitor before her vision allowed her to see him clearly. That truly would have been enough of a shock to force a scream from one who had never seen him before. His presence was a staggering surprise to me too, but I laughed instead of screaming, for I had the advantage of recognizing the shriveled, hunched, cacao-brown old man.