Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  Perhaps the most noticeable feature of the hollow-square-shaped palace was that it straddled one of the city’s canals. Thus the building could be entered from the plaza, through its Snake Wall gate, or it could be entered by canoe. A nobleman idling in his oversized, cushioned acáli—or a common boatman paddling a freight of sweet potatoes—could take that delightfully hospitable route to wherever he was going. On his way, he would drift through a cavelike corridor of dazzling new-painted murals, then through Ahuítzotl’s lushly gardened courtyard, then through another cavernous hall full of impressive new-carved statuary, before emerging into the public canal again.

  The page led us, almost at a run, through the Snake Wall portal to the palace, then along galleries and around corners, to a room whose entire adornment consisted of hunting and war weapons hung upon the walls. The skins of jaguars, ocelots, cuguars, and alligators made rugs for the floor and covers for the low chairs and benches. Ahuítzotl, a man of square figure, square head, and square face, sat upon an elevated throne. It was completely covered by the thick-furred pelt of one of the giant bears of the northern mountains far beyond these lands—the fearsome beast that you Spaniards call the oso pardo, or grizzled bear. Its massive head loomed over that of the Uey-Tlatoáni, and its snarling open mouth showed teeth the size of my fingers. Ahuítzotl’s face, just below it, was not much less fierce.

  The page, Xococ, and I dropped to make the gesture of kissing the earth. When Ahuítzotl gruffly bade us stand, the Arrow Knight said, “As you commanded, Revered Speaker, I bring the iyac named—”

  Ahuítzotl interrupted brusquely, “You also bring a letter from Nezahualpíli. Give it to us. When you return to your command quarters, Xococ, mark on your roster that the Iyac Mixtli has been elevated by our order to the rank of tequíua. You are dismissed.”

  “But, my lord,” said Xococ, stricken. “Do you not wish my report on the Texcála battle?”

  “What do you know about it? Except that you marched from here to there and home again? We will hear it from the Tequíua Mixtli, who fought in it. We said you are dismissed, Xococ. Go.”

  The knight gave me a hateful look and slithered backward from the room. I paid little notice, being myself in something of a daze. After having served in the army less than a month, I had already been promoted to a level that most men might have to fight many wars to attain. The rank of tequíua, which means “beast of prey,” was ordinarily awarded only to those who had slain or captured at least four enemies in battle.

  I had approached that interview with Ahuítzotl rather less than eagerly—not knowing what to expect—since I had been so closely associated with the Uey-Tlatoáni’s late daughter and her downfall. But it seemed that he had not connected me with that scandal; there was some advantage in having a common name like Mixtli. I was relieved that he regarded me as benignly as his severe countenance would allow. Also, I was intrigued by his manner of speech. It was the first time I had ever heard a man alone refer to himself as “we” and “us.”

  “Nezahualpíli’s letter,” he said, when he had perused it, “is considerably more flattering to you, young soldier, than it is to us. He sarcastically suggests that, next time, we send him some companies of belligerent scribblers like yourself, instead of blunt arrows like Xococ.” Ahuítzotl smiled as well as he could, even more resembling the bear’s head over his throne. “He also suggests that, with sufficient forces, this war could finally have subdued that obstreperous land of the Texcaltéca. Do you agree?”

  “I can hardly disagree, my lord, with an experienced commander like the Revered Speaker Nezahualpíli. I know only that his tactics defeated one entire army in Texcála. If we could have pushed the siege, any subsequent defenses must have been weaker and weaker.”

  “You are a word knower,” said Ahuítzotl. “Can you write out for us a detailed account of the dispositions and movements of the various forces engaged? With comprehensible maps?”

  “Yes, my Lord Speaker. I can do that.”

  “Do it. You have six days before the temple dedication ceremonies get under way, when all work will cease and you will have the privilege of presenting your illustrious prisoner for his Flowery Death. Page, have the palace steward provide a suitable suite of rooms for this man, and all the working materials he requires. You are dismissed, Tequíua Mixtli.”

  My chambers were as commodious and comfortable as those I had enjoyed at Texcóco, and, since they were on the second floor, I had the advantage of skylight for my work. The palace steward offered me a servant, but I sent the page to find Cozcatl instead, and then sent Cozcatl to find us each a change of clothes, while I bathed and steamed myself, several times over.

  First I drew the map. It occupied many folded pages and opened to considerable length. I began it with the city symbol of Texcóco, then put the little black footprints showing the route of our journey eastward from there, with the stylized drawings of mountains and such to mark each of our overnight stops, and finally put the symbol for river, where the battle had been joined. There I placed the universally recognized symbol of overwhelming victory: the drawing of a burning temple—though in actuality we had not seen or destroyed any teocáli—and the symbol of our taking prisoners: a drawing of one warrior clutching another by the hair. Then I drew the footprints, alternately black and red, to indicate captors and captives, tracing our westward march to Tenochtítlan.

  Never leaving my chambers, taking all my meals there, I completed the map in two days. Then I started on the more complex account of the Texcaltéca and Acólhua strategy and tactics, at least insofar as I had observed and understood them. One midday Cozcatl came into my sunny workroom and asked leave to interrupt me.

  He said, “Master, a large canoe has arrived from Texcóco and is moored in the courtyard garden. The steersman says it brings belongings of yours.”

  I was happy to hear it. When I left Nezahualpíli’s palace to join the muster of troops, I had not felt it would be right to take with me any of the fine clothes and other gifts bestowed on me in the time before my banishment. In any case, I could hardly have carried them to war. So, although Cozcatl had borrowed garments for us to wear, neither he nor I actually possessed anything but the now extremely disreputable loincloths, sandals, and heavy tlamáitin we had worn to war and back again. I told the boy:

  “It is a thoughtful gesture, and we probably have the Lady of Tolan to thank for it. I hope she sent your own wardrobe as well. Get a palace tamémi to help you bring the bundle here.”

  When he came back upstairs, accompanied by the boat’s steersman and a whole train of laboring tamémime, I was so surprised that I forgot my work utterly. I had never owned the quantity of goods that the porters brought and stacked in my chambers. One large and one small bundle, neatly bound in protective matting, were recognizable. My clothes and other belongings were in the larger, even including my memento of my late sister, her little figurine of the goddess Xochiquétzal. Cozcatl’s clothes were in the smaller bundle. But the other bales and packages I could not account for, and I protested that there must have been some mistake in the delivery.

  The steersman said, “My lord, every one is tagged. Is not that your name?”

  It was so. Each separate bundle carried a securely attached piece of bark paper on which was inscribed my name. There were many Mixtlis in these parts, and more than a few Tliléctic-Mixtlis. But those tags bore my full name: Chicóme-Xochitl Tliléctic-Mixtli. I asked everyone present to help open the wrappings, so that, if the contents did prove to have been misaddressed, the workers could help repack them for return. And if I had been bewildered before, I was soon astounded.

  One bale of fiber matting opened to reveal a neat stack of forty men’s mantles of the finest cotton, richly embroidered. Another contained the same number of women’s skirts, colored crimson with that costly dye extracted from insects. Another bale yielded the same number of women’s blouses, intricately hand worked in an open filigree so that they were all but transparent. Sti
ll another bundle contained a bolt of woven cotton which, if we had unfolded it, would have been a cloth two-arms’-spread wide and perhaps two hundred paces long. Though the cotton was an unadorned white, it was seamless and therefore priceless, just for the work—possibly years of work—some dedicated weaver had put into the weaving of it. The heaviest bale proved to contain chunks of itztetl, rough and unworked obsidian rocks.

  The three lightest bundles were the most valuable of all, for they contained not tradeable goods but trade currency. One was a sack of two or three thousand cacao beans. Another was a sack of two or three hundred of the pieces of tin and copper, shaped like miniature hatchet blades, each of which was worth eight hundred cacao beans. The third was a cluster of four feather quills, each translucent quill stoppered with a dab of óli gum and filled with gleaming pure gold dust.

  I said to the boatman, “I wish it was not a mistake, but it clearly is. Take it back. This fortune must belong to Nezahualpíli’s treasury.”

  “It does not,” he said stubbornly. “It was the Revered Speaker himself who bade me bring this, and he saw it loaded in my craft. All I am to take back is a message saying it was safely delivered. With your signature symbols, my lord, if you please.”

  I still could not believe what my eyes beheld and my ears were told, but I could hardly protest further. Still dazed, I gave him the note, and he and the porters withdrew. Cozcatl and I stood and looked at the unwrapped riches. Finally the boy said:

  “It can only be one last gift, master, from the Lord Nezahualpíli himself.”

  “That may be,” I conceded. “He trained me up to be a palace courtier and then had to cast me adrift, as it were. And he is a man of conscience. So he has now, perhaps, supplied me with the means to engage in some other occupation.”

  “Occupation!” Cozcatl squeaked. “Do you mean work, master? Why should you work? There is enough here to keep you in fair comfort all your days. You, a wife, a family, a devoted slave.” He added mischievously, “You once said you would build a nobleman’s mansion and make me the Master of the Keys.”

  “Hold your tongue,” I told him. “If all I wanted was idleness, I could have let Armed Scorpion send me to the afterworld. I now have the means to do many things. I have only to decide what I prefer to do.”

  When I completed the battle report, the day before the pyramid’s dedication, I took it downstairs, seeking Ahuítzotl’s trophy-hung den where I had first met him. But the palace steward, looking flustered, intercepted me to accept it in his stead.

  “The Revered Speaker is entertaining many notables who have come from far lands for the ceremony,” said the man distractedly. “Every palace around the plaza is crammed with foreign rulers and their retinues. I do not know how or where we can accommodate many more. But I will see that Ahuítzotl gets this account of yours, when he can read it in tranquillity. He will summon you for another interview after things quiet down again.” And he bustled off.

  As long as I was on the ground floor, I wandered through those rooms accessible to the public, just to admire the architecture and decor. Eventually I found myself in the great hall of statues, through the middle of which the canal flowed. The walls and ceiling were spangled with light reflections from the water. Several freight boats came through while I was there, their rowers admiring—as I was doing—the several sculptures of Ahuítzotl and his wives, of the patron god Huitzilopóchtli, of numerous other gods and goddesses. They were all most excellent works, most skillfully done, as they should have been: every one of them bore the incised falcon symbol of the late sculptor Tlatli.

  But, as he had boasted many years before, Tlatli’s work scarcely needed a signature; his god statues were indeed very different from those which had been imitated and replicated through generations of less imaginative sculptors. His distinctive vision was perhaps most evident in his depiction of Coatlícue, the goddess mother of the god Huitzilopóchtli. The massive stone object stood nearly a third again as tall as I did, and, looking up at it, I felt my back hair prickle at the eeriness of it.

  Since Coatlícue was, after all, the mother of the god of war, most earlier artists had portrayed her as grim of visage, but in form she had always been recognizable as a woman. Not so in Tlatli’s conception. His Coatlícue had no head. Instead, above her shoulders, two great serpents’ heads met, as if kissing, to compose her face: their single visible eye apiece gave Coatlícue two glaring eyes, their meeting mouths gave Coatlícue one wide mouth full of fangs and horribly grinning. She wore a necklace hung with a skull, with severed hands and torn-out human hearts. Her nether garment was entirely of writhing snakes, and her feet were the taloned paws of some immense beast. It was a unique and original image of a female deity, but a gruesome one, and I believe that only a cuilóntli man who could not love women could have carved a goddess so egregiously monstrous.

  I followed the canal out of that chamber, under the weeping willows that overhung it in the courtyard garden, and into the chamber on the other side of the palace, where the walls were covered with murals. They mostly depicted the military and civic deeds done by Ahuítzotl before and since his accession to the throne: himself the most prominent participant in various battles, himself supervising the finishing touches on the Great Pyramid. But the pictures were alive, not stiff; they teemed with detail; they were artfully colored. As I had expected, the murals were finer than any other modern paintings I had seen. Because, as I had expected, each of them was signed in its lowermost right corner with the blood-red print of Chimáli’s hand.

  I wondered if he was yet back in Tenochtítlan, and if we would meet, and how he would go about killing me if we did. I went in search of my little slave Cozcatl, and gave him instructions:

  “You know the artist Chimáli by sight, and you know that he has reason to wish me dead. I shall have duties to perform tomorrow, so I cannot keep looking over my shoulder for an assassin. I want you to circulate among the throng and then come to warn me if you see Chimáli. In tomorrow’s crowd and confusion, he may hope to knife me unobserved and slip away unsuspected.”

  “He cannot, if I see him first,” Cozcatl said staunchly. “And I promise, if he is present, I will see him. Have I not been useful before, master, at being your eyes?”

  I said, “You have indeed, young one. And your vigilance and loyalty will not go unrewarded.”

  Yes, Your Excellency, I know that you are most particularly interested in our former religious observances, hence your attendance here today. Although I was never a priest, nor much of a friend to priests, I will explain the dedication of the Great Pyramid—the manner of it and the significance of it—as well as I can.

  If that was not the most resplendent, populous, and awesome celebration ever held in the history of the Mexíca, it certainly outdid all others I beheld in my time. The Heart of the One World was a solid mass of people, of colorful fabrics, of perfumes, of feather plumes, of flesh, of gold, of body heat, of jewels, of sweat. One reason for the crowding was that lanes had to be kept open—by cordons of guards, their arms linked, struggling to contain the jostling mob—so the lines of prisoners could march to the pyramid and ascend to the sacrificial altar. But the spectator crush was also due to the fact that the standing room in the plaza had been reduced by the building of numerous new temples over the years, not to mention the gradually spreading bulk of the Great Pyramid itself.

  Since Your Excellency never saw it, perhaps I had better describe that icpac tlamanacáli. Its base was square, one hundred and fifty paces from one corner to the next, the four sides sloping inward as they rose, until the pyramid’s flat summit measured seventy paces to a side. The staircase ascending its front or western incline was actually two stairways, one each for those persons climbing and descending, separated by an ornamental gutter for blood to flow down. Fifty and two stairs of steep risers and narrow treads led to a terrace that encircled the pyramid a third of the way up. Then another flight of one hundred and four steps culminated in the platform on
top, with its temples and their appurtenances. At either side of every thirteenth step of the staircase stood the stone image of some god, major or minor, its stone fists holding aloft a tall pole from which floated a white feather banner.

  To a man standing at the very bottom of the Great Pyramid, the structures on top were invisible. From the bottom he could see only the broad dual staircase ascending, appearing to narrow, and seeming to lead even higher than it did—into the blue sky or, on other occasions, into the sunrise. A xochimíqui trudging up the stairs toward his Flowery Death must have felt that he was truly climbing toward the very heavens of the high gods.

  But when he reached the top, he would find first the small, pyramidal sacrificial stone and behind that the two temples. In a sense, those teocáltin represented war and peace, for the one on the right was the abode of Huitzilopóchtli, responsible for our military prowess, and in the one on the left dwelt Tlaloc, responsible for our harvests and peacetime prosperity. Perhaps there should rightly have been a third teocáli for the sun Tonatíu, but he already had a separate sanctuary on a more modest pyramid elsewhere in the plaza, as did several other important gods. There was also in the plaza the temple in which were ranked the images of numerous gods of subordinate nations.

  The new temples of Tlaloc and Huitzilopóchtli, atop the new Great Pyramid, were but square stone rooms, each containing a hollow stone statue of the god, his mouth wide open to receive nourishment. But each temple was made much taller and more impressive by a towering stone façade or roof comb: Huitzilopóchtli’s indented with angular and red-painted designs, Tlaloc’s indented with rounded and blue-painted designs. The body of the pyramid was predominantly a gleaming almost-silver gesso white, but the two serpentine banisters, one along each flank of the dual staircase, were painted with reptilian scales of red, blue, and green, and their big snake heads, stretching out at the ground level, were entirely covered with beaten gold.