Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  “Prepare lime water,” I said. “Use much lime in the concentration, and drench the skin with it. Keep on wetting the skin all night long, until it has become well sodden. Then we will wait for the sun to come up.”

  Angry at Everybody nodded approvingly. “And the others? We await your command, Knight Mixtli.”

  One of the priests, impelled by terror, lunged between us and knelt before me, his bloodstained hands clutching the hem of my mantle, and he said, “Knight Commander, it was by your leave that we conducted this ceremony. Any other man here would have rejoiced to see his son or daughter chosen for the personation, but it was yours who best met all the qualifications. Once she had been chosen by the populace, and that choice approved by the people’s priests, you could not have refused to relinquish her for the ceremony.”

  I gave him a look. He dropped his gaze, then stammered, “At least—in Tenochtítlan—you could not have refused.” He tugged at my mantle again and said imploringly, “She was a virgin, as required, but she was mature enough to function as a woman, which she did. You told me yourself, Knight Commander: do all things required by the gods. So now the girl’s Flowery Death has blessed your people and their new colony, and assured the fertility of this ground. You could not have withheld that blessing. Believe me, Knight Commander, we intended only honor … to Xipe Totec and to your daughter … and to you!”

  I gave him a blow that toppled him to one side, and I said to Qualánqui, “You are familiar with the honors traditionally accorded to the chosen Xipe Totec?”

  “I am, friend Mixtli.”

  “Then you know the things that were done to the innocent and unblemished Nochípa. Do all the same things to all this filth. Do it in whatever manner you please. You have sufficient soldiers. Let them indulge themselves, and they need not hurry. Let them be inventive, and leisurely at it. But when all that is done, I want nobody—nothing—left alive in Yanquítlan.”

  It was the last command I gave there. Angry at Everybody took charge then. He turned and barked more specific orders, and the crowd howled as if already in agony. But the soldiers moved eagerly to comply with their instructions. Some of them swept all the adult men into a separate group, and held them there with their weapons. The other soldiers put down their arms and took off their clothes and went to work—or to play—and when any one of them tired, he would change places with one of those standing guard.

  I watched, all through the night, for the great fires kept the night alight until dawn. But I did not really see, or gloat at what happened before my eyes, or take any satisfaction in the reprisal. I paid no heed to the screams and bellows and wails and other, more liquid noises occasioned by the mass rape and carnage. I could see and hear only Nochípa dancing gracefully in the firelight, singing melodiously as she did so, to a single flute’s accompaniment.

  What Qualánqui had ordered, what actually occurred, was this. All the smallest children, the babes in arms and toddling infants, were snatched by the soldiers and cut to pieces—not quickly, but as one would slowly peel and slice a fruit for the eating of it—while their parents watched and wept and threatened and cursed. Then the remaining children, all those judged old enough to be sexually used, the males as well as females, were used by the Tecpanéca, while their older sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers were forced to look on.

  When those children had been so riven that they no longer afforded pleasure, the soldiers flung them aside to die. They next seized the bigger children, and the adolescent girls and boys, and finally the younger women and men—I have mentioned that the priests were all young men—and similarly served them. The one priest staked to the ground watched and whimpered, and looked fearfully down toward his own vulnerably exposed parts. But even in their slavering rampage, the Tecpanéca realized that that one was not to be touched, and he was not.

  From time to time, the older men penned at one side tried frantically to break loose, when they saw wives, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters being despoiled. But the ring of guards stolidly held the men captive, and would not even let them turn away from watching the spectacle. Finally, when every other usable piece of flesh had been used until it was no longer usable, when it lay dead or lay wishing and trying to die, the Tecpanéca turned to the older folk. Though by then somewhat depleted of both appetite and ability, the soldiers managed adequately to ravish all the mature women, and even the two or three elderly grandmothers who had made the journey.

  The next day’s sun was high when all that was over, and Angry at Everybody ordered the penned men let loose. They, the husbands and fathers and uncles of the ruined, went about the littered ground, flinging themselves weeping on this and that limp, broken, naked body besmeared with blood and drool and omícetl. Some of the used bodies were still alive, and they lived to see the soldiers—at Qualánqui’s next command—seize their husbands and fathers and uncles. What the Tecpanéca did to those men with their obsidian knives, and with the things they amputated, made each man sexually abuse himself while he lay bleeding to death.

  Meanwhile, the staked-down priest had been keeping quiet, perhaps hoping he had been forgotten. But as the sun rose higher, he realized that he was to die more hideously than all the others, for what was left of Nochípa began to exact its own revenge. The skin, saturated with lime water, slowly and excruciatingly contracted as it dried. What had been Nochípa’s breasts gradually flattened as the skin tightened its embrace around the priest’s chest. He began to gasp and wheeze. He might have wished to express his terror in a scream, but he had to hoard what air he could inhale, just to live a little longer.

  And the skin continued inexorably to contract, and began to impede the movement of the blood in his body. What had been Nochípa’s neck and wrists and ankles shrank their openings like slow garrottes. The man’s face and hands and feet began to bloat and darken to an ugly purple color. Through his distended lips came the sound “ugh … ugh … ugh …” but that gradually was choked off. Meanwhile, what had been Nochípa’s little tipíli shut ever more virginally tight around the roots of the priest’s genitals. His olóltin sac swelled to the size and tautness of a tlachtli ball, and his engorged tepúli bulged to a length and thickness bigger than my forearm.

  The soldiers wandered about the area, inspecting every body lying about, to ascertain that each was surely dead or dying. The Tecpanéca did not mercifully dispatch the ones still alive, but only verified that they would die in the gods’ good time—to leave, as I had commanded, no living thing in Yanquítlan. There was nothing more to keep us there, except to view the dying of that one remaining priest.

  So I and my four old comrades stood over him and watched his agonized, slight stirring and the shallow movement of his chest, while the ever constricting skin made his torso and limbs get thinner and his visible extremities get larger. His hands and feet were like black breasts with many black teats, his head was a featureless black pumpkin. He found breath enough to give one last loud cry when his rigid tepúli could no longer contain the pressure, and split its skin, and exploded black blood, and fell in tattered shreds.

  He was still dimly alive, but he was finished, and our vengeance was done. Angry at Everybody ordered the Tecpanéca to pack in preparation to march, while the other three old men forded with me back across the river to where Béu Ribé waited. Silently, I showed her the bloodstained opals. I do not know how much else she had seen or heard or guessed, and I do not know how I looked at that moment. But she regarded me with eyes full of horror and pity and reproach and sorrow—the horror uppermost—and for an instant she shrank from the hand I reached out to her.

  “Come, Waiting Moon,” I said stonily. “I will take you home.”

  I H S

  S. C. C. M.

  Sanctified, Caesarean, Catholic Majesty,

  the Emperor Don Carlos, Our Lord King:

  MOST Perspicacious and Oracular Prince: from the City of Mexíco, capital of New Spain, two days after the Feast of the Purification, in this Year
of Our Lord one thousand five hundred thirty, greeting.

  Sovereign Sire, we can only express our admiration at the depth and daring of our Liege’s cogitations in the field of speculative hagiology, and our genuine awe at the brilliant conjecture propounded in Your Majesty’s latest letter. Viz., that the Indian’s best-beloved deity, Quetzalcóatl, so frequently alluded to in our Aztec’s narrative, could have been in actuality the Apostle Thomas, visiting these lands fifteen centuries ago for the purpose of bringing the Gospel to these heathens.

  Of course, even as Bishop of Mexíco, we cannot give the episcopal imprimatur to such a strikingly bold hypothesis, Sire, prior to its consideration among higher ranks of the Church hierarchy. We can, however, attest that there exists a body of circumstantial evidence to support Your Majesty’s innovative theory: Primus. The so-called Feathery Snake was the one supernatural being recognized by every separate nation and variant religion so far known to have existed in all of New Spain, his name being severally rendered as Quetzalcóatl among the Náhuatl-speakers, Kukulkán among the Maya-speakers, Gukumatz among peoples even farther south, &c.

  Secundus. All these peoples agree in the tradition that Quetzalcóatl was first a human, mortal, incarnate king or emperor who lived and walked on earth during the span of a lifetime, before his transmutation into an insubstantial and immortal deity. Since the Indians’ calendar is exasperatingly inutile, and since there no longer exist the books of even mythical history, it may never be possible to date the alleged earthly reign of Quetzalcóatl. Therefore, he could very well have been coeval with St. Thomas.

  Tertius. All these peoples likewise agree that Quetzalcóatl was not so much a ruler—or tyrant, as most of their rulers have been—but a teacher and a preacher and, not incidentally, a celibate by religious conviction. To him are attributed the invention or introduction of numerous things, customs, beliefs, &c., which have endured to this day.

  Quartus. Among the numberless deities of these lands, Quetzalcóatl was one of the very few that never demanded or countenanced human sacrifice. The offerings made to him were always innocuous: birds, butterflies, flowers, and the like.

  Quintus. The Church holds it to be historical fact that St. Thomas did travel to the land of India in the East, and did there convert many pagan peoples to Christianity. So, as Your Majesty suggests, “May it not be a reasonable supposition that the Apostle should also have done so in the then-unknown Indies of the West?” A reprobate materialist might remark that the sainted Thomas had the advantage of an overland route from the Holy Land to the East Indies, whereas he would have found some difficulty in crossing the Ocean Sea fifteen centuries before the development of the vessels and navigational facilities available to modern-day explorers. However, any cavil at the abilities of one of the Twelve Disciples would be as injudicious as was the doubt once voiced by Thomas himself and rebuked by the risen Christ.

  Sextus et mirabile dictu. A common Spanish soldier named Díaz, who occupies his off-duty hours in idly exploring the old ruins of this area, recently visited the abandoned city of Tolan, or Tula. This is revered by the Aztecs as having been once the seat of the legendary people called the Toltecs—and of their ruler, the king later to become deity, Quetzalcóatl. Among the roots of a tree sprung from a crack in one of the old stone walls, Díaz found a carved onyx box, of native manufacture but of indeterminate age, and in this box he found a number of white wafers of delicate bread, quite unlike anything baked by these Indians. Díaz at once recognized them, and we, when they were brought to us, verified them as the Host. How these sacramental wafers came to be in that place and in a native-made pyx, how many centuries they may have been secreted there, and how it is that they did not long ago dry and crumble and perish, no one can guess. Could it be that Your Erudite Majesty has supplied the answer? Could the Communion wafers have been left as a token by the evangelist St. Thomas?

  We are this day relating all these data in a communication to the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, giving due credit to Your Majesty’s inspired contribution, and will eagerly await the opinion of those theologians at Rome, far more sapient than ourself.

  May Our Lord God continue to smile upon and favor the enterprises of Your Imperial Majesty, to whom unbounded admiration is due and professed by all your subjects, not least by your S.C.C.M.’s chaplain and servant,

  (ecce signum) Zumárraga

  DECIMA PARS

  FOR the same reason that I do not have much recollection of the events just prior to the obliteration of Yanquítlan, I do not clearly remember the things that happened immediately afterward. I and Béu and our escort marched north again toward Tenochtítlan, and I suppose the journey was unremarkable, for I recall little of it except two brief conversations.

  The first was with Béu Ribé. She had been weeping as she walked, weeping almost constantly, ever since I told her of Nochípa’s death. But one day, somewhere on the return route, she suddenly stopped both weeping and walking, and looked about her, like someone roused from sleep, and she said to me:

  “You told me you would take me home. But we are going north.”

  I said, “Of course. Where else?”

  “Why not south? South to Tecuantépec?”

  “You have no home there,” I said. “No family, probably no friends. It has been—what?—eight years since you left there.”

  “And what have I in Tenochtítlan?”

  A roof under which to sleep, I might have remarked, but I knew what she really meant. So I said simply, “You have as much as I have, Waiting Moon. Memories.”

  “Not very pleasant ones, Záa.”

  “I know that too well,” I said, without sympathy. “They are the same ones I have. And we will have them wherever we wander, or wherever we call home. At least you can grieve and mourn in comfort in Tenochtítlan, but no one is dragging you there. Come with us or go your own way, as you choose.”

  I walked on and did not look back, so I do not know how long it took her to decide. But the next time I lifted my gaze from my own inward visions, Béu was again walking at my side.

  The other conversation was with Angry at Everybody. For many days the men had respectfully left me to my brooding silence, but one day he strode along with me and said:

  “Forgive my intrusion on your sorrow, friend Mixtli. But we are getting near home, and there are things you should know. They are some things which we four elders have discussed and presumed to settle among ourselves. We have made up a story, and we have instructed the Tecpanéca troops to tell the same. It is this. While all of us—you and we and the soldiers—were making that embassy to the court of Teohuacán, while we were necessarily absent with good reason, the colony was set upon by bandits, and looted and massacred. On our return to Yanquítlan, we naturally went raging and searching for the marauders, but found no trace of them. Not so much as one of their arrows, whose feathering would have told us from what nation they came. That uncertainty of the bandits’ identity will prevent Motecuzóma from instantly declaring a war upon the innocent Teohuacána.”

  I nodded and said, “I will tell it exactly so. It is a good story, Qualánqui.”

  He coughed and said, “Unfortunately, not good enough for you to tell, Mixtli. Not to Motecuzóma’s face. Even if he believed every word of it, he would not hold you blameless for the failure of that mission. He would either order you throttled by the flower garland or, if he happened to be feeling kindly, he would give you another chance. Meaning you would be commanded to lead another train of colonists, and probably to the same unspeakable place.”

  I shook my head. “I could not and would not.”

  “I know,” said Angry at Everybody. “And besides, the truth is bound to leak out, soon or later. One of those Tecpanéca soldiers, when he gets home safe to Tlácopan, is sure to boast of his part in the massacre. How he raped and slew six children and a priest, or whatever. It would get back to Motecuzóma; you would be caught in a lie; and you would certainly get the garrotte, if not worse. I
think it better that you leave the lying to us old men, who are only hirelings, beneath Motecuzóma’s notice, hence in less danger. I also think you might consider not returning to Tenochtítlan at all—not for some time, anyway—since your future there seems to offer only a choice of capital punishment or renewed banishment to Yanquítlan.”

  I nodded again. “You are right. I have been mourning the dark days and roads behind me, not looking toward those ahead. It is an old saying, is it not, that we are born to suffer and endure? And a man must give thought to his enduring, must he not? Thank you, Qualánqui, good friend and wise adviser. I will meditate upon your counsel.”

  When we came to Quaunáhuac, and that night took lodgings at an inn, I had a dining cloth set apart for me and Béu and my four old comrades. When we had done eating, I took from my waistband my leather sack of gold dust and dropped it on the cloth, and said:

  “There is your pay for your services, my friends.”

  “It is far too much,” said Angry at Everybody.

  “For what you have done, it could not possibly be. I have this other purse of copper bits and cacao beans, sufficient for what I will do now.”

  “Do now?” echoed one of the old men.

  “Tonight I abdicate command, and these are my last instructions to you. Friend officers, you will proceed from here around the western border of the lakes, to deliver the Tecpanéca troops to Tlácopan. From there you will cross the causeway to Tenochtítlan and escort the lady Béu to my house, before you report to the Revered Speaker. Tell him your nicely concocted story, but add that I have inflicted on myself a punishment for the failure of this expedition. Tell him that I have voluntarily gone into exile.”

  “It will be done so, Commander Mixtli,” said Angry at Everybody, and the other three men murmured agreement.