Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  However, according to our watching mice, the outlaw had bested the outlaw hunter. So, while Alonso was presumably laying golden gifts and golden prospects before your King Carlos in Spain, Cortés was doing the same at Vera Cruz—showing Narváez samples of the riches of these lands, persuading him that the lands were all but won, convincing Narváez to join him in concluding the conquest, assuring him that they had no reason to fear the wrath of any mere colonial governor. For they would soon deliver—not to their insignificant immediate superior, but to the all-powerful King Carlos—a whole new colony greater in size and wealth than Mother Spain and all its other colonies put together.

  Even if we leaders and elders of the Mexíca had known all those things on that day we met in secret, I do not suppose we could have done more than what we did. And that was, by formal vote, to declare Motecuzóma Xocóyotzin “temporarily incapacitated,” and to appoint his brother Cuitláhuatzin as regent to rule instead, and to approve his first decision in that office: that we swiftly eliminate all the aliens then infesting Tenochtítlan.

  “Two days from now,” he said, “occurs the ceremony in honor of the rain god’s sister, Iztocíuatl. Since she is only the goddess of salt, it would normally be a minor event involving only a few priests, but the white men cannot know that. Neither can the Texcaltéca, who have never before attended any religious observances in this city.” He gave a small, wry laugh. “For that reason, we can be glad that Cortés chose to leave our old enemies here, and not the Acólhua, who are well acquainted with our festivals. Because I will go now to the palace and, bidding my brother show no surprise, I will tell that officer Tonatíu Alvarado a blatant lie. I will stress to him the importance of our Iztocíuatl ceremony, and ask his permission that all our people be allowed to gather in the grand plaza during that day and night, to make worship and merriment.”

  “Yes!” said the Snake Woman. “Meanwhile, the rest of you will alert every ablebodied knight and warrior within call, every least yaoquízqui who can bear arms. When the outlanders see a crowd of people harmlessly flourishing weapons in what appears to be only a ritual dance, accompanied by music and singing, they will merely look on with their usual tolerant amusement. But, at a signal—”

  “Wait,” said Cuautémoc. “My cousin Motecuzóma will not give away the deception, since he will divine our good reason for it. But we are forgetting that cursed woman Malíntzin. Cortés left her to be the officer Tonatíu’s interpreter during his absence. And she has made it her business to learn much about our customs. When she sees the plaza full of people other than priests, she will know that it is not the customary homage to the salt goddess. She is certain to cry the alarm to her white masters.”

  “Leave the woman to me,” I said. It was the opportunity I had waited for, and it would effect more than just my personal satisfaction. “I regret that I am a bit too old to fight in the plaza, but I can remove our one most dangerous enemy. Proceed with your plans, Lord Regent. Malíntzin will not see the ceremony, or suspect anything, or disclose anything. She will be dead.”

  The plan for the night of Iztocíuatl was this. It would be preceded by day-long singing and dancing and mock combat in The Heart of the One World, all performed by the city’s women, girls, and children. Only when the twilight began to come down would the men begin to drift in by twos and threes and take the places of the women and children dancing out of the plaza by twos and threes. By the time it was full dark, and the scene was illuminated by torches and urn fires, most of the watching outlanders might well have tired of it and gone to their quarters, or at least, in the fitful firelight, might not observe that all the performers had become large and male. Those chanting, gesticulating dancers would gradually form lines and columns that would twine and weave their way from the center of the plaza toward the Snake Wall entrance to the palace of Axayácatl.

  The strongest deterrent to their assault was the menace of the four cannons on the roof of that palace. One or more of them could rake almost all of the open plaza with their terrible shards, but they could not so easily be aimed directly downward. So it was Cuitláhuac’s intention to get all his men crowded as closely as possible against the very walls of that palace before the white men realized that they were under attack. Then, at his signal, the entire Mexíca force would burst in past the doorway guards and do their fighting in the rooms and courts and halls and chambers inside, where the greater numbers of their obsidian maquáhuime should overwhelm their opponents’ stronger but fewer steel swords and more unwieldly harquebuses. Meanwhile, other Mexíca would have lifted and removed the wooden bridges spanning the canoe passages of the three island causeways, and, with bows and arrows, those men would repel any attempt by Alvarado’s mainland troops to swim or otherwise cross those gaps.

  I made my own plans just as carefully. I visited the physician who had for long attended my household, a man I could trust, and without flinching at my request he gave me a potion on which he swore I could rely. I was of course well known to the servants of Motecuzóma’s court and the workers in the kitchens, and they were unhappy enough in their current service that I had no trouble in getting their agreement to employ the potion in the exact manner and at the exact time I specified. Then I told Béu that I wanted her out of town during the Iztocíuatl ceremony, though I did not tell her why: that there was to be an uprising, and I feared the fighting might spread over the whole island, and I fully expected—because of my singular part in the affair—that the white men, if they had the chance, might wreak their most vengeful fury on me and mine.

  Béu was, as I have said, frail and unwell, and she was clearly less than enthusiastic about leaving our house. But she was not unaware of the secret meetings I had attended, so she knew something was going to happen, and she complied without protest. She would visit a woman friend who lived in Tepeyáca on the mainland. As a concession to her weakened condition, I let her stay at home, resting, until shortly before the causeway bridges should be lifted. It was in the afternoon that I sent her off in a little chair, the two Turquoises walking alongside.

  I remained in the house, alone. It was far enough from The Heart of the One World that I could not hear the music or other sounds of the feigned revelry, but I could imagine the plan unfolding as the twilight deepened: the causeways being sundered, the armed warriors beginning to replace the female celebrants. I was not particularly elated by my imaginings, since my own contribution had been to kill by stealth for the first time in my life. I got a jug of octli and a cup from the kitchen, hoping the strong beverage would dull the twinges of my conscience. Then I sat in the gathering dusk of my downstairs front room, not lighting any lamps, trying to drink to numbness, waiting for whatever might happen next.

  I heard the tramp of many feet in the street outside, and then a heavy banging upon my house door. When I opened it, there stood four palace guards, holding the four corners of a plaited-reed pallet on which lay a slender body covered by a fine white cotton cloth.

  “Forgive the intrusion, Lord Mixtli,” said one of the guards, sounding not at all anxious for forgiveness. “We are bidden to ask you to look upon the face of this dead woman.”

  “No need,” I said, rather surprised that Alvarado or Motecuzóma had so quickly guessed the perpetrator of the murder. “I can identify the bitch coyote without looking.”

  “You will regard her face,” the guard sternly insisted.

  I lifted the sheet from her face, lifting my topaz to my eye at the same time, and I may have made some involuntary noise, for it was a young girl I could not recognize as anyone I had seen before.

  “Her name is Laurel,” said Malíntzin, “or it was.” I had not noticed that a litter chair was at the foot of my stairs. Its bearers set it down, and Malíntzin stepped from it, and the guards bearing the pallet edged aside to make room for her to come up to me. She said, “We will talk inside,” and to the four guards, “Wait below until I come or unless I call. If I do, drop your burden and come at once.”


  I swung the door wide for her, then closed it in the guards’ faces. I fumbled about the darkening hall, seeking a lamp, but she said, “Leave the house in gloom. We do not much enjoy looking at each other, do we?” So I led her into the front room, and we sat on facing chairs. She was a small, huddled figure in the dusk, but the threat of her loomed large. I poured and drank another copious draft of octli. If I had earlier sought numbness, the new circumstances made either paralysis or maniac delirium seem preferable.

  “Laurel was one of the Texcaltéca girls given me to be my personal maids,” said Malíntzin. “Today was her turn to taste the food served to me. It is a precaution I have been taking for some time, but unknown to the other servants and occupants of the palace. So you need not reproach yourself too harshly for your failure, Lord Mixtli, though you might sometime spare a moment’s remorse for the blameless young Laurel.”

  “It is something I have been deploring for years,” I said, with inebriated gravity. “Always the wrong people die—the good, the useful, the worthy, the innocent. But the wicked ones—and, even more lamentably, the totally useless and worthless and dispensable ones—they all go on cluttering our world, long beyond the life span they deserve. Of course, it requires no wise man to make that observation. I might as well grumble because Tlaloc’s hailstorms destroy the nourishing maize but never a disagreeable thornbush.”

  I was indeed maundering, belaboring the self-evident, but it was because some still-sober part of my mind was frantically busy with a much different concern. The attempt on Malíntzin’s life—and no doubt her intent to return the attention—had so far distracted her from noticing any unusual doings in The Heart of the One World. But if she killed me quickly and returned there immediately, she would notice, and she could yet warn her masters in time. Aside from my not being over-eager to die to no purpose, as the unfortunate Laurel had done, I was sworn to insure that Malíntzin would be no impediment to Cuitláhuac’s plans. I had to keep her talking, or gloating—or, if necessary, listening to me plead cowardly for my life—until the night was full dark and there came an audible uproar from the plaza. At that, her four guards might rush off to investigate. Whether they did or did not, they would not much longer be taking orders from Malíntzin. If I could keep her with me, keep her occupied, for just a while.

  “Tlaloc’s hailstorms also destroy butterflies,” I babbled on, “but never, I think, a single pestiferous housefly.”

  She said sharply, “Stop talking as if you were senile, or I were a child. I am the woman you tried to poison. Now I am here—”

  To parry the expected next words, I would have said anything. What I said was, “I suppose I still do think of you as a child just turning woman … as I still think of my late daughter Nochípa….”

  “But I am old enough to warrant killing,” she said. “Lord Mixtli, if my power is such that you deem it dangerous, you might also consider its possible usefulness. Why try to end it, when you could turn it to your advantage?”

  I blinked owlishly at her, but did not interrupt to ask what she meant; let her go on talking as long as she would.

  She said, “You stand in the same relation to the Mexíca as I do to the white men. Not an officially recognized member of their councils, nevertheless a voice they hearken to and heed. We will never like each other, but we can help each other. You and I both know that things will never again be the same in The One World, but no one can say to whom the future belongs. If the people of these lands prevail, you can be my strong ally. If the white men prevail, I can be yours.”

  I said, with irony, and with a hiccup, “You suggest that we mutually agree to be traitors to the opposing sides we have separately chosen? Why do we not simply trade clothes and change sides?”

  “Know this. I have only to call for my guards and you are a dead man. But you are not a nobody like Laurel. That would imperil the truce that both our masters have tried to preserve. Hernán might even feel obliged to hand me over for punishment, as Motecuzóma handed over Cuaupopóca. At the very least, I could lose some of the eminence I have already won. But if I do not have you eliminated, I must forever be on my guard against your next attempt on my life. That would be a distraction, an interference with my concentration on my own interests.”

  I laughed and said, almost in genuine admiration, “You have the cold blood of an iguana.” That struck me as hilarious; I laughed so hard that I nearly rocked myself off my low chair.

  She waited until I quieted, and then went on as if she had not been interrupted. “So let us make a secret pact between us. If not of alliance, at least of neutrality. And let us seal it in such a way that neither of us can ever break it.”

  “Seal it how, Malíntzin? We have both proved ourselves treacherous and untrustworthy.”

  “We will go to bed together,” she said, and that rocked me back so that I did slide off the chair. She waited for me to get up again, and when I remained sitting stupidly on the floor, she asked, “Are you intoxicated, Mixtzin?”

  “I must be,” I said. “I am hearing impossible things. I thought I heard you propose that we—”

  “I did. That we lie together tonight. The white men are more jealous of their women than are the men even of our race. Hernán would slay you for having done it, and me for submitting to it. The four guards outside will always be available to testify—that I spent much time in here with you, in the dark, and that I left your house smiling, not outraged and weeping. Is it not beautifully simple? And unbreakably binding? Neither of us can ever again dare to harm or offend the other, lest that one speak the word which will doom us both.”

  At risk of angering her and untimely letting her get away, I said, “At fifty and four years old, I am not sexually senile, but I no longer lunge at just any female who offers herself. I have not become incapable, only more selective.” I meant to speak with lofty dignity, but the fact that I hiccuped frequently between the words, and spoke them from a sitting position on the floor, somewhat diminished the effect. “As you have remarked, we do not even like each other. You could have used stronger words. Repugnance would better describe our feeling toward each other.”

  She said, “I would not wish our feelings otherwise. I propose only an act of convenience. As for your discriminating sensibilities, it is nearly dark in here. You can make of me any woman you desire.”

  Must I do this, I asked myself fuzzily, to keep her here and away from the plaza? Aloud, I protested, “I am more than old enough to be your father.”

  “Pretend you are, then,” she said indifferently, “if incest is to your taste.” Then she giggled. “For all I know, you really might be my father. And I, I can pretend anything.”

  “Then you shall,” I said. “We will both pretend that our illicit coupling did take place, though it does not. We will pass the time simply conversing, and the guards can testify that we were together for a time sufficiently compromising. Would you like a drink of octli?”

  I reeled away to the kitchen and, after breaking several things in the dark there, came reeling back with another cup. As I poured for her, Malíntzin mused, “I remember … you said your daughter and I had the same birth-name and year. We were the same age.” I took another long drink of my octli. She sipped at hers, and tilted her head inquisitively to one side. “You and that daughter, did you ever play—games—together?”

  “Yes,” I said thickly. “But not what I think you are thinking.”

  “I was thinking nothing,” she said, all innocence. “We are conversing, as you suggested. What games did you play?”

  “There was one we called the Volcano Hiccuping—I mean the Volcano Erupting.”

  “I do not know that game.”

  “It was only a silly thing. We invented it ourselves. I would lie down on the floor. Like this.” I did not exactly lie down; I fell supine with a crash. “And bend my knees, you see, to make the volcano peak. Nochípa would perch up there.”

  “Like this?” she said, doing it. She was small and ligh
t of weight, and in the dark room she could have been anybody.

  “Yes,” I said. “Then I would waggle my knees—the volcano waking, you see—and then I would bounce her—”

  She gave a little squeak of surprise, and slid down to thump against my belly. Her skirt rucked up as she did so, and when I reached to steady her, I discovered that she wore nothing under the skirt.

  She said softly, “And that was when the volcano erupted?”

  I had been long without a woman, and it was good to have one again, and my drunkenness did not affect my capability. I surged so powerfully, so often, that I think some of my wits spilled with my omícetl. The first time, I could have sworn that I actually felt the vibration and heard the rumble of a volcano erupting. If she did too, she said nothing. But after the second time, she gasped, “It is different—almost enjoyable. You are so clean—and smell so nice.” And after the third time, when she had her breath again, she said, “If you do not—tell anyone your age—no one would guess it.” At last, we both lay exhausted, panting entwined, and I only slowly became aware that the room had lightened. I felt a sort of shock, a sort of disbelief, to recognize the face beside mine as the face of Malíntzin. The sustained activity of copulation had been more than pleasurable, but I seemed to have emerged from it in a state of distraction, or perhaps even derangement. I wondered : what am I doing with her? This is the woman I have detested so vehemently for so long that I am now guilty of having murdered an innocent stranger….