“The people are honored by your presence,” the woman said in Spanish.
“You’re Dona Marina, aren’t you?”
She didn’t even blink. “I am, Goddess.”
Goddess! Well, that was more like it. I’d be the last to contradict her. But there was something funny about all this. It was like a scene from a bad Tarzan movie. Kind of cheesy and screwed up. In the real world, people just didn’t go around worshipping strangers— especially kids in khakis and polo shirts. Puh-lease.
However, this was no time to ask questions.
The spear-carriers made the prisoner kneel, and suddenly I realized what they were doing. They weren’t going to sacrifice me— they were going to sacrifice him. In my honor.
“Dona Marina, tell them—” I was thinking fast— tell them I can’t thank them enough for all the hospitality, but today I showed mercy to this man, and I cannot take him now. Not that I’m, not, like, majorly grateful, of course.”
She spoke to the crowd in Mayan, but it didn’t seem to go over. Disappointed little murmurs spread through the crowd like “boos” at a baseball game.
I said, “A.B., is this about to turn ugly?”
“Would Meryl Streep let it turn ugly? Act, Soldier!”
Soldier. Not even Student. I must be flunking drama.
I felt a little better when the soldiers jerked the man up by the hair and took him away, but things got a lot worse when they came back with a little boy. “Then they will give you the man’s son,” said Dona Marina.
Oh, boy.
“Look, Dona Marina, I’m in a really great mood today. Could you please tell the king he has a special place in my heart? I’m really crazy about the guy— and all his people too. Tell them because they’re, like, big-deal favorites of mine, they don’t have to give me anybody. Really! They can have all my blessings free of charge until the end of their days.”
She nodded, expressionless. Very professional. But, as she began to speak, the crowd started cheering. The king broke out in this great big filed-tooth smile and put an arm around my shoulders. Which was really weird because I was standing there in my bra.
“And the Oscar goes to… Reeno Dimond!” I said to the Beast.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“You mean the book? Something tells me it’s the wrong time to bring it up.”
I waved and blew a few kisses, and then Dona Marina translated a grateful little speech the king made, and I said, “Ask them if they’d like to see me again tomorrow.”
She asked. They cheered. It was like being Homecoming Queen.
“Very well,” I told her. “Tell them I shall return. Meanwhile, I wonder if they could give my shirt back and could take me to Cortes?” I indicated my taxi. “In that, preferably. Oh, and order one up for yourself. I need a witness to this little episode.”
So commanded the goddess, and it was done.
Except that they brought me a much better shirt, one of those cool embroidered jobs they seemed to specialize in. Much better for a meeting with a historic figure.
Perhaps I should mention here that I may have taken a liberty or two regarding my fluency— my Spanish was still kind of in the pidgin stage, but it would be boring to write down all the words I got wrong and the times Dona Marina had to say, “Do you mean…?” and that kind of thing. The point is, I could make myself understood and what I meant to say is what I wrote, and I’m pretty sure that’s how the Mayans took it. Do we understand each other?
A.B. snoozed in my lap the whole way back to the beach, all tuckered out by his murderous afternoon. I spent the trip composing little speeches to Cortes, who had been informed that we were on the way, and thus had come ashore in a dinghy. He’d had his men plant four poles in the sand and drape a blanket over them to serve as a little shelter where we could talk. On the whole, he didn’t look thrilled to see us, but I kind of liked his looks. If he usually wore sailor’s clothes, he’d changed out of them, into the kind of knee pants and puff-sleeved tunics you see in those old Spanish paintings. Like pictures of Columbus. He had a plumed hat and everything, which might be why the Mayans made that plumed-serpent error at first. Couldn’t blame them, I thought. Anyone who mistook me for a goddess ought to be a lot more impressed by this dude.
I for one sure was, and I really couldn’t afford to be.
I screwed up my courage, what there was of it, scrambled out of my taxi, stood up, and offered to shake. But he wouldn’t do it— perhaps women didn’t shake in the Middle Ages. So I had to content myself with a polite “Buenos tardes.”
“This is the woman,” Dona Marina said.
Woman. So I’d been demoted. Very ungood.
“And is that,” the explorer said, “the animal who so severely frightened my sailor?”
“Your sailor,” I said, “was lucky to escape with his life. Not to put too fine a point on it, Señor, but he and his two buddies tried to rape me up there.”
“Is that so, little one? Pedro and Dona Marina tell quite a different story.”
Dona Marina? So much for sisterhood. But I forgave her. I figured she had to live with these people.
But that “little one” simply wasn’t doing it for me— once you’ve tasted goddess-hood, you expect slightly better from mere mortals. “I don’t believe,” I said, “that we’ve been properly introduced. You are the famous Hernan Cortes, of course. My people know of your accomplishments and exploits, and we salute you. I am Princess Deboreeno Diamondino of the Zigaloo tribe of Norte Americana. I have been sent here on a most important mission.”
Okay, it was a dumb speech, but Meryl Streep could have made it work. My acting career was barely thirty minutes old. But I wasn’t exactly prepared for what happened. This man I’d spent half my Bad Girl career reading about— and let’s face it, the Spanish might have plundered, but you had to be a little impressed— this famous explorer laughed in the princess’s royal face. Didn’t just laugh, took off his hat and beat his leg with it, having a good old belly-whomper at my expense.
I was pissed. You just don’t treat a princess like that. “Perhaps the conquistador,” I said, “is amused by my accent. I apologize for my poor Spanish, but we Zigaloos speak much better English, which we learned from a shipwrecked sailor a century or two ago.” I switched to my native tongue. “Would you prefer to continue the conversation in English?”
He looked confused, so I pressed my advantage. “ ‘Four-score and seven years ago,’ ” I said, “ ‘our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’ ”
Of course he couldn’t know the Gettysburg Address, which wouldn’t be written for another three hundred years, but I wanted him to know I really did habla Ingles. I figured he didn’t and it might make me look smarter.
I was right.
But it only made him mad. “The English haven’t sailed to the Indies!” he huffed.
I shrugged and switched to Spanish again. “Their ship was blown off course. You know— like the Spanish Armada, that other time?” But of course that hadn’t happened yet, either. To cover his confusion, he said, “What is Norte Americana?”
“Nice little country north of here. We don’t get down here much, but I’ve come on a very important mission, and I really need your help.”
He held up a hand to stop me. “What kind of tribe sends a mere girl on an important mission?”
I’d figured that one out on the ride over. “Like I mentioned, the Zigaloo, Señor. You see, among the Zigaloo, the women are the leaders— the rulers, the soldiers, the artists, the explorers. We do all the important stuff and the men are more or less our slaves. It’s an extremely advanced civilization.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE—THE FOUNTAIN OF LIES
He was turning red.
“Oh, it’s quite true. Ask Dona Marina— she saw how respectful the Mayans were. In our own little way, we kick a lot of sexist butt in these parts and if you mess with m
e, my mama the queen will cut your fancy Spanish liver out.”
Okay, okay, I didn’t really say the last part. Instead, I followed up with, “My mother the queen, who particularly admires you and happens to be a world-class babe, sends her compliments and asks me to invite you to visit us. Her Spanish is really a lot better than mine, and the royal cocinas are renowned for miles around. Also, she’s very forgiving and would probably only torture that rapist Pedro for an hour or two.”
I was banking on the old saying about the way to a man’s heart, and I do think he loosened up a little at the mention of the royal kitchens. “And the animal?” he said.
“Ah, the animal. Can it be that news of the cats of the Zigaloo has not reached your ears? They are the secret of our success in battle. We herd them, Señor. The tiny ones, like the scruffy specimen at my feet, serve as our infantry, and the larger, like jaguars and cougars, are our mounts. Like your… horses.” I made the last word a sneer. “Except, of course, they’re much better in battle than horses, because each cat is as much a ravening foe as the bloodthirsty Warrior Woman on its back. We wear green in battle, with our arms bare, which are tattooed with fearsome serpents…”— at this point I did a little show-and-tell— “and we dye our hair startling shades of red. The mere sight of a Zigaloo army has caused many a brave regiment to retreat in terror.”
“I can believe that,” said the great explorer, or something pretty close. I was wearing him down. “Dona Marina?”
“In his speech to the city,” she said, “the Mayan king did mention that the goddess rode a Jaguar in her previous appearance. And of course, there is the hair.” If I thought I’d managed to make the word “horse” sound like “turd,” you should have heard what she did with “hair.”
“Very well.” The great man nodded. I figured my lying skills were getting right up there with my thieving ability. “But, surely, Princess, you haven’t traveled all this way just to invite me for a home-cooked Zigaloo meal. What, exactly, is this mission of yours?”
The tricky part was coming up. “I’m looking for a manuscript.”
Cortes looked frankly bewildered. I could see that Dona Marina was a bit in the dark as well, but her confusion had a hint of slyness to it. She knew something I didn’t.
“Know your enemy,” A.B. warned. I’d almost forgotten about him. Okay, I had to find out what she knew.
I said, “You know about it, don’t you, Dona Marina? Suppose you tell the conquistador.”
So at that point she took over. It was a beautiful thing. I felt as if I’d accomplished a verbal martial arts move— somehow managed to use the enemy’s strength to my own advantage. “The Mayans,” she said, “call the princess not Deboreeno Diamondino— it’s probably too much for their primitive brains to absorb…”
“Hold it right there!” I said. “There’s a lot more to the Mayans than meets the totally retarded European eye. They’re brilliant astronomers and they have this incredible calendar…”
A.B. gave me a look that said this was no time for consciousness-raising. I sighed. “Never mind. Go on.”
“They call her Jaguar-Snake Woman, because of her tattoos. They recognized her by four signs— first, the snakes themselves, then the hideous two-colored hair, and the tacky unibrow. Zigaloo women apparently don’t pluck.”
Involuntarily, I raised my hand to the fuzzy space above my nose. I remembered looking in the mirror on my trip to town.
“And the fourth sign?” Cortes asked.
“The murderous feline.” She glanced at A.B., catching him preening his whiskers, and shrank back a bit. “They say that the woman appeared out of nowhere in Uxmal during the reign of King Palak, bearing wonderful gifts that made the entire town delirious with happiness.”
No wonder they loved me. It sure explained the Tarzan scene. (Also, it explained how to say Uxmal, which I knew about from my reading— it’s “Ooshmall”.)
“But she betrayed them,” Dona Marina continued. “She repaid their hospitality by attempting to rob them.”
“I don’t understand,” the great man said. Neither did I, but I was glad I hadn’t asked for the book in the city that day— they might not have taken kindly to it. “Why would they revere a thief?”
“Because she— or her ancestor, one presumes, has since passed into legend. She has become a goddess in their eyes.” She shrugged. “The story is merely a story now. Whatever she may have stolen is of less importance than the legend itself.”
“After all, it was four hundred years ago.” I said. “That’s a long time to hold a grudge.”
But there was something vague about the way Dona Marina told the tale— that word “attempting.” And I didn’t know how to ask for the specifics without betraying myself as an impostor.
Cortes addressed me. “What was the object your ancestor was supposed to have stolen?”
“Not my ancestor,” I said. “Me. I removed the item myself.”
That was Dona Marina’s cue to say, “Oh, no, the book wasn’t stolen, it was merely an attempt”— as if she knew for sure. Because that was the missing piece: Whether or not I’d succeeded in my mission. But she didn’t say anything— only looked at me as if I’d gone crazy.
Cortes said, “What do you mean you stole it? As you point out, that was over four hundred years ago.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “you’ve heard the legend of the Fountain of Youth? It’s true.”
See, I knew the legend from reading up on the conquistadores. Another one, Juan Ponce De Leon, had plundered his share of New World gold, but he’d never found what he really wanted when he set sail in 1513— a magic spring that had the power of restoring youth. Given that that was sixteen years earlier, I figured Cortes had to have heard of it.
“What I stole,” I said, “was a book that tells how to find it.”
He did a satisfying double-take. “You are four hundred years old?” he asked.
“Four hundred thirty-three, to be exact. We found the Fountain of Youth, but the Mayans still have the important book— the one that says where the gold is.”
If we hadn’t already been on the ground— Cortes’s men had spread a blanket for us— the famous explorer would have had to sit down. He looked like a cartoon character with dollar-sign eyes. “Back up for a minute. You’re telling me the Zigaloo have the secret of eternal youth?”
“My friends say I don’t look a day over three hundred. But, see, when we got the book, we got something else we didn’t bargain for— it tells about the other book; the one with the map to El Dorado. That’s the book I came for this time.” Now, El Dorado was a mythical land of gold the Spaniards also tried to find, but in later expeditions. I wasn’t entirely sure how time-travel worked, but for a moment I wondered if they heard about it from me.
However, the look on the conquistador’s face said the legend had already made the rounds. He was suspicious, though. Shaking his head, he said, “Princess, princess. You expect me to believe a thing like that? If the Mayans know the way to El Dorado, why don’t they just go there and take the gold?”
I was ready for him— all that library time was paying off like crazy. “Because it’s too far away,” I said, “Think about it. They don’t have wheels or sails. How are they going to go all the way to Colombia to get it?”
“Colombia?”
“A land many miles to the south— named for your Christopher Columbus.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How are you planning to get there, Your Highness? Ride that kitty over there?”
“Please, Señor, give my people some credit. We have ships that make your little boats look like bathtub toys.”
He looked puzzled. “What is ‘bathtub’?”
Uh-oh, a misstep. They probably didn’t have bathtubs in 1529. But then I remembered that the Moors in Spain took ritual baths. “Civilized people,” I said, “have pools for washing their bodies. Our seers say they exist in Spain.”
“Civilized! The infidels use them.”
“Whatever. The point is, we’ve got a totally happening navy. You really shouldn’t mess with the Zigaloo.”
Cortes stroked his beard, thinking. “Well, then. If I’m supposed to believe your little fairy tale, why didn’t you come back sooner for the El Dorado book?”
“The stars, dude. On our continent, we don’t make a move without asking the royal astrologers. The stars say that now—” I emphasized the word. “— is the right time.”
He was buying it. Oh, man, was he buying it. I almost felt sorry for him, having to decide between eternal youth and a lake full of gold and jewels. But I guess he figured he couldn’t defeat the amazing all-female Zigaloo army: He went for the gold. “And this book,” he said, looking way crafty. “Why are you telling me about it?”
“Dona Marina,” I said, “do you read Mayan?”
“I can’t even read Spanish. I’m illiterate.”
“Well, there you have it, Señor. Nobody you know can read the book, even if you could get it. Oh, sure, you probably think you could torture some poor scribe into doing it, but haven’t you noticed? The Mayans aren’t afraid of pain or death, either one. They’re not going to translate it for you.”
I could see him about to huff and puff, so I held up a hand. “Wait. Our great seer, The Sibyl of Minneapolis, tells us that El Dorado won’t be found for hundreds of years. Now, we Zigaloo can wait. Time is seriously on our side. But Mama Mia, as she is known, also mentioned that the Spaniards have been known to burn a few books. How about that, Señor? You haven’t destroyed anybody’s library, have you? Because I’m telling you, don’t. The book’s there, and in time, it’ll give up its secrets. So treat the Mayan books like sacred objects. Maybe you’ll find it, maybe I’ll find it, but if it gets burned, nobody wins. Comprendo?”
I was pretty satisfied with that little speech. It wasn’t getting A.B. and me any closer to the end-of-the-world text, but maybe I’d just saved the Dresden Codex.
“And also, I want to make you an offer. Do you know if the Mayan king has a daughter?”
A.B. was livid. “What the almighty devil are you doing, Human? What’s that got to do with anything?”
Bad Girl School Page 19