The Seven Serpents Trilogy

by Scott O'Dell

  I reached down and felt around. It was there, twice the size of my other hand, still doubled up into a hard, unyielding fist. On my finger was the amethyst ring.

  Through the deadlight I could see a storming sky. Rain beat on the cabin roof and ran in the scuppers. Drops of water were falling on my bunk, one slow drop at a time, from a seam overhead.

  I struggled up from the bunk and, finding that I could walk, went to the door and put my ear against it. I heard nothing except the running water and a stiff wind in the rigging. Then I opened the door a crack.

  The catwalk leading into the cabin was deserted, as was the deck below. But after a moment I heard voices. I shut the door and went back to my bunk. By the feeble light of a lamp swinging in the gimbals, I noticed a tray of food that someone had set on the floor while I was asleep. It looked gray and old and turned my stomach.

  While I was sitting there, perhaps an hour later, in pain and fear, knowing that Cortés and his bullies would return at any time that suited them, with a rush of wind the door suddenly opened, then quickly closed. Doña Marina stood there, her long hair wet and windswept. She held her fingers to her lips in silent warning.

  She said, “Do as you are told, señor. Guards are on the deck. They are everywhere except by the stern. Ayo is by the stern with a canoe. Ayo is the one who took Don Luis and me across to the mainland. That was the night we fled. In the corner behind you is a crawl-through. It leads to the rudder.”

  I started to speak. I wanted to ask a hundred questions.

  “Go,” she said. “They are coming back for you. They will be here before the night is over. They have a place for you where they can hang you upside down by your feet. Cortés has found the bishop’s body, and he is very angry. He is an grier than I have ever seen him.”

  Again I started to speak. She had gone. I watched her run along the catwalk, climb down the ladder, and disappear in the rain, her long black hair streaming.

  I closed the door. I stood there, unable to move. Moments passed. I roused myself, fearing that by now the Indian and his canoe would be gone, and found the crawlway—I knew where it was because Cortés’s ship and the Santa Margarita were built alike. It led to a cramped space, mostly taken up by the arm that worked the rudder. Where it was attached to the rudder, below the gudgeon that it turned upon, was a space large enough to squirm through. The broad face of the rudder was strapped with iron bands. On these slim projections I must lower myself.

  The rain had lessened but the wind blew strong. Grasping the rudder’s edge, I climbed out on the first of the straps. I saw nothing below except black water. The canoe could be hidden under the ship’s counter. It might have gone.

  Lowering myself one strap at a time, I had gone only half the distance when a gust of wind swept me into the sea. I went under and after an endless time came up. A hand reached out of the darkness and clutched my hair.

  A frightened voice, which I recognized as the voice of the young priest Ayo, humbly said, “I beg your forgiveness, Lord of the Wind of Knives, for grasping you in this unseemly way. But I fear that you will drown unless I do so.”

  “Hold on!” I shouted.

  Inching along on his knees, a helper appeared out of the gloom, and among the three of us I managed to scramble over the side.

  Ayo took up his paddle. “We cannot stay here,” he said. “Where, Lord of the Evening Star, do you wish to go? In which of the four directions?”

  I sat silently in the bottom of the canoe, bilge water sloshing over my legs, aware that any moment we might be discovered, yet powerless to decide what I should do. There was a chance I could rally the warriors and drive Cortés from the city. Perhaps I had more than a chance.

  “What has become of my warriors?” I said.

  “They are scattered,” the young priest said. “When the nacom’s body toppled into the sea, they lost spirit. When you fell on the deck and lay quiet, as though you were dead, they laid down their weapons.”

  “I will ask them to take up their weapons again.”

  “The white soldiers roam the city. They ride around on big deer, carrying thundersticks, with big dogs running along be side them.”

  “I can gather warriors. They outnumber the white soldiers. They will answer if I call them. We will gather in the jungle secretly.”

  “It is too late for gatherings.”

  “Why?” I said angrily. “Are you carrying on my feud with Chalco? Are you my enemy?”

  “I have always been your friend,” Ayo said, hurt by my words. “Otherwise, King of the Wind of Knives, I would not be here in the storm, in danger of my life.”

  Rain was falling again. The city was a vast black shadow. A single fire showed on the god house roof.

  “As a friend,” I said, “you doubt that the warriors will answer me?”

  “You can see that the streets are deserted,” Ayo said. “The citizens are hiding. Farmers have gone back to their farms. The temple fires are out, all save one. The people mourn.”

  “They have much to mourn. Flint Knife’s death. My wound ing. The temporary loss of the city. This and more.”

  “Yes, much, but it is your leaving that truly grieves them.”

  “I haven’t left. I am here, waiting.”

  “We are all waiting,” Ayo said, “and it is a bad thing. Let us go away from the ship and take our chances elsewhere.”

  We moved out into the channel against the tide, slowly be cause the canoe was heavy—fashioned as it was from a hol lowed log—and half full of water. I began to bail, using my good hand.

  “The people grieve because they think you have left the island,” Ayo said. “They thought you were dead when they saw you lying on the deck and you did not move and were carried away. They thought that the white men had hidden your body. Then Ceela Yaxche went to see the three elders and high priest Pital. She is called Doña Marina now. And she has changed. She is no longer a Maya. Now she calls herself a Christian woman and has a string of beads with a cross around her neck. She is different now, very important, but she is still a Yaxche and my cousin. She said to them that you had not been killed. You were alive. Then after three days…”

  “I was on the ship three days?”

  “For three days and three nights,” Ayo said. “Then Ceela told them that you had disappeared. In the middle of the night you had sailed away on a snakeskin raft, like the raft you had when you left before. Only this time you said that when you came back you would be in a different form. Not young as now. You would be an old man with much experience who would bring them many beautiful gifts.”

  We moved up the winding channel to the entrance, past the first of the anchored ships. We were close enough to be hailed. We didn’t answer. A musket shot struck the water behind us, but we did not stop. By the light from their stern lantern, I caught a glimpse of the young priest. His looped earrings glit tered. His face was serious, and when I looked at him he averted his eyes.

  “Where is the snakeskin raft?” he said. “In the cove by the volcano?”

  “You think that it is time to go?” I said.

  “Three days now,” Ayo said. “The night they carried you away, there was a great fire in the volcano. Seven fiery flowers burst out of its mouth, one after another. They filled the sky. It was a sign to us all, given by you, Lord of the Winds.”

  I sat in a canoe within sight of the city, injured but alive, yet to the priests who read the signs of the fiery flowers and the people to whom they were reported I had sailed away as I had done before, long centuries in the past. Even to the young priest kneeling scarcely two arm’s lengths from me, I was only a shadowy presence.

  The fire on the god house roof was dying out. Gray shadows covered the white stones of the terrace. Only a short time ago—was it two years or three?—I had stood there with Cantú the dwarf, looked out upon the ruined city, and dreamed of gleaming temples, of a port that sheltered caravels from all the ocean seas, of high walls built to withstand every foe, of treasures w
rested from the tyrants of a hundred towns.

  We passed the last of the enemy ships. The fire on the god house roof had died out. The city was now dark. The only light came from far away, from the burning crest of St. John the Baptist, whose name I had used and whom, in pride and lust, I had failed.

  CHAPTER 14

  WE RAISED A SAIL WHEN THE ENEMY SHIP FELL ASTERN AND REACHED the coast at dawn, after a stormy night. Having seen this part of the coast in the past, I chose a sheltered place to land, much like the cove where I had been tossed on the beach years ago in the wreck of the Santa Margarita.

  “The snakeskin raft?” Ayo said as we parted company. “Do you wish me to wait until it comes?”

  “It may be days,” I said.

  He took a handful of cacao beans from his gown. “You may need these on your journey,” he said.

  I was about to refuse them, then thought better of it. I was no longer a god. Wherever fate took me, I would need money.

  “I always planned,” I said, accepting the dark little nuts, “to make money out of gold, as they do in Spain. Coins they call them. Ducados, pesos, castellanos.”

  “You can do this when you return someday,” the priest said.

  “There are many things to do if I return, but this will not be the first.”

  Ayo bowed, touching his forehead to the sand. He got into the canoe and put up the sail. Only then did he wave farewell. I watched him for a long time, until he disappeared in the sun.

  I stood on the shore alone. The sky had cleared. Heat came out of the jungle in breathless waves, and already the sun shimmered like brass.

  On the far horizon St. John the Baptist glowed red. As its fiery crest sent forth clouds of smoke that drifted down upon the city, I was assailed by a bitter thought: if only it would erupt and bury the island beneath a mountain of burning lava. Yes, all of the island—the jungle and the bay where the Spanish caravels were smugly anchored, triumphant Cortés and his captains. Yes, the whole ungrateful city itself—yes, and the thousands who had witnessed my humiliation. All buried deep beneath mountains of fire!

  I stood for a time, gazing about at the unfamiliar beach and the jungle that came down to meet it. I was hungry—from what Ayo told me, I had not eaten for three days and nights. I saw nothing that was dry enough to use for a fire and noth ing to cook if I had one.

  A small, clear stream ran past me, much like the stream that ran in the island meadow where I was cast away. There would be fish, but I couldn’t catch them. And fish in the sea. As before, I satisfied my hunger with wild fruit, which grew everywhere in profusion.

  Having eaten, I fell asleep, awakened at sundown to eat, then slept through the night, ate again, and again went to sleep. I had been carrying a heavy stone on my back. It was gone. I prayed each morning, but halfheartedly and without redeeming thoughts or wishes.

  I followed these habits for a week and more—it might have been longer, even three weeks or a month, since I had lost count of the days. I began to have scattered thoughts about my future.

  I even thought of returning to the City of the Seven Serpents. By now Cortés would have rifled it of its gold—what little the dwarf had missed—and left a small garrison behind, which could easily be destroyed. In time, however, he would return to take revenge on the city as he had upon Tenochtitlán. He would burn the god house, take down the Temple of Kukulcán stone by stone, and with the stones build a Chris tian church.

  Should I have done so? I had a guilty feeling that I should have, beginning on my first day in the city. And that despite all his brutalities, Cortés was right in not trafficking with the devil, and I was wrong. In my stubborn, prideful way, I had even sat down and dined with Satan.

  The thought of returning was an aberration, born of wounded pride and stubbornness. Especially the latter. I had always been stubborn. I had drunk it in with my mother’s milk. I recalled the time it had nearly cost me my life.

  That was when we moved from Seville to the village of Anazo. I was eight years old. We had lived on the banks of the Guadalquivir, but the river ran deep there, so I was never allowed to swim. Upstream, however, at Arroyo, it wasn’t deep, and boys went swimming there in the summer.

  The first week I was in the place, some of my new friends came by and asked me to go swimming. Which I did—after my mother made me promise that I wouldn’t go into water that was over my head.

  Most of the river ran shallow, but there was one deep pool. Just before we started for home, all the boys jumped in. They went down one after the other into water that was over their heads. I saw them touch bottom. They came up, waded out, and waved for me to jump.

  I hesitated. I had told them, when we first got to the river, that I could swim. I even bragged a little, saying that I had learned when I was only four years old.

  There they were, six of them, shouting for me to jump. And here I was on the bank, stiff with fear, unable to swim so much as a foot. I stared down into the deeps, scared to death. But certain that I would rather drown than go back on what I had said, I jumped.

  I don’t remember how I escaped. I guess by instinct, as a dog paddles. But I do remember that my friends fished me out and that I was full of water when they laid me on the bank. I also remember my mother hovering over me, clutching her black shawl, weeping in joy and fright.

  “It’s that stubborn streak,” she said, when she was over her fright. “You would rather be stubborn as a pig and drown yourself…”

  The scene faded. The aberration had been a brief one. What I had failed to do on the Island of the Seven Serpents in times of peace I had no chance of ever doing now. Certainly not now that I had incurred the wrath of Governor Velásquez. I had eluded Cortés, but the governor would send other men to track me down.

  With its abundant fruit and stream of fresh water, the cove was not inhospitable. I had made a rough shelter among the trees, out of sight of the many passing canoes, yet for all my caution I might be discovered. The season of fruit would soon come to a close. I had no fire and no prospects of building any until the daily downpours ended with summer. A sensible course was to move south along the coast—the northern coast was already overrun by Spaniards—away from the Island of the Seven Serpents.

  I remembered the village of Chichén-Palapa, and its cacique, Matlazingo, who liked Spaniards. But how was I to reach this friendly village?

  It lay at a distance of more than sixty leagues—the Santa Margarita had taken two days to get there, not counting the storm. There were no trails, at least none that I knew of. And if there were, if I found one, it would be dangerous for a white man. I could only travel by sea. But I didn’t own a canoe, not even a raft.

  Enormous trees grew to the water’s edge, but I lacked an ax to fell one and the fire to hollow it out. I considered a raft, the kind Kukulcán had made. The jungle teemed with snakes, large ones, some five or six strides in length. I could fashion a frame of thin withes and cover it with snakeskins.

  I settled on a raft made from trees that grew along the edge of the jungle. The wood was exceedingly light, easy to cut and move about.

  Using shells sharpened to a fine edge with sand, I cut four dozen logs of a good length, bound them together with wet reeds, laying down four rows, one on top of the other, in opposite directions. I wove a small sail of split reeds, as I had seen the weavers do in the city square, and made a rough sculling oar.

  It took me the rest of the summer to finish the raft. I would have finished it much sooner had it not been for my crippled hand. Cortés’s iron claw had squeezed it like a vice. The wounds had healed, but it was now somewhat misshapen, the amethyst ring embedded in my finger. I would have taken the ring off had I been able to, for it constantly reminded me, as I worked, of Bishop Pedroza, that vain pedagogue who longed for saintly glory, whose memory I tried to forget.

  The summer storms had ended. Early on a bright morning I sculled out of the cove and with the wind astern set sail for Chichén-Palapa. I was glad to be leaving my
jungle camp.

  With me I took the results of many hours of thinking. As I hacked away at the logs to make my raft, while I lay in bed at night, I had come to two conclusions.

  Cortés was right when he burned the heathen temples, gathered up the bare stones, and from them built Christian churches. There was no other way, it seemed, though years would pass and generations would live and die before the Maya and the Azteca forgot their pagan gods.

  Perhaps Cantú the dwarf was right, also. He had played a scurvy trick upon the Maya. He had deserted me at a time when I needed him the most. Yet he had been sorely tempted. Gold was power. He would return to Seville and purchase a fine estate and a dukedom. He would dine with nobles, converse with the leading artists, philosophers, and men of science. He would sit with princes of the church and receive their churchly blessings and benefits. Cantú would revel in all this splendor while I, cast away for the second time in my short life, penniless and rejected, deserted by God, faced an un certain future.

  Yet I could blame no one for my plight. Who, I asked myself, had called upon me to do Christ’s work? What voice had spoken? Who had chosen Julián Escobar to journey into pagan lands to save heathen souls? To fail, to find himself far from home, a fugitive hunted by the king’s men?

  I never glanced back at my jungle camp as the raft left the shore, or at the city that lay somewhere to port, or at St. John the Baptist, which had not erupted and buried the island as once I had wished it to do. I looked straight before me and made a silent vow.

  Never out of sight of land and only by day, I sailed for close to three weeks. I was passed by many canoes, hailed by some, but mostly ignored. On another bright morning I en tered the estuary that led to the village of cacique Matlazingo.

  The cacique was lounging on the beach, in much the same position as I had left him months before, chewing on coca leaves and spitting in the sand. He recognized me at once, though this time no cannon had announced my arrival. I was stepping ashore from a raft, instead of from a longboat rowed by dozens of painted warriors. The sun had bleached my hair white and given my skin a mahogany hue. The diet of fruit had reduced my frame to skin and bones. Yet he greeted me with a Spanish abrazo—he must have learned the embrace from Gerónimo de Aguilar—so moved by emotion that he could scarcely speak.