Came the years 2 Flint, 3 House, 4 Rabbit; 5 Reed, 6 Flint, 7 House, 8 Rabbit; 9 Reed.
In the year 9 Reed, Prince Topiltzin asked to know his father. What did he look like, who did he resemble? What was the manner of his passing? Where is he buried? But in that time no one could answer him. Then did he set forth into the western deserts, asking on the road for news of the King. So it was that he came to be known in the West as Nacxitl, the Traveller.
Came the years 10 Flint, 11 House, 12 Rabbit; 13 Reed, 1 Flint, 2 House, 3 Rabbit; 4 Reed, 5 Flint, 6 House, 7 Rabbit; 8 Reed, 9 Flint.
In the year 9 Flint in the depths of despair in the heart of the desert he was found by a vulture. Taking pity she showed him how to open the earth and find the bones where the King’s brothers had heaped them with sand.
And terrible was the vengeance Our Prince wrought upon his uncles.
Yet returning he discovered himself twice an orphan; returning he discovered the Serpent Woman dead. And so her bones he buried next to his fathers in her temple on Serpent Mountain.
Back to the desert, to the land of the vulture did he take his grief and the guilt of his blood sins. And great was his penance. He bled his ears. He pierced his thighs with thorns, and the thorns he used were of jadestone. For seven years he fasted. Nothing but earth did he eat. Terrible was his sorrow, pitiful his remorse as he cried out to the heart of heaven, to the Place of Duality.
And the heart of heaven heard him.
Nearby, upon the once great city of Tollan the weight of drought and famine had fallen, for great were the sins of its people. And though the priests of Tollan had sacrificed the four times four hundred captives that its warriors had taken, still did the drought continue—the famine spread like a stain unabated, even unto the nobles of the city.
And so in the year 5 House, the nobles sent for him, asking that he rule over them and restore Tollan to its former greatness. But only when the sacrifices of the captives had ceased, when their cooking pots had been overturned and their shinbones buried did Our Prince agree to enter the city.
Came the years 6 Rabbit, 7 Reed; 8 Flint, 9 House, 10 Rabbit, 11 Reed; 12 Flint, 13 House, 1 Rabbit, 2 Reed.
During that time did Tollan grow prosperous once again, and flowers returned to the land of the Toltecs. The fruit of the cacao was everywhere plentiful and the cotton grew already tinted—they had no need to dye it. Easily did Our Prince enter the bowels of the earth and bring forth what many before him had sought: emeralds and jade, gold and silver, amber and turquoise. And truly was he a great artisan, truly did the grandeur of the Toltecs return with him: first, he made the sacred calendar that measures the gaits of the gods in their passage, that charts the stars in their courses; then the painted books, and the precious featherwork and pottery, the fine working of metal and stone. A great builder, in the heart of Tollan did he build his round palace of jade and turquoise, his palace of redshell and whiteshell and bone, his house of penance. And he lived there alone. For though he had brought the Toltecs art and knowledge and plenty, though he was worshipped as one worships a god, yet was he strict in his observances, severe in his fasting, and his penance was harsh.
In the year 3 Flint, Tezcatlipoca descended to earth and sent sorcerers to plague Our Prince in Tollan.
Came the years 4 House, 5 Rabbit, 6 Reed; 7 Flint, 8 House; 9 Rabbit, 10 Reed, 11 Flint.
All the statues the Toltecs had raised in his honour the sorcerers toppled. Our Prince’s sacred mirror of augury they stole. In his house of penance they beleaguered him. They mocked him for the meagreness of his offerings to the gods—only the sacrifice of serpents and birds and butterflies would he permit. They mocked the poverty of his fasts.
For nine years did they bait and taunt him, commanding him to return to the harvest of the precious eagle fruit, but Our Dear Prince resisted. Out of love for the Toltecs came his refusal, for the people were precious to him and he to the people.
And the sorcerers grew angrier.
So it happened, so it came to pass that resisting the sorcerers for so long had filled Our Prince with a great weariness. Less and less often did he leave his house of penance to walk among the people. Tired and solitary, he fell ill, he grew feverish. The Toltecs were troubled and uncertain for he appeared greatly aged.
Came the year 12 House. Came the season when the people of Tollan made preparations for the Feast of Toxcatl, for the twenty days of feasting and pleasure, for the time when DrumCoyote came to walk among them, came to lead them in the dance. Then did all the sorcerers gather together with Tezcatlipoca and say: Let us make pulque. Make him drunk with it. We will make him drink his health. And they laughed, for they were playful.
For four days did they brew the octli, the sacred drink, and in only four days more they had decanted it and blended it with wild honey. In the body of an old woman came Tezcatlipoca to the palace of redshell and whiteshell, to Our Prince’s house of beams. In the guise of a healer, SmokingMirror appeared to the palace guards, saying: I bring strong food and drink to Our Prince that he may recover himself.
And after he had eaten well of the spicy stew, the strong meat, Our Prince, feeling strength and also a great thirst, said: Grandmother, what else have you brought, for before you came my flesh felt as though cut to ribbons.
And the SmokingMirror answered: I have laboured across a great distance to bring you pulque—taste it, it’s strong, it’s newly made. She set it before him saying: You will find it tempting. It will tempt you like your own fate.
Only with the tip of his finger did he taste it, but the taste was good. And so she cajoled him to taste it four times, though only with a fingertip; but the fifth time, when she saw him drink deeply, she laughed harshly and said: This shall be your sacrament, priest.
Then did she make each of the palace guards drunk with just one taste of the octli. Returning to Our Prince where he lay on his mat of gold and feathers she showed him the smoking mirror and in its surface his sister, Quetzalpetlatl, fasting amidst flowers on the slopes of Iztaccihuatl. Among the priests of the Four Year Fast she fasted, and for three years she had tasted nothing but earth.
And she was beautiful.
Seeing her then in his drunkenness did Our Prince Topiltzin 1-Reed Quetzalcoatl send for his sister. PreciousFeatherMat sat beside him, and four times did he bid her taste the sacred pulque. And tasting it a fifth time, she too was besotted. No longer were they fasting, no longer forcing thorns through the flesh of their thighs. Never again would they bathe themselves in the Turquoise Waters.
As though in a dream he saw her; through mirror smoke he saw her and tried to approach in the manner of the CloudSerpent, his father, Mixcoatl. The first time his seed fell onto a rock and opened a hole in it. Laughing playfully she seemed to say: Raise your aim, brother. Into the hole in the rock she leapt and fled him. And into the Underworld as a bat he swooped down after her. The second time she appeared to him as a two-headed deer. As he drew near her the precious fluid of his body burst into flame. Laughing she leapt into the flames and fled him, and as a crippled dog he limped after her. The third time she stood and fought him. Fiercely she resisted him with her shield hand, and only after a great struggle did he finally possess her.
Through mirror smoke he first saw her; into mirror smoke she vanished, and this time he could not follow. On a mat of precious feathers she left him lying as though dead….
Then over him did the sorcerers bend and hover, mocking and laughing, until Tezcatlipoca said: Now, let us give him his body.
Then the sorcerers woke him and made him gaze again into the SmokingMirror. And for the first time Our Prince saw himself horrible to look upon, body withered and crippled and palsied, skin covered with sores and yellowed, all wrinkled and sallow.
And his face was a pitiful thing, like a great stone battered, eyelids inflamed, one eye sprung from its orbit and ruptured.
Unable to look away from the SmokingMirror he cried: Can this be, truly? Can this be what I resemble? Am I
so vile—have I always been?
But the sorcerers replied, ever playful: These things, your youth and beauty and virtue, have only fled you. They can be recovered. Have faith.
Fled where? Where am I to find them?
And the sorcerers answered him: Toward Tillan Tlapallan shall you go. A man stands guard there, one already aged. You and he shall take counsel together. And when you return you shall have again been made a child.41 But go now and celebrate with your people.
And even as they said this the sounds of a great drumming reached his ears. But how can I go out among them like this? They will be terrified and run from me.
But the sorcerers said, smiling: Have we not come to help you? And for him they made a turquoise mask. Finely wrought it was, and beautiful, with tracings of gold in the forehead, and topped with a crest of quetzal plumes. And red was the mouth and filled with fine, curving serpent’s teeth.
Then in the SmokingMirror did he appear truly majestic, truly splendid, and his spirits were lifted, though only for the briefest of times, only for a brief moment did it last. For as he emerged to walk among his people his eyes were met with a scene of devastation.
Withered and blighted were the cacao trees, twisted and bent like mesquite. Blanched of its colours was the cotton. Gone, the precious birds. Filled with smoke lay the streets; heaped with corpses locked fiercely together were the temple precincts where Tezcatlipoca had raised the dancers in the palm of her hand and—sending them into a frenzy—danced them to death.
And when Our Prince had emerged from his round palace of shell and jade to see the ruin of the Toltecs, when he saw the horror loosed upon his people while he had lain gazing into the SmokingMirror, weltering in drunkenness and sin upon his mat of feathers, the spell was lifted; it faded like the memory of a dream.
Then in four hundred pieces did he smash the grinning turquoise mask—
To the sorcerers did he turn to wreak his vengeance—but they had vanished, leaving him to himself.
And the empty city, the dead streets echoed with the song of his lament:
She will nurse me no more,
She, my mother, an ya’!
She of the Serpent Skirt,
Ah, the holy one!42
He who had produced so many great and beautiful works, who had brought to Tollan flowers and song, wisdom and knowledge, he who could trace each footprint of the gods through the heavens and through time itself, was now undone, now overthrown. Now only shame and misery, remorse and horror did he know.
And so it came to pass that he ordered his pages to construct him a stone casket, and closely did it fit him as he lay in it as though dead. For four days did he lie in his jewelled casket, waiting for death. And all who had fled the city returned at the news of his dying. But it was not yet time.
On the fourth day he arose and commanded his pages: Bury all these vain treasures I have created—bury them somewhere deep in the earth or send them to the bottom of the Lake of Texcoco. And they did what he had commanded.
Seeing him preparing his departure, the people cried out in despair: Our Dear Prince, where are you going?
The story of his journey into the East, the journey of Our Dear Prince Topiltzin 1-Reed Quetzalcoatl, has since been many times told. How he was attacked by sorcerers on the road. How he and his pages—dwarves with backs hunched and twisted—hid in the bowels of WhiteLady, and for four days and for four more struggled to find their way out again. How at last they emerged in a high mountain pass next to SmokingStone, where the dwarves and the hunchbacks were frozen.
How as Our Prince wept at the foot of a tree and his tears pierced the rock he sat upon, the sorcerers returned and challenged him—Where are you going?
How Our Prince answered: The sun is calling me.
How the sorcerers would not let him pass until he had surrendered to them all the precious Toltec arts.
How the Traveller wandered on alone.
Alone he arrived at the coast in a place called Coatzalcoalcos and mounting a litter of serpents, a serpent mat, he sailed east, he sailed towards the sun.
There as every child should know he arrived at last in Tlillan Tlapallan, the Red Land and Black, the place of burning, the place of knowledge and death. And there donning his precious feather cape, his wind jewels, his headdress of quetzal plumes did he cast himself into a great fire of his own making. The flames of his burning rose high to the first level of heaven—as a flight of precious birds, scarlet and blue, citron and ochre and vermilion they rose, even as the souls of painted books.
And after four days of burning, from the ashes ascended the heart of Quetzalcoatl, ascended the heart of the morning. Pure and splendid as fine beaten silver did MorningStar rise into the eastern sky. High in the heavens did it rise, into the ninth level of heaven. As Lord of the House of Dawn he rose, he who rises first in the red fields of combat to await the sun.
And every child should know of his promise to return to reclaim his place near the end of the world. And terrible shall be the manner of his coming.
And if he comes in 1 Reed, he strikes at kings.
In 1 Reed was he born, in 1 Reed did he die. And so for fifty-two years, for a bundle of years did he live among the people of the centre.
And this is the story of his coming and of his passing and of his return, in the time, in the year, 1 Reed.
JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ
B. Limosneros, trans.
Guided by a silent Clarion
along a path that is no path,
blundered across, stumbled upon,
in search of an end that has no end.
Jerome sat in contemplation of
the Trumpet of the Judgement,
but soon was troubled
to be hearing the very echo
of what he feared most;
and thus, pondering an event
to strike terror in the heart
of the most exalted Seraphim,
advanced a step, without moving,
guided by a silent Clarion.
He walks toward that City
where his spirit dwells
in ardent Charity—
and though the road is unknown to him,
in truth God is the way—
and, in the manner of a pilgrim, spans
in one long peregrine flight,
the gulf from earth to Heaven
without ever losing his way,
along a path that is no path.
Leaving the track stained red—
holding his blood scant price
to have covered such terrain—
he came to be thought mad
and was subjected to brutal stonings …
these, the Holy Doctor answering:
—Since by an easy path
no one to heaven has ever ascended,
let none wonder it should at last have been
blundered across, stumbled upon.
That it comes to me by happy accident
dampens not the ardent
fire that enkindles my soul:
to find the end of my love’s quest
in One who has no end.
Thus, eagerly do I go
spilling all of the carmine
that these veins enclose,
till now not a drop is left
in search of an End that has no end.
Horus BOOK FIVE
You, Egypt is you, and you are its mask of gold …
PAUL VALÉRY
This is the patent age of new inventions,
for saving bodies, and for killing souls.
B. LIMOSNEROS
CONTENTS
Harlequin: the Anniversary
Gavin
Harlequin: Table
Aqueduct
Rose of Alexandria
Codex: Forger
Codex: Temptation
Codex: Incantation
Harlequin: Civil Discovery
Codex: Temptation 2
Codex: Renunci
ation
To the Pass
Threshold
Ascent
To her breast, pale Cleopatra
Harlequin: Sound Bites
Solstice
Subliminal Snow
That ancient Tribunal
Harlequin: Surfacing
Lives of the Gregorys
Harlequin: Old Comedy
Reform School
Harlequin: Fifth Business
The ancient Wonders of the world
Postcards from the Cloister
Harlequin: Mascot
True-Crime Stories 1
There was a girl
Night of Paz
De-Canting the Black Legend
Jubilee: a Shooting Script—Day 1
How to Found Your Own Inquisition
Jubilee, Day 2: Ram’s Head
O Providence most high!
Jubilee, Day 16: Formulas
Jubilee, Day 17: Lodestone
Hummingbird
Jubilee, Day 24: the Body of a Nun
Jubilee, Day 28: Black Beast
Jubilee, Day 32: the Grand Inquisitor
Jubilee, Day 34: Requerimiento
Berserkers
A Rose that is cut
Jubilee, Day 37: Heresy, the Technology
Jubilee, Day 39: Shaggy Beast
Jubilee, Day 40: Castle, or Tower
Protest
True-Crime Stories 2
True-Crime Stories 3
In truth, my sweetest love
Serpent Litter
S
Battle-call
Horus
HARLEQUIN: THE ANNIVERSARY
YOU ARE HERE. You have taken a room near the Warren Street tube station whose stencilled logo, which you meet at every turn, is in the image of a maze. You are alone now: you wanted to get away from her—the idea of her lying there—even for a little while and so on the pretext of conducting research you go to London—where else do former English professors go? You have left your wife and infant child behind. You are here today, you tell yourself, on a study of labyrinths but in fact you are running from or towards the strange and new sensation that you have committed a crime, at least one. After a full day in the British Museum and an evening in its library you return to your room and a stack of books. Wearily you begin Pliny’s description of the greatest labyrinth of antiquity—the Egyptian maze, long ago lost—said to be a hundred times larger than the infamous labyrinth of Crete, but it’s late so you turn out the lamp and get into bed….
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