Aztec Autumn a-2

by Gary Jennings

  Though I had witnessed that procedure several times, this was the first time I had nerved myself to ask questions about it.

  "We indios never used anything but nets," I told the young soldier, "into which we drove the birds. Your method is much more rewarding. How does it work?"

  "Very simple," he said. "A string is tied to the gatillo of each of the leveled arcabuces." (I was already puzzled, for gatillo means a "little cat" or a "kitten.") "All those strings are tied to a single string for me to pull and fire those weapons all at once. Likewise, strings are tied to the gatillos of all the upward-aimed—"

  "I could see that," I said. "But how does the arcabuz itself work?"

  "Ah," he said, and pridefully led me to one of the staked weapons, knelt beside it and began to point. "This little thing here is the gatillo." It was a bit of metal protruding from under the rearward part of the arcabuz, crescent-shaped to be pulled by a finger or, in this case, a string, and the kitten was inside a metal guard, evidently to prevent its being pulled accidentally. "And this thing here is the wheel, which is spun by a spring that you cannot see, inside the lock there." The wheel was just that—a wheel—but small, about the size of an ardite coin, made of metal and grooved with tiny teeth all around.

  "What is a spring?" I asked.

  "A narrow leaf of thin metal, wound into a tight coil by this key." He showed me the key, then used it to sketch a small, tight spiral in the earth at our feet. "That is what the spring looks like, and every arcabucero carries a key." He inserted his into a hole in what he had called "the lock," turned the key a time or two, and I heard a faint grating noise. "There, the wheel is ready to spin. Now, this thing here we call a cat's-paw." It was another small metal piece, not like a cat's paw at all, but shaped more like a bird's head, gripping in its beak a bit of gravel. "That stone," the soldier explained, "is a pirita." And I recognized it as a tiny fragment of what we call the "false-gold."

  "Now, we cock the cat's-paw back, ready to strike," he went on, thumbing it backward with a click, "and another spring holds it there. Then—observe—I squeeze the kitten, the wheel spins and at the same instant the cat's-paw slaps its pirita against the wheel and you will see a spray of sparks."

  Which is exactly what occurred, and the soldier looked more proud than ever.

  "But," I said, "there was no flash or noise or smoke from the tube."

  He laughed indulgently. "That is because I had not yet loaded the arcabuz or primed its cazoleta."

  He produced two large leather pouches and, from one of them, dribbled a small pile of dark powder into my palm. "That is the pólvora. See, now I pour a measured amount of it down the mouth of the cañon here, and shove in behind it a small piece of cloth. Then, from this other pouch, I take a cartucho." He showed me a small, transparent sac—like a bit of tied-off animal intestine—packed with little metal pellets. "For shooting enemies or large animals, of course, we use a heavy round bala. But for birds we use a cartucho of perdigones." Then, with a long metal rod, he tamped all the contents tightly down in there. "Last of all, I put a mere touch of the pólvora here on the cazoleta." That was a little pan sticking out shelflike from the lock, where the sparks from the wheel and the false-gold would strike it. "You will notice," he concluded, "that there is a narrow hole going from the cazoleta into the cañon where the charge of pólvora is packed. Now, here, I wind the spring and you squeeze the gatillo."

  I knelt down to the charged weapon with commingled curiosity, timidity and dread. But the curiosity was foremost, because I had come here and accosted the young soldier with precisely this end in mind. I put my finger through the guard beneath the arcabuz's lock, hooked it around the kitten and squeezed.

  The wheel spun, the cat's-paw snapped down, the sparks sprayed, there was a noise like an angry little snarl and a puff of smoke from the powdered pan... and then the arcabuz rocked backward, and I flinched wildly away, as its mouth roared and spewed a flame and a bloom of blue smoke and, I had no doubt, all those death-dealing metal pellets. When I had recovered from the shock and the ringing in my ears, the young soldier was laughing heartily.

  "¡Cáspita!" he exclaimed. "I will wager that you are the first and only indio ever to fire such a weapon. Do not let anyone know that I let you do it. Come, you can watch me load all the arcabuces for the next fusillade."

  As I followed him, I said, "Then the pólvora is the absolute essential component of the arcabuz. The lock and wheel and cats and such are simply to make the pólvora work as you wish it to."

  "Indeed, yes," he said. "Without the pólvora there would be no firearms at all in the world. No arcabuces, granadas, culebrínas, petardos. Ni siquiera triquitraques. Nada."

  "But what is the pólvora?" I asked. "What is it made of?"

  "Ah, now that I will not tell you. It was rash enough of me to let you play with the arcabuz. The orders are that no indio be allowed to handle any weapon of the white men, and my punishment for that would be dire. I certainly cannot reveal the composition of the pólvora."

  I must have looked downcast, because he laughed once more and said, "I will tell you this much. The pólvora is obviously very much a man's property, for manly uses. But, oddly enough, one of its ingredients is a very intimate contribution from the ladies."

  He went on laughing as he went on working, and as I drifted away. He took no notice of my departure, nor had he noticed that the small amount of the pólvora he had poured into my hand had gone into my own belt pouch, nor that I had picked up one of the wheel-winding keys I found lying beside one of the other arcabuces.

  Bearing those items, I made my way to the Cathedral—hurrying thence, before I might forget any detail of the contrivances I had been shown. It was past the hour of Compline when I got to Alonso's workroom, so the notarius was not there, probably busy at his devotions. I found a blank piece of bark paper and, with a stick of charcoal, began to draw: the kitten and its guard, the cat's-paw, the wheel, the spiral of spring...

  "Are you returned to work late this evening, Juan Británico?" said Alonso, coming through the door.

  I managed not to jump or act startled. "Only practicing some word-pictures of my own," I said offhandedly, crumpling the paper but holding on to it. "You and I do so much translating of other scribes' work that I feared I might be forgetting the craft. So, having nothing better to do, I came back here to practice."

  "I am glad you did. I would like to ask you something."

  "A su servicio, Cuatl Alonso," I said, hoping I did not look wary.

  "I have just come from a meeting of Bishop Zumárraga, Archdeacon Suárez-Begega, the Ostiarius Sánchez-Santoveña and various other custodians. They are all agreed that it is time the Cathedral was provided with more dignified and resplendent furnishings and vessels. We have been using makeshift paraphernalia only because a whole new Cathedral must be built before long. However, since such articles as chalice and monstrance, pyx and stoup—even larger things, like a rood screen and a font—can be easily moved to the new building, it has been agreed that we procure all those things, and of a quality befitting a Cathedral."

  "Surely," I said, "you are not seeking my agreement?"

  He smiled. "Hardly. But you may be of assistance, since I know you wander widely about the city. These fixtures and appurtenances must be of gold and silver and precious gems. Your people used to be sublimely accomplished at such works. Before we send a crier through the streets, calling for a master jewelsmith to come forward, I thought you might be able to suggest someone."

  "Cuatl Alonso," I said, gleefully clapping my hands together, "I know the very man."

  Back at the mesón, I said to Pochotl, "You are acquainted with the Spanish weapon we call the thunder-stick?"

  "The arcabuz, yes," he said. "At any rate, I have seen what it can do. One of them put a hole—as if it had thrown an invisible javelin—clear through my elder brother."

  "Do you know how the arcabuz works?"

  "How it works? No. How should I?"


  "You are an artist of great ingenuity. Could you make one?"

  "Make a device that is both outlandish and prodigious? A thing I have seen only from a distance? Without even knowing how it works? Are you tlahuéle, friend, or merely xolopítli?"

  There are two Náhuatl words meaning "deranged." Tlahuéle refers to a person who is violently and dangerously insane. Xolopítli refers to one who is witless in only a moony and harmless degree.

  I said, "But could you build one if I show you pictures of the parts that make it work?"

  "How can you possibly do that? None of us is allowed anywhere near the white men's arms or armor."

  "I have done that. Here, look." I showed him the paper of drawings I had made, and, right there, with a bit of charcoal, I completed a couple of the pictures that had been left unfinished when Alonso interrupted me. I told Pochotl what the drawings represented and how the various pieces performed to make an arcabuz do its death-dealing.

  Pochotl mumbled, "Well, it would not be impossible to forge and shape the pieces, and to fit them together as you have described. But this is work for a common smith, not for an artificer of delicate jewelry. All of it, anyway, except for these strange things you call springs."

  "Except the springs, exactly," I said. "That is why I come to you."

  "Even assuming I can lay hands on the iron and steel required, why should I waste my time fooling with such a complicated contraption?"

  "Waste what time?" I asked sardonically. "What are you spending your time on, beyond eating and sleeping?"

  "Be that as it may, I told you I want nothing to do with your ludicrous idea of revolution! Making an unlawful weapon for you would involve me in your tlahuéle delirium, and I would stand yoked beside you at the burning stake!"

  "I shall absolve you and go to the stake alone," I said. "Meanwhile, suppose I offer you a reward irresistible in payment for the arcabuz?"

  He said nothing, only glared darkly at me.

  "The Christians are looking for an artist to sculpture for their Cathedral numerous items of gold and silver and gems." Pochotl's eyes went from dark to brightly glowing. "Dishes and cups and other vessels, also articles that I cannot describe to you, all to be most ornately worked. Splendiferous things. The man who makes those will leave a heritage to posterity. An outlandish posterity, of course, but—"

  "But artistry is artistry!" Pochotl exclaimed. "Even in the service of an alien people and an alien religion!"

  "Indubitably," I said, complacent. "And, as you yourself have remarked, I am something of a darling of the Christian clergy. Were I to put in a word on behalf of a certain incomparable artificer..."

  "Would you? Yyo ayyo, Cuatl Tenamáxtli, would you?"

  "Should I do so, I believe that artist would be assured of the commission to do the work. And all I would ask in return would be that he waste his free time in the construction of my arcabuz."

  Pochotl snatched up the paper of my drawings. "Let me take and study this." He started away, muttering, "...Have to contrive some way to procure the metals..." But then he turned back, frowning, and said, "When you explained the workings of the arcabuz, Tenamáxtli, you made it plain that the secret powder called pólvora is the one vital component. What is the use of my building this weapon if you have no pólvora?"

  "I have a pinch of it," I said, "and I think I may be able to divine the separate constituents. By the time you have made the weapon, Pochotl, I hope to have the pólvora in abundance. That young soldier was indiscreet enough to give me a hint that may help."

  "The hint," I said to Netzlin and Citláli, "was that women make some contribution to this powdery mixture. An intimate contribution, he called it."

  Citláli widened her eyes at that, as she and her husband and I, squatting on the earthen floor of their little house, regarded the pinch of pólvora I had carefully put onto a piece of bark paper.

  "As you can see," I went on, "the powder appears gray in color. But, working very meticulously with the tip of a tiny feather, I have succeeded in separating the almost impalpable grains of it. As best I can determine, there are only three different sorts mixed together. One kind is black, one is yellow and one is white."

  Netzlin grunted skeptically. "So much painstaking and ticklish labor, and what do you learn from that? The specks could be pollens from any number of different flowers."

  "But they are not," I said. "I have already identified two of them, simply by touching a few grains of each to my tongue. The black specks are nothing but common charcoal. The yellow ones are the dust of that crusty excretion found around the vents of any volcano. The Spaniards use that for several other purposes as well—for preserving fruits, for making dyes, for caulking their wine casks—and they call it azufre."

  "So those two would be easy for you to procure," said Netzlin. "But the white grains defy your so-clever investigation?"

  "Yes. All I can tell about those is that they taste something like salt, only more sharp and bitter. That is why I brought the pólvora here"—I turned to Citláli—"because that soldier spoke of women."

  She smiled with good humor but shrugged helplessly. "I can discern the white grains in that little pile, but I certainly do not recognize them. Why should a woman's eyes see more to them than yours do, Tenamáxtli?"

  "Perhaps not the eyes," I said. "A woman's other senses and intuitions are known to be much more acute than a man's. Here, I will separate out a number of those specks." I had brought the little feather, and delicately employed it, so that I teased a minute quantity of the white grains apart from the rest. "Now, taste them, Citláli."

  "Must I?" she asked, eyeing them askance. Then she leaned forward—with considerable effort, because her protuberant belly was in the way—lowered her head to the paper and sniffed. "Must I really taste them?" she asked again, sitting back on her heels. "They smell exactly like xitli."

  "Xitli?" said both Netzlin and myself, blinking at her, because that word means "urine."

  Citláli blushed with embarrassment and said, "Well, like my xitli, anyway. You see, Tenamáxtli, we have only a single public retiring-closet here on this street, and only immodest women go there to urinate. Most of us use axixcáltin pots and, when they are full, go and empty them in that closet's pit."

  "But nobody—not even a Spanish woman, I am sure—urinates powder," I said. "Unless, Citláli, you are one uncommon human being."

  "I am no such thing, you simpleton!" she said, in mock anger, but blushing again. "However, I have noticed that while the xitli sits undisturbed between emptyings, at the bottom of the axixcáli there come into being some little whitish crystals."

  I stared at her, cogitating.

  "The way a moss or a scale sometimes develops at the bottom of a water jar," she elaborated, as if she thought me so dense that I needed a simple illustration.

  I continued staring at her, making her blush redder yet.

  "Those crystals I speak of," she said, "if they were ground very fine on a metlatl stone, they would be a powder just like those white grains you have there."

  Almost breathlessly, I said, "You may have hit on it, Citláli."

  "What?!" her husband exclaimed. "You think that is why the soldier mentioned women in connection with the secret powder?"

  "In an intimate connection," I reminded him.

  "But would a female's xitli be any different from a male's?"

  "In one respect, I know it is, and so do you. You must have seen that when a man urinates outdoors, on the grass, the grass is not at all affected. But wherever a woman urinates, the grass goes brown and dead."

  "You are right," he and his wife said together, and Netzlin added, "It is such a commonplace occurrence that no one ever even speaks of it."

  "And charcoal is also a commonplace thing," I said. "And so is the volcanic yellow azufre. It stands to reason that something as common as a female's xitli could provide the third ingredient of the pólvora. Citláli, forgive my audacious rudeness, but may I borrow your axixc�
�li pot for a while, and do some experimenting with its contents?"

  She went still redder in the face, maybe by now all the way down to her taut belly, but her laugh was unabashed. "Do with it what you like, you preposterous man. Only do bring back the pot, please. I have ever more frequent need of it now that the child is due to be born at any moment."

  It took both hands to carry the clay container, covered but audibly sloshing, back to the mesón—and I got some queer looks from passersby along the way, because everyone knows an axixcáli by sight.

  Yes, I had been living all this while at the mesón—or at least sleeping and taking meals there—and so had Pochotl, while many other lodgers had come and gone in the meantime. So, feeling guilty about my leech-like dependence on the friars of San José, I had often joined Pochotl in helping them clean the place, fetch wood to stoke the fires, stir and serve the soup, things like that. I might have thought that the friars were lenient about my staving on and on because they knew of my attending classes next door. But they were equally lenient about the perpetual residence of Pochotl, so obviously they were not showing me any partiality. In my opinion, they were kindheartedly carrying charity to an extreme of benevolence. Even though I was one of its chief beneficiaries, that day I returned from visiting Netzlin and Citláli, I made bold to ask one of the soup-ladling friars about that.

  To my bewilderment, the friar actually sneered at me. "You think we do this for love of you shiftless layabouts?" he snarled. "We do this in God's name, for our own souls' sake. Our order bids us to debase ourselves, to work among the lowest of the lowly, the filthiest of the filthy. I am here at this mesón only because so many other brothers of the order had already volunteered for the leprosery that there was no room there for me. I had to settle for serving you indio sluggards. And that I do, and in doing that I lay up for myself credits in heaven. But one thing I do not have to do is associate with you. So get back to your lazy fellow redskins."

  Well, I thought charity comes in some strange guises. I wondered if the nuns of Santa Brígida felt similar contempt for the multicolored orphans in their charge—caring for them ostensibly in the name of their God, but really in the expectation of reward in the afterlife. I wondered also if Alonso de Molina had been kind and helpful to me only for that same reason. Such thoughts naturally strengthened my resolve not to adopt such a crass religion. Bad enough that my tonáli had decreed that I be born into The One World precisely when I would have to share my lifetime with these Christians; I certainly did not intend to spend my afterlife among them.