Aztec

by neetha Napew

  "My dear," said Nezahualpili. "This is Mixtli, of whom I have spoken. Would you have him in your retinue, in the role of companion and protector?"

  "If my Lord Husband wishes it, I comply. If the young man agrees to it, I shall be pleased to regard him as my elder brother."

  The long-lashed eyelids lifted, and she looked at me, and her eyes were like unfathomably deep forest pools. I found out later that she habitually put into her eyes drops of juice from the herb camopalxihuitl, which greatly enlarged her pupils and made her eyes lustrous as jewels. It also forced her to avoid bright lights, even the light of day, when her dilated eyes saw almost as poorly as mine.

  "Well, then," said the Revered Speaker, rubbing his hands with satisfaction. I wondered, with some misgivings, just how long he had conferred with his counsel skull before deciding on this arrangement. To me he said:

  "I ask only that you provide brotherly direction and advice, Head Nodder. I do not expect you to correct or chastise the Lady Jadestone Doll. It would, in any event, be a capital offense for a commoner to raise either his hand or his voice against a noblewoman. Nor do I expect you to play the jailer or the spy or the talebearer of her confidences. But I would be pleased, Mole, if you devote to your lady sister what time you can spare from your school work and studies. That you serve her with the same devotion and discretion with which you serve me or the First Lady Tolana-Teciuapil. Now go, young people, ximopanólti, and get acquainted with each other."

  We made the proper obeisances and left the throne room. In the corridor, Jadestone Doll smiled sweetly at me and said, "Mole, Head Nodder, Mixtli. How many names do you have?"

  "My lady may call me whatever she pleases."

  She smiled even more sweetly, and put a delicate tapered fingertip to her pointed little chin. "I think I shall call you..." She smiled still more sweetly, and said with a sweetness like the taste of sticky maguey syrup, "I will call you Qualcuie!"

  That word is the third person singular jussive of the verb "to fetch," and is always pronounced forcefully and commandingly: "Fetch!" My heart grew heavy. If my latest name was to be Fetch!, my misgivings about this arrangement seemed justified. And I was right. Though she still spoke in that maguey syrup voice, the young queen dropped all semblance of demureness, docility, and submissiveness, and said, very queen-like:

  "You need not interrupt any of your daytime classwork, Fetch! However, I shall want you available in the evenings, and on call if necessary during the nights. You will please move all your effects into the apartment directly across the hall from mine." Without waiting for me to say any word of acquiescence, without herself saying any polite word of leave-taking, she turned and walked away down the hall.

  Jadestone Doll. She was named for the mineral chalchihuitl, which, though it is neither rare nor of any intrinsic value, was prized by our people because it was the color of The Center of Everything. Unlike you Spaniards, who know only the four directions of what you call the compass, we perceived five, and designated them by different colors. Like you, we had the east, north, west, and south, respectively referred to as the directions of the red, black, white, and blue. But we also had the green: to mark the center of the compass, so to speak—the place where a man was at any given moment, and all the space above that spot as far as the sky, and all below it as far as the Mictlan underworld. So the color green was important to us, and the green stone chalchihuitl was precious to us, and only a child of noble lineage and high degree could appropriately have been named Jadestone Doll.

  Like a Jadestone, that girl queen was an object to be handled most respectfully and carefully. Like a doll, she was exquisitely fashioned, she was beautiful, she was a work of divine craftsmanship. But, like a doll, she had no human conscience or compunctions. And, though I did not immediately recognize my feeling of premonition, like a doll she was fated to be broken.

  * * *

  I must admit that I rather reveled in the sumptuousness of my new chambers. Three rooms, and the sanitary closet contained my own private steam bath. The bed in the bedroom was an even higher than ordinary pile of quilts, over which lay an enormous coverlet made of hundreds of tiny squirrel skins bleached white and sewn together. Over the whole was suspended a fringed canopy and from that hung almost invisible, fine-meshed net curtains, which I could close around the bed to keep out mosquitoes and moths.

  The one inconvenience of the apartment was that it was far distant from those others which the slave Cozcatl had in his charge. But when I mentioned that to Jadestone Doll, little Cozcatl was abruptly relieved of all his other duties, to attend solely to me. The boy was ever so proud of that promotion. Even I felt rather the pampered young lord. And later, when Jadestone Doll and I were in disgrace, I would be glad that Cozcatl had always been by me and was loyally ready to testify in my defense.

  For soon I learned: if Cozcatl was my slave, I was Jadestone Doll's. On that first evening, when one of her maids admitted me to her grand suite, the young queen's first words were:

  "I am glad you were given to me, Fetch!, for I was getting unutterably bored, cooped up in seclusion like some rare animal." I tried to make a demurrer regarding the word "given," but she overrode me. "I am told by Pitza"—she indicated the elderly maidservant hovering behind her cushioned bench—"that you are an expert at capturing the likeness of a person on paper."

  "I flatter myself, my lady, that people have recognized themselves and each other in my drawings. But it is some while since I have practiced the craft."

  "You will practice on me. Pitza, go across the corridor and have Cozcatl collect the implements Fetch! will require."

  The little boy brought me some chalk sticks and several sheets of bark paper—the brown, the cheapest, uncoated with lime, which I used for rough drafts of my picture writing. At my gesture, the boy went to crouch in a corner of the big room.

  I said apologetically, "You know of my poor eyesight, my lady. If I may have your permission to sit near you?"

  I moved a low chair over beside the bench, and Jadestone Doll held her head still and steady, her glorious eyes on me, while I did a sketch. When I was done and handed her the paper, she did not glance at it, but held it over her shoulder to the maid.

  "Pitza, is it I?"

  "To the very dimple in the cheek, my lady. And no one could mistake those eyes."

  At which the young queen condescended to examine it, and nodded, and smiled sweetly at me. "Yes, it is I. I am very beautiful. Thank you, Fetch! Now, can you do bodies, too?"

  "Well, yes, the articulation of limbs, the folds of garments, the identifying emblems and insignia..."

  "I am not interested in the outward habiliments. I mean the body. Here, do mine."

  The maid Pitza gave a muted shriek and Cozcatl's mouth dropped open, as Jadestone Doll stood up and, without coyness or hesitation, stripped off all her jewelry and bangles, her sandals, her blouse, her skirt, and finally her single remaining undergarment. Pitza went away and buried her flushed face in the draperies by the window—Cozcatl seemed incapable of movement—as the young queen again reclined on the bench.

  In my agitation, I dropped some of my drawing materials from my lap to the floor, but I managed to say, and in a voice of severity, "My lady, this is most unseemly."

  "Ayya, the typical prudery of a commoner," she said, and laughed at me. "You must learn, Fetch!, that a noblewoman thinks nothing of being nude, or of bathing, or of performing any function in the presence of slaves. Male or female, they might be pet deer or quail, or a moth in the room, for all that their seeing signifies."

  "I am not a slave," I said stiffly. "My seeing my lady unclad—the queen of the Uey-Tlatoani—would be accounted a criminal liberty, a capital offense. And those who are slaves can talk."

  "Not mine. They fear my own anger more than that of any law or any lord. Pitza, show Fetch! your back."

  The maid whimpered and, without turning, slid her blouse down for me to see the raw welts inflicted by a knout of some sort. I lo
oked at Cozcatl, to make sure that he also saw and understood.

  "Now," said Jadestone Doll, smiling her maguey syrup smile. "Come as near as you please, Fetch!, and draw me entire."

  So I did, though my hand trembled so that I had often to rub out and redraw a line. The tremor was not entirely because of my dismay and apprehension. The sight of Jadestone Doll stark naked would, I think, have made any man tremble. She might better have been named Golden Doll, for gold was the color of her body, and its every surface and curve and crevice and bend and hollow was as perfectly rendered as by a Toltecatl dollmaker. I might also mention that her nipples and their areolas were dark and generous in size.

  I drew her in the pose she had assumed: full length on the cushioned bench, except for one leg negligently trailing onto the floor; her arms behind her head to give an even more piquant tilt to her breasts. Though I could not help viewing—I might say memorizing—certain parts of her, I confess that my prudish sense of propriety made me blur them somewhat in the drawing. And Jadestone Doll complained about that, when I gave her the finished picture:

  "I am all a smudge between the legs! Are you squeamish, Fetch!, or merely ignorant of female anatomy? Surely the most sacrosanct part of my body deserves the most attention to detail."

  She got up from the bench and came to stand spread-legged before me, where I sat on my low chair. With one finger she traced what she now displayed and painstakingly described. "See? How these tender pink lips come together here in front, to enfold this little xacapili nub which is like a pink pearl and—ooh!—most responsive to the lightest touch."

  I was perspiring heavily, the servant Pitza had practically enshrouded herself in the draperies, and Cozcatl appeared permanently paralyzed in his crouch in the corner.

  "Now quit your prissy agonizing, Fetch!" said the girl queen. "I did not intend to tease you; rather to test your draftmanship. I have a task for you." She turned to snap at the maid. "Pitza, stop hiding your head! Come and dress me again."

  While that was being done, I said, "My lady wishes me to draw a picture of someone?"

  "Yes."

  "Of whom, my lady?"

  "Of anyone," she said, and I blinked in puzzlement. "You see, when I walk about the palace grounds or go into the city in my chair, it would be unladylike of me to point and say that one. Also, my eyedrops can dazzle me so that I might overlook someone really attractive. I mean men, of course."

  "Men?" I echoed stupidly.

  "I want you to carry your papers and chalks wherever you go. Whenever you encounter some handsome man, put his face and figure on paper for me." She paused to giggle. "You need not undress him. I want as many different pictures of as many different men as you can provide. But no one is to know why you are doing it, or for whom. If you are questioned, say you are merely practicing your art." She tossed back to me the two drawings I had just done. "That is all. You may take your leave, Fetch!, and do not come back until you have a sheaf of pictures to show me."

  I was not, even then, so dense that I did not have an inkling of what Jadestone Doll's command portended. But I put that out of my mind, to concentrate on doing the task to the best of my ability. My main problem was in trying to guess what a fifteen-year-old girl might regard as "handsome" in a man. Having been given no other criteria, I confined my surreptitious sketchings to princes and knights and warriors and athletes and other such stalwarts. But when I returned to the queen, with Cozcatl carrying my stack of bark papers, I had whimsically topped them with a drawing I had done from memory—of that bent, crooked, cacao-brown man who had so oddly kept reappearing in my life.

  She sniffed, but surprised me by saying, "You think you jest in mischief, Fetch! However, I have heard whispers among women that there are special delights to be had from dwarfs and hunchbacks and even"—she glanced at Cozcatl—"a little boy with a tepúli like an earlobe. Someday, when I tire of the ordinary..."

  She riffled through the papers, then stopped and said, "Yyo ayyo! This one, Fetch!, he has bold eyebrows. Who is he?"

  "That is the Crown Prince Black Flower."

  She frowned prettily. "No, that might cause complications." She went on, intently studying each picture, then said, "And this one?"

  "I do not know his name, my lady. He is a swift-messenger whom sometimes I see running with messages."

  "Ideal," she said, with that smile of hers. She pointed to the drawing and said, "Fetch!" She was not just pronouncing my name, but the verbal imperative: "Bring him!"

  I had fearfully anticipated something of the sort, but I broke into a cold sweat nonetheless. With the utmost diffidence and formality, I said:

  "My Lady Jadestone Doll, I have been ordered to serve you, and cautioned not to correct or criticize you. But, if I rightly perceive your intentions, I beg you to reconsider. You are the virgin princess of the greatest lord in all The One World, and the wedded virgin queen of a lord who is also great. You will be demeaning two Revered Speakers and your own noble self, if you trifle with some other man before you go to your Lord Husband's bed."

  I was expecting her at any moment to produce the whip she used on her slaves, but she heard me out, still wearing her infuriating sweet smile. Then she said:

  "I could tell you that your impertinence is punishable. But I will merely remark that Nezahualpili is older than my own father, and that his virility has apparently been sapped by the Lady of Tolan, by all his other wives and concubines. He keeps me sequestered here while he is no doubt desperately trying medicines and enchantments to stiffen his limp and withered old tepúli. But why should I waste my urges and juices and the bloom of my beauty while I await his convenience or his capability? If he requires postponement of his husbandly duties, I shall arrange that they are long postponed indeed. And then, when he and I are ready, you may be sure I can convince Nezahualpili that I come to him untouched and pristine and as timorous of the experience as any maiden."

  I tried again. I really did my best to dissuade her, though I do not think anyone afterward ever really believed it.

  "My lady, remember who you are, and the lineage from which you descend. You are the granddaughter of the venerated Motecuzóma, and he was born of a virgin. His father threw a gemstone into the garden of his beloved. She tucked it into her bosom, and at that moment conceived the child Motecuzóma, before she ever married or coupled with his father. Thus you have a heritage of purity and virginity which you should not sully—"

  She interrupted me with a laugh. "I am touched, Fetch!, by your concern. But you should have lectured me when I was nine or ten years old. When I was a virgin."

  It belatedly occurred to me to turn to Cozcatl and say, "You had better—you may go now, boy."

  Jadestone Doll said, "You know those carvings that the beastly Huaxteca make? The wooden torsos with the oversized male member? My father Ahuítzotl keeps one hanging on the wall of a gallery in our palace as a curiosity to amuse or amaze his men friends. It interests women, too. It has been rubbed smooth and glossy by those who have handled it admiringly in passing. Noblewomen. Servant wenches. Myself."

  I said, "I really do not think I care to hear..." But she ignored my protestation.

  "I had to drag a big storage chest against the wall, on which to stand to reach the thing. And it took me many painful days, because after each of my attempts I had to wait and rest while my inadequate tipíli stopped hurting. But I persisted, and it was a day of triumph when I finally managed just the tip of the tremendous thing. Little by little, I took more of it into me. I have had perhaps a hundred men since then, but none of them has ever given me the sensation I enjoyed in those days of thumping my little belly against that crude Huaxteca carving."

  I pleaded, "I should not know these things, my lady."

  She shrugged. "I make no excuses for my nature. That sort of release is something I must have, and must have often, and will have. I would even use you for that purpose, Fetch! You are not unappealing. And you would not inform against me, for I know you will
obey Nezahualpili's bidding that you be no talebearer. But that would not prevent your confessing your own guilt at our coupling, and that would be the ruin of us both. So..."

  She handed me the picture I had drawn of the unsuspecting swift-messenger, and a ring from her finger. "Give him this. It was my Lord Husband's wedding gift to me, and there is not another like it."

  The ring was of red gold, set with a huge emerald whose value was incalculable. Those jewels were only seldom brought by traders who ventured as far as the land of Quautemálan, the uttermost southern limit of our trade routes, and the emerald's origin was not even there, but in some land, its name unknown, an untold distance farther to the south of Quautemálan. The ring was one of those designed to be worn on a hand held vertically, for its circlet was hung with jadestone pendants that would show to best advantage when the wearer kept her hand uplifted. The ring had been made to the measure of Jadestone Doll's middle finger. I could barely squeeze it onto my little one.

  "No, you are not to wear it," the girl warned. "Nor is he. That ring would be recognized by anyone who saw it. He is merely to carry it, hidden, and then at midnight tonight show it to the guard on the eastern gate. At sight of the ring, the guard will admit him. Pitza will be waiting just inside, to bring him here."

  "Tonight?" I said. "But I must find him again, my lady. He may have been sent running on an errand to who knows where."

  "Tonight," she said. "I have already been too long deprived."

  I do not know what she would have done to me had I not found the man, but I did, and accosted him as if I were a young noble with a message for him to carry. I deliberately did not give him my name, but he said, "I am Yeyac-Netztlin, at my lord's service."

  "At a lady's service," I corrected him. "She wishes that you attend upon her at the palace at midnight."

  He looked troubled and said, "It is most difficult to tun a message any distance at night, my lord—" But then his eyes fell on the ring I held in my palm, and his eyes widened, and he said, "For that lady, of course, not midnight nor Mictlan could prevent my doing a service."