Aztec

by neetha Napew

  I followed them down the stone stair to their stone-walled studio. It was well appointed but, being underground, lighted day and night by lamps and torches, it felt very like a dungeon. The artists had been working simultaneously on several statues, two of which I recognized. The one of the slave, I Will Be of Greatness, was already sculptured full length, life size, and Chimali had started painting the clay with his specially concocted paints.

  "Very lifelike," I said, and meant it. "The Lady Jadestone Doll will approve."

  "Oh, well, capturing the likeness was not difficult," Tlatli said modestly. "Not when I could work from your excellent drawing and mold the clay upon the actual skull."

  "But my pictures show no colors," I said, "and even the Master Sculptor Pixquitl has been unable to recreate those. Chimali, I applaud your talent."

  I meant that, too. Pixquitl's statues had been done in the usual flat colors: a uniform pale copper for all exposed skin surfaces, an unvarying black for the hair, and so on. Chimali's skin tones varied as do those on a living person: the nose and ears just the least bit darker than the rest of the face, the cheeks a little more pink. Even the black of the hair glinted here and there with brownish lights.

  "It should look even better when it has been fired in the kiln," said Chimali. "The colors meld more together. Oh, and look at this, Mole." He led me around to the back of the statue and pointed. At the bottom of the slave's clay mantle Tlatli had incised his falcon symbol. Under that was Chimali's blood-red handprint.

  "Yes, unmistakable," I said, without inflexion. I moved to the next statue. "And this will be Something Delicate."

  Tlatli said uncomfortably, "I think, Mole, we would prefer not to know the names of the—uh—models."

  "That was more than her name," I said.

  Only her head and shoulders had yet been molded in clay, but they stood at the height they had stood in life, for they were supported by bones, her articulated bones, her own skeleton, held upright by a pole at the back.

  "It is giving me problems," said Tlatli, as if he were speaking of a stone block in which he had found an unsuspected flaw. He showed me a picture, the one I had sketched in the marketplace, the portrait head I had first drawn of Something Delicate. "Your drawing and the skull serve me nicely for doing the head. And the colotli, the armature, gives me the body's linear proportions, but—"

  "The armature?" I inquired.

  "The interior support. Any sculpture of clay or wax must be supported by an armature, just as a pulpy cactus is supported by its interior woody framework. For a statue of a human figure, what better armature than its own original skeleton?"

  "What indeed?" I said. "But tell me, how do you procure the original skeletons?"

  Chimali said, "The Lady Jadestone Doll provides them, from her private kitchen."

  "From her kitchen?"

  Chimali looked away from me. "Do not ask me how she has persuaded her cooks and kitchen slaves. But they flay the skin and scoop the bowels and carve the flesh from the—from the model—without dismembering it. Then they boil the remainder in great vats of lime water. They have to stop the boiling before the ligaments and sinews of the joints are dissolved, so there are still some scraps of meat we have to scrape off. But we do get the skeleton entire. Oh, a finger bone or a rib may come loose, but..."

  "But unfortunately," said Tlatli, "even the complete skeleton gives me no indication of how the body's exterior was padded and curved. I can guess at a man's figure, but a woman's is different. You know, the breasts and hips and buttocks."

  "They were sublime," I muttered, remembering Something Delicate. "Come to my chambers. I will give you another drawing which shows your model in her entirety."

  In my apartment, I ordered Cozcatl to make chocolate for us all. Tlatli and Chimali roamed through the three rooms, uttering exclamatory noises about their finery and luxury, while I leafed through my assortment of drawings and extracted one that showed Something Delicate full length.

  "Ah, completely nude," said Tlatli. "That is ideal for my purposes." He might have been passing judgment on a sample of good marl clay.

  Chimali also looked at the picture of the dead woman and said, "Truly, Mole, your drawings are skillfully detailed. If you would leave off doing only lines, and learn to work with the lights and shadows of paint, you could be a real artist. You too could give beauty to the world."

  I laughed harshly. "Like statues built on boiled skeletons?"

  Tlatli sipped at his chocolate and said defensively, "We did not kill those people, Mole. And we do not know why the young queen wants them preserved. But consider. If they were merely buried or burned, they would disintegrate into mold or ashes. We at least make them endure. And yes, we do our best to make them objects of beauty."

  I said, "I am a scribe. I do not prettify the world. I only describe it."

  Tlatli held up the picture of Something Delicate. "You did this, and it is quite a beautiful thing."

  "From now on, I will draw nothing but word pictures. I have done the last portrait I shall ever do."

  "That one of the Lord Joy," Chimali guessed. He glanced about to make sure my slave was not within hearing. "You must know you are putting Pactli at risk of the kitchen lime vats."

  "I devoutly hope so," I said. "I will not let my sister's death go unpunished." I flung Chimali's own words back at him: "It would be a weakness, a sullying of what we felt for each other."

  The two had the grace at least to lower their heads for some moments of silence before Tlatli spoke:

  "You will put us all at hazard of discovery, Mole."

  "You are already at hazard. I have long been. I might have told you that before you came." I gestured in the direction of their studio. "But would you have believed what is down there?"

  Chimali protested, "Those are only city commoners and slaves. They might never be missed. Pactli is a Crown Prince of a Mexíca province!"

  I shook my head. "The husband of that woman in the drawing—I hear he has gone quite mad, searching to discover what became of his beloved wife. He will never be sane again. And even slaves do not just disappear. The Revered Speaker has his guardsmen already seeking and making inquiries about the several mysteriously missing persons. Discovery is only a matter of time. That time may be tomorrow night, if Pactli is prompt."

  Visibly sweating, Tlatli said, "Mole, we cannot let you—"

  "You cannot stop me. And if you try to flee, if you try to warn Pactli or Jadestone Doll, I will hear of it instantly, and I will go instantly to the Uey-Tlatoani."

  Chimali said, "He will have your life along with everyone else's. Why do this to me and Tlatli, Mole? Why do it to yourself?"

  "My sister's death is not upon Pactli's head alone. I was involved, you were involved. I am prepared to atone with my own life, if that is my tonáli. You two must take your chances."

  "Chances!" Tlatli flung up his hands. "What chances?"

  "One very good one. I suspect the lady herself has the sense not to kill a prince of the Mexíca. I suspect she will toy with him for a while, perhaps a long while, then send him home with his lips sealed by a pledge."

  "Yes," Chimali said thoughtfully. "She may court danger, but not suicide." He turned to Tlatli. "And while he is here, you and I can finish the statues already on order. Then we can plead urgent work elsewhere—"

  Tlatli gulped the dregs of his chocolate. "Come! We will work night and day. We must be finished with everything on hand, we must have reason to ask leave to depart, before our lady wearies of our prince."

  On that note of hope, they dashed from my chambers.

  I had not lied to them, but I had neglected to mention one detail of my arrangements. I had spoken truly when I suggested that Jadestone Doll might balk at killing an invited prince. That was a very real possibility. And for that reason, for this particular guest, I had made one small change in the usual wording of the invitation. As we say in our language, of one who deserves retribution, "he would be destroyed with f
lowers."

  The gods supposedly know all our plans, and know their ends before their beginnings. The gods are mischievous, and they delight to potter with the plans of men. They usually prefer to complicate those plans, as they might snarl a fowler's net, or to frustrate them so the plans come to no result whatever. Very seldom do the gods intervene to any worthier purpose. But I do believe, that time, they looked at my plan and said among themselves, "This dark scheme contrived by Dark Cloud, it is so ironically good, let us make it ironically even better."

  The next midnight, I kept my ear close against the inside of my door until I heard Pitza and the guest arrive and enter the apartment across the corridor. Then I cracked my door slightly to hear better. I expected some exclamation of profanity from Jadestone Doll when she first compared Pactli's brutish face with my idealized portrait. What I had not expected was what I did hear: the girls' piercing scream of real shock, and then her hysterical shrieking of my name: "Fetch! Come here at once? Fetch!"

  That seemed rather an extreme reaction in anyone meeting even the abhorrent Lord Joy. I opened my door and stepped out, to find a spear-carrying guard stationed just outside it, and another across the hall beside my lady's door. Both of them respectfully snapped their spears to the vertical as I emerged, and neither tried to prevent my entering the other apartment.

  The young queen was standing just inside. Her face was twisted and unlovely, and nearly white with shock. But it gradually went nearly purple with fury as she began screaming at me, "What kind of comedy is this, you son of a dog? Do you think you can make filthy jokes at my expense?"

  She went on like that, in full voice. I turned to Pitza and the man she had brought—and, for all my mixed feelings, I could not help bursting out into loud and sustained laughter. I had forgotten about Jadestone Doll's drug-caused nearsightedness. She must have come running through all the rooms and halls of her apartment, to embrace the eagerly awaited Lord Joy, and she must have got right upon the visitor before her vision allowed her to see him clearly. That truly would have been enough of a shock to force a scream from one who had never seen him before. His presence was a staggering surprise to me too, but I laughed instead of screaming, for I had the advantage of recognizing the shriveled, hunched, cacao-brown old man.

  I had worded the letter to Pactli in such a way as to assure that he could not arrive unobserved. But I had no idea how or why the old vagabond had come instead of Pactli, and it did not seem the time to ask. Besides, I could not stop laughing. "Disloyal! Unforgivable! Despicable!" the girl was crying, over my guffaws, and Pitza was trying to fade into the nearest draperies, and the cacao man was waving my fawnskin letter and saying, "But that is your own signature, is it not, my lady?" She broke off her vilification of me to snarl at him, "Yes! But can even you believe it was addressed to a miserable, half-naked beggar? Now shut your toothless mouth!" She whirled back to me. "It has to be a joke, since it convulses you so. Confess to it and you will merely be beaten raw. Keep on laughing like that and I swear—"

  "And of course, my lady," the man persisted, "I recognize in the body of the letter the picture writing of my old friend Mole here."

  "I said be silent! When the flower garland is around your throat, you will dearly regret every breath you have wasted. And his name is Fetch!"

  "Is it, now? It fits." His slitted eyes slid to me, and the way they glittered was not at all friendly. My laughter subsided. "But the letter clearly says, my lady, for me to be here at this hour, and wearing this ring, and—"

  "Not wearing the ring!" she shrieked, most imprudently. "You sneaking old pretender, you even pretend to read. The ring was to be carried concealed! And you must have flourished it through all Texcóco... yya ayya!" She ground her teeth, and swung again to me. "Do you realize what your joke may have caused, you unspeakable lout? Yya ouíya, but you will die in the slowest of agonies!"

  "How is it a joke, my lady?" the bent man asked. "According to this invitation, you must have been expecting someone. And you came running so joyfully to greet me—"

  "You! To greet you?" screamed the girl, throwing out her arms as if she were physically throwing away all caution. "Would the cheapest, hungriest waterfront whore in Texcóco lie with you?" Once more she turned on me. "Fetch! Why did you do this?"

  "My lady," I said, speaking for the first time, and speaking the hard words gently. "I have often thought your Lord Husband did not sufficiently weigh his words, when he commanded me to serve the Lady Jadestone Doll, and to serve her without question. But I was bound to obey. As you once pointed out to me, my lady, I could not myself betray your wickedness without disobeying both you and him. I had to trick you, finally, into betraying yourself."

  She took a step back from me, and her mouth worked soundlessly, while her angrily flushed face began to pale again. The words took a while to come. "You—tricked me? This—this is no joke?"

  "Not his joke, at any rate, but mine," said the hunched man. "I was at the lakeside when a well-dressed and oiled and perfumed young lord debarked from your private acáli, my lady, and boldly made his way hither, with this ring highly visible and recognizable upon the little finger of his big hand. It seemed a flagrant indiscretion, if not a transgression. I summoned guards to relieve him of the ring, and then of the letter he carried. I brought the things in his stead."

  "You—you—by what authority—how dare you meddle?" she spluttered. "Fetch! This man is a confessed thief. Kill him! I order you to kill this man, here and now, that I may see."

  "No, my lady," I said, still gently, for I was almost beginning to feel sorry for her. "This one time I disobey. I think you have at last revealed your true self to another observer. I think I am released from all bonds of obedience. I think you will kill no more."

  She spun swiftly and yanked open the door to the corridor. Perhaps she meant to flee, but when the sentinel outside turned to face her, blocking the doorway, she said sharply, "Guard, I have here one thief and one traitor. That beggar, see, he is wearing my stolen ring. And this commoner has disobeyed my direct command. I want you to take them both and—"

  "Your pardon, my lady," the guard rumbled. "I already have my orders from the Uey-Tlatoani. Different orders."

  Her mouth fell open.

  I said, "Guard, lend me your spear for one moment."

  He hesitated, then handed it to me. I stepped to the nearby alcove housing the statue of the gardener Xali-Otli and, with all my strength, drove the spear point under the thing's chin. The painted head broke off, it hit the floor and rolled, its baked clay shattering and crumbling. When the head bounced to a stop against a far wall, it was a bare, white, gleaming skull, the cleanest and most honest face of man. The brown beggar watched its progress without expression. But the immense pupils of Jadestone Doll's eyes seemed now to have engulfed her eyes entirely. They were liquid black pools of terror. I gave the spear back to the guard and asked, "What are your orders, then?"

  "You and your slave boy are to remain in your apartment. The lady queen and her serving women are to stay in this one. You will all remain under guard while your chambers are searched, and until further orders come from the Revered Speaker."

  I said to the cacao man, "Will you join me in my captivity for a while, venerable one, to take a cup of chocolate perhaps?"

  "No," he said, wrenching his gaze away from the exposed skull. "I am bidden to report on this night's events. I think the Lord Nezahualpili will now command a more extensive search—of the sculpture studios and other places."

  I made the gesture of kissing the earth. "Then I bid you good night, old man, my lady." She stared at me, but I do not think she saw me.

  I returned to my own chambers to find them being ransacked by the Lord Strong Bone and some others of the Revered Speaker's confidential aides. They had already discovered my drawings of Jadestone Doll and Something Delicate in embrace.

  * * *

  You say you attend today's sitting, my Lord Bishop, because you are interested in hearing ho
w our judicial processes were conducted. But it is hardly necessary for me to describe the trial of Jadestone Doll. Your Excellency will find it minutely set forth in the archives of the Texcóco court, if you will trouble to examine those books. Your Excellency will also find it in the written histories of other lands, and even in the folktales of the common people, for the scandal is still remembered and related, especially by our women.

  Nezahualpili invited to the trial the rulers of every neighboring nation, and all their tlamatintin wise men, and all their tecutlin of every least province. He even invited them to bring their wives and court ladies. He did it partly to make public demonstration that not even the highest-born of women could sin with impunity. But there was another reason. The accused was the daughter of the most powerful ruler in The One World, the ill-tempered and bellicose Revered Speaker Ahuítzotl of the Mexíca. By inviting him and every other nation's highest officials, Nezahualpili sought also to demonstrate that the proceedings were conducted in absolute fairness. It was for that same reason that Nezahualpili sat to one side during the trial. He delegated the questioning of defendants and witnesses to two disinterested parties: his Snake Woman, the Lord Strong Bone, and a tlamatini judge named Tepitzic.

  Texcóco's hall of justice was crowded to capacity. It may have been the greatest gathering of rulers—friendly, neutral, inimical—until then convened in one place. Ahuítzotl only was absent. He could not expose himself to the disgrace of being ogled and pitied and derided while his own daughter's shame was inexorably revealed. In his stead, he sent the Snake Woman of Tenochtítlan. Among the many other lords who did attend, however, was the governor of Xaltócan, Pactli's father, Red Heron. He sat and endured his humiliation, head bowed, throughout the entire trial. The few times he raised his sad and bleared old eyes, they fixed on me. I think he was remembering a remark he had made long ago, when he had commented on my childhood ambitions: "Whatever occupation you do undertake, young man, you ought to do it well."