Fugitives of Fate
A One World Romance
Copyright © 2015 by T. L. Morganfield
Cover design by T. L. Morganfield
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events in this book either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form whatsoever.
Published by Feathered Serpent Books
Thornton, Colorado
For Jeff,
My husband, my best friend, my everything.
Dear reader,
What you're about to read isn't your typical historical romance. There are no dukes, no highlanders, no rogues, but there are knights; they wear jaguar skins rather than steel armor. There are kings and commoners, war and politics, and of course, most importantly of all, there is love. All of the makings of a fine romance.
The history presented in this book doesn’t follow real history though. It is instead an alternate history, which is built upon taking a pivotal historical event and asking “What if?” What if Rome hadn’t fallen? What if the South had won the Civil War? Or what if the Nazis had won World War II? This story is built upon the question: what if the Spanish Conquest had been averted? What would have become of history’s major players?
The hero and heroine are both real historical figures. Cuauhtemoc (Nahuatl for "Falling Eagle") was the very last emperor (huey tlatoani) of the Aztec empire and he was executed by Hernán Cortés under suspicion of trying to raise a revolt in the aftermath of the destruction of Tenochtitlan, the former Aztec capital, on which present-day Mexico City was founded. Malinali (the Nahuatl word for "Grass") is a more widely-known figure; to the Spanish she was La Malinche, the woman who helped Cortés conquer the mighty Aztec empire. History—and literature—has rarely been kind in judging her actions and motivations.
In real life, these two iconic figures were enemies, but what if events had played out differently? Let's find out!
Chapter One
Malinali wound through the throng of noblemen and warriors crowding the palace's great hall, heading for the kitchens. Banners of red, green, blue, and white feathers hung from the white-washed walls, all bearing the emperor's crest: a swooping eagle with outspread talons, snakes writhing in its beak. With the palace musicians playing drums and clay flutes, it was impossible to overhear any conversation, but she didn't miss the leering calls of a group of young noblemen wearing their cotton armor under their colorful feathered xicolli shirts as she passed by them; such tedious behavior was expected of young warriors, and she ignored them and pressed on through the crush of bodies. She paused though when she heard her Lady's voice.
"Don't forget the honey, Malinali!" Lady Tecuichpo called from across the room where she lounged on a pile of pillows in the corner, resting. Despite the male servants cooling her with goose feather fans, sweat streaked the yellow face powder she wore to disguise her pallor.
Nodding, Malinali turned away again, but from the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Cuauhtemoc—huey tlatoani of the Mexica—sitting on his reed-woven icpalli throne, scanning the crowd with intense dark eyes. He looked small in his lavish turquoise robe and the enormous headdress of long, wispy emerald quetzal feathers, but his jaw-line spoke unmistakable strength and confidence. She rarely paid attention to such trivial things—it was particularly foolish for a slave to be taken with pretty noblemen—but when Cuauhtemoc's searching gaze fixed on hers, her breath caught.
She held his stare only for a heartbeat—decorum forbade she look him in the eye or turn her back on him when leaving a room—but in that briefest of moments, she couldn't look away. His eyes smoldered with secret passion, a desire to devour everything he saw, like a jaguar spotting his prey. She ducked through the doorway onto the portico, her heart hammering. After the crush of sweat and flowers in the great hall, she welcomed the cool evening breeze and the rich aroma of roasting meats and chile peppers.
Once in the kitchens, she grabbed a gourd-bowl and let the head cook ladle watery cornmeal mash into it. "Lady Tecuichpo is getting better?" he asked.
"Slowly." Though she suspected her mistress would get sick on the atole, again. Three months earlier, Tecuichpo had come down with a mysterious illness that had turned her body burning hot; but when oozing sores broke out all over her, the emperor ordered all of her slaves put into quarantine and took his young wife away to one of his private estates in Huaxtepec. Malinali spent the next two weeks in isolation, where two of the slaves perished, but her thoughts remained with her mistress; Tecuichpo was still so young, with all of her life ahead of her, and to be cut down so soon was unfair.
But a month later, Cuauhtemoc returned with Tecuichpo at his side. "He alone cared for me," Tecuichpo told Malinali. "He gave me cool baths and put salve on my sores; he even fed me by his own hand when I was too weak to feed myself." She sighed longingly. "I can't wait until I'm old enough to be his wife in more than just ceremony."
The sickness had marred her pretty face with dark red splotches and pockmarks, and though she seemed better for the first month, she soon turned listless and weak again. Some days she never left her bed. She shouldn't have been at tonight's feast, even though it celebrated her sixteenth Name Day—the beginning of adulthood—but she'd insisted. "I must show Cuauhtemoc that I'm strong. If he thinks I'm still sick, he'll never...we'll never...." She broke down crying at that point, and nothing Malinali said could comfort her.
Malinali added honey to the atole, then, after a quick glance around to see if anyone was watching, she sprinkled in some herbs from the maguey-cloth pouch she always carried. She hoped some of the medicinal spells and potions she'd learned in Potonchan would help her mistress recover her strength and health. She had to be careful though. The Mexica thought all magic evil, even the beneficial kind. She tucked the pouch back under her dress then stirred in the powdered herbs as she left the kitchen.
But as she approached the doorway to the great hall, the emperor suddenly loomed over her, blocking her way. She met his grave, dark eyes for a breath before dropping her gaze and bowing. "Revered Speaker."
"Malinali, isn't it?" Cuauhtemoc's voice was liquid heat on her ears. "From Paynala?"
Startled, she stared at him; a dire protocol violation, but he'd ensnared her with his questioning gaze. "I was born there, My Lord," she choked out as she wrestled her wits back. Fluster and confusion heated her cheeks. Who told him where she was from? She never spoke of her childhood to anyone; not even her best friend Xochitli. She preferred to keep her tears and pain to herself.
Cuauhtemoc folded his arms and smiled behind the finger he curled before his lips. "La Malinche," he murmured, bemused. "Working in my palace!"
"La Malinche?" She tried not to sound as though she thought him deranged, but failed.
"Nothing." He leaned forward and looked into the bowl. "For my wife?"
"I tend to her needs, My Lord."
He nodded. "She speaks very highly of you."
A lie. Tecuichpo always told her if she said kind things about her to the guards or the head steward. She stiffened her shoulders, standing straighter, but kept her gaze downcast. "My Lady is waiting for her meal, Your Grace."
He finally stepped aside, but she felt his gaze follow her the entire way back to where Tecuichpo reclined on her feather-stuffed pillows. Daring a glance back, she spotted Cuauhtemoc back at his throne, still watching her, tapping his fingers on his knee. She turned back quickly, tamping down the anger. She knew all too well what that kind of look meant, especially from a man of Cuauhtemoc's power and privilege. Gods, let m
e be wrong, she thought, turning her attention back to Tecuichpo, who was blissfully oblivious. Especially for My Lady's sake.
¤
"I can't believe you're ravaging that slave with your eyes right in front of your wife."
Cuauhtemoc broke his focus away from Malinali to glare at his friend Ixtlil. The other man sat on a black-feathered mat next to Cuauhtemoc's reed throne and grinned at him over his gold-plated cup. He took his title of King of Texcoco very seriously and showed it off with an extravagant collection of silver and gold necklaces, turquoise rings, and a heavy feathered robe that concealed his ample gut. His cheeks were flushed with their usual merriment and mischief.
"I'm not ravaging her," Cuauhtemoc replied, amused.
"Even I'm careful not to stare at other women when my wife is in the room, so what's your excuse?" Ixtlil glanced over at Malinali. "Not that she isn't worth looking at, but that chunky wooden slave collar makes her look as if she has no neck."
For a breath, Cuauhtemoc wondered how Malinali's neck looked under that concealing collar, but he then turned his gaze to Tecuichpo. The girl looked pale but in good spirits, and she smiled shyly when she noticed him watching her. He returned the gesture.
"Besides, why would you want some random slave when your virgin wife awaits your first visit to her bed tonight?" When Cuauhtemoc snorted, Ixtlil held up his hands, a crooked grin on his round face. "I know. You don't talk about such things."
"There are far more important things to talk about."
"Such as your victory over the Spanish?"
Cuauhtemoc shook his head. "That's old news."
"Perhaps, but everyone loves a good war story."
"The people need something new to crow about."
"Like say...Tlaxcala?" Ixtlil raised an eyebrow.
Letting out an exhausted breath, Cuauhtemoc asked, "Don't you ever tire of war?"
"And have to stay home with my wife? No thank you."
"I tire of war." Cuauhtemoc stared into the watery remains of his chocolate then drained the cup in one swig. "It gets us nowhere."
"What if the gods hear you?"
"Who do you think told me so?"
Ixtlil sobered; he always did when Cuauhtemoc alluded to the divine vision that had changed everything; how, while on his death bed, his teyolia had slipped the binding of his body, to go into the underworld, but instead of disappearing, it returned a few days later, with knowledge of a terrifying future, shown to him by the gods themselves. That was an even better story than the battle against Cortés, one that would turn him into a god in the eyes of his people, if he chose to tell them about it.
But he didn't want the pressure of living up to that image, so he'd told only Ixtlil, who would scoff at any notion of his best friend being any kind of god.
"Crushing Tlaxcala would be a nice feather in my headdress," Cuauhtemoc conceded. "But peace with them would be far nicer, for everyone."
Ixtlil gave out a booming laugh. "Don't tell that to our soldiers."
Cuauhtemoc cracked a strained smile. Warfare had been the preferred diplomatic status of the empire since its inception, but the gods had warned him that such conflicts weren't sustainable; the empire dodged fate, but just because Cuauhtemoc had killed Cortés and driven the Spanish off the islands, it didn't mean everyone was safe. More invaders would come, and so long as everyone remained embroiled in petty infighting, the future was vulnerable. Especially if ambitious lords of hostile regions—such as Tlaxcala—started intentionally spreading the smallpox as a weapon.
"Our best defense against future invasions is to make peace with our enemies and turn them into allies," Cuauhtemoc said.
"Yes, but with Tlaxcala?" Ixtlil wrinkled his nose, disgusted. "A whole lot of ignorant dogs, they are, and stinking thieves. They ignore our envoys and they stole my Cihuacoatl's horse from the army camp just last month. We should wipe them out, not try to make friends with them."
"There's two hundred years of bad blood between our nations, so of course it won't be easy," Cuauhtemoc conceded. But if La Malinche—as the gods had called her—was in his court, under his control, that changed everything. If she could be as much use to him as she would have been to Cortés....
Cuauhtemoc watched Malinali help Tecuichpo up from her pillows and lead her out. His wife looked ill and weak, gripping onto her handmaiden like an anxious bird. She wasn't getting better with the passing days, and after what she'd asked of him when they were alone in Huaxtepec...he didn't look forward to discussing the tough facts of their future as husband and wife when he visited her tonight. But I owe it to her to be honest.
A slave boy moved to refill his cup but he held up his hand. "Bring a fresh pot to Lady Tecuichpo's quarters, with two cups." The boy nodded then hurried off.
"You're leaving already?" Ixtlil asked when Cuauhtemoc rose. "We haven't even smoked our pipes yet."
"Any nobleman here would enjoy smoking and listening at the feet of the King of Texcoco. I have things I need to do."
Ixtlil grinned. "Things?"
"Things, you lecher. And behave yourself."
"I'm not the one eyeing the slave girls."
Cuauhtemoc rolled his eyes.
"You should take a few as concubines," Ixtlil suggested.
Cuauhtemoc's mother would rupture a vein at that suggestion. She'd lectured him for years about bringing slaves into his household, a concern stemming from when the son of one of her husband's concubines—a former slave—tried to kill Cuauhtemoc when he was only six. Ambitious slaves were hardly the only ones to practice such power plays, but Cuauhtemoc made a habit of not bedding his servants. Or anyone else, for that matter.
"A king should have dozens of concubines, but the huey tlatoani should have hundreds; and you have, what? One virgin wife you haven't even bedded yet? What would your father think?"
Lancing Ixtlil with a glare, Cuauhtemoc growled, "I'm not my father."
"You aren't," Ixtlil agreed, casting him an uneasy nod.
"Keep your paws off my slaves. We'll talk again in the morning." Cuauhtemoc then ducked out the doorway behind the dais, glad to be away from the constant reminders of how he failed miserably at being his father.
¤
Once back in her quarters, Lady Tecuichpo retched all over the floor. She sobbed and tried to clean it up herself, but Malinali led her away to the bed. "Cleaning it up is my job," she reminded her. Luckily the sweet aroma of the copal candles she kept burning in her room—to drive off the smell of sickness—shielded them from the worst of it. Malinali rolled up the red and black striped rug next to the bed, to take it away for cleaning, then she brought a cup of water from the rain jar in the bath yard. She then sat on the bed with her mistress and cleaned the yellow powder off her face.
"I'm going to die, and no one cares!" Tecuichpo cried, adding tears to her sweat-streaked face paint.
Malinali squeezed her elbow. "I care."
"You're the only one who does."
Once Malinali finished, Tecuichpo grabbed her hand to keep her sitting next to her on the luxurious rabbit-skin blanket. "You've been like a mother to me, Malinali. You taught me the things my mother would have if she were still alive, and you comforted me through the death of my last husband and having to marry Cuauhtemoc. You've even told me what to expect when he finally can see me as a woman rather than the child the Council forced him to marry. I've been waiting so many years and now it's finally happening."
Trying to muster some enthusiasm, Malinali nodded, but she really hoped Cuauhtemoc had sense enough to see that his wife—woman though she now was—wasn't in any condition for begetting children. She understood Tecuichpo's eagerness though; Cuauhtemoc was her third husband in her short life. At age eight, her father, Emperor Motecuhzoma the Younger, had married her to one of his cousins, but when that man died in battle around the same time her father perished in a palace fire, the Triple Alliance Council married her to the new huey tlatoani—her uncle Cuitlahuac. He died four years later, after tak
ing an arrow to the throat in a hunting accident, and once again the Council married her off, this time to Cuauhtemoc, who'd won election for his legendary military victories over the Spanish. It didn't matter that he was already married with a child; Tecuichpo's status as a former emperor's daughter gave her precedence, so he'd had to set his marriage to his first wife aside. Lord Death claimed that poor woman later in childbirth, and took the baby as well. Hopefully losing one wife to the childbed would convince him to delay claiming his husbandly rights until Tecuichpo was strong enough to face the dangers that lay ahead on that path; the childbed wasn't called a battlefield for no reason.
But life had taught Malinali that powerful men took what they wanted when they wanted it, regardless of what was best for the woman. That's why every day, along with her morning tortilla, she drank a bitter tea made of the root of the chipahuacxihuitl, to keep from begetting. But feeding Tecuichpo such potent medicine would only make her sicker. The poor girl was at the mercy of the goodness of the man who'd spent all evening leering at her handmaiden.
The concern must have been plain on Malinali's face, for Tecuichpo frowned. "He won't ever visit our marriage bed anyway." Her bottom lip quivered. "Those jade stones and feathers we laid together on this bed will never become the children he promised to give me."
Malinali put an arm around her shoulder and hugged her tight. Personal contact between slaves and their noble masters was frowned upon—and, in the case of the emperor, completely forbidden—but Tecuichpo leaned eagerly into Malinali's embrace. "There will be time enough, My Lady. You need to get well first."
"What if I never recover?" Tecuichpo sobbed.
"You will get better."
"When we were in Huaxtepec, I asked him to forget all those silly laws and...." She squeezed her eyes shut. "It was foolishness, and the fever speaking. He, of course, refused."
"As he should have."
"But now he'll never visit my bed, even when I recover."
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