‘Despatch an honour guard to bring Apocol here to Tenochtitlan,’ Hummingbird continued. ‘Let him oversee the burning of your sorcerers; let him put his warding spells in place to protect your palace against intrusion, and then send him to Cholula to prepare the final doom of the white men.’
‘Your word is my command,’ said Moctezuma as the vision slowly faded from view.
PART TWO
12 May 1519–16 August 1519
Chapter Twenty-Three
Wednesday 12 May 1519
Awakened by Melchior’s wet nose nuzzling his face, Pepillo shifted position on the hard ground beneath his blanket and gazed sleepily into the cold ashes of last night’s kitchen fire. He was overtaken by an uneasy premonition that something was wrong.
Melchior whined and nuzzled him again.
‘What is it, boy?’ Pepillo asked, still drowsy. ‘What’s the matter?’
The dog replied with a muffled bark and this time Pepillo sat up, wide awake, his spine tingling. He looked around. On the ridge of the dunes he saw sentries at their post, the barrel of the small falconet they manned silhouetted against the rising sun. The soldiers’ postures were alert, their gaze was directed to the south, and the tone of surprise in their voices was clear on the morning air.
South lay Cuetlaxtlan, from whence any Mexica forces that were to be thrown against the Spanish camp could be expected to make their approach. And the threat of an attack, after yesterday’s menacing encounter with Moctezuma’s ambassadors, seemed very real. Pepillo bounded to his feet and ran up the side of the dune, scattering sand, with Melchior loping at his side. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked, as he burst in amongst the sentries.
‘See for yourself, lad,’ said Miguel de La Mafla, a young musketeer promoted to the rank of officer cadet after the fighting at Potonchan. He pointed to the rough bivouacs that had been pitched a few hundred paces to the south of the camp’s perimeter to house the thousands of Totonac labourers and serving women who the Mexica had put at the disposal of the Spaniards. The bivouacs were deserted and empty now, not a soul moved amongst them, and it was obvious the workers had fled. ‘They stole away in the night,’ La Mafla said. ‘Didn’t make a sound, the buggers.’
‘What does it mean?’ asked Pepillo.
‘It means we have to shift for ourselves,’ complained La Mafla with a rueful smile. ‘Pity. I was getting used to being waited on hand and foot.’
‘And to tupping a different woman every night,’ added another of the sentries with a ribald laugh.
Pepillo blushed. ‘But what does it really mean? Will we be attacked?’
‘Ask your master the caudillo,’ said La Mafla, patting the brass barrel of the falconet. ‘But if they come, we’re ready.’
* * *
No attack materialised, but neither did the additional supplies of food and drinking water that Pichatzin, the governor of Cuetlaxtlan, had promised the day before. As evening fell, Cortés was therefore not surprised to be confronted in his pavilion by a delegation of Velazquistas led, as usual, by Juan Escudero. Escudero’s by now steadfast companion Velázquez de Léon was with him, and they were supported, predictably, by Cristóbal de Olid. Less predictable (not because his Velazquista sympathies were unknown to Cortés, but because he was usually not forward in revealing them) was the grizzled, authoritative presence of Diego de Ordaz, and an even more unexpected member of the group was Alonso de Grado, hitherto a staunch and vocal supporter of the expedition. Francisco de Montejo was also there, wearing a hangdog expression. Last but not least the Velazquistas had even brought along a man of God, a one-eyed priest with lank black hair and a bad smell about him named Pedro de Cuellar, another of the many distant relatives of the governor of Cuba who had sailed with the expedition.
Quite a formidable troop, Cortés thought as he called for Pepillo to light the torches that stood in brackets around the walls of the pavilion, to bring wine, and to be ready to take notes. Arranging himself comfortably in his folding campaign chair, Cortés then made small talk regarding the weather, the insects and the probable causes of the bloody flux that still afflicted a quarter of the expeditionaries. He finally turned to Escudero. ‘So Don Juan, I gather you have some concerns,’ he said as the wine was poured. Pepillo was settled cross-legged on the floor, quill in hand, a fresh sheaf of milled paper resting ready on his knees.
‘Concerns?’ Escudero spluttered with a spastic jerk of his wine glass. ‘Concerns! Have you not observed that we have been deserted by our native labourers? Have you not observed that no food has been brought to us? Does it not occur to you that the treasure handed to us yesterday may be about to be snatched back from us tomorrow?’
Cortés treated his old enemy to an unblinking stare, saying nothing, but reflecting inwardly on how much he loathed this former mayor of the town of Baracoa, whose pronounced underbite gave him the look of the grouper, caught fresh from the sea, that the cooks had served up for luncheon. It was not so much that Escudero had been the one to arrest and lock him up in Baracoa’s filthy jail on Velázquez’s orders over the matter of Catalina, but that the man’s strutting and sneers at the time were as unforgivable as the trumped-up charges of treason the governor had used to force Cortés to marry his insipid niece.
‘Well?’ stormed Escudero as the silence drew out. ‘Do you have nothing to say?’
Cortés smiled. ‘The labourers have done their work for us, Don Juan. The camp is complete and we can manage well enough without them. As to food, the bounteous ocean is near at hand – ’ a gesture through the open flaps of the pavilion to where the fleet floated at anchor in the bay – ‘and our sailors know how to fish. I myself enjoyed an excellent grouper at luncheon and shall dine on lobster tonight.’
‘You get the choice of the catch!’ complained de Léon, a man of prodigious appetites.
‘Yet you have not been deprived,’ replied Cortés, raising a quizzical eyebrow at de Léon’s huge belly. He looked around at the others: ‘You are all still eating well, I think?’
‘It’s not ourselves we’re concerned about,’ said Ordaz gruffly, his strong, stubborn miller’s face set in a look of deep disapproval. ‘It’s the common soldiery who’ll grow hungry if the supplies from Cuetlaxtlan aren’t resumed.’
When Cortés had led the decisive cavalry charge at Potonchan, he had given Ordaz command of the infantry. The old swordsman had performed the task well, but now seemed to feel it entitled him to the role of spokesman for the needs of the ranks.
‘Fie, Don Diego,’ said Cortés in a tone of gentle reproval. ‘They need not go hungry. We are Spaniards after all! We can fend very well for ourselves – hunt, fish and take what we want from the indigenes whenever we wish. None of us will go hungry, I promise you that—’
‘All this is beside the point,’ cut in Escudero.
‘But, with respect, Don Juan, it was you who raised this point.’
Escudero’s eyes bulged. ‘As I have every right to do.’ He thrust out his lower jaw even further than usual. ‘However, what we’re really here to discuss is the gold.’
‘Ah, yes, of course, the gold.’
‘We received enough yesterday from those stinking savages to make every one of us rich – not just the officers, but the men as well. We must not squander or risk this great treasure, Don Hernán. We have no allies here, no reserves to fall back on. We must sail at once for Cuba, and for safety, and make account to His Excellency the governor.’
‘I agree that we must not squander or risk the treasure,’ said Cortés, ‘but to cut for Cuba now when there is still so much to be gained seems the ultimate folly. I should not like to think, Don Juan, that you have grown shy?’
‘Shy? You dare call me shy?’
‘Your great desire for safety raises the question—’
Escudero lunged to his feet, upsetting his stool, his knuckles white around the hilt of his sword. ‘You will withdraw that remark,’ he said, a bubble of spit popping at the corner of his mouth, �
�or you will give me satisfaction … ’
Cortés stood also. ‘My dear Don Juan,’ he said, ‘I shall be delighted to give you satisfaction.’
* * *
The trouble with being an officer, even a relatively junior one, was the infernal need to make decisions, and after being called to the sentry post at the camp’s northern gateway, Bernal Díaz found himself confronted by yet another judgement call – in this case whether to disturb the caudillo during his meeting with a group of the expedition’s senior captains, or to leave the matter until the morning.
A knot of about twenty Indians – most outlandish Indians – had gathered outside the gate in the darkness. They had a wild look, with muscular tattooed bodies and great holes in their lower lips and in their ears, in which they had inserted large disks, some of bone, some of stone spotted with blue, some of gold. They were unarmed and their manner seemed friendly enough, but what on earth did they want, and what was it they were saying in their foreign, incomprehensible jabber?
Díaz despatched a sentry to bring the woman Malinal and her counterpart Jerónimo de Aguilar, who collectively provided the expedition’s interpreting services, but when the sentry returned he was accompanied by Malinal alone. It seemed that Aguilar was laid up with the bloody flux and claimed to be too unwell to come.
As ever when he found himself in close proximity to the beautiful raven-haired native, Díaz’s heart pounded and his tongue froze. What was he to say to her? What could he possibly say to her? He knew that she was learning Castilian – the boy Pepillo was teaching her and Díaz himself had sometimes heard her speak in halting Castilian to the caudillo – but he feared he would not be able to make himself understood.
He bowed awkwardly. ‘My lady,’ he began. It was not the right term of address for a native; Puertocarrero, who owned her, simply called her ‘woman’ or ‘hey, you’, but there was something ladylike, even aristocratic, about her. ‘Thank you for coming. Please tell me, do you understand my language?’
Malinal’s huge almond eyes twinkled in the torchlight. ‘Yes. Understand. And you? You understand me, Don Bernal?’
Good God! This was better than he could have hoped. She even – wonder of wonders – knew his name.
‘I understand you very well,’ he said. For a moment he was lost for words and just stood there staring at her.
That twinkle in her eyes again. ‘Can help you?’ she asked.
‘Yes! Oh yes! Very much.’ He jerked a big, dirty thumb towards the gang of Indians outside the gate. ‘I need to know what they want. Will you ask them?’
‘They Totonacs. I don’t speak they language. Maybe one speak Nahuatl? Wait … I ask.’
She stepped forward, slim, graceful, wrapped in a tight-fitting smock that left little of her figure to the imagination, passed between the guards on either side of the open gateway and addressed the Indians in a firm, clear voice.
One of them, a tall, muscular savage in his prime with the look of a warrior, immediately replied, and the pair were soon engaged in urgent conversation.
* * *
As was her habit, Tozi waited until after nightfall to enter Moctezuma’s palace. Although her invisibility protected her even in broad daylight, she always felt safer, more sure of herself, in the hours of darkness. Tonight, though, she sensed something different, something ominous, something terrible in the air. And as she floated weightless and invulnerable through the vast echoing corridors, as she passed oblivious guards with their useless obsidian-tipped spears, she experienced … what was this?
Something new?
Something unfamiliar.
Something strange.
Was it … could it be … fear?
No! Surely not. For she was Tozi, she reminded herself – Tozi the witch! – and she was never afraid. She had no reason, since Hummingbird had so mysteriously multiplied her powers, ever to be afraid!
Even so, what was this? She didn’t like the feeling at all.
She had been aware for some moments of a commotion ahead in the further of the two great inner courtyards of the palace: a blaze of torches, an eerie glow and the hubbub of a thousand voices. Tozi had intended to haunt Moctezuma tonight, but first she must discover the cause of this unusual activity. Some celebration? Some ceremony? If so, then most likely Moctezuma would preside and she might have the opportunity to disturb the balance of his mind in public. Her own intimations of fear would be as nothing beside the fear she would feed him.
* * *
‘The Great Speaker will not be pleased,’ said Teudile, his sepulchral voice emanating from behind the curtains of the gilded and feather-strewn palanquin in which his bearers carried him aloft.
Disdaining such a womanish transport, Guatemoc loped easily alongside and now, in the darkness, bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. The steward’s remark must rank, he thought, as the understatement of the year. Far from being merely displeased, Moctezuma would be furious, livid and likely murderous when he discovered what the prince had done and – worse! – what he intended to do next. Not only had he antagonised and threatened the white-skins during their meeting on the dunes, something Moctezuma had expressly forbidden; not only had he ordered the withdrawal of the Totonac labourers who had previously served the white-skins’ camp; but Guatemoc had also spirited five hundred elite Cuahchic warriors out of Tenochtitlan, his personal squad, and they awaited him at the next way station less than a mile ahead. His plan, as he had just informed Teudile, was to make a forced overnight march back to Cuetlaxtlan with his fiercely loyal Cuahchics, and begin at once to test the white-skins’ strength.
‘I’d rather I had the eighty thousand men I asked for,’ Guatemoc now added. ‘My uncle was a fool not to grant my request. With such a force I could have overwhelmed the foreigners, regardless of their weapons and war animals. But I’ll warrant I can cause them enough trouble with my picked five hundred to stir up a hornet’s nest, and I fully intend to draw Cuetlaxtlan’s garrison into the fight as well. Then Moctezuma will be obliged to send reinforcements or stand revealed for the fool and eunuch that he is.’
‘It is you who are the fool, young prince,’ said Teudile gloomily, ‘and I fear I, too, will pay the price for your folly. The Great Speaker will not forgive my failure to stop you.’
Guatemoc laughed. ‘Stop me? Absurd! How could you stop me?’
‘I cannot, of course. Yours are the arms, yours is the might, yours is the royal blood. But the lord Moctezuma will see none of this. He will have me flayed alive.’
‘Not if I return to Tenochtitlan with a conspicuous victory—’
‘Even if you do,’ said Teudile, ‘I shall have been parted from my skin by then.’
‘I hope not, old man! Still, I must do what I believe is right to save our nation from these interlopers.’
The way station loomed ahead and figures emerged from the darkness. ‘Hey, Mud Head,’ Guatemoc roared, recognising his friends leading the Cuahchic contingent. ‘Big Dart, Man-Eater, Fuzzy Face, Starving Coyote, well met! Are you ready for a fight?’
* * *
‘No, no – gentlemen please! – No!’ The small, wiry Francisco de Montejo had jumped to his feet and stood between Cortés and Escudero, a hand extended towards each of them as though he intended to hold them apart physically. ‘You must not duel, gentlemen,’ he said. His voice was trembling. ‘We must not fight amongst ourselves while we are in hostile territory. As a friend to you both, I cannot allow it. It simply will not do.’
A long-faced, olive-skinned man with something of the Moor about him, wearing a neatly trimmed spade beard that showed some grey amongst the black, and with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, Montejo seemed older than his thirty-four years. He’d been nicknamed El Mozo – ‘The Novice’ – in his early twenties, when he had, indeed, still been a fresh-faced and optimistic young fellow, but the last five years of heavy drinking, womanising, gambling and crushing debt had aged him terribly, eating up the small fortune settled upon him by his aristo
cratic Salamanca family and threatening his honour. His financial needs had put him in the pocket of the governor of Cuba, who’d appointed him to the expedition to spy on Cortés and nip in the bud any act of mutiny, as he’d admitted during a drinking bout with Cortés himself. In the weeks before their unauthorised departure from Cuba on 18 February, Cortés had therefore carefully cultivated Montejo, enjoying a few raucous nights out with him, sharing some rough whores and some very fine wines, and settling a gambling debt of two thousand pesos for him, in an attempt to undermine his loyalty to Velázquez. As it happened the same sum, with the same purpose, had gone to Velázquez de Léon, the governor’s cousin, and it was therefore no accident that neither had opposed the precipitous escape from Cuba. But Cortés prided himself on understanding human nature, and expected that these two fundamentally weak men would continue to play both ends against the middle, now appearing to side with him, now with Escudero, until they were more certain how things would turn out.
‘In God’s name you must not fight,’ said the one-eyed priest De Cuellar at this point. Velázquez de Léon rumbled his agreement with the peacemakers, and the enormously strong Cristóbal de Olid, short, squat and gnome-like, with a wild black beard and twinkling blue eyes, bounded to Escudero’s side and restrained him as he attempted to draw his sword.
So far Alonso de Grado, the surprise new convert to the Velazquista cause, had said not a word, but now he strode into the centre of the floor to join Montejo. He addressed Escudero. ‘Don Juan,’ he reasoned, ‘there is no need for you to seek satisfaction. The caudillo did not mean to impugn your courage, I am sure.’
‘He said I was shy,’ sulked Escudero, ‘and I am not shy, as I will prove to him with my blade.’ He struggled fruitlessly against Olid’s iron grip. ‘Release me, Don Cristóbal! It is my right to defend my honour.’
War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent Page 18