Looking down again, Cortés saw Díaz and his friends Mibiercas and La Serna walking with Sandoval, picking their way amongst the heaped bodies in the plaza. They parted company at the foot of the stairway he had just climbed, Sandoval jogging up the steps towards him, Díaz and the others turning towards the Spanish quarters.
‘Sandoval,’ Cortés called down, ‘how goes it?’
* * *
As Pepillo reached Melchior, ready to slip his chain, five heavily armed Cholulan Indians in loincloths and war-paint burst into the room. One seized Malinal in the doorway. Another threw himself across the floor at Pepillo, taking hold of him before he could free Melchior. Letting go of the dog’s chain, Pepillo tried to draw his sword, but the Indian gave him a hard knock to the head that sent him sprawling, followed him, struck him again and ripped his sword away. Melchior barked and snarled, tugging frantically at the full extent of the chain, but could not break loose. Giving him a wide berth, the Indians dragged Malinal back into the middle of the room. One stifled her screams with a hand clamped over her mouth. Two others drew long flint knives and cut Tlaqui and Tlalchi free.
Pepillo lay limp, feigning unconsciousness, his Nahuatl quite good enough to understand from the rapid exchange of words what was happening. The intruders were part of the personal bodyguard of the Cholulan rulers. Left behind to protect the palace this morning, they’d seen Brabo’s flying squad grab Tlaqui and Tlalchi from the plaza just as the fighting began, and had now crept across by way of the roof to rescue their masters.
The leader of the gang – a tall, sleekly muscled warrior whose name was Ecatepec – wanted to kill Pepillo and Malinal right away, but Tlaqui was against it: ‘They’re important to the white-skins,’ he said, ‘especially the woman. We can use them as hostages.’
‘It won’t work,’ said Ecatepec. ‘We have to get them up the stairs, across the roof, back into the palace, which the white-skins are busy looting, down the stairs and into the secret tunnel. Without them we might just make it, with them kicking up a fuss we’re done for. Better to kill them and take our chances.’
Pepillo saw the elderly rulers exchange one of their secret looks and then Tlalchi said: ‘Very well, kill them.’
* * *
Alvarado pursued his quarry into a vault that was dimly lit by a row of high, narrow windows. Unlike in the other chambers of the temple, there was no exit corridor here. This long narrow room, with a brazier of burning coals at one side and a stone idol of a huge plumed serpent twenty feet tall rearing up at the other, was a dead end.
The man, the creature – whatever it was – turned finally at bay. In this half-light, covered in blood from a broken nose, from the long cut the falchion had scored across the width of its chest and from a second deep wound in its shoulder, it did appear at first truly like a monster from another world. Though human enough, its arms, legs and body were densely inscribed with strange, hypnotic designs of black dots and spirals. These seemed to swirl and gyrate in constant motion, boiling in rich whorls and tendrils up its neck to cover its shaved skull, and giving its flat, broad face the aspect of some great, swart, yellow-eyed panther of the jungle.
Alvarado had paused in the middle of the room to study this apparition, recognising the so-called sorcerer he’d seen standing on the summit of the pyramid the evening before – the same ugly savage who’d also cut out the hearts of twenty young men at dawn that morning, and was no doubt responsible for every one of those skulls on the rack.
‘They tell me,’ Alvarado said conversationally as he stepped forward, light on his feet and swinging the falchion, ‘that you’re a sorcerer.’ He moved the big blade faster, liking the sound as it sliced the air. ‘But I don’t believe in sorcery, so where does that leave you?’
The creature muttered some rhythmic incantation in its own brute language and executed a series of weird, hopping leaps in a big circle around him. As it did so, a beam of light from one of the windows caught its right hand, which seemed hooked and clawed. ‘Ah,’ said Alvarado, remembering the bleeding wound on his arm, ‘that’s what you cut me with.’ He narrowed his eyes, wondering for a moment if this subhuman thing did actually have claws, then realised that it held some carved stone weapon in its fist with three scythe-like blades protruding from between its fingers.
It executed a second series of leaps, snarling and spitting, lashing out at him once, twice, three times with those scythes, but on the fourth attack Alvarado slid his right foot powerfully forward and put all his weight into a lunge, driving the tip of the falchion deep into the creature’s tattooed belly, giving it a vicious twist and whipping it out again. It was followed by a great spurt of blood. ‘There, my lovely,’ he said, ‘I expect that hurt you.’
Howling and screeching like a scalded cat, the creature made one more wild rush at him, which Alvarado easily sidestepped; as it went by he chopped the heavy blade of the falchion into the small of its back, cutting it down as one would cut down a tree, severing its spine and leaving it flopping convulsively on the floor, unable any longer to command its arms and legs.
Alvarado reached down, prised the peculiar weapon loose and threw it across the room, then dragged the screaming creature by its wrist across the floor, positioned its neck over the base of the idol of the plumed serpent, which made a convenient chopping block, and hacked off its head with a single blow.
‘Sorcerer?’ he said, looking down at his handiwork. ‘That’s what I think of bastard sorcerers.’
* * *
‘Come walk with me,’ Cortés invited Sandoval. ‘Let’s see if we’ve done enough here.’ As he spoke, a great bellow of pain rose up from somewhere below.
Sandoval winced at the sound. ‘So many wounded to finish off,’ he commented. ‘You’re determined not to leave a single one of them alive?’
‘I know it seems harsh,’ Cortés replied, ‘but yes. Those who came to the plaza to kill us this morning must all die. They knew what they were doing. They have to pay the price.’
‘And the city? What are your intentions for it?’
‘If we face no more resistance, I believe I’ll spare the city. Once we’ve shown we can be firm, a reputation for mercy will not harm us. Cholula can thrive again; its people can return.’
While it was under way, in the thick of the killing, Sandoval had thought the massacre bad enough; but up here, from the top of the pyramid, the true extent of the slaughter was revealed to him and far exceeded his worst imaginings. He and Cortés had walked from the east to the south side of the summit platform, skirting the rubble and devastation of the ruined temple, and from this lofty vantage point it was obvious that every part of the plaza, from the base of the pyramid to the enclosure wall, was filled to overflowing with dead and dying Indians. Despite their hostile intent, the vast majority had perished without even defending themselves, and it was significant, Sandoval saw with feelings of revulsion, that their poor, broken bodies were most thickly clustered round the gates where they had sought and been denied escape.
The one consolation was Cortés’s apparent decision to limit the destruction to the plaza and not continue it beyond the walls with a general sack of the city itself. Halfway along the west side of the summit platform, however, he suddenly stopped and pointed north. ‘What’s that?’ he said.
Both men had been so focused on the scene directly below that they’d paid little attention to the surrounding countryside, but now, looking in the direction indicated by Cortés, Sandoval’s hand fell automatically to the hilt of his sword.
The day’s fighting and killing, which he’d believed to be over, had only just begun.
* * *
When Tlalchi said ‘kill them’, Pepillo’s hand went to the sheath at his belt where he kept the wickedly sharp little dagger Cortés had given him months before at Potonchan. The movement went unnoticed by the Indians, one of whom, still talking in an urgent whisper to the others, was padding across the floor to where he lay. Pepillo got a glimpse of a huge club being
raised, drew the dagger and stabbed it into the Indian’s bare, dirty foot as he stepped in to straddle him, skewering the arch, finding a path through the bones and driving the point with a forceful thud deep into the wooden floor beneath.
The effect was extraordinary and instantaneous. The Indian let loose a great bellow of shock and pain, lost his balance as he attempted to free his foot and crashed down in a heap, narrowly missing Pepillo, who twisted sideways and leapt towards Malinal.
Things happened very fast after that.
In response to Tlalchi’s order, Malinal’s captor had clamped both hands round her neck and begun to throttle her, but when Pepillo’s head smashed into his right side, he lost his grip and Malinal at once reached inside her tunic, pulled out a short stiletto and stabbed the man through the eye.
It all still would have ended badly, as the other Indians hefted their macuahuitls, if Bernal Díaz, Francisco Mibiercas and Alonso de la Serna had not at that moment charged into the room, blades flashing, and cut all three of them down. Tlalchi got in the way of Mibiercas’s great and strong sword and was also killed, cut nearly in half at the waist, but Tlaqui, weeping and wringing his hands, was left unharmed, as was the Indian Pepillo had stabbed through the foot, who remained pinioned to the floor.
Seeing gentleness and concern on Díaz’s face as he strode over to Malinal and enfolded her in his arms, Pepillo was struck by the realisation that this gruff, honest soldier loved her in a way that the caudillo never had or would.
* * *
Stretching away to the north of Cholula was a wide grassy plain, bounded at a distance of about four miles by a range of hills cut through with narrow valleys. The whole plain between the hills and the city was filled with the swarming regiments of an army at least a hundred thousand strong. ‘We’ve fought as many before,’ Cortés reassured Sandoval, ‘and won. We can do it again.’
‘We won’t have to,’ said a cheerful, confident voice.
The two men now stood on the north side of the great pyramid’s summit platform, which commanded an unimpeded view over the plain. They turned in unison to see Alvarado strolling towards them out of the ruins of the temple, with his falchion resting jauntily on his shoulder. Impaled through the neck on the point of the weapon was a tattooed human head.
‘What do you mean, Pedro?’ asked Cortés, doing his best to ignore the glaring head with its baleful dead eyes.
‘I mean we won’t have to fight them. The Tlascalans are going to do that for us.’
‘The Tlascalans?’ said Sandoval. ‘There’s only a thousand of them. They can’t fight an army this big.’
‘Look again,’ urged Alvarado. ‘Our friends have been reinforced. I count close to fifty thousand of them out there now. Don’t you recognise the banners?’
Cortés looked and suddenly understood. The massing regiments he’d estimated at a hundred thousand men were separated into two distinct blocks. The nearest, with their backs turned to the city, indeed held aloft the banners of Tlascala and were positioned to intercept the advance of the regiments further north.
‘Let’s ride, gentlemen,’ he said, suddenly decisive. ‘These forces look equally matched but the Mexica have never faced cavalry before. I warrant a charge or two will tip the balance.’
Chapter Forty
Saturday 16 October 1519 to Thursday 21 October 1519
A glance was enough to reveal what had happened in the audience chamber – the corpses of the Cholulan warriors, Tlalchi dead, Tlaqui sobbing and wringing his hands, Díaz, Mibiercas and La Serna grimly cleaning their swords, Pepillo white-faced, Malinal shaken, her throat bruised, a blood-smeared stiletto still gripped tight in her fist, and that damned dog Melchior chained up in the corner where he’d clearly been no use to anyone. ‘I’ll hear more about this later,’ Cortés said. He took Malinal by the arm. ‘But now I need your services. There’s speaking to be done. A matter of life and death.’
Minutes later they were mounted up, Malinal before him in the saddle, and riding at a gallop out of the north gate of the plaza. No sooner had the small troop of cavalry moved into position at the forefront of the Tlascalan ranks, however, than the Mexica regiments began to beat a hasty retreat. Seeing them on the verge of panic, Cortés was sorely tempted to pursue and destroy them, but he held back. His cannon and all his infantry remained in Cholula and, although the city seemed defeated, there might yet be hostile forces lurking within it. Besides, a pitched battle against the Mexica now would end the fiction of cordial relations he was attempting to maintain with Moctezuma, by means of which, and cunning diplomacy, he still hoped to see Tenochtitlan open its causeways and gates to him without a fight.
Cortés reined in Molinero beside Shikotenka. ‘We’ll let them go,’ he said through Malinal.
‘Let them go?’ The Tlascalan leader’s face darkened. ‘Do that and you’ll see them again on another battlefield.’
‘I understand,’ said Cortés, ‘but my mind is made up. Let them go. Don’t engage them.’ He waited while Shikotenka barked orders to his captains, then added: ‘Thank you, my friend. You saved the day for us here. I’ll not forget it.’
‘You told me to bring no more men.’ There was a smile on Shikotenka’s lips but not in his eyes as he gestured to the massed regiments of Tlascalans behind him.
‘And you disobeyed me,’ said Cortés. ‘Thanks be to God!’ He raised himself in his stirrups, looking south to the collapsed temple on the summit of Cholula’s mountainous pyramid, and to the plumes of smoke billowing up from the fires in the plaza. ‘I know the Mexica have deprived you of salt and cotton and other necessities for many years,’ he said to Shikotenka, ‘and I know they have used Cholula as a base to launch their attacks on Tlascala, but all that is ended now. We have conquered this city, and today and for the two days following, save only the temple precincts, I give it to you and your men to do with as you wish, take whatever revenge you choose, kill and rape as it pleases you and loot whichever commodities you require. That is my reward to you, Shikotenka, and to the warriors of Tlascala, for the great service you have done me here.’
* * *
The Tlascalans ran wild, but their sack of Cholula, though thorough and brutal, ceased at sunset on the third day, Monday 18 October, as Cortés had commanded. Nor at any point did the rampaging warriors seek to enter the great plaza with its palace and temples, which remained under Spanish control, yielding rich pickings in gold and jewels that were not shared with their Indian friends.
Under torture, Tlaqui protested repeatedly that the plan to trap the Spaniards in the plaza and kill or capture them for sacrifice had been entirely Moctezuma’s idea, and Cortés put this accusation to a Mexica delegation, led once again by Teudile, which arrived in Cholula under a flag of truce on Wednesday 20 October. Teudile denied it, of course, so Cortés obliged him to witness a further more probing torture session, during which Tlaqui rather convincingly repeated the charges against Moctezuma as his fingernails were pulled out with pliers.
Working himself up into the appearance of a rage, though inwardly he was amused, Cortés told Teudile: ‘I can scarcely believe that so great a lord as Moctezuma should send his messengers and such esteemed persons as yourself to me to convince me he is my friend while at the same time seeking to attack me by another’s hand in so cowardly a way and hoping to evade responsibility if all did not come out as he intended! Well, Teudile, actions have consequences, as your lord will now learn to his cost. I have changed my plans. Before, it was my intention to visit Tenochtitlan to see Moctezuma and make myself a friend to him and speak with him in harmony and even ask his advice on all the things that must be done in this land, but now I will come to him at war, doing him all the harm I can as an enemy.’
Tlaqui chose this moment to convulse, foam at the mouth and noisily perish in the chair he was strapped to. Looking on aghast, Teudile himself seemed half dead with fear, his mouth gaping, his cadaverous features glistening with sweat as he insisted again that Moctezuma ha
d never done anything to encourage the Cholulan rulers in their wicked plot against the Spaniards.
‘How very odd,’ Cortés objected, ‘since I myself counted close to fifty thousand of Moctezuma’s warriors outside Cholula, ready to make war on me. They ran away when we confronted them, but they were most assuredly there. I fail to understand how that could be, unless they were acting on Moctezuma’s orders.’
Teudile’s pallor worsened and, in a shaking voice, he begged Cortés not to cast aside his friendship for Moctezuma and not under any circumstances to make war on him until he was certain of the truth. ‘Let me go to Tenochtitlan,’ he said, ‘and put these accusations to my master and return to you very soon with his answer.’
‘How soon,’ said Cortés with a ferocious glower, ‘is very soon?’
‘Not more than six days, great lord.’
‘Very well,’ Cortés replied. ‘You have six days.’
* * *
Teudile and his fellow delegates departed in haste, but the following morning, Thursday 21 October, a new visitor was brought to Cortés by Shikotenka – the grave, stooped elder named Huicton, ambassador to the rebel Lord Ishtlil of Texcoco, who’d last visited him in early May in the camp on the dunes at Cuetlaxtlan.
‘Welcome, Huicton,’ Cortés said through Malinal and Pepillo. ‘A pleasure to see you again. You’ll know by now I took your advice and put Tlascala on my route of march.’ A grin at Shikotenka: ‘These fellows gave us a spot of bother, but we’ve since become firm friends. I hope very soon to make the acquaintance of your master Ishtlil and accept the offer of his allegiance that you brought me before. I recall he was badly wronged by Moctezuma. I hope to play some part in putting those wrongs to right.’
‘Ah, good sir,’ said the ambassador, ‘there are so many wrongs to be righted in this unfortunate land.’ Without ceremony, he then squatted on his haunches in the native manner. ‘You’ll forgive me if I rest my weary bones?’
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