by Zoe Saadia
Her heart pounding, she listened to the voices, now rolling down the patio, talking loudly and curtly, distributing orders. She could hear Father’s words, his hurried footsteps coming from the direction of the workshop, followed by the frantic echoing of more sandals, belonging to her brothers surely. It was difficult to decipher their words in this clamor.
Father sounded atypically agitated again, and it seemed that he was asking questions, arguing, maybe. With warriors? It didn’t make any sense. Her fingers twisted the stretched maguey strings, messing up the entire frame. But she would have to redo it all in the end, to unravel the work of half a day. Numbly, she stared at the scrambled fabric.
The voices and the footsteps began drawing away. She could hear them pouring from beyond the patio now, the opposite direction they had come from. Father’s too. He was still talking rapidly, with clear agitation.
Another sound, this time of the drawn screen of the doorway, made her jump, overturning the inadequately secured loom, ruining her work for good now. She didn’t care, staring at Mother’s lithe figure, bereft of words. After the semidarkness of her room, her eyes found it difficult to adjust; still, it was easy to see how upset Mother was, how flustered, even more than on the evening before, upon her, Chantli’s, return. Back then, the poor woman looked terrible, gazing out of her swollen ringed eyes as though dazed, her face puffy and red, stained with tears. The memory made her heart twist despite her own ghastly feeling. It was all because of her, she had known immediately, a dreadful worry and not a simple anger at the displayed disobedience, but with Father thundering fiercely, shooting his direful promises and threats, forbidding her contact with anyone until deciding her fate, she couldn’t throw herself into Mother’s arms, to cry and ask for forgiveness. Yet now…
The loom still strapped to her back dragged awkwardly across the floor, screeching, forgotten. Oblivious of it all, she hurled herself into her mother’s arms, heedless of reason, or that she had been forbidden to do so, sobbing her heart out. It was so good to feel this wonderfully familiar warmth and comfort, something she needed oh so very badly, she realized, through the last two days.
“Nantli,” she sobbed, pressing into the crispiness of the familiar huipil, its patterns friendly and cheerful, its touch intimate and soft, smell cozy, familiar. “Oh, nantli!”
The loving arms were pressing her tenderly, trembling too. “Hush, little one. Don’t cry.”
“But, nantli!” She felt her words about to burst out in an unstoppable gush. It made her head dizzy. “It’s so unfair. Father is so angry and won’t let me explain. And he won’t let me be with you. And I… I… I’m so miserable. I’m sorry about everything. I didn’t mean to do any of it. I, I was just worried, worried about Miztli, and I went to see the calmecac boys, to ask for their help. Because Patli, you see, Patli showed them that place, that temple with the tunnel, and they got in trouble and Miztli didn’t come home, and we just wanted, wanted to find out what happened to him…” The hysterical sobbing was taking over again, making her struggle for breath. “And I didn’t, didn’t mean to get into all this trouble, or to make you worry so. Or to make Father that angry. I didn’t…”
The familiar comforting warmth was all there, enveloping, rocking her back and forth, calming. “Come now, little one. Don’t cry. Not so loudly,” Mother was chanting, whispering into her hair. “Calm down, little one. Calm down. It’s important that you do.” The embracing hands were pushing her away gently, still holding, giving her strength, but now at arm’s length. “You must tell me what happened, little one. You must calm down and tell me. It’s important that you do and we don’t have much time.”
Something in the older woman’s tone made Chantli concentrate. She tried to see through the veil of tears. “Wh-what, what d-do you mean?” But this stammering was annoying! She swallowed hard. “What do you mean, Mother?”
The woman sighed. “You must tell me where have you been and what exactly happened.”
“Why?” Somehow, it felt important to know that. Mother wasn’t being just comforting or invoking her right to know where her daughter had spent a night and half a day. She was after something. “Why do you ask?” To sniff with her clogged nose felt silly. She glanced around, hunting after a discarded piece of cloth.
“The warriors came here just now. They had been sent to collect the apprentice, to take him to the Imperial Court.”
She felt her heart tumbling down to her stomach, to lie there like a dead weight. To bring her hands to her face didn’t help. They were trembling too badly, doing a silly dance.
“Why?” she whispered, marveling at her ability to say anything at all. “Why would they do that?”
Mother’s eyes didn’t shift, boring into her, stern and unwavering, reading her thoughts. Now it was the interrogator asking, the stern parent that she always was. Father could scold and admonish, but it was always Mother who made sure she and her sibling behaved on a daily basis.
“It has to do with your adventures out there, Chantli. Tell me what you did and where. And why.”
She drew herself together, ashamed of the tears. “I was trying to tell you, Mother. Since coming back here, I was trying to tell you what happened, where we were. Father was the one who told me not to talk but to listen. He locked me in this room and he didn’t let me out for the entire night!” It felt childish to raise her voice, surely with the warriors still around, maybe wishing to drag her to the Imperial Court as well. But why would they want to judge Miztli? For what offense? Did Tlatelolco authorities lodge a complaint of a sort? She shivered, her newly gained confidence trickling out fast. “I don’t know what we did wrong,” she went on, hating the pleading tone, so obvious, impossible to miss. “I don’t mind telling it all, all of it. But the village boy doesn’t deserve to be dragged into the courts. He didn’t do anything wrong. None of us did!”
“Tell me about it, Chantli, and do it quickly,” was the unsympathetic response.
She struggled to keep her gaze level and her back straight. “Miztli was kidnapped. I don’t know exactly who did it. You should ask Patli about it. He was the one to drag them all into it, Miztli and some other boys. I don’t know who they were. Patli could tell you.” It was wiser to pretend that she didn’t know who Necalli was, to what school he belonged, or what his name was. Maybe he and his friend would manage to stay out of it somehow. She drew another deep breath. “Anyway, Miztli was kidnapped and Patli and I and those other boys went looking for him, and, well, we got stuck under the causeway and there was this canoe…” But wasn’t she telling too much? Mother’s eyes were mere slits in the gentleness of her face, their suspicion well on display. “In the beginning, we drifted to Tlatelolco, and then it took so long to find our way back. And, well, in the end, we managed to return.”
“With the village boy miraculously recovered?”
That came out slightly mocking. Chantli pressed her lips tight.
“Yes, we did find him. And in the strangest of companies.” She remembered the Tlatelolcan girl, so bad-tempered and haughty, so foul-mouthed. So obviously taken with Miztli too, the most transparent thing, stupid fowl. As though such obviously high nobility could be allowed to run around with barefoot villagers from across the causeway. Ridiculous! Even though he did wear sandals back then. Where did he get something so costly? He didn’t explain, neither his sudden change in appearance nor his unlikely company, and she had been too busy to stop and ask questions. Their predicament was too direful back then.
“Tell me what you did in Tlatelolco, Chantli. And what that boy did.”
To gain some time, she bent to pick up the fallen loom, its unfinished fabric hopelessly messed up beyond repair. “I don’t…”
The voices were pouring in again, reaching them through the wall opening and the gaping doorway, such loud talking. They were crowding the patio, now unmistakably. Chantli stopped breathing again. Father’s voice was not among the commotion of curt words and shuffling of thick-soled sandals,
but she knew he was there, watching silently, his fury well hidden, and when his shadowed silhouette blocked the light seeping through the narrow doorway, she knew that her troubles were far from being over.
“Tell me everything you know about that boy and what he did through the last two days here and in Tlatelolco, and do it quickly, Daughter!” His tone left no doubts in her dread-frozen chest.
Chapter 20
The dusty stones of the road behind the marketplace were surprisingly smooth, pleasant to step on. Even though scorching hot, they provided a welcome change to the unevenness of the gravel alleys. So much easier to walk on, a real pleasure, despite his battered, disoriented state.
To keep his back straight and his step satisfactorily steady was a challenge in itself, not helped by the briskness of his guards’ walk. However, the paved surface helped, considerably at that. Having never set his foot in this luxurious part of the city, glimpsing its towering pyramids and their glittering temples from afar, he now found his interest genuinely piqued, eyes comparing. That crowded plaza of Tlatelolco, with one towering pyramid and a few smaller ones, filled with people and warriors to the brim, sporting two podiums and two lavishly decorated daises; would Tenochtitlan’s Great Plaza be that imposing? It was easy to guess the answer. Judging by the several plazas they had passed until now, after leaving the marketplace and the simple yet well-to-do neighborhoods behind, he didn’t even try to imagine what the Great Plaza and the Royal Enclosure would look like. Tlatelolco might as well declare itself as a village. But would Tlemilli get mad hearing him thinking something like that!
The thought made him chuckle inside, too spent and dizzy to try and do it for real, even without the presence of his grave, close-mouthed escorts. He didn’t dare to glance at them, concentrating on the dusty stones sweeping below his feet, trying not to trip, his stomach tightening in a hundred painful knots. No, he wouldn’t be able to tell her any of that. He wouldn’t be able to see her again, ever! Even if he survived that court ordeal, something old Tlaquitoc threatened him with for the entire evening before locking him in the melting room, too frightened and exhausted to protest or even feel bad about it; even then he wouldn’t enjoy any freedom for many moons to come, if ever. Oh mighty gods!
Even now, half a day later, after that troubled sleep on the bare floor and the whole morning of working with no meal in sight – not even a moldy tortilla, although he was too exhausted to feel pangs of hunger by now – he could not bring himself to think about it all, the direful consequences of his deed. But how did it come to this? Yes, he went to wander around with Patli, succumbing to his boredom and the need of company. Yes, he got in trouble down there in that tunnel and in the reeds of the lake. Still, how had it come to something that hopeless and terrible? The dreadful adventures, yes, hurtful and scary, resulting in plenty of beating and running around, facing scheming nobility, lying to them, trying to survive. Then her, that fiery Tlatelolcan girl, a noble of the Palace of all things but so trustworthy and down-to-earth, demanding, impulsive, talking with no pause, pleasing with her bubbling and enthusiastic presence, making him feel curiously important, strong, in control. Until Chantli had fallen on them, angering his companion greatly, causing a strange outburst of nastiness, lashing out like a slender, furious serpent. Not TleMilli – Field of Fire, but TleCoatl – Fire Snake; they should have called her that. Still, he didn’t want her to leave, not minding the complications her presence might have brought, with her connection to that dreadful Teconal, her father of all things, not only after him, Miztli, but after the calmecac boy as well. And yet, from that moment on, it all went downhill, he reflected now, clenching his teeth against the smothering wave that was rising again high in his chest, threatening to choke him.
Although back then, it didn’t look all so bad. They had managed to free themselves, escape with their lives and even some of their dignity, laughing about it in the end, feeling good, victorious. But was it good to be a part of this group, the cheerful leader-like Necalli so sure of himself, so reliable and a friend, not a snotty violent noble-school pupil, not anymore, full of needling jokes but not meaning to hurt, a lighthearted fellow. Even Patli was not that unbearable, contributing a little to their talks, wavering and swaying, his head bleeding but not too badly. They said it was a relief, as in the morning he was out cold, conversing with the spirits. Chantli kept worrying about that.
So all reeling and tottering, hurt to different degrees but in the best of spirits, they had waded their way to the causeway, climbing the slippery earthwork, choking with laughter at each other’s clumsiness. The wild pell-mell run across had them doubling over yet again, spilling into Tenochtitlan’s wharves, unable to breathe from the wildness of their laughter. The dangerous adventure was over and they had come out of it in not such bad shape.
Or so he thought. Until they staggered into the narrow yard of old Tlaquitoc’s house. Then the illusion broke into twenty little pieces, like a clay form under the annealing hammer.
Crazed with anger in a way he couldn’t even imagine the dignified, well-spoken, solemn craftsman succumbing to, he listened to the blistering screams, the man’s face glowing with unhealthy red, his huge fists clenched and shaking, dangerous looking, promising no good. Even half-conscious Patli drew himself up, daring not to slide along the doorway beam he had pressed against as though trying to disappear there, or faint, for that matter, his face a grotesque mask of dry blood, mud, and pastiness.
Chantli didn’t look much better at this point, so openly shocked and frightened it made his own dread multiply by leaps and bounds. For all eternity, it seemed, twenty upon twenty direful promises were heaped upon their heads, then Chantli and Patli were hastened inside the house, while he had been grabbed by his shoulder with rock-hard, crushing fingers – but this man should have been a stone worker! – and dragged into the workshop, frightened for real and resisting to no avail, hurled into the melting room as though he had been a reed-woven mat with no weight, a disobedient mat at that. But he never suspected the old man as being so terribly strong.
Anticipating a savage beating at the very least, he sprang back to his feet almost against his will, his heart pumping insanely. Yet what came next made him regret the lack of physical punishment. Suddenly calm, ominously in control, the old man stood there, studying his victim, his massive head shaking, lips twisting unpleasantly. He, Miztli, was the most ungrateful human being that ever trod the earth of their World of the Fifth Sun, his employer had informed him, most ungrateful and worthless, thinking nothing of people who were good to him, repaying kindness with nastiness and self-serving indulgence, harming his benefactors and even his own family, the poor farmers of his home village, those who put their trust in him, going to great lengths in order to obtain him a place in the Great Capital to learn and evolve. The punishment for his vile ways would harm his family, oh yes, he had been informed, his stomach nothing but jelly, quivering, his limbs refusing to support him. Such crimes as his were dealt harshly by the courts of the Great Capital, laziness and theft being two of the seven most abominable transgressions in youths and adults alike.
As the man went on, speaking in his old deliberate way, tranquil and almost compassionate, he kept wondering how it had come to him being accused of all those things, but his mind refused to concentrate, unable to cope, and it left his ears alone to absorb the assaulting phrases, telling him how he would be strangled or maybe stoned, depending on the judge and his mood, and how his family would have to be sold into slavery in order to repay the debt his absence of three full days had created. Oh mighty deities, but what did his family have to do with all this?
Pressing against the inner wall, fighting the suffocating fear with no success, he remembered being informed that the courts were convened in the first part of the day and so the next day would seal his fate – his and his family’s – but did the man keep harping on that, his family, his father. It was all too bad that it had come to this, his tormenter would sigh several time
s. What an unfortunate ending.
In the end, he remembered himself finding his tongue at long last, breaking into a frantic begging. No, not the court, please, anything but that. He would work for days and nights, wouldn’t even move from the braziers, would do anything and everything, but please not to have his father involved, not to have the courts selling his father or anyone else of the family into slavery, anything but this.
It took some time and many frantic promises to have the old craftsman relenting, letting himself to be persuaded, albeit reluctantly, to have him, Miztli, sold into his slavery instead, until his debt was paid in its entirety however many moons it took. A hard, dedicated work with no payments and no meals, but by this point, he would have agreed to let the man cut off his right arm and his left one in the bargain. Even when locked in the melting room, to think it all through as the old man informed him, he still didn’t dare to believe the lucky outcome, still feared that the man would drag him to the court first thing in the morning, demanding his execution and his father’s slavery to make it all right again. Oh mighty gods!
Clenching his teeth against the terrible memory, he lifted his eyes, watching the colorful walls that were now slanting all around, the stairs of some of the lower pyramids glimmering in the strong sun, so perfectly polished, they shone. Beautifully dressed crowds surrounded them now, less pushing and loudmouthed than the multitudes swarming the alleys behind the marketplace or even back in Tlatelolco, upon that plaza that could not be compared with Tenochtitlan’s spacious vastness or the richness of its coloring and adornments.