Aztec a-1

by Gary Jennings

  Next came the dance of the auyanime, those women whose bodies were reserved to the service of soldiers and knights. The dance they did was called the quequezcuicatl, "the ticklish dance," because it roused such sensations among its watchers, male and female, young and old, that they often had to be restrained from rushing in among the dancers and doing something really outrageously irreverent. The dance was so explicit in its movements that—though only the auyanime danced, and apart even from each other—you would swear they had invisible, naked male companions with whom...

  Yes, well, after the auyanime had left the plaza—panting, perspiring, their hair tousled, their legs weak and wobbly—there came, to the hungry rumble of the god drum, a boy and a girl, each about four years old, in an ornate litter chair carried by priests. Because the late and unlamented Revered Speaker Tixoc had been lax in his waging of war, there had been no captive children from some other nation available for that night's sacrifice, so the priests had to buy the youngsters from two local slave families. The four parents sat well down front on the plaza and watched proudly as their babies were paraded several times past them in their several circuits of the square. The parents and the children had reason to be proud and pleased, for the little boy and girl had been purchased long enough beforehand to have been well cared for and well fed. They were now plump and perky, waving merrily to their parents and to everyone else in the crowd who waved at them. They were better dressed than they could ever have hoped to be, for they were costumed to represent the tlalóque spirits which attend upon the rain god. Their little mantles were of the finest cotton, a blue-green color patterned with silver raindrops, and they wore on their shoulder blades cloud-white wings of paper.

  As had happened at every previous ceremony in honor of Tlaloc, the children were unaware of the behaviour expected of them. They were so delighted by the excitement, the colors, the lights and music that they bounced with laughter and beamed about them as radiantly as the sun. That, of course, was just the opposite of what they were meant to do. So, as usual, the priests carrying their chair had to reach up surreptitiously and pinch their bottoms. The children were at first puzzled, then pained. The boy and girl began to complain, then to weep, then to wail, as was proper. The more bawling, the more thunderstorms to come. The more tears, the more rain. The crowd joined in the crying, as was expected and encouraged, even for grown men and crusty warriors, until the hills roundabout echoed with the groaning and sobbing and beating of breasts. Every other drum and musical instrument now augmented the throbbing of the god drum and the ululation of the crowd, as the priests set down the litter chair on the far side of that stone tub of water by the pyramid. So unbelievably loud was the combined noise that probably not even the chief priest could hear the words he chanted over the two children when he lifted them and held them up one at a time to the sky, that Tlaloc might see and approve of them.

  Then two assistant priests approached, one with a small pot, the other with a brush. The chief priest bent over the boy and girl and, though no one could hear, we all knew he was telling the children that they were now to don masks so the water would not get into their eyes while they swam in the sacred tank. They were still sniffling, not smiling, their cheeks wet with tears, but they did not protest when the priest brushed liquid óli liberally over their faces, leaving only their flower-bud lips uncoated. We could not see their expression when the priest turned from them again to chant, still unheard, the final appeal that Tlaloc accept their sacrifice, that in exchange he send a substantial rainy season, and so on.

  The assistants lifted the boy and girl one last time, and the chief priest swiftly daubed the sticky liquid across their lower faces, covering mouths and nostrils, and the assistants dropped the children into the tank, where the cool water instantly congealed the gum. You see, the ceremony required that the sacrifices die in the water, but not of it. So they did not drown, they suffocated slowly behind the thick, unremovable, untearable óli masks, while they flailed desperately in the tank, and sank and rose and sank again, and the crowd wailed in mourning, and the drums and instruments continued their god-shouting cacophony. The children splashed and struggled ever more feebly, until first the girl, then the boy, ceased to move and hung only dimly visible just under the water, and on the surface their white wings floated, widespread, unmoving.

  Cold-blooded murder, Your Excellency? But they were slave children. The boy and girl would otherwise have led brute lives, perhaps mated when they were grown, and begotten more brutes. When they came to die, they would have died to no purpose whatever, and they would have languished for a dreary eternity in the darkness and nothingness of Mictlan. Instead, they died to the honor of Tlaloc, and to the benefit of us who went on living, and their death earned them a happy life ever after in the lush green afterworld of Tlalocan.

  Barbaric superstition, Your Excellency? But that next rainy season was as bountiful as even a Christian could have implored, and it gave us a handsome harvest.

  Cruel? Heartrending? Well, yes... Yes, I at least remember it so, for that was the last happy holy day that Tzitzitlini and I were ever to enjoy together.

  * * *

  When Prince Willow's acáli came to fetch me again, it did not reach Xaltócan until well after midday, because it was then the season of high winds, and the oarsmen had had a turbulent crossing. It was just as rough going back—the lake was roiled into choppy waves from which the wind tore and flung a stinging spray—so we did not dock at Texcóco until the sun was halfway to bed.

  Though the city's buildings and streets began there at the docks, that district was really only a fringe of lakeside industries and dwellings—boatyards; shops making nets, ropes, hooks, and the like; the houses of boatmen, fishermen, and fowlers. The city's center was perhaps half of one-long-run farther inland. Since no one from the palace had come to meet me, Willow's oarsmen volunteered to walk part of the way with me and help to carry the bundles I had brought: some additional clothes, another set of paints given me by Chimali, a basket of sweets cooked by Tzitzi.

  My companions dropped off, one by one, as we came to the neighborhoods in which they lived. But the last one told me that if I simply walked straight on, I could not fail to recognize the palace on the great central square. It was full dark by then, and there were not many other people abroad on that blustery night, but the streets were lighted. Every house seemed supplied with lamps of coconut oil or ahuacatl oil or fish oil or whatever fuel the householders could afford. Their light spilled out through the houses' window openings, even those closed by lattice shutters or cloth curtains or oiled-paper shades. In addition, there was a torchlight set at most of the street corners: high poles with copperwork baskets of blazing pine splinters on top, from which the wind blew sparks and occasional gobbets of burning pitch. Those poles were set in sockets drilled through the fists of standing or squatting stone statues of various gods.

  I had not walked far before I began to tire; I was carrying so many bundles, and I was being so buffeted by the wind. It was with relief that I saw a streetside stone bench set in the darkness under a red-flowering tapachini tree. I sank down on it gratefully, and sat for a while, enjoying being showered by the tree's scarlet petals blown loose by the wind. Then I became aware that the bench seat under me was ridged with a carved design. I had only to begin tracing it with my fingers—not even to peer at it in the dark—to know that it was picture writing, and to know what it said.

  "A resting place for the Lord Night Wind," I quoted aloud, smiling to myself.

  "You were reading exactly the same thing," said a voice from the darkness, "when we met at another bench some years ago."

  I gave a start of surprise, then squinted to make out the figure at the other end of the seat. Again he was wearing a mantle and sandals of good quality, though travel-worn. Again he was so covered with the dust of the road that his coppery, features were indistinct. But now I was probably just as dusty, and I had grown considerably, and I marveled that he co
uld have recognized me. When I had recovered my voice, I said:

  "Yes, Yanquicatzin, it is a surpassing coincidence."

  "You should not address me as Lord Stranger," he growled, as surly as I remembered him. "Here you are the stranger."

  "True, my lord," I said. "And here I have learned to read more than the simple symbols on roadside benches."

  "I should hope so," he said drily.

  "It is thanks to the Uey-Tlatotoi Nezahualpili," I explained. "At his generous invitation, I have enjoyed many months of higher schooling in his court classrooms:"

  "And what do you do to earn such favors?"

  "Well, I would do anything, for I am grateful to my benefactor, and eager to repay him. But I have yet to meet the Revered Speaker, and nobody else gives me anything but schoolwork to do. It makes me uncomfortable, to feel that I am only a parasite."

  "Perhaps Nezahualpili has merely been waiting. To see you prove yourself trustworthy. To hear you say you would do anything."

  "I would. Anything he might ask."

  "I daresay he will ask something of you eventually."

  "I hope so, my lord."

  We sat for some time in silence, except for the sound of the wind moaning between the buildings, like Chocaciuatl the Weeping Woman forever wandering. Finally the dusty man said sarcastically:

  "You are eager to be of use at the court, but here you sit and the palace is yonder." He waved down the street. I was being dismissed as curtly as the other time.

  I stood up, gathered my bundles, and said with some pique, "As my impatient lord suggests, I go. Mixpantzinco."

  "Ximopanolti," he drawled indifferently.

  I stopped under the torch pole at the next corner and looked back, but the light did not reach far enough to illuminate the bench. If the travel-stained stranger still sat there, I could not make out his form. All I could see was a little red whirl of tapachini petals being danced along the street by the night wind.

  I finally found the palace, and found the slave boy Cozcatl waiting to show me to my quarters. That palace at Texcóco was far larger than the one at Texcotzinco—it must have contained a thousand rooms—since there was not so much space in the central city for its necessary annexes to sprawl and spread around it. Still, the Texcóco palace grounds were extensive and, even in the middle of his capital city, Nezahualpili evidently would not be denied his gardens and arbors and fountains and the like.

  There was even a living maze, which occupied land enough for ten families to have farmed. It had been planted by some long-ago royal ancestor, and had been growing ever since, though kept neatly clipped. It was now an avenue of parallel, impenetrable thorn hedges, twice man-high, which twisted and forked and doubled upon itself. There was only a single opening in the hedge's green outer wall, and it was said that anyone entering there would, after long meandering, find his way to a little grassy glade in the center of the maze, but that the return route was impossible to retrace. Only the aged chief gardener of the palace knew the way out, a secret handed down in his family and traditionally kept secret even from the Uey-Tlatoani. So no one was allowed to enter there without the old gardener for a guide—except as a punishment. The occasional convicted lawbreaker was sentenced to be delivered alone and naked into the maze, at spearpoint if necessary. After a month or so, the gardener would go in and bring out whatever remained of the starved and thorn-torn and bird-pecked and worm-eaten body.

  The day after my return, I was waiting for a class to begin, when young Prince Willow approached me. After welcoming me back to court, he said casually, "My father would be pleased to see you in the throne room at your convenience, Head Nodder."

  At my convenience! How courteously the highest noble of the Acolhua summoned to his presence this lowly foreigner who had been battening on his hospitality. Of course I left the classroom and went immediately, almost running along the buildings' galleries, so that I was quite breathless when at last I dropped to one knee at the threshold of the immense throne room, made the gesture of kissing the earth, and said, "In your august presence, Revered Speaker."

  "Ximopanolti, Head Nodder." When I remained bowed in my position of humility, he said, "You may rise, Mole." When I stood, but stayed where I was, he said, "You may come here, Dark Cloud." As I did so, slowly and respectfully, he said, smiling, "You have as many names as a bird which flies over all the nations of The One World and which is called differently by every people." With a fly whisk he was wielding he indicated one of several icpaltin chairs ranged in a semicircle before the throne and said, "Be seated."

  Nezahualpili's own chair was no more grand or impressive than the stubby-legged one on which I sat, but it was raised on a dais so that I had to look up at him. He sat with his legs not formally crossed under him or knees up in front of him, but languidly stretched out to the front and crossed at the ankles. Though the throne room was hung with feather-work tapestries and panel paintings, there were no other furnishings except the throne, those low chairs for visitors—and, directly in front of the Uey-Tlatoani, a low table of black onyx on which reposed, facing him, a gleaming white human skull.

  "My father, Fasting Coyote, set that there," said Nezahualpili, noticing my eyes upon it. "I do not know why. It may have been some vanquished enemy over whom he delighted to gloat. Or some lost beloved he could never stop mourning. Or he may have kept it for the same reason I do."

  I asked, "And what is that, Lord Speaker?"

  "There come to this room envoys bearing threats of war or offering treaties of peace. There come plaintiffs laden with grievances, petitioners asking favors. When those persons address me, their faces may contort with anger or sag with misery or smile in feigned devotion. So, while I listen to them, I look not at their faces, but at the skull."

  I could only say, "Why, my lord?"

  "Because there is the cleanest and most honest face of man. No paint or disguise, no guile or grimace, no sly wink or ingratiating smile. Only a fixed, ironic grin, a mockery of every living man's concern for urgencies. When any visitor pleads that I make a ruling here and now, I temporize, I dissimulate. I smoke a poquietl or two, while I look long at that skull. It reminds me that the words I speak may well outlast my own flesh, may long stand as firm decrees—and to what effect on those then living? Ayyo, that skull has often served to caution me against an impatient or impulsive decision." Nezahualpili looked from the skull to me, and laughed. "When the head lived, for all I know, it was that of a babbling idiot, but dead and silent it is a wise counselor indeed."

  I said, "I think, my lord, that no counselor would be of use except to a man wise enough to heed counsel."

  "I take that as a compliment, Head Nodder, and I thank you. Now, was I wise to bring you here from Xaltócan?"

  "I cannot say, my lord. I do not know why you did."

  "Since the time of Fasting Coyote, the city of Texcóco has been famed as a center of knowledge and culture, but such a center is not necessarily self-perpetuating. The noblest of families can breed dolts and sluggards—I could name a few of my own get—so we do not hesitate to import talent from elsewhere, and even to infuse foreign blood. You seemed a promising prospect, so here you are."

  "To stay, Lord Speaker?"

  "That will be up to you, or to your tonáli, or to circumstances that not you nor we can foresee. But your teachers have given good report of you, so I think it time that you became a more active participant in court life."

  "I had been hoping for a means to repay your generosity, my lord. Do you mean I am to be given some useful employment?"

  "If it is to your liking. During your recent absence, I took another wife. Her name is Chalchiunenetl. Jadestone Doll."

  I said nothing, wondering confusedly if he had for some reason changed the subject. But he went on:

  "She is the eldest daughter of Ahuítzotl. A gift from him to mark his accession as the new Uey-Tlatoani of Tenochtítlan. She is a Mexicali like yourself. She is fifteen years old, of an age to be your younge
r sister. Our ceremony of marriage has been duly celebrated, but of course the physical consummation will be postponed until Jadestone Doll is grown more mature."

  I still said nothing, though I could have told even the wise Nezahualpili something about the physical capabilities of adolescent Mexíca maidens.

  He continued, "She has been given a small army of waiting women, and the entire east wing as apartments for herself, for servants' quarters, private kitchen; a private palace in miniature. So she will lack for nothing in the way of comfort, service, and female companionship. However, I wonder if you might consent, Head Nodder, to join her retinue. It would be good for her to have the company of at least one male, and he a brother Mexícatl. At the same time you would be serving me. instructing the girl in our customs, teaching her our Texcóco style of speech, preparing her to be a consort of whom I can be proud."

  I said evasively, "Chalchiunenetzin might not take kindly to having me appointed her keeper, Lord Speaker. A young girl can be willful, irrepressible, jealous of her freedom—"

  "How well I know," sighed Nezahualpili. "I have two or three daughters of about that same age. And Jadestone Doll, being the princess daughter of one Uey-Tlatoani and the queen wife of another, is likely to be even more spirited. I would not condemn my worst enemy to be the keeper of a mettlesome young female. But I think, Mole, that you will find her at least pleasant to look upon."