Aztec a-1

by Gary Jennings

  I said, "It is a helmet, as I am sure the Revered Speaker has already ascertained. And a most practical sort of helmet. No maquahuitl could split the head of a man wearing one of these. It would be a good thing if our own warriors could be equipped with—"

  "You miss the important point!" he interrupted impatiently. "That thing is of the exact same shape as what the god Quetzalcóatl habitually wore on his revered head."

  I said, skeptically but respectfully, "How can we possibly know that, my lord?"

  With another swoop of movement, he produced the last of his triumphant surprises. "There! Look at that, you stubborn old disbeliever. My own nephew Cacama sent it from the archives of Texcóco."

  It was a history text on fawnskin, recounting the abdication and departure of the Toltéca ruler Feathered Serpent. Motecuzóma pointed, with a slightly trembling finger, to one of the pictures. It showed Quetzalcoatl waving good-bye as he stood on his raft, floating out to sea.

  "He is dressed as we dress," said Motecuzóma, his voice also a little tremulous. "But he wears on his head a thing which must have been the crown of the Toltéca. Compare it with the helmet you hold at this moment!"

  "There is no disputing the resemblance between the two objects," I said, and he gave a grunt of satisfaction. But I went on, cautiously, "Still, my lord, we must bear in mind that all the Toltéca were long gone before any of the Acolhua learned to draw. Therefore the artist who did this could never have seen how any Toltecatl dressed, let alone Quetzalcoatl. I grant that the appearance of his pictured headgear is of marvelous likeness to the white man's helmet. But I know well how storytelling scribes can indulge their imagination in their work, and I remind my lord that there is such a thing as coincidence."

  "Yya!" Motecuzóma made the exclamation sound rather like a retch of nausea. "Will nothing convince you? Listen, there is even more proof. As I long ago promised, I set all the historians of all The Triple Alliance to the task of learning all they could about the vanished Toltéca. To their own surprise—they confess it—they have unearthed many old legends, hitherto mislaid or forgotten. And hear this: according to those rediscovered legends, the Toltéca were of uncommonly pale complexion and of uncommon hairiness, and their men accounted it a sign of manliness to encourage the growth of hair on their faces." He leaned forward, the better to glare at me. "In simple words, Knight Mixtli, the Toltéca were white and bearded men, exactly like the outlanders making their ever more frequent visits. What do you say to that?"

  I could have said that our histories were so full of legends and variant legends and elaborations on legends that any child could find some one of them that would support any wildest belief or new theory. I could have said that the most dedicated historian was not likely to disappoint a Revered Speaker who was infatuated with an irrational idea and demanding substantiation of it. I did not say those things. I said circumspectly:

  "Whoever the white men may be, my lord, you rightly remark that their visits are becoming ever more frequent. Also, they are coming in greater numbers each time. Also, each landing has been more westerly—Tihó, then Kimpech, now Xicalanca—ever closer to these lands of ours. What does my lord make of that?"

  He shifted on his throne, as if unconsciously suspecting that he sat only precariously there, and after a few moments of cogitation he said:

  "When they have not been opposed, they have done no harm or damage. It is obvious from their always traveling in ships that they prefer to be on or near the sea. You yourself told that they come from islands. Whoever they are—the returning Toltéca or the veritable gods of the Toltéca—they show no inclination to press on inland toward this region which once was theirs." He shrugged. "If they wish to return to The One World, but wish only to settle in the coastlands... well..." He shrugged again. "Why should we and they not be able to live as friendly neighbors?" He paused, and I said nothing, and he asked with asperity, "Do you not agree?"

  I said, "In my experience, Lord Speaker, one never really knows whether a prospective neighbor will be a treasure or a trial, until that neighbor has moved in to stay, and then it is too late to have regrets. I might liken it to an impetuous marriage. One can only hope."

  Less than a year later, the neighbors moved in to stay. It was in the springtime of the year One Reed that another swift-messenger came, and again from the Olméca country, but that time bringing a most alarming report, and Motecuzóma sent for me at the same time he convened his Speaking Council to hear the news. The Cupilcatl messenger had brought bark papers documenting the sad story in word pictures. But, while we examined them, he also told us what had happened, in his own breathless and anguished words. On the day Six Flower, the ships had again floated on their wide wings to that coast, and not a few but a frightening fleet of them, eleven of them. By your calendar, reverend scribes, that would have been the twenty-fifth day of March, or your New Year's Day of the year one thousand five hundred and nineteen.

  The eleven ships had moored off the mouth of The River of the Tabascoob, farther to the west than on the earlier visit, and they had disgorged onto the beaches uncountable hundreds of white men. All armed and sheathed with metal, those men had swarmed ashore—shouting "Santiago!," apparently the name of their war god—coming with the clear intent of doing more than admiring the local landscape and savoring the local foods. So the populace had immediately mustered their warriors—the Cupilco, the Coatzacuali, the Coatlicamac, and others of that region—some five thousand men altogether. Many battles had been fought in the space of ten days, and the people had fought bravely, but to no avail, for the white men's weapons were invincible.

  They had spears and swords and shields and body coverings of metal, against which the obsidian maqualiuime shattered at first blow. They had bows that were contemptibly small and held awkwardly cross ways, but which somehow propelled short arrows with incredible accuracy. They had the sticks that spat lightning and thunder and put an almost trifling but death-dealing hole in their victims. They had metal tubes on large wheels, which even more resembled a furious storm god, for they belched still brighter lightning, louder thunder, and a spray of jagged metal bits that could mow down many men at once, like maize stalks beaten down by a hailstorm. Most wondrous and unbelievable and terrifying of all, said the messenger, some of the white warriors were beast-men: they had bodies like giant, hornless deer, with four hoofed legs on which they could gallop as fleetly as deer, while their two human arms wielded sword or spear to lethal effect, and while the very sight of them sent brave men scattering in fear.

  You smile, reverend friars. But at that time, neither the messenger's tumbling words nor the crude Cupilco drawings conveyed to us any coherent idea of soldiers mounted on animals larger than any animal in these lands. We were equally uncomprehending of what the messenger called lion-dogs, which could run down a running man, or sniff him out of hiding, and rend him as terribly as a sword or jaguar could do. Now, of course, we have all become intimately acquainted with your horses and staghounds, and their utility in hunting or in battle.

  When the combined Olméca forces had lost eight hundred men to death and about an equal number to severe wounds, said the messenger, and had in the meantime killed only fourteen of the white invaders, the Tabascoob called them all to retreat from the engagement. He sent emissary nobles carrying the gilt mesh flags of truce, and they approached the houses of cloth which the white men had erected upon the ocean beach. The nobles were surprised to find that they could communicate without having to use gestures, for they found that one of the white men spoke an understandable dialect of the Maya language. The envoys asked what terms of surrender the white men would demand, that a peace might be declared. One of the white men, evidently their chief, spoke some unintelligible words, and the Maya-speaking one translated.

  Reverend scribes, I cannot testify to the exactitude of those words, since I repeat to you only what the Cupilcatl messenger said that day, and he of course had heard them only after their passing through several
mouths and the several languages spoken by the several parties. But the words were these:

  "Tell your people that we did not come to make war. We came seeking a cure for our ailment. We white men suffer from a disease of the heart, for which the only remedy is gold."

  At that, the Snake Woman Tlacotzin looked up at Motecuzóma and said, in a voice meant to be encouraging, "That could be a valuable thing to know, Lord Speaker. The outlanders are not invulnerable to everything. They are afflicted with a curious disease which has never troubled any of the peoples in these lands."

  Motecuzóma nodded hesitantly, uncertainly. All the old men of his Speaking Council followed his lead and likewise nodded as if reserving judgment. Only one old man in the room was rude enough to speak an opinion, and that of course was myself.

  "I beg to differ, Lord Snake Woman," I said. "I have known numerous of our own people to show symptoms of that affliction. It is called greed."

  Both Tlacotzin and Motecuzóma threw me peevish glances, and I said nothing else. The messenger was told to proceed with his story, of which there was not much more.

  The Tabascoob, he said, had bought peace by heaping upon the sands every fragment of gold he could immediately order brought to that place: vessels and chains and god images and jewels and ornaments of wrought gold, even dust and nuggets and chunks of the raw metal yet unworked. The obviously commanding white man asked, almost off-handedly, where the people acquired that heart-soothing gold. The Tabascoob replied that it was found in many places in The One World, but that most of it was pledged to the ruler Motecuzóma of the Mexíca, hence the greatest store of it was to be found in his capital city. The white men had seemed much beguiled by that remark, and inquired where that city might be. The Tabascoob told them that their floating houses could get near to it by floating farther along the coast, west, then northwest.

  Motecuzóma growled, "Nice helpful neighbors we already have."

  The Tabascoob had also given the white commander a gift of twenty beautiful young women to be divided among himself and his ranking under-chiefs. Nineteen of the girls has been selected, by the Tabascoob himself, as the most desirable of all the virgins in that immediate region. They did not go too happily into the camp of the outlanders. But the twentieth girl had unselfishly volunteered herself to make the gift total twenty, which ritual number might influence the gods to send the Olméca no more such visitations. So, the Cupilcatl concluded, the white men had loaded their plunder of gold and young womanhood into their big canoes, then into their immeasurably bigger floating houses and, as all the people had fervently hoped, the houses had unfurled their wings and set off westward, on the day Thirteen Flower, keeping close along the shoreline.

  Motecuzóma growled some more, while the elders of his Speaking Council huddled in a muttering conference, and while the palace steward ushered the messenger from the room.

  "My Lord Speaker," one of the elders said with diffidence, "this is the year One Reed."

  "Thank you," Motecuzóma said sourly. "That is one thing which I already knew."

  Another old man said, "But perhaps the possible significance of it has escaped my lord's attention. According to at least one legend, One Reed was the year in which Quetzalcoatl was born in his human form, to become the Uey-Tlatoani of the Toltéca."

  And another said, "One Reed would also, of course, have been the designation of the succeeding year in which Quetzalcóatl attained his sheaf of fifty and two years. And, again according to legend, it was in that year One Reed that his enemy the god Tezcatlipóca tricked him into becoming drunk, so that without intent he sinned abominably."

  And another said, "The great sin he committed, while inebriated, was to couple with his own daughter. When he awoke beside her in the morning, his remorse made him abdicate his throne and go away alone upon his raft, beyond the eastern sea."

  And another said, "But even as he went away, he vowed to return. You see, my lord? The Feathered Serpent was born in the year One Reed, and he vanished in the next year known as One Reed. Admittedly, that is only a legend, and other legends about Quetzalcoatl cite different dates, and all of them were countless sheaves of years ago. But, since this is another One Reed year, might it not be likely to wonder...?"

  That one let his question trail off into silence, because Motecuzóma's face had gone almost as pale as that of any white man. He was shocked to speechlessness. It may have been because the reminder of the coincidental dates had followed so closely upon what the messenger had told: that the men from beyond the eastern sea were apparently intent on seeking his own city. Or he may have paled at the suggestive hint of a resemblance between himself and the Quetzalcoatl dethroned by shame at his own sin. Motecuzóma by then had numerous children of varying ages, by his various wives and concubines, and for some time there had been scurrilous gossip regarding his rumored relationship with two of three of his own daughters. The Revered Speaker had a sufficiency of things to ponder upon at that moment, but the palace steward came in again, kissing the earth and begging permission to announce the arrival of more messengers.

  It was a delegation of four men from the Totonaca country on the eastern coast, come to report the appearance there of those eleven ships full of white men. The entry of the Totonaca messengers so immediately after the Cupilcatl messenger was yet another unsettling coincidence, but it was not an inexplicable one. Some twenty days had elapsed between the ships' leaving the Olméca lands and appearing on the Totonaca coast, but the latter country was almost directly east of Tenochtítlan and there were well-trodden trade routes between. The man from the Olméca country had had to come by a much longer and more arduous route. So the nearly simultaneous arrival of the separate reports was not remarkable, but neither did it make any of us in the throne room feel any easier.

  The Totonaca were an ignorant people, and had not the art of word knowing, so they had sent no word-picture documentation of events. The four messengers were word rememberers, delivering a memorized report from their ruler, the Lord Patzinca, as he had spoken it to them, word for word. I should here remark that word rememberers were almost as useful as written accounts, in one respect: they could repeat whatever they had memorized, over and over again, as many times as necessary, and not omit or misplace a word of it. But they had their limitations, being impervious to questioning. When asked to clarify some obscure point in their message, they could not, They could only repeat the obscurity. They could not even elaborate a message by adding opinions or impressions of their own, for their single-mindedness precluded their having any such things.

  "On the day Eight Alligator, my Lord Speaker," began one of the Totonaca, and went on to recite the message sent by Patzinca. On the day Eight Alligator, the eleven ships had suddenly materialized on the ocean and had come to a halt outside the bay of Chalchihuacuecan. It was a place I had once visited myself, The Place of Abundant Beautiful Things, but I made no comment, knowing better than to interrupt a word rememberer. The man went on to report that, on the following day, the day Nine Wind, the white and bearded strangers had begun to come ashore and build themselves little houses of cloth on the beach, and to erect large wooden crosses in the sand, also large banners, and to enact what appeared to be some sort of ceremony, since it included much chanting and gesticulation and kneeling down and standing up, and there were several priests, unmistakably priests, for they dressed all in black, just like those of these lands. Such were the occurrences of the day Nine Wind. On the next day...

  One of the old men of the Speaking Council said pensively, "Nine Wind. According to at least one legend, Quetzalcoatl's full name was Nine Wind Feathered Serpent. That is to say, he was born on the day Nine Wind."

  Motecuzóma flinched slightly, perhaps because that information struck him as portentous, perhaps because the informant should have known that it was a mistake ever to interrupt a word rememberer. A word rememberer could not just pick up his recitation where it was broken off; he had to back up and start from the beginning aga
in.

  "On the day Eight Alligator..."

  He droned along to the point he had reached before, and went on, to report that there had been no battles on the beach, or anywhere else as yet. That was understandable. The Totonaca, besides being ignorant, were a servile and whining people. For years they had been subordinate to the Triple Alliance, and they regularly, though with querulous complaints, had paid us their annual tribute of fruits, fine woods, vanilla and cacao for making chocolate, picíetl for smoking, and other such products of the Hot Lands.

  The residents of that Place of Abundant Beautiful Things, said the messenger, had not opposed the outlanders' arrival, but had sent word of it to their Lord Patzinca in the capital city of Tzempoalan. Patzinca in turn sent nobles bearing many gifts to the bearded white strangers, and also an invitation that they come to visit his court. So five of their presumably highest-ranking personages went to be his guests, taking with them one woman who had come ashore with them. She was neither white nor bearded, said the messenger, but was a female of some nation of the Olméca lands. At the Tzempoalan palace, the visitors presented gifts to Patzinca: a chair of curious construction, many beads of many colors, a hat made of some heavy, fuzzy red cloth. The visitors then announced that they came as envoys of a ruler called Kinkarlos and of a god called Our Lord and a goddess called Our Lady.

  Yes, reverend scribes, I know, I know. I merely repeat it as the Totonacatl ignorantly repeated it.

  Then the visitors intensely questioned Patzinca as to the circumstances obtaining in his land. To what god did he and his people pay homage? Was there much gold in this place? Was he himself an emperor or a king or merely a viceroy? Patzinca, though considerably perplexed by the many unfamiliar terms employed in the interrogation, replied as best he could. Of the multitudinous gods in existence, he and his people recognized Tezcatlipóca as the highest. He himself was ruler of all the Totonaca, but was subservient to three mightier nations farther inland, the mightiest of which was the nation of the Mexíca, ruled by the Revered Speaker Motecuzóma. At that very moment, confided Patzinca, five registrars of the Mexíca treasury were in Tzempoalan to review this year's list of the items the Totonaca were to yield in tribute...