Aztec a-1

by Gary Jennings

  "I should like to know," a Council elder suddenly said, "how was this interrogation conducted? We have heard that one of the white men speaks the Maya tongue. But none of the Totonaca speaks anything but his own language and our Náhuatl."

  The word rememberer looked momentarily flustered. He cleared his throat and went all the way back to: "On the day Eight Alligator, my Lord Speaker..."

  Motecuzóma glared with exasperation at the hapless elder who had interrupted, and said between his teeth, "Now you may perish of old age before the lout ever gets around to explaining that."

  The Totonacatl cleared his throat again. "On the day Eight Alligator..." and we all sat fidgeting until he worked his way through his recital and arrived again at new information. When he did, it was of sufficient interest to have been almost worth the wait.

  The five haughty Mexíca tribute registrars, Patzinca told the white men, were exceedingly angry at him because he had made those strangers welcome without first asking the permission of their Revered Speaker Motecuzóma. In consequence, they had added to their tribute demand ten adolescent Totonaca boys and ten virgin Totonaca maidens, to be sent with the vanilla and cacao and other items to Tenochtítlan, to be sacrificed when such victims should be required by the Mexíca gods.

  On hearing that, the chief of the white men made noises of great revulsion, and stormed at Patzinca that he should do no such thing, that he should instead have the five Mexíca officials seized and imprisoned. When the Lord Patzinca expressed a horrified reluctance to lay hands on Motecuzóma's functionaries, the white chief promised that his white soldiers would defend the Totonaca against any retaliation. So Patzinca, though sweating in apprehension, had given the order, and the five registrars were last seen—by the word rememberers, before they departed for Tenochtítlan—caged in a small cage of vine-tied wooden bars, all five stuffed in together like fowl going to market, their feather mantles lamentably ruffled, to say nothing of their state of mind.

  "This is outrageous!" cried Motecuzóma, forgetting himself. "The outlanders may be excused for not knowing out tributary laws. But that witless Patzinca—!" He stood up from his throne and shook a clenched fist at the Totonacatl who had been speaking. "Five of my treasury officials treated so, and you dare to come and tell me! By the gods, I will have you thrown alive to the great cats in the menagerie unless your next words explain and excuse Patzinca's insane act of treason!"

  The man gulped and his eyes bulged, but what he said was, "On the day Eight Alligator, my Lord Speaker..."

  "Ayya ouíya, BE STILL!" roared Motecuzóma. He sank back onto his throne and despairingly covered his face with his hands. "I retract the threat. Any cat would be too proud to eat such trash."

  One of the Council elders diplomatically supplied a diversion by signaling for one of the other messengers to speak. That one immediately began to babble rapidly, and in a mixture of languages. It was evident that he had been present during at least one of the conferences between his ruler and the visitors, and was repeating every single word that had passed among them. It was also evident that the white chief spoke in Spanish, after which another visitor translated that into Maya, after which still another translated that into Náhuatl for Patzinca's comprehension, after which Patzinca's replies were relayed back to the white chief along that same chain of interpretation.

  "It is good that you are here, Mixtli," Motecuzóma said to me. "The Náhuatl is poorly spoken but, with enough repetitions, we may be able to make sense of it. Meanwhile, the other tongues—can you tell us what they say?"

  I would have liked to show off with an immediate and glib translation but, in truth, I understood little more of the welter of words than did anyone else there. The messenger's Totonacatl accent was enough of an impediment. But also his ruler did not speak Náhuatl very well, since it was for him a language acquired only for conversing with his betters. Also, the Maya dialect being spoken as an intermediate translation was that of the Xiu tribe and, while I was competent enough in that tongue, the presumably white interpreter was not. Also, I was of course far from fluent in Spanish at that time. Also, there were many Spanish words used—such as "emperadore" and "virrey"—for which there were then no substitutes in any of our languages, so they were merely and badly parroted without translation in both the Xiu and Náhuatl the messenger recited. Somewhat abashedly, I had to confess to Motecuzóma:

  "Perhaps I too, my lord, hearing enough repetitions, might be able to extract some pertinence. But at this moment I can only tell you that the word most often spoken by the white men in their own tongue is 'cortés.' "

  Motecuzóma said gloomily, "One word."

  "It means courteous, Lord Speaker, or gentle, mannerly, kindly."

  Motecuzóma brightened a little and said, "Well, at least it does not bode too ill if the outlanders are speaking of gentleness and kindliness." I refrained from remarking that they had hardly behaved gently in their assault upon the Olméca lands.

  After some moody cogitation, Motecuzóma told me and his brother, the war chief Cuitiahuac, to take the messengers elsewhere, to listen to what they had to say, as often as necessary, until we could reduce their effusions to a coherent report of the occurrences in the Totonaca country. So we took them to my house, where Béu kept us all supplied with food and drink while we devoted several whole days to listening to them. The one messenger recited, over and over, the message he had been given by the Lord Patzinca; the other three repeated, over and over, the garble of words they had memorized at the many-voiced conferences between Patzinca and the visitors. Cuitiahuac concentrated on the Náhuatl portions of the recitals, I on the Xiu and Spanish, until our ears and brains were all but benumbed. However, from the flux of words, we at last got a sort of essence, which I put into word pictures.

  Cuitiahuac and I perceived the situation thus. The white men professed to be scandalized that the Totonaca or any other people should be fearful of or subject to the domination of a "foreign" ruler called Motecuzóma. They offered to lend their unique weapons and their invincible white warriors, to "liberate" the Totonaca and any others who wished to be free of Motecuzóma's despotism—on condition that those peoples would instead give their allegiance to an even more foreign King Carlos of Spain. We knew that some nations might be willing to join in an overthrow of the Mexíca, for none had ever been pleased to pay tribute to Tenochtítlan, and Motecuzóma had lately made the Mexíca even less popular throughout The One World. However, the white men attached one other condition to their offer of liberation, and any ally's acceptance of it would commit that ally to another act of rebellion that was appalling to contemplate.

  Our Lord and Our Lady, said the white men, were jealous of all rival deities, and were revolted by the practice of human sacrifice. All the peoples desirous of becoming free of Mexíca domination would also have to become worshipers of the new god and goddess. They would eschew blood offerings, they would topple all the statues and temples of their old deities, they would instead set up crosses representing Our Lord and images of Our Lady—which objects the white men were conveniently ready to supply. Cuitlahuac and I agreed that the Totonaca or any other disaffected people might see much advantage in deposing Motecuzóma and his everywhere pervasive Mexíca, in favor of a faraway and invisible King Carlos. But we were also sure that no people would be so ready to disavow the old gods, immeasurably more fearsome than any earthly ruler, and thereby risk an immediate earthquake destruction of themselves and the entire One World. Even the easily swayed Patzinca of the Totonaca, we gathered from his messengers, was aghast at that suggestion.

  So that was the account, and the conclusions we had drawn from it, which Cuitlalmac and I took to the palace. Motecuzóma laid my book of bark paper across his lap and began reading it, cheerlessly unfolding pleat after pleat, while I told its content aloud for the benefit of the Speaking Council elders also convened in the room. But that meeting, like an earlier one, was interrupted by the palace steward's announcement of new arrivals imp
loring immediate audience.

  They were the five treasury registrars who had been in Tzempoalan when the white men arrived there. Like all such officials traveling in tributary lands, they wore their richest mantles and feather headdresses and insignia of office—to impress and awe the tribute payers—but they entered the throne room looking like birds that had been blown by a storm through several thorny thickets. They were disheveled and dirty and haggard and breathless, partly because, they said, they had come from Tzempoalan at their fastest pace, but mainly because they had spent many days and nights confined in Patzinca's accursed prison cage, where there was no room to lie down and no sanitary facilities.

  "What madness is going on over there?" Motecuzóma demanded.

  One of them sighed wearily and said, "Ayya, my lord, it is indescribable."

  "Nonsense!" snapped Motecuzóma. "Anything survivable is describable. How did you manage to escape?"

  "We did not, Lord Speaker. The leader of the white strangers secretly opened the cage for us."

  We all blinked and Motecuzóma exclaimed, "Secretly?"

  "Yes, my lord. The white man, whose name is Cortés—"

  "His name is Cortés?" Motecuzóma followed that exclamation with a piercing look at me, but I could only shrug helplessly, being as mystified as he. The word rememberers' memorized conversations had given me no hint that the word was a name.

  The newcomer went on patiently, wearily. "The white man Cortés came to our cage secretly, in the night, when there were no Totonaca about, and he was accompanied only by two interpreters. He opened the cage door with his own hands. Through his interpreters, he told us that his name is Cortés, and he told us to flee for our lives, and he asked that we convey his respects to our Revered Speaker. The white man Cortés wishes you to know, my lord, that the Totonaca are in a rebellious mood, that Patzinca imprisoned us despite the urgent cautioning of Cortés that the envoys of the mighty Motecuzóma should not be so rashly manhandled. Cortés wishes you to know, my lord, that he has heard much of the mighty Motecuzóma, that he is a devoted admirer of the mighty Motecuzóma, and that he willingly risks the fury of the treasonous Patzinca in thus sending us back to you unharmed, as a token of his regard. He wishes you also to know that he will exert all his persuasion to prevent an uprising of the Totonaca against you. In exchange for his keeping the peace, Lord Speaker, the white man Cortés asks only that you invite him to Tenochtítlan, so that he may pay his homage in person to the greatest ruler in all these lands."

  "Well," said Motecuzóma, smiling and sitting straighter on his throne, unconsciously preening in that spate of adulation. "The white outlander is aptly named Courteous."

  But his Snake Woman, Tlacotzin, addressed the man who had just spoken: "Do you believe what that white stranger told you?"

  "Lord Snake Woman, I can recount only what I know. We were imprisoned by Totonaca guards and we were freed by the man Cortés."

  Tlacotzin turned again to Motecuzóma. "We were told by Patzinca's own messengers that he laid hands on these officials only after being commanded to do so by that same chief of the white men."

  Motecuzóma said uncertainly, "Patzinca could have lied, for some devious reason."

  "I know the Totonaca," Tlacotzin said contemptuously. "None of them, including Patzinca, has the courage to rebel or the wit to dissemble. Not without assistance."

  "If I may speak, Lord Brother," said Cuitlahuac. "You had not yet finished reading the account prepared by the Knight Mixtli and myself. The words repeated therein are the actual words spoken between the Lord Patzinca and the man Cortés. They do not at all accord with the message just received from that Cortés. There can be no doubt that he has artfully tricked Patzinca into treason, and that he has shamelessly lied to these registrars."

  "It does not make sense," Motecuzóma objected. "Why should he incite Patzinca to the treachery of seizing these men, and then negate that by setting them loose himself?"

  "He hoped to make sure that we blamed the Totonaca for the treason," resumed the Snake Woman. "Now that the officials have returned to us, Patzinca must be in a frenzy of fear, and mustering his army against our reprisal. When that army is gathered to mount a defense, the man Cortés may just as easily incite Patzinca to use them for attack instead."

  Cuitlahuac added, "And that does accord with our conclusions, Mixtli. Does it not?"

  "Yes, my lords," I said, addressing them all. "The white chief Cortés clearly wants something from us Mexíca, and he will use force to get it, if necessary. The threat is implicit in the message brought by these registrars he so cunningly freed. His price for keeping the Totonaca in check is that he be invited here. If the invitation is withheld, he will use the Totonaca—and perhaps others—to help him fight his way here."

  "Then we can easily forestall that," said Motecuzóma, "by extending the invitation he requests. After all, he says he merely wishes to pay his respects, and it is proper that he should. If he comes with no armies, with just an escort of his ranking subordinates, he can certainly work no harm here. My belief is that he wishes to ask our permission to settle a colony of his people on the coast. We already know that these strangers are by nature island dwellers and seafarers. If they wish only an allotment of some seaside land..."

  "I hesitate to contradict my Revered Speaker," said a hoarse voice. "But the white men want more than a foothold on the beach." The speaker was another of the returned registrars. "Before we were freed from Tzempoalan, we saw the glow of great fires in the direction of the ocean, and a messenger came running from the bay where the white men had moored their eleven ships, and eventually we heard what had happened. At the order of the man Cortés, his soldiers stripped and gutted every useful item from ten of those ships, and the ten were burned to ashes. Only one ship is left, apparently to serve as a courier craft between here and wherever the white men come from."

  Motecuzóma said irritably, "This makes less and less sense. Why should they deliberately destroy their only means of transport? Are you trying to tell me that the outlanders are all madmen?"

  "I do not know, Lord Speaker," said the hoarse-voiced man. "I know only this. The hundreds of white warriors are now aground on that coast, with no means of returning whence they came. The chief Cortés will not now be persuaded or forced to go away, because, by his own action, he cannot. His back is to the sea, and I do not believe he will simply stand there. His only alternative is to march forward, inland from the ocean. I believe the Eagle Knight Mixtli has predicted correctly: that he will march this way. Toward Tenochtítlan."

  Seeming as troubled and unsure of himself as the unhappy Patzinca of Tzempoalan, our Revered Speaker refused to make any immediate decision or to order any immediate action. He commanded that the throne room be cleared and that he be left alone. "I must give these matters deep thought," he said, "and closely study this account compiled by my brother and the Knight Mixtli. I will commune with the gods. When I have determined what should be done next, I will communicate my decisions. For now, I require solitude."

  So the five bedraggled registrars went away to refresh themselves, and the Speaking Council dispersed, and I went home. Although Waiting Moon and I seldom exchanged many words, and then only regarding trivial household matters, on that occasion I felt the need of someone to talk to. I related to her all the things that had been happening on the coast and at the court, and the troublous apprehensions they were causing.

  She said softly, "Motecuzóma fears that it is the end of our world. Do you, Záa?"

  I shook my head noncommittally. "I am no far-seer. Quite the contrary. But the end of The One World has been often predicted. So has the return of Quetzalcoatl, with or without his Toltéca attendants. If this Cortés is only a new and different sort of marauder, we can fight him and probably vanquish him. But if his coming is somehow a fulfillment of all those old prophecies... well, it will be like the coming of the great flood twenty years ago, against which none of us could stand. I could not, and I was t
hen in my prime of manhood. Even the strong and fearless Speaker Ahuítzotl could not. Now I am old, and I have little confidence in the Speaker Motecuzóma."

  Béu regarded me pensively, then said, "Are you thinking that perhaps we should take our belongings and flee to some safer haven? Even if there is calamity here in the north, my old home city of Tecuantépec should be out of danger."

  "I had thought of that," I said. "But I have for so long been involved in the fortunes of the Mexíca that I should feel like a deserter if I departed at this juncture. And it may be perverse of me, but if this is some kind of ending, I should like to be able to say, when I get to Mictlan, that I saw it all."

  Motecuzóma might have gone on vacillating and temporizing for a long time, except for what occurred that very night. It was yet another omen, and a sufficiently alarming one that he bestirred himself at least to send for me. A palace page came, himself much perturbed, and roused me from my bed to accompany him at once to the palace.

  As I dressed, I could hear a subdued hubbub from the street outside, and I grumbled, "What has happened now?"

  "I will show you, Knight Mixtli," said the young messenger, "as soon as we are outdoors."

  When we were, he pointed to the sky and said in a hushed voice, "Look there." Late though it was, well after midnight, we were not the only ones watching the apparition. The street was full of people from the neighboring houses, scantily clad in whatever garments they had snatched up, all of them with their faces upturned, all of them murmuring uneasily except when they were calling for other neighbors to wake up. I raised my crystal and looked at the sky, at first as wonderingly as everyone else. But then a memory came to my mind from long ago, and it somewhat diminished the dreadfulness of the spectacle, at least for me. The page glanced sideways at me, perhaps waiting for me to utter some exclamation of dismay, but I only sighed and said: