Aztec a-1

by Gary Jennings

  "No one holds you to blame, Mixtzin," he said, when I told how she had eluded the poison. "You would have done The One World a service in disposing of that traitress, but it does not matter that you did not."

  Puzzled, I said, "It does not matter? Why not?"

  "Because she did not betray us," said Cuautemoc. "She did not have to." He grimaced as if in pain. "It was my exalted cousin. Our Revered Speaker Motecuzóma."

  "What?" I exclaimed.

  "Cuitlahuac went to the officer Tonatíu Alvarado, you remember, and asked and was given permission to hold the Iztociuatl ceremony. As soon as Cuitlahuac left the palace, Motecuzóma told Alvarado to beware of trickery."

  "Why?"

  Cuautemoc shrugged. "Injured pride? Vindictive spite? Motecuzóma could hardly have been pleased that the uprising was the idea of his underlings, and arranged without his knowledge, to be done without his approval or participation. Whatever his real reason, his excuse is that he will countenance no breaking of his truce with Cortés."

  I snarled a filthy word, not generally applied to Revered Speakers. "What is our breaking of the truce, compared to his instigating the butchery of a thousand women and children of his own people?"

  "Let us charitably assume that he expected Alvarado only to forbid the celebration, that he did not anticipate such a violent dispersal of the celebrants."

  "Violent dispersal," I growled. "That is a new way to say indiscriminate slaughter. My wife, a mere onlooker, was wounded. One of her two female servants was killed, and the other has fled terrified into hiding somewhere."

  "If nothing else," Cuautemoc said with a sigh, "the incident has united all our people in outrage. Before, they only muttered and grumbled, some of them mistrusting Motecuzóma, others supporting him. Now all are ready to tear him limb from limb, along with everyone else in that palace."

  "Good," I said. "Then let us do so. We still have most of our warriors. Raise the city folk as well—even old men like me—and storm the palace."

  "That would be suicidal. The outlanders have now barricaded themselves inside it, behind their cannons, behind the harquebuses and crossbows aimed from every window. We could not get near the building without being obliterated. We must engage them hand to hand, as originally planned, and we must wait to have that opportunity again."

  "Wait!" I said, with another profanity.

  "But while we wait, Cuitlahuac is packing the island with still more warriors. You may have noticed an increase in the traffic of canoes and freight barges plying between here and the mainland, apparently carrying flowers and vegetables and such. Concealed under that top cargo are men and arms—Cacama's Acolhua troops from Texcóco, Tecpanéca troops from Tlácopan. Meanwhile, as we get stronger, our opponents may get weaker. During the massacre, all their servants and attendants deserted the palace. Now, of course, not a single Mexícatl vendor or porter will deliver to them food or anything else. We will let the white men and their friends—Motecuzóma, Malintzin, all of them—sit in their fortification and suffer for a while."

  I asked, "Cuitlahuac hopes to starve them into surrender?"

  "No. They will be uncomfortable, but the kitchens and larders are adequately supplied to sustain them until Cortés gets back here. When he does, he must not find us overtly belligerent, holding the palace under siege, for he would need only to mount a similar siege around the whole island, and starve us as we starve them."

  "Why let him get here at all?" I demanded. "We know he is marching hither. Let us go out and attack him in the open."

  "Have you forgotten how easily he won the battle of Texcala? And he now has many more men and horses and weapons. No, we will not confront him in the field. Cuitlahuac plans to let Cortés come here unopposed, and find all his people in the palace unharmed, the truce apparently restored. He will not know of our imported and hidden and waiting warriors. But when we have him and all the white men within our confines, then we will attack—even suicidally, if necessary—and we will wipe this island and this whole lake district clean of them."

  * * *

  Perhaps the gods decided that it was time Tenochtítlan had a change for the better in its communal tonáli, because that latest plan did work—with only a few unforeseeable complications.

  When we got word that Cortés and his multitudinous force were approaching, everyone in the city, by command of the regent Cuitlahuac, determinedly assumed an outward semblance of untroubled normality, even the widowers and orphans and other kinfolk of the slain innocents. All three causeways were again bridged intact, and travelers and porters trudged and trotted back and forth across them. The canoes and barges that plied the canals of the city and the lake around the island were genuinely carrying innocuous cargoes. The thousands of Acolhua and Tecpanéca fighting men whom they had earlier ferried unnoticed, right from under the noses of Cortés's mainland allies, had been kept out of sight ever since. Eight of them, in fact, were living in my house, bored and impatient for action. Tenochtítlan's streets were as thronged as usual, and the Tlaltelólco market was as busy, colorful, and clamorous. The only nearly empty part of the city was The Heart of the One World, its marble pavement still bloodstained, its vast expanse traversed only by the priests of the temples there, who still performed their everyday functions of praying, chanting, burning incense, blowing the time-telling conch trumpets at dawn and midday and so on.

  Cortés came warily, apprehensive of animosity, for he had of course heard about the night of massacre, and he would not expose even his formidable army to any risk of ambush. After skirting Texcóco at a prudent distance, he came around the southern lakeshore as before, but he did not take the southern causeway into Tenochtítlan; his men would have been vulnerable to an attack by canoe-borne warriors if they were strung out along the open span of that longest causeway. He continued on around the lake, and up its western shore, dropping off Prince Black Flower and his warriors, posting the big cannons at intervals, all of them pointed across the water at the city, with men to tend them. He marched all the way to Tlácopan, because the causeway from there is the shortest of the three approaches. First he and his hundred or so other horsemen galloped across it as if expecting it to be snatched from under them. Then his foot soldiers did the same, dashing across in companies of about a hundred men at a time.

  Once he was on the island, Cortés must have breathed more easily. There had been no ambush or other obstacle to his return. While the people on the city streets did not greet him with tumultuous welcome, neither did they revile him; they merely nodded as if he had never been away. And he must have felt comfortably powerful at being accompanied by one and a half thousand of his own countrymen, not to mention that backing of his thousands of allied warriors camped in an arc around the mainland. He may even have deluded himself that we Mexíca were at last resigned to recognizing his supremacy. So, from the causeway, he and his troops marched through the city like already acknowledged conquerors.

  Cortés showed no surprise at finding the central plaza so empty; perhaps he thought it had been cleared for his convenience. Anyway, the bulk of his force stopped there and, with much noise and bustle and wafting about of their bad odors, began to tether their horses, spread out their bedrolls, lay camp-fires, and otherwise settle down as if for an indeterminate stay. All the resident Texcalteca, except for their chief knights, vacated the Axayácatl palace and also made camp in the plaza. Motecuzóma and a group of his loyal courtiers likewise made their first emergence from the palace since the night of Iztociuatl—coming out to greet Cortés—but he disdainfully gave them no recognition at all. He and his newly recruited comrade in arms, Narváez, brushed past them and into the palace.

  I imagine the first thing they did was to shout for food and drink, and I would like to have seen Cortés's face when he was served not by servants, but by Alvarado's soldiers, and served only moldy old beans, atóli mush, whatever other provisions remained. I would also like to have overheard Cortés's first conversation with Alvarado, when th
at sunlike officer told how he had so heroically put down the "uprising" of unarmed women and children, but had neglected to eliminate more than a handful of the Mexíca warriors who could still be a menace.

  Cortés and his augmented army had come onto the island in the afternoon. Evidently he and Narváez and Alvarado remained huddled in conference until nightfall, but what they discussed or what plans they made, no one ever knew. I know only that, at some point, Cortés sent a company of his soldiers across the plaza to Motecuzóma's own palace, where, with spears and pry-bars and battering beams, they broke down the walls with which Motecuzóma had tried to seal up the treasure chambers. Then, like ants toiling between a honey pot and their nest, the soldiers went back and forth, transferring the treasury's store of gold and jewels to the dining hall of Cortés's palace. That took the men most of the night, because there was a great deal of the plunder, and it was not in easily portable form, for reasons I should perhaps explain.

  Since it was our people's belief that gold is the sacred excrement of the gods, our treasurers did not simply hoard it in the raw form of dust or nuggets, and they did not melt it into featureless ingots or strike coins of it, as you Spaniards do. Before it went into our treasury, it went through the skilled hands of our goldsmiths, who increased its value and beauty by transforming it into figurines, gem-encrusted jewelry, medallions, coronets, filigree ornaments, jugs and cups and platters—all sorts of works of art, wrought in homage to the gods. So, while Cortés must have beamed with satisfaction to see the immense and ever growing pile of treasure his men were heaping in his hall, nearly filling that spacious chamber, he must also have frowned at its variety of shapes, unsuited for being loaded onto either horses or porters.

  While Cortés thus occupied his first night back on the island, the city all around him remained quiet, as if no one paid any attention to the activity. He went to bed sometime before dawn, taking Malintzin with him, and, in the most contemptuous manner, he left word that Motecuzóma and his chief counselors should stand ready to attend upon him when he woke and called for them. So the pathetically obedient Motecuzóma sent messengers early the next morning to call his Speaking Council and others, including myself. He had no palace pages to send; it was one of his own younger sons who came to my house, and he looked rather frayed and disheveled after his long immurement in the palace. All of us conspirators had expected such a message, and we had arranged to meet at Cuitlahuac's house. When we were gathered, we all looked expectantly to the regent and war chief, and one of the Council elders asked him:

  "Well, do we obey the summons or ignore it?"

  "Obey," said Cuitlahuac. "Cortés still believes he holds us helpless by holding our complaisant ruler. Let us not disillusion him."

  "Why not?" asked the high priest of Huitzilopóchtli. "We are in readiness for our assault. Cortés cannot cram that whole army of his inside the palace of Axayácatl, and barricade it against us, as the Tonatíu Alvarado did."

  "He has no need to," said Cuitlahuac. "If we cause him the slightest alarm, he can quickly make the entire Heart of the One World a fortification as unapproachable as the palace was. We must keep him lulled in false security only a little longer. We will go to the palace as bidden, and act as if we and all the Mexíca are still the pliant and passive dolls of Motecuzóma."

  The Snake Woman pointed out, "Cortés can bar the entrances when we are inside, and he will have us hostage, too."

  "I am aware of that," said Cuitlahuac. "But all my knights and cuáchictin already have their orders; they will not need my person. One of my orders is that they proceed with the various feints and movements, whatever the hazard to me or to anyone else who is inside the palace at the striking time. If you prefer not to share that risk, Tlacotzin—or any of the rest of you—I here and now give you leave to go home."

  Of course, not a man of us backed away. We all accompanied Cuitlahuac to The Heart of the One World, and fastidiously made our way through the crowded and smelly encampment of men, horses, cooking fires, stacked weapons, and other paraphernalia. I was surprised to see, grouped in one area apart from the white men, as if they were inferiors, a contingent of black men. I had been told of such beings, but I had never seen any until then.

  Curious, I briefly left my fellows to go and look more closely at those oddities. They wore helmets and uniforms identical to those of the Spaniards, but they physically resembled the Spaniards considerably less than I did. They were not really black black, but a sort of brown-tinged black, like the heartwood of the ebony tree. They had peculiarly flat, broad noses and large, protuberant lips—in truth, they looked very like those giant stone heads I once saw in the Olméca country—and their beards were only a sort of kinky black fuzz, scarcely visible until I was close to them. But then I was close enough to notice that one of the blackamoors had a face covered with angry pimples and suppurant pustules, such as I had long ago seen on the white man Guerrero, and I hastily rejoined my fellow lords.

  The white sentries stationed at the Snake Wall entrance to the Axayácatl palace felt us all over for concealed weapons before they let us enter. We passed through the dining hall, where there had grown up an indoor mountain of heaped and tumbled jewelry, the gold and gems coruscating richly even in that dim chamber. Several soldiers, who were probably supposed to be guarding the hoard, were fingering various pieces and smiling at them and very nearly drooling over them. We went on upstairs, to the throne room, where waited Cortés, Alvarado, and numerous other Spaniards, including a new one, a one-eyed man, who was Narváez. Motecuzóma looked rather surrounded and beleaguered, since the woman Malintzin was the only other of his race in evidence until our arrival. We all kissed the earth to him, and he gave us a cool nod of salute, while he went on speaking to the white men.

  "I do not know what the people's intentions were. I know only that they planned a ceremony. Through your Malintzin, I told your Alvarado that I thought it wiser not to allow such a gathering so close to this garrison, that perhaps he ought to order the plaza cleared." Motecuzóma sighed tragically. "Well, you know the calamitous manner in which he cleared it."

  "Yes," said Cortés, through his teeth. His flat eyes turned icily on Alvarado, who stood wringing his fingers and looking as if he had endured a very hard night. "It could have ruined all my—" Cortés coughed and said instead, "It could have made your people our enemies for all time. What puzzles me, Don Montezúma, is that it did not. Why did it not? If I were one of your subjects and had suffered such maltreatment, I would have pelted me with dung when I rode in. No one in the city seems to show the slightest detestation, and that strikes me as unnatural. There is a Spanish saying: 'I can avoid the turbulent torrent; God preserve me from the quiet waters.' "

  "It is because they all blame me," Motecuzóma said wretchedly. "They believe I insanely ordered my own people killed—all those women and children—and that I meanly employed your men for my weapons." There were actually tears in his eyes. "So all my domestics left in disgust, and not so much as a peddler of fried maguey worms has come near this place since then."

  "Yes, a most trying situation," said Cortés. "We must remedy that." He turned his face to Cuitlahuac and, indicating that I should translate, said to him, "You are the war chief. I will not speculate on the probable intent of that alleged religious celebration. I will even humbly apologize for my own lieutenant's impetuosity. But I will remind you that a truce still exists. I should think it the responsibility of a war chief to see that my men are not segregated in isolation, deprived of food and human contact with their hosts."

  Cuitlahuac said, "I command only fighting men, Lord Captain-General. If the civilian population prefer to shun this place, I have no authority to command that they do otherwise. That authority resides only in the Revered Speaker. It was your own men who shut themselves in here, and the Revered Speaker with them."

  Cortés turned back to Motecuzóma. "Then it is up to you, Don Montezúma, to placate your people, to persuade them to resume supplying
and serving us."

  "How can I, if they will not come near me?" said Motecuzóma, almost wailing. "And if I go out among them, I may go to my death!"

  "We will provide an escort—" Cortés began, but he was interrupted by a soldier who ran in and told him in Spanish:

  "My captain, the natives begin to congregate in the plaza. Men and women are crowding through our camp and coming hither. Not armed, but they look none too friendly. Do we expel them? Repel them?"

  "Let them come," said Cortés, and then to Narváez, "Get out there and take charge. The order is: hold your fire. Not a man is to make any move unless I command it. I will be on the roof where I can watch all that occurs. Come, Pedro! Come, Don Montezúma!" He actually reached out for the Revered Speaker's hand and snatched him off the throne.

  All of us who had been in the throne room followed them, running up the stairs to the roof, and I could hear Malintzin breathlessly repeating Cortés's instructions to Motecuzóma:

  "Your people are collecting in the plaza. You will address them. Make your peace with them. Blame every ill and calamity on us Spaniards, if you like. Tell them anything that will maintain calm in the city!"

  The roof had been made a garden just before the first coming of the white men, but it had been untended since then, and had endured a winter besides. Where the ground had not been scored and furrowed by the wheels of the heavy cannons, it was a wasteland of dry soil, withered stalks, bare-branched shrubs, dead flower heads, and windrowed brown leaves. It was a most bleak and desolate platform for Motecuzóma's last speech.

  We all went to the parapet that overlooked the plaza and, standing in a line along that wall, peered down at The Heart of the One World. The thousand or so Spaniards were easily identifiable by their glints of armor, as they stood or moved uncertainly among the twice as many Mexíca pouring into the area and converging below us. As the messenger had reported, there were both men and women, and they wore only their everyday dress, and they showed no interest in the soldiers or the unprecedented fact of an armed camp erected on that sacred ground. They merely made their way through the clutter, in no haste but with no hesitation, until there was a densely packed crowd of them right below us.