Aztec

by Colin Falconer

  "What does he say now, the old fool?"

  "More whimpering and pity for himself, my Lord. It is good you do not have the elegant speech and you are spared this whining."

  "Repeat to him that I will have him hanged for treason should he continue with his rebellion."

  "My lord says that all he wants now is to depart in peace. He will even leave you all your treasures. All you have to do is tell your people to desist, so that he can march away from here with his life. You have his word on that."

  "His word! When has he ever kept his word to me?"

  "Everything can be again as it once was."

  Montezuma shakes his head. "I cannot betray my people."

  "Then I shall tell them to prepare a fire for you. It will be a slow death, much slower than Smoking Eagle's. They will roast you one limb at a time."

  I watch him struggle with himself. He wants to defy them. Perhaps a few months ago he would still have had the strength.

  "You think the Jaguar Knights will storm the gates in time to save you. Suppose that should happen. What fate befalls the former king? Will they bow before the tlatoani who allowed the thieves beyond their gate to burn the temple and murder their sons? No, my lord, this is your one chance to restore your authority as Emperor. If you can make them obey you, then tomorrow we will march away from here and your rule will be restored. You will rebuild the Templo Mayor to a greater glory than before, do penance before your gods, redeem your spirit. But if we die, you will die with us, and on your shoulders will lie the blame for all this. There will not even be a jade in your mouth to pay the Yellow Beast, just pain and ashes."

  He raises his head, just a little. "If I do this ... Malinche ... and all of you ... will leave this city?"

  "Call off your warriors. We only want our lives."

  Montezuma looks at Cortés. "And I thought him divine!"

  "As I once thought you."

  He takes a deep breath. He loves life too much to part with it. "I will do what I can," he says.

  Chapter 89

  A trumpet blast heralded the Emperor's appearance on the roof. He was protected from the rain of stones and arrows by Spanish shields. Falling Eagle saw one of the Castilian priests with him, the one called Aguilar.

  A slow and shuffling silence fell over the plaza.

  Even now, a few still lowered their eyes, afraid to look directly upon Revered Speaker. But Falling Eagle did not avert his eyes. He stared, affronted and appalled at how ill the Emperor looked, how shabby his clothes appeared. He wore a makeshift head dress of yellow bark paper and a robe of white maguey fibre. The Spaniards had stolen his gold and silver jewellery, even his cotton mantles.

  Montezuma started to speak.

  "My people! You of the Aztlan! Of the Eagle and the Cactus! I command you all to desist from this war! I have spoken with Lord Malinche and his followers and I have told them they are no longer welcome in our capital. They are sorry they have caused so much dissension among us and they are now ready to leave immediately. They wish only that you withdraw and allow them to return to the East Lands in peace."

  Falling Eagle listened to this speech with growing incredulity. Montezuma still believes he has authority over us, after all that has happened, after all the humiliation and disgrace he has brought us. We have seen him grovel at the feet of these thieves and murderers. Does he still believe that we revere him as our tlatoani?

  He looked around at the young warriors around him in the plaza, realised with plunging dismay that some of these other innocents might yet obey him.

  Something must be done to break the spell.

  Falling Eagle took a deep breath. "Who is this woman?" he shouted. "Who is this disgusting wife of a Spaniard? We will not listen to you, Montezuma! You are no longer our king! You have disgraced us before our gods! We will not shame ourselves further! Cuitlahuac is our king now and we will fight on until all the foreigners are dead!"

  He picked up a stone lying at his feet and tossed it at the walls, saw it fall harmlessly on the patio at Montezuma's feet. But now others were shouting too; there were more rocks, even several arrows. One slammed into Montezuma's shoulder and he gasped and fell back. The Castilians threw up their shields and dragged him away.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  "We have to get away from here!" Alvarado shouted as he dragged Montezuma from the terrace.

  Sandoval raised his voice, trying to make himself heard above the din from the plaza. "He is right, caudillo, our situation is hopeless. The decision must be made!"

  They all looked at Cortés. His face betrayed bewilderment, he could not believe he had been beaten.

  Montezuma had fainted. There was blood matted in his hair where a stone had struck him and the arrow was lodged in the muscle of his shoulder. He lay on his back, his eyes rolling in his head. Mendez bent down to minister to him. Montezuma cried out as the doctor pulled the arrow shaft from the wound.

  "What shall we do with him, my lord?" Benítez said.

  "Well, he is no further use to us."

  "I disagree, my lord," Malinali said.

  "My lady?"

  She took him aside. "When an emperor dies, tradition demands that he is taken outside the city, to a place called Copulco and there cremated with all due honour. His priests, dwarves, hunchbacks and concubines, all must be properly sacrificed, so that they may serve him in the next world. Cremation and mourning can last perhaps eighty days, time enough for us to leave the capital, return to Texcála, even reach the coast. Montezuma can serve us better from the spirit world than he ever did in life."

  "His wounds are not mortal."

  "Perhaps he needs another."

  A grim smile, a bitter smile. If he could not have Tenochtitlán, neither would Montezuma. "I will have Alvarado do it. Or Jaramillo. They enjoy that sort of thing."

  "No, my lord."

  "No?"

  "Let me have your knife."

  He raised an eyebrow in surprise. He hesitated for a moment before sliding the dirk from his belt and placing it in her palm. She concealed it beneath her cloak.

  Malinali

  And so we are left alone.

  I put my lips close by his ear. "My lord, I wish you to open your eyes."

  Montezuma is in great pain. The doctor has bandaged his forehead and there is another bloodied cloth wrapped around the muscle of his right shoulder, where the arrow shaft has done terrible damage.

  His eyes flutter open. "You ... you still ... wish ... to bargain?"

  "Lord, my lord, my great lord. What a pitiful wretch you have become."

  "The prophecies were .... true. There was ... nothing ... I could ... do."

  I hold an obsidian mirror close to his face so that he might see his own reflection. "What do you see here?"

  "Take it away!"

  I take a handful of hair, forcing his head back, make him look. "Do you not see a murderer and a butcher? Do you not hear countless widows and daughters weeping?"

  "Leave me ..."

  "Do you remember my father?"

  A flicker of fear in his eyes. "I did ... not know ... your father ..."

  "No, you did not know him, but you ordered his execution anyway, because he could read the stars and the winds, because he spoke against all the human sacrifices you demanded, because he prophesied the end of the Mexica. It was a long time ago and I am sure you have forgotten giving the command that ended his life. But I have not forgotten.” I show him the dagger beneath my cloak.

  His eyes are open now.

  "I served my ... gods ... faithfully. They ... did not ... serve me."

  "Your gods curse you. As do I." I hold the knife to the light. "This is for my father."

  Chapter 90

  Atorch lit courtyard, rain slapping on the cobbles, a cold wind. They were to leave that night, head for the shortest causeway, the one leading west to Tlacopan.

  Preparations were taking place in silence all over the palace, but nowhere were they more circumspect than in this
quiet court. Eight wounded horses had been mustered, their hooves muffled with cloth, and a hundred Texcálans assigned to guard them. Wooden boxes had been strapped to the horses' backs. Benítez opened one and examined its contents.

  Alvarado watched him, hands on hips. "When we leave you will be assigned one hundred and fifty men, Nárvaez’s best infantrymen. You are to guard the treasure in these bags with your life. They belong to the king."

  "If the king wants his gold he can come here and stand over it himself."

  "A treasonous point of view."

  "If you think me treasonous, you can guard the gold."

  Benítez watched the heavy ingots being loaded. If this was the quinto real, the king's fifth, they had won much more than had been declared. Cortés had claimed the worth of the gold at three hundred thousand crowns. Unless half of these boxes were filled with stones, the bullion here amounted to almost double that. Benítez suspected that what he saw here was not the king's fifth but Cortés's hidden profits. Small wonder the caudillo had not wished to leave.

  "There is more here than the sixty thousand crowns that Cortés claimed."

  "You would do well to keep your silence, Benítez. You will get your reward."

  "Yes, a Mexican spear in the back before the night is out."

  "Cortés always remembers his friends."

  "He always swears, by his conscience. He has no more conscience than a dog." Benítez pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders; another sodden night, like the night they attacked Nárvaez. Then it had been their friend, had cloaked their movements. He hoped the weather would serve them as well tonight.

  He found himself thinking, unexpectedly, of Rain Flower. He wondered where she was, what had become of her. Another of his weaknesses, he supposed; he had allowed himself to feel an unnatural love for an indian concubine. He wondered, not for the first time, what would have happened to him if he had been in Norte's position, shipwrecked and alone in Yucatan and had been given as husband to a woman like Rain Flower. He had to allow that in certain circumstances it might be all too easy to forget about Spain and the Christian world.

  Perhaps he and Norte were not so different, after all.

  As for Rain Flower, he supposed she had run to the Mexica. He hoped they had not harmed her. He pushed from his mind an image of her spread-eagled on the sacrificial stone at the Tlatelolco temple.

  How he wished she were with him now.

  What will happen to me should I survive this night? he thought. Back to Cuba, as an impoverished hidalgo with a petty land-holding, without courtly looks or manners or connections, sweating in the sun, fearing disease and an early, wine-sodden and anonymous death on his encomienda ...

  Better to die tonight, if that was what God intended. A little glory, a swift end and no time to mourn and to regret.

  Malinali

  "Have you seen Cortés?"

  Cáceres's face is pale with strain. "I think he is in the chapel, my lady. He offers up his prayers for this night."

  I hurry down the passageway. The room next to Cortés's apartments has been converted into a shrine for the goddess Virgin. Inside, Martín Lopez has erected a wooden cross. The chapel is bright with candles, haloes of light shine on the cedar wood altars and in the niches in the wall where the Mexica's gods once stood.

  The shrine is empty except for Aguilar, on his knees in front of the cross, his ancient book clutched to his chest.

  I hurry on to the next apartment.

  The quarters given to Montezuma's daughter, Doña Ana, adjoined the emperor's former apartments. I ignore the protests of the guards and push through the bell-hung curtain over the door.

  Doña Ana is on her knees, bent over the low bed, and my lord has both his hands on her shoulders to keep her there. He has mounted her from the rear, so I am face to face with them both as I enter the room. My lord's forehead shines with sweat, his face fierce with tension; below him the girl's monkey-brown face is screwed up in pain at my lord's rough taking of her.

  She really has nothing to recommend her, except her birthright.

  My lord does not stop. He continues thrusting until he has finished. I wait, my hands crossed on my swollen belly. I feel my small son kick and struggle.

  When the act is completed, I watch a bead of perspiration make its uncertain way along his temple to his beard. I listen to the sawing of his breathing in his chest. Doña Ana has covered her face with her hands.

  My lord wants a child with the Emperor's blood, thinks it will make his claim to the throne legitimate in the eyes of the Mexica. He still has not given up his attempt to conquer them, by any means at his disposal.

  "Doña Marina. You should not be here. You should be resting. In your condition."

  "Does my condition make me repulsive to you, my lord?"

  "It is not for the ladies of the household to question a king on his appetites."

  "Your last moments should be with me."

  "If they are indeed the last moments, as you say, then I must do all I can to ensure that my seed secures the throne of Mexico. It is my right, I have earned it."

  I caress my swollen stomach. "The throne of Mexico is here, my lord."

  My lord reaches around, cups Doña Ana's plump brown stomach in the palms of his hands. "And here also."

  Well.

  We will see about that.

  Chapter 91

  "What's going on here?" Benítez asked.

  "Cortés gave orders," Sandoval said. "Everything that cannot be loaded onto the pack horses is to be piled here in the courtyard and the men are to help themselves."

  Benítez stared. The ingots had been made to Cortés' precise specifications; flat bars two inches broad and half an inch thick, the perfect size to fit under Spanish armour. A mountain of them lay on the flagstones in front of the main gates, along with discarded jewellery and feather work and cotton capes. An emperor's bequest had been left in the rain, shimmering in the dim light of smoky torches.

  Benítez was reminded of pigs feeding at a trough, this same frenzy of squealing and shoving as men fought each other to get at the gold, pushing bars into their tunics and their armour, filling their pockets with silver medals and gemstones, cramming rings and beads into their mouths.

  "And you, Gonzalo, are you going to stuff your pockets?"

  Sandoval reached into his purse, spilled a few pearls and opals into his palm. "Do as I did. A few large stones, enough to buy you some ease should we ever see Cuba again and not too heavy to slow you down if there is fighting."

  Icy needles of rain slanted down.

  Benítez saw a familiar figure in the crowd; Norte, in there with the others, scrabbling for the best pieces, his eyes burning with that particular hunger that had so disgusted the Mexica on the beach at San Juan de Ulúa.

  I believe I liked you better as an indian.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  No moon, no stars, freezing rain; sheet lightning flickered over the mountain cols. The three priests - Diaz, Olmedo, Guevarra - were kept busy taking confessions. At midnight Fray Olmedo spoke a last benediction and the gates were thrown open. Cortés prepared to depart the city of his dreams.

  They filed in silence down the road to Tlacopan, the falling rain masking their departure. The streets were slick underfoot, no lights burned anywhere, and only the gentle lapping of the lake and the murmur of the rain cleaved the silence.

  An army of wraiths, bandaged and hobbling, melting into the mist.

  Martín Lopez had constructed a portable bridge from cedar beams plundered from the palace ceilings. Four hundred Texcálan porters had been assigned to carry it, under the command of one of the officers, Francisco Magariño.

  Benítez had prepared himself for sudden death in the street, but they reached the causeway without alarm and went safely across the first breech. For the first time he allowed himself to hope that it might work. Cortés' luck had held again. The Mexica had broken the siege to mourn their dead emperor, just as Malinali had promised the
y would.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  An old woman, drawing water from the lake, gave a shrill scream of alarm, and this was taken up by two Mexica sentries. A crossbowman silenced the woman's screams, but it was too late. From the summit of the Templo Mayor came the mournful boom of the huehuetl drum. It echoed across the lake and through the valley, summoning the warriors of Hummingbird.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Panic.

  Cortés shouted for the bridge to be brought forward, and hurry, damn your eyes. Benítez twisted in the saddle. What was happening? Where was Magariño? Without the pontoon, they were trapped here in the open and helpless.

  "Where is the bridge?" Benítez screamed.

  It had stuck fast. The rain that had muffled their exodus betrayed them now, softening the banks of the lake and jamming the bridge supports into the mud at the first divide. Magariño and his men desperately tried to raise it. There would not be time. Torches appeared all over the lake as the war canoes descended, like thousands of fireflies. Their column was at the mercy of the naturales, like a huge caterpillar being swarmed by ants.

  Benítez's horse stamped its hooves, sensing fear. He heard the splashing of paddles, saw the white cotton tunics of the Mexica warriors through the fog and rain. They made good targets for the crossbowmen and the arquebusiers, so many targets, too many to kill...

  Cortés shouted again for the bridge, but his voice was lost to the ululations of the Mexica and the cacophony of horns and whistles. The first volley of stones and arrows rained down from a pitch-black sky.

  The column surged forward, pushing towards the second breech. He went with them, a cork on the tide, angry, frightened, bellowing defiance.

  Malinali

  I scramble down the muddy banks into the water, slipping on the musket balls and Venetian glass beads that have spilled from overturned chests. The breech in the canal is already filled with dead horses and overturned carts. Soldiers are trying to scramble across, but many are so weighed down with ingots they immediately disappear under the water. Others cannot run because of the gold they carry under their armour and are overtaken by the Mexica and dragged away screaming, captives for Hummingbird.