A Signal Victory (19 page)

There was no direct answer. Instead word came that Davila and his fifty soldiers and thirteen horsemen had been greeted royally in Mani. There had not been enough that the Lords of Xiu could do for them. They regretted only that they had no gold. Gold was farther off, in Chetumal, or better yet, in Sotuta. Jade was a material they greatly preferred themselves, but if gold was what the invaders wanted, why it should not be at Sotuta?

Guerrero had miscalculated badly. He had forgotten the first thing those out of power desire is revenge. Sotuta was governed by the last of their former captors: by means of an alliance the Lords of Xiu could at last destroy that powerful remnant. They could then deal with their Spanish mercenaries, and have Chetumal as well.

It was the story at Champoton all over again.

Unfortunately the Spanish did not regard themselves as mercenaries. The problem of Sotuta Davila turned over to Montejo, which pleased the Lords of Xiu well enough, for Montejo had the superior force.

Then, taking his mining expert with him, and with maps
of the country provided by the Xiu, he entered Cochuah, a barren, thorn-covered, rocky state, towards Chetumal itself. Patently it was not gold-producing country, but Davila was following orders. He was to found a town at Chetumal. He knew what his men wanted, and they had to be driven on. The constant promise of gold farther ahead could be used as a carrot to a donkey.

Reaching easier country, he turned sharply south, and in a week, crossed the frontier into Uaymil-Chetumal. His goal was Lake Bacalar, forty kilometres from Chetumal itself, over country almost impassable by land.

When he heard that, Guerrero cursed. He understood what was happening well enough. Chetumal was a large confederated state, but no Maya confederated for anything but their own immediate advantage. They had no long-range plan for what to do next, for they needed none. Every twenty years the katun books were opened and told them what to do. They had only to comply with events, and improvise on those days which were governed by none. Nachancan was sixty-seven and had no heirs. His loyal vassals could well afford to remain loyal a little longer, but now that the invaders were here not even that might be necessary.

Politics are based upon fear, and now they had something new to be afraid of. No man could hold them.

The first to defect were the Lords of Chable, a prosperous town on the far border of Uaymil. They came to Davila of themselves, and Davila sent them to demand the surrender of Chetumal. Already, Guerrero could see, the Spanish had taught them something new. They had learned how to sidle. It was not a posture that sat well upon their panoply of plumes and servitors. Their dignity was cowed, and that made them respectful but venomous, for since they no longer had to look out for themselves, they took on a few of the pretensions of their new conquerors.

Guerrero looked them over, standing beside Nachancan, who sat cross-legged on his stone divan, giving them audience.
The answer had already been prepared. The reception was only a formality. But it was also the last audience Nachancan was ever to give.

If he sensed that, he did not show it. His dignity was authentic. Nothing would ever make him show anything. It was perhaps only the impudence of these little lords, that made his hands tremble, and his blinking was the more startling, for his effort to control it.

He told them that Chetumal and its people preferred war to peace with such an invader, and that the only tribute they would make to such a man was lances instead of fowls, and arrows instead of maize.

It at least made the Lords of Chable look like fools, for in their first panic they had given the Spanish everything. They went back through the watchful city, still sidling, as though they could feel an arrow in their backs.

They saw a town prepared for war. Guerrero could only hope that would make them doubtful of their new masters. And yet perhaps not. Davila was clever. Perhaps he had not yet shown them what it felt like to go in chains.

Meanwhile, there was no land route from Bacalar to the coast. The only way was by canoe, down the rivers which emptied the lake into the sea. Destroy the canoes, and the Spaniards could be picked off one by one, in the swamps. Guerrero prepared to set out with a small party and do so. He had no illusions any more about the loyalty of Bacalar.

He was down at the waterfront, preparing to enter his boats with a picked force standing by, by the hiss and flare of torches, when news came that he was too late. The Spanish had been sighted paddling down Lake Bacalar towards its outlets, with an immense flotilla of canoes and Indian auxiliaries, including the Lords of Maçanahau and Ypumpeten. The watercourse they had chosen would bring them to a village three leagues south of Chetumal by morning.

Guerrero no longer trusted the army. Only one force could hold his men. He had Nachancan send for the high priest.

How does one behave on a last day? Ultimate situations by their nature have no precedents. We do not know quite what to do, we cannot believe it, so we do what we would have done anyhow, but a little differently, and perhaps with a certain apologetic incoherence of pauses, which we do our best, out of consideration for each other, to cover up.

One thing they did not want to do was go to bed. They did not want to face the dark just yet. Every night they expected it to be final, with less excuse than they had now. If a man must die, he wants at least to do it by day.

Certainly they expected to die. They had been a small ruling class for so long, that they did not even think of the people. They had a two-class society. It had a body and a head. And what body can do anything unless the head tells it to? But for the first time they felt a little cold. For the first time, like a man who has had a stroke, they learned that the body does not always obey us. It is the part of us that dies first.

There was no telling what was going on out there, in five times a thousand houses. There was only the terrible, dangerous, restless dark, and the flames from the temples and the watch-fires, burning like the eyes of a man who has lost everything but his intelligence and the knowledge of what he has lost.

They sat in the chief room of Nachancan’s palace, which was bright with braziers and lamps. They had very little to say, and did not try to say it. Nachancan had done something exceptional. He had had his chief concubine come from the women’s wing. He had preferred her for years, and he preferred her now. His daughter, who was Guerrero’s wife, and the high priest, who was his brother, had also been there. They ate a little. They listened to music, or the low sound of the wicks drinking up the oil, the crackle of the rushlights. The rushlights were made of beeswax. They did not smoke.

From time to time conches, somewhere out there in the darkness, sounded the religious watches of the night.

Guerrero watched. The hole in his nose itched, and he tugged at it from time to time. There was so much they did not want to say, but his wife, he knew, was worried about their elder son, who was off with a military outpost to the south. That was where the Spanish would come from, the south. He was worried about Hun Imix himself.

His younger son was safe at the main temple. It was curious how priesthoods everywhere do somehow manage to be safe. Apart from wars he had no doubts. Except for his sons, his whole world sat waiting in this room, and at least they were waiting together. It did occur to him, vaguely, that it was so easy to die for this world, or even with it, when it had been so hard to live in that other that was now floating down the river to destroy them.

He did not intend to be destroyed without a fight. And he did not intend that Nachancan or Ix Chan should be destroyed either. But that could wait until morning. It was enough to be together now. As for his sons, there was nothing he could do.

From time to time news of Davila’s progress came through. The warriors had been alerted, but needed sleep. There would be time to muster them in the morning.

At a little after midnight Nachancan decided to go to the temple. Guerrero did not wish him to go alone, and almost nobody could be trusted. He sent his wife off to her own rooms, under a close guard. He would join her later.

Nachancan was carried through the streets in a closed litter, bundled against the cold in two or three mantles. Guerrero walked beside him. Everywhere he could catch sight of burning lamps. There could be few, then, who felt confident in that dark.

As happened once or twice a month, there was a heavy fog off the sea, very low, that hung in patches over the streets and the fields. It was bathed in moonlight, and the stars were extremely bright. You could see the constellations marching slowly about up there, like the gods they were.

They reached the main temple, and the litter was deposited on the paving before the stairs. The fog was thick, but above their heads had a ruddy glow. There was no one to receive them. The priests were too busy up there. They were trying to evoke an augery, favourable, or even unfavourable, out of desperation, when they found none, just to know that the gods were still there.

For no one can stand the silences of God. It is like the death of a loved one one later came to hate. The hate vanishes and all the love pours back. Even the sceptic believes then, out of contrition, for no one wants to be a sceptic, really, and even the misanthrope cannot survive without at least one, or even the idea or memory of, a friend. There must be someone there.

Out of all those gods, did not even one exist, except perhaps that ultimate pair who were never prayed to, because they took no interest in human affairs?

They believed in the stars, and not in the world around them. The world around them was full of demons, but the stars were up there, subdividing time. Could not one star fall, like a tear, as an omen, to save them? Or were they really to be shuffled off down the prison corridors of merely human history before their time, an hour too soon, cut off thereby, from hope even of a last-minute reprieve?

It made them distrust the stars, which had told them so often their world had yet a hundred and sixty-six years to run. They worked rapidly up there, like surgeons when something has gone wrong. It could not be a mistake in belief. Not even the sceptics felt so. It must be some mistake in astronomy, made how many katuns ago; they must find out when.

Nachancan threw off his mantles and began to climb, with Guerrero beside him. The stairs of Maya temples have very steep risers and very narrow treads, so that one must go up tiptoe. This straightens the spine and improves the dignity, and besides, Nachancan was a very straight old man. They began to mount through the fog.

Still, one has thoughts as one mounts towards the gods.

Their plumes rose above the mist, and then their heads and bodies. The stairs were clearly defined above them. Every time the priests cast copal in the incense burners, the flames shot a little higher, dancing against the fog and the sky, and casting complicated shadows. They rose from the other temple, too.

Guerrero and Nachancan reached the platform. The high priest came forward and greeted both of them.

Nachancan had not really come to pray, but to confer. The place was holy, and he wanted to see it last, that was all. As for prayer, he knew better, for of course the gods do not really intervene. It is only that afterwards we like to persuade ourselves that at least they looked on. Somewhere under the foundations of these cyclically rebuilt temples some of his ancestors were buried. He had come out of a profound ancestral piety, nothing more. He wanted to say good-bye. Perhaps he had also wanted to get above things, and this temple was in the city the highest place. He moved into the shrine.

Guerrero did not follow, but remained there, in the cold air, looking out over the fog, the forest, the white city, and the bay, rather surprised that it was all still intact. It was a little like looking at what he believed in.

After a while he moved round to the open side of the shrine. In the flickering light he could see the statues of the gods, rippling in and out of the shadows. They were to him very familiar gods, and not nearly so terrible as men. Priests moved in the shadows.

He had thought that there were two statues in there, not three. Then the third took on colour, and became Nachancan. It was a natural mistake, but startled him. Nachancan’s face had the same grave stone look, for after all, what we worship is something in ourselves, that is better than we are, which explained both the resemblance and why he, a Spaniard, had changed his allegiance years ago.

He had always accepted these people, but now, seeing
Nachancan, and the idol behind him of Ah Puch, festooned with bells, he believed in them as well, realizing that always, even in the beginning, instinctively, as he always did, he had. The Maya were sensible. The gods are beings whom we bribe in order to obtain the good things of this world, as well as certain information. Ah Puch was the god of death, and it had taken a little while to find the justification of his own death, that was all.

Something made the bells on the statue rattle. They were gold. So the Spanish would steal them, if they won. But the theft would not alter in any way the nature of the god of death.

Rattling that way, they made an almost welcome sound. He and Nachancan returned to the palace, perhaps to sleep.

Guerrero spent the night with his wife. It occurred to him as it often did these days, unexpectedly, and with a sense of helpless wonder, that she was still beautiful. She was also like her father. She said nothing, but felt much.

He wanted her very much, she wanted him, and even though cool by nature, her body was warm. They fell asleep in each other’s arms.

When he woke she was still sleeping, a little frown on her face, even though she was smiling. The room was cold. He went into the next one.

The servants had not yet dared to run away. His little girl was sitting up on her mat, drinking cocoa. She held the bowl in both hands, like a squirrel with a nut, but the look on her face was so rapt that it made Guerrero shiver.