Aztec Rage (26 page)

“Is your master here?”

“No, senór, he died a few months ago. His passing left me homeless and without a master. I have heard you are hiring porters for the trip south.
I am a good worker and obey without too many beatings. I would serve you well if you would so permit.”

“I'm sorry, but I've already hired a bearer, Pepe, a local man who not only knows the territory but has many children to feed.”

“Perhaps I can serve you in other ways, señor. While I have been nothing more than a lowly household servant, my master did teach me to shoot and to use a blade. There are many bandidos on the road . . .”

He shook his head. “We have men from the army protecting us.”

He pointed to where six soldiers were standing around talking, smoking, and drinking wine. If it were not for their dirty, sloppy uniforms, I would have taken the group to be compañeros of the léperos drinking pulque across the way. They would not be mistaken for bandidos only because they were too fat and lazy.

“Are you traveling far beyond Cuicuilco?” I asked.

“We are going all the way to the land of the Mayas.”

“That far? To the southern jungles? I am told there are many hazards en route, that the south is even more dangerous than the north, the indios are wild and bloodthirsty.”

“The porter I'm hiring,” he nodded in the direction of Pepe the lépero, “assures me he knows of safe routes through the jungles.”

“Well, señor, as one familiar with the colony, I can say with assurance that you will arrive safely in Cuicuilco.”

“What's your name?” he asked.

“Juan Madero,” I said.

“Come along with me if you want a day's work. You can assist me by clearing some of the brush from ruins that I want to examine. I'm interested in what other things your former employer told you about the city.”

“He told me this main boulevard is called the Avenue of the Dead because many kings and notables—dead since before the time of our Savior Jesus Christ—are said to be buried in the tombs that line it.”

“I've heard that story, too, but some question whether those buildings are tombs or temples and palaces. Regardless, it is a ghost city for sure.”

“Dead, but not quiet, eh?” I said. “What you couldn't hear with your ears, you feel with your skin as you walk down the roadway between the two great pyramids. You sense them, too, señor?”

He laughed. “If you fear the spirits of the city, you are in good company. Perhaps it runs in your indio blood. As you said, the Aztecs also feared the city. In their pagan tongue, the name Teotihuacán meant something like ‘city of the gods.' They believed that it was the dwelling place of powerfully dangerous deities. That's why they pilgrimaged here each year, to pay homage to the gods.”

“Señor, why would the Aztecs—who I have been told were bad hombres, who warred and killed at every opportunity—fear a deserted city?”

“They feared what they could see as well as what they didn't see. Look at the incredible ruins. Giant pyramids and brilliantly carved stone temples and palaces. Can you imagine what the city must have looked like in ancient times, when its buildings were brightly painted? I have never heard of a place on earth—except the monuments of the mighty pharaohs in Egypt, and the wall that runs forever through the land of the chinos—that compares to the accomplishments of the ancient race that built this magnificent city.

“What frightened the Aztecs most and continues to alarm people like you who come here, is the fact that no one knows who exactly built the city. Is that not incredible, Juan? We stand in the middle of a great city, with towering pyramids, and no one knows what race of man built it or even what name they gave it.

“As your master told you, your Aztec ancestors didn't build it. They came to the Valley of Méjico thirteen, even fourteen centuries
after
the city was built. Do you realize that Teotihuacán is the largest city that ever existed in the Americas before the time of Columbus? It was larger than the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán and would have rivaled Rome at its fullest splendor. Not even Méjico City, Havana, or any other city of the Americas today has as many people as this ancient city had.”

“How many people do you think lived here?” I asked.

“Some scholars believe over two hundred thousand people populated the city at its height.”

¡Ay! That was a lot of ghosts.

We talked as I cleared brush to expose the inscriptions on the side of a wall. I remembered something else Raquel told me.

“The pyramids here, they were what the Aztecs and other indios copied for their cities. At least, this is what I was told.”

“You are correct, though the copies are smaller than the Pyramid of the Sun here in Teotihuacán. Think of it, Juan, the great and wondrous monuments of all the indio empires were copied from a city that was built by people no one knows. Look at the Pyramid of the Sun.”

The huge structure was on the east side of the Avenue of the Dead, dominating the central part of the ruined city. Carlos told me that the structure was over two hundred feet high and that each of the four sides of its base was over seven hundred feet. From the ground, a man standing atop it looked like an ant on the roof of a hut.

At the north end of the wide avenue was the Pyramid of the Moon.

“The pyramid dedicated to the moon is actually shorter than its sister sun, but it appears to be of equal height only because it's on elevated ground. The Pyramid of the Sun is the third largest pyramid on Earth. While not as tall, it is almost as voluminous as the Great Pyramid of the Pharaoh at Giza in Egypt. Do you realize, Juan, that the largest pyramid of all—one that is even bigger than the pharaoh's pyramid—is not on the Nile, but in New Spain, at Cholula, where we will be journeying soon.”

“Why did they build these pyramids? To take people to the top and rip out their hearts?”

“Yes. Human sacrifice was practiced, but other than that heinous institution, the pyramids were really places of worship, as our churches are to us of the true faith. They built them to please their gods. Unlike the pyramids of Egypt, which were built as tombs for kings, religious ceremonies took place atop the pyramids of New Spain. That's why they're flat on top, so the indios could built temples of worship on them. As for sacrifices,” he shrugged, “unfortunately, that became part of their religion.”

“For blood,” I said, remembering the one part of Raquel's lecture that really interested me.

“Exactly. They believed that the sun, rain, and other gods were nourished by blood. The indios relied upon their crops for survival and believed that if they gave blood to the gods, the gods would thrive and bequeath to them weather conducive to raising crops. A blood covenant—human blood for rain and sunshine—was the agreement between the indios and the gods.”

“Pure ignorance,” I said.

“Perhaps.” Carlos looked around to make sure there was no one else in hearing. “But ignorance abounds in many places.”

I suspected he was talking about the Inquisition, which burned people at the stake during autos-de-fé.

“I am told that atop the Pyramid of the Sun,” I said, “there once was a great gold disk, a tribute to the sun god. It alone was worth a king's ransom. Cortés seized it and had it melted down.”

“Sí, scholars confirm that tale. Your master was well informed about the ruins.”

“Will we ever know who built this city?” I asked.

“Only God can answer that question. The mystery of who could have built such enormous monuments is as puzzling as why the city's citizens abandoned it.”

“You say abandoned, señor. Can it not be that the people simply fled from a stronger enemy?”

“Perhaps, but if war desolated the city, one would expect to see more of war's devastation. One must also wonder why the conquerors did not occupy this prodigious prize.”

I shrugged. “Perhaps they did not wish to live cheek by jowl with ghosts.”

The scholar studied me with quizzical amusement.

Belief in ghosts was new to me. When I was leading the life of a caballero, I seldom considered anyone or anything, and certainly not anyone in the hereafter. Perhaps I was changing. In the past, an impregnable shield of money and power had protected me, leaving me indifferent to the rest of the world. But now I lived my life, watching my back trail for
constables and bandidos, searching the eyes of other travelers to see if they viewed me as their prey or if their suspicions would alert the viceroy's police. Now, on a street named for the dead, in a city long deserted by the living, I sensed the same sort of presence that had made Aztec emperors pay trembling tribute on bended knee to unseen ghosts.

Carlos patted my shoulder as we parted. “I've enjoyed our conversations. I regret that I have already hired Pepe for the journey. But with him knowing the route . . .”

I left the scholar, muttering to myself that he was a naïve fool and the lépero was the Mother of Liars. Other than being sentenced to road construction for drunkenness and theft each time he was scraped out of the gutter, that piece of human garbage had never been more than a league from the spot where he was born. I had told Carlos he'd be safe as far as Cuicuilco because the town was close to the capital. After Cuicuilco, the expedition planned to traveled to Puebla, perhaps a journey of sixty or seventy leagues, along probably the most traveled road in all the Americas. That route was safe, too. But south beyond Puebla, each league took the traveler farther from the heart of the colony until . . . eh, even I didn't know what lay ahead by the time one reached the hot, wet jungles, except that most of those trackless wastes had not been explored.

But I did know that the expedition needed more protection than the soldiers I saw, and only Christian charity impelled me to dignify them with the title “soldiers.” If they had actually served in the army, they had been scraped off stockade walls and barracks-brothel floors, then foisted on this expedition by officers who wanted them off the post.

Either way, I had to see that the young scholar got to his destination, at least as far as Puebla, from which the main road to Veracruz runs. From Veracruz, ships plied the Caribbean and Europe sea routes.

The viceroy's constables would not spot me as long as I was part of the expedition. I would be safer traveling in a large well-armed caravan, and if I had trouble duping the constables and customs officials, I could, if necessary, “borrow” the young scholar's documents and dinero for both my journey on the Veracruz road and my passage out of New Spain.

To win employment with the expedition, I had to eliminate the lépero. Preying on Carlos's soft-hearted naiveté, the lépero convinced him he needed his earnings to support a brood of children. Eh, if this thieving scum had had children, he would have sold them into slavery for a jug of pulque. But I couldn't take the risk of alienating the scholar by exposing the lépero's lies and his own naiveté. My only recourse was to ensure that the lepéro could not physically make the trip. A dagger slipped across his throat would do the job.

Who said that necessity is the mother of murder? I believe it was Juan de Zavala.

THIRTY-FIVE

F
OR TWO DAYS
I watched the lépero, and the constable watched me. I had unpacked my load of clothes from the mule and set them out on the ground in the market where other vendors sold trinkets and goods to the travelers who visited the great pyramids. When the constable came by to question me, I feigned respect for his high office, though he was doubtless hired by a local hacendado and was not an actual government official. I paid the mordida, giving him one of my better shirts as a token of my “respect.” But I still sensed skepticism in his eyes. Perhaps my manner was too arrogant, my eyes too shrewd. Taller than most peons, my height may have raised suspicions.

He was approaching me again, probably to extort more bribes and to hammer me with questions I didn't want to answer. I hurried over to the young scholar, who was drawing on paper the carvings and paintings portrayed on the temple walls.

“Are you able to read the pictures, Don Carlos?” I asked. I added the honorific “don” to ingratiate myself with him. He didn't appear to be the type of gachupine who was arrogant about his position, not a wearer of sharp spurs as I had been, eh? But no man is totally without ego, as I well know.

“Unfortunately, I cannot, and neither can my fellow scholars. Several of us can decipher the picture writing of the Aztecs and other indio groups that were present at the time of the Conquest. These symbols, however, predate those hieroglyphs. Also much of the picture writing is illegible, worn away by time and weather or defaced by vandals and curiosity seekers.”

“More likely treasure hunters,” I said. “Who has not heard the story of Montezuma's lost treasure and lusted for it?” I nodded toward the léperos. “Thieves, not scholars—when those men hear of buried treasure, they come to loot, not learn. These swine would destroy the Parthenon to find a silver spoon.”