Feathered Serpent (10 page)

Feathered Serpent smiles when he hears this. He says that he will be most happy to visit with them and asks if they are subjects of the great king, Motecuhzoma.

At the mention of Motecuhzoma’s name these Totonacs utter a string of curses in their own language. Finally the boy says: “We are most certainly his subjects, though we wish it otherwise. But is it true what we have heard, that Motecuhzoma sent tribute to your lord?”

“Indeed,” I tell him, deciding I might better answer this question myself. True, it was more bribe than tribute, but it will not harm our cause for it to be seen another way. “He sent us a mountain of gifts, quetzal plumes, jade and gold.”

There is another excited exchange between the Totonacs. Then one of them, an old man, points to the feather work pectoral that I have around my neck, something I salvaged from under the feet of the my lord’s moles the day Lord Tendile presented the golden wheel.

“My uncle wishes to know where you obtained this beautiful piece of feather work.”

“It was part of their tribute.”

The old man looks stricken.

“My cousin wore something like this when he was taken by Motecuhzoma’s tax gatherers last year,” the boy explains.

Aguilar shakes me roughly by the arm. I swear, if this brute ever touches me like this again, I will take a knife and cut out his heart myself.

“What’s going on?” he demands of me.

“They are explaining to me how the Mexica steal their children for sacrifice.”

Aguilar makes the sign of the Cross and conveys this information to Feathered Serpent. He is customarily stern, but for a moment I see something else in his face, a flicker of excitement perhaps. Our eyes meet and there is conspiracy between us; Aguilar does not exist for a moment, or any of the others. His glance lingers on me, like a lover’s.

Aguilar coughs, to remind us of his presence. My lord murmurs something.

“My lord Cortés wants to know if the Mexica have many enemies inside their federation.”

Why is he asking me this? He already knows the answer to such a question. Why else would he be here? “The whole world hates the Mexica. Everyone knows that.”

The Totonacs are growing impatient with us. “Will these teules visit us at Cempoallan?” the boy asks me. “It is only a day’s journey to the north.”

I relay the request to Aguilar, who in turn passes it on to Feathered Serpent. My lord seems not to be listening, his eyes fixed on some faraway time. He is seeing the future, I realise, and a chill passes through me.

Finally he speaks softly to Aguilar, who appears to hesitate, then gives me a look I cannot fathom. “He wants to know if you, too, hate the Mexica.”

“He is my country now.”

“That was not his question.”

“Just tell him what I said.”

I receive a hateful look from him. Oh, he is so easy to read, this priest, this hater of women. But he does as I tell him, and I see Feathered Serpent smile and I know he has translated my words precisely. Aguilar is too ingenuous to lie.

Feathered Serpent murmurs something else and gives me one last, appraising look before he turns and walks away.

“What did he say?”

“He praised you,” Aguilar tells me.

“In what way?”

“Vanity is the enemy of the soul. You have been baptised into the faith and you should practise modesty. Tell these Indians my lord Cortés will be delighted to visit them. We will leave tomorrow. That is all.”

Benítez opened his eyes. His mouth was dry and foul, and there was a dull pain behind his eyes. He stared at the dark thatch of the roof, heard the sonorous murmur of flies, recoiled at the rank smell of sweat and putrefaction and wood smoke.

How long had he been lying here?

Rain Flower dipped a piece of rag into a gourd of water, and wiped his forehead. She spoke some words he could not understand.

Norte’s face thrust itself into his vision. “She asks if you are feeling better.”

Benítez tried to sit up but he was too weak. The room swam in and out of focus. He thought he was going to retch.

“Don’t try to move. You must rest.”

Benítez wanted to speak but his tongue felt as if it were twice its size. Rain Flower held the wet cloth to his lips and he sucked gratefully at the cool water, like a baby at a mother’s breast. “Have I ... been ill?” he managed.

“You had the marsh fever,” Norte said. “You came close to death. The whole world was about to grieve for one less Spaniard.”

Benítez looked up at Rain Flower. He wondered how long she had been there with him. He could not understand why she might take it upon herself to nurse him. “Tell her ... thank you.”

Norte shrugged. “She knows.”

“Tell ... her.”

A hurried exchange in a strange and exotic tongue. “She said it was Doña Marina’s herbs that made you better,” Norte said.

Benítez closed his eyes. A strange world. He was thirty three years old and he had seen little enough mercy in his life. As for the kindness of women, that had been rarer still. He did not delude himself; his features and his shy manners did not make him a lady’s man. This Rain Flower, given him as a camarada, a servant-concubine, had helped him not because he was rich or handsome, but simply because she herself was kind.

How strange. How very strange.

———————

We set off at dawn, the thunder gods at the fore, the moles stumbling behind, loaded down with armour and weapons. Our column snakes through the dunes, making hard work of it through the pebbled sand.

I follow on foot behind Puertocarrero, who rides his war beast. The sun and the muscle-breaking sand are not our only enemies; halfway through the morning one of the men steps on a scorpion and his screams follow us even when he is so far distant we cannot even see him.

Late in the afternoon I stumble, my foot catching in a tree root hidden in the sand. I feel my ankle wrench and twist. I gasp in pain but I do not cry out; I have been taught from birth not to show pain. Puertocarrero rides on, ignorant of what has happened to me.

The moles tramp past, too pre-occupied with their own misery to worry about some lord’s camarada. I wait for the pain to subside. Finally I attempt to stand but my leg will not support me and I fall back on my haunches.

“Are you all right, my lady?”

A deep, rich voice. It is him. The sun is behind him, putting a golden aura around his head. I have to shield my eyes to look at him. He his beast of war and walks over to me.

“You are hurt?”

I do not understand the words but I recognise the tone of gentle concern. I point to my left ankle. He bends down to examine it. His touch is gentle. He looks into my face. The grey eyes are penetrating.

I squeeze out a small tear for his benefit, although the pain is not so bad. I move my leg, allow my tunic to rise a little higher. But just then one of the other lords rides up and spoils the moment.

Alvarado reined in beside Cortés. “What’s happening?”

“The Lady Marina has injured her ankle.”

“By the sacred balls of all the Popes...”

“Order a stop. We will have the bearers make her a litter from tree saplings. They will have to carry her.”

Alvarado shook his head in disbelief. “All this fuss for one puta? Leave her here, we can send the bearers back for her tomorrow.”

“She is not a puta, she is a Christian gentlewoman. She is also our eyes and ears with the
naturales
. How we will communicate with the Totonacs or the Mexica without her? Would you rather have Brother Aguilar draw pictures for us in the sand? At this moment she is worth more to us than the cannon, even more valuable than my second in command, perhaps. Should I leave you here, and send her on ahead on your horse? I can have the bearers come back for you tomorrow.”

Alvarado nodded, chastened by this harangue. “I will order a halt.”

“I would be obliged.”

Cortés turned back to the girl. She was smiling at him. An exquisite face framed by hair as black as a raven. And a delightful ankle, even when injured. Skin like velvet. Her tunic had ridden up allowing him an uninterrupted view of the silky softness inside her thighs.

Well.

A native princess with a command for language and, I do believe, a flair for politics. Too much of a woman for the likes of Puertocarrero.

In time I must find a remedy for that.

  ———————

The next morning they forded a shallow river and turned inland; abruptly they left the barren sand behind and tracked through bright green fields of maize. They plunged into a forest, a riot of orchids and tangled, tendon-like vines. Huge zapote trees, their trunks sticky and shining with chicle gum, rose into a dense green canopy, alive with the brilliant flashes of scarlet-breasted macaws and blue-plumed tanagers. Occasionally there were ragged villages, aswarm with flies. The people, though, had fled in their wake.

And then, just after noon, they reached Cempoallan.

  ———————

Cortés was not sure what he had expected; not this. A small town rose from the heart of the jungle; thousands of thatched adobe houses clustered around a sprawl of palaces and temples glistening with polished white limestone and stucco. It was wondrous, not the rundown shamble of filthy huts he had dreaded.

God had rewarded his faith.

“By the sacred balls of all the Popes,” Alvarado shouted.

One of their guides announced their arrival with a long blast on a conch shell, which was answered by the beat of drums from inside the town.

As they rode through the streets they were feted like returning heroes. The Totonacs crowded in, throwing garlands of flowers about their necks, tossing pineapples and plums to the foot soldiers, bouquets of roses to the
jinetas
.

Cortés worked his mount through the press of brown bodies and white mantles. He found Malinali on her litter, Aguilar and Norte following behind her, as he had instructed.

“Ask her why we are honoured with such a welcome,” he shouted to Aguilar.

It is not easy for Malinali and Aguilar to make themselves heard over the noise of the drums and clay flutes. But finally: “She says we are liberators, my lord!”

“Liberators?”

“I do not understand all of it. She says something about the return of a serpent god. Somehow these people know that we have come to save them from barbarity and lead them to salvation!”

A Totonac woman, braver than her fellows, ran towards Cortés and threw a garland of flowers at him, even had the temerity to touch his horse before she rushed away, giggling.

“Liberators,” Cortés murmured. Liberators!

Yet something else Aguilar said troubled him. The return of a serpent god. The words nagged at him.

There was more here than he had at first supposed.

  ———————

His name was Chicomacatl, but Alvarado immediately nicknamed him Gordo— Fatso. His standard bearers came first, carrying long bamboo poles supporting fans of intricate feather work; then Gordo himself approached, leaning on stout canes, young boys supporting the great scallops of his flesh from behind. Other princes followed, their presence rendered insignificant by the great mountain of lard that preceded them.

“If they are all as fat as this,” Alvarado said, “no wonder these people are cannibals.”

Jaramillo grinned. “The whole of Salamanca could feed off his haunches for a month.”

Cortés dismounted and looked around. Like the great towns of Spain, Cempoallan had its own plaza, surrounded on three sides by the courtyard walls of the temples, on the fourth by Gordo’s own palace. Smoke curled from the summit of one of the pyramids, doubtless to signify the completion of some barbaric ceremony. Cortés reminded himself that although the Totonacs had so far displayed friendship, at heart they were heathen.

May God protect them.

Malinali joined him, Aguilar beside her. The swelling on her ankle had diminished overnight, thanks to a herb poultice she herself had prepared. No bones were broken and she was able to walk unaided, though with a pronounced limp. He smiled at her, and saw a look of fury on Aguilar’s face. Jealous of a woman! How unbecoming in a man of God.

Gordo waited while his surrogates fumigated Cortés and his officers with their copal censers and then he stepped forward to embrace him. Gordo, like the town luminaries Cortés had met the previous day, wore gold ornaments through his ears and lower lips and had a turquoise stone through the pierced septum of his nose.

Savages!

Gordo’s slaves stepped forward and deposited at his feet a wicker basket containing bracelets, necklaces and earrings, all worked in gold. Gordo then made a brief speech.

Aguilar listened to Malinali’s translation: “She says he apologises for these few paltry gifts. It is all they have to demonstrate their friendship. He says the Mexica tax collectors have robbed them for years and left them with almost nothing.”

Cortés considered. “Tell him we receive these gifts very gratefully.”

It was now deathly quiet in the plaza, both the Cempoallans and the Spanish soldiers straining to hear every word that was spoken.

After the next exchange Aguilar turned back to Cortés. “The woman...” Cortés noted the contempt in his voice, he could not bring himself to say Malinali’s name. “ ... the woman says he makes great complaint against Motecuhzoma, that the Mexica have taken all their gold and feather work and jade in taxes, have stolen half their vanilla crop and taken many of their young men and women to feed their priests' demand for sacrifice at their temples. He asks for your help.”

Cortés solemnly regarded the fat simpleton standing across from him on the dusty plaza. At last. “Aguilar, please ask Malinali to inform Chicomacatl that we ourselves are subjects of a very powerful king who has sent us here to free them from tyranny. If he agrees to become a vassal of King Charles the Fifth he has paid the last of his taxes to the Mexica.”

Another long harangue passed between Malinali and Aguilar and Gordo.

“I think he wishes our help,” Aguilar said, finally, “but he is frightened because there is a garrison of Mexica not far from here. He says if he were to renounce his vassalship to Motecuhzoma they would come here and burn the town and drag all the young men off to Tenochtitlán to be slaughtered in the temples.”

“Tell him that if he obeys me he need never fear Motecuhzoma again.”

He heard the sharp intake of breath behind him. Puertocarrero began to protest, but he silenced him with a glance.

He watched the fat Totonac lord. Was it possible for a man to look relieved, delighted and consumed by abject terror at once? Gordo did a fair imitation of it.

Alvarado spurred his horse forward and leaned from the saddle. “Are you out of your mind?” he whispered.

“Have you ever known me to be reckless?”

“More often than I can count. That time in Salamanca you climbed the wall to that doñetta’s window, for instance.”

“I still calculate the odds before I gamble. It will go well with us. You will see.”

Alvarado pressed his lips together in a thin white line. “Whatever you say.”

“Trust me. We have just been handed the key to Motecuhzoma’s house.”  

———————

A huge feast of turkey, fish, pineapples, plums and corn cakes has been prepared for us. Afterwards Feathered Serpent and the other lords are led to their quarters, a large palace belonging to a rich noblewoman.

It has a flat roof with a wide terrace that overlooks the plaza. The rooms are spacious, though there is little furniture, just some sleeping mats and a few low tables. Tapestries hang on the walls; others are strewn on the white stucco floors. Puertocarrero and myself have a room to ourselves, as do the other thunder lords and their camaradas; the soldiers and moles are billeted together in the audience hall.

I cannot stop thinking about Feathered Serpent. During the meeting in the plaza something angered him. Several times during that encounter I saw him stare at the smoke rising from the pyramid and I think I know what is troubling him.

It is the god stirring in him.