Feathered Serpent (15 page)

Though it might be a gamble, in this particular game he was in possession of the only ace in the pack. And her name was Malinali.

———————

Cortes’ officers crowded into his headquarters, stained with sweat from labouring at the construction work, exhaustion etched into their faces. They waited for Cortés to address them, all of them wary, excited and a little afraid.

Cortés has hatched some new plan, Benítez thought. I can see it in his eyes.

“The construction of the new colony has gone well,” Cortés began. “In a few more days the most important work will be done.” He paused to look around the room. “Yet while we remain here we earn ourselves no merit in the eyes of the Lord or the King of Spain. The glory and the riches we seek remains in the capital of the Mexica, this Tenochtitlán.”

“Then we must lay siege immediately,” Leon said, his voice thick with irony.

Cortés smiled thinly, as if amused by Leon’s humour. “There are many ways to catch a hen. Sometimes by giving chase, sometimes just by holding a few grains in the palm of the hand and having the hen come to you. Either way, we will not get our dinner by sitting here. As soon as construction of the fort is completed I suggest we remove ourselves to Tenochtitlán.”

Benítez wondered if he had heard correctly. What Cortés proposed was breath-taking. Breath-taking and suicidal.

“We are five hundred against millions,” Ordaz reminded him.

“We are five hundred generals,” Cortés said. “For every Spaniard here I believe we can raise an army from those
naturales
in the countryside that Motecuhzoma has oppressed. From what I have learned from the Lady Marina, the Emperor of the Mexica has more enemies than a dog has fleas.”

“To a dog, fleas are only an irritation,” Leon said.

Cortés’ finally lost patience. “You call yourselves gallant gentlemen but you are all of you consumed by your own fears!”

“Better than being consumed by Indians,” Ordaz said.

“We have already demonstrated, at Ceutla, that we can defeat any number of
naturales
in battle. I am not proposing a war, we do not have to fight this Motecuhzoma. If we can win our way inside his city we may be able to do our good works by other means.” He waited for the others to support him, but even Alvarado and Puertocarrero were silent.

Cortés’ slammed his fist on the desk. “Have you forgotten the gold wheel that lies in the hold of the Santa Maria? There will be one there for each of you if you support me in this!”

“If there were more of us...” Puertocarrero began.

“There are more of us! There are our Totonac allies. And as we walk the road to Tenochtitlán there will be many more along the way! Do you not see? We come here as saviours! These people look to us to save them from the Mexica! They will support us, in their thousands, in their tens of thousands! Not only shall we do God’s work, gentlemen, but there shall be fame and fortune here for every man, enough to last him his whole life through!”

“I say we go with Cortés,” a voice said. They all looked around. It was Aguilar, of all people.

There was a tense silence. Then Alvarado started to laugh. “By the hairy balls of Saint Joseph! Why not? I shall not let you carry back all that gold on your own.”

“Alonso?” Cortés said.

Puertocarrero, nodded, ashen-faced.

“I will go,” Sandoval said.

“I will go also,” Jaramillo said.

Cortés looked around at Benítez.

Madness, Benítez thought. But what choice was there? He could not go back to Cuba empty-handed. What would be the point of that? Nor would he stay here in the fort and catch jungle rot and die of the vomito.

“Yes, all right,” he heard himself say. Look at us! We are all infected by this madness. We caught the fever the day the Mexica brought that great golden wheel to us on the beach.

Now it is going to kill us all ... 

The rush of water drowned out all sound. Butterflies danced under the silver-barked cotton trees, dragonflies hovered in the green shade of the waterfall. A blue hummingbird hovered around the flowers of a zopilote tree.

Norte stripped off his shirt and breeches and jumped into the pool. Rain Flower watched him, crouched among the ferns. She had been more careful this time and she was sure he had not seen her. Why did I follow him here, what do I hope to find? Hadn’t Little Mother Malinali warned her of the dangers?

But she could not help herself. She was obsessed with him, this beautiful Spaniard with the ways of a Person and the saddest eyes she had ever seen.

She watched him bathe. Afterwards he rose from the water and picked up his clothes. But instead of dressing, he walked naked to the mouth of a cave partially concealed by the waterfall at the far end of the pool. He disappeared inside.

Rain Flower’s heart quickened in anticipation.

She crept from her hiding place and picked her way carefully over the rocks, stopping in the shadows at the lip of the cave. She crouched down and peered inside.

A niche had been cut into the rock on the far wall as a shrine for a small clay figure of Feathered Serpent. Norte knelt before it. He took out a small gourd and a stingray spine that he had concealed in his clothes. He plunged the spine without warning into the fleshy part of his penis. He held the gourd below his groin to collect the blood that dripped from his thighs. The sweat that glistened on his skin was the only outward sign of his pain.

When the bleeding had finished he stood and dashed the contents of the gourd into the face of Feathered Serpent and the offering was complete.

Rain Flower turned to go; as she did so, a rock slipped from under her feet and she almost fell. Norte spun around.

There was no point in trying to hide from him now. She stood up so that he could see her clearly, outlined against the sun-dappled pool.

He said nothing, waited to see she would do.

He is beautiful, she thought. The sweat-sheen on his bronzed skin outlined every muscle on his chest, his shoulders, his legs. His face was gaunt and hungry and she knew what he wanted. She wanted it, too. Wasn’t that the reason she came here?

She reached down, pulled the huipitl over head, removed her skirt and undergarment and stepped into the cave.

“You put yourself in danger,” he said to her.

She knelt down in front of him, licked the blood from his
maquauhuitl
, gently sucking on the wound. She heard him groan. Mali had whispered to her of this; caressing a man with flowers. She had never done this before, tasting that which had been intended for the gods. The organ grew huge in her hands, richly engorged with the blood he had held back from Feathered Serpent.

Now he dropped to his knees also. There was blood on her lips and he licked it away with his tongue. She turned away from him, placed her hands on the cool, slippery rock of the shrine. He held her by the hips, penetrating her slowly, moment by golden moment, like a hummingbird dipping its tongue into a flower, quick, tiny, darting movements. His final possession of her evinced a gasp of pain and pleasure. My death will be this way, she thought. When she opened her eyes again she saw Quetzalcóatl watching her, his beaked face and scaled body mute in the shadows, as their bodies coiled and intertwined like serpents above the dusty floor.

———————

A chill and violet sunset. They sat at the mouth of the cave, watching the jungle turn dark, listening to the symphony of the night, the rhythm of insects, the snarl of a jaguar somewhere in the mountains. Rain Flower shivered, and he drew her closer. They could make out the glow of the camp fires at Vera Cruz.

“We must go back,” he whispered.

She kissed him once more, then dressed quickly and ran ahead alone. They danced with death now. She must keep this secret even from Little Mother.

———————

Flickering shadows, the smell of wood smoke. Cortés toured the guard posts, shared a jest with those gambling with dice around the fires, reprimanded a sentry he found dozing at his post. He found Puertocarrero standing alone on the parapet, watching the moon rise over the black slopes of Orizaba.

“Dreaming of Cuba?” Cortés said.

“Of Spain.”

Spain. But which Spain? For Cortés it was the few sparse groves of cork oaks and olives of Extremadura, the baking heat of summer with its intense light that hurt the eyes, and in winter the biting winds that hissed across the plains and almost froze you to the saddle of your horse. Spain was the genteel poverty of his father’s hacienda, great oak doors with bolts of iron that could not keep out the draughts, cavernous halls without furniture, a vast kitchen with few servants and no food.

“You have been talking with the men?” Puertocarrero said.

“I played the hale and hearty commander. I was hoping to gauge their mood.”

“Some of them are frightened.”

What you mean, Cortés thought, is that you are frightened. He saw a woman hurry across the courtyard below. Her face was illuminated for a moment by a pine torch. Doña Marina.

“You are happy with the services of the Lady Marina?” Cortés said.

“Of course,
caudillo
.”

“What is she like?”

Puertocarrero was embarrassed by the indelicacy of the question. “She is very beautiful to look at. But she has no passion.”

No passion? Cortés thought. That has not been my impression. Perhaps she simply has no passion for you, my friend.

“She has been very useful to us an interpreter.”

“Yes,” Cortés agreed, “very useful.” More than useful! Without her I could not have secured so much gold from Motecuhzoma’s lords or manipulated the Totonacs. She is the key in the lock, and I have only just begun to turn it.

He thought again about the lacustrine city she had spoken of and wondered. “Do you think the men will follow us willingly to Tenochtitlán?” he said.

Puertocarrero thought about this for a long time. “No,” he said, finally.”But I somehow think that you will find a way to persuade them.”

Aguilar wanted to conduct his lessons in the church but the noise of the carpenters’ hammers as was deafening. Instead he took his charges a little way off and sat them down in the shade of a jacaranda tree. He sweated heavily in his heavy brown robes. He kept his Book of Hours clutched to his breast. His audience, the cross-eyed beauties from Potonchan, sat on the ground at his feet staring at him, slack-jawed. The Totonáca women had been excluded from his Bible classes, as he called them, as none of them could speak Chontal Maya.

Rain Flower listened, but sat apart from the others.

What Aguilar had to say bewildered her, as if often did. It took the form of a long harangue about religion. He said that the Spaniards had just one god, but there were three gods in this one god. These three gods who made up one god had a son who was also a god. There was also another man called a Pope who was also a god, but wasn’t.

As far as she could make out, none of these gods were as powerful as the Spaniard’s own king.

Aguilar finished his lesson by making the women recite a prayer praising their own fathers.

When the Potonchan girls had all drifted away he seemed surprised to find Rain Flower still there, watching him. “Doña Isabel,” he said, calling her by the name he had given her on her baptismal day, “I am pleased to see you have discovered a thirst for God.”

“I listened to your speech. There is something I do not understand. When you spoke of your gods you did not mention my lord Cortés.”

“Cortés?”

“Is he not one of your gods?”

“Of course not!”

“Then I was right. He is just a man, like the rest of you.”

“I do not know where you learn such blasphemies. Cortés is our leader, and his mission is blessed by Pope and by Almighty God. But he himself is just a man.”

“You are not from the Cloud Lands?”

“We were born in a great and powerful country called Spain. But we came here from Cuba, an island across the ocean.”

Well, Rain Flower thought, that makes as much sense as anything else you have to say. “Why did you come?”

“We came here to teach you about God. We want you to be saved.”

“From what?”

“From the devil.”

The devil. Perhaps he meant the Mexica’s god, Hummingbird of the Left. Well, we should all like to be saved from him.

But I was right about this Cortés then. Poor Malinali. But what was the point of trying to convince her of the truth? She must have asked these same questions. She clearly did not want to believe that Cortés was just a man like all the rest.

But what did it matter? Let her dream. Their future was out of their hands anyway. Unlike the Totonáca women they were far from home and could not slip away in the night if they wanted to.

Motecuhzoma’s sacrificial altars were waiting for all them at the end of this journey, no matter what they believed. Life was just a dream, a short postponement of death.

She stood up and started to walk away.

“Wait,” Aguilar called breathlessly after her, “I can read to you from my holy book!”

Rain Flower ignored him. She was planning when she might next steal away to the pool with Gonzalo Norte.

———————

“We must send a deputation back to Spain to petition the king for the right to establish our own colony here. Alonso, as my most trusted friend and ally, I want you to return to Spain to plead the case on our behalf.”

Puertocarrero did not seem unhappy with this news. He does not have the stomach for soldiering, Cortés thought, or the temperament to survive long in these fevered lands. His breeding and manners are more suited to the royal court, which was why Cortés had chosen him for this errand.

Well, perhaps not the only reason.

But his officers would find his logic irrefutable. To obtain official recognition from the king they would need to send someone who knew the ways of the court. Puertocarrero was by far the best candidate, the nephew of a prominent justice of Sevilla and related to the Count of Medellín, one of Charles' most powerful and influential
grandee
s.

Cortés passed across the table his carte de relación, sealed with wax. “In my letter I have described to the king all that has happened here since our arrival three months ago. I have informed His Majesty how we have been forced into our recent drastic actions because of the arrogance and greed of Governor Velásquez in Cuba. It also relates the enthusiasm of all members of our new colony to serve the king.”

“I will return as soon as I can, with royal endorsement for our endeavours.”

Cortés would miss Puertocarrero; he was a loyal and trustworthy comrade. But he would still rather have Alvarado with him if it came to a fight. “To help the king arrive at his decision I am sending with you all the treasure we have won so far.” Well almost, Cortés thought. Not the gold that Gordo’s niece was wearing the day he gave her to me, nor certain items of dress Tendile’s lords hung on me. They are rightfully mine. “The value of the gold and jewels alone I place at two thousand castellanos.”

“I am sure His Majesty cannot fail to be impressed.”

“We will leave in the morning for the coast. You will take my flagship from San Juan de Ulúa. Alaminos will be your pilot.”

Puertocarrero rose to leave, hesitated. “About the girl,” he said.

Cortés strived to appear puzzled.

“Doña Marina,” Puertocarrero said.

“What about her?”

He smiled. “Treat her kindly.”

———————

The sun is just risen on the water and the great war canoes of the thunder gods roll on a gentle tide, A smaller canoe waits at the beach, to take my husband away. A few of my lord’s soldiers stand around, watching me. I hear them mutter and spit in the sand.

My husband strides down to the strand in high leather boots. The morning sun brings out the gold in his hair and his beard. He says something to Aguilar, who then turns to me.

“He says he does not know when he will be back.”

“Tell my lord I wish him well and thank him for his kindness.” I am almost too excited to play my role this morning. I know that Feathered Serpent has arranged this. It is not unknown for a person to have his own brother instruct his bride in the ways of the cave before he takes her to his own bed and I am sure this is what my lord intended. Now his task is completed, my violet-eyed husband is returning to the Cloud Lands.

Still, he looks sad.

“He wishes you well,” Aguilar yawns.

“I wish him well also. Tell him my cave of joy will be a place of great emptiness without him.”

Aguilar gasps. “I cannot tell him that.”

“You cannot tell him that I wish him well?”

“I cannot ... the rest of it.”

“Then tell him may the God of Wind hurry onwards the great canoe bearing him to heaven.”

“Castile is not heaven,” Aguilar mutters. He speaks a few curt sentences to my husband who smiles and answers in his own language.

“You did not tell him what I said,” I say to Aguilar.

“How can you know what I said? I said that you would miss him and that you wished him well.”

“And he wished me well also.”

“That much you may have guessed.”

“And the rest?”

“That was all.”

“There was more.”

Aguilar is about to debate further with me, but then he shrugs his shoulders and admits: “He also asked that you do the best you can for his friend, Cortés.”

“I would do anything for my lord.”

Aguilar snorts with derision and walks back up the beach, leaving us to complete our farewells without him.

My husband kisses my hand and gets in the canoe. Some moles push the boat through the shallows. He waves to me once, then takes his position at the stern. I know I shall never see him again.