Feathered Serpent (18 page)

There was no earth to plant the tent pegs, so they threw their sleeping blankets down on hard basalt rock and huddled next to one another for warmth, tried to sleep as best they could. The wind shrieked over their heads and icy needles of rain slanted down from a black sky.

Benítez drew Rain Flower closer. He had thrown his cloak around her slender shoulders, wrapped his body around her to give her some of his warmth.

We’re going to die here, he thought. We’re going to freeze to death in this wilderness and the buzzards will pick over our bones until there is nothing left. What a fool I have been. Why did I ever leave Cuba, why did I follow Cortés here? Leon and Ordaz were right about him all along.

He heard the rumble of a landslide somewhere in the mountains.

Rain Flower clung to him, moaning something in her own pretty speech over the rushing of the wind and rain.

Norte lay close by. Benítez could hear his teeth chattering in his head.

“What did she say?” Benítez asked him.

“She wonders,” Norte said, his voice barely discernible over the howling of the gale, “since you are so intent on throwing ourselves on Motecuhzoma’s altars, why you wish to suffer so much first?”

Chapter
Thirty Four

Below them lay a broad valley, green with maize, patchworked with fields of pale lavender flowers. The wind had shifted to the west, clearing the sky and warming the shivering men as they made their way down from the mountains. Cortés went down the line barking orders, tightening formations. They marched into the town of Zautla in close order as a victorious army, not one that had nearly frozen to death on the high passes.

Cortés was given the best house in the town for his living quarters. A great oak table and his favourite carved wooden chair, inlaid with brass and turquoise stones, had been carried all the way from Vera Cruz; these were set down in the middle of the beaten earth floor.

That morning’s council was the usual gathering of captains, Benítez noted, but with one exception; Malinali was there, and without Aguilar to translate for her.

The mood in the room was bouyant. They had eaten a dinner of roasted turkeys and maize cakes and slept warm and dry with roofs over their heads. Already the horrors of their journey were receding into memory.

Cortés brought them all to order. “Gentlemen, we have a decision to make. There appears to be some dispute on how we should proceed.”

“What dispute?” Alvarado asked.

“There are two routes we may take. Last night I spoke with the
cacique
of this town and he pressed me strongly to go by way of a place they call Cholula. He said that we may be certain of an enthusiastic welcome. However the Totonacs advise me that the route is longer and more difficult and suggest we instead pass through the land of Texcála.”

“By the Virgin’s ass,” a voice said. “You cannot take the word of a Mexica over a Totonáca.”

They all looked around. It was Malinali.

Benítez grinned. Her education in Castilian was progressing well, in the company of men like Jaramillo and Sandoval and Alvarado.

Cortés looked stricken by her outburst. “We will have to consult with your language tutors,” he said by way of rebuke.

“What do you know of these Texcálans, Doña Marina?” Alvarado asked her, who seemed to think that profanity in a yo0oung Indian woman was merely amusing.

“They have been at war with the Mexica for as long as anyone can remember. Most of the hearts torn out each year on Motecuhzoma’s altars belong to Texcálan captives. They are his mortal enemies.”

Cortés looked around the room. “So, is it Texcála then?”

Every man nodded his assent.

“Then I shall send four Totonac envoys to Texcála to explain our mission and offer them alliance against the Mexica. How can they refuse? Then we will have two great nations with us. I predict that by the time we enter Tenochtitlán, Motecuhzoma will be isolated and besieged, and will submit without one of us drawing our sword from its sheath.”

They grinned at each other, mesmerised by Cortés’ words. He made it seem so easy. Even Benítez imagined himself returning to Extremadura clothed in velvet with gold on his fingers and jewels in his pouch. What had seemed impossible on the coast seemed within easy reach here in the mountains. It might really be as simple as Cortés told them. Like picking a ripe plum from a tree.

———————

The four Totonáca set out the next day, wearing the official regalia of their rank; double-knotted cloaks, special cotton wraps and a buckler. They also had with them a letter of greeting, signed by Cortés and sealed with red wax, as well as some special gifts; a Toledo sword, a crossbow and a red taffeta hat fashionable in genteel Cuban society.

The leader of the delegation took with him a further, and vital, accoutrement; a tiny piece of jade, carved in the shape of a heart. He concealed it by sewing it into his hair. It would pay his passage to the Yellow Beast of the Underworld should the Texcaltéca prove less accommodating than the Spaniards believed.

After all, everyone knew the favourite food in Texcála was ambassador stew.

The envoys were conveyed to the Council of Four in Texcála with all courtesy. They proffered their gifts and letter of greeting and explained how Feathered Serpent had returned to assist the Texcaltéca in their struggle against the Mexica. They were thanked for the troubles they had taken and escorted to the quarters that had been prepared for them.

During the night they were seized and thrown in wooden cages to await sacrifice to Smoking Mirror the next day. Two of them managed to escape and arrived back in the Spanish camp, filthy and exhausted, two days later.

Cortés had his answer. There would be no alliance. The Texcálans would not be intimidated as easily as the fat
cacique
s of the Totonacs.

———————

Norte lay on his back, staring at the sky, thousands of stars tossed across the firmament like chips of diamond on velvet. As he drifted to sleep his mind broke free of Zautla, slipped away to a small village in Yucatan. He watched two small boys playing in the shallows on the beach. They were not like the two sons he had once imagined for himself; their hooked noses and the dark copper colour of their skin was uncompromisingly Indian. But they were his blood, and he had loved them.

The cold pain in his chest returned.

He did not remember when the old world slipped away from him and the New World insinuated itself into his soul; there was no absolute moment when the yellow sands of Cozumel Island had become more important to him than the central plaza in Sevilla. It had happened slowly, moment by moment, breath by breath. However it had happened somehow the Spaniard who had sailed from Palos eight years ago was a stranger to him now.

What irony that he had once wandered that Yucatan beach, searching the horizon for sign of his countrymen. He had thought himself a Christian gentleman, lost among heathens. But when he looked back now he only saw a pirate and a thief and a hypocrite, rank with the smell of his own sweat. He tossed on his sparse straw bed, cried out to his two tobacco-coloured children. He wondered if they had wept for him, whether they had already keened the funeral rites for him ...

He remembered their mother scolding them for some infraction and threatening them with chilli smoke. She was a squat woman with a plain, square face, a shy smile and little conversation. A flower her father could afford to toss aside. But he had made children with her, thankful that he had not finished his life, like his comrades, on the sacrificial stone.

It was the birth of his sons that had bonded him to the Mayans; it was his own flesh, still there in Yucatan, that tore at him now.

His nightmares woke him. Around him his comrades were snoring and farting in their sleep. Like sleeping in a sty, he thought. How he hated them.

He thought again about escape, as he had done every night since they had taken him from the beach. But if he ran away, Cortés would send men after him and they would just hunt him down again. These Spaniards would not allow that one of their own would prefer the company of the
naturales
to that of Christian gentlemen. He could find his way back to Yucatan as easily as he might find his way to the moon.

The only one of this band worth his spit was Benítez. And right now he would have as gladly slit his throat as well.

———————

They left Zautla, headed through thick forests to the west. Everywhere they found figurines in wood or clay, smaller versions of the devils they had found in the temples; they had been left by the side of the road, or placed in niches cut into the trunks of large trees, or hidden inside hilltop shrines. The soldiers puzzled over the bright coloured threads strung between the pine trees and stopped to examine them, frankly curious. The Totonacs just stared, wide-eyed with trepidation.

Bad luck charms, they said. Motecuhzoma’s owl men have been this way, making their sorcery.

The Spaniards laughed at them and marched on.

———————

They followed a fast running river towards the neck of the valley, grey ramparts closing in on either side. A wall loomed in front of them, an impossible sight in the middle of this raw plain.

Cortés reined in his horse and gazed at this new wonder in awe. It had been built of the same granite as the cliffs on either side and stretched from one side of the valley to the other.

“By Satan’s ass, it must be three leagues wide,” Benítez murmured.

Cristoval was sent ahead as scout. The wall looked to be over nine feet high, Benítez decided; even seated on his horse Cristoval could not see over the parapet.

Cristoval wheeled his horse and rode back. “It is not defended, my lord. There is only one entrance, but it is like no gateway I have ever seen. It is curved and so narrow that only one rider may enter at a time, and no faster than walking pace.”

“It’s a trap,” Sandoval muttered. “By the Pope’s holy balls it has to be a trap.”

Norte ran forward, whispered something to Benítez.

“What does he say?” Cortés asked him.

“He advises caution, my lord.”

Cortés stared at Norte. “Well?”

“
Caudillo
, the first aim of all warfare in this country is to entice your enemy into a place where he cannot escape. That way, when you are victorious, you have more prisoners to sacrifice to the gods.”

Cortés stared at the wall and did not respond.

Alvarado walked his horse forward a few steps. “Did the Totonacs not tell you of this wall?”

“I thought they exaggerated the extent of it. Who would have thought these
naturales
capable of such a thing?”

The horses tossed their heads and stamped their hooves. The brass on their strappings jangled.

Benítez joined them. “We defeated the Tabascans only with difficulty. Are we then to face a much more powerful enemy with a wall at our backs?”

“We do not want to fight them. We want them as our allies against the Mexica.”

“Even so, we should perhaps take the other road, to Cholula.”

“Are you afraid, Benítez?”

“I am not afraid to die. But I did not come here to throw my life away to no good purpose. I came here for the gold.”

“And there is gold! If we show no fear, there will be more gold than any of you ever dreamed of!”

“I agree with Benítez,” Jaramillo said. “We should go back.”

“If we go back, what do we go back to? I tell you, if we ride up to the devil and spit in his face, he will run.” He pointed to the feathered ranks of the Totonacs at their rear. “But by my conscience, if we show one scrap of fear, these dogs, too, will be at our throats.”

Benítez thought: He is right. We are even outnumbered ten to one by our allies.

Cortés twisted in the saddle. “Remember the Cid, gentlemen, in his battles against the Moors? Would he have turned back, faced with his first wall?” Cortés snatched the banner from Cristoval, and held it aloft, then wheeled his chestnut mare around so that he faced his army. “Gentlemen! Let us follow the banner, the sign of the Holy Cross, and by this we shall conquer!”

He galloped towards the wall, and disappeared from view through the entrance. Benítez looked at Alvarado and Sandoval. Alvarado shrugged, and spurred his horse after Cortés. None of them knew what was on the other side.

But they had no choice but to follow him. 

A vast and empty plain. An eagle circles above our heads, black against an overcast sky.

Cortés points at a score of Indians wearing cloaks of red and white. When they see us they run towards the defile at the far end of the valley.

“We will cut them off,” Cortés says. He turns to Benítez. “Take Martin Lares and four other horsemen and block their retreat. We will parlay with them. Malinali, follow me, we will need you to help us talk with them.”

I think not. I try and shout a warning to him, but my lord has already spurred his horse forward. What difference will it make now? Our armies are engaged but my lord does not know it.

Benítez and his fellow
jinetas
, as the thunder gods call them, flank the Texcálans easily, round them up like turkeys in a pen. But they do not cower at the sight of the horses, as the Tabascans had done; instead one runs screaming towards Benítez, swinging a great war club studded with volcanic glass. He is taken by surprise, and the club swings into his mount’s shoulder. The beast screams and rears back.

Lares rides forward, driving his lance into the Texcálan’s chest.

Now two more come on, their spears raised. Benítez tries to regain control of his horse, but this huge animal, that I once thought invincible, is bucking with the agony of the wound. It is impossible for Benítez to manoeuvre his lance and defend himself, so he lets it slide from his grasp and draws his sword. He hacks at the first of his attackers, and the second is deterred by the horse’s flailing hooves.

Just then one of the
jinetas
wheels his horse around and gallops away.

Jaramillo.

The rest join Benítez and Lares in the mêlée but the Texcálans stand their ground. One of the great warhorses crashes to its knees, defeated, after a blow from one of the war clubs. Its rider crawls away, clutching at his leg. I hear a gasp from the Tabascans behind us. This is something none of us thought to see.

Cortés has galloped ahead and I run after him. I hear Lares shout a warning. The horizon is moving towards us, transformed now to a solid line of red and white, stark against the pine trees. There are thousands of them, streaming from the defile, their war whoops faint but growing stronger on the wind.

Their faces were painted as death’s heads, their bodies striped in red and white grease. The sound of their ululating war cries was unnerving. Benítez tightened his grip on his sword. Stay calm.

His mare was lame. A flap of flesh hung loose from her shoulder and blood had sprayed along her right foreleg. He could not ride her with such a wound. He looked to his left. The cannons had been unloaded from the carts and primed. Mesa stood by one of the
culverin
s, waiting for Cortés to give the order. Ordaz and his infantry were drawn up behind, ready to protect the guns if the Indians broke through.

“Look at them,” Ordaz shouted, making a gesture towards the advancing Indians. “It is always the ruffians and cannon fodder that make the most noise. Real soldiers go about their business quietly.”

Ruffians? Benítez thought. They do not fight like ruffians. Not many men would stand and face a charging horse as these
naturales
had done.

Cortés gave the order to fire.

The cannons roared and the front rank of the Texcálan charge disappeared. When the powder smoke cleared they saw a few survivors milling around in dazed confusion. But instead of retreating they tried to drag away their dead and wounded.

Cortés gave another signal and the remaining
jinetas
spurred their horses among them, cutting them down with their lances and swords, wheeling clear of the carnage before they could be engaged, then charging in again at full gallop.

But the Texcálans still would not leave their dead.

“Why don’t they just run?” Benítez murmured, sickened.

The cannons had been reloaded. As he charged back to the lines, Cortés gave the order to fire again.