Feathered Serpent (25 page)

———————

The wax candles burned in ruby cups, were reflected in the breastplate of Benítez' armour hanging on the wall. Rain Flower sat on a reed mat, Benítez beside her, picking from a platter of roasted rabbit and maize cakes. Norte, his arm still strapped, sat apart from them by the curtained door, his expression sullen.

Rain beat on the roof, and the storm wind brought with it the mouldering breath of the jungle, of things dead and rotting.

Rain Flower had painted flowers on her feet, and there was cinnabar on her lips and eyelids. Her eyes flashed in the candlelight, predatory, primitive. Norte wondered if this display was for benefit of the Benítez or for him, her true lover?

“I want to make love with you,” Norte said to her, in Chontal Maya.

She did not answer.

Benítez looked up sharply. “You have something to say?”

“I merely asked her what she was thinking, my lord.”

Benítez' inaction had made Norte reckless. It would have been easier if he hated him; but it was impossible to properly hate a man who has saved you from the gallows and faced death with you on the battlefield.

Norte looked up at the ceiling where men were being devoured by a great snake, their endless torment forever etched into the dark volcanic stone. Something strangely beautiful in it. The other Castilians had expressed their revulsion at this savage art. Norte himself wondered how a Mexica gentleman would react if he walked into a Christian home, where the centrepiece of every wall was a naked man being tortured with wood and nails.

“Will you ask my lord when we are to leave this place?” Rain Flower said.

Norte turned to Benítez. “She wants to know when we are leaving Cholula.”

Benítez finished eating, licking the juice from his fingers. “When Cortés is ready. I don’t know when that will be.”

“Tell him I hate this place,” Rain Flower said. “It has the stink of death.”

Benítez nodded his agreement when he heard this. “I feel the same way. But it is not my decision.”

What is he really thinking? Norte wondered. It is a subtle game he is playing here. Too easy to simply have me put to death, better to torment me this way, have me watch him with her every day. Or perhaps I do him a disservice; it may not be in his nature to condemn me to death out of spite. It would offend this damnable man’s sense of justice.

“My body aches to hide in your cave,” Norte whispered to Rain Flower.

She pretended not to hear him. Instead she asked him if they would one day go back to the coast.

“She asks where we go from here,” he said to Benítez.

“I believe my lord Cortés intends us to march on Motecuhzoma’s capital.”

“Then he is a madman. Can none of you captains not convince him to turn back?”

“One does not tell the wind which way to blow.”

“Do you know anything at all about the Mexica, Benítez?”

“Do you?”

“Only what I have learned from Rain Flower.”

“Then tell me. I would like to hear it.”

“A century past these people were living in the desert eating vermin. By nature they are savages. Everyone knows it, even the Mexica themselves.”

“How did they come to be so powerful so quickly?”

“Because they have always been great warriors. It is the one thing they have to recommend them, apparently. They now have a formidable army.”

“Of how many men? Twenty thousand? Fifty thousand?”

Norte consulted with Rain Flower. Even he seemed surprised at her answer. “She believes a hundred thousand, at least. So - do you still want to follow Cortés to Tenochtitlán?”

Benítez looked shaken. He can already imagine his insides roasting on a brazier before Hummingbird’s altar, Norte thought.

“She obviously has no understanding of numbers,” Benítez said.

“On the contrary, she says she counts only the Mexica. She does not count the other armies of the Triple Alliance, the Texcocans and the Tacubans.”

Norte doubted very much if this summation of their enemy would deter Cortés. He supposed he had already learned this much from Malinali himself and was keeping it from the rest of his officers.

Norte turned his attention to the sleeping mat where tonight Benítez would lie with Rain Flower. If only it were me, he thought. Sometimes he imagined himself back on Cozumel Island, but instead of the squat and homely girl they had given him, his wife was Rain Flower ...

Since Texcála there had been few opportunities to be with her. But now he had found a place just outside the city where they could slip away, unseen, with a little complicity on her part. But lately she would not catch his eye and whenever he tried to speak with her, she moved away.

She was afraid of what would Benítez would do if he discovered them, he supposed.

“I am tired,” he said. “May I have leave to go bed?”

Benítez nodded and Norte got to his feet.

“There is one more service you can perform for me,” Benítez said, almost as afterthought. “I want you to tell Rain Flower here ... tell her that if we survive this expedition, and we are able to return to Cuba ... tell her I would like her to come with me. I will make her my wife in a Catholic church and be proud to do it.”

Norte stared at him. By the Devil’s spotted and hairy great ass! You would be proud, would you? How generous of you! And what of Rain Flower? How might she find such an arrangement? What do you understand of these
naturales
, as you call them? You just want to make them more like you.

Rain Flower waited for him to speak.

“He says that he likes you very much and he is happy to have you in his bed. But you must understand he already has a wife in Cuba. After Tenochtitlán he wishes you well and hopes you will go back to your people and not bother him any more.”

He pushed the curtain aside and went out, into the night.

———————

“I have just received ambassadors from Motecuhzoma,” Cortés announced. “They have invited us to visit him at Tenochtitlán.”

There was a sullen and shuffling silence. Cortés looked at his second in command. “Alvarado?”

His captain thrust out his jaw. “We have been talking among ourselves,” he said, and looked at Benítez for support. “It seems these Mexica are far stronger even than we anticipated. It is said they can raise an army of one hundred thousand men ...”

“We are not going to Tenochtitlán to fight a war.”

“After the slaughter here, surely they will not open their arms to us?”

“That is exactly what they will do. Because they are afraid of us.”

“Even the Texcálans advise against it,” Benítez said.

“The Texcálans are not our war council.”

“We think we should go back to Vera Cruz,” de Grado said.

Cortés could not believe his ears. If he could teach a parrot to talk and put a helmet on its head, it would be as much use as de Grado. “Oh, very well then,” he said and he sat down.

“
Caudillo
?” Sandoval said.

“I said - very well. Go back to Vera Cruz. Sit there in the swamp and breathe in the bad airs of the coast and catch fevers and die, if that is what you want. And then, no doubt, some of you will harp again about going back to Cuba - where, no doubt, you will be forced to heap all the treasures we have so sorely won into the hands of the governor.”

Silence.

“We have come so far and at every turn you want to go back. Have you forgotten we have God’s work to do?”

“Cortés is right,” Sandoval said. “It is too late to turn back.”

“What of our allies?” Alvarado asked.

“The Totonacs have expressed a wish to return to Cempoallan. They lost many of their men in the war against the Texcálans and now they are weighed down with the booty they have taken in Cholula. As I cannot persuade them to stay, I have given them leave to do as they wish.”

“What about the Texcálans?” Sandoval said. “Will they desert us also?”

“On the contrary. Laughs at Women has received word from Ring of the Wasp the Elder that we may have ten thousand of his finest warriors to accompany us when we visit Motecuhzoma.”

Alvarado smiled. “Well, that is a little better.”

“I have refused his offer,” Cortés said.

Alvarado gaped at him. “Are you mad?”

“
Caudillo
!” Jaramillo gasped.

“Ten thousand men is not enough to wage a war against a whole nation, but it is enough to enrage their emperor. He cannot allow so many of his enemies to march across his territory unchallenged. When we enter the valley of the Mexica, we must be seen as friends and not enemies.”

“So we are to go alone?” Sandoval asked.

“I have agreed to two thousand Texcálans, on condition they keep their weapons hidden and pretend to be our porters.”

de Grado started to protest.

Cortés jumped to his feet. “May you repent your intransigence! What do you all wish from me? You wanted me to found a colony and I did as you asked. You asked me to find gold, I have won for you all a fortune from Motecuhzoma himself. You prayed for deliverance from the Texcálan armies, did I not obtain for you their surrender?”

Benítez bit his tongue. It seemed no one but Cortés was to get credit for anything. But he despised de Grado and so kept his silence.

He turned and looked at Malinali. He saw in her face the same uncertainty that he felt himself. Without Cortés, we have no hope. With him, we face certain death.

What sort of choice was that?

Cortés looked around the room. “I shall be guided by you, gentlemen. You are, after all, wise and Christian captains. If you wish to return to Cuba as paupers - that is, if the Totonacs and Texcálans do not slaughter you all - then I shall lead you back. If you wish to do God’s work, and find your life’s fortunes in Tenochtitlán, we shall follow Christ’s banner to that city. Let me know your decision.”

And he walked out.

——————— 

They left Cholula on the first day of the Month of the Flamingo. Their Mexica guides led the way into the high passes between Smoking Man and Sleeping Woman, the volcanoes that guarded the gate to the Valley of the Mexica.

Pennons snapped in the wind. There was a breath of ice in the air.

They were all afraid.

Even, perhaps, Cortés.

The mist embraced them long before they reached the col, a grey shroud that hid them from each other, and transformed their march into a series of lonely struggles. They entered a world of startled lizards, and of trees gnarled and twisted into bitter fingers by the winter winds.

The column halted at a high and rocky stream. Rain Flower bent to drink, grateful for the rest. She splashed water on her face, cupped the icy water in her palm to slake her thirst. Rain Flower bent down to drink beside her.

“Little Mother,” Rain Flower whispered.

Malinali squeezed her hand. “Little Sister.”

“I had hoped that you might persuade the great lord from this.”

“It would be like chaining an eagle to the earth. If he was not on the road to Tenochtitlán I think he would disappear.”

“You still think he is Feathered Serpent then?”

“Not the Feathered Serpent we dreamed of as children, perhaps.”

“I can still hear the women screaming in Cholula.”

Rain Flower saw one of the Texcalteca, Laughs at Women, watching them from the baggage train. His face was streaked with the yellow and white paint of his clan. She wondered what he was thinking. He would not talk to her, out of contempt or out of awe, she did not know.

“It was not our thunder lords who slaughtered the women and children in Cholula,” Malinali said.

“Your lord allowed it to happen. I do not love the Cholulans but I wonder if these thunder gods of yours are any better. Their swords are just as sharp as the knives of Motecuhzoma’s priests.”

Malinali stood up and Rain Flower clutched at her wrist. “You can break this spell! It is in your power. He cannot speak to Motecuhzoma without you!”

“You think we are better served by the Mexica?”

“I think you are wrong about these thunder lords. They are not kind.”

“You expect kindness from the gods? Look around you. If gods were kind would little children die of disease, would we all starve when the crops fail?” She ran her fingers through Rain Flower’s thick black hair, tender as a mother. “You once told me, life is just a dream, it lasts only a moment, that all our fears are shadows on a wall from a child’s hand. So we must follow our hearts. In the end nothing matters anyway.”

The column had resumed its march. Malinali ran to catch up with Cortés at the van. Rain Flower stared after her until she was swallowed by the mists.

———————

My lord sits astride his great warhorse at the crest of a hill. He takes a magical charm from the pocket of his long-sleeved doublet. Our Mexica guides murmur among themselves, pointing.

I clutch at the stirrups of the beast, no longer afraid of its size, its smell. “Our guides would like to know what is in the box you are looking at.”

“It is a compass,” he says, and shows it to me. “The needle always points to the north. This way I can judge in which direction we are headed.”

It is a ridiculous answer and one I cannot repeat to men of position and intelligence. I turn back to our Mexica guides. “It is a mirror for looking into the future,” I tell them. “It can also read men’s minds.”

The Mexica stare at Cortés and their eyes go wide.

They stopped that evening at a village hunched in the shadow of the great volcanoes. Billowing clouds of ash rose vertically into the sky despite the howling winds. Another omen.

His men crowded together into the few poor houses while the Texcálans crouched around campfires in the open, shivering in their cloaks.

When night fell Cortés called his captains to a conference in the adobe house he had requisitioned for his own use. Malinali was nowhere to be found and when the parlay ended she still had not returned. Cortés was about to order a search of the camp when she appeared in the doorway, flushed and anxious.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

“The
cacique
sent word that he wished to speak with me privately.”

Cortés frowned. “Oh? What did he want?”

“He says that Motecuhzoma’s soldiers have laid an ambush for us on the road to Chalco.”

“I see. And is this road the only way to the capital?”

“There is another passage through the mountains, but the Mexica have blocked it.”

What sort of treacherous dog am I dealing with here? Cortés thought. By my conscience, I shall make this Motecuhzoma repent the trouble he has given me! "Why does the
cacique
tell us this?”

“My lord, like everyone, he hates the Mexica. They have seized much of his good land, taken the most handsome women for concubines and the strongest men as slaves. And once a year, at the feast of the Rain Giver, he takes their sons and daughters for sacrifice in his altars. Naturally the
cacique
does not want our guides to know of his enmity but he hopes that if he helps us we will give him redress.”

“This Motecuhzoma is certainly a popular fellow.”

“There are very few in this Empire who do not have cause to hate him.”

Cortés considered for a moment. “Go back to the
cacique
. Thank him for the good service he has done us and tell him the time will soon come when his people will not have to fear the butchers of Tenochtitlán. Then return here to me. I would like to talk to you.”  

 ———————

We lie huddled under the blankets, listening to the icy wind moan through the alleys of the village. I rest my head on his chest and I can hear the beat of his mortal heart, the pulsing of quick blood.

“What is it you haven’t told me, Mali?”

“I don’t know what you mean, my lord.”

“You can speak freely. Your secrets are safe with me.”

“My lord?”

“You are Maya. How did you learn the language of these Mexica?”

I am reluctant to speak of this, even now. “From my mother, lord.”

“How?”

I think he knows, or suspects. It is impossible to hide such things from a god. I take a deep breath. “Because she herself was a Mexica, my lord, and high-born.”

He takes my hand, holds it to his lips, and kisses my fingers. “Tell me all of it.”

“After my father was murdered, my mother married again, bore a son by her new husband. It was soon clear to me that this man did not want me to inherit any of his lands or to interfere with my new half-brother’s claims even to my own father’s estates. My mother felt she must decide between her new husband and me.” I feel my throat tighten. “One day there was a sickness in the village. I became very ill as did one of our slave girls. One night, as I lay in a fever, I heard my mother kneel down beside my bed and pray to Smoking Mirror to let me die. It would have solved all her problems, of course. But I did not die. Our slave girl succumbed, but I survived.

“My mother had a devious mind - she was raised, after all, as a Mexica - and she was yet able to find an ingenious solution to her problems.” He pulls me closer and I continue, as best I can. “She must have told everyone I had died ... so they placed a piece of jade between my lips and wrapped my body in a cloak, head to toe, in the traditional manner ... and they threw Ce Malinali Tenepal on a funeral pyre. Only the body in the burial cloak was not mine. It was our slave girl.”

“How could they succeed with such a deception?”

“Slave traders came to our town the night of the funeral. I am sure now that it had been pre-arranged. They trussed me with wet rawhide and carried me away. I was sold to a wealthy Tabascan lord at Potonchan. I have no idea how much profit my mother made on this arrangement. I fetched a good price I believe. I hope the traders did not try and cheat her.”

“Caro ...” he murmurs.

“My Tabascan master got a handsome bargain. I had already received rigorous training in song and dance and I had royal Mexica blood in my veins. If my feelings on this commerce were discounted everyone involved was greatly pleased.”

“Royal blood, Mali?”

“My mother was a descendant of Motecuhzoma’s grandfather.”

“And your father? He was a lord also?”

“My father was from the royal house of Culhuacan, long ago conquered by the Mexica. They pay Motecuhzoma rich tribute every year. But my father was a priest, much revered and very wealthy. He owned much land and many houses.”

My lord falls silent. He strokes my back with his hand. His skin feels hot against mine, as if anger has ignited a fire inside him. “How did your father die, Mali?”

It takes me a long time to answer. “My father was a follower of the cult of Feathered Serpent ... he also understood the passage of the stars and could foretell the future by the portents in the heavens. He publicly prophesied the end of the Mexica.”

“Motecuhzoma punished him for that?”

“Some soldiers came. They murdered him, in the square, in front of everyone.”

I think he understands me better now. He strokes my hair. “So you would number yourself among Motecuhzoma’s enemies?”

“My lord, I am the greatest enemy he has. And he does not know it.”

They reached a fork in the road; one way led down to the valley, to a place called Chalco; the other towards Amacameca and the high saddle between the volcanoes. Pine trees had been felled across the Amacameca road, blocking the way.

Cortés halted the column, walked his horse up to the van, where Malinali waited with their Mexica guides. “The old chief was right,” he said.

Malinali nodded but said nothing.

“Ask our guides why the road is blocked.”

She did as he asked. “They say you should not concern yourself over it,” she answered. “The road to Chalco is easier and you can be assured of a warm welcome there.”

“Very warm, if the
cacique
is to be believed.” The Mexica watched him, their cloaks pulled tight around them in the grey, cold mist. “Tell them we will take the Amacameca road.”

Their guides received this news with consternation.

“What are they saying now?”

“They cannot understand why you wish to take the more difficult route. I told them you had consulted your magic mirror and this is what it had told you to do. They say Motecuhzoma will be displeased with them for putting you through such hardship.”

“I shall take full responsibility for my actions when I meet their lord.” He turned around in the saddle. “Bring up some men with axes,” he shouted to Alvarado. “We should not be delayed here more than an hour or two. We will soon see this Tenochtitlán.”