Feathered Serpent (27 page)

Cortés heard Aguilar intone the words of a prayer somewhere behind him. There, it was said now, loud enough for them all to hear, and his response must be just as plain for one day it would find its way to the King of Spain and the Holy Inquisition. “What did you tell him, Mali?”

“I said you were a Spaniard, my lord, and that put you one rank above his gods.”

Even Alvarado laughed at that.

The green slopes were veiled in mist, creating a world at once mysterious and magical. As the shrouds parted they saw a great lake. Lush gardens floated on its surface, anchored by lines of weeping cypress.

Their march had taken on the appearance of a pilgrimage. Crowds flocked to greet them, men and women and children lined the road, some cheering their approach, others staring in sullen silence or slack-jawed wonder. A number even joined their procession, thinking they were witnessing the return of the gods. Their column swelled to twenty, thirty thousand.

The road down the mountain led to a causeway that took them across the lake. They struck across the peninsula at a town called the Place of the Precious Black Stones. Motecuhzoma’s lacustrine city, of which they had heard so much, remained invisible, hidden in the mists; but they could now see, in the distance, trailing wisps of smoke from the altars of the Great Temple.

Motecuhzoma was just a few hours ride away.

——————— 

Benitez stood on the roof terrace looking around in awe. He had never imagined any place as beautiful as this. In every direction there were forests of oak and sycamore and cedar, fields of maize and
maguey
cactus. The town itself was a marvel, white adobe houses with thatched roofs, some perched on stilts over the mirrored waters of the lake. Sculptured terraces of lily ponds, arbors and fruit trees led down to the water. The warm scents of frangipani and hibiscus carried to him on the evening breeze.

Not even Salamanca or Toledo – considered the most beautiful towns in all Spain – could compare to this place.

He was astonished at the architecture. The palace they had given them as quarters was built of cedar and an ochre-coloured volcanic stone, and was as solid as any
grandee
’s palace in Castile or Andalusia. The sandalwood beams they used to reinforce the ceilings also gave off a fragrance that sweetened the rooms. Colourful tapestries and brightly painted frescoes enlivened the walls, and there were spacious patios where vivid-coloured macaws and parrots chattered in hanging bamboo cages.

A paradise.

He prayed that there would be no fighting to endanger this fragile beauty. He consoled himself instead with what Cortés had told him many times on the journey; they had not come here not to make war, but to bring peace, salvation and true religion.

———————

Norte joined Benitez on the terrace, and for a while they shared an uneasy silence.

“Where are you from, Norte?” Benitez said, suddenly.

Norte seemed surprised at the question. “It was a village called Barajas in Castile.”

“When you were there, did you ever imagine a place like this?”

“No, my lord. The slum I lived in bore no relation this. Even the poor people here live better than I did. Yet the Mexica appear to have done all this without initiation into the secrets of Christ or the Virgin.”

Benitez felt a prickle of irritation. Why did he ever venture Norte’s opinion? “Every time you open your mouth it is to utter a blasphemy,” he said.

“Is it blasphemy? It strikes me as the truth. Eight years away from Christian society gives a man a different perspective.”

“I agree with you that these people may not be as backward as we at first supposed. But we come here armed with the true faith and trusted with a sacred mission.”

“Because we are victorious does not make us saviours. Barbarians have conquered Rome before now.”

Benitez was about to argue with him further, thought better of it. The panorama before him did not incline him to be disagreeable. So they returned to their silence until at last the sun fell behind the distant mountains and it grew too dark to see.  

———————

Painali, 1511
:

I am eleven years old and my life is abruptly separated, as you would chop a maize cob in two with a machete, neatly parting the two halves.

In one hand the gods held my childhood: in the other my destiny.

It happens with the arrival of the Mexica calpisqui, the tribute gatherers, and a squadron of Mexica warriors. There is no warning of their arrival, and they are not expected.

They know where my father is. They drag him from our house, throw him in the dirt at their feet to humiliate him while the whole town watches. They slash at him with their obsidian knives to hear him scream.

Then one of the warriors, their lieutenant, drops a great rock on his head, crushing his skull. As if he is a thief, an adulterer.

There they leave him, in the plaza, the flies crawling over the bloody mess that had once been the man I loved and adored and revered most in the world.

His crime was to prophecy against Motecuhzoma and to foresee his end.You might ask me how I feel at that moment: only numb. I try to summon the rage and grief that consumed me the day my two brothers and sister were led away for sacrifice. I want desperately to feel something, but grief does not exact its bitter due until much later.

Instead I stare at my father’s body and something dies in me; something else is born to take its place.

I carry it with me, even today. It is black and secret and lives in my heart. Its taste is foul and its course implacable.

Hate.

Place of the Precious Black Stones, 1519:

The fire had been lit in the stone hearth outside and the wall glowed with heat. Rain Flower led him into the bath-house, took off her clothes and indicated that he should do the same. Then she sat him down on a stone bench.

There was a trough in the corner of the room. A drain had been cut in the wall to allow water to flow into the trough from a well outside. She took a clay dipper, dashed some water onto the shimmering wall. Immediately the room filled with steam.

She sat down on the bench next to him and examined his naked body. The wound on his arm had healed well, she noted with satisfaction. The heat in the room was opening the pores on his skin and she took a handful of grass and began to wipe the sweat from his back and chest.

Her naked body had aroused him. She liked his kisses on her face now, even though his beard tickled her, and she liked the way his hands stroked her. She had shown him what she enjoyed and he had been an adept pupil. But then she wriggled away, dashed more water against the wall. The steam filled the tiny room in a hissing roar.

Suddenly he was behind her. Their skins were slick with perspiration and she felt his
maquauhuitl
slide sweetly between the clefts of her body. She threw back her head for his kisses. He lifted her under her arms and she parted her thighs for him, was surprised to find that her cave was ready. For the first time she found herself enjoying him as she imagined a wife would enjoy her husband. She reached behind her and clung to him and he joined with her easily.

As he reached his moment she wondered if her baby would look like Norte or like this hairy Castilian. But she would not have to worry about such a predicament; long before that day came Benitez would have returned to his wife in the Cloud Lands or they would all be dead on Motecuhzoma’s altars.

———————

Motecuhzoma stared at the dishes that had been laid before him, each prepared in the finest red and black Cholulan earthenware and warmed over tiny clay braziers filled with burning charcoal; fried fish that had been swimming in the eastern ocean just the morning before, brought to him across the plains and the sierra by a relay of specially trained messengers; crow, quail, venison and grasshoppers, each one a delicacy; rattlesnake and agave worms from the desert; larvae nests and salamanders from the lakes; armadillos from the forests. There was a foaming cup of chocolatl, cacao beans mashed and boiled with cornmeal and seasoned with honey.

None of it interested him.

The plates were returned to the kitchens untouched and the gilded screens that guarded his privacy while he ate were removed. His private theatre of freaks and monstrosities performed for him; dancing hunchbacks, juggling dwarves, a one-legged man who lay on his back to spin balls into the air. His musicians played flutes and snakeskin drums.

They scarcely warranted attention.

A servant lit his tobacco pipe and he puffed on the smoke, lost to the byzantine wanderings of his own thoughts ...

... As much as he had always feared the coming of Feathered Serpent, another darker interpretation of recent events had occurred to him. It had been suggested by a chance remark of one of his spies, who had reported malintzin had with him a small mirror in which he could look into the souls of men. As a former priest he knew that Feathered Serpent did not own such a mirror; but his rival, Smoking Mirror, certainly did.

Tezcatlipoca, Smoking Mirror: the god of affliction and anguish and disease, whose particular pleasure it was to disguise himself in many forms in order to bring misery and suffering to human beings on earth. Like Lord Malinche, he was greatly interested in personal riches and whenever he appeared on earth he caused confusion and anguish; exactly as Lord Malinche had done.

A confrontation with Feathered Serpent was terrible enough but at least he had known the perimeters of his dilemma; but what if this was instead a test of his steadfastness? What if Smoking Mirror had for some reason grown dissatisfied with his people, the Mexica, and had come to punish them? What should he do to save himself and his people? How should he act?

He could not find answer to this riddle. All he knew was that tomorrow he must go out and face this bewildering divinity and nothing in his training, either as a priest or as a prince, had prepared him for such an encounter.  

Dawn: mist drifted across the steely surface of the lake, keeping Tenochtitlán yet hidden from view, but the Spaniards could hear the cry of the city’s boatmen and the echo of their wooden clappers as they steered their canoes along the algae-green canals between the chinampas. The stench from these floating gardens belied their ethereal beauty; the crops were fertilised with frequent applications of human manure.

They were on a broad causeway, made of earth and stone flags. Their guides led the way, followed by the cavalry, in full armour, pennons hanging limp from iron lances. Cristóbal del Corral, the standard bearer, tossed his banner from side to side so that it fluttered and whipped in the still morning air. Then came the infantry, led by Ordaz, swords drawn, shields over their shoulders. Cortés was in the rear, Malinali marching on foot on the left of his great chestnut mare; Brother Aguilar and Father Olmedo followed on his right, bearing aloft great wooden crosses. Finally came the great wicker standard of the White Heron, the emblem of Texcála. Some of the Texcálan warriors dragged the wooden carts that held the lombard guns, the rest marched in their traditional cloaks of red and white, jubilant at the prospect of entering the capital of their ancient tormentors.

The sun rose over the dark blue ridge of Mount Tlaloc. As the mist burned away they saw Indians darting across the lake in their canoes to witness this remarkable sight. Soon the lake was filled with boats, some with just a single fisher, others huge, holding two or three score people, all paddling as close to the causeway as they dared for a better view. Some ventured too close and one of the war dogs ran barking to the edge of the causeway with foam dripping from their jaws, and they shouted in alarm and paddled frantically away to a safer distance.

Sunlight glinted on newly polished armour and brass trappings and steel lances; the pipers began to play, were answered by the whistles and shouts of the Texcálans.

Then the mists burned away and they were afforded their first view of the towers of Tenochtitlán.

———————

At first Benitez thought it must be an illusion, a trick of the light and water. Scores of stone pyramids floated on the haze created by the early morning cooking fires. Skeins of smoke drifted skywards from the temple shrines, from the dawn sacrifices to the Mexican idols.

As the sun rose up the sky it was as if a veil had been lifted away. He twisted in the saddle and realised that there were towns and villages all around them, linked by the causeways and chinampas, a vast and vibrant economy supported entirely by the great lake.

None of them, perhaps not even Cortés, had imagined they were going to find a civilisation as large and as complex as this.

Cortés says we have come as saviours. Why then do I feel like a sheep being herded to the slaughterhouse?