The Goldsmith's Daughter (22 page)

For many days, wakes and funerals dominated the city. The elite were buried, the commoners burned. The Spanish had slaughtered the flower of our nobility: artisans, craftsmen, peasants alike. The smoke of many thousands of cremations hung like a cloud above Tenochtitlán. The sound of fathers sobbing, widows wailing and mothers weeping echoed through the empty streets and was carried across the still lake until the mountains themselves seemed to cry in loud lament.

G
rief. Fear. They wear the same mask. Both gnaw at the insides and give no rest. In those days an ominous calm held Tenochtitlán frozen, and yet I seemed beset with parasites that wormed and tunnelled through the very marrow of my bones. I itched with an intolerable restlessness; I could not keep still. Yet neither could I move about the city streets. My father begged me to keep within the house.

We were then in the time of Etzalcualiztli, the peak of the season of dryness. Food was often scarce at this time of year and, since the Tlaxcalan hordes had eaten our food reserves, many went hungry.

The priests had control of the city. They roamed wild and fearsome, insulting or beating anyone who displeased them, for they had to do whatever was necessary to bring the rains. They could take whomever they pleased for sacrifice: captives, slaves, children. Their hearts were then thrown into Pantitlan, the whirlpool that spun in the centre of the lake, in offering to Tlaloc.

When Mitotiqui and I were small, we had been confined to the rear of the house until the rains came lest we should attract the attention of a wandering priest. Now my father and Mayatl and I did the same. They had never been known to take grown citizens, but this was a time without precedent. We lived by eating what little remained growing in our roof garden. None of us ventured out.

During these days, I mourned for my brother. For Francisco. I could scarce take in all I had witnessed. While it was light I occupied my hands with grinding such corn as we had stored. It was a task I had once so despised, yet now it gave me something of a purpose and I was glad of it. Our meals were sparse, but our appetites were so dulled with unhappiness that we did not crave for more. While I rolled tortillas, and stuffed them with thin shreds of vegetable, my numbed mind refused to accept what had befallen those I loved. But in the darkness of night, truth pierced me like a knife. Paroxysms of grief convulsed me and I clung to Eve for comfort.

While I was thus paralysed with sorrow, the men of Tenochtitlán were creating for themselves a new order. Our city was governed so tightly that we had no means or system for a single man to rise above his fellows and take command of them. But now necessity forged a different path. In the days when the city wept for its dead, the warriors formed a new hierarchy. With what rites and secret ceremonies the elite stripped power from Montezuma and made his brother Cuitlahuac emperor, I did not know. But Tenochtitlán had a new leader. One, moreover, who was intent on revenge.

Perhaps Cortés thought all resistance had ceased when the warriors were ordered home and that they would fight no more. Perhaps he could not bear to leave the city he had travelled so far to conquer, for he did not move from the palace.

When the days of ritual mourning were done, when the rains had come and the time of Etzalcualiztli was ended, our warriors struck. One night I awoke suddenly to the stench of burning. Climbing to the roof, I saw fires in the distance. Many flames pierced the darkness. I knew my city well and did not need to be told where these fires burned. The bridges. The pleasure boats the Spanish used to sail upon the lake. Torches had been put to them all. There would be no escape for our enemy.

As conch blasts called forth the dawn, the palace was surrounded by warriors: men dressed in the furs of leopards, or wearing the masks of eagles. Standing high on the temple steps beside my father, I saw it all and yet felt nothing. My body lived, but I was dead within.

For five days, there was fighting. Battle sounds rang in the square. Steel on wood. Roars of angry men.

On the afternoon of the sixth day, the Spanish leader was roused to desperate action. It had worked before. Our emperor had been forced onto the roof and the warriors had melted away.

And so Montezuma – shrunken with misery, unwashed, his face bloated with weeping – was once more paraded before us.

He could not have commanded a dog.

He raised his slackly withered arms above his head. Not one word fell from his mouth. Not one word reached the ears of the gathered crowd. A storm of stones, sticks, broken vessels – anything that came to hand – rained upon him. Pelted with missiles, pierced by shards of obsidian, bruised and bleeding, he was forced back within.

Whether he truly died of these wounds, I do not know. It was said by the Spanish that his own people had killed him. But a different tale was passed from mouth to mouth in Tenochtitlán.

Montezuma was of no further use to Cortés. Attacked by his own warriors, all authority gone, what purpose was there in keeping him alive? Like a toothless dog, he was nothing but an encumbrance. And so he suffered the same fate as a beast that has outlived its usefulness. He was slain. His attendants were slain with him. And the nobles' wives and children who had long ago been taken captive were slaughtered like animals, their bodies hurled from the palace roof into the precinct below.

It did not take long for word to travel. In the gathering dark the square was lit as bright as day by the flaming torches and braziers carried by the people of Tenochtitlán. They came for their husbands. Their brothers. Their sons. Wives. Sisters. Daughters. Throwing themselves on their corpses with wails of despair, their lamentations rang to the heavens. The buildings quaked with their suffering. The desolation I felt within was manifest all around me.

As I stood and watched the broken body of our emperor being carried from that place, I wept for him. For Mitotiqui. For Francisco.

For us all.

I
t was the god who woke me. Tezcatlipoca who breathed an icy chill through my bedchamber and caressed my flesh with his cold fingers. In the darkest hour of that night, he whispered in my ear.

I did his bidding.

I went to the palace.

The streets are deserted when dark, for it is a time of dread. The sun battles in the underworld, and who knows if it will win its fight and rise once more? In the night demons are abroad, and the gods are at their most fearsome: they wear the aspects of their dark sides and will violate and murder any who cross their path.

It was with trepidation that I set forth, barefoot so I would make no noise. Eve walked beside me, her claws clacking on the stones, the sound magnified in the still blackness. A fine drizzle streamed steadily from the sky, obscuring the brightness of the moon.

On nearing the palace, I was surprised to hear movement. At this late hour there should be nothing but Eve's paws and my own breathing. Yet now, whispered though they were, I caught hurried conversations, urgent commands, desperate questions.

The doors to the palace were wide open.

I shrank back into the shadows to watch. A horse was led forth, heavily laden. What it bore on its back was ill packed and poorly tied as though done in great haste. Through the gaps in the cloth I could see the glint of gold.

Gold. The metal that had drawn them here. The metal that – though their lives were in peril – they would not leave without.

For they were leaving, of that there could be no doubt. The first horse was followed by a line of men. Then more horses, their hooves bound in cloth to muffle their sound. The dogs' jaws were tied to prevent their barking, and some men walked barefoot as I did to avoid detection.

How different a procession it was to the one I had watched in awe just a few months ago! Then they had arrived with jangling armour, splendid and shining, like gods. Now they left like thieves. Cowards. Fleeing furtively from the city whose wealth they had plundered. Whose people they had slaughtered. Whose ruler they had destroyed.

They should not go unpunished.

I would give our people warning. Rouse the warriors. A yell erupted from my breast. “They are running away! Come quickly!”

At my sudden shout, the soldiers turned. One ran, sword drawn, to stop my noise. I did not move. As he came, I continued to cry aloud.

“They are fleeing the city! The Spanish are escaping!”

He raised his sword high as Eve barked a warning. But before he could reach me, people from nearby houses spilt into the square. Seeing them, the Spaniard turned and fled.

And now my shouts were taken up by others and carried to the temple. A drumbeat pounded from the top of the pyramid, waking all who still lay sleeping. Men and women tumbled through the doors of every house, and soon their running feet slapped loudly on the streets. Canoes glided swiftly through the canals towards the causeway. Many torches lit the night sky as brightly as the burning flame had done so long ago. Shouts of men – the warlike howls of warriors – rent the air.

With this, every trace of discipline in the Spanish force crumbled. Bearing planks of wood they had ripped from the palace, they attempted to make bridges on the causeway across which they could pass. Had they not been observed, they might perhaps have succeeded and made an orderly retreat. But thrown into panic and confusion as they were, all was chaos.

Those at the rear hastened forward, desperate to escape the onslaught of our warriors. They did not know – they could not – that the weight of their numbers forced those ahead into the canal before the planks could be laid down.

Men fell into the water and were drowned, dragged to the lake floor by the gold they had stuffed into their tunics. Horses, heavily laden with the stolen blocks of metal, screamed in terror before they too were pulled beneath the water. Others were pushed from the causeway as fear made men cruel. Tlaxcalan warriors. Tlaxcalan courtesans. Their bodies made the first bridge the Spanish stumbled across.

The causeway was long with many burnt bridges to cross before they reached solid land. They fled heedless of others, each man caring only to save his own skin. And as they fled, our canoes came at them from both sides. The sky rained arrows.

Three quarters of the Spanish force was lost that night. In the cold grey light of the following dawn their bodies choked the clear lake, hanging in the water like a frenzied, monumental offering to the god Tlaloc.

Their leaving had been hastily arranged, so suddenly done that those who were lodged in the slaves' quarters had not heard word of it. Some hundred men had been left behind. Their capture took little effort on the part of our warriors. They were made to dance, naked, on top of the city's principal temple before their sacrifice. And with no mushrooms to dull the senses, their screams were loud and dreadful.

As I dressed in crisp, clean clothing, the ancient steps ran red with Spanish blood.

T
he Spanish were gone. But the bloodlust they had roused did not go with them. It had to vent itself on someone. Lacking an enemy, the warriors turned their fury on our own people. To those who had aided our enemy – however unwillingly – they were without mercy.