The Seven Serpents Trilogy (17 page)

I then stood off and surveyed everything that lay around me, making sure that there was no obstacle to stumble over, that I was certain which way to flee once the fuses were set.

The sun shone on the red and blue image that towered above me in all of its terror and dreadful meaning—the seven writhing serpents, the many-winged monster, the bloody claws.

I took up the coals, only to find, to my dismay, that they had died away while I stood there. Fortunately, the copal still burned, and with it I lighted each fuse, waited until the powder hissed, then turned and ran.

I chose the tangled path that led toward the beach. I came to a ceiba tree, whence I had a good view of the image, and dodged behind it. The fuses sputtered, faded away, sputtered once more, giving off a shower of bright sparks. The reek of powder took the place of sweetsmelling copal.

I waited. Moments passed. Cautiously, I took one step from behind the ceiba tree onto the trail, from where I gained a full view of the image and the rock that held the gunpowder.

I had taken a second cautious step when a burst of brilliance engulfed the image and the jungle around. A rush of air swept past me, tearing at my clothes, and at once the earth beneath my feet shook with a mighty roar that sent me reeling. Gray smoke shut out the sky. Pieces of stone came down like rain. The roar ended and returned as wandering echoes.

There was little left of the image—a sifting of blue dust, one claw, one serpent's head. An eye, which no longer would have the power to hold me, I picked out from the pile of dust and threw far away into the brush.

The jungle was quiet for a while. Then a bird sang and the macaws went on with their morning chatter. The gray smoke drifted off among the trees. As I stood looking at the pile of rubble, I felt that I had done a worthy deed, yet some of my anger had left me. In its place came a nagging sense of failure. I had destroyed the stone image, but not the longings that would still lie deep in the heart of the girl who worshiped her. These I had not touched.

I took the trail to the headland and stood before the cross. I stood there and thought of Moses. How he came down from the mountain with tablets written by the hand of God, only to find that his people were worship ing a golden calf. That he thereupon broke the tablets and burned the image with fire and ground it to powder. Yes, it was true what Moses had done in his wrath. But I was not Moses, and Ceela was an Indian girl and not the people of Israel. Suddenly, I felt self-righteous.

I got down on my knees and prayed, asking God for mercy and guidance. When I got back to my hut, Ceela was waiting for me. She looked frightened.

“I thought that it was the volcano,” she said. “But my grandfather pointed and told me, see, the smoke rises straight up from the volcano and no fire runs down its sides like the time when it was bad.” There was no way to explain gunpowder to her, and I was now too ashamed to tell her all that I had done.

“What did your grandfather think it was?” I asked her.

“He thinks that it was a noise that one of the gods made. Perhaps Itzamná, the great Lord and God.”

 

T
HERE WERE MANY ON THE ISLAND WHO THOUGHT THE SAME, THAT
mighty Itzamná, Emperor of the Universe, exalted God of the Thirteen Gods of the Upper World and the Nine Gods of the Lower World, that Itzamná had wrathfully caused the thunder. There was, however, one who did not. His name was Guillermo Cantú, a native of Spain.

Cantú appeared the next day at noon, while I was fishing along the estuary. A large red canoe with six men swinging paddles swiftly rounded the northern arm of our little cove and floated to rest not twenty paces from where I stood.

Cantú sat in the prow, chin resting on his knees, and for a moment I took him to be a part of the canoe, its figurehead. Then two of the paddlers slid into the water, lifted him to their shoulders, and set him gently on the shore.

So suddenly did all this take place that I had no chance to be frightened, no time to drop the fishing line, to gather myself together and disappear into the jungle. There magically in front of me were six men painted black and a dwarf who barely reached my belt. A lump with two legs and two long arms, yet surprisingly grace ful as he came toward me.

He spoke first, in a high dwarflike voice. His words came tumbling out, not in Maya as I had expected, but in a language that I did not understand. Through fear and ignorance, I remained silent while the dwarf gave me a puzzled look. His eyes were almond shaped, a lu minous brown, large, beautiful, unexpected in a dwarf, and too beautiful for a man.

He tried again. It was a different language he spoke this time, and, though I still failed to understand it, thinking it might be German, there was a lilting tone to his voice that sounded familiar.

I said to him in my native tongue, “I am a Spaniard. My name is Julián Escobar. From the city of Seville.”

“A Spaniard!” he exclaimed. “Seville. Mother of Our Lord.”

Tears showed in the dwarf 's eyes and, suddenly over come by emotion, he glided forward and threw his arms about my waist in a stout
abrazo.

“I took you for a Rhinelander. Your hair and eyes. A blond Rhinelander.”

The dwarf loosened his grip on my waist—he could reach no higher—and stepped back. He bowed, touch ing his forehead on the sand. “Your servant,” he said, “Don Guillermo Cantú. Also a native of Seville. Once a student of law at Salamanca.”

He paused to run stubby fingers through his beard, which was black, pointed, and well kept. In one ear he wore a plug of green turquoise edged with gold. His cloak was trimmed with green feathers and made of two small jaguar skins, the tails hanging down behind him.

“But I greet you now,” Cantú said, “not as a student but in the exalted role of adviser to those who govern the City of the Seven Serpents, as well as many islands hereabouts and far lands to the west.”

He glanced over his shoulder toward the paddlers, four of them seated in the canoe and two standing beside it, all of them listening, but to no avail, since the dwarf was speaking in the choicest of Sevillian accents.

“
Govern
is perhaps not the word,” Cantú went on, “for at present the city is in turmoil. Xpan, who ruled as king for many years, is dead this last month, and we have no king; only a score and more of pretenders who ache to kill each other and, it is to be hoped, will, all at once.”

In the meadow the stallion neighed. Soon afterward, Ceela came out of the jungle with a bundle of shoots balanced on her head and stopped to feed him. I waved to her, but whether or not she saw me, she didn't answer.

Having recovered somewhat from the shock I had just suffered, and determined to continue the friendly course our talk was taking, I asked Cantú if he, too, had been the victim of a shipwreck.

“Three years ago next month,” he said, turning to point. “There in the channel and in broad daylight. All hands saved by Maya fishermen, twenty-one of us. But saved for a worse fate. Carted off to the City of the Seven Serpents, which lies ten leagues northward, and there sacrificed to the gods. All except Guillermo Cantú, for dwarfs are venerated here among the Maya, unlike Seville, where they're the butt of many a scurrilous joke.”

“We are both castaways,” I ventured.

“Brother Sevillanos,” said the dwarf as he again glided forward and for a moment clasped me stoutly around the waist. “Brother Spaniards!”

I had caught a small flounder while fishing the es tuary. It lay on the bank, baking in the bright morning sun. The dwarf walked over and dashed sea water upon it, which stirred the fish to life.

“How long have you been a resident of the island?” he asked.

“Since early in September.”

“Strange that I heard nothing until last night. News of you arrived by runner from the village of Ixpan while I was eating dinner. Since I knew that the horrendous commotion was caused neither by the volcano nor by thunder from the skies, I was certain that it was caused by an explosion of gunpowder. And gunpowder, I rea soned, must belong to a Spaniard, since powder is un known upon the island. But this morning, when I first set eyes upon you—tall and blond and blue eyed—I doubted my reasoning.”

“Little wonder.”

“And why did you explode the gunpowder? To at tract attention to your plight?”

Not knowing whether or not he, too, had become a devotee of the goddess Ix Chel, I gave him an evasive answer.

“Is there powder left?”

“A keg.”

“A little keg or a big keg?”

“A medium-sized keg.”

It must have been at this moment that the monstrous plan took final shape in his mind. He had been watch ing the six paddlers. He now turned his full gaze upon me. It traveled from my head to my bare feet, inch by inch, slowly, as if he had not seen me before.

 

C
ANTÚ, THE DWARF, GLANCED UP AT ME.
I
NOTICED THAT THE CANDOR
I had first seen in his eyes had given way to a look of duplicity. He walked around me in a wide circle, scratching his bumpy head, examining me as if I were a statue.

He said, “Centuries ago the lord of this island was Kukulcán, the same lord, incidentally, who is known among the Aztecs as Quetzalcóatl. He was a real man, this Kukulcán, no mythical god. He was a captain, and he came mysteriously from out of the north into the land of the Maya.”

“I have heard of him,” I said, nodding toward Ceela, who had appeared and stood behind the dwarf, staring at him in awe. “From this girl.”

Cantú went on as if I had not spoken. “Kukulcán ruled this island for years. Then, under the influence of strong drink, he committed disgraceful acts. So re morseful was he when at last his sense returned that he made a raft for himself and alone sailed off into the east.”

The dwarf looked in that direction and pointed with a stubby finger. He glanced at Ceela.

“You know this girl?”

“For months.”

“Does she understand Spanish?”

“Not a word.”

“
Excelente,
” said the dwarf. “Kukulcán, the captain and lord, sailed off. But his words of farewell to those who tearfully watched him go—and this is important, so listen to me carefully. His last words were these: ‘I leave you now but I shall come again. I will come from the east. You will find me in the body of a young man, younger than I, a tall youth with golden hair whose eyes are blue.' ”

Walking back and forth, the dwarf surveyed me once more; minutely, this time, as if he were at the market about to purchase a slave. He did everything except ask me to open my mouth while he examined my teeth.

At last he turned to Ceela and spoke in Maya. “You have heard of Kukulcán?”

“Oh, yes. Since the time I was a child.”

“Do many people know about him?”

“Everyone everywhere knows of Kukulcán. Soon, when three suns have come and gone, will be his feast day. Already in the village of Ixpan they have begun the celebration.”

“The people pray for Kukulcán's return?”

“Every year we pray.”

“They also pray for his return in the City of the Seven Serpents,” said the dwarf. “They sing and dance and burn copal before the temples.”

“This I have heard, though I have not seen it with my own eyes.”

The dwarf plucked me by the sleeve and said in his fine Spanish accent, “You see that Captain Kukulcán is a living legend. Even this country girl knows about him and prays for his return.”

It was not what he had said before nor his words now to Ceela that gave me the first hint that something dire was afoot. It was the way he looked at me that brought sweat to my brow.

The dwarf said, “Do you understand? Do you see what goes through my mind?”

“Dimly,” I replied.

“But you see it nonetheless,” said the dwarf. “It is a bold undertaking. If it fails, we are confronted with dis aster. You will die and I will die with you. We will both die on the sacrificial stone, our hearts removed with an obsidian knife.”

I looked away from him across the strait to the far mountains veiled in mist. I tried to conceal the emotions that seethed within me. I must have failed, for at once the dwarf 's manner changed.

His enormous eyes clouded over. His lips, which were stained purple with some kind of fruit he had eaten, tightened. He was no longer the new-won friend, a brother Sevillano sharing memories of a happy past, a Spaniard offering succor to another Spaniard, but an ambitious and cunning rogue.

“I see that you are confused,” he said in his shrill voice, “so may I be of assistance. Your presence on this island is known. If you refuse the role I have devised, the high priests will deal with you. It may be tomorrow or it may be a week from now, but they will surely send warriors to take you away to the City of the Seven Serpents, and there, amid the jubilation of thousands, sacrifice you to the gods, as they did all my companions, twenty-one of them, not so long ago.”

The beach was quiet save for the sound of water lapping against the canoes. Ceela stood at a distance from us, in awe of the dwarf, who was now scuffling his feet in the sand, waiting impatiently for me to answer. There was a thundering in my head. I could not open my mouth to say a word.

Cantú, the dwarf, said, “You have doubts. Speak up.”

“I am not a Maya,” I answered at last.

“So much the better. If you were a Maya, you would then look like one of the six warriors who stand in front of you.”

The six were staring at me in awe. They had put down their paddles and were holding long spears tipped with stones and macaw feathers. Their bodies, which were painted black, gleamed in the hot sun.

“Note,” said the dwarf, “that each has a prominent nose and a forehead that slants back and comes to something of a point at the crown. They also have crossed eyes. This is the Mayan look. Fortunately, it is not your look. You fit the legend precisely. You are young, tall, white, blue eyed, and golden haired.”