The Seven Serpents Trilogy (26 page)

The skeletons were carried out. We buried them in a common grave marked by ballast stone, and I com mended their souls to God.

The powder kegs were found, eleven of them. One we opened, to learn with great relief that the seals had held and the powder was undamaged.

Cannon, steel armor, all the muskets were then brought out and set on the beach.

As night fell, fires were kindled and I climbed to the prow of the risen ship and sang the Salve Regina in Latin, then as best I could in Maya. The workers lis tened but their faces showed no trace of understanding.

Shortly before dawn we emptied the
Santa Margarita's
capacious hold. We left the gold where it lay, and Cantú posted guards over it.

When the sun rose in a blaze of sudden light a cry, a single Mayan word, went up from the divers. They stood on the deck and each pricked his thumb with the sharp point of a thorn. As blood welled out, they held it high toward the sun.

This rite was not new to me; I had seen it practiced on Isla del Oro by the slaves of Don Luis de Arroyo. But to my surprise the dwarf brought forth a stingray spine and pricked his own thumb. He then handed the spine to me.

“The pain is small,” he said.

The men were facing the sun with their hands held out, but their eyes were turned in my direction.

“You are not taking a vow,” the dwarf said, a pinched smile on his lips. “You greet the sun after its long journey through the night and the gates of hell. It is ex hausted and needs strength.”

I hesitated, but only for a moment. I placed the yellow-tipped spine against my thumb and pressed hard upon it. Blood welled up and formed a bright drop that ran down my arm.

As I held it toward the rising sun, my thoughts were far away, on the work that the
Santa Margarita
still re quired and the use I would put her to once she was ready to sail.

Most of the populace were farmers, tied to their farms. To fulfill my dream of the city that Cantú had envisioned as we stood on the terrace of the god house, I must gather from someplace an army of workers.

That place was in the hands of Don Luis de Arroyo.

God willing, with the use of the caravel and her cannon I would capture a thousand of his men, two thousand if luck favored, and put them to rebuilding the City of the Seven Serpents—its crumbling temples, the palace, the once magnificent Court of the Warriors, the archives—and to uncovering the great mounds that still lay hidden in the jungle.

But what of the temple, its bloody stones, the barbarous idols that stared out at me from every wall? The dwarf and Ah den Yaxche had warned against destroying them. Their warnings weighed heavily upon me.

I prayed for guidance as I faced the dawn, but my prayers rose on leaden wings. They did not leave the deck where I stood. They scarcely left my lips.

Ya !
My mind burned with a clear vision. I could think of little else.

 

O
N A RUNNING TIDE WE FLOATED THE SHIP.
U
SING TWELVE CANOES
and a following wind, we towed her north along the coast and safely into harbor.

The next day woodcutters were sent out to cut timbers for those spars that needed to be replaced.

The sails were rotten, but from them we traced pat terns that were used to lay out new ones. Since they were too large for the women to weave as they wove cloth for clothes, we had them make small squares that would be sewn together.

More than a hundred women were put to work at the task. The muscular young
nacom
had charge of the sail making, and he drove the weavers, setting them up in the city square where everyone could see if they worked or not.

Meanwhile, our road weasels returned from Tikan each day with reports that the enemy continued to gather war supplies, to strengthen its walls, and to deepen its trenches.

The elders recognized our danger, but the high priests were firmly set against an attack on the enemy until Venus and the moon stood in a favorable position one to the other, and to the City of the Seven Serpents, which to them was the center of the universe.

Our island was in danger, but according to the stars that the priests studied from their high towers, an attack upon Tikan would be doomed unless we waited for a pe riod of nineteen days. Both our priests and those of our enemy were Mayans. They would make the same calculations. The Tikans, therefore, would be waiting for this same time to pass before they set upon us.

I had learned from reading Caesar's
Gallic Wars
, and recalled at this moment, that the great captain consid ered the element of surprise his deadliest weapon. If I were to attack Tikan while they were waiting for the favorable time to fight, I reasoned, I might catch them off guard.

Moreover, if I did defeat them, it would be a step on the long road that lay before me. It would prove that the priests had been wrong in their readings. And if they were wrong once, they could be wrong again. If they were wrong often enough, then I might be able to put an end to this slavish superstition.

Ah den Yaxche attempted to discourage this idea.

“It would not be wise,” the old man said while we were eating supper together the night of my return. “Elders and priests agree about nothing except one thing. The stars. They have been quarreling now for two long years, since Chalco appeared. They quarreled so bitterly over who should govern the island that it was possible for you to appear in our midst and be welcomed as a god.”

The old man could not have enjoyed being shut up in the palace, but he showed no signs of displeasure. In deed, he seemed to enjoy his new role as adviser to a god. Perhaps he hoped to pay back his enemies for the injuries they had caused him.

“Do you believe that the stars speak to us?” I asked him. “My grandfather did. If the stars sent a bad mes sage on the day he was to plant his wheat, he wouldn't leave the house. Nor, when the day came to harvest, would he go into the fields if the stars told him not to.”

“When I was young,” Ah den Yaxche said, “I studied the stars and was the best student in the school that taught this art. By diligence I became the best of all the scanners of the sky. In time, I became a high priest, and nothing was undertaken anywhere on the island unless it was favored by what I found from my readings. Then catastrophes took place. I foretold a season of bounteous rains. The rains didn't come and the crops were lost. I foretold good weather for a fleet of pearlers that was venturing south to a pearling ground beyond Tikan. A storm came when the fleet was returning and not a canoe and not a man survived.”

The memory choked off his words.

“That was when you quarreled with the priests?” I said.

“When I left the city and went to live by the volcano.”

“But the stargazing goes on. The priests are against an attack on Tikan. They have consulted the stars and found them unfavorable. I have decided to challenge them.”

“It will do no good,” the old man said. “The skies will fall around your ears and every star lie dead before the priestly scanners desert their towers.”

I ignored the old man's warning. Supported by the dwarf and the muscular young
nacom
, who saw a chance to improve his fortunes by a bold venture against the enemy, I had the
nacom
call out all the soldiers he could muster.

The number came to nearly nine hundred men, a third of them experienced warriors. The rest were farm ers taken from the countryside. The divers who had helped float the ship and thirty of the best canoemen formed our crew.

The army was assembled in five days. On the sixth day, against an outcry from the elders and priests, with her new sails fitted, the
Santa Margarita
left the harbor to the din of conch-shell trumpets and drums.

Our fleet followed, carrying the army and also, at the dwarf's suggestion, Bravo the stallion, safely stabled.

We proceeded south along the coast, keeping close to land, and at dusk anchored in the lee of the promontory and its cross.

The next day, without the canoes, we made a half circuit of the island, turned back, and anchored for the night again behind the promontory.

At dawn, confident that the crew had the feel of the ship, I set a course for the mainland. With a fair wind we crossed the narrow strait and headed south toward Tikan.

Tunac-Eel, our navigator, broad chested and a head taller than the usual Maya, had made many voyages in the big trading canoes, some to places as far away as three hundred leagues. To help him in his navigation, over the years he had tattooed on his back and arms and broad chest small charts of certain lagoons and inlets he had visited. In the crook of one arm was the harbor of Tikan. He was accustomed, however, to sailing canoes that drew only two feet of water, so I made it known that the
Santa Margarita
had five times that draft and could not be handled in the same way.

Nonetheless, we did run aground, luckily on a sand bar at low tide, from which we escaped when the chang ing tide floated us free.

On the second evening we sighted Xe ah Xel headland, where we planned to meet the flotilla, which had gone on ahead. They were there waiting with their torches shining on the water and the big war drums booming.

I knew little about battle tactics, all of it from my reading of Caesar's
Gallic Wars
.

I did remember that Caesar placed the greatest prior ity on moving his troops with planned surprise and quickly. The Maya, I gathered, were not concerned with either speed or surprise. They believed in letting the enemy know that they were present, ready to pounce, hoping that they would be frightened into retreat or surrender. But the soldiers of Tikan would be under the command of a captain long experienced in all the tactics of Spanish war, not an Indian cacique.

Since the port of Tikan lay less than two leagues south of the headland, I ordered the torches extinguished and the booming drums silenced. We doused the lights on the
Santa Margarita,
The caravel and the canoes lay in darkness, silent as serpents in the grass.

A soft night wind blew out from the jungle, and the sea was calm.

Everything was in readiness. Moored fore and aft with light anchors and slipknots, the ship was able to move away at a moment's command. Her cannon were primed and set to fire from either port or starboard, from bow and stern. Her powder kegs were protected from rain by heavy mats of woven straw. Her crew stood alertly at their stations.

Everything was in readiness for battle except a battle plan.

Accordingly, soon after supper I called a council of war. We met in the cabin that once had belonged to Don Luis de Arroyo. The room was large, the width of the stern, but the bulwarks had not dried out yet and were badly warped. The stench of sea muck fouled the air.

Five sat at the long table upon which Don Luis had eaten his meals and with his astrologer's help plotted our westward course across the Atlantic and into the waters of the Spanish Main. The five were Cantú the dwarf and the young
nacom
and three of his officers. I stood at the head of the table, apart.

Cantú lit a torch, hung his cloak over the stern win dow to shade the light from those of the enemy who might be lurking in the jungle, and lit two bowls of copal incense. The heavy vapors smothered the dank sea smell.

At my bidding the
nacom
got to his feet. He was an awesome figure in his black paint, white, curling stripes, and jaguar mask with pointed teeth made of gold. And he spoke in awesome tones.

“Lord of the Evening, Mighty Serpent of the Skies, we capture everything that lives in Tikan,” he said. “Men and women, children, the old. We leave nothing except the dogs—those that are too mangy to eat.”

He uttered more threats against Tikan but sat down without suggesting a battle plan. I felt that out of defer ence and caution he was waiting upon me.

Cantú, though his experience in war was as limited as mine, presented an elaborate idea for battle. It had two parts—an attack both by land and by sea. The land at tack involved my presence. I was to mount the stallion and at the right moment show myself before the enemy.

On the bulwark behind him was a copper shield ribbed with steel. “You will carry this,” he said, lifting it down. “Astride Bravo, your blond hair flying in the wind, with the sun blazing upon sword and shield, you will strike terror in their souls!”

I listened to all this with some discomfort, surprised that he would ask me to risk my life when so much of his fortune hung upon my safety.

“Of course,” he said quickly, taking note of my surprise, “the
nacom
will place a rank of his best warriors between you and the enemy. As you know, they have never seen a horse. When they lay eyes upon you and the prancing steed...” He paused to hold out a musket. “Fire this,” he said. “They'll grovel in the dust.”

The
nacom
objected to the dwarfs ideas when I ex plained them to him in Maya. He probably thought that if the enemy fell in the dust, then all that would be left to him was to go about and gather up the prisoners, an unheroic role for a warrior.

Now that someone else had spoken, he was willing to offer his own plan. It was more practical. He explained it after some urging as he strode back and forth in the narrow cabin, his anklets and amulets clanking in the quiet.

“Much depends on the news our three road weasels bring,” he said. “And we should not move until we have this news. Tikan has planned war for many months. News about what they are doing has come to me every week. They have built a ditch around half of the city. It is three steps wide and the height of four men. The other half of the city is protected by a lagoon that can be waded at low tide. Only at low tide. All this we know. What we do not know is what they are doing at this moment. Are their warriors ready? Do they know that we sit here behind the headland of Xe ah Xel with nearly a thousand men and a big canoe that spits fire and round balls half as big as their heads?”