The Seven Serpents Trilogy (33 page)

 

W
E TRAVELED OUT OF THE LOW COUNTRY IN GOOD ORDER NOW THAT
the salt marshes lay behind us.

In two days we covered more than twelve leagues, but this pace proved too fast for the dwarf 's short legs and we had to rest for a day in the village of Socochima. I myself was glad to rest, for after months of a soft life in the palace, doing little more strenuous than lifting books and walking from one room to the other, I was ill condi tioned.

In addition to blistered feet and aching muscles, I was discomfited by crowds of curious villagers, who were not content until they had viewed me from all sides, loudly commented on my height, white skin, and long blond hair, and finally touched my garments or my bare skin.

I was further annoyed.

I had become used to people approaching me with downcast eyes, bowing in a gesture of kissing the earth, and backing away when they were dismissed. I was somewhat surprised at myself for feeling this way, but it did not lessen my annoyance at the lack of reverence these people showed.

Beyond the village of Socochima, we began to climb and in five days entered a pass through high mountains. There it rained and then hailed, and a bitter wind blew from the heights.

We changed into warmer clothes, which Chalco had wisely brought along, and thus kept from freezing. The dwarf complained bitterly at the cold and sulked, groaning that he wished to return to the ship. I had a notion to send him back, but fortunately thought better of it.

At the end of the pass we came to Xocotlán and were now in the heart of the Azteca, Chalco informed us.

The lord of the province was Ozintec, a young man with red-tinted hair hanging to his waist. He greeted Chalco warmly, apparently having known him before, but his gaze quickly fastened upon me.

“What price do you wish for the giant?” he asked Chalco.

“He is not for sale,” Chalco said.

“You will sell him to the emperor, though.”

“He is not for sale.”

“The dwarf ?”

“Equally, Lord Ozintec.”

The dwarf said in Spanish, “I think the
bastardo
would like to sell us.”

“It's possible.”

“Let's strangle him,” the dwarf said. “I will do it to night when he sleeps. Then we'll return to the
Santa Margarita
and engage in no more tramping for a year or so.”

Socochima had two small temples on a plaza facing each other. Beside them were piles of human skulls, arranged neatly in rows. I made a guess, as we left the plaza, that there were more than ten thousand of these whitened skulls stacked in the sun.

The next day we made better time, having left the mountains for good and finding ourselves on a plateau. Two snow-crested peaks rose up on the far horizon. We were on our way to the city of Texcála, Chalco said.

“The city is a vassal of Moctezuma, but not a friend. The people hate him and strive for his downfall.”

The journey to Texcála was uneventful, and we saw no one except Azteca runners, who passed us on their way to Tenochtitlán, carrying parcels of fish for the em peror's table.

We had encountered the runners many times since leaving the coast. They ran in relays, two men in a team, three leagues at a stretch, passing their parcels from one team to another. They made the long journey in two short days.

“We'll at least have fresh-caught fish when we sit down at Moctezuma's table,” the dwarf said, trying to make a joke. “If we ever manage to see him, which I doubt.”

That night before we reached Texcála, while we were sitting around our campfire, I asked Chalco how he planned to introduce me to the emperor.

“I have been traveling as a common trader, but I shouldn't be a trader when I meet and talk to Mocte zuma.”

Chalco took a moment to think. “Not in the guise of a
pochtéca,
no, but I can't introduce you as the god Kukulcán. I would not be believed. The emperor would think me a wild man and forthwith put me in a cage. And you as well.”

“He must have heard of me,” I said.

“If he has, it is with disbelief.”

“Why?” the dwarf shouted angrily. “He
is
a god. He was welcomed into the City of the Seven Serpents as a god.”

“Because of you,” Chalco said. “You prepared the way. The priests saw momentous things in the stars. People were tired of the quarreling elders. They prayed for the return of the god and were ready to receive him. The Azteca are not. They are flushed with their own importance. They rule all that they see, even the lands they do not see. They call themselves ‘We of the One and Only World' and they believe this fanciful idea.”

“How then is he to be introduced?” the dwarf wanted to know.

“He will be an important lord from a far-off Mayan province come to pay tribute.”

I had not been pleased with my first change of fortune—from a god to a trader—and was not pleased now to be merely a lord of a remote country. Yet I saw the sense of his words and did not bring up the subject again, though the dwarf never ceased to bedevil Chalco about it.

In the morning we started through the vast country of Texcála. A good trail led us past two towering volca noes, both snow crested, one of them giving off smoke.

We arrived at a village on the outskirts of Tenochtitlán after three days of hard travel. Here we rested for a day, bathed in a hot spring, changed our travel-worn clothes, and made up for the meals we had not eaten since the last of the deer.

On the next morning, in the bright sunshine, we started down a raised causeway toward Tenochtitlán.

The city shimmered white in the distance, a brilliant white since it rose up from a vast green lake and a myr iad of winding canals. Canals ran along either side of the causeway and from time to time we crossed them on wooden bridges.

The dwarf paused in amazement.

“I have seen the great places in many parts of this world,” he said, “in Egypt and the cities of Venice, Constantinople, and Rome, but never have I seen a city of such magnificence.”

The causeway swarmed with people going into the city on foot. There were so many traveling that little at tention was paid to the dwarf or to me, which was a boon to us both.

We reached a second broad causeway, this one at right angles to the road we were on, and here we saw hundreds of canoes, laden with produce, on their way to the marketplace. People walking along the causeway were talking to friends in the passing canoes.

Not far beyond this crossing, where two temples stood opposite each other, we entered a narrow street and at once stepped out into an enormous square. Later, during my days in Tenochtitlán, I paced off its four sides and found that they came to a total of more than three thousand feet. This plaza was enclosed by solid ranks of buildings, richly decorated with sculpture and bas-reliefs of all descriptions.

In the very center of this enclosure stood a pyramid, taller than the Temple of Kukulcán, with crenelated walls of many shades of red, blue, and yellow, with stairs on all four sides that faced the four directions of the world and led upward to a pair of small temples.

The dwarf and I were left in front of this pyramid, beside a pool where silver-sided fish were swimming about. Promising to return shortly, Chalco disappeared with the ten porters at his heels and all but three of our pearls in his possession.

We soon attracted a crowd bemused by my height and the dwarf 's shortness. A girl of five or six, black eyed and brown skinned, came up and handed me a flower. In return I gave her one of the pearls I had withheld from Chalco.

There were flowers everywhere—growing beside the pool, in baskets strung along the front of the temple, in the doorways of the buildings that enclosed the great square. Among the hundreds who passed, many men carried a bunch of flowers, and all the women had flowers in their hair. As we came along the causeway, I had seen dozens of canoes filled with roses.

I could not remember ever having seen a flower in the City of the Seven Serpents, except in the hair of the slain young man, an Aztecatl. Certainly the men did not carry them, nor did the women.

When I returned to the island, I would see that not one building or temple was without flowers. The nobles who lived in the palaces and the peasants in their huts would plant them. The priests would learn to tend them. Our soil was rich, the sun strong.

Ya!
We would have gardens throughout the city. They would rival, they would surpass, the gardens in Tenochtitlán, I said to myself.

Yet as I gazed out over the swarms of white-clad Indians at the offices and sanctuaries that surrounded the great square, my spirits sank. Ornately carved and beautifully painted, rising side by side in splendid, unbroken rows, these buildings stood in sharp contrast to the square that faced the Temple of Kukulcán, the disorderly jumble of broken pillars and crumbling walls so recently snatched from the jungle.

“To rebuild our city,” I said to the dwarf, “will take years. Many years. Unless we can double and triple the number of workers.”

The dwarf did not answer. His gaze was fixed upon a passing litter in which a young lord lay stretched out, while servants fanned him with feathered whisks. He wore a gold nose plug, gold rings on his fingers, even his thumbs. From his ears dangled loops of gold, and his hair, knotted on top of his head, was bound with gold pins that glittered as he bounced along.

The dwarf glanced at me. His face shone with the first light I had seen there in days.

“He, he,” he said and grinned at some thought of his own.

 

T
HE MORNING PASSED, A COLD SUN MOVED OVERHEAD, STILL
C
HALCO
did not return.

The dwarf was hungry, not having eaten a bite since breakfast. Vendors strolled everywhere through the crowds selling maize cakes and pink frijoles, but I had nothing to buy them with except a valuable pearl. To stay his hunger he drank from a fountain we found in front of the temple, the water pouring ice cold from the mouth of a stone goddess.

When Chalco did return, his tunic showing signs of a hearty meal, his face was flushed with excitement.

“Fortune smiles on us,” he said, as if he could scarcely believe the news he carried. “This is the day, the one day in the entire month, when the emperor hears petitions. Not for another month does he meet with visitors from the various parts of his empire. But I have managed to convince Lord Tlaloc, a cousin of the emperor who is in charge of these matters, that you cannot wait for a month. Important affairs in your country require your lordly attention.”

Without further words, he herded us across the square to a door guarded by four stone serpents.

“Speak to the emperor in Nahuatl,” he instructed me. “You speak it hesitantly, but well enough to be under stood.”

Two lords in feathered regalia met us and led the way along a winding passage, across a bridge that spanned a stretch of black water and a wharf where scows were anchored, into an alcove lit by rows of votive torches.

“You are to make a low bow,” Chalco went on. “Touch the palms of your hands on the floor, then raise them and touch your forehead. Do this three times.”

“And you,” he said to the dwarf, “remain hidden until you are called. Whereupon step forward and present this gift.”

Chalco handed him the bag of pearls. “Say that the pearls are a gift from Lord Zamabac. If you forget the name, as you are apt to do, say any name that comes to mind, like Tlacolhtecuhtli, for instance. If you can't think of a name, say nothing and bow yourself out of sight, remembering never to show your back to the em peror.”

“Lord of the Morning,” Chalco said, turning to me, “address the emperor as Great Speaker or Revered Speaker of the One World, for these are titles he likes and is known by. Also you might take notice of his beard. It is an unusual occurrence among the Azteca for men to be so endowed. Moctezuma's is luxuriant, but he keeps it neatly trimmed and it's as dark as a starless sky. He is very proud of it. You might say, ‘Great Speaker, Lord of the Beard.' This will create a favorable im pression.”

Cantú cleared his throat. “When I was a student in Salamanca, it was said that if a beard were a sign of in telligence, then a goat would be wiser than our great King Carlos.”

Cantú laughed, but he was uncomfortable. No more, however, than I.

The alcove was gray with smoke and reeked of in cense. I could hear voices on the far side of the door, earnest voices speaking in the strange language of the Mexica, so like and so unlike the language of the Maya.

“Oh, yes,” said Chalco, “as a sign of respect to the emperor, remove your sandals. It is also customary to appear before him poorly dressed, but you are already in a very ragged state.”

The two nobles knocked on the door with gold canes. It swung open at once. Both of them slipped through and the door closed behind them.

After a long wait, during which I heard solemn voices and the reedy wail of flutes, the door opened upon a vista that for a moment blinded me.

The dwarf, standing at my side, said in a choked whis per, “Mary on the Mount, I do not believe what I see.”

The room seemed made of gold—the ceiling, the walls, the floor, the air itself—and it all shimmered in the glow of votive urns. Light came from all directions in dazzling streamers. I moved through waves of golden air down a corridor of burning incense, toward a throne where hundreds of golden streamers came together and rested upon a figure in a jaguar robe, a small man with a curly black beard.

The dwarf whispered, “He, he, it is not the palace of Kukulcán we are in!”

Speechless, clad in bedraggled clothes, and bare of foot, I bowed my head. A few steps from the throne, ill at ease, I touched my forehead to the floor, once, twice, three times, the third time with a feeling of humiliation.

From the nobles came gasps of astonishment. And little wonder! When had they seen a young man of my great height, made to look still taller by the dwarf—a man with blue eyes, fair skin, and long blond hair?