Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  Recovering himself, Motecuzóma made a decision that was at least a bit more forceful than “wait.” He called for his most intelligent swift-messenger and dictated to him a message and sent him running immediately to repeat it to Cortés. Of course, the message was lengthy and fulsome with complimentary language, but in essence it said:

  “Esteemed Captain-General Cortés, do not put your trust in the disloyal Texcaltéca, who will tell you any lies to win your confidence and then will treacherously betray you. As you can easily discover by inquiry, the nation of Texcála is an island completely surrounded and blockaded by those neighbor nations of which it has made enemies. If you befriend the Texcaltéca you will be, like them, despised and shunned and repelled by all other nations. Heed our advice. Abandon the unworthy Texcaltéca and unite yourself instead with the mighty Triple Alliance of the Mexíca, the Acólhua, and the Tecpanéca. We invite you to visit our allied city of Cholólan, an easy march south of where you are. There you will be received with a great ceremony of welcome befitting so distinguished a visitor. When you have rested, you will be escorted to Tenochtítlan, as you have desired, where I, the Uey-Tlatoáni Motecuzóma Xocóyotzin, wait eagerly to embrace my friend and do him all honor.”

  It may be that Motecuzóma meant exactly what he said, that he was willing to capitulate to the extent of granting audience to the white men while he pondered what to do next. I do not know. He did not then confide his plans to me or to any of his Speaking Council. But this I do know. If I had been Cortés, I should have laughed at such an invitation, especially with the sly Malíntzin standing by to interpret it more plainly and succinctly:

  “Detested enemy: Please to dismiss your new-won allies, throw away the additional forces you have acquired, and do Motecuzóma the favor of walking stupidly into a trap you will never walk out of.”

  But to my surprise, since I did not then know the man’s audacity, Cortés sent the messenger back with an acceptance of the invitation, and he did march south to pay a courtesy call on Cholólan, and he was received there like a notable and welcome guest. He was met on the city’s outskirts by its joint rulers, the Lord of What Is Above and the Lord of What Is Below, and by most of the civilian population, and by no armed men. Those lords Tlaquíach and Tlalchíac had mustered none of their warriors, and no weapons were in evidence; all appeared as Motecuzóma had promised, peaceable and hospitable.

  Nevertheless, Cortés had naturally not complied with all of Motecuzóma’s suggestions; he had not divested himself of his allies before coming to Cholólan. In the interim, old Xicoténca of the defeated Texcála had accepted Cortés’s offer of making common cause, and had given into his command fully ten thousand Texcaltéca warriors—not to mention many other things: a number of the most comely and noble Texcaltéca females to be divided among Cortés’s officers, and even a numerous retinue of maids to be the personal serving women of the Lady One Grass, or Malíntzin, or Doña Marina. So Cortés arrived at Cholólan leading that army of Texcaltéca, plus his three thousand men recruited from the Totonáca and other tribes, plus of course his own hundreds of white soldiers, his horses and dogs, his Malíntzin and the other women traveling with the company.

  After properly saluting Cortés, the two lords of Cholólan looked fearfully at that multitude of his companions and meekly told him, through Malíntzin, “By command of the Revered Speaker Motecuzóma, our city is unarmed and undefended by any warriors. It can accommodate your lordly self and your personal troops and attendants, and we have made arrangements to accommodate all of you in comfort, but there is simply no room for your countless allies. Also, if you will excuse our mentioning it, the Texcaltéca are our sworn enemies, and we should be most uneasy if they were let to enter our city….”

  So Cortés obligingly gave orders that his greater force of native warriors stay outside the city, but camping in a circle that would entirely surround it. Cortés surely felt secure enough, with all those thousands so near and on call if he should need help. And only he and the other white men entered Cholólan, striding as proudly as nobles or riding their horses in towering majesty, while the gathered populace cheered and tossed flowers in their path.

  As had been promised, the white men were given luxurious lodgings—every least soldier being treated as obsequiously as if he were a knight—and they were provided with servants and attendants, and women for their beds at night. Cholólan had been forewarned of the men’s personal habits, so no one—not even the women commanded to couple with them—ever commented on the dreadful smell of them, or their vulturine manner of eating, or their never taking off their filthy clothes and boots, or their refusal to bathe, or their neglect even to clean their hands between performing excretory functions and sitting down to dine. For fourteen days, the white men lived the kind of life that heroic warriors might hope for in the best of afterworlds. They were feasted, and plied with octli, and let to get as drunk and disorderly as they pleased, and they made free with the women assigned to them, and they were entertained with music and song and dancing. And after those fourteen days, the white men rose up and massacred every man, woman, and child in Cholólan.

  We got the news in Tenochtítlan, probably before the harquebus smoke had cleared from the city, by way of our mice who flitted in and out of Cortés’s own ranks. According to them, the slaughter was done at the instigation of the woman Malíntzin. She came one night to her master’s room in the Cholólan palace, where he was swilling octli and disporting himself with several women. She snapped at the women to begone and then warned Cortés of a plot in progress. She had learned of it, she said, by mingling and conversing with the local market women, who innocently supposed her to be a war captive eager for liberation from her white captors. The whole purpose of the visitors’ being so lavishly entertained, said Malíntzin, was to lull and weaken them while Motecuzóma secretly sent a force of twenty thousand Mexíca warriors to encircle Cholólan. At a certain signal, she said, the Mexíca forces would fall upon the native troops camped outside, while the city men inside would arm themselves and turn on the unready white men. And, she said, on her way to expose the scheme, she had seen the city folk already grouping under banners in the central square.

  Cortés burst from the palace, with his under-officers who had also been lodged there, and their shouts of “Santiago!” brought their troops converging from other lodgings in the city, throwing aside their women and their cups and seizing up their weapons. As Malíntzin had warned, they found the plaza packed with people, many of them bearing feather banners, all of them wearing ceremonial garments which perhaps did look like battle garb. Those gathered people were given no time to raise a war cry or issue a challenge to combat—or otherwise to explain their presence there—for the white men instantly discharged their weapons and, so dense was the crowd, the first volley of pellets and arrows and other projectiles mowed them down like weeds.

  When the smoke cleared a bit, perhaps the white men saw that the plaza contained women and children as well as men, and they may even have wondered if their precipitate action had been warranted. But the noise of it brought their Texcaltéca and other allies swarming from their camps into the city. It was they who, more wantonly than the white men, laid waste the city and slew its populace without mercy or discrimination, killing even the lords Tiaquíach and Tlalchíac. Some of the men of Cholólan did run to get weapons with which to fight back, but they were so outnumbered and encircled that they could only fight a delaying action as they retreated upward along the slopes of Cholólan’s mountain-sized pyramid. They made their last stand at the very top of it, and at the end were penned inside the great temple of Quetzalcóatl there. So their besiegers simply piled wood about the temple and set it afire and incinerated the defenders alive.

  That was nearly twelve years ago, reverend friars, when that temple was burned and leveled and its rubble scattered. There remained nothing but trees and shrubs to be seen, which is why so many of your people have since been unable to believe tha
t the mountain is not a mountain but a pyramid long ago erected by men. Of course, I know that it now bears something more than greenery. The summit where Quetzalcóatl and his worshipers were that night overthrown has lately been crowned with a Christian church.

  When Cortés arrived at Cholólan, it was inhabited by some eight thousand people. When he departed, it was empty. I say again that Motecuzóma had confided to me none of his plans. For all I know, he did have Mexíca troops moving stealthily toward that city, and he had instructed the people to rise up when the trap was sprung. But I beg leave to doubt it. The massacre occurred on the first day of our fifteenth month, called Panquétzalíztli, which means The Flourishing of the Feather Banners, and was everywhere celebrated with ceremonies in which the people did just that.

  It may be that the woman Malíntzin had never before attended an observance of that festival. She may genuinely have believed, or mistakenly assumed, that the people were massing with battle flags. Or she could have invented the “plot,” perhaps from her jealous resentment of Cortés’s attentions to the local women. Whether she was moved by misunderstanding or malice, she effectually moved Cortés to make a desert of Cholólan. And if he regretted that at all, he did not regret it for long, because it advanced his fortunes more than even his defeat of the Texcaltéca had done. I have mentioned that I have visited Cholólan, and found the people there to be rather less than lovable. I had no reason to care if the city went on existing, and its abrupt depopulation caused me no grief, except insofar as that added to Cortés’s increasingly fearsome reputation. Because, when the news of the Cholólan massacre spread by swift-messenger throughout The One World, the rulers and war chiefs of many other communities began to consider the course of events to date, no doubt in some such words as these:

  “First the white men took the Totonáca away from Motecuzóma. Then they conquered Texcála, which not Motecuzóma nor any of his predecessors ever could do. Then they obliterated Motecuzóma’s allies in Cholólan, caring not a little finger for Motecuzóma’s anger or vindictiveness. It begins to appear that the white men are mightier even than the long-mightiest Mexíca. It may be wise for us to side with the superior force … while we still can do so of our own volition.”

  One powerful noble did so without hesitation: the Crown Prince Ixtlil-Xochitl, rightful ruler of the Acólhua. Motecuzóma must have bitterly regretted his ouster of that prince, three years before, when he realized that Black Flower had not just spent those years sulking in his mountain retreat, that he had been collecting warriors in preparation for reclaiming his Texcóco throne. To Black Flower, the coming of Cortés must have seemed a god-sent and timely help to his cause. He came down from his redoubt to the devastated city of Cholólan, where Cortés was regrouping his multitude in preparation for continuing their march westward. At their meeting, Black Flower surely told Cortés of the mistreatment he had suffered at Motecuzóma’s hands, and Cortés presumably promised to help him redress it. Anyway, the next piece of bad news we heard in Tenochtítlan was that Cortés’s company had been augmented by the addition of the vengeful Prince Black Flower and his several thousand superbly trained Acólhua warriors.

  Clearly, the impulsive and perhaps unnecessary massacre in Cholólan had proved a master stroke for Cortés, and he had his woman Malíntzin to thank, whatever had been her reason for provoking it. She had demonstrated her wholehearted dedication to his cause, her eagerness to help him achieve his destiny, even if it meant trampling the dead bodies of men, women, and children of her own race. From then on, though Cortés still relied on her as an interpreter, he valued her even more as his chief strategic adviser, his most trusted under-officer, his staunchest of all his allies. He may even have come to love the woman; no one ever knew. Malíntzin had achieved her two ambitions: she had made herself indispensable to her lord; and she was going to Tenochtítlan, her long-dreamed-of destination, with the title and perquisites of a lady.

  Now, it may be that all the events I have recounted would have come to pass even if the orphan brat Ce-Malináli had never been born to that slave slut of the Coatlícamac. And I may have a personal motive in so contemptuously reviling her groveling devotion to her master, her shameful disloyalty to her own kind. It may be that I nursed a special loathing of her, simply because I could not forget that she had the same birth-name as my dead daughter, that she was the same age Nochípa would have been, that her despicable actions seemed, to my mind, to cast obloquy on my own Ce-Malináli, blameless and defenseless.

  But, my personal feelings aside, I had twice encountered Malíntzin before she became Cortés’s most wicked weapon, and either time I could have prevented her becoming that. When we first met at the slave market, I could have bought her, and she would have been content to spend her life in the great city of Tenochtítlan as a member of the household of an Eagle Knight of the Mexíca. When we met again in the Totonáca country, she was still a slave, and the property of an officer of no consequence, and a mere link in the chain of interpreting of conversations. Her disappearance then would have occasioned only a minimum of fuss, and I could easily have arranged her disappearance. So twice I might have changed the course of her life, I might perhaps have changed the course of history, and I had not. But her instigation of the Cholólan butchery made me recognize the menace of her, and I knew that I would eventually see her again—in Tenochtítlan, whither she had been traveling all her life—and I swore to myself that I would arrange for her life to end there.

  Meanwhile, immediately after receiving news of the massacre at Cholólan, Motecuzóma had made another of his irresolute shows of resolute action, by sending there another delegation of nobles, and that embassy was headed by his Snake Woman Tlácotzin, High Treasurer of the Mexíca, second in command only to Motecuzóma himself. Tlácotzin and his companion nobles led a train of porters again laden with gold and many other riches—not intended to provide for a repopulation of the unfortunate city, but for the cajoling of Cortés.

  In that one move, I believe, Motecuzóma revealed the ultimate hypocrisy of which he was capable. The people of Cholólan had either been totally innocent and undeserving of their annihilation, or, if they had been planning to rise up against Cortés, they could only have been obeying secret orders from Motecuzóma. However, the Revered Speaker, in the message conveyed to Cortés by Tlácotzin, blamed his Cholólan allies for having contrived the dubious “plot” entirely on their own; he claimed to have had no knowledge of it; he described them as “traitors to both of us”; he praised Cortés for his swift and complete extinction of the rebels; and he hoped the unhappy occurrence would not imperil the anticipated friendship between the white men and The Triple Alliance.

  I think it was fitting that Motecuzóma’s message was delivered by his Snake Woman, since it was a masterpiece of reptilian squirming. It went on, “Nevertheless, if Cholólan’s perfidy has discouraged the Captain-General and his company from venturing any farther through such hazardous lands and unpredictable people, we will understand his decision to turn and go homeward, though we will sincerely regret having missed the opportunity of meeting the valiant Captain-General Cortés face to face. Therefore, since you will not be visiting us in our capital city, we of the Mexíca ask that you accept these gifts as a small substitute for our friendly embrace, and that you share them with your King Carlos when you have returned to your native country.”

  I heard later that Cortés could hardly contain his mirth when that transparently devious and wishful message was translated to him by Malíntzin, and that he mused aloud, “I do look forward to meeting, face to face, a man with two faces.” But he then made reply to Tlácotzin:

  “I thank your master for his concern, and for these gifts of amends, which I gratefully accept in the name of His Majesty King Carlos. However”—and here he yawned, Tlácotzin reported—“the recent trouble here at Cholólan was no trouble at all.” And here he laughed. “As we Spanish fighting men account trouble, this was no more than a fleabite to be scra
tched. Your lord need not worry that it has lessened our determination to continue our explorations. We will keep on traveling westward. Oh, we may digress here and there, to visit other cities and nations which may wish to contribute forces to our retinue. But eventually, assuredly, our journey will bring us to Tenochtítlan. You may give your ruler our solemn promise that we will meet.” He laughed again. “Face to face to face.”

  Naturally, Motecuzóma had foreseen that the invaders might still resist dissuasion, so he had provided his Snake Woman with one more squirm.

  “In that case,” said Tlácotzin, “it would please our Revered Speaker to have the Captain-General no longer delay his arrival.” Meaning that Motecuzóma did not want him wandering at will among the malcontent tributary peoples, and probably enlisting them. “The Revered Speaker suggests that in these uncomfortable and primitive outer provinces you can get the impression only that our people are barbarous and uncivilized. He is desirous that you see his capital city’s splendor and magnificence, so you may realize our people’s real worth and ability. He urges that you come now and directly to Tenochtítlan. I will guide you there, my lord. And since I am Tlácotzin, second to the ruler of the Mexíca, my presence will be proof against any other people’s trickery or ambush.”

  Cortés swept his arm in a gesture encompassing the troops ranked and waiting all about Cholólan. “I do not fret overmuch about trickery and ambush, friend Tlácotzin,” he said pointedly. “But I accept your lord’s invitation to the capital, and your kind offer to guide. We are ready to march when you are.”

  It was true that Cortés had little to fear from either open or sneak attack, or that he had any real need to continue collecting new warriors. Our mice estimated that, when he departed Cholólan, his combined forces numbered about twenty thousand, and there were in addition some eight thousand porters carrying the army’s equipment and provisions. The company stretched over two one-long-runs in length, and required a quarter of a day to march past any given point. Incidentally, by then, every warrior and porter wore an insigne that proclaimed him a man of Cortés’s army. Since the Spaniards still complained that they “could not tell the damned Indians apart,” and could not in the confusion of battle distinguish friend from enemy, Cortés had ordered all his native troops to adopt a uniform style of headdress: a high crown of mazátla grass. When that army of twenty and eight thousand advanced toward Tenochtítlan, said the mice, it resembled from a distance a great, undulating, grass-grown field magically on the move.