Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  Motecuzóma and his courtiers and counselors seemed to adapt easily to their change of residence, and his governing of the nation’s affairs appeared unaffected by the dislocation of the center of government. As he and every other Uey-Tlatoáni had always done, he regularly met with his Speaking Council; he received emissaries from outlying Mexíca provinces, from the other countries of The Triple Alliance, and from foreign nations; he gave audience to private supplicants bringing pleas and plaintiffs bringing grievances. One of his most frequent visitors was his nephew Cacáma, no doubt nervous, and rightly so, about the shakiness of his throne in Texcóco. But perhaps Cortés too was bidding his allies and subordinates to “be calm and wait.” At any rate, none of them—not even Prince Black Flower, impatient to take that throne of the Acólhua—did anything rash or unruly. Throughout that winter, our world’s life seemed to go on, as Motecuzóma had promised, exactly as always.

  I say “seemed,” because I personally had less and less to do with matters of state. My attendance at court was seldom required, except when some question arose on which Motecuzóma desired the opinions of all his lords resident in the city. My less lordly job as interpreter also became less often necessary and finally ended altogether, for Motecuzóma apparently decided that, if he was going to trust the man Cortés, he might as well trust the woman Malíntzin as well. The three of them were seen to spend much time together. That could hardly have been avoided, with them all under the same roof, big though that palace was. But in fact Cortés and Motecuzóma came to enjoy each other’s company. They conversed often on the history and current estate of their separate countries and religions and ways of life. For a less solemn diversion, Motecuzóma taught Cortés how to play the gambling bean game of patóli—and I, for one, hoped that the Revered Speaker was playing for high wagers, and that he was winning, so that he would get to keep part of that treasury he had promised to the white men.

  In his turn, Cortés introduced Motecuzóma to a different diversion. He sent to the coast for a number of his boatmen—the artisans you call shipwrights—and they brought with them the necessary metal tools and equipment and fittings, and they had woodsmen cut down for them some good straight trees, and they almost magically shaped those logs into planks and beams and ribs and poles. Within a surprisingly short time, they had built a half-size replica of one of their oceangoing ships and launched it on Lake Texcóco: the first boat ever seen on our waters wearing the wings called sails. With the boatmen to do the complicated business of steering it, Cortés took Motecuzóma—sometimes accompanied by members of his family and court—on frequent outings over and among all the five interconnected lakes.

  I did not at all regret my gradual relief from close attendance at the court or on the white men. I was pleased to resume my former life of idle retirement, even again spending some time at The House of Pochtéca, though not so much time as I had used to spend there. My wife did not ask, but I felt that I ought to be oftener around the house and in her company, for she seemed weak and inclined to tire easily. Waiting Moon had always occupied her empty time with womanly little crafts like embroidery work, but I noticed that she had taken to holding the work very close to her eyes. Also, she would sometimes pick up a kitchen pot or some other thing, only to drop and break it. When I made solicitous inquiry, she said simply:

  “I grow old, Záa.”

  “We are almost exactly the same age,” I reminded her.

  That remark seemed to give offense, as if I had abruptly begun frisking and dancing to show my comparative vivacity. Béu said rather sharply, for her, “It is one of the curses of women. At every age, they are older than the male.” Then she softened, and smiled, and made a pallid joke of it. “That is why women treat their men like children. Because they never seem to grow old … or even to grow up.”

  So she lightly dismissed the matter, and it was a long time before I realized that she was in fact showing the first symptoms of the ailment that would gradually bring her to the sickbed she now has occupied for years. Béu never complained of feeling bad, she never requested any attention from me, but I gave it anyway, and, although we spoke so little, I could tell that she was grateful. When our aged servant Turquoise died, I bought two younger women—one to do the housekeeping, one to devote herself entirely to Béu’s needs and wishes. Because for so many years I had been accustomed to calling for Turquoise whenever I had any household orders to give, I could not break myself of the habit. I called the two women interchangeably Turquoise, and they got used to it, and to this day I cannot remember what their real names were.

  Perhaps I had unconsciously adopted the white men’s disregard for proper names and correct speech. During that nearly half a year of the Spaniards’ residence in Tenochtítlan, none of them made any effort to learn our Náhuatl tongue, or the rudiments of its pronunciation. The one person of our race with whom they were most closely associated was the woman who called herself Malíntzin, but even her consort Cortés invariably mispronounced that assumed name as Malinche. In time, so did all our own people, either in polite emulation of the Spaniards or mischievously to spite the woman. For it always made Malíntzin grind her teeth when she was called Malinche—it denied her the -tzin of nobility—but she could hardly complain of the disrespect without seeming to criticize her master’s own slovenly speech.

  Anyway, Cortés and the other men were impartial; they misnamed everybody else as well. Since Náhuatl’s soft sound of “sh” does not exist in your Spanish language, we Mexíca were for a long time called either Mes-síca or Mec-síca. But you Spaniards have lately preferred to bestow on us our older name, finding it easier to call us Aztecs. Because Cortés and his men found the name Motecuzóma unwieldy, they made of it Montezuma, and I think they honestly believed they were doing no discourtesy, since the new name’s inclusion of their word for “mountain” could still be taken to imply greatness and importance. The war god’s name Huitzilopóchtli likewise defeated them, and they loathed that god anyway, so they made his name Huichilobos, incorporating their word for the beasts called “wolves.”

  Well, the winter passed, and the springtime came, and with it came more white men. Motecuzóma heard the news before Cortés did, but only barely and only by chance. One of his quimíchime mice still stationed in the Totonáca country, having got bored and restless, wandered a good way south of where he should have been. So it was that the mouse saw a fleet of the wide-winged ships, only a little distance offshore and moving only slowly northward along the coast, pausing at bays and inlets and river mouths—“as if they were searching for sight of their fellows,” said the quimíchi, when he came scuttling to Tenochtítlan, bearing a bark paper on which he had drawn a picture enumerating the fleet.

  I and other lords and the entire Speaking Council were present in the throne room when Motecuzóma sent a page to bring the still uninformed Cortés. The Revered Speaker, taking the opportunity to pretend that he knew all things happening everywhere, broached the news, through my translation, in this fashion:

  “Captain-General, your King Carlos has received your messenger ship and your first report of these lands and our first gifts which you sent to him, and he is much pleased with you.”

  Cortés looked properly impressed and surprised. “How can the Don Señor Montezuma know that?” he asked.

  Still feigning omniscience, Motecuzóma said, “Because your King Carlos is sending a fleet twice the size of yours—a full twenty ships to carry you and your men home.”

  “Indeed?” said Cortés, politely not showing skepticism. “And where might they be?”

  “Approaching,” said Motecuzóma mysteriously. “Perhaps you are unaware that my far-seers can see both into the future and beyond the horizon. They drew for me this picture while the ships were still in mid-ocean.” He handed the paper to Cortés. “I show it to you now because the ships should soon be in sight of your own garrison.”

  “Amazing,” said Cortés, examining the paper. He muttered to himself, “Yes
… galleons, transports, victuallers … if the damned drawing is anywhere near correct.” He frowned. “But … twenty of them?”

  Motecuzóma said smoothly, “Although we have all been honored by your visit, and I personally have enjoyed your companionship, I am pleased that your brothers have come and that you are no longer isolated in an alien land.” He added, somewhat insistently, “They have come to bear you home, have they not?”

  “So it would appear,” said Cortés, though looking a trifle bemused.

  “I will now order the treasury chambers in my palace unsealed,” said Motecuzóma, sounding almost happy at the imminence of his nation’s impoverishment.

  But at that moment the palace steward and some other men came kissing the earth at the throne room door. When I said that Motecuzóma had barely got the news of the ships before Cortés did, I spoke literally. For the newcomers were two swift-messengers sent by Lord Patzínca, and they had been hurriedly brought from the mainland by the Totonáca knights to whom they had reported. Cortés glanced uncomfortably about the room; it was plain that he would have liked to take the men away and interrogate them in private; but he asked me if I would convey to all present whatever the messengers had to say.

  The one who spoke first brought a message dictated by Patzínca: “Twenty of the winged ships, the biggest yet seen, have arrived in the bay of the lesser Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz. From those ships have come ashore one thousand three hundred white soldiers, armed and armored. Eighty of them bear harquebuses and one hundred twenty bear crossbows, in addition to their swords and spears. Also there are ninety and six horses and twenty cannons.”

  Motecuzóma looked suspiciously at Cortés and said, “It seems quite a warlike force, my friend, just to escort you home.”

  “Yes, it does,” said Cortés, himself looking less than delighted at the news. He turned to me. “Have they anything else to report?”

  The other messenger spoke then, and revealed himself to be one of those tedious word rememberers. He rattled off every word overheard from Patzínca’s first meeting with the new white men, but it was a monkeylike babble of the Totonáca and Spanish languages, quite incomprehensible, owing to there having been no interpreters present to sort out the speeches. I shrugged and said, “Captain-General, I can catch nothing but two names frequently repeated. Your own and another which sounds like Narváez.”

  “Narváez here?” blurted Cortés, and he added a very coarse Spanish expletive.

  Motecuzóma began again, “I will have the gold and gems brought from the treasury, as soon as your train of porters—”

  “Pardon me,” said Cortés, recovering from his evident surprise. “I suggest that you keep the treasure hidden and safe, until I can verify the intentions of these new arrivals.”

  Motecuzóma said, “Surely they are your own countrymen.”

  “Yes, Don Montezuma. But you have told me how your own countrymen sometimes turn bandit. Just so, we Spaniards must be chary of some of our fellow seafarers. You are commissioning me to carry to King Carlos the richest gift ever sent by a foreign monarch. I should not like to risk losing it to the sea bandits we call pirates. With your leave, I will go immediately to the coast and investigate these men.”

  “By all means,” said the Revered Speaker, who could not have been more overjoyed if the separate groups of white men decided to go for each other’s throats in mutual annihilation.

  “I must move rapidly, by forced march,” Cortés went on, making his plans aloud. “I will take only my Spanish soldiers and the pick of our allied warriors. Prince Black Flower’s are the best….”

  “Yes,” said Motecuzóma approvingly. “Good. Very good.” But he lost his smile at the Captain-General’s next words:

  “I will leave Pedro de Alvarado, the red-bearded man your people call Tonatíu, to safeguard my interests here.” He quickly amended that statement. “I mean, of course, to help defend your city in case the pirates should overcome me and fight their way here. Since I can leave with Pedro only a small reserve of our comrades, I must reinforce them by bringing native troops from the mainland….”

  And so it was that, when Cortés marched away eastward with the bulk of the white force and all of Black Flower’s Acólhua, Alvarado was left in command of about eighty white men and four hundred Texcaltéca, all quartered in the palace. It was the ultimate insult. During his winter-long residence there, Motecuzóma had been in a situation that was peculiar enough. But spring found him in the even more degrading position of living not just with the alien whites, but also with that horde of surly, glowering, not at all respectful warriors who were veritable invaders. If the Revered Speaker had seemed briefly to come alive and alert at the prospect of being rid of the Spaniards, he was again dashed down to morose and impotent despair when he became both host and captive of his lifelong, most abhorrent, most abhorred enemies. There was only one mitigating circumstance, though I doubt that Motecuzóma found much comfort in the fact: the Texcaltéca were notably cleanlier in their habits and much better smelling than an equal number of white men.

  The Snake Woman said, “This is intolerable!”—words I was hearing more and more frequently from more and more of Motecuzóma’s disgruntled subjects.

  The occasion was a secret meeting of the Speaking Council, to which had been summoned many other Mexíca knights and priests and wise men and nobles, among them myself. Motecuzóma was not there, and knew nothing of it.

  The war chief Cuitláhuac said angrily, “We Mexíca have only rarely been able to penetrate the borders of Texcála. We have never fought our way as far as its capital.” His voice rose during the next words, until at the last he was fairly shouting. “And now the detestable Texcaltéca are here—in the impregnable city of Tenochtítlan, Heart of the One World—in the palace of the warrior ruler Axayácatl, who surely must be trying right now to claw his way out of the afterworld and back to this one, to redress the insult. The Texcaltéca did not invade us by force—they are here by invitation, but not our invitation—and in that palace they live side by side, on an equal standing, with our REVERED SPEAKER!”

  “Revered Speaker in name only,” growled the chief priest of Huitzilopóchtli. “I tell you, our war god disowns him.”

  “It is time we all did,” said the Lord Cuautémoc, son of the late Ahuítzotl. “And if we dally now, there may never be another time. The man Alvarado shines like Tonatíu, perhaps, but he is less brilliant as a surrogate Cortés. We must strike against him, before the stronger Cortés comes back.”

  “You are sure, then, that Cortés will come back?” I asked, because I had attended no Council meetings, open or secret, since the Captain-General’s departure some ten days before, and I was not privy to the latest news. Cuautémoc told me:

  “It is all most strange, what we hear from our quimíchime on the coast. Cortés did not exactly greet his newly arrived brothers like brothers. He fell upon them, made a night attack upon them, and took them unprepared. Though outnumbered by perhaps three to one, his forces prevailed over them. Curiously, there were few casualties on either side, for Cortés had ordered that there be no more killing than necessary, that the newcomers be only captured and disarmed, as if he were fighting a Flowery War. And since then, he and the new expedition’s chief white man have been engaged in much argument and negotiation. We are at a loss to understand all these occurrences. But we must assume that Cortés is arranging the surrender of that force to his command, and that he will return here leading all those additional men and weapons.”

  You can understand, lord scribes, why all of us were bewildered by the quick turns of events in those days. We had supposed that the new arrivals came from the King Carlos, at the request of Cortés himself; thus his attacking them without provocation was a mystery we could not plumb. It was not until long afterward that I gathered enough fragments of information, and pieced them together, to realize the true extent of Cortés’s deception—both of my people and of yours.

  From the mome
nt of his arrival in these lands, Cortés represented himself as the envoy of your King Carlos, and I know now that he was no such thing. Your King Carlos never sent Cortés questing here—not for the enhancement of His Majesty, not for the aggrandizement of Spain, not for the propagation of the Christian Faith, not for any other reason. When Hernán Cortés first set foot on The One World, your King Carlos had never heard of Hernán Cortés!

  To this day, even His Excellency the Bishop speaks with contempt of “that pretender Cortés” and his lowly origins and his upstart rank and his presumptuous ambitions. From the remarks of Bishop Zumárraga and others, I now understand that Cortés was originally sent here, not by his King or his Church, but by a far less exalted authority, the governor of that island colony called Cuba. And Cortés was sent with instructions to do nothing more venturesome than to explore our coasts, to make maps of them, perhaps to do a little profitable trading with his glass beads and other trinkets.

  But even I can comprehend how Cortés came to see far greater opportunities, after he so easily defeated the Olméca forces of the Tabascoöb, and more especially after the weakling Totonáca people submitted to him without even a fight. It must have been then that Cortés determined to become the Conquistador en Jefe, the conqueror of all The One World. I have heard that some of his under-officers, fearful of their governor’s anger, opposed his grandiose plans, and it was for that reason that he ordered his less timid followers to burn their ships of transport. Stranded on these shores, even the objectors had little choice but to fall in with Cortés’s scheme.

  As I have heard the story, only one misfortune briefly threatened to impede Cortés’s success. He sent his one remaining ship and his officer Alonso—that man who had first owned Malíntzin—to deliver the first load of treasure extorted from our lands. Alonso was supposed to steal past Cuba and go straight across the ocean to Spain, there to dazzle King Carlos with the rich gifts, that the King might give his royal blessing to Cortés’s enterprise, along with a grant of high rank to make legitimate his foray of conquest. But somehow, I do not know how, the governor got word of the ship’s secretive passing of his island, and guessed that Cortés was doing something in defiance of his orders. So the governor mustered the twenty ships and the multitude of men and set Pámfilo de Narváez in command of them—to chase and catch the outlaw Cortés, to strip him of all authority, to make peace with any peoples he had offended or abused, and to bring Cortés back to Cuba in chains.