Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  Cortés and his augmented army had come onto the island in the afternoon. Evidently he and Narváez and Alvarado remained huddled in conference until nightfall, but what they discussed or what plans they made, no one ever knew. I know only that, at some point, Cortés sent a company of his soldiers across the plaza to Motecuzóma’s own palace, where, with spears and pry-bars and battering beams, they broke down the walls with which Motecuzóma had tried to seal up the treasure chambers. Then, like ants toiling between a honey pot and their nest, the soldiers went back and forth, transferring the treasury’s store of gold and jewels to the dining hall of Cortés’s palace. That took the men most of the night, because there was a great deal of the plunder, and it was not in easily portable form, for reasons I should perhaps explain.

  Since it was our people’s belief that gold is the sacred excrement of the gods, our treasurers did not simply hoard it in the raw form of dust or nuggets, and they did not melt it into featureless ingots or strike coins of it, as you Spaniards do. Before it went into our treasury, it went through the skilled hands of our goldsmiths, who increased its value and beauty by transforming it into figurines, gem-encrusted jewelry, medallions, coronets, filigree ornaments, jugs and cups and platters—all sorts of works of art, wrought in homage to the gods. So, while Cortés must have beamed with satisfaction to see the immense and ever growing pile of treasure his men were heaping in his hall, nearly filling that spacious chamber, he must also have frowned at its variety of shapes, unsuited for being loaded onto either horses or porters.

  While Cortés thus occupied his first night back on the island, the city all around him remained quiet, as if no one paid any attention to the activity. He went to bed sometime before dawn, taking Malíntzin with him, and, in the most contemptuous manner, he left word that Motecuzóma and his chief counselors should stand ready to attend upon him when he woke and called for them. So the pathetically obedient Motecuzóma sent messengers early the next morning to call his Speaking Council and others, including myself. He had no palace pages to send; it was one of his own younger sons who came to my house, and he looked rather frayed and disheveled after his long immurement in the palace. All of us conspirators had expected such a message, and we had arranged to meet at Cuitláhuac’s house. When we were gathered, we all looked expectantly to the regent and war chief, and one of the Council elders asked him:

  “Well, do we obey the summons or ignore it?”

  “Obey,” said Cuitláhuac. “Cortés still believes he holds us helpless by holding our complaisant ruler. Let us not disillusion him.”

  “Why not?” asked the high priest of Huitzilopóchtli. “We are in readiness for our assault. Cortés cannot cram that whole army of his inside the palace of Axayácatl, and barricade it against us, as the Tonatíu Alvarado did.”

  “He has no need to,” said Cuitláhuac. “If we cause him the slightest alarm, he can quickly make the entire Heart of the One World a fortification as unapproachable as the palace was. We must keep him lulled in false security only a little longer. We will go to the palace as bidden, and act as if we and all the Mexíca are still the pliant and passive dolls of Motecuzóma.”

  The Snake Woman pointed out, “Cortés can bar the entrances when we are inside, and he will have us hostage, too.”

  “I am aware of that,” said Cuitláhuac. “But all my knights and cuáchictin already have their orders; they will not need my person. One of my orders is that they proceed with the various feints and movements, whatever the hazard to me or to anyone else who is inside the palace at the striking time. If you prefer not to share that risk, Tlácotzin—or any of the rest of you—I here and now give you leave to go home.”

  Of course, not a man of us backed away. We all accompanied Cuitláhuac to The Heart of the One World, and fastidiously made our way through the crowded and smelly encampment of men, horses, cooking fires, stacked weapons, and other paraphernalia. I was surprised to see, grouped in one area apart from the white men, as if they were inferiors, a contingent of black men. I had been told of such beings, but I had never seen any until then.

  Curious, I briefly left my fellows to go and look more closely at those oddities. They wore helmets and uniforms identical to those of the Spaniards, but they physically resembled the Spaniards considerably less than I did. They were not really black black, but a sort of brown-tinged black, like the heartwood of the ebony tree. They had peculiarly flat, broad noses and large, protuberant lips—in truth, they looked very like those giant stone heads I once saw in the Olméca country—and their beards were only a sort of kinky black fuzz, scarcely visible until I was close to them. But then I was close enough to notice that one of the blackamoors had a face covered with angry pimples and suppurant pustules, such as I had long ago seen on the white man Guerrero, and I hastily rejoined my fellow lords.

  The white sentries stationed at the Snake Wall entrance to the Axayácatl palace felt us all over for concealed weapons before they let us enter. We passed through the dining hall, where there had grown up an indoor mountain of heaped and tumbled jewelry, the gold and gems coruscating richly even in that dim chamber. Several soldiers, who were probably supposed to be guarding the hoard, were fingering various pieces and smiling at them and very nearly drooling over them. We went on upstairs, to the throne room, where waited Cortés, Alvarado, and numerous other Spaniards, including a new one, a one-eyed man, who was Narváez. Motecuzóma looked rather surrounded and beleaguered, since the woman Malíntzin was the only other of his race in evidence until our arrival. We all kissed the earth to him, and he gave us a cool nod of salute, while he went on speaking to the white men.

  “I do not know what the people’s intentions were. I know only that they planned a ceremony. Through your Malíntzin, I told your Alvarado that I thought it wiser not to allow such a gathering so close to this garrison, that perhaps he ought to order the plaza cleared.” Motecuzóma sighed tragically. “Well, you know the calamitous manner in which he cleared it.”

  “Yes,” said Cortés, through his teeth. His flat eyes turned icily on Alvarado, who stood wringing his fingers and looking as if he had endured a very hard night. “It could have ruined all my—” Cortés coughed and said instead, “It could have made your people our enemies for all time. What puzzles me, Don Montezuma, is that it did not. Why did it not? If I were one of your subjects and had suffered such maltreatment, I would have pelted me with dung when I rode in. No one in the city seems to show the slightest detestation, and that strikes me as unnatural. There is a Spanish saying: ‘I can avoid the turbulent torrent; God preserve me from the quiet waters.’”

  “It is because they all blame me,” Motecuzóma said wretchedly. “They believe I insanely ordered my own people killed—all those women and children—and that I meanly employed your men for my weapons.” There were actually tears in his eyes. “So all my domestics left in disgust, and not so much as a peddler of fried maguey worms has come near this place since then.”

  “Yes, a most trying situation,” said Cortés. “We must remedy that.” He turned his face to Cuitláhuac and, indicating that I should translate, said to him, “You are the war chief. I will not speculate on the probable intent of that alleged religious celebration. I will even humbly apologize for my own lieutenant’s impetuosity. But I will remind you that a truce still exists. I should think it the responsibility of a war chief to see that my men are not segregated in isolation, deprived of food and human contact with their hosts.”

  Cuitláhuac said, “I command only fighting men, Lord Captain-General. If the civilian population prefer to shun this place, I have no authority to command that they do otherwise. That authority resides only in the Revered Speaker. It was your own men who shut themselves in here, and the Revered Speaker with them.”

  Cortés turned back to Motecuzóma. “Then it is up to you, Don Montezuma, to placate your people, to persuade them to resume supplying and serving us.”

  “How can I, if they will not come near me?” said
Motecuzóma, almost wailing. “And if I go out among them, I may go to my death!”

  “We will provide an escort—” Cortés began, but he was interrupted by a soldier who ran in and told him in Spanish:

  “My captain, the natives begin to congregate in the plaza. Men and women are crowding through our camp and coming hither. Not armed, but they look none too friendly. Do we expel them? Repel them?”

  “Let them come,” said Cortés, and then to Narváez, “Get out there and take charge. The order is: hold your fire. Not a man is to make any move unless I command it. I will be on the roof where I can watch all that occurs. Come, Pedro! Come, Don Montezuma!” He actually reached out for the Revered Speaker’s hand and snatched him off the throne.

  All of us who had been in the throne room, followed them, running up the stairs to the roof, and I could hear Malíntzin breathlessly repeating Cortés’s instructions to Motecuzóma:

  “Your people are collecting in the plaza. You will address them. Make your peace with them. Blame every ill and calamity on us Spaniards, if you like. Tell them anything that will maintain calm in the city!”

  The roof had been made a garden just before the first coming of the white men, but it had been untended since then, and had endured a winter besides. Where the ground had not been scored and furrowed by the wheels of the heavy cannons, it was a wasteland of dry soil, withered stalks, bare-branched shrubs, dead flower heads, and windrowed brown leaves. It was a most bleak and desolate platform for Motecuzóma’s last speech.

  We all went to the parapet that overlooked the plaza and, standing in a line along that wall, peered down at The Heart of the One World. The thousand or so Spaniards were easily identifiable by their glints of armor, as they stood or moved uncertainly among the twice as many Mexíca pouring into the area and converging below us. As the messenger had reported, there were both men and women, and they wore only their everyday dress, and they showed no interest in the soldiers or the unprecedented fact of an armed camp erected on that sacred ground. They merely made their way through the clutter, in no haste but with no hesitation, until there was a densely packed crowd of them right below us.

  “The corporal was right,” said Alvarado. “They bear no weapons.”

  Cortés said bitingly, “Just the kind of opponents you prefer, eh, Pedro?” and Alvarado’s face went almost as red as his beard. To all his men present, Cortés said, “Let us step back out of view. Let the people see only their own ruler and lords.”

  He and Malíntzin and the others withdrew to the middle of the roof. Motecuzóma cleared his throat nervously, then had to call three times, each time more loudly, before the crowd heard him over its own murmurings and the noise of the camp. Some of the black dots of heads turned to flesh color as their faces lifted, then more and more of them. Finally the whole convocation of Mexíca were looking up, and many of the white faces as well, and the crowd noise subsided.

  “My people …” Motecuzóma began, his voice husky. He cleared his throat again and said, loudly, clearly, “My people …”

  “Your people!” came a concerted and hostile roar from below, then a confused clamor of angry shouts: “The people you betrayed!” “Yours are the white people!” “You are not our Speaker!” “You are no longer revered!” It startled me even though I had been expecting it, knowing that it had all been arranged by Cuitláhuac, and that the men in the crowd were all warriors only temporarily unarmed for the seemingly spontaneous community outburst of vilification.

  I should say they were unarmed with ordinary weapons, for at that moment they all produced stones and fragments of adobe brick—men from under their mantles, women from beneath their skirts—and, still shouting imprecations, began hurling them upward. Most of the women’s missiles fell short, and thudded against the palace wall below us, but enough others reached the roof to make all of us duck and dodge. The priest of Huitzilopóchtli uttered a most unpriestly exclamation when one of the rocks hit him on the shoulder. Several of the Spaniards behind us also cursed as rocks fell among them. The only man—I must say it—the only man who did not move was Motecuzóma.

  He stood where he was, upright still, and raised his arms in a conciliatory gesture, and shouted above the noise, “Wait!” He said it in Náhuatl, “Mixchía—!” And then a rock hit him squarely in the forehead, and he staggered backward, and he fell unconscious.

  Cortés instantly took command again. He snapped at me, “See to him! Put him at ease!” Then he grabbed Cuitláhuac by his mantle, and pointed and said, “Do what you can. Say anything. That mob must be calmed.” Malíntzin translated to Cuitláhuac, and he was at the parapet, shouting, when I and two Spanish officers carried Motecuzóma’s limp body downstairs and to the throne room again. We laid the unconscious man on a bench there, and the two officers ran out the door, presumably to fetch one of their army surgeons.

  I stood and looked down at Motecuzóma’s face, quite relaxed and peaceful despite the knot of bruise rising on his forehead. I thought of many things then: the events and occurrences of our simultaneous lifetimes. I remembered his disloyal defiance of his own Revered Speaker Ahuítzotl during the campaign in Uaxyácac … and his ignobly pitiful try at raping my wife’s sister there … and his many threats against me over the years … and his spiteful sending of me to Yanquítlan, where my daughter Nochípa died … and his weakling vacillations ever since the first white men had appeared off our shores … and his betrayal of an attempt by braver men to rid our city of those white men. Yes, I had many reasons for doing what I did, some of them immediate and urgent. But I suppose, as much as for any other reason, I slew him to avenge his long-ago insult to Béu Ribé, who had been Zyanya’s sister and was now in name my wife.

  Those reminiscences went through my mind in only a moment. I looked up from his face and looked about the room for a weapon. Two Texcaltéca warriors had been left there on guard. I beckoned one over and, when he came, scowling at me, I asked for his waist dagger. He scowled more darkly, unsure of my identity or rank or intention, but when I made the request a loud and lordly command, he handed me the obsidian blade. I placed it carefully, for I had watched enough sacrifices to know exactly where the heart is in a human breast, and I pushed the dagger all the way to the extent of its blade, and Motecuzóma’s chest ceased its slow rise and fall. I left the dagger in the wound, so only a very little blood welled up from around it. The Texcaltécatl guard goggled at me in horrified wonderment, then he and his companion hastily fled the room.

  I had only just had time. I heard the uproar of the crowd in the plaza subside to a still wrathful but lesser rumble. Then all the people who had been on the roof came clattering down the stairs, along the hall, and into the throne room. They were conversing excitedly or worriedly in their different languages, but they fell suddenly silent as they stood in the doorway and saw and realized and contemplated the enormity of my deed. They approached slowly, Spaniards and Mexíca lords together, and stared speechless at the body of Motecuzóma and the dagger haft protruding from his chest, and at me standing unperturbed beside the corpse. Cortés turned his flat eyes on me and said, with ominous quietness:

  “What … have … you … done?”

  I said, “As you commanded, my lord, I put him at ease.”

  “Damn your impudence, you son of a whore,” he said, but still quietly, with contained fury. “I have heard you make mockeries before.”

  I calmly shook my head. “Because Motecuzóma is at ease, Captain-General, perhaps all the rest of us may be more at ease. Including yourself.”

  He jabbed a stiff finger into my chest, then jabbed it toward the plaza. “There is a war brewing yonder! Who now will control that rabble?”

  “Not Motecuzóma, alive or dead. But here stands his successor, his brother Cuitláhuac, a man of firmer hand and a man who is still respected by that rabble.”

  Cortés turned to look doubtfully at the war chief, and I could guess his thinking. Cuitláhuac might dominate the Mexíca, but Cort�
�s had yet no domination over Cuitláhuac. As if also reading his thoughts, Malíntzin said:

  “We can put the new ruler to a test, Señor Hernán. Let us all go again to the roof, show Motecuzóma’s body to the crowd, let Cuitláhuac proclaim his succession, and see if the people will obey his first order—that we be again provisioned and served in this palace.”

  “A shrewd idea, Malinche,” said Cortés. “Give him exactly those instructions. Tell him also that he is to make it unmistakably clear that Montezuma died”—he plucked the dagger from the body, and threw a scathing glance at me—“that Montezuma died at the hands of his own people.”

  So we returned to the roof, and the rest of us hung back while Cuitláhuac took his brother’s corpse in his arms and stepped to the parapet and called for attention. As he showed the body and told the news, the sound that came up from the plaza was a murmur sounding of approval. Another thing happened then: a gentle rain began to fall from the sky, as if Tlaloc, as if Tlaloc alone, as if no other being but Tlaloc mourned the end of Motecuzóma’s roads and days and rule. Cuitláhuac spoke loudly enough to be heard by the gathered people below, but in a persuasively placid manner. Malíntzin translated for Cortés, and assured him, “The new ruler speaks as instructed.”

  At last, Cuitláhuac turned toward us and gestured with his head. We all joined him at the parapet, while two or three priests relieved him of Motecuzóma’s body. The people who had been so solidly packed below the palace wall were separating and making their way again through the cluttered encampment. Some of the Spanish soldiers still looked uncertain, and fingered their weapons, so Cortés shouted down, “Let them come and go without hindrance, my boys! They are bringing fresh food!” The soldiers were cheering when we all left the roof for the last time.

  In the throne room again, Cuitláhuac looked at Cortés and said, “We must talk.” Cortés agreed, “We must talk,” and called for Malíntzin, as if he would not trust my translation without his own interpreter present. Cuitláhuac said: