by Scott O'Dell
He scrambled forward to the bow of the canoe, spoke something to one of the warriors, and scrambled back. He sidled up, stole a quick glance at my skimpy attire.
“Tomorrow, hombre, I will see that you are properly clothed. Feathered headdresses by the score, jaguar-skin cloaks, snakeskin sandals, amber bracelets, necklaces of the most precious stones. You may also wish to have your nosepierced for turquoiseplugs and your teeth filed and setwith jade.”
I made no reply to this last suggestion, feeling that it did not require an answer.
“But we have a more serious problem,” the dwarf said. “Our Council of Lords is concerned with a coming war with the city of Tikan. The nacom in charge of the army sent out three road weasels early last week. These spies returned to report that Tikan is preparing for battle. They are collecting a large store of hornets’ nests.”
The dwarf paused to flick away a pink insect that was bent on getting into his ear.
“Were you ever bitten by a hornet?” he asked. “Yes? Then you are acquainted with the fiery sting. A hornet’s nest is a deadly weapon. Tikan has collected over a hun dred. Furthermore, their army is led by one of our countrymen, a Don Luis de Arroyo.”
I was not surprised to hear the name spoken. There was, I had always thought, a good chance that Don Luis had somehow survived. My last memory of him on the morning of the shipwreck was the moment when he pushed aside the barber’s hand to save himself. He was a man of great determination. Once ashore, he could have managed to make his way into the confidence of the Indians and talk them into an adventurous war.
Calmly I said, “I know Don Luis de Arroyo. We sailed together from Seville. He owned the caravel that sank, the Santa Margarita.”
“You know him well, then. Tell me, is he brave? Can he lead Indians into battle?”
“He is a fearless man. And ruthless.”
“Xpan’s death left us unprepared and without a leader. The Council of Lords would prefer to fight later, when the harvest is over, when our weaponry is in better shape, and the stars are in conjunction. Do you have influence with Arroyo? Could you persuade him to delay his attack?”
“No,” I said. “If he knew I was here and in a position of power, it would only encourage him. He would be devious. He would pretend friendship, but only to at tack us when we least expect it.”
A harsh judgment, but Don Luis de Arroyo had earned it.
“You favor an attack, then? As soon as the stars are favorable?”
“I would not wait on the stars.”
I was astounded at myself in urging war upon Don Luis. Astounded that suddenly I had spoken, not as Julián Escobar, a seminarian, a lover of peace, a follower of meek St. Francis, but as the powerful god Kukulcán.
The dwarf thought for a while. “You had cannon aboard the Santa Margarita? ”
“Many. Three bombards, five brass falconets, others.”
“How deep does the Santa Margarita lie?”
“At low tide, fifteen feet.”
“We have pearl divers here on the island who can dive that deep and stay under water for as long as four minutes at a time. Long enough to fasten ropes around the cannon so that they can be dragged up. With our keg of gunpowder, we will be more than a match for their hundred hornets’ nests.”
The dwarf, though he was standing near the edge of the platform, gave one of his little jigs, laughed, then fell sober again.
“We have lesser problems that require your counsel,” he said. “For one, there is at present a feud between our three ball teams. You have not seen this game. It is not played in Spain. The players are heavily protected by leather padding, scuffle with each other over a ball as big as a melon. The ball is hard, but bounces. The object is to put it into stone rings at either side of the court. It is…”
“What is the feud about?” I broke in, for I could see that he was devoted to the game and was bent on wind ing away. “What will I have to do with the feud?”
“Everything, hombre. The Jaguars and the Hawks are troublemakers. The Eagles...”
Cantú, who favored the Eagles, went on further to de scribe the game and furnish the names of each of the players, their individual merits, ages, and sizes.
“A fine group of young men,” he said, concluding his description of the Eagles. “You will soon be cheering for them, I am sure. And also you will admonish the Jaguars and the Hawks, who have swollen cabezas, to speak civilly when spoken to. And quit strutting about the city, frightening people and getting into brawls. This should be one of the first things you do, señor.”
A commanding, peremptory tone had come into the man’s voice. It was annoying. I suddenly foresaw the day when he would be giving me orders instead of suggestions.
“Guillermo Cantú,” I said, “henceforth will you ad dress me not as señor or hombre or capitán, but by my proper name.”
He turned and glanced up. There was an insolent glint in his eyes.
“What name is that?”
“The name you so thoughtfully bestowed upon me and insisted that I assume.”
“All of it?”
“Yes, Señor Cantú, all of it.”
“You are not a god yet.”
“Nor are you,” I answered.
The dwarf came forth with a false smile, smoothed down the feathers on his headdress.
“The time approaches,” he said, “when we shall know who is a god and who is not.”
“Hurry the moment,” I said, “and in the event that your scheme does succeed, there is something I wish you to do. Send canoes to the place where you found me and bring back the girl, Ceela Yaxche, who lives nearby.”
“It is too soon to think of such things,” the dwarf objected. “Here we teeter on an abyss, and you think of a girl. She is comely, from what I saw of her, but the city is full of comely girls. I can collect fifty in an hour.”
“Bring her,” I said.
“What if she is needed in the family? Most girls are.”
“She is needed. So bring the family. All of them.”
The dwarf was unhappy.
“And in the hut,” I added, “you will find during the day, not at night, a coatimundi. His name is Valiente.”
“We have hundreds of the pests in the jungle and many in the streets.”
“Bring him,” I said. “Bring Ceela. Bring everybody. And send the canoes today.”
Grudgingly, Cantú bowed.
CHAPTER 41
THROUGH AN OPENING ALMOST HIDDEN FROM SEAWARD, SO NARROW that I could reach out and touch its walls, we entered a small lagoon guarded on two sides by high walls. At the far end of the lagoon, at a distance of half a league or less, stood the City of the Seven Serpents.
The dazzling sight held my tongue.
The dwarf said, “Three years ago when, as a cast away, I first came upon the city, it rendered me speechless, too. Speechless I remain. There is nothing in Spain to match it. Nor in France. I have traveled far. Only in the land of Egypt will you find edifices such as greet us now.”
Before me, hacked out of the surrounding jungle, stood a central plaza, and facing it on the left and right, two pyramid-like temples that rose to thrice the height of the tallest trees. Broad steps ascended them on the two sides that I could see, ending at the lofty top in a terrace and an ornate structure that the dwarf informed me was the god house.
“With luck, we will stand there soon.”
There was a stone landing at the far end of the la goon, where a fleet of canoes was moored. Beyond, leading to the plaza and the two temples, I saw a wide thoroughfare thronged with people.
“Stupendous,” said the dwarf. ‘The greatest gathering since the feast day of lordly Itzamná. They have come from all parts of the island.”
At his command—he still spoke in a commanding tone, only a little less peremptory than formerly—I mounted Bravo.
“I had one of the warriors pour out only a third of the keg to complete the bomb,” he said. “The rest of the gunpowder we’ll u
se in the cannon when Don Luis Arroyo and Moctezuma the Second pay us their visits.”
As the unwieldy craft nosed into the embarcadero, I made ready to ride ashore.
“When the powder explodes,” the dwarf said, “—and fervently pray that it will explode, for much depends on it—at that moment when the earth shakes and smoke rises in a stupefying cloud, ride through and emerge on the far side. I will be there to lead you on your way to the Temple of Kukulcán. It’s the taller temple, the one on the left. Built, incidentally, in your honor, some 442 years ago, ten years after you fled the island, or so I am told.”
The dwarf preceding me, I rode up a wooden ramp, carved with many figures, to a terrace that was seven sided and paved with wooden blocks. On all of its seven sides were serpents, each alike, carved from stone, with their heads resting on their coiled bodies, their eyes halfclosed and mouths agape.
The terrace was empty except for warriors, who, spears in hand, stood guard beside the serpents. The dwarf motioned for me to halt, scrambled to the middle of the terrace, set down the powder, and covered it with his feathered cloak.
The flotilla was now moored in the lagoon. The three priests were huddled on the landing, seemingly awaiting further word from Cantú. They had taken off their masks and, in their feathered headdresses, no longer looked like jaguars and a howling monkey, but more like giant birds of prey.
Beyond the dwarf, from the broad thoroughfare that led to the plaza and the two temples, came a chorus of wild sounds, the cries and shouts and silences of a mul titude, swelling and dying away.
In a moment of silence the dwarf drew back his cloak and touched the fuse with tinder. I sat fifty paces away or more, with a tight hold on the stallion. Among my many real and imagined fears was the fear that he might bolt, for I lacked spurs and bit, to which he was accustomed.
The fuses caught, sputtered, apparently went out, then in an instant caught again. The explosion was not so heavy as the one I had set off under the statue of Ix Chel, but it was loud. The stallion reared and shied away. I managed to hold him more by words than by the halter.
Through the cloud of black smoke that rose over the terrace I urged him on. A pair of clowns with false faces and circular stripes around their bodies suddenly ap peared in front of me and were joined by a dozen or more musicians. Led by Cantú, the dwarf, the assem blage then moved forward to the rattle of drums and clownish chatter.
These were the only sounds I heard. The bronze-skinned crowd that lined both sides of the thoroughfare was silent. It was the deep silence of awe and adoration.
We had not gone a furlong before the dwarf whis pered from his place at Bravo’s flank, “The stallion has won the day. The explosion helped. The populace be lieves that it was the voice of the horse. And you, de spite a certain tightness around the mouth, as if you felt the rusty taste of fear, look very much as a god should look. Hold firm, Lord Kukulcán. Have courage. And as our brave forebears on the heights of Granada shouted into the very teeth of the Moors, ‘Santiago!’”
Bringing to mind that ancient scene, following the dwarf ’s admonitions, I held firm and swallowed my fears. The stallion responded. He must have remem bered the fiestas in Seville at which he had carried Don Luis through flower-decked streets. He turned his neck and took mincing, sidewise steps, lifting his hooves as if he were treading on snakes.
I was suddenly aware that the silent crowd was watching me from a distance. But when I came upon the people, all of them, on both sides of the thorough fare, quickly turned their backs. I saw no face except that of a child, a girl of four or five, who gazed up at me with wondering eyes, as if truly I were a god. The only god she had ever seen or would ever see again.
Farther along, a boy ran out in great excitement and fell in front of the stallion. He lay stunned. Ordinarily, I would have jumped down and seen to him, but thinking of my new role as mighty Kukulcán, I rode on.
CHAPTER 42
THE SILENT THOUSANDS FELL IN BEHIND US AS WE MOVED ALONG—the painted clowns cavorting out in front, the dwarf hobbling along at my side, the priests following close. We came to the broad plaza outlined by columns that were painted a shining red and carved with scenes of battle. The twin temples I had seen from afar, thrusting into the sky through clouds of copal smoke, now stood before me.
The dwarf said, “The citizens are silent, but don’t be misled. They are ready to acclaim you. The words now tremble on their lips. Come, and we shall accomplish the final act.”
The clowns had disappeared, and the three priests, joined by a dozen or more retainers, had set off up a long flight of stairs that led from the ground to the terrace at the summit of the Temple of Kukulcán.
“Seventy-seven steps,” the dwarf said, leading me through the forest of red columns. “There’s a shorter way.”
We came to the far side of the pyramid-like temple and I followed him into a shadowy passage, just high enough for me to enter if I crouched low over the stal lion’s neck. It was musty with the smell of bats that clung to the roof and flapped away at our approach.
The dwarf struck light to a wick in a bowl of tallow and led me upward, round and round in tight circles. The stone walls dripped water. Stalagmites that proj ected from the earthen floor made it necessary for us to advance with caution.
We came to a series of narrow alcoves through whose openings the light shone, revealing rows of obsidian slabs carved with figures of owls and frogs, other creatures that I could not distinguish. These places, the dwarf told me, held the bodies of dead kings and high priests.
The air grew stale. The dwarf stopped with an excla mation of anger. “Nombre de Dios,” he said. “We have taken a wrong turn.” His words sounded down the pas sageway and by some trick came weirdly back to us in decreasing echoes from far above. “We must return. We need to reach the god house before the priests.”
It was not easy to square the stallion around in the narrow place, with the dwarf shouting instructions. Finally he ran back, holding the light aloft, and I followed. We traveled for half a furlong, to the last of the crypts. There, he took a left turn and, scuttling ahead, urged me on.
With visions of being trapped in miles of tomb-like tunnels, I quickly caught up with him and kept hard on his heels. The widening walls no longer dripped water. We came to a large room, where the dwarf’s light shone on shelves that rose from floor to ceiling and ran far back into darkness. Upon these racks, their cheekbones touching, were human skulls in endless rows.
“Is this a cemetery?” I asked the dwarf.
“In a way of speaking. The heads, but not the bodies, are brought here when the ceremonies are over.”
We reached a wide, heavily carved door. Shoving it open, he said, “Ride! Come to a halt upon the parapet.”
Light flooded in through the doorway although the day was sunless. For a moment I was blinded. The stal lion neighed and backed off into the darkness. I put hard heels to him. He took only a step toward the door, and there set his hooves. The dwarf shouted, to no avail. Dismounting, I tried to lead him to the doorway, but again he flinched and backed away.
“Time is short,” the dwarf shouted. ‘Tether him here in the alcove. No matter. You cannot appear always on your horse. You cannot take him to bed with you.”
I tethered Bravo at the door and stepped out upon the wide stone parapet. Far away to the margin of the sea, to the very reaches of the eye, shimmering red and blue and yellow and turquoise green—all the colors Ceela had painted upon the walls of my hut—lay the walled City of the Seven Serpents.
Below, far down, seeming as small as insects, stood the multitude, a river of insects flowing away in the distance.
The dwarf was at my side. “Raise your hand,” he said. “Raise it high.”
I had no sooner done so than a chant, like the sound of a distant storm, floated up to me. The chant grew louder, became a shout, then it was a single thunderous word repeated over and over: “Kukulcán! Kukulcán!”
The dwarf coc
ked his head at the sound. He did his little jig. “Hexo, Xipan, and Chalco will conduct a vote,” he said. “They will confer with the city elders, the nacom. The outcome, however, is no longer in doubt.”
The priests, toiling up the long steep flight of steps, had nearly reached the terrace upon which we stood. They paused to watch the chanting multitude, all save Chalco, who, dragging his feet, continued slowly on his way.
The three priests in their towering headdresses came together on the terrace. Without a word they bowed to me, to the teeming crowd below, to each other, and turned their backs. They looked insignificant against the vast dome of the sky. Chanting went on, died away, rose up again stronger than before.
“These ceremonies,” the dwarf said, “often get out of hand. Also, you will not like what you see. But remem ber that you are now a god and that gods flourish upon blood.”
Off to my right, in front of the god house where I stood, at the edge of the terrace in order that the throng could see, was a large, curiously shaped object. I took it to be a decoration or a statue of some Maya god.
“The sacrificial altar,” the dwarf said.
It was longer than a man’s body, some three feet in width and the same in height, curved upward in the center.
Seven priests came through a doorway at the far end of the god house and took up positions at the head and foot of the sacrificial stone. They were followed by a muscular Indian clad only in a breechclout.
Through the same doorway a prisoner was led forth and placed upon the stone altar, face up. Its curved shape caused his chest to be thrust upward and pulled tight like the skin on a drum.
Two chacs, priestly helpers, spread-eagled the young man, holding his arms and legs, though he made no ef fort to move. The muscular Indian, the nacom, swiftly and surely ripped his obsidian knife across the victim’s chest. He then reached down into the gaping wound, seized the exposed heart, and snatched it out.
The dwarf said, “It is not new. Centuries past, the Carthaginians sacrificed children to the god Baal-Haman. As many as three hundred in a day were placed upon the outstretched arms of the idol and then rolled off into the fire beneath.”
