Aztec Rage

by Gary Jennings

  After eating, Carlos opened a jug of wine and nodded at me to follow him. It was after nightfall, but a full moon lit up the city of the dead. We walked slowly along, passing the jug between us.

  “A magnificent place, is it not?” he said.

  I agreed. Whatever was on Carlos’s mind, he kept his counsel. He knew now I was not what I seemed, and I suspected that he was wise enough to understand that some secrets are best kept secret.

  If my behavior confused him, I also did not understand Carlos. I had always assumed scholars, like learned priests, were womanly. Since they were indifferent to horses, swords, pistols, putas, and bottles of brandy, I assumed they lacked cojones. Carlos had surprised me. He showed big cojones: When I charged on the mule, waving a machete wildly, he had stood his ground with a dagger.

  That he had stood his ground astonished me. I could not think of a single caballero in Guanajuato who would have leaped upon that boulder to face that attack.

  I now knew I had more to learn about scholars, at least about this one. He was not a big man nor did he have the agile strength in his legs and upper body to make him a fine swordsman. He didn’t ride his horse as if he’d been born in the saddle but as a townsperson more used to carriages. Yet he had stood his ground in the face of certain death. He was much man, despite his book learning.

  “I’m not unaware that I owe you my life,” Carlos said. He handed me the jug of wine as we walked. “Nor am I unaware that I had been taken in by the lépero.”

  “Por nada, señor.” It was nothing.

  “You understand that I personally do not distinguish between the races of men. But tonight, even after saving my life, you could not eat with me because the others on the expedition would take offense. My savior would have to eat with the servants.”

  I shrugged. “I would naturally eat with the servants, Don Carlos. I know my place.”

  He took a swig of wine. “You can stop calling me ‘don.’ My father was a butcher, and the only reason I attended university is because a wealthy patrón thought I had a gift for learning and paid my way.”

  “The way you stood your ground, you earned the title.”

  He gave me that puzzled look again. “After today, perhaps I should be calling you ‘don’ as I did earlier.”

  “I am a poor man and it honors me that—”

  “Stop. You just lapsed into your gutter Spanish. Do you know how you addressed me after you chased the lépero to his death?”

  My feet kept moving at an even pace, but my mind went flying. What had I done?

  “You spoke Catalán.”

  My heart pounded. “Of course, my patrón was from Barcelona. I heard him speak in that tongue many times.”

  “You lapse back and forth between Catalán and Castilian.”

  “My master spoke—”

  “I don’t care what your master spoke. It’s not your command of the language; it’s your tone. One moment you speak with the vulgar tone of the lower classes, the next you sound like the youngest son of a nobleman, the kind who refused to study but who can parrot what others have told him.” He held up his hand as I started another protest. “This is the last we will speak of this. Some matters are better left unspoken. You understand that not all the members of the expedition are scholars?”

  I understood. Besides the soldiers, priests had come along, one of whom wore the green cross of the Inquisition. The Holy Office of the Inquisition typically sent an Inquisitor on such expeditions to ensure that any aspect of indio artifacts and history that offended the church was summarily suppressed.

  In other words, the priest was a spy, constable, and hanging judge, cloaked with the power of the church, an entity that rivaled the viceroy in terms of its dominance in the colony and oftentimes was more powerful.

  “We leave in two days for Cuicuilco. I will hire you and your animal at the rate the expedition pays for such services. You will have to dispose of your cargo of clothes because your mule will convey my equipment and personal items. Does that meet with your satisfaction?”

  “Completely.”

  “You are to avoid contact with other members of the expedition. If there are any problems along the road, let the soldiers take care of them. Is that understood?”

  “Sí, señor.”

  “And try to walk without strutting, especially when you see a pretty señorita. You look too much like a caballero.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  FOR THE NEXT two days, I followed Carlos around, carrying his drawing and writing materials. He recorded everything he saw, though some of his observations were solely a product of his imagination. The ruins were heavily overgrown with vegetation, concealing not only their secrets but often their shape.

  “Do you realize, Juan, what a wonder this place is?” Carlos said to me, as we ate tortillas filled with peppers and beans. To my dismay, he had packed tortillas and beans rather then steak and trail-baked bread. He found the “peon food” tasty.

  “Very nice place,” I said, uninterested in the glories of a time and place long dead.

  “Ah, Don Juan, I can see from your expression that you disdain the forgotten achievements of this ancient city. But perhaps you would care if you knew one of its secrets.” He looked around to make sure no one was in earshot. “Can I trust you to keep your lips sealed? I put great trust in you because you saved my life and appear to be a man who keeps secrets.”

  I wondered if he had found hidden treasure in the old ruins. Eh, a little indio treasure would buy me a grand house in Havana. “Of course, señor, you can trust me.”

  “Have you heard of Atlantis?”

  “Atlantis?”

  He grinned like a small boy who knew the answer to a teacher’s question at school. “An island in the Atlantic Ocean, it lay west of Gibraltar between Europe and the Americas. Plato—who mentioned it in two of his dialogues—is our sole source of information on this lost civilization. He says the island was beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which was what the Straits of Gibraltar were called in his time. Larger than the lands of Asia Minor and Libya combined, it had the landmass of a small continent.

  “A rich and powerful empire, its rulers had conquered much of the Mediterranean world before the Greek army stopped their expansion. But Atlantis’s most dreadful nemesis was not the Greeks, or even war, but a cataclysmic earthquake that destroyed the great land and caused it to sink in the ocean.”

  “What does that have to do with Teotihuacán?” I asked. A more important question in my mind was what it had to do with treasure.

  “Some scholars believe that before Atlantis was destroyed, it had sent expeditions to America to colonize the continent and that the indios are the descendants of those people.

  “Some argue that indios are descendants of Mongols who came across the Bering Strait in the far north during a time when it was frozen. But the Mongol theory does not account for the differences between the indios of the Americas and the Mongols of Asia. Nor does it account for the fact that ruins here at Teotihuacán, Cholula, and Cuicuilco prove that the indios were very advanced at an early stage.

  “The writing of the ancient indios and ancient Egyptians is comparable. They both used picture-writing to communicate. Just as the Egyptians decorated their pyramids and temples with drawings that told stories about their gods and rulers, so did the ancient indios. The Egyptians made books out of paper, and our priests who came here following the Conquest found thousands of books the indios made from paper. Sadly, in a rush of religious fervor, almost all of the books were destroyed.”

  “So did the indios swim here from Atlantis or across the northern strait?”

  He shrugged. “Some of my scholar friends have another theory, one that takes into account the resemblance between the indios and the Egyptians. They believe that the pyramids were built by a lost tribe of Israel that—driven by war and the desire for a homeland—crossed Asia and the Bering Strait. These people would have known the shape of the Egyptian pyramids and could have d
uplicated them in the New World.”

  Suddenly still, he glanced at the inquisitor-priest who stood nearby.

  “Do you know that Teotihuacán played a famous role in the conquest of the Aztecs? Of the connection between the Pyramid of the Sun and Cortés?” Carlos asked me, changing subjects.

  I shook my head. “No, señor. I apologize for my ignorance.”

  We climbed partway up the Pyramid of the Sun. Covered with cactus and other thick vegetation, the ascent was rough-going. When we were halfway up, over a hundred feet from the ground, we paused, and Carlos told me the story of Cortés and his connection to the pyramid.

  “The Aztecs feared this city of ancient, inscrutable peoples, long dead would one day help the Great Conqueror.

  “The connection between Cortés and the pyramid began soon after he arrived in what is now New Spain, landing on the coast with his small army. He won battles and recruited indio leaders who hated the dominance of the Aztecs. After he made his way to the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, Montezuma received him with great pomp. Even with indio allies, however, Montezuma’s men vastly outnumbered Cortés’s small force. In the end, the Great Conqueror subdued the indio empires by force of personality as much as he did by force of arms.

  “While in Tenochtitlán, he received word that another Spaniard, Pánfilo Narváez, had arrived with an armed force to relieve Cortés of his command. Cortés set out with most of his men, leaving behind in the Aztec capital about eighty of his soldiers and several hundred indio allies under the command of Pedro de Alvarado. Cortés then proceeded to the coast, defeated Narváez’s force, and brought the survivors under his own command.

  “He returned to the capital to discover it seething and Alvarado’s force under siege. Alvarado was the most rash and brutal of Cortes’s lieutenants. Suspecting a plot, Alvarado attacked the indios during a religious festival, massacring them with cannon fire.

  “Cortés saw that the entire city was rallying against the Spaniards. That night, he and his army fought their way out of the city, absconding with priceless treasures, retreating to the plains near what is now the town of Otumba. As he peered out over the plains from a great eminence, Cortés saw thousands of indio warriors, stretching as far as the eye could see.

  “Do you see what I’m getting at?” Carlos asked me. “The only elevated mounds from which Cortés could have surveyed the plains were either the Pyramid of the Sun or that of the Moon. Were they as overgrown with vegetation as they are today, he might not have even known he was climbing a pyramid. But the indios, who revered this place, would have known.

  “As the vast indio army closed in, Cortés knew he could not prevail through military power alone. From his towering pyramid, he spotted the captain-general of the Aztec forces marching with banner unfurled. Díaz, who fought alongside Cortés in the battle, described the Aztec commander as garishly garbed in golden armor, gold and silver plumes rising high above his headpiece. Ordering his men to attack the Aztec commander, Cortés led the charge, sweeping through the Aztec ranks on his magnificent warhorse, plowing through them until he reached the commander.

  “Cortés struck the commander with his horse, knocking his banner to the ground while Cortés’s lieutenants crashed through the lines behind him. Juan de Salamanca, who rode beside Cortés on a fine piebald mare, killed the Aztec commander with a lance thrust and took from him his rich plumes.

  “When the indios saw their commander fall, his banner trampled, his plumes of regal power usurped, they broke ranks, fleeing in panic and confusion. Several years later, our king gave the symbol of the plume to Salamanca as his coat of arms, and his descendants bear it on their tabards.

  “This battle marked the beginning of the Aztec empire’s end. Following the battle, Cortés and his indio allies returned to Tenochtitlán. After months of fierce fighting, they retook the city, battling Aztec warriors street by street. Think of it, amigo, we may be on the very same spot where Cortés stood when he saw the Aztec army approaching.”

  Carlos was a very knowledgeable scholar, even more learned than Rachel. Like her and Padre Hidalgo, his head was full of the people, places, and events of history. Unfortunately, all his information didn’t bring any treasure to assist in my escape. But he was also full of both mystery and surprises. One of those mysteries would surface before we left this great city of the dead.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE NIGHT BEFORE we were to break camp and head south for Cuicuilco, the members of the expedition went to an inn at Otumba to meet with a colonial savant, Doctor Oteyza, who was studying and measuring the pyramid. Carlos had paid our mule train’s head driver to take the porters to a pulquería in San Juan. He also treated the camp guards, who stayed behind, to a feast of wine and roasted fowl. And he sent me to a village to bring back putas for the soldiers. Upon my return, he gave me dinero and told me to go back to the village and enjoy myself with a bottle and a woman.

  It was providing putas for the guards that piqued my interest the most. Ay, the Barcelonan scholar was not a man to procure whores, even through an emissary. His actions seemed to center around having the entire encampment of scholars to himself.

  I decided to stay around, inconspicuous, and see why Carlos wanted the run of the camp. Pretending to be off to the village pulquería, instead I took a jug of wine from the cook’s tent, cigars from Carlos’s tent and climbed up on the Pyramid of the Sun to relax, drink, and smoke my purloined cigars, hiding the tobacco’s glow with my hat.

  I was dozing off when I saw a figure on a mule approaching the camp from the direction of Otumba. I stared, trying to make out who it was in the darkness. The moon was three-quarters full and lit the site with surprising luminosity.

  The person got off the mule before the camp, tied it to a bush, and walked to the tent of Roberto Muñoz, the expedition’s military engineer.

  I had had no dealings with the engineer. In fact, I hadn’t had dealings with any members of the expedition except Carlos. But I had heard that the king had commissioned Muñoz to draw diagrams of the colony’s fortifications and report on their condition.

  I recognized the man who entered Muñoz’s tent—it was Carlos. He had left the mule a considerable distance from the tent. Approaching the tent surreptitiously, he didn’t reveal his presence to the soldiers who were gathered at the other end of the camp, sampling the wine and whores he had so generously provided.

  Very curious. Getting everyone out of camp so he could enter the engineer’s tent? There was some skullduggery afoot, no?

  After leaving the tent with papers in hand, Carlos disappeared into his own tent. A candle lamp illuminated his tent walls.

  I worked my way down the pyramid and crouched behind a bush near the tent to wait. A few minutes later the light went out. Leaving the tent, Carlos returned briefly to the engineer’s tent, then, carrying a pouch, he headed back for his mule.

  It was obvious that Carlos had copied something belonging to the military engineer. That he did it covertly indicated that he played a dangerous game.

  I mounted my mule bareback and set off after Carlos, keeping enough distance behind so he would not be aware I was following him. I had not thought out my purpose for following him. I liked the young scholar from Barcelona and bid him no ill will. My own position, however, was precarious. I needed to know if I would profit—or suffer—from Carlos’s mysterious agenda.

  I followed him for over an hour when I saw a carriage approaching. More mystery. Few people would risk an animal’s broken leg or a broken wheel on a carriage by traveling at night, not to mention the danger from two-legged animals with pistolas.

  I got off the mule, tied its reins to a limb, and quietly sneaked through the brush. Carlos was waiting by the roadside as the carriage rumbled slowly over the rutted road toward him. Then he did another curious thing: When the carriage came to a halt, Carlos moved away from the roadside, steering his mount up a hillock to a copse of trees. Having devised my own clandestine movements to avoid jea
lous husbands and constables, I realized he had moved away to avoid letting the carriage driver see his features.

  The carriage came to a halt, and a man wearing a cloak that covered him from head to foot stepped out. Without hesitation, he went up the hill and into the trees where Carlos was waiting. Emblazoned on the side of the coach was a coat of arms, but I couldn’t discern its exact design.

  I made my way on foot around the side of the hill, keeping low to the ground, crouching, and finally crawling on my stomach. Having stalked many animals on my hunting trips, I now moved as stealthily as el tigre, the jaguar, through scrub brush. I got close enough to see through the trees. I heard Carlos’s voice, but could not make out his words, though I recognized that he was speaking French and, judging by his excited hand movements, very animatedly. I spoke French, although not as fluently as the scholarly Carlos.

  Carlos waved the papers he held, which I assumed were a copy of the military engineer’s drawings. When the cloaked person reached for them, he jerked back and said, “No!”

  The other man pulled a pistol out from under his cloak and pointed it point-blank at Carlos. I froze. My own pistol was back at the camp, hidden in my possessions. Armed only with a knife, I was too far away to throw it with any accuracy.

  Carlos threw the papers on the ground and approached the cloaked man, seemingly unafraid of the pistol. Then something else surprising happened: The man put the pistol away, he and Carlos hugged, and they exchanged more words, quietly, almost whispering to each other. Then their heads went together—they kissed.

  Carlos and the man were sodomites!

  Shortly thereafter, Carlos left, leaving the papers on the ground. The cloaked man picked up the papers and started back to where his carriage was waiting. But I was waiting closer to him than to the carriage. As he drew abreast, I came out of the bushes and hit him with my shoulder, sending him reeling back with an exclamation—the sound a woman would make.