‘He’s lying,’ said Alvarado, ‘just trying to send us on a wild goose chase to get us away from here.’
But when the Mayan delegation had been dismissed to return to Cintla, and the Spaniards sat down to their supper, some taking to their beds soon after to enjoy the women they’d been given, Aguilar confirmed Muluc’s story to be essentially true. Even the distant part of the Yucatán where he had been held as a slave was occasionally visited by Mexica merchants. It was generally understood that the far-off land from which they came was enormously rich and that their emperor, Moctezuma, ruled over huge territories populated by millions and commanded a vast army.
Tozi was filled with trepidation as she entered Guatemoc’s bedchamber in Chapultepec for the third and final night – her last chance on this present mission to make the prince ‘our man’. She wasn’t sure exactly what Huicton had meant by that strange phrase, but she was determined to achieve something, to make some breakthrough before returning to Tenochtitlan tomorrow to resume her haunting and torture of Moctezuma.
As she stood watching Guatemoc in the moonlight, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling evenly with his breathing, looking so much stronger than he had on the two previous nights, indeed positively glowing with health and vitality, it occurred to her that she had perhaps already achieved much. She had, after all, given the prince healing and freed him from the pain of his wounds and won his trust, and these gains might surely be bartered to some valuable advantage when the right time came.
She moved silently to the bedside and faded into visibility, watching Guatemoc uncertainly for a moment longer before waking him. His attempt last night to kiss her had taken her by surprise but had not, she had to admit, been entirely unwelcome. He was a stunningly handsome man, even beautiful in his way, and she was flattered that so powerful and important a personage should be attracted to her at all.
Although, of course, she had to remind herself, it was not her, Tozi, he was attracted to, but her in her guise as the Lady Temaz, goddess of healing and medicines – a completely different matter. A prince who might abase himself and do foolish things to win the attentions of a goddess would not even spare a glance at a little beggar girl!
Feeling a burst of annoyance and indignation, she reached out her hand and touched his muscular naked shoulder.
‘Hello, sweet goddess,’ he said immediately. ‘I was waiting for your visit.’ He opened his eyes and in a single graceful movement sat up, swung his bare feet over the side of the bed and arranged the sheet – just so – to cover his manly parts.
Ha! So he hadn’t been asleep after all. Just pretending. He was tricky, Tozi realised. She would have to be careful. ‘You must not,’ she said, ‘attempt to kiss me again.’
‘Or you’ll turn me to stone?’
Was he mocking her?
‘Not I, Prince, but the universe itself will punish you if you transgress the sanctity of the gods. Now lie down again, please. Let me complete the work of healing.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet. I want to talk first.’
‘We can talk as I work.’
‘Oh, very well,’ he grumbled. ‘I can hardly object.’
He lay on his back. He wore no bandages tonight. His wounds were clean and dry with no sign of infection. As she ran her fingers over the jagged scars for the last time he asked: ‘Why are you doing this for me?’
‘A great battle is coming,’ she said. ‘The world as you know it will cease to exist and a new world will arise to take its place. You are a powerful figure amongst your people, Prince Guatemoc, an important figure, one to whom many look up. It will be good if you are on the right side.’
‘Strange that,’ said Guatemoc. He paused: ‘Shikotenka of Tlascala gave me these wounds.’ He moved his hand down to touch her fingers where they rested on the series of great puncture marks across his belly. ‘Afterwards, as I lay dying on a hillside, the war god Hummingbird appeared to me and he too told me that a great battle is coming.’
Tozi’s mind was in turmoil. Hummingbird, who had reprieved her from death on the sacrificial stone and touched her with his fire! And Shikotenka of Tlascala, the very man with whom Huicton had been sent to negotiate an alliance! Both brought together in this single utterance of Guatemoc’s! It could hardly be chance.
‘I suppose,’ Guatemoc said, ‘it is your privilege, Lady Temaz, to see the face of Hummingbird every day in the council of the gods?’
‘I have seen him,’ said Tozi, ‘and I do not like him. He is a cruel god with a lust for suffering …’
‘Whereas your work is healing?’
‘I heal the wounds that war makes—’
Guatemoc seemed to ignore her. ‘Hummingbird told me,’ he continued, ‘that Moctezuma is a weakling, not competent to fight the battle that confronts us.’
‘That is true,’ Tozi agreed.
‘And he told me – I think he told me – he had brought me back from the dead to fight that battle in Moctezuma’s place.’
Tozi’s mind was racing. ‘It was I, not Hummingbird, who brought you back from the dead,’ she exclaimed, ‘and I am here to tell you another thing …’
The prince looked at her expectantly.
‘The god of peace is coming,’ Tozi continued, ‘the god Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent. It is with him and his retinue of gods that Moctezuma will very soon find himself at war, and Moctezuma will lose that fight and be cast away forever. You must not, Guatemoc, you must not place yourself in opposition to Quetzalcoatl! You must be on the right side. You must be on the side of peace.’
‘Peace?’ The prince seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘Peace? I am a warrior, my lady. I can never be on the side of peace. Besides,’ a sly look crossed his handsome face, ‘what sort of god of peace would fight a war in the first place? Surely if he wishes to rid the world of Moctezuma he will find a way to do that by peaceful means?’
Tozi thought about it. It made sense! But it would never work. ‘Moctezuma is evil,’ she said, ‘and sometimes evil overwhelms good, and when it does it can’t just be wished away peacefully. It has to be fought and it has to be stopped, and that’s what Quetzalcoatl is returning to do.’
‘So Quetzalcoatl, then, is a god of war, just like Hummingbird?’
‘No … Yes!’
‘Which is it to be, my lady? Is this Quetzalcoatl of yours a god of peace? Or is he a god of war?’ The prince laughed. ‘He can’t be both!’
‘Then he is a god of war! But his war is against Hummingbird himself, the wicked ruler and authority of the unseen world, who contaminates and pollutes everything he touches with evil and darkness, whose puppet Moctezuma is, just as the physician Mecatl was Moctezuma’s puppet in the plot to poison you … So the question you must ask yourself, Guatemoc, is this – will you, too, be Hummingbird’s puppet in the great conflict that is to come, or will you fight on the side of the good and the light?’
Guatemoc’s lean, handsome face was serious. ‘Lady Temaz,’ he said, ‘if you are asking me to fight against Moctezuma then I will tell you now I am ready to do so! He is a weakling and a fool and he sought to murder me! But if you are asking me to fight against Hummingbird, my lady – well, that is quite another matter and by no means so easily done.’
‘The time will come, Prince, when you will have to choose,’ Tozi said. ‘I can only hope you choose wisely.’ She pressed her fingers one more time against the wounds that scarred his lean, naked belly, sending healing warmth into his body. ‘I will see you again,’ she said, straightening, relinquishing the contact, ‘but now I must return to Aztlán.’
Quick as a striking snake, Guatemoc sat up on the bed and threw one arm around Tozi’s waist and another around her neck. ‘Not so fast, Lady Temaz,’ he said. ‘I still want my kiss.’
‘Well you shall not have it, foolish boy! I am a goddess and you a mere man. Do you wish to be turned to stone?’
‘I’ll take that risk,’ said Guatemoc, and pulled her face down to his, crushing his
lips against hers. Her mouth was open, perhaps with shock, perhaps something else. She felt his tongue enter, pass the barrier of her teeth, and – what was this? – her own tongue responded! For an instant she was lost in a delicious, roiling, wet warmth, tasting this man, smelling this man, melting into him, and then she remembered herself and focussed her intent and whoosh, with a whisper of reluctance she dissolved into smoke and vanished and left him embracing empty air …
In the few seconds she remained invisible in the room with him, she saw him look with astonishment at his hands, at his arms, and press his fingers to his lips.
‘Well at least,’ he said finally, ‘she didn’t turn me to stone.’
Guatemoc stood by the open window of his bedchamber in the dawn light, listening to the chorus of morning birds amongst the trees of his father’s estate.
What just happened? he thought. Who is she? A goddess, as she claims? Or something else?
He touched his lips again, glowing, alive, tingling with sensation. But when he brought his fingers away he saw they were smeared with red.
He frowned. What was this? Blood? He tasted his lips with his tongue. No! Not blood! Something else. Something familiar.
He found an obsidian mirror and examined himself. This red stuff, whatever it might be, was not confined to his lips but smeared all round his mouth. He tasted it again and suddenly he had it. Tincture of cochineal! Rare and exotic, yes, but quite definitely a woman’s makeup.
What would a goddess need with makeup?
As the sun rose on a new day he pondered this question, but could come to no definite conclusion.
As the sun rose on the new day, Huicton was ushered into Shikotenka’s presence.
The battle king of Tlascala, he was pleasantly surprised to discover, had no pretensions whatsoever. Rather than insist on meeting him in some overblown audience chamber in the royal palace, he’d invited him to his home where his beautiful young wife Zilonen, doe eyes, high cheekbones, bee-stung lips, silky dark hair hanging to her waist, pert bottom, perfect hips, was personally cooking breakfast. ‘Your eyes are clouded, father Huicton,’ she said, noticing his scrutiny, ‘but I think you see everything.’
So … not only stunning to behold but clever, feisty and direct as well!
‘I see,’ he replied, ‘everything I need to.’
Shikotenka entered the room. He wore only a colourful length of cloth wrapped around his waist that covered his legs to just below his knees. His black hair hung in knotted braids around his broad shoulders. His eyes were shrewd and intelligent, weighing his guest up. He was not handsome in the way his wife was beautiful, but there was a roguish forthrightness and charm about him, and his hard, muscular body was inscribed with the pictographs of a hundred old scars – all to the front, Huicton noticed, none at all on his back. Deduction: this was a man who stood and fought. This was a man who did not run away.
‘Good morning, Ambassador Huicton,’ said Shikotenka. ‘To what do we owe this honour?’
Huicton decided to be honest. ‘To your remarkable success in your recent battles with the Mexica, Lord Shikotenka. Your destruction of the great field army of Coaxoch has attracted the attention of my master Ishtlil of Texcoco. He would like, if you are willing, to propose an alliance between your people and his.’
‘You say “his”, not “ours”. Can I take it you are not a Texcocan yourself then?’
‘I am Mexica.’
‘Yet you work for Ishtlil against the interests of your own people?’
‘As I worked for his father Neza before him. I do not see myself as Mexica, or Texcocan, but as a citizen of the one world, and in that capacity I strive honestly, I strive truly, I strive with all my heart, for balance. For a generation now, the power of the Mexica has been too great. It has introduced distortions into the one world. It has created a nation of cruel and arrogant bullies in Tenochtitlan. I have done my best, played my part such as the gods allow, to restore that balance.’
‘And this is why you now seek an alliance with Tlascala?’
‘My master Ishtlil seeks that alliance. I am merely his messenger.’
Zilonen had laid out a stack of maize cakes on the table and a bowl of richly spiced venison in which green chillies floated. There were goblets of foaming chocolate and plates of succulent fruit. ‘Sit down,’ she said, ‘break your fast. No good business gets done on an empty stomach.’
Huicton licked his lips. ‘Very true, my lady.’ He took his place at the table, broke off a handful of bread and gathered up an ample mouthful of stew. ‘Ah, excellent,’ he commented as he chewed, smacking his lips. ‘Truly excellent.’
‘So this alliance,’ Shikotenka asked, ‘what’s the purpose of it?’
‘Why, to defeat Moctezuma, of course, once and for all. Even for his most loyal, arselicking vassals,’ an apologetic glance at Zilonen, ‘his endless demands for human sacrifices have become too burdensome for any reasonable person to stand. And you in Tlascala, who have never submitted to vassaldom, have borne the cruellest burden in the incessant wars and raids of the Mexica – until, that is, you smashed Coaxoch’s army.’ Huicton helped himself to another dripping mouthful of stew. ‘That, I can tell you – that gave Moctezuma something to think about!’
‘So much to think about,’ Shikotenka said, ‘that our Senate does not believe we’ll be troubled by him again for many a long year. Which raises the question – if we’ve got Moctezuma off our backs, why do we need a pact with Ishtlil? As you know, Huicton, we in Tlascala go our own independent way. We’ve never been very keen on alliances.’
Huicton chewed in silence for a moment. He would not speak of Tozi and her prophetic utterances. He could hardly expect a pragmatist like Shikotenka to believe any of that. But he didn’t see now how he could avoid the subject of Quetzalcoatl. It was impossible to understand Moctezuma’s motivations, and his insatiable quest for ever more sacrificial victims, without taking the legends of the plumed serpent and his return in a One-Reed year – this very year! – into account.
‘I’m afraid, Shikotenka, it is not so simple. Not nearly so simple. And I much regret to inform you that your victory over Coaxoch will not be an end to the matter “for many a long year”, as your Senate naively imagines. There is another factor at work, one you may not even be aware of, but I have reason to believe that because of it you and your people will face more – not fewer – attacks from the Mexica in the months ahead, and the same will unfortunately be true for Ishtlil’s people and for many others. So, contrary to your commendably proud and independent stance, the truth is there has never been a time when an alliance would be more expedient or more worthwhile for Tlascala than it is today …’
Shikotenka took a long draught of chocolate and wiped his mouth. ‘Very well, old man, I’m here to listen.’
Huicton dipped another handful of bread into the stewpot and transferred it to his mouth, smacking his lips with satisfaction. ‘It’s a long story,’ he said, ‘and I’m an old man, as you rightly say, and much given to prolixity, so please bear with me while I tell it …’
Melchior had been buried with full honours alongside the four Spaniards also killed in Thursday’s fighting. The graves lay in a shady corner of the orchard behind the palace, the same orchard where the horses had been exercised before the battle, and on the morning of Saturday 27 March Pepillo returned there carrying the little dagger Cortés had given him. He knelt, whispered, ‘I miss you, Melchior,’ and then very carefully carved four words onto the wooden cross that bore his friend’s name. The words were:
RIDE IN GREEN PASTURES
‘A fitting epitaph,’ said a gruff voice behind him, and Pepillo turned to see Bernal Díaz standing there leaning on a stick. The ensign’s thigh looked less swollen than before and the bandages around his chest were clean. He was holding a hessian sack with some object inside it.
Pepillo, who’d been crying again, sheathed the knife and rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. ‘Don Bernal. I’m h
appy to see you on your feet.’
‘Dr La Peña has done well by me,’ Díaz replied with a smile. ‘He tells me I’ll be fit for battle in no time.’
Pepillo shuddered. ‘I hope there’ll be no more fighting!’
‘I’m afraid there will be, lad, it’s what we’re here to do … Now, look …’ Something moved in the sack he was holding and he glanced down at it. ‘There’s a kindness you could do for a poor orphaned creature … If you’re willing.’
‘A kindness, sir? I don’t understand.’
‘It concerns the war dogs.’ Another wriggle of the sack. ‘Amongst them when we sailed from Santiago was a pregnant wolfhound bitch. She gave birth to a litter of six pups on the voyage and was nursing them, but Vendabal dragged her away from them on Thursday and put her into the pack for battle. She was one of his best fighters, so he said, but she was killed. The pups are barely weeks old, too much trouble to feed by hand, so Vendabal and his handlers destroyed them all …’
Pepillo’s face fell.
‘… Except this one, which I managed to save. I was thinking you might have time to rear him. Goat’s milk, I’m told, is a good substitute to feed an orphaned pup when its dam is lost. And, well, we have plenty of goats on the hoof with us. A veritable farm! I should know, since I requisitioned them from Santiago’s slaughterhouse the night we sailed! Here, take a look.’
And with that the ensign hobbled forward, reached into the sack and lifted out by the scruff of its neck a surprisingly large, furry, brindled puppy, which opened its toothless jaws in a yawn and licked him with its pink tongue. ‘Here, lad, he’s yours if you want him,’ Díaz said, passing the animal over. ‘He’s not a purebred wolfhound. From the look of him Vendabal says he was likely sired by a greyhound.’
Pepillo cradled the puppy. It was quite heavy, as long as his forearm and wonderfully warm. He could feel its heartbeat. It gave another yawn and a small contented whimper.
‘Well?’ asked Díaz. ‘Will you keep him?’
‘Oh yes, sir!’
‘And what will you call him?’
War God: Nights of the Witch Page 58
