Aztec

by neetha Napew

  The Spaniards entered the temple of Tlaloc, and instantly lunged out again, with retching exclamations and faces expressive of nausea. It was the first and only time I ever knew the white men to back away from a smell, or even acknowledge one, but in truth the stench of that place was worse than their own. When they could control their heaving stomachs, Cortés and Alvarado and the priest Bartolome went inside again, and went into spasms of rage when they discovered Tlaloc's hollow statue to be filled, right up to the level of his gaping square mouth, with the decaying human hearts on which he had been fed. Cortés was so infuriated that he whipped out his sword and gave the statue a mighty blow. It only chipped away a fragment of dried blood from Tlaloc's stone face, but it was an insult that made Motecuzóma and his priests gasp with consternation. However, Tlaloc did not respond with any devastating blast of lightning, and Cortés caught hold of his temper. He said to Motecuzóma:

  "This idol of yours is not god. It is an evil thing which we call a devil. It must be cast down and out and into eternal darkness. Let me set here in its place the cross of Our Lord and an image of Our Lady. You will see that this demon dares not object, and from that you will realize that it is inferior, that it fears the True Faith, and that you will be well advised to abjure such wicked beings and embrace our kindly ones."

  Motecuzóma said stiffly that the idea was unthinkable, but the Spaniards went into convulsions again when they entered the adjacent temple of Huitzilopóchtli, and yet again when they beheld the similar temples atop the lesser pyramid at Tlal-telólco, and each time Cortés expressed his repugnance more strongly and in more intemperate words.

  "The Totonaca," he said, "have swept their country clean of these foul idols, and have given their allegiance to Our Lord and His Virgin Mother. The monstrous mountain temple at Chololan has been leveled. At this moment, some of my friars are instructing King Xicotenca and his court in the blessings of Christianity. I tell you, in none of those places have the old devil-deities so much as whimpered. And I swear on my oath, neither will they when you cast them out!"

  Motecuzóma replied, and I translated, doing my best to convey the iciness of his words, "Captain-General, you are here as my guest, and a mannerly guest does not deride his host's beliefs any more than he would mock his host's taste in dress or wives. Also, although you are my guest, a majority of my people resent that they too must be hospitable to you. If you try to tamper with their gods, the priests will raise an outcry against you, and in matters of religion the priests can overrule my mandates. The people will heed the priests, not me, and you will be fortunate if you and your men are only evicted alive from Tenochtítlan."

  Even the brash Cortés understood that he was being sharply reminded of his tenuous position, and he withdrew from pressing the topic further, and he muttered words of apology. At which Motecuzóma likewise thawed a little, and said:

  "However, I try to be a fair man and a generous host. I realize that you Christians have no place here in which to worship your own gods, and I have no objection to your doing that. I will order that the small Eagle Temple in the grand plaza be cleared of its statues and altar stones and anything else offensive to your faith. Your priests may put in whatever furnishings they require, and the temple is your temple for as long as you want it."

  Our own priests naturally were not pleased at even that minor concession to the aliens, but they did no more than grumble when the white priests took over the little temple. Thereafter, in fact, the place was more frequented than it had ever been. The Christian priests seemed to hold their Masses and other services continuously from morning to night, whether the white soldiers attended or not—because numbers of our own people, drawn by simple curiosity, began to drift in to those services. I say our own people; in actuality, they were mainly the white men's female consorts and allied warriors from other nations. But the priests employed Malintzin to translate their sermons, and were delighted when many of those heathen participants submitted—still no more than curious about the novelty of it—to take the salt and sprinkling and new-naming of baptism. Anyway, Motecuzóma's granting of that temple temporarily diverted Cortés from laying violent hands on our ancient gods, as he had done in other places.

  The Spaniards had been in Tenochtítlan for little more than a month when something happened that could have expunged them forever from Tenochtítlan, probably from the entire One World. A swift-messenger came from Lord Patzinca of the Totonaca and, if he had reported to Motecuzóma, as formerly he would have done, the white men's sojourn might have ended then and there. However, the messenger made his report to the Totonaca army camped on the mainland, and he was brought by one of that company into the city to repeat it privily to Cortés. His news was that a serious commotion had occurred on the coast.

  What had happened was this. A Mexícatl tribute collector named Cuaupopoca, making his accustomed annual round of various tributary nations, accompanied by a troop of Mexíca warriors, had collected the year's levy from the Huaxteca, who also live on the seacoast, but to the north of the Totonaca. Then, leading a train of Huaxteca porters, conscripted to carry their own tribute goods to Tenochtítlan, Cuaupopoca had moved on south into the Totonaca country, as he had been doing every year for years. But on reaching the capital city of Tzempoalan, he was shocked and indignant to find that the Totonaca were unprepared for his arrival. There was no stock of goods ready to go; there were no local men waiting to serve as porters; the ruling Lord Patzinca had not even the usual list compiled for Cuaupopoca to know what the tribute was supposed to consist of.

  Having come from the northern hinterlands, Cuaupopoca had heard nothing of the misadventure that had befallen the Mexíca registrars who always went ahead of him, and he knew nothing of all the occurrences since then. Motecuzóma could easily have sent word to him, but had not. And I will never know whether the Revered Speaker simply forgot, in the press of so many other events, or whether he deliberately chose to let the tribute collection proceed as usual, just to see what would happen. Well, Cuaupopoca tried to do his duty. He demanded the tribute from Patzinca, who did his customary cringing but refused to comply, on the ground that he was no longer subordinate to The Triple Alliance. He had new masters, white ones, who lived in a fortified village farther down the beach. Patzinca whiningly suggested that Cuaupopoca apply to the white officer in charge there, a certain Juan de Escalante.

  Angry and mystified, but determined, Cuaupopoca led his men to the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, to be received only with jeers in a language that was incomprehensible but recognizably insulting. So he, a mere tribute collector, did what the mighty Motecuzóma never had done yet; he objected to being thus disdainfully treated, and he objected strenuously, violently, decisively. In so doing, Cuaupopoca may have made a mistake, but he made it in the grand manner, in the lordly manner to be expected of the Mexíca. Patzinca and Escalante made a worse mistake in provoking him to it, for they should have been aware of their vulnerability. Practically the entire Totonaca army had marched away with Cortés, along with practically all of his own. Tzempoalan had few men left to defend it, and Vera Cruz was not much better manned, since most of its garrison consisted of the boatmen left there simply because they had no ships to require their employment.

  Cuaupopoca, I repeat, was only a minor Mexícatl official. I may be the only person who even remembers his name, though many still remember the fate to which his tonáli brought him. The man was diligent in his duty of collecting levies, and that was the first time in his career that he had ever met defiance from a tributary nation, and he must have been as fiery-tempered as his name implied—it meant Smoldering Eagle—and he would not be balked in accomplishing his mission. He snapped an order to his force of Mexíca warriors and they leapt eagerly into action, because they were fighting men, bored by an undemanding journey of escort duty. They happily seized the opportunity for combat, and they were not long deterred by the few harquebuses and crossbows discharged at them from the stockade walls of the white men'
s village.

  They killed Escalante and what few professional soldiers Cortés had detached to his command. The remaining population of unwarlike boatmen immediately surrendered. Cuaupopoca set guards there and around the Tzempoalan palace, then ordered the rest of his men to strip clean the entire surrounding country. This year, he proclaimed to the terrorized Totonaca, their levy would comprise no fraction of their goods and produce, but all of it. So it had been something of a feat for Patzinca's messenger to escape from the cordoned palace, and to slip past the scourging warriors of Cuaupopoca, and to bring Cortés the bad news.

  Surely Cortés perceived how much more perilous his own position had suddenly become, and how uncertain his future, but he wasted no time in brooding. He went immediately to Motecuzóma's palace, and in no subdued or fearful mood. He took with him the red giant Alvarado and Malintzin and a number of heavily armed men, and all of them stormed past the palace stewards and, without ceremony, directly into Motecuzóma's throne room. Cortés raged, or pretended to rage, as he regaled the Revered Speaker with an amended version of the report he had received. As he told it, a roving band of Mexíca bandits had without provocation attacked his few men peaceably living on the beach, and had slaughtered them. It was a grave breach of the truce and friendship Motecuzóma had promised, and what did Motecuzóma intend to do about it?

  The Revered Speaker knew of the tribute train's presence in that general area, so, from hearing Cortés's account, he would have supposed that it had got involved in a skirmish there and had done some damage among the white men. But he need not have hastened to conciliate Cortés; he could have temporized long enough to find out the true state of affairs. And the truth was this: the white men's one and only established settlement in these lands had surrendered itself to Cuaupopoca's Mexíca troops; the white men's one most biddable ally, Lord Patzinca, was cowering inside his palace, a prisoner of the Mexíca. Meanwhile, Motecuzóma had almost all the rest of the white men contained on his island, easy prey for elimination; and Cortés's other white and native troops could easily have been held off the island while the mainland armies of The Triple Alliance gathered to pulverize them. Thanks to Cuaupopoca, Motecuzóma held the Spaniards and all their supporters helpless in his hand. He had only to close that hand into a fist and squeeze until the blood ran out between his fingers.

  He did not. He expressed to Cortés his dismay and condolence. He sent a force of his palace guard to make apologies in Tzempoalan and Vera Cruz, to relieve Cuaupopoca of his authority, to bring him and his chief military officers under arrest to Tenochtítlan.

  What was worse, when the praiseworthy Cuaupopoca and his four commendable cuáchictin "old eagles" of the Mexíca army knelt in obeisance before the throne, Motecuzóma sat flaccidly slumped on that throne, flanked by the sternly erect Cortés and Alvarado, and in a not at all lordly voice he said to the prisoners:

  "You have exceeded the authority of your mission. You have seriously embarrassed your Lord Speaker and compromised the honor of the Mexíca nation. You have broken the promise of truce I granted to these esteemed visitors and all their subordinates. Have you anything to say for yourselves?"

  Cuaupopoca was dutiful to the end, though he was recognizably more of a man, more of a noble, more of a Mexícatl, than the creature on the throne to whom he said respectfully, "It was all my doing, Lord Speaker. And I did what I thought best to do. No man can do more."

  Motecuzóma said dully, "You have caused me grievous hurt. But the death and damage you caused have more grievously hurt these our guests. Therefore..." And incredibly the Revered Speaker of the One World said, "Therefore, I will defer judgment to the Captain-General Cortés, and let him determine what punishment you deserve."

  Cortés had evidently given prior thought to that matter, for he decreed a punishment that he must have been sure would deter any other individuals trying to oppose him, and it was at the same time a punishment intended to flout our traditions and spite our gods. He commanded that the five should be put to death, but not to any Flowery Death. No heart would be fed to any god, no blood would be spilled to the honor of any god, no flesh or organ of the men would remain to be used as any least sacrificial offering.

  Cortés had his soldiers bring a length of chain; it was the thickest chain I ever saw, like looped constrictor snakes made of iron; I learned later that it was a segment of what is called an anchor chain, used for mooring the heavy ships. It took considerable effort on the part of the soldiers, and surely caused considerable pain to Cuaupopoca and his four officers, but the giant links of that chain were forced over the heads of the condemned men, so a link hung around each man's neck. They were taken into The Heart of the One World, where a great log had been fixed upright in the square... just yonder, in front of where the cathedral now stands, where the Señor Bishop now has his pillory for the exposure of sinners to public vilification. The chain was fastened around the top of that heavy post, so the five men stood in a circle, their backs to the log, pinioned by their necks. Then a pile of wood, previously soaked in chapopotli, was heaped around their feet and as high as their knees, and it was set afire.

  Such a novel punishment—a deliberately bloodless execution—had never been known in these lands before, so almost everyone in Tenochtítlan came to see it. But I watched it while standing beside the priest Bartolome, and he confided to me that such burnings are quite common in Spain, that they are especially suited to the execution of enemies of Holy Church, because the Church has always forbidden its clerics to shed the blood of even the worst sinners. It is a pity, reverend scribes, that your Church is thereby enjoined from employing more merciful methods of execution. For I have seen many kinds of killing and dying in my time, but none more hideous, I think, than what Cuaupopoca and his officers suffered that day.

  They bore it staunchly for a while, as the flames first licked up along their legs. Above the heavy iron collars of the chain links, their faces were calm and resigned. They were not otherwise bound to the post, but they did not kick their legs or flail their arms or struggle in any unseemly manner. However, when the flames reached their groins and burned away their loincloths and began to burn what was underneath, their faces became agonized. Then the fire needed no longer to be fed by the wood and chapopotli; it caught the natural oils of their skin and the fatty tissue just under the skin. The men, instead of being burned, began to burn of themselves, and the flames rose so high that we could barely see their faces. But we saw the brighter flash of their hair going in one blaze, and we could hear the men begin to scream.

  After a while, the screams faded to a thin, high shrilling, just audible above the crackling of the flames, and more unpleasant to hear than the screaming had been. When we onlookers got a glimpse of the men inside the blaze, they were black and crinkled all over, but somewhere inside that char they still lived and one or more of them kept up that inhuman keening. The flames eventually ate under their skin and flesh, to gnaw on their muscles, and that made the muscles tighten in odd ways, so that the men's bodies began to contort. Their arms bent at the elbows; their hands of fused fingers came up before their faces, or where their faces had been. What was left of their legs slowly bent at the knees and hips; they lifted off the ground and bunched up against the men's bellies.

  As they hung there and fried, they also shrank, until they ceased to resemble men, in size as well as appearance. Only their crusted and featureless heads were still of adult size. Otherwise they looked like five children, charred black, tucked into the position in which young children so often sleep. And still, though it was hard to believe that life still existed inside those pitiful objects, that shrill noise went on. It went on until their heads burst. Wood soaked in chapopotli gives a hot fire, and such heat must make the brain boil and froth and steam until the skull can no longer contain it. There was a sudden noise like a clay pot shattering, and it sounded four times more, and then there was no noise except the sizzle of some last droplets from the bodies falling into the fir
e, and the soft crunch of the wood relaxing into a bed of embers.

  It was a long time before the anchor chain was cool enough for Cortés's soldiers to undo it from the blackened post, and let the five small things drop into the embers to burn entirely to ash, and they took the chain away to be saved for future use, though no other such execution has taken place since then. That was eleven years ago. But just last year, when Cortés returned from his visit to Spain, where your King Carlos raised him from his rank of Captain-General and ennobled him as the Marqués del Valle, Cortés himself designed the emblem of his new nobility. What you call his coat of arms is now to be seen everywhere: it is a shield marked with various symbols, and the shield is encircled by a chain, and in the links of that chain are collared five human heads. Cortés might have chosen to commemorate others of his triumphs, but he knows well that the end of the brave Cuaupopoca marked the beginning of the Conquest of The One World.

  Since the execution had been decreed and directed by the white strangers who should have had no such authority, it caused much trepidation and unrest among our people. But the next occurrence was even more unexpected and unbelievable and mystifying: Motecuzóma's public announcement that he was moving out of his own palace to go and live for a while among the white men.

  The citizens of Tenochtítlan crowded The Heart of the One World, watching with stony faces, on the day their Revered Speaker strolled leisurely across the plaza, arm in arm with Cortés, under no restraint or any visible compulsion, and entered the palace of his father Axayicatl, the palace occupied by the visiting aliens. During the days following, there was a constant traffic back and forth across the square, as Spanish soldiers helped Motecuzóma's porters and slaves to move his entire court from the one palace to the other: Motecuzóma's wives and children and servants, their wardrobes and the furnishings of all their chambers, the contents of the throne room, libraries of books and treasury accounts, all the appurtenances necessary to conducting court business.