* * *
That evening, the conquistadors took refuge on a nearby hilltop, where an abandoned fort promised shelter against the mountain winds. They settled themselves inside the dark fort and tried to find rest.
For Benicio, there was only torment. Weary with fatigue, he stumbled around the camp. ‘Tula,’ he called. The other men watched him with a mixture of compassion and contempt. This was no time to be worrying oneself over a woman.
But Benicio did not care what the other men thought. He found himself at the riverside once again. There, upon the bank, was a single fig.
‘Tula,’ he whispered.
He sensed that she was near. If he was right, then he would find her. The two of them had an agreement to uphold, after all. An alliance. She would help him find his gold and he would help her find her sister. They needed each other.
There was also the small detail that he owed her his life.
He wandered into the women’s camp. ‘Tula?’ he asked, then held his hand at his elbow to represent her height. The women merely shook their heads, returning their attention to their pots of bubbling beans.
The porters were even less helpful. The tired men emerged from their shelters and stared at Benicio with something like pity behind their eyes.
The rain began to fall, but still he wandered. There had been so much killing that day, much of it accomplished by his own hand. He felt wretched and sullied and yearned for her forgiveness.
The sun sank below the horizon. Still standing, he pressed his tired body against the trunk of a tree and closed his eyes. When he opened them, a stout man was walking towards him through the grey rain.
‘Greetings, Big Tree. A lovely evening for a stroll,’ Benicio mocked, knowing the man could not understand him. Benicio noticed a wool blanket wrapped about the man’s stocky frame.
‘Where is your doublet?’ asked Benicio, though he hardly cared.
Big Tree bowed low, then threw off his blanket. Benicio bent to retrieve it, but Big Tree stopped him and began to shiver. Benicio watched closely, realising that the porter was just pretending to shiver.
Clearly Big Tree was trying to tell Benicio that he had given away Benicio’s doublet.
‘It is nothing. I understand,’ said Benicio. Since the beginning of the siege, the porters had been left to forage and survive on their own. Surely the man had traded Benicio’s doublet in some nearby town and was now attempting to explain his actions.
Benicio pointed at the blanket. ‘You traded it for the blanket, right? And perhaps some food? You did what you must.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Big Tree. He removed the imaginary doublet once again, then pretended to accept it from himself.
Benicio was growing tired of this. Big Tree did not need to explain to him why he had sold the doublet. Benicio motioned for Big Tree to go.
Big Tree refused. Instead, he placed his arms at the level of his thighs and swished them from side to side, as if he were holding a skirt.
A skirt?
Sensing Benicio’s interest, Big Tree quickly repeated his movements, now in a different order: He removed his invisible doublet, swished his invisible skirts, then smiled and put on the doublet once again.
‘Tula?’ Benicio asked.
‘Yes, yes,’ Big Tree said. The porter had gifted his doublet to Tula.
Benicio gripped Big Tree by the shoulders. ‘Where? Where did she go?’
The man shook his head and shrugged.
‘When? Today? Yesterday?’
‘Yest-a-dey,’ Big Tree said and Benicio embraced him so hard that the poor man began to cough.
When Benicio released him, Big Tree bowed, whisking his blanket from the ground. He had finally repaid his debt to Benicio. He had somehow discovered Tula and given her the gift of warmth, possibly saving her life. It seemed that this humble Taino man from Cuba had more honour in his little finger than most of the Spaniards did in their entire bodies.
‘Thank you,’ Benicio said and gave the man the deepest, sincerest bow he had ever given anyone.
Big Tree bowed back, then turned and disappeared into the mist.
She could not be far, if only a day ago she had encountered Big Tree. And wherever she was going, she had not been captured. She was alive, she was well, and, thanks to Big Tree, she was warm.
Benicio smiled sadly. Of course she was alive, for she was a hunter and a survivor. He recalled her sweet, haughty walk across the beach of Vera Cruz and the pride she had shown when she found water inside the agave stalk. He was certain she had been equally proud to have found the figs that day by the river. Instead of showing gratitude, however, he had kicked dirt in her face. She deserved better than that from him. From anyone. No wonder she had left him.
The rain trickled through the bows of the tree like the tears of some foreign god. ‘Goodnight, Tula,’ he said, picturing her curled up in warmth. Finally, for the first time in two days, he let the oblivion of sleep take him.
* * *
The next morning, Benicio and the other Spanish soldiers looked down from their hilltop to behold a sea of Tlaxcalan warriors even larger than the day before. One terrified musketeer observed that there were at least twenty thousand of them. Benicio estimated their numbers closer to forty. Forty thousand Tlaxcalans against an army of three hundred Spaniards and five hundred Totonacs. Against those odds, any Spanish or Italian or French general would have waved the white flag.
But not Cortés. He ordered the cannons lit and told his men to shore up their hearts. The battle to conquer the New World had only just begun.
Benicio did his best not to kill. He fought alone, as far as possible from the front lines, smashing his steel sword against each man’s obsidian club until exhaustion set in. But instead of delivering death, he delivered a command. ‘Leave!’ he would shout, pointing to the forest.
It was not always effective. Some men fought mindlessly, with the zeal of lifelong soldiers. Benicio had no choice but to defend himself against them, though he did it with loathing. He hated Cortés in those moments, but he also hated himself. He hardly cared about the treasure any more. All he wished was that he could find Tula and that the fighting would cease.
* * *
On the fifth morning, part of his wish came true. A party of Tlaxcalan nobles rode out to meet Cortés and concede defeat. Food arrived soon after, turkeys and berries and maize flour, along with dozens of slave women to prepare it. Benicio searched among them for Tula, but was disappointed. When a blushing Maya cook offered him a roasted turkey leg, he refused it.
* * *
After several days, the triumphant Spanish–Totonac army marched into the city of Tlaxcala. The tops of countless stone pyramids streamed white smoke as the army was ushered into a central plaza as big as a Spanish bull ring.
Before Cortés could even dismount, four venerable chiefs were bowing to their newest and greatest ally—the man whose army could not be defeated; the man who would help them finally overcome the Mexica.
* * *
The days passed like months in the dry mountain city of Tlaxcala as the Spanish–Totonac–Tlaxcalan army prepared for the final march on Tenochtitlan. Benicio spent many long hours in the marketplace, scanning every face he saw, hoping to find his only friend.
One day, he thought he spied a woman in a dirt-stained doublet dashing across Tlaxcala’s central plaza. He ran after her, but lost sight of her among a group of beekeepers crowding the base of Tlaxcala’s Great Temple.
Benicio stared up at the giant edifice, the familiar path of dried blood staining its steps. Just beneath it was a low building, open to the street, with large, colourful murals decorating its inner walls. Perhaps the woman had escaped into that strange, enchanting space?
Benicio wandered inside to behold scenes of battle and triumph, of gods
and goddesses, of hunts and harvests and trade—all swirling in a riot of colour. The murals were as beautiful as any fresco or frieze adorning the walls of Spain’s great cathedrals and Benicio lost himself inside the fascinating histories they told.
As he journeyed deeper into the space, the light diminished until all he could discern were shadowy movements at the back of a long hall. Suddenly, a flame illuminated the darkness. A man in a priest’s robe held a torch into the air. He was followed by two poorly dressed young men who were obviously slaves. One of the young men was carrying an earthen pot.
The three stopped before a cluster of large wooden cages. The first young man held out a small bowl while the other poured some of the contents of the pot into it. The first boy stretched the bowl through the bars of the cage. Benicio froze when he saw a hand emerge to receive it.
It was a human hand.
Benicio looked closer. A grown man crouched inside the cage like a beast, doubled over and unable to move. His face was tattooed with a soldier’s emblem and the muscles of his arms bulged as he held the bowl to his mouth and drank. He returned the bowl to the boy and looked up, catching Benicio’s eye.
Benicio shuffled backwards, his sudden movement echoing through the hall. Hearing the disturbance, the holy man looked up, quickly spying Benicio. The man’s face twisted into an angry scowl and he whispered something to the two slaves. Benicio stumbled backwards in fear. He knew that if he were captured now, he would be placed inside one of the cages himself. He broke into a run.
He ran out of the great hall and back across the plaza, stumbling into the market and making his way to its busiest part. He hunched down, trying not to draw attention to himself, feigning interest in a tomato vendor’s offerings while he struggled to regain his breath.
There was no doubt that he had just witnessed the feeding of a sacrifice victim. The caged soldier Benicio had seen would soon be splayed across some bloody sacrificial stone, an obsidian blade hovering over his heart. And the man was not alone. There had been dozens of such cages, perhaps hundreds, stretching deep into the shadowy hall.
It occurred to Benicio that the native people of this New World did not fight to destroy their enemies. They went to battle to find victims for sacrifice and slavery. They did not fight to kill, Benicio realised. They fought to collect.
Suddenly, Benicio saw the future. He saw a world in which relatively few Spaniards took this crowded continent and placed it beneath their steel boots—not through the advantage of gunpowder or horses, but due to the simple fact that the Spanish fought to kill and the native people did not.
Benicio stiffened as he considered the implications of this truth. Cortés was not going to Tenochtitlan to free prisoners or negotiate treaties. He meant to invade the capital city and seize it. That was why he walked with such arrogance, such certainty of triumph. If the Mexica soldiers did not fight to kill, then Cortés was sure to defeat them. He knew that he could not lose. In a sense, he had already won.
And Benicio and the rest of his men were just pawns, unaware of the bloody errand that lay ahead. They were no longer simple traders, nor were they explorers in search of treasure. They were warriors now, merciless, bloodstained invaders whose souls were quickly passing beyond salvation.
They were conquistadors.
‘Greetings, Benicio.’ Benicio jumped at the sound of his name. The small tomato that he had taken into his hand went flying and was captured in the air by a man with a scar so prominent and ugly that Benicio could have recognised him from a league away.
‘Rogelio.’
‘You look as though you have just seen a ghost.’ said Rogelio, popping the tomato into his mouth.
‘I have,’ said Benicio. ‘The ghost of the future.’
Benicio noticed that Rogelio leaned upon a cane. ‘Ah, that ghost,’ said Rogelio. ‘He is ugly indeed.’
Benicio frowned. ‘Speak plainly, or leave.’
‘I have merely observed that you are without your lovely Totonac assassin these many days.’
Benicio gripped the hilt of his dagger, searching Rogelio’s expression. ‘If you know her whereabouts, tell me now, or I shall plunge this blade directly into that festering wound in your thigh.’
‘Peace!’ shouted Rogelio, dragging his lame leg backwards. ‘Do you think that if I knew her whereabouts I would be speaking with you?’
‘Well, I have not seen her since we camped upon the hilltop,’ Benicio admitted.
‘It is as I feared,’ said Rogelio. He reached beneath his jerkin to produce Luisa’s letter. ‘Here, take it.’
Benicio stared at the small, ragged envelope as if it might bite him.
‘Take it, man,’ repeated Rogelio.
Sheathing his dagger, Benicio reached for the letter and took it. He placed it quickly beneath his own jerkin and stared at Rogelio in suspicion. ‘Why do you give it to me now, after withholding it for so long?’
‘When you read it, you will understand.’
‘You have read the letter yourself?’
‘Of course I have.’
‘You are the lowest worm on the ugliest rat in Hell.’
‘Read the letter, Benicio, and you will see why I am certain that we shall yet be partners. I know exactly where the treasure of Tenochtitlan is hidden.’ Rogelio stared down at his useless leg. ‘If I return to Spain with enough gold, it will not matter that I am lame.’
‘And what of your soul?’ asked Benicio.
‘My soul?’ Rogelio asked, laughing. ‘I left it upon the cobblestones of Plaza del Triunfo, a lifetime ago.’
‘Indeed you did.’
‘Benicio, do you not realise? So did you.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Benicio could not bring himself to open the third letter. Not that morning, standing beside the tomato stall, nor that afternoon in the quiet pine forest outside of Tlaxcala. Nor even that evening, sitting by the small fire inside the house where he and several other Spanish soldiers had been quartered. He stared into the firelight, remembering Luisa’s face, but unable to bring himself to read her script.
Even the next day, as Cortés’s army, enlarged by six thousand Tlaxcalan warriors, set out for the Mexica tributary city of Cholula, Benicio couldn’t bring himself to open it. It was as if, in all his worry over Tula, he had forgotten his responsibility and the promise he had made. Now God was reminding him of it again.
There was a distinct possibility that the letter contained news of Luisa’s wedding. Perhaps even the birth of her first child.
The other possibility was that she had written him to announce that her engagement to Armando had been terminated and that she remained his doting maid, ever true.
If the second possibility, then Benicio’s duty did not change, it only increased in urgency. He needed to get himself to Tenochtitlan and find the gold, though he admitted that without Tula, he had no idea where to look.
It was as if the second letter contained the power of Pandora’s box. By opening it, Benicio would release that dreadful power into his life. No, he would wait until the right moment to read the story of his fate.
* * *
The next day, he marched with the Spanish-Totonac-Tlaxcalan army into the city of Cholula, the second holiest city in the Mexican Empire. Cortés had ordered the Spanish soldiers to appear unimpressed by the things they encountered. ‘Do not reveal your wonder,’ he urged the men. ‘We must comport ourselves as though we already rule here.’
Benicio found indifference particularly difficult to project as he stared up at the limewashed stone temples, which rose around them like snowy volcanoes. There were hundreds of them, all glowing white in the blinding sunshine of the high country. Atop them, Benicio watched the black-robed priests dance like shadows against the clouds of white incense smoke rising to touch the heavens.
If Tlaxcala had been a church, then Cholula was surely a cathedral. Its clean stone streets were lined with blossoming trees and urns of flowering plants decorated its many parks and gardens. Large stone aqueducts brought water to the city and channelled it through a series of beautiful fountains whose overflow fed an ingenious ditch system that flushed waste out.
In addition to the innumerable temples and holy halls, there were sprawling markets offering a greater variety of goods than Benicio had seen anywhere on the earth. Amaranth and sage vendors took their places next to the ubiquitous maize merchants, along with men selling every kind of flower and every type of fruit. Wood, flint, obsidian and copper vendors proudly spread their wares and sellers of amber, jade and salt smirked at their own prosperity. There were also schools, tlachtli courts, stores, hospitals and thousands upon thousands of stone houses, all with immaculately tended gardens.
As he marched through the mesmerising streets, Benicio thought of Gonzalo Guerrero, the Spaniard who had been stranded in this strange land and had chosen to stay. Surely he had beheld this elegant city, or cities like it, and had become enamoured of the rich civilisation that thrived herein. Benicio wondered briefly if, in a different life, he would have done the same.
* * *
Benicio and the other Spaniards had been quartered in a large gathering hall and provided with daily food rations. Many of the tired, wounded Totonac soldiers were allowed to return home, replaced by Tlaxcalan warriors ready to reap their revenge on their Mexica enemies. Meanwhile Cortés, Malinali and the other leaders spent long hours in negotiation with the Cholulan lords, presumably winning them to the Spanish cause.
But Benicio sensed a trap.
Each day, their rations grew sparser, though the conquistadors hardly noticed. They were too busy ravishing the women that the Tlaxcalans had given them to solidify their truce. Now every single Spanish soldier enjoyed the spoils of Cortés’s ongoing conquest and they cheered him for it.
But Benicio did not cheer. He cringed as he watched the Spaniards fight over the Tlaxcalan women, grabbing their braids and pulling their fine skirts. It was not long before the men were stealing off with their prizes into dark hallways and hidden corridors, where they despoiled the young women before Cholula’s sacred gods.
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