But the seeds of Aztec destruction did not begin with the landing of Cortes, but hundreds of years before in a city, a time, and a place when Aztecs were nomadic barbarians who wore animal skins and ate meat raw. When Montezuma saw the picture writing he was deeply disturbed. He was fifty-two years old at the time Cortes arrived, and the news of the landing brought home to him a decade of growing fear and suspicion and to the indios at large the culmination of several hundred years of myth—the return of Quetzalcóatl, the Plumed Serpent.
Ay, poor Montezuma. He was a victim of his own fears—especially when his sister told him of her death dream in which she saw the return of a legend. The legend, of course, was that of the Plumed Serpent. Quetzalcóatl's story had as much love, murder, betrayal, and incest to have been written by Sophocles to entertain the ancient Greeks.
Quetzalcóatl was born in a One-Reed year. It was to become the most momentous date in indio history. He presided over Tula, the fabled Toltec city of gold and pleasure I visited in my dream. A great ruler, he erected wondrous temples and had artisans create sculptures, pottery, word-picture books, and other works of art that glorified the city. He was also a humane king who banned human sacrifice and permitted only the sacrifice of snakes and butterflies.
Those who favored human sacrifice feared that Quetzalcóatl was offending the gods by not giving them blood. They plotted his destruction, enlisting the help of three evil magicians. The evil magicians tricked Quetzalcóatl into becoming drunk on octli, the drink of the gods, now called pulque. In his drunken state he sent for his beautiful sister. He later awoke to find his sister naked beside him and realized he had bedded with her as he would a wife.
In pain and horror over his sin, Quetzalcóatl fled the golden city, setting sail upon the Eastern Sea with some of his followers on a raft made of intertwined snakes. Later he rose into the sky, becoming the Lord of the Dawn House, turning into the planet the Spaniards call Venus. He was a fiery eye in the sky, watching over the lands of the indios, waiting for the day when he would return to reclaim his kingdom. It was written that he would return in a One-Reed year.
For a decade before the arrival of the Spaniards, ominous signs had struck fear in the hearts of the indios as the One-Reed year approached—a fiery comet had appeared in the sky, earthquakes shook the land, and the mighty volcano Popocatépetl, the Smoking Mountain, had spit fire from the bowels of the underworld.
One of the most frightening events was a violent upheaval of the waters of Lake Texcoco, the lake that surrounds Tenochtitlan. Without warning or excessive rain, the waters of the lake suddenly swelled up as if lifted by a giant hand and overflowed into the island city, sweeping away many buildings.
Fire followed flood as one of the turrets of Tenochtitlan's great temple of Huitzilopochtli suddenly burst aflame without apparent cause and burned in defiance of all attempts to put it out.
Three comets were seen streaking across the night sky. Then, not long before the coming of the Spanish on the Eastern Sea, a strange golden light broke forth in the east. It glowed like a midnight sun, rising in the same pyramidal shape of an Aztec temple. The scribes recorded that fires burned so within it that it seemed "thickly powered with stars." Fray Antonio told me that it was the opinion of Church scholars that this event was a volcanic eruption, but some of the highest and most violent volcanoes in the world stood above the Valley of Mexico and one would think that the Aztecs would know the difference between volcanic eruption and heavenly fire.
At the same time of the golden pyramid of the night, low voices and doleful wailing was heard, as if to announce some strange, mysterious calamity.
Montezuma was terrified of the apparitions in the heavens and of his sister's death dream. When Cortes landed, a One-Reed year was coming around on the calendar wheel. Montezuma assumed that Quetzalcóatl had returned to claim his kingdom. Of course by now Quetzalcóatl's Tula was an abandoned city of ghostly stone temples, having been destroyed by invading barbarian armies, the Aztecs among them, hundreds of years before; but Montezuma thought he could pay tribute to Quetzalcóatl in goods and human hearts for the way the Aztecs had turned upon and devoured Tula.
Rather than driving the new arrivals into the sea with his overwhelming forces, gripped by fear and superstition, Montezuma sent an ambassador to salute Cortes and bring him gifts—while forbidding him to come to Tenochtitlan.
Among the gifts, Montezuma returned a Spanish helmet Cortes had sent to him. The helmet was overflowing with gold. There were also two great circular disks of gold and silver, as large as carriage wheels. The sight of golden gifts rather than force of arms did not pacify Cortes and his men; instead, it brought their greed to a boiling point.
But there was a great threat between them and the treasures of the Aztecs. The Spaniards realized that they were not dealing with a tribal chieftain but the monarch of a great nation, in size and population larger than most European countries. While the Spanish had superiority of weapons—the indio arrows and lances bounced off their armor—they were outnumbered a thousand to one. Any concerted attack by the Aztecs would succeed by sheer force of numbers.
The courage of his men wavered and Cortes, desperate that Velasquez would not get his prize, did the act of a man desperate for gold and glory—he burned his ships.
Now his men had only two choices—to fight or die. A handful of sailors and soldiers, around six hundred in all, found themselves stranded on the beach with their back to the water. To survive they had to defeat the army of an empire composed of millions of people.
One might fault Cortes on many levels. He was a womanizer, a slave master, a ruthless opponent, a man without respect for authority. But here was an act of daring and courage and brilliance that won a kingdom. To burn one's ships, to make him and his men cornered rats facing odds of a thousand to one, to have evaded the fate of an ordinary man, an ordinary leader who would have sent sail for reinforcements... this was the act of a muy hombre, very much man, worthy of Alexander the Great at Tyre, Julius Caesar at Munda, Hannibal crossing the Alps with elephants!
Another clever tactic was to work on the hatred the other indios had for the Aztecs to whom they paid tribute.
Using Doña Marina as his interpreter and mentor, Cortes convinced indio states that had been paying the Aztecs tribute in goods and sacrifice victims to ally themselves with him. The Aztec legions were dreaded much as the Roman legions and those of Genghis Khan, which had inspired fear into conquered people who were forced to pay tribute.
The strategy was successful. When Cortes marched upon Tenochtitlan, along with his men came indios numbering in the tens of thousands, the armies of Totonac, Tlaxcalans, and other nations anxious to use the Spanish to revenge countless aggressions by the domineering Aztecs.
Even with indio allies, the Aztecs were still the supreme fighting force in the New World. Without the quirk of fate that the indios believed that Cortes's arrival on the Eastern seashore fulfilled the Quetzalcóatl legend, Montezuma would have fielded an army that would have fallen upon the puny Spanish forces and its indio armies, sending the indios in terror from the dreaded Jaguar and Eagle Knights, who'd sworn to never retreat in battle. Montezuma's indecision cost him first his kingdom and then his life. He let the Spanish into his city without a fight.
One of the conquistadors, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, wrote a history of the conquest before my lifetime. A manuscript of it has circulated widely among the clerics of New Spain, and Fray Antonio had me read it so that I would learn the true story of how the Spanish had come to New Spain. Diaz's description of the city was the final fulfillment of the dream of Cortes and his men that he could find a fabled kingdom as had the hero of Amadis of Gaul. Diaz wrote that when the men saw Tenochtitlan for the first time, they realized that they had arrived at a golden city:
When we saw so many cities and villages built in the waters of the lake and other large towns on dry land, and that straight, level causeway leading into Mexico City, we were amazed and we
said that it was like the enchanted things related in the book of Amadis because of the huge towers, temples, and buildings rising from the water and all of masonry. And some of the soldiers even asked whether the things we saw were not a dream.
After permitting the Spanish to enter his city, Montezuma, held prisoner in his palace by his "guests," tried to address his people. While many fell to the ground in awe of his august presence, some began to taunt him as a man who had been turned into a woman by the white men—that he was only fit to suckle babies and knead maize! Rocks and arrows loosened from the crowd and Montezuma fell.
He was as mortally wounded in soul as in body for the way his people turned on him. He knew he had failed them. The Spanish tried to treat his wounds but he tore off the bandages. He refused to survive his disgrace. Dying, he rejected baptism into the Christian faith, telling a priest kneeling at his side, "I have but a few moments to live and will not at this hour desert the faith of my fathers."
Catastrophic disasters erupted in the wake of the Spanish conquest. First came the destruction of the fabric of indio society as almost everything they had ever known and worshipped was trampled by the conquerors. It wasn't just stone edifices that were torn asunder, but the very fabric of society—just as birth and marriage and death revolve around a Christian Church, so was almost every aspect of the indio's life caught up in the priests and temples of their faith. Those temples were torn down and ones of the new faith erected, administered by priests who spoke a strange language.
The second great catastrophe was the plagues that descended upon the indios in the footsteps of the Spaniards. Terrible epidemics of diseases that caused the indios' flesh to boil and insides to wither was the vengeful gift of the Spanish god. The Christian priests said that the diseases that struck down nine out of every ten indios in New Spain within a few generations of the conquest were fire and brimstone from God, punishing indios for their heathen ways.
The third disaster was greed. The Spanish king divided the most favorable parts of New Spain into feudal domains called encomiendas: grants of tribute from indios to each of the conquistadors.
Somewhere along the twisted road in which the entire structure of their society was destroyed, the indios lost their image of themselves as a great and mighty people.
Now I saw people who had once built dazzling cities and perfected science and medicine sitting with dull eyes in front of thatched huts, scratching the dirt with sticks.
SIXTY-SEVEN
Mateo became convinced that the naualli was not the leader of the Jaguar cult. "We have been watching him for weeks. If he was up to something, we would know it by now."
I did not agree. Mateo was prejudiced against investigating the naualli because he was tired and bored of being in the back country. I slowly learned more about what had happened to bring him within the grasp of the king's law. Jose confided that Mateo was not caught selling profano libros as the members of the acting troupe had been. Rather, Mateo's difficulties arose from gambling. In a heated moment he had accused a young man of cheating at cards. Swords were drawn and a moment later the young man's life poured out onto the cantina floor. While there was an official ban against dueling, it was commonly ignored; but in this case the dead man was the nephew of a member of the Royal Audiencia, the High Court that resided in the City of Mexico but had power over all of New Spain.
Jose told me that Mateo ran a risk of the gallows if he showed his face in the capital.
As for the naualli, I had taken a great dislike to him. He had nearly killed me once, and I had been humiliated by the pig incident. I also did not want to fail for another good reason: I did not know how I would be treated by Don Julio if I failed. Would he ship me off to the northern mines? The hell of the Filipinas? Or simply have me hanged and my head cut off afterward and impaled on a city gate as a warning to others?
Pondering the undesirable fates I was being swept toward, I nearly stumbled into the young girl I had previously seen with the two men who followed the naualli into the jungle. She had been kneeling picking berries and I nearly fell over her.
"Perdón," I said.
She did not reply but got up with her basket of berries and slowly walked into the dense forest. As she disappeared in the bushes, she looked back, with an inviting expression.
India women were washing clothes along the rocky riverbank and two men were smoking pipes and playing a dice game outside a hut. No one seemed to be paying any attention to me. Pretending to be just sauntering about, I moseyed into the bushes.
She followed the riverbank for ten minutes. When I caught up with her, she was sitting on a large boulder with her feet in the water.
I sat down on another boulder, kicked off my sandals, and cooled my own feet in the river.
"My name is Cristo."
"I am Maria."
I could have guessed that. Maria was the most common Christian name for females among the indias because it was a name they heard when they went to church. She was perhaps a couple of years younger than me, fifteen or sixteen. She struck me as a little unhappy.
"You don't look happy, muchacha." She was too old to be called muchacha and I was too young to be calling her that, but being around a pretty young woman caused me to inflate into an hombre macho... at least in my own eyes.
"I'm getting married in a few days," she said.
"Eh, that's a time to celebrate. Don't you like the man you will marry?"
She shrugged. "He's neither good nor bad. He will provide for me. That is not what is making me unhappy. It is that my brother and uncle are such ugly men. I am not lucky like some of the other girls in the village who have handsome men in the family."
That brought up my eyebrows. "What do you care about your uncle and brother? You will not be marrying them."
"Of course not. But my father is dead and I will be making ahuilnéma with them."
I nearly fell off of the boulder. "What? You will be having ahuilnéma with your own uncle and brother?"
"Sí. They follow the old ways."
"I know of no Aztec ways that permit incest," I said hotly. Such an act would be considered sacrilegious among the Aztecs.
"We are not Mexica. Our tribe is older than the one you call Aztec. And here in this village, our elders make us practice the old customs."
"What old custom is this that you would bed your uncle and brother?"
"I will not bed both of them. Because I have no father, the act must be done by a male relative. The elders will decide whether it will be done by my uncle or brother before the wedding ceremony."
"Dios mio, you will bed your uncle or brother after the wedding? When will you lay with your husband?"
"Not until the next night. You do not have this custom among your people?"
"Of course not; it's blasphemous. If the priests found out about it, the men of your village would be severely punished. Have you ever heard of the Holy Office of the Inquisition?"
She shook her head. "We have no priest. To attend the Christian Church, we must walk for nearly two hours."
"This custom from the old ways, what is the purpose of it?"
"To ensure that our marriage does not offend the gods. The gods enjoy virgins, that is why maidens are sacrificed to them. If my husband bedded with a virgin, our marriage would be offensive to the gods and they might do bad things to us."
In the minds of people in a small, isolated village where it seemed that the spirits and gods of old were all around them, the idea of deflowering a young woman before she had ahuilnéma with her husband was not illogical.
"From your face I can see that you do not like our custom," she said.
I thought it was barbaric but did not want to offend the girl who had to live with the practice. "What do you think of bedding your uncle or brother?"
"They are both ugly. There are other men in the village I wouldn't mind making ahuilnéma with, but not those two." She splashed water with her feet. "I wouldn't mind making ahuilnéma with you."
Ayyo. Now this was a custom I understood.
We found a soft spot on the grass and took off our clothes. Our bodies were both young and supple. I was too eager and my virile juice flowed before I was ready, but she carefully caressed my tepúli and it grew again. And again.
After we had satisfied our desires for the time being, I asked her more questions about the "old ways" practiced in the village. I knew her male relatives were consorting with the naualli. Fearing I would frighten her, I let her talk about the old ways in general before leading her to the subject of sacrifices.
"There is a pyramid," she said, "put there by the gods long before there were any people in this valley. When the naualli comes, the men of the village go there and give blood in the old way."
"How do they give blood?" I asked, keeping my tone casual.
"They cut their arms and legs and sometimes their tepúli. Once a year they take blood from another. This year it was a dwarf."
Keeping the excitement out of my voice, I asked, "When did they sacrifice the dwarf?"
"Last night."
Dios madre! I had been right about the dwarf. With some gentle persuasion, I convinced her to show me this temple where the dwarf had been sacrificed.
She led me deep into the tropical forest. The farther we went, the more dense the vegetation became. Most of the ancient monuments of the indios were already swallowed by jungle throughout New Spain. One way the Spanish priests knew that a temple was still being used was if it had been cleared of the jungle growth.
We had walked a half an hour when she stopped and pointed. "Over there, another few hundred paces. I'm not going any farther."
She ran back the way we had come. I did not blame her. It was late afternoon, nearly twilight, with the sky dark from heavy black rain clouds. Rain would be falling soon and complete darkness on its heels. I had no more desire than she to be out in the jungle after the fall of night.
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