A Signal Victory

by David Stacton

  It was used only once a year, but they could not do without it. Once the Spanish had marched through it, to find even the ruins of this world a little too big for them. Now they were back, under the Montejo, the younger one, for like their own incomprehensible god, the Christians seemed to have three persons.

  The books of Chilam Balam stated that eventually white-skinned saviour gods would appear from the sea, to impose a new age. But no one wants a saviour to appear, for his appearance would disturb the established order. What is wanted is only the hope that one will appear, which allows the established order to go on undisturbed and at the same time gives it something to wait for.

  Besides, these men were not gods, and though the people might not recognize that at once, the priests had, instantly.

  Now they had seized the city with two hundred men, defended it with cannon, and turned its most sacred shrines into a bivouac and a stable for their horses. They had subdivided the land among themselves, though it was not theirs, announced the levying of taxes, and informed the natives that though they were not slaves, still, each Spaniard owned 3,000 of them. Their new masters were the King of Spain and God.

  The natives had heard of both and accepted neither. Even the local lord, Nacon Cupul, who had helped the Spanish for his own reasons, now for the same reasons helped them less. It was time to put the invaders in their place. They were ignorant and overweaning. “We already have kings,” Nacon Cupul told them, when the requerimiento was read to him, and with some sarcasm, “O noble lords,” and named lords far nobler than they, the Kings of Sotuta, of the Pechs, the Chels. Had these invaders never heard of the Itza?

  They had not, but Nacon Cupul could do nothing about it for the moment except wait, pretend obedience, and follow his own plans. The Xiu might follow the invader, for their own advantage, but few men would follow the Xiu, given the chance to do otherwise. The Spanish had one weakness. In their arrogance they took the word for the deed. They thought men loyal because they said they were. There might be some future advantage in that.

  But the priests knew the Spanish could not be put in their place because, quite clearly, they had none. They could only be destroyed. And a priest can go anywhere. Guerrero soon found that he had a large force gathering, and many of the detachments appeared led by priests who knew how, and were armed, to fight. For the priests were the brains of the country. They married, they had children, they were interrelated with everybody of secular importance, and though they knew how to worship, they also knew when to kill.

  There are advantages, it seems, to a theocracy, if everyone in it is a theocrat. Of his younger son he had heard nothing. He might be dead, but if he was, it was because, like all novices, he had taken the forms for the fact. His superiors clearly intended to keep instead the fact of the forms.

  For the moment they allowed Davila to advance.

  He did so, with amazing foolishness, but their plans almost went wrong at Chable. The caciques at Chable could not hide their contempt, even though their part in the plot was to reassure Davila of their loyalty. Davila seemed to hesitate. It was an anxious moment. But then, as they had hoped he would, he came on, and crossed the border into Cochuah. His native auxiliaries and their lords seemed restive, but he could not very well put them in chains. For one thing he did not have enough chains. For another, it would slow his march.

  The first resistance to the Spanish was organized at Cochuah, behind a series of woven and disguised screens, called albarrada, which lined the road and were thick with warriors. Guerrero did not seriously expect to stop the Spanish there, but he did hope to disrupt them, and to give the Maya with them a chance to escape.

  The albarrada was discovered by the advance party, and Davila soon came up to inspect for himself. He then tried to lead his men around the barrier, in order to attack it from the rear.

  It was Guerrero’s first sight of this particular leader of the enemy. He stared out pitilessly, and found that he felt nothing at all. He had seen Spaniards before. Clearly Davila was nervous. It would be a pleasure to tease such a man until he fell apart. It was a thought his visible arrogance evoked and deserved.

  He gave orders for the Maya to put up a defence, but fall rapidly back. At the first volley of arrows, the Maya with the Spanish deserted into the forest, with a rustle of foliage and feathers, and the little party was left alone out there, confused by the absence of a path. The Spanish had crossbows. That meant some of his own troops were killed. But three of the Spaniards were wounded.

  Guerrilla warfare was something at which Guerrero was astute. He told his men to fall back, and had already had the pueblo behind the albarrada gutted and its wells filled with earth and stones. It would make a good place for Davila to spend the night and think things over. The town itself, once the Spanish were in its ruins, he surrounded with warriors instructed to make their presence known, but not to attack.

  Next morning, when Davila marched forward, two wounded men were strapped to the horses. That meant that the third had died in the night. It was at least a beginning.

  The second albarrada was a well-concealed ambush, in the form of a hidden maze, whose perfectly camouflaged walls allowed the maximum of cross-fire. Davila could be seen advancing to the attack, towards that outer and poorly hidden stockade which was to act as a lure.

  He was seen talking to the cacique of Uaymil, who had deserted him the day before, but had been hauled back by the two Spanish whom he had been unfortunate enough to stumble across in his flight.

  He knew about the ambush of course, wanted to save his life, and was now obviously doing it. Guerrero had hoped the man dead, and if they won, he would be, but for the time being Davila deflected his troops, and circled around the maze, making camp in the town on the other side.

  It was a setback, but Guerrero was not unduly worried. There are always traitors, and he had allowed for that. He called off his men and fell back on his third plan, which was to force the Spanish to attack. Indeed they would have no choice but to do so, for they had had no supplies for days, and must be hungry. He had also had his spies tell Davila that the Maya had risen to arms everywhere behind them. Therefore they would have to come on.

  This they were forced to do, the next day, before the strong palisades and defences he had erected in front of Hoya.

  Guerrero watched. The Spaniards came on again and again, Davila well in front. But by afternoon eleven of them had been wounded, and the others were worn out. To their evident humiliation they were forced to turn back. They now had only eleven able men and three horses. Guerrero ordered his men to shoot one of the horses, and it fell belly up, pawing the air and screaming.

  He would have sent the Maya out to destroy them, but he did not dare. Maya wars consisted of one battle and then flight or loot. It was not that they were cowards, but that that was their method of fighting. If the Spaniards rallied, anything might happen.

  Instead he planned to pick off the invaders slowly, as they had to retreat. But the Maya had other plans. They streamed out over the barricades and across the field, in the direction the Spaniards had taken, the priests well out in front, with a great roaring and yelling.

  Guerrero shrugged. Perhaps it was better that way.

  Unfortunately Davila had managed to make his retreat. Knowing he had no chance of getting through, he had decided to fall back on Villa Real, by secret or little known paths, and as a reward to the cacique who had told him of the hidden maze, threatened him with torture unless he showed him where such paths were.

  The cacique showed him. To make sure of that, Davila kept him bound, guessing correctly he was not the man to lose his own life, by leading them into another ambush. There was also a captive merchant in the company, and merchants do what is expedient. In the end it was the merchant who got them through.

  Darkness was falling. It was not until next morning that search parties managed to find Davila.

  The Spanish floundered in swamps, lost another horse, cut their way through the
brush, and had to scramble over huge trees overturned by a hurricane. The jungle was dense. If that hampered the Spanish, it also prevented the Indians from reaching them. They could only follow, loudly challenging them to fight.

  And then, when at last an advance party did get through to them, because the Spanish were drawn up in a clearing, the Indians seemed uncertain and would not fight. Davila had prepared an ambush of his own. Riders on the two remaining horses rushed out of cover and broke up the Indians. They were still afraid of horses.

  Exasperated, Guerrero drew a bow, and shot the treacherous cacique. But that was all he could do. He was forced to flee himself. Getting well ahead, he drew up a blockade across the route he thought Davila would take. Davila avoided it, and marched on the Chable. There he had a stroke of luck. He came up from the wrong side, and stumbled on the hiding-place of the women and children. Once he had taken them hostage, there was nothing the inhabitants of Chable would do to halt him.

  Davila was in no position to fight. All his men were wounded, and most of them hungry. Somehow he evaded any contact, and reached Lake Bacalar.

  There he was safe, for he could seize canoes and float back to Villa Real de Chetumal. There was nothing Guerrero could do about it.

  It turned out there was nothing he had to do.

  As soon as he had returned, Davila held a solemn mass in the church he had improvised, but he had only to look round that room, to see what his position was. The country was in arms against him. It was only a matter of time before the Indians marched against Villa Real. And he could not defend it. Eleven of the fifty soldiers with whom he had left Campeche were dead. So were eight of the thirteen horses. There was no food, and none of them knew how to grow any. They made plantings inside the town, but nothing would grow fast enough, and very little would grow at all. Of the forty men left to him, eleven were maimed.

  And something else had happened, so unbelievable that at first he did not even notice it. The Maya were not afraid of him any more. That he was, after all, Spanish, seemed to mean nothing to them.

  It made him almost afraid himself.

  For two months he temporized. He had no way of knowing what had happened to Montejo. He could not go inland, and he could not expect a ship, unless he sent for one. Again he tried to get a message through.

  It would take a month to get any answer, given there were anyone on the west coast left to answer. It was not a pleasant month.

  Guerrero had arrived in the region. He kept well out of sight, advised, and watched. It was easy enough to intercept the messenger, who had never intended to go in the first place. He was the cacique of Tapaen, and though Davila held his son as hostage, he had no intention of complying. He merely went home. The month went on. Davila must be almost demented by now. He seized the cacique and his nobles and tortured all of them, stringing them up over a beam and burning their feet and armpits. Then it came out. No messenger had been sent. It was something it was a pleasure to confess to.

  Davila tried again, and again had to wait a month.

  Guerrero had all the canoes around Chetumal, whether belonging to Davila or the Indians, burnt. He was well content to wait.

  Davila was starving. He had to send out a foraging party. The Indians managed to kill two of them, before Davila could make a covering sortie from Villa Real.

  That reduced their numbers to thirty-eight, which was not many. Two of those developed scurvy, and the eleven wounded found their wounds were slow to heal.

  There was no word from Montejo, perhaps there was no Montejo to send word, and the Indians were closing in. There was nothing else to do but flee. Davila sent out small parties to seize all the canoes they could find.

  Guerrero was away in the interior, but the Indians now that they were almost free of their tormentors, began to smart, particularly the nobles, under the impertinence they had suffered. It was a word Europe had not yet invented, for it is a sin that occurs only when barbarians manage to make their way into an ancient and established society, so rich in accepted answers, that it does not take kindly to the questions of the misinformed. As yet Europe had no such society. But that they had been forced to grovel before such a pigmy conqueror, now that they had the strength to straighten up, filled the caciques with an almost Byzantine rage, now that there were few enough of the enemy for them to punish.

  They planned to annihilate Villa Real with their full host. That night the signal fires leaped up on every available hillock or pile of masonry, along the shore and far inland.

  Davila knew what that meant. It was too late now to get any message to Montejo. He had the scorched but living bodies of the hostage caciques to show for that, and nothing more. He and the able men worked frantically through the night. The last thing they did was to dismantle their crosses and the church.

  They did not even dare to wait for dawn, but set out at once. Some of the canoes they lashed together, to carry the horses. They had with them some Indian prisoners to act as guides, and these they shackled to the gunwales, for the sake of security, and forced them to paddle. In all there were thirty-two canoes.

  As they shoved off from the jetty, the Indians were already streaming into the town, to find nothing but the smarting and hobbled caciques, and ruins everywhere.

  Then, with a whoop, the canoes were sighted. The Indians piled into their own boats, and paddled after them down the bay. But by some miracle, and Davila was in such extremity that he believed it to be one, the pursuers did not catch up, and when night fell, were forced to turn back.

  The Maya were cheated of revenge, but otherwise not displeased. Their countryside was in ruins, but at least the Spanish were at last gone. And they knew that coast and that ocean. Davila would die out there, somewhere, under the sun, with cracked lips, at sea. It was appropriate that he should, for death there was a protracted agony.

  They had got rid of one enemy. But this time they meant to fight to the end. It was time now to uproot the others from Chichen Itza. Uproot them they did.

  XXV

  Guerrero was everywhere. He wanted to exult. But something had gone wrong with him. Perhaps he was too old to feel the passions any more. He could not exult. He could only feel a determined relief.

  Though he arrived there too late to see Montejo driven out, he had complete reports of what had happened, and hoped that it had been a shock to Montejo.

  For in 1533 Montejo the Elder felt he had every reason to be pleased with himself. He was quite sure that he held all northern Yucatan. Ceh Pech, Ah Kin Chel, Ecab, Chikinchel, the Xiu at Mani, Sotuta, the Taxes, Chakan and Hocba-Homun had all sworn loyalty.

  He could safely turn his attention now to securing that of his own men, by one means or another. There being no gold for them in Yucatan, the means were chiefly other. He divided out the Maya lands, saddled the clergy on everyone, and sent for imported Negroes, since the Indians could not be induced to work.

  The Indians were impressed. They had never seen black men before. The Negroes were also impressed. When they could they deserted to the native side. It suited them better.

  He pleased no one but the clergy, who baptized thousands, desecrated a few more temples every day, and made enemies everywhere. Yet they were not bad men. They were not even bigots. It was just that they were Christians, and so did not understand.

  The natives were quite willing to be baptized. They were not willing to see their temples destroyed. All the good things of this world they bribed from the gods, and now these strangers were cutting them off from the source of supply. Food was becoming more sparse. Baptism was all very well, it pleased the foreigner and seemed harmless, but these new priests could not tell them when to plant their crops.

  Their own priests moved quietly everywhere.

  The Christians explained everything. The gods had gone into hiding. They were now something called saints.

  Try as they could, the Maya had not yet been forced to see the resemblance. Their own priests told them differently.

 
One by one, the provinces rose, and now it seemed only Mani was loyal. But Montejo did not trust the Xiu. Nobody in all their history ever had, and with excellent reason, for they were not to be trusted. Yet there was an irony in that. For in that peninsula only the Xiu saw the Spanish could not be beaten, even though they might seem beaten for a time. The Xiu remained loyal.

  Montejo took heart. But as soon as he did so, he had another problem on his hands. Lerma, the merchant who financed his expeditions, wanted to be paid back, while there was still time. He would take his payment in slaves.

  That was the one thing Montejo did not dare to give him. Not that he either disapproved or approved of slavery itself. Slavery was a fact, and one never questioned facts. But unfortunately Charles V had forbidden the taking of slaves. If Montejo gave Lerma the permission, or the assistance he wanted, or even permission to act for himself, that transgression would give his enemies in New Spain the fulcrum they needed to swing him out of office. Yucatan was a poor province, but they could not help but suspect he wanted it for some reason, and besides, he was a rich man. Once he was a private citizen back in Mexico, they could soon devise some means to strip him of his wealth.

  On the other hand, he owed Lerma a great deal, and might need, moreover, his continued support. He had made him Treasurer of Yucatan, but since there was no Treasury but the funds he put into it, that could scarcely satisfy Lerma.

  There was one way out. Charles V might be a Christian gentleman of the best intentions, but he was also a realist, and to a realist no law could be considered useful unless it had a loophole. It had a loophole. Though his subjects might not take slaves, they were permitted, if they had to, to resell such slaves as the Indians had taken for themselves, and in the confusion of a raid, who could tell which was which? Though Montejo could neither spare the men nor run the risk of participating in such raids himself, he could at least suggest, though of course not openly, that if Lerma wished to make such raids, he would not interfere.