Aztec Autumn

by Gary Jennings

  * * *

  To make memorable my taking leave of the City of Mexíco, I had conceived a veritably temptestuous parting salute. Though I had already twice caused the Spaniards some alarm and agitation, that furor subsided after several days in which no more disturbances occurred. Only an occasional, really suspicious-looking person on the street was being stopped and searched or stripped, and only in the precincts of the Traza. I had to assume that I was still under the watchful eye of a Cathedral spy at all times, but I made sure that he never saw me do anything that would reward his vigilance.

  When I told Citláli what I had in mind, she laughed approvingly, even while she shivered with mixed emotions of trepidation and gleeful anticipation—and enthusiastically agreed to assist me. So, as I set about preparing fully four of the clay balls, each as big as the ball used in a tlachtli game, each tightly packed with pólvora, I instructed her in all the details of my plan.

  “The last time,” I said, “I managed only to put a black smudge on the outside of the Spanish soldiers’ building, and in the process slew a passing tamémi. This time, I wish to explode the pólvora inside a building—I am confident that it will cause great destruction—and not to kill any innocents. Well, admittedly, there are always several maátime about the place, selling their favors to the soldiers, but I do not regard such women as innocents.”

  “Do you mean that same barracks building in the Traza?”

  “No. The street there is forever crowded with passersby. But I know of one place in which and around which there are never any persons but Spaniards. And the madtime. You will take the pólvora balls in there for me. The military school and stronghold called the Castillo, high on Grasshopper Hill.”

  Citláli exclaimed, “I am to carry these death-dealing objects inside? Inside a building full of soldiers, surrounded by soldiers?”

  “Its stockade is ringed about by oldest-of-old trees, and it is very loosely guarded. I recently spent a whole day prowling its environs, unobserved, peering from behind one after another of those trees, and I am satisfied that you can easily get into and out of the Castillo without any danger of harm or capture.”

  She said, “I should very much like to be satisfied of that, myself.”

  “The stockade gates are always wide open, and the cadetes, as the recruits are called, wander in and out. So do their soldier-teachers. So do ordinary Spaniards, those who bring food and supplies and such. So do the maátime. And the one lone armed guard at the gate simply lolls about, uncaring. He challenges no one, not even the whores. I suppose the Spaniards feel they can be lax about protecting such a place, because what person in his right mind would try to wreak damage inside a military garrison?”

  “Only I? Citláli the Brave and Foolhardy?” she said archly. “Please do assure me, Tenamáxtli, that I am doing this in my right mind.”

  “When I have explained everything,” I said, “you will see how practical is my plan. Now, I myself cannot get through that stockade gate without being challenged and doubtless arrested. But you can.”

  “I pretend to be a maatitl? Ayya, do I look that much like a slut?”

  “Hardly. You are far prettier than any of those. And you will be carrying a basket of fruit by its handle, and leading Ehécatl. Nothing could look more innocent than a young mother strolling through the greenwood with her child. If anyone does ask, you say that one of the maátime is your cousin, and you are bringing her a gift of fruit. Or that you hope to sell your fruit to the cadetes. That you need the money to support your obviously disabled child. I will teach you enough of the Spanish words for you to make those remarks. You will not be stopped. Then, once you are inside the Castillo, you simply set down your fruit basket and stroll out again. Set it near something combustible, if possible.”

  “A basket of fruit? These clay things do not much resemble fruit.”

  “Let me finish. Right now—you see?—into the quill-hole of this one of the balls I am inserting a thin poquíetl as long as my forearm. I will light it before you approach the stockade gate, and it will take a long, slow while to burn down and ignite the ball, by which time you and Ehécatl will be safely outside with me again. That one ball, when it bursts, will ignite the other three. All together, they should make a really spectacular explosion. Very well. When these have dried rock-hard and we are ready to go, I will place them in one of your elegant baskets, then cover them with fruits from the market.” I paused and said, half to myself, “Those ought to be coyacapúli fruits. And I must try to find some with worms—like me—inside them.”

  “What?” said Citláli, puzzled.

  “A private jest Pay it no mind. Coyacapúli fruits are light of weight, not to make the basket too heavy. Anyway, I shall be carrying it until we get to the Castillo. Well, then. On the first sunny day, we three will leave this house and amble casually westward across the island, I with the basket, you leading Ehécatl…”

  So that is what we did, a few days later, all of us dressed in immaculate white clothing and acting innocently carefree. To any onlooker we would have appeared to be only a happy family going off to enjoy an outdoor meal in the open air somewhere. And I assumed that there had to be an interested onlooker, some one of the Cathedral hirelings.

  Besides the basket, I was carrying my arcabuz beneath my mantle, its stock clamped under my free arm so it hung vertically. It forced me to walk a bit stiffly, but it was invisible. And I had loaded it beforehand, exactly as I had once seen it done—a good measure of pólvora and a cloth patch and a lead ball rammed down the tube, a chip of false-gold held by the cat’s-paw, the whole weapon awaiting only a pinch of pólvora on the little cazoleta pan to be ready to fling its lethal missile. I really had no notion of how to aim the thing, beyond vaguely pointing it But, if the arcabuz also worked, and if fortune favored me, my swift-flying ball of lead might actually strike and wound some Spanish soldier or cadete.

  If there was anyone following us, he was at least temporarily balked when, at the island’s edge, I beckoned to a ferryman and we got aboard his acáli. I had him pole us first southward, toward the flower gardens of Xochimilco—where even Spanish families sometimes go for a day’s outing—until I was sure no other acáli was pursuing us. Then I directed the ferryman to turn, and we landed at the mudflats bordering what was once the Chapultépec park. We climbed uphill, encountering no one, until the Castillo’s roof was in sight. Then we dodged from tree to tree, going ever closer, until we could see the gate and the numerous figures going in and out, or to and fro, or just idling about, and still no one raised any outcry. At last we came to the tremendously thick-trunked ahuéhuetl I had earlier chosen, no more than a hundred paces distant from the gate, and we crouched behind that.

  “It appears to be just another routine day at the Castillo,” I said, as I disencumbered myself of the arcabuz and laid it beside me. “No extra guards, no one looking particularly wary. So the more quickly we do this, the better. Are you and the child ready, Citláli?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice steady. “I did not tell you, Tenamáxtli, but last night we both went to a priest of the good goddess Tlazoltéotl, and I confessed all the misdeeds of our lifetimes. Including this one, if this is one.” She saw the expression on my face and hastily added, “Just in case anything should go wrong. So, yes, we are ready.”

  I had winced at Citláli’s mention of that goddess, because one does not usually invoke Filth Eater until one feels death is near—hence asks her to take and swallow all one’s sins, in order to go purged and clean to one’s afterlife. But, if it made Citláli feel better…

  “This poquíetl will go on emitting its trail of smoke and smell while it burns,” I said, as I used my lente and a stray sunbeam to light the paper that protruded slightly from the basket. “But there is a breeze up here today, so it will not be too noticeable. If anyone does smell it, he will doubtless think some cadetes have been practicing with their arcabuces. And I say again, the poquíetl will give you plenty of time to—”<
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  “Let me have it, then,” she said, “before I am overcome by nervousness or cowardice.” She took the basket’s handle and Ehécatl’s hand. “And give me a kiss, Tenamáxtli, for … for encouragement.”

  I would have done that anyway, and gladly, lovingly, without her asking. She hesitated, peering around the tree, only until she was sure no one was looking our way. Then she stepped from behind the trunk and, the child beside her, walked sedately, serenely out from the tree’s dense shade into the bright sunlight—as if they had just then come up the hill through the deep wood. I took my eyes off them only long enough to prime the arcabuz’s cazoleta with a pinch of pólvora and to click the cat’s-paw rearward, ready for firing. But when I looked again at the mother and child, what I saw was disconcerting.

  Many of the men outside the gate were glancing with smiles of approval at the handsome woman approaching them. There was nothing unnatural about that. But then their gaze dropped to the eyeless Ehécatl, and their smiles turned to expressions of disbelief and distaste. Their focused attention caught the attention, too, of the armed guard leaning against the gate. He stared at the approaching pair, then straightened from his slouch and moved to intercept them. This was a contingency that I should have foreseen and prepared for, but I had not, or I most certainly would have instructed Citláli to desist from our plan if she were challenged.

  Citláli stopped in front of him and they exchanged some words. I supposed that the guard said something like, “In God’s name, what kind of freak is this you have in tow?” But Citláli would not have understood that, nor been able to make coherent reply. What she was saying—or trying to say—I assumed was one of the remarks in which I had drilled hen that she was visiting a maátitl cousin, or that she was peddling fruit She could simply have set down her basket and stalked away, as if offended.

  Anyway, the guard, seeing this comely woman up close, appeared to lose interest in her malformed little companion. As well as I could tell from my hiding place, he grinned and uttered a command, gesturing ominously with his arcabuz, for Citláli let go the child’s hand and—to my astonishment—gave the basket to Ehécatl! That small person had to use both arms to hold it Then Citláli turned Ehécatl to face the gate and gave a gentle push. As Ehécatl toddled obediently and directly toward the open entrance, Citláli raised her hands and began slowly undoing the knots that closed her huipil blouse. Not the guard nor the other men roundabout gave any notice to the child carrying the basket through the gate. All eyes were salaciously fixed on Citláli as she undressed.

  Obviously, the guard had ordered her to strip for a thorough search—he had that authority—and she was doing it slowly, as voluptuously as any maátitl, to divert everyone’s attention from Ehécatl, now out of my sight inside the stockade somewhere. Here was another distressing contingency for which we had not prepared. What was I to do? I knew from previous observation that the Castillo’s fort door was in a line with the gate; presumably little Ehécatl would continue on, straight through it and into the fort. But then what?

  I was now standing erect behind my tree, only my head extended far enough to keep watching, and I was uncertainly fingering the gatillo of my arcabuz. Should I discharge it now? I certainly was tempted to kill some one of the white men, who were clustered now and staring avidly, for Citláli had bared herself above the waist. All I could see was her shapely back, but I knew well that her breasts were lovely things to look upon. She began, still slowly, provocatively, undoing the waistband of her long skirt. It seemed to me—and perhaps also to those smirking onlookers—a sheaf of years before that skirt dropped to the ground. Then Citláli commenced another sheaf of years of unwinding her tochómitl undergarment The guard took a step closer to her, and all the other men crowded close behind him, when at last Citláli tossed the cloth away and stood totally naked before them.

  At that instant came a bellow of noise and a billow of smoke from some remote place inside the stockade, inside the fort itself, making every one of the watching men flinch even farther toward Citláli, then turn to gape openmouthed—as another and louder thunder boomed inside their fort, and another, louder yet. The red tiles of the fort’s roof jittered and danced, and several fell off. Then, as if those still-reverberating roars had been only preliminary ebullitions—as occasionally the great volcano Citlaltepetl clears its throat three or four times before belching up a devastating eruption—so did the fort erupt with a blast that must have been heard all over the valley.

  Its entire roof lifted high into the air, and disintegrated there, so the tiles and timbers soared even higher. From under them rose a tremendous, roiling, yellow-and-red-and-black cloud of commingled flames, smoke, sparks, unidentifiable pieces of the fort’s interior furnishings, flailing human bodies and limp fragments of human bodies. I was quite sure that even my extravagant employment of several pólvora balls could not have caused such a cataclysm. What must have happened—little Ehécatl must have toddled, unhindered, as far as some storeroom of the fort’s own pólvora or its cache of some other terribly sensitive combustible, just at the moment my basketful ignited and blew apart. I briefly wondered—could the child have been guided by our war god Huitzilopóchtli? By the spirit of my dead father? Or was it simply Ehécatl’s own tonáli?

  But I had other things to wonder about. Simultaneously with the fort’s flying all to pieces, every person between it and me staggered as if by a heavy blow—including the guard and his captive Citláli—and several of the men lost their footing and fell down. Also, Citláli’s discarded garments went whisking away from around her feet I could not see anything to account for those happenings. But then I felt a shock as if cupped hands had abruptly slammed hard against both my ears. A mighty gale of wind, with the force of a stone wall falling, dashed against my ahuéhuctl and every other tree in the vicinity. Leaves, twigs, small branches, all went hurtling away from the site of that awesome explosion. The wall of wind was gcme as suddenly as it had come, but had I not been behind my tree, my cazoleta would have been blown clean of pólvora and my arcabuz made useless.

  When those people between me and the gate regained their balance, they stared horrified at the destruction within the stockade, and the fiercely blazing fire, and at the pieces of stone, wood, weapons—and their fellows—dropping from the sky. (Some of the men who had fallen did not get up; they had been hit by the things hurled straight outward by the blast.) The gate guard was the first to realize who was responsible for the disaster, he whirled again to face Citláli, a snarl contorting his visage. Citláli turned and ran, toward me, and the guard pointed his arcabuz at her back.

  I pointed mine, too—at him—and squeezed the gatillo. My arcabuz performed exactly as it was supposed to, with a roar and a jolt that numbed my shoulder and rocked me backward a step or two. Where my lead ball went, whether it struck the guard or any of the others, I have no idea, because my view of them was clouded by the blue smoke I had created. Anyway, regretfully, I had not prevented the guard from discharging his own weapon. One moment Citláli was running toward me, her fine breasts bouncing lightly. The next moment, those breasts, her whole upper body, opened out like a red flower bursting into blossom. Gouts of blood and gobbets of flesh spewed out ahead of her to spatter on the ground, and onto those shreds of herself she fell face forward and lay still.

  * * *

  There was no sign or sound of pursuit as I fled down the hill. Evidently the discharge of my weapon had gone unheard, as I had expected, in the general tumult. And if I had hit anybody with the lead ball, his fellow soldiers probably assumed that he had been felled by one of the far-flung pieces of the fort. When I reached the lakeside, I did not stand about, waiting for an acáli to come along. I strode straight out across the mudflats and then, knee-deep in the turbid water, waded all the way back to the city, staying close under the aqueduct’s tree-trunk piles to avoid being seen from either shore. Once I got to the island, though, I had to wait awhile before I had an opportunity to slip unnoticed in
among the crowds of people that had gathered there, buzzing excitedly as they gazed at the tower of smoke still hanging over Grasshopper Hill.

  The streets were all but empty as I scuttled to our familiar colación of San Pablo Zoquipan and to the house Citláli and I had shared for so long. I doubted that any Cathedral spy was still keeping watch—he would be down beside the lake with almost every other city resident—but if he was on duty, and if he challenged me or even followed me, I was fully prepared to kill him. Inside the house, I recharged my arcabuz, to be ready for that necessity or any other. Then I lifted to my back, with a tumpline around my forehead, the bale of my belongings that I had prudently packed beforehand. The only other things I took from the house were our little hoard of money—in cacao beans, tin snippets, a variety of Spanish coins—and my sack of salitre, the one pólvora ingredient that might be hard to find elsewhere. With a piece of rope, I made a sling for my arcabuz, so it could be carried inconspicuously under my pack and sack.

  On the street again, I saw none of the few passersby take any interest in my doings and, glancing back from time to time, saw no one following me. I did not head north to the Tepeyéca causeway by which my mother, my uncle and myself had so long ago entered the City of Mexíco. If soldiers should be sent chasing me, the notarius Alonso would be in conscience bound to tell them that I was most likely going directly homeward, toward the Aztlan I had told him about. So I went west through the city instead, and across the causeway that leads to the town of Tlécopan. And there, as I stepped onto the mainland, I turned just long enough to shake my clenched fist back at the city—the city that had slaughtered both my father and my lover—swearing an oath that I would be back, to avenge them both.

  Many things have happened in my lifetime that have forever hung heavy in my heart. The death of Citláli was one of those occurrences. And I have known many regrettable losses, leaving voids in my heart that never would be filled again. The death of Citláli was one of those occurrences, too.