Aztec Autumn

by Gary Jennings

  When at long last they reached the far outskirts of New Spain, there were only four of them left alive: three whites—Cabeza de Vaca, Andres Dorantes and Alonso del Castillo—and Estebanico, the black slave belonging to Dorantes. Except for my overhearing Castillo’s comment that “we have crossed an entire continent”—and I have only the vaguest idea of what a continent is—I have no way of estimating how many leagues and one-long-runs those men so painfully traversed. All that I—and they—know for certain is that it took them eight years to do it They would have made the journey in less time, of course, if they had been able to keep to the shore of the Eastern Sea. But their various captors had passed them from hand to hand, among ever more inland-dwelling tribes—or their escapes from those captivities had impelled them ever farther inland—so that they were very nearly at the shore of the Western Sea when finally they encountered a group of Spanish soldiers patrolling daringly deep in the Tierra de Guerra.

  Those soldiers—awed, admiring, almost incredulous of the strangers’ story—escorted them to an army outpost, where they were clothed and fed, then brought them to Compostela. Governor Guzmán gave them horses and a more numerous escort and the friar, Marcos de Niza, to see to their spiritual needs, and set them on the cross-country trail toward the City of Mexíco. There, Guzmán had assured them, they would be feasted and honored and celebrated as they deserved. And, all along the way, the heroes had been telling and retelling their tale to every new-met and eager listener. I listened as avidly as any, and with unfeigned admiration.

  There were many questions I would have liked to ask those three white men, if they had not been so sedulously ignoring me. But I could not help hearing that Fray Marcos was asking some of the very same questions I had in mind. He seemed frustrated—and so was I—when the heroes protested their inability to supply this or that piece of information the friar wanted. So I went over to where the black man, Estebanico, sat apart. Now, the -ico that the Spaniards appended to his name is a condescending diminutive such as is used when speaking to children, so I took care to address him properly, as an adult:

  “Buenas noches, Esteban.”

  “Buenas …,” he mumbled, looking rather askance at an indio who spoke Spanish.

  “May I talk with you, amigo?”

  “Amigo?” he repeated, as if surprised to be addressed as an equal.

  “Are we not both of us slaves to the white men?” I asked. “Here you sit, disdained, while your master preens and revels in the attention he is getting. I should like to know something of your adventures. Here, I have some picíetl. Let us smoke together, while I listen.”

  He still regarded me warily, but either I had established some comity between us or he was simply yearnful to be heard. He said, “What would you wish to know?”

  “Just tell me what happened during the past eight years. I have listened to the Señor Cow Head’s recollections. Now tell me yours.”

  And he did, from the expedition’s first landing in that place called Florida, through all the disappointments and disasters that afflicted and decimated the fugitive survivors as they crossed the unknown lands from east to west. His account differed from the white men’s only in two respects. Esteban clearly had suffered every hurt and hardship and humiliation that the other journeyers had endured, but no more and no less. He rather stressed this in his telling, as if to assert that those mutual sufferings had conferred on him an equality with his masters.

  The other difference between his account and theirs was that Esteban had taken the trouble to learn at least some fragments of the various languages spoken by the peoples in whose communities they had spent any time. I had never heard the names of any of those tribes before. Esteban said they lived far to the northeast of this New Spain. The two last—or nearest—tribes that held the wanderers in captivity called themselves, he said, the Akimoél O’otam, or River People, and the To’ono O’otam, or Desert People. And of all the “damned red diablos” encountered, he said, they were the most devilishly diabolico. I tucked the two names into my memory. Whoever those people were, and wherever, they sounded like apt candidates for enlistment in my private rebel army.

  By the time Esteban finished his story, everyone else around the fire had rolled himself in his blankets and gone to sleep. I was just about to ask the questions I had not been able to put to the white men, when I heard a stealthy footfall behind me. I spun about, and found it was only Tiptoe, asking in a whisper:

  “Are you all right, Tenamáxtli?”

  I answered in Poré, “Of course. Go back to sleep, Pakápeti.” And I repeated that in Spanish, for Esteban to hear, “Go back to sleep, my man.”

  “I was asleep. But I woke in sudden fear that the beasts might have harmed you or trussed you as a prisoner. And ayya! This beast is black!”

  “No matter, my dear. A friendly beast, for all that. But thank you for your concern.”

  As she crept away, Esteban laughed without humor and said jeeringly, “My man!”

  I shrugged, “Even a slave can own a slave.”

  “I do not give a ripe, fragrant pedo how many slaves you own. And a slave that one may be, and as short-haired as I am, but a man she is not.”

  “Hush, Esteban. A pretense, yes, but only to avoid any risk of her being molested by these tunantón bluecoats.”

  “I should not mind doing a bit of that molesting myself,” he said, grinning whitely in the darkness. “A few times during our journey, I got a taste of the red women, and found them tasty indeed. And they found me no more distasteful than if I had been white.”

  Probably so. I supposed that, even among the people of my own race, a woman lewd enough to be tempted to sample a foreign flesh would hardly think black flesh any more freakish than white. But Esteban apparently took the women’s unfastidiousness to be another token—however pathetic a token—that there in the unknown lands he had been the equal of any white man. I almost confided to him that I had once enjoyed a woman of his race—or half black, at any rate—and found her no different inside than any “red” woman. Instead, I said only:

  “Amigo Esteban, I believe you would like to return to those far lands.”

  It was he who shrugged now. “Even in brute captivity there, I was not the slave of any one man.”

  “Then why not just go back? Go now. Steal a horse. I will not raise any outcry.”

  He shook his head. “I have been a fugitive these eight years. I do not want to have slave-catchers hunting me for the rest of my life. And they would, even into the savage lands.”

  “Perhaps …” I said, ruminating. “Perhaps we can concoct a reason for you to go there legitimately, and with the white men’s blessing.”

  “Oh? How?”

  “I overheard that Fray Marcos interrogating—”

  Esteban laughed again, and again without humor. “Ah, el galicoso.”

  “What?” I said. If I had understood the word, he had described the friar as suffering from an extremely shameful disease.

  “I was jesting. A play of words. I should have said el galicano.”

  “I still do not…”

  “El francés, then. He comes from France. Marcos de Niza is only the Spanish rendering of his real name, Marc de Nice, and Nice is a place in France. The friar is as reptilian as any other Frenchman.”

  I said impatiently, “I do not care if he has scales. Will you listen, Esteban? He kept prodding your white comrades to tell him about the seven cities. What did he mean by that?”

  “¡Ay de mí!” He spat disgustedly. “An old Spanish fable. I have heard it many times. The Seven Cities of Antilia. They are supposedly cities of gold and silver and gems and ivory and crystal, situated in some never-yet-seen land far beyond the Ocean Sea. That fable has been repeated since time before time. When this New World was discovered, the Spaniards hoped to find those seven cities here. Rumors reached us, even in Cuba, that you indios of New Spain could tell us, if you would, where they are. But I am not asking you, amigo, mistake me
not.”

  “Ask if you like,” I said. “I can answer honestly that I never heard of them until now. Did you or the others see any such things during your travels?”

  “¡Mierda!” he grunted. “In all those lands we came through, any mud-brick-and-straw village is called a city. That is the only kind we saw. Ugly and wretched and squalid and verminous and odorous.”

  “The friar was being most insistent in his questioning. When the three heroes protested ignorance of any such fabulous cities, it seemed to me that Fray Marcos almost suspected them of keeping something secret from him.”

  “He would, the reptile! When we were at Compostela, I was told that all men who know him call him El Monje Mentiroso. Naturally, the Lying Monk suspects everyone else of lying.”

  “Well… did any of the indios you encountered even hint at the existence of—?”

  “¡Mierda más mierda!” he exclaimed, so loudly that I had to hiss at him again, for fear that someone would awaken. “If you must know, yes, they did. One day, when we were among the River People—we were being used as pack animals when they moved from one unlovely riverbend to another—our slave-drivers pointed off to the northward and told us that in that direction lay six great cities of the Desert People.”

  “Six,” I repeated. “Not seven?”

  “Six, but they were great cities. Meaning that to those estupidos the cities probably each had more than a handful of mud houses and perhaps a dependable water hole.”

  “Not the wealth of that fabled Antilia?”

  “Oh, but yes!” he said sarcastically. “Our river indios said that they traded animal hides and river shells and bird feathers with the inhabitants of those elegant cities, and got in return great riches. What they called ‘riches’ being only those cheap blue and green stones that all you indios so revere.”

  “Nothing, then, that would arouse the avarice of a Spaniard?”

  “Will you hear me, man? We are talking of a desertl”

  “So your companions are not withholding anything from the friar?”

  “Withholding what? I was the only one who comprehended the indios’ languages. My master Dorantes knows only what I translated to him. And that was little enough, for there was little to tell.”

  “But suppose… now… you were to take Fray Marcos aside and whisper to him that the white men are being secretive? That you know the whereabouts of really rich cities.”

  Esteban gaped at me. “Lie to him? What profit in lying to a man known as the Lying Monk?”

  “It is my experience that liars are the persons most ready to believe lies. He already seems to believe in that fable of the Antilia cities.”

  “So? I tell him they do exist? And that I know where? Why would I do that?”

  “As I suggested a while ago, so that you can return to those lands where you were not a slave—where you found the native women to your taste—and return there not as a fugitive.”

  “Hm…” murmured Esteban, considering this.

  “Convince the friar that you can lead him to those cities of immeasurable wealth. He will be the more easily persuaded if he thinks you are revealing to him something the white heroes will not He will assume that they are waiting to tell their secret to the Marqués Cortés. He will rejoice in the delusion that he can get to those riches—with your help—ahead of Cortés or any treasure-seekers Cortés may send. And he will arrange for you to take him there.”

  “But… when we get there and I have nothing to show him? Only laughable mud hutches and worthless blue pebbles and…”

  “Now it is you, my friend, who are being estópido. Lead him there and lose him. That should be easy enough. If he ever finds his way back here to New Spain, he can only report that you must have been slain by the vigilant guardians of those treasures.”

  Esteban’s face began almost to glow, if black can glow. “I would be free …”

  “It is certainly worth the trying. You need not even lie, if that troubles you. The friar’s own greedy and dishonest nature will supply to his mind any exaggerations necessary to convince him.”

  “By God, I will do it! You, amigo, are a wise and clever man. You should be the Marqués of all New Spain!”

  I made modest demurrers, but I must confess that I was fairly glowing myself, with pride in the intricate scheme I was setting in motion. Esteban, of course, did not know that I was using him to further my own secret plans, but that would not lessen his benefiting from the scheme. He would be free of any master, for the first time in his life, and free to take his chances of staying free among those far-off River People, and free to browse as much as he pleased—or dared—among their womenfolk.

  I have recounted much of our night-long conversation in detail, because that will make clearer my explanation—which I will provide in its place—of how my meeting with the heroes and the friar did redound to the furtherance of my intended overthrow of the white men’s dominion. And there was yet another encounter in store, to give me added encouragement By the time Esteban and I finished talking, the morning was dawning, and with the morning came one more of those seeming coincidences that the gods, in their mischievous meddling with the doings of men, are forever contriving.

  Four new Spanish soldiers on horseback came suddenly—from the direction Tiptoe and I had come—clattering into the camp and startling awake everyone else there. When I heard the news that they bawled at the Teniente Tallabuena, I was again heartily relieved; these men were not pursuing me and Tiptoe. Their horses were heavily lathered, so they had obviously been riding hard, and overnight. If they had passed that empty outpost away back yonder, they had not paused to pay it any attention.

  “Teniente!” shouted one of the newcomers. “You are no longer under the command of that zurullón Guzmán!”

  “Praise God for that,” said Tallabuena, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “But why am I not?”

  The rider swung down from his horse, flung its reins to a sleepy soldier and demanded, “Is there anything to eat? Our belt buckles are rattling our backbones! Ay, there is news from the capital, Teniente. The king has finally appointed a virrey to head the Audiencia of New Spain. A good man, this Viceroy Mendoza. One of the first things he did was to hear the many complaints against Nuno de Guzmán—his countless atrocities against the slave indios and Moros here. And one of Mendoza’s first decrees is that Guzmán be removed from the governorship of New Galicia. We are galloping to Compostela to take him in charge and fetch him to the city for his punishment.”

  I could have heard nothing that would have pleased me more. The news-bringer paused to take a massive munch at a cold chunk of deer meat before he went on:

  “Guzmán will be replaced by a younger man, one who came from Spain with Mendoza, un tal Coronado, who is on his way hither as we speak.”

  “¡Oye!” exclaimed Fray Marcos. “Would that be Francisco Vésquez de Coronado?”

  “It would,” said the soldier, between bites.

  “¡Qué feliz fortuna!” cried the friar. “I have heard of him, and heard only praise of him. He is a close friend of that Viceroy Mendoza, who is in turn a close friend of Bishop Zumárraga, who is in turn a close friend of mine. Also, this Coronado has recently made a most brilliant marriage to a cousin of King Carlos himself. Ay, but Coronado will wield power and influence here!”

  The other Spaniards were shaking their heads at this abundance of news coming all at once, but I sidled out of the throng to where Esteban stood apart and said in a low voice:

  “Things are looking better and better, amigo, for your soon getting back among those River People.”

  He nodded and said exactly what I was thinking. “The Lying Monk will persuade his friend, the bishop—and the bishop’s friend, the viceroy—to send him thither, ostensibly as a missionary to the savages. Whether he tells the bishop and the viceroy why he is really going does not matter. So long as I go with him.”

  “And this new Governor Coronado,” I added, “will be eager to make his
mark. If you bring Fray Marcos by way of Compostela, I wager that Coronado will be most generous in providing horses and equipment and weapons and provisions.”

  “Yes,” Esteban crowed. “I owe you much, amigo. I will not forget you. And if ever I am rich, be sure I shall share with you.”

  At that, he impulsively threw his arms around me and gave me the crushing squeeze that is called in Spanish the abrazo. A few of the Spaniards were watching, and I worried that they might wonder why I was being so exuberantly thanked, and for what But then I had a more immediate worry. Over Esteban’s shoulder, I saw that Tiptoe was also watching. Her eyes went wide, and abruptly she made a dash for our horses. I realized what she was about to do, and wrenched myself loose from the embrace and pelted after her. I got there just in time to prevent her snatching one of our arcabuces from the packs.

  “No, Pakápeti! No need!”

  “You are still unharmed?” she asked, her voice trembly. “I thought you were being assaulted by that black beast.”

  “No, no. You are a dear and caring girl, but overly impetuous. Please leave any rescuing to me. I will tell you later why I was being squeezed.”

  A good many of the Spaniards, now, were eyeing us curiously, but I smiled a reassuring smile in all directions, and they turned back to the news-bringers. One of those was telling his listeners:

  “Another news, though not of such portentousness, is that Papa Paulo has established a new bishopric here in New Spain, the diocese of New Galicia. And he has elevated the Padre Vasco de Quiroga to a new and august station. Another of our couriers is riding to advise Padre Vasco that he is now to wear the miter, as Bishop Quiroga of New Galicia.”

  That announcement pleased me as much as any of the others I had heard here. But I did hope that Padre Vasco, now that he was such an important dignitary, would not forswear his good works and good intentions and good nature. No doubt Pope Paulo would expect his newest bishop to wring from those Utopía colonists yet more contributions to what Alonso de Molina had called the pope’s “private King’s Fifth.” Be that as it may, this also augured well for my and Esteban’s scheme. Probably Bishop Zumárraga would see Bishop Quiroga as a rival, and be even more ready to send Fray Marcos scouting either for new souls or new riches for Mother Church.