Aztec Blood

by Gary Jennings

  At an early age I began accompanying the fray as his servant on his medical missions to those who were too ill to come to the church. At first I only cleaned up after him, but soon I was able to stand by to hand him medicines or instruments as he worked on patients. I watched him mix his elixirs and later was able to make the same concoctions. I learned to set broken bones, dig out a musket ball, suture a wound, and restore the humors of the body through bloodletting, although always in the guise of a servant.

  All these arts I mastered by the time I was spouting hair under my arms and between my legs. Don Francisco never took notice of my skills until I was almost twelve years old and made a mistake of revealing what I had learned.

  That incident was to set off a chain of events that changed my life. Like so many times, changes came to me not with the tranquillity of a lazy river but with the volcanic bursts of those mountains the indios call fire mountains.

  It occurred during the examination of a hacienda majordomo, who complained of abdominal pain. I had not seen this Spaniard before but knew from others that he was the new manager of the hacienda that was the largest in the valley. It was owned by Don Eduardo de la Cerda, a hacendado I had also never seen.

  Don Eduardo de la Cerda was a gachupín, a wearer of spurs, so-called because he was born in Spain itself. Don Francisco, though of pure Spanish blood, had been born in New Spain. Under the rigid social code, Don Francisco, for all his purity of blood and ownership of a large hacienda, was legally a criollo because of his place of birth. Criollos were below gachupíns on the social scale because of where they were born.

  Well, amigos, to the indios and mixed bloods, there was no difference between a gachupín and a criollo. The spurs of both drew blood equally.

  One day, the fray had been called to the main house to administer to the majordomo, Enrique Gomez, who had been visiting with Don Francisco when he became ill after the noon meal. I came with the fray as his servant, carrying the leather bag in which he stored his medical tools and main jars of potions.

  The majordomo was lying on a cot when we arrived. He stared intently up at me as the fray examined him. For some reason my features had attracted his curiosity. It was almost as if, despite his pain, he recognized me. This was an unusual experience for me. Spaniards never noticed servants, especially mestizos.

  "Our guest," Don Francisco told Fray Antonio, "flinches when you press his stomach. He has strained a muscle in his abdomen, probably from lying on too many of Don Eduardo's india maidens."

  "Never too many, Don Francisco," the majordomo said, "but perhaps too tough and too tight. Some of the women in our village are harder to mount than a jaguar."

  From the smell of the man's breath as he had passed by me earlier, I realized that his stomach contents were boiling from chilies and spices he had consumed. The Spanish had adopted indio cooking, but their stomachs were not always in agreement. He needed a potion made from goat's milk and jalapa root to clean out his innards.

  "It's an ache in his stomach from the noon meal," I blurted out, "not a muscle."

  I realized my mistake immediately by the flush of anger on Don Francisco's face. I had not only refuted his diagnosis but had insulted the food of his household, literally accusing him of poisoning his guest.

  Fray Antonio froze with his mouth agape.

  Don Francisco slapped me hard. "Go outside and wait."

  With my face stinging, I went outside and squatted in the dirt to await the inevitable beating.

  In a few minutes Don Francisco, the majordomo, and Fray Antonio came outside. They looked at me and appeared to argue among themselves in whispers. I could not hear the words, but I could tell that the majordomo was making some contention about me. The assertion seemed to create puzzlement in Don Francisco and consternation in the fray.

  I had never seen the fray in fear before. But today apprehension twisted his features.

  Finally, the don motioned me over. I was tall for my age but thin.

  "Look at me, boy," the majordomo said.

  The man took my jaw in his hand and twisted my face from one side to another as if he were looking for some special mark. The skin on his hand was darker than the skin on my face because many pure blood Spaniards had olive-colored skin, but skin color meant less than the color of blood.

  "You see what I mean?" he said to the don, "the same nose, ears—look at the side profile."

  "No," said the fray, "I know the man well, and the resemblance between him and the boy is superficial. I know of this thing. You must trust my word."

  Whatever contention the fray was making, it was apparent from the don's expression that he was not trusting it.

  "Go over there," Don Francisco said to me, indicating a corral post.

  I went to it and squatted in the dirt while the three men had another animated conversation and kept looking back at me.

  Finally, all three went back inside the house. Don Francisco returned a moment later with a rawhide rope and a mule whip.

  He lashed me to a post and gave me the worst beating of my life.

  "Never again are you to speak out in the presence of a Spaniard unless you are told to. You forgot your place. You are a mestizo. You must never forget that you have tainted blood and that those of your type are lazy and stupid. Your place in life is to serve people of honor and quality."

  He stared at me intently and then twisted my face from side to side as the majordomo had done. He uttered a particularly foul curse. "I see the resemblance," he said. "The bitch laid with him."

  Flinging me aside, he grabbed his whip and rushed across the stepping stones to the village on the other side of the river.

  My mother's wails could be heard throughout the village. Later, when I returned to our hut, I found my mother huddled in a corner. There was blood on her face from her mouth and nose, and one of her eyes was already swelling shut.

  "¡Mestizo!" she yelled and struck me.

  I recoiled in shock. To get a beating from others was bad enough, but to have my own mother blaspheme my mixed blood was unbearable. I ran from the hut to a rock hanging over the river. I sat and cried, stung more from my mother's words than the don's beating.

  Later the fray sat down beside me.

  "I'm sorry," he said. He handed me a piece of sugarcane to suck on. "You must never forget your place in life. Today you revealed medical knowledge. Had they known you read books... I can only shudder at the thought of what the don might have done to you."

  "Why did the don and the other man look at me so strangely? What did he mean when he said my mother had lain with someone else?"

  "Cristo, there are things you do not know about your birth, that you can never be told. To reveal them would place you in danger." He refused to say more to me, but he gave me a hug. "Your only sin is that you were born."

  The fray's medicine was not the only kind practiced on the hacienda. The villagers and their sorceress had their own remedies. I knew the wide-leafed plants found in a few places along the riverbank had spiritual healing power over wounds. Feeling sorry because my mother had taken a beating for what I had done, I pulled a handful of these out, soaked them in water, and took them back to our hut. I spread them across my mother's cuts and welts.

  She thanked me. "Cristo, I know it is hard on you. One day many things will be revealed to you, and you will understand why the secrecy was necessary."

  That was all that she said.

  Later, while the fray was still with the don and the majordomo, I sneaked into the fray's room and prepared a mixture of powder from his potions and applied them to my mother's face to reduce the pain. I knew the village sorceress used a potion of jungle herbs to cause sleep because she believed that good spirits enter the body during sleep and fight disease. I also believed in the healing power of sleep, so I went to her to obtain the herb to induce sleep for my mother.

  SIX

  The hut of the sorceress was outside the village in a grove of zapote trees and bushes that had no
t been cleared for cornfields. A two-room mud hut with a maguey-thatched roof, it told the world it was the home of a witch-sorceress by the feathers and animal skeletons draped around the doorway. An eerie-looking creature that could only exist in a nightmare—the head of a coyote, the body of an eagle, the tail of a snake—hung above the doorway.

  When I entered she was sitting crosslegged on the dirt floor. Before a small fire she heated green leaves on a flat rock. The seared, shriveling leaves gave off a pungent, smoky smell. Inside the hut was no less bizarre than the outer doorway. Animal skulls, some of which looked human and I hoped were monkeys, were scattered about and connected to a unearthly collection of misshapen forms.

  Her name meant Snake Flower in the Aztec tongue.

  Snake Flower was neither old nor young. Her india features were dark and sharp, her nose thin, her eyes black as obsidian but flecked with gold. Some villagers believed those orbs could steal souls and pull out eyes.

  She was a tititl, a native healer skilled in herbal remedies and chants. She was also a practitioner of the darker arts—secret skills that Spanish law and logic would never comprehend. When the village cacique feuded with a mule train overseer, Snake Flower placed a curse on the overseer. After she shaped a clay doll in his image—but with the doll's guts hard as rock—the man's bowels impacted, and he was unable to eliminate waste. He would have died if the tititl in his own village had not made a duplicate doll with hard guts and smashed it to break the spell.

  You say that this is foolishness and not magic? The play of childish savages? Is a tititl's magic anymore the work of savages than a priest's envisioning the devil in the shape of a man's garrancha? Or his dream of salvation from a dead man nailed to a cross?

  Snake Flower did not look up when I entered her hut.

  "I need a sleeping potion for my mother."

  "You have no mother," she said, still not looking up.

  "What? Even mestizos have mothers, witch-woman. It is sorcerers who are spawned from dirt and bat droppings. My mother needs a potion to help her sleep so the sleep spirits can fight the sickness."

  She kept stirring the green leaves, sizzling and smoking on the rock slab. "A mestizo enters my hut and asks for favors and brings insults as his gifts. Have the Aztec gods grown so weak that a half-blood can insult one of pure blood?"

  "My apologies, Snake Flower. My mother's injuries have made me forget my place." I had softened my tone. While I did not believe in the power of gods and spirits, there are many mysteries that sorceresses know and many secret paths they walk. I did not want to find a snake in my bed or poison in my bowl because I had offended her.

  "My mother needs the sleep medicine that only an Aztec spirit woman can prepare. I offer not only gratitude but a gift of magic."

  I tossed a small doeskin pouch on the dirt beside her.

  She stirred the smoking leaves, not looking at the pouch or me.

  "And what is this? The heart of a monkey? The ground bones of a jaguar? What magic does a mestizo boy know?"

  "Spanish magic. A medical potion not as powerful as yours," I added hastily, "but different."

  I could tell she was intrigued but too proud to admit it.

  "Magic from pale-skinned weaklings who cannot withstand the sun god without burning and fainting?"

  "I brought it so that you can show the others in the village how weak and foolish Spanish medicine is. The powder inside is used by Fray Antonio to burn off skin growths. It is mixed with water and spread over the growth. After it disappears, a lesser amount is applied to keep the growth from returning."

  "Bah!" She flung the pouch across the room. "My medicine is stronger." She scraped green matter from the hot rock into a small clay cup. "Here, mestizo, take this to Miahauxiuitl. It is the sleeping potion you seek."

  I stared at her. "How did you know I would come for sleeping medicine?"

  She laughed shrilly. "I know many things."

  I reached for the cup, but she withdrew it. She stared at me, taking my measure. "You shoot up like a corn stalk under a hot, wet sun. You are no longer a boy." She pointed a finger at me. "I give you this medicine to bring the sleeping spirits to Miahauxiuitl, but you will serve me in return."

  "In what way?"

  She laughed shrilly again. "You will see, mestizo, you will see."

  I hurried back to my mother, leaving the doeskin pouch with the sorceress. She had a growth on the back of her hand, the same type of growth that I had seen Fray Antonio treat on Spaniards with the mixture of mercuriales I left her. I knew her concern. Because she was unable to get rid of the growth on her own hand, villagers had begun to question her skills. How could she drive away the demons that bring sickness, when she could not cure herself?

  On the way back to our hut, I smelled her potion and was curious to learn its ingredients. My nose detected honey and lime and octli, a powerful drink similar to pulque made from the fermented sap of the maguey. There were other herbs in it, one of which I later realized was yoyotli, a concoction Aztec priests used to sedate sacrificial victims before their hearts were cut out.

  SEVEN

  Three days later the sorceress collected her debt. She came in the night and took me into the jungle to a place where children were once sacrificed to the gods by my Aztec ancestors.

  She was covered from head to foot in a cape. I followed her with apprehension. I could not see her hands, but her toes were exposed and each toe had a claw attached. I wondered nervously what else was under the long cape.

  It was with some relief that I was taken off on this unnamed adventure even though it raised the hair on the back of my neck. Fray Antonio and Miaha had argued on several occasions since the incident with the majordomo, each time sending me away so I could not hear what was being said. I did not have to hear the words to know that I was in some manner the source of their controversy.

  For an hour I followed Snake Flower into the jungle—until we came to a pyramid that was almost covered by vines and other jungle growth. I had not been to an ancient Aztec shrine before but knew of this one from the village talk.

  The fray forbade all from going to it, and to be discovered worshipping at it was blasphemy.

  Under the glow of a half moon, Snake Flower bounded up the stepped slope of the temple like a jungle cat and waited for me near the large, flat, altar stone. She took off the reed cape, and I gawked at what she wore underneath. A snakeskin skirt covered her lower body. Above the dangling snakes, her breasts were bare, full and plump. Hanging between her naked breasts was a necklace of tiny hands and hearts. I stared intently in the darkness and could not readily see if the hands were those of monkeys or infants.

  The temple was fifty feet high—a dwarf compared to many of the great Aztec temples I'd heard of—but it appeared gigantic to me in the moonlight. As we approached the top I trembled. On this summit children had been sacrificed by the thousands to angry Aztecs.

  She was dressed as Coatlicue, Serpent Woman, the earth goddess who is the mother of the moon and the stars. Some say that the grisly necklace Coatlicue wears holds the hands and hearts of her own children, whom she had murdered when they disobeyed her.

  We were at the right place for such dark deeds. Here was where young children were slaughtered, sacrificed to Tlaloc, the rain god. The tears of the children symbolized falling rain, and the more they cried, the better chances for rain to feed the life-giving maize.

  "Why have you brought me to this place?" I put my hand on the bone knife I carried. "If you want my blood, witch, you will find it costly."

  Her laughter shrilled.

  "It is not blood I desire, young one. Pull down your pants."

  I stepped back in fear, instinctively covering my virile part.

  "Foolish boy, this will not hurt."

  She took a small bundle from beneath the reed cape and removed the sacred deerskin she used in healing and a clay cup. To those items she added the rib bone of an animal and emptied a rawhide bag into the cup. She knel
t on the sacrificial stone and began crushing the contents with the bone.

  "What is that?" I asked, as I knelt beside her.

  "A piece of dried jaguar heart."

  She cut an eagle feather and deposited it into the cup. "The jaguar has power, the eagle soars. Both abilities are necessary if a man is to please his woman and produce many children." She sprinkled a fine, dark powder into the cup. "This is snake blood. A snake can unhinge its jaws, swell its belly, and devour something several times its size. A man needs a snake's expansive power to fill his woman's hole and satisfy her." She carefully stirred the mixture.

  "I will not drink it."

  Her laugh rang through the jungle night. "No, little fool, it is not for you to drink but to add to its power. The potion is for another man who can no longer swell his tepúli to please and impregnate his woman."

  "He can't make babies?"

  "No babies, no pleasure for him or his woman. The potion will make his tepúli grow long and hard."

  Her gold-flecked eyes froze me to the bone; her dark power consumed me. I lay on my back on the sacrificial stone while she undid my rope belt. She pulled down my pants to expose my private parts. I felt no shame. While I had yet to lay with a girl, I had watched Don Francisco in the hut with my mother and knew that his garrancha grew as he suckled her breasts.

  She gently stroked my pene. "Your young juice will make him strong like a bull when he lies with his woman."

  Her hand was strong; her rhythm sure. A warm glow enveloped my extremities, and I smiled.

  "You enjoy the touch of a woman on your man part. Now I must milk your juice like a calf sucking on its mother."

  She put her mouth on my garrancha. Her mouth was hot and wet, her tongue ingeniously energetic. My garrancha became more and more eager for the sucking, and I shoved it deeper into her mouth. I jerked up and down as a firestorm roared in me, trying to push it deeper and deeper down her throat. Suddenly I was pumping with a rhythm of my own as my juices exploded into her mouth.