Feathered Serpent (2 page)
Authors: Colin Falconer
Painali, Tabasco: 1513
I stare into the darkness, listening to the sounds of my own funeral.
It is the Eighth Watch of the Night, when ghosts walk and headless demons pursue lonely travellers on the roads. I am trussed on the floor of my mother’s food store. Wicker baskets of vanilla pods are stacked against the adobe walls and the room is filled with their sweet, cloying smell.
A screech owl twists its great head and watches me from its perch on the carved cedar beam above my head. Its yellow eyes blink slowly. An omen; the owl is envoy from the Lord of the Darkness, Mitlantecutli, come to lead me into the underworld.
And my mother is to send me from this world without even my fare through the Narrow Passage.
I try again to wriggle free but the thongs around my wrists and ankles bite deeper into my skin.
My mother wants me dead.
I close my eyes and listen to the dirge sounds, the bass boom of the conches, the hollow thrum of the
huehuetl
drums, the shriek of whistles. I can hear someone shouting my name, then the crackle of flames; another is blackening on the pyre in my place.
The moan of the East Wind consoles me. At this moment of my great danger, Feathered Serpent, Lord of Wisdom, is watching over me.
I hear whispers outside the hut. My eyes blink open to search the shadows.
There is the flare of a pine torch as they enter. I know them; slave merchants from Xicallanco. They have visited Painali many times; my father always treated them with disdain. One of them is without an eye and the flesh is smeared pink around the old scar like cold grease.
The torches throw their faces into shadow. “Here she is,” the one-eyed man says.
The gag is making me choke. One of the men laughs at my struggles but One Eye hisses at him to be quiet. But there is no need for stealth. They could all be drunk and screaming on
peyotl
juice but no one would hear them over the sound of the funeral drums.
They lift me easily between them and carry me out of the hut into the darkness. The wind moans again, Feathered Serpent growling in anger.
I must not be frightened. This is not the end my father prophesied for me. I am Ce Malinali, One Grass of Penance, I will find my destiny in disaster, I am the drum that beats the sunset for Motecuhzoma, my future is with the gods.
My future is with Feathered Serpent.
Tenochtitlàn
One Reed on the ancient Aztec Calendar,
The Year of Our Lord, 1519.
The owl man staggered, white froth on his lips, laughing at the shadows hiding in the corners of the Dark House of the Cord. His hair, which reached almost to his waist, was matted with dried blood, and the black mantle around his shoulders gave him the appearance of a hunched and malevolent crow.
Motecuhzoma, the Angry Lord, Revered Speaker of the Mexica, watched, the turquoise plugs in the piercings of his ears and lips reflecting the glow of the pine torches. He whispered his questions to Woman Snake at his elbow.
Woman Snake repeated the questions carefully. “Owl Bringer, can you see through the mists to the future of the Mexica?”
The owl man lay on his back on the floor, laughing hysterically, helpless to the grip of the peyote liquor. “Tenochtitlàn is in flames!”
Motecuhzoma shifted uneasily on the low carved throne.
The owl man sat up, pointed at the wall. “A wooden tower walks to the temple of Yopico!”
“A tower cannot walk,” Motecuhzoma hissed.
“The gods have fled ... to the forest.”
Motecuhzoma wrung his hands in his lap. He whispered another question to Woman Snake. “What do you see of Motecuhzoma?”
“I see the Angry Lord burning and no one to mourn him. The Mexica spit on his body!”
Woman Snake stiffened. Even under the intoxication of
peyotl
the obscenity echoed around the cavernous room like thunder. “What other portents?” he asked.
“There are great temples on the lake ... marching towards Tenochtitlàn!”
“A temple cannot march.”
“The Feathered Serpent returns!” The owl man gasped gasped the words between paroxysms of laughter. “There will be a Tenochtitlàn no longer!”
Motecuhzoma rose to his feet, his face contorted into a grimace.
“Our cities are destroyed ... our bodies are piled in heaps ... “
The emperor put both hands to his face.
“Soon we will see the portents in the sky!”
The owl man crawled towards the throne on his hands and knees. There was saliva smeared on his cheek. His eyes were like obsidian. “Turn and see what is about to befall the Mexica!”
Motecuhzoma was silent, his face hidden in his hands. When he removed them, Woman Snake dared a glance at his emperor and saw that he was weeping.
“Wait until the effects of the
peyotl
have worn off,” Motecuhzoma growled, “then skin him.”
He hurried from the chamber. Owl Bringer lay on the floor, lost to his wild and fevered dreams, laughing at shadows.
———————
Near the Grijalva River.
Hernan Cortés steadied himself on the rail of the Santa Maria de la Concepción, sailing close-hauled, the coast of Yucatan no more than a grease-green border on the port horizon. He sniffed at the taint of tropic vegetation on the salt air. The canvas cracked like grapeshot in the yards above his head, his personal banner whipping from the mast. It bore a red cross on black velvet, below it a Latin inscription in royal blue, the same words that had once graced the Emperor Constantine’s own ensign:
Brothers, let us follow the Cross, and by our faith shall we conquer!
A long way, all this, from the melancholy plains of Extremadura. It was the culmination of all his dreams. He was sailing to a hostile coast in uncharted waters and yet it was as if he was coming home. This wind was his wind, carrying him to his destiny. He knew it as sure as there was a God in heaven.
He looked down at the main deck, at Benitez and Jaramillo hunched in conversation; poor
hidalgo
s like himself, men with education and breeding but no inheritance. They had come to the Indies, as he had, to find their fortunes and escape boredom and poverty, to free themselves from the petty tyrannies of
grandee
s and the harping of priests. They had all rushed to join him in Cuba, these soldiers of fortune, these bored planters, these failed gold miners, looking for plunder and profit. And he would give it to them, and more besides. It would be an adventure in the old style, with fame and riches and service to the Lord.
This was his hour, and a good day to be alive.
———————
Gonzalo Norte wanted only to die.
He retched again, spitting green bile into the ocean. Who would believe he had spent eleven of his thirty three years as a sailor? But the last time he had stood on the heaving deck of a ship was eight years ago, another lifetime.
It was not the oily pitching of the
Nao
that made him wish for death. It was a sickness of another kind, a sickness of the soul. He dared a glance and saw his new companions staring at him with their vicious eyes. They feared and hated him, of course. He was a plague carrier, incubus of a contagion worse than any black-blistered pestilence known on this fever coast. A few of them spat in his direction as they passed him on the deck.
He felt an arm go around his shoulders. Aguilar! His one friend on this boat and the pity of it was he did not have the strength to throttle the bastard.
“Is it not good to be among Christians again, Gonzalo?” Aguilar used the Chontal Maya tongue, for Norte had forgotten all but a few words of his native Castilian.
Thy rancid and hairy balls! Norte thought. My dog spits them out! "Good? For you, perhaps, Jeronimo.”
Aguilar had donned the brown habit of a deacon. Only his shaved head and tobacco-dark skin betrayed the fact that a few days ago he was the slave of a Mayan
cacique
. He clutched the crumbling Book of Hours that had been his constant companion through his captivity in Yucatan. “You must leave that other life behind,” Aguilar said. “Pray for forgiveness and it shall be given you. You succumbed to the devil but you may still be saved.”
By Satan’s hairy ass, Norte thought. I would like to pitch this damned deacon over the side and let God enjoy his company in heaven with the other saints. Does he not understand that I have no soul left to save? They have wrenched it from me, like a priest tearing out a heart. Why doesn’t he just leave me alone?
“Our Lord is boundless in mercy. Confess your sins and you may start your life anew.”
“Just leave me alone,” Norte said. “For pity’s sake, just leave me alone.”
And he retched again.
———————
Julian Benitez watched Aguilar’s attempts to console the renegade. Only Norte truly disgusted him; Aguilar was merely insufferable, like most churchmen. The two men - Norte was a crew member, Aguilar a passenger, a deacon who had just taken minor orders - had been shipwrecked on the way from Darien to Hispañola eight years ago. They and seventeen others escaped the wreck in a long boat but most died of thirst long before they reached the coast of Yucatan. Perhaps they were the lucky ones. The survivors were captured by the Mayan atural and the captain, Valdivia, and several others were murdered. Only Aguilar and Norte had escaped.
After a few days they were captured again, by a Mayan
cacique
who proved a more amenable than their first captor. He had even offered Aguilar his own daughter as a wife. As Aguilar told the story, he spent a whole night lying naked beside her in a village hut, but had saved himself from the sins of the flesh by taking refuge in his tattered copy of the Book of Hours.
Norte had not proved as resilient and thus far Benitez was in sympathy with him. He understood Norte’s carnality far better than Aguilar’s self-imposed chastity. What he did not understand was Norte’s later actions; how he could marry a heathen woman and have three children by her; how he could have his ears and lower lip pierced and his face and hands tattooed like a atural. The man was no better than a dog.
When Jaramillo and the rest of the landing party found Norte on Cozumel Island he had tried to run away. Jaramillo would have murdered him with the rest of the aturals if it had not been for Aguilar’s intervention.
He is a Spaniard just like us, he had said, imploring them to mercy.
A Spaniard perhaps, Benitez thought. But not like any of us.
“Cortés should have hanged him,” Jaramillo said over his shoulder.”They could roast me over a small fire, I would never allow myself to be so humiliated.”
“When I found him he had stone plugs through his nose. And look at how his earlobes are torn. Aguilar says that it is a part of the devil worship in their temples.”
“He even stinks like an atura.”
“I should have slit his throat on the beach and to hell with it.”
“Cortés says we need him and Aguilar to help us talk with the aturals.”
“Aguilar perhaps, but not him. How do we know what he will say to them?” Jaramillo spat into the sea. “I hear they sacrifice children in their temples. Afterwards they eat the flesh.”
Benitez shook his head. “I am no lover of priests but pray God we can bring salvation to these dark lands.”
Jaramillo grinned. “Pray God also that we are well rewarded for doing Him such service.”
———————
Alaminos, the pilot, turned the fleet towards the river mouth. He had been with Grijalva the year before when they beached in this spot and the natives, who called themselves Tabascans, had shown themselves friendly. It was why Cortés planned to make this his landing. The men gathered at the rail and watched the coastline resolve into palms and sand dunes. A New World waited for them, with dreams of gold and women and glory.
Potonchan, on the Grijalva River
There was a cluster of adobe huts, thatched with palm leaves, surrounded by a timber stockade.
The villagers had gathered on the river bank, waving spears and arrows, many dressed in quilted cotton armour. Some jumped into war canoes and paddled out to mid-stream to block the way ahead. They heard war drums and the strident clamour of horns from inside the stockade.
Benitez watched Cortés. He wondered what sort of commander he would prove to be. He saw no fear on that proud face, only contempt, and it reassured him.
“They do not seem disposed to treat as kindly with us as they did with Grijalva,” Benitez said.
Cortés grunted. “We come here in peace. And they shall be likewise peaceful. We may have to kill a few to persuade them to it.” He broke suddenly from his stillness. Two small guns,
falconet
s, had been drawn up to the starboard side, facing the settlement. “Prepare your powder!” he shouted. “Ordaz, get ready to lower the boats! Aguilar, Norte, come with me!”
War cries ululated along the river. Benitez shuddered. Unlike some of the others, he was no soldier. He had come to the Indies to build a plantation. He hoped his own body would not reach the earth ahead of his dreams.
