Feathered Serpent (22 page)

He is still screaming when Jaramillo cuts off his nose with his knife.

It is worse, much worse, than anything I have witnessed in the temples. Our prisoners are not even allowed a warrior’s death and the certainty of afterlife. They will go to the underworld as old men and cripples.

Why, why has my Lord of Gentle Wisdom allowed this?

“My lord ...”

He dismisses me with a wave of his hand. “I am tired. I have to rest. Just do as I say.” And he signals to his major-domo to send me out of the room.

Young Ring of the Wasp shook his head. “I still do not believe they are gods.”

The Council of Four no longer shared his conviction. “Then how do you explain our defeat?” Laughs at Women said. “Even if they are men, as you say, then they must surely have a god leading them. These teules can see at night, as well as read our minds.”

“We can defeat them,” Young Ring of the Wasp insisted.

“No,” his father said. The old
cacique
was tired of this, tired of these endless debates, tired of hearing the funeral drums for his young warriors. “You are wrong, we cannot vanquish them. We have fought them through the whole Month of Sweeping and still they will not retreat. First they send us words of peace, claiming they wish only to fight the Mexica, now they send back our young warriors without hands and faces.” He sighed. “He is unpredictable like a god and if he is Feathered Serpent then we have tried his patience too far. These teules offer us an alliance against the Mexica. What if this is true? For fifty years Motecuhzoma and his ancestors have drained the blood of our youth on their altars. At last we will have the opportunity to free ourselves from their arrogance and cruelty. When these teules return to the Cloud Lands, we will be the masters of the Valley.”

Young Ring of the Wasp began to protest but the old
cacique
put up a hand to silence him. “You have had your chance, my son. We have made war, without effect. Now we must sue for peace.”

———————

They are shabby, compared to the Mexica. Indeed, some of their robes must have been stolen from enemies; you can see the bloodstains. The rest of them wear poor mantles of
maguey
fibre.

I stand behind Cortés’ chair as he receives them, ready to offer my translations from the elegant speech. There are perhaps as many of fifty in the delegation, and judging by their feathers and jewels they are all senators of the Texcála republic. Their leader is as tall as a Spaniard, his skin spotted by disease. He identifies himself as Ring of the Wasp the Young, son of the Texcála chieftain.

“We have come to ask your Lord Malinche for forgiveness,” the young chief begins, his face a sullen mask. “At first we thought he had been sent to invade us by our great enemy, Motecuhzoma. We thought this because you were accompanied by their vassals, the Totonáca. Now we see that we were ... wrong.” He seemed to choke on the last word.

I relay his sentiments to my lord. If he is relieved to hear these soothing words, he does not show it. “Tell them they only have themselves to blame for this war,” he answers. “I came here in friendship and they attacked me and caused much disruption. Now my officers want to burn their town and I do not know if I can keep them from it.”

A churlish and astonishing reply. Burn their town? Our soldiers can barely light a cook fire at night.

But his reply seems to cause Young Ring of the Wasp great consternation. “Please remind your lord Malinche that he entered Texcála without our consent. We would be less than men if we had not fought to defend ourselves. However, we regret this misunderstanding and our Council of Four offer him their friendship if he will make an alliance with us.”

But my lord is sulky when I tell him this, couching Young Ring of the Wasp’s words in more pleasantries than I heard from his lips.

“I see no reason to forget past injuries,” my lord says, and his fingers drum impatiently on the arm of his chair.

“So what should I tell him, my lord?”

“Tell him that my terms for peace are these: that he must submit to me immediately and offer his allegiance to His Majesty, King Charles of Spain. If he refuses, I shall come to Texcála, burn it to the ground and make all the people there my slaves.”

I take a moment to compose my thoughts. “Feathered Serpent says that you must agree to obey him, in everything he says, or he will come to Texcála and punish you all.”

Young Ring of the Wasp stares at Feathered Serpent, then at me. “Are they really gods?”

“What does he say?” my lord wants to know.

I lean towards him so that no one else can hear, though I see Aguilar crane his neck trying to eavesdrop. “He asks if you are a god, my lord,” I whisper.

“Tell him I am a man, as he is, but I serve the one and only true God.”

What can I say? If I tell the Texcaltéca he is not a god, they will want to fight us again, and this time they will surely win. I look into Feathered Serpent’s wild grey eyes and wonder why he tries to conceal the truth about himself this way.

I turn to Young Ring of the Wasp and give him the only answer that makes sense to me. “He is just a man, but he has a god inside him. That is why he cannot be defeated in battle.”

And now I see my lord’s wisdom for it is the only answer that this young warrior will accept. Yes, that is possible, I can see him thinking. Sometimes gods return as men. Feathered Serpent had been a man when he ruled the
Toltecs
.

It is an answer for the Texcaltéca, but is it answer enough for me? Can a man really be a god and not know of it? Or is there some mystery here greater than I have so far divined?

 ———————

Painali, 1508:

The Yucatan is a place of scrub and thorn, a low plateau of limestone nestled against a coast of salt pans and lagoons. In places the rain percolating through the stone has caused underground caverns to collapse and form deep wells we call cenotes, where the rain gods live.

One day my father takes me by the hand and leads me to the litter that waits for him outside our house. My mother watches us leave and I see the poison in her eyes. She wishes Motecuhzoma had chosen me for his altars instead of my brothers and I know also that she is jealous of the time my father spends with me.

You should understand that my father was a man of some importance and renown in our district and had a litter to carry him everywhere. He was of striking appearance. His head had been bound with boards as an infant so that his skull had the elongated shape of a nobleman. He was a man of distinction among us. His hair was bound in four plaits and there were expensive jade ornaments in his ears, nose and lips. His body was painted in the blue of a priest and his front teeth had been sharpened to points and capped with expensive topaz.

I adored him.

When we reach the waterhole we climb from the litter and he leads me by the hand down a steep and crumbling path. The shadows close around us and the water is black and very cold. Butterflies dance in the emerald twilight, a hummingbird dances from flower to flower.

But this is no paradise garden. We step over a skeleton mouldering at the base of a cliff, and the air is sickly and tainted with rotting flesh. A column of ants is busy at work, harvesting the latest prize.

When the rains do not come the priests bring a sacrifice here, and they are thrown from the top of the cliff as offering. Our gods are not greedy. One or two slaves and they are mollified.

“You are wondering why I brought you here,” my father whispers.

He points to a ledge above us, halfway up the cliff.

“When I was as old as you are now, the rains did not come. The maize crops shrivelled in the field. Clouds gathered on the horizon, but they shunned us, and would not venture in from the sea, frightened away by Tlaloc, Rain Bringer, who was angry with us. Scores of slaves were sacrificed here, but still Tlaloc did not relent.

“So it was decided to offer a true sacrifice, the son of a freeman. The one they chose was me.”

He was silent, the past relived behind his black eyes.

“I did not understand what was happening, of course. I was too young to understand death. I remember only a feeling of importance, briefly enjoyed, and then the terrible fear as the priests led me towards the edge of that cliff.

“I remember they told me that when I met the gods I was to ask humbly for rains and knowledge of the future. That when this was done I could return to Painali. And then I remember falling.

“That ledge saved my life of course. I do not remember much of what happened. When I woke up it was night and I was in terrible pain, something was broken in my leg. In the morning I managed to crawl out, and the villagers found me. And that day it rained.

“The rain was my destiny. I was immediately raised to the priesthood. From that day on I also enjoyed the gift of prophecy and it elevated me above other men.

“Mali, my gift has shown me that one day soon Feathered Serpent will return from the Cloud Lands to break the hold of the Mexica and bring peace and golden times, as he did before. I know also why I was saved from death on the ledge; so that one day my daughter would grow up to be Feathered Serpent’s consort and guide on his return.”

I cannot tell you how I felt. I confess I had been born with a sense of destiny. I had always known that I would not spend the days of my life pounding tortillas with an infant strapped to my back.

“Do not fear the end of things, Mali,” my father said to me. “From death and drought you will emerge reborn, bowed down with gifts from the gods. Look for destruction, when it comes. Welcome it. It is your destiny.”

The litter carried us back to Painali in silence. A golden future spread before me, rippling in the wind, like a field of ripening maize.

 ———————

Texcála, 1519

A silver river snakes across the valley below us. White stone buildings cling to the hillsides as if balanced there by weather and time, well-tended gardens clustered about the high walls. To the surprise of my thunder lords, Texcála is even more beautiful than Cempoallan.

The entire population comes out to welcome us. The day before these people were our bitter enemies; now they crowd the streets and roofs, throwing flowers, and they are beating drums and blowing their conch horns in welcome instead of war.

We enter Texcála on the first day of the month known as Return of the Gods.

Ring of the Wasp the Elder waits in the plaza to greet us, seated on a palanquin, a great train of lords and servants behind him. He is very old, his face so nut-brown and wrinkled that he looks like a small monkey. Gold ornaments and bolts of cloth are spread on mats in front of his litter. Not a great treasure, but an offering, of sorts.

My lord dismounts his horse, and Old Ring of the Wasp is helped to his feet by his attendants. He makes a short speech. My lord turns to me for translation.

“He welcomes you to Texcála and offers you these poor gifts in tribute,” I say, indicating the gold and the cloth. “He says he would like to offer you much more but Motecuhzoma keeps him besieged here in the mountains and so his people are very poor.”

Today Feathered Serpent, smiling and radiant, has returned. Perhaps it was just the fever that stole him away from me for those few hours. “Tell Ring of the Wasp that I value his friendship more than I value all the gold in the whole world. Tell him also that he shall suffer under the yoke of the Mexica no longer, for I have been sent by a great Lord to free men from the tyrannies of kings.”

I relay his words in the elegant tongue and Old Ring of the Wasp answers: “He thanks you for your kind words. He wishes very soon to confirm this alliance by offering you and your officers some of their women in marriage. But for now he wishes to touch your face.”

“My face?”

“He is blind, my lord. He wishes to see you.”

My lord gives his assent, standing rigid while the old chief runs his gnarled fingers across his lips and eyes and beard. The
cacique
’s face splits into a beatific smile.

“Quetzalcóatl,” he says.

“What was that?” Cortés asks me.

“He spoke the name of one of our gods, my lord.”

“Which one?”

“Feathered Serpent.”

I see a moment of fear on his face. “Well, my lord?”

“Yes, Doña Marina?”

“What shall I tell him?”

“Tell him nothing. He knows enough for now.”

———————

That night, Aguilar waits for me in the darkness.

“I need to talk with you,” he says, falling into step beside me. I can smell him, fervent and rank. I walk faster, trying to outpace him.

“Cortés does not make me privy to his deliberations any longer,” he says.

“That is not my concern.”

“I fear for him. He is a good man but there are some things he does not understand.”

“What things?”

“He trusts too much. For instance, he trusts that you translate exactly what he says to these lords and chieftains.”

“What is it you think I do? Recite poems about butterflies?”

“You must take care, Doña Marina. You are playing a dangerous game.”

I wheel around. Look at him! That tattered book he clutches to his chest, the ridiculous fertility symbol he wears at his neck. How much can he possibly understand about the Mexica, and about my lord? “I will do nothing to harm him. Ever.”

“Then be careful what you say. You will destroy him.”

“He cannot be destroyed. Not by me, and certainly not by you.”

“You are wrong. He is just a man and any man may be destroyed. Especially by a woman.”

Tenochtitlán

Motecuhzoma was huddled on the ycpcalli, a fur cloak wrapped around his shoulders. He stared into the distance. Woman Snake lay prostrate on the floor in front of him.

The Emperor contemplated the latest news: the Spaniards had defeated the Texcaltéca on the fields of flowers and had forced them to surrender, something their own armies had failed to do in a bundle of years. How could a few hundred men defeat an army of tens of thousands? How was such a thing possible?

It was not possible, of course, unless these Castilians were led by a god. Unless this Malintzin was Quetzalcóatl, the Feathered Serpent.

A god must be properly propitiated. But Feathered Serpent was not one of their own gods, and therein lay the problem. When Motecuhzoma’s ancestors had reached this valley many bundles of years before, they had come under the protection of Huitzilopochtli, Hummingbird of the Left, the God of War; and Tezcatlipoca, Smoking Mirror, Bringer of Darkness. Both were bitter enemies of Feathered Serpent. It was Smoking Mirror himself who had plotted Feathered Serpent’s expulsion from his ancient city of Tollan.

Unlike Feathered Serpent, they both demanded human blood as sacrifice.

Motecuhzoma considered the terrible implications of these recent events. What if his people were caught in a direct confrontation between the gods? A clash of these titans would either destroy the sun or bring an end to the wind and rain. Whoever won, it would mean the utter destruction of the Mexica and he, Motecuhzoma, was responsible for preventing this cataclysm.

He had always known it would come to this. When he had taken the throne, he commissioned the building of a shrine to Feathered Serpent in the court of the Great Temple in the hope of allaying this moment.

The weight of his responsibilities overwhelmed him and he started to giggle with fear.

Texcála

A prince’s ransom in gold and silver and precious stones lay on the floor at his feet. Cortés tried not to look impressed.

“They wish to congratulate you on your victory over the Texcaltéca,” Malinali said.

“Thank them for their kind words. But tell them it was all a misunderstanding. Insist that I have not come to make war on anyone, I have come here in peace.”

She relayed this sentiment to the leader of the Mexica, an Indian with more pride than was good for him. He had thick jades and opals on his fingers, even more jade through his ears and lower lip. On his head was a great fan of quetzal feathers that gave him the look of a strutting peacock.

“He says you should not trust the Texcaltéca,” Malinali said, “for they are a perfidious and unworthy people and he is greatly concerned that we may all be murdered in our beds.”

Cortés smiled. How sweetly we talk to one another! "Thank him again for his concern on my behalf. But tell them that if the Texcálans should think of dealing treacherously with me in any way I would know of it in advance because I can read men’s minds.”

Another rapid exchange. Malinali seemed surprised at what the Mexica had to say and appeared to verify it.

“What is it?” Cortés asked her.

“He says that the Revered Speaker of the Mexica, the great Motecuhzoma, would like to offer you annual tribute to demonstrate his friendship. You yourself may set the amount in gold, silver, jade and cloth, payable each year. But Motecuhzoma insists that it is too dangerous for you to travel further towards his capital since there are many treacherous republics like Texcála between here and Tenochtitlán. He therefore asks that once you collect your tribute you must return to the Cloud Lands in the east.”

He is afraid of me! Cortés thought. He is afraid of me and it must be because he, too, thinks I am this mysterious Feathered Serpent! First he sends his ambassadors to plead with me, now he offers me rich bribes to leave his lands as if I was the commander of great armies and he the captain of a few hundred men! Above the Totonacs and the Texcálans there is one ally here that I have so far overlooked, an ally far stronger than any of them.

Motecuhzoma’s mind.

These
naturales
really believe that men can become gods! It is a blasphemous notion, but one that will serve me well for the present, as long as I tread carefully.

“Mali, ask him to convey to his great lord my most devout friendship. Tell him I would dearly wish to accede to his lord’s wishes, but I must convey my words to Motecuhzoma in person. I cannot turn back without disobeying my own king.”

The Mexican ambassador seemed dismayed at this reply. There was another long exchange. I wonder what she is saying to him, Cortés wondered, how much she embellishes this myth that I am not mortal? A dangerous game. No matter what these Mexica believe, not a word of heresy or sedition must be seen to emanate from my own lips. I must remain blameless.

“What is his reply?” he asked Malinali.

“He says that if you must approach, then he asks that you travel by way of Cholula for there you can be certain of a welcome befitting a great lord. He is even willing to act as your guide.”

“Thank him most kindly for me. Tell him I will think on this and he will have his reply in due course.”

The Mexican ambassador and his retinue bowed and left. Cortés stared after them, lost to his own thoughts.

Painali, 1510
:

The Mexica are to dedicate a new temple in their capital, Tenochtitlàn, and there is to be a day of celebration demanding many sacrifices to their insatiable gods. Below us, in the market square, are gathered together the young men and women they have chosen as suitable gifts for Huitzilopotchli.

Hate, real hate like this, is a new experience for me. My legs are trembling with the force of it so that I have to lock my knees and clench my fists. It is only when you feel such powerlessness that you lust for power, ache for it, pine for it. I think this is what happened to me at that moment, I think that was the beginning. I want to watch their own beating hearts blacken and burn and see their faces suffer in agony and death for once.

I am ten years old.

Down there among the milling prisoners are two of my brothers and a sister; down there, five friends I have played with since I walked my first steps; down there one hundred boys and girls from my village little older than myself. I hear their mothers shriek in grief, watch the blank faces of fathers powerless to protect them.

I understand, of course, that if rain is to fall and maize is to grow, that the gods must have their due. Even here in our own temples our priests offer up a slave from time to time. But this wanton slaughter of Persons is savagery beyond comprehension.

My father stands beside me. His face betrays no emotion.

“Quetzalcoàtl, Feathered Serpent, will return in the year One Reed,’ he whispers to me. “He will return on a raft from the east, as he has done before, and he will put these vermin, this plague on our people, to the torch. The hours of our suffering are almost past.”

Later this became my creed; but back then I barely heard him. I watched the boys and girls file from the plaza, roped together, a hundred hearts for Huitzilopotchli, the warm blood humming through their veins soon to be dashed in the face of Hummingbird of the Left.

I rushed away to vomit. Pure bile. I spit out my hate on the hot stones of the plaza. May Feathered Serpent hasten his return. Bring them down in pain and suffering and terrible, shrieking death, all of them.

I am ten years old. 

Texcála, 1519:

The beat of drums, the whistle of flutes, the tantalising odours of warm food and spices. Heaped dishes of maize cakes, roasted rabbit and beans with chilli were placed on the mats in front of them. Acrobats cart-wheeled across the floor of the great hall and dwarves tumbled and danced.

Ring of the Wasp the Elder whispered something to Malinali.

Cortés had eaten very little, his eyes darting everywhere. He saw this exchange and wanted to know what the old chief had said.

“He says you should not go to Cholula,” Malinali told him.

“The Mexica have assured us of an hospitable welcome.”

She conferred briefly with the Texcálan chief in
Nahuatl
then turned back to Cortés. “He says he would trust a rattlesnake not to bite him before he trusted a Mexican’s hospitality. If you go to Tenochtitlán you must go by way of Huexotzinco.”

Suddenly everyone is concerned for our welfare, Cortés thought. How things have changed in the past few days. “I will have to think about this.”

“Of course you will think about it,” Malinali said, “but then you must go to Cholula.”

Alvarado and Benítez overheard the conversation and they both stared at her in stunned silence. “Damn your eyes,” Alvarado muttered, “you cannot speak to the
caudillo
in such a manner.”

Cortés smiled. “But she is right. I do have to go to Cholula.”

“But why,
caudillo
?” Benítez asked him.

Cortés did not answer.

“Ring of the Wasp wants to cement the alliance we have made with him,” Malinali said to Cortés. “He offers women for all your captains.” She hesitated. “He would like you to have his daughter.”

Ring of Cotton indicated the five women sitting demurely on the other side of the hall. They wore beautifully decorated huipitli and fine pieces of jade had been worked into their hair.

“They are all from families of important Texcaltéca lords. The one Ring of the Wasp claims as his own daughter is the one on the right. Actually she is his grandchild. He is being vain.”

Cortés studied the women critically. “What do you think, Mali?”

“My lord?”

“Should I accept his kind offer? Should I bed his grand-daughter?”

He saw a flicker of uncertainty, of pain, on that inscrutable face. His little Indian princess was jealous and possessive, after all. Like all women. She seemed to have lost her tongue.

“Tell him it is a most gracious offer and I thank him for it. But I cannot accept his daughter, although she is indeed quite lovely, because I am already married and my religion permits me just one wife.”

He returned to his food but he felt her stillness. Several moments went by before he heard her relay his words to Old Ring of the Wasp and when she did her voice was not the same.

“Please inform him however that my other captains would be greatly honoured to accept these beautiful ladies into their households after they have been baptised into the Christian faith. Remind him also that he is an old man and must soon think about death. And because he is my friend I would like him and his fellow chiefs to also take the sacrament and renounce their old gods, so their souls might find peace in heaven.”

Malinali seemed shaken by this. Cortés listened to her stammer through her translation, with many pauses. When she had finished, Old Ring of the Wasp’s toothless grin was gone.

“He answers you this way,” Malinali said. “He is very happy for his daughters to be sprinkled with water if that will make you content. But for himself, he could not renounce his gods even at the forfeit of his own life. Should he do so, there would be an insurrection among the people.”

Why were these people so stubborn? Cortés wondered. He thought Fray Olmedo and Fray Díaz had explained this matter thoroughly to the
naturales
, so that they should see their errors. “If he becomes a Christian he will find eternal happiness in heaven. But if he dies without the sacrament he will be thrown into the infernal pit and roast forever in agony. He must renounce these blood sacrifices ...”