Feathered Serpent (7 page)

  ———————

I am asked to inform the Lord Tendile that today is a very important and holy day to the gods of thunder, and that he and his retinue are invited to witness the proceedings. They sit in the shade of the palm trees as Fray Olmedo and Brother Aguilar erect a large wooden cross in the sand. The friar then reads from his book while Aguilar rings a small silver bell he has brought from the ship.

“What are they doing?” Tendile asks me, as Aguilar and the priest raise a silver goblet to their lips. “What is that are they drinking? Is it blood?”

I do not know how to answer him. All I know of their customs is the gibberish spouted by Aguilar. “It is blood, but not human blood. The blood belongs to their god.”

Tendile looks perplexed.

“Our gods demand blood from us,” I go on, more confident now. “Feathered Serpent and his followers instead demand blood from their gods. The gods sacrifice themselves.”

Tendile is silent. No doubt he wonders what Revered Speaker will say when he hears this.

Cortés studied these Mexica. From the moment Tendile had arrived at the camp, two of his retinue had been at work, seating themselves on reed mats on the ground and drawing everything they saw. So, he thought; not only a delegation of welcome, but a delegation of spies as well. Perhaps I can use this to my advantage.

After the Holy Easter Mass was completed he turned to Alvarado. “Tell Benítez and the others to saddle their horses. And have Mesa prepare a charge for the artillery. We will give this pompous savage something to tell Motecuhzoma when he goes home.”

Alvarado grinned and hurried away.

Cortés led Tendile and his entourage down to the beach. “Tell Malinali I have something to show my guests,” he said to Aguilar.

Tendile followed Cortés, his face returned to the stern visage he had assumed on his arrival at their camp. The other Mexica lords followed too, their noses in the air.

Damn your arrogance, Cortés thought.

From a clear blue sky, a thunderclap shook the ground under their feet. All the Mexica fell to their knees, even Tendile. Another thunderclap followed, then another.

Cortés smiled. It was precisely the effect he had intended. Tendile cowered on the ground.

Mesa fired another salvo from his
culverin
s. On the other side of the bay coconut fronds crashed onto the beach, palm trees snapped like twigs.

The guns fell silent. Tendile and his entourage got slowly back to their feet. Trembling like women, he was pleased to see. He nodded to Alvarado, who drew his sword and raised it into the air, a pre-arranged signal. From the other end of the beach came the
jinetas
, followed by the war dogs, galloping towards them in close formation, the horses' hooves thundering on the wet, hard sand.

The Mexica gasped in dismay. Tendile took a step back, his face sickly grey. The others huddled around him. Some of them threw themselves back on the ground. Benítez and his cavalry spurred their horses so close to the Indians that the hooves churned up the sand mere inches from their heads.

Cortés looked back up the beach, saw Motecuhzoma’s scribes frantically transcribing all they had just seen. Well, that should make a good impression.  

  ———————

I cannot take my eyes from him. He is all that I have waited for. He fears nothing.

Feathered Serpent confers briefly with Aguilar, who then turns to me. “My lord Cortés wishes you to tell this Tendile that he hopes soon to have the great pleasure of looking on Motecuhzoma personally.”

I pass this news on to my Lord Tendile. See how the great Mexican lord sweats like a girl! I am no longer the struggling child tied with thongs in a storage hut, the helpless princess watching her father kick and tremble as Motecuhzoma’s soldiers throttle the life from him. I am not dust on the ground. I am the obsidian wind, the breath of the gods. I am safe with Feathered Serpent, and together we shall crush these invaders with their savage, unnatural gods, these usurpers, these Mexica.

The Lord Tendile took time to assume his composure and former dignity, re-gathering it around him like a cloak. He pointed to Alvarado.

“He asks Tonatiuh if he can have his helmet as a gift for my lord Motecuhzoma,” Aguilar said to Cortés.

Alvarado laughed when he heard the request. He removed his cabasset, and tossed it to Malinali. “He may borrow it for a while if he returns it filled with gold!”

Cortés thought to stop him but Malinali had already translated what he had said. He wished sometimes he could control Alvarado’s tongue. Such a request too baldly revealed their intentions.

Tendile frowned at Malinali and an urgent discussion followed.

“What does he say?” Cortés asked.

“Evidently,” Aguilar said, after conferring with Malinali, “he asked what is so very special about gold.”

There was a tense silence. Several of the Spaniards exchanged glances.

Cortés considered a reply. “Tell him,” he said, “that we Spaniards all suffer a terrible disease of the heart. Gold is the only cure. That is why it is so special to us, that is why we need it so badly.”

“Amen to that,” Jaramillo said and grinned.

  ———————

Tendile left with a promise to return soon with word from Motecuhzoma. Cortés tried to suppress his excitement. All this talk of gold. They were so close now.

He looked at the Indian girl, Malinali. “Give her my thanks,” he said to Aguilar. “In future she will stay by my side, to help me speak with the Mexica.”

Aguilar started to protest. “But my lord …”

“Just do it, Aguilar,” Cortés said and walked away. More than a pretty face, he thought. He wondered what other secrets lay behind those black and velvet eyes.

  ———————

Feathered Serpent’s tent has been pitched behind the dunes, in the shade of the palms. The royal blue silk whips in the ocean breeze, the wind which he alone commands. He sits behind a wooden table, his valet and major-domo standing at his shoulder on either side.

I watch him, fascinated. He has the eyes of an owl man and when he holds you in his gaze you cannot look away. For the first time I notice the small scar on his chin and lower lip, that is partly concealed by his beard. Perhaps he was once attacked by the Earth Monster, as happened to another of the gods, Tezcatlipoca.

He says something to Aguilar and Aguilar then turns to me. “He wants to know where you learned to speak the language of the Mexica.”

“I am not a native of Tabasco,” I answer. I wonder how much I should tell him. I am too ashamed to reveal all of it. “I come from a place called Painali. There we have the elegant speech -
Nahuatl
. When I was a child I was ... captured ... and made a slave. “

Feathered Serpent leans forward, his elbows resting on the table. “He asks if you know of this Motecuhzoma,” Aguilar says.

“I went to Tenochtitlán only once, when I was a small girl. He passed in the street, borne on a palanquin. I know only that he is the richest prince in the whole world. But he is also very cruel.”

“This city - Tenochtitlán. What is it like?”

I direct my answers to Feathered Serpent, even though it is Aguilar who speaks. I want Feathered Serpent to see that I am a Person, and not afraid. “Tenochtitlán is built on a lake in the middle of a great valley surrounded by mountains. It is the most beautiful city in the world. Perhaps one hundred thousand people live there.”

Aguilar smiles when he hears this. He thinks it is an empty boast, he thinks I see things with a peasant’s eyes. I detest his smug smiles and cruel eyes.

“Are they a rich people?”

Now it is my turn to smile. “The Mexica own half the world, and half the world pays them tribute each year.”

Feathered Serpent nods, satisfied. He is a god and so he already knows the answers to these questions and is testing me.

“He says you will be well rewarded for your service,” Aguilar tells me. Then he asks, apparently of his own volition: “When we were talking with the Mexica, with Tendile ... did you translate exactly what I said?”

I lower my eyes to the ground so they do not betray me. Does he suspect? I told the Lord Tendile the truth, certainly, even though it was not exactly what this fool asked me to say.

“Yes, my lord.”

“You are sure?”

I feel Feathered Serpent’s eyes on me. I know e does not understand what we are saying yet I feel a thrill of fear. “I repeated everything as you said it to me.”

“And they understood it?”

“They understood.”

Aguilar is either a fool or a charlatan and for some reason wishes to subvert his lord Feathered Serpent’s task. If only I could talk with him directly.

“Thankyou, Doña Marina,” Aguilar mutters, although he appears much less than satisfied with me. I am escorted out of the tent by one of the Spanish guards but as I leave I turn around and give Feathered Serpent one last glance and I see that he is smiling at me.

May you be buggered by a porcupine, Brother Aguilar. I shall be his right hand, not you!

   ———————

Painali, 1507

I am seven years old and my father is trying to explain to me why he had not changed my date of naming to a more propitious day.

“You will be Ce Malinali, One Grass of Penance,” he whispers to me, “because you are fated to find your destiny in disorder and destruction. We have to destroy the Mexica so we can build a new nation.”

I am very young so what he says is incomprehensible to me. It is only when I am older that I realise my name is the reason my mother wished to be rid of me; such a daughter can only bring bad luck to those around her.

My father and I are standing together on the summit of the Quetzalcóatl temple. Above us the blood-star falls down the night sky, its fiery tail pointing towards the Cloud Lands.

“That is your star,” he whispers to me. “It comes to tell the world that the reign of the Mexica is over and the days of Hummingbird are numbered. It is sign that Feathered Serpent is to return.”

His voice is soft and soothing it was, like a hand stroking my head.

“You are of the few. I knew this from the moment of your birth. You will be here when Feathered Serpent arrives and you will help him rid us of the Mexica. I have seen it in the portents in the sky.

“You are both blessed and cursed with a destiny, my little one, my daughter, my One Grass of Penance.”

Tenochtitlán, 1519
:

It was late, deep into the Sixth Watch of the Night, when Tendile and his fellow lords arrived at the royal palace. Motecuhzoma had given orders that he be woken immediately upon their arrival. The delegation removed their sandals and stripped off their decorated mantles, replacing them with plain cloaks of
maguey
fibre. Then they were led up the great staircase to Motecuhzoma’s apartments.

Revered Speaker awaited them in one of his private chambers. As they entered they were assailed by the pungent musk of copal incense. Sandalwood glowed in a copper brazier, and Teztcatlipoca, Bringer of Darkness, watched them from the smoky gloom. Woman Snake lay prostrate in front of the altar. A young girl was spreadeagled, naked, over Motecuhzoma’s own sacrificial stone, arms and legs hanging limp, her chest open, her heart cooking in the coals.

A skein of black smoke rose to the ceiling.

Tendile and his officers approached on their faces. Motecuhzoma stepped from behind the slab, his robes wet with gore from the sacrifice. He approached them with the basalt jaguar receptacle that held some of the dead girl’s blood. He sprinkled it over his messengers, to purify them. They had spoken with gods.

Motecuhzoma had hoped for good news, but instead saw a terrible truth written on their stricken faces. “Speak,” he said.

“The great rafts appeared off our coast five days ago,” Tendile said. “We met with the strangers and have hurried day and night since to bring you news.”

“Well?”

“They do not have the elegant speech, they speak some other language that sounds like the quacking of ducks. They have a woman who speaks for them: a Person, like ourselves. She calls herself Malinali.”

“And what did this Malinali say to you?”

Tendile was trembling. Saliva leaked from his mouth onto the floor.

“What did she say?” Motecuhzoma shouted.

“She said that the ancient prophecies are to be fulfilled. She said ... that Feathered Serpent has returned as promised.”

Motecuhzoma pressed his knuckles to his forehead, as if trying to burrow his way inside his own skull. “Who was this woman?”

“I confess I do not know my Lord, except that she spoke most insolently to me.”

“What did she say?”

“That Feathered Serpent wishes to speak with you in person, that he has been commanded to do this by Olintecle himself.”

Tendile lay prostrate on the cold marble, waiting a hundred years for these few terrible moments to pass. I will be sacrificed to Hummingbird for this, he thought. My skin will be flayed and thrown into the great pit at Yopico.

Motecuhzoma took an agave thorn from the shrine and stabbed at his own flesh, repeatedly, until the blood ran down his arms. “Did you see this stranger who claimed to be Quetzalcóatl?”

“Yes, my lord. His skin was white, like chalk, and he had a dark beard and a straight nose. He was dressed in black and wore a green feather in his cap.”

“A quetzal plume!” Motecuhzoma murmured. A god was known best by his head dress. A jade feather signified Feathered Serpent. And black was one of his colours. “What of the others who were with him?”

“Like him, they wore strange clothes that had a pestilential odour about them. Many of them had long beards and hair of strange and unnatural colours. Their swords and shields and bows are all made of some metal that shines like the sun. And yet, great Lord, if they were indeed gods, their excrement was not of gold, as it should be, but like ours. For we waited after our meeting to observe them and ...”

“What do you know of the ways of the gods!” Motecuhzoma shouted.

Tendile lay on his belly, silent. Please do not kill me.

“Did this woman tell you why this bearded lord wishes to speak with me?”

“She says it concerns matters of the gods.”

“They spoke of religion?”

“No, but I saw them at their ritual, great Lord. They were drinking blood.”

For the first time Motecuhzoma allowed himself to hope.

But then Tendile said: “Yet it was not the blood of a man they were drinking, or this is what she said, but the blood of a god.”

“The blood of a god?”

“My artists drew pictures for you, great lord.”

One of Tendile’s scribes crawled forward clutching several bark sheets, the paintings that he and his companion had made on the beach at San Juan de Ulúa. Motecuhzoma snatched them from him. He stared at the floating temples with their great banners of cloth, the logs spitting fire, the two-headed monsters, the angry beasts that followed them.

“What is this?”

“Great Lord, the strangers possess stone serpents that shoot smoke and sparks from their mouths. If the serpent is pointed towards a tree, the tree falls. If it is pointed towards a mountain, the mountain cracks and crumbles away. The noise is like thunder and the smoke has a vile smell that made us all sick. Some of them rode great stags, taller than two men standing on each other’s shoulders, and these beasts carry them wherever they want to go. They breathe smoke from their mouths and when they ran it was as if the very ground trembled under our feet. They also possess dogs as no dogs we have ever seen, monsters straight from the land of the dead, with great jowls and yellow teeth.”

What this woman called Malinali had told Tendile could not be denied. It was the year One Reed, the day Feathered Serpent had been born and the day he had sailed away. The portents were there for even the most obtuse priest to read. The owl men had prophesied:

Motecuhzoma stared at the shadows, lost in his own despair. Finally he remembered Tendile and the other lords, who were awaiting his answer.

“Is there anything else you have to tell me?” he said.

Another of Tendile’s retinue crept forward. He was holding a metal helmet, made of some shining metal that resembled silver. What is this?

“One of the strangers gave us this head-dress,” Tendile said.

Motecuhzoma examined it. It was similar to the helmet worn by Hummingbird on the Left, their own war-god.

“He gave you this as a gift?” Motecuhzoma asked.

“No, great Lord. He demanded that we return it, filled with gold.”

“Gold,” Motecuhzoma said. “Why gold?”

“They said it was to heal a sickness peculiar to their kind. Indeed, they ignored all our other gifts, the finest cloth and feather work and some exquisite pieces of jade. Only the gold seemed to excite them.”

Perhaps that is why they have come, Motecuhzoma thought. He started to giggle. Perhaps there was an answer to this after all ...

“You shall return to the coast tonight and give these strangers exactly what they ask. If it is gold they want, it is gold they shall have. We shall also discover if this Malinali’s Lord is truly Feathered Serpent or just a man, as you claim. There are ways we may divine the truth.”