Jaguar Princess (20 page)

She decided that the absence of anyone else at Tezcotzinco was connected with the examination she and Nine-Lizard had undergone before crossing the lake. In addition, she had a feeling that the assistant estate manager had been directed to keep a close watch on them through the servants. Even if the healer had passed the two newcomers as being free from sickness. Wise Coyote might keep them away from the rest of his household until he was certain.

How long would he keep them alone, she wondered. She enjoyed the simple life of rising early, breakfasting, then painting glyphs all morning and taking walks after lunch. But there was something about the isolation here and the sense of being observed that made her feel unsettled. She wanted Wise Coyote to return, so that she could see for herself what sort of man he was.

One day in the early afternoon, Mixcatl was strolling the blue-tiled hallways of the palace near the library when she heard the echoing slap of sandals on stone. She thought at first that a servant might be approaching, although they seldom went near this part of the house. She quickly decided that it was not a servant. The loud ringing steps spoke of confidence, as if the one approaching knew he had a perfect right to be there.

Perhaps it was Wise Coyote himself, returning unannounced to see how his scribes were doing. She halted, feeling frightened as the steps grew nearer. Perhaps she should run back to her room.
He might not appreciate her wandering around his palace. If he wanted to visit her, he would do so. She shouldn’t thrust herself in his way. After all, as Nine-Lizard had told her, he was the ruler of Texcoco.

As these thoughts went through her head, a young man came around the comer, swinging his arms and singing to himself. He was tall, but not broad of chest like a warrior. Instead he had a graceful slimness like a dancer or a runner and a bounce to his step that went with his engaging smile. He wore a cloak and loincloth of dark jade-green, with a matching headband. On his hands and thighs were smears of an odd green dust and Mixcatl could see some on his clothes as well. He looked as if he might have come from a craftsman’s workshop.

It was too late to duck around a corner. He had seen her and was coming toward her. Well, if this was Wise Coyote, she would get her chance to meet him. She did not fall to her knees as she had seen others do when approached by one of noble status. She only bowed her head, as was proper, so she would not look him in the face.

“Look up, child.” His voice was light with happiness, but resonant and strong. “The sun is pouring in the window and the dust motes are dancing. It is too beautiful a day to cast your eyes down.”

“Are you Wise Coyote?” Mixcatl peered up at him.

“No. I am one of his many sons. It is said that I resemble him greatly. I am Huetzin.”

She studied the newcomer’s face and decided that if Wise Coyote was similar to his son in appearance and manner, she would like him. Huetzin’s face was slightly long, his complexion dark, his eyes deepset. In another, such features might have given a gloomy or moody impression, but there was a certain luminosity of spirit that lighted the young man’s face.

“You must be one of the two scribe-painters that father told me about,” said Huetzin. “Are you enjoying life at Tezcotzinco?”

“Very much,” answered Mixcatl politely, and added, “it is nice not to have to empty pisspots.”

Huetzin laughed. “Of all the things to praise about Tezcotzinco, and you choose that. Well, I will tell you a secret. Father hated emptying pots too, so he built those little water rooms. I didn’t like them when I was small—I nearly fell through the hole.” Shaking his head, he chuckled to himself.

“I would like to meet your father. Will he come soon?”

“I think so. He sent me word that I could come and use the library. That means he is satisfied that it is safe to let you have contact with others of his household.”

“He seems to be a wise and cautious man.”

“Yes. His practice of keeping newcomers to the household separated from the rest has saved us from several plagues that swept through the courts of other kings. Neither he nor I understand why the method works, but it does.”

“Why haven’t I seen you before this?” Mixcatl asked.

“I do not stay here. I have a workshop close to the palace grounds and I sleep in a small shelter nearby. It is not the life of luxury pictured for a king’s son, but I have what I want.”

Mixcatl wanted to know what that was.

“Why, the same thing as you have been given, young scribe. The freedom to work at my art without being disturbed.”

It was easy to talk to Huetzin, with his smile and his open manner. She soon learned that he was a stone-worker and a sculptor. As a king’s son, he did not have to work, but he enjoyed doing statuary for temples and creating pieces from his own inspiration. It was not enough to live on, but Wise Coyote kindly supplied the difference.

“Would you like to come into the library? I am sure my father would not mind,” the youth said, drawing aside one edge of a doorhanging.

To Mixcatl, a library was a chamber where scholars stored and read sacred texts. When she followed Huetzin into the room, she saw many bound-up manuscripts on shelves. Pieces of artwork and sculpture stood on the floor or rested on pedestals or special brackets.

She quickly saw that Huetzin had not come to study the books, but to draw inspiration from the figurines and bas-relief carvings of Wise Coyote’s collection. He handled each piece with reverence and care, studying it closely before replacing it on the shelf. Some he took over to the windows, where a rich yellow sunlight was streaming through.

“These are all images of gods and spirits from times long past,” he said to Mixcatl. “Some were lost; others now make up our present religion. My father seeks in them the beginnings of a god he can worship without getting blood on his hands.” Huetzin’s face turned pensive as he turned away from the window. “And I seek to create an image of a god that has no form. Perhaps, as some say, it is a foolish task.”

Mixcatl did not understand Huetzin’s words, but she felt in them something similar to longings that she had known, but could not yet put into words. As she let her eyes travel along the shelves of beautifully wrought or carved objects, her gaze came to rest on two that stood slightly apart from the rest. One was a composite figure of a broad-shouldered and deep-jawed man holding the figure of a grotesque baby. The other was a single figure, not stiffly upright but down on one knee, with head and hands raised. Looking closer, she saw that the hands looked more like paws and the face was a strange blend of human and great cat.

An odd feeling like a shiver ran down her back as she looked at them, yet she felt a compulsion to pick them up, touch and study each one in turn. There were strange echoes of familiarity in both, as if she had once known what they meant, but had somehow forgotten. Feeling her heart start to hammer in her chest, she quickly moved away.

For an instant she had forgotten Huetzin. Now, as she sent a glance toward him, she saw a questioning look on his face and his mouth moving in words that he spoke only to himself.

“Thank you for letting me see the library,” she said, trying not to let her voice betray the strange
shakiness that had come over her at the sight of the two figurines. “I should go now. Nine-Lizard will be wanting to start work soon.”

“May I come and visit you both later?” asked Huetzin. “I know where your quarters are. I would be eager to see your work, if you don’t mind.”

His grin was infectious and sunny, almost banishing her unease. She found herself smiling back at him. “I wouldn’t mind at all and I am sure that Nine-Lizard would welcome the company of a fellow artist.”

She turned and hurried out, leaving Huetzin alone in the library.

Mixcatl had time to return to her quarters, compose herself and become involved in the painting project once again before Huetzin arrived.

The images in the library had shaken her, not Huetzin himself. She found it easy to greet him and introduce him to Nine-lizard.

“I am pleased to know you,” said the old scribe, rising stiffly from his paintpots to clasp hands with the new arrival. Even though he wiped his hands, he didn’t get all the pigment off his fingers and Huetzin ended up with a cobalt-blue streak on his palm.

“No apologies,” Wise Coyote’s son said, raising one hand before Mixcatl could burst out with an apology for the old man. “We have traded. I wear your paint and you wear my stonedust.” It was true, for Nine-lizard had acquired a jade-colored smudge on the back of his hand. “May I see the work in progress?” Huetzin asked.

Nine-Lizard invited him to bend down over the page. Huetzin studied it with a critical eye. “I am a sculptor, but my father also trained me in the art of interpreting glyphs. It is good work, beautiful, clear and easily read. What are you using as references?”

“Some older books that were sent with us from IIhuicamina’s court. We are coming to the end of what we can do with those, however.”

“Then it is fortunate that Mixcatl met me in the library. In my father’s name, I am pleased to invite you to make full use of it.”

“Then I will accept your gracious offer,” said Nine-lizard, with a sparkle in his eyes that showed that he was greatly pleased. Mixcatl knew that he had been chafing at being restricted to the materials that had been sent with them and he also had grumbled about how far from the truth the Aztec writings strayed.

“I would also like to make another invitation,” said Huetzin. “Would either or both of you like to visit my workshop this afternoon?”

Nine-lizard declined politely, for he wanted a rest after working so hard that morning. Mixcatl eagerly accepted and soon she was following Huetzin down the path through the garden.

Beneath the wide-spread branches of a huge tree lay a small but well-built house, walled with stone and roofed with tile. Nearby stood a canvas-covered pavillion and inside several
workbenches, stools and mats. They were all covered with the gritty dust of stone-carving. Statues in various stages of completion stood on the workbenches, surrounded by stone-chisels and rasps. Mixcatl identified one freestanding figure as the rain god Tlaloc. Others were animals; birds with heads tucked under their wings, a coyote sitting upright, ears pricked forward, tail wrapped about his feet.

Fascinated, Mixcatl put out a hand to touch the statue, then drew it back, fearing that Huetzin might object.

“You may touch and handle anything you like,” he said. “You are an artist; you know how to be careful.”

Gently she ran her fingers down the smooth slope of the coyote’s back. Turning to the workbench, she picked up a small bird carved in. serpentine, turned it in her hands, marveling at the shape Huetzin had drawn from the stone. She felt it and smelled it, enjoying the delicate odor arising from the sun-warmed rock. The sight and feel of the piece in her hand reminded her of a dream she had once had, to break free of the boundaries of glyphs and paint the sweep of an entire landscape.

She smiled to herself, a little sadly. To draw a picture that conveyed no specific information was a waste of time. Better that effort be spent in the mastery of difficult glyphs and the ability to combine them. Yet her hand itched for brush and paper with an urge that she knew was foolish. One of the first things she had been taught as a scribe was that beauty alone was useless; true worth must emerge from the flawless execution of a line of glyphs.

Yet was the urge so foolish? She looked around at the statues surrounding her. Huetzin sculpted to serve a purpose; to create temple statuary that honored the Aztec gods. But he also found the freedom to explore shapes in stone, to create beauty for its own sake.

She found Huetzin looking at her, a puzzled expression on his face. “You look unhappy,” he said softly. “I did not mean to bring you to a place that would cause you sorrow.”

Mixcatl swallowed. How could she explain it all to him? And even worse, how could she admit that the sight of his works had given birth not only to joy and amazement but to a deep envy and a wish to paint as freely as Huetzin sculpted. She fought the urge to turn and run from the workshop, back to the palace where she could shut herself up with the codex and forget anything else.

“Tell me what troubles you,” Huetzin said, putting his hand on hers. She looked up, realizing that he had spoken to her not as adult to a child or a master to a novice but as one gifted spirit to another.

She struggled to find the words. “Did anyone ever say to you that it was…foolish to use stone just for…pretty things?”

“Do you think it is foolish of me?” Huetzin sounded a little disappointed, although Mixcatl thought that it would be impossible for anything to quench his sunny nature for long.

“No,” she protested, fearing that she had been rude. “I think your birds and animals are
wonderful.”

“As a matter of fact, many people have told me that this”—Huetzin took a stone dove in his hand and stroked it with his fingertips—“is nothing but a child’s toy and that I should spend all my time working on my commissions.”

Mixcatl touched the dove. He had polished it to silky smoothness.

“But you didn’t listen to them, did you?”

Huetzin smiled. “I did for a while. And I became very unhappy. Then my father came and asked why there were no more little birds and animals in my workshop. Do not be bound by what others say, he told me. Make your creatures again because they are beautiful in my eyes.”

Mixcatl sighed. “I wish…”

“To carve in stone? I could teach you, but it is a long and painstaking art.”

“No, my skill is with the brush, not the chisel. I just wish I could do with paints what you do in stone.”

“Why can’t you?”

The question startled Mixcatl. She stared at him, wide-eyed. At last she said, “I dare not waste the blank pages that we brought with us. They are for the history.”

Huetzin looked thoughtful. “My father may have some old ones that he has not used. I could ask him.”

Mixcatl protested. “Paper is too valuable to be used for just…scribbling.”

Huetzin took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “If my animals are not just child’s toys, then your painting would be more than ‘scribbling.’ Still, if you feel uncomfortable about using paper, there are some clay tiles left over from building my little house. They aren’t very large, but they are smooth.”