The Seven Serpents Trilogy (18 page)

Struck dumb by the man's audacity, I had trouble summoning a second objection to his plan, though a dozen crowded my mind. At last I said, “I do not like the thought of placing myself in the role of a mountebank.”

“Would you prefer to have your chest ripped open and your heart plucked out? Are your scruples that keen?”

“No,” I said, and fell silent.

The dwarf prodded me. “What else confuses you?” he asked.

“I am not fit, not suited to be a god. I am not a god.”

“It is not what you are that matters. It is what the people think you are.”

“The plan is preposterous,” I said.

“We shall see.” The dwarf drew himself up and puffed his cheeks. “Your choice,
amigo
, is simple. You accept the role I have chosen for you, or you die on the sacrificial stone as a common castaway. As for me, if by chance you wonder, all I need to do is to return to the City of the Seven Serpents with the news that another Spaniard has been cast upon the shore.”

He motioned to the warriors, two of whom trotted over and raised him to their shoulders.

“Three days from now in the morning I will be back,” he said, “with many warriors, musicians, and three high priests. Be ready. Seat yourself upon the horse, the one I caught a glimpse of a moment ago standing beside your hut. Grease his coat so that it shines. Comport yourself like a god.” He paused to give me a threatening look. “If you are not here, we will find you.”

The warriors placed him in his canoe and they all took up their paddles, continuing to stare at me as they moved away, as if already they had decided that I
was
the god Kukulcán. The dwarf waved. Ceela and I watched them until they disappeared behind the promontory.

She had understood nothing of the conversation, but she had heard the name Kukulcán spoken a number of times. She asked me if the dwarf 's visit had something to do with the god's feast day. I told her that it had. I decided to say no more.

“The dwarf is a big man among the noble rulers of this island,” she said. “He is very big; my grandfather has told me.”

“I noticed that you stood off and treated him with respect.”

“It is wise,” she said, “to be respectful when noble people are about.”

I looked at her broad, handsome brow and asked her why, since it was the fashion of the Mayans, her mother had not changed its shape.

“She wished to do this,” Ceela explained, “but my grandfather would not let her. He said that heads were meant to be as they had been given to us. He said that to change their shape was vain, an insult to the gods.”

Ceela pushed back her shock of hair and felt her head and smiled. “Do you like it this way?” she asked.

“Yes, exactly that way,” I said. “Tell me, does your grandfather have crossed eyes and a head that slants?”

She nodded. “Yes, he has one like that because it was done to him when he was a baby. His mother did this with the boards, and she likewise hung a pebble in front of his eyes and encouraged him to look at it, so his eyes became crossed.”

Bravo came running along the shore, splashing through the waves, and stopped in front of us, dripping sea water.

“I feared when the dwarf came with the warriors,” Ceela confessed, “that he had come to take you away.” She blushed at these words and quickly added, “What would happen if he came back and took Bravo away?”

That night I never closed my eyes in sleep. It was not that I lay awake trying to decide what I would do. It was clear that I could not stay where I was. Nor could I hope to escape by fleeing into the jungle or taking to sea on a raft. I had no choice except to play out the role the dwarf had devised for me, wildly preposterous though it was. Either that or to give up my life on a sacrificial stone.

 

T
HREE DAYS LATER, IN MIDMORNING, AS INSTRUCTED BY
C
ANTÚ,
I
WAS ON
the beach when his flotilla of red ca noes rounded the promontory.

I sat astride the stallion, whose coat I had brushed till it shone, whose mane Ceela had braided and woven with ribbons of blue cloth. His tail was combed and his hooves polished. He looked magnificent, a Pegasus, the perfect mount for a god.

As for myself I was dressed in my makeshift boots, the blue cloak Ceela had sewn for me, which was far too small, and the frayed breechclout. I didn't look at all as a god should look—imperious, defiant, fashioned of ice and fire. Nor, alas, did I feel like one.

The flotilla sped shoreward, one canoe following hard upon the other. I counted ten, twenty, thirty-three. With feathered pennons flying from prow and stern, laden with warriors painted black and musicians painted green, to the swish of broad-bladed paddles, the rattle of shakers and the beat of drums, of conch-shell horns bellowing, they came toward us as if they were charging an enemy and we ourselves were that enemy. To make this seem even more like the beginning of a battle, the canoes, moving as one, pulled up when they neared the shore, and the phalanx of warriors, no longer smiting the air and the sea, laid down their paddles and grasped long spears, which they brandished, meanwhile sending forth blood-chilling cries.

Ceela, who stood beside the stallion, one hand clutch ing his mane, retreated and took up a place behind me. For moments I myself was seized with an impulse to re treat, to turn and flee into the jungle, even though I were pursued by a hundred warriors. It was possible that the dwarf's plan had failed at the very beginning, that the flotilla had come to take me prisoner.

My apprehension was soon dispelled. While Ceela watched with open fear and I hid mine as best I could, two Indians, as they had done on our first meeting, gathered up Cantú, the dwarf, and set him down upon the beach. I recognized him only by his shape. He carried a feathered cane and wore a feathered headdress much larger than he was, adorned with the hooked beak of a macaw. Through this mask he now addressed me, his words sounding more birdlike than human.

“Captain Kukulcán,” he said, speaking in Spanish, “you make a godly impression as you sit there in the sun on your black Arabian steed. Two of the three priests who are assembled in the canoe directly behind me are amazed by what they behold. So amazed, in fact, that they are speechless.”

The priests were huddled together in the bow of a red canoe that was carved in the shape of a giant two-headed serpent. They wore elaborate masks covered with gaudy feathers, two of the masks representing jaguars with teeth bared and one the visage of an araguato, a howling monkey.

“Two of the priests,” the dwarf continued, “think that you and the horse are one. God-horse, a horse-god, inseparable, one and the same.”

Six warriors now gathered around the priests and carried them ashore and set them down with great care, as if they were fragile objects that might fall apart.

“Despite amazement at your godlike appearance,” Cantú said, “we have a serious problem. It is the priest Chalco. He's the one in the monkey mask. Without the masks they all look pretty much alike—slanted foreheads, ear plugs, teeth set with turquoise. It took me weeks to tell one from the other. But Chalco you will come to recognize, for he is prone to breathe through his mouth, making a hissing sound as he does so.”

The three stood motionless not a dozen paces from where I sat astride my nervous mount. Their hands were concealed; the tails of their enormous headdresses trailed long feathers in the sand. The sun fell full upon them, and through the wide slits in their masks I could see that two were gazing at me in wild astonishment. The third priest, however, the one with the araguato-like visage, stood with his eyes averted, looking off somewhere in the distance.

“This Chalco doubts that you are the god Kukulcán,” the dwarf said, his words tumbling out. “Chalco's doubts are based upon a powerful ambition. Mali ciously, he aspires to the lordship of the city; in time, in time, to be, God forbid, a god himself. At this moment you are in the way. We are in the way. But events favor us. We can count upon two of the priests, Hexo and Xipan, both of whom would like to see Chalco catch his nose in the door. Furthermore, this is the feast day of Kukulcán. What better time for you on your beautiful black steed to ride forth into the City of the Seven Serpents?”

 

T
HE PRIESTS, ALL THREE OF THEM, WERE WATCHING US THROUGH THEIR
slitted masks. Perhaps for their astonishment, per haps because he now sensed victory, the dwarf began to speak in a lively tone, so cheerily that I expected to see him break out into a dance.

“Señor, brother Sevillano,” he said, “do exactly as I tell you. It is
absolutamente necesario.
First, display the steed. He is one of the keys that unlock the door to the kingdom. Slowly circle about us. Then gallop off along the beach. Then return and assume a position in front of the priests, perhaps a trifle closer to them than you are at present, for they must clearly hear each word you speak.”

I took a firm seat, a good hold upon the reins. Behind me, in the throes of fear and excitement, Ceela said something under her breath that I only half caught. But I did not ask her to repeat it, thinking that it was an un seemly moment for me, a newborn god, to answer questions.

Sitting tall and stiff-backed as I had often seen Don Luis ride, I made a circle, as I had been instructed to do, aware of silent wonderment on the part of two of the priests and the studied indifference of Chalco. I spurred the stallion into a gallop, sped down the beach, and returned, splashing through the waves, to face the three priests and Cantú, the dwarf.

Birdlike, Cantú hopped forward and with bowed head whispered further instructions. They were simple. I followed them at once, using the words he put in my mouth but, to his immense surprise, speaking them in Maya. “I have come back,” I said, “after many years in eastern lands. I appear, as you can see and as I prom ised, in a different body, the body of a young man blue eyed and white of skin. I come to rule this kingdom once again. My name is Kukulcán.”

As I spoke the words “My name is Kukulcán,” there came from behind me a moan of surprise and alarm. It was followed almost at once by a piercing cry. Turning in the saddle, I saw that Ceela lay stretched upon the sand. I jumped from the stallion's back, forgetting that I was now a god, and stooped to take her up. But with a fearful look she was on her feet, running away along the shore, then through the meadow. At the edge of the jungle she paused to glance back. I waved to her, but she raised her hands to her eyes, as if to shut me out, then disappeared among the trees.

The dwarf, in great distress at this interruption, was hopping about with his feathers dragging, so I quickly took up the reins and a godlike pose, which to my surprise came easier to me than it had at first, only mo ments before.

The words that had shocked Ceela had another and instant effect. As the drums and shakers, which had kept up a steady beat throughout the encounter, fell silent, the three priests turned their backs upon me. Two of them at once; the third grudgingly.

Also about to turn away, but observing my perplexity at the strange behavior of the priests, the dwarf paused. “Henceforth,” he said, “no one will look at you face to face. And I will do so only when we're alone, speaking as two Spaniards. It is the custom here in this strange land.
La costumbre
.”

Before turning his back, the dwarf asked my pardon and said, “You speak Maya well.
Perfectamente.
Al though Chalco conspires against us, as is to be expected, this has strengthened our hold upon the other two, Hexo and Xipan.”

The tide was rising, and with it there suddenly ap peared a shoal of bright-colored crabs. Deposited at our feet, they took fright and scuttled off down the beach, save one, larger than my hand, which took up a position nearby. It reared up and fixed its eyes, which sat like jewels at the ends of long stalks, upon me, at the same time challenging my presence with scimitar-like claws.

The dwarf scuttled crabwise across the sand and placed a foot upon the silvery shell, saying, “That much for our friend, whose name I will not mention, for he is listening—the one who breathes through his mouth and makes hissing sounds as he does so.”

He then signaled with his feathered cane. Three ca noes promptly slid into the beach. They were held to gether bow and stern by thongs and by a rough-hewn platform of poles built amidships, upon which with some difficulty I urged the stallion. The keg of gunpowder was carried through the waves and carefully stowed in a fourth canoe.

The conch-shell horns sounded; shakers and drums took up their beat.

From my precarious perch beside Bravo, I watched my home disappear. First the headland and the wooden cross; then my doorless hut, through which Valiente had come and gone at his pleasure, on whose walls Ceela had daubed her girlish paintings; then the stream in the meadow and the trail that led to the green jungle, whence she had come bringing gifts. I looked for her in the leafy opening, where I saw or thought I saw a move ment among the undergrowth, but it must have been the morning breeze springing up, for she was nowhere to be seen. It was a sad, sad moment for me.

The dwarf, sweating beneath his feathers, said, “We have come this far. Holy Mary, be good to us the rest of the way.”

 

W
E MOVED RAPIDLY NORTHWARD, HUGGING THE COAST, THROUGH
water the color of turquoise, past white caves and stretches of jungle, then clearings where there were clusters of thatched huts, much like the hut I had left, and small farms green with growing crops. People ran to the shore to stare at us. We came to a reef that curved beneath us like a giant fishhook, marked by poles driven into the sea and decorated with tufts of bright feathers.

As we rounded a westward bend in the coast, I saw what seemed to be a cloud lying low above the sea. It was gray in color and oddly shaped, unlike any cloud I had ever seen before. At the same moment, there came to me on the morning breeze a familiar smell.