The Seven Serpents Trilogy (32 page)

The door had double panels and in the center of one was the print of a bright red hand.

Half the size of mine, with the fingers spread out so as to show the clear lines of the palm, it was, according to Cantú, the mark, the signature of the architect who had built the observatory. I was to find this red hand in all the buildings we excavated, sometimes in a prominent place for everyone to see, often hidden away in a corner.

The door, which was jammed by fallen stones, was broken open, and we entered a vaulted room that ex tended far beyond the reach of our torches. In the center of this vast room I made out what seemed to be a small god house.

“A tomb,” the dwarf shouted, his words flying off into the darkness and returning in a ghostly echo. “A king's tomb!”

That is what he saw in the dim light and what he wanted to see—the sarcophagus of a mighty king, filled with treasure.

But it was neither a god house nor a king's sarcopha gus. It was a ship, more than twenty paces in length, with a high bow and stern, woven of reeds arranged in bundles heavily tied and set down in pitch.

On a raised deck in the center of this canoe-like ship, with his back against a broken mast, sat a figure dressed in white. A plumed cap draped the skull and a tuft of dusty hair jutted forth from the jaws. In his lap, he held a delicate fan.

I gasped. For a moment I saw Ah den Yaxche sitting there in a regal gown, his white beard curled, a replica of the drawing I had seen of an Egyptian prince. But the embroidered gown clothed a skeleton, and the beard adorned a gaping jaw.

We did not remain long. The dry air burned our skins. The smoke from our torches and the dust we raised choked us.

When we went again to the tomb it was to decipher a glyph on the prow of the ship. The day of the entomb ment was carved in Maya. It gave, counting in our time, the year 211 after the birth of Christ.

The ship was wholly unlike the Mayan dugouts in size, construction, and materials. The bearded figure in the long white robe, embroidered with signs I had never seen before, did not look like a Maya. If he was not a Maya, who could he be? An Egyptian? If so, why was he here in the heart of an ancient city?

Cantú clamored to search the tomb for gold and jewels, but to his great distress I decided to seal the door for the present.

Ceela entered the discovery of the ship in our archives and left room for any answers to these questions that time and study might develop.

The Indians were promptly put to work on the excavation of another mound, much larger than the observatory, which lay a short distance to the west and was connected to it by a raised causeway.

There was a line of mounds beyond this one. Between the Temple of Kukulcán and the palace was the mound with the red roof and others that the dwarf had shown me the day I arrived. Dozens of mounds were visible from the temple god house, stretching away into the jun gle in all directions.

But I needed workmen to unearth them, at least three times the number that I now had. I inquired among our
pochtéca,
who were trading along the coast, if they knew of any villages where prisoners could be taken.

There was none large enough to bother with, they said, but they suggested that I consider an attack upon the city of Mayapán, which lay inland and some 110 leagues to the northwest.

For many centuries in the past, I was told, Mayapán had been the capital of a confederacy of villages, towns, and city-states. But some sixty years ago a chieftain, Ah Xupan, had raised a revolt, claiming that the rulers were not natural lords and that they were selling their own people as slaves to the Azteca in Tenochtitlán.

As a result, various factions fought bitterly among themselves. The city of Mayapán, which was protected by a twelve-foot wall extending for six Roman miles, had been destroyed from within, the confederacy bro ken up and now no longer extant. Its former inhabitants were scattered about, ready, so my informants told me, to be rounded up and taken prisoner, one by one.

However, there were several difficulties connected with such a campaign.

The villages of Uxmal and Zaya had been easy to capture because they were located on the sea, where they could be overpowered by the ship's cannon. Tikan fell to us because its people had learned that a god had appeared among them.

Mayapán presented a different problem.

It was located far from the coast, in mountainous country difficult to reach because of poor trails and a desert of thorn bushes that had to be crossed. Furthermore, though he had not traded there for more than three years, one of my informants was certain that the city had not heard of Kukulcán's return. Otherwise, he said, its people would have made the long pilgrimage to worship at my feet.

I gave up the idea of attacking Mayapán. But the trader's suggestion sparked a line of thought.

Moctezuma had built an empire by conquering prov inces beyond the borders of his capital, Tenochtitlán. He ruled dozens of villages, towns, and city-states. As the god Kukulcán, with a more powerful presence than Moctezuma's own, possibly I could restore the confeder acy of Mayapán and join it as a vassal to the Island of the Seven Serpents.

Soon afterwards Chalco, the high priest, returned from his native province, a vassal city of Emperor Moc tezuma. He brought with him many jugs of
tecuítcal
, borne on the broad shoulders of ninety porters, fifty of them, to my amazement, Azteca.

Our workmen built an earthen dike across the mouth of the lagoon in the cove north of the city and set out the green, mosslike
tecuítcal
in its brackish water. But when the planting was done and the
Santa Margarita
was ready to take the visitors on the first leg of the journey back to their home, they decided, since it was very cold in the mountains where they lived, that they wished to stay until the end of our beautiful spring.

I made them welcome and put them to work—all were strong young warriors—on the excavation of the second mound.

It was at this time that I decided to make a journey to the Azteca capital.

The idea of restoring the confederacy of Mayapán and joining it as a vassal to the Island of the Seven Serpents had taken a strong hold upon me. If I could see the great city of Tenochtitlán, if I could talk to its nobles, perhaps to Emperor Moctezuma himself, I would learn by what strategies it had conquered its vassal states and kept them in subjection.

Equally important, I would learn how my own city should be organized.

It ran somewhat better than when I arrived, yet it still was a casual operation. Public servants, for instance—those who gathered copal to burn in the temple, the street cleaners, the drawers of community water—all took long siestas in the middle of the day. Treasury clerks, it was said, made a practice of nibbling small bites out of the city funds. Even Xicalanco, my irreplaceable archivist, filched pieces of our best paper. How, I wondered, did Emperor Moctezuma treat lazi ness and theft?

Cantú and Ah den Yaxche were strongly opposed to my journey.

“It's a long one, 150 leagues or more,” the dwarf said, “through hot lands where disease is rife and mountains where the snows never melt. Where everyone you meet is a savage. And when you get there,
if
you do get there alive, what happens then with an em peror who slays twenty thousand people in a single day?”

Ah den Yaxche added, “The Azteca are a warrior race. They have grown powerful by the sword. They live by the sword. The Maya, on the other hand, are not warriors. Once they were a brilliant people, superior to the Azteca in every way. But they have lost that bril liance. They are shiftless. They are content to live from one moment to the next. Be satisfied, therefore, to do what can be done with the poor material you have to work with. Do not try to rival the mighty Moctezuma.”

Preparation for the journey took less than a week. I first convinced Chalco that it was necessary for me to go to Tenochtitlán, giving the reasons I have just stated.

He was silent for a moment, scarcely believing, I am sure, what he had heard. “It's a dangerous journey,” he said, repeating the dwarf 's words.

“All journeys worth making are dangerous.”

Chalco shook his head. I could not see his face, hid den as it was behind his jaguar mask, but I knew that he was overcome by the happy prospect of being rid of me, if only for a time.

“I forget, Knight of the Evening Star, that you are not mortal like the rest of us,” he said. “There are no dangers for a god. You should have a safe journey and learn many things from Lord Moctezuma, likewise from Xocoyotl, Cem-Anáhuac, Uey-Tlatoani, and the other nobles.”

His bearing changed when I told him that he himself must accompany me to Tenochtitlán. “You're an Aztecatl,” I said. “You have made the journey. You know Moctezuma. The—”

“I'll send Tlacho to guide you,” he broke in. “He's an Aztecatl and knows the best way to Tenochtitlán.''

“It is you who will be my guide,” I said, speaking not unkindly, even softly, in the words of Nahuatl, his na tive tongue. “We will leave as soon as possible.”

There was no further argument. Chalco bowed gracefully, made the gesture of kissing the earth at my feet, touched the beak of his jaguar mask.

“We can go now,” he said without the least trace of anger, in a servile voice. “Do you wish to go by litter or on the back of the black beast?”

“On foot,” I said, “and as a trader.”

“That is wise. As the god Kukulcán, you would never reach Tenochtitlán. Thousands would swarm about you. Soon you could not move for people. You would be trampled to death under loving feet. Even worse, every lord, every cacique, of every town and village you passed through would suddenly cease to rule. You would be the supreme god of all. There would be great confusion, battles, death.”

I thought it best not to divulge my plans to the popu lace, dreading the thought of their tears and lamenta tions.

I warned the Council of Elders to beware of ships that might appear in my absence, to greet all strangers po litely, supply them with any food they might need, exchange presents, but under no circumstances to let them set foot in the city.

I asked Ah den Yaxche to tell his granddaughter that she had my permission to ride the stallion while I was away. I also requested him to keep an eye on Don Luis and the fifty Azteca, of whom I was suspicious, to see that they and the rest of the prisoners kept diligently at work.

We left the harbor at noon and reached the mainland before nightfall, anchoring in a cove protected from a heavy wind. The same crew that I had on the campaign against Tikan sailed with us. The wind held us back as we sailed north along the coast of Yucatán, so we did not turn west until three days later.

We were headed for Ixtlilzochitl, a trading center that Chalco had passed through with his Azteca porters. We carried as presents for Moctezuma a bag of pearls of the finest orient, jewels that the emperor was reported to covet.

On a morning of intense heat, the air filled with in sects, we entered a winding estuary where the water was a clear blue, showing a sandy bottom at a depth of two fathoms. The trading village lay at the head of the es tuary. Here we dropped anchor and furled our sails.

I turned the ship over to the
nacom
, Flint Knife, with the same instructions I had given to the three elders about any white men he might encounter. To keep the hold clean, the sails dry, to wash down the decks every day.

The dwarf begged to stay aboard until I returned, but since he was a man of some sagacity, I wanted him with me.

Two days later we were ready to leave but were de layed by a week of torrential rain.

At last, on a clear day of terrible heat, we took the trail for the land of the Azteca, ten porters carrying our supplies. The pearls, because of their value, were strapped to our waists. We carried black staves, the in signia of the merchant trade, although we had nothing to trade.

I had left my mask on the
Santa Margarita
, but Chalco wore his until we had slogged through a sickly yellow marsh infested with water snakes and the village lay well behind us.

What I expected to see hidden behind his jaguar mask, I do not know. I had never formed any idea of what he looked like, nor had I tried. Possibly a nose like the head of a stone club, a slanting forehead. Surely, the small and predatory eyes of a jungle cat lurked there.

He wrapped his mask in plantain leaves and set about stowing it away in one of the packs. When he had fin ished, he turned and said something.

In my amazement, I failed to hear.

Before me stood a man much younger than I had thought, whose face was neither tattooed nor scarified as I had expected. It was the face of an artisan, a goldsmith or a painter of books or of one who could carve the deli cate golden hummingbirds that many of our nobles wore around their necks.

Yes, the mask had hidden the sensitive face of an artisan. Without it Chalco was a different person, no longer the haughty and mysterious high priest.

He smiled a modest, almost bashful smile that I am compelled to say seemed engaging. Small wonder that he wore a mask with catlike eyes and terrifying fangs.

We left the hot salt marshes and were traveling fast when we came upon a herd of young deer. We had plentiful supplies of maize cakes and dried fish, but Chalco insisted upon killing two of the animals. It was not this that held us up, but the ritual afterwards.

The porters laid the deer out in the grass, straightened their crumpled legs, and placed maguey leaves around the bodies in the four directions. It was an apology for the act of killing, made to the animals who were dead in the name of the living, honoring the law which decreed that all life was sacred, kin one to the other—the leaves of the maguey, the deer, ourselves.

“We are cousins of the deer,” Chalco said, “and drink the same water that they drink.”

Coming from a man who had argued that it was better to sacrifice a hundred prisoners than fifty, these words surprised and puzzled me.