A Signal Victory (15 page)

The rain cleared and they had an excellent view. Montejo scuttled or burnt both ships. They burned for a long time against the sky, and the smoke from them made the afternoon sky look green. The crews he added to his own company. They might not be willing, but at least they could fight if they had to.

That suited Guerrero very well. He was not impressed. It was what Cortés had done at Vera Cruz, but Montejo could only ape the gestures of a larger man. Being himself small, he would not know what to do next.

It was a miscalculation. But then Guerrero was between worlds. He still thought initiative was in the hands of the individual, who wants this or that. He had no knowledge of the world’s new conquerors, the little men, to whom personal integrity means nothing, and possessions at no matter whose or what cost everything.

Montejo marched north, leaving forty helpless invalids behind. He had been lured, as Guerrero hoped he would be, by false promises, into the interior.

The Indians had not the courage to attack. Cortés had left prestige behind him, and few men will attack prestige, for it is an evasive enemy. Very well then: let them be picked off, Indian fashion, a few at a time. It would make them suffer, and they deserved to suffer. Suffering was all of the world they understood. Perhaps to endure it would make them saints, and that, surely, should please them.

Guerrero saw them now as the enemy. Perhaps even as a child, he had seen them so. He followed. And he made his preparations. That was when he began to understand Nachancan’s quietism, for sometimes he could rouse the natives, and sometimes he could not. He found it difficult to suppress his rage before those who would not help. Did they really want to give away a world which, even if it plagued them, was still their own?

He went ahead, failed or succeeded, and then came back to watch the Spanish. They had the fascination of the horrible.

Montejo’s progress could not exactly be called a march. The rain forest grew quickly during the wet season, and no one would show them a path. They had to cut themselves through.

In addition they had no idea where they were going.

Eventually they reached a place called Pole. The Indians so far had left them alone. But now they were close to inhabited parts of the country. They had to advance with more care. Twenty more men had sickened. These Montejo left at Pole. The Indians there seemed friendly. He went on towards Xamanca, which was on the coast. He was himself ill. At night now they let the horses wander loose, for if Indians tried to attack, the horses would whinny and sound the alarm.

It was impossible to tell anything about the Indians. In these parts each town seemed to have a policy of its own. There did not seem to be any large unified states, as in Mexico.

That was what Guerrero had found out. But they did not, as yet, even imagine the existence of a Guerrero, and would have thought him a renegade, if they had.

Sometimes the townspeople came out to meet them, bearing gifts of maize, turkeys, and jars of honey. But sometimes they would not appear at all. Between the trees and the vines they would instead build palisades called albarradas, at an angle to the line of march, and disguised as underbrush. From these they could shoot down the
Spaniards with arrows, lances, darts, stones, or anything else that came to hand.

It always meant a few men hurt. The Spaniards took up the quilted armour of the country, and cast aside their own. It was made of cotton, and in that weather, clung heavy, treacherous, and damp about them.

Guerrero, who had made many improvements in the albarradas, now judged the time the right one, and sent a message along the rear of Montejo’s line of march.

As a result, at Pole, the Indians swept down on the Spaniards, killed the weakest, and hauled the others off for sacrifice. So even a coward makes a good ally at the right time. It meant a few Spaniards the less. Guerrero was not displeased. It was obvious, now, that Montejo was desperate to reach the coast. That meant he would have to pass through Xamanca.

Guerrero sent off a message to Naum Pat, got no answer, and then went to see the man himself.

Naum Pat, ruler of Cozumel, controlled Xamanca and the coast. Meeting him, Guerrero began to understand Nachancan’s polite despair.

The man was middle-aged and quite immoral. Already, tired of sensation, at fifty, he had begun to tipple, a self-indulgence the Maya approved of only in the very old, who might be presumed to need that alcoholic screen between themselves and life.

There was nothing to be done with him. Since he believed he might die tomorrow, and was an elegantly selfish man, he made no plans for the future. The future for him did not even exist, for the world to him was himself, and for himself it was always today.

Oh yes, he admitted the evil in their midst. But it was not his business to deal with it. Besides, he was bored. He would do anything to be amused. Prudence, perhaps, is always short-sighted. Strangers often came to Cozumel. It was better to treat them well until they went away.

So he would not even listen to Guerrero. He was on the
way to the marriage of his sister, at Ecab. He departed, encountered Montejo, saw what he was, and befriended him. It pleased him to arrive before his brother-in-law at Ecab with such an exotic company. He became benign. He gave the Spaniards gifts, as one would reward a dwarf or a zany.

Not to be outdone in splendour, the Lord of Ecab presented the Spaniards with gold necklaces encrusted with jewels. It was a fatal mistake. The Spaniards had no way of knowing how rare such things were here. They took heart and began to preach Christianity at once.

The Indians listened politely and went away. It seemed a professional matter for priests, not the subject for a public harangue. Of course if the strangers preferred their own gods they might keep them. There was nothing wrong with being devout.

Guerrero, anonymous in the crowd, could only curse. What Indian in that crowd could make anything of it? It was both naïve and horrible, naïve in its greed, even more naïve in its hatred of the world.

His Spanish was rusty. And yet he could follow the argument. But more than ever it had done, once, it now disgusted him. What awful pride these people had, to see the world in their own way only and never perceive the diversity.

He set himself to foment disorder. He had not much trouble.

Though reduced by death and disease, the Spanish were expensive guests, and difficult to get rid of. The Lord of Ecab decided to pass them along to the nearest border. It was amiably done. They were even shown a little more treasure. Montejo was afraid to take it, and told his men not to do so.

“I found many signs of gold,” he wrote home,” but to prevent the natives from gaining the impression that we came to find it, I did not dare accept what they offered me. Rather, I pretended to hold it in little value, because my men were few and ailing, and because the Indians, if they believed I desired gold, would deceitfully conceal it.”

You cannot do anything with a mind that works that way.
But then the Spanish could not do anything with the way the minds of the Indians worked, either.

They removed to Conil, another prosperous city too large for them to attack, where they were well received. Down by the sea, they found fresh springs bubbling up through the gentle tide. They rode the horses out there to drink, and counted it more of a marvel than anything else they had seen. But then apart from greed, they were a simple people. They could only marvel at simple things.

Guerrero was ahead of them, but could accomplish nothing at Conil. He moved on to Chuauca. It was on Montejo’s line of march, and Chetumal and Chuauca had, as it happened, excellent trade relations. Guerrero did better there. An ambush was planned. He supervised it himself. He was beginning to learn diplomacy. Since the Spanish spent two months at Conil, he had ample time to plan.

From Conil, confident that the country was within his grasp, Montejo moved to Chikinchel, and from there, to Chuauca, which lay on a fresh-water lake.

Guerrero was ready for them. So were the Chuauca. They were a proud people, sure of themselves, and therefore difficult to shock. Yet the Spanish did shock them. They had that naïveté of the truly rapacious which takes one’s breath away: it is so oblivious of all values but its own, and therefore so rude.

However the Lords of Chuauca were not ones easily to lose their poise by giving way to fits of temper. They saw how that bland assumption of superiority might be turned to some advantage.

The first thing to do was to provide an adequate welcome. They provided well. The welcome left nothing to be desired. The cacique himself greeted Montejo in the plaza in front of the palace. Montejo took him for an effete dandy, and relaxed. He should not have done so. Effete dandies can be extremely dangerous. They also lay their plans well in advance, and the cacique had had the best advice. He did not care for foreign men-at-arms wandering about. For the
present he fed them well, assigned them lodgings, and made himself as agreeable as possible.

He even managed to show a polite interest in their vulgar and appealing little gods. He stood respectfully through evening prayer. Then he put them to bed drunk.

The Maya retired early, as did all men in those days. Lighting was bad. There was only the moon, and on that particular night the moon rose late.

The priests had provided a few omens, all favourable. They were, after all, members of the ruling house.

It was a very large city, built of stone. The moonlight made it sedate, full of scented flowers and gardens, platforms and terraces. But though soldiers may marvel, they do not admire.

It was Caraveo the priest who gave the warning. He did not drink, and if this white world was to die, at least he wanted to see as much of it as he could. Besides, he could not sleep. He stood in the doorway of the room assigned to him, high on one of those terraces. It was a little before dawn.

Then slowly he became aware of things. Shapes fluttered in shadow, and though feather head-dresses do not reflect much light, gold ear plugs and lip ornaments do. Here and there in the quiet he heard a jewelled tinkle.

A sense of beauty is of some use after all. He went to give warning.

But it was hard to wake drunken men and harder still to round them up from the various houses where they were lodged. The Indians attacked at ten o’clock, while the Spanish were still buckling on their armour and trying desperately to build a barricade. They came from everywhere, without their customary shouts and drumming. There was not even the sound of a conch. They came in silence that was more frightening, and they filled the world. And when they were close enough, they attacked.

Though the Chuauca cacique could dispense with the ritual of war, he could not dispense with the idea that war was one. That notion was too ancient, and unlike the
musicians, could not be ordered away. The Indians made straight for Montejo.

Montejo was no coward, and he had not only to save himself, but also his men. If he did not whip them into a victory, they would be hunted down one by one, and he had been to Yucatan before. He knew what happened to the leader of any engagement. He knew he would not be killed. What the Indians would want was capture, and from his horse he could see the temple stairs up which his captors would lead him, painted blue. He dug his spurs in and charged, slashing with his sword.

It did not take him long to learn that he was wrong. The Indians were too furious to bother even with their own religion. They merely wanted their invaders dead. That is why they had left out the customary music. But by then he could not turn back. He fought on.

By afternoon he had them beaten to a standstill. They had already evacuated the city. Now they fled themselves, leaving their dead behind them.

But they also left ten Spaniards dead behind them. The Indians used obsidian arrows. These shattered when they entered the flesh. Those Spanish who were not dead, soon wished they were.

The next day the Lords of Chuauca sued for peace, swore allegiance to the Spanish and the Spanish king, accepted Christianity, let the friars smash a few idols, did everything if only they would go away.

Perhaps a defence in depth would work better. Once the Spanish were inland, the Maya could heal over them like flesh around a wound. There were a great many Maya and very few Spanish. Even picking them off a few at a time might do.

So they induced the Spanish to turn inland to Ake, a rival state, and gave Montejo bearers. They then sent messengers to Ake, announcing the Spanish were come to conquer them, and to Montejo, to say that the inhabitants of Ake were coming to conquer him. It was a standard Maya ruse. It had
worked before against the Mexicans, why should it not work now against a small force? It was impossible to make them understand why a people would come four thousand miles, across the ocean, just to destroy them. They had no concept of an alien culture or of a lemming-war.

Guerrero alone of all of them knew that. Yet even he approved.

As usual in such wars, the Akians evacuated their city and prepared an ambuscade. The Spanish marched right to the town and fortified it.

That was what everybody wanted. The Chuauca burden bearers and allies sacked the city and made off with the plunder, leaving the Spanish to be killed. The Akians moved up their ambuscades, surrounded the town, and prepared to kill them. Night fell, and then came day.

The Maya were satisfied. They were also extremely angry. But they had no doubt that they would win. They had had time to follow all the proper forms. The conches were blown. The whistles were sounded, and the drums. They put on their war paint, and all their nose, lip, and ear jewels. They marched out in orderly fashion, and then they attacked.

The sight of those decorated demons, following their own arrows over the ramparts, and eager for human hearts, was supposed to be unnerving. It was unnerving.

Unfortunately the Spanish won.

It was a great victory. They did not lose a man, though one or two were wounded. Above all, it was a diplomatic victory. The surrounding pueblos swore friendship and loyalty, having decided to temporize. There were other stronger states. One of those could defeat the Spanish. For the moment they had done enough.