The Goldsmith's Daughter (12 page)

“There has been a battle!” she announced with relish.

“A battle? Impossible! It is not the season for war!” A woman in the corner dismissed her words in scathing tones.

“Season or not,” she persisted, “this force of strangers has fought the Otomi.”

“The Otomi?” I echoed, astonished. I knew of their reputation. They were a wild, brutal race whose territory lay next to that of the Tlaxcalans. Their women were as savage as their men, walking abroad with blue-painted breasts bared for all to see. The Otomi were said to be unconquerable, ungovernable. Certainly our emperor had always allowed them to do as they wished. “These strangers must be fools indeed if they sought a fight with them!”

A woman next to me agreed. “Then it is the last we shall hear of these newcomers. They must have perished.”

The portly one shook her head furiously, cheeks flapping like the wattles of a rooster as her words fell over themselves in her hurry to get them out. “No no no – it was the Otomi who perished. The Otomi who were vanquished. It was the strangers who won.”

“I heard their numbers were small,” puzzled a girl sitting opposite me. “A few hundred. How can they have beaten the Otomi? That tribe has many thousands of warriors.”

“They have great magic, it seems. Monstrous dogs that will tear a man's throat out at their bidding. An instrument that will kill ten men with one blow, scattering their limbs to the wind. Sticks that will slay across such a distance that a warrior has no chance even to raise his cudgel against an opponent. How can any fight against such unnatural force?”

The steam chamber seemed suddenly to cool. Every woman sat, arms wrapped around her body, as if seized with cold. There was silence for a while, and then the girl who faced me across the room said quietly, “They are gods, then.”

The rooster-cheeked woman was unnerved. She pulled her head back, and then thrust it forward again. “Perhaps,” she conceded.

“Quetzalcoatl,” said the girl. “It can be no other.”

“I know not,” came the response. “But it is said their leader has no taste for sacrifice. That has the sound of Quetzalcoatl, does it not? And if they
are
merely mortal, they surely have a powerful god behind them. Some deity smooths their path. How else could they conquer the Otomi? Whatever they are, I think we shall soon find out.” She looked about at her fearful audience, timing her next words to cause a sensation. “They have already journeyed far. With each day they come closer. And after their fight with the Otomi, it seems they made an alliance with Tlaxcala. They have their support.”

A series of gasps rippled around the chamber. The Tlaxcalans were our ancient foe. Each year the blood of their warriors was spilt on our altars. But now this old enemy had a new and mighty friend…

“What will they do?” I asked softly.

“Who can say? These are peculiar days. But all know the Tlaxcalans have long wanted to rise up against our emperor. If they have the opportunity to do so, they will surely take it.”

“They will come here.”

“They will,” declared the woman. “Only the gods can protect us.”

T
he rumours gripped Tenochtitlán, and when it became certain that the strangers were both real and approaching with an army of Tlaxcalan warriors, people became frozen with fear. No one knew what to say or do. The city quaked with dread at what would follow. We were used to the sights of sacrifice: such suffering was necessary. But if so much blood and pain were required to buy the gods' favour, how much more would be needed now we had lost it?

Our emperor was carried about in his litter as if bidding farewell to the earthly splendours of Tenochtitlán. Before the will of the gods he bowed his head, as did we all, and waited for the blows of fate to fall.

Devastating news came on the next market day. Mayatl set forth to trade for vegetables but returned almost at once, her face drained of colour, her eyes wide with shock.

“Dead!” she gasped. “Slain!” As she entered the kitchen her knees gave way beneath her and she folded onto the tiled floor.

“Who?” I demanded, panic stripping me of sympathy. Shaking her by the shoulders, I roused her sufficiently to relate the appalling tale.

It seemed there had been a massacre in a nearby city. The strangers had drawn their weapons on the people of Cholula. Unprovoked. Undeserved. Unarmed.

Women. Children. Babies.

Thousands upon thousands of them. Slain without warning. Without mercy.

Knowledge of this slaughter settled on Tenochtitlán like heavy frost. It chilled every heart and filled every belly with despair. My own insides heaved with distress.

And with this dreadful event came even greater confusion. I had thought it certain that he who drew ever nearer was Quetzalcoatl. And yet I knew that the people of Cholula venerated this god above all others; they were his favoured ones, his chosen race. It was inconceivable that he would set upon them and slay them within the precinct of his own temple. The strangers had used their weapons not on warriors but on nobles, merchants, traders, craftsmen. And their Tlaxcalan followers had looted and pillaged the city, burning and destroying until its buildings were ash, its avenues choked with rubble.

With every heartbeat the same questions fluttered inside my head like the wings of a caged bird. It was not Quetzalcoatl … and yet who but a god could do such things? Who but a god could allow this to happen? Had the Cholulans erred in their beliefs? Had they given their devotion to the wrong deity?

Was this their punishment?

Cholula was ten days' journey from Tenochtitlán. Before the blood had even dried in the streets the strangers and their Tlaxcalan followers marched towards us.

The emperor's spies could be seen scurrying daily to and from the city, and dreadful news swept outwards from the palace like a great wave. The emperor sent more and more gifts, no longer troubling with secrecy or discretion in his growing agitation. It was said that those who approached had a disease – a terrible affliction – that gold alone could cure. The goldsmiths' district of Azcapotzalco was emptied of its ornaments by imperial command as Montezuma sought to buy the strangers' favour.

My father and I did not escape attention. The contents of our own workshop were taken by Axcahuah, who came himself, bursting in so suddenly that I was caught kneeling, moulding a figure in wax. In haste I concealed the object within a fold of my skirt and began to rub the floor with the hem as though attempting to clean it. It was a poor sham, and would not have deceived anyone who looked at me, but Axcahuah did not even glance my way. His mind was filled with more pressing concerns.

“I will take everything now,” he told my father. “Payment shall follow later.”

In just a few moments all we had – both finished and unfinished pieces, quills of gold, unpolished stones waiting to be set – was loaded into the arms of slaves and taken away to the palace. The workshop was stripped bare; we would have to sit idle until the next market day, when traders would bring more gold.

“These are gifts, my lord?” my father questioned.

Axcahuah frowned at his impertinence, but gave an answer. Perhaps it relieved him to talk of it.

“Our lord emperor offers tribute.”

“Tribute?” My father was astonished. Tribute was something paid to our emperor, something given to a conquering force. And yet our warriors had fought no battle. “Do they come to rule us, then?”

Axcahuah shook his head, but his eyes told a different story. “They say they come in peace; our emperor is not so certain. And so he offers them much gold – a price he will pay annually – if they will agree not to enter our city.”

“And yet they still come?”

“They do. They say they are envoys of a great ruler. They come to offer our emperor friendship.”

“Who is this ruler?” My father's question was little more than a whisper.

In reply the nobleman simply shook his head, and shrugged his shoulders helplessly. He made no further comment, but left our workshop without another word.

The unanswered question lingered in the strange emptiness of the room. My father and I could do nothing but exchange looks, and see our own alarm mirrored in the other's face.

Who claimed to be equal with our emperor? Did such a ruler truly exist? And if he did, how could it be that we had never heard of him?

Like so many of the citizens of Tenochtitlán, my father and I were drawn daily to the great temple precinct to hear the fresh news that flowed from the palace.

One day, soon after dawn, we saw a messenger leading a procession of many bearers away towards the causeway carrying the finest tokens our city could muster.

The sun was not yet high when I saw that same messenger return. I knew him only by the colour of his cape, for he was in disarray, his eyes rolling in alarm, his hair unbound, clutching at his heart as though it might burst from his chest. He staggered towards the palace, but before he could reach it he fell, almost knocking me off my feet. When I bent to aid him, he grasped my waist as though engulfed in horror.

The bearers who had followed him I now saw were empty-handed and stood confused, uncertain what they should do.

“Can I help you?” I asked gently, trying to prise his arms away from me. A crowd had begun to gather around us to witness this bizarre sight. “Let me assist you into the palace.”

“No!” he gasped. “I fear to relate what I have seen to our lord emperor. Is not a teller of bad omens always slain?”

I was too shocked to answer. Before I could reply, he was hoisted to his feet by palace guards and dragged inside. His wailing cries could be heard as he vanished within.

“I have seen the god! The city is doomed!”

The bearers followed, muttering amongst themselves. With these overheard remarks, it did not take long for the tale to be pieced together by the assembled crowd. I had not moved from the precinct before I knew what had occurred.

It seemed the messenger had never reached the strangers. Indeed he had barely crossed the causeway with his gifts, when he had found his path blocked by an aged man with jaguar-clawed toes, apparently sleeping in the road.

The messenger had tried to rouse this withered ancient, but as soon as he had touched him the old man had vanished. Startled, the messenger had looked about him, and the old man had appeared on the road ahead, grinning with mad delight. Whirling his walking stick above his head, he had begun to cackle.

At once the skies had darkened and a wind had blown about them, tearing at their fine cloaks and making the bearers spill their goods upon the ground, where they went rolling into the lake. And then the wizened creature had pointed back along the causeway to Tenochtitlán. As he had watched, the messenger had seen our city burst into flames before both vision and old man disappeared.

This tale swept through the crowded streets. Men wept openly with despair. Women held their children to their breasts in passionate frenzy, kissing them fiercely as though for the last time.

The name of the god was on every tongue. I had to press my hand to my lips to stop a sob bursting from me. Had I not seen him myself in the marketplace? Had not Mitotiqui shielded me from his blows? Had I not carved his waxen image?

No one could doubt that the old man who had thus foretold the destruction of our city was Titlacuan, the destroyer: the dark face of the god Tezcatlipoca.

T
he strangers had gathered on the shore. In the evening light we could make out little detail, but the immense size of the force assembled against us was in no doubt. We were surrounded: held within Tenochtitlán by Tlaxcalans who had massed at the end of each causeway, and who swarmed upon the hills, numerous as ants. And as we watched they stood in turn, each raising his cloak high so that a blood-red wave rippled across the slopes.

With fear gnawing at my insides, my father and I elbowed through the crowds that were drawn to the city's edge to view this spectacle. Each mouth muttered different words, but the meaning was always the same: terror, doom, death.