Jaguar Princess (21 page)

The forbidden dream suddenly seemed within reach. “I shouldn’t,” she said. “It would ruin my training as a scribe. That is what Nine-Lizard would say.”

Huetzin laughed, not mockingly but gently. “I would think the worse of Nine-Lizard if he did. Perhaps it is your own fear that puts such words upon his lips.” He paused. “And as for destroying your training by allowing yourself a little freedom outside it, well look at me. Have I lost any of the care and precision needed to carve within the forms required by temple statuary?”

Mixcatl gazed at the painstakingly carved figure of Tlaloc and admitted that no, he had not.

“I think now that making my creatures has turned me into a better sculptor than before. I have the discipline if I need it. When I do not, I can put it away.”

“So you think that letting myself paint as I want will make me a better scribe, not worse?” She bent her brows at him.

Huetzin shrugged his shoulders, but his eyes sparkled. “It cannot harm. If you fear Nine-Lizard’s scolding, you could bring your paints here.”

“Perhaps I could,” said Mixcatl, half to herself. “I have plenty.”

With a warm smile at her, Huetzin drew a stool up to the low bench where the coyote figure was sitting and began work upon it once again. To Mixcatl, his manner spoke more eloquently than words. She was free to accept or reject his offer, but she did not have to make an immediate decision.

She knelt on a nearby mat and watched Huetzin as he dipped a strip of leathery material into a pot of water and set it into a rough-cut groove that marked the junction between the coyote’s neck and shoulder. With two hands, he began to work it back and forth. Slowly the leather rasp turned a whitish blue from the stone powder worn away while the cut became smoother and deeper.

“What sort of hide can wear stone?” Mixcatl asked when Huetzin paused to wipe the sweat from his face.

“The skin of a great winged fish that lives in the western sea. It bears a sting so that it is not easily caught, but the rasps I cut from the skin are worth the price I have to pay.”

He resumed his work. Mixcatl could see now how the flexible rasp could be drawn through the tightest of gaps or over large areas of stone, grinding and polishing until the worked surface became glossy. The work went very slowly and she could see how one might have to develop a great deal of patience to coax images from stone. But Huetzin seemed supremely happy as his hands shaped the figure. He seemed to fall into a hypnotic state, and Mixcatl along with him.

With a start she realized that the sun was going down and that she had been away from the palace all afternoon. Huetzin rose, dusted off his hands and began putting his tools away.

“Go to your evening meal,” he said. “I will be here tomorrow afternoon, if you wish to come.”

She said nothing in answer as she turned away, but she found that a smile was on her lips and rejoicing in her heart. She would bring paints tomorrow and sit under the tree.

In the days that followed, Mixcatl spent her mornings with Nine-Lizard, working on the history. Often they visited the library and consulted the books stored there. In the afternoons, Mixcatl took her paints to Huetzin’s workshop and experimented on the clay tiles he gave her.

At first she only reproduced glyphs, for despite her impatience with the tightly restricted forms, they were all she knew and she was afraid to abandon them. Then, one day, with her heart beating hard, she deliberately painted color over the black boundary line of a glyph and found herself free on the surface of the tile. At first she wanted to paint Huetzin, but, despite her ability to capture shapes, she knew instinctively that the human face and figure were far too demanding for her at this stage.

Instead she chose a much simpler subject: a large dock leaf that hung down near her mat. Carefully she outlined the shape of the leaf, the veins, the stem. She chose and mixed colors to suggest the changing hues of sunlight and shadow on the leaf. It was so new a task and so
difficult for her at first that she took many days to finish the leaf, trying different color blends, discarding tiles when dissatisfied with the results, often putting aside her brush and sighing with frustration.

And then, one day, when she stared at the tile and image on it, she knew that the leaf was finished and that any more work would destroy it. She set it to dry in the sunlight, went for a walk, and when she returned, she looked at it with mixed joy and despair. She compared it with the glyphs she had painted earlier. They were made of black lines, each area filled in with a single flat color, not shaded and blended as she had done with the leaf. She looked at the tile and realized that what she had done could be condemned as perverted, juvenile. Look how she had let the greens and yellows run together, mixing to create a smearing of colors across the dock leaf. No scribe-painter would be permitted such an excess. The colors must be pure, even and contained tightly within the black boundaries.

Her hands trembled and she put the tile over her knee to break it. Something made her gaze once again to the dock leaf and she realized with a shock that the wash of changing hues over the surface was real, that the irregularities in the leaf edge were there, that it had browned a little bit and that there were indeed some shades of violet in the dark veins and in the areas where shadow fell. She had not made an icon of the leaf but an image that was so real it was as if the leaf had grown in the tile.

A shadow fell along the grass near her. She had become so caught up in her painting that she had not noticed that the sounds of carving had ceased. She looked up and saw the sculptor’s steady gaze, fixed on her tile.

“Huetzin, I do not know what I have done,” she said helplessly. “Should I break it and start again?”

He knelt down beside her, studying the tile and the leaf from which it was drawn. There was a startled look in his eyes, then they narrowed. For an instant Mixcatl felt a cold fear such as the one she had felt when her image of Tezcatlipoca had been discovered long ago in the calmecac. Would he react in disgust, fear, puzzlement, disbelief?

His face showed none of the expressions she feared. Only a look of rapt fascination with perhaps a touch of bewilderment.

“I do not know what you have done, either,” he murmured.

“That is what I saw when I looked at the leaf,” she said.

“That is why it is so different. You looked at what you painted. You did not make it up out of your mind or from what you have been taught.”

“That is what you do when you make your little birds and animals,” Mixcatl stated, then halted uncertainly. “Isn’t it?”

“Perhaps I do, a little. I watch a coyote and a coyote comes from my hands. But my beast does not look as if he could leap off the pedestal. Your leaf looks as if it could blow right off the tile.”

“Is that good or bad?”

Huetzin spread his hands. “There is no good or bad to this. It is what you see.”

Mixcatl stared down at her tile. “I should break it.”

“No. Give it to me instead,” said Huetzin. “Perhaps it will teach me your way of seeing.”

Mixcatl stared at him, feeling more confused than ever. “I think I need to go back and work on the document,” she said quickly. “Take the tile, Huetzin. Put it in your house. Perhaps I will look at it again later.” She placed the piece in his hands and ran away up the path.

WISE COYOTE WAS
holding court in Texcoco, his capital city, when word came from his palace at Tezcotzinco that both scribes had settled in. They were progressing well on the history for Ilhuicamina. The young woman Seven-Flower Mixcatl had shown no strange behavior, skin-peeling or anything else that the servants had been told to watch for.

Having finished with the duties of rulership for the day. Wise Coyote retired to his private chambers. He meant to work on the plans for the first temple to Hummingbird on the Left, but he found himself getting distracted by thoughts of Mixcatl.

Her face and that of the Olmec jaguar-baby statuette seemed to drift about in his mind. One was repulsively ugly; the other had a strange, almost compelling beauty. How could they both be the same? Yet gradually the two images came together, as if one mask had been laid atop another. From that fusion emerged the magnificent yet terrifying visage of the great cat.

Wise Coyote broke free of the dreamy trancelike state he had fallen into and sat up, thinking. If the girl had the divine power that he hoped and feared lay within her, she could be a danger not only to him but to his household.

His children were safe, for they either lived in estates of their own or resided in the city. The only exception was his sculptor son, Huetzin, but he didn’t live at Tezcotzinco. His house and workshop stood near the palace grounds, but he rarely set foot beyond. He did come once in a while to use the palace library.

Wise Coyote started to rise from his kneeling position, clenching a fist. He should have sent word to Huetzin, warning him, telling him to stay away.

He sank down again, running a hand across his face. What good would a warning have done? Declaring something to be forbidden always had the opposite effect of increasing interest in it. Better to just let things be. Huetzin had always been totally engrossed in his art, rarely seeing or speaking to anyone other than his immediate family. He was always pleasant, but somehow always preoccupied, and any woman who was attracted to him because of his appearance or his paternity soon turned away.

Woman? Wise Coyote caught himself. Why did he think Mixcatl’s womanhood would matter? Her potential power, not her sex, was the real concern. Or was it?

No. The girl herself—the shape of her body, her face, the jungle mystery in her eyes—had kindled a fascination in him. It burned like lust and would not be quenched. He wanted not only the abilities Mixcatl might have, but her body, perhaps even her spirit.

Any man who stood in his way…even his own son…

Again he caught himself, startled at the surge of possessiveness that knotted his hands once again into fists. Deliberately he opened his palms, stroking them lightly with his fingertips. Even though his queen had turned cold to him, he had many other wives and was used to being able to sate his desires.

He stared down at the documents on the low table before him. On top was a map of Texcoco, drawn by his own hand on stretched deerskin. It showed the city center, with its many existing buildings and temples. Reluctantly, Wise Coyote laid his forefinger in the most crowded area. Ilhuicamina had demanded that the temple to Hummingbird be raised here. It did not matter how many other houses, public buildings or shrines to other gods had to be demolished in order to clear the site.

He laid his palm up against his forehead, thinking of how much time, aggravation and wealth he would have to spend to mollify the angered priests of other gods, landlords, nobles, shopkeepers and others who would be displaced. He pressed harder. Why, by the love of Tloque Nahaque, was he doing this? Because of an infatuation with an exotic face? Or a hope that was rapidly becoming an obsession.

He sighed, took off his turquoise coronet and ran his fingers through his hair. He might bear the title of tlatoani, but he was as much a slave to Ilhuicamina as the lowest ditch digger in Tenochtitlan. He would be building this temple whether or not he had been granted the loan of the two scribes.

Yet something had compelled him to bargain for the lives of the two painters, especially for Mixcatl’s. She was the key to his search for a true god worthy of human devotion. She had to be, or else he would stand alone in the darkness, facing the vicious mockery of godhood raised by a man who had gone insane from his own fears. If there really was no hope. Wise Coyote thought that he too might go mad.

Impatiently he swept the map aside and got out the texts he had brought with him from Tezcotzinco. The words of the ancient Toltec scholars could not lie. The Aztecs might have burned their old books and rewritten their history to glorify their people, but these records, preserved intact from the founding of Texcoco, must hold the truth.

Eagerly he ran one forefinger along the elaborate lines of glyphs, searching again for a passage he had noted once before. Trying to judge the veracity of the taleteller’s stories about the jaguar kings, he had looked for the oldest texts he could find, searching for fragments of information.

There were many such pieces, each tiny, but adding up into a coherent whole. Here for instance. His finger halted as he read. This text claimed that the art of writing glyphs had not originated here in the Valley of Mexico, but had been brought from a people on the eastern coast. The art had already grown highly sophisticated, indicating that it had been developed in a culture that reached its height long before the Aztec state arose.

He unbound another sacred book and searched it. Here, in the myth of the creation story, lay more evidence. Of the four suns that had preceded the present age, the first had been the Jaguar Sun. Tezcatlipoca, shown in the text in the form of a dancing jaguar, had ruled a world of giants. The age had ended when a swarm of voracious jaguars consumed that world and its inhabitants.

Even if the text was not literally true, it seemed to speak of an age even older than the Toltec era that Wise Coyote had learned to revere. Somewhere deep in the past, there had been a first blooming of civilization under the rule of the jaguar kings. Then somehow it had fallen apart, its glories never again to be attained.

In other records. Wise Coyote found many other scattered hints to support the idea. He found more references to Tepeyolotli, Heart-of-the-Mountain, the jaguar aspect of Tezcatlipoca. A series of faces taken from ancient stone carvings seemed to depict the origin of the rain god Tlaloc from a primeval divine jaguar. And there was more.

“Everything points back to the Magicians,” Wise Coyote muttered to himself, wiping the sweat from his face before it could drip onto the stiff yellowing pages. “Everything.”

In a daze, he sat staring at the swirling glyphs in the text, no longer seeing them. Instead the distant world of the lost jungle cities seemed to come to life in his mind, a time when gods took the shape of the great cats and descended to earth. They took the shape of men and women, as mighty as they were wise. They gave gifts; the knowledge of turning streams to irrigate crops, the art of writing, the calendar, the knowledge of numbers and calculation. Perhaps they had not even wished to be worshipped, but could not turn aside the adulation and the demand that they be made kings.

What tragedy had brought down those first ones? Had it been their jaguar nature and their need to revert to their true shape? How had they been worshipped? Surely such beings would have no need to see human blood poured down their altars; flowers, food and perhaps the beauty of artisanship would have served them. Had it been the blood of the hunt on jaguar claws and teeth that inspired frenzied worshippers or scheming priests to give more of the same? Or was it a need inherent in man to kill his own kind in the name of divinity?

Perhaps the first stream of crimson to spill on those carved altars had spelled the end of that age. A betrayal came in the form of an offering and began a tradition of slaughter that drove away those that it was intended to please and destroyed nearly all that they had built.

Wise Coyote realized that this vision was a fantasy built in part of his own dreams and desires, but at its core, he sensed truth. A beast might shed blood, in feeding or defense, but only men would slay throngs of their own kind and pile the corpses to steam and rot in the name of reverence. Did the jaguar kings flee their cities, horrified at what they had unleashed? Or did they, too, succumb to the bloodlust?

Did it really matter how it had happened? The cities had long since crumbled and their inhabitants become moldy dust. The Magicians had all gone. He would never know the answer, for it lay in the nature of the vanished jaguar kings.

No. The king woke from his vision, blinking. If the girl Mixcatl proved to be a true descendant of those people, her development would tell him if the jaguar heritage inflamed or muted human savagery.

He gathered up the fan-folded texts, bound them and put them aside. Then he pulled the city map before him, wishing that he could put aside this hateful project until he could go to Tezcotzinco. The quarantine period for the two scribes was over, but this duty would keep him away until he had arranged to have the temple site cleared and all occupants of the demolished structures compensated for their loss. And Ilhuicamina would become impatient at any delay.

Wearily Wise Coyote picked up a brush and began to mark off buildings to be removed from the temple site.

The days dragged by at Texcoco. Wise Coyote chafed at a task he hated. He longed to be away from the heat and dust of the capital city and return to the hills of Tezcotzinco. At last his part in the siting, negotiations and financial arrangement for Hummingbird’s temple was done. The rest he could leave to lesser officials. He dictated a document detailing his progress and had it sent to Tenochtitlan. Then he ordered his servants to pack in preparation for a well-deserved retreat to Tezcotzinco.

He had no illusions that he was going to the estate for relaxation, however. During the journey by litter from the capital, he thought about Mixcatl and weighed different approaches to dealing with her. He spoke of this to no one, for it would seem absurd that a king should be so concerned over a glyph-painting slave, and a borrowed one at that.

He thought first of meeting her privately in the estate’s gardens. The idea tempted him, for the introduction would be less stiff and formal if he could speak to her while strolling about on flowered paths. Reluctantly he put it aside. Perhaps the garden would do for a later encounter, but that setting was too risky for the first.

It would be foolish to assume that the skin-peeling seizure that struck the girl in Tenochtitlan would not happen here. In her beast frenzy, she would have no respect for royalty. She might attack him as savagely as she had the youths who had tormented her. Wise Coyote intended no such provocation, but who knew what might upset or enrage one whom he yet knew so little about?

It would be better to meet the two scribes together, perhaps with the pretext of reviewing the commissioned history. The old man Nine-Lizard might be a bit of a mystery himself, but so far he had proved to be a loyal and useful ally. He could ease the introduction, and if the girl began to transform, he would know how to manage her. Wise Coyote could also have some men positioned discretely outside the chamber so that he could summon assistance if needed.

He arrived in the early evening, settled himself and his entourage and sent a messenger to notify Huetzin of his arrival. He had said that Huetzin need not come for a few days, knowing that the young sculptor was probably in his workshop, ankle-deep in stonedust and chips.

After the evening meal. Wise Coyote had word sent to the two scribes that he wished to visit them in their chambers and examine the document they were preparing. Dressing himself in the simple, comfortable yet regal clothing he usually wore at Tezcotzinco, he straightened his turquoise coronet and ordered a lightly armed escort to accompany him.

Leaving all but two of the men outside, he raised the door flap of the scribes’ quarters and entered. A fire burned on the hearth and torches made from twisted pine bark flamed in niches in the wall. He saw at a glance that everything was ready—the completed books of the history were spread for his inspection on a low table and an icpalli laid with cushions had been set out for him.

Motioning the two guardsmen to stand at each side of the doorway, Wise Coyote took his place at the table. The two scribes knelt, touched the floor with their foreheads and then stood quietly by. The king had not intended to devote most of his attention to the document, but his scholar’s eye was soon captured by the clarity and beauty of the glyphwork. He noted, with mixed pleasure and alarm, how fast the work had gone.

It was well that the two scribes worked so efficiently, but the completion of the document meant that Nine-Lizard and Mixcatl would have to be delivered back to Ilhuicamina. For the girl, the return would mean death, and he was sure she knew that. He wondered if she had tried to stall or slow the work.

He read one section and glanced at several others. “The quality of this manuscript is excellent, considering how fast you both have worked. You have also blended your styles so well that I cannot say who did most of it.”

“Thank you tlatoani,” answered Nine-Lizard, dipping his head in acknowledgment. “Seven-Flower Mixcatl and I shared the task.”

There was no hint of untruth in the old man’s voice or face, nor any indication that he was dissatisfied with Mixcatl’s contribution. That the girl evidently had made no attempt to delay the work spoke in her favor.

“Come,” said Wise Coyote kindly, beckoning her forward and rising from his icpalli, “let me meet the one who has been so diligent on my behalf.”

Mixcatl came slowly, but not timidly, the torchlight flickering in her eyes as she studied him. Her face was as he remembered it from seeing her in Tenochtitlan, with its full bowed lips, short nose and full jaw.

“I am grateful that you have offered me refuge at your court, tlatoani,” she answered.

Her plain huipil blouse revealed the shape of her young breasts beneath. Through the rough-woven fabric of her skirt he could see the outlines of her powerful thighs, the curve of her rump, the flowing lines of hips that narrowed to a well-muscled waist.