The Seven Serpents Trilogy (22 page)

“Warriors,” the dwarf said. “Put there alive to guard the dead lord on his journey.”

Behind each guard crouched a stone jaguar, larger than life, with eyes that glittered red in the torchlight.

“The eyes are made of precious stones,” Cantú said. “As are the spots. A fortune in gems.”

The sarcophagus was sealed with a heavy lid. Across it was a band of glyphs. I managed to decipher one of the figures, the symbol for Pop, the first month of the year, and a bar and four dots above it, denoting the nu meral nine. The year and the name of the lord lying there I could not read, though they were cleanly carved.

Cantú waved the torch above his head. “Gold,” he said in a reverent tone. “The walls, the ceiling, the floor, all you see, even the sarcophagus, is gold, pure gold!”

His hushed voice reminded me of the
Santa Margarita's
crew listening as we had sailed westward into the waters of New Spain, while their leader spoke of the treasures we were approaching. “The houses have gold floors and walls of gold, those of the poor as well as the rich. The streets and byways are paved with gold...” I also remembered my doubts that such treasures ever ex isted. And yet, at this moment, I stood in a room fash ioned of gold, dazzled by its brilliance.

The dwarf touched the carved lid. “It is too heavy for my poor strength, alas. The both of us, perhaps, can pry it open.”

I said nothing, revolted by the thought.

“There is no telling what lies beneath,” he persisted. “What jewels—emeralds, rubies, jade, turquoise, pearls.”

I turned away.

Abandoning his idea, he circled around and faced me, shining the torchlight over the room. “I have dug into the walls,” he said, “all four of them. Do you know their thickness? No?” He held up a hand and separated his thumb from his index finger. “Two inches thick, at least. We are surrounded by a shipload of gold!”

As he glanced up at me, in awe of his own words, the silence was broken by the resounding boom of a drum, followed by a second boom and a third.

I was to learn later that it was the Maya way of denoting time. Their days, like ours, were divided into twenty-four hours. The drum, located in the god house, sounded six times during that period—at the rising of the star Venus, in midmorning, at high noon, in the middle of the afternoon, which was the present hour, at dusk, and at midnight.

The dwarf stirred himself. “I have proven to you that treasure abounds. But let us proceed. There is more.”

We stumbled out of the crypt and into the corridor, where I retrieved the horse, and set off along a steep in cline.

The last echoes of the temple drum died away. The torchlight now shone far ahead, then flickered and disappeared and shone again. A massive door rose sud denly out of the gloom. The dwarf stood knocking upon it with his feathered cane. It was slowly opened by two young men who at the sight of the cavorting horse turned and fled.

An abandoned garden lay before me. A weed-grown path led to an empty pool where a pack of hairless dogs, similar to those that had bothered me when I lived be side the volcano, sat watching us. Cats of every color peered out from rocky crevices.

A huge strangler tree shadowed the pool, its gnarled, gray roots, larger than my arm, looped along the ground like tentacles, as if to seek out something to grasp and throttle, be it stone or human.

Beyond the garden was a vast, weather-stained edifice built upon a rectangular platform twice my height. An open terrace that ran along its two sides was reached by a flight of stairs bordered by broken columns.

Trees pushed up wildly through the terrace stones and creepers climbed the walls, which once had been blood red but over the centuries had faded to a sickly pink.

The dwarf dropped his torch. “The palace,” he said.

“Palace?”

“Yours,” he replied. “The palace you are to occupy.”

There was a long silence while I tried to fit together the thoughts that crowded in upon me. From the strait when we had approached the harbor, during my tri umphant ride through the streets, from the lofty terrace, I had formed the impression that it was a place of gran deur.

However, during our journey through the temple's endless corridors, strewn with rubble, alive with creep ing vermin and birds of prey, I had been visited by sec ond thoughts. Now, as I looked up at the ruined palace, these doubts overwhelmed me.

The dwarf was disappointed at my lack of enthusi asm.

Pointing toward the jungle that stood close at hand, he said, “If you look you'll see what seems to be a hill. If you look closer you will see that it is not a hill, but a mound. Then if you look closer yet, you will see at the top of the mound a glimmer of red.”

“A roof,” I said.

“The roof of a palace, perhaps. The palace that stands before you looked exactly the same, engulfed by bushes, trees, and countless creepers. Three days ago, after we had completed our bargain and I left you on the beach, I gathered a thousand farmers, more than a thousand. They toiled two days and two nights. They slashed and dug and burned. They removed a jungle that has grown here for three hundred years as you might remove the husk from a nut. There are a few trees left to be hauled away. Broken columns to replace, walls to plaster and paint. But these things will be taken care of in time.”

Cantú paused, waiting for the praise that he felt was due. In truth, it was surely a prodigious feat that he and his workmen had accomplished. I told him so in fulsome phrases.

“Of course,” he continued, “the interior of the palace is not commodious. Yet more so than the hut in which you have been living. We have hauled out the accumulated rubble of many centuries. Also, we have gotten rid of an army of rats, snakes, and tarantulas. Not to mention a swarm of coatimundis. That reminds me—you said today that you wished me to gather up your pet. Are you still of the same mind? Hundreds of these pests are running around here, as I have told you. About the girl, Ceela, and her grandfather and grandmother and the two aunts, do you still wish to send for them?”

Gazing up at the ruined palace, imagining what it must be like inside, I said, “Let us wait until things are settled.”

Rain began to fall, large drops like musket shot that dug holes in the dust. But the dwarf made no move to seek shelter. He gathered his feathered cloak around him and again pointed toward the tower.

“Beyond that red roof,” he said, “lie other mounds. They extend in a line for a distance of two leagues. In some of them we'll find the tombs of ancient lords, untouched from ancient days to this, like the one you have just seen.”

I was struck with the thought of a city smothered by trees.

What ancient people, what
antiguos
, had built the road of pure white stone that led from the harbor to the Temple of Kukulcán? Who had built the towering tem ple itself and the palace, as long and as wide as the great cathedral of Seville, and the edifices that lay beneath the mounds that stretched away for leagues into the blue jungle? And having built a beautiful city, why had they left it? And why had their descendants, the people who were now chanting my name, returned to live among the ruins?

“Tell me, Cantú, what you know about this city and its dwellers. I learned a little from my friend Ceela, but I must know more.”

The dwarf was walking back and forth on his short legs. He was not interested in answering questions. In deed, I doubt that he heard me. His gaze was fixed upon the red roof that could be seen jutting out above the trees.

“We need workmen to unearth these mounds,” he said. “I used farmers to work on the palace. But they had to go back to their fields. We need prisoners. Slaves. A lot of them. A thousand!”

“Why not restore the temples that already have been unearthed?” I said. “The one we have just left, for instance, with its mountainous piles of rubble?”

“You don't understand. There's a surplus of temples. One for every day of the month. I mean to tunnel into the mounds and locate the burial crypts. You've already seen what treasures are hidden in these secret cham bers.”

He removed his jaguar mask. There was a glint in his eyes that I was familiar with. It was the same hot glint that I had often seen in the eyes of Don Luis de Arroyo, Duke of Cantavara y Llorente. As well as in the ugly orbs of Baltasar Guzmán, whose bones now lay, picked clean by fish, in fathoms of the nearby sea.

“All we lack are workers,” he said.

“To set them digging in the mounds like a flock of demented ferrets...?”

The dwarf blinked. He stepped back as if I had struck him a blow on the head.

“The temples are sacred to the Indians,” I said. “It is well enough to unearth them. And this we shall do. With God's help we will make them into Christian churches, beautiful to behold. But we will not rifle them for trea sure. We are not grave robbers.”

“Already, señor, you speak like the Lord Ruler him self.”

“I
am
the Lord Ruler.”

The dwarf gave me an injured look from his dark, yellow-flecked eyes, which were much too beautiful for a man.

“Not two hours ago,” he said, “you stood upon the terrace trembling in your knees, fearful it would be dis covered that you are Julián Escobar, a beardless semi narian from an obscure village in Spain. That in truth, you are a common castaway from a wrecked ship, and not the returning god Kukulcán.”

“My knees did not tremble two hours ago,” I said. “And they do not tremble now.”

The dwarf curled his upper lip, which was as thin as a line drawn with a fresh-cut pen. “Do we travel this road together,” he asked, “or do you wish to travel it alone?”

I waited a few moments before answering, to give him a chance to listen again to the roars of the people. They were everywhere—on all sides of the temple, in the fields beyond the palace. Their voices rose on the wind and faded away and rose once more like waves crashing on the shore.

“Answer,
amigo
,” he said impatiently. “Is it together or alone?”

“Together,” I said. “But you will understand that it is I who am the god, not you.”

Cantú rubbed his chin with his fat little fist. It seemed as if he was about to cry. I did not relent.

“On the beach three days ago you threw a saddle on my back as if I were a donkey, beat me with a stick, and now are riding me down a dangerous road. It is time for us to pause and remove the saddle.”

A tear, round as a pearl, rolled down his cheek. I waited once more while the sound of the chanting came to us on the wind.

“And further, let me remind you again to address me by my proper name—Lord Kukulcán—and not by just anything that happens to come to mind, like
señor
or
amigo
.”

More tears glistened in his beautiful eyes. I had the suspicion that this Cantú from the city of Seville could laugh or cry as he wished. Yet I hesitated to push him further.

“Tell me,” I said, speaking of a matter that had long been with me, indeed since the day the caravel sank be neath the waves. “Do you think there's a chance we can float the
Santa Margarita
?”

The dwarf smiled, showing two perfect rows of small white teeth. “You told me this morning that the ship lies in about three fathoms of water?” “More or less.”

“How? In what position?”

“On her side. Her bow wedged between two arms of a reef.”

“She's been down how long?”

“Four months and more.”

“Then she's still sound. Our divers, who are experi enced in diving for pearls, can dismantle the ship—decks and ribs and planking. Then we'll put her back to gether again on the beach.”

“You're an engineer of great promise, señor.''

The dwarf laughed, “He, he, he.”

“This Luis de Arroyo,” he said soberly, “this duke who owned the
Santa Margarita
and settled over on the mainland in Tikan after the wreck, tell me more about him.”

“I said that he is ruthless, a man without fear.”

“Capable of fighting a war against us?”

“Fully capable.”

“While you were living there on the beach, did you see anyone nosing about the reef where the
Santa Margarita
went down?”

“Nobody.”

“Did it surprise you that Don Luis de Arroyo never came back to investigate the wreck?”

“No, because I had no idea that he was still alive. He was clinging to a piece of timber, fighting for his life, when I saw him last.”

“How much gunpowder will we find in the
Santa Margarita
? ”

“Ten kegs at least.”

“Sealed tight?”

“Sealed with tar, as tight as the kegs that drifted ashore. Some of the powder you used this morning when we landed.”

“And cannon?”

“A dozen.”

The dwarf laughed again and did his little dance.

I decided to say nothing to him of the treasure piled high in the sunken hold of the
Santa Margarita
the tons of gold Don Luis de Arroyo had harvested by laying waste to the village on Isla del Oro, by killing scores of its people and enslaving the rest.

 

M
Y FIRST IMPRESSION OF THE PALACE PROVED CORRECT
. A
FTER
centuries of neglect it was, alas, in a ruinous state. Innu merable rooms opened into two long corridors that ended in a desolate garden where fountains once had played but now were silent. The throne room was in a separate wing, a vast, high-vaulted room whose stained walls and ceiling were covered with serpent figures, some erect, some coiled, all of them crowned with feath ers, symbols of the god Kukulcán.

To enter this cavern I had to pass through a doorway fashioned in the shape of a yawning mouth, neither beast nor human, a mammoth fanged jaw painted red that might have been the entrance to hell itself. I was in the palace only one day before I had it torn down and had two wooden crosses erected in its place, one on each side of the wide doorway.