The Seven Serpents Trilogy (37 page)

“Beautiful blue water,” Raul Carrasco added, “but many bad currents and no islands.”

“Did you sight any ships?” I asked.

They both agreed that no ships were sighted.

“On the sea or after you landed?”

“When the captain general raised the cross and founded the village of Vera Cruz, they came from everywhere by the hundreds.”

“But no caravels, then or later.”

“None,” Carrasco said.

This settled my mind somewhat, but it did not mean that the men who were left to guard the fleet would not take it upon themselves to explore the coast and by chance find the
Santa Margarita
.

“How many ships were in the fleet?” I asked, to con firm the truth of Moctezuma's painting.

“Eleven,” Raul Carrasco said. “But now there's none left. Cortés destroyed them all.”

“All but one,” Juan Borrego corrected him.

“That's a strange thing,” I said, thinking that they must be either telling a lie or joking. “I never heard of a captain destroying his own ships.”

“He destroyed them,” Carrasco repeated. “ ‘Let all those who lose courage,” he said, ‘and wish to leave the expedition, let them have fair warning that their fates are sealed. Turn your backs upon home, for you shall not see it again until we are victorious.' This is what he told us, standing by the cross.”

If this were not a lie, if it were true that Cortés had sunk nearly all his fleet, then there was no need for me to worry about anyone finding the
Santa Margarita
.

“To sink ten ships,” I said, “almost his entire fleet, this Cortés must think that he has set off on a dangerous campaign.”

“Yes,” said Carrasco, “and there are many who think likewise. Before us is an army of fifty thousand savages, some say more. And beyond is this Indian king who has ten times that many ready and waiting to cut off our heads.”

“Cortés has plans to capture the big Azteca city, Tenochtitlán?” I asked.

“That's where we're going,” Carrasco said, “to the big Indian city.”

“That's where you'll find the gold,” Juan Borrego said.

“The doorknobs are made of gold,” Carrasco said. “Imagine!”

They reminded me of Baltasar Guzmán talking to the crew of the
Santa Margarita
before we reached Isla del Oro, describing to the men how the house of Lope Luzir had doors and walls fashioned of gold.

They were not interested in who I was or where I had come from, only in the dream that had brought them more than two thousand leagues to this cold hillside, in sight of an enemy who vastly outnumbered them, in the province of the mighty Moctezuma, whose gods thirsted for their blood.

 

A
FTER A LONG HOUR DURING WHICH WE SAT IN GLUM SILENCE AROUND
the fire, a musket shot rang out. It was a warning and it brought us scrambling to our feet.

A party of Indians was moving along at the bottom of the hill, through a tuna grove. I counted forty, some in the black garb of warriors, others in blue and white robes, led by a masked cacique who reclined on a litter prettily decked out with flowers.

They came slowly to the thud of wooden drums, stopped halfway up the hill, and announced their pres ence by the screech of many trumpets.

At a walk, as if they did not wish to appear in a hurry, four Spanish horsemen rode past and down the hill to where the Indians were waiting. From the picture Moc tezuma had shown me, I recognized one of the Span iards, a man not much older than thirty, pale of countenance and stiff-backed, holding a tight rein with small, gloved hands, as the conquistador and captain general, Hernán Cortés.

The Indians, we learned from word passed up the hill, had come with an offer of peace.

“We've been waiting on the alert now for two days,” Juan Borrego said, “not knowing if they will attack us or not. We sleep in our clothes.”

“The savages carry swords twice as long as my arm,” Raul Carrasco said. “They're made of wood but they have stone teeth that cut deeper than steel.”

“With one blow they kill a horse,” Juan Borrego said.

“And did,” his friend added. “When we were fighting in a village near Cingapacinga, they killed one of our mares, cut her head off with a single blow.”

“I hope they're here to make peace,” Juan Borrego said.

“This I doubt,” Raul Carrasco said. “More likely it's a ruse.”

Cortés and the cacique talked for a while, then the assemblage moved up the hill and gathered again not far from us. It seemed as if Cortés, not trusting the Texcaltéca, wished to surround himself with his own sol diers.

The Texcaltéca, it developed, had come with word from their chieftain to say that in his heart he had only peaceful thoughts. As proof, he was sending now In dians with gifts of fowl, bread, fruit, many parrot feath ers, and four miserable-looking old women.

The Indians burned copal incense in front of Cortés and delivered the cacique's message, which, as I overheard it, contained these words:

“All this is sent you by the Captain Xicoténca so that you may eat. If you are savages, as some say, and wish for a sacrifice, take these four old women, sacrifice them, and consume their flesh and hearts. But as we do not know in what way you do this act, we do not sacrifice them here before you. If you are men, however, eat these fowls and bread and fruit, and if you are not
teules
, devils, make your sacrifice with copal and parrots' feath ers.”

Cortés heard the message, spoken and then translated, with great impatience. Even his gelding was impatient and kept moving about in circles, the silver bell on its bit tinkling merrily.

Cortés answered that he had not come to make war, that he came in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and Emperor Carlos. He thanked them for the food they had brought and warned them not to commit any foolish ness, but to make peace.

As he talked, an officer rode up and gave him a mes sage. There was something about the rider's drawling words and the way he sat stiffly in the saddle, as stiff-backed and arrogant as Cortés himself, that stirred my memory. But it was the horse he rode that I recognized.

God being my judge, there before me on the windy hillside stood the black stallion, Bravo. And on his back, with his big-roweled Spanish spurs glittering, sat Don Luis de Arroyo.

When I told the dwarf at supper that Don Luis was an officer in Cortés's army and I had seen him in camp, he laughed.

“You're having visions like the Emperor Moctezuma. Either that or in our absence Don Luis has been sacri ficed and his heartless ghost has come back to haunt us.”

The next morning Don Luis rode down the hill past my watch fire, and I called out to him. He glanced back over his shoulder but without recognizing me—there was no reason why he should, since I wore a helmet several sizes too small and a breastplate that belonged to someone half my girth. He rode on.

I had not gotten over my surprise that he had escaped from his cage, found his way into Cortés's army, and was riding around the camp on my black stallion.

This surprise was small in light of the surprise that awaited me.

Xicoténca had sent Cortés gifts of food and parrot feathers and old women as an act of friendship. It was thought, however, that all his Indians were
quimíchime
, mice, spies who came only to size up weapons, learn how many soldiers Cortés commanded, and find the ways into and out of the camp.

One of these Indians was an old man who toiled up the hill leaning on a stick and asked if he could talk to the chieftain who rode around on a big gray deer. He was dressed in rags, but, thinking that he might carry an important message, I led him to the top of the hill where Cortés had pitched his tent.

Cortés was talking to a comely young woman whom I had caught distant glances of before. She was dressed in a leather skirt and blouse that were remade from an officer's uniform, wore fawn-colored sandals laced to the knees, and had her hair bound in a yellow and black neckerchief.

Her name, I had heard, was Doña Marina, and she was Cortés's interpreter, translating Maya and Nahuatl into Spanish.

I led the old man up to Cortés. I was about to leave discreetly, when I caught the girl's eye. She dropped her gaze and quickly turned away, yet in that brief instant, to my great surprise, I saw that the captain general's interpreter, Doña Marina, was not a stranger but my friend Ceela Yaxche.

I waited, thinking that I would have a chance to talk to her when Cortés was through with the old man. Why had she left the Island of the Seven Serpents? Had she left with Don Luis? How had she met Cortés, and why had she followed him to this place?

I had no chance to ask these questions, for as soon as Doña Marina had translated the old man's message, she hurried off.

The man brought word that Xicoténca was planning to attack the camp by night, choosing that hour because the Spaniards believed that Indians never fought after the sun went down. As soon as Cortés heard the news, he had one of the Texcaltéca seized and taken into the hut where Doña Marina had fled.

I heard talking between Cortés and the Indian, several quiet moans, then the men came out and Cortés called upon two of his officers.

“The Texcaltéca who are standing there gaping at me are spies,” he said. “Line them against the wall and at tend to them.”

The officers went about collecting the Indians—there were seventeen standing about—and herded them against the wall. Then two of the officers, wielding swords, stepped quickly down the line. They hacked off the hands of the first man, the thumbs of the next, the hands of the third, and so on.

When the officers were finished, Cortés said to the Texcaltéca, “Go and tell Xicoténca that this is punish ment for his audacity. Tell him also that if he wishes to come, for him to come any time, day or night. And if he does not come, I, Hernán Cortés, will seek him out in his own house.”

By some mistake the old man had been lined up with the rest. Fortunately, he did not lose his hands, only his thumbs.

He picked up his cane and went down the trail, a slow step at a time. The rest of the men fled in terror, clasping their arms across their breasts.

Cortés and his officers began talking again. I stood there staring at them in disbelief until one of the officers with an oath ordered me back to my watch.

Toward noon of the following day, while I sat hud dled half frozen over the hillside fire, I looked up to see Don Luis riding along the trail, erect in the saddle, his legs hanging free.

As I stood up, he swung down from the saddle and grasped me in a tight
abrazo
.

“I caught a glimpse of you yesterday,” Don Luis said, “but I was busy with the Indians—a stupid lot.”

He paused to embrace me a second time. Stepping back, he glanced at my ill-fitting armor and the dented steel helmet that sat on top of my head.

“How the gods have fallen,” he said. “But perhaps you'll rise again somewhere, perhaps in another life, among the saints.”

“You, señor, have risen already,” I said. “When seen last, you were dressed in remnants, had a broom in your hand, and on your face a very sour expression.”

He did look more like himself—the jaunty nobleman for whom the world was a peach to be plucked. But events had put a bitter look in his eye and a long, white scar across his forehead.

“When I saw you yesterday, Don Luis, I thought you were an apparition.”

He smiled, the quick, charming smile that meant nothing. “In that case, if you saw an apparition, you must have thought me quite dead.”

I was silent, still unable to believe that the man stood before me, not two paces away.

“You must have given orders for me to die,” he said.

“Not exactly. But tell me how you didn't.”

Don Luis fingered his sword, groping for words. “I've no intention of revealing how I escaped,” he said. “I may wish to do so again.”

“You're riding Bravo. I recognized him at once, though he's in bad need of grooming, walks with a limp, and somebody has bobbed his tail.”

“An Otomí did it last week. I got even by bobbing the Indian's head.”

“You had help to get yourself out of jail, steal the horse from the palace, and then cross to the mainland. Who was it? Cortés?”

“No, he hasn't been near the island. But he will be, and soon if his campaign against Moctezuma succeeds.”

“It can't succeed. Moctezuma has an army of a hun dred thousand wild soldiers, ready and anxious to fight. What does Cortés have?”

“Four hundred men or less, all of them worn out and many sick. A thousand Indians armed with clubs.”

There was a watch fire near us with men sitting around it. Don Luis turned his back on them and lowered his voice.

“The campaign has been foolish from the start,” he said. “Every day that goes by proves it. We wait now to see if the Indians attack, if we'll be alive tomorrow or not. In the last weeks I haven't had my clothes off. I've slept on the ground with a saddle for a pillow. And I was wounded—you may have noticed the scar—given up for dead. I
would
be dead, except for our surgeon. He had a fat Indian killed and made bandages of the fat and thus saved my life.”

My comrades of the previous afternoon came up and sat down by the fire.

“I see by your faces that you are not in a happy mood,” Don Luis said to them. “What troubles you?”

“Everything,” Juan Borrego answered.

“You would like to go back to Havana?”

“Anywhere,” Raul Carrasco said. “To Vera Cruz. Anywhere.”

Motioning me to follow, Don Luis walked over and mounted Bravo. “There are two factions in this army,” he said. “The
encomenderos
, who like myself own is lands in the Indies. The other faction is a gang of ad venturers who have nothing to lose.”