The Seven Serpents Trilogy (38 page)

The stallion pawed the ground. Don Luis glanced down at me from the saddle. There was the look in his eyes, the mad look I had first seen that morning more than a year before, when he had rousted me out of sleep with the tip of his sword, the same look I had seen many times since.

“Join us,” he said. “We'll put an end to this Cortés and his vaulting ideas. Imagine a man who scuttles al most all of his ships, turns his back upon any chance of escape, and marches away with a motley band of four hundred to conquer an empire! Neither the Romans nor the great Alexander, nor any of the famous captains ever dared to destroy their ships and brashly set off to attack vast populations and huge armies. Join us, Julián Esco bar. You have a ship hidden somewhere along the coast. Let's make for it. I'll gather the
encomenderos
tomorrow and we'll slip away while Cortés is occupied with Xicoténca.''

“Give me a little time,” I said.

“I'll see that you talk to the other
encomenderos.
There are three of them—all officers and stout men. In addition, we have fifty, at least fifty, common soldiers who are anxious to go with us.”

I had no intention of joining him and his renegades, but I needed to delay an answer until the army was farther along the road to Tenochtitlán, at a place where it would be too late for Don Luis to turn back.

If I were to set off with him now I would never reach the coast alive—or alive, I would find myself bound hand and foot, sprawled out on the deck of the
Santa Margarita
.

Don Luis rode off with a wave of his hand, astride my handsome black stallion. I watched him go, unable to lift a finger to prevent it—I, the Lord Kukulcán, afoot on a windswept hill, beside a fire that gave off no heat.

In a fit of anger and frustration, I sent after him a long, bitter curse.

 

W
E NEED NOT HAVE FEARED AN ATTACK FROM
X
ICOTÉNCA
.

Upon the return of his spies, seeing that some had lost their thumbs, some their hands, he decided to oppose Cortés no longer and sent messengers to welcome him into the city.

I had given up all thought of escape.

We were surrounded by hostile Texcaltéca, who, though they were afraid of Cortés, would not be afraid of two fleeing soldiers. Furthermore, the dwarf was not able to travel more than half a league without stopping for a long rest.

With me in armor half my size that had belonged to a soldier now dead, and the dwarf carrying five silver dishes from which Cortés ate his meals, we entered the city of Texcála.

There was little room in the streets or on the rooftops, so many people were eager to see us.

The caciques brought food and drink and cones of sweet-scented roses. Some declared that they would bring their daughters and have the officers accept them as wives. Xicoténca did bring his daughter—a most beautiful girl—and after she was baptized and made a true Christian, Cortés agreed that his favorite, Pedro de Alvarado, could take her as his wife. She was given the title of nobility and was called Doña Luisa.

We were in the city but a few hours when ambassa dors from the Emperor Moctezuma appeared with rich presents—jewels to the value of three thousand gold pesos, wrought in various shapes, and two hundred pieces of cloth elegantly worked with feathers and other embellishments.

Among the ambassadors was the emperor's nephew, Lord Tzapotlan. I caught glimpses of him when he first appeared, but managed to evade him for several days. At last, for our camp was small, we met.

“I am not surprised,” he said, “to find you here. When the painting of Hernán Cortés came, I was suspicious. I thought you must have some connections with this man. Now I find you in his camp.”

He spoke to me in a mild tone that I was inclined to distrust. “When your uncle,” I said, “had the painting of Cortés shown to me, it was the first time I had heard of this man. Until a few days ago, I had never set eyes on him.”

I stopped there and did not show my true feelings—that of all the places in the world, Cortés's army was the last place I would have chosen.

“From what is rumored,” I said, “you have brought word that the emperor wishes to see Captain General Cortés.”

“You learned when you were talking to the Great Speaker,” Lord Tzapotlan said, “that he was confused about the vision he saw in the bird's eye. He thought in the beginning, in the paintings of Cortés and his big canoes, that Cortés was the god Quetzalcóatl returning to be among us. Our wizards thought different and said that Cortés was an invader bent upon our destruction. Now the emperor has changed his mind again. Now he believes it is decreed by fate, which the chief soothsayer has read in the stars, that Cortés has come to rule peace fully over the nation of the Azteca. That is our fate.”

When Xicoténca heard that the emperor now was welcoming Cortés as the rightful owner of the crown, he sneered and told Cortés not to put the least trust in Moctezuma. Standing on the campground before our army, he said to Doña Marina, who translated his words:

“You must not believe in the homage Moctezuma has offered. Or in all the presents he has sent, or in any of his promises, for all of this is treachery. In a single hour the Azteca will take back everything. They will attack you when you are off your guard. And in fighting them remember to leave no one alive whom you are able to kill—neither the young, lest they should grow up to bear arms, nor the old, lest they should give wise coun sel.”

Xicoténca was a forceful man, tall with a long, dark face, and he pounded his broad chest as he spoke.

He described the fortifications of Tenochtitlán and the lakes, the depth of water, the causeways that led into the city, and the wooden bridges over each of them. How it was possible to go in and out by boat through the openings and how, when the bridges were raised, an army could be caught between them and so be unable to reach the heart of the city. He also said that the houses were built with flat roofs and provided with parapets, from which their warriors could fight.

All this I knew from my days in Tenochtitlán, but Cortés and his officers had not heard it before.

Soon after this, word got to them, probably from Don Luis, that I had been in Tenochtitlán. Whereupon they queried me and the dwarf. Both of us denied that we knew more than they had learned from Xicoténca. We were confused. We were beset on every side by enemies.

As the dwarf expressed it, “Jonah found himself in the stomach of a gentle whale. Ourselves we find in the stomach of a tiger.”

We were sitting beside a scanty fire, for wood was scarce in camp, with a cold moon streaming down upon us.

“I let Don Luis know today that we are not with him and the
encomenderos.
But this won't keep him from deserting before we travel another league. If he does, he and the other rebellious officers and the fifty soldiers will head straight for the coast. I see him raise his sword and smile when his eyes fall on the
Santa Margarita
.”

The dwarf jumped to his feet. “I'll go now,” he said, “and make sure that he has other matters to occupy his thoughts. I've never been able to talk to Cortés, but I can talk to Doña Marina.”

I had seen little of her since the days before we marched into Texcála. When our paths crossed and it seemed as though we were about to meet face to face, she had disappeared, mysteriously almost, from sight. No doubt she still looked upon me as the god Kukulcán. What she had said to Cortés I had no way of know ing—if, indeed, she had so much as spoken my name.

“You may have trouble with her,” I said. “She had some part in getting Don Luis out of his cage.”

“Whatever happened,” the dwarf said, “now she is loyal only to Hernán Cortés. I imagine she'll be in terested to learn what Don Luis thinks about her hero.”

An hour after the dwarf talked to Doña Marina, Don Luis was seized, along with three of the rebellious officers. They now were in chains strung from one to the other, on foot and heavily guarded.

After seventeen days, having rested his army, the captain general moved on toward the city of Cholólan, taking with him two thousand Indians to carry his baggage and artillery. Also to serve as warriors, for he had been warned by Xicoténca that a turbulent people lived in Cholólan.

We made camp the first night beside a river close to the city. While we were cooking supper, five caciques came to welcome us. They brought gifts of poultry and maize cakes and said that more of their caciques would come in the morning to greet us.

Cortés posted sentries, sent out scouts in all directions, and ordered us to sleep in our clothes. But the night was peaceful.

At dawn we set off and had not gone far when a large group of nobles appeared, followed by a multitude of curious Indians who had heard about our horses and big staghounds and wished to see them.

Their priests carried braziers of sweet copal with which they perfumed Cortés and everyone else around him. It was a very friendly scene until the caciques learned that our army was accompanied by their bitter enemies, the Texcaltéca.

Whereupon three of their chief nobles came forward. Cortés, on his gray gelding, watched with a wary eye. One of the nobles said to him, speaking through Doña Marina:

“Forgive us, noble warrior, for not having come to see you in Texcála to bring you food and presents. It was not for lack of good will but because of our foe, Xicoténca, and his people, who have spoken much evil about us and our lord, Moctezuma. And not satisfied with abusing us they now have grown so bold, under your protection, as to come to our city armed. We beg you to send them back to their country, or at least to tell them to stay outside in the fields. But as for yourselves, you are welcome.”

I stood near Cortés during this speech. The man, ruthless and at times evil, driven by something that rendered him fearless, fascinated me. I doubted that the re quest to send the Texcaltéca away was made because they were enemies. Cortés felt differently.

Moved by what he thought was the fairness of the ca cique's request, he sent the Texcaltéca into the fields and at once made efforts to calm the city. But no sooner had he ordered the people to return to their duties, open their markets, and so forth, than word of a plot reached our ears.

An old woman, the wife of a cacique who had fallen out with the city elders, secretly visited Doña Marina, or so I heard, and said to her, “Collect all your belongings and come to the cacique's house now, if you wish to escape with your life. This very night or tomorrow, by the command of Moctezuma, every Spaniard in the city will be killed or captured.”

Doña Marina, it seems, had doubts about the old woman's story and asked her, since the plan was so se cret, how she had heard about it.

“My husband told me,” the woman said. “He is a captain of one of the clans in the city, and as captain he is out at this moment with his command. He is giving them orders to join with Moctezuma's men, twenty thousand of them, who are hidden in the ravines at this moment.”

“How long have you known about the plot?” Doña Marina asked.

“For three days,” the woman said. “Since Moctezuma sent my husband a gilded drum, and rich cloaks and golden gems to three of the other captains, as a bribe to bring to him at least a hundred of the Spaniards.”

“You are certain?” Doña Marina said.

“Certain!” the old woman answered. “Three days ago our caciques started on this. They made long poles with collars and many ropes to hold the Spaniards. They dug holes in the streets and built breastworks on the roofs of the houses. They quietly sent their wives and children out of the city. You must come now or risk your life.”

“I'll come later, tonight, not now,” Doña Marina said, to put the woman off, fearing that an alarm might be sounded before she could warn Cortés.

She burst in upon the captain while he was talking to one of the caciques and told him what she had learned. The story added weight to rumors he had already heard.

That night he gave orders for the army to gird itself, with horses saddled and cannon primed.

 

A
T DAWN THE ARMY WAS READY
.

The big court in the center of the city had only one gate. Beside this gate Cortés had stationed a phalanx of foot soldiers armed with swords and shields. On three sides of the courtyard stood crossbowmen and musket eers. Ranged along the fourth side were officers on horseback, in position to move quickly whenever they were needed. On the steps of the temple sat twenty can non.

The dwarf and I were placed—or rather we placed ourselves—at a well in the middle of the court that was protected by low stone walls. We were armed with swords of fine temper but were without shields, since there were not enough to go round. Neither of us had thoughts of taking part in the coming battle. If we were attacked, we would defend ourselves, and that was all.

As the sun rose Cortés summoned all the priests and nobles to the courtyard. They came promptly, laughing and singing, followed by hundreds of happy Indians.

When they were inside the gate and the gate was closed, Cortés appeared on his gray gelding. He was not smiling, but he seemed to be in good spirits. Surrounded by a heavy guard, he faced the assembly.

“For what reason,” he said, speaking quietly, “have you prepared long, stout poles with collars and many ropes? And why have you raised barricades in the streets and built breastworks on the roofs of your houses? Why are many companies of warriors lying in wait for us in the ravines close by? I ask these questions, but you do not have to answer. I already know the answer. Al though we have come here to treat you like brothers, under the commands of our Lord God and King Carlos, you are treacherously planning to kill us and eat our flesh. Already you have prepared the pots with salt and chili.”

When Cortés had finished, Doña Marina translated his words in a clear voice so that all present would understand. Then Cortés spoke again.