The Seven Serpents Trilogy (49 page)

Pital, the new high priest, had charge of the burial rites. He was a softly spoken little man with a scraggly beard and a gentle gaze. I was surprised therefore to discover, when I reached the god house, that he was even more of a sun worshipper than Chalco, the Azteca. Instead of choosing a reasonable number to sacrifice, in addition to the seven slaves he had decided to sacrifice all of the Spaniards captured at Ixtlilzochitl. They now stood huddled together at the far end of the terrace.

Bishop Pedroza had refused to attend the burial and had barred his door against invaders. A messenger explained the situation to me as I watched the first of the burial rites, a solemn dusting of Chalco's remains with the plumes of a quetzal bird. I sent the messenger back with instructions to have the door removed and Pedroza borne to the god house by litter.

He appeared on the terrace, his hands bound, in the custody of two guards. I ordered him unbound.

His fine robe was ripped at the hem and his violet-colored vest awry. He didn't seem to be in a mood to listen to explana tions, but I wanted him to know why he was here on the terrace of a Mayan temple.

“Your Eminence,” I said, “what you'll see now—the dust ing of Chalco's remains with a quetzal plume you have missed, unfortunately, because it is a touching part of the burial rites—what you'll witness now may appear revolting.”

Pedroza stood stiff lipped and composed, his gaze averted from the scene around him—the god house decorated by gaping serpents and a hieroglyph of the sun, the terrace, its votive vases and the sacrificial stone, beyond the sea of fog that hid the crowd gathered below us in the square—to the fires of St. John the Baptist gleaming red on the far horizon.

“To the Maya,” I said, “the sun is the source of all life. If it did not rise each day, they would live in a world of perpetual darkness lit only by the moon and the distant stars.”

The bishop crossed himself. “God,” he said, “is the source of all life. There is no other.”

“The sun is God's creation,” I said. “God, in one of His many forms, is the sun. The Maya deem it wise therefore to give the sun new strength after its long journey through the dark night and the gates of hell. Likewise, to give it new strength at sunset as it starts the long, perilous journey again.”

“Barbarous,” the bishop said, casting a glance toward the Spaniards standing miserably in the shadows of the god house. “Are these men to be victims of this abominable custom?”

“They are here to be sacrificed to the sun and the memory of Chalco, the Azteca.”

“You have the power to stop this sacrifice,” Pedroza said.

“No, the power is in the hands of the thousands gathered in the square below us. Perhaps you could speak to them. You are familiar with the Maya language. You might per suade them.”

Through the curtain of fog there rose a surging chant, now “Chalco,” now “Kukulcán, Lord of the Evening Star.”

“Speak,” I said, “and tell the people that their rites are barbarous.”

Pedroza looked about him helplessly then raised his eyes to heaven.

“Yes, speak to God,” I said. “Ask him to intercede for us. I have done so many times. Ask him! Since you are a bishop, since you are closer to Him than I am, certainly He will hear you.”

“In His own good time God will attend to this outrage. But you, young man, have the power to stop it now. At this moment.”

“And you,” I said, coming to the subject that had not left my thoughts since I first had set eyes upon him, “have the power to make me a priest, an honor I desire with all my being. With a mere laying on of hands, you can do this.”

“What there is to say, I've said,” the bishop answered. “I will say no more except that in my eyes you are unfit for the office.”

The fog was beginning to lift. There were brief glimpses of the crowd gathered at the base of the temple, who now as the god house came into their view increased their cries of “Chalco” and “Kukulcán.”

The first of the Spaniards, a stout man with a grizzled beard, was placed on the sacrificial stone and held down. In an instant, not much after he had had time to cry out, his breast was slit open, his steaming heart was removed, held up to the crowd, then handed to a waiting priest who placed it reverently in a votive jar.

Pedroza had not uttered a sound. At the first sight of blood he had turned his back upon the scene. I repeated my humble request. He did not answer. He was staring at the heavens as if he expected a bolt of lightning to shatter the temple, stone from stone, to slay me where I stood.

Driven by a breeze from the sea, the fog was moving away. The upturned faces of the crowd were now visible. Pedroza strode to the edge of the terrace, to the balustrade of stone serpents, and flung out his hands. The crowd fell silent.

“Barbarians!” he shouted down to them, using his churchly Spanish. “Savages! Scum! Devil's scrapings from the gutters of hell! Enjoy yourselves while you have time. For God will not be mocked. Cortés, his faithful captain, will burn this temple to ashes. He will pursue you and ferret you out wherever you hide and burn you also.”

The only part of the bishop's outcry that the crowd could have understood were the words “God” and “Hernán Cortés.” But they heard his outraged voice and saw his violent gestures. An ominous silence settled upon them.

The priests in their dirty black gowns and long hair rank with spatterings understood no more than the crowd. But they, too, were silent. Pital, who stood a dozen paces away, clutching his obsidian knife, glanced at me. Finding nothing to stay his hand, he ordered the bishop seized and carried into the god house.

The Indians had begun to chant again, but now it was a wordless, threatening sound that came to my ears. The door of the god house opened and Bishop Pedroza was brought forth. They had taken away his cassock and violet-colored vest, even his fawnskin boots, and dressed him in a breechclout with tassels.

Half-clothed, angular and thin, his high forehead whiter than ever, he still carried himself with dignity. He might have been fully dressed, a bishop waiting in the chancel to lead some holy procession. Pital reached out to take him by the arm, but, stared down by the bishop, he hesitated and turned to me.

Pedroza stood a dozen paces away. As I walked toward him, as our gazes met, I saw the same look I had seen before—a steady, unblinking truculence that told me there was nothing more to say, no plea I could make that he had not heard already and rejected.

Deep in the temple the big drum sounded the hour of sun set. An afterglow, brighter than the blood that surrounded us, flooded the terrace. The cries from below had grown louder and more threatening. Pital was watching me, waiting for a signal, which, lifting my jaguar mask, I gave him.

Guards gathered the bishop in and placed him on the altar so that the stone bent his naked chest upward in a position that invited the knife. They held him there, two Indians at his feet and two at his head, courteously yet firmly, as if he were some winged serpent that might fly away at any moment.

I went to where he lay and looked down at him. He said nothing. Then he lifted a hand. For an instant I thought he intended to touch my brow. Instead, he touched his lips and then his breast, whispering to himself in Latin.

He calmly closed his eyes. He must have thought that all of this was an elaborate scheme to unnerve him, that I had brought him here to witness the savage rites, taken his cassock and vest away, had him dressed in an Indian breechclout, and placed him upon the sacrificial stone only to force him into granting my wish.

Pedroza opened his eyes and again our gazes met. I got down on my knees beside the stone in the blood of the Spaniard who had died to speed the sun on its journey through the perilous night and to ask the gods to befriend Chalco and his little yellow dog.

“You have heard my request many times,” I said. “I ask it again.”

“And it has been refused,” Pedroza said calmly. “And I do so again.”

There was no sign that he thought himself in danger. Impa tiently he began to twist his amethyst ring, using his thumb to turn it round and round. I ordered the guard to release his hand.

“There is much work to do among these people,” I said. “I can do it far better once I have received holy orders. I am handicapped now. The load is heavy. I strain under it.”

No sound came from the bishop.

“Your Eminence, I beseech this favor!”

The bishop's eyes were closed. His lips were stiff and unmoving. He had sealed them. He had spoken the last word on the matter, confident that he was in the right. Confident, too, that I knew he was in the right.

Yet I was tempted to speak to him again. “You can hear the crowd clamoring for your life,” I said. “You can see the high priest standing over you, anxious to use the sacrificial knife. This is not a play by Cervantes on a Seville stage nor a masquerade in the queen's garden. Once more I make the request.”

There was no answer. He still twisted the beautiful ring round and round on his finger.

“Are you playing the role of a martyr?” I asked him. “Do you really seek martyrdom?”

Pedroza opened his eyes. He looked at me. It was only a glance, but in it, before he turned his gaze toward heaven, I read the answer to my question.

Pital, clutching the black obsidian knife in both his hands, peered down at me, waiting to use it. I put the jaguar mask on. I raised my fist and gave the signal.

That night, in the darkness, I went back to the god house and removed the amethyst ring.

 

X
ICO, THE FASTEST AND MOST TRUSTWORTHY OF MY ROAD WEASELS
, arrived by sailing canoe shortly after dawn of the following day.

He brought word that two Spanish ships were anchored in a cove opposite the island, some nine leagues away. He had stumbled upon them by chance in the heavy fog that had settled on the coast during the night. Actually, he had sailed between the two caravels, close enough to hear the Spaniards shouting. When he did not answer them, they sent a round of shot through his sail.

Our enemies were unfamiliar with the coast. They had taken refuge from the fog and would not dare to leave until it lifted. When it did, probably within an hour or so, they would be able to sight the two landmarks they certainly had heard about and would be looking for—the Temple of Kukulcán and the fiery crest of St. John the Baptist. It was Xico's opinion that we could expect the Spaniards sometime before noonday.

With Flint Knife striding along behind me, I immediately set off to inspect our little army. In spite of the festivities, ending with Chalco's funeral, during which ample quan tities of palm wine had been consumed, I found it in good shape. I alerted the captain of our fifty canoes, whose warriors were armed with spears, the guards at the main gate, and the cannoneers stationed on the walls to right and left, as well as the sailors aboard the
Delfín Azul.
The
Santa Margarita
, an chored far out at the entrance to the harbor, I could not reach because of the heavy fog.

The inspection took half the morning. As soon as it was over, I rode to the terrace, tethered the stallion, and took up a position on the roof of the god house, the highest point in the city, from which, once the fog had lifted, I would have a clear view of all the shorelines, the harbor, and the channel between the island and the coast.

To keep in contact with the
nacom,
I placed a squad of fleet-footed boys on the terrace, close at hand. When the fog began to lift I dispatched one of them with a message for the
Santa Margarita
, telling the dwarf that Cortés was on the coast, prepared to move against the island. Recalling how he had outwitted Emperor Moctezuma, I had already warned Cantú that he must not be allowed to enter the harbor under any pretext or excuse, and if necessary to block the entrance by sinking the
Santa Margarita
.

I waited impatiently for a clearer vision of the channel. Fog still hid the harbor, but beyond it there were now and then glimpses of open sea and the mainland coast. Nowhere did I catch sight of Spanish sails. It was possible that Cortés was not planning an attack upon the island. He had sent me no honeyed letters as he had to Moctezuma. No threats nor ultimatums. Perhaps because I myself would undertake such an attack were I in Cortés's shoes, I had concluded that it was something he would do.

The same misgivings that plagued me when I attacked Don Luis de Arroyo at Tikan plagued me now. The same rules of battle did not apply here—Caesar's dictum,
celeritas,
swift ness and surprise. At Tikan I had led an attack. Here I must repel one. Or did the rules apply equally to attack and defense?

In my mind, from the moment I discovered that Pedroza was a high-placed churchman and a friend of the governor of Hispaniola, even to the last, when the two of us were enemies in a war of wills, I had harbored the thought of using him, should I ever encounter Hernán Cortés. But now Cortés was anchored across the strait only a few leagues away, and Pedroza lay dead.

I felt no remorse at Pedroza's death. He had hankered after it. He had courted it. He had willed it. In his cold eyes at the very last I had detected a glint of the ultimate vanity—a consuming desire for martyrdom. I had no doubt that he would achieve his desire. Someday his bones would be sorted out of the thousands stacked in the ossuary—not a difficult task, since they would be quite different from those of the Indians, especially the domelike skull—gathered up, and sent back to Spain, there to be decked out with flowers and worshipped by those who would never know that Pedroza was stubborn, truculent, and vain, a man so steeped in himself that he couldn't tell the love of ritual from love itself.

The temple drum sounded the midday hour. Though wisps of fog still drifted over the bay, I could make out the
Delfín Azul
tied at the wharf, her lombards and falconets trained westward, the flotilla of canoes between her and the harbor entrance. But the feathered poles that marked the entrance were barely visible. The
Santa Margarita
I could not find at all.