The Seven Serpents Trilogy (50 page)

Sun shone in the channel and on the far blue line of the mainland coast. There was no sign of Spanish sails. Cortés might have passed us by and headed south for the shores of Guatemala and the river Polochic, where Moctezuma had told him in my hearing, not once but several times, that vast amounts of gold were to be found.

For most of a long hour, I stood on the roof of the god house, waiting for the harbor entrance to clear, to make certain that the
Santa Margarita
was in the right position if attacked. At last a messenger came clambering up the temple steps. He arrived on the terrace so out of breath that he could not speak, only raise his hand and point.

In the brief time I had watched him climb the stairs, the sun had burned away the last of the fog and the entrance stood clear. The
Santa Margarita
was not in sight. My first thought was that the dwarf had moved her to a different position. Possibly she had slipped her moorings and drifted away in the night or during the morning fog. I searched the harbor in vain.

“Where is the ship?” I shouted to the messenger. “The
Santa Margarita
?”

“Gone,” the messenger shouted back, waving his arms to imitate a bird in flight. “Gone.”

“Cantú, the dwarf ?”

“Gone!” the messenger said.

The stallion was tethered at the far end of the terrace. Leaping to his back, I took the shortest of the three trails that led out of the temple, spurred him into a gallop when I reached the square, and rode pell-mell for the harbor. Flint Knife was waiting for me on the deck of the
Delfín Azul
.

“I sent the message,” he called down. “It is true. The dwarf has left. Two of our traders came from the north part of the island and said this. They were paddling along this morning. They were taking their time in the fog. A great white cloud rushed past them. It was whiter than the fog and had sails. It had a name, but it was not Maya and they could not read it.”

The traders, who stood beside him, shook their heads.

“The
Santa Margarita
is gone,” Flint Knife said. “It must have left around midnight. These traders were coming here. The ship was going the other way. It must be going to Hispaniola.”

Flint Knife related all this in a toneless voice, stone-faced, calm, as though in the space of one night we had not been dealt a cruel and staggering blow. Half of our cannon were gone. Half of our muskets and gunpowder. Our best sailors were gone and our most experienced fighting men.

“I never liked the dwarf,” Flint Knife said. “His eyes were too big. Like a woman's. And he made those sounds—
he, he, he
—like a monkey sitting up in the tree with more bananas hanging around than he can eat. This one did not cause me any surprise.”

Nor was I surprised by what the dwarf had done, not really surprised. I was more surprised at myself for trusting him with a shipload of treasure worth millions and millions of pesos de oro. It was my fault to have put this great temptation in his way. If only he had chosen a better time to desert us!

The day steamed. Sweat ran down me in hot rivulets. “Move the
Delfín Azul
to the entrance,” I said, more to show that I had not been rendered helpless by the bad news than by any faith in the procedure. “She is not so sturdy as the
Santa Margarita
and mounts lighter cannon. But we have no choice.”

“What if we took up the marking poles from the channel?” Flint Knife said. “This Cortés does not know that we have a channel and that if you do not keep in the channel, then, bang, you go sailing onto the rocks.”

“Good,” I said. “And you take charge of the
Delfín Azul.
I'll go to the gate and back you up. We'll let Cortés find the channel for himself. If we're lucky he'll not find it and go aground.”

“A
citam.
A pig.”

“Yes, a wild pig who will try to root us out of our home.”

“And eat us alive?”

“Yes, alive.”

 

H
ERNÁN
C
ORTÉS, IN COMMAND OF A SHIP UNDER THE BANNER OF
King Carlos the Fifth, in the name of the Holy Virgin, whose blessing he invoked before such encounters, came into sight in the early afternoon.

Watchmen on the god house roof announced his presence by three long blasts from their conch-shell trumpets. The winds were light, and more than an hour went by before the ship was visible from the deck of the
Delfín.
A second hour passed before the
Holy Virgin
appeared at the harbor entrance.

Cortés did not attempt the narrow passage. Instead, with a great clamor of voices and clanking of chains, the ship anchored squarely at the mouth of the channel. She was within a few short
varas
of where the line of markers began, the first of those we had removed in the hope of grounding all ships that tried to run the passage.

Flint Knife grunted. “How do these fellows know where to stop? The water is not clear. They cannot see to the bottom. They must have a soothsayer. What do you think, Lord of the Winds? You do not think? Well, I think so. Likewise, that we should give them some shots before long.”

“Their guns are trained on the city,” I said. “First, send mes sengers and order everyone indoors, especially the women. No one is to stay on the streets.”

Messengers went out posthaste. A short time later Cortés came ashore in a longboat, flanked by a guard of musketeers. He landed near the stern of the
Delfín
and came on foot to our gangway, the guard following in his wake. A standard-bearer preceded him, holding aloft a banner emblazoned with a gaudy crest.

Cortés looked much older than I remembered him, and more of a dandy in his red doublet with large white ruffs at neck and wrists. He recognized me at once, though I was wearing my jaguar mask and stood above him on the deck. He smiled, his lips curled nearly shut.

“We meet again,” he said, “under far happier circum stances. Had I known when we met in Tenochtitlán that you were the king of La Ciudad de las Serpientes, I would have supplied you with a bodyguard and a more commodious dwelling.” He bowed with a stiff, curt movement of his head. “I ask your forgiveness.”

I ignored the apology. “You have come here for provi sions?” I said. “You're in need of water and food? We have both.”

“We are in need of both,” Cortés said, “but before food and water, be it known to you that I have come from distant lands at the bidding of my emperor, Carlos the Fifth, and of his Lord and Protector, Jesus Christ.”

I had heard these words before. He used them whenever he marched into an Indian village, speaking them by rote, from a long memory. Saying them now, he glanced from bow to stern with a practiced eye, counting the cannon, appraising the crew that served them, the numbers of men with muskets, slingstones, and javelins.

He straightened his white ruff and glanced up at me. “Be advised,” he said, “that from this moment, henceforth and forever, La Ciudad de las Serpientes is a possession of the emperor, Carlos of Spain.”

He paused, as I had often seen him do, to allow a guard to sound a flourish on a small silver trumpet. Whereupon a volley of musket shots answered from the deck of his ship. Clouds of smoke rose up and drifted toward us.

I removed my mask. I waited until I caught his gaze, which had been shifting back and forth between the caravel and the warriors in plain view at the gate.

“Señor,” I said, “this city and island and the seas that surround them are already in the possession of King Carlos. His Majesty took possession of them years ago. The day that I set foot upon these shores.”

A flush appeared on the captain's pale cheeks. He spat on the stones and wiped his mouth on a handkerchief he took from his sleeve.

“You had no patent,” he said, raising his voice from the monotone he had been using. “You had no license to claim
anything
in the name of the king. Not so much as a grain of sand on the beach.”

He looked away, running his eyes over the
Delfín,
her masts and bulwarks, her name freshly painted on the stern.

“This is the caravel,” he announced, turning to an officer behind him, whom I had not noticed before but now recog nized as Pedro de Alvarado, the crudest of his captains. “It fits the description I received from Governor Velásquez. It's the same ship that disappeared mysteriously a few days after reaching Yucatán.”

Cortés turned away from Alvarado and looked at me. “This ship was stolen,” he said. “Are you the thief ?”

Flint Knife had understood none of the conversation, but when I was accused of thievery, as Cortés raised his jeweled hand and pointed at me, he whispered a quick warning.

“The
citam
gets ready to seize you. I can kill the pig before he takes one more breath.”

Flint Knife had never seen the skills of these fierce swords men, who wore Damascus steel under their fine velvet doub lets, who were unacquainted with fear.

“Hold off,” I said. “These are not children who face us.”

Cortés apparently knew nothing of the Maya language, for his expression did not change.

“On the ship that you stole,” he said, “on whose deck you now stand, there was a distinguished passenger—Rodrigo Pedroza, bishop of Alicantara, a dear friend of mine. I have recently learned from Governor Velásquez that he carried a message for me from King Carlos, whose purport I also learned. Having seized his ship, you must know what became of him.”

Cortés had lowered his voice and was speaking now in the kindly tone I had heard him use with Moctezuma, with the Cholólans before he slew them and their blood sloshed in the gutters.

I didn't hesitate to answer. “Pedroza was here on the island for weeks. I saw little of him. He was a man who wanted to be by himself.”

“Where is he?” Cortés said.

“He disappeared,” I said. “He could be with the saints. He was a saintly man.”

Cortés did not care for this remark. His bony cheeks took on a deeper hue—I marveled that the ruthless captain had not lost his ability to blush. His light-colored eyes searched me over, strayed off, and came back to focus on my hand.

“I observe that you are wearing a bishop's ring,” he said. “I have been watching you as you twisted it on your finger. May I inform you that this holy ornament is not worn on the left hand and not on the third finger, but on the right hand and the fourth finger.”

A chill ran through me. I had forgotten the amethyst.

“It reminds me of a ring Bishop Pedroza wore,” Cortés went on. “It was unique. Unusual in shape. Cut squarely. I admired it when the bishop gave me his blessing on the day I set off on my voyage to Yucatán.”

Cortés had described exactly the ring I was wearing.

“Pedroza owned many rings,” I said. “He was vain about rings, also about clothes. He had clothes for every day. A chest full of clothes—surplices and cassocks and vests. And a little leather bag filled with rings.”

“I've never heard this about him,” Cortés said. “But you are right about his soul. It would be with the saints if he were dead. But he is not dead, and Governor Velásquez has charged me to find him.”

“I'll be pleased to help you in your worthy search,” I said.

“Pedroza, was he there when the ship was captured?”

“Yes.”

“He was here on the island and then disappeared?”

“Yes.”

Cortés mumbled something to Pedro de Alvarado, then started to say something to me, then thought better of it. After a moment he turned his back and strode away, followed by his captains and men, and climbed into the longboat, which sped off up the channel. A short while later the caravel raised anchor and sailed toward the south on a brisk wind.

“There are things I do not understand,” the
nacom
said, disappointed that Cortés had run away without a fight, with not so much as a skirmish. “This man comes and talks and does nothing. His people carry weapons they do not use. The ships carry big thundersticks they point at us and do not fire. Then they flee like scared rabbits.”

“Cortés has experienced much,” I said. “He is a warrior. While he talked, he was busy counting our cannon, our spearmen waiting in the canoes. He studied the walls around the harbor, guessed at their height, counted their defenders, the ones he could see, knowing there would be double that number he could not see. He missed nothing. He decided we were ready for battle and that his chances of capturing the city were not good.”

“He can change his mind,” Flint Knife said, “and return.”

That Cortés would return was certain. His hunger for gold had not been satisfied by the treasures of Tenochtitlán. The hunger of his men, upon whom victory depended, was insa tiable. We mined no gold, yet he knew that we had it stored away in secret chambers and buried in ruined temples. He would not rest until it was found.

But more important, he had been asked by Governor Velás quez to find Pedroza. And just as important, to find and arrest me for crimes against the king. The governor's requests were commands. He ruled New Spain. He was the voice of King Carlos. And Cortés was well aware of his power.

“You have seen this Cortés before?” Flint Knife said. “In Tenochtitlán?''

“There and other places.”

“I don't think you like him.”

“No.”

“And he doesn't like you.”

I twisted the amethyst and said nothing. The ring felt like a burning coal.

 

C
ORTÉS WAS NO SOONER BEHIND THE HEADLAND THAN A BLAST OF
trumpets and a roll of drums announced that the funeral rites had begun once more. I put half the canoemen on guard and half the warriors at the gate and the wall embrasures. I left Flint Knife in command of the ship, rode back to the temple, and took my place among the priests.