War God (76 page)

‘I think I would be willing to endure that fate,’ he said, ‘and remain eternally a statue, in return for one taste of your sweet lips.’

He was, Tozi had to admit, very persuasive. She felt the heat of his body, felt herself blush. Thankfully it was still too dark for him to see. But he mused: ‘What is this? Even a goddess trembles?’

‘I tremble that you do not die for this sacrilege! Release me at once, Prince, or never see me again!’

Guatemoc nodded. ‘So slim,’ he whispered, ‘so warm …’ His forehead rested against hers before he let her go. ‘So moist … So very human …’

Feeling his hands unclasp from her waist, Tozi stepped back sharply from the bed and faded into invisibility.

‘And yet not human,’ she heard the prince add as she disappeared, ‘for surely no human has such powers.’

‘Who else is going to teach you to ride?’

Those words, so full of hope and promise, were the last Melchior spoke. Moments later he slipped into unconsciousness, his fierce grip slackening, and did not wake again. Pepillo sat vigil with him through the night in the makeshift field hospital that Dr La Peña had set up for the injured, but as dawn was breaking his friend drew a final laboured breath and died.

‘He’s gone to a better place, lad,’ said Bernal Díaz, who lay on the next mat, his right thigh swollen and septic where an arrow had struck him two days before, the left side of his chest bandaged and seeping blood where a knife thrust in yesterday’s fighting had got past his armour.

‘What’s so good about being dead?’ Pepillo shouted angrily. ‘Nothing’s better than being alive!’ Then he remembered that if it hadn’t been for Díaz he and Melchior would both have been dead, killed by Muñoz, weeks before. ‘I’m sorry,’ he sniffled. ‘I didn’t mean to shout.’

‘And I’m sorry you’ve lost your friend,’ said Díaz. ‘He was a good lad and a brave one. He didn’t deserve this.’

‘He was teaching me to ride,’ Pepillo said. Suddenly, the emotions he had held in check all night, trying to be strong, trying to be a man, overwhelmed him, and he found himself doubled over, sobbing disconsolately, snot running out of his nose. ‘He put me on Molinero’s back. Yesterday! Just yesterday, Don Bernal. And we rode, and we felt so fine and Melchior was so happy. Even after what Muñoz did to him – the bad memories, the horror, the pain – he’d overcome all that. I know he’d overcome it, and he was smiling again. And he loved his horses, Don Bernal. He loved his horses. He told me how he’d been a slave and how riding like the wind was the true meaning of freedom for him. And now he’s dead. Just dead! It’s not right! It’s not fair! What kind of God would allow a good person like Melchior to die in such a way?’

‘The same kind of God that let an evil person like Muñoz live for so many years,’ said Díaz quietly. Pepillo looked up and saw only kindness and concern in the ensign’s eyes, but when he looked down again, nothing had changed, for there was Melchior, cold and still.

Outside morning had broken and a new day had begun.

During the night after the battle, Ah Kinchil recovered his wits and refused Muluc’s request to raise another army from surrounding towns to do battle with the white men again.

‘Are you mad?’ the old chief spat at him incredulously as Malinal served them an early breakfast in the palace in Cintla. ‘I saw what happened. I saw how they defeated us. Don’t forget I was
there
, Muluc! I witnessed the whole battle, from beginning to end, and it was unbelievable. Something impossible even to imagine. Whether they are men or gods, it’s obvious we can’t fight them.’

At that moment, Cit Bolon Tun, the cross-eyed former captive of the Spaniards, was brought in by the palace guards. The man’s nose had been broken by some brutal blow and was still bleeding freely.

‘There you are!’ said Ah Kinchil. ‘You knew they’d beat us and you told us to fight them anyway. I call you a traitor! A
traitor
, do you hear? It was you who misled us and brought this disaster down on our heads. Without your advice I would never have gone to war.’

‘I’m no traitor, sire,’ said Cit Bolon Tun, falling to his knees and sobbing pitifully, drops of blood from his nose spattering around him on the polished floor. ‘The Spaniards are very dangerous. I made no secret of that! But I gave you my best, most honest, most truthful advice when I urged you to fight them, while they are still few in number. Wait a few more months and there will be many more of them. Wait a year and there will be thousands. Our only chance was a swift, decisive victory now …’

‘Liar!’ roared Ah Kinchil, spraying spittle. ‘We had no chance at all! I say you knew that all along.’

‘No, sire. I swear it …’

Ah Kinchil gave a curt nod to one of the guards who pulled a long dagger from his belt, walked up behind Cit Bolon Tun, wrenched the wretched man’s head back by his long hair, and sawed the blade back and forth across his throat as one might slaughter a deer. Blood spurted freely as the major vessels were severed, the victim’s horrible screams and gurgles were abruptly silenced as his vocal cords were cut, and the guard didn’t stop until he’d decapitated the poor man. The whole procedure took about a minute. When it was over, Ah Kinchil turned to Malinal and the other serving girls. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What are you waiting for? Clear this mess up at once.’

Not surprisingly, Muluc’s plans for a further battle with the white men evaporated like mist after that and he readily agreed to Ah Kinchil’s suggestion that he should go to Potonchan at once at the head of a peace delegation, seek out the Spanish leader Cortés and present him with the abject and total surrender of the Chontal Maya.

‘He will require gifts,’ said Muluc.

‘Take him gifts,’ said Ah Kinchil with a lofty wave of his hand. ‘You may empty the palace treasury.’

‘The gods only know why,’ said Muluc, ‘but these white men have a particular lust for gold.’

‘Then take them all we have,’ Ah Kinchil replied with a sniff. The smell of Cit Bolon Tun’s blood was thick in the air. ‘Not that it amounts to much.’ Another sniff: ‘Why would they want gold anyway?’

‘They say it’s the specific remedy for a certain disease of the heart they suffer from. Silver also seems to help it.’

‘I hope they will not be angered that we have so little of both.’ Ah Kinchil turned thoughtfully and directed his ancient rheumy gaze at Malinal, busy scrubbing the floor. ‘This women is quite fetching,’ he said. ‘I suggest you take her as well. In fact, take twenty women, the most beautiful you can find, and present them all to the Spaniards. All men, and even gods, suffer from a certain need –’ a lecherous, toothless grin – ‘and women are the specific remedy for it.’

‘You said you returned to us to meet the white men,’ Muluc told Malinal gleefully, ‘so now you’re going to get your wish – and good riddance to you; I hope you’re as much trouble to them as you’ve been to me.’

Malinal found it hard to conceal her joy. She had walked all the way from Tenochtitlan to find these white ‘gods’, only to be diverted from her quest by Muluc – yet fate had now conspired to make him the very instrument that would put her into their hands!

The peace delegation, with the twenty women in its midst, and bearers carrying fifty heaped bundles of jaguar skins, two hundred bundles of embroidered textiles and three large treasure chests, was ready to depart by midday and reached Potonchan, seven miles to the north, three hours later. The route, following the
sacbe
, led directly across the battlefield between the Xaman hills and Potonchan itself, and Malinal was now able to see close up the effects of the devastation she’d witnessed from afar the day before.

The Spaniards’ ‘guns’ had torn men limb from limb, smashed them, crushed them, turned them inside out. Those grim glittering spheres launched from the top of the pyramid had cut long lanes of carnage through the Mayan ranks – here ten, twenty, even thirty warriors in a row had been mowed down; then there was a gap where the ball had bounced into the air, then another lane of demolished corpses, all rotting already in the hot afternoon sun. Closer to where the Spanish squares had stood there were countless sword and axe and spear wounds. And everywhere there were men who’d been ripped to bloody ribbons, their guts dragged out of their bellies in stinking, slimy, flyblown piles, by the Spanish war animals. Some species of dog, Cit Bolon Tun had hazarded? Some species of demon or dragon more like, Malinal thought, judging from the dreadful butchery of the wounds.

And what of the animals, like deer, called ‘horses’? The huge beasts on which Malinal had seen the Spanish war leader and his troop thunder past the foot of the Xaman hills on their way to battle? The hoofprints of these creatures were everywhere, in the churned-up soil and imprinted on the bodies and faces of fallen men, and where they had charged into the thickest press of the Mayan ranks, crowds of corpses lay hunched and heaped one upon the other, as many killed as they’d fled in blind panic as had been struck down by the weapons of the Spaniards.

The trail of bodies led all the way into Potonchan, through the narrow streets and up towards the plaza, where the ancient pyramid overlooked the sacred silk-cotton tree. Long before this, the Mayan delegation had been shadowed and flanked by Spanish scouts, hard-faced, bearded, pale-eyed men wearing metal armour, carrying metal swords and spears – some of the terrifying ‘guns’, too, Malinal noted – but Muluc had shown by signs that his intentions were peaceful and the caravan had been allowed to proceed.

Now at last, in the mid-afternoon, they came into the square and, up ahead, in the shade of the silk-cotton tree, seated regally on a throne, looking relaxed, confident, handsome – gods he was handsome! – the Spanish leader awaited them. Malinal recognised him at once and felt again the special connection she’d felt with him yesterday as she’d watched him ride into battle. The way he had turned his bearded white face towards her then, the way his eyes had seemed to fix on her and root her to the spot, had filled her with hope and a strange yearning, and she now had a sense, as she’d had so often in the past month, that she was swept up in some divine scheme and that her fate was about to be fulfilled.

But how to talk to him? This was the problem. How to communicate to him her special purpose? How to let him know that she was the one who had been chosen by the gods, and spared from death, to bring him to Tenochtitlan and end forever the cruel and gluttonous reign of Moctezuma?

Strangely – a blow to Malinal’s conviction that a divine plan was about to unfold – this man, if he was a man, or god if he was a god, this Cortés, did not even acknowledge her existence as she stood roasting in the sun with the other twenty women, amongst the bearers of the treasures and jaguar skins and textiles, while Muluc alone entered the shade of the silk-cotton tree. Through the intermediary of the black-bearded interpreter Aguilar, whom Cit Bolon Tun had spoken of, and who sat on a stool at Cortés’s right hand, a long conversation then ensued. Very long. Malinal was only able to grasp snatches of what was said, as her hated stepfather was made to grovel and squirm. At one point another Spaniard even more beautiful than Cortés himself, a man who it seemed was called Alvarado, but who resembled the sun brought down to earth with his yellow beard and hair, stepped forward and beat Muluc about the buttocks with the flat of his huge metal sword.

All this was very enjoyable and diverting, but it still brought Malinal no closer to Cortés, the avatar, she yet had reason to hope, of the god Quetzalcoatl, whom she had travelled all this way and risked so many dangers to see.

The solution, of course, was the interpreter Aguilar. Malinal must simply speak to him in the Mayan language, which he appeared to have complete mastery of, tell him of her mission, and he would immediately translate what she had said into the language of the Spaniards and Cortés would understand.

She leapt forward. A Spanish guard got in her way but she bowled him aside, swords were drawn all around her –
swish, swish, swish
– and she found herself on her knees at the very feet of Cortés, strong hands holding her, forcing her head down.

‘How
dare
you, woman?’ Muluc shrieked, reaching out to strike her, but his hand was kicked aside by the Spaniard Alvarado, who stood over him, hand on the hilt of his sword, his pale eyes glittering, saying incomprehensible words in his strange language. ‘You’re to leave her alone, Muluc,’ snapped the translator Aguilar. ‘Back off! My masters want to hear her.’

Snarling and snapping, Muluc backed away.

‘What’s your name?’ said Aguilar in faultless Mayan.

‘Who, me?’ asked Malinal.

‘Yes, you. Who else?’

‘I am Malinal.’

‘Very well, Malinal, state your business here.’

‘I must speak with the Lord Cortés,’ she said. ‘I have been seeking him out these last thirty days. I have walked all the way from Tenochtitlan to find him. I … we … my friend and I, we believe he is the Lord Quetzalcoatl, returned to claim his kingdom. I have come to guide him to his home.’

‘His home? His home is in Spain.’

‘No, lord. We believe him to be the human manifestation of the great god Quetzalcoatl, whose rightful home is Tenochtitlan, capital city of the Mexica. I am here to guide him thither. I am here to help him to overthrow the usurper Moctezuma and claim back his throne.’

‘Nonsense, woman. You are talking complete and utter nonsense!’

‘I have heard,’ Malinal said, desperate now for anything that would sway this dog-faced translator on whose good graces she depended utterly to speak to Cortés, ‘that you Spaniards have a great need for gold. Well, you will find precious little here amongst my people the Maya, for whom gold holds no meaning. If you want gold, whole rooms full of gold, a city of gold, then only allow me to lead you to Tenochtitlan and I will place in your hands all the gold you want. Please, I beg you, Lord Aguilar, convey what I have said to the Lord Cortés.’

Aguilar seemed to think about it. A muscle twitched in his bearded cheek. His upper teeth appeared and nibbled his lower lip. ‘Do you,’ he asked, ‘speak the language of the Mexica?’