War God (77 page)

‘I speak it fluently,’ Malinal replied, ‘like my mother tongue. And through me, and through you, Lord Aguilar, the Lord Cortés also may speak to the Mexica, and convey to them his commands. You will put what he says into the Mayan tongue and I will put it into the language of the Mexica. I will put what they say in reply into the Mayan tongue and you will put my words into Spanish. It is a good plan, is it not?’

‘No,’ said Aguilar cruelly, ‘it’s a terrible plan, it’s a stupid plan and I’ll have nothing to do with it.’ Abruptly he turned to Cortés and spoke to him at length in Spanish, and the next moment guards took rough hold of Malinal and dragged her out into the sun again, and threw her down, sprawling amongst the other women, while from the shade of the silk-cotton tree Muluc leered at her in triumph.

What followed was, if anything, worse. Despite the connection she felt certain they enjoyed, that special connection that had drawn him to her and her to him as he rode into battle, the Lord Cortés continued to ignore Malinal – completely, as though she did not even exist – for the rest of the afternoon.

His primary interest was the treasure, and truly he did not even seem greatly interested in that. The bales of embroidered cloth and jaguar skins meant nothing to him. He looked at them as though they were excrement.

Only the three wooden chests attracted his attention, and when they were opened he rifled through their contents before giving a great sigh and turning away in disgust. Behind him followed the Spaniard Alvarado who, if anything, seemed even more angered and frustrated by Muluc’s gifts.

That was when the pair of them noticed the women again. They walked over, fingered the girls, squeezed their breasts, slapped a buttock here or there, all the while speaking to one another harshly and cruelly in their mysterious foreign tongue. Then other Spaniards gathered round, lean men, hungry men, who looked on the women as vultures might look on carrion, and there was much laughter and nudging and lewd gestures, all of them perfectly comprehensible to Malinal.

This was about sex now, that eternal obsession of men.

Finally the women were divided up, this one to that man, this one to another. Cortés still showed not the slightest interest in Malinal and gave her finally to a vulgar beast with a bushy red beard.

She learned soon enough that his name was Alonso Hernández Puertocarrero.

Melchior had died during the night, as Cortés had known he must the moment he’d seen his injuries, and was buried just hours later on the morning of Friday 26 March. Four good Spaniards who’d also lost their lives on the plains of Potonchan were buried alongside him in a moving ceremony, at which Cortés gave a reading, attended by all who were fit to walk. The death toll was small, all things considered, but more than a hundred of the men had been wounded in Thursday’s great battle, a few so severely that even the best efforts of Dr La Peña would not save them. Still, there was much to be thankful for, Cortés decided. He’d faced down and defeated a giant army while his own small force was still almost entirely intact.

That same afternoon of Friday 26th, a delegation of Indians appeared, led by the creature Muluc, whom Cortés now knew to be the chief of Potonchan – though he’d pretended otherwise. He came bearing the seal of Ah Kinchil, the paramount chief of all the Chontal Maya, to offer a complete, abject and unconditional surrender, which Cortés was happy to accept. His men had taken a hammering over the past few days and badly needed time to rest and recuperate.

As a token of the peace, Muluc brought twenty fine, clean women to serve the Spaniards as slaves or, he said with a lewd grimace, ‘for any other purpose you wish’. Amongst them, Cortés noted, was the same striking, graceful beauty whom he’d seen the previous afternoon, watching the battle from the hills south of Potonchan. He’d been strongly drawn to her then, her magnetism reaching out to him as he’d thundered by on Molinero, and he felt her spell again now, but resisted it even when she rather dramatically threw herself at his feet and yammered away at Aguilar in her exotic tongue for some minutes.

She was, the interpreter assured him, completely mad. It seemed she was convinced he was some pagan god! In Aguilar’s opinion she was best ignored if he did not want trouble. Cortés was tempted to take the matter further, but ultimately decided against it. With rebellion brewing amongst the Velazquistas it was important to keep his friends sweet, and a sex slave as decorative as this was an easy way to satisfy Puertocarrero, who loved women at least as much as he loved gold.

On the matter of gold, the peace offerings presented by Muluc were less satisfactory. Other than the heaped skins of some unknown animals, and two hundred bundles of embroidered textiles, costly but inferior to silk, he brought only three chests, admittedly large, packed in the main with little statues, face masks, pectorals, belts, ear and lip decorations, ornamental weapons, plates and serving vessels, all made of the curious, somewhat translucent green stone that had been offered before at the riverside in Potonchan. There were in addition a good number of pearls, various gemstones resembling rubies, cornelians, emeralds, agates, topazes and the like, but pitifully little gold – four diadems, some ornaments shaped like lizards, two shaped like fish with finely worked individual scales, five resembling ducks, a handful of earrings and necklaces, two gold soles for sandals and a few items of silver, pretty to look at but of small value. Alvarado thought the gold, silver, pearls and gems worth less than fifteen thousand pesos, a sum – he declared with a sour face – that was by no means worth the battle fought to obtain it. He suggested they put Muluc to torture and burn the town of Cintla where Ah Kinchil had his seat. ‘It’s the only way we’re going to part these swine from their treasure.’

But Aguilar disagreed. ‘The Maya don’t share our idea of treasure,’ he said. ‘They place little value on gold.’ He pulled a carved green stone from the chest. It was similar to the piece, shaped like an axe head, that Alvarado had thrown in the river some days before. ‘This is the stuff that matters to them. ‘They call it
ik’
, and they regard it as precious beyond any jewel or metal. It speaks to them of breath, fertility, the maize crop, vitality. It’s their ultimate symbol of wealth.’

‘Looks like shit to me,’ said Alvarado. ‘Let’s burn some towns. They’ll show us their gold soon enough.’

When questioned, Muluc protested that the chest contained all the gold of Cintla and Potonchan. There was no more to be had in either place, and while other towns and villages in the region might be able to offer some pieces, they would be of poor quality and the quantity would not be great.

‘We’ll see about that,’ Alvarado growled.

Muluc then launched into a lengthy account of another people, a people called the Mexica who were ruled by a great emperor named Moctezuma and whose capital city, Tenochtitlan, stood on an island in a lake at the heart of an immense green valley hundreds of miles to the northwest, protected by ranges of huge, snow-capped mountains.

Cortés was at once entranced; he sat forward, listening intently as evening drew in and the first stars appeared in the darkening sky.

Mexica traders, Muluc continued, frequently visited the Maya, and some of the Maya had made the journey to Tenochtitlan. Indeed Muluc claimed to have made a visit to it himself. It was, he said, a city of fabulous wealth and power. If the Spanish wanted gold, that was where they should go, for its temples and treasuries were stuffed with gold and every other precious item they desired. Indeed, all the gold ornaments he had brought as gifts today had been acquired by the Maya – who had no gold mines of their own – through trade with the Mexica.

‘He’s lying,’ said Alvarado, ‘just trying to send us on a wild goose chase to get us away from here.’

But when the Mayan delegation had been dismissed to return to Cintla, and the Spaniards sat down to their supper, some taking to their beds soon after to enjoy the women they’d been given, Aguilar confirmed Muluc’s story to be essentially true. Even the distant part of the Yucatán where he had been held as a slave was occasionally visited by Mexica merchants. It was generally understood that the far-off land from which they came was enormously rich and that their emperor, Moctezuma, ruled over huge territories populated by millions and commanded a vast army.

Tozi was filled with trepidation as she entered Guatemoc’s bedchamber in Chapultepec for the third and final night – her last chance on this present mission to make the prince ‘our man’. She wasn’t sure exactly what Huicton had meant by that strange phrase, but she was determined to achieve something, to make some breakthrough before returning to Tenochtitlan tomorrow to resume her haunting and torture of Moctezuma.

As she stood watching Guatemoc in the moonlight, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling evenly with his breathing, looking so much stronger than he had on the two previous nights, indeed positively
glowing
with health and vitality, it occurred to her that she had perhaps already achieved much. She had, after all, given the prince healing and freed him from the pain of his wounds and won his trust, and these gains might surely be bartered to some valuable advantage when the right time came.

She moved silently to the bedside and faded into visibility, watching Guatemoc uncertainly for a moment longer before waking him. His attempt last night to kiss her had taken her by surprise but had not, she had to admit, been entirely unwelcome. He was a stunningly handsome man, even
beautiful
in his way, and she was flattered that so powerful and important a personage should be attracted to her at all.

Although, of course, she had to remind herself, it was not her, Tozi, he was attracted to, but her in her guise as the Lady Temaz, goddess of healing and medicines – a completely different matter. A prince who might abase himself and do foolish things to win the attentions of a goddess would not even spare a glance at a little beggar girl!

Feeling a burst of annoyance and indignation, she reached out her hand and touched his muscular naked shoulder.

‘Hello, sweet goddess,’ he said immediately. ‘I was waiting for your visit.’ He opened his eyes and in a single graceful movement sat up, swung his bare feet over the side of the bed and arranged the sheet – just so – to cover his manly parts.

Ha! So he hadn’t been asleep after all. Just pretending. He was tricky, Tozi realised. She would have to be careful. ‘You must not,’ she said, ‘attempt to kiss me again.’

‘Or you’ll turn me to stone?’

Was he mocking her?

‘Not I, Prince, but the universe itself will punish you if you transgress the sanctity of the gods. Now lie down again, please. Let me complete the work of healing.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet. I want to talk first.’

‘We can talk as I work.’

‘Oh, very well,’ he grumbled. ‘I can hardly object.’

He lay on his back. He wore no bandages tonight. His wounds were clean and dry with no sign of infection. As she ran her fingers over the jagged scars for the last time he asked: ‘Why are you doing this for me?’

‘A great battle is coming,’ she said. ‘The world as you know it will cease to exist and a new world will arise to take its place. You are a powerful figure amongst your people, Prince Guatemoc, an important figure, one to whom many look up. It will be good if you are on the right side.’

‘Strange that,’ said Guatemoc. He paused: ‘Shikotenka of Tlascala gave me these wounds.’ He moved his hand down to touch her fingers where they rested on the series of great puncture marks across his belly. ‘Afterwards, as I lay dying on a hillside, the war god Hummingbird appeared to me and he too told me that a great battle is coming.’

Tozi’s mind was in turmoil. Hummingbird, who had reprieved her from death on the sacrificial stone and touched her with his fire! And Shikotenka of Tlascala, the very man with whom Huicton had been sent to negotiate an alliance! Both brought together in this single utterance of Guatemoc’s! It could hardly be chance.

‘I suppose,’ Guatemoc said, ‘it is your privilege, Lady Temaz, to see the face of Hummingbird every day in the council of the gods?’

‘I have seen him,’ said Tozi, ‘and I do not like him. He is a cruel god with a lust for suffering …’

‘Whereas your work is healing?’

‘I heal the wounds that war makes—’

Guatemoc seemed to ignore her. ‘Hummingbird told me,’ he continued, ‘that Moctezuma is a weakling, not competent to fight the battle that confronts us.’

‘That is true,’ Tozi agreed.

‘And he told me – I think he told me – he had brought me back from the dead to fight that battle in Moctezuma’s place.’

Tozi’s mind was racing. ‘It was I, not Hummingbird, who brought you back from the dead,’ she exclaimed, ‘and I am here to tell you another thing …’

The prince looked at her expectantly.

‘The god of peace is coming,’ Tozi continued, ‘the god Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent. It is with him and his retinue of gods that Moctezuma will very soon find himself at war, and Moctezuma will lose that fight and be cast away forever. You must not, Guatemoc,
you must not
place yourself in opposition to Quetzalcoatl! You must be on the right side. You must be on the side of peace.’

‘Peace?’ The prince seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘Peace? I am a warrior, my lady. I can never be on the side of peace. Besides,’ a sly look crossed his handsome face, ‘what sort of god of peace would fight a war in the first place? Surely if he wishes to rid the world of Moctezuma he will find a way to do that by peaceful means?’

Tozi thought about it. It made sense! But it would never work. ‘Moctezuma is evil,’ she said, ‘and sometimes evil overwhelms good, and when it does it can’t just be wished away peacefully. It has to be fought and it has to be stopped, and that’s what Quetzalcoatl is returning to do.’

‘So Quetzalcoatl, then, is a god of war, just like Hummingbird?’

‘No … Yes!’

‘Which is it to be, my lady? Is this Quetzalcoatl of yours a god of peace? Or is he a god of war?’ The prince laughed. ‘He can’t be both!’