Текст книги "Aztec"

Автор книги: Gary Jennings

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Since the chápari, like the metal, was never exported outside Michihuácan, I and my men drank as much as we could while we were there. We also feasted on Michihuácan's lake and river fish, frogs' legs and eels, whenever we spent a night in a travelers' hostel. As a matter of fact, we got rather weary of aquatic fare after a while, but those people have peculiar strictures against killing practically every edible game animal. A Purémpe will not hunt deer because he believes them to be manifestations of the sun god, and that is because, to his eyes, the male deer's antlers resemble the sun's beams. Not even squirrels can be trapped or blowpiped, because the Purémpecha priests, as filthy and shaggy as ours, were called tiuimencha, and that word means "black squirrels." So most of the meals we took at inns were, when not fish, either wild or domestic fowl.

We were offered rather more of a choice after we had eaten. I believe I have mentioned the Purémpecha's attitude regarding sexual practices. An outlander might call it vilely loose or tolerantly broadminded, depending on his own attitude, but it certainly catered to every conceivable taste. Each time we finished our meal at an inn, the landlord would inquire of me and then my bearers, "Will you have a male or female sweet?" I did not answer for my men; I was paying them enough that they could indulge as they chose. But, with Zyanya waiting back home, I was not inclined to sample the offerings of every new country I visited, as I had done in my bachelor days. I invariably replied to the innkeeper, "Neither, thank you," and the innkeeper would persist, without a blink or a blush, "Would you prefer green fruit, then?"

It may really have been necessary for a pleasure-seeking traveler to specify the precise kind of bedmate he wanted—grown woman or man, young girl or boy—for in Michihuácan it is sometimes hard for a stranger to tell which sex is which, because the Purémpecha observe another peculiar practice, or did in those days. The folk of every class higher than slaves depilated their body of every removable hair. They shaved or plucked or otherwise scoured clean all the hair from their head, the eyebrows from above their eyes, any slightest trace of fuzz from beneath their arms or between their legs. Men, women, and children, they had absolutely no hair but their eyelashes. And, in contrast to whatever lewdnesses they may have performed in the nighttime, they went about during the day modestly clothed in several layers of mantles or blouses, which was why it could be difficult to tell the females from the males.

At first, I assumed that the smooth and glossy hairlessness of the Purémpecha represented either their singular notion of beauty or a passing affectation of fashion. But there may have been an obsessively sanitary reason for it. In my study of their language I discovered that Poré has at least eight different words for dandruff and about as many more for louse.

We came to the seacoast at an immense blue harbor protected by enfolding arms of land from the battering of heavy seas and sea storms. There was situated the port village called Patamkuaro by its inhabitants and Acamepulco by our visiting Mexíca traders, both the Poré and Náhuatl names given because of the great swales of cane and reed growing there. Acamepulco was a fishing port in its own right, and also a market center for the peoples living along the coast to the east and west, who came in canoes to dispose of their own gleanings from the sea and land: fish, turtles, salt, cotton, cacao, vanilla, other typical products of those Hot Lands.

It was my intention that time not to hire but to buy four roomy, seagoing canoes, and for the eight of us to paddle them, so that we need have no witnesses in attendance. But that was more easily intended than accomplished. The familiar acáli of our home lake district was easily carved from the soft pine that grew there. But a sea canoe was made of the formidably heavy and hard mahogany, and it could take months to make. Almost all the canoes at Acamepulco had been in use through generations of their owner families, and no family was inclined to sell one, since that would mean a suspension of all profitable fishing or hauling while a replacement was hacked to shape and burned hollow and rasped smooth. But I did finally acquire the four I needed, though it took frustrating days of negotiation, and a far greater outlay of gold dust than I had meant to spend.

And to row them southeastward down the coast, two of us in each, was not so easy either. We all had some experience of lake canoeing, and those big inland lakes could sometimes be roughened by the wind, but we were unaccustomed to waters roiled by currents and tidal surges even in the calm weather that—I thank the gods—attended our sea voyage. Several of those staunch old warriors, whose stomachs had never been turned by all the nauseating horrors of war, were wretchedly sick for the first two or three days. I was not, perhaps because I had been to sea before. But we early learned not to hug the shore where the water's motion was most violent and unpredictable. Though it made us all uneasy to be such a long swim from The One World, we stayed well out beyond the first billows of the breakers, only riding them in at sundown, to spend the nights gratefully on the soft and unheaving sands of the beach.

That beach, as I had seen it do before, gradually darkened from gleaming white to dull gray and then to the sullen black of volcanic sands. And then that beach was interrupted by a suddenly jutting promontory: the mountain that walks in the water. Thanks to my topaz, I espied the mountain from afar, and, it being then late afternoon, I gave the order to make landfall on the beach.

When we were seated around our campfire, I addressed my seven men, repeating the planned actions of our mission on the morrow, and adding, "Some of you may have reservations about raising your hand against a priest, even a priest of an alien god. Do not have. These priests will appear unarmed, and merely vexed at our intrusion, and helpless before our weapons. They are not. Given the least opportunity, they will slay every one of us, and carve us like boar meat, and eat us at their leisure. Tomorrow, when our work has been accomplished, we kill. We kill without mercy or we risk being killed. Remember that, and remember my signals."

When we pushed off through the combers again the next morning, we were no longer a young pochtéatl and his seven elder porters. We were a detachment of seven fearsome Mexíca warriors led by one not very old "old eagle" cuáchic. We had undone the packs and donned the war regalia and armed ourselves with the weapons. I carried Blood Glutton's cuáchic insignia of shield and guidon staff, and wore his cuáchic headdress. The only missing insigne of that rank was a bone through my nose, but my septum had never been pierced for such a thing. The seven soldiers were, like myself, all wearing clean white quilted armor. They had stuck feathers into their hair, which was drawn up into topknots, and had painted fierce many-colored designs on their faces. We each carried a maquahuitl, a dagger, and a javelin.

Our little fleet paddled boldly toward the mountain promontory, making no attempt at stealth, deliberately intending that the guardians there should see us come. And they did, they were waiting on the mountainside: at least twelve of the evil Zyu priests in their robes of ragged and patchy fur. We did not turn our canoes toward the beach to make an easy landing, but rowed on straight for them.

I do not know whether it was the different season of the year, or whether it was because we approached from the western side of the mountain, but the ocean was in much less turmoil than it had been that time I and the Tzapotecatl boatman came upon it from the east. Nevertheless, the sea was still agitated enough that we unpracticed seafarers might well have splintered the boats and some of ourselves against the rocks, except that a number of the priests leapt down from boulder to boulder and waded into the water and drew our canoes into protected clefts. Of course they did it only because they knew and feared our Mexíca warrior costumes—which was what I had counted on.

We wedged the craft securely there, and I left one soldier to guard them. Then I waved, the gesture including the priests as well as my men, and we all went bounding from rock to rock, through the thunders and spouts of surf, through the clouds and sheets of spray, onto the main slope of the mountain mass. The chief priest of the Sea God stood there, his arms folded across his chest to conceal the fact that he had no hands. He snarled something in his Huave dialect. When I merely raised my eyebrows, he tried Lóochi, and said with bluster:

"What more you Mexíca come for now? We only keepers of god color, and you have that."

"Not all of it," I said in the same tongue.

He seemed slightly shaken by the brusque assurance with which I spoke, but he insisted, "We have no more."

"No, it is mine you have," I said. "Some purple for which I paid much gold. Remember? On the day I did that." With the flat of my maquahuitl I slapped his arms apart so that the wrist stumps were visible. He knew me then, and his evil face became even uglier with impotent rage and hatred. The other priests on his either side spread to make a threatening ring about me and my warriors. There were two of them to each of us, but we held our javelins in a bristling circle. I said to the chief, "Lead us to the god's cave."

His mouth worked for a moment, possibly trying other lies, before he said, "Your army emptied the cave of Tiat Ndik."

I motioned to the soldier next to me. He drove his javelin's point deep into the belly of the priest standing at the chief's left. The man shrieked, fell down, and rolled on the ground, clutching his abdomen and continuing to scream.

I said, "That is to show we are in earnest. This is to show that we are in a hurry." I gestured again, and the soldier jabbed again at the fallen man, that time skewering him through the heart and abruptly stopping his cries. "Now," I said to the chief priest, "we will go to the grotto."

He swallowed and said no more; the demonstration had sufficed. With me and my javelin at his back, with my warriors prodding the remaining priests, he led the way over the jumbled rocks and down into the protected hollow and into the cave. I was much relieved to find that the god's place had not been collapsed or buried by the earthquake. When we stood before the purple-daubed heap of stones simulating a statue, I indicated the leather flasks and dyed skeins of yarn heaped all about it, and said to the chief, "Tell your attendants to start carrying all this to our canoes." He swallowed again, but said nothing.

"Tell them," I repeated, "or I cut next at your elbows, and then at your shoulders, and then elsewhere."

He hastily told them something in their language, and whatever he told them was convincing. With no words, but with many a murderous look at me, the unkempt priests began lifting and carrying the flasks and bales of yarn. My men accompanied them to the boats and back to the cave during the many trips it took them to shift the entire store of treasure. Meanwhile, I and the handless priest stayed by the statue, he immobilized by my javelin point held vertically pricking the underside of his jaw. I might have used the time to make him produce the packet of gold he had taken from me on that other occasion, but I did not. I preferred to leave the gold, wherever it was, as payment for what I was doing. It made me feel less like a plunderer and more like a trader concluding a slightly delayed but legitimate transaction.

Not until the last of the flasks were being carried out of the cave did the chief priest speak again, with loathing in his voice: "You defiled holy place before. You angered Tiat Ndik so he sent the zyuüú to punish. He will do so again, or worse. This insult and loss he will not forgive. The Sea God will not let you go free with his purple."

"Oh, perhaps he will," I said carelessly, "if I leave him a sacrifice of another color." At that, I thrust my javelin upward and the point went all the way through jaw and tongue and palate into the man's brain. He fell flat on his back, red blood fountaining from his mouth, and I had to brace my foot against his chin to yank the spear loose.

I heard a concerted shout of consternation behind me. My soldiers were just then bunching all the other priests into the grotto, and they had seen their fallen chief. But I did not have to give any command or signal to my men. Before the priests could recover from their shocked surprise, to fight or flee, they were all dead.

I said, "I promised a sacrifice to that heap of boulders there. Pile all the bodies on and around it."

When that was done, the god statue was no longer purple but shiny red, and the red was spreading over the floor of the whole cave. I do believe that Tiat Ndik must have been satisfied with the offering. We felt no earthquake on our way down to the canoes. Nothing interfered with our loading of the precious cargo or our launching of the then heavier boats. No Sea God churned up his element to prevent our paddling safely away, well out to sea and around the rock-littered waters at the tip of the promontory, out of the land of The Strangers. Without hindrance we rowed on eastward down the coast, and I never again set foot or laid eyes on the mountain that walks in the water.

However, we all eight continued to wear our Mexíca battle costumes for the next few days, while we were still in Huave and Tzapoteca waters, while we passed Nozibe and other seaside villages—and the fishing boats whose puzzled crewmen timidly waved to us—until we were well past the Tecuantépec isthmus and offshore of the Xoconóchco cotton country. There we beached at night in a secluded spot. We burned our armor and other regalia, and buried all but a necessary few of our weapons, and remade our packs, to transport the leather flasks and dyed yarn.

When we rowed away from there in the morning, we were dressed again as a pochtéatl and his porters. We landed later that day, quite openly, at the Mame village of Pijijia, and I sold our canoes—though at a pitifully low price, since the fisher folk there, as everywhere along the coast, already owned all the boats they needed. My men and I, after having been so long afloat, found that we lurched ludicrously when we tried to walk. So we spent two days in Pijijia to get reaccustomed to solid ground—and I had some interesting conversations with the Mame elders—before we took up our packs and moved on inland.

You ask, Fray Toribio, why we had taken such trouble to make that long voyage first in the guise of traders, then as warriors, then as traders again.

Well, the people of Acamepulco knew that a trader had bought for himself and his porters four seagoing canoes, and the people of Pijijia knew that a similar group had sold similar canoes, and both peoples may have thought the circumstances odd. But those towns were so far distant from each other that they were unlikely ever to compare impressions, and they were both so far distant from the Tzapoteca and Mexíca capitals that I had little fear of their gossip's ever reaching the ears of Kosi Yuela or Ahuítzotl.

It was inevitable that the Zyu would soon discover the mass murder of their priests and the disappearance of their hoarded purple from the god's cave. Though we had effectually silenced all the witnesses to the actual looting, there was every likelihood that other Zyu onshore had seen our approach to the sacred mountain or our departure from it. They would raise a clamor that would eventually be heard by the Bishosu Kosi Yuela and the Revered Speaker Ahuítzotl, and infuriate both of them. But the Zyu could only impute the atrocity to a bunch of battle-arrayed Mexíca warriors. Kosi Yuela might suspect Ahuítzotl of having played a trick to secure the treasure, but Ahuítzotl could honestly say he knew nothing of any Mexíca foragers in that area. I was wagering that the confusion would be such that the seagoing warriors could never be connected to the seagoing traders and that neither could ever be connected to me.

My plan required me to go on from Pijijia across the mountain ranges into the Chiapa country. But, since my porters were so heavily laden, I saw no necessity for them to make that climb. We arranged a day and a place to regroup in the barrens of the isthmus of Tecuantépec; it would give them plenty of time to travel there at a leisurely pace. I told them to avoid villages and encounters with other travelers on the way; a train of loaded tamémime without a leader would have provoked comment, if not their detention for investigation. So, once we were well away from Pijijia, my seven men turned west, staying in the lowlands of the Xoconóchco, while I went north into the mountains.

I came down from them finally, into the meager capital city of Chiapan, and went straight to the workshop of the Master Xibalba.

"Ah!" said he with delight. "I thought you would be back. So I have been collecting all the quartz possible, and making of it many more burning crystals."

"Yes, they sell well," I told him. "This time I insist on paying you their full value and the full worth of your labors on them." I also told him how my topaz, by enhancing my vision, had much enriched my life, and how grateful I was to him.

When I had filled my pack with the cotton-wrapped crystals, I was carrying almost as much weight as each of my absent porters. But I did not stay to rest and refresh myself in Chiapan, because I could hardly have stayed anywhere but at the home of the Macoboo family, and there I should have had to fend off the advances of those two female cousins, which would hardly be polite behavior for a guest. So I paid the Master Xibalba in gold dust, and hurried on my way.

Some days later, after only a little searching about, I found the spot, remote from any inhabited area, where my men awaited me, sitting around a campfire and a litter of picked-clean bones of armadillos and iguanas and such. There we lingered only long enough for me to get a good night's sleep, and for one of the old campaigners to cook for me my first hot meal since I had left them: a plump pheasant broiled over the fire.

When we came through the eastern reaches of the city of Tecuantépec, we could see the marks of the Mexíca's depredations, though most of the burned-over areas had already been rebuilt. In fact, the city had been rather improved thereby. There were decent and sturdy houses in the once squalid area where I had formerly seen only woebegone shanties—including the one that had been such a landmark in my life. When we made our way through the city to its western edge, however, we found that the rioting soldiers had apparently not carried their rampage that far. The familiar inn was still there. I left my men in the yard while I went in, shouting boisterously:

"Innkeeper! Have you room for a weary pochtéatl and his train?"

Béu Ribé came from some inner room, looking healthy and fit and as beautiful as ever, but her only greeting was to say:

"The Mexíca are not very popular hereabouts these days."

I said, still trying for cordiality, "Surely, Waiting Moon, you make an exception of your own brother, Dark Cloud. Your sister sent me all this way to make sure of your safety. I am happy to see you were unharmed by the troubles."

"Unharmed," she said in a flat voice. "I am happy that you are happy, since it was your doing that the Mexíca soldiers came here. Everyone knows they were sent because of your misadventures with the Zyu, and your failure to seize the purple dye."

That much was true, I admitted. "But you cannot blame me for—"

"There is blame enough for me to share it!" she said bitterly. "I am blamed that this inn ever gave you shelter in the first place!" Then she seemed suddenly to droop. "But I have long been acquainted with scorn, have I not? Yes, you may have a room, and you know where to lodge your porters. The servants will see to you."

She turned and went back to whatever she had been busy with. Hardly a tumultuous or even sisterly welcome, I thought to myself. But the servants got my men and my goods stowed away, and prepared a meal for me. When I had finished it and was smoking a poquietl, Béu came through the room. She would have kept right on walking, but I took her wrist and stopped her and said:

"I do not deceive myself, Béu. I know you dislike me, and if the recent Mexíca riots made you love me even less—"

She interrupted me, her winglike eyebrows haughtily high. "Dislike? Love? Those are emotions. What right have I to feel any emotion toward you, husband of my sister?"

"All right," I said impatiently. "Despise me. Ignore me. But will you not give me some word to take back to Zyanya?"

"Yes. Tell her I was raped by a Mexícatl soldier."

Stunned, I let go of her wrist. I tried to think of something to say, but she laughed and went on:

"Oh, do not say you are sorry. I think I can still claim virginity, for he was exceptionally inept. In his attempt to debase me, he only confirmed my already abysmal opinion of the arrogant Mexíca."

I found my voice, and demanded, "His name. If he has not yet been executed, I will see to it."

"Do you suppose he introduced himself?" she said, laughing again. "I believe he was no soldier of common rank, though I do not know all your military insignia, and my room was dark. But I did recognize the costume he made me don for the occasion. I was forced to put soot on my face, and to put on the black, musty robes of a female temple attendant."

"What?" I said, stupefied.

"There was not much conversation, but I realized that mere virginity was not sufficient to excite him. I realized that he could only be aroused by pretending that he violated the holy and untouchable."

"I never heard of such a—"

She said, "Do not try to make excuses for your countryman. And you do not need to commiserate with me. I told you: he was quite unsuited to be a violator of women. His—I believe you call it a tepúli—his tepúli was all knobby and gnarled and bent. The act of penetration—"

"Please, Béu," I said. "This telling cannot be pleasant for you."

"Neither was the experience," she said, as coolly as if describing someone else's. "A woman who must later endure being pointed out as a victim of rape should at least have been well raped. His maimed tepúli would penetrate only as far as its head, or bulb, or whatever you call that. And for all his heaving and grunting, it would not stay in. When he finally emitted his juice, it merely dribbled onto my leg. I do not know if there are degrees of virginity, but I think I can still call myself a virgin. I also think the man felt even more shamed and mortified than I did. He could not even look me in the eye while I undressed again and he collected those awful temple garments and carried them away with him."

I said helplessly, "He certainly does not sound like—"

"Like the typical, virile Mexícatl male? Like Záa Nayazu?" She dropped her voice to a whisper. "Tell me truly, Záa, has my little sister ever really been satisfied in her marriage bed?"

"Please, Béu. This is unseemly."

She said a profanity: "Gi zyaba! What can be unseemly for a woman already degraded? If you will not tell me, why not show me? Prove to me that you are a fit husband. Oh, do not blush and turn away. Remember, I saw you do it once, but my mother never said afterward whether it was good or not. I would be gratified to know, and from personal experience. Come to my room. Why should you have qualms about using a woman who has already been used? Not much used, of course, but—"

Firmly, I changed the subject. "I told Zyanya I would bring you to Tenochtítlan if you were suffering or in any danger. We have a house of many rooms. I ask you now, Béu. If you find your situation here intolerable, will you come away and live with us?"

"Impossible!" she snapped. "Live under your roof? How could I there ignore you, as you have suggested?"

Unable to control myself any longer, I said loudly, "I have said and done all I know to say and do. I have spoken apology and contrition and sympathy and brotherly love. I have offered you a good home in a different city where you can hold up your head and forget what is past. But you reply only with sneers and mockery and malice. I will leave in the morning, woman, and you may come with me or not!"

She did not.

In the capital city of Záachila, to sustain my pose as a trader, I again paid a courtesy call on the Bishosu Ben Záa, and he granted me audience, and I told my lie: how I had been roaming in the Chiapa country, how I had only recently learned of occurrences in the civilized world, and I said:

"As the Lord Kosi Yuela will have guessed, it was largely at my instigation that Ahuítzotl brought his men to Uaxyacac. So I feel I owe some apologies."

He made a casual gesture of dismissal. "Whatever intrigues were involved are of no importance. I am satisfied that your Revered Speaker came with good intentions, and I was pleased that the long animosity between our nations might finally abate, and I do not at all object to receiving the rich tribute of the purple."

I said, "But then there was the reprehensible behavior of Ahuítzotl's men in Tecuantépec. Simply as a Mexícatl, I must add my apologies for that."

"I do not blame Ahuítzotl. I do not even much blame the men."

I must have looked surprised. He explained, "Your Revered Speaker moved quickly to stop the outrages. He ordered the worst offenders garrotted, and he placated the rest of the men with promises which I am sure he has kept. Then he paid to atone for the havoc, or as much of it as could be paid for. Our nations would probably be now at war, if he had not acted so swiftly and honorably. No, Ahuítzotl was humbly anxious to restore good relations."

It was the first time I had ever heard the choleric Ahuítzotl, Water Monster, described as anything like humble. Kosi Yuela went on:

"But there was another man, a young man, his nephew. That one had command of the Mexíca while Ahuítzotl and I conferred, and that is when the outbreak began. The young man bears a name we Ben Záa have historical reason to detest—he is called Motecuzóma—and I believe he regarded Ahuítzotl's treaty of alliance with us as a sign of weakness. I believe he wanted the Cloud People as subjects of the Mexíca, not as equals. I strongly suspect he fomented that riot in hope of setting us at each other's throats again. If you do have Ahuítzotl's ear, young traveler, I suggest you insinuate a word of warning about his nephew. That new and upstart Motecuzóma, if he retains a position of any power, could undo all the good his uncle might seek to accomplish."