Текст книги "Aztec"

Автор книги: Gary Jennings

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Текущая страница: 37 (всего у книги 75 страниц)

* * *

At the causeway to Tenochtítlan, where the city loomed before us luminous white in the dove-colored dusk, I sent my men ahead of me by twos and threes. By the time I set foot on the island, the night had come down, and the city was ablaze with firelight, candlelight, and lamplight. In that inconstant illumination I could see that my house was finished, and that it was a sightly one, but I could not make out all its exterior details. Since it was set on pillars about my own height above ground level, I had to climb a short stair to the entrance. There I was admitted by a middle-aged female I had never seen before, obviously a new-bought slave. She introduced herself as Teoxihuitl, or Turquoise, and said, "When the porters arrived, the mistress went upstairs, that you might have privacy for the business of men. She will await you in your chamber, master."

The woman showed me into the lower-floor room where my seven companions were devouring a cold meal she had hurried to lay for them. When dishes had also been provided for me, and we had all allayed our hunger, the men helped me pivot the false wall of that room and secrete their packs behind it, where some others of my goods had already been stored. Then I paid the men the homecoming share of their wages, and paid them rather more than I had promised, for they had performed admirably. They all kissed the earth to me as they departed, after making me swear that I would summon them again if I should conceive any other projects that would be to the taste of seven elder warriors otherwise consigned to peace and stagnation.

Upstairs, I found the sanitary closet exactly as I had told the architect it should be: as complete and efficiently self-emptying as those I had admired in palaces. In the adjacent steam room, the slave woman Turquoise had already heated and laid the glowing stones and, when I had finished my first bath, she poured water over them to make the clouds of steam. I sweated there for a good while, then returned to the bathing basin again, until I was satisfied that I had got all the dust and grime and smell of travel out of my pores.

When, naked, I stepped through the connecting door to the bedchamber, I found Zyanya equally naked, lying invitingly supine atop the bed stack of soft quilts. There was only a dim red light from a brazier in the room, but it glinted on the pale streak in her hair and outlined her upthrusting breasts. Each of them was a beautifully symmetrical mound, with on top of it the smaller mound of her areola, exactly like the profile of Popocatepetl as you see it through the window there, my lords friars: a cone upon a cone. No, of course there is no need for me to regale you with such details. I only explain why my breathing altered as I moved toward Zyanya, and why I spoke only a few words:

"Béu is safe. There is other news, but it can wait."

"Let it wait," she said, and she smiled, and she reached for the nearest approaching part of me.

So it was quite some time later that I told about Béu Ribé: that she was alive and safe, but dismally unhappy. I am glad that we had made love first. It gave Zyanya the usual lasting languor of pleasure and satisfaction which, I hope, softened the words I had to speak. I told of Béu's unfortunate encounter with the Mexícatl officer, and tried to make it sound—as indeed Béu had made it sound—more of a farce that a tragedy.

I concluded, "I think it is her stubborn pride that makes her stay on there, keeping the inn. She is determined to take no notice of what the townspeople may think of her, whether they think shame or sympathy. She will not leave Tecuantépec for any good reason or for any better life, because it might be taken as a sign that she had weakened at last."

"Poor Béu," Zyanya murmured. "Is there nothing we can do?"

Suppressing my own opinion of "poor Béu," I meditated and finally said, "I can think of nothing but for you to suffer a misfortune. If her only sister needed her desperately, I believe she would come to you. But let us not tempt or provoke the gods. Let us not discuss mischance."

The next day, when Ahuítzotl received me in his grisly throne room, I again told my confected story: that I had gone to see that my wife's sister had not suffered in the sack of Tecuantépec and, while there, had taken the opportunity to go farther south and procure more of the magical crystals. I again ceremoniously made him a present of one, and he thanked me without great enthusiasm. Then, before bringing up a subject which I expected would bulge his eyeballs and fire his irascibility, I told him something to sweeten his temper.

"My travels, Lord Speaker, took me into the coastal land of the Xoconóchco, whence comes most of our cotton and salt. I spent two days among the Mame people, in their main village of Pijijia, and there the elders called me into council. They desired me to bring a message to the Uey-Tlatoani of the Mexíca."

He said indifferently, "Speak the message."

"Know first, my lord, that the Xoconóchco is not a nation, but a vast extent of fertile land inhabited by various peoples: the Mame, the Mixe, the Comiteca, and even smaller tribes. Their territories all overlap, and their allegiance is only to such tribal elders as those in Pijijia. The Xoconóchco has no central capital or governing body or standing army."

"Interesting," muttered Ahuítzotl. "But not very."

I went on, "To the east of the rich and fruitful Xoconóchco is the unproductive jungle country of Quautemálan, The Tangled Wood. Its natives, the Quiche and Lacandon, are degenerate remnants of the Maya. They are poor and dirty and lazy, and heretofore have been accounted beneath contempt. However, they have recently summoned the energy to emerge from Quautemálan and make raids into the Xoconóchco. Those scavengers threaten that their raids will increase in frequency, will become an unremitting war, unless the Xoconóchco peoples agree to pay them heavy tribute of cotton and salt."

"Tribute?" grunted Ahuítzotl, interested at last. "Our cotton and salt!"

"Yes, my lord. Now, we can hardly expect peaceable cotton farmers and sea fishers and salt panners to mount a fierce defense of their lands. But they do have spirit enough to resent those demands. They are unwilling to give to the Quiche and Lacandon what they have formerly and profitably sold to us Mexíca. They believe our Revered Speaker should be equally outraged at the idea."

"Spare us your emphasis of the obvious," growled Ahuítzotl. "What did those elders propose? That we go to war for them against Quautemálan?"

"No, my lord. They offer to give us the Xoconóchco."

"What?" He was honestly staggered.

"If the Uey-Tlatoani will accept the Xoconóchco lands as a new province, all its petty rulers will relinquish their offices, all its separate tribes will relinquish their identities, all will swear loyalty to Tenochtítlan as voluntary Mexíca. They ask only two things: that they be allowed to go on living and working as they always have, unmolested, and that they continue to receive a living wage for their labor. The Mame speak for all their neighbor tribes in requesting that a Mexícatl noble be appointed ruler and protector of the Xoconóchco, and that a strong garrison of Mexíca troops be established and maintained there."

Looking pleased for a change, even dazzled, Ahuítzotl murmured to himself, "Incredible. A rich land, free for the taking, freely given." To me he said, more warmly than he had ever before addressed me, "You do not always bring annoyances and problems, young Mixtli."

I modestly said nothing.

He went on, thinking aloud, "It would be the farthest dominion of The Triple Alliance. Put an army there and we would have much of the entire One World, from sea to sea, between two jaws. The nations thus flanked would evermore hesitate to be troublesome, lest those jaws gnash together and chew them up. They would be apprehensive, biddable, servile...."

I spoke up again: "If I may point out another advantage, Lord Speaker. That army will be far from here, but it need not depend on supply trains from Tenochtítlan. The Mame elders promised me that it will be supported and provisioned without stint. The soldiers will live well in the abundance of the Xoconóchco."

"By Huitztli, we will do it!" Ahuítzotl exclaimed. "We must of course present the proposition to our Speaking Council, but that will be only a formality."

I said, "My lord might care to tell the Speaking Council this, too. Once the garrison is established, the soldiers could be joined by their families. Tradesmen would follow. Still other Mexíca might wish to leave these crowded lake lands and resettle in that ample Xoconóchco. The garrison could become the seed of a colony, even a lesser Tenochtítlan, perhaps someday the second greatest city of the Mexíca."

He said, "You do not dream small, do you?"

"Perhaps I took a liberty, Revered Speaker, but I mentioned that possibility of colonization in the council of Mame elders. Far from objecting, they would be honored if their land should become the site of, so to speak, the Tenochtítlan of the south."

He looked at me approvingly, and drummed his fingers for a moment before speaking. "In civil status you are nothing but a bean-counting merchant, and in military rank a mere tequiua..."

"By my lord's courtesy," I said humbly.

"And yet you—a nobody—you come and give us a whole new province, more valuable than any annexed by treaty or force since the reign of our esteemed father Motecuzóma. That fact will also be brought to the attention of our Speaking Council."

I said, "The mention of Motecuzóma, my lord, reminds me." And I then told him what was harder to tell: the harsh words spoken about his nephew by the Bishosu Kosi Yuela. As I had expected, Ahuítzotl began to bulge and snort and redden conspicuously, but his anger was not directed at me. He said bluntly:

"Know, then. As a priest, young Motecuzóma paid unswerving obedience to every least and trivial and imbecilic superstition imposed by the gods. He also tried to abolish every human failing and weakness, in himself as in others. He did not froth and rage, as do so many of our priests; he was always cold and unemotional. Once, when he uttered a word that he thought might displease the gods, he pierced his tongue and dragged back and forth through it a string on which were knotted some twenty big maguey thorns. Again, when a base thought crossed his mind, he bored a hole through the shaft of his tepúli and did that same bloody self-punishment with the string of thorns. Well, now that he has become a military man, he seems equally fanatic on the subject of making war. It appears that, in his very first command, the coyote whelp has flexed his muscles, contrary to orders and good order—"

Ahuítzotl paused. When he went on, he seemed again to be thinking aloud. "Yes, he would naturally yearn to live up to his grandfather's name of Wrathful Lord. Young Motecuzóma is not pleased to have peace between our nation and others, since that leaves him the fewer adversaries to challenge. He wants to be respected and feared as a man of hard fist and loud voice. But a man must consist of more than those things. Or he will cower when he is opposed by a harder fist, a louder voice."

I ventured to say, "My impression, my lord, is that the Bishosu of Uaxyacac dreads the possibility that your truculent nephew may someday be Uey-Tlatoani of the Mexíca."

At that, Ahuítzotl did turn his glare on me. "Kosi Yuela will be dead long before he has to worry about his relations with some new Uey-Tlatoani. We are but forty and three years old, and we plan to live long. Before we die or turn dotard, we will make known to the Speaking Council who our successor is to be. Offhand, we forget how many of our twenty children are male, but surely among them there is another Ahuítzotl. Bear in mind, Tequiua Mixtli, that the loudest drum is the one most hollow, and its only service or function is to stay motionless and be beaten upon. We will not set upon this throne a hollow drum like our nephew Motecuzóma. Remember our words!"

I did, and I do, and ruefully.

It took a while for the Revered Speaker to subdue his indignation. Then he said quietly, "We thank you, Tequiua Mixtli, for the opportunity of that garrison in the far Xoconóchco. It will be the young Wrathful Lord's next assignment. He will be ordered immediately to the south, to establish and build and command that distant post. Yes, we must keep Motecuzóma busy—and safely far from us—or we might be tempted to beat with heavy drumsticks upon our own kinsman."

Some days passed, and what time I did not spend in bed, getting reacquainted with my wife, I spent in getting accustomed to my first home of my own. Its exterior was of gleaming white Xaltócan limestone, decorated only modestly with some filigree carving, and none of that embellished with color. To the passerby, it was merely the typical home of a successful but not too successful pochtéatl. Inside, however, its appointments were of the finest, and it smelled throughout of newness, not of the smokes and foods and exudations and old quarrels of previous inhabitants. The doors were all of nicely carved cedar, turning in pivots in sockets top and bottom. There were windows in the outdoor-facing walls, front and back, with reliable slat blinds on all of them.

The ground floor—which, as I have said, did not rest on the ground—contained a kitchen, a separate room for dining, and another room in which we could entertain guests or I could conduct business with visiting associates. There was not space enough to make any provision for slave quarters; Turquoise simply unrolled her woven-reed pallet in the kitchen after we were abed. The upper floor of the house consisted of our bedchamber and another for guests, each with its sanitary closet and steam room; plus a third, smaller bedroom for which I could see no purpose, until Zyanya, smiling shyly, said, "Someday there may be a child, Záa. Perhaps children. It can be a room for them and their nursemaid."

The rooftop of the house was flat, surrounded by a waist-high balustrade of stones cemented in a fretwork pattern. The entire surface had already been spread with rich chinampa loam, ready for the planting of flowers, shade shrubs, and kitchen herbs. Our house was not tall, and there were many others roundabout, so we had no view of the lake, but we could see the twin temples atop the Great Pyramid, and the peaks of the smoking volcano Popocatepetl and the sleeping volcano Ixtacciuatl. Zyanya had furnished the rooms, upstairs and down, with only the immediately necessary items: the piled-quilt beds, some wicker storage chests, a few low chairs and benches. Otherwise the rooms were echoingly empty, the gleaming stone floors uncarpeted and the white-limed walls unadorned.

She said, "The more important furnishings, the ornaments, the wall hangings—I thought the man of the house ought to choose such things."

"We will visit the markets and the workshops together," I said. "But I will come only to agree to your choices and to pay for them."

In similar wifely restraint, she had bought just the one slave, and Turquoise had sufficed to assist Zyanya in all the work of preparing the house for habitation. But I decided that we should buy another female to share the everyday labor of cooking, cleaning, and other chores, plus a male slave to tend the rooftop garden, run my errands, and the like. So we acquired a not so young but still wiry man named, in the grandiloquent manner of the tlacotli class, Citlali-Cuicani, or Star Singer, and a young housemaid named, quite contrary to slave custom, Quequelmíqui, which means only Ticklish. Possibly she had got the name because she was much given to unprovoked giggling.

We immediately enrolled all three—Turquoise, Star Singer, and Ticklish—to spend their spare hours studying at the school newly founded by my young friend Cozcatl. His own highest ambition, in the days when he was himself a child slave, had been to learn the skills necessary to attain the highest domestic post in a noble household, that of Master of the Keys. But he had already risen considerably above that station, possessing an estimable house and fortune of his own. So Cozcatl had turned his residence into a school to train servants. That is, to make of them the best servants possible.

He told me, with pride, "I have of course engaged expert instructors to teach the basic employments—cookery, gardening, embroidery, whatever a student wishes to excel at. But I myself teach each student the elegant manners he otherwise could learn only through long experience, if at all. Since I have worked in two palaces, my students pay close heed to my teachings, even though most of them are much older than I."

"Elegant manners?" I said. "For mere menials?"

"So that they are not mere menials, but valuable and valued members of a household. I teach them how to comport themselves with dignity instead of the usual cringing servility. How to anticipate their employers' wants even before they are voiced. A steward, for example, learns to keep always prepared a poquietl for his master to smoke. A housekeeper learns to advise her mistress which flowers are about to bloom in the garden, so the lady can plan in advance the floral arrangements for her rooms."

I said, "Surely no slave could afford the fee for your training."

"Well, no," he admitted. "At present all my students are already in domestic service, like those three of yours, and their fees are paid by their masters. But the schooling will so increase their ability and worth that they will earn promotions within their households—or be sold for a profit—meaning they must be replaced. I foresee a great demand for the graduates of my school. Eventually, I will be able to buy slaves from the market, train them, place them, and collect their fees from the wages they earn."

I nodded and said, "It will be a good thing for them, for their employers, and for you. An ingenious idea, Cozcatl, You have not just found your place in the world, you have carved an entirely new niche, for which no one is better fitted than yourself."

He said with humility, "I could not have done it but for you, Mixtli. Had we not adventured together, I would probably still be a drudge in some Texcóco palace. I owe all my good fortune to the tonáli, whether it was yours or mine, that linked our lives."

And I too, I thought, as I walked slowly home, was much indebted to a tonáli I had once cursed as capricious, if not malign. It had caused me grief and loss and unhappiness. But it had also made me a man of property, a man of substantial wealth, a man lofted high above the expectations of his birth, a man married to the most desirable woman among women, and a man still young enough to explore further enticing prospects.

As I strolled toward my comfortable home and the welcoming arms of Zyanya, I was moved to waft my gratitude toward the supposed sky residences of the major gods. "Gods," I said—in my mind, not aloud—"if gods there be, and you are they, I thank you. Sometimes you have taken from me with one hand while giving to me with the other. But on the whole you have given me much more than you have taken. I kiss the earth to you, gods."

And the gods must have been grateful for my gratitude. The gods wasted no time in arranging that when I entered my house, I should find a palace page waiting with a summons from Ahuítzotl. I took only time enough to give Zyanya a hurried kiss of greeting and farewell, then followed the boy through the streets to The Heart of the One World.

It was quite late that night when I came home again, and I was very differently dressed, and I was more than a little intoxicated. Our slave Turquoise, when she opened the door to me, instantly forgot any poise she might have learned at Cozcatl's school. She took one look at me and my somewhat disordered profusion of feathers, gave a piercing shriek, and fled toward the back of the house. Zyanya came, looking anxious.

She said, "Záa, you were gone so long—!" Then she too gave a squeak and recoiled from me, exclaiming, "What did that monster Ahuítzotl do to you? Why is your arm bleeding? What have you got on your feet? What is that thing on your head? Záa, say something!"

"Hello," I mumbled foolishly, with a hiccup in it.

"Hello?" she echoed, taken aback by the absurdity. Then she said crisply, "Whatever else, you are drunk," and went away toward the kitchen. I slumped down onto a bench, but I came energetically to my feet again—perhaps even some distance off the floor—when Zyanya poured ajar of shockingly cold water over my head.

"My helmet!" I cried, when I stopped coughing and spluttering.

"A helmet, is it?" said Zyanya, as I struggled to get it off and dry it before the wetting should damage it. "I thought you were caught in the craw of some giant bird."

"My lady wife," I said, with the stately sobriety of the half drunk, "you might have ruined this noble eagle head. Now you are standing on one of my talons. And look—just look at my poor draggled feathers."

"I am. I am looking," she said, in a strangled voice, and I perceived that she was trying mightily not to burst out laughing. "Get out of that silly costume, Záa. Go to the steam room. Sweat some of the octli out of you. Clean that blood off your arm. Then come to bed and tell me... tell me what on earth..." She could hold the laughter no longer, and it came forth in peals.

"Silly costume, indeed," I said, contriving to sound both haughty and hurt. "Only a woman could be so insensitive to the regalia of high honor. Were you a man, you would kneel in awe and admiration and congratulation. But no. I get ignominiously drenched and laughed at." With which, I turned and stalked majestically up the stairs, only stumbling occasionally in my long-taloned sandals, to go and soak and sulk in the steam room.

Thus did I behave with lugubrious bluster, thus was I received with indulgent mirth, on what should have been the most solemn evening of my life to date. Not one in ten or twenty thousand of my countrymen ever became what I had that day become—In Tlamahuichihuani Cuautlic: a Knight of the Eagle Order of the Mexíca.

I further humiliated myself by falling asleep in the steam room, and was quite unconscious of being moved when Zyanya and Star Singer somehow got me out of there and into the bed. So it was not until morning, when I lay late abed, sipping hot chocolate in an attempt to ease the ponderous weight of my headache, that I could coherently tell Zyanya what had happened at the palace.

Ahuítzotl had been alone in the throne room when the page and I arrived, and he said abruptly, "Our nephew Motecuzóma left Tenochtítlan this morning, leading the considerable force that will man the garrison in the Xoconóchco. As we promised, we mentioned to our Speaking Council your admirable role in negotiating the acquisition of that territory, and it was decided that you should be rewarded."

He made some signal, and the page departed, and a moment afterward the room began to fill with other men. I would have expected them to be the Snake Woman and other members of the Speaking Council. But, looking through my topaz, I was surprised to see that they were all warriors—the elite of warriors—all Eagle Knights, in full-feathered battle armor, eagle-head helmets, wing pinions fringing their arms, taloned sandals on their feet.

Ahuítzotl introduced them to me, one by one—the highest chieftains of the Eagle Order—and said, "They have voted, Mixtli, to raise you—in one vaulting bound—from the mediocre rank of tequiua to full knighthood in their exalted company."

There were various rituals to be performed, of course. Though I had been stricken nearly speechless, I made an effort to find my voice, so that I could swear the many and wordy oaths—that I would be faithful to and fight to the death for the Eagle Order itself, for the supremacy of Tenochtítlan, for the power and prestige of the Mexíca nation, for the preservation of The Triple Alliance. I had to gash my forearm, the knight chieftains doing likewise, so that we could rub our forearms one against another and so mingle our blood in brotherhood. Then I donned the quilted armor with all its adornments, so that I had arms like wide wings, a body feathered all over, feet like an eagle's strong claws. The culmination of the ceremony came when I was crowned with the helmet: the eagle's head. It was made of corkwood, stiff paper, and óli-glued feathers. Its wide-open beak protruded above my forehead and under my chin, and its glaring obsidian eyes were somewhere above my ears. I was given the other emblems of my new rank: the stout leather shield with my name symbols worked in colored feathers on its front, the paints to make my face fierce, the gold nose plug to wear as soon as I felt like having my septum pierced for it....

Then, rather heavily encumbered, I sat with Ahuítzotl and the other knights while the palace servants brought an opulent banquet and many jars of the best octli. I had to make a pretense of eating heartily, since by then I was so flustered and excited that I had little appetite. There was no way, though, that I could avoid drinking in response to the numerous and vociferous toasts raised—to me, to the Eagle chieftains present, to Eagle Knights who had died spectacularly in the past, to our supreme commander Ahuítzotzin, to the ever greater might of the Mexíca.... After a while, I lost track of the toasts. That is why, when I was finally let depart from the palace, I was more than a little addled and my splendid new uniform was in some disarray.

"I am proud of you, Záa, and happy for you," Zyanya said when I had concluded my account. "It is indeed a great honor. And now, what brave feat will you do, my warrior husband? What will be your first deed of valor as an Eagle Knight?"

I said feebly, "Were we not supposed to pick flowers today, my dear? When the freight canoe brings them from Xochimilco? Flowers to plant in our roof garden?"

My brain hurt too badly for me to strain it, so I did not even try to understand why Zyanya again, as she had done the night before, burst into peals of laughter.

* * *

Our new house meant a new life for all of us who inhabited it, so we had much to occupy us. Zyanya continued to be busy with the evidently interminable task of visiting market stalls and artisans' workshops in chase of "just the right sort of matting for the nursery floor" or "a figurine of some sort for that niche at the top of the stair" or something else that seemed always to elude her.

My contributions were not always received with acclamation, as for instance when I brought home a small stone statue for that staircase niche and Zyanya pronounced it "hideous." Well, it was, but I had bought it because it looked exactly like that brown, wizened, and hunched old-man disguise in which Nezahualpili had used to accost me. Actually, the figure represented Huehueteotl, Oldest of Old Gods, so called because that was what he was. Though no longer widely worshiped, the aged, wrinkled, sardonically smiling Huehueteotl was still venerated as the god first recognized in these lands and known since time before human memory, long before Quetzalcoatl or any of the later favorites. Since Zyanya refused to let me put him where guests would see him, I set The Oldest of Old Gods at my side of our bed.

Our three servants, in the free time during their first few months with us, attended their classes at Cozcatl's school, and to noticeable effect. The little maid Ticklish was cured of giggling every time she was spoken to, and gave only a modest and obliging smile. Star Singer became so attentive that he presented me with a lighted poquietl almost every time I sat down, and—not to rebuff his solicitude—I smoked rather more than I wanted to.

My own business was that of consolidating my fortune. Trains of pochtéa had for some time been coming into Tenochtítlan from Uaxyacac, bearing flasks of purple dye and skeins of empurpled yarn which they had purchased legitimately from the collected stock of the Bishosu Kosi Yuela. They had of course paid an exorbitant price for it, and of course asked an even more extortionate price when they doled it out through the Tlaltelólco merchants. But the Mexíca nobles—their ladies especially—were so avid for that unique coloring that they paid whatever was asked. And, once the legitimately acquired purple was on the market, I was able discreetly and without detection to pour my own stock trickling into the stream.

I sold my hoard for more easily concealable currency: carved jadestones, a few emeralds and other gems, gold jewelry, quills of gold dust. But Zyanya and I kept enough of the dye for our own use that I believe we owned more purple-embroidered garments than the Revered Speaker and all his wives. I know ours was the only house in Tenochtítlan with solid-purple draperies at the windows. Those were visible only to our invited guests, however; they were backed with less sumptuous stuffs on their street side.

We were most frequently visited by longtime friends: Cozcatl, lately and more properly known as Master Cozcatl; associates of mine from The House of Pochtéa; one or several of Blood Glutton's old fellows-in-arms who had helped me secure the purple. But we also made many acquaintances among our higher-class neighbors in our Ixacualco quarter and the nobles we met at court—in particular a number of noble-women who had been captivated by Zyanya's charm. One of those was the First Lady of Tenochtítlan, which is to say Ahuítzotl's premier wife. When she came to visit, she often brought her eldest son, Cuauhtemoc, Swooping Eagle, the young lord who would be the likeliest successor to his father's throne. Though the Mexíca succession was not immutably patrilineal, like that of some other nations, an eldest son was the first candidate considered by the Speaking Council on the death of a Uey-Tlatoani who left no surviving brother to succeed him. So Zyanya and I treated Cuautemoctzin and his mother with fitting deference; it does no harm to be on good terms with him whom you may someday be addressing as Revered Speaker.