Текст книги "Aztec"

Автор книги: Gary Jennings

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The soldiers wandered about the area, inspecting every body lying about, to ascertain that each was surely dead or dying. The Tecpanéca did not mercifully dispatch the ones still alive, but only verified that they would die in the gods' good time—to leave, as I had commanded, no living thing in Yanquitlan. There was nothing more to keep us there, except to view the dying of that one remaining priest.

So I and my four old comrades stood over him and watched his agonized, slight stirring and the shallow movement of his chest, while the ever constricting skin made his torso and limbs get thinner and his visible extremities get larger. His hands and feet were like black breasts with many black teats, his head was a featureless black pumpkin. He found breath enough to give one last loud cry when his rigid tepúli could no longer contain the pressure, and split its skin, and exploded black blood, and fell in tattered shreds.

He was still dimly alive, but he was finished, and our vengeance was done. Angry at Everybody ordered the Tecpanéca to pack in preparation to march, while the other three old men forded with me back across the river to where Béu Ribé waited. Silently, I showed her the bloodstained opals. I do not know how much else she had seen or heard or guessed, and I do not know how I looked at that moment. But she regarded me with eyes full of horror and pity and reproach and sorrow—the horror uppermost—and for an instant she shrank from the hand I reached out to her.

"Come, Waiting Moon," I said stonily. "I will take you home."

I H S

S.C.C.M.

Sanctified, Caesarean, Catholic Majesty, the Emperor Don Carlos, Our Lord King:

Most Perspicacious and Oracular Prince: from the City of Mexíco, capital of New Spain, two days after the Feast of the Purification, in this Year of Our Lord one Thousand five hundred thirty, greeting.

Sovereign Sire, we can only express our admiration at the depth and daring of our Liege's cogitations in the field of speculative hagiology, and our genuine awe at the brilliant conjecture propounded in Your Majesty's latest letter. Viz.,that the Indian's best-beloved deity, Quetzalcoatl, so frequently alluded to in our Aztec's narrative, could have been in actuality the Apostle Thomas,visiting these lands fifteen centuries ago for the purpose of bringing the Gospel to these heathens.

Of course, even as Bishop of Mexíco, we cannot give the episcopal imprimatur to such a strikingly bold hypothesis, Sire, prior to its consideration among higher ranks of the Church hierarchy. We can, however, attest that there exists a body of circumstantial evidence to support Your Majesty's innovative theory:

Primus.The so-called Feathery Snake was the one supernatural being recognized by every separate nation and variant religion so far known to have existed in all of New Spain, his name being severally rendered as Quetzalcoatl among the Náhuatl-speakers, Kukulkan among the Maya-speakers, Gu-kumatz among peoples even farther south, etc.

Secundus.All these peoples agree in the tradition that Quetzalcóatl was first a human, mortal, incarnate king or emperor who lived and walked on earth during the span of a lifetime, before his transmutation into an insubstantial and immortal deity. Since the Indians' calendar is exasperatingly inutile, and since there no longer exist the books of even mythical history, it may never be possible to date the alleged earthly reign of Quetzalcoatl. Therefore, he couldvery well have been coeval with St. Thomas.

Tertius.All these peoples likewise agree that Quetzalcoatl was not so much a ruler—or tyrant, as most of their rulers have been—but a teacher and a preacher and, not incidentally, a celibate by religious conviction. To him are attributed the invention or introduction of numerous things, customs, beliefs, etc., which have endured to this day.

Quartus.Among the numberless deities of these lands, Quetzalcoatl was one of the very few that never demanded or countenanced human sacrifice. The offerings made to him were always innocuous: birds, butterflies, flowers, and the like.

Quintus.The Church holds it to be historical fact that St. Thomas did travel to the land of India in the East, and did there convert many pagan peoples to Christianity. So, as Your Majesty suggests, "May it not be a reasonable supposition that the Apostle should also have done so in the then-unknown Indies of the West?" A reprobate materialist might remark that the sainted Thomas had the advantage of an overland route from the Holy Land to the East Indies, whereas he would have found some difficulty in crossing the Ocean Sea fifteen centuries before the development of the vessels and navigational facilities available to modern-day explorers. However, any cavil at the abilities of one of the Twelve Disciples would be as injudicious as was the doubt once voiced by Thomas himself and rebuked by the risen Christ.

Sextus et mirabile dictu.A common Spanish soldier named Diaz, who occupies his off-duty hours in idly exploring the old ruins of this area, recently visited the abandoned city of Tolan, or Tula. This is revered by the Aztecs as having been once the seat of the legendary people called the Toltecs—and of their ruler, the king later to become deity, Quetzalcoatl. Among the roots of a tree sprung from a crack in one of the old stone walls, Diaz found a carved onyx box, of native manufacture but of indeterminate age, and in this box he found a number of white wafers of delicate bread, quite unlike anything baked by these Indians. Diaz at once recognized them, and we, when they were brought to us, verified them as the Host. How these sacramental wafers came to be in that place and in a native-made pyx, how many centuries they may have been secreted there, and how it is that they did not long ago dry and crumble and perish, no one can guess. Could it be that Your Erudite Majesty has supplied the answer? Could the Communion wafers have been left as a token by the evangelist St. Thomas?

We are this day relating all these data in a communication to the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, giving due credit to Your Majesty's inspired contribution, and will eagerly await the opinion of those theologians at Rome, far more sapient than ourself.

May Our Lord God continue to smile upon and favor the enterprises of Your Imperial Majesty, to whom unbound admiration is due and professed by all your subjects, not least by your S.C.C.M.'s chaplain and servant,

(ecce signum)Zumárraga

DECIMA PARS

For the same reason that I do not have much recollection of the events just prior to the obliteration of Yanquitlan, I do not clearly remember the things that happened immediately afterward. I and Béu and our escort marched north again toward Tenochtítlan, and I suppose the journey was unremarkable, for I recall little of it except two brief conversations.

The first was with Béu Ribé. She had been weeping as she walked, weeping almost constantly, ever since I told her of Nochipa's death. But one day, somewhere on the return route, she suddenly stopped both weeping and walking, and looked about her, like someone roused from sleep, and she said to me:

"You told me you would take me home. But we are going north."

I said, "Of course. Where else?"

"Why not south? South to Tecuantépec?"

"You have no home there," I said. "No family, probably no friends. It has been—what?—eight years since you left there."

"And what have I in Tenochtítlan?"

A roof under which to sleep, I might have remarked, but I knew what she really meant. So I said simply, "You have as much as I have, Waiting Moon. Memories."

"Not very pleasant ones, Záa."

"I know that too well," I said, without sympathy. "They are the same ones I have. And we will have them wherever we wander, or wherever we call home. At least you can grieve and mourn in comfort in Tenochtítlan, but no one is dragging you there. Come with us or go your own way, as you choose."

I walked on and did not look back, so I do not know how long it took her to decide. But the next time I lifted my gaze from my own inward visions, Béu was again walking at my side.

The other conversation was with Angry at Everybody. For many days the men had respectfully left me to my brooding silence, but one day he strode along with me and said:

"Forgive my intrusion on your sorrow, friend Mixtli. But we are getting near home, and there are things you should know. They are some things which we four elders have discussed and presumed to settle among ourselves. We have made up a story, and we have instructed the Tecpanéca troops to tell the same. It is this. While all of us—you and we and the soldiers—were making that embassy to the court of Teohuacan, while we were necessarily absent with good reason, the colony was set upon by bandits, and looted and massacred. On our return to Yanquitlan, we naturally went raging and searching for the marauders, but found no trace of them. Not so much as one of their arrows, whose feathering would have told us from what nation they came. That uncertainty of the bandits' identity will prevent Motecuzóma from instantly declaring a war upon the innocent Teohuacana."

I nodded and said, "I will tell it exactly so. It is a good story, Qualanqui."

He coughed and said, "Unfortunately, not good enough for you to tell, Mixtli. Not to Motecuzóma's face. Even if he believed every word of it, he would not hold you blameless for the failure of that mission. He would either order you throttled by the flower garland or, if he happened to be feeling kindly, he would give you another chance. Meaning you would be commanded to lead another train of colonists, and probably to the same unspeakable place."

I shook my head. "I could not and would not."

"I know," said Angry at Everybody. "And besides, the truth is bound to leak out, soon or later. One of those Tecpanéca soldiers, when he gets home safe to Tlácopan, is sure to boast of his part in the massacre. How he raped and slew six children and a priest, or whatever. It would get back to Motecuzóma; you would be caught in a lie; and you would certainly get the garrotte, if not worse. I think it better that you leave the lying to us old men, who are only hirelings, beneath Motecuzóma's notice, hence in less danger. I also think you might consider not returning to Tenochtítlan at all—not for some time, anyway—since your future there seems to offer only a choice of capital punishment or renewed banishment to Yanquitlan."

I nodded again. "You are right. I have been mourning the dark days and roads behind me, not looking toward those ahead. It is an old saying, is it not, that we are born to suffer and endure? And a man must give thought to his enduring, must he not? Thank you, Qualanqui, good friend and wise adviser. I will meditate upon your counsel."

When we came to Quaunahuac, and that night took lodgings at an inn, I had a dining cloth set apart for me and Béu and my four old comrades. When we had done eating, I took from my waistband my leather sack of gold dust and dropped it on the cloth, and said:

"There is your pay for your services, my friends."

"It is far too much," said Angry at Everybody.

"For what you have done, it could not possibly be. I have this other purse of copper bits and cacao beans, sufficient for what I will do now."

"Do now?" echoed one of the old men.

"Tonight I abdicate command, and these are my last instructions to you. Friend officers, you will proceed from here around the western border of the lakes, to deliver the Tecpanéca troops to Tlácopan. From there you will cross the causeway to Tenochtítlan and escort the lady Béu to my house, before you report to the Revered Speaker. Tell him your nicely concocted story, but add that I have inflicted on myself a punishment for the failure of this expedition. Tell him that I have voluntarily gone into exile."

"It will be done so, Commander Mixtli," said Angry at Everybody, and the other three men murmured agreement.

Only Béu asked the question: "Where are you going, Záa?"

"In search of a legend," I said, and I told them the story that Nezahualpili had not long ago told to Motecuzóma in my hearing, and I concluded, "I will retrace that long march our forefathers made in the time when they still called themselves the Aztéca. I will go northward, following their route as nearly as I can construe it and as far as I can trace it... all the way to their homeland of Aztlan, if such a place still exists or ever did. And if those wanderers truly did bury armories of weapons and stores at intervals, I will find them too, and map their locations. Such a map could be of great military value to Motecuzóma. Try to impress that upon him when you report to him, Qualanqui." I smiled ruefully. "He may welcome me with flowers instead of a flower garland when I return."

"If you return," said Béu.

I could not smile at that. I said, "It seems my tonáli forces me always to return, but every time a little more alone." I paused, then said between my teeth, "Someday, somewhere, I will meet a god and I will ask him: Why do the gods never strike me down, when I have done so much to deserve their anger? Why do they instead strike down every undeserving one who has ever stood close to me?"

The four elderly men appeared slightly uneasy at having to hear my bitter lament, and they seemed relieved when Béu said, "Old friends, would you be kind enough to take your leave, that Záa and I may exchange a few private words?"

They got up, making a cursory gesture of kissing the earth to us, and, when they went off toward their quarters, I said brusquely, "If you are going to ask to accompany me, Béu, do not ask."

She did not. She was silent for a considerable time, her eyes downcast to her nervously twining fingers. Finally she said, and her first words seemed totally irrelevant, "On my seventh birthday I was named Waiting Moon. I used to wonder why. But then I knew, and I have known for years now, and I think Waiting Moon has waited long enough." She raised her beautiful eyes to mine, and somehow she had made them entreating instead of mocking for a change, and somehow she even managed a maidenly blush. "Let us now at last be married, Záa."

So that was it, I said to myself, remembering again how she had surreptitiously collected that mud I had made. Earlier, and for only a brief time, I had wondered if she fashioned an image of me in order to curse it with misfortune, and if that was what had deprived me of Nochipa. But that suspicion had been a fleeting one, shaming me even to think of it. I knew Béu had loved my daughter dearly, and her weeping had demonstrated a sorrow as genuine as my tearless own. So I had forgotten the mud doll—until her own words revealed that she had made it, and why. Not to blight my life but merely to weaken my will, so that I could not reject her pretendedly impulsive but transparently long-planned proposal. I did not immediately reply; I waited while she proffered her carefully marshaled arguments. She said first:

"A moment ago, Záa, you remarked that you are ever more and more alone. So am I, you know. We both are, now. We have no one left but each other."

And she said, "It was acceptable that I should live with you while I was known to be the guardian and companion of your motherless daughter. But now that Nochipa... now that I am no longer the resident aunt, it would be unseemly for an unmarried man and woman to share the same house."

And she said, with another blush, "I know there could never be a replacement for our beloved Nochipa. But there could be... I am not too old..."

And there she let her voice fade away, in a very good simulation of modesty and inability to say more. I waited, and held her eyes, until her blushing face glowed like copper being heated, and then I said:

"You need not have troubled with conjuration and cajolery, Béu. I intended to ask you the same thing this very night. Since you seem agreeable, we will be married tomorrow, as early as I can awaken a priest."

"What?" she said faintly.

"As you remind me, I am now most utterly alone. I am also a man of estimable estate and, if I die without an heir, my property is forfeit to the nation's treasury. I should prefer that it not go to Motecuzóma. So tomorrow the priest will draw a document affirming your inheritance as well as the paper attesting our marriage."

Béu slowly got to her feet and looked down at me, and she stammered, "That is not what... I never gave a thought to... Záa, I was trying to say..."

"And I have spoiled the performance," I said, smiling up at her. "All the blandishments and persuasions were unnecessary. But you need not count them wasted, Béu. Tonight may have been good practice for some future use, when perhaps you are a wealthy but lonely widow."

"Stop it, Záa!" she exclaimed. "You refuse to hear what I am earnestly trying to tell you. It is hard enough for me, because it is not a woman's place to say such things—"

"Please, Béu, no more," I said, wincing. "We have lived too long together, too long accustomed to our mutual dislike. Saying sweet words at this late date would strain either of us, and probably astound all the gods. But at least, from tomorrow on, our detestation of each other can be formally consecrated and indistinguishable from that of most other married—"

"You are cruel!" she interrupted. "You are immune to any tender sentiment, and heedless of a hand reaching out to you."

"I have too often felt the hard back of your tender hand, Béu. And am I not about to feel it again? Are you not going to laugh now and tell me that your talk of marriage was just another derisive prank?"

"No," she said. "I meant it seriously. Did you?"

"Yes," I said, and raised high my cup of octli. "May the gods take pity on us both."

"An eloquent proposal," she said. "But I accept it, Záa. I will marry you tomorrow." And she ran for her room.

I sat on, moodily sipping my octli and eyeing the inn's other patrons, most of them pochtéa on their way home to Tenochtítlan, celebrating their profitable journeys and safe return by getting eminently drunk, in which pursuit they were being encouraged by the hostel's numerous available women. The innkeeper, already aware that I had engaged a separate room for Béu, and seeing her depart alone, came sidling to where I sat, and inquired:

"Would the Lord Knight care for a sweet with which to conclude his meal? One of our charming maátime?"

I grunted, "Few of them look exceptionally charming."

"Ah, but looks are not everything. My lord must know that, since his own beautiful companion seems cool toward him. Charm can reside in other attributes than face and figure. For example, regard that woman yonder."

He pointed to what must surely have been the least appealing female in the establishment. Her features and her breasts sagged like moist clay. Her hair, from having been so often bleached and recolored, was like wire grass dried to kinky hay. I grimaced, but the innkeeper laughed and said:

"I know, I know. To contemplate that woman is to yearn for a boy instead. At a glance, you would take her for a grandmother, but I know for a fact that she is scarcely thirty. And would you believe this, Lord Knight? Every man who has ever once tried Quequelyehua always demands her on his next visit here. Her every patron becomes a regular, and will accept no other maátitl. I do not indulge, myself, but I have it on good authority that she knows some extraordinary ways to delight a man."

I raised my topaz and took another, more searching look at the draggle-haired, bleary-eyed sloven. I would have wagered that she was a walking pustule of the nanaua disease, and that the effeminate innkeeper knew it, and that he took malicious pleasure in trying to peddle her to the unsuspecting.

"In the dark, my lord, all women look alike, no? Well, boys do too, of course. So it is other considerations that matter, no? The highly accomplished Quequelyehua probably already has a waiting line for tonight, but an Eagle Knight can demand precedence over mere pochtéa. Shall I summon Quequelyehua for you, my lord?"

"Quequelyehua," I repeated, as the name evoked a memory. "I once knew a most beautiful girl named Quequelmíqui."

"Ticklish?" said the innkeeper, and giggled. "From her name, she must have been a diverting consort too. But this one should be far more so. Quequelyehua, the Tickler."

Feeling rather sick at heart, I said, "Thank you for the recommendation, but no, thank you." I took a large drink of my octli. "That thin girl sitting quietly in the corner, what of her?"

"Misty Rain?" said the innkeeper, indifferently. "They call her that because she weeps all the time she is, er, functioning. A newcomer, but competent enough, I am told."

I said, "Send that one to my room. As soon as I am drunk enough to go there myself."

"At your command, Lord Eagle Knight. I am impartial in the matter of other people's preferences, but sometimes I am mildly curious. May I ask why my lord chooses Misty Rain?"

I said, "Simply because she does not remind me of any other woman I have known."

The marriage ceremony was plain and simple and quiet, at least until its conclusion. My four old stalwarts stood as our witnesses. The innkeeper prepared tamaltin for the ritual meal. Some of the inn's earlier-rising patrons served as our wedding guests. Since Quaunahuac is the chief community of the Tlahuica people, I had procured a priest of the Tlahuica's principal deity, the good god Quetzalcoatl. And the priest, observing that the couple standing before him were somewhat past the first greening of youth, tactfully omitted from his service the usual doleful warnings to the presumably innocent female, and the usual cautionary exhortations to the presumably lusting male. So his harangue was mercifully brief and bland.

But even that perfunctory ritual elicited some emotion from Béu Ribé, or she pretended it did. She wept a few maidenly tears and, through the tears, smiled tremulous smiles. I must admit that her performance enhanced her already striking beauty, which, as I have never denied, was equal to and almost indistinguishable from the sublime loveliness of her late sister. Béu was dressed most enticingly and, when I looked at her without the clarification of my crystal, she appeared still as youthful as my forever twenty-year-old Zyanya. It was for that reason that I had made repeated use of the girl Misty Rain throughout the night. I would not risk Béu's making me want her, even physically, so I drained myself of any possibility of becoming aroused against my will.

The priest finally swung his smoking censer of copali around us for the last time. Then he watched while we fed each other a bite of steaming tamali, then he knotted the corner of my mantle to a corner of Waiting Moon's skirt hem, then he wished us the best of fortune in our new life.

"Thank you, Lord Priest," I said, handing him his fee. "Thank you especially for the good wishes." I undid the knot that tied me to Béu. "I may need the gods' help where I am now going." I slung my traveling pack on my shoulder and told Béu good-bye.

"Good-bye?" she repeated, in a sort of squeak. "But Záa, this is our wedding day."

I said, "I told you I would be leaving. My men will see you safely home."

"But—but I thought—I thought surely we would stay here at least another night. For the..." She glanced about, at the watching and listening guests. She blushed hotly and her voice rose, "Záa, I am now your wife!"

I corrected her, "You are married to me, as you requested, and you will be my widow and my heiress. Zyanya was my wife."

"Zyanya has been ten years dead!"

"Her dying did not sever our bond. I can have no other wife."

"Hypocrite!" she raged at me. "You have not been celibate for these ten years. You have had other women. Why will you not have the one you just now wed? Why will you not have me?"

Except for the innkeeper, who was smirking lewdly, most of the people in the room stood fidgeting and looking uncomfortable. So did even the priest, who nerved himself to say, "My lord, it is customary, after all, to seal the vows with an act of... well, to know each other intimately—"

I said, "Your concern does you credit, Lord Priest. But I already know this woman far too intimately."

Béu gasped. "What a horrid lie to tell! We have never once—"

"And we never will. Waiting Moon, I know you too well in other ways. I also know that the most vulnerable moment in a man's life occurs when he couples with a woman. I will not chance arriving at that moment to have you disdainfully reject me, or break into your mocking laughter, or diminish me by any other of the means you have been so long practicing and perfecting."

She cried, "And what are you doing to me this moment?"

"The very same," I agreed. "But this once, my dear, I have done it first. Now the day latens, and I must be on my way."

When I left, Béu was dabbing at her eyes with the crumpled corner of her skirt that had been our marriage knot.