FEATHERED SERPENT, page 30
‘We are going to die,’ Fray Guevarra shouted. ‘Because of you, Cortés! I should never have listened to your lies!’
‘By my conscience, you will keep quiet, sir, or you will repent it!’
The desecration of the Temple had not subdued the Mexica as they had hoped. If anything, the attacks had become even more frenzied. It went on, day after day, the booming of the falconets, the crack of muskets, the ululation of the Mexica warriors, the hammering of the drums.
‘We have to do something,’ Alvarado said.
‘I will not give up this city.’
‘Alvarado is right,’ Sandoval said. ‘We cannot hold them forever. The walls are breeched in many places and our water is fetid. We are short of gunpowder and our stock of balls for the cannons is running low.’
‘Then we will make more out of our gold. I have promised Tenochtitlàn to my king!’
Benítez looked at Malinali. She must have read the desperation in their eyes. ‘Malinali,’ he whispered. ‘Please, talk to him.’
She took Cortés by the arm, led him away from the others. There was a long, whispered exchange. Cortés’ shoulders slumped in defeat. He nodded to Olid.
‘Fetch Montezuma,’ he said.
Montezuma looked around the room and saw the fear on the faces of the thunder lords, heard Fray Olmedo's desperate incantations of prayer. A golden smile came to his lips.
He turned to her. ‘Why have you brought me here? It is weeks since Lord Malinche has come to visit me. Now suddenly I am ushered into his presence without time to prepare. What does he want of me?’
‘He needs your help.’
‘I cannot help him.’
‘You must.’
‘Why should I do anything for him, or for any of you?’
‘What does he say?’ Feathered Serpent asked her.
‘It is all whines and crying, nothing of consequence.’
‘Tell him that the city is in rebellion. So far, I have been patient, but unless the attacks cease, I will be forced to kill all his warriors and burn the city. If he wishes to prevent this catastrophe, he must go out and talk to his people.’
Such an empty boast might have worked once, against those ignorant dogs of Texcála, but she knew Montezuma would not be fooled again. ‘Feathered Serpent wants you to talk to the people. You must stop the rebellion.’
Montezuma started to laugh. ‘If only I could.’
‘Malinali,’ Olid said, ‘remind him that we are his friends. Have we not treated him kindly these last months? Will he see us all killed?’
She took a step closer. How thin he was, how much gray there was in his hair! But the greatest change was in his eyes. They were like obsidians mirrors, black and empty.
‘My lord Montezuma, you must do as my lord commands you.’
‘I cannot. It is beyond my power now.’
‘For our sakes,’ Olid shouted again, ‘will he not help us?’
‘Hold your tongue,’ Feathered Serpent said to him. He took her aside. ‘What does Montezuma say?’
‘He says he is powerless to do anything.’
A muscle rippled in his jaw. ‘Very well. Will you kindly remind him that he agreed, in front of witnesses, to accept vassalage to the King of Spain. If he will not help us, I shall construe it as act of rebellion against His Majesty and have him executed for treason. Tell him that and let us see how powerless he is!’
There, that's more like it.
Malinali turned back to the Emperor. ‘Revered Speaker, if you do not help us, Feathered Serpent says he will ensure he does not perish alone. Before he dies, he intends to tie you to a stake and burn you over a slow fire. Do you remember Smoking Hawk and how he suffered?’
‘He would not dare.’
‘My lord will dare anything, you know that. Look around the room at the faces of these other thunder lords. Do you see mercy anywhere here?’
Montezuma’s face turned grey.
‘I learned from this Nárvaez,’ Montezuma mumbled, ‘that Cortés is no god. He does not even have the authority of his own king. He is a mercenary and a traitor. A nomad. Nárvaez was sent here to arrest him.’
‘And for this nomad and mercenary you forfeited your throne!’
‘Do not taunt me!’
‘What a fool you have been! Even the gods curse you.’
Spit spilled from his lower lip.
‘What does he say now, the old fool?’ her lord asked her.
‘More pity for himself, my lord. It is good you do not have the elegant speech and you are spared this whining.’
‘Tell him again that I will have him hanged for treason should he continue with his rebellion.’
‘My lord says that all he wants now is to depart in peace. He will even leave you all your treasures. All you have to do is tell your people to desist, so that he can march away from here with his life. You have his word on that.’
‘His word. When has he ever kept his word to me?’
‘Everything can be again as it once was.’
‘No. I cannot betray my people.’
‘Then I shall tell them to prepare a fire for you. It will be a slow death, much slower than Smoking Hawk's. They will roast you one limb at a time.’
She watched him struggle with himself. He wants to defy us, she thought. Perhaps a few months ago he would still have had the strength.
‘You think the Jaguar Knights will storm the gates in time to save you. Suppose that should happen. What fate befalls the former king? Will they bow before the Revered Speaker who allowed thieves through their gate to burn the temple and murder their sons? This is your one chance to restore your authority as Emperor. If you can make them obey you, then tomorrow we will march away from here and your rule will be restored. You will rebuild the Great Temple to a greater glory than before, do penance before your gods, redeem your spirit. But if we die, you will die with us, and on your shoulders will lie the blame for all this. There will not even be a jade in your mouth to pay the Yellow Beast, just pain and ashes.’
He raised his head, just a little. ‘If I do this, Malinche and all of you, you will leave this city?’
‘Call off your warriors. We only want our lives.’
Montezuma looked at Cortés. ‘And I thought him divine!’
‘As I once thought you.’
He took a deep breath. He loved life too much to part with it. ‘I will do what I can,’ he said.
A trumpet blast heralded the Emperor's appearance on the roof. Falling Eagle saw one of the Castilian priests with him, the one called Aguilar. They were protected from the rain of stones and arrows by Spanish shields.
But then, a slow and shuffling silence fell over the plaza.
Even now, a few still lowered their eyes, afraid to look directly upon their Revered Speaker. Falling Eagle did not avert his eyes. He stared, affronted and appalled at how ill the Emperor looked, how shabby his clothes appeared. He wore a makeshift head dress of yellow bark paper and a robe of white maguey fiber. The Spaniards had stolen his gold and silver jewelry, even his cotton mantles.
Montezuma started to speak.
‘My people! You of the Aztlan, of the Eagle and the Cactus. I command you all to desist from this war! I have spoken with Lord Malinche and his followers and I have told them they are no longer welcome in our capital. They are sorry they have caused so much dissension among us and they are now ready to leave immediately. They wish only that you withdraw and allow them to return to the East Lands in peace.’
Falling Eagle listened to this speech with growing incredulity. Montezuma still believed he had authority over them, after all that had happened, after all the humiliation and disgrace he had brought them. They had all seen him grovel at the feet of these thieves and murderers. Did he still believe that they held him in reverence?
He looked at the young warriors around him in the plaza, and realized with dismay that some of these other innocents might yet obey him, despite all he had done.
Something had to be done to break the spell.
Falling Eagle took a deep breath. ‘Who is this woman?’ he shouted. ‘Who is this disgusting wife of a Spaniard? We will not listen to you, Montezuma! You are no longer our king. You have disgraced us before our gods. We will not shame ourselves further. Cuitlahuac is our king now and we will fight on until all the foreigners are dead!’
He picked up a stone lying at his feet and tossed it at the walls, saw it fall harmlessly on the patio at Montezuma's feet. But now others were shouting too, there were more rocks, even several arrows. One slammed into Montezuma's shoulder and he gasped and fell back. The Castilians threw up their shields and pulled him away.
‘We have to get away from here!’ Alvarado shouted as he dragged Montezuma from the terrace.
Sandoval raised his voice, trying to make himself heard above the din from the plaza. ‘Our situation is hopeless. The decision must be made!’
They all looked at Cortés. His face betrayed bewilderment. He could not believe he had been beaten.
Montezuma had fainted. There was blood matted in his hair where a stone had struck him and an arrow was lodged in the muscle of his shoulder. He lay on his back, his eyes rolling in his head. Mendez bent down to minister to him. Montezuma cried out as the doctor pulled the arrow shaft from the wound.
‘What shall we do with him, my lord?’ Benítez said.
‘Well, he is no further use to us.’
‘I disagree, my lord,’ Malinali said.
She took Cortés aside. ‘When an emperor dies, tradition demands that he is taken outside the city, to a place called Copulco, and there cremated with all due honor. His priests, dwarves, hunchbacks and concubines, all must be properly sacrificed, so that they may serve him in the next world. Cremation and mourning can last eighty days, time enough for us to leave the capital, return to Texcála, even reach the coast. Montezuma can serve us better from the spirit world than he ever did in life.’
‘His wounds are not mortal.’
‘Then perhaps he needs another.’
A grim smile, a bitter smile. If he could not have Tenochtitlàn, neither would Montezuma. ‘I will have Alvarado do it. Or Jaramillo. They enjoy that sort of thing.’
‘No, my lord.’
‘No?’
‘Let me have your knife.’
He raised an eyebrow in surprise. He hesitated for a moment before sliding the dirk from his belt and placing it in her palm. She concealed it beneath her cloak.
And they were left alone.
Malinali put her lips close to Montezuma’s ear. ‘My lord, I wish you to open your eyes.’
Montezuma was in great pain. The doctor had bandaged his forehead and there was another bloodied cloth wrapped around the muscle of his right shoulder, where the arrow shaft has done terrible damage.
His eyes fluttered open. ‘You... you still wish to bargain?’
‘Lord, my lord, my great lord. What a pitiful wretch you have become.’
‘The prophecies were true. There was nothing I could have done.’
She held an obsidian mirror close to his face so that he could see his own face in the reflection. ‘What do you see here?’
‘Take it away!’
She took a handful of his hair, forcing his head back, made him look. ‘Do you not see a murderer and a butcher? Do you not hear countless widows and daughters weeping?’
‘Leave me...’
‘Do you remember my father?’
‘What? I did not know your father...’
‘No, but you ordered his execution anyway, because he could read the stars and the winds, because he spoke against all the human sacrifices you demanded, because he prophesied the end of the Mexica. It was a long time ago and I am sure you have forgotten giving the command that ended his life. But I, I have not forgotten.’ She showed him the dagger beneath her cloak.
His eyes were wide open now.
‘I served my gods faithfully,’ he said. ‘But they did not serve me.’
‘Your gods curse you. As do I.’ She held the knife to the light, then brought the sharpened tip against the skin of his belly, just below his heart. ‘This is for my father.’
74.
A torch lit courtyard, rain slapping on the cobbles, a cold wind. They planned to leave that night, head for the shortest causeway, the one leading west to Tlacopan.
Preparations were taking place in silence all over the palace, but nowhere were they more circumspect than in this quiet court. Eight horses had been mustered, their hooves muffled with cloth, and a hundred Texcálans assigned to guard them. Wooden boxes had been strapped to the horses' backs. Benítez opened one and examined its contents.
Alvarado watched on, hands on hips. ‘When we leave you will be assigned one hundred and fifty men, Nárvaez’ best infantrymen. You are to guard the treasure in these bags with your life. They belong to the king.’
‘If the king wants his gold he can come here and stand over it himself.’
‘A treasonous point of view.’
‘If you think me treasonous, you can guard the gold.’
Benítez watched the heavy ingots being loaded. If this was the king's fifth, they had won far more than had been declared. Cortés had put the worth of the gold at three hundred thousand crowns. Unless half of these boxes were filled with stones, the bullion here amounted to almost double that. Benítez suspected that what he saw here was not the king's fifth but Cortés’ hidden profits. Small wonder their Captain-General had not wished to leave.
‘There is more here than the sixty thousand crowns that Cortés claimed.’
‘You would do well to keep your silence, Benítez. You will get your reward.’
‘Yes, a Mexican spear in the back before the night is out.’
‘Cortés always remembers his friends.’
‘You know, he always swears, ‘by my conscience.’ He has no more conscience than a dog.’ Benítez pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders, it was another sodden night, like the night they attacked Nárvaez. Then it had been their friend, had cloaked their movements. He hoped the weather would serve them as well tonight.
He found himself thinking of Rain Flower. He wondered where she was, what had become of her. Another of his weaknesses, he supposed. He had allowed himself to feel an unnatural love for a savage. He thought about Norte, too, wondered what would have happened if he had been in Norte's position, shipwrecked and alone in Yucatán and had been given as husband to a woman like Rain Flower. He could see now how it might be all too easy to forget about Spain and the Christian world.
He hoped that Rain Flower had found refuge with the Mexica, prayed they had not harmed her. He pushed from his mind an image of her spread-eagled on a sacrificial stone.
How he wished she were with him now.
What will happen to me should I survive this night, he thought? Back to Cuba, he supposed, as an impoverished hidalgo with a petty landholding, without courtly looks or manners or connections, sweating in the sun, fearing disease and an early, wine-sodden and anonymous death on his farm.
Better to die tonight if that was what God intended. A little glory, a swift end and no time to mourn and to regret.
‘Have you seen Cortés?’ Malinali said.
Cáceres’ face was pale with strain. ‘He is in the chapel, my lady. He offers up his prayers for this night.’
She hurried down the passageway. The room next to Cortés’ apartments had been converted into a shrine for Virgin. Inside, Lopez had erected a wooden cross. The chapel was bright with candles, haloes of light shone on the cedarwood altars and in the niches in the wall where the Mexica's gods once stood.
The shrine was empty except for Aguilar, on his knees in front of the cross, his ancient book clutched to his chest.
She hurried on to the next apartment, the quarters given to Montezuma's daughter, Doña Ana. She went in, ignoring the protests of the guards and pushed through the bell-hung curtain over the door.
Doña Ana was on her knees, bent over the low bed, and Feathered Serpent had both his hands on her shoulders to keep her there. He had mounted her from behind, so Malinali found herself face to face with them both. His forehead shone with sweat. Below him, the girl's nut-brown face was screwed up in pain at his rough taking of her.
Not even beautiful, Malinali thought. Nothing to recommend her, at all, except her birthright.
He continued thrusting until he had finished. She waited, her hands crossed on her swollen belly. She could feel her small son kick and struggle.
When the act was completed, she watched a bead of perspiration make its uncertain way down his temple and into his beard. She listened to the sawing of his breath in his chest. Doña Ana covered her face with her hands.
Of course. He wanted a child with the Emperor's blood, thought that it would make his claim to the throne legitimate in the eyes of the Mexica. Even now, he had not given up his efforts to conquer them, by any means at his disposal.
‘Malinali. You should be resting. You should not be here.’
‘You should not be here either.’
‘It is not for the ladies of the household to question a king on his appetites.’
‘Your last moments should be with me.’
‘If these are the last moments, as you say, then I must do all I can to ensure that my seed secures the throne of Mexico. It is my right, I have earned it.’
She caressed her swollen stomach. ‘The throne of Mexico is here, my lord.’
He reached around, cupped Doña Ana's plump brown stomach in the palms of his hands. ‘No, Malinali,’ he said. ‘It is here also.’
75.
‘What's going on here?’ Benítez said.
‘Cortés gave orders,’ Sandoval said. ‘Everything that cannot be loaded onto the pack horses is to be left here in the courtyard and the men are to help themselves.’
Benítez stared. An astonishing sight. A mountain of gold ingots lay on the flagstones in front of the main gates. Each one had been made to Cortés’ precise specifications, flat bars two inches broad and half an inch thick, the perfect size to fit under Spanish armor. There was jewelry and feather work and cotton capes, piled like dirty washing in the rain. An emperor's bequest just dumped there, shimmering in the dim light of smoky torches.
