FEATHERED SERPENT, page 5
Tendile looked perplexed.
‘Our gods demand blood from us,’ Malinali. said. ‘But Feathered Serpent and his followers instead demand blood from their gods. The gods sacrifice themselves.’
Tendile was silent. No doubt he was wondering what Montezuma would say when he heard that.
Cortés studied his visitors. From the moment Tendile had arrived at the camp, two of his retinue had been at work, sketching everything they saw. So, he thought, not only a delegation of welcome, but a delegation of spies as well. I can use this to my advantage.
After the Holy Easter Mass was completed, he turned to Alvarado. ‘Tell Benítez and the others to saddle their horses. And have Mesa prepare a charge for the artillery. We will give this pompous savage something to tell Montezuma when he goes home.’
Alvarado hurried away.
Cortés led Tendile and his entourage down to the beach. ‘Tell Malinali I have something else to show my guests,’ he said to Aguilar.
Tendile had by now recovered his poise. The other Mexica lords followed, their noses in the air.
Damn your arrogance, Cortés thought.
From a clear blue sky, a thunderclap shook the ground under their feet. Immediately, the Mexica fell to their knees, even Tendile. Another thunderclap followed, then another.
Cortés smiled. It was precisely the effect he had intended.
Mesa fired another salvo from his culverins. On the other side of the bay coconut fronds crashed onto the beach, palm trees snapped like twigs.
At last, the guns fell silent. Tendile and his entourage got slowly back to their feet. Trembling like women, he was pleased to see. He nodded to Alvarado, who drew his sword and raised it into the air, a pre-arranged signal. His cavalry charged towards them from the other end of the beach, followed by the war dogs, galloping towards them in close formation, the horses' hooves thundering on the wet, hard sand.
The Mexica gasped in dismay. Tendile took a step back, his face sickly grey. The others huddled around him. Some of them threw themselves back on the ground. Benítez and his cavalry reined in their horses so close to the Indians that they were showered with sand from the hooves.
Cortés looked back up the beach, saw Montezuma's scribes frantically transcribing it all. Well, he thought, that should make a good impression.
Malinali could not take her eyes off him. He is just as I imagined, she thought. He fears nothing.
She watched him confer briefly with Aguilar, who turned back to her. ‘My lord Cortés wants you to tell Tendile that he hopes soon to have the great pleasure of looking on Montezuma personally.’
She did as she was asked, enjoying the ambassador’s discomfort. How the tables have turned, she thought. I am no longer the struggling child tied with thongs in a storage hut, the helpless girl watching her father kick and tremble as Montezuma's soldiers throttle the life from him. I am no longer dust on the ground. I am with Feathered Serpent now, and together we shall crush these invaders, these usurpers, these Mexica!
11.
It took a little time for Tendile to regain his composure, regathering it around him like a cloak. He pointed to Alvarado.
There was another delay as he spoke to Malinali, who passed on what he had said to Aguilar.
‘He asks if he can have Alvarado’s helmet as a gift for his lord Montezuma,’ Aguilar said to Cortés.
Alvarado laughed when he heard it. He immediately took off his helmet and tossed it to Malinali. ‘He may borrow it for a while but only if he returns it filled with gold!’
Cortés thought to stop him but Aguilar and Malinali had already translated what he had said. He wished sometimes he could control Alvarado's tongue. He had not wished to reveal his true intention too soon.
When he heard this, Tendile frowned, and an urgent discussion followed.
‘What does he say?’ Cortés asked.
‘Evidently,’ Aguilar said, after conferring with Malinali, ‘he asked what is so very special about gold.’
There was a long, shuffling silence. His officers exchanged tense glances.
Cortés considered a reply. ‘Tell him,’ he said, ‘that we Spaniards all suffer a terrible disease of the heart. Gold is the only cure. That is why we need it so badly.’
‘Amen to that,’ Jaramillo said and grinned.
Tendile left, but promised to return very soon with word from Montezuma. Cortés tried to suppress his excitement. He nodded at Malinali. ‘Give her my thanks,’ he said to Aguilar. ‘In future she will stay by my side, to help me speak with the Mexica.’
Aguilar started to protest.
‘Just do it, Aguilar,’ Cortés said and walked away. More than a pretty face, he thought. He might not have her in his bed, but she might be of use in other ways.
Malinali stepped inside Feathered Serpent's tent. It had been pitched behind the dunes, in the shade of the palms. The royal blue silk whipped in the ocean breeze, the wind which he alone commanded. He sat behind a wooden table, his valet and Caceres at his shoulder on either side.
She watched him, fascinated. He had the eyes of an owl man and when he looked at her she found she could not look away. She noticed for the first time the small scar on his chin and lower lip, partly concealed by his beard. Perhaps he had once been attacked by the Earth Monster, as had happened to another of the gods, Smoking Mirror.
He said something to Aguilar and Aguilar turned to her. ‘He wants to know where you learned to speak the language of the Mexica.’
She wondered how much to tell him. She was too ashamed to reveal all of it. ‘I come from a place called Painali. There we have the elegant speech - Nahuatl. When I was a child, I was captured by the Mexica and made a slave.’
Feathered Serpent leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table. ‘He asks if you know of this Montezuma,’ Aguilar said to her.
‘I went to Tenochtitlàn, once, when I was a small girl. He passed in the street, borne on a palanquin. He is the richest prince in the whole world. He is also very cruel.’
‘This city - Tenochtitlàn. What is it like?’
She directed her answers to Feathered Serpent, even though it was Aguilar who asked the questions. She wanted him to see that she was a Person, and not afraid. ‘Tenochtitlàn is built on a lake in the middle of a great valley surrounded by mountains. It is the most beautiful city in the world. Perhaps one hundred thousand people live there.’
Aguilar smiled when he heard this. He thinks it is an empty boast, she thought, he thinks I see things with a peasant's eyes.
‘The people who live there – are they rich also?’
‘The Mexica own half the world, and half the world pays them tribute each year.’
Feathered Serpent nodded, appeared satisfied. She knew he already knew the answers to these questions. He was testing her.
‘He says you will be well rewarded for your service,’ Aguilar said. Then he asked, apparently of his own volition, ‘When we were talking to Tendile, did you translate exactly everything I said?’
She lowered her eyes in case they betrayed her. Did he suspect? ‘Yes, my lord.’
‘You are sure?’
She felt Feathered Serpent's eyes on her and felt a thrill of fear. ‘I repeated everything just as you said it to me.’
‘And they understood your words?’
‘They understood.’
It was clear to her that Aguilar was a charlatan and for some reason wished to subvert lord Feathered Serpent's task. If only she could converse with him without this fool in the way!
‘Thank you, Doña Marina,’ Aguilar said.
When she was seven years old, her father had explained why he had given her such an ominous name.
‘I named you Ce Malinali, One Grass of Penance, because it is your destiny to bring disorder and destruction to the world. We must first destroy the Mexica so that we can build a new nation.’
She was standing beside her father on the summit of Feathered Serpent’s temple. A blood-star fell down the night sky, its fiery tail pointing towards the Cloud Lands.
‘That is your star,’ he said to her. ‘It comes to tell the world that the reign of the Mexica will soon be over, and the days of Hummingbird are numbered. It is sign that Feathered Serpent is to return. You are both blessed and cursed with a destiny, my little one.’
She was very young so what he said was incomprehensible to her then. It was only when she grew older that she realized her name was the reason her mother wished to be rid of her. She thought she would bring her bad luck.
It was partly true, she was born to bring misfortune. But not to her mother.
To Montezuma.
It was late, deep into the Sixth Watch of the Night, when Tendile and his fellow lords arrived at the royal palace in Tenochtitlàn. Montezuma had given orders that he be woken immediately upon their arrival. The delegation removed their sandals and stripped off their decorated mantles, replacing them with plain cloaks of maguey fiber. Then they were led up the great staircase to Montezuma's apartments.
Revered Speaker awaited them in one of his private chambers. As they entered, they were assailed by the pungent musk of copal incense glowing in a copper brazier. Smoking Mirror watched them from the smoky gloom.
Woman Snake lay prostrate in front of the altar. A young girl was spreadeagled, naked, over Montezuma's own sacrificial stone, arms and legs hanging limp, her chest open, her heart cooking in the coals.
A skein of black smoke rose to the ceiling.
Tendile and his officers approached on their faces. Montezuma stepped from behind the slab, his robes wet with gore from the sacrifice. He approached them with the basalt jaguar receptacle that held some of the dead girl's blood. He sprinkled it over his messengers, to purify them.
Montezuma had hoped for good news, but instead saw a terrible truth written on their stricken faces. ‘Speak,’ he said.
‘The great rafts appeared off our coast five days ago,’ Tendile said. ‘We met with the strangers and have hurried day and night since to bring you news.’
‘Well?’
‘They do not have the elegant speech, they speak some other language that sounds like the quacking of ducks. They have a woman who speaks for them, she is a Person, like us. She calls herself Malinali.’
‘And what did this Malinali say to you?’
Tendile was trembling. Saliva leaked from his mouth onto the floor.
‘What did she say?’ Montezuma repeated.
‘She said that the ancient prophecies are to be fulfilled. She said that Feathered Serpent has returned as promised.’
Montezuma pressed his knuckles to his forehead, as if trying to burrow his way inside his own skull. ‘Who was this woman?’
‘I confess I do not know my Lord, except that she spoke most insolently to me.’
‘What did she say?’
‘That Feathered Serpent wishes to speak with you in person, that he has been commanded to do this by Olintecle himself.’
Tendile lay prostrate on the cold marble, waiting a hundred years for these few terrible moments to pass. I will be sacrificed to Hummingbird for this, he thought. My skin will be flayed and thrown into the great pit at Yopico.
‘Did you see this stranger who claimed to be Feathered Serpent?’
‘Yes, my lord. His skin was white, like chalk, and he had a dark beard and a straight nose. He was dressed in black and wore a green feather in his cap.’
‘A quetzal plume!’ Montezuma murmured. A god was known best by his head dress. A jade feather signified Feathered Serpent. And black was one of his colors. ‘What of the others who were with him?’
‘They also wore strange clothes that had a pestilential odor about them. Many of them had long beards and hair of strange and unnatural colors. Their swords and shields and bows are all made of some metal that shines like the sun.’
Tendile lay on his belly, silent. Please do not kill me.
‘Did this woman tell you why the bearded lord wishes to speak with me?’
‘She says it concerns matters of the gods.’
‘She spoke of religion?’
‘No, but I saw the strangers at their ritual, great Lord. They were drinking blood.’
For the first time Montezuma allowed himself to hope.
But then Tendile said, ‘Yet it was not the blood of a man they were drinking, or this is what she said, but the blood of a god.’
‘The blood of a god?’
‘We drew pictures for you, great lord.’
One of Tendile's scribes crawled forward clutching several bark sheets, the paintings that he and his companion had made on the beach. Montezuma snatched them from him. He stared at the floating temples with their great banners of cloth, the logs spitting fire, the two-headed monsters, and the angry beasts that followed them.
‘What is this?’
‘Great Lord, the strangers possess stone serpents that shoot smoke and sparks from their mouths. If the serpent is pointed towards a tree, the tree falls. If it is pointed towards a mountain, the mountain cracks and crumbles away. The noise is like thunder and the smoke has a vile smell. Some of them rode great stags, taller than two men standing on each other's shoulders, and these beasts carry them wherever they want to go. They breathe smoke from their mouths and when they ran it was as if the very ground trembled under our feet. They also possess dogs as no dogs we have ever seen, monsters straight from the land of the dead, with great jowls and yellow teeth.’
Montezuma stared at the shadows, lost in his own despair.
‘Is there anything else you have to tell me?’ he said, finally.
Another of Tendile's retinue crept forward. He was holding a metal helmet, made of some shining metal that resembled silver. What is this?
‘One of the strangers gave us this headdress,’ Tendile said.
Montezuma examined it. It was like the helmet worn by Hummingbird on the Left, their own war-god.
‘He gave you this as a gift?’ Montezuma asked.
‘No, great Lord. He demanded that we return it, filled with gold.’
‘Gold,’ Montezuma said. ‘Why gold?’
‘They said it was to heal a sickness peculiar to their kind. Indeed, they ignored all our other gifts, the finest cloth and feather work and some exquisite pieces of jade. Only the gold excited them.’
Perhaps there is an answer to this, Montezuma thought.
‘You shall return to the coast tonight and give these strangers exactly what they ask. We must also discover if this Malinali's Lord is truly Feathered Serpent or just a man. There are ways we may divine the truth.’
12.
Cortés stood on a rise overlooking the beach and looked around. A depressing place, just a few sand dunes with sparse patches of straw-colored grass and groves of forlorn and wind-bowed palm trees. In the distance he could make out a range of blue mountains, dominated by a peak the natives called Orizaba, a volcanic caldera cloaked in great banks of cloud.
The slaves that Tendile had left behind helped them make shelters from green branches and palm fronds and thatch. The natives made their own camp a little way off, a shantytown built overnight to service their needs. They cooked fish and turkeys over open fires and the women peeled fruit and prepared corn cakes under canopies of woven mats.
It was cold, at first. They had clustered around their fires, shivering in the teeth of the northerly winds. Then quite suddenly the wind died away and the weather turned unbearably hot. They had all huddled in the shade of the few gnarled trees, slapping at the voracious clouds of tiny black insects that appeared from nowhere and made their lives a misery.
Such discomforts were to be expected. There could be no triumph without hardship. Day after day, he patrolled the dunes, staring at the forbidding range of mountains far to the west, and waited, and wondered, and planned.
Rain Flower pulled off her tunic. There was a dark, plum-colored bruise on her arm. She waded into the pool under the trees, saw Malinali staring. ‘Did your new husband hurt you?’ Malinali said.
‘He is just big and clumsy. He forgets how strong he is and how small I am.’
She crouched down so that the water reached her shoulders. In Potonchan, Rain Flower was considered no prize as a wife. Her mother had neglected to hang a pearl from her cap when she was an infant and so she did not have the crossed eyes that her people so prized in their women. Rain Flower's mother had been Tiger Lip Plug's elder wife. Malinali thought of her like a sister.
‘I do not believe they are gods, Little Mother,’ Rain Flower said. ‘Their bodies have a rank smell and they spill their seed like any man.’
‘Some men are not born as gods,’ Malinali said. ‘Sometimes the spirit of a god is given to them, as it was with Montezuma.’
‘And what of your god with the violet eyes?’
‘He has three penises and he keeps me awake all night! Then in the morning he turns into a cat and joins the ocelots in greeting the dawn with their cries.’
‘You have a fancy tongue. One day one of Montezuma's priests may cut it out and roast it in their fires.’
‘Soon we will no longer have to fear Montezuma,’ Malinali said.
‘Is that what you think?’
‘Why else would the thunder lords have come?’
Rain Flower ladled water from the palm of her hand over her shoulder, wincing at the small bruises on her flesh. ‘They are just men. They will take whatever they want and go back to the Cloud Lands.’
‘They may take us with them.
‘You hope for too much,’ Rain Flower said.
Lord Sun was sinking in the sky. The sound of the cicada beetles in the forest was deafening. A butterfly danced among the ferns, the spirit of a dead warrior playing forever among the flowers and reeds.
The water seemed suddenly black and very cold.
Malinali watched on as Tendile arrived with the usual fanfare; snakeskin drums, conches, clay flutes, wooden clappers. But this time his heralds also held green quetzal standards to show that the delegation had royal approval.
