She sniffed, but surprised me by saying, “You think you jest in mischief, Fetch! However, I have heard whispers among women that there are special delights to be had from dwarfs and hunchbacks and even”—she glanced at Cozcatl—“a little boy with a tepúli like an earlobe. Someday, when I tire of the ordinary …”
She riffled through the papers, then stopped and said, “Yyo ayyo! This one, Fetch!, he has bold eyebrows. Who is he?”
“That is the Crown Prince Black Flower.”
She frowned prettily. “No, that might cause complications.” She went on, intently studying each picture, then said, “And this one?”
“I do not know his name, my lady. He is a swift-messenger whom sometimes I see running with messages.”
“Ideal,” she said, with that smile of hers. She pointed to the drawing and said, “Fetch!” She was not just pronouncing my name, but the verbal imperative: “Bring him!”
I had fearfully anticipated something of the sort, but I broke into a cold sweat nonetheless. With the utmost diffidence and formality, I said:
“My Lady Jadestone Doll, I have been ordered to serve you, and cautioned not to correct or criticize you. But, if I rightly perceive your intentions, I beg you to reconsider. You are the virgin princess of the greatest lord in all The One World, and the wedded virgin queen of a lord who is also great. You will be demeaning two Revered Speakers and your own noble self, if you trifle with some other man before you go to your Lord Husband’s bed.”
I was expecting her at any moment to produce the whip she used on her slaves, but she heard me out, still wearing her infuriating sweet smile. Then she said:
“I could tell you that your impertinence is punishable. But I will merely remark that Nezahualpíli is older than my own father, and that his virility has apparently been sapped by the Lady of Tolan, by all his other wives and concubines. He keeps me sequestered here while he is no doubt desperately trying medicines and enchantments to stiffen his limp and withered old tepúli. But why should I waste my urges and juices and the bloom of my beauty while I await his convenience or his capability? If he requires postponement of his husbandly duties, I shall arrange that they are long postponed indeed. And then, when he and I are ready, you may be sure I can convince Nezahualpíli that I come to him untouched and pristine and as timorous of the experience as any maiden.”
I tried again. I really did my best to dissuade her, though I do not think anyone afterward ever really believed it.
“My lady, remember who you are, and the lineage from which you descend. You are the granddaughter of the venerated Motecuzóma, and he was born of a virgin. His father threw a gemstone into the garden of his beloved. She tucked it into her bosom, and at that moment conceived the child Motecuzóma, before she ever married or coupled with his father. Thus you have a heritage of purity and virginity which you should not sully—”
She interrupted me with a laugh. “I am touched, Fetch!, by your concern. But you should have lectured me when I was nine or ten years old. When I was a virgin.”
It belatedly occurred to me to turn to Cozcatl and say, “You had better—you may go now, boy.”
Jadestone Doll said, “You know those carvings that the beastly Huaxtéca make? The wooden torsos with the oversized male member? My father Ahuítzotl keeps one hanging on the wall of a gallery in our palace as a curiosity to amuse or amaze his men friends. It interests women, too. It has been rubbed smooth and glossy by those who have handled it admiringly in passing. Noblewomen. Servant wenches. Myself.”
I said, “I really do not think I care to hear …” But she ignored my protestation.
“I had to drag a big storage chest against the wall, on which to stand to reach the thing. And it took me many painful days, because after each of my early attempts I had to wait and rest while my inadequate tipíli stopped hurting. But I persisted, and it was a day of triumph when I finally managed just the tip of the tremendous thing. Little by little, I took more of it into me. I have had perhaps a hundred men since then, but none of them has ever given me the sensation I enjoyed in those days of thumping my little belly against that crude Huaxtéca carving.”
I pleaded, “I should not know these things, my lady.”
She shrugged. “I make no excuses for my nature. That sort of release is something I must have, and must have often, and will have. I would even use you for that purpose, Fetch! You are not unappealing. And you would not inform against me, for I know you will obey Nezahualpíli’s bidding that you be no talebearer. But that would not prevent your confessing your own guilt at our coupling, and that would be the ruin of us both. So …”
She handed me the picture I had drawn of the unsuspecting swift- messenger, and a ring from her finger. “Give him this. It was my Lord Husband’s wedding gift to me, and there is not another like it.”
The ring was of red gold, set with a huge emerald whose value was incalculable. Those jewels were only seldom brought by traders who ventured as far as the land of Quautemálan, the uttermost southern limit of our trade routes, and the emerald’s origin was not even there, but in some land, its name unknown, an untold distance farther to the south of Quautemálan. The ring was one of those designed to be worn on a hand held vertically, for its circlet was hung with jadestone pendants that would show to best advantage when the wearer kept her hand uplifted. The ring had been made to the measure of Jadestone Doll’s middle finger. I could barely squeeze it onto my little one.
“No, you are not to wear it,” the girl warned. “Nor is he. That ring would be recognized by anyone who saw it. He is merely to carry it, hidden, and then at midnight tonight show it to the guard on the eastern gate. At sight of the ring, the guard will admit him. Pitza will be waiting just inside, to bring him here.”
“Tonight?” I said. “But I must find him again, my lady. He may have been sent running on an errand to who knows where.”
“Tonight,” she said. “I have already been too long deprived.”
I do not know what she would have done to me had I not found the man, but I did, and accosted him as if I were a young noble with a message for him to carry. I deliberately did not give him my name, but he said, “I am Yeyac-Netztlin, at my lord’s service.”
“At a lady’s service,” I corrected him. “She wishes that you attend upon her at the palace at midnight.”
He looked troubled and said, “It is most difficult to run a message any distance at night, my lord—” But then his eyes fell on the ring I held in my palm, and his eyes widened, and he said, “For that lady, of course, not midnight nor Míctlan could prevent my doing a service.”
“It is a service requiring discretion,” I said, a sour taste in my mouth. “Show this ring to the guard on the east gate to be admitted.”
“I hear and obey, young lord. I will be there.”
And he was. I stayed awake and listened near my door until I heard Pitza lead Yeyac-Netztlin tiptoeing to the door across the corridor. After that I heard no more, so I do not know how long he stayed or how he effected his departure. And I did not listen again for his subsequent arrivals, so I do not know how often he visited. But it was a month before Jadestone Doll, yawning with boredom, asked me to start sketching prospective new consorts, so Yeyac-Netztlin apparently satisfied her for that span of time. The swift-messenger’s name, appropriately, meant Long Legs, and perhaps he was otherwise lengthily endowed.
Though Jadestone Doll made no demands upon my time during that month, I was not always easy in my mind. The Revered Speaker came about every eighth or ninth day to pay a courtesy call on his supposedly cosseted and patient princess-queen, and often I was present in the apartment, and I strove not to sweat visibly during those interviews. I could only wonder why, in the names of all the gods, Nezahualpíli did not recognize that he was married to a female ripe and ready for his immediate savoring. Or that of any other man.
Those jewelers who deal in jadestone say that the mineral is easily found among the commoner rocks of the field
, because it proclaims its own presence and availability. Simply go into the countryside at first sunrise, they say, and you will see a rock here or there exuding a faint but unmistakable vapor which announces proudly, “There is jadestone inside me. Come and take it.” Like the prized mineral for which she was named, Jadestone Doll also emanated some indefinable nimbus or essence or vibration which said to every male, “Here I am. Come and take me.” Could Nezahualpíli be the only man in creation who did not sense her ardor and readiness? Could he really be impotent and uninterested, as the young queen had said?
No. When I saw and listened to them together, I realized that he was manifesting a gentlemanly consideration and restraint. For Jadestone Doll, in her perverse reluctance to settle for just one lover, was making him see not a girl in the prime of nubility but a delicate and immature adolescent untimely consigned to a marriage of convenience. During his visits, she was not at all the Jadestone Doll so well known to me and her slaves—and presumably to Yeyac-Netztlin. She wore garments that concealed her provocative curves and made her look as slender and fragile as a child. Somehow she suppressed her usual aura of flagrant sexuality, not to mention her usual arrogance and irascibility. She never once used the rude name Fetch! when referring to me. Somehow she kept the real Jadestone Doll concealed—topco petlacálco, “in the bag, in the box,” as we say of a secret.
In the presence of her lord, she neither lay languorously on a couch nor even sat on a chair. She knelt at his feet, her knees modestly together, her eyes demurely downcast, and she spoke in a childishly meek voice. She might have fooled even me into believing her no more than ten years old, except that I knew what she had already been even at that age.
“I hope you find your life less constricted,” said Nezahualpíli, “now that you have Mixtli for a companion.”
“Ayyo, yes, my lord,” she said, dimpling. “He is an invaluable escort. Mixtli shows me things and explains them. Yesterday he took me to the library of your esteemed father’s poetry, and recited for me some of the poems.”
“And did you like them?” asked the Uey-Tlatoáni.
“Oh, I did. But I think I should like even more to hear some of your own, my Lord Husband.”
Nezahualpíli accordingly recited for us some of his compositions, though with becoming modesty: “They sound better, of course, when my drummer accompanies me.” One of them, praising the sunset, concluded:
… Like a bright bouquet of flowers,
our radiant god, our glowing god, the Sun
thrusts himself into a vase
of richest jewels, and the day is done.
“Lovely,” sighed Jadestone Doll. “It makes me feel a little melancholy.”
“The sunset?” asked Nezahualpíli.
“No, my lord, the mention of gods. I know that in time I shall become acquainted with all those of your people. But meanwhile, I have none of my old accustomed gods about me. Would I be forward if I asked my Revered Husband’s permission to place in these rooms some statues of my family’s favorites?”
“My dear Little Doll,” he said indulgently, “you may do or have anything that makes you happy and less homesick. I will send Pixquitl, the resident palace sculptor, and you may instruct him to carve whatever gods your gentle heart yearns for.”
When he left her rooms that time, Nezahualpíli signaled for me to accompany him. I went, still silently commanding my sweat pores to stay shut, for I fully expected to be questioned about Jadestone Doll’s activities when she was not visiting libraries. Much to my relief, though, the Revered Speaker inquired about my own activities.
“Is it much of a burden on you, Mole,” he asked kindly, “devoting so much time to your young lady sister?”
“No, my lord,” I lied. “She is most considerate about not intruding on my school time. It is only in the evenings that we converse, or stroll about the palace, or wander about the city.”
“In the conversing,” he said, “I would ask that you spend some effort on trying to correct her Mexícatl accent. You yourself picked up our Texcóco speech so quickly. Do encourage her to speak more elegantly, Head Nodder.”
“Yes, my lord. I will try.”
He went on, “Your Lord Teacher of Word Knowing tells me that you have also made quick and admirable progress in the art of picture writing. Could you perhaps spare any other time to put that ability to a practical use?”
“To be sure, my lord!” I exclaimed eagerly, ardently. “I will make time.”
Thus I finally began my career as a scribe, and it was thanks in large measure to Jadestone Doll’s father Ahuítzotl. Immediately upon being crowned Uey-Tlatoáni of Tenochtítlan, Ahuítzotl had dramatically demonstrated his prowess as a ruler by declaring a war against the Huaxtéca of the coast to the northeast. Personally leading a combined army of Mexíca, Acólhua, and Tecpanéca, he had waged and won the war in less than a month. The armies brought back much booty, and the defeated nation was, as usual, put under annual tribute. The plunder and the yearly levy were to be divided among The Triple Alliance as was customary: two-fifths each to Tenochtítlan and Texcóco, one-fifth to Tlácopan.
The job Nezahualpíli gave me was to draw up a ledger book listing the tribute items received from the Huaxtéca, and those yet to come, and then also to enter the various items—turquoise, cacao, cotton mantles, skirts and blouses, cotton cloth in bulk—in other ledgers which kept account of the goods as they were stored in various Texcóco warehouses. It was a task that exercised my knowledge of both picture writing and arithmetic, and I threw myself into it with great pleasure, with a conscientious determination to do it well.
But, as I have said, Jadestone Doll also had use for my abilities, and called me in again to command that I renew my search for and my sketching of “handsome men.” She also took that opportunity to complain about the palace sculptor’s lack of ability.
“As my Lord Husband allowed, I ordered this statue, and I gave precise instructions to that old fool of a sculptor he sent. But look at it, Fetch! A monstrosity.”
I looked at it: a life-sized male figure sculptured in clay, painted in lifelike colors and baked to hardness. It depicted no god of the Mexíca that I could recognize, but there was something familiar about it.
“The Acólhua are supposed to be so expert in the arts,” the girl went on, with disdain. “Know this, Fetch! Their avowed master sculptor is woefully inept compared to some far less renowned artists whose work I have seen back home. If Pixquitl does not do my next statue better than this one, I shall send to Tenochtítlan for those Mexíca unknowns, and put him to shame. You go and tell him so!”
I rather suspected that the lady was merely preparing an excuse to import not artists but some former lovers whom she fondly remembered. Nevertheless, as commanded, I went and found the palace sculptor Pixquitl in his studio below ground level. It was clamorous with the roar of the baking kiln’s fire, the stone hammering and chiseling and chipping of his students and apprentices. I had to shout to make him hear Jadestone Doll’s complaint and threat.
“I did my best,” said the elderly artist. “The young queen would not even tell me the name of her chosen god, so that I could refer to other statues or painted pictures of him. All that I had to work from was this.”
And he showed me a chalk drawing on bark paper: my own picture of Yeyac-Netztlin. I was extremely puzzled. Why should Jadestone Doll have ordered the statue of a god—whichever god it was supposed to be—and order it made in the likeness of a mere and mortal swift-messenger? But, in expectation that she would snarl at me to mind my own business, I did not ask her.
In my next delivery of drawings, I deliberately included, and not entirely in facetious spirit, a picture of Jadestone Doll’s own legitimate husband, the Revered Speaker Nezahualpíli. She gave it and me only a scornful sniff as she thrust it to one side. The picture she chose that time was one of a young under-gardener at the palace, Xali-Otli by name, and it was to him that I gave her ring and her instructions the next da
y. He, like his predecessor, was only a commoner, but he spoke Náhuatl with the Texcóco accent, and I hoped—since I would again be excused for a while from attendance upon the lady—that he would continue the refining of her speech, as Nezahualpíli desired.
When I had finished the Huaxtéca tribute entries, I delivered the ledger lists to the under-treasurer in charge of such things, who highly praised my work to his superior, the Snake Woman, and that Lord Strong Bone in turn was kind enough to give a good report of me to Nezahualpíli. Whereupon the Revered Speaker sent for me to ask if I would like to try my hand at the very same sort of work you are doing, reverend friars. That is, to take down in writing the words spoken in the chamber where the Uey-Tlatoáni met with his Speaking Council, and in the hall of justice where he gave audience to lesser Acólhua bringing requests and complaints.
Naturally I took on the job with gleeful enthusiasm and, though at first it was not easy and I made mistakes, I eventually earned plaudits for that work too. I must say immodestly that I had already attained considerable fluency, proficiency, and accuracy in setting down my pictures. Now I had to learn to do the symbols swiftly, though of course I could never have become so rapid a scribe as any of you, my lords. In those council meetings and receptions of supplicants, there was seldom a moment when somebody was not speaking words to be recorded, and often there would be several persons talking at once. Fortunately for me, the system was—like yours—to have two or more experienced scribes simultaneously at work, so that what one of them missed another would probably catch.
I early learned to set down only the symbols recording the most important words of any person’s discourse, and those only in sketchy outline. Afterward, at my leisure, I would strive to recall and insert the substance between, then make a clean recopying of the whole, and add the colors that made it fully comprehensible. That method not only improved my rapidity of writing, it improved my memory as well.