‘Your words have vanquished me – ’ Moctezuma shed more womanly tears – ‘and thrown me into confusion. Must these gods then come to Tenochtitlan? Does the future hold no hope for me?’
The magicians sat silently, their long faces filled with fear.
‘Speak!’ Moctezuma said. ‘I command you to speak.’
Tlilpo looked at the others and seemed to share a silent communication with them. They all nodded their heads and he uttered a series of dry coughs. ‘We must tell you the truth, great lord,’ he said finally. ‘The future has already been determined and decreed in heaven, and Moctezuma will behold and suffer a great mystery which must come to pass in his land. If our king wishes to know more about it, he will learn soon enough, for it comes swiftly. This is what we predict, since he demands that we speak, and since it must surely take place, he can only wait for it.’
‘Nonsense!’ Guatemoc couldn’t stop himself from crying out. ‘The ramblings of imbeciles and cowards!’ He stood and glared at Moctezuma. ‘Your sorcerers offer you a counsel of despair, sire. I implore you not to heed it. Under no circumstances should we wait here passively for doom to descend upon us. We must march out, today, and fight these white men – for they are surely men, not gods, and even if they are gods we must still fight them.’
Guatemoc could feel his father’s hand tugging at his robe, pulling him back to his seat, and heard low, fearful whispers from other councillors. To stand in this way in the presence of the Great Speaker was an unprecedented breach of etiquette. ‘Sit!’ Cuitláhuac hissed. ‘Sit and apologise!’
Guatemoc remained standing and addressed Moctezuma again. ‘Forgive me, lord,’ he said, ‘but I believe it is my responsibility to speak my mind. These strangers must not be permitted to do to us what they are said to have done to the Chontal Maya at Potonchan. We must crush them now while they still linger on the coast. We must under no circumstances allow them to come to Tenochtitlan.’
Moctezuma blinked twice and wiped the tears from his cheeks with the sleeve of his robe. ‘Nephew,’ he said, ‘you are newly appointed to our council, you have not yet learnt our ways, and your mind is still much troubled by your recent injuries. I will therefore overlook your discourtesy on this occasion,’ his voice rose abruptly, ‘but you will be seated now. Should I require your advice again I will ask for it.’
As Guatemoc subsided onto the bench, seething with indignation, Moctezuma turned to Teudile. ‘Good steward,’ he said, ‘before we hear your report, we would like to know why it is that the whole city is informed of the strangers’ victory at Potonchan, their arrival at Cuetlaxtlan and your mission to them there. Did I not caution you to keep these matters secret until we had the opportunity to consider them fully?’
‘Yes, lord, you did so caution me.’ Teudile had already suffered a severe public rebuke by the mere fact that the Great Speaker had asked the sorcerers to report first. His voice was now shaky and so small as to be almost inaudible. ‘I assure you that I told no one.’
‘Then how do you explain the rumours? The gossip? The panic.’
‘Sire, I fear a spy must be at work in the palace.’
‘A spy? How can that be? We two were alone when we studied the message from the governor of Cuetlaxtlan.’
‘It was not me, sire,’ Teudile blubbered. ‘I told no one the reason for our mission, not even the magicians, not even the priests. I kept everything to myself until we reached the coast.’
‘Hmm,’ pondered Moctezuma. ‘Do you suppose the leak came about through our relay messengers?’
‘Perhaps, sire,’ said Teudile. ‘Or perhaps the merchant named Cuetzpalli.’
‘He knew about Potonchan only,’ objected Moctezuma, ‘and nothing about Cuetlaxtlan.’
‘It is a mystery, sire, but I swear, on my life, I was not responsible.’
‘On your life,’ mused Moctezuma. ‘Yes, exactly. I will think on the matter. Meanwhile give us your report, gentle steward.’
Unlike the sorcerers, who had spoken only of their own magical dealings, Teudile’s report was lengthy and detailed, and was brought to life by dozens of sketches and paintings produced by his artists. Featuring prominently amongst these, standing by the side of the leader of the strangers, was the figure of a beautiful Mayan woman. It seemed she was fluent in Nahuatl and worked with another of the strangers – who somehow spoke the Mayan tongue – to interpret the leader’s words. If there were mysteries everywhere, one of them certainly surrounded this woman who, it emerged, had been held for sacrifice some months before in the fattening pens of Tenochtitlan. She had come beneath Moctezuma’s knife on the night of the great holocaust – the same night Guatemoc lay bleeding from the wounds Shikotenka had inflicted on him – and, astonishingly, the Great Speaker had released her. It seemed many of the Supreme Council, including Guatemoc’s own father Cuitláhuac, were aware of this shameful breach of sacrificial tradition, which had otherwise been hushed up. But the fact that the woman now served as an interpreter for the strangers was obviously highly significant.
Moctezuma took it as further proof of their divine status and there was, admittedly, much other evidence that seemed to point in this direction. Of particular note, amongst the paintings, were images of the great boats the strangers had arrived in, including one the delegates had been allowed to board, which Teudile described as ‘a thing more divine than human, a work of genius.’
Guatemoc found he had to agree. The immense and powerful structure the artists had depicted was unlike any boat known to the Mexica, seeming a thousand times bigger even than the great royal canoe that Moctezuma had commissioned to carry him on his voyages across Lake Texcoco. Moreover this craft, in which the strangers had reached Mexico, was not moved by paddles but by huge sheets of cloth that caught the wind and apparently caused it to rush forward at terrifying speeds.
Despite himself, Guatemoc could not help but be reminded of the legends of Quetzalcoatl, which told of how he would return to claim his kingdom in a boat that moved by itself without paddles.
Was this that legendary boat?
Moctezuma thought so, and was already giving way to fresh tears as he looked through the paintings in which he seemed to find certain proof – if the words of the magicians were not enough! – that a great and terrible doom awaited him.
The appearance of the strangers – their white skin, their luxuriant beards, and some with hair as yellow as the sun – added further to his anguish. Priests were summoned to open the temple archives and bring ancient books containing images of Quetzalcoatl and his demigods, and these were found to match very closely with the paintings of the strangers that the artists had produced. Moreover, it seemed the leader of the strangers, while cunningly denying that he was a god and stating his name as Don Hernándo Cortés, had behaved exactly as Quetzalcoatl would have been expected to behave over the matter of sacrifices. He had become furiously angry when human blood and hearts were offered to him, had beaten one of the sacrificing priests black and blue and had insisted the victims be freed. Equally telling, when offered the finery of the gods Tezcatlipoca, Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl, he had unhesitatingly chosen the latter, and when offered a banquet of the fruits and meats of the land he had eaten everything that was put before him, thus showing himself to be familiar with the food of Mexico, as was to be expected if he was indeed Quetzalcoatl returning to claim his kingdom.
For Guatemoc, the paintings of the strangers’ weapons and armour, and the descriptions given of them by Teudile, were impressive and intriguing, but for Moctezuma they were obviously terrifying. It was clear the Great Speaker already had some knowledge of these things from an earlier informant – the merchant Cuetzpalli? – whose testimony he had not shared with the Supreme Council. But it seemed they had been viewed only from afar. Now Teudile and the artists provided close, detailed observations of the strangers’ deadly fire-serpents, the horrific crashing noise they made, the clouds of smoke that emanated from them and their terrible destructive power. T
hen too there were the long knives and the armour of the strangers, crafted from some unknown metal, which made them deadly and invulnerable in battle.
Moctezuma had also heard before of the wild animals that the strangers commanded, already the subject of so many fearful rumours doing the rounds in the city. Teudile had not at any point seen them mount up on the backs of eagles, but he was most impressed by the huge deer they rode, faster than an avalanche in the mountains, and by the ferocious beasts that did their bidding, which he took to be some hitherto unknown species of dog. ‘These dogs are enormous,’ he said. ‘They have flat ears and are spotted like ocelots. They have great dragging jowls and fangs like daggers and blazing eyes of burning yellow that flash fire and shoot off sparks. Their bellies are gaunt, their flanks long and lean with the ribs showing. They are tireless and very powerful. They bound here and there, panting, their tongues dripping venom.’
Guatemoc was almost more fascinated by the expression on Moctezuma’s face as he heard this report than he was by the report itself. It was as though the heart of the Great Speaker had fainted, as if it had withered, as if the strangers would not even need to confront him in battle because his own fears had already utterly defeated him.
And worse was to follow, because Teudile next told of how the leader of the strangers had taken a special interest in the Great Speaker himself, frequently expressing his intention to visit him and meet him face to face, asking many probing questions about him and wanting to know details of his age, his physical strength and his exact appearance. At this Moctezuma covered his head with his hands and said: ‘I cannot fight these gods; my only choice is to flee. I know a certain cave out by Chapultepec; I will hide myself there.’
Guatemoc was about to risk his own life a second time by objecting to these craven words when, to his amazement, Namacuix, who had recently replaced Ahuizotl as the High Priest, spoke up: ‘What is this, O mighty lord,’ he said to Moctezuma in a tone of outrage. ‘What folly is this in a person of such courage as you? If you run, if you hide, then what will our enemies the Tlascalans say? What will Huexotzinco, Cholula, Tliluhquitepec, Michoacan and Metztitlan say? Think of the contempt they will have for Tenochtitlan, this city that is at the heart of the entire world. Truly it will be a great shame for your city and for all those who remain behind you when the news of your flight becomes known. If you were to die, and they had seen you dead and buried, it would be a natural thing. But how can one explain flight? What will we say, what will we answer, to those who ask about our king? Will we have to say that you have abandoned us? This cannot be, lord! You must strengthen yourself! You must stay on your throne!’
A terrible hush had fallen on the councillors gathered in the assembly room, all of them no doubt waiting, Guatemoc thought, for Moctezuma to order the High Priest’s summary execution. Instead the Great Speaker, with a mournful look, merely sighed and said: ‘You are right, Namacuix. Thank you for reminding me of my duty. I will master my heart and await my doom here in this city, for my fate has been ordained and Quetzalcoatl has returned to vent his ire against me. But know this! All of us will die at the hands of these gods, and those who survive will be made their slaves and vassals. They are to reign now, for it is fated that I am to be the one to be cast from the throne of my ancestors and leave it in ruins.’
Again, to the profound embarrassment of all present, Moctezuma began weeping.
Guatemoc looked round at the other councillors. Here were his sponsors – Apanec, Zolton, Tzoncu, Maxtla, Yayau – the fathers of his friends. Here was Aztaxoch, the Chief of the Refugees from the South, Here was Cacama, lord of Texcoco, Moctezuma’s picked man elevated over Ishtlil, the rightful heir. Here was Totoqui, the poet-king of Tacuba. Here was Guatemoc’s own father Cuitláhuac, here Namacuix, here Teudile – and all the others sitting stunned and mute as they observed the catastrophic disintegration of their Great Speaker, the man they had feared above all others, the man they had all sworn to follow and to obey unto death.
It was Teudile who broke the silence. ‘It may not be as bad as it seems, sire,’ he sought to reassure Moctezuma. ‘There is yet hope! I have met these gods, if they are gods, and men if they are men, and they showed great warmth and friendship towards me and towards you, Your Majesty. They embraced our delegation, they ate our food and shared theirs with us, and they insisted that they mean us no harm. In my opinion, lord, you should do everything in your power to gratify them in order not to anger or displease them in any way.’
‘Did they indicate,’ asked Moctezuma with a sniff, ‘how they might be gratified?’
‘Yes, lord,’ answered Teudile. ‘There are two matters that seem to be of paramount importance to them. The first is their great desire to journey here, to Tenochtitlan. Claiming to be men, as they do, they say they serve a powerful emperor who dwells across the eastern ocean, where he rules a rich land called Spain. They say it was he who sent them here for the express purpose of meeting with you and establishing diplomatic relations between his land and ours.’
‘That seems harmless enough,’ offered Cacama, the smooth and pampered ruler of Texcoco. ‘Perhaps they are indeed men, as they say they are, in which case I think we should agree with this request.’
Moctezuma sat brooding on his plinth. ‘I don’t like the idea of them coming here,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t like it at all.’
‘Nonetheless, sire,’ persisted Cacama, ‘my advice is that if you do not admit the embassy of a great lord such as this King of Spain appears to be, it is a low thing, since princes have the duty to hear the ambassadors of others. If they come dishonestly, you have in your court – ’ and at this he looked pointedly at Guatemoc – ‘brave captains who can defend us.’
‘And if they are in fact gods?’ asked Cuitláhuac, who had kept silent until now.
Moctezuma looked up: ‘Speak, brother,’ he said.
‘Suppose they deceive us with this talk of being men, as gods are known to do? Suppose the leader of these strangers really is Quetzalcoatl come to overthrow you?’
Moctezuma nodded: ‘Suppose it is so … What then, brother?’
‘My advice,’ said Cuitláhuac, ‘is not to allow into your house someone who will put you out of it.’
Moctezuma nodded again and turned his eyes back to Teudile. ‘You said, gentle steward, that there is a second matter of great importance to the strangers by which we might gratify them.’
‘There is, lord … ’ Teudile reached down to the floor beside his bench and brought up a battered metal helmet. ‘The second matter is gold. The strangers say they have great need of it. They say, indeed, that they suffer an ailment of the heart that can only be cured by it.’
* * *
From the moment that the strangers’ love of gold was mentioned, and their impudent ploy in claiming they needed it for their health, Guatemoc ceased to have any doubt about their identity. As he’d suspected from the outset, these were not gods but audacious men, bandits, risk-takers armed with powerful unknown weapons, but men nevertheless. Serving as their interpreter, the Mayan woman Malinal would of course have informed them about Quetzalcoatl, who their leader Cortés resembled simply by chance, enabling him to act the part. Yet it was notable he had never in fact claimed to be Quetzalcoatl, leaving that conclusion to the gullible and superstitious minds of the Mexica themselves.
Clever, Guatemoc thought. Very clever!
Then there was the business of the strangers’ helmet. Moctezuma had called for the sacred helm kept in the temple of Hummingbird to be brought forth, and almost lost his senses when he saw similarities between the two objects. Guatemoc was less convinced by the likeness; what interested him more was Cortés’s opportunism in asking for the helmet to be returned filled with grains of gold from the mines, supposedly as a present for his far-off emperor. Were that request to be granted, Guatemoc reasoned, then this daredevil pirate would gain valuable and dangerous knowledge. It would confirm that the land of the Mexica was rich in gold and therefo
re well worth attacking!
So, as the meeting of the Supreme Council went on from afternoon into evening, with many different points of view and many competing arguments expressed, Guatemoc found himself increasingly opposed to the emerging consensus. This was that excuses should be made to refuse the strangers’ wish to come to Tenochtitlan – that the road was too long, that it abounded in thieves, that it was beset by the enemies of the Mexica, that there were dangerous cliffs to scale and rivers to cross, that the passes were too high and frozen all year round … and so on and so forth. At the same time, the strangers’ other wish – that the helmet should be returned filled with grains of gold – was to be granted. And not only that. Moctezuma, who was gaining courage from the idiotic notion that these predators could simply be bought off, was in favour of giving them other gold presents – and in huge quantities. He had in mind the spectacular calendar disk of solid gold, as tall as a man and a span thick, that he had commissioned the year before. To this he would add, since the strangers had also expressed a desire for presents made of silver, a second disk of similar size cast from the highest grade of silver and representing the full moon. There would in addition be ten basket-loads of beautiful gold figures – of animals, birds, gods and goddesses – and ten basket-loads of costly gold jewels, including necklaces, pectorals and arm rings, ankle rings, and many other fine things. Warming even further to the idea, the Great Speaker now insisted that this vast treasure should be prepared with the greatest haste and a caravan made ready to set off for the strangers’ camp near Cuetlaxtlan the next day.