‘Not so bad, all things considered. He was lucky the knife got stuck in his ribs and didn’t push through to his vitals. He’ll be right as rain in a week or two … Here … ’ The caudillo stepped close to Malinal, embraced and kissed her, but she pulled away.
‘He was brave,’ she continued.
‘Who was brave?’ Cortés sought another kiss and again she resisted.
‘The boy, Pepillo. He was brave.’
‘Yes!’
‘And gentleman?’
‘Yes … ’ A guarded look had appeared in the caudillo’s eyes. ‘What do you want from me, Malinal?’
‘Want you to give Pepillo his dog back.’
‘You know I can’t do that, my dear.’
‘You are caudillo! Can do what you like. You say “Vendabal give dog” and Vendabal give dog.’
‘Exactly!’ The curtains hanging across the open door of the pavilion were swept aside and Escalante strode in. ‘Vendabal’s not the captain-general of this expedition, Hernán, you are! And we’re not talking about treasure, for God’s sake, just a bloody dog.’
The caudillo’s face had darkened. ‘Were you eavesdropping, Juan?’
‘I was coming to see you anyway and I couldn’t help but overhear. I’ve got a soft spot for that boy and I want to see right done by him. Give him back his dog.’
Cortés glanced at Malinal, then back to Escalante again. ‘I feel conspired against,’ he said with a rueful smile. ‘My lover on one side, my dear friend on the other. What am I to do?’
‘Give Pepillo dog, then we shut up?’ Malinal suggested. She was determined to have her way on this.
‘Go on, Hernán. Just say yes,’ urged Escalante. ‘The boy did win you a thousand pesos, after all, and I’d say our army’s gained another swordsman. Not a bad exchange for a dog, all things considered.’
Strangely, because this really was such a small matter, and one so easily resolved, Cortés seemed locked in some fierce internal struggle. What was it, Malinal wondered, that she didn’t know? What was driving him? To be sure, he placed great weight on his frequent dreams of Saint Peter, and she chose to believe the dreams were true communications from the heavenly powers. Even so, why would the dead Christian holy man, who the caudillo said held the keys of heaven itself, disturb his mind with dreams about a dog? It made no sense!
Cortés had reached a resolution. ‘Oh very well, the pair of you,’ he grumbled. ‘I’m persuaded. Send word to Vendabal he’s to return the dog to Pepillo.’
‘I’ll tell him myself,’ said Escalante, turning to go.
‘I thought you wanted to see me about something,’ Cortés reminded him.
‘I did, I have, and I’m very happy at the result.’
With a wide grin, Escalante stooped out through the curtains, leaving Malinal alone with Cortés. She moved towards her master, sensual now, ready for anything.
* * *
Night had fallen when they were done. Cortés was a forceful man but he had rarely made love with such urgency or such passion. ‘You see,’ Malinal said as she dressed. ‘It is nice to be nice.’
‘Bah! Bugger nice. I just wanted to tup you. I knew you’d be more willing if I gave you your way.’
They paid a visit to Pepillo in the colony’s two-roomed hospital. Melchior, newly restored to his young master, was lying at the foot of the bed and regarded them with a baleful eye. The dog was huge now, though still little more than a pup.
‘Thank you for letting me have him back,’ Pepillo said.
‘It’s nothing, lad,’ Cortés said, as though it were all his doing. ‘You earned it. Keep him lean, keep him savage. That’s my advice to you. If it comes to a fight with the Mexica, he’ll be needed. Everyone will be needed.’
‘What about Santisteban? Is he all right?’
‘He’ll live … until we hang him tomorrow.’
‘Hang him, sir? You mustn’t do that.’
‘Why ever not? Treacherous bastard pulled a knife on you. Broke the one rule of the duel. That’s a capital offence. I thought you’d be happy to see him dead.’
‘No I wouldn’t, sir. Not at all.’
‘So shall I have his hand cut off? What about that? Or maybe a good scourging? A hundred lashes should serve him out if he’s to escape hanging. Since you’re the injured party, you get to decide.’
‘Pardon him, sir, is my request. I’ve suffered no serious injury and, as you say, we’ll need every man if it comes to a fight with the Mexica.’
Pepillo sounded so tired, thought Malinal. Gentle, sweet-natured boy. If there were more like him, this world would not be so dark.
* * *
After the pair had gone, Pepillo received a visit from Escalante, who was carrying a cloth-wrapped bundle. ‘Glad to see you’ve got your dog back,’ he said.
‘I still can’t believe it.’ Pepillo rested his hand on Melchior’s head. ‘The caudillo can be so kind.’
‘He can – though sometimes he needs a little encouragement to bring out his better side. Like all of us, he has a devil whispering in one ear and an angel in the other.’
Escalante unwrapped the bundle as he spoke, and Pepillo recognised the beautiful broadsword he’d been allowed to use in their practice session. ‘I’ve brought you a present,’ the captain said. ‘You fought like Amadis himself today, and a bold knight errant must have a sword of his own.’
‘Oh, but sir, you can’t give me that!’
‘I keep telling you not to call me sir!’ Escalante smiled. ‘First names are good between friends. And I certainly can give you this sword – ’ he passed it over – ‘so here it is.’
‘But Juan, it was for your son … ’
‘He’s in a better place now. With him gone, I can think of no one more deserving of it than you. Indeed, Pepillo, if you will allow me to say so, you’ve become a son to me these past weeks, and since you’re an orphan, I’ve taken steps with the notary to name you as my legal heir.’
Pepillo was so overwhelmed with emotion at Escalante’s nobility and kindness that he began to cry.
‘There, there, lad,’ said the captain. ‘Dry your eyes, for I wish you joy.’
* * *
When Tozi awoke, it was dark. Her chest and her right hand hurt mightily, and a small flickering fire built under a rocky overhang revealed a lurid scene. She sat up fast. Three wizened old men with something of the appearance of spider monkeys, naked but for loincloths, their faces and bodies painted with fantastic designs, were crouched around her chanting very softly, almost as though they did not want to be heard. She recognised some words in their chant but others were completely alien to her. ‘Who are you?’ she asked. She resisted the urge to fade, but couldn’t quite hide the alarm in her voice.
‘Ah,’ one of them replied, speaking now definitely in Nahuatl. ‘The sleeper awakes … You have fallen into good hands, my dear, don’t you worry. If we’d been Chichemecs you’d be dead by now, and most likely eaten – certainly not cured of that very nasty snake bite. But luckily for you, we’re not furious cannibals who dine on helpless maidens … ’
Tozi gave him a suspicious glare: ‘Who are you then?’
The elder who had addressed her puffed out his scrawny chest. ‘We are medicine men of the Huichol nation,’ he said. ‘Good fortune put you in the path of the greatest healers on earth.’
Tozi gingerly touched her own chest. She felt battered, as though she had been punched repeatedly. ‘You hit me,’ she said accusingly.
The elder’s deeply lined face took on a severe, scolding look. ‘Well, what do you expect?’ he said. ‘Your heart had stopped. Would you have preferred we didn’t restart it?’
‘No! I’m grateful to you for that.’ Tozi realised that her throat was parched. ‘Do you have water?’ she asked.
The elder reached into the shadows behind him, found a half-full skin and passed it to her. She drank greedily before a thought struck her and she paused. ‘You have more?’
‘We have more
,’ he said, ‘you may finish that one if you wish.’
The other two watched her with glinting eyes, saying nothing as she upended the skin and finished it in five swallows. ‘They don’t speak?’ she asked when she was done.
‘They do.’ A sour face from the elder. ‘Usually too much, with boringly pointless excursions from the subject, long-winded soliloquies and tedious self-congratulation, so you may consider yourself doubly blessed, not only that we found you and saved your life, but also that only I amongst the three of us speak the barbaric pidgin of the Mexica, which abomination I was forced to learn as a child.’
‘So you were chanting in Huichol, you and your friends?’
‘Yes. The noble tongue.’
‘It sounds a lot like Nahuatl … ’
‘Ugh! Yes, I have to agree. There are some family resemblances. But it is true, is it not, that within the same family one may sometimes find one brother who is intelligent, tall, comely and perfectly formed in features, limb and manners, and another who is small, retarded, ugly, misshapen and vulgar … This is the case with our beautiful Huichol and the hideous argot of the Mexica.’ He paused, seeming to consider something: ‘You are not, I suppose, Mexica yourself?’
‘No,’ said Tozi. ‘I hate them. I was five years old when I first set eyes on Tenochtitlan. My mother always told me we came from Aztlán.’
The elder glanced quickly at his friends. They glanced back. The three of them then conversed in urgent whispered tones, of which Tozi understood perhaps one word in twenty, but those few words included ‘witch,’ ‘magic’, ‘Aztlán’, ‘Chicomoztoc’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘Chichemec’, ‘Moctezuma’ and, most chillingly of all, ‘Acopol’.
‘What are you talking about?’ she asked.
‘You, my dear,’ the elder replied. ‘It seems it’s not enough that we must save you from snake bite, sunstroke and dehydration … A witch of Aztlán is spoken of in our prophecies. It’s said she will do battle for the light against the forces of darkness.’ His eyes narrowed and a look of fierce concentration animated his lined, expressive face. ‘Tell me … Is the name Acopol familiar to you?’
When she made no reply, he leaned closer, studying her. ‘You’ve met him!’ he said a moment later. ‘I can see it in your eyes! You met Acopol in Tenochtitlan! Do I guess right? Is he the reason you’re here now?’ Urgency entered his tone: ‘You must allow us to tutor you, my child!’
Tozi felt acutely uncomfortable and defensive at the mention of Acopol, but at the same time intrigued by the reference to prophecy. ‘I don’t need tutoring,’ she said. ‘I can take care of myself.’
‘I’m sure you can! We saw how you summoned the spell of invisibility when you were sleepwalking in the desert. That’s quite a formidable skill you have there. It’s more than enough to protect you in the normal way of things. But Acopol is not a normal man. I’m afraid your magic tricks won’t work with him.’
Tozi desperately wanted to change the subject. ‘It doesn’t make sense that you saw me walking in the desert,’ she objected, her voice rising, a hint of anger in it. ‘After the snake bit me, I sat under a saguaro cactus. I didn’t go anywhere.’
‘Well, so you may think, but you certainly weren’t sitting when we found you. You were walking. You had been walking in the open desert for a very long while with your arm swollen and your heart beating too fast and your breathing very harsh and irregular. Sometimes you became invisible; perhaps this was how you avoided the Chichemec scouts.’
Other than in her visions, Tozi was sure she hadn’t walked anywhere. Yet when she looked more carefully at her present surroundings, she realised she was in a very different place from the flatlands where she’d been bitten that morning. The flickering flames of the little fire under the overhang didn’t reveal much, but there were bright stars overhead and – by the light of these – she saw they were camped in a narrow defile no more than a dozen paces wide, perhaps a side branch of a canyon, between high walls of sheer rock.
‘What Chichemec scouts?’ she asked suddenly.
‘You mean you don’t know the Chichemecs are on the war path?’
‘I’ve seen no sign of Chichemecs or anyone else in these parts until I met you.’
‘Then you’re either exceptionally lucky, or protected by some god, because Acopol really stirred them up before he left for Tenochtitlan and they’re swarming like hornets from a broken nest.’
‘If they’re swarming like hornets, what are you doing here, the three of you? Huichols are no friends of the Chichemecs, as I recall.’
‘This is the season of the deer hunt,’ the elder said, ‘and we follow where the deer lead.’
‘Deer?’ Tozi laughed. ‘In this desert? You must be joking.’
‘Ah yes, but, you see, ours are a very special kind of deer …
Chapter Thirty-One
Monday 26 July 1519 to Monday 16 August 1519
‘Among other things that we are sending to Your Highness by way of these our representatives are our instructions that they plead with Your Majesty on no account to give any governorship in perpetuity, or judicial powers, to Don Diego de Velázquez. If any shall have been given him, then they should be revoked forthwith, because it is not for the benefit of the Royal Crown that the aforementioned Diego de Velázquez should have authority or favour in these New Lands of Your Majesty, which, as we have seen up to now and as we hope, are very rich. Should the aforementioned Diego de Velázquez be granted any powers, far from benefiting Your Majesty’s service, we foresee that we vassals of Your Royal Highness, who have begun to settle and live in these lands, would be most ill treated by him. For we think that what we have now done in Your Majesty’s service, that is to send You such gold and silver and jewellery as we have been able to obtain in these lands, would not have been his intention.’
It had proved difficult, but not impossible, to write with a broken index finger; though far from ideal, Pepillo had discovered he could grip the quill between his thumb and his second finger. For the past week, since his other injuries were healing well, he had been hard at work. The task was to create a final draft of the letter to the king that Cortés had been dictating virtually every day since the end of February, to do so in such a form that it would appear to come from the settlers of Villa Rica de la Veracruz rather than from the caudillo himself, and to ensure that it not only described all the events, negotiations, battles and travails they had passed through, but also that in every way possible – both subtle and direct – it served to blacken the name of Diego de Velázquez and put Cortés in the best possible light.
Now, on the morning of Monday 26 July, just in time to be carried aboard the Santa Luisa with all the treasure that Puertocarrero and Montejo had been charged with delivering to the king, the letter was complete. Pepillo read it aloud to Cortés with a sense of quiet satisfaction at a job well done.
‘We, the inhabitants and citizens of this town and colony of Villa Rica de la Veracruz,’ the letter concluded, ‘do entreat Your Majesty to order and provide a decree and letters patent in favour of Don Hernándo Cortés, Captain and Chief Justice of Your Royal Highness, so that he may govern us until this land is conquered and pacified, and for as long as Your Majesty may wish, since he is a person well suited for such a position. The treasures which we send you herewith, over and above the one-fifth which belongs to Your Majesty, are offered in Your Service by Don Hernándo Cortés and the Council of Villa Rica de la Veracruz and are the following … ’
The itemised list of the treasures annexed to the letter excluded certain items that had been given to Puertocarrero and Montejo, but still ran to many pages. ‘Truly a king’s ransom, sir,’ Pepillo dared to comment as he finished the reading and passed the complete document to his master.
‘Let’s hope the king sees it that way!’ Cortés replied, ‘for if he does not, there’s damn all I can do. The die is cast.’
The final touch was to have the letter signed on behalf of all the colonists by the algu
acil, regidores, treasurer, veedor and other officials of the town, as well as ten of the common soldiers.
Three hours later, taking advantage of the afternoon ebb tide, the Santa Luisa sailed.
* * *
Cortés stood with Alvarado on the headland, watching the Santa Luisa as she left the bay under a cloud of sail, drawing a clear, straight wake behind her. It would be three hours at least before she disappeared from view over the western horizon, but there was no calling her back now and the die was indeed cast.
‘Any chance they’ll betray us, do you think?’ Alvarado asked, giving voice to Cortés’s own thoughts.
‘In this life I’ve come to expect treachery,’ he replied, ‘but honestly I don’t think so. Puertocarrero will act as a check on Montejo and Montejo on Puertocarrero. Besides, both men are in my pocket – quite apart from the previous bribes they’ve had from me, the treasures they’ll deliver to the king exclude ten per cent for each of them, skimmed off the top before the inventory was prepared.’
‘Ha!’ Alvarado exclaimed, ‘ten per cent per man, eh? Escudero tried to convince me you were giving Puertocarrero a full thirty per cent just for himself … ’
Cortés raised his eyebrow. ‘That would have been excessive … ’
‘But of course he also wanted me to believe that the treasure would never reach the king – that Puertocarrero would take his thirty per cent and your father would hold the other seventy in safekeeping for you.’
‘But naturally you didn’t believe any of this?’
‘If I had we wouldn’t be standing here now, Hernán, and Escudero wouldn’t have had his neck stretched. You’re a snake and the very devil, but I know you’re playing for higher stakes than treasures that can be packed in a single ship.’
‘You are right, Pedro. I am playing for a world.’
‘Then make sure my share will be a kingdom at the very least, old friend.’