‘The gods themselves?’ wondered Ilhuicamina, whose own face bore the marks of a much earlier encounter with the enemy – in his case a wide, puckered scar where a macuahuitl had struck him, the ugliest part of the injury concealed by a prosthetic nose made of small jade tiles.
‘Then what are those?’ asked Acolmiztli, at forty-two, lean and sinister, he was the oldest man in the squad, but as formidable a warrior as Tlascala had ever produced. He was pointing at a herd of extraordinary beasts, tall as houses, that had just now emerged from behind a dune. In their lower parts these beasts somewhat resembled deer, though they were much larger than any deer Shikotenka had ever hunted. But out of the midst of their backs sprouted the upper bodies of white-skinned bearded men! How was that to be explained? Men seated on deer, perhaps? Or some sort of completely unknown hybrid entities? Anything seemed possible on this day of miracles and wonders.
Another oddity was that the men who stood on two legs on the ground, some busily performing various tasks, others just sauntering around, were decked out in shining, flashing silver that caught and reflected the rays of the sun! So, too, were those formidable man-beasts which now broke into a run, charged up the side of a towering dune and disappeared over its summit in the direction of the beach.
‘They’re wearing some sort of metal armour,’ observed Tree. The big man had a belligerent scowl on his broad, stolid face, and now rose to a crouch, shaking his massive head, his long, tangled hair falling about his powerful shoulders. ‘I say we go grab one or two of them, find out what sort of creatures they are, see if they can fight.’
‘Don’t be so eager,’ Shikotenka hissed, pulling his friend down again. ‘I want to watch them for a day or two, get the measure of them, see how the Mexica are treating them ... ’
‘They’re licking their arses,’ said Chipahua dryly. ‘Just look over there!’ He gestured to the space between two dunes where wooden huts were being erected by teams of Totonac labourers and carpenters under the watchful eye of armed Mexica overseers. The sounds of hammers and saws could be heard faintly on the morning air, and there was a general atmosphere of industrious activity. Many of the white-skinned bearded men – if indeed they were human at all – stood around watching, seemingly on good terms with the Mexica supervisors. Soon afterwards, a long file of Totonac bearers appeared, carrying food baskets on their heads, which they delivered up as though they were sacred offerings.
‘They’re housing them,’ said Chipahua, ‘they’re feeding them, they’ve put their Totonac vassals at their disposal … In short, they’re treating them like royalty.’
‘Or like gods,’ suggested Ilhuicamina.
Shikotenka thought long and hard. The month before, wily old Huicton, spy and emissary for the Texcocan rebel leader Ishtlil, had come to him in Tlascala and offered him an alliance against the Mexica. Shikotenka had turned the offer down, arguing that he had just destroyed an entire Mexica army of more than thirty thousand men, and that Moctezuma was unlikely to trouble him again for a very long while. But Huicton had disagreed: ‘I much regret to inform you that your victory will not be an end to the matter. There is another factor at work, one you may not even be aware of, but I have reason to believe that because of it you and your people will face more – not fewer – attacks from the Mexica in the months ahead. The same will unfortunately be true for Ishtlil’s people and for many others. So, despite your commendably proud and independent stance, the truth is that there has never been a time when an alliance would be more expedient or more worthwhile for Tlascala than it is today … ’
Huicton had then gone on – and at great length! – to tell an incredible story. It seemed Moctezuma was convinced that the white-skinned, bearded god Quetzalcoatl, the fabled ‘Plumed Serpent’, was about to return from across the sea to overthrow him, and to abolish the sacrificial cult that honoured the Mexica war god Hummingbird. It was not just that this was the year One-Reed, in which it had long ago been prophesied that Quetzalcoatl would return; far more ominous had been – a few months earlier – the appearance amongst the Chontal Maya of the Yucatán of a small band of white-skinned, bearded strangers, who possessed the weapons and the attributes of Quetzalcoatl’s legendary demigods. The Maya had driven them off at great cost to themselves, but it seemed Moctezuma was convinced they would return in force, led by Quetzalcoatl himself. The Great Speaker’s whole focus now, therefore, was to gather victims – for some reason exclusively pure, undefiled virgin females – who were to be offered up in a spectacular festival of human sacrifice to feed and flatter Hummingbird, thus persuading the war god to fight alongside the Mexica to defeat Quetzalcoatl.
Although he could not understand the special interest in virgin female victims, Shikotenka was forced to admit that Huicton’s story was not entirely without merit. He, too, had heard rumours of white-skinned bearded strangers being sighted in great ships off the coasts of Mexico, but he refused to believe there was any such god as Quetzalcoatl, or that he would ever return.
‘With respect, Lord Shikotenka,’ Huicton had argued, ‘what you believe or don’t believe isn’t really the issue here. All that matters is what Moctezuma believes. He is mad, of course, you already know that – so please allow me to assure you that he does indeed most certainly believe, and fear in the depths of his black, demented heart, that the return of Quetzalcoatl is imminent. He will let nothing stand in his way; he will sacrifice thousands of virgins, tens of thousands if he can find them – Tlascalans, Totonacs, rebel Texcocans, and any others he can lay his hands on – to prevent that happening. It is for this reason, I urge you, before more lamentable harm and suffering is caused, to accept the alliance that my lord Ishtlil offers you and to join forces with him to bring Moctezuma to his knees.’
‘Tell Lord Ishtlil,’ Shikotenka had replied, ‘that I am grateful for his offer and that I regard him as the enemy of my enemy and therefore as my friend. Nonetheless, we Tlascalans have always walked our own path, and we do not resort to alliances and intrigues. Let us continue, therefore, to fight Moctezuma in our own separate ways – Ishtlil’s Texcocans in their way, we Tlascalans in ours – obliging the madman to divide his forces and do battle on two fronts. If the gods are with us, he will fall.’
It had been a proud statement of Tlascalan independence, but Shikotenka had already had cause to reflect deeply on it over the past month. Huicton’s warning had proved uncannily accurate. True, Shikotenka had destroyed one Mexica army consisting of four full regiments, but five other armies of the same size, twenty regiments in all – a total of one hundred and sixty thousand men – remained in the field, and it seemed that at least one of these armies had been tasked exclusively with the capture of virgin females for sacrifice, just as Huicton had predicted.
He’d been right about the raids on Tlascala too. Far from ceasing, they had intensified. Indeed, it was in an attempt to create a distraction that would draw Moctezuma’s forces away from the Tlascalan highlands that Shikotenka had conceived his plan to attack and destroy the coastal city of Cuetlaxtlan. This outpost of the Mexica empire, so important for the prosperous trade with the Yucatán, had been seized from the Totonacs some seventy years before; the Totonacs themselves were now vassals of the Mexica. Shikotenka had reasoned that if he could take the prize of Cuetlaxtlan, and slaughter its Mexica settlers, then the Totonacs might be persuaded to rise against their overlords.
That was why he was here now, with his four most trusted lieutenants, on this mission of reconnaissance to lay plans for a full-scale attack. But instead he found himself confronted by a war camp of white-skinned, bearded strangers, dressed in metal armour, allied with strange beasts, and waited on hand and foot by the Mexica’s Totonac vassals – clearly acting on the orders of the Mexica – as the gods themselves might expect!
So, yes, Huicton had been right to predict that Shikotenka’s great victory of the past month would not see the end of the Mexica’s quest for sacrificial victims, but – eerily – it now seemed that he h
ad also been right about the return of Quetzalcoatl, or at any rate of beings who had the look of Quetzalcoatl.
But here was the very odd thing! Quetzalcoatl was supposed to be the enemy of Moctezuma, and the enemy of the vile god Hummingbird whom Moctezuma served. So if these strangers had anything to do with Quetzalcoatl, then why were the Mexica feeding them and sheltering them, and why would gods camp out on these pestilential, windblown, fly-infested dunes?
The whole situation was a riddle wrapped inside a puzzle enclosed within a conundrum.
‘I want to catch one,’ said Tree stubbornly. ‘I want to catch one and kill one tonight.’
Shikotenka thought about it.
Maybe Tree was right. When you were confronted by something you didn’t understand, the best thing was to get as close as possible to it.
That way, the truth would come out.
Chapter Eight
Monday 26 April 1519, night
Pepillo pointed at himself. ‘I am a boy,’ he said. He pointed again – ‘boy’. He pointed to Malinal: ‘You are a woman.’ He spread his hands and looked at her expectantly.
Now it was Malinal’s turn. She pointed to herself: ‘Ne cihuatzintli.’ She pointed to Pepillo: ‘Titelpochontli.’ Then she softened her tone and added: ‘Noquichpiltzin’, which meant not just ‘you are a boy’ but rather, as a mother might say to her child, ‘my beloved boy.’ He was sweet, innocent and lonely, and she felt pity for him, understanding, as she’d discovered yesterday, that he’d lost his closest companion in the fighting at Potonchan, a friend named Melchior after whom he had named his pet dog.
Pepillo pointed upwards now and said: ‘Sky.’
Malinal looked up, wondering – did he mean sky? She made an expansive gesture towards the heavens with her hands, raised her eyebrows in query, and said: ‘Ilhuicac?’ Or did he perhaps mean a specific star? She selected one of the brightest, pointed to it, sighting along her arm and said, ‘Citlalin.’
Pepillo nodded, getting the distinction immediately, pointed at the same bright star and said ‘star’, then copied her expansive hand movement and repeated the word ‘sky’.
It was a cloudless night, and the two of them sat alone in the lantern-lit area in front of the kitchen, after the evening meal had been served and all the men had dispersed. Malinal no longer worked in the kitchen, but Cortés had ordered the boy to teach her Castilian – she in return was to teach him Nahuatl – and Pepillo had chosen this place for their classes because he kept his beloved Melchior nearby. The caudillo – the title meant military leader, as Malinal had quickly learned – was plainly a man who understood the power of language, and she was happy he had made his young page her instructor, rather than that envious snake Aguilar, with whom she was forced to work day to day.
Delegations of Mexica officials constantly scurried back and forth between the Spanish camp and the town of Cuetlaxtlan. Their job was to carry the incessant demands made by Cortés for more food, more fresh water, more bearers, more labourers, more carpenters, more women to serve as bedslaves – more of everything! – to the wretched and overburdened governor Pichatzin, and to return with Pichatzin’s responses. These were usually affirmative, but always with qualifications, quibbles, excuses and prevarications. So it was a tedious, time-consuming task. First she must listen to Aguilar as he put the caudillo’s words into Mayan, next she must translate those words into Nahuatl for the benefit of the Mexica officials, and finally she must put the words of the officials into Mayan so that Aguilar could convey them in Castilian to Cortés.
Moreover, there was the complicating factor of Aguilar’s jealousy. His resentment at the privileged position Cortés had given Malinal was driving him – she was beginning to realise – to make deliberate interpreting errors that resulted in confusion and misunderstandings, which he then steadfastly blamed on her. Since the caudillo continued to favour her greatly, she liked to think he saw through Aguilar’s wiles, but still it was disturbing and meant she had to be constantly on her guard. How much easier everything would be if Aguilar could be got out of the way!
Fortunately Malinal had a gift for languages and had always been a fast learner. Indeed, her survival and success during her years amongst the Mexica had depended at least as much on those skills as upon her sexual prowess. She was finding Castilian easy to grasp, though tonight was only her second formal lesson. Of course, she’d already taken every opportunity to learn what she could since she’d been handed over with the other women after the battle at Potonchan, always carefully listening and watching and picking up vocabulary and snatches of conversation. And now, with her new role as interpreter, every minute of every day offered her fresh opportunities as she wrestled with Aguilar’s subterfuge and paid close attention to the words he and Cortés spoke to one another. It was amazing how constant jeopardy and uncertainty focused the mind, but Malinal had high hopes that her work with Pepillo would bring her on even faster in this new language, and she was pleased with the progress they’d made since their first lesson the evening before.
What helped was Pepillo’s sweet nature as did the fact that he was plainly as eager to learn Nahuatl from her as she was to learn Castilian from him. So they both entered into the process with enthusiasm, as though it were a kind of game, fun rather than a chore, and there was even some laughter between them.
But this laughter was tempered with the deep sadness Malinal sensed within Pepillo. Like her friend Tozi, who was about the same age, not more than fifteen years under the sun, it seemed that he had already seen too much of the cruelties of the world and grown old before his time. And, like Tozi, he had a good heart and a generous spirit. Unlike Tozi, however, this boy had no magical powers, no burning purpose, no thirst for revenge. He was just kind and decent and good – and damaged. More important almost than his role in her life as a language teacher was the other lesson he had already taught her, which was that these Spaniards, for all their formidable powers, were exactly like any other people – vulnerable, in need of love, and even capable, in their own way, of giving it.
‘Puertocarrero,’ Pepillo said suddenly.
Malinal looked up. She couldn’t bear the rough, barbarous, stinking creature, to whom Cortés had given her as a bed slave.
Pepillo then said something else, a short string of unfamiliar words, the meaning of which Malinal could not grasp. She gazed at him blankly.
‘Puertocarrero,’ he repeated, at the same time making the face of someone who has smelled a bad thing and she suddenly understood. Pepillo was trying to tell her that he knew she didn’t like Puertocarrero. He said the words again: ‘You don’t like him, do you?’
‘No,’ she answered, in halting Castilian. ‘Don’t like. Don’t like Puertocarrero.’
* * *
Much later, after Malinal had retired with a grimace to Puertocarrero’s hut, Pepillo untied Melchior and headed out past the guards and into the dunes. He was happy to see how the young lurcher was rapidly overcoming the effects of the whipping Vendabal had administered six days before, shrugging off the stiffness of the wounds, rebuilding his strength and day by day recovering more of his exuberant spirit.
Pepillo often wished that he could be a dog, living in the now, reacting immediately to everything and quickly forgetting pains and woes, but unfortunately it was not so easy for him. The worst of it was he could not forget – indeed, he swore, he would never forget – the original Melchior, his best and only friend. Nor could he cast from memory how the two of them had followed that evil, murderous friar Gaspar Muñoz into the forest on the island of Cozumel, or what had happened after – their capture, their near murder and their rescue at the last moment by Bernal Díaz, Francisco Mibiercas and Alonso de la Serna. Pepillo shivered as other images streamed unbidden into his mind – the hatchet in his hands as he’d hacked at Muñoz’s skull, his own part in the disposal of the friar’s body and, a month later, the desperate fight on the summit of the great pyramid of Potonchan, the long-haired Mayan warrior who
’d straddled Melchior, viciously stabbing him with a flint blade, Melchior’s death a few hours later, his burial, and finally Bernal Díaz’s kindly gift of the lurcher pup – the new Melchior, now off somewhere excitedly exploring the dunes.
Pepillo came to his usual spot overlooking the ocean. He sat down to watch the light of the stars and the waning moon reflecting from the waters, to listen to the soft sound of the waves lapping against the beach below, and feel the cooling southern breeze in his hair. Melchior ranged further and further every night, but sooner or later he always came back, appearing like a ghost out of the darkness, and Pepillo was content to wait here and think his thoughts and dwell in his memories.
* * *
They had made a long detour to the north of the camp and now approached it by way of the beach, moving silent as ghosts in the darkness. Shikotenka had chosen this route because a fair breeze was blowing from the south that would carry their scent away from the strange beasts resembling deer that some of the white-skins rode. The notion that the creatures might be hybrids had already been laid to rest when several of the white-skins had been seen to dismount from their backs, but extreme caution was still in order until the nature of the strangers and their animals was better understood.
Shikotenka led the climb up the side of the dunes from the beach. Like him, all his crew were skilled night fighters; the darkness held no terrors for them. They’d fought so many engagements together that they didn’t need to plan, didn’t need to speak – every movement, every action, was second nature to them, so perfectly coordinated that they were more like a single creature, united in single-minded intent, than five separate men.