The Seven Serpents Trilogy

  He spoke calmly, however, of small things, as is the Indian custom, then in a distressed tone said, “The em peror has had a vision. Perhaps it is not a vision, but a presence. There is a difference. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking in Christian terms, “I do un derstand.”

  “Yesterday the vision came,” said Tzapotlan. “This is how. The emperor awakened from his sleep in the af ternoon. He lit his pipe and smoked. In the smoke a face began to form—the eyes first, then the nose, then the lips—until it was a face looking at him. Until it was your face looking at him.”

  The young lord glanced at me, his eyes half closed and clouded, as if he had been partaking of teonanacatl. This was a black fungus that the Azteca ate with honey. He had offered me one of these little black buttons the previous day.

  “Was the emperor smoking something that would give him visions?” I asked.

  “A few mixitl seeds, but not so many that he would see a face. Your face. Yet this is not all. A hunter came from the lake. With him he had a bird that he had caught in his fowling net. The emperor had never seen a bird like it. It had feathers that grew in circles, like eyes, and the eyes were blue colored, like yours. But this was not the thing that made the bird so odd. Its eyes were mirrors that showed pictures of the sky and the stars. When the Revered Speaker looked into the bird’s eyes he did not see the sky and the stars, only a picture of many men, and they were sitting on the backs of deer, holding spears in their hands and riding fast.”

  Lord Tzapotlan paused to allow me to speak.

  “He saw them clearly,” I said. “Armed men riding on the backs of deer?”

  “Clearly in the round mirrors of the bird’s two eyes.”

  “What then?”

  “Then the Great Speaker was alarmed and he sent for the wisest of his tomalpouhque. He said to him, ‘Do you see what I have seen? Look and you will find a crowd of people coming.’ But before the soothsayer could answer, the bird fluttered its wings and vanished.”

  I concealed my disbelief as best I could. The dwarf got up and put wood in the brazier.

  “We’ll never leave the city,” he said to me, “except as hummingbirds.”

  “The emperor,” Tzapotlan said, “is much disturbed by these men who ride on the backs of deer and carry spears. He did not sleep last night for thinking about these things. This morning he called his soothsayers, but they could not help his mind.”

  “Why do you tell me about the emperor’s distress?”

  “Because I believe that you might counsel with him. He looks upon you as a wise young man, as do I, from the questions you asked about our country and the love you show for your own. Besides, it is your face that he saw clearly in the smoke cloud.”

  Lord Tzapotlan went on. “The thing of the bird is only the latest of many evils that have come to pass. Nine years ago the lake of Téxcoco, for no reason that could be seen, overflowed and furiously swept off many of the buildings in this city. Only a year later, one of the temples of the pyramid mysteriously took fire, and no body could stop it. Then there were three comets in the sky. Then a light broke forth in the east and rose in clouds that tossed red sparks everywhere. The emperor took counsel with Nezahualpilli, but the royal sage cast even a deeper gloom upon him. He predicted, three times over, that these events foretold the downfall of Tenochtitlán. Its downfall!”

  The lord glanced at our few belongings, which were in a roll beside the brazier. He must have smiled to himself, knowing as he did that the emperor would never allow us to leave the city.

  “You have told me your plans,” he said, “and I un derstand them. But you are needed here. Come, my dear friends.”

  A number of armed servants had appeared with Lord Tzapotlan. One of them opened the door for us to pass.

  The dwarf said, “Shall we go or not? I would as soon die here and now as later on the pyramid.”

  “We say a prayer and go, Guillermo.”

  The emperor was finishing his breakfast as we arrived. He sat behind a gold screen so that no one except the servants would see him, and they were removing it as we were ushered in. A servant held out a gold finger bowl. The emperor waved it away. He had eaten noth ing from the dozens of gold dishes that covered the table.

  This chamber, which adjoined the throne room, was less than half its size. The walls were painted with bright scenes and hung with draperies of rich quetzal plumes. Four dwarfs, a hunchback, and a group of musicians huddled in a dim corner, as if the emperor had banished them from his sight.

  We entered the room, not walking directly toward him, but to one side along the wall, as we were in structed. We bowed and touched the floor with our hands and remembered not to look at him.

  Moctezuma said nothing for a long time.

  His skin was pale and he seemed to be in a trance; his gaze moved slowly about the room, over the various scenes painted on the walls. On one scene, which depicted him as a young man receiving the jeweled diadem of an emperor, his gaze rested. He looked away at other scenes—some of battles fought and victims slain, others of festivals and flowery meadows—but always his eyes came back to the one that showed him receiving his jeweled crown.

  Lord Tzapotlan spoke in a whisper. The emperor awakened from his trance and motioned to his servants, one of whom disappeared and quickly returned with a roll of sisal cloth.

  The emperor’s gaze again drifted away to the various scenes on the walls. Again Lord Tzapotlan whispered to him. The emperor lowered his eyes and by chance our gazes met. There was fear in his eyes and something more terrible than fear.

  Calling the interpreter to his side, he said to me, “Five days ago, perhaps it was six days—I have lost count. It was the day after the hunter brought the bird that had eyes like mirrors and I saw men riding the backs of deer. It was two days before that day the runners came from the coast, from the sea where fish and turtles are caught. They brought news of a strange sight, which from excitement they were unable to describe. There upon I sent artists to paint the strange things the runners had seen.”

  The emperor was silent for a while, then he roused himself and spoke to the servants.

  Two men unloosed the roll they had brought, holding it up between them. On it, painted in true colors, using white for the sand, blue for the sea, black for the caravels, and white for their sails, was a picture of a fleet rid ing at anchor behind a small island covered with palm trees. A Spanish fleet!

  My astonishment was greater than Moctezuma’s must have been when the messengers first unrolled the painting before his startled gaze.

  The dwarf whispered, “Help us, Blessed Mary of Se ville!” which was as close to my thoughts as anything could be.

  “What does this mean?” the emperor said. “What do you see before you?”

  “It is a fleet of big canoes,” I answered. “I have seen one of these canoes before.”

  There were eleven ships in the picture, some large, some small, but all of them unmistakably Spanish, even to the Spanish cross on the sails.

  “From where do they come, these big canoes?” the emperor said.

  “From a far country, Great Speaker, a country east beyond the sea. Or so I have been told.”

  “Who are these people?”

  “They call themselves Spaniards.”

  It was a cold morning with a north wind blowing. A pinewood fire was blazing in a pit in the center of the room, but servants brought Moctezuma a feathered blanket and put it around him. He looked cold and fearful.

  “Do you have a message from these people?” I said.

  “Two have come. One came yesterday and one came this morning. They were signed by a man whose name cannot be translated.”

  A servant handed me a letter written in Nahuatl, which I could not read, but at the end of the letter there was a Spanish rubric with many elaborate flourishes that I deciphered as the name of someone who called himself Hernán Cortés.

  I had never known anyone called Cort?
?s, though the man most surely would have lived in Seville at some time in his life. The ships that journeyed to the New World were all outfitted in this city and sailed from there.

  “What do these two messages say?” I asked.

  “They say that the man wishes to come to Tenochtitlán. This is what he said in the first letter. In the sec ond letter he says that he is already on his way to Tenochtitlán.”

  “Have you answered the letters?”

  “The first one only.”

  “What did you answer?”

  “I said that he must not come.”

  “What else, Great Speaker?”

  “I sent him gold. A gold disk in the shape of the sun, twelve spans high. As high as you stand.”

  “The last thing to give a Spaniard,” the dwarf whis pered. “It’s like giving honey to a hornet.”

  “These men ride on the backs of deer?” the emperor asked.

  “Not on deer, but on large animals.”

  “They ride with spears and thunder sticks?”

  “Yes, with many weapons when I saw them.”

  The emperor was silent. Then he spoke again and his voice now was the voice of a child, not that of an em peror.

  “Do you think,” he said, “that these are the same men I saw in the eyes of the fowler’s bird?”

  “Yes, Revered Speaker, the same.”

  Servants brought a second roll of sisal cloth, which Moctezuma carefully examined. It was a picture of a Spanish officer in helmet and cuirass, surrounded by soldiers, apparently a portrait of Hernán Cortés.

  I could feel the emperor’s gaze fixed upon me, com paring me to the men in the picture, the bearded Span iards, tanned from long exposure to the sun, and short, not much taller than the Maya, small men even in their heavy armor.

  He roused himself and turned to Lord Tzapotlan.

  “Looking out my window this morning,” he said, “I saw the temple of Uitzilopochtli shining brightly in the sun. That is good. Now we must gather many prison ers.”

  Lord Tzapotlan gave a figure in Nahuatl that I translated as one thousand.

  “Gather twice that number!” the emperor demanded. “Lord Uitzilopochtli will need all of his strength. Now more than ever!”

  CHAPTER 18

  MOCTEZUMA DID NOT MOVE FROM HIS JAGUAR BENCH. HE SAT QUIETLY with hands folded, gazing beyond the chamber, as if his soul had fled to a distant place.

  Lord Tzapotlan spoke to him, but he did not answer.

  Then the lord called upon the clowns and they tum bled about while musicians played on their flutes. Moctezuma’s gaze never changed. At last the golden screen was brought and placed in front of him.

  At once the nobles began to argue. The soothsayers, a dozen old men in yellow gowns and pointed hats, joined the argument, which concerned Hernán Cortés and how he should be treated.

  The time had come. Ya! It was here.

  Without delay, taking the dwarf by the hand, I quietly pushed through the excited crowd. Outside the chamber, we ran through the dimly lit passage that led back to the bridge we had crossed a short time before, to stairs that wound downward from the bridge to the canal.

  Here we stopped and looked back. There was no sign that we were being followed.

  A double canoe festooned with pennons was nosing up to the wharf, a feathered carpet was spread out, and a lord and his large retinue of servants, musicians, and guards were making ready to come ashore.

  We waited until everyone was on the wharf and drums were beating.

  Beyond the canoe was a line of barges tied to stone rings. The canal ran beneath the emperor’s palace, and at its far end was a glimmer of sunlight. Judging that the lake lay in that direction, we slipped through the crowd and raced along the wharf toward the end of the tunnel.

  We came upon a barge piled high with garbage that was being pushed along by two men with poles. We waited until, having run out of space to walk, they turned about, trotted forward to the bow, and set their poles again.

  With Cantú in my arms, I made a leap from the wharf to the moving barge, with good fortune landing on my feet. The two bargemen had not seen us, but they were toiling slowly along the deck. We could either grapple with them or try to hide.

  We clawed into the garbage, dug away until we reached bottom. We pulled the rank stuff over us, lay quiet, and waited. Bent over their long poles, grunting as they came, the two men reached the stern, turned around, and went forward to start poling again.

  The barge moved into the sunlight. The air freshened.

  Peering out through a hole I had left myself, I saw the temple of Uitzilopochtli behind us. To the left was a causeway crowded with people, to the right an expanse of water with white houses beyond and some small tem ples.

  We covered our heads now that we had left the half-light of the tunnel, but the smell grew stronger and I began to cough. There were no sounds from the dwarf. For a while I thought he might be dead. Then he said something that sounded as if he were out of his wits and whispered, “He, he.”

  We were moving along faster at this time, in water no deeper than my waist. I thought about wading ashore, carrying the dwarf on my back, but we were still too close to the main part of the city.

  An hour must have passed, the two Indians tramping back and forth with their long poles, when one of them, a squat young man dressed in a breechclout, hesitated as he reached the stern, fell to his knees less than an arm’s length away, then looked squarely at me, blinking his eyes in surprise.

  Lacking any choice, I squirmed out of the garbage, picked up the startled Indian, who was half my size, and threw him overboard. The second Indian turned back when he heard the splash, and as he reached me I wres tled him along the deck and finally into the lake.

  With the poles we went on for half a league and guided the scow ashore. We washed ourselves, which took a long time, and, finding that we had been this road before, found the causeway that led on to Cholólan.

  Fires burned in the courtyards we passed, but few people were on the road. We traveled until it was too dark to see, then found a place to sleep.

  It was near a hut where a woman was selling maize cakes, but I had nothing to pay for food except the one pearl left from the hoard I had started with. Since we would be traveling in the guise of pochtéca and needed merchandise and decent clothes, we could not part with it. We slept, therefore, on empty stomachs.

  At the marketplace in Ayotzingo I traded the pearl for two sets of rough clothes, including sandals for the dwarf, who had somehow lost his, traveling staffs, and a bundle of trading goods. By noon we were on the road again, walking eastward in bright sunshine toward the town of Amecameca.

  We went fast, much faster than when we had been traveling toward Tenochtitlán weeks before.

  Fear sped our footsteps. Fear that Lord Tzapotlan had sent his men in search of us. Fear that the men whom the Spaniard Cortés had left behind would ven ture out and in time happen upon the Santa Margarita. Fear of Chalco, who by now must have found his way back to the island.

  On the fourth day, as we were leaving a grove of trees, there were rapid steps behind us. We hid in the bushes until two youths passed by. I recognized them by their blue headbands as the emperor’s runners.

  Not long afterward, another pair passed us going in the opposite direction. I tried to stop them, thinking that they might be carrying news about Hernán Cortés, but with a wave of their hands, they sped on.

  People we talked to in Amecameca when we stopped to buy food recognized us.

  Children, attracted by the giant and the dwarf, gath ered around and followed us through the streets, shout ing friendly words, entreating us not to leave them. But we went on as rapidly as Cantú’s short legs would permit—some five leagues each day, traveling from dawn to nightfall—with me worried that he would collapse on the trail, unable to take another step.

  When we came to the high country between the snowy peaks of Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl, we suf fered from the co
ld and could only travel at midday, when the sun was warm.

  One morning, halfway through the high pass, the dwarf could not get to his feet. Fortunately, there was a village nearby where I located two strong young men who agreed to carry him in a litter.

  We traveled faster now. And since we were leaving the cold peaks behind and the trail trended down, we covered more leagues each day than at any time since we had left Tenochtitlán.

  Near the city of Cholólan we came upon four of the runners, who were passing bags to each other on the trail. We stopped, and I asked the two members of the team running westward from the coast if they had heard news of men with beards who were riding on the backs of deer. Both men shook their heads.

  In Cholólan I asked a youth if he had heard anything of bearded men carrying sticks that made thunder and spouted fire.

  “Tell me more about these men who carry thunder sticks,” he said.

  “There is much to tell,” I said, “but there is no time.”

  The first we heard of Cortés was when we came to the city of Texcála. Though Cantú was on his feet once more, we had been held back by a norte, a freezing wind that covered the land with dust.

  It was shortly after dawn when we reached Texcála, but torches flamed on the temple steps, drums were beating, and people crowded the streets. I thought that it must be a festival day. Before we had gone far, however, we discovered that the city was under siege.

  Hernán Cortés and his army stood at the gates.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE ONLY ROAD TO THE SEA WAS BLOCKED BY THE SPANIARDS AND THE Texcaltéca, which made it necessary for us to find a way around the two armies.

  We wasted the rest of the day discovering that a trail used by deer hunters skirted the city. It led for a league and more in the opposite direction from the way we had to travel, made a winding loop back through a steep ravine, but at last came out on the trail.

  With the armies at our backs we made haste along the road to the sea.

  There were signs that farmers had been harvesting their fields when Cortés came by and that the Spaniards had stopped to raid the crops and burn the huts where the Indians lived. There were no farmers in the fields, and the only life I saw was a stray dog that stared at me from behind a tuna bush. The big, black-winged zopilotes had begun to gather in the sky.