The day had worn on. In the mid-afternoon Guatemoc rebuffed Mecatl yet again but the physician refused to leave the room. ‘I cannot,’ he said. ‘it’s more than my life is worth. The Lord Speaker himself commands you to drink this medicine.’
‘My respects to the Lord Speaker,’ Guatemoc replied wearily, ‘but my body commands me to sleep, so please go away.’
The physician had tucked the bottle inside his robes again – a good sign. ‘You put me in an impossible position, sire,’ he said, wringing his hands.
‘Come back tonight,’ Guatemoc replied. ‘I will, for the Lord Speaker’s sake, attempt your elixir then.’
‘Do I have your promise on that, sire?’
‘You have my promise.’
‘Very well. I will return tonight.’
Shortly before sunset came the news that Cuitláhuac had reached Tenochtitlan and was making preparations to infiltrate the hospital in secret with a few of his most trusted men.
The trap was baited and set. All that remained was to wait.
Two hours after dark, Mecatl entered Guatemoc’s room, moved to his bedside, produced the medicine bottle and bent over him, oozing false concern. ‘The night is well advanced, lord. You must drink the elixir again.’
Guatemoc gave him a stony glare: ‘Clear off, you toad. I’ve told you a dozen times today I don’t have the stomach for it.’
‘Against my better judgement, sire, I have allowed you to postpone your medication, but you promised me you would drink it this evening.’
‘Allowed, you say? Allowed me? You little quack. I’m a prince of the realm and I do as I please.’ And with that Guatemoc thrust out his hand from under the covers, gripped Mecatl by the throat and drew the doctor’s fat, sweating face towards his own. ‘Get out of my sight!’ he bellowed, and tightened his grip for a moment before shoving the other man away.
The words ‘get out of my sight’ were the agreed signal; behind the doctor, Guatemoc saw the door open – saw his father Cuitláhuac and three men at arms silently enter the room. Unaware of the threat, Mecatl straightened and gulped in air, a look of real anger for the first time crossing his face. He’d held on tightly to the medicine bottle, which he now unstoppered. ‘I am afraid I must insist,’ he said. A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘The Great Speaker is deeply concerned for your welfare. My orders are to ensure, by any means, that you drink the elixir.’
‘And how, may I ask, do you propose to do that?’
Behind Mecatl, Guatemoc saw another man slip into the room. He recognised Acamap, Cuitláhuac’s personal physician.
Mecatl was too busy digging his own grave to notice. ‘If I must,’ he said with more self-confidence than he usually expressed, ‘I am authorised to call for assistance … I will have you restrained, young Guatemoc, and I will pour the elixir down your throat with a funnel. My master the Speaker requires it.’
‘Oh does he indeed?’ said Cuitláhuac in a cold, quiet voice. Rushing forward, the men at arms pounced on Mecatl and held him still while Cuitláhuac prised the medicine bottle from his hand.
‘My lord.’ A note of hysteria had entered the doctor’s voice. ‘This is an outrage.’
‘Yes, I agree,’ said Cuitláhuac. ‘It is an outrage that you threaten my son with violence.’
‘The noble prince is stubborn, lord. What am I to do when he refuses medication that will save his life?’
Ignoring him, Cuitláhuac passed the bottle over to Acamap, who sniffed its contents and made a sour face.
‘Well,’ said Cuitláhuac. ‘Do you recognise it?’
‘One moment please,’ said Acamap. He poured a drop of the liquid onto his finger, very cautiously tasted it with his tongue, spat violently, rinsed his mouth with water from a flask at his hip and then spat again. ‘It is cotelachi poison,’ he said. ‘A very strong dose – much stronger than the sample your lady wife asked me to test this morning. Had the prince drunk the entire contents of this bottle, he would have been dead in a few hours.’
His face contorted with rage, Cuitláhuac turned on Mecatl. ‘What do you say to that?’
‘I say it is a lie, Excellency. This medicine is an elixir of wondrous virtue that I prepare for the Lord Speaker.’
‘Then you will no doubt be happy to drink it yourself.’
Mecatl’s face drained of colour. ‘I …’ he said. ‘I … No, sire. I prefer not to.’
‘Force his mouth open,’ growled Cuitláhuac to the men at arms.
Mecatl struggled, with surprising strength, Guatemoc thought, but the soldiers were all over him. Soon enough they got a dagger between his teeth and levered his mouth open, wounding his lips and cheeks in the process. As blood spattered down his costly robes and pooled on the floor at his feet, he let out a stifled sob and shook his head wildly, cutting himself further on the blade.
Cuitláhuac loomed over him holding the bottle. ‘So what’s it to be?’ he said. ‘Death by this Zapotec butterfly poison you were going to kill my son with? Or you tell us who’s behind all this and maybe we let you live?’
Moctezuma’s stomach rumbled as a zephyr of delicious aromas wafted from the adjoining kitchen, and he glanced up to see four serving girls, selected from the daughters of the nobility for their cleanliness and beauty, enter the dining chamber carrying a large, deep gourd. As they approached they did not – dared not! – look at him, but kept their eyes downcast, ladled water from the gourd onto his outstretched hands and skilfully caught the overflow in special basins. None of the water was allowed to drop to the floor; it was considered bad luck, punishable by the death of the offending servant, if any did. Taking the greatest possible care, the girls then towelled his fingers dry as two more noble daughters entered, bringing him white maize cakes. Finally the women retired and a host of male retainers, all chosen for the honour from amongst the nobility, entered the room carrying thirty earthenware braziers on which were arrayed three hundred small red and black ceramic dishes heaped with a fantasia of cooked fowls, turkeys, pheasants, partridges, quail, tame and wild duck, venison, peccary, marsh birds, pigeons, hares, monkeys, lobster, shrimp, octopus, molluscs, turtles, thirty different varieties of sea and river fish, a dozen different vegetables and, in pride of place, seasoned with salt and chillies, little cubes of meat sliced from the thigh of the sacrificed boy.
When the feast had been set out, all the retainers withdrew, with the exception of Moctezuma’s steward Teudile, a man of the most refined noble birth who, because of his proximity to the ruler, stood amongst the highest lords of the land, ranking seventh after Moctezuma himself, the Snake Woman (a position still unfilled since the death of Coaxoch), Cuitláhuac, the lords of Tacuba and Texcoco, and the new high priest, Namacuix. Tall, gaunt and hollow cheeked, Teudile’s temples and brow were shaved, his long grey hair gathered in a top-knot at the back of his head and his cherished personal dignity enlarged by the star-spangled robes of office that he alone was permitted to wear in the presence of the Great Speaker. He held sole responsibility for all matters concerning the running of the royal household, and at dinner it was his particular honour and privilege to describe the dishes to the Speaker and hand him whichever took his fancy. First, however, he drew a gold-inlaid wooden screen around Moctezuma so that his three dinner guests, who were now invited to draw close, could not see him eat.
This was the part that Moctezuma always enjoyed the most – for tradition required that the guests must be barefoot, must remain standing throughout like beggars at his gate, must speak only when he spoke to them and might eat only if he chose to offer them a morsel of this or that from behind the screen. It was an excellent system for reminding the nobility of their subservience to him and to keep them at each other’s throats by bestowing honour on one and humiliation on another.
Even as he sampled the first juicy chunks of the sacrificed boy’s inner thigh, however, Moctezuma looked down and saw with horror that a drop of water had somehow splashed to the ground at his feet while his ha
nds were being washed. It was a terrible omen, and as though in immediate fulfilment of it he heard the familiar voice of Cuitláhuac, not in Texcoco as he was meant to be but at the door to the chamber and speaking loudly and urgently to the guards. The names Guatemoc and Mecatl were both mentioned.
With a roar of anger Moctezuma threw his plate to the floor and dismissed his guests and Teudile.
This could only be about one thing.
Chapter Fifty-One
Cozumel, Saturday 27 February 1519 to dawn Sunday 28 February 1519
The route Muñoz had taken led through an area of terracing on the lower slopes of the hill where the Indians of Cozumel grew vegetables for the town, and although well camouflaged in his black habit, the friar had left deep sandal prints in the rich red earth that were easy enough to follow in the starlight.
‘Quick,’ said Melchior, ‘he’s too far ahead of us. We’re going to lose him if we don’t get closer.’
‘But not too close!’ Pepillo felt compelled to warn. ‘If he hears us we’re done for.’
‘Silly mammet!’ hissed Melchior, increasing his pace. ‘We’ve got to get close to kill him.’
Pepillo scrambled after his friend, doing his best to keep quiet even though he was already panting with the effort and his heart pounded frightfully against his ribs. You must be mad, he said to himself as he ran. You’re going to get yourself killed. Every rational instinct, every bone in his body, every straining, terrified nerve urged him to turn and slink back to the ship. But he couldn’t do that, could he? Because if he did he would let Melchior down in the worst possible way and reveal himself for the coward he was.
They were out of the terraces now, speeding up an open grassy slope. There! Ahead! A surging column of darkness deeper than the rest. That had to be Muñoz! Melchior had seen him too and raced faster, fairly pounding up the hill, widening the gap between himself and Pepillo who was thinking, Even if we do kill him, what then? Won’t my soul be damned forever for the murder of a religious? And he heard inside his head, like a drum roll, a deep, portentous voice that seemed to say over and over again, Damned! Damned! Damned! and Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!
A hundred paces above them loomed the ominous, massy gloom of a swathe of woodland, and with a chill Pepillo recognised it as a different quarter of the same wild copse in which they’d found the body of the murdered child two days before. The shadow that was Muñoz slipped amongst the trees and was gone.
‘Melchior!’ Pepillo wanted to shout as he ran. ‘Stop, for pity’s sake! We dare not follow him there.’ And he thought – It would be like tracking a lion to its den. But he couldn’t call out for fear of giving their pursuit away, and to his horror he saw his friend, so far ahead now that he too seemed little more than a shadow, making straight for the spot where the friar had vanished.
Twenty seconds later Pepillo reached the edge of the trees and skidded to a halt.
By the uncertain glimmer of the stars he saw the entrance to a path, no wider than the span of his arms, leading deep into the wood.
He squinted but he couldn’t see Melchior.
In fact he couldn’t see anything!
The darkness amongst the close packed, thickly tangled trees was near total. Worse still, although the forest was alive with all manner of strange and frightening crepitations, rustlings, clicks, squawks and snuffles, he couldn’t identify any sound that was obviously Melchior pushing ahead through the undergrowth.
‘God help me,’ Pepillo whispered, and felt he was about to be sick as he took his first step on the path. Immediately something clutched his face and he slapped it away, gasping with horror before he had time to register it was nothing more than a creeper hanging down from above. The urge to vomit grew stronger, but the fear of being judged a coward by Melchior, and worse still the fear that his friend might be in danger and in need of his help, was stronger than the fear of what lay ahead, so he pressed on, carefully testing the ground at his feet with each step, sensing the soft detritus of fallen leaves, feeling the brambles tugging at his ankles. On both sides now the trees seemed to close in and when he looked back he found he could no longer see the start of the path.
He held tight to his hatchet, pushing branches and thick clusters of rough leaves and clinging tendrils aside as he walked. Then with no forewarning he heard a slow, vibrating whirr – very close! – and something about the size of a small bird flew right over the top of his head, disturbing the air with the flap of its wings. There were bats here, the sailors said, that drank human blood – yet surely such creatures were the least of his worries when a true monster like Muñoz lurked in this terrible close darkness, and when Melchior, on whose strength and courage he depended, was nowhere to be seen.
‘Melchior!’ he hissed, risking all. ‘Where are you?’
Nothing.
Deciding he would take ten more paces before making his way back to the ship, Pepillo began to count – one … two … three … four – when suddenly he heard … what? A footstep? A crackle of branches compressed under a heavy sandal?
‘Melchior?’ he croaked. ‘Melchior?’ Icy terror gripped his bowels and a strangled whimper rose in his throat. He turned to run but a strong hand fell on his shoulder out of the night and held him in place.
‘Ahhhh!’ Pepillo shrieked. ‘Let go, let me go.’ He struggled desperately, flailed and lashed out but it was useless. ‘Please,’ he begged, ‘please, Father, don’t kill me.’
A hand was on his other shoulder now, shaking him, and he heard a deep, familiar chuckle. ‘Don’t shit yourself, you daft mammet,’ said Melchior. ‘It’s only me. Muñoz has gone. We’re not going to catch him tonight.’
In an instant Pepillo was wildly angry, and planted a kick on his friend’s shin that sent him hopping amongst the bushes. ‘You swine!’ he yelled at the older boy, ‘you scared me. Creeping around like that! What were you thinking of?’
‘Just a jape. Don’t take on so!’
‘A jape? A jape? You’d jape about this?’ Pepillo felt indignant, foolish and furious all at once, but most of all, he realised, he felt relieved. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s get—’
He didn’t finish his sentence. Something came whoosh out of the darkness, there was a solid clunk and he sensed rather than saw Melchior crumple to the ground beside him. A second of mute incomprehension followed, and then a moment of sudden, horrific realisation before a blow crashed into Pepillo’s jaw, lifted him off his feet, exploded bright lights inside his head – strangely reminding him of the time, years before, when he’d run full tilt into a stone wall – and plunged him, finally, into absolute, enveloping blackness.
As he swum up into consciousness, Pepillo couldn’t at first remember where he was or understand why he was lying naked on a surface of broken branches and leaves, on his stomach, gagged, with his knees bent, his wrists and ankles bound together behind his painfully arched back, and a noose around his neck seemingly connected to the tether at his ankles so that any attempt to struggle or straighten his body brought on immediate strangulation. It was very dark but the flicker of some faint light nonetheless reached his eyes. He heard a man’s voice, lisping, horribly familiar – Muñoz! – and the events of the night came back to him in a stupefying flood. A great cry burst from his throat, only to be stifled by the thick bundle of foul-tasting rags that stuffed his mouth.
The Dominican was speaking in an almost pleasant, conversational tone. ‘See blackamoor! Your young accomplice awakes to witness your punishment. By the time I have him he’ll be oozing with fear.’
Pepillo thought – Have him? Have him? What does that mean? – and heard an incoherent, choking roar which he understood must be Melchior, gagged like himself. He thrashed his head left and right, tightening the noose, coughing and wheezing, as he strained to find his friend whose own struggles he could hear somewhere behind him.
But he saw Muñoz first, sitting two paces away on the thick trunk of a fallen tree, his hand resting on a Bible, his black
habit drawn up exposing the knobs of his knees and his face hellishly illumined by the quivering gleam of two altar candles positioned on either side of him.
‘Ah,’ the friar said, ‘allow me to oblige.’ Suddenly standing, he loomed over Pepillo, raised a foot, placed the sole of one heavy-duty sandal on his shoulder and gave him a powerful shove, spinning him round half a turn on his belly until Melchior came into view, facing him, also naked and hogtied. Unlike Pepillo, the older boy showed no fear, only a brooding anger that burned through the reflected candle flames in his eyes and contorted his proud features.
With a strange chuckle Muñoz crouched and put his mouth close to Pepillo’s ear – the same ear he’d bitten in Santiago, brushed now with the same soft heat of his lips. ‘See how your friend hates me,’ he said. Casually he placed his open hand between Pepillo’s hunched shoulder blades, moved it slowly down his body, caressed his trussed wrists and brought it to rest on his buttocks, making him flinch as though burned with a hot iron. ‘Why do you think he hates me so?’ the Inquisitor continued.
Because you’re a wicked sodomite, Pepillo would have said if he wasn’t gagged, but Muñoz clearly didn’t expect an answer. ‘He hates me,’ he mused, his voice instantly raised to a shout and ringing in Pepillo’s ear, ‘because I had him for a peso in my cabin when we sailed with Córdoba. He’d do anything for coin when he was a slave – wouldn’t you, blackamoor? – but now he’s free the poor boy can’t bear the shame.’
Another furious roar from Melchior, who was struggling desperately, hopelessly, against his bonds, the noose biting so hard into his neck it had drawn blood.