‘Never mind,’ said Escalante, brushing aside the need for details. ‘The gist is clear enough. Tell them we’re the men to get Moctezuma off their backs but we’ll expect some help from them in return.’
Pepillo conveyed the message to Yaretzi who replied: ‘Anything within my power. The great lord Tlacoch has told me to put myself at your service, and this I do willingly … ’
‘Tlacoch?’ said Escalante. ‘Who the hell’s he?’
‘The paramount chief of the Totonacs,’ Pepillo remembered. ‘Has his seat in the city of Cempoala, a few hours’ march south of here – the caudillo mentioned him to you, Don Juan.’
‘I can’t be expected to remember every one of these damned names … ’
‘Tla-coch,’ Pepillo repeated, emphasising both syllables. ‘He’s the one who sent Meco to us to seek out an alliance in the first place. It seems Yaretzi answers to him.’
‘Well and good, whatever he’s called,’ said Escalante, draining his fourth mug of pulque with a grin and switching to wine. ‘By God I like these fellows, Pepillo, and it seems they like us, so now’s the time to put our proposal to them. Tell them, if your language runs to it, that we want the right to build a town of our own here on these cliffs next to theirs. Tell them we delight in their company so much that we want to be their neighbours. As their neighbours we will become their friends, their brothers and their family, and as their family we will join in the great enterprise of ridding them of Moctezuma.’
It was a difficult interpreting challenge, and Pepillo and Meco went back and forward on it for some time, often resorting to sign language, before it could be conveyed, but Yaretzi’s response was immediate and enthusiastic. ‘We are very happy that you will build your town here,’ he said. Our labourers, our craftsmen, our materials – all will be put at your disposal. We are honoured,’ he concluded, ‘that the gods wish to live amongst us.’
‘Tell him we’re not gods,’ said Escalante.
Pepillo tried but Yaretzi would have none of it. ‘Of course you are gods,’ he insisted. ‘Everyone knows this.’
Escalante stood up a little unsteadily from the table, walked round to where Yaretzi was sitting, lifted the chieftain to his feet and wrapped him in a strong Spanish embrace. ‘We are not gods,’ he said, ‘we are men like you. We are your brothers, and as brothers we embrace you.’
Yaretzi, who was also very drunk, returned the embrace. ‘Still you must be gods,’ he said. ‘For only gods could hope to destroy Moctezuma.’
* * *
On the morning of Sunday 16 May, after breakfasting with his friend and fellow ensign Bernal Díaz, and attending the short service in the makeshift chapel on the dunes, Gonzalo de Sandoval donned his cuirass, strapped on his sword and walked to the stables. Alonso Puertocarrero would ride out with him on this first patrol of the day; he was already mounted on his silver-grey mare Ciri and impatient to be off.
Sandoval took his lance from his groom and climbed into the saddle of the chestnut mare, Llesenia. He was far too poor to own a horse, but the caudillo had put this one at his disposal at Potonchan, and allowed him to keep her ever since. Rather than place his lance in the scabbard attached to his saddle, as Puertocarrero had done, he kept it in his hand; some intuition told him he might need it. ‘A fine morning for a gallop, Alonso,’ he said, trying to sound cheerful.
‘A fine morning indeed, Gonzalo. What say we go as far as Cuetlaxtlan? Give those Mexica a bit of a scare. I could do with a spot of action.’
Puertocarrero was a braggart and a blowhard, and had not done well at Potonchan where others, including Sandoval and Díaz, had been commended by the caudillo for conspicuous bravery. Perhaps this explained why the red-bearded aristocrat so often seemed to feel the need to prove himself.
‘I’d prefer to avoid action if at all possible,’ Sandoval replied. ‘Our mission is to scout, not start a fight.’
‘Oh bah!’ said Puertocarrero. He spurred Ciri and set off at a gallop.
Sandoval followed in his dust trail.
* * *
Guatemoc had prepared his ambush with the greatest possible care.
To approach Cuetlaxtlan, the white-skinned deer riders would need to wind their way through a range of low dunes. There were four possible paths and on either side of each of these, dug into the sand so they were as near to invisible as possible, he had distributed the hundred Cuahchics he’d selected for the task – his most skilled, most violent warriors. Twenty were with him, while the other three groups, each also twenty men strong, were led by Fuzzy Face, Big Dart and Man-Eater. Reserves of ten under Starving Coyote and another ten under Mud Head were held back, out of sight, in houses at the very edge of town, able to join the fight in a matter of moments wherever they were needed most.
And a fight it seemed there would be! A short while before, two long trails of dust had appeared in the north, and now, beneath them, coming on at fantastic speed, could be seen two riders, their upper bodies shining silver in the sun.
These were not gods, Guatemoc reminded himself; he refused to believe such superstitious nonsense. Yet how fast they moved! How extraordinary they seemed! How they loomed and threatened as they approached! How the hooves of their deer thundered and shook the earth! Already the lead rider had chosen his path; it would not take him past Guatemoc’s position, but between the dunes commanded by Big Dart. The second rider was a hundred paces behind on the same trajectory, yelling something in his strange language, his words torn away by the wind. As the first rider passed from view into the reach of Big Dart’s ambush, Guatemoc barked an order and his twenty surged from their hides and rushed to join the fray.
* * *
Sandoval was furious at Puertocarrero’s rashness and stupidity. What had got into the man, to approach so close to Cuetlaxtlan with its huge garrison – and at such an impetuous pace? Still, there was nothing for it but to follow and try to rein him in. Shouting, ‘Stop, you bloody fool’ at the top of his voice, he spurred Llesenia, aiming her at the gap between two dunes that Puertocarrero had already entered, when everywhere he saw painted Indians dressed in loincloths, armed with spears and obsidian-edged broadswords, erupting from the sands. Twenty of them were straight ahead, swarming around Puertocarrero and – ye gods! – one of them shoved a spear between Ciri’s legs, making her stumble, sending her idiot rider flying out of the saddle and crashing to the ground on his face before he’d even had time to draw his lance from its scabbard. Riderless now, Ciri quickly recovered her footing and bolted free, evading other groups of attackers, yelling war cries and beating their swords against their shields, who converged from dunes to the left and right. With no time to think, only to act, Sandoval bellowed ‘Santiago and at ’em’, dropped the tip of his lance to take an Indian full in the chest, jerked the weapon free in a spray of blood, raised it high, stabbed down to kill another, bowled three more men over with the force of his charge, smashed his iron-clad stirrup into a warrior’s screaming face and wheeled Llesenia in a tight arc, her hooves lashing the air, before driving back a pair of Indians who already had their hands on the seemingly unconscious Puertocarrero and were trying to drag him off.
Now Sandoval himself was surrounded, and the little valley between the dunes was rapidly filling with scores of screaming, heavily armed warriors. Steadying Llesenia, he bent low, grabbed Puertocarrero by his wiry red hair and, with a mighty effort, hauled his limp, unconscious weight up into the saddle in front of him – at the cost of his lance, which was torn from his grasp by a glowering savage. Releasing the reins, gripping Puertocarrero round the midriff, clinging onto Llesenia by his knees alone, Sandoval drew his broadsword, cleaved the skull of the damned Indian who’d taken his lance and urged the prancing chestnut mare onward into the scrum. Hemmed in by contorted, painted faces that streamed with sweat, their eyes flashing white, their filed teeth bared, it was a scene from his worst nightmare. Some projectile bounced harmlessly off the backplate of his cuirass, an arrow grazed his thigh and, as
a thicket of strong brown hands reached to unseat him, his sword scythed down, taking an arm off at the elbow here, severing a man’s fingers there, hacking so hard through the neck of a third that his head, smeared with yellow and red paint, took flight, ending up bouncing and rolling a dozen paces away.
Poor Llesenia, though trained for battle, was spooked by the blood and the din, the ululating howls of the Indians, the clash of weapons and the unaccustomed weight of two men on her back. She reared madly, nearly throwing off Sandoval and his still unconscious charge, and he only brought her back under control with the greatest difficulty. He buried the point of his sword in the eye of a warrior who leapt up to wrestle Puertocarrero from him, cut deep into a naked shoulder, tore open a throat – and suddenly the crowd ahead was just two ranks deep. Had he been alone on her back, he had little doubt that spirited Llesenia could have jumped them, but Puertocarrero’s weight made such a feat impossible. Sandoval spurred the mare forward, yelling his battle cry, ‘Santiago and at ’em … Santiago and at ’em’, clinging to the hope that he might somehow break through, even though it would be in the direction of the town and not back towards the camp.
* * *
There was an imminent danger the white-skins and their animals would escape, Guatemoc realised. The deer whose legs had been fouled by Big Dart’s spear had already galloped off over the dunes, placing itself out of reach in a heartbeat, while its fallen rider had been rescued by his companion, a formidable warrior who’d worked terrible slaughter on the Cuahchics and seemed as unstoppable as a whirlwind.
But Guatemoc had already signalled to Mud Head and Starving Coyote to bring up the reserves and, as the white-skin broke through the last men encircling him, driving his animal out of the pass between the dunes in the direction of Cuetlaxtlan, he was suddenly confronted by twenty fresh warriors blocking his path. Guatemoc threw down his macuahuitl -- he wanted a living prisoner, not a corpse – sprinted forward, leapt up onto the back of the deer, wrapped his arms around the white-skin’s neck and succeeded in unbalancing him and wrestling him to the ground. There Big Dart and Fuzzy Face also fell upon him, pinning him down despite his struggles. In the same instant of intense action, the second white-skin, who’d seemed stunned and helpless, abruptly woke up, took control of the deer and – quite astonishing this! – goaded it into a run, jumped it over the reserves barring his way and fled without looking back, first towards the town but soon veering onto the smooth, compacted sand of the beach, where the animal’s stride lengthened to such a pace that it left all pursuit far behind as it thundered northwards.
* * *
Sandoval couldn’t believe Puertocarrero’s cowardice – or, rather, knowing the man, he could believe it, but was stunned to have been its victim. He had plunged into the thick of battle for him, fought for his life, come close to pulling off a successful rescue, yet when the tables were suddenly turned, when Sandoval had been pulled from his horse, Puertocarrero had simply run, making no effort to help, not even looking back, and had left him in the hands of the Indians who would undoubtedly sacrifice him to their vile gods and make a cannibal feast of his carcass.
Sandoval had been beaten savagely about the head until his ears bled, his arms had been tied behind his back, and a strangling noose had been fastened round his neck. It was fixed to the end of a long pole, which was held by the cruel savage who now shoved him, stumbling and choking, towards the outskirts of Cuetlaxtlan, taking great pleasure in pulling him back abruptly if he hurried too far ahead and pushing him forward if he lagged.
Sandoval recognised his tormenter.
Though dressed then in splendid robes, and this morning wearing only a loincloth that revealed the scars of recent knife wounds disfiguring his muscular belly, he was without a doubt the same tall and powerful Mexica prince with long black hair, high cheekbones and a prideful sneer, who had come to the Spanish camp five days before as a member of the delegation from Moctezuma – the delegation that had brought so much treasure and left with so many threats. The prince’s name, Sandoval remembered, was Guatemoc. Through Malinal he’d had the temerity, the huge cojones, to order Cortés to leave, warning him that he and all his men would be wiped out if they did not. ‘My soldiers are as numberless as the sands of the sea,’ Guatemoc had boasted, ‘and undefeated in battle. March on Tenochtitlan and I will teach you the Mexica way of war.’
Cortés had said something about awaiting that lesson eagerly, but now it looked very much as though Guatemoc was about to pre-empt the caudillo’s plans and nip the Spanish advance in the bud – for out of Cuetlaxtlan, marching rapidly to meet them, surged thousands of Mexica warriors fully armed for battle.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sunday 16 May 1519
There came an urgent drumming of hooves, yells from the guards, a sliding skid, a furious neigh and a scatter of sand as a horse at full gallop was brought to a near-catastrophic halt and Puertocarrero burst into the pavilion, his face as white as his hair was red. ‘An ambush, Caudillo,’ he screamed. ‘There were hundreds of them. They overwhelmed us. They’ve captured Sandoval … ’
Cortés, who had been drafting a long letter to the king and regretting the absence of Pepillo to take dictation, leapt up from his desk. ‘Who ambushed you?’ he asked. ‘Where? When? How was Sandoval captured?’ But as Puertocarrero told the story, the words vomiting forth in a confused, urgent, unpunctuated mass, Cortés held up his hand. ‘Slow down, man,’ he said. ‘Catch your breath … Here, drink this.’ He poured wine and, as the aristocrat slurped greedily from the glass, sent a guard to bring Pedro de Alvarado and Bernal Díaz to the pavilion and issued orders for a general muster. The entire army was to form up and be ready to march within the hour.
By the time Alvarado and Díaz arrived, Cortés was beginning to notice certain oddities and lacunae in Puertocarrero’s story. He seemed most intent on painting his own actions in a good light, while blaming Sandoval for rashly putting them both in harm’s way by insisting the morning patrol pass much closer to Cuetlaxtlan than was safe. Now came an accusation of cowardice: ‘I do not wish to impugn young Sandoval’s name, Hernán, but the truth is he deserted me at the moment of greatest danger. I was surrounded! I had to fight my way out alone. I killed many! By the grace of God I escaped.’
‘Caudillo, I object!’ said Bernal Díaz. ‘I object most strenuously. Gonzalo would never leave another man in the lurch – and besides, he is not here to speak for himself.’
Cortés gave Puertocarrero a hard glance. ‘If Sandoval deserted you and fled,’ he asked, ‘how is it that you were the one to return safely to camp?’
‘And how, pray tell,’ said Alvarado, ‘did you manage to do so on Sandoval’s horse? I saw you leave the stables earlier. You were riding your Ciri and Gonzalo was mounted on Llesenia, yet it is now Llesenia I see tethered outside, while of Ciri there is no sign. It is passing strange, is it not?’
‘We were both unhorsed,’ blustered Puertocarrero, a blob of spit flying from his mouth. ‘In his haste to flee, Sandoval mounted Ciri and made off but was brought down. I fought my way through a mass of Indians to Llesenia and escaped by the skin of my teeth.’
‘So then it was you who left Gonzalo behind, not the other way round,’ said Díaz, his jaw thrust forward pugnaciously.
‘No, not at all. He abandoned me—’
‘I don’t like the stench of this,’ said Alvarado. ‘Sandoval’s not the man to run from a fight.’ He stepped closer to Puertocarrero and loomed over him. ‘Let me see your sword,’ he demanded. ‘If you struck blows against the Indians as you claim, then it will be marked, it will be bloodied … ’
A look of mingled horror and fury now appeared in Puertocarrero’s eyes. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’ he shouted.
With a grunt of impatience, Bernal Díaz grasped the hilt of Puertocarrero’s sword and drew the weapon. All could see that the blade was clean and unmarked.
‘Yes, I’m calling you a liar,’ said Alvarado coldly. ‘And now I c
all you a coward as well.’
‘I fought with my lance,’ Puertocarrero protested.
‘So where is it?’ asked Alvarado. ‘Show it to us.’
‘It … it was wrested from my grasp.’
‘Ha!’ Alvarado exclaimed, showing his disgust. ‘You have an answer for everything.’
Cortés’s mind was working fast. He did not want his plans for Puertocarrero ruined by the charge of cowardice now raised against him. On the other hand, might there not be ways he could use it to his advantage to press and further dominate and control the aristocrat? He would have to give the matter careful thought. ‘Gentleman,’ he said, ‘please! We’ll settle this later. Our priority now must be the rescue of Gonzalo and the punishment of the Indians who took him.’
‘What if he’s already been sacrificed?’ asked Díaz.
‘If he has, then we will sack Cuetlaxtlan, annihilate its garrison and kill every man, woman and child there—’
‘Annihilate its garrison?’ said Puertocarrero aghast. ‘There are eight thousand of them.’
‘We faced forty thousand at Potonchan,’ Cortés reminded him, restraining himself from striking the red-haired fool across the face. That the man was a coward he had no doubt, but he could still be a useful coward. Important, therefore, that he was not shamed into demanding satisfaction from Alvarado, who would certainly slaughter him if it came to a duel.
Fortunately at that moment the tension was broken by the arrival of García Brabo, a lean grey-haired sergeant from Cortés’s home province of Extramadura, with the announcement that the army was formed up and ready to march. Brabo, an efficient, ruthless killer who Cortés had relied on for many years to do his dirty work, had a hooked nose and a permanently sour expression. The smell of sweat and garlic hung about him like a threat. ‘Where do we march to, sir?’ he asked.