On the voyage, Pepillo learned much more about the art of the sword, mastering the basic step, the passing step, the switch step, the step pivot and other elements of footwork to such a degree that the captain said he was now ready to continue his practice with a weapon in hand; he brought out the beautiful blade he’d shown Pepillo so tantalisingly a few days before. Escalante took up his own sword so that they could spar, and they then spent some hours practising the four primary guard positions, known as the plough guard, the roof guard, the ox’s guard and the fool’s guard.
‘Why the fool’s guard?’ Pepillo asked of the strange posture in which the hands were held below the waist and the tip of the sword was allowed to drop down, almost touching the ground. ‘Does it mean only a fool would use it?’
Escalante laughed. ‘Far from it! The idea is to make your opponent think you’re a fool, when in fact you’re not. Along with strength, balance, footwork and speed, deception is one of the pillars of swordsmanship.’
There was, for Pepillo, an almost fairytale quality to the return voyage, as though he were in a place and time entirely different from and unconnected to the rigours, challenges and ordeals of the daily life he’d grown used to in Mexico. But soon enough reality was restored, and with it an abiding sense of gloom and hopelessness, when the Spanish camp on the dunes came into view on the afternoon of Tuesday 18 May.
‘You’re looking glum, lad,’ said Escalante, joining him by the rail on the navigation deck.
‘I defied the caudillo,’ Pepillo admitted. ‘He ordered me to leave Melchior behind and I brought him.’
‘Well, that doesn’t sound too serious. I’ve been happy to have your dog on board.’
‘It is serious, Don Juan. The caudillo believes Melchior should be cast in with the dog pack and trained for war.’
‘And you don’t agree?’
‘Never! If the caudillo doesn’t relent, I’ll take Melchior and run.’
Escalante’s reaction to this idea – that Pepillo must not even consider it – was much the same as Díaz’s had been a few weeks before, and like Díaz he promised to intervene with Cortés if necessary.
‘I’m grateful,’ Pepillo said, ‘don’t think I’m not. Don Bernal Díaz also said he’d help me, but I don’t even know if he’s spoken to the caudillo yet. If he has, it’s made no difference.’
‘I’m not Don Bernal,’ said Escalante. ‘The caudillo and I go back a long way. I like to think I have some influence with him.’
* * *
Three days later, on 21 May, as Pepillo sat miserably staring through the bars of the filthy pen where Melchior now lived, it was clear that neither Don Juan, Don Bernal or Malinal, who’d also tried to help, had any influence whatsoever with Cortés. Pepillo and Melchior had gone ashore in the longboat with Escalante on the 18th, but after they’d beached and were making the boat fast, Telmo Vendabal and his triumphant, sneering assistants came sauntering down the dunes from the camp.
‘We’re taking your dog,’ said Vendabal. ‘Hand me his leash, there’s a good lad, and don’t make trouble.’
Pepillo had turned to run but Andrés Santisteban had blocked and held him and Vendabal had prised the leash from his hands.
Escalante gave them a dangerous look. ‘The boy’s under my protection,’ he said. ‘Let him go. Let his dog go. I’ll be talking to the caudillo about this.’
‘It’s the caudillo’s orders, sir,’ said Vendabal. Although his tone was obsequious, his manner was supremely confident and, moments later, when Cortés himself appeared, Pepillo understood why.
‘Welcome back, Juan.’ Cortés strode down the beach to embrace the captain, not sparing so much as a glance for Pepillo. ‘A successful mission?’
‘Very successful,’ Escalante replied. ‘I’ve much to tell you … But I’d like to see this little misunderstanding resolved first. Don Telmo seems to feel he has a right to take Pepillo’s pet dog.’
‘There’s no misunderstanding,’ Cortés said with a hint of impatience. ‘Don Telmo’s acting on my orders.’
‘But Hernán—’
Cortés held up his hand to silence Escalante. ‘Not now, Juan. This is a trivial matter when we have the future of the expedition to discuss. Come away to my pavilion—’
‘It’s not a trivial matter for me,’ Pepillo dared to object, but Cortés turned on him with a face of thunder. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘you are asking for a beating. The dog goes with Vendabal. Now! You will follow Don Juan and me to my pavilion and when our meeting is done I’ll have dictation for you to take.’
Thereafter, any attempt by Pepillo to raise the subject of Melchior with Cortés had led to a cuff about the ear, and now, three days later, he was beginning to accept that he would never get the pup back.
But there were consolations. Most important of all, Melchior was not dead yet, for it seemed that even in the dog world – perhaps more so than in the human world – there was such a thing as a code of honour. Whenever he could, Pepillo stole away to the kennels to see how his pet was doing. Twice he’d witnessed Melchior being attacked by a full-grown jet-black mastiff whose name, he learned, was Jairo – an animal no taller than Melchior (for Melchior had grown very tall despite being so young), but much more massive through the chest and withers, scarred from old battles and rippling with muscle.
On the first attack, which came suddenly, with stunning ferocity and seemingly without provocation, Melchior had tried to fight back and had been badly mauled, the flesh of his shoulder torn open and his throat seized in a death grip. But then, whimpering, he had fallen still and Jairo had released him, cocked his leg and pissed on him, then stalked off, seemingly satisfied.
On the second occasion Melchior had made the mistake of going for a scrap of meat lying on the earth floor of the kennel close to Jairo. No other dog had claimed the morsel, and the big dog seemed uninterested in it, but as Melchior edged closer, Jairo bounded to his feet, snarling horribly, his yellow fangs bared. This time Melchior knew what to do. Rather than resist, he crouched and grovelled, lowered his back to make himself appear smaller, tucked his tail between his legs, flattened his ears and dribbled urine. The mastiff stood over him, hackles raised, a rumbling, deep growl vibrating in his throat, and Melchior responded by rolling on his back, exposing his belly and throat to Jairo’s teeth – complete, abject surrender. Jairo sniffed him, his growl subsiding, his hackles falling back, picked up the scrap and swallowed it, then walked away, again seemingly satisfied.
Was there a lesson to be learned here, Pepillo wondered? Although they’d got what they wanted, Santisteban, Hemes and Julian continued to torment him. Should he, then, grovel to them, just as Melchior had grovelled to Jairo? Would that persuade them to leave him alone? Somehow Pepillo doubted it. Dogs were more honourable than humans. And besides, he would not grovel. He simply would not! Instead, he was determined, he would learn to fight and make himself strong – and soon, he promised himself, he would pay them out.
Two days before, on the 19th, Don Juan, regretful at being unable to help reunite him with Melchior, had suggested they resume the sword practice that had begun on board the Santa Theresa. Pepillo had accepted with alacrity. The captain had also shown him a system of exercises he must pursue to strengthen his legs and arms, his belly and his shoulders, and he had begun to perform them religiously. There was, likewise, much manual work to be done around the camp, from the digging of latrines to the construction of ramparts, to the running out of the lombards – those great guns, so effective at Potonchan, that could throw a seventy-pound cannonball a distance of two miles. Although Pepillo had hitherto been excused such duties, he now volunteered for them whenever his responsibilities as Cortés’s page and secretary allowed.
* * *
Plucking up her courage, Tozi entered the gates of the sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan nine days after she had fled Moctezuma’s palace. She had doubted her powers, but this was the proof they had not deserted her, for she was able to pass in front of
the guards without them seeing her, just as she had done on many occasions before, then cross the grand plaza and skirt the eastern side of Hummingbird’s immense pyramid, where a priestly ceremony was in full flow – all, again, without her presence being detected. She shivered and mastered the fear that rose like vomit in her throat as the vestibule of the palace loomed ahead, patrolled by a dozen royal spearmen. All she had to do was pass them unnoticed, as she had the others, and the palace would lie open to her: its halls, its meeting rooms, Moctezuma’s chambers of state and Moctezuma himself would be as vulnerable to her as they had ever been before the arrival of the nagual. To make sure that she truly was invisible, Tozi drifted to within an arm’s length of the two nearest spearmen, turned her back on them, bent forward and lifted her skirt, showing them her bare arse, but they did not blink at the insult, did not react; absolutely, undeniably, did not see her. She braced herself and moved closer.
Though Huicton was still absent, word from his network of spies had reached the safe house in Tacuba that the Great Speaker’s new nagual, the tattooed one from the north, had left Tenochtitlan the very next morning after the public burning of the sorcerers Tlilpo, Cuappi, Aztatzin, and Hecateu. The nagual’s name, the spies had discovered, was Acopol, and his destination was the city of Cholula, sacred to the god of peace Quetzalcoatl. What his purpose was there and when, if ever, he would return, were unknown, but the fact was he had gone and the responsibility to resume her work for Quetzalcoatl preyed so insistently on Tozi’s mind that she resolved to return to the palace, resume her campaign of terror against Moctezuma, and discover what she could about Acopol’s mission.
She was within the vestibule when the first knives pricked her, the first razors sliced her, the first talons tore her, the first arrows of horror entered her brain. She gasped, aloud – she could not help herself – and the guards turned as one towards the place where she stood. They spun round and yet they could not see her … Relief flooded through her as she realised her magical protection was still intact but then … wait! Wait! What was that sound? Pitter, patter, pitter, patter, like rain on a roof. She looked down and saw drops of fresh blood – her blood! – falling to the marble-tiled floor. She gasped again. Three guards thrust at her with spears but the weapons passed harmlessly through her invisible form; yet in the same instant she felt other unseen spears drive into her and she screamed in agony, turned and ran, leaving a trail of blood to mark her path, a trail that the guards followed.
Not until she was streaking back along the flank of the great pyramid did Tozi realise that none of the blood was coming from her body, arms or legs where she had felt so many wounds inflicted. All of it was coming from her nose! Clapping a hand around her nostrils she stemmed the flow, cut off the telltale trail, abruptly changed direction and struck out across the plaza for the towering enclosure wall. She hurtled towards it at a speed that was only possible in her invisible form, reached it, penetrated it, and was out the other side with no more resistance than passing through a light shower of rain.
Tozi fled on, only stopping to catch her breath and still her pounding heart when she reached a shadowy alcove in a narrow street. Emerging into visibility, she held her sleeve across her nose until the bleeding stopped. She examined herself carefully. Though the agonies she’d suffered had felt like murder, she could find not a single wound. Not one! What then were those stabs and cuts she’d felt; those rips, those piercings? The pain had been beyond imagining; she did not think she could ever bear it again. But what had caused it? What had attacked her? Slipping back into invisibility again, she made her way across the causeway to Tacuba, reaching the safe house after nightfall. Yolya awaited her, tutting and clucking at her dishevelled state. ‘Wherever have you been, my dear?’ the washerwoman asked. ‘You’ve had a nosebleed … Look, your ears have bled as well.’
There had been a time when Tozi had suffered terrible bleeding from her nose and ears whenever she had tried to maintain invisibility for longer than a few seconds. The bleeds had stopped months ago on the night she and Malinal had been marched up the great pyramid of Tenochtitlan to face sacrifice at Moctezuma’s hands and Hummingbird had intervened to save them. On that same night, for mysterious reasons that had never been explained, the war god had also enhanced and multiplied Tozi’s powers, her bleeds had stopped, and she had become able to maintain invisibility indefinitely, suffering no harm.
Did tonight’s bleed – following the strange sorcerous attack she’d suffered – mean her powers were waning again? The source of the attack, of course, could only be Acopol, even though he was not physically present in the palace. The thought that he had ways to reach her from afar, and to destroy her strength, filled her with desolate apprehension, and she realised how much she had come to love her powers.
* * *
‘But I want to kill him, great lord. I must kill him. I missed my opportunity before. This is my chance—’
‘Restrain yourself, my son. It does not serve our purposes for Guatemoc to die now … ’
‘I want his skin. I want to drape it wet and warm over my own naked body and dance in your honour wearing it, lord … ’
‘A noble thought, and entirely understandable. It pleases me greatly. Yet unfortunately I cannot allow it. I have another death planned for Guatemoc, another destiny for him to fulfil, and until then I command and require you to keep him alive.’
In the darkest hour of the night, lying in the skull room of Hummingbird’s temple, surrounding by the grinning, dripping heads of recent sacrificial victims skewered ear to ear on the racks, Moctezuma had entered into deep communion with his god after consuming ten large teonanácatl mushrooms. He was only distantly aware of the hard floor beneath his back and of the flickering lanterns around him because he was out of his body, soaring through the heavens on an enchanted shield, with Hummingbird radiant beside him in his form as a tall, powerfully built man dressed only in a simple loincloth. Yet Hummingbird emanated force and authority; he was massive through the chest and thighs, with the fair skin and golden hair of the gods, but with eyes black as obsidian, and with exceptionally large, strong hands – strangler’s hands, warrior’s hands, knotted with bulging veins.
‘I am yours to command, lord,’ said Moctezuma, accepting the inevitable. ‘Tell me what I must do with Guatemoc and it will be done.’ Even in trance, the idea filled him with an impotent, rebellious, petulant fury and he added: ‘Surely you do not expect me to allow him to return to my council, though?’
‘No, my son,’ chuckled Hummingbird. ‘That would be too merciful.’
‘Imprisonment, then,’ said Moctezuma hopefully. ‘I have a certain pit where I keep those whom I wish to be neither alive nor dead.’
‘No, that will not do. It serves my purposes better for Guatemoc to be free but not free. Perhaps you might think of banishing him to Cuitláhuac’s estate at Chapultepec? Place him under house arrest?’
Cuitláhuac, Guatemoc’s father, was Moctezuma’s brother, the second most powerful man in the land. There had been tension between them ever since Moctezuma had tried to have Guatemoc poisoned a few months before.
‘You’re right,’ said Hummingbird, divining his thoughts. ‘Cuitláhuac’s support for you has waned. He is becoming a danger to you. Be merciful to his son in this way and you will win him back.’
As they flew through the night, Moctezuma found the thought of not killing Guatemoc but keeping him under house arrest increasingly appealing. Very soon it seemed to him that it had been his own idea all along.
‘You are so very clever, my son,’ Hummingbird said as he brought the shield swooping down out of the night sky, over a vast plaza surrounded by a high perimeter wall, lit by a thousand torches and dominated by an immense pyramid. It was immediately recognisable as the sanctuary of Quetzalcoatl in the heart of the sacred city of Cholula.
‘I have brought you here,’ Hummingbird whispered in Moctezuma’s ear, ‘to witness the work of our favourite, Acopol. The burnt offeri
ng of his predecessors that you made to me in your palace was most satisfactory, my son. Most satisfactory. The smoke of their flesh delighted my nostrils … ’
‘It is my honour to have pleased you, great lord.’
‘And afterwards you did well to send him at once to Cholula as I had ordered.’
‘It was hard for me, lord, though your word is my command and I hastened to obey. Before his departure for Cholula, Acopol told me of a magical intruder, a witch who watched me from the shadows. He said he had driven her away, but I fear she has returned. This very afternoon I received a report that my guards became aware of an invisible presence. They attacked it with spears. They saw blood fall from empty air to the ground … ’
‘You are right that the witch returned, my son, but you have nothing to fear. Acopol has placed warding spells of great power around your palace, and within the sanctuary of this, my temple. Those are spells that no witch can overcome. They will protect you, as they protected you today, for the whole of Acopol’s sojourn in Cholula.’
‘And that sojourn, lord – will it be long?’
Hummingbird’s laughter was thunder that rose from his belly and burst forth from his throat. ‘Long enough for him to work the doom of the white-skins, my son! Long enough to weave the web of blood and sorcery that will destroy them. See now what he has done here in my name – here in Cholula, in the very sanctuary of my ancient enemy Quetzalcoatl, whose likeness the white-skins have stolen.’
On the eastern horizon, the first pink flush of dawn had now touched the sky and Hummingbird brought the flying shield close, very close, to the summit of the pyramid and to the great temple that stood there – the temple of Quetzalcoatl with its two distinctive wings, like the wings of a dragon, joined in the centre by a great hollow tower of stone, itself in the shape of a pyramid. Moctezuma had visited the temple two years before, the only active and functioning shrine to the god of peace that he permitted in his realm, but now he saw with approval that there were new additions, both placed at the east side of the temple complex, set back from the top of the stairway. The first was a bulky hemisphere of green jasper, an execution stone across which sacrificial victims would be stretched to offer up their hearts. Such a thing had never been seen before in Cholula, since Quetzalcoatl had forbidden human sacrifice. And the second modification to the age-old customs of the sacred city, even more pleasing to Moctezuma’s eye, was that a giant idol of Hummingbird himself, an idol glinting with gold and gemstones, its gaping maw barbed with fangs and tusks, had been set up beside the execution stone.