Tozi, with her eyes to the ground, felt a prickle of fear run down her spine as Acopol approached, his bare, blood-smeared feet padding almost soundlessly across the flagstones. She had expected he would simply pass by and that she could observe him surreptitiously while she herself, just one more insignificant beggar amongst a hundred, would not be observed, or even noticed.
But that was not what happened.
Instead, with an awful inevitability, Acopol stopped directly in front of her, and loomed over her. She could feel his eyes boring into the top of her head.
‘You, girl,’ he said. ‘What’s your business here?’ His voice was soft and mellow, rich and warm.
‘I am Tozi,’ she replied, ‘a beggar seeking the charity of the god.’
‘Look at me, Tozi.’
‘It would be impertinent, sir, for me to gaze on a great one such as yourself.’
‘But you are here to gaze on me, are you not?’
‘No, great sir, I am here to beg.’
‘I think not. You are here to observe. You are here to spy on me as you did once before.’
Tozi’s eyes were still downcast, but she sensed the four priests manoeuvring into position around her. Her heart was beating fast, so loudly she knew the sorcerer must hear it, and though the morning was cool she felt a fat bead of sweat roll down her cheek. ‘No, sir, I am here to beg, to beg only.’
‘I said look at me, girl,’ the voice was suddenly harsh. ‘So you will look!’
Reluctant, but unable to resist, Tozi obeyed and saw the hidden nature of the man standing before her. He had the lean, rangy body of the race of nomads from which he sprang, the Chichimec people of the northern deserts, but his yellow eyes burned like molten gold out of a broad, flat, cruel face, writhing with intricate tattoos that twisted and intertwined, as though filled with a life of their own, revealing, in their dots and swirls and tendrils, a thousand transient, half-recognised shapes and forms.
The priests were moving again, moving in to seize her. Knowing she had gravely miscalculated, that visible or invisible she would always be a torch burning in the darkness to a man such as this, Tozi willed herself to fade as she had done a hundred times before, felt the hands that had reached out to grasp her close on the empty space where she had been, and heard the astonished, cheated shouts of her would-be captors.
She glanced back as she fled.
Behind her, undoubtedly seeing her, its golden eyes fixed on her with furious intent, loped a huge black jaguar. It was gaining on her, closing the distance between them too rapidly for her to escape. The creature opened its jaws and something, some shadow, some darkness, poured forth from its mouth, enveloping her in a mesh of fine black threads as sticky and entrapping as the web of a spider.
With a cry of terror, Tozi felt her strength drain from her and was dragged back against her will into full visibility. Dazed, confused, more afraid than she had ever been in a lifetime of fear, she found herself lying at the foot of the great pyramid of Cholula, with Acopol, once more in the body of a man, standing over her.
His face squirmed with triumph: ‘You’re mine now,’ he said, as Hummingbird’s foul priests swarmed round her, each one seizing an arm and a leg.
It was, Tozi realised with abject horror, the position of sacrifice.
* * *
On Wednesday 29 September, around mid-morning, Shikotenka visited Cortés in the palace he had been given for his headquarters. Their argument over religion had subsided. What had replaced it was a growing practical cooperation – Cortés did not imagine it was a friendship such as he was beginning to enjoy with Maxixcatzin – over the strategy that must soon be pursued against the Mexica. ‘It’s as I predicted,’ Shikotenka now said. ‘A delegation from Moctezuma has arrived under a banner of truce. They want to talk to you, Hernán. Do you want to talk to them?’
Cortés thought about it, his mind racing. He still didn’t trust Shikotenka – perhaps he would never completely trust him; the man had too free and independent a spirit. And he wanted to be able to continue to play a devious game with the Mexica, assuring Moctezuma of his warmth and good feelings towards him, acting the part of an ambassador come to exchange gifts, and not suggesting for a moment he intended to conquer his kingdom and take the Great Speaker himself dead or alive. At the same time, Cortés had promised Shikotenka this was exactly what he was going to do, and that if the Tlascalans honoured their alliance with Spain, their reward would be the utter destruction of the hated Mexica and the death of Moctezuma. How much more difficult it would be to maintain such diametrically opposed positions with both parties in earshot of each other.
He smiled: ‘Yes, Shikotenka, allow them to come. Let’s see what Moctezuma has to say for himself now.’
* * *
‘You’re mine now.’
Hummingbird had used the same words all those months before when he had reprieved Tozi from sacrifice on top of the great pyramid of Tenochtitlan.
But today it was Acopol who claimed possession of her and, on his orders, the four strong young priests of Hummingbird were carrying her like a sack of maize into a corridor concealed behind a false wall beneath the eastern stairway of the great pyramid of Cholula.
Tozi struggled, but could not break free. She willed herself invisible but could not fade. She tried to send the fog but it would not come.
‘Your powers have deserted you,’ said Acopol, who was walking ahead holding a burning brand. ‘I’ve put you under an enchantment.’
Tozi knew, without having to ask further, that what he said was true. Where magic had once been alive within her, she now felt only a numb, blank emptiness, so if she was going to escape it would have to be some other way. Craning her neck she saw the corridor she was being carried along was so narrow and cramped that the priests and the tattooed sorcerer had to stoop. The rough-hewn rock walls pressed in on them on both sides. ‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked, despising the edge of fear in her voice.
‘The cave of the serpent,’ said Acopol. ‘The pyramid was built on top of it. In fact it’s the reason the pyramid is here. It’s the original sacred place of Quetzalcoatl. I had another girl set aside for this sacrifice, but when I saw you this morning and looked into your mind, I knew you’d be much more effective.’
Tozi struggled again but the priests held her firm; their stink filled her nostrils.
‘We’re not going to cut out your heart,’ Acopol reassured her. ‘Yours will be a sacrifice by slow starvation, a much worse death really.’ He laughed – a horrible sound in this echoing place. ‘As the vitality drains from your body, the power of Quetzalcoatl too will drain away.’
An immense stalagmite in the shape of a coiled boa constrictor gave the cave its name. A pile of quarried stone blocks stood at the end of the corridor, ready to wall in the victim. Acopol lit three other torches from his own to reveal a very large, high-ceilinged, irregular space, at least two hundred paces across, with several smaller lobes or alcoves branching off the main central chamber. ‘Your tomb,’ he said with a flourish, as the priests threw Tozi down at the base of the stalagmite. Then, while they tied her wrists and ankles and set to work building the wall with trowels and cement, he recited a lengthy rhythmic incantation in a language she did not recognise. Finally, without further explanation, he turned his back on her, walked off down the long corridor and was gone.
‘Release me!’ Tozi ordered the priests, putting all her will into a spell of commanding, but they ignored her and she understood again, with a tremendous, plummeting sense of despair, just how completely, and with what ease, Acopol had stolen her power. She was, truly, a witch no longer, and what was being done to her was going to be done and she could not prevent it. So while the priests cemented the final blocks in place and the light of their torches yet reached into the chamber, she looked round urgently for something, anything that could help her. At five different points on the cavern walls she saw glistening streaks of water that seemed to be seeping down from abov
e and marked them in her memory. If she could slip her tethers she would, at least, not die of thirst. She also thought she felt a current of air blowing not only along the entrance corridor but also from the opposite direction, much deeper inside the cave. This too gave her a thread of hope, and when the last block was cemented into position and complete darkness fell, she refused to let panic take her but began work at once, twisting and turning to loosen her bonds.
* * *
‘The lord Moctezuma sends his compliments,’ said Teudile, giving his hollow-cheeked, insincere smile, ‘and more medicine for your disease of the heart.’ He indicated four large baskets that his bearers had placed on the floor of the audience chamber of Cortés’s Tlascalan palace.
‘My gratitude to the great Moctezuma,’ Cortés replied as Alvarado leaned down to open the baskets, which were filled with small gold ingots in the shape of shrimps. ‘This medicine will serve us well.’
Alvarado was already weighing the baskets on the expedition’s scales. ‘There’s two thousand ounces here,’ he declared after a moment, his eyes glittering with greed and calculation. The other Spanish captains, Davila, Velázquez de Léon, Ordaz, Olid and Sandoval, looked on with equally transparent interest. Only Pepillo, present as usual to help Malinal with the task not only of interpreting the words of the Mexica, but rendering them in flawless Castilian, seemed indifferent to the gold.
The Mexica delegation consisted of Teudile and three other lords, all splendidly dressed in sumptuous cotton robes that put to shame the rough, maguey-fibre smocks and tunics of the Tlascalans. Not that there were any Tlascalans here tonight, Malinal noted, since Cortés’s powers of persuasion were such that Shikotenka had agreed to his request for privacy.
Teudile leaned forward, his voice lowered a notch. ‘Tell the lord Cortés,’ he said to Malinal, ‘that his friend the lord Moctezuma rejoices in his splendid victory over our enemy Tlascala.’
I doubt it, thought Malinal, as she and Pepillo gave the translation. I very much doubt it. She felt quite sure the coward Moctezuma would have much preferred to hear the inconvenient Spaniards had been wiped out, thus saving him the trouble of wiping them out himself.
‘My lord does wonder, though,’ Teudile continued, ‘why the lord Cortés chooses, now that he has defeated them, to stay with the enemies of the Mexica?’
‘Because we are comfortable here,’ Cortés replied, ‘because our every need is met,’ he waved a hand expressively around the large, well-furnished audience chamber. ‘Because the people of Tlascala have made us welcome, and because they have agreed to become the vassals of my king, Don Carlos.’
Teudile lowered his voice further; it was almost a whisper now: ‘The friendship they offer you is not sincere,’ he hissed. ‘Their promise to become vassals is empty. Everything they do is merely to dispel your suspicions so they can later betray you with impunity. Do not trust them, for they are traitors and they will surely kill you at the first opportunity and steal this present of gold we have brought you. The lord Moctezuma therefore requests that you leave this savage, dangerous place at once and proceed to our city of Cholula, where your safety will be guaranteed and he will show you the true meaning of welcome.’
‘And this welcome of the great Moctezuma,’ Cortés asked. ‘What will it consist of?’
‘My lord cannot negotiate with you while you are here in Tlascala,’ whispered Teudile, ‘but he gives his promise, if you show goodwill by making the short journey to Cholula, that he will heap upon you great presents of gold, a thousand times larger than this one – ’ a nod at the gleaming baskets – ‘and that he himself will become a vassal of your king.’
‘A vassal, eh?’ said Cortés, a sharp look – that Malinal recognised – crossing his face. ‘And how much tribute in cloth, in gold, in silver, does the great Moctezuma propose to pay each year to my king?’
‘All such details can be agreed once you are in Cholula,’ Teudile insisted, ‘and when they are agreed, and the tribute set, my lord Moctezuma will invite you to visit him in friendship in Tenochtitlan.’
Cortés turned to Malinal. ‘I don’t trust them,’ he said in Spanish, at the same time giving Teudile a gleaming smile. ‘Tell them we see no need to waste time in Cholula. Our preference is to march straight to Tenochtitlan and receive Moctezuma’s pledge of vassalage there.’
Malinal knew very well that Cortés, on account of his dreams of Saint Peter, was already firmly resolved to go to Cholula, but she put the bluff into the most scornful and ringing Nahuatl. As she did so, Teudile’s face became stubborn: ‘I regret that will not be possible,’ he said.
‘Why is it not possible?’ Cortés asked. ‘Why is the great Moctezuma so keen for us to go to Cholula?’
‘There are two reasons,’ Teudile replied. ‘The first is that in Cholula, my lord Moctezuma hopes that he and the lord Cortés will learn to trust each other fully. He feels it is better for both of you that this trust is built before rather than after the lord Cortés comes to Tenochtitlan. Do you not agree?’
Though his mind had long been made up on the need to go to Cholula Cortés feigned an excellent impression of reflecting carefully on what he’d just been told. ‘I can see the point of the argument,’ he said finally. ‘What is the second reason?’
‘The second reason,’ said Teudile, ‘is that Cholula is sacred to the god Quetzalcoatl, whose manifestation on earth my lord Moctezuma believes the lord Cortés to be. It is right and proper, therefore, that the lord Cortés should visit this city before his arrival in Tenochtitlan. If he does not do so, if he is afraid to do so, it may cause my lord Moctezuma to entertain doubts about the identity – and the intentions – of the lord Cortés.’
‘I am a man,’ said Cortés sourly, ‘as I have told you many times.’
‘Nonetheless, this is what the lord Moctezuma requires – that you make a sojourn in Cholula before he permits you to enter Tenochtitlan.’
Cortés nodded and looked down at the gold. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.
* * *
That night, Wednesday 29 September, while the Mexica delegation slept beneath the roof of Cortés’s palace, under his protection, Saint Peter visited him in a dream.
‘Moctezuma plans treachery,’ the saint now revealed. ‘He is gathering his forces. When you reach Cholula, he aims to bring a great army down on your head and destroy you utterly.’
‘What then would you have me do, Holy Father?’ Cortés asked, ‘since you yourself have urged me more than once to go to Cholula?’
Saint Peter smiled, his eyes, black as coals, glittered with inner fire. ‘Nothing has changed,’ he said. ‘I would have you go to Cholula and lay my vengeance upon that place. When you are within the city, when you judge the moment to be right, invite the lords, the heads of households, the soldiers, to gather in their thousands in the great plaza before the tall pyramid and there I want you to kill them all. Make a massacre for God in Cholula, my son. Repay Moctezuma in full measure for the treachery he plans there, and I will open the gates of Tenochtitlan wide for you.’
* * *
Teudile’s delegation stayed until Sunday 3 October, and left with Cortés’s promise that the Spanish would visit Cholula as they had requested.
‘When?’ Teudile asked.
‘Very soon, when my men are fully rested and recovered from the injuries they received in our war against Tlascala. In no more than ten days from now, we will be there.’
‘You must be mad,’ Shikotenka told Cortés when he learned of this. ‘Don’t you know that everything the Mexica do is riddled with treachery and cunning, and in this manner they have subjected the whole land?’ Speaking urgently through Malinal and Pepillo, he then informed Cortés of specific intelligence he had received in the past three days of a plan to trap the Spaniards once they were inside Cholula: ‘Stones have been piled on the roofs of many houses ready to throw down on you; certain streets have been walled up to deny you free movement, and others have been mined with hol
es filled with sharpened stakes so your deer will fall and cripple themselves. The whole citizenry is being prepared and armed to rise against you and either kill you all or take you prisoner for sacrifice.’
None of this news seemed to come as any surprise to Cortés, and Pepillo saw from the look on his master’s face that he had already made up his mind to go.
Later that same day, he explained his decision to his captains: ‘Gentlemen, our goal is Tenochtitlan and the total subjection of the empire of the Mexica, so we cannot leave a city as hostile as Cholula between us and the sea. For this reason alone, even if there were no others, I would insist that we go there and either extract its surrender or destroy it. But even more important than this, in my view, is the matter of our honour. If Moctezuma sees us balk at Cholula and seek another way to reach him, he will know we are afraid, he will know we can be intimidated and this will strengthen his courage to resist us. It is still my hope, and my conviction, that we can conquer Tenochtitlan without having to fight but, if we are to do this, then we dare show no hesitation now.’
The next days were spent in planning and preparation. The Senate of Tlascala offered its whole army, close to a hundred thousand men, to defend against the expected treachery of Cholula, but Cortés declined, saying so many would amount to an open declaration of war on Moctezuma, and certainly cause him to close up and fortify Tenochtitlan instead of leaving the way open. Given the long history of enmity between the Mexica and the Tlascalans, it was better to proceed by stealth and misdirection, and for this reason, Cortés said, though he understood the risks were great, he would take no more than a thousand Tlascalans to Cholula and preferred that any fighting there should be done by the Spaniards alone.
On Monday 11 October, the Spanish captains gathered to make final plans before setting off for Cholula the next morning, a march of eighteen miles. Shikotenka, who would be leading the small Tlascalan force, was also present. ‘Do you have some words for us?’ Cortés asked him.