‘Cholula is part of the Mexica empire,’ he replied, ‘and it’s obvious the Mexica aim to deal with you there so they don’t have to face you in Tenochtitlan. It will be a war to the death, so leave no one alive who you’re able to kill; neither the young, lest they should bear arms again, nor the old, lest they should give good advice. The Mexica will show you no mercy and you must show none to them.’
There was a moment’s silence, then Alvarado was on his feet clapping ostentatiously. ‘Bravo!’ he cheered. ‘Bravo, Shikotenka! I knew it when we faced each other knife to knife on that beach at Cuetlaxtlan. You’re a man after my own heart!’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Wednesday 13 October 1519 to Saturday 16 October 1519
After they had crawled towards him across the smooth, polished flagstones of his audience chamber, it pleased Moctezuma to keep Tlaqui and Tlalchi on their gnarled hands and knobbly knees while he conversed with them. As the secular ruler of Cholula, Tlaqui’s impressive title was ‘Lord of the Here and Now’ and, as the spiritual ruler, Tlalchi was ‘Lord of the World Below the Earth’. This morning, however, they looked more like the Lords of Grovel, or the Lords of Humiliation or, better still – Moctezuma suppressed a snigger at the thought – the Shit-Eating Lords, since he suspected they would gladly gobble up piles of their own filth, or any other noxious substance it might occur to him to nominate, if he would only grant the request they had come to him to lodge.
Both men were old, wizened, thin, grey-haired and cautious. Their mannerisms were curiously similar, in particular the odd way they held their hands before their mouths while speaking as though wishing to hide their teeth. They also frequently exchanged shifty eye movements – some sort of wordless consultation, doubtless built up over many years of collusion.
‘If it would please Your Excellency,’ Tlalchi was saying, his voice dry as an ancient corpse, ‘we have certain doubts about the plan communicated to us by General Maza.’
‘Doubts?’ Moctezuma deliberately beetled his brows, giving the lords of Cholula a fierce, disapproving glare. ‘Why should you have doubts? It is an excellent plan. I drew it up myself.’
In unison the pair wriggled uncomfortably.
‘Meaning no disrespect to yourself, sire,’ offered Tlaqui, ‘but the plan as we understand it requires us to capture or kill the white-skinned tueles in the streets of Cholula and we fear this will be difficult. We have heard reports of their fire-serpents and it is undoubtedly the case that great damage will be done if these powerful weapons are used within our sacred city.’
Streets of Cholula? Moctezuma thought. Maza, one of his most favoured generals, who he had appointed to oversee the Cholula operation because of his unquestioning loyalty, ferocity and cunning, had obviously been spreading misinformation – a clever way to keep the real plan concealed from prying eyes and ears. On a whim, he decided to play the old fools along for a few moments more. ‘So what are you suggesting?’ he barked. ‘You want us to call off the attack because of possible damage to your precious city?’
‘No, sire. No. No.’ It was Tlaqui again, positively dribbling with anxiety. ‘We are fully committed to the destruction of the tueles. We are loyal supporters of Your Excellency’s plan. But in the narrow streets of Cholula there are so many obstacles, so many houses and temples for them to hide in, so many possible escape routes they may use to rally and regroup, that we fear things could go badly wrong.’
‘And damage? You said you feared damage?’
‘That too, sire, yes, but our greater concern is to bring overwhelming force to bear on the tueles and the very structure of the city will prevent that … ’
‘I don’t see why,’ said Moctezuma.
‘The narrow streets, Excellency’ – it was Tlalchi mumbling now, his hand back over his mouth. ‘We understand General Maza is mustering six regiments to take the tueles, but it will not be possible to deploy all those men to good effect in our crowded city. Instead, Excellency, since the muster has already begun in the valley of Citlaltépec, four miles north of the city boundary, we suggest the general should lie in wait for the tueles there and ambush them when they march out of Cholula on their way to Tenochtitlan—’
‘Fools!’ fumed Moctezuma. ‘The valley of Citlaltépec isn’t even on the highway! That’s why we chose it for the muster, so the regiments can assemble without attracting attention.’
‘Of course, sire,’ said Tlaqui with a sly smile, ‘but our proposal is to block the highway – block it completely – and create a false road that will lead the tueles directly into the valley where the regiments will be waiting to annihilate them.’
‘No!’ shouted Moctezuma, suddenly bored with this charade. ‘That is not how it will be done! The white-skins must be dealt with inside Cholula but not in those narrow streets you speak of. I cannot imagine where you got such a foolish idea! The white-skins are to be attacked and destroyed in the sacred precinct of the great pyramid of Quetzalcoatl and nowhere else! The god Hummingbird himself showed me this in a vision. Have you truly not, until now, understood the real reason for the ritual preparation of the pyramid by our excellent sorcerer Acopol?’
‘We gave Acopol every cooperation, sire,’ said Tlalchi, ‘but we thought it better not to question.’
‘Yet here you are,’ Moctezuma pointed out, ‘questioning me about narrow streets, and prattling like a pair of old women afraid of your own shadows when you should be preparing yourselves and your city. Don’t you realise how soon the great moment will be upon you?’
A wordless look of concern passed between the two lords.
‘I thought as much!’ Moctezuma exclaimed. ‘You haven’t even taken the precaution of sending spies and runners of your own into Tlascala, have you?’
‘No, sire. It is not safe there.’
‘Not safe? Not safe! Bah! Spies are in the business of not being safe. Mine come and go and manage to survive and what they tell me is this. The army of the white-skins marched out of Tlascala yesterday, supported by a thousand of Shikotenka’s warriors! They bivouacked in the open fields last night and they will certainly reach Cholula today. Most likely they are already there while you are here in Tenochtitlan, treasonously ill-informed and wasting my time with your petty concerns.’
Moctezuma stood, thrusting his stool back with such force that it crashed to the floor. He looked down at Tlaqui and Tlalchi, cowering beneath him. ‘You will return to Cholula at once,’ he said, ‘and on the morning of the third day after today, when Maza has all his forces in place, you will spring the trap. Create some pretext, some subterfuge – I leave the details to you – but lure the white-skins to the sacred precinct, close and lock the gates, and have all your armed male citizens fall upon them there. I do not expect you to conquer and destroy them yourselves. That is not asked of you. Your task will merely be to begin the work and hold them within the walls of the precinct for the short time it takes – an hour at most – for Maza’s regiments to reach you after the fighting begins. Do you think you can do that small thing for me without making a complete mess of it?’
* * *
The rulers of Cholula, it seemed, were absent from the city, and the lesser lords who had come out to greet Cortés had persuaded him to leave the small Tlascalan force camped in the surrounding fields. ‘They’re afraid of you,’ Cortés told Shikotenka through Malinal. ‘You should be flattered.’
‘They should be afraid of those,’ Shikotenka had said, pointing to the cannon that the foolish Cholulans had given entry to without a word of protest. The carriages were being pulled by Totonac bearers to whom, as Mexica vassals, the Cholulans had also granted access.
‘Let us be thankful for small mercies,’ Cortés replied with a wink. He paused thoughtfully, then added: ‘Now hear me, Shikotenka: there are to be no rash actions, do you understand? I know how you feel about Cholula, but you must make no attack or do anything that could be interpreted as aggressive. Above all, although I know you’re sorely tempted, don’t
bring in any more warriors from Tlascala. This is a delicate game I’m playing here with Moctezuma’s fears and suspicions. You must leave me a free hand to play it as I think best.’
Five hours had passed since then, and the Spaniards had disappeared without a trace into the vast maw of Cholula, a city five times as large as Tlascala. ‘I’m concerned for them,’ Shikotenka admitted. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll ever see them again.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Tree. ‘Not so long ago you wanted to kill every one of them. Now you’re worrying about them as if they’re your children or something.’
‘They’re our allies,’ Shikotenka replied gruffly. ‘We have responsibilities for mutual protection under that alliance – responsibilities I take seriously.’
‘It’s more than that,’ said Chipahua. ‘The fact is, you like them. Why don’t you just admit it?’
Shikotenka thought about this for a few moments. Finally he said: ‘I like some of them. They’re true warriors – courageous, skilful, loyal to one another, cruel to their enemies but willing to let bygones be bygones. Why should I not like them?’
‘You could ask Ilhuicamina,’ said Tree, ‘if he hadn’t died from his infected wounds. I’m sure he’d give you a thousand reasons why you should not like them.’
Shikotenka grimaced. They all missed Ilhuicamina. They were all still bitter about what Cortés had done to him. But war was war.
‘What about Cortés?’ Chipahua asked. ‘Do you like him?’
‘I do,’ said Shikotenka. ‘But I don’t trust him. I’ll never trust him. He would sell his own grandmother if the price was right.’
‘Pity the poor Cholulans then,’ laughed Chipahua, ‘for allowing such a viper into their midst!’
Shikotenka lapsed into silence. Of course his friends were right. The Spaniards knew how to defend themselves. Even surrounded by enemies, in the midst of a hostile city, they would find a way to survive.
Yet still he felt restless, felt threat and danger in the air, felt the need to take action. As the sun set behind the great pyramid of Cholula, a pyramid so large it was known locally as Tlachihualtepetl, ‘the artificial mountain’, he called his men together and asked for a hundred volunteers.
* * *
Entombed in thick darkness in the ancient underground cavern beneath the great pyramid of Cholula, Tozi had long since lost any sense of whether it was day or night, and of how much time had passed since she was interred here. She had air to breathe, and after freeing herself from her bonds, she’d worked her way around the huge, irregular space, finding sufficient trickles of slime running down the rough rock walls to keep thirst at bay. Hunger was no great hardship, for she had been hungry many times before; eventually, as she’d expected, her contracting stomach ceased to trouble her with its sharp, demanding pangs.
What was strange was the way the darkness frequently yielded to light, and she saw extraordinary patterns, flows of dots merging together like waterfalls, scintillating zigzag lines, stars that burst and exploded, scattering flecks of fire, brilliantly coloured spirals that wheeled and spun, collections of dazzling triangles, circles and squares, and sometimes, thrusting forth through them, bizarre figures and forms she took to be spirits – a man with the head of a deer, a creature that was part fish, part alligator, a woman transformed into a puma, a giant serpent that wrapped itself around her and laid its great head upon her shoulder, gazing into her eyes with ineffable wisdom.
At some point a vortex of light opened up at her feet and she was drawn down into it in a rushing, whirling luminescent stream that carried her off helplessly, swirling and somersaulting through caverns and winding corridors until she was deposited gently on the shore of a vast midnight-dark lake in another world with a blue sun in a burnished sky. She had been here before! When the serpent had bitten her in the desert, just before the Huichol medicine men had found her and healed her, this was the place she’d been brought to in vision. And, just as before, she saw a woman dressed in red robes, with her back turned, sitting on a rock in the lake, her bare feet dangling in the water. The woman had long black hair which she was combing, combing, and Tozi was again overtaken by the poignant sense of familiarity that had tortured her in her vision of Aztlán and the Caves of Chicomoztoc, which had been left so hauntingly unexplained. She walked closer, stepped into the water which came only to her knees, and was wading out towards the rock when the woman looked round and she recognised her own long-lost mother.
Tozi was running now, splashing through the water, great sobs of joy wracking her whole body as she climbed up onto the rock and embraced her mother, who seemed absolutely present in that place – her scent, her warmth, the urgency of her embrace, everything about her, solid and tangible and real. ‘Oh, mother,’ Tozi heard herself saying, ‘oh, how I’ve missed you’, and her mother replied, ‘I’ve missed you too, my darling,’ and they held each other a moment longer until suddenly, cruelly, inexorably, the whole scene dissolved back into absolute darkness and Tozi knew the truth – that she lay entombed beneath the great pyramid of Cholula, bereft of her powers, cut off forever from all hope of life or rescue and unutterably alone.
* * *
It was the twins Momotztli and Nopaltzin, men of his old squad, men he’d trust with his life, who brought Shikotenka the news the following morning. They’d been amongst the hundred scouts he’d sent out in different directions around Cholula to see what they could learn. Well after midnight, they’d entered a steep-sided valley called Citlaltépec, about four miles north of the city, and started to work their way along the bank of a stream running through the valley floor, when they’d almost stumbled into a Mexica sentry post.
‘There was no moon,’ said Momotztli, ‘otherwise we’d have seen the bastards sooner—’
‘Or they might have seen us,’ added his brother.
‘But they didn’t,’ Momotztli continued.
‘Which was just as well for them,’ said Nopaltzin. ‘I reckon we could have taken them any time.’
‘But just as well for us we didn’t have to,’ said Momotztli. ‘We were able to sneak up close, hunker down and listen to their gossip.’
Nopaltzin took up the story. ‘Seems they’re part of a big force that’s mustering there. Huge force, in fact. Six regiments … ’
‘All in honour of our friends the Spaniards,’ Momotztli added.
‘So there’s an attack planned,’ Nopaltzin continued, ‘two days from today in the morning. Seems the Cholulans are going to start it with a mass uprising inside the city to distract our friends’ attention, then the regiments are going to pile in. They’re going to try to take most of them alive … ’
‘They’ve been issued with special poles with leather collars on the end,’ Momotztli elaborated. ‘And hammocks! Lots of hammocks!’ He laughed. ‘The plan is to capture some of the Spaniards with the poles and tie the rest up in the hammocks and then carry them off to Tenochtitlan for sacrifice—’
‘Except for twenty of them,’ Nopaltzin remembered. ‘They’ll be handed over to the Cholulans to sacrifice here.’
Chipahua had been listening in: ‘Hammocks!’ he scoffed. ‘Poles! Typical Mexica wet dream – nice warm fantasy followed by a nasty damp bed. You can tell they haven’t faced the Spaniards in battle yet. If they had, they’d know six regiments are nowhere near enough.’
Shikotenka was sitting very still, thinking, calculating. Cortés had said he was to bring no more men to Cholula, and take no aggressive actions, but that was before either of them knew that close to fifty thousand Mexica warriors were mobilising for battle outside the city.
Chipahua nudged him: ‘You’re cooking something up, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘You’ve got that look in your eye.’
Suddenly interested, Tree edged closer.
* * *
Pepillo brought his diary up to date on Friday 15 October, the second full day the Spaniards had spent in Cholula.
‘We reached the city,’ he wrote
, ‘on Wednesday 13 October, and entered it with all our cannon and cavalry, and our Totonac auxiliaries and bearers; however, the Tlascalans who had accompanied us were obliged to remain camped in the fields outside.
‘The rulers of Cholula, Tlaqui and Tlalchi by name, were not present when we arrived. They were, we were told, in Tenochtitlan. They returned yesterday, Thursday 14 October, and installed themselves in their palace, but yet refused to see us. This the caudillo thought very rude, particularly so since they sent persons of no great importance to treat with us. He informed these minor lords through Malinal that an embassy such as ours, from such a great prince as Don Carlos, King of Spain, should not be received by men such as they, and that even their masters were hardly worthy to receive it. He gave orders that Tlaqui and Tlalchi should appear before him this morning, otherwise he would be forced to proceed against them as rebels who refused to subject themselves to the dominion of the king.
‘This morning, however, Friday 15 October, even though we were quartered in two tall, spacious buildings overlooking the main plaza with its great pyramid, and adjacent to their palace, the rulers still did not appear. Instead they sent a message claiming they were both very sick. Adequate food supplies were provided to us yesterday and the day before, but none whatsoever were provided today. We all take this as an ominous sign, particularly since there is great unrest in the town, with large numbers of people, mainly women and children, leaving carrying their belongings. Malinal very bravely went out disguised as a local woman and found close to our lodgings some holes dug in the streets, covered over with wood and earth in such a way they could not be seen without careful examination. When she removed a little of the earth from above one of these holes she found it was full of sharp stakes to kill the horses when they charged, as our friends the Tlascalans had warned us. She saw that the roofs of many of the houses had breastworks of dried clay and were piled with stones, and this could be for no friendly purpose, since she also found barricades of stout timbers in another street.