Was this their punishment?
Cholula was ten days’ journey from Tenochtitlán. Before the blood had even dried in the streets the strangers and their Tlaxcalan followers marched towards us.
The emperor’s spies could be seen scurrying daily to and from the city, and dreadful news swept outwards from the palace like a great wave. The emperor sent more and more gifts, no longer troubling with secrecy or discretion in his growing agitation. It was said that those who approached had a disease – a terrible affliction – that gold alone could cure. The goldsmiths’ district of Azcapotzalco was emptied of its ornaments by imperial command as Montezuma sought to buy the strangers’ favour.
My father and I did not escape attention. The contents of our own workshop were taken by Axcahuah, who came himself, bursting in so suddenly that I was caught kneeling, moulding a figure in wax. In haste I concealed the object within a fold of my skirt and began to rub the floor with the hem as though attempting to clean it. It was a poor sham, and would not have deceived anyone who looked at me, but Axcahuah did not even glance my way. His mind was filled with more pressing concerns.
“I will take everything now,” he told my father. “Payment shall follow later.”
In just a few moments all we had – both finished and unfinished pieces, quills of gold, unpolished stones waiting to be set – was loaded into the arms of slaves and taken away to the palace. The workshop was stripped bare; we would have to sit idle until the next market day, when traders would bring more gold.
“These are gifts, my lord?” my father questioned.
Axcahuah frowned at his impertinence, but gave an answer. Perhaps it relieved him to talk of it.
“Our lord emperor offers tribute.”
“Tribute?” My father was astonished. Tribute was something paid to our emperor, something given to a conquering force. And yet our warriors had fought no battle. “Do they come to rule us, then?”
Axcahuah shook his head, but his eyes told a different story. “They say they come in peace; our emperor is not so certain. And so he offers them much gold – a price he will pay annually – if they will agree not to enter our city.”
“And yet they still come?”
“They do. They say they are envoys of a great ruler. They come to offer our emperor friendship.”
“Who is this ruler?” My father’s question was little more than a whisper.
In reply the nobleman simply shook his head, and shrugged his shoulders helplessly. He made no further comment, but left our workshop without another word.
The unanswered question lingered in the strange emptiness of the room. My father and I could do nothing but exchange looks, and see our own alarm mirrored in the other’s face.
Who claimed to be equal with our emperor? Did such a ruler truly exist? And if he did, how could it be that we had never heard of him?
Like so many of the citizens of Tenochtitlán, my father and I were drawn daily to the great temple precinct to hear the fresh news that flowed from the palace.
One day, soon after dawn, we saw a messenger leading a procession of many bearers away towards the causeway carrying the finest tokens our city could muster.
The sun was not yet high when I saw that same messenger return. I knew him only by the colour of his cape, for he was in disarray, his eyes rolling in alarm, his hair unbound, clutching at his heart as though it might burst from his chest. He staggered towards the palace, but before he could reach it he fell, almost knocking me off my feet. When I bent to aid him, he grasped my waist as though engulfed in horror.
The bearers who had followed him I now saw were empty-handed and stood confused, uncertain what they should do.
“Can I help you?” I asked gently, trying to prise his arms away from me. A crowd had begun to gather around us to witness this bizarre sight. “Let me assist you into the palace.”
“No!” he gasped. “I fear to relate what I have seen to our lord emperor. Is not a teller of bad omens always slain?”
I was too shocked to answer. Before I could reply, he was hoisted to his feet by palace guards and dragged inside. His wailing cries could be heard as he vanished within.
“I have seen the god! The city is doomed!”
The bearers followed, muttering amongst themselves. With these overheard remarks, it did not take long for the tale to be pieced together by the assembled crowd. I had not moved from the precinct before I knew what had occurred.
It seemed the messenger had never reached the strangers. Indeed he had barely crossed the causeway with his gifts, when he had found his path blocked by an aged man with jaguar-clawed toes, apparently sleeping in the road.
The messenger had tried to rouse this withered ancient, but as soon as he had touched him the old man had vanished. Startled, the messenger had looked about him, and the old man had appeared on the road ahead, grinning with mad delight. Whirling his walking stick above his head, he had begun to cackle.
At once the skies had darkened and a wind had blown about them, tearing at their fine cloaks and making the bearers spill their goods upon the ground, where they went rolling into the lake. And then the wizened creature had pointed back along the causeway to Tenochtitlán. As he had watched, the messenger had seen our city burst into flames before both vision and old man disappeared.
This tale swept through the crowded streets. Men wept openly with despair. Women held their children to their breasts in passionate frenzy, kissing them fiercely as though for the last time.
The name of the god was on every tongue. I had to press my hand to my lips to stop a sob bursting from me. Had I not seen him myself in the marketplace? Had not Mitotiqui shielded me from his blows? Had I not carved his waxen image?
No one could doubt that the old man who had thus foretold the destruction of our city was Titlacuan, the destroyer: the dark face of the god Tezcatlipoca.
The strangers had gathered on the shore. In the evening light we could make out little detail, but the immense size of the force assembled against us was in no doubt. We were surrounded: held within Tenochtitlán by Tlaxcalans who had massed at the end of each causeway, and who swarmed upon the hills, numerous as ants. And as we watched they stood in turn, each raising his cloak high so that a blood-red wave rippled across the slopes.
With fear gnawing at my insides, my father and I elbowed through the crowds that were drawn to the city’s edge to view this spectacle. Each mouth muttered different words, but the meaning was always the same: terror, doom, death.
“The entire Tlaxcalan army is there!”
“Listen! They give their battle cry!”
“Why does our emperor not send warriors to defend us?”
“It is not the season of war.”
“The rituals have not been observed.”
“The priests will not allow it.”
“The gods have decided our destiny. Our lord emperor knows that no warriors can protect us from it.”
“We can do nothing.”
“We must accept our fate.”
They made no move that day.
Darkness fell heavy on Tenochtitlán, and silence gripped the city as though every person within held their breath. For this was the night when the sacred and temporal calendars became aligned. It was the close of the bundle of years. As was the custom, all fires were extinguished to mark its end. At dawn a new cycle would begin.
Or it would not.
I had no thought of sleep. Though I lay on my reed mat, I was so afraid I knew I could not rest. Mayatl had turned her face to the wall but neither did she slumber. Her breathing came hard and fast, labouring under the weight of apprehension. I believed we would remain like this until dawn, but suddenly sleep came upon me, enveloping me so swiftly it was as though I had drunk deep draughts of pulque.
I dreamt of the same youth I had seen when Mitotiqui and I had eaten the sacred mushrooms. His hair came from his head in curves, twisting and writhing like serpents, and yet I knew full well that a man’s hair gr
ows straight no matter how he wears it. It was strangely coloured too, not black but gleaming gold, and his eyes were not brown but the blue of the sky, the blue of the lake. This youth said nothing. Merely looked at me. When I woke – suddenly, with a gasp – I was chilled with cold, as though a wind had blown from the mountain tops into my bedchamber. My heart pounded – not with fear but with a sensation so akin to it, it was hard to identify.
I sat up. It was so still that when the dawn flushed the sky with gold, the sounds of clanking metal, dogs barking, men shouting, could be faintly heard from the distant shore.
Scarcely stopping to dress and eat, my father and I left the house, joining the crowds that hastened towards the causeway, where a cataclysm would shortly come to meet us.
They approached. Conquerors of the Otomi; destroyers of Cholula. Led by the god, perhaps, or at least one smiled on by Tezcatlipoca. Behind them, all the warriors of Tlaxcala.
If the moon had stepped from the sky and bathed in the lake, if the sun had climbed down from the heavens and walked into Tenochtitlán, it could not have amazed us so much as what came on that crisp, bright morning.
The whole city, from slave to noble, had been drawn into the streets to see them. The lake was choked with canoes that sat dangerously low in the water, so full were they of terrified onlookers. The rooftops were tightly packed, the streets near impassable. And over all this great throng hung an awful quiet that was punctuated only by the wail of a baby, the cry of a child, a soft low moan from a woman who could not contain her anxiety.
The tramp of many feet broke it. Though they were some way off, we heard their advance long before we could see the faces of those who came. I watched, feeling a cold detachment from the scene, for fear had numbed me. My father and I had walked onto the causeway to better see their progress. As the distant shapes took form, I noted that these strangers had an eye for spectacle – for drama and pageantry – that rivalled our own. Wishing to strike dread and awe into our hearts, they had arranged themselves with artful care.
At the head of the procession came four beasts the like of which neither I nor anyone in Tenochtitlán had ever seen. Creatures whose shoulders stood taller than a man. Whose iron feet struck sparks off the stones they clattered over. From whose nostrils plumed smoke as though they breathed fire. And on their backs, men with skin of an oddly pale hue, dressed in polished metal that gleamed in the sunshine. The men of the Aztec empire are smooth-faced, but these newcomers had thick beards upon their chins that were cut into a point at the end like the god Quetzalcoatl. It was easy to see how our messengers had taken them for immortals. They seemed not of this earth. Waving metal knives with blades as sharp as obsidian and longer than a man’s arm, they advanced, and people shrank back to make way for them.
As the crowds shifted and rearranged, I found myself pushed to the front. No one stood between the mighty procession and me. If I reached out a hand, I could touch them. My eyes drank in every detail. Each fresh sight pressed upon my mind, leaving an imprint as deep and clear as if my head was filled with soft wax. I found I could not feel fear, although all around me seemed to quake with it. Only a wild excitement held me. I was aware that if they came to fight, I would be amongst the first slain; but I could not bring myself to care. I was stunned by the splendour of those who passed. Curiosity inflamed me.
A man came carrying a length of bright cloth upon a pole which he twirled as he walked, letting the material flow out behind him in display. Then followed others on foot, plumed helmets glinting, weapons held as if ready for battle. Men with bows of a strange crossed construction which would surely fire the arrows that were bunched, bristling, at their hips. They were not like the longbows of our own warriors, but I did not doubt that theirs were the more deadly.
Behind them came three dark-skirted men who had styled their hair in an outlandish way by cutting a neat circle from their crowns. Each carried a painted wooden figure. That in the front was of a dying man fixed to a cross. Behind him a woman, robed in the blue of sacrifice, with a baby in her arms. Last was a well-muscled man who carried a small child upon his shoulder. From the care and reverence with which they held them, I took these to be their gods.
Suddenly several huge dogs – large enough to knock a warrior off his feet – were released from the lines of the procession and ran amongst the gathered crowds. Their teeth were so long they could rip a throat out with one tearing bite. Slobbering, panting, urinating, they caused panic wherever they went. The strangers made no attempt to control their creatures, but rather seemed to relish the alarm that spread in waves before them.
One such beast ran straight at me – a hound whose head came up to my chest. I recoiled, flinching, pressing back, but there was such a mass of people I had nowhere to flee. Without warning, the creature leapt, placing a clawed paw on either shoulder. It was so heavy that my knees threatened to buckle beneath me.
Here was my death. Here. Now.
I waited for those teeth to close upon my throat. With its dreadful breath rank and hot in my face, it opened its cavernous mouth, its lips curled back to expose those savage fangs – but then its tongue came out and I was licked across the face. Revolted, relieved, I pushed the dog away, wiping my mouth with the back of my arm. The men who rode by laughed at my discomfort and I bristled with fury.
More of the huge iron-footed beasts came. Five abreast, and then five more. And between them a man on a white mount whose armour was polished so highly that it blinded the eyes of any who looked at him. From their grouping, and the attitude of reverence shown by those who surrounded him, I guessed this was their leader.
As he drew level with me, he stopped. I could not – would not – drop my gaze. Was he the god? Was he Tezcatlipoca? I stared, longing to know the truth. Slowly the man turned and scanned the bent heads of those that lined the causeway. For a moment, his eyes met mine. And in that instant I knew he was a man. I had seen the god: at the spring festival I had been scalded by the glory of his gaze. This man was not Tezcatlipoca, nor was he possessed by his spirit. For certain his eyes blazed as if fired by some great emotion, but those pupils were as mortal as mine.
Behind him was a column of Tlaxcalan warriors painted for battle, screaming their war cries and giving wild yelps and whistles. There were so many thousands of them that their line extended back all the way to the lake shore.
Those at the head of the procession had already entered Tenochtitlán. Now the ranks of those who were still on the causeway divided. Our emperor was coming forth! He was coming out of the city to welcome these strangers!
The causeway was wide, but it was now so full that our emperor’s progress was slow. He came carried on his litter, with few attendants, humbly as it seemed to me, to honour these intruders.
When he stepped out, all around him tried to kneel, but the mass of bodies was so great that none could do so. All cast their eyes to the ground and covered their faces with their hands. I averted my gaze, turning my head once more towards the foreign leader. From where had he come? In what unknown land did he make his home?
In a strange tongue he addressed our emperor. His words were translated by the slave who attended him.
“You are the emperor? You are ruler of this city?” he demanded roughly.
Acknowledging that it was so, our emperor spoke the formal words of courtesy that were always extended to guests.
“My lords, you have travelled far; you are weary.” His voice sounded forced, wooden, as if he tried to make his words sincere. Gesturing to the city behind him, he said, “My palace is now your home. Come rest your aching limbs. Come eat your fill. You are my most honoured guests.”
To my very great shock, this man in dazzling armour then sprang down from his mount. Before I could look away, he boldly put his arms around our emperor – laid hands upon him – and kissed him on both cheeks! I dropped my head in horror and embarrassment. I alone had seen. But the people around me had heard the noise of the embrace and the slap of foreign
lips upon our emperor’s face. As one they took a sharp indrawn breath.
It was then that I first became aware of a dreadful smell. I had come across it only once before, and it was some time before I could recognize it. Long ago, Mitotiqui and I had stumbled across what we took to be a pile of old rags. It had turned out to be a person – a man sick in his mind – who had lain in the streets for several days, unattended and forgotten. This was the smell that now hung all around me: sweat, unclean clothes and unwashed bodies. These strangers stank worse than their animals!
It seemed that their powerful odour had also reached the emperor’s nostrils, for he called to the priests who accompanied him. They came forward, liberally pouring sweet-smelling incense upon our guests to drown their ghastly aroma. Their leader lowered his head graciously, as if a very great honour was being bestowed on him.
From where it came, I know not. Perhaps the dread of the last few months at last overcame me; perhaps I simply could not contain myself any longer, but had to find some means of release. The sight of our priests desperately dousing these strangers with incense while they bowed solemnly as if accepting some noble tribute made a great laugh swell in my chest. It rose until it threatened to burst from my throat. I had to suppress it. It could not escape. Not there, not then! Biting my lip I raised a hand to my mouth to stop the smile that grew, broad and uncontrollable, on my face. Casting my eyes about frantically, I searched for a distraction.
And found one.
In the group of strangers pressed together tightly behind their leader was a youth. A soldier. One who stood out amongst his dark-haired fellows. Whose eyes were the blue of the sky, the blue of the lake. Whose hair came from his head in curves, twisting and writhing like serpents, and which gleamed gold when he turned towards me. And smiled. For, though he was from another world, he had seen my laughter and understood its cause.