Christopher Evans - Aztec Century

I don’t know how long it was before I realized that someone had entered the room. The light seemed to have dimmed at this point so that I felt as if I was viewing everything through an amber haze. The figure was in shadow at first, but as he stepped forward into the light, I gasped.

It was Extepan.

He was dressed in a similar fashion to us, in a simple tunic of white cotton. His feet were bare except for gold circlets around his ankles, and his hair had been cropped to a stubble. He looked like a prisoner, a sacrificial victim just like ourselves. Behind him stood two other Aztecs, both in ceremonial costumes with cloaks, ear pendants, coiled serpent staffs of black wood.

Extepan held out both his hands and said, ‘Come.’

His two companions raised Victoria and me from our chairs. I felt detached from what was happening, as if the core of my consciousness had retreated to a private place that was inside me yet not part of me. As if I had become an observer, a watcher and a listener, in my own actions.

We were led up a long stairway into another room, where Teztahuitl and numerous other Aztecs were waiting. All wore traditional costume, a plethora of feathered ornaments, richly patterned cloaks and gold jewellery which shone in the flickering light of torches in brackets on the bare stone walls. The light entranced me, making shadows loom and ripple. Voices were distant yet occasional sounds sharp and distinct: the rustling of a fabric, the chink of metal on stone, a cough.

Extepan went forward and stood before Tetzahuitl, who promptly lifted the cotton tunic from his body, leaving him standing naked before us, light gleaming on his body. Then the cihuacoatl draped a mantle around him. It was turquoise, the imperial colour.

The other figures seemed to retreat, to dissolve into the shadows, so that now there were only the four of us, Victoria and I facing Extepan and the cihuacoatl .

‘I thought you were in Potomac,’ I heard myself say.

It was Tetzahuitl who spoke: ‘The siege was ended. We have destroyed the enemy’s capital. The New English have sued for peace.’

I could feel my tongue, rough and bloated, in my mouth. It was hard to speak.

‘Where’s Maxixca?’ I asked.

‘He’s been sent to accept the surrender,’ Tetzahuitl replied.

I laboured with my tortuous thoughts, with the effort of speaking Nahuatl.

‘I thought you were going to make him tlatoani .’

He smiled at this. ‘What gave you that idea?’ His face rushed at me, then sank back as swiftly. ‘He’s an able soldier, but he lacks the finer instincts necessary for a ruler. We already have a successor.’

Extepan stood motionless, expressionless, his gaze on me. He was now wearing a headdress of precious stones and quetzal feathers.

‘You betrayed him,’ Tetzahuitl said.

The stone room was cool, a wide pillared doorway opening to the night.

‘What did you expect?’ I said. ‘You all lied to me. Used me.’

Extepan raised a hand as if to silence any further discussion.

Then a voice said: ‘I was worthless. I never honoured you.’

Victoria and I both turned. There, sitting in the shadows on an icpalli , was Alex. He was naked, and there was something wrong with him, something utterly wrong. In the dimness, it was hard to see, but his face looked a travesty of the real thing, eyes sunk in blackness, skin slack, his shape all wrong.

‘At this time of the year,’ I heard Extepan saying, ‘our ancestors celebrated the feast of Xipe Totec…’

Even as he spoke, ‘Alex’ rose and began capering grotesquely towards us, waving his arms, genitals flapping, face like a mask.

Victoria’s fingernails clawed into my wrist, and my whole body crawled. His skin sagged, then fell away entirely, crumpling to the floor to reveal the prancing, black-painted figure that had been wearing it.

Xipe Totec, the Flayed One…

Victoria’s screams were long, ululating shrieks of terror and loathing. They went on and on, unearthly in their intensity, drowning out everything else. Within myself I remember wondering how I remained so calm. I simply stood there, revolted and petrified, it was true, yet at the same time I had a sense of finally confronting what I had always feared.

The torches kept flickering on the walls, and my eyes were drawn to the flames, the restless, changing patterns and colours. Dimly I was aware of Victoria’s screams diminishing, but only because she was being led away. Tears were flooding from my eyes, unaccompanied by any feelings of sorrow. Then I seemed to be alone with Extepan, who was raising me from a kneeling position.

‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why?’

His face was close to mine, familiar yet completely strange in its frame of feathers.

‘You loved him, didn’t you?’ he said softly in English. ‘Even at the end.’

‘Why did you use me? I believed in you.’

‘You never believed I truly wanted you for yourself. Did you, Catherine? Did you?’

Only in his eyes did his rage show. He held me by the upper arms, very tightly.

‘He was a traitor and a coward. I would have honoured you, made you everything my mother was.’

The lights of the torches behind him danced. I began lolling in his hands, but he raised me roughly upright. His robe had fallen open, and I was certain he was going to revenge himself by raping me.

‘You killed him,’ I said, aware that I was sobbing. ‘You had him flayed alive.’

‘I gave you what you wanted.’

He let me go, and I slumped to the cold stone floor.

Blood rushed and swirled in my head, filling my ears with a roaring. I tried to sit up, but the walls of the chamber seemed to pulse around me, as if I were trapped within a stone heart. ‘There were muttered exchanges, sandalled feet passed close by my face. Then snakes rose up my throat and gushed out of my mouth in a teeming mass, leaving only the acid reek of bile.

After a time I was raised up again. A mountain lion and a man-sized eagle reared their faces at me. I was dragged out through the doorway, past squatting stone soldiers with braziers in their laps. The bright comma of the moon punctuated the dark night sky, and a host of Aztec nobles waited with jewelled costumes and feathered banners.

We were on top of the Great Pyramid in the Temple Precinct: I had been brought out of one of the shrines. The thick night air was filled with smoke and incense, and ranks of whitewashed skulls leered down at me from a blood-red background on Huitzilopochtli’s crowning glory. Extepan sat on a raised throne with Tetzahuitl at his side.

The sky was filled with shooting stars. Fascinated, I traced their paths with my eyes, after-images lingering. Those assembled were murmuring and chanting, a vast communal sound like the pulse and ebb of life itself. I swam in and out of awareness, my mind adrift, unharnessed, accepting of everything. I saw Tetzahuitl raise the imperial diadem and place it on Extepan’s head; I heard him announce that the new tlatoani had taken the name of Xiuhcoatl. I saw Extepan rise and receive the humble obeisances of the nobles, who came forward, crouching, heads bowed, not daring to look him in the face. Was that Chicomeztli in the crowd? I could not be sure. Mia stood close to the throne, holding Cuauhtemoc, placid and joyous, fulfilling her desires at last beside the man she loved. I was certain she would become his queen now, and foreign women would be expunged from the heart of the empire. Xiuhcoatl, the Serpent of Fire, weapon of Huitzilopochtli, the instrument which he used to destroy all his enemies.

Now everything slowed, as if all the figures were moving through water. Torchlight spilled across the stone like melted butter. Black-skinned figures with Medusa hair moved on the edges of the darkness, and the pristine sacrificial stone awaited me. I had a vision of Extepan looming over me with a long obsidian knife, naked except for his golden body ornaments. As the black blade sliced through my breast, he mounted me, penetrated me to the core, and as my heart was torn out, I died in a flurry of release.