Gary Jennings - Aztec

"Perhaps I too, my lord, hearing enough repetitions, might be able to extract some pertinence. But at this moment I can only tell you that the word most often spoken by the white men in their own tongue is 'cortés.' "

Motecuzóma said gloomily, "One word."

"It means courteous, Lord Speaker, or gentle, mannerly, kindly."

Motecuzóma brightened a little and said, "Well, at least it does not bode too ill if the outlanders are speaking of gentleness and kindliness." I refrained from remarking that they had hardly behaved gently in their assault upon the Olméca lands.

After some moody cogitation, Motecuzóma told me and his brother, the war chief Cuitiahuac, to take the messengers elsewhere, to listen to what they had to say, as often as necessary, until we could reduce their effusions to a coherent report of the occurrences in the Totonaca country. So we took them to my house, where Béu kept us all supplied with food and drink while we devoted several whole days to listening to them. The one messenger recited, over and over, the message he had been given by the Lord Patzinca; the other three repeated, over and over, the garble of words they had memorized at the many-voiced conferences between Patzinca and the visitors. Cuitiahuac concentrated on the Náhuatl portions of the recitals, I on the Xiu and Spanish, until our ears and brains were all but benumbed. However, from the flux of words, we at last got a sort of essence, which I put into word pictures.

Cuitiahuac and I perceived the situation thus. The white men professed to be scandalized that the Totonaca or any other people should be fearful of or subject to the domination of a "foreign" ruler called Motecuzóma. They offered to lend their unique weapons and their invincible white warriors, to "liberate" the Totonaca and any others who wished to be free of Motecuzóma's despotism—on condition that those peoples would instead give their allegiance to an even more foreign King Carlos of Spain. We knew that some nations might be willing to join in an overthrow of the Mexíca, for none had ever been pleased to pay tribute to Tenochtítlan, and Motecuzóma had lately made the Mexíca even less popular throughout The One World. However, the white men attached one other condition to their offer of liberation, and any ally's acceptance of it would commit that ally to another act of rebellion that was appalling to contemplate.

Our Lord and Our Lady, said the white men, were jealous of all rival deities, and were revolted by the practice of human sacrifice. All the peoples desirous of becoming free of Mexíca domination would also have to become worshipers of the new god and goddess. They would eschew blood offerings, they would topple all the statues and temples of their old deities, they would instead set up crosses representing Our Lord and images of Our Lady—which objects the white men were conveniently ready to supply. Cuitlahuac and I agreed that the Totonaca or any other disaffected people might see much advantage in deposing Motecuzóma and his everywhere pervasive Mexíca, in favor of a faraway and invisible King Carlos. But we were also sure that no people would be so ready to disavow the old gods, immeasurably more fearsome than any earthly ruler, and thereby risk an immediate earthquake destruction of themselves and the entire One World. Even the easily swayed Patzinca of the Totonaca, we gathered from his messengers, was aghast at that suggestion.

So that was the account, and the conclusions we had drawn from it, which Cuitlalmac and I took to the palace. Motecuzóma laid my book of bark paper across his lap and began reading it, cheerlessly unfolding pleat after pleat, while I told its content aloud for the benefit of the Speaking Council elders also convened in the room. But that meeting, like an earlier one, was interrupted by the palace steward's announcement of new arrivals imploring immediate audience.

They were the five treasury registrars who had been in Tzempoalan when the white men arrived there. Like all such officials traveling in tributary lands, they wore their richest mantles and feather headdresses and insignia of office—to impress and awe the tribute payers—but they entered the throne room looking like birds that had been blown by a storm through several thorny thickets. They were disheveled and dirty and haggard and breathless, partly because, they said, they had come from Tzempoalan at their fastest pace, but mainly because they had spent many days and nights confined in Patzinca's accursed prison cage, where there was no room to lie down and no sanitary facilities.

"What madness is going on over there?" Motecuzóma demanded.

One of them sighed wearily and said, "Ayya, my lord, it is indescribable."

"Nonsense!" snapped Motecuzóma. "Anything survivable is describable. How did you manage to escape?"

"We did not, Lord Speaker. The leader of the white strangers secretly opened the cage for us."

We all blinked and Motecuzóma exclaimed, "Secretly?"

"Yes, my lord. The white man, whose name is Cortés—"

"His name is Cortés?" Motecuzóma followed that exclamation with a piercing look at me, but I could only shrug helplessly, being as mystified as he. The word rememberers' memorized conversations had given me no hint that the word was a name.

The newcomer went on patiently, wearily. "The white man Cortés came to our cage secretly, in the night, when there were no Totonaca about, and he was accompanied only by two interpreters. He opened the cage door with his own hands. Through his interpreters, he told us that his name is Cortés, and he told us to flee for our lives, and he asked that we convey his respects to our Revered Speaker. The white man Cortés wishes you to know, my lord, that the Totonaca are in a rebellious mood, that Patzinca imprisoned us despite the urgent cautioning of Cortés that the envoys of the mighty Motecuzóma should not be so rashly manhandled. Cortés wishes you to know, my lord, that he has heard much of the mighty Motecuzóma, that he is a devoted admirer of the mighty Motecuzóma, and that he willingly risks the fury of the treasonous Patzinca in thus sending us back to you unharmed, as a token of his regard. He wishes you also to know that he will exert all his persuasion to prevent an uprising of the Totonaca against you. In exchange for his keeping the peace, Lord Speaker, the white man Cortés asks only that you invite him to Tenochtítlan, so that he may pay his homage in person to the greatest ruler in all these lands."

"Well," said Motecuzóma, smiling and sitting straighter on his throne, unconsciously preening in that spate of adulation. "The white outlander is aptly named Courteous."

But his Snake Woman, Tlacotzin, addressed the man who had just spoken: "Do you believe what that white stranger told you?"

"Lord Snake Woman, I can recount only what I know. We were imprisoned by Totonaca guards and we were freed by the man Cortés."

Tlacotzin turned again to Motecuzóma. "We were told by Patzinca's own messengers that he laid hands on these officials only after being commanded to do so by that same chief of the white men."

Motecuzóma said uncertainly, "Patzinca could have lied, for some devious reason."

"I know the Totonaca," Tlacotzin said contemptuously. "None of them, including Patzinca, has the courage to rebel or the wit to dissemble. Not without assistance."

"If I may speak, Lord Brother," said Cuitlahuac. "You had not yet finished reading the account prepared by the Knight Mixtli and myself. The words repeated therein are the actual words spoken between the Lord Patzinca and the man Cortés. They do not at all accord with the message just received from that Cortés. There can be no doubt that he has artfully tricked Patzinca into treason, and that he has shamelessly lied to these registrars."