Gary Jennings - Aztec

I pleaded, "I should not know these things, my lady."

She shrugged. "I make no excuses for my nature. That sort of release is something I must have, and must have often, and will have. I would even use you for that purpose, Fetch! You are not unappealing. And you would not inform against me, for I know you will obey Nezahualpili's bidding that you be no talebearer. But that would not prevent your confessing your own guilt at our coupling, and that would be the ruin of us both. So..."

She handed me the picture I had drawn of the unsuspecting swift-messenger, and a ring from her finger. "Give him this. It was my Lord Husband's wedding gift to me, and there is not another like it."

The ring was of red gold, set with a huge emerald whose value was incalculable. Those jewels were only seldom brought by traders who ventured as far as the land of Quautemálan, the uttermost southern limit of our trade routes, and the emerald's origin was not even there, but in some land, its name unknown, an untold distance farther to the south of Quautemálan. The ring was one of those designed to be worn on a hand held vertically, for its circlet was hung with jadestone pendants that would show to best advantage when the wearer kept her hand uplifted. The ring had been made to the measure of Jadestone Doll's middle finger. I could barely squeeze it onto my little one.

"No, you are not to wear it," the girl warned. "Nor is he. That ring would be recognized by anyone who saw it. He is merely to carry it, hidden, and then at midnight tonight show it to the guard on the eastern gate. At sight of the ring, the guard will admit him. Pitza will be waiting just inside, to bring him here."

"Tonight?" I said. "But I must find him again, my lady. He may have been sent running on an errand to who knows where."

"Tonight," she said. "I have already been too long deprived."

I do not know what she would have done to me had I not found the man, but I did, and accosted him as if I were a young noble with a message for him to carry. I deliberately did not give him my name, but he said, "I am Yeyac-Netztlin, at my lord's service."

"At a lady's service," I corrected him. "She wishes that you attend upon her at the palace at midnight."

He looked troubled and said, "It is most difficult to tun a message any distance at night, my lord—" But then his eyes fell on the ring I held in my palm, and his eyes widened, and he said, "For that lady, of course, not midnight nor Mictlan could prevent my doing a service."

"It is a service requiring discretion," I said, a sour taste in my mouth. "Show this ring to the guard on the east gate to be admitted."

"I hear and obey, young lord. I will be there." And he was. I stayed awake and listened near my door until I heard Pitza lead Yeyac-Netztlin tiptoeing to the door across the corridor. After that I heard no more, so I do not know how long he stayed or how he effected his departure. And I did not listen again for his subsequent arrivals, so I do not know how often he visited. But it was a month before Jadestone Doll, yawning with boredom, asked me to start sketching prospective new consorts, so Yeyac-Netztlin apparently satisfied her for that span of time. The swift-messenger's name, appropriately, meant Long Legs, and perhaps he was otherwise lengthily endowed.

Though Jadestone Doll made no demands upon my time during that month, I was not always easy in my mind. The Revered Speaker came about every eighth or ninth day to pay a courtesy call on his supposedly cosseted and patient princess-queen, and often I was present in the apartment, and I strove not to sweat visibly during those interviews. I could only wonder why, in the names of all the gods, Nezahualpili did not recognize that he was married to a female ripe and ready for his immediate savoring. Or that of any other man.

Those jewelers who deal in Jadestone say that the mineral is easily found among the commoner rocks of the field, because it proclaims its own presence and availability. Simply go into the countryside at first sunrise, they say, and you will see a rock here or there exuding a faint but unmistakable vapor which announces proudly, "There is Jadestone inside me. Come and take it." Like the prized mineral for which she was named, Jadestone Doll also emanated some indefinable nimbus or essence or vibration which said to every male, "Here I am. Come and take me." Could Nezahualpili be the only man in creation who did not sense her ardor and readiness? Could he really be impotent and uninterested, as the young queen had said?

No. When I saw and listened to them together, I realized that he was manifesting a gentlemanly consideration and restraint. For Jadestone Doll, in her perverse reluctance to settle for just one lover, was making him see not a girl in the prime of nubility but a delicate and immature adolescent untimely consigned to a marriage of convenience. During his visits, she was not at all the Jadestone Doll so well known to me and her slaves—and presumably to Yeyac-Netztlin. She wore garments that concealed her provocative curves and made her look as slender and fragile as a child. Somehow she suppressed her usual aura of flagrant sexuality, not to mention her usual arrogance and irascibility. She never once used the rude name Fetch! when referring to me. Somehow she kept the real Jadestone Doll concealed—topco petlacalco, "in the bag, in the box," as we say of a secret.

In the presence of her lord, she neither lay languorously on a couch nor even sat on a chair. She knelt at his feet, her knees modestly together, her eyes demurely downcast, and she spoke in a childishly meek voice. She might have fooled even me into believing her no more than ten years old, except that I knew what she had already been even at that age.

"I hope you find your life less constricted," said Nezahualpili, "now that you have Mixtli for a companion."

"Ayyo, yes, my lord," she said, dimpling. "He is an invaluable escort. Mixtli shows me things and explains them. Yesterday he took me to the library of your esteemed father's poetry, and recited for me some of the poems."

"And did you like them?" asked the Uey-Tlatoani.

"Oh, I did. But I think I should like even more to hear some of your own, my Lord Husband."

Nezahualpili accordingly recited for us some of his compositions, though with becoming modesty: "They sound better, of course, when my drummer accompanies me." One of them, praising the sunset, concluded:

...Like a bright bouquet of flowers,

our radiant god, our glowing god, the Sun

thrusts himself into a vase

of richest jewels, and the day is done.

"Lovely," sighed Jadestone Doll. "It makes me feel a little melancholy."

"The sunset?" asked Nezahualpili.

"No, my lord, the mention of gods. I know that in time I shall become acquainted with all those of your people. But meanwhile, I have none of my old accustomed gods about me. Would I be forward if I asked my Revered Husband's permission to place in these rooms some statues of my family's favorites?"

"My dear Little Doll," he said indulgently, "you may do or have anything that makes you happy and less homesick. I will send Pizquitl, the resident palace sculptor, and you may instruct him to carve whatever gods your gentle heart yearns for."

When he left her rooms that time, Nezahualpili signaled for me to accompany him. I went, still silently commanding my sweat pores to stay shut, for I fully expected to be questioned about Jadestone Doll's activities when she was not visiting libraries. Much to my relief, though, the Revered Speaker inquired about my own activities.

"Is it much of a burden on you, Mole," he asked kindly, "devoting so much time to your young lady sister?"

"No, my lord," I lied. "She is most considerate about not intruding on my school time. It is only in the evenings that we converse, or stroll about the palace, or wander about the city."