War God: Nights of the Witch Page 16

  She wrapped her arms round Malinal and Coyotl, and realised with a flood of emotion how deeply connected to them she felt. It was as though they’d been together all their lives, or in lives before this life, but certainly not for just a few hours or days.

  Even in the midst of evil, Tozi thought, good still flourishes.

  When at last the soldiers came for them they’d already decided not to resist – might as well resist a mountain or the ocean – and silently obeyed the harsh barks of the Mexica officers. In this way they soon found themselves herded together with the last five hundred women remaining in the pen. The whole group was then marched out of the gates and into the plaza, where they were greeted by a horrible, disorienting clamour of cries and screams, conches, tambourines, horns, whistles and the mournful, gut-churning beat of the snakeskin drum.

  Tozi had witnessed countless sacrifices and knew what to expect next. Jeering guards surrounded the women and made them strip naked, leering at their bodies, roughly shoving and goading them into compliance. Poor Coyotl clutched his little hands to his mutilated genitals – as if any of that mattered now, thought Tozi as she shrugged off her own filthy rags. Malinal stood tall and proud, firm-breasted, her head held upright.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Coyotl in a small voice.

  ‘Me too,’ said Tozi.

  ‘This is so hideous,’ said Malinal. ‘What are they going to do to us now?’

  ‘They’re going to paint us,’ Tozi said.

  It was already happening. Up ahead the women were being harried into a line where slaves armed with brushes daubed their bodies with a thick chalk plaster, turning them ghostly white. Some cried out, hunched over, but it only delayed the inevitable – they were forced upright and the plaster was applied. Other functionaries were at work hurriedly painting their eyelids black and their lips red, anointing the crowns of their heads with molten rubber and pluming them with turkey feathers. Finally they were dressed in crude paper garments and herded onwards towards the looming pyramid.

  Tozi, Malinal and Coyotl stuck close together as their turn came, submitting passively to the painting and feathering. Although Tozi had never admitted to herself that she would ever become a victim, there was a strange, dreamlike way, as she donned the paper loincloth and the paper blouse, in which she found she was ready to admit it now. Perhaps it was because she was so tired, her body so punished, her head hurting so much, her spirit so beaten down, but after months of relentless struggle to stay alive, always alert, always suspicious, always afraid, she began at this moment to see death as a welcome release from the hell-world the Mexica had created.

  A fat priest in black robes, blood-matted hair down to his waist, stepped onto a low platform and addressed the women, most of whom were from Tlascala and other more distant lands, as they trudged past him towards the pyramid:

  We welcome you to this city of Tenochtitlan

  Where reigns the god Hummingbird.

  Do not think that you have come here to live;

  You have come here to die,

  To offer your chests to the knife.

  Only in this way, through your deaths, has it been your fortune

  To know this great city.

  ‘Such arrogance!’ whispered Malinal. A wind had come up while the priest spoke, a warm, damp wind swirling round the plaza, plucking at their flimsy garments. Tozi looked to the sky. Thick clouds had begun to build there, though the moon still shone clear, casting its cold glamour over the whole hellish scene – the swirling orange patterns painted by the lanterns in the plaza, the torsos and heaps of human offal piled up at the base of the pyramid, the hideous glistening cascades of blood through which the victims must climb, the diabolical flare and flicker of the torches and braziers on the sacrificial platform before the temple of Hummingbird, and Moctezuma himself still wielding the obsidian knife at the top of the northern stairway.

  Coyotl was clinging tight to Tozi’s hand as the panicked crowd jostled round them, great shivers and tremors shaking his body. She stooped, uncertain if she had the strength to lift him, but Malinal got there first. ‘Let me carry him,’ she said, hoisting Coyotl up onto her hip again. ‘He’s not heavy.’

  The little boy looked her straight in the eye. ‘I’m still afraid,’ he said.

  ‘We’re all afraid,’ said Malinal. She smiled wearily at Coyotl: ‘Rest a bit, little one,’ she told him, and he obediently put his head on her shoulder.

  Again Tozi felt a wash of gratitude for her new family. If the struggle was truly over and the end came for all of them under the sacrificial knife, it was a comfort to know they would pass to the next world together.

  With loud whistles and shouts and repeated kicks and punches, the guards kept the women moving forward in a mass towards the pyramid through swirling, grimacing lantern dancers whose faces were painted red as boiled lobsters. Somewhere ahead, but close, Tozi heard loud shouts and high-pitched screams. Standing on tiptoe she saw a squad of brute-faced soldiers armed with macuahuitls dividing the prisoners into two lines.

  The line that forked left led to death at the top of the northern stairway.

  The line that forked right led to death at the top of the western stairway.

  As she approached the fork, Tozi saw Ahuizotl pushing his way towards them through the dancers, his face busy with malign intent. He seemed to have recovered from whatever hurt Xoco had done to his leg and was no longer using his spear as a crutch.

  His eyes were fixed on Malinal. He marched right up to her, leaned in and whispered, loud enough for Tozi to hear, ‘I don’t know how you and your friends did that vanishing act today but now you’re going to disappear for ever.’ Recoiling from the venom in his tone, or perhaps the stink of blood that rose from him, Coyotl whimpered on Malinal’s shoulder and the high priest’s hand shot out, snatched the child by the hair and jerked his head violently back, half pulling him from Malinal’s arms.

  ‘NO!’ Coyotl screamed – a single word, filled with terror. An instant later Tozi sank her teeth into Ahuizotl’s wrist and Malinal went for his face. He shook them off as the soldiers piled in, there was a flurry of movement and, at the end of it, the high priest held Coyotl triumphantly clamped under his arm.

  ‘Tozi!’ Coyotl wailed.

  Ahuizotl barked orders to the guards to bypass the line and take Malinal and Tozi forward at once to the foot of the northern stairway. His face set in a horrible, mocking leer; he then hurried off, still clutching the struggling child.

  Tozi found a burst of strength and tried to follow, but a soldier smashed his fist into the side of her jaw, sending her sprawling on her face on the hard paving of the plaza. A vast new pain exploded in her head, confounding her senses. She dimly heard the sounds of shouting and struggle, shrill screams from Coyotl, blows, then Malinal landed on top of her, knocking the breath from her body.

  ‘Tozi … Help me! …’ Coyotl’s voice was filled with terror, abandonment, loss, violation and pain – everything that a child should never know or feel. ‘No No No … Owwwwwww! No, no … To-ziiii!’

  Then soldiers were hauling Malinal to her feet, half stunned, eyes rolling drunkenly, lips split and bleeding from a blow to the face. Tozi drew in a great whooping breath as her friend’s weight came off her, and felt rough hands gripping her arms, forcing her to stand. ‘Tozi … Help me!’ Coyotl screamed again. His voice was fainter, moving away. ‘You said you wouldn’t let them hurt me. You promised! Toziiii!’

  But it was a promise she could not keep. As Ahuizotl carried the little boy all the way to the foot of the western stairway and tossed him down, Tozi was swarmed over by guards prodding her with the obsidian points of their spears, beating her thighs, whooping and whistling at her, dragging her forward to the foot of the northern stairway. Right in front of her in the line, still reeling from the blow she’d taken, and forced to mount the first step, was Malinal.

  Coyotl’s screams were faint now, barely audible. Tozi heard, ‘You promised’ one more time,
fluttering on the breeze like a butterfly, then the little boy was swallowed up amongst the other victims and his voice fell silent.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Santiago, Cuba, Thursday 18 February 1519

  As the great ship gently rocked beneath him, and the lanterns on the wall flared and flickered, Cortés sat alone at the map table in Alvarado’s spacious stateroom, looking round the ten empty seats soon to be filled by his captains, considering how best to get what he wanted from these men. Some of them were his already, some he was in the process of making his, and some would never be his. He could only hope he had done enough to tip the balance in his favour.

  Since Cortés had taken command of the expedition three months previously, and begun to make all necessary preparations, Diego de Velázquez had constantly interfered, insisting on appointing many of the captains himself. Of these, Cortés was most offended by the glowering Juan Escudero – the very man whom Velázquez had sent to arrest him two years before over the matter of Catalina. Escudero had looked down his long nose at Cortés as though he was a criminal then – and nothing had changed today.

  There would be no accommodation with him, but other Velazquistas had proved easier to subvert with gold, or flattery, or friendship.

  Juan Velázquez de León, for example, appeared on the surface to be completely loyal to his cousin Diego. Of a naturally loud, harsh and vulgar temperament, this ox of a man with his angry green eyes, bushy black beard and aggressive chin was quiet and unusually servile in the governor’s presence. But Cortés had discovered that his outward deference concealed simmering bad blood. De León felt bitter that his powerful kinsman had not given him sufficient land, or Indians to work it, when he came to Cuba. Cortés had poured subtle poison in his ear almost daily during the past three months, stoking his already fierce resentment of Velázquez and filling his mind with new suspicions and rancour. He had also extended a generous personal loan of two thousand gold pesos to De León to refit his ancient, leaking caravel, telling him that if the expedition was a success, as he expected it to be, he would not ask him to pay the money back.

  Still, it was by no means clear which way Velázquez de León would jump if he was forced to choose sides, and the same was true of many of the others. Indeed out of the ten captains, there were only three whom Cortés counted as firm and reliable friends – the well-placed aristocrat Alonso Hernández Puertocarrero, Juan de Escalante and, of course, Pedro Alvarado.

  Cortés stepped out onto the navigation deck and looked up at the moon, close to full and riding high, its pale glare casting baleful shadows through the masts and rigging of the San Sebastián, reflecting off the black water of the harbour, filling the sky with light. It would be about nine o’clock and down below on the pier, right on schedule, he heard voices and saw a large group of men approaching – Alvarado with, it seemed, all the captains. Most of them were in their mid-thirties – around Cortés’s own age – and all were veterans who’d fought their way through the Italian wars and the conquest of Hispaniola and Cuba. Juan de Escalante was the youngest of them at thirty-one, Diego de Ordaz the oldest at forty-three. Cortés had also sent orders with Alvarado for one of his newly appointed junior officers to attend, twenty-two-year-old Gonzalo de Sandoval.

  When all the captains were seated, with Sandoval left standing for want of a chair, Cortés launched right into things, bluntly, with no preamble. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘we must leave Santiago tonight. We sail on the ebb tide five hours from now.’

  He did not immediately elaborate and there was a beat of stunned silence. Juan Escudero’s lantern jaw gaped comically for a moment before he snapped it shut. ‘Sail to where?’ he asked.

  ‘To the New Lands, of course, but a week early.’

  ‘This is highly irregular,’ objected Ordaz. He had the strong, stubborn face of a miller or a mason. ‘Does the governor know what you intend?’

  ‘He does not,’ said Cortés, meeting the man’s thoughtful, grey-eyed stare. ‘And if he did he would not permit our departure this night.’

  ‘But then surely we must not leave?’ proposed Velázquez de León. He flashed Cortés an apologetic glance as though to say: You and I know how I really feel, but I have to be seen to defend my kinsman’s interests.

  ‘We will not leave!’ thundered Escudero, slapping his hand on the table. ‘Cortés is nothing more than a thief. He would steal the expedition from the governor.’

  Cortés pushed back his chair and stood, half drawing his sword. Escudero looked startled, as though he really wasn’t expecting this, and scrambled to his feet, knocking his own chair over with a loud crash. ‘I’ll not be called a thief,’ Cortés said. ‘Apologise now or we step outside and settle this man to man.’

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ said Puertocarrero, his red beard twitching. ‘How can we hope for victory in the New Lands if we’re already fighting among ourselves?’ He turned his moist brown eyes on Cortés: ‘Please, Hernán, put away your sword. If Juan is too pig-headed to apologise to you, I will apologise on his behalf, but we must not fall to killing each other, don’t you agree?’

  Cortés thought about it, but only for an instant. Everything that was impulsive, violent and vengeful in his nature yearned to run Escudero through. That was what had got him out of his chair. But his more rational side saw no gain in killing the man while they were still in the port of Santiago and subject to the governor’s jurisdiction. A better opportunity was sure to present itself. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘we will not fight.’ He sheathed his sword and sat down again. Now make a virtue of necessity. He smiled. ‘Instead, I have a suggestion. Let us agree that all of us around this table may trade insults tonight as we wish, without any man’s honour being impugned. That way’ – he looked at Escudero – ‘we may speak our minds freely and be satisfied as to the truth.’

  There was a rumble of assent from the captains.

  ‘Which of course does not mean,’ added Cortés, ‘that we’re obliged to insult each other.’ A ripple of laughter ran round the table. ‘I for one intend to remain civil even if some do not … Now, Don Juan, you suspect me of stealing the expedition from our patron Diego de Velázquez, but the truth is I wish to save it for him. Will you hear me out?’

  ‘Be my guest,’ sneered Escudero with a wave of his hand. ‘Given enough rope, you’re bound to hang yourself.’

  Cortés smiled again. When we reach the New Lands, he thought, we’ll see which one of us hangs. But instead he said: ‘Something’s come up – a great danger to us that we must deal with at once. Under such circumstances our official Instructions, written by Don Diego himself, vest full emergency powers in me to take whatever actions I decide are in the best interests of the expedition.’ He brought out a scroll from his pocket, pushed it into the middle of the table. ‘Clause twenty-three,’ he said. ‘It’s on this basis, though I hold him in the highest personal regard, that I’ve decided not to consult Don Diego tonight. Neither the interests of the expedition, nor his personal interests, will be served by involving him. What’s needed now is swift action, but he’s the governor of Cuba, busy with a thousand things, and if we put this to him he’ll bog us down for days. We all know he’s a man who doesn’t make decisions quickly …’

  ‘I’ll second that,’ said Cristóbal de Olid. He was short, squat and gnome-like, with a wild black beard and twinkling blue eyes. ‘Takes him three months to sign a simple requisition sometimes.’

  ‘I’ve waited three years for a proper grant of Indians,’ complained De León.

  Puertocarrero agreed: ‘What Velázquez promises and what gets done are two different things.’

  Cortés moved swiftly to capitalise on his gains. ‘You touch upon my exact point, Alonso. This emergency is such we can’t waste a single minute waiting for His Excellency to make up his mind. We have to sail tonight!’ He leaned forward over the map table, his voice low and urgent. ‘My shipping agent, whom I trust with my life, has returned this afternoon from Santiago de La Vega
on the island of Jamaica. He reports that Pedro de Arias has installed himself there, recruited close to fifteen hundred men – the scum of the earth, so it seems – and gathered together a mixed fleet of twenty good carracks and caravels. They’re bound for the New Lands.’ He paused for effect. ‘Nigh on ready to sail. If we don’t beat them to it, there’ll be no prize left for us to win.’

  ‘Oh very good, Cortés, very good,’ said Escudero, performing a slow handclap, ‘but you don’t seriously expect us to believe any of this, do you?’

  ‘I see nothing to disbelieve,’ snapped Juan de Escalante. A lean, rangy, blue-eyed man, he wore his black hair straight and long to his shoulders, framing a wolfish, heavily bearded face and concealing the sword wound from the Italian wars that had deprived him of the top two-thirds of his right ear. ‘We all know what Pedrarias did in Darién. We all know he’s been gathering men. We all know he’s looking for fresh pickings. Why not the New Lands?’

  ‘There’s a way to settle this we’ll all believe,’ said Ordaz. His cold grey eyes rested on Cortés again. ‘Simply produce your shipping agent and have him repeat his story to us …’

  It was Cortés’s experience that some truth in a lie makes the lie stronger, and he would have told a different lie if his shipping agent, Luis Garrido, had not in fact returned from Jamaica that very afternoon. It helped that Garrido was himself an accomplished liar, having sworn falsely on Cortés’s behalf in many business disputes. He had also recently fallen into debt – a problem that Cortés could help him solve. Best of all, Garrido had met Pedrarias the previous year and was able to describe him.