Feathered Serpent (21 page)

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The Madonna watched Cortés from a corner of the room. She was bathed in watery light and her face was serene and very pale. She wore a flowing blue robe. She reached out a hand towards him and Cortés tried to grasp it. He murmured the words of a prayer he had learned in boyhood from his grandmother as they knelt before the image of the Señora de los Remedios in the cathedral in Sevilla.

“You have been blessed by God,” the Lady said. “You will have me beside you, wherever you go and whatever you do.”

“They will not relent,” he murmured.

“They will break before you. You must fear nothing for this kingdom is already yours. You will win it for me. This is your destiny.”

“My destiny,” Cortés repeated.

“You are not like other men. That is why I chose you. You will be my champion. You will bring these people to me and I will reward you a thousand times.”

He would have reached out and touched her robe but a hand pulled him back onto the bed. “You’re hot,” Malinali whispered. “Your skin is burning.”

“Maria,” Cortés murmured.

“Who are you talking to?”

Cortés looked again for the woman in the blue robes but she was gone. The sweat on his skin felt suddenly chill and he started to shiver again. Malinali lay on top of him to warm him while he shuddered and cursed.

Finally he slept.

When morning came he had forgotten the lady in the blue robes. The memory of her remained buried, something glimpsed and quickly forgotten; a match struck in a darkened room in a dream.

 ———————

I rise naked from the bed. The blanket is dank with cold sweat. I throw it aside.

The plain is still in darkness. The morning star, emblem of Feathered Serpent, is risen in the east and the ocelots are calling him welcome. My lord breathes in deep and peaceful rhythm. The fever is passed.

I put a hand to my belly and wonder if Feathered Serpent’s seed already grows inside me. Tonight I thought I felt it move, though it is too soon, it is just my imagination. But what a wonder it would be, to be mother of a god, the womb of a new dynasty for the Toltec kings.

Already my lord’s soldiers are moving about the camp, wraiths dressed in rags, hunched for warmth over the smouldering embers of their fires. A mist of rain seeps down from the mountains.

I feel someone’s eyes on me. He has a jar of wine cradled on his lap. I cannot see his features clearly in this grey dawn light, but I guess that it must be Jaramillo.

My skin feels hot, as if it is crawling with fire ants. I hurry back inside.

Men lay on mats on the bare earth floors, their wounds covered in blood-soaked bandages, shivering under thin blankets. Some stared hollow-eyed at the rafters, others moaned and called for their mothers. Benítez wandered through the slaughterhouse stink, looking for Norte.

Rain Flower was still with him, crouched beside him on the straw mat where he had lain for almost a week. His cheeks were hollow, covered with the pelt of a beard. Before he was wounded he had shaved his face every day with a piece of obsidian, a practice he had taken up while living with the beardless Mayans. At last he looked like a real Spaniard.

Rain Flower saw him and quickly averted her eyes.

Benítez knelt down. The stench of old blood and waste was overpowering. Our renegade no longer smells so sweet, he thought with some satisfaction.

“Norte,” he whispered.

His eyes flickered open. Rain Flower raised his head and held a small gourd of water his lips.

“You have a beard now,” Benítez said. “You are one of us.”

Norte managed a strained smile. “You ... come here .... to insult me?”

“If possible.” He is better since yesterday, Benítez thought. The yellow has gone from his cheeks and his breathing is better. “I hope you are suffering.”

“Thank you, yes. The wound is .... not deep but I have broken .... ribs. It is difficult to breathe and the pain ... is very bad.”

“I find that most satisfactory.”

Benítez glanced at Rain Flower. The little Tabascan girl looked thin and ill, he thought, just like the rest of us.

Norte’s eyes went to the girl. “... you know?”

Benítez nodded.

“What are you going to do?”

“I have not decided. The way things are, perhaps I will not have to do anything.”

Norte reached for Rain Flower. “Be kind ... to her. She ... does not deserve ... to suffer.”

“No?”

“Had you plans for her? ... You could never ... take her back with you ... to Castile. Except as ... a novelty.”

“That was not my thought.” What was my thought? Benítez wondered. Have I really grown fond of an Indian? Or is it just my pride that is wounded?

Mendez had begun an operation on a wooden table in the corner of the hut. Four soldiers had been recruited to hold down the patient, who had been liberally soused with Cuban wine.

“Why did you save my life?” Benítez asked him.

“You saved mine.”

The man on the table let out a piercing scream. Benítez tried to shut his ears to it.

“Was that reason enough to kill your fellow Indians?”

“I told you ... they are not ... my fellow Indians. I am a Spaniard ... like you. I have a beard and ... blue eyes. Why deny it?”

Rain Flower whispered something to Norte.

“She wants to see ... your arm.”

“It is nothing.”

Another whispered exchange. “She says wounds get infected ... very easily here. She would like to ... take care of it for ... you.”

“What is the point? As you say, we are all going to die here.”

Norte’s breathing was becoming laboured. The effort of talking had exhausted him. “You should try ... and learn a little ... of her language. If you are kind to her, she ... will be kind to you.”

“Why would I need her kindness?”

The man on the table had finished screaming, had thankfully passed into unconsciousness.

“I discovered ... among the Maya ... that every man ... is two men. What he is born to, and ... what he can become. Most follow the road ... they were born to.”

“What are you saying?”

“Perhaps you are not ... at heart ... that much of a Spaniard.”

He wasn’t going to listen to this any more. He stood up and hurried outside. Damn him.

Damn him.

Damn him because Norte was right, he did not hate the renegade as a true Spaniard should hate him. It was his right to have them both punished for their crimes against him and yet he still did nothing. His slowness to vengeance had unmanned him. They had unmanned him.

Clouds raced across the moon, the smell of camp smoke and rain hung on the air. Feelings of confusion; exhausted yet unable to sleep.

Rain Flower examined the wound in the light of the candle. As she removed the filthy bandage, her nose wrinkled at the taint of infection. A Texcálan lance had sliced cleanly through the skin and deep into the muscle, and the lips of the wound were swollen and inflamed. A watery discharge wept from the flesh.

Benítez gave a small grunt of pain.

Rain Flower had with her a foul smelling poultice of herbs. She placed it on the wound and bound it tightly with cloth strips. When she had finished she looked up at him and did something he had not expected her to do.

She smiled.

Despite himself, he found himself reaching out a hand to stroke her hair.

So beautiful, he thought, once you became accustomed to this coppery skin. She was perhaps more beautiful than any Castilian women he had ever courted, but then he was not as experienced as others in such matters. He was not what most women thought of as an attractive man; he was clumsy, his nose was too large and his features too coarse. He was not like Alvarado or even Cortés, who had a reputation for chasing every doñetta on Cuba. No, he had never been a lady’s man, had never possessed the wealth or the power or the personality to outweigh the shortcomings in his appearance.

He was suddenly overwhelmed by the force of his own loneliness. He could not even talk to this woman in the simplest terms. He wondered what she was thinking; about Norte no doubt, he thought with a stab of anger. Norte with his torn ears and tattooed face, Norte who could speak her language and could talk to her about her own ways and her own gods.

But it was no good. He could not sustain the same force of rage he felt when he first discovered her betrayal. Now there was just the pain of his own clumsiness. He had never been able to keep beautiful things; it was his fault, not hers. And Norte? Hard to hate a man when you have stood back to back with him in a fight.

Her fingers touched his cheek.

“Caro,” he whispered. But, of course, she could not understand.

She kissed him. Gently. Not a kiss of obligation or even of reward. Indeed, no woman had ever kissed him quite that way. Be careful, a voice said to him, do not pretend to yourself that you can fall in love with a naturale. You simply take what is offered, when you can. That is the nature of soldiering.

He pulled her gently down beside him on the mat.

The man is dressed only in a loincloth. I can see each muscle and sinew of his body rippling beneath the skin. He is on his knees, his feet roped together, and one of the thunder gods, Jaramillo, has a foot on the rope; his right hand holds the bonds that are looped around the man’s neck and wrists. He keeps it taut, forcing his prisoner’s arms up between his shoulders while simultaneously choking him.

Alvarado has another rope around the man’s upper arm, an iron spike knotted in the cord as a lever. He twists it tight so that it bites deep into his prisoner’s arm, cutting off the supply of blood. The limb is swollen and purple.

The young man gasps and writhes but does not shame himself by crying out. Not yet.

He had been captured during the night attack. The moonlight had betrayed the Texcaltéca’s movements; a sentry had seen them and given the alarm. This warrior was not as fortunate as their other prisoners. Instead of gifts and offers of peace Feathered Serpent has decided on quite a different tactic.

I look up at him. Can he not stop this? I fear the bout of fever has changed him somehow. He no longer behaves as a god, but as a man.

“Ask him if he knows who I am,” he says to me. He has a look on his face I have not seen before.

“Feathered Serpent asks if you recognise him,” I say to the young warrior. “You must tell him and stop your suffering. He is very angry.”

Jaramillo takes the tension from the rope to allow him to reply. Our warrior gags and coughs, fighting to catch his breath, froth spilling down his chin. He rakes air into his lungs. After a few moments Jaramillo jerks on the rope to remind him of the question.

The Texcálan looks up at me, his eyes silently pleading with me to make them stop the torture. Death in battle or on the sacrificial stone holds no fears for any warrior. But this!

“Some say .... he is indeed ... a god .... others that ... he is a man. Lord Ring of the Wasp ... is unsure.”

I turn back to my lord. “He knows who you are.”

“Ask him then why his people are fighting us.”

When our young warrior man hears this question, he shouts: “Because you are on our land! You are thieves and ... murderers! Soon we will .... roast all your hearts and feed them to the gods!”

Jaramillo does not understand what is said but hears the defiance in his prisoner’s voice and jerks hard on the rope, forcing his head back, silencing him. I look up at my lord. Why does he allow this? To kill in battle is glorious, but to inflict such torment deliberately is shameful.

“What did he say?” he asks me. There is a sheen of perspiration on his forehead, even though it is deathly cold in the room.

“He says ... he thinks we are invaders.”

My lord sinks into his chair, the small effort of standing even for so short a time leaves him exhausted. After a few moments he looks up at Jaramillo. “Cut off his nose and hands, tie them around his neck and send him back to his village.”

No! I cannot believe what he has just ordered. I cannot speak against him in front of the other thunder gods, so I implore him with my eyes to revoke the order. He looks straight through me, dead to all kindness. Could this be my Feathered Serpent, the god who weeps for suffering, the commander who looked so forlorn when he signed the death warrant for the traitors at Vera Cruz, who prays every night on his knees in front of a painting of a mother and child?

“Mali, before we send our prisoners back, you must give them a message for Lord Ring of the Wasp. They are to tell him that I have lost all patience with them. I will give them two days to come here in peace or I will march to their capital and burn it to the ground.”

Outside Jaramillo has set about the task Cortés has assigned him. He holds the man’s hands on a chopping block, grinning into his face as Guzman wields the pike. As the blade crunches into the wood our unfortunate young warrior screams, blood spurting rhythmically from his wrists. Jaramillo plunges the stumps of his arms into a bucket of hot pitch to cauterise the wounds.