The Conquistadors (19 page)

At the top were two rooms, higher than a pike and a half, and here was the principal god of all the land. He was made from all kinds of seeds, which had been ground and kneaded with the blood of virgin boys and girls. These they killed by cutting open their breasts and taking out the heart, and from there they took the blood and kneaded it with the seeds into a mass thicker than a man and as high. At the time of their feasts they adorned the figure with the kind of gold jewelry they wore when they dressed for great festivals. They wrapped the figure in very thin mantles, making a bundle, then with many ceremonies they made a beverage and put it with this figure inside the room at the top of the tower. They say they also gave some of this beverage to the one they elected captain-general when there was a war or something of great importance. They put these things between the outer wall of the tower and another inner wall, leaving no opening so that it seemed there was nothing there.

Outside the hollow wall were two idols on large stone bases the height of a measuring rod. The idols were nearly the height of three measuring rods, and the girth of an ox. They were of polished granite covered with mother-of-pearl, which is the shell that the pearl grows in. Over this they used a glue in the form of a paste to incrust gold ornamentation, and designs of men, serpents, birds, and other figures made of large and
small turquoises, emeralds [jade], and amethysts, so that all of the mother-of-pearl was covered except in some places where they left it to make a design with the stones. These idols wore thick gold serpents, and for necklaces some ten or twelve human hearts made of gold. For faces they had gold masks with mirror eyes, and at the nape of the neck hung another face like a human head without flesh.

There were more than five thousand men in the service of this idol, some of them superior to the rest in rank as well as dress. They had their high priest whom they devoutly obeyed, and whom Moctezuma as well as all the other lords held in great veneration. They arose promptly at midnight for their sacrifice, which was the letting of blood from the tongue and the arms and thighs – sometimes from one place and sometimes from another – and wetting straws in the blood and offering them before an enormous oakwood fire. Then they went out to the idol-tower to offer incense.

Bernal Díaz makes the point that the precious stones depicting birds, snakes, animals, fish and flowers, the thick snakes of gold twined round their waist, and the necklaces of golden humming birds, the golden masks with mirrorlike eyes, and the dead man's face at the back of each idol's head, all had their meaning and symbolism. However, it was the sight of the skull rack, about a stone's throw from the main gate of the great temple, that must have had a deadly fascination for the Spaniards. It was in the form of a theatre with skulls set row upon row between the stones, teeth outward. At the end of the theatre were two towers, built entirely of mortar and skulls, and on the upper part were over seventy tall poles bristling with pegs. ‘These pegs stood out like studs, and each of them had five skulls impaled on it through the temples.' A total of 136,000 skulls were counted, not including the uncountable number forming the two towers.

More attractive were the markets. These were held every five days, each community having its own market square. In the two main districts of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, the markets were continuous; the former, surrounded by an arcade, was large enough to hold about a hundred thousand people. As in an Arabian
suk,
each trade, each type of merchandise, had its own place, the bulkier commodities – building materials such as stone, adobe, lime and lumber made up into boards, cradles, beams, blocks and benches – spreading out into the main thoroughfares, which were continuations of the three great causeways. The profusion of goods in the market proper reflected the high standard of living
of the Mexicans and the great climatic range of their dominions, which extended to more than sixty great cities and their provinces. Though the potter's wheel was unknown to them, the variety of their earthenware was very extensive in size, colour and glaze. Charcoal was used for cooking, and wood was, of course, plentiful. Flint knives were in great demand, for they were used by masons for shaping stone, as well as by woodworkers, housewives, hunters and warriors, and there were axes of bronze, copper and tin. As always in a hot climate at high altitude, salt was important and valuable. Cotton was the main material. It was sold in mantles of various sizes, shapes and colours, in the form of cloaks, shirts, head-dresses, tablecloths, napkins, bed-coverings, even handkerchiefs. There were also mantles of maguey and palm fibre and the skins of animals, particularly deer, which were very plentiful throughout the whole country. Deer-skin, both tanned and raw, and coloured with vegetable dyes, was sold for sandals, shields, jackets, and for combining with wood to form protective armour.

The most colourful section was the bird and plumage market. The birds were sold live, and they included all the tropical varieties from the mangrove swamps and dense forests of the Gulf coast. The feather market was even more brilliant, and since they used the plumage of birds for their ceremonial dances, as well as for personal adornment and general decoration, the featherwork of Indian craftsmen was quite exceptional. ‘They will make a butterfly, an animal, a tree, a rose, flowers, herbs and rocks, all done with feathers, and with such fidelity that they seem alive or natural. So absorbed are they in placing, moving and adjusting the feathers, scrutinizing them from one side or the other, in the sun, in the shade, or in the half light, that sometimes they will not eat all day long. In a word, they will not let the work out of their hands until it is absolutely perfect.'

The same concentration and perfectionism was to be seen in the silver market. ‘They can cast a parrot that moves its tongue, head and wings; a monkey that moves its feet and head and holds a distaff in its hand so naturally that it seems to be spinning, or an apple that it appears to be eating.' The work of their silversmiths and goldsmiths is described as of a higher standard than that of Spanish craftsmen, but they were not so expert with precious stones, which were rather rough cut, and work in copper, lead or bronze was not much prized.

The food markets were big and varied, since they would ‘eat almost anything that lives: snakes without head or tail; little barkless dogs, castrated and fattened; moles, dormice, mice, worms, lice'. Deer, with wild sheep, hares, rabbits, musk-rat, fowl and birds provided the meat. There was fish from the lakes and rivers, grain, beans, herbs, and fruit and vegetables in great variety. They also used algae for food, a sort of blanket weed netted from the lake, dried and sold in cakes that looked like bricks and tasted like cheese, and canoe-loads of human excrement were brought up the creeks bordering the market for sale to the manufacturers of salt and the curers of skin. All sorts of vegetable dyes were on sale, also herbs for curing almost any ailment, and there were doctors, as well as barbers in attendance in the market place; judges, too, and law officers to ensure that the sellers' measures were correct. There was oil for cooking, pitch-pine for torches, paper made from bark and called
amal,
tobacco, honey-paste and sweets like nougat, syrups made from wheat and even trees and plants,
pulque,
which was alcoholic and used in religious ritual as well as for entertainment, and wines of various kinds. All purchases were on a barter basis, the only forms of money being cacao beans and goose-quills that acted as purses for raw-mined gold. There were eating places, too, where meat and fish were served, either baked or fried in batter or made into pies, and omelettes made from the eggs of a great variety of birds.

In those first six days, whilst the off-duty soldiers were able to tour the sights, Cortés and his captains were exchanging formal visits with Moctezuma and his nobles. As a result of these exchanges, it is reasonable to assume that the fears, which had made Moctezuma so reluctant to face Cortés, were more than confirmed and that he began to appreciate the full extent of the power the Spanish captain represented and the demands that would be made upon himself and his people. Cortés was also in a difficult position. Accustomed to command events, he was very conscious of the danger of doing nothing. He had achieved his goal. He was in Mexico, his force intact. They were being treated like conquerors. But it was a victory without substance. They were there on sufferance, entertained as honoured guests, yet still dependent, as they had been throughout the march, on the goodwill of the Indians, even for their food. Their Tlaxcalan allies were also provided for and the horses were fed on
alcacer,
a grass that grows all the year round, on flour and grain, and were bedded down in a litter of roses and other flowers as though they, too, were gods.

Throughout the week Moctezuma's behaviour as host was impeccable. He loaded Cortés with gifts, treating him as a brother and almost his equal in rank. But since he was an autocratic and absolute ruler. Cortés knew only too well that a change of mind, the pressure of his advisers, his own fears, or a single incident, any little thing could spring the trap shut. They were in his hands entirely. And to Cortés, an autocrat himself, this was intolerable.

His plan to build four brigantines, with which he could dominate the lake and protect his flanks in case he had to fight his way out down one of the causeways, was a sensible one, and it met to some extent the fears being expressed by his captains. But Cortés was not thinking in terms of evacuation, and building the ships would take time. It was whilst he was considering what best to do to regain the initiative that his attention was drawn to the wall of one of the rooms in Axayacatl's palace.

They had been looking for the best place to construct a church with a permanent altar for worship. All the way up from the coast they had been conscientiously proselytizing the Christian faith. In the smaller towns and villages they had been
able to convert the Indians and destroy their idols. But in the big cities, like Tlaxcala and Cholula, the best they had been able to do was to erect crosses. Since coming to Mexico, Cortés had done his best to expound to Moctezuma the tenets of his faith, but with little result. Gómara claims that the total of the gods worshipped by the Mexicans was in excess of two thousand. This is an exaggeration, but they were certainly very numerous, and the inclusion of one more seemed to the Spaniards a small matter. To Moctezuma, however, even the setting up of one simple cross within the precincts of the great temple was blasphemy and bound to bring down upon his people the wrath of their gods. More practically, he probably saw it as the thin end of the wedge, intended to destroy the ritual-social community strength of his people. He had, however, agreed to the Spaniards building a church within the confines of their own quarters and had given instructions for them to be supplied with stonemasons and all the necessary materials. In one of the rooms, which they had been considering as a possible location, the shape of a bricked-up door showed through the plaster and lime-wash. Cortés had it torn down by one of his carpenters, more out of curiosity and the boredom of inaction, one imagines, than the hope of finding the treasure of Axayacatl, about which they had all heard rumours.

The result was beyond the dreams of the most avaricious Spaniard. The cavity led into several rooms, all of them heaped with the wealth accumulated by Moctezuma's father during the twelve years of his reign – idols, feather work, jewels, precious stones, silver, and a great deal of gold. Cortés let his men enter and view it. Bernal Díaz says: ‘The sight of all that wealth dumbfounded us. Being only a youth at the time and never having seen such riches before, I felt certain that there could not be a store like it in the whole world.' In this he was wrong; there was to be a bigger store for the gold seekers in Peru.

Cortés knew very well that there was nothing like the prospect of fabulous loot for putting heart into the Spanish soldier. He let them feast their eyes on it, and then had the cavity bricked up again and plastered over. Next morning two Tlaxcalans came secretly with news of trouble on the coast. Cualpopoca, Moctezuma's governor in the province of Nautla, had killed two Spaniards sent as emissaries to demand his allegiance to the Emperor. Nautla was in the Pánuco river area claimed by Francisco de Garay, governor of Jamaica. The constable of Vera Cruz, Juan de Escalante, had immediately set out on a punitive expedition with fifty Spanish soldiers and ten thousand Zempoalan irregulars. In the battle that followed both Escalante and his horse had been killed, and also six Spanish soldiers. Now all the Indians of the coastal area, Totonacs as well as Mexicans, were out of control.

Cortés' reaction to the news was immediate and positive. Taking with him five of his captains, including Juan Velázquez de León, and his two interpreters, Doña Marina and Aguilar – altogether about thirty of his most trusted followers – he went at once to Moctezuma. There is no doubt that he had already been toying
with the idea of seizing the person of the king and holding him as hostage for the submissive behaviour of his war chiefs and warriors. The trouble on the coast, and the report that Cualpopoca had been acting on the direct orders of Moctezuma, now provided him with the excuse he needed. Gómara says they entered Moctezuma's apartments with their arms concealed. Díaz claims there was no attempt at concealment, since the Spaniards always went armed, merely doffing their helmets in Moctezuma's presence; also that they sent word to the king that they were coming, so that he was already apprehensive, having himself been informed of what had happened on the coast.

In a mood of conciliation, Moctezuma is said to have given Cortés more jewels and to have offered him one of his daughters. Cortés was coldly formal. ‘Lord Moctezuma', Díaz quotes him as saying, ‘I am greatly astonished that you, a valiant prince who have declared yourself our friend, should have ordered your captains stationed on the coast near Tuxpan to take up arms against my Spaniards. I am astonished also at their boldness in robbing towns which are in the keeping and under the protection of our King and master, and demanding of them Indian men and women for sacrifice, also that they should have killed a Spaniard [Escalante], who was my brother, and a horse.' He referred again to the attempted ambush at Cholula, accused Moctezuma of encouraging his war chiefs and vassals to kill the Spaniards, and then abruptly demanded that Moctezuma accompany him to the Spaniards' quarters.