War God (48 page)

For all these reasons, Cortés decided, he was going to have to think extremely carefully about how to handle the Inquisitor in the future, and find an accommodation with him as Saint Peter required. Meanwhile, although it had been essential to put Muñoz in his place, and prevent the
auto-da-fé
in the plaza, Cortés also felt it was right, notwithstanding Olmedo’s more cautious counsel, that he should continue to support and enforce Muñoz’s policies regarding the removal and smashing of idols and their replacement by Christian symbols.

He closed the meeting with a lengthy homily against human sacrifice, a foul practice, he told the Indians, that they must agree to abandon at once. If they did not do so, he warned, he might be unable to prevent his Inquisitor a second time from burning them at the stake. Some further confusion resulted here, since it seemed the chief and the elders laboured under the misguided impression that Muñoz had wanted to burn them as sacrifices to his God, and Cortés found it very hard to disabuse them of this repugnant notion which, to make matters worse, it appeared that both Díaz and Olmedo had some sympathy with! He soldiered on, however, patiently working round the execrable interpreting skills of Little Julian, making his points again and again in different ways, until he was reasonably sure he had been properly understood.

What happened next convinced Cortés he was on the right track and that, despite his harsh treatment of Muñoz, he did still have Saint Peter’s blessing for his expedition.

As the elders were taking their leave, the chief – now dressed in the splendid doublet he had been given – put an arm round Cortés’s shoulder, drew him to the edge of the pyramid and pointed northwest, towards the mainland. He then made a short speech in his own language, but interspersed within it was a familiar-sounding word – something like ‘
Castilan
’ – repeated several times and with great emphasis. As he spoke, the chief rubbed his own hairless chin with his fingers and pointed to the beards of the Spaniards.

Intrigued, Cortés delayed the elders’ exodus from the pyramid and inquired further. More excruciating difficulties of interpretation followed but, bit by bit, with Díaz’s help, the story was teased out. Some days’ journey away on the mainland, which the Indians called the ‘Yucatán’, it seemed there lived a bearded white man, much like the Spanish in appearance. He had been carried there a long time before in a boat and was held captive by a lord of that land. Apparently this white man called himself a ‘
Castilan
’. He had learned the language of the Maya and spoke it like a native.

Could it be, Cortés wondered, that God had delivered into his hands the very gift he now so obviously required, namely a shipwrecked Spaniard, a man of Castile, who might serve as a proper interpreter for his expedition? With growing excitement he asked the chief to send a messenger to the Yucatán requesting the release of the ‘
Castilan
’ and offering rich gifts – which the Spanish would provide – in return.

The chief demurred. The men of the Yucatán, he said, were fierce and warlike and, moreover, cannibals; any messenger was likely to be killed and eaten. If Cortés wished to free this ‘
Castilan
’, the only solution would be to send one of his own great boats and soldiers there to seize him by force of arms – in which case, the chief promised, he would be happy to assign two Indians who knew the way to accompany them.

Cortés needed no further urging. ‘Sandoval,’ he said as they descended the pyramid. ‘I’ve got a little job for you.’

Tozi was in the royal hospital, invisible, standing by the bedside of Prince Guatemoc, hating his handsome sleeping face. She was thinking how easy it would be to slit his throat with the sharp little knife Huicton had provided for her, when Moctezuma’s chief physician Mecatl, a famous man in Tenochtitlan, entered the room. He was fat and bald and wore his ornate robes of office, but there was, Tozi immediately detected, something odd about his manner.

Something secretive and jittery.

He seemed nervous, but what would he have to be nervous about in his own hospital?

Wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow, he peered out into the corridor, looking left and right as though seeking to ensure he would not be disturbed, then closed the door behind him and advanced on the bed, drawing a small ceramic bottle from his robes as he did so. He removed the bottle’s rubber stopper, sniffed its contents, lifted Guatemoc’s head from the pillow and muttered, ‘You must drink this medicine, sire.’

The prince groaned and turned his head away. ‘Not again! Can’t you see I’m sleeping?’

‘You must drink the medicine, lord.’

‘Leave me
alone
, Mecatl. I’m not in the mood for any more of your foul brew.’

‘Your life depends on it, lord. Drink now, please, I beg you. It’s only a matter of a moment and then you may rest.’

‘Come back later, damn you! Let me sleep!’

The doctor was persistent. ‘I’m afraid, sire, that I must insist.’

Guatemoc’s eyes fluttered open. ‘You’re a horrible fat worm, Mecatl.
Go away!
’

‘I will not, great Prince. I am your doctor, appointed by the Lord Speaker himself. I cannot leave your side until you drink this medicine.’

Another groan. ‘Damn it then, get on with it – if it’s the only way for me to be rid of you!’

‘Thank you, sire.’ Mecatl lifted the prince’s head again, put the bottle to his pale lips, nudged it between his teeth and upended it into his mouth. Tozi saw Guatemoc’s throat working as he swallowed the draught, leaving a few drops of what appeared to be liquid chocolate on his chin, which Mecatl carefully wiped away with a cloth. The physician then restoppered the empty bottle, placed it and the cloth back inside his robes, stood looking down at the prince for a few moments until his breathing fell back into the regular pattern of sleep, then left the room as furtively as he had entered it.

Tozi followed.

Her connection with the stuff of the world was different, more complicated, when she was invisible. Her clothes and the contents of her pockets always faded with her, and she had learned she could spread the field of magic to other things, and the people around her, if she concentrated her will. She could pick up objects and use them if she chose to do so, but she was also able to make herself as insubstantial as thought and flow in this form even through solid matter. In every case, she had discovered, the keys to control were focus and intention, so she focussed now, flowed through the wall with no more resistance than passing through a light shower of rain, and stayed right behind Mecatl as he waddled along the corridor and into a lavishly furnished office. He went to a cupboard standing in a corner of the room, opened it, took out a large bottle, carried it over to a table, placed the small bottle from his robes beside it and refilled it from the large bottle with more of the same chocolate-coloured liquid. A drop spilled on the table and he carefully wiped it up with the cloth. Finally he placed both bottles and the cloth back inside the cupboard and left the room, closing and locking the door behind him.

When he was gone, Tozi remained invisible while she conducted a rapid search. Laid out on the table was a fine collection of obsidian surgical instruments, a large mortar and pestle and two human skulls. There were shelves stacked with medical books painted on maguey cloth and deerskin and folded zigzag fashion between wooden covers. None of this was of any use to her but on a ledge beneath the shuttered window she found a collection of empty bottles. She took the smallest of these, filled it from the larger bottle in the cupboard, which she then carefully replaced, tucked the smaller bottle inside her blouse, mopped up a few spilled drops with the cloth Mecatl had used, and closed the cupboard. She made a final inspection to ensure she had left no trace of her visit other than the missing bottle, which she hoped would not be noticed. When she was satisfied she flowed out through the wall directly into the gardens surrounding the hospital and thence back into the streets of Tenochtitlan. Finding a patch of shadow in a deserted alley, she re-emerged into visibility again and began to walk briskly northwards through the city.

An hour later Tozi and Huicton sat together on their begging mats, talking quietly, reviewing their progress.

Everyone knew the story of the weeping woman who’d haunted Tenochtitlan the year before, so it had been an obvious ploy for Tozi, shielded by invisibility, to play that part, passing through the streets these last six nights, heard but not seen, seeding doubts and fear in Moctezuma’s mind.

It was Huicton who’d had the idea of the dreamers, rounding up a few lonely old tramps and invalids with the promise of a big reward from Ishtlil, and a comfortable retirement in the mountains, if they could pull it off. Of course there’d been a danger that Moctezuma would kill them on the spot, but the elders had decided the reward was worth the risk.

The scheme had worked better than they could have hoped. It had been an easy matter for Tozi to fade herself into the dungeon, slip the sleeping draught Huicton had procured into the guards’ food, and set the prisoners free. The guards, naturally, had not admitted to falling asleep on duty and had told a story of magic and sorcery that had disturbed Moctezuma even further.

Next Tozi and Huicton decided to turn their attention to Cuitláhuac, who was not only the Great Speaker’s brother but also his strongest supporter and closest adviser – the very man who had escorted Tozi and Malinal from the pyramid on the night of the sacrifices. Rumour had it he would be appointed to the high office of Snake Woman, now that Coaxoch had been killed in the Tlascalan wars, so he was an obvious target. And the fact that Cuitláhuac’s own son Guatemoc had also been injured in Tlascala and lay in the royal hospital seemed to offer special opportunities for mischief.

So Tozi had entered the hospital early this morning and waited quietly and invisibly by Guatemoc’s bed for Cuitláhuac to arrive. Surprisingly, however, despite his son’s obviously grave condition, he had not come. Instead there had been the strange and sinister visit of Mecatl.

‘He didn’t behave like a doctor,’ Tozi told Huicton. ‘That’s what made me suspicious, so I followed him.’ She pulled the little bottle from her blouse and passed it over. ‘This is what they’re treating Guatemoc with,’ she said. ‘Any idea what it is?’

Moctezuma was in a state of morose despair. Despite consuming huge quantities of
teonanácatl
on each of the last four nights, and sacrificing a dozen small children, he’d been unable to make contact with Hummingbird again. The only good news came in the daily reports from Mecatl. Cuitláhuac was out of Tenochtitlan on a trumped-up mission to Texcoco and Tacuba, supposedly to seek assurances of their continued commitment to the alliance that united the three cities. In his absence the poison was being administered morning and evening and Guatemoc’s condition was deteriorating at a satisfactory pace.

Mecatl had arrived from the hospital some moments earlier and now spoke from his usual position, face down on the floor of the audience chamber. ‘Sire,’ he said, ‘I gave the prince a further dose this morning …’

‘Good, good … How much longer, then, until he …?’

‘The poison is subtle, sire, as you requested, but at the present dosage I do not believe he can survive it for more than another eight days.’

Sitting on his throne, Moctezuma placed his index fingers together and twirled his thumbs around each other. ‘That will be perfect,’ he said finally. ‘Much sooner and suspicions might be aroused. We would not wish that. But much later and there is the possibility that his father will remove him from your care. I can’t keep Cuitláhuac out of Tenochtitlan forever.’

‘If he can be kept away from the hospital for another two days, sire, it should be sufficient. By then the effects of the poison will be irreversible.’

Much as Mecatl had done this morning before giving the medicine to Guatemoc, Huicton pulled the rubber stopper from the bottle and sniffed the contents. ‘Aha …’ he said. He took another deep sniff. ‘Interesting.’ He poured a few drops of the liquid into the palm of his hand and tentatively dipped his tongue into it before spitting vigorously, leaving a brown smear on the paving of the causeway.

‘Looks like chocolate,’ Tozi said.

‘Yes. Quite clever of Mecatl, that. It helps disguise the bitter taste. It would probably pass casual inspection because most medicines are bitter. But when you’ve been in this business as long as I have, you get to know your poisons, and I think I can say with certainty that the chief physician of our revered Great Speaker is presently poisoning Cuitláhuac’s son.’

‘I knew it!’ Tozi exclaimed. ‘I knew he was doing something wicked.’

Huicton sniffed the bottle again and placed the stopper firmly back in its mouth. ‘Wicked indeed,’ he said. ‘This is dangerous stuff. Quite rare in these parts, by the way. It’s made from the powdered body and wings of a butterfly that the Zapotecs call
cotelachi
– which means in their language “the butterfly that kills within a year”. But actually it depends on the size of butterfly you use. A small, young
cotelachi
consumed entire will take about a year to kill you, a big full-grown one will do the job overnight and the medium-sized ones take ten or twelve days.’