The Goldsmith's Daughter Page 16

  It was with trepidation that I set forth, barefoot so I would make no noise. Eve walked beside me, her claws clacking on the stones, the sound magnified in the still blackness. A fine drizzle streamed steadily from the sky, obscuring the brightness of the moon.

  On nearing the palace, I was surprised to hear movement. At this late hour there should be nothing but Eve’s paws and my own breathing. Yet now, whispered though they were, I caught hurried conversations, urgent commands, desperate questions.

  The doors to the palace were wide open.

  I shrank back into the shadows to watch. A horse was led forth, heavily laden. What it bore on its back was ill packed and poorly tied as though done in great haste. Through the gaps in the cloth I could see the glint of gold.

  Gold. The metal that had drawn them here. The metal that – though their lives were in peril – they would not leave without.

  For they were leaving, of that there could be no doubt. The first horse was followed by a line of men. Then more horses, their hooves bound in cloth to muffle their sound. The dogs’ jaws were tied to prevent their barking, and some men walked barefoot as I did to avoid detection.

  How different a procession it was to the one I had watched in awe just a few months ago! Then they had arrived with jangling armour, splendid and shining, like gods. Now they left like thieves. Cowards. Fleeing furtively from the city whose wealth they had plundered. Whose people they had slaughtered. Whose ruler they had destroyed.

  They should not go unpunished.

  I would give our people warning. Rouse the warriors. A yell erupted from my breast. “They are running away! Come quickly!”

  At my sudden shout, the soldiers turned. One ran, sword drawn, to stop my noise. I did not move. As he came, I continued to cry aloud.

  “They are fleeing the city! The Spanish are escaping!”

  He raised his sword high as Eve barked a warning. But before he could reach me, people from nearby houses spilt into the square. Seeing them, the Spaniard turned and fled.

  And now my shouts were taken up by others and carried to the temple. A drumbeat pounded from the top of the pyramid, waking all who still lay sleeping. Men and women tumbled through the doors of every house, and soon their running feet slapped loudly on the streets. Canoes glided swiftly through the canals towards the causeway. Many torches lit the night sky as brightly as the burning flame had done so long ago. Shouts of men – the warlike howls of warriors – rent the air.

  With this, every trace of discipline in the Spanish force crumbled. Bearing planks of wood they had ripped from the palace, they attempted to make bridges on the causeway across which they could pass. Had they not been observed, they might perhaps have succeeded and made an orderly retreat. But thrown into panic and confusion as they were, all was chaos.

  Those at the rear hastened forward, desperate to escape the onslaught of our warriors. They did not know – they could not – that the weight of their numbers forced those ahead into the canal before the planks could be laid down.

  Men fell into the water and were drowned, dragged to the lake floor by the gold they had stuffed into their tunics. Horses, heavily laden with the stolen blocks of metal, screamed in terror before they too were pulled beneath the water. Others were pushed from the causeway as fear made men cruel. Tlaxcalan warriors. Tlaxcalan courtesans. Their bodies made the first bridge the Spanish stumbled across.

  The causeway was long with many burnt bridges to cross before they reached solid land. They fled heedless of others, each man caring only to save his own skin. And as they fled, our canoes came at them from both sides. The sky rained arrows.

  Three quarters of the Spanish force was lost that night. In the cold grey light of the following dawn their bodies choked the clear lake, hanging in the water like a frenzied, monumental offering to the god Tlaloc.

  Their leaving had been hastily arranged, so suddenly done that those who were lodged in the slaves’ quarters had not heard word of it. Some hundred men had been left behind. Their capture took little effort on the part of our warriors. They were made to dance, naked, on top of the city’s principal temple before their sacrifice. And with no mushrooms to dull the senses, their screams were loud and dreadful.

  As I dressed in crisp, clean clothing, the ancient steps ran red with Spanish blood.

  The Spanish were gone. But the bloodlust they had roused did not go with them. It had to vent itself on someone. Lacking an enemy, the warriors turned their fury on our own people. To those who had aided our enemy – however unwillingly – they were without mercy.

  I did not know such things were happening, or I should have made efforts to keep my father in our home. But I was in a kind of stupor, my mind deadened with misery, my senses clouded with sadness. Attempting to comfort me, my father had sent Mayatl to market to buy titbits with which to tempt my appetite, for since the deaths of Mitotiqui and Francisco I had eaten little. Hearing the cry of a street vendor, he went out to buy a hot tamale, for he knew how well I savoured them.

  Our neighbours had known of my liking for Francisco. Even had they not, we could not have hoped to conceal Eve. The only dogs in the city were small and hairless, their barks as high-pitched as a chicken’s cluck. Eve declared herself Spanish in every huge bone, every long hair, every booming bark. She marked us as collaborators, and it was my father who paid the price.

  Returning from the vendor, the tamale clutched in one hand, he was confronted by a group of brutish warriors.

  The rough shouts from the street penetrated my daze. Slowly, for my body was loath to do my bidding, I went to find the cause.

  My father was a craftsman, not used to fighting. He was no match for a band of louts armed with cudgels. By the time I reached him he was already down, splayed on the ground, limbs outstretched like a spider. The treat he carried for me had been crushed underfoot. Red chilli mingled with his blood.

  I howled in pain and set upon the warriors, my woman’s fists beating uselessly on their backs.

  “Spanish whore!” they called me. A fist struck my jaw, and my mouth filled with blood.

  I would have perished in a storm of blows. But the dog Francisco had called coward leapt to my defence. The warriors’ hatred of me was not equal to their terror of Eve. Snapping, snarling, the huge animal was a fearsome sight. She had barely begun to fight when they fled.

  My father was not dead. Not yet. But I could see that his wounds were mortal. A deep cut had severed the veins in his neck. His life was spilling onto the street.

  No one came to help me. The neighbours who had stood watching slipped silently away into their homes, and I was left to drag my father to his bed alone.

  And alone, I watched him die.

  I thought I could endure no more. That the gods had laid me as low as it was possible to be. That there could be no greater depths of misery. I wished for death; I longed for it. The endless night of Mictlan could not be bleaker than the city I dwelt in.

  But then a sickness came. Spiralling outwards from the palace, it first took those who had lived closest to the Spanish. It raised angry spots on the flesh and brought a raging fever that burned so strong that people plunged into the cold waters of the lake seeking relief. It was so violent that once it had struck, it did not abate until it carried its victim away on flaming wings of death. It swept through Tenochtitlán like fire sweeps across the hills in times of drought. Hundreds … thousands fell with it. A quarter, one half, two thirds of the city lay in its clutches. It carried away our emperor, Cuitlahuac; our priesthood; farmers; slaves.

  It took Mayatl.

  Crops grew untended in the chinampa fields; ripened maize went unpicked. The streets were deserted, and over each house hung a fearful hush pierced only by groans of suffering and cries of mourning.

  And yet the sickness did not take me.

  For those who die of disease go to the eastern paradise. The gods would not allow me this.

  I was condemned to live.

  Francisco ha
d said that the human heart is fragile; it must cleave to something. He had spoken true. I had lost my brother, lover, father, nurse. My crippled heart sought an object to cling to before I was driven mad with grief and loneliness. Unthinking, I allowed my feet to carry me towards the peasants’ district at the northern limit of Tenochtitlán.

  I went to my grandfather’s dwelling. A two-roomed hut, it stood on wooden supports on the edge of the lake. It was like an island, cut off from the city by a thin canal. A set of planks made a bridge, giving access to the doorway. Telling Eve to sit and wait, I walked across it, calling as I went.

  I had seen little of my relations. On occasion we might pass in the street, or at the marketplace, but that was the limit of our acquaintance. Farmers and craftsmen do not mix. I thought this was the only reason we saw them so rarely. I did not realize how much my father had protected me.

  There was no one else I could approach. I did not even know where my father’s parents lived. And besides, they had disowned him; they would be unlikely to admit he had a daughter, much less give her aid.

  My mother’s family, though, was a different matter. Being farmers they could have no unwieldy sense of pride. Though I had seen little of them, I thought they would recognize me – had my father not said I was the image of my mother? But they would have no knowledge of what had lately befallen my father. I would have to explain all.

  I had reached only the middle of the plank bridge when an aged woman appeared in the doorway thrusting a sharpened pole before her as if to defend herself. I took her aggressive stance to be simple ignorance of my identity. She was an old woman – perhaps her sight was not as sharp as mine; perhaps she could not make out my features. She gave no greeting, but I thought little of it. I pitied how embarrassed she would feel when she knew I was her daughter’s child.

  Stretching my hands towards her, palms uppermost in a gesture of supplication, I spoke.

  “I am daughter of Yecyotl, and of Oquitchli the goldsmith.”

  I had expected her mouth to crease into a smile of recognition, but it remained impassive. She made no reply.

  “Do you not know me?” I persisted. “Your name is Temolin, is it not? I am Itacate, your granddaughter.”

  Still her face showed nothing. Confused, I began to wonder if her hearing was right – perhaps, like her sight, it was impaired with age.

  I spoke louder, more clearly. “Alas! My father is dead.” I paused. Swallowed. Drew deep breaths. For a few moments, I could not continue. Then, wiping the tears that coursed down my cheeks, I said, “I am left alone. I seek your protection.”

  “Go.” She spat the word. It splashed like poison between us.

  I blinked. Looked at her face. Her mouth was a thin, hard line. “Go?” I echoed, not understanding.

  “Go back to your own home,” she said harshly. “You are not welcome here. Neither you nor your ill fortune.”

  “But…” I gasped, “you are my kin!”

  “No. We do not choose to own you. You have no family here. You will not bring the gods’ wrath down on our heads too.”

  “But—”

  “You deny it? It was predicted at your birth and the priests were right. The moment you were born you brought disaster. You killed your mother! My daughter! If your father had possessed the sense of an ant, he would have left you upon the mountain-side to die. He should have sold you as a slave. None but a fool would have nurtured you. And now he has been punished.”

  She waved her stick at me as though she could drive me away by force. She had no need to. The sight of her eyes scalding me with hatred and loathing was enough to make me turn on those thin planks and limp wounded away.

  At last I saw clearly the gods’ intent. At last I could trace the pattern they had drawn at my birth. I was cursed. I had been told it often but had long resisted the truth, nourishing a hope that the predictions would be proved wrong. That I could escape my destiny. How could I have been so foolish?

  Had I remained in my allotted place, perhaps only those closest to me would have been stained by my ill fortune, and the damage contained within the walls of our dwelling. But I had not. I had tried to step aside, and all the people of Tenochtitlán had suffered for it. My brother had gone unwillingly to sacrifice in jealousy of me. He had dishonoured the god, and I was to blame. In his great wrath Tezcatlipoca had avenged himself on the whole city. Had I not seen him strike the Spanish leader and thus provoke the massacre that followed? Had he not sent a plague to destroy those who had evaded the Spanish swords? So much blood it had taken to appease him! And I was the cause of all its shedding.

  Knowledge of my guilt weighed so hard upon me that my soul was compressed, crushed, until it was hard and black as obsidian. And with that hardness came a new resolve.

  I would not sink into despair to please the gods; I would not plunge into the abyss of misery they opened up before me. They had drawn this path, and I was compelled to walk it. But I would not hang my head in shame. Even now, I defied them.

  In those dark, cold days Eve was my only comforter; my only protector. Having neither task to occupy my hands, nor companion to speak to, I walked with her. And I walked tall, chin held high, deaf to the whispers muttered behind raised hands, blind to the fingers that pointed accusingly. From sunrise to sunset we tramped relentlessly, mile upon mile, like the shadows of the unburied dead; the restless spirits that haunt the highways; the wandering soul of Francisco.

  I did not cross the principal causeway along which the Spanish had fled. Though the burnt bridges that linked the sections of stone had been replaced, too many dead still choked the waters, filling the air with foul vapours. Instead we went out through the market across the causeway closest to my home, and from there into the hills beyond, where Mayatl had once led Mitotiqui and me in search of flowers. With Eve at my side, no one challenged me. Looks there were, certainly – hostile stares and murmurs of contempt. The dog showed me for a Spanish whore: a betrayer of my people, a blot upon the city. A whore, moreover, so little valued that she had been abandoned by our enemy when they left.

  I could go where I pleased. Do as I liked. No one ordered me home. No one told me to remain in the valley. I could roam free; cross the mountains and see what lay beyond; walk to the coast and behold the great ocean which had carried Francisco to our land; view the jungle he had spoken of with such rapture. And yet each night I returned to my empty home like a beast to its lair. I did not leave my city. I found I could not. I was tied to it, as though tethered by an invisible thread, which jerked tight if I wandered too far.

  It was a terrible winter. Every face I passed was pinched with woe. All eyes were dulled with hunger. But when the days began to lengthen, and the chill grip of the season loosened its hold, it seemed possible that some semblance of life might continue.

  One morning I was woken early by sunlight streaming through the windows of my empty house. The air was balmy and a gentle breeze blew down from the hillsides, sweetly fragranced with the scent of newly opened flowers. I had walked like a living corpse through the months of winter, but now I felt the freshening spring stir something in me: something akin to hope.

  Sensing the energy within me, Eve leapt to her feet, tail wagging, loud bark splitting the still dawn air. It was a summons to walk, and I obeyed, setting forth across the causeway to the hills beyond.

  This time I climbed and felt no tug of thread pulling me back. I strode loose-limbed, energetic, delighting in the healing warmth of sunshine on my face.

  But the god who had slackened my leash did so for a reason. Cresting the ridge for the first time in my life, I gazed at the vista beyond.

  And stopped dead. Air was punched from my chest as though with a sudden blow.

  They were far away – perhaps a mile distant. I could not see their faces. But there could be no doubt as to their identity.

  Glinting armour. Iron-shod horses. Men in plumed helmets.

  The Spanish had returned.

  When I arrived in
the marketplace, I found that word had already reached Tenochtitlán.

  A boy ran screaming before me, causing people to run into the street in alarm. He was stopped in his headlong flight by a potter whose dwelling was close to my own.

  “What is happening?” he demanded roughly. “How dare you frighten people thus?”

  The boy pointed towards the shore. “The Spanish are here!”

  Panic gripped the crowd. Men cried; women clutched at their throats.

  The potter paid no heed. “Our warriors will drive them off,” he said scornfully. At once the gathered people murmured in agreement. “Our new emperor, Cuauhtemoc, will not let them into the city. We shall not make the same mistake twice.”

  “But there are thousands of them!” the boy protested. “They bring boats!”

  “Boats?” exclaimed the potter incredulously. “Impossible!”

  “The Tlaxcalans have carried them across the hills. Already they put them to the water! They are coming!”

  “The city is impregnable,” shouted a different man. “The causeway bridges will be lifted, will they not? They cannot march in. And boats are easy to repel.” He laughed at the folly of our enemy.

  Another called, “How can they fight from the water? From canoes? It cannot be done! They will tire of this and go home.”

  But they did not tire, and they did not go home.

  Slowly, patiently, their canoes circled the city, gliding calmly, distantly, where our warriors’ arrows could not reach. As the darts plopped uselessly into the water, mocking laughter rippled across the lake. Our enemy did not attempt to attack.

  I started to see the reason for the many pleasure trips Cortés had taken with Montezuma upon the lake. The Spanish leader had mapped the city well. He knew exactly how to strike with most effect.

  He did nothing.

  Holding us trapped within our city, he waited.