Aztec

The Doña Marina lives because I let her live, and I let her live because, for a brief while one night, she was... well, she was someone I loved—

Either the Spaniards had foolishly been too eager to let loose their devastation in The Heart of the One World, or they had deliberately chosen to make their attack as wanton, punitive, and unforgettable as possible. For it had not yet been quite full night when they blasted with their ca

To apologize for my failure in not having eliminated Malintzin I did not go to the war chief Cuitlahuac, who I supposed must be raging with fury and frustration. Instead, I sought out the Lord Cuautemoc, hoping he would be more sympathetic to my dereliction. I had known him ever since he was a boy, visiting my house with his mother, the First Lady, in the days when his father Ahuítzotl and my wife Zyanya still lived. At that time, Cuautemoctzin had been the Crown Prince, heir to the Mexíca throne, and it was only mischance that had prevented his becoming Uey-Tlatoani before Motecuzóma was insinuated into that office. Since Cuautemoc was familiar with disappointment, I thought he might be more lenient about my not having prevented Malintzin's warning the white men.

"No one holds you to blame, Mixtzin," he said, when I told how she had eluded the poison. "You would have done The One World a service in disposing of that traitress, but it does not matter that you did not."

Puzzled, I said, "It does not matter? Why not?"

"Because she did not betray us," said Cuautemoc. "She did not have to." He grimaced as if in pain. "It was my exalted cousin. Our Revered Speaker Motecuzóma."

"What?" I exclaimed.

"Cuitlahuac went to the officer Tonatíu Alvarado, you remember, and asked and was given permission to hold the Iztociuatl ceremony. As soon as Cuitlahuac left the palace, Motecuzóma told Alvarado to beware of trickery."

"Why?"

Cuautemoc shrugged. "Injured pride? Vindictive spite? Motecuzóma could hardly have been pleased that the uprising was the idea of his underlings, and arranged without his knowledge, to be done without his approval or participation. Whatever his real reason, his excuse is that he will countenance no breaking of his truce with Cortés."

I snarled a filthy word, not generally applied to Revered Speakers. "What is our breaking of the truce, compared to his instigating the butchery of a thousand women and children of his own people?"

"Let us charitably assume that he expected Alvarado only to forbid the celebration, that he did not anticipate such a violent dispersal of the celebrants."

"Violent dispersal," I growled. "That is a new way to say indiscriminate slaughter. My wife, a mere onlooker, was wounded. One of her two female servants was killed, and the other has fled terrified into hiding somewhere."

"If nothing else," Cuautemoc said with a sigh, "the incident has united all our people in outrage. Before, they only muttered and grumbled, some of them mistrusting Motecuzóma, others supporting him. Now all are ready to tear him limb from limb, along with everyone else in that palace."

"Good," I said. "Then let us do so. We still have most of our warriors. Raise the city folk as well—even old men like me—and storm the palace."

"That would be suicidal. The outlanders have now barricaded themselves inside it, behind their ca

"Wait!" I said, with another profanity.

"But while we wait, Cuitlahuac is packing the island with still more warriors. You may have noticed an increase in the traffic of canoes and freight barges plying between here and the mainland, apparently carrying flowers and vegetables and such. Concealed under that top cargo are men and arms—Cacama's Acolhua troops from Texcóco, Tecpanéca troops from Tlácopan. Meanwhile, as we get stronger, our opponents may get weaker. During the massacre, all their servants and attendants deserted the palace. Now, of course, not a single Mexícatl vendor or porter will deliver to them food or anything else. We will let the white men and their friends—Motecuzóma, Malintzin, all of them—sit in their fortification and suffer for a while."

I asked, "Cuitlahuac hopes to starve them into surrender?"

"No. They will be uncomfortable, but the kitchens and larders are adequately supplied to sustain them until Cortés gets back here. When he does, he must not find us overtly belligerent, holding the palace under siege, for he would need only to mount a similar siege around the whole island, and starve us as we starve them."

"Why let him get here at all?" I demanded. "We know he is marching hither. Let us go out and attack him in the open."

"Have you forgotten how easily he won the battle of Texcala? And he now has many more men and horses and weapons. No, we will not confront him in the field. Cuitlahuac plans to let Cortés come here unopposed, and find all his people in the palace unharmed, the truce apparently restored. He will not know of our imported and hidden and waiting warriors. But when we have him and all the white men within our confines, then we will attack—even suicidally, if necessary—and we will wipe this island and this whole lake district clean of them."

* * *

Perhaps the gods decided that it was time Tenochtítlan had a change for the better in its communal tonáli, because that latest plan did work—with only a few unforeseeable complications.

When we got word that Cortés and his multitudinous force were approaching, everyone in the city, by command of the regent Cuitlahuac, determinedly assumed an outward semblance of untroubled normality, even the widowers and orphans and other kinfolk of the slain i

Cortés came warily, apprehensive of animosity, for he had of course heard about the night of massacre, and he would not expose even his formidable army to any risk of ambush. After skirting Texcóco at a prudent distance, he came around the southern lakeshore as before, but he did not take the southern causeway into Tenochtítlan; his men would have been vulnerable to an attack by canoe-borne warriors if they were strung out along the open span of that longest causeway. He continued on around the lake, and up its western shore, dropping off Prince Black Flower and his warriors, posting the big ca