lands and resettle in that ample Xoconochco. The garrison could become the seed of a colony, even a lesser Tenochtitlan, perhaps someday the second greatest city of the Mexica.'
He said, 'You do not dream small, do you?'
'Perhaps I took a liberty, Revered Speaker, but I mentioned that possibility of colonization in the council of Mame elders. Far from objecting, they would be honored if their land should become the site of, so to speak, the Tenochtitlan of the south.'
He looked at me approvingly, and drummed his fingers for a moment before speaking. 'In civil status you are nothing but a bean-counting merchant, and in military rank a mere tequiua...'
'By my lord's courtesy,' I said humbly.
'And yet you—a nobody—you come and give us a whole new province, more valuable than any annexed by treaty or force since the reign of our esteemed father Motecuzoma. That fact will also be brought to the attention of our Speaking Council.'
I said, 'The mention of Motecuzoma, my lord, reminds me.' And I then told him what was harder to tell: the harsh words spoken about his nephew by the Bishosu Kosi Yuela. As I had expected, Ahuitzotl began to bulge and snort and redden conspicuously, but his anger was not directed at me. He said bluntly:
'Know, then. As a priest, young Motecuzoma paid unswerving obedience to every least and trivial and imbecilic superstition imposed by the gods. He also tried to abolish every human failing and weakness, in himself as in others. He did not froth and rage, as do so many of our priests; he was always cold and unemotional. Once, when he uttered a word that he thought might displease the gods, he pierced his tongue and dragged back and forth through it a string on which were knotted some twenty big maguey thorns. Again, when a base thought crossed his mind, he bored a hole through the shaft of his tepuli and did that same bloody self-punishment with the string of thorns. Well, now that he has become a military man, he seems equally fanatic on the subject of making war. It appears that, in his very first command, the coyote whelp has flexed his muscles, contrary to orders and good order—'
Ahuitzotl paused. When he went on, he seemed again to be thinking aloud. 'Yes, he would naturally yearn to live up to his grandfather's name of Wrathful Lord. Young Motecuzoma is not pleased to have peace between our nation and others, since that leaves him the fewer adversaries to challenge. He wants to be respected and feared as a man of hard fist and loud voice. But a man must consist of more than those things. Or he will cower when he is opposed by a harder fist, a louder voice.'
I ventured to say, 'My impression, my lord, is that the Bishosu of Uaxyacac dreads the possibility that your truculent nephew may someday be Uey-Tlatoani of the Mexica.'
At that, Ahuitzotl did turn his glare on me. 'Kosi Yuela will be dead long before he has to worry about his relations with some new Uey-Tlatoani. We are but forty and three years old, and we plan to live long. Before we die or turn dotard, we will make known to the Speaking Council who our successor is to be. Offhand, we forget how many of our twenty children are male, but surely among them there is another Ahuitzotl. Bear in mind, Tequiua Mixtli, that the loudest drum is the one most hollow, and its only service or function is to stay motionless and be beaten upon. We will not set upon this throne a hollow drum like our nephew Motecuzoma. Remember our words!'
I did, and I do, and ruefully.
It took a while for the Revered Speaker to subdue his indignation. Then he said quietly, 'We thank you, Tequiua Mixtli, for the opportunity of that garrison in the far Xoconochco. It will be the young Wrathful Lord's next assignment. He will be ordered immediately to the south, to establish and build and command that distant post. Yes, we must keep Motecuzoma busy—and safely far from us—or we might be tempted to beat with heavy drumsticks upon our own kinsman.'
Some days passed, and what time I did not spend in bed, getting reacquainted with my wife, I spent in getting accustomed to my first home of my own. Its exterior was of gleaming white Xaltocan limestone, decorated only modestly with some filigree carving, and none of that embellished with color. To the passerby, it was merely the typical home of a successful but not too successful pochteatl. Inside, however, its appointments were of the finest, and it smelled throughout of newness, not of the smokes and foods and exudations and old quarrels of previous inhabitants. The doors were all of nicely carved cedar, turning in pivots in sockets top and bottom. There were windows in the outdoor-facing walls, front and back, with reliable slat blinds on all of them.
The ground floor—which, as I have said, did not rest on the ground—contained a kitchen, a separate room for dining, and another room in which we could entertain guests or I could conduct business with visiting associates. There was not space enough to make any provision for slave quarters; Turquoise simply unrolled her woven-reed pallet in the kitchen after we were abed. The upper floor of the house consisted of our bedchamber and another for guests, each with its sanitary closet and steam room; plus a third, smaller bedroom for which I could see no purpose, until Zyanya, smiling shyly, said, 'Someday there may be a child, Zaa. Perhaps children. It can be a room for them and their nursemaid.'
The rooftop of the house was flat, surrounded by a waist-high balustrade of stones cemented in a fretwork pattern. The entire surface had already been spread with rich chinampa loam, ready for the planting of flowers, shade shrubs, and kitchen herbs. Our house was not tall, and there were many others roundabout, so we had no view of the lake, but we could see the twin temples atop the Great Pyramid, and the peaks of the smoking volcano Popocatepetl and the sleeping volcano Ixtacciuatl. Zyanya had furnished the rooms, upstairs and down, with only the immediately necessary items: the piled-quilt beds, some wicker storage chests, a few low chairs and benches. Otherwise the rooms were echoingly empty, the gleaming stone floors uncarpeted and the white-limed walls unadorned.
She said, 'The more important furnishings, the ornaments, the wall hangings—I thought the man of the house ought to choose such things.'
'We will visit the markets and the workshops together,' I said. 'But I will come only to agree to your choices and to pay for them.'
In similar wifely restraint, she had bought just the one slave, and Turquoise had sufficed to assist Zyanya in all the work of preparing the house for habitation. But I decided that we should buy another female to share the everyday labor of cooking, cleaning, and other chores, plus a male slave to tend the rooftop garden, run my errands, and the like. So we acquired a not so young but still wiry man named, in the grandiloquent manner of the tlacotli class, Citlali-Cuicani, or Star Singer, and a young housemaid named, quite contrary to slave custom, Quequelmiqui, which means only Ticklish. Possibly she had got the name because she was much given to unprovoked giggling.
We immediately enrolled all three—Turquoise, Star Singer, and Ticklish—to spend their spare hours studying at the school newly founded by my young friend Cozcatl. His own highest ambition, in the days when he was himself a child slave, had been to learn the skills necessary to attain the highest domestic post in a noble household, that of Master of the Keys. But he had already risen considerably above that station, possessing an estimable house and fortune of his own. So Cozcatl had turned his residence into a school to train servants. That is, to make of them the best servants possible.
He told me, with pride, 'I have of course engaged expert instructors to teach the basic employments— cookery, gardening, embroidery, whatever a student wishes to excel at. But I myself teach each student the elegant manners he otherwise could learn only through long experience, if at all. Since I have worked in two palaces, my students pay close heed to my teachings, even though most of them are much older than I.'
'Elegant manners?' I said. 'For mere menials?'
'So that they are not mere menials, but valuable and valued members of a household. I teach them how to comport themselves with dignity instead of the usual cringing servility. How to anticipate their employers' wants even before they are voiced. A steward, for example, learns to keep always prepared a poquietl for his master to smoke. A housekeeper learns to advise her mistress which flowers are about to bloom in the garden, so the lady can plan in advance the floral arrangements for her rooms.'
I said, 'Surely no slave could afford the fee for your training.'
'Well, no,' he admitted. 'At present all my students are already in domestic service, like those three of yours, and their fees are paid by their masters. But the schooling will so increase their ability and worth that they will earn promotions within their households—or be sold for a profit—meaning they must be replaced. I foresee a great demand for the graduates of my school. Eventually, I will be able to buy slaves from the market, train them, place them, and collect their fees from the wages they earn.'
