effusions to a coherent report of the occurrences in the Totonaca country. So we took them to my house, where Beu kept us all supplied with food and drink while we devoted several whole days to listening to them. The one messenger recited, over and over, the message he had been given by the Lord Patzinca; the other three repeated, over and over, the garble of words they had memorized at the many-voiced conferences between Patzinca and the visitors. Cuitiahuac concentrated on the Nahuatl portions of the recitals, I on the Xiu and Spanish, until our ears and brains were all but benumbed. However, from the flux of words, we at last got a sort of essence, which I put into word pictures.
Cuitiahuac and I perceived the situation thus. The white men professed to be scandalized that the Totonaca or any other people should be fearful of or subject to the domination of a 'foreign' ruler called Motecuzoma. They offered to lend their unique weapons and their invincible white warriors, to 'liberate' the Totonaca and any others who wished to be free of Motecuzoma's despotism—on condition that those peoples would instead give their allegiance to an even more foreign King Carlos of Spain. We knew that some nations might be willing to join in an overthrow of the Mexica, for none had ever been pleased to pay tribute to Tenochtitlan, and Motecuzoma had lately made the Mexica even less popular throughout The One World. However, the white men attached one other condition to their offer of liberation, and any ally's acceptance of it would commit that ally to another act of rebellion that was appalling to contemplate.
Our Lord and Our Lady, said the white men, were jealous of all rival deities, and were revolted by the practice of human sacrifice. All the peoples desirous of becoming free of Mexica domination would also have to become worshipers of the new god and goddess. They would eschew blood offerings, they would topple all the statues and temples of their old deities, they would instead set up crosses representing Our Lord and images of Our Lady— which objects the white men were conveniently ready to supply. Cuitlahuac and I agreed that the Totonaca or any other disaffected people might see much advantage in deposing Motecuzoma and his everywhere pervasive Mexica, in favor of a faraway and invisible King Carlos. But we were also sure that no people would be so ready to disavow the old gods, immeasurably more fearsome than any earthly ruler, and thereby risk an immediate earthquake destruction of themselves and the entire One World. Even the easily swayed Patzinca of the Totonaca, we gathered from his messengers, was aghast at that suggestion.
So that was the account, and the conclusions we had drawn from it, which Cuitlalmac and I took to the palace. Motecuzoma laid my book of bark paper across his lap and began reading it, cheerlessly unfolding pleat after pleat, while I told its content aloud for the benefit of the Speaking Council elders also convened in the room. But that meeting, like an earlier one, was interrupted by the palace steward's announcement of new arrivals imploring immediate audience.
They were the five treasury registrars who had been in Tzempoalan when the white men arrived there. Like all such officials traveling in tributary lands, they wore their richest mantles and feather headdresses and insignia of office—to impress and awe the tribute payers—but they entered the throne room looking like birds that had been blown by a storm through several thorny thickets. They were disheveled and dirty and haggard and breathless, partly because, they said, they had come from Tzempoalan at their fastest pace, but mainly because they had spent many days and nights confined in Patzinca's accursed prison cage, where there was no room to lie down and no sanitary facilities.
'What madness is going on over there?' Motecuzoma demanded.
One of them sighed wearily and said, 'Ayya, my lord, it is indescribable.'
'Nonsense!' snapped Motecuzoma. 'Anything survivable is describable. How did you manage to escape?'
'We did not, Lord Speaker. The leader of the white strangers secretly opened the cage for us.'
We all blinked and Motecuzoma exclaimed, 'Secretly?'
'Yes, my lord. The white man, whose name is Cortes—'
'His name is Cortes?' Motecuzoma followed that exclamation with a piercing look at me, but I could only shrug helplessly, being as mystified as he. The word rememberers' memorized conversations had given me no hint that the word was a name.
The newcomer went on patiently, wearily. 'The white man Cortes came to our cage secretly, in the night, when there were no Totonaca about, and he was accompanied only by two interpreters. He opened the cage door with his own hands. Through his interpreters, he told us that his name is Cortes, and he told us to flee for our lives, and he asked that we convey his respects to our Revered Speaker. The white man Cortes wishes you to know, my lord, that the Totonaca are in a rebellious mood, that Patzinca imprisoned us despite the urgent cautioning of Cortes that the envoys of the mighty Motecuzoma should not be so rashly manhandled. Cortes wishes you to know, my lord, that he has heard much of the mighty Motecuzoma, that he is a devoted admirer of the mighty Motecuzoma, and that he willingly risks the fury of the treasonous Patzinca in thus sending us back to you unharmed, as a token of his regard. He wishes you also to know that he will exert all his persuasion to prevent an uprising of the Totonaca against you. In exchange for his keeping the peace, Lord Speaker, the white man Cortes asks only that you invite him to Tenochtitlan, so that he may pay his homage in person to the greatest ruler in all these lands.'
'Well,' said Motecuzoma, smiling and sitting straighter on his throne, unconsciously preening in that spate of adulation. 'The white outlander is aptly named Courteous.'
But his Snake Woman, Tlacotzin, addressed the man who had just spoken: 'Do you believe what that white stranger told you?'
'Lord Snake Woman, I can recount only what I know. We were imprisoned by Totonaca guards and we were freed by the man Cortes.'
Tlacotzin turned again to Motecuzoma. 'We were told by Patzinca's own messengers that he laid hands on these officials only after being commanded to do so by that same chief of the white men.'
Motecuzoma said uncertainly, 'Patzinca could have lied, for some devious reason.'
'I know the Totonaca,' Tlacotzin said contemptuously. 'None of them, including Patzinca, has the courage to rebel or the wit to dissemble. Not without assistance.'
'If I may speak, Lord Brother,' said Cuitlahuac. 'You had not yet finished reading the account prepared by the Knight Mixtli and myself. The words repeated therein are the actual words spoken between the Lord Patzinca and the man Cortes. They do not at all accord with the message just received from that Cortes. There can be no doubt that he has artfully tricked Patzinca into treason, and that he has shamelessly lied to these registrars.'
'It does not make sense,' Motecuzoma objected. 'Why should he incite Patzinca to the treachery of seizing these men, and then negate that by setting them loose himself?'
'He hoped to make sure that we blamed the Totonaca for the treason,' resumed the Snake Woman. 'Now that the officials have returned to us, Patzinca must be in a frenzy of fear, and mustering his army against our reprisal. When that army is gathered to mount a defense, the man Cortes may just as easily incite Patzinca to use them for attack instead.'
Cuitlahuac added, 'And that does accord with our conclusions, Mixtli. Does it not?'
'Yes, my lords,' I said, addressing them all. 'The white chief Cortes clearly wants something from us Mexica, and he will use force to get it, if necessary. The threat is implicit in the message brought by these registrars he so cunningly freed. His price for keeping the Totonaca in check is that he be invited here. If the invitation is withheld, he will use the Totonaca—and perhaps others—to help him fight his way here.'
'Then we can easily forestall that,' said Motecuzoma, 'by extending the invitation he requests. After all, he says he merely wishes to pay his respects, and it is proper that he should. If he comes with no armies, with just an escort of his ranking subordinates, he can certainly work no harm here. My belief is that he wishes to ask our permission to settle a colony of his people on the coast. We already know that these strangers are by nature island dwellers and seafarers. If they wish only an allotment of some seaside land...'
'I hesitate to contradict my Revered Speaker,' said a hoarse voice. 'But the white men want more than a foothold on the beach.' The speaker was another of the returned registrars. 'Before we were freed from Tzempoalan, we saw the glow of great fires in the direction of the ocean, and a messenger came running from the bay where the white men had moored their eleven ships, and eventually we heard what had happened. At the order of the man Cortes, his soldiers stripped and gutted every useful item from ten of those ships, and the ten were burned to ashes. Only one ship is left, apparently to serve as a courier craft between here and wherever the white men come from.'
Motecuzoma said irritably, 'This makes less and less sense. Why should they deliberately destroy their only means of transport? Are you trying to tell me that the outlanders are all madmen?'
