Aztec

that I was about to denounce her—or perhaps apply to take her place as interpreter.

'I am curious to know...' I began, pretending humility and uncertainty. 'Could you tell me...?'

'Yes?' prompted Cortes.

Still seeming shy and hesitant, I said, 'I have heard your men—so many of your men—speak of our women as, well, incomplete in a certain respect....'

There was a clanking of metal and a squeaking of leather as all the white men bent closer their attention to me. 'Yes? Yes?'

I asked as if I really wanted to know, and asked politely, solemnly, with no hint of scurrility or mockery. 'Do your women... does your Virgin Mary have hair covering her private parts?'

There was another clank and squeak of their armor; I think their opening mouths and eyelids almost squeaked too, as they all sat back and gaped at me—rather as Your Excellency is doing at this moment. There were shocked mutters of 'Locura!' and 'Blasfemia!' and 'Ultraje!'

Only one of them, the big flame-bearded Alvarado, laughed uproariously. He turned to the priests dining with us and pounded his big hands on the shoulders of two of them and, between his gusts of laughter, asked, 'Padre Bartolome, Padre Merced, have you ever been asked that before? Did the seminary teach you a suitable answer to that question? Have you ever even thought of it before? Eh?'

The priests made no comment, except to glare at me and grind their teeth and make the cross sign to ward off evil. Cortes had not taken his eyes off me. Still skewering me with his falcon gaze, he said, 'No, you are no hijodalgo or grandee, or any other sort of courtly gentleman. But you will bear remembering. Yes, I will remember you.'

Next morning, while our party was packing to depart, Ce-Malinali came and imperiously beckoned to me, indicating that she wished a private discussion. I took my time about joining her. When I did, I said:

'This should be interesting. Speak, One Grass.'

'Kindly do not address me by my discarded slave name. You will call me Malintzin or Dona Marina.' She explained, 'I was christened with the name of the Santa Margarita Marina. That means nothing to you, of course, but I suggest that you show me the proper respect, for the Captain Cortes regards me highly, and he is quick to punish insolence.'

I said coldly, 'Then I suggest that you sleep very close against your Captain Cortes, for at a word from me any of these Totonaca hereabout will gladly slip a blade between your ribs the first time you are off guard. You are talking insolently now to the Lord Mixtli, who earned the -tzin to his name. Slave girl, you may fool the white men with your pretensions to nobility. You may endear yourself to them by coloring your hair like a maatitl. But your own people see exactly that: a red-haired slut who has sold more than just her own body to the invader Cortes.'

That shook her, and she said defensively, 'I do not sleep with the Captain Cortes. I serve only as his interpreter. When the Tabascoob presented us, we twenty women were shared out among the white men. I was given to that man.' She indicated one of the under-chiefs who had dined with us. 'His name is Alonso.'

'Are you enjoying him?' I asked drily. 'As I recall from our earlier meeting, you expressed a hatred of men and the use they make of women.'

'I can pretend anything,' she said. 'Anything that serves my purpose.'

'And what is your purpose? I am sure the mistranslation I overheard was not your first. Why do you goad Cortes to press on to Tenochtitlan?'

'Because I wish to go there. I told you so, years ago, when we first met. Once I get to Tenochtitlan, I care not what happens to the white men. Perhaps I will be rewarded for having brought them to where Motecuzoma can squash them like bugs. Anyway, I will be where I have always wanted to be, and I will be noticed and known, and it will not take me long to become a noblewoman in fact as well as in name.'

'On the other hand,' I suggested, 'if by some quirk of chance the white men are not squashed, you would be even better rewarded.'

She made a gesture of indifference. 'I only wish to ask... to beg if you like, Lord Mixtli... that you do nothing to imperil my opportunity. Only give me time to prove my usefulness to Cortes, so that he cannot dispense with my help and advice. Only let me get to Tenochtitlan. It can matter little to you or to your Revered Speaker or to anyone else, but it matters much to me.'

I shrugged and said, 'I do not step out of my way just to squash bugs. I will not impede your ambitions, slave girl, unless and until they conflict with the interests I serve.'

While Motecuzoma studied the portrait of Cortes and the other drawings I had given him, I enumerated the persons and things I had counted:

'Including the leader and his several officers, there are five hundred and eight fighting men. Most of them carry the metal swords and spears, but thirteen of them have also the fire-stick harquebuses, thirty and two have the crossbows, and I venture to suppose that all the other men are equally capable of using those special weapons. There are, in addition, one hundred men who were evidently the boatmen of the ten ships that were burned.

Motecuzoma handed the sheaf of bark papers over his shoulder. The elders of the Speaking Council, ranged behind him, began to pass them back and forth.

I went on, 'There are four white priests. There are numerous women of our own race, given to the white men by the Tabascoob of Cupilco and by Patzinca of the Totonaca. There are sixteen of the riding horses and twelve of the giant hunting dogs. There are ten of the far-throwing cannons and four smaller cannons. As we were told, Lord Speaker, there remains only one ship still floating in the bay, and there are boatmen aboard, but I could not count them.'

Two of the Council, two physicians, were solemnly scrutinizing my drawings of Cortes and conferring in professional mumbles.

I concluded, 'Besides the persons I have mentioned, practically the entire Totonaca population appears to be at Cortes's command, working as porters and carpenters and masons and such... when they are not being taught by the white priests how to worship before the cross and the lady image.'

One of the two doctors said, 'Lord Speaker, if I may make a comment...' Motecuzoma nodded permission. 'My colleague and I have looked hard at this drawing of the face of the man Cortes, and at the other drawings which show him entire.'

Motecuzoma said impatiently, 'And I suppose, as physicians, you officially declare him to be a man.'

'Not just that, my lord. There are other signs diagnostic. It is impossible to say with certainty, unless we should sometime have a chance to examine him in person. But it very much appears, from his weak features and sparse hair and the ill proportioning of his body, that he was born of a mother afflicted with the shameful disease nanaua. We have seen the same characteristics often in the offspring of the lowest class of maatime.'

'Indeed?' said Motecuzoma, visibly brightening. 'If this is true, and the nanaua has affected his brain, it would explain some of his actions. Only a madman would have burned those vessels and destroyed his only means of retreat to safety. And if a man consumed by the nanaua is the leader of the outlanders, the others must be vermin of even feebler intellect. And you, Mixtzin, tell us that their weapons are not so invincibly terrible as others have described them. Do you know, I begin to think that we may have much exaggerated the peril posed by these visitors.'

Motecuzoma was suddenly more cheerful than I had seen him in a long time, but his swift rebound from gloom to jauntiness did not dispose me to imitate it. He had until then held the white men in awe, as gods or messengers of gods, requiring our respect and propitiation and perhaps our utter submission. But, on hearing my report and the doctors' opinion, he was just as ready to dismiss the white men as undeserving of our attention or concern. One attitude seemed to me as dangerous as the other, but I could not say that in so many words. Instead I said:

'Perhaps Cortes is diseased to the point of madness, Lord Speaker, but a madman can be even more fearsome than a sane one. It was only months ago that these same vermin easily vanquished some five thousand warriors in the Olmeca lands.'

'But the Olmeca defenders did not have our advantage.' It was not Motecuzoma who spoke, but his brother, the war chief Cuitlahuac. 'They went against the white men in the age-old tactic of close combat. But thanks to you, Lord Mixtli, we now know something of the enemy's capabilities. I will equip the majority of my troops with bows and arrows. We can stay out of range of their metal weapons, we can dodge the discharges of their unwieldy fire weapons, and we can deluge them with arrows faster than they can send projectiles in return.'

Motecuzoma said indulgently, 'It is expectable that a war chief speaks of war. But I see no need for fighting