interiors were never cleaned. Since an accumulation of blood signified an accumulation of veneration, the temples' statues and walls and ceilings and floors were thick with coagulated blood.
The Spaniards entered the temple of Tlaloc, and instantly lunged out again, with retching exclamations and faces expressive of nausea. It was the first and only time I ever knew the white men to back away from a smell, or even acknowledge one, but in truth the stench of that place was worse than their own. When they could control their heaving stomachs, Cortes and Alvarado and the priest Bartolome went inside again, and went into spasms of rage when they discovered Tlaloc's hollow statue to be filled, right up to the level of his gaping square mouth, with the decaying human hearts on which he had been fed. Cortes was so infuriated that he whipped out his sword and gave the statue a mighty blow. It only chipped away a fragment of dried blood from Tlaloc's stone face, but it was an insult that made Motecuzoma and his priests gasp with consternation. However, Tlaloc did not respond with any devastating blast of lightning, and Cortes caught hold of his temper. He said to Motecuzoma:
'This idol of yours is not god. It is an evil thing which we call a devil. It must be cast down and out and into eternal darkness. Let me set here in its place the cross of Our Lord and an image of Our Lady. You will see that this demon dares not object, and from that you will realize that it is inferior, that it fears the True Faith, and that you will be well advised to abjure such wicked beings and embrace our kindly ones.'
Motecuzoma said stiffly that the idea was unthinkable, but the Spaniards went into convulsions again when they entered the adjacent temple of Huitzilopochtli, and yet again when they beheld the similar temples atop the lesser pyramid at Tlal-telolco, and each time Cortes expressed his repugnance more strongly and in more intemperate words.
'The Totonaca,' he said, 'have swept their country clean of these foul idols, and have given their allegiance to Our Lord and His Virgin Mother. The monstrous mountain temple at Chololan has been leveled. At this moment, some of my friars are instructing King Xicotenca and his court in the blessings of Christianity. I tell you, in none of those places have the old devil-deities so much as whimpered. And I swear on my oath, neither will they when you cast them out!'
Motecuzoma replied, and I translated, doing my best to convey the iciness of his words, 'Captain-General, you are here as my guest, and a mannerly guest does not deride his host's beliefs any more than he would mock his host's taste in dress or wives. Also, although you are my guest, a majority of my people resent that they too must be hospitable to you. If you try to tamper with their gods, the priests will raise an outcry against you, and in matters of religion the priests can overrule my mandates. The people will heed the priests, not me, and you will be fortunate if you and your men are only evicted alive from Tenochtitlan.'
Even the brash Cortes understood that he was being sharply reminded of his tenuous position, and he withdrew from pressing the topic further, and he muttered words of apology. At which Motecuzoma likewise thawed a little, and said:
'However, I try to be a fair man and a generous host. I realize that you Christians have no place here in which to worship your own gods, and I have no objection to your doing that. I will order that the small Eagle Temple in the grand plaza be cleared of its statues and altar stones and anything else offensive to your faith. Your priests may put in whatever furnishings they require, and the temple is your temple for as long as you want it.'
Our own priests naturally were not pleased at even that minor concession to the aliens, but they did no more than grumble when the white priests took over the little temple. Thereafter, in fact, the place was more frequented than it had ever been. The Christian priests seemed to hold their Masses and other services continuously from morning to night, whether the white soldiers attended or not—because numbers of our own people, drawn by simple curiosity, began to drift in to those services. I say our own people; in actuality, they were mainly the white men's female consorts and allied warriors from other nations. But the priests employed Malintzin to translate their sermons, and were delighted when many of those heathen participants submitted—still no more than curious about the novelty of it—to take the salt and sprinkling and new-naming of baptism. Anyway, Motecuzoma's granting of that temple temporarily diverted Cortes from laying violent hands on our ancient gods, as he had done in other places.
The Spaniards had been in Tenochtitlan for little more than a month when something happened that could have expunged them forever from Tenochtitlan, probably from the entire One World. A swift-messenger came from Lord Patzinca of the Totonaca and, if he had reported to Motecuzoma, as formerly he would have done, the white men's sojourn might have ended then and there. However, the messenger made his report to the Totonaca army camped on the mainland, and he was brought by one of that company into the city to repeat it privily to Cortes. His news was that a serious commotion had occurred on the coast.
What had happened was this. A Mexicatl tribute collector named Cuaupopoca, making his accustomed annual round of various tributary nations, accompanied by a troop of Mexica warriors, had collected the year's levy from the Huaxteca, who also live on the seacoast, but to the north of the Totonaca. Then, leading a train of Huaxteca porters, conscripted to carry their own tribute goods to Tenochtitlan, Cuaupopoca had moved on south into the Totonaca country, as he had been doing every year for years. But on reaching the capital city of Tzempoalan, he was shocked and indignant to find that the Totonaca were unprepared for his arrival. There was no stock of goods ready to go; there were no local men waiting to serve as porters; the ruling Lord Patzinca had not even the usual list compiled for Cuaupopoca to know what the tribute was supposed to consist of.
Having come from the northern hinterlands, Cuaupopoca had heard nothing of the misadventure that had befallen the Mexica registrars who always went ahead of him, and he knew nothing of all the occurrences since then. Motecuzoma could easily have sent word to him, but had not. And I will never know whether the Revered Speaker simply forgot, in the press of so many other events, or whether he deliberately chose to let the tribute collection proceed as usual, just to see what would happen. Well, Cuaupopoca tried to do his duty. He demanded the tribute from Patzinca, who did his customary cringing but refused to comply, on the ground that he was no longer subordinate to The Triple Alliance. He had new masters, white ones, who lived in a fortified village farther down the beach. Patzinca whiningly suggested that Cuaupopoca apply to the white officer in charge there, a certain Juan de Escalante.
Angry and mystified, but determined, Cuaupopoca led his men to the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, to be received only with jeers in a language that was incomprehensible but recognizably insulting. So he, a mere tribute collector, did what the mighty Motecuzoma never had done yet; he objected to being thus disdainfully treated, and he objected strenuously, violently, decisively. In so doing, Cuaupopoca may have made a mistake, but he made it in the grand manner, in the lordly manner to be expected of the Mexica. Patzinca and Escalante made a worse mistake in provoking him to it, for they should have been aware of their vulnerability. Practically the entire Totonaca army had marched away with Cortes, along with practically all of his own. Tzempoalan had few men left to defend it, and Vera Cruz was not much better manned, since most of its garrison consisted of the boatmen left there simply because they had no ships to require their employment.
Cuaupopoca, I repeat, was only a minor Mexicatl official. I may be the only person who even remembers his name, though many still remember the fate to which his tonali brought him. The man was diligent in his duty of collecting levies, and that was the first time in his career that he had ever met defiance from a tributary nation, and he must have been as fiery-tempered as his name implied—it meant Smoldering Eagle—and he would not be balked in accomplishing his mission. He snapped an order to his force of Mexica warriors and they leapt eagerly into action, because they were fighting men, bored by an undemanding journey of escort duty. They happily seized the opportunity for combat, and they were not long deterred by the few harquebuses and crossbows discharged at them from the stockade walls of the white men's village.
They killed Escalante and what few professional soldiers Cortes had detached to his command. The remaining population of unwarlike boatmen immediately surrendered. Cuaupopoca set guards there and around the Tzempoalan palace, then ordered the rest of his men to strip clean the entire surrounding country. This year, he proclaimed to the terrorized Totonaca, their levy would comprise no fraction of their goods and produce, but all of it. So it had been something of a feat for Patzinca's messenger to escape from the cordoned palace, and to slip past the scourging warriors of Cuaupopoca, and to bring Cortes the bad news.
Surely Cortes perceived how much more perilous his own position had suddenly become, and how uncertain his future, but he wasted no time in brooding. He went immediately to Motecuzoma's palace, and in no subdued or fearful mood. He took with him the red giant Alvarado and Malintzin and a number of heavily armed men, and all of them stormed past the palace stewards and, without ceremony, directly into Motecuzoma's throne room. Cortes raged, or pretended to rage, as he regaled the Revered Speaker with an amended version of the report he had received. As he told it, a roving band of Mexica bandits had without provocation attacked his few men peaceably
