Aztec

off the throne.

All of us who had been in the throne room followed them, running up the stairs to the roof, and I could hear Malintzin breathlessly repeating Cortes's instructions to Motecuzoma:

'Your people are collecting in the plaza. You will address them. Make your peace with them. Blame every ill and calamity on us Spaniards, if you like. Tell them anything that will maintain calm in the city!'

The roof had been made a garden just before the first coming of the white men, but it had been untended since then, and had endured a winter besides. Where the ground had not been scored and furrowed by the wheels of the heavy cannons, it was a wasteland of dry soil, withered stalks, bare-branched shrubs, dead flower heads, and windrowed brown leaves. It was a most bleak and desolate platform for Motecuzoma's last speech.

We all went to the parapet that overlooked the plaza and, standing in a line along that wall, peered down at The Heart of the One World. The thousand or so Spaniards were easily identifiable by their glints of armor, as they stood or moved uncertainly among the twice as many Mexica pouring into the area and converging below us. As the messenger had reported, there were both men and women, and they wore only their everyday dress, and they showed no interest in the soldiers or the unprecedented fact of an armed camp erected on that sacred ground. They merely made their way through the clutter, in no haste but with no hesitation, until there was a densely packed crowd of them right below us.

'The corporal was right,' said Alvarado. 'They bear no weapons.'

Cortes said bitingly, 'Just the kind of opponents you prefer, eh, Pedro?' and Alvarado's face went almost as red as his beard. To all his men present, Cortes said, 'Let us step back out of view. Let the people see only their own ruler and lords.'

He and Malintzin and the others withdrew to the middle of the roof. Motecuzoma cleared his throat nervously, then had to call three times, each time more loudly, before the crowd heard him over its own murmurings and the noise of the camp. Some of the black dots of heads turned to flesh color as their faces lifted, then more and more of them. Finally the whole convocation of Mexica were looking up, and many of the white faces as well, and the crowd noise subsided.

'My people...' Motecuzoma began, his voice husky. He cleared his throat again and said, loudly, clearly, 'My people...'

'Your people!' came a concerted and hostile roar from below, then a confused clamor of angry shouts: 'The people you betrayed!' 'Yours are the white people!' 'You are not our Speaker!' 'You are no longer revered!' It startled me even though I had been expecting it, knowing that it had all been arranged by Cuitlahuac, and that the men in the crowd were all warriors only temporarily unarmed for the seemingly spontaneous community outburst of vilification.

I should say they were unarmed with ordinary weapons, for at that moment they all produced stones and fragments of adobe brick—men from under their mantles, women from beneath their skirts—and, still shouting imprecations, began hurling them upward. Most of the women's missiles fell short, and thudded against the palace wall below us, but enough others reached the roof to make all of us duck and dodge. The priest of Huitzilopochtli uttered a most unpriestly exclamation when one of the rocks hit him on the shoulder. Several of the Spaniards behind us also cursed as rocks fell among them. The only man—I must say it—the only man who did not move was Motecuzoma.

He stood where he was, upright still, and raised his arms in a conciliatory gesture, and shouted above the noise, 'Wait!' He said it in Nahuatl, 'Mixchia—!' And then a rock hit him squarely in the forehead, and he staggered backward, and he fell unconscious.

Cortes instantly took command again. He snapped at me, 'See to him! Put him at ease!' Then he grabbed Cuitlahuac by his mantle, and pointed and said, 'Do what you can. Say anything. That mob must be calmed.' Malintzin translated to Cuitlahuac, and he was at the parapet, shouting, when I and two Spanish officers carried Motecuzoma's limp body downstairs and to the throne room again. We laid the unconscious man on a bench there, and the two officers ran out the door, presumably to fetch one of their army surgeons.

I stood and looked down at Motecuzoma's face, quite relaxed and peaceful despite the knot of bruise rising on his forehead. I thought of many things then: the events and occurrences of our simultaneous lifetimes. I remembered his disloyal defiance of his own Revered Speaker Ahuitzotl during the campaign in Uaxyacac... and his ignobly pitiful try at raping my wife's sister there... and his many threats against me over the years... and his spiteful sending of me to Yanquitlan, where my daughter Nochipa died... and his weakling vacillations ever since the first white men had appeared off our shores... and his betrayal of an attempt by braver men to rid our city of those white men. Yes, I had many reasons for doing what I did, some of them immediate and urgent. But I suppose, as much as for any other reason, I slew him to avenge his long-ago insult to Beu Ribe, who had been Zyanya's sister and was now in name my wife.

Those reminiscences went through my mind in only a moment. I looked up from his face and looked about the room for a weapon. Two Texcalteca warriors had been left there on guard. I beckoned one over and, when he came, scowling at me, I asked for his waist dagger. He scowled more darkly, unsure of my identity or rank or intention, but when I made the request a loud and lordly command, he handed me the obsidian blade. I placed it carefully, for I had watched enough sacrifices to know exactly where the heart is in a human breast, and I pushed the dagger all the way to the extent of its blade, and Motecuzoma's chest ceased its slow rise and fall. I left the dagger in the wound, so only a very little blood welled up from around it. The Texcaltecatl guard goggled at me in horrified wonderment, then he and his companion hastily fled the room.

I had only just had time. I heard the uproar of the crowd in the plaza subside to a still wrathful but lesser rumble. Then all the people who had been on the roof came clattering down the stairs, along the hall, and into the throne room. They were conversing excitedly or worriedly in their different languages, but they fell suddenly silent as they stood in the doorway and saw and realized and contemplated the enormity of my deed. They approached slowly, Spaniards and Mexica lords together, and stared speechless at the body of Motecuzoma and the dagger haft protruding from his chest, and at me standing unperturbed beside the corpse.

Cortes turned his flat eyes on me and said, with ominous quietness: 'What... have... you... done?'

I said, 'As you commanded, my lord, I put him at ease.'

'Damn your impudence, you son of a whore,' he said, but still quietly, with contained fury. 'I have heard you make mockeries before.'

I calmly shook my head. 'Because Motecuzoma is at ease, Captain-General, perhaps all the rest of us may be more at ease. Including yourself.'

He jabbed a stiff finger into my chest, then jabbed it toward the plaza. 'There is a war brewing yonder! Who now will control that rabble?'

'Not Motecuzoma, alive or dead. But here stands his successor, his brother Cuitlahuac, a man of firmer hand and a man who is still respected by that rabble.'

Cortes turned to look doubtfully at the war chief, and I could guess his thinking. Cuitlahuac might dominate the Mexica, but Cortes had yet no domination over Cuitlahuac. As if also reading his thoughts, Malintzin said:

'We can put the new ruler to a test, Senor Hernan. Let us all go again to the roof, show Motecuzoma's body to the crowd, let Cuitlahuac proclaim his succession, and see if the people will obey his first order—that we be again provisioned and served in this palace.'

'A shrewd idea, Malinche,' said Cortes. 'Give him exactly those instructions. Tell him also that he is to make it unmistakably clear that Montezuma died'—he plucked the dagger from the body, and threw a scathing glance at me—'that Montezuma died at the hands of his own people.'

So we returned to the roof, and the rest of us hung back while Cuitlahuac took his brother's corpse in his arms and stepped to the parapet and called for attention. As he showed the body and told the news, the sound that came up from the plaza was a murmur sounding of approval. Another thing happened then: a gentle rain began to fall from the sky, as if Tlaloc, as if Tlaloc alone, as if no other being but Tlaloc mourned the end of Motecuzoma's roads and days and rule. Cuitlahuac spoke loudly enough to be heard by the gathered people below, but in a persuasively placid manner. Malintzin translated for Cortes, and assured him, 'The new ruler speaks as instructed.'

At last, Cuitlahuac turned toward us and gestured with his head. We all joined him at the parapet, while two or three priests relieved him of Motecuzoma's body. The people who had been so solidly packed below the palace wall were separating and making their way again through the cluttered encampment. Some of the Spanish soldiers still looked uncertain, and fingered their weapons, so Cortes shouted down, 'Let them come and go without