Aztec

I detected their imminent and increasing loss of distant vision. That affliction is sufficiently uncommon that the distinctive shape of the afflicted eyeball affords an unmistakeable sign diagnostic. I could say with certainty that you were fated to see things close and true.'

'You also said I would speak truly of such things.'

He shrugged. 'You seemed bright enough, for a brat, that it was safe to predict you would grow up passably intelligent. A man who is forced by weak eyesight to regard everything in this world at close range, and with good sense, is also usually inclined to describe the world as it really is.'

'You are a cunning old trickster,' I said, smiling. 'But what has all that to do with my being summoned to Texcoco?'

'Every ruler and prince and governor is surrounded by servile attendants and self-seeking wise men who will tell him what he wants to hear, or what they want him to hear. A man who will tell only the truth is a rarity among courtiers. I believed that you would become such a rarity, and that your faculties would be better appreciated at a court rather nobler than that of Xaltocan. So I dropped a word here and there...'

'You,' I said unbelievingly, 'have the ear of a man like Nezahualpili?'

He gave me a look that somehow made me feel again much smaller than he was. 'I told you long ago—have I not proved it yet?—that I also speak true, and to my own detriment, when I could easily pose as an omniscient messenger of the gods. Nezahualpili is not so cynical as you, young Mole. He will listen to the lowliest of men, if that man speaks the truth.'

'I apologize,' I said, after a moment. 'I should be thanking you, old man, not doubting you. And I truly am grateful for—'

He waved that away. 'I did not do it entirely for you. I usually get full value for my discoveries. Simply see to it that you give faithful service to the Uey-Tlatoani, and we shall both have earned our rewards. Now go.'

'But go where? No one has told me where or to whom I am to announce myself. Do I just cross over this hill and hope to be recognized?'

'Yes. The palace is on the other side, and you are expected. Whether the Speaker himself will recognize you, next time you meet, I could not say.'

'We have never met,' I complained. 'We cannot possibly know each other.'

'Oh? Well, I advise you to ingratiate yourself with Tolana-Teciuapil, the Lady of Tolan, for she is the favorite of Nezahualpili's seven wedded wives. At last count he also had forty concubines. So over there at the palace are some sixty sons and fifty daughters of the Revered Speaker. I doubt that even he knows the latest tally. He may take you to be a forgotten by-blow from one of his wanderings abroad, a son just now come home. But you will be hospitably welcomed, young Mole, never fear.'

I turned, then turned back again. 'Could I first be of some service to you, venerable one? Perhaps I could assist you to the top of the hill?'

He said, 'I thank you for the kind offer, but I will loiter here yet a while. It is best that you climb and breast the hill alone, for all the rest of your life awaits you on the other side.'

That sounded portentous, but I saw a small fallacy in it, and I smiled at my own perspicacity. 'Surely my life awaits, whichever way I go from here, and whether I go alone or not.'

The cacao man smiled too, but ironically. 'Yes, at your age, many possible lives await. Go whichever way you choose. Go alone or in company. The companions may walk with you a long way or a little. But at the end of your life, no matter how crowded were its roads and its days, you will have learned what all must learn. And that will be too late for any starting over, too late for anything but regret. So learn it now. No man has ever yet lived out any life but one, and that one his chosen own, and most of that alone.' He paused, and his eyes held mine. 'Now then, Mixtli, which way do you go from here, and in what company?'

I turned and kept on up the hill, alone.

I H S

S.C.C.M.

Sanctified, Caesarean, Catholic Majesty, the Emperor Don Carlos, Our Lord King:

Most Virtuous Majesty, our Sagacious Monarch: from the City of Mexico, capital of New Spain, this Feast Day of the Circumcision in the Year of Our Lord one thousand five hundred twenty and nine, greeting.

With heavy heart but submissive hand, your chaplain again forwards to Your Imperial Majesty, as again commanded, yet another collection of the writings dictated to date by our still-resident Aztec—or Asmodeus, as Your Majesty's servant is increasingly inclined to think of him.

This humble cleric can sympathize with Your Majesty's wry comment that the Indian's chronicle is 'considerably more informative than the fanfarronadas we hear incessantly from the newly entitled Marques, the Senor Cortes himself, who is currently favoring us with his attendance at Court.' And even a grieved and morose Bishop can perceive Your Majesty's wry joke when you write that 'the Indian's communications are the first we have received from New Spain not attempting to wheedle a title, or a vast allotment of the conquered lands, or a loan.'

But, Sire, we stand aghast when you report that your royal self and your courtiers are 'entirely rapt and enthralled at the reading aloud of these pages.' We trust we do not take lightly our pledges as a subject of Your Most Eminent Majesty, but our other sacred oaths oblige us to warn most solemnly, ex officio et de fides, against any further indiscriminate dissemination of this foul history.

Your Astute Majesty can hardly have failed to notice that the earlier pages have treated—casually, without remorse or repentance—of such sins as homicide, prolicide, suicide, anthropophagy, incest, harlotry, torture, idolatry, and breach of the Commandment to honor father and mother. If, as it has been said, one's sins are wounds of one's soul, this Indian's soul is bleeding at every pore.

But, in the case the more sly insinuations somehow escaped Your Majesty's attention, allow us to point out that the scurrilous Aztec has dared to suggest that his people boast of some vague lineal descent from a Lord and Lady Pair, a pagan parody of Adam and Eve. He also suggests that we Christians ourselves are idolatrous of a whole pantheon comparable to the seething host of demons his people worshiped. With equal blasphemy, he has implied that such Holy Sacraments as Baptism, and Absolution through Confession, and even the petitioning for Grace before a meal, were observed in these lands, antedating and independent of any knowledge of Our Lord and His bestowal of the Sacraments. Perhaps his most vile sacrilege is to aver, as Your Majesty will shortly read, that one of the previous heathen rulers of these people was born of a virgin!

Your Majesty makes an incidental inquiry in this latest letter. Though we ourself have sat in on the Indian's storytelling sessions from time to time—and will continue to do so, time permitting, to put to him specific questions or to demand elaboration on some of his comments we have read—we must deferentially remind Your Majesty that the Bishop of Mexico has other pressing duties which preclude our personally verifying or disproving any of this prattler's boasts and asseverations.

However, Your Majesty asks information regarding one of his more outrageous assertions, and we sincerely hope that the query is merely another of our jovial sovereign's good-humored jests. In any case, we must reply: No, Sire, we know nothing of the properties the Aztec ascribes to the root called barbasco. We cannot confirm that it would be 'worth its weight in gold' as a commodity of Spanish commerce. We know nothing about it that would 'silence the chatter of the ladies of the Court.' The very suggestion that Our Lord God could have created a vegetable efficacious in averting the conception of Christian human life is repugnant to our sensibilities and an affront to—

Pardon the ink blot, Sire. Our agitation afflicts our pen hand. But satis superque...

As Your Majesty commands, the friars and the young lay brother will continue setting down these pages until—in time, we pray—Your Majesty commands that they be relieved of their pitiable duty. Or until they themselves can no longer bear the task. We think we are not breaching the confidence of the Confessional if we merely remark that in these last months the brothers' own confessions have become phantasmatical in the extreme, and bloodcurdling to hear, and necessitating the most exigent penances for absolution.

May Our Redeemer and Master, Jesus Christ, be always Your Majesty's consolation and defense against all the wiles of our Adversary, is the constant prayer of Your S.C.C.M.'s chaplain.

(ecce signum) Zumarraga