Aztec

'You will practice on me. Pitza, go across the corridor and have Cozcatl collect the implements Fetch! will require.'

The little boy brought me some chalk sticks and several sheets of bark paper—the brown, the cheapest, uncoated with lime, which I used for rough drafts of my picture writing. At my gesture, the boy went to crouch in a corner of the big room.

I said apologetically, 'You know of my poor eyesight, my lady. If I may have your permission to sit near you?'

I moved a low chair over beside the bench, and Jadestone Doll held her head still and steady, her glorious eyes on me, while I did a sketch. When I was done and handed her the paper, she did not glance at it, but held it over her shoulder to the maid.

'Pitza, is it I?'

'To the very dimple in the cheek, my lady. And no one could mistake those eyes.'

At which the young queen condescended to examine it, and nodded, and smiled sweetly at me. 'Yes, it is I. I am very beautiful. Thank you, Fetch! Now, can you do bodies, too?'

'Well, yes, the articulation of limbs, the folds of garments, the identifying emblems and insignia...'

'I am not interested in the outward habiliments. I mean the body. Here, do mine.'

The maid Pitza gave a muted shriek and Cozcatl's mouth dropped open, as Jadestone Doll stood up and, without coyness or hesitation, stripped off all her jewelry and bangles, her sandals, her blouse, her skirt, and finally her single remaining undergarment. Pitza went away and buried her flushed face in the draperies by the window— Cozcatl seemed incapable of movement—as the young queen again reclined on the bench.

In my agitation, I dropped some of my drawing materials from my lap to the floor, but I managed to say, and in a voice of severity, 'My lady, this is most unseemly.'

'Ayya, the typical prudery of a commoner,' she said, and laughed at me. 'You must learn, Fetch!, that a noblewoman thinks nothing of being nude, or of bathing, or of performing any function in the presence of slaves. Male or female, they might be pet deer or quail, or a moth in the room, for all that their seeing signifies.'

'I am not a slave,' I said stiffly. 'My seeing my lady unclad—the queen of the Uey-Tlatoani—would be accounted a criminal liberty, a capital offense. And those who are slaves can talk.'

'Not mine. They fear my own anger more than that of any law or any lord. Pitza, show Fetch! your back.'

The maid whimpered and, without turning, slid her blouse down for me to see the raw welts inflicted by a knout of some sort. I looked at Cozcatl, to make sure that he also saw and understood.

'Now,' said Jadestone Doll, smiling her maguey syrup smile. 'Come as near as you please, Fetch!, and draw me entire.'

So I did, though my hand trembled so that I had often to rub out and redraw a line. The tremor was not entirely because of my dismay and apprehension. The sight of Jadestone Doll stark naked would, I think, have made any man tremble. She might better have been named Golden Doll, for gold was the color of her body, and its every surface and curve and crevice and bend and hollow was as perfectly rendered as by a Toltecatl dollmaker. I might also mention that her nipples and their areolas were dark and generous in size.

I drew her in the pose she had assumed: full length on the cushioned bench, except for one leg negligently trailing onto the floor; her arms behind her head to give an even more piquant tilt to her breasts. Though I could not help viewing—I might say memorizing—certain parts of her, I confess that my prudish sense of propriety made me blur them somewhat in the drawing. And Jadestone Doll complained about that, when I gave her the finished picture:

'I am all a smudge between the legs! Are you squeamish, Fetch!, or merely ignorant of female anatomy? Surely the most sacrosanct part of my body deserves the most attention to detail.'

She got up from the bench and came to stand spread-legged before me, where I sat on my low chair. With one finger she traced what she now displayed and painstakingly described. 'See? How these tender pink lips come together here in front, to enfold this little xacapili nub which is like a pink pearl and—ooh!—most responsive to the lightest touch.'

I was perspiring heavily, the servant Pitza had practically enshrouded herself in the draperies, and Cozcatl appeared permanently paralyzed in his crouch in the corner.

'Now quit your prissy agonizing, Fetch!' said the girl queen. 'I did not intend to tease you; rather to test your draftmanship. I have a task for you.' She turned to snap at the maid. 'Pitza, stop hiding your head! Come and dress me again.'

While that was being done, I said, 'My lady wishes me to draw a picture of someone?'

'Yes.'

'Of whom, my lady?'

'Of anyone,' she said, and I blinked in puzzlement. 'You see, when I walk about the palace grounds or go into the city in my chair, it would be unladylike of me to point and say that one. Also, my eyedrops can dazzle me so that I might overlook someone really attractive. I mean men, of course.'

'Men?' I echoed stupidly.

'I want you to carry your papers and chalks wherever you go. Whenever you encounter some handsome man, put his face and figure on paper for me.' She paused to giggle. 'You need not undress him. I want as many different pictures of as many different men as you can provide. But no one is to know why you are doing it, or for whom. If you are questioned, say you are merely practicing your art.' She tossed back to me the two drawings I had just done. 'That is all. You may take your leave, Fetch!, and do not come back until you have a sheaf of pictures to show me.'

I was not, even then, so dense that I did not have an inkling of what Jadestone Doll's command portended. But I put that out of my mind, to concentrate on doing the task to the best of my ability. My main problem was in trying to guess what a fifteen-year-old girl might regard as 'handsome' in a man. Having been given no other criteria, I confined my surreptitious sketchings to princes and knights and warriors and athletes and other such stalwarts. But when I returned to the queen, with Cozcatl carrying my stack of bark papers, I had whimsically topped them with a drawing I had done from memory—of that bent, crooked, cacao-brown man who had so oddly kept reappearing in my life.

She sniffed, but surprised me by saying, 'You think you jest in mischief, Fetch! However, I have heard whispers among women that there are special delights to be had from dwarfs and hunchbacks and even'—she glanced at Cozcatl—'a little boy with a tepuli like an earlobe. Someday, when I tire of the ordinary...'

She riffled through the papers, then stopped and said, 'Yyo ayyo! This one, Fetch!, he has bold eyebrows. Who is he?'

'That is the Crown Prince Black Flower.'

She frowned prettily. 'No, that might cause complications.' She went on, intently studying each picture, then said, 'And this one?'

'I do not know his name, my lady. He is a swift-messenger whom sometimes I see running with messages.'

'Ideal,' she said, with that smile of hers. She pointed to the drawing and said, 'Fetch!' She was not just pronouncing my name, but the verbal imperative: 'Bring him!'

I had fearfully anticipated something of the sort, but I broke into a cold sweat nonetheless. With the utmost diffidence and formality, I said:

'My Lady Jadestone Doll, I have been ordered to serve you, and cautioned not to correct or criticize you. But, if I rightly perceive your intentions, I beg you to reconsider. You are the virgin princess of the greatest lord in all The One World, and the wedded virgin queen of a lord who is also great. You will be demeaning two Revered Speakers and your own noble self, if you trifle with some other man before you go to your Lord Husband's bed.'

I was expecting her at any moment to produce the whip she used on her slaves, but she heard me out, still wearing her infuriating sweet smile. Then she said:

'I could tell you that your impertinence is punishable. But I will merely remark that Nezahualpili is older than my own father, and that his virility has apparently been sapped by the Lady of Tolan, by all his other wives and concubines. He keeps me sequestered here while he is no doubt desperately trying medicines and enchantments to stiffen his limp and withered old tepuli. But why should I waste my urges and juices and the bloom of my beauty while I await his convenience or his capability? If he requires postponement of his husbandly duties, I shall arrange that they are long postponed indeed. And then, when he and I are ready, you may be sure I can convince