Aztec Autumn

burn down and ignite the ball, by which time you and Ehecatl will be safely outside with me again. That one ball, when it bursts, will ignite the other three. All together, they should make a really spectacular explosion. Very well. When these have dried rock-hard and we are ready to go, I will place them in one of your elegant baskets, then cover them with fruits from the market.' I paused and said, half to myself, 'Those ought to be coyacapuli fruits. And I must try to find some with worms—like me—inside them.'

'What?' said Citlali, puzzled.

'A private jest. Pay it no mind. Coyacapuli fruits are light of weight, not to make the basket too heavy. Anyway, I shall be carrying it until we get to the Castillo. Well, then. On the first sunny day, we three will leave this house and amble casually westward across the island, I with the basket, you leading Ehecatl...'

So that is what we did, a few days later, all of us dressed in immaculate white clothing and acting innocently carefree. To any onlooker we would have appeared to be only a happy family going off to enjoy an outdoor meal in the open air somewhere. And I assumed that there had to be an interested onlooker, some one of the Cathedral hirelings.

Besides the basket, I was carrying my arcabuz beneath my mantle, its stock clamped under my free arm so it hung vertically. It forced me to walk a bit stiffly, but it was invisible. And I had loaded it beforehand, exactly as I had once seen it done—a good measure of polvora and a cloth patch and a lead ball rammed down the tube, a chip of false-gold held by the cat's-paw, the whole weapon awaiting only a pinch of polvora on the little cazoleta pan to be ready to fling its lethal missile. I really had no notion of how to aim the thing, beyond vaguely pointing it. But, if the arcabuz also worked, and if fortune favored me, my swift-flying ball of lead might actually strike and wound some Spanish soldier or cadete.

If there was anyone following us, he was at least temporarily balked when, at the island's edge, I beckoned to a ferryman and we got aboard his acali. I had him pole us first southward, toward the flower gardens of Xochimilco—where even Spanish families sometimes go for a day's outing—until I was sure no other acali was pursuing us. Then I directed the ferryman to turn, and we landed at the mudflats bordering what was once the Chapultepec park. We climbed uphill, encountering no one, until the Castillo's roof was in sight. Then we dodged from tree to tree, going ever closer, until we could see the gate and the numerous figures going in and out, or to and fro, or just idling about, and still no one raised any outcry. At last we came to the tremendously thick-trunked ahuehuetl I had earlier chosen, no more than a hundred paces distant from the gate, and we crouched behind that.

'It appears to be just another routine day at the Castillo,' I said, as I disencumbered myself of the arcabuz and laid it beside me. 'No extra guards, no one looking particularly wary. So the more quickly we do this, the better. Are you and the child ready, Citlali?'

'Yes,' she said, her voice steady. 'I did not tell you, Tenamaxtli, but last night we both went to a priest of the good goddess Tlazolteotl, and I confessed all the misdeeds of our lifetimes. Including this one, if this is one.' She saw the expression on my face and hastily added, 'Just in case anything should go wrong. So, yes, we are ready.'

I had winced at Citlali's mention of that goddess, because one does not usually invoke Filth Eater until one feels death is near—hence asks her to take and swallow all one's sins, in order to go purged and clean to one's afterlife. But, if it made Citlali feel better...

'This poquietl will go on emitting its trail of smoke and smell while it burns,' I said, as I used my lente and a stray sunbeam to light the paper that protruded slightly from the basket. 'But there is a breeze up here today, so it will not be too noticeable. If anyone does smell it, he will doubtless think some cadetes have been practicing with their arcabuces. And I say again, the poquietl will give you plenty of time to—'

'Let me have it, then,' she said, 'before I am overcome by nervousness or cowardice.' She took the basket's handle and Ehecatl's hand. 'And give me a kiss, Tenamaxtli, for... for encouragement.'

I would have done that anyway, and gladly, lovingly, without her asking. She hesitated, peering around the tree, only until she was sure no one was looking our way. Then she stepped from behind the trunk and, the child beside her, walked sedately, serenely out from the tree's dense shade into the bright sunlight—as if they had just then come up the hill through the deep wood. I took my eyes off them only long enough to prime the arcabuz's cazoleta with a pinch of polvora and to click the cat's-paw rearward, ready for firing. But when I looked again at the mother and child, what I saw was disconcerting.

Many of the men outside the gate were glancing with smiles of approval at the handsome woman approaching them. There was nothing unnatural about that. But then their gaze dropped to the eyeless Ehecatl, and their smiles turned to expressions of disbelief and distaste. Their focused attention caught the attention, too, of the armed guard leaning against the gate. He stared at the approaching pair, then straightened from his slouch and moved to intercept them. This was a contingency that I should have foreseen and prepared for, but I had not, or I most certainly would have instructed Citlali to desist from our plan if she were challenged.

Citlali stopped in front of him and they exchanged some words. I supposed that the guard said something like, 'In God's name, what kind of freak is this you have in tow?' But Citlali would not have understood that, nor been able to make coherent reply. What she was saying—or trying to say—I assumed was one of the remarks in which I had drilled her: that she was visiting a maatitl cousin, or that she was peddling fruit. She could simply have set down her basket and stalked away, as if offended.

Anyway, the guard, seeing this comely woman up close, appeared to lose interest in her malformed little companion. As well as I could tell from my hiding place, he grinned and uttered a command, gesturing ominously with his arcabuz, for Citlali let go the child's hand and—to my astonishment—gave the basket to Ehecatl! That small person had to use both arms to hold it. Then Citlali turned Ehecatl to face the gate and gave a gentle push. As Ehecatl toddled obediently and directly toward the open entrance, Citlali raised her hands and began slowly undoing the knots that closed her huipil blouse. Not the guard nor the other men roundabout gave any notice to the child carrying the basket through the gate. All eyes were salaciously fixed on Citlali as she undressed.

Obviously, the guard had ordered her to strip for a thorough search—he had that authority—and she was doing it slowly, as voluptuously as any maatitl, to divert everyone's attention from Ehecatl, now out of my sight inside the stockade somewhere. Here was another distressing contingency for which we had not prepared. What was I to do? I knew from previous observation that the Castillo's fort door was in a line with the gate; presumably little Ehecatl would continue on, straight through it and into the fort. But then what?

I was now standing erect behind my tree, only my head extended far enough to keep watching, and I was uncertainly fingering the gatillo of my arcabuz. Should I discharge it now? I certainly was tempted to kill some one of the white men, who were clustered now and staring avidly, for Citlali had bared herself above the waist. All I could see was her shapely back, but I knew well that her breasts were lovely things to look upon. She began, still slowly, provocatively, undoing the waistband of her long skirt. It seemed to me—and perhaps also to those smirking onlookers—a sheaf of years before that skirt dropped to the ground. Then Citlali commenced another sheaf of years of unwinding her tochomitl undergarment. The guard took a step closer to her, and all the other men crowded close behind him, when at last Citlali tossed the cloth away and stood totally naked before them.

At that instant came a bellow of noise and a billow of smoke from some remote place inside the stockade, inside the fort itself, making every one of the watching men flinch even farther toward Citlali, then turn to gape openmouthed—as another and louder thunder boomed inside their fort, and another, louder yet. The red tiles of the fort's roof jittered and danced, and several fell off. Then, as if those still-reverberating roars had been only preliminary ebullitions—as occasionally the great volcano Citlaltepetl clears its throat three or four times before belching up a devastating eruption—so did the fort erupt with a blast that must have been heard all over the valley.

Its entire roof lifted high into the air, and disintegrated there, so the tiles and timbers soared even higher. From under them rose a tremendous, roiling, yellow-and-red-and-black cloud of commingled flames, smoke, sparks, unidentifiable pieces of the fort's interior furnishings, flailing human bodies and limp fragments of human bodies. I was quite sure that even my extravagant employment of several polvora balls could not have caused such a cataclysm. What must have happened—little Ehecatl must have toddled, unhindered, as far as some storeroom of the fort's own polvora or its cache of some other terribly sensitive combustible, just at the moment my basketful ignited and blew apart. I briefly wondered—could the child have been guided by our war god Huitzilopochtli? By the spirit of my dead father? Or was it simply Ehecatl's own tonali?

But I had other things to wonder about. Simultaneously with the fort's flying all to pieces, every person