Aztec Autumn

'Ayya, I will never recruit any warlike men here,' I said. 'I must move on.'

'What about warlike women?' asked my consort of the moment, a radiantly lovely young woman, whose feather-fan eyelashes seemed even more luxuriant in contrast to her otherwise hairless and glowing visage. Her name was Pakapeti, which means 'Tiptoe.' When I only looked blankly at her, she added, 'The Spaniards committed an oversight when they killed or abducted only our menfolk. They ignored the capabilities of us women.'

I snorted in amusement. 'Women? Warriors? Nonsense.'

'It is you who speak nonsense,' she snapped. 'You might as well claim that a man can ride a horse faster than a woman can. I have seen both Spanish men and women on horseback. As to which can ride the faster, much depends on the horse.'

'I have no men or horses,' I said ruefully.

'You have that,' said Tiptoe, indicating my arcabuz. I had been practicing with it all afternoon, trying with only middling success to knock individual ahuacatin fruits off a tree near her hut. 'A woman could use it as expertly as you do,' she said, trying hard not to sound sarcastic. 'Make or steal more of those thunder-sticks and...'

'That is my intention. As soon as I have enough of an army to warrant the need of them.'

'I would not have to travel very far hereabout,' she said, 'to recruit for you a considerable number of strong and willing and vengeful women. Except for those whom the Spaniards took for household slaves—or bed- warmers—the rest of us would not even be missed, if we disappeared from our customary abodes.'

I knew what she meant. On my way westward, thus far, I had carefully stayed clear of the many Spanish estancias, all of which, naturally, encompassed Michihuacan's prime growing and grazing lands. There being no more Purempe men, and the Purempe women having been judged suitable only for indoor services, the outdoor work of the farms and ranches and orchards was done by imported male slaves. From a distance, I had seen the black Moros laboring, overseen by Spaniards on horseback, each usually with whip in hand. The new masters of Michihuacan had planted the fields mostly with marketable crops—the alien wheat and sweet cane and a greenery called alfalfa, and the trees that grow alien fruits called manzanas, naranjas, limones and aceitunas. Less tillable fields were thick with herds of sheep or cows or horses, and there were pens full of pigs, chickens and gallipavos. Even places so swampy they had never been tilled before were planted with a foreign water-growing grain called arroz. Since the Spaniards managed to wrest harvests and profits from almost every piece of Michihuacan, the plots left to the surviving Purempecha were few and small and only grudgingly productive.

Pakapeti said, 'You have spoken of eating well in this land, Tenamaxtli. Let me tell you why that is. What patches we have of maize and tomatoes and chilis are tended by our old men and women. The children gather fruits, nuts, berries, the wild honey for making sweets and chapari. It is we women who bring in the meat. Wild fowl, small game, fish, even the occasional boar and cuguar.'

She paused, then added wryly, 'We do not do that with thunder-sticks. We use the ancient means of fowling nets and fishing lines and obsidian hunting weapons. Also, we women continue the ancient Purempe crafts of making lacquerware and glazed pottery. Those objects we barter for other foods from the seacoast tribes, and for pigs or chickens or lambs or kids from the Spaniards. We live, even without menfolk, and we live not badly, but we live only by the sufferance of those white masters. That is why I say we would not be missed if we marched off to war.'

'At least you live,' I said. 'You would assuredly not live so well if you went to war. If you lived at all.'

'Other women have fought the Spaniards, you know. The Mexica women, during the final battles in the streets of Tenochtitlan, stood on the rooftops and threw down on the invaders stones and nests full of wasps and even lumps of their own excrement.'

'Much good it did them. I knew an even braver Mexicatl woman in more recent times. She actually slew a number of the white men, and much good it did her. She lost her own life in consequence.'

Tiptoe said urgently, 'We, too, would gladly give our lives if we could take some of theirs.' She leaned close, those extraordinary eyelashes wide, fixing me with eyes as dark and lovely as the lashes. 'Only try us, Tenamaxtli. It would be the last thing the Spaniards would ever expect. An uprising of women!'

'And the last thing I should ever hope to be involved in,' I said with a laugh. 'Me—at the head of an army of females. Why, every dead warrior in Tonatiucan would be convulsed, either with hilarity or with horror. The idea is ludicrous, my dear. I must seek men.'

'Go then,' she said, sitting back and looking extremely vexed. 'Go and get your men. There still are some in Michihuacan.' She waved an arm vaguely northward.

'Still some men here?' I said, surprised. 'Purempe men? Warriors? Are they in hiding? In ambuscade?'

'No. They are in swaddling,' she said contemptuously. 'Not warriors and not Purempecha. They are Mexica, imported here to settle new colonies around the lake Patzcuaro. But I fear you will find those men much less stalwart and much more meek than myself and the women I could gather for you.'

'I grant, Tiptoe, that you are anything but meek. Your name-giver must have badly misread his tonalmatl book of names. Tell me about those Mexica. Imported by whom? For what purpose?'

'I know only what I have heard. Some Spanish Christian priest has founded colonies all around that Lake of Rushes, for some peculiar purpose of his own. And there being no Purempe men still in existence, he had to bring men—and their families—from the Mexica lands. I hear also that the priest coddles all those settlers as tenderly as if they were his children. His babes in swaddling, just as I said.'

'Family men,' I muttered. 'You are probably right about their not being very much disposed to rebellion. Especially if they are being so well treated by their overlord. But if that is so, he sounds little like a Christian.'

Pakapeti shrugged, and that made my heart smile, for she happened to be naked at the time, and her darling breasts bounced with the movement. Not at all heart-smilingly, but frostily, she said, 'Go and see. The lake is only three one-long-runs from here.'

The Lake of Rushes is the exact color of the chalchihuitl, the jadestone, the gem that is held sacred by every people of The One World. And the low, rounded mountains enclosing Patzcuaro are a darker shade of that same blue-green color. So, as I crested one of the mountains and looked down, the lake appeared to be a bright jewel that had been dropped upon a bed of moss. There is an island in the lake, Xarakuaro, that must once have been the brightest facet of that gem, for I am told that it was covered with temples and altars that glowed and coruscated with colored paints and gold leaf and feather banners. But Guzman's soldiers had razed all those edifices and scoured the island down to the barrenness that it still is.

Gone, too, were all the original communities that had ringed the lake, including Tzintzuntzani, 'Where There Are Hummingbirds.' That had been the capital city of Michihuacan, a city composed entirely of palaces, one of them the seat of Tzimtzicha, last Revered Speaker of the vanquished Purempecha. From my mountaintop, I could see only one thing remaining from olden days. That was the pyramid, east of the lake, notable for its size and form, not tall but lengthy, combining both round and square shapes. And that iyakata, as a pyramid is called in Pore, I knew was a survivor from a really olden time, erected by a people who lived here long before the Purempecha. Even in Tzimtzicha's day, it had been ruinously crumbled and overgrown, but it was still an awesome sight to see.

There were again villages scattered around the lake's rim, replacing those that had been leveled by Guzman's men, but these were in no way distinctive, all their houses having been built in the Spanish style, low and flat, of that dried adobe brick. In the nearest village, directly below the height where I stood, I could see people moving about. All were clad in Mexica fashion and were of my own skin color; I saw no Spaniards anywhere among them. So I descended thither, and greeted the first man I came upon. He was seated on a bench before the doorway of his house, painstakingly whittling and shaping a piece of wood.

I spoke the customary Nahuatl salute, 'Mixpantzinco,' meaning 'In your august presence...'

And he replied, not in Pore, but also in Nahuatl, with the customary polite 'Ximopanolti,' meaning 'At your convenience...' then added, cordially enough, 'we do not have many of our fellow Mexica coming to visit Utopia.'

I did not want to confuse him by saying that I was actually an Aztecatl, nor did I ask the meaning of that strange word he had just spoken. I said only, 'I am a stranger in these parts, and I only recently learned that there were Mexica in this vicinity. It is good to hear my native tongue spoken again. My name is Tenamaxtli.'

'Mixpantzinco, Cuatl Tenamaxtli,' he said courteously. 'I am called Erasmo Martir.'