Aztec Autumn

There were many questions I would have liked to ask those three white men, if they had not been so sedulously ignoring me. But I could not help hearing that Fray Marcos was asking some of the very same questions I had in mind. He seemed frustrated—and so was I—when the heroes protested their inability to supply this or that piece of information the friar wanted. So I went over to where the black man, Estebanico, sat apart. Now, the -ico that the Spaniards appended to his name is a condescending diminutive such as is used when speaking to children, so I took care to address him properly, as an adult:

'Buenas noches, Esteban.'

'Buenas...,' he mumbled, looking rather askance at an indio who spoke Spanish.

'May I talk with you, amigo?'

'Amigo?' he repeated, as if surprised to be addressed as an equal.

'Are we not both of us slaves to the white men?' I asked. 'Here you sit, disdained, while your master preens and revels in the attention he is getting. I should like to know something of your adventures. Here, I have some picietl. Let us smoke together, while I listen.'

He still regarded me warily, but either I had established some comity between us or he was simply yearnful to be heard. He said, 'What would you wish to know?'

'Just tell me what happened during the past eight years. I have listened to the Senor Cow Head's recollections. Now tell me yours.'

And he did, from the expedition's first landing in that place called Florida, through all the disappointments and disasters that afflicted and decimated the fugitive survivors as they crossed the unknown lands from east to west. His account differed from the white men's only in two respects. Esteban clearly had suffered every hurt and hardship and humiliation that the other journeyers had endured, but no more and no less. He rather stressed this in his telling, as if to assert that those mutual sufferings had conferred on him an equality with his masters.

The other difference between his account and theirs was that Esteban had taken the trouble to learn at least some fragments of the various languages spoken by the peoples in whose communities they had spent any time. I had never heard the names of any of those tribes before. Esteban said they lived far to the northeast of this New Spain. The two last—or nearest—tribes that held the wanderers in captivity called themselves, he said, the Akimoel O'otam, or River People, and the To'ono O'otam, or Desert People. And of all the 'damned red diablos' encountered, he said, they were the most devilishly diabolico. I tucked the two names into my memory. Whoever those people were, and wherever, they sounded like apt candidates for enlistment in my private rebel army.

By the time Esteban finished his story, everyone else around the fire had rolled himself in his blankets and gone to sleep. I was just about to ask the questions I had not been able to put to the white men, when I heard a stealthy footfall behind me. I spun about, and found it was only Tiptoe, asking in a whisper:

'Are you all right, Tenamaxtli?'

I answered in Pore, 'Of course. Go back to sleep, Pakapeti.' And I repeated that in Spanish, for Esteban to hear, 'Go back to sleep, my man.'

'I was asleep. But I woke in sudden fear that the beasts might have harmed you or trussed you as a prisoner. And ayya! This beast is black!'

'No matter, my dear. A friendly beast, for all that. But thank you for your concern.'

As she crept away, Esteban laughed without humor and said jeeringly, 'My man!'

I shrugged, 'Even a slave can own a slave.'

'I do not give a ripe, fragrant pedo how many slaves you own. And a slave that one may be, and as short-haired as I am, but a man she is not.'

'Hush, Esteban. A pretense, yes, but only to avoid any risk of her being molested by these tunanton bluecoats.'

'I should not mind doing a bit of that molesting myself,' he said, grinning whitely in the darkness. 'A few times during our journey, I got a taste of the red women, and found them tasty indeed. And they found me no more distasteful than if I had been white.'

Probably so. I supposed that, even among the people of my own race, a woman lewd enough to be tempted to sample a foreign flesh would hardly think black flesh any more freakish than white. But Esteban apparently took the women's unfastidiousness to be another token—however pathetic a token—that there in the unknown lands he had been the equal of any white man. I almost confided to him that I had once enjoyed a woman of his race—or half black, at any rate—and found her no different inside than any 'red' woman. Instead, I said only:

'Amigo Esteban, I believe you would like to return to those far lands.'

It was he who shrugged now. 'Even in brute captivity there, I was not the slave of any one man.'

'Then why not just go back? Go now. Steal a horse. I will not raise any outcry.'

He shook his head. 'I have been a fugitive these eight years. I do not want to have slave-catchers hunting me for the rest of my life. And they would, even into the savage lands.'

'Perhaps...' I said, ruminating. 'Perhaps we can concoct a reason for you to go there legitimately, and with the white men's blessing.'

'Oh? How?'

'I overheard that Fray Marcos interrogating—'

Esteban laughed again, and again without humor. 'Ah, el galicoso.'

'What?' I said. If I had understood the word, he had described the friar as suffering from an extremely shameful disease.

'I was jesting. A play of words. I should have said el galicano.'

'I still do not...'

'El frances, then. He comes from France. Marcos de Niza is only the Spanish rendering of his real name, Marc de Nice, and Nice is a place in France. The friar is as reptilian as any other Frenchman.'

I said impatiently, 'I do not care if he has scales. Will you listen, Esteban? He kept prodding your white comrades to tell him about the seven cities. What did he mean by that?'

'?Ay de mi!' He spat disgustedly. 'An old Spanish fable. I have heard it many times. The Seven Cities of Antilia. They are supposedly cities of gold and silver and gems and ivory and crystal, situated in some never-yet-seen land far beyond the Ocean Sea. That fable has been repeated since time before time. When this New World was discovered, the Spaniards hoped to find those seven cities here. Rumors reached us, even in Cuba, that you indios of New Spain could tell us, if you would, where they are. But I am not asking you, amigo, mistake me not.'

'Ask if you like,' I said. 'I can answer honestly that I never heard of them until now. Did you or the others see any such things during your travels?'

'?Mierda!' he grunted. 'In all those lands we came through, any mud-brick-and- straw village is called a city. That is the only kind we saw. Ugly and wretched and squalid and verminous and odorous.'

'The friar was being most insistent in his questioning. When the three heroes protested ignorance of any such fabulous cities, it seemed to me that Fray Marcos almost suspected them of keeping something secret from him.'

'He would, the reptile! When we were at Compostela, I was told that all men who know him call him El Monje Mentiroso. Naturally, the Lying Monk suspects everyone else of lying.'

'Well... did any of the indios you encountered even hint at the existence of—?'

'?Mierda mas mierda!' he exclaimed, so loudly that I had to hiss at him again, for fear that someone would awaken. 'If you must know, yes, they did. One day, when we were among the River People—we were being used as pack animals when they moved from one unlovely riverbend to another—our slave- drivers pointed off to the northward and told us that in that direction lay six great cities of the Desert People.'

'Six,' I repeated. 'Not seven?'

'Six, but they were great cities. Meaning that to those estupidos the cities probably each had more than a handful of mud houses and perhaps a dependable water hole.'