Aztec Autumn

Coronado's remark. Yeyac protested in Nahuatl, and the interpreter translated:

'Your Excellency holds a naked sword and speaks of paring pieces off this person. I can tell you that a flake of obsidian is keener than steel, and can pare even more artfully. I may not have told Your Excellency that I carry inside me a thunder-stick ball put there by this person. But I remind Your Excellency that you promised the chipping and mincing of him to me.'

'Yes, yes, very well,' Coronado said testily, and slammed his sword back into its scabbard. 'Produce your damned obsidian. I will ask the questions and you can hack away at him when his answers are unsatisfactory.'

But now it was Fray Marcos who protested. 'Your Excellency, when first I met this man he claimed to be an emissary of Bishop Zumarraga. Furthermore, he introduced himself as Juan Britanico. Whether or not he has ever been anywhere near the bishop, he has incontrovertibly been baptized at some time, and given a Christian name. Ergo, he is at the least an apostate and more likely a heretic. It follows that he is primarily subject to ecclesiastic jurisdiction. I myself would be happy to try him, convict him and condemn him to the stake.'

I was already beginning to sweat, and I had yet to hear anything from the third person who had entered with Yeyac and the Lying Monk. That was the Yaki woman, G'nda Ke, and I was not surprised to see her in that company. It was inevitable that having survived the ambush—or having known of it in advance—she would now have given her allegiance to the victors.

The soldier-interpreter was looking quite giddy from having to turn from person to person while he translated all the foregoing conversations to the various participants. What G'nda Ke now said, and said most oilily, he translated into Spanish:

'Good friar, this Juan Britanico may be a traitor to your Holy Mother Church. But, Your Excellency Coronado, he has been much more a traitor to your domain. I can aver that he is responsible for the numerous attacks—by persons unknown and so far unapprehended—all over New Galicia. Were this man to be tortured properly and lingeringly, he could enable Your Excellency to end those attacks. That would seem, to me, to take precedence over the friar's intent to send him straight to the Christian hell. And in that interrogation I would be pleased to assist your loyal ally, Yeyactzin, for I have had much practice in the art.'

'?Perdicion!' shouted Coronado, irritated beyond measure. 'This prisoner has so many claimants on his flesh and his life and even his soul that I almost feel sorry for the wretch!' He turned his glare again on me and demanded, in Spanish, 'Wretch, you are the only one in this room who has not yet suggested how I should deal with you. Surely you have some ideas on the subject. Speak!'

'Senor Gobernador,' I said—I would not concede him any excellency—'I am a prisoner of war, and a noble of the Azteca nation that is at war with yours. Exactly as were the Mexica nobles dethroned and overthrown by your Marques Cortes so many years ago. The marques was and is no weak man, but he found it compatible with his conscience to treat those earlier defeated nobles in a civilized manner. I would ask no more than that.'

'There!' Coronado said to the three latest arrivals. 'That is the first reasonable speech I have heard during all this turbulent confabulation.' He came back to me to ask, but not menacingly, 'Will you tell me the source and the number of the replica arcabuces? Will you tell me who are the insurgents beleaguering our settlements south of here?'

'No, Senor Gobernador. In all the conflicts among our nations of this One World—and I believe in all that your own Spain has fought with other peoples—no prisoner of war was ever expected by his captors to betray his comrades. Certainly I will not, even if I am interrogated by that hen-vulture yonder, so boastful of her scavenger skills.'

The scathing glance that Coronado gave G'nda Ke indicated, I was sure, that he shared my opinion of her. Perhaps he really had begun to feel some sympathy for me, because when G'nda Ke, the friar and Yeyac all began indignantly speaking at once, he silenced them with a peremptory slash of his hand, then said:

'Guards, take the prisoner back to his cell, unbound. Give him food and water to keep him alive. I will ponder on this matter before I question him again. The rest of you, begone! Now!'

My cell had a stout door, barred on the outside, where my two guards were posted. In the opposite wall was a single window, unbarred, but too small for anything larger than a rabbit to wriggle through. It was not, however, too small for communication with a person outdoors. And, sometime after nightfall, there did come someone to that window.

'?Oye!' said a voice, barely loud enough for me to hear, and I arose from the straw that was my bedding.

I looked out, and at first could see nothing but darkness. Then the visitor grinned and I saw white teeth, and realized that I was being visited by a man as black as the night outside, the Moro slave Estebanico. I greeted him warmly, but also in a low murmur.

He said, 'I told you, Juan Britanico, that I would be always in your debt. You must know by now that I am—as you foretold—appointed to guide the Lying Monk to those nonexistent cities of riches. So I owe you whatever help or comfort I can give.'

'Thank you, Esteban,' I said. 'I would be most comfortable if I were at liberty. Could you somehow draw off the guards and unbar my door?'

'That, I fear, is beyond my ability. Spanish soldiers do not pay much heed to a black man. Also—forgive me for sounding selfish—I value my own liberty. I will try to think of some means of effecting your escape that would not put me in your place. In the meantime, word has just come from a Spanish patrol that may be cheering to you. It assuredly is not cheering to the Spaniards.'

'Good. Tell me.'

'Well, some of your slain or wounded warriors were found immediately after the ambush that cut them down last night. But the governor waited until this morning to send a full patrol combing that entire area. Of additional dead or incapacitated warriors, they came upon comparatively few. Clearly, most of your men survived and got away. And one of those fugitives—a man on a horse—boldly let himself be seen by the patrol. When they returned here, they described him. The two indios now in league with Coronado—Yeyac and that awful woman G'nda Ke— seemed to recognize the man described. They spoke a name. Nocheztli. Does that mean anything to you?'

'Yes,' I said. 'One of my best warriors.'

'Yeyac seemed oddly disturbed to learn that this Nocheztli is one of yours, but he made little comment, because we were all in the presence of the governor and his interpreter. However, the woman laughed scornfully and called Nocheztli an unmanly cuilontli. What does that word mean, amigo?'

'Never mind. Go on, Esteban.'

'She told Coronado that such an unmanly man, even armed and at large, would be no danger. But later news proved her wrong.'

'How so?'

'Your Nocheztli not only escaped the ambush, he apparently was among the few not terrified and panicked and sent fleeing. One of your wounded who was brought here has proudly related what happened next. The man Nocheztli, sitting his horse alone in the darkness and smoke, shouted curses at the others for running away, and insulted them as weakling cowards, and bellowed for them to regroup on his position.'

'He does have a compelling voice,' I said.

'Evidently he rallied all your remaining warriors, and has removed them somewhere into hiding. Yeyac told the governor they would number high in the hundreds.'

'About nine hundred, originally,' I said. 'There must be nearly that many still with Nocheztli.'

'Coronado is reluctant to try chasing them down. His whole force here amounts to not many more than a thousand men, even including those Yeyac contributed. The governor would have to send them all, and leave Compostela undefended. For the moment, he has only taken the precaution of turning all the town's artilleria—what you call the thunder-tubes—outward again.'

I said, 'I do not think Nocheztli would mount another assault without instructions from me. And I doubt that he knows what has become of me.'

'He is a resourceful man,' said Esteban. 'He removed more than your army from the reach of the Spaniards.'

'What do you mean?'

'The patrol that went out this morning—one of their tasks was to fetch back all the arcabuces that had been