Aztec Autumn

When we had settled down and gratefully rested for two or three days, I summoned to me the Iyac Pozonali and my darling scribe Veronica, and told them:

'I have a mission for you two. I think it will not be a hazardous mission, though it will entail arduous travel. However'—I smiled—'I think also that you will not mind a long journey in close company with one another.' You blushed, Veronica, and so did Pozonali.

I went on, 'It is certain that everyone in the City of Mexico, from the Viceroy Mendoza down to the least market slave, knows of our insurrection and our depredations. But I should like to know how much they know of us, and what measures they may be taking to defend the city against us or to sally out and find and fight us in the open. What I want you to do is this. Go on horseback as fast and as far southeastward as you can, stopping only when you decide you are getting perilously close to any possible Spanish outposts. By my reckoning, that will probably be somewhere in the eastern part of Michihuacan, where it borders on the Mexica lands. Leave the horses with any hospitable native who can tend them. From there, go on foot and dressed in the roughest of peasant garb. Take with you bags of some kind of marketable goods—fruits, vegetables, whatever you can procure. You may find the city solidly ringed about with sharp steel, but it must let supplies and commodities in and out. And I think the guards will hardly be suspicious of a young peasant farmer and—shall we say?—his little cousin, headed for the market.'

You both blushed again. I continued:

'Just do not, Veronica, speak your Spanish. Do not speak at all. You, Pozonali, I trust can talk your way past any guard or other challenger by mumbling Nahuatl and the few Spanish words you know, and gesticulating like some clumsy rustic.'

'We will get into the city, Tenamaxtzin, I kiss the earth to that,' he said. 'Have you specific orders for us, once we are there?'

'I want both of you mainly to look and to listen. You, Iyac, have proven yourself a competent military man. You should have no trouble in recognizing whatever defenses the city is preparing for itself, or whatever preparations it is making in the way of an offensive against us. Meanwhile, go about the streets and the markets and engage the common folk in conversation. I wish to know their mood, their temper and their opinion of our insurrection, because I know from experience that some, perhaps many, will side with the Spaniards on whom they have come to depend. Meanwhile, also, there is one Aztecatl man—a goldsmith, elderly by now—you are to visit personally.' I gave him directions. 'He was my very first ally in this campaign, so I want him warned that we will be coming. He may wish to hide his gold or even leave the city with it. And, of course, pass on to him my fond regards.'

'All will be done as you say, Tenamaxtzin. And Veronica? Am I to stay protectively close by her?'

'No need, I think. Veronica, you are an exceedingly resourceful girl. I want you merely to get within hearing distance of any two or more Spaniards conversing on the streets, in the markets, wherever, and eavesdrop—especially if they are in uniform or otherwise look like important persons. They will scarcely suspect that you can understand their talk, and it may be that you will learn even more than Iyac Pozonali about the Spaniards' intended responses to our intended assault.'

'Yes, my lord.'

'I have also one specific instruction for you. In all that city, there is but a single white man to whom I owe the same warning that Pozonali will give to the goldsmith. His name is Alonso de Molina—remember it—and he is a high official at the Cathedral.'

'I know where it is, my lord.'

'Do not go and speak that warning to him directly. He is, after all, a Spaniard. He might well seize you and hold you hostage. He most certainly would, if he should remotely suspect that you are my—my personal scribe. So write the warning on a piece of paper, fold it, put Alonso's name on the outside and—without speaking, just with gestures—give it to any lowly churchman you find loitering about the Cathedral. Then get away from there as fast as you can. And stay away.'

'Yes, my lord. Anything else?'

'Just this. The most important order I can give you both. When you feel you have learned all you can, get safely out of the city, get safely back to your horses and get safely back here. Both of you. If, Iyac, you should dare to return here without Veronica... well...'

'We shall safely return, Tenamaxtzin, I kiss the earth to that. If some unforeseen evil befalls, and only one of us returns, it will be Veronica. To that, I kiss the earth four hundred times!'

When they were gone, the rest of us rather luxuriated in our new surroundings. We certainly lived well. There was more than enough cow meat to eat, of course, but our hunters ranged about the valley anyway, just to provide variety—deer and rabbits and quail and ducks and other game. They even slew two or three of the cuguars for which the mountains were named, though cuguar meat is tough to chew and not very tasty. Our fishers found the mountain streams abounding in a fish—I do not know what it is called—that made a delectable change from our mostly meat meals. Our foragers found all sorts of fruits, vegetables, roots and such. The plundered jugs of octli, chapari and Spanish wines were reserved to myself and my knights, but we now drank only sparingly of them. All we lacked was something really sweet, like the coconuts of my homeland. I do believe that many of our people— particularly the numerous slave families we had freed and brought along—would have been content to live in that valley for the rest of their lives. And they probably could have done so, unmolested by the white men, even unknown to the white men, to the end of time.

I do not mean to say that we all simply lazed and vegetated there. Though I slept at night between silken Spanish sheets and under a fine woolen Spanish blanket—feeling as if I were a Spanish marques or viceroy—I was busy all day long. I kept my scouts roaming the countryside beyond the mountains, and reporting back to me. I strode about the valley, as a sort of inspector-in-general, because I had ordered Nocheztli and our other knights to train many more of our warriors to ride the many new horses we had acquired and to employ properly the many new arcabuces we had acquired.

When one of my scouts came to report that not far to the west of our mountains was a crossroads Spanish trading post—similar to the one we had earlier vanquished—I decided to try an experiment. I took a medium-sized force of Sobaipuri warriors, because they had not yet had the pleasure of participating in any of our battles, and because they had become proficient both at riding and at using the arcabuz, and I asked Knight Pixqui to accompany me, and we rode westward to that trading post.

I intended not really a battle, but only a feint. We galloped, hooting and howling and discharging our arcabuces, out of the woods into the open ground before the palisaded post. And, as before, from the ports in that palisade, thunder-tubes spewed a spray of lethal scraps and fragments, but I was careful to keep us out of their range, and only one of our men suffered a minor shoulder wound. We remained out there, dancing our horses back and forth, making our threatening war cries and extravagantly threatening gestures, until the stockade gate opened and a troop of mounted soldiers came galloping out. Then, pretending to be intimidated, we all turned and galloped back the way we had come. The soldiers pursued us, and I made sure that we stayed ahead of them, but always in their sight. We led them all the way back to the ravine from which we had left our valley.

Still taking care that the soldiers should not lose us in those mazes, we baited them through one very narrow notch where I had already posted arcabuz men on either side. Just as Knight Pixqui had predicted, the first discharges of those arcabuces brought down enough soldiers and their horses to block the passage for all the others behind. And those, milling about in confusion, were in a very short time destroyed by spears, arrows and boulders propelled by other warriors I had posted on the heights above. My Sobaipuri of course were pleased to confiscate the weapons and the surviving horses of all those dead Spaniards. But I was mainly pleased to have proven that our hideaway was indeed invulnerable. We could hold out here forever, if need be, against any force sent to assail us.

There came a day when several of my scouts came to tell me, really gleefully, that they had discovered a new and major target for us to attack.

'About three days east of here, Tenamaxtzin, a town almost as big as a city, but we might never have known it existed, except that we espied a mounted Spanish soldier and followed him. One of us who understands a little Spanish crept into the town behind him, and learned that it is a rich town, well built, called by the white man Aguascalientes.'

'Hot Springs,' I said.

'Yes, my lord. It is evidently a place to which the Spanish men and women resort for curative baths and