The Goldsmith's Daughter (24 page)

The potter paid no heed. “Our warriors will drive them off,” he said scornfully. At once the gathered people murmured in agreement. “Our new emperor, Cuauhtemoc, will not let them into the city. We shall not make the same mistake twice.”

“But there are thousands of them!” the boy protested. “They bring boats!”

“Boats?” exclaimed the potter incredulously. “Impossible!”

“The Tlaxcalans have carried them across the hills. Already they put them to the water! They are coming!”

“The city is impregnable,” shouted a different man. “The causeway bridges will be lifted, will they not? They cannot march in. And boats are easy to repel.” He laughed at the folly of our enemy.

Another called, “How can they fight from the water? From canoes? It cannot be done! They will tire of this and go home.”

But they did not tire, and they did not go home.

Slowly, patiently, their canoes circled the city, gliding calmly, distantly, where our warriors' arrows could not reach. As the darts plopped uselessly into the water, mocking laughter rippled across the lake. Our enemy did not attempt to attack.

I started to see the reason for the many pleasure trips Cortés had taken with Montezuma upon the lake. The Spanish leader had mapped the city well. He knew exactly how to strike with most effect.

He did nothing.

Holding us trapped within our city, he waited.

No traders came from the hills bringing meat to market. Crops ripened in the fields but no one could harvest them, cut off as we were by the Spanish boats. Food could not reach us, either by road or by canoe. And then the pipes that carried sweet water from the mountains were cut.

We began to starve.

Eighty days.

The struggle for Tenochtitlán lasted eighty days.

People said we were deserted by the gods, but I could hear the malicious glee of Tezcatlipoca and I knew it was not so. In the dead of night he stalked the streets. In the long days of siege and battle he ran amok amongst the warriors. Often I felt the chill of his presence, the icy breath in my hair, the cold fingers pressed below my ribs. But when I turned my head to look, he was gone, leaving the sound of his laughter echoing in my ears.

All around me I watched my neighbours, eyes growing big in their gaunt faces, cheeks sinking, skin hanging slack over bone. We ate what we could. Lizards. Reeds from the lake. Deer hide. Leather. Weeds. Dirt.

It was Eve who saved me from starvation. I had no skill, no knowledge, of how to obtain meat. She hunted at night, and often I dreamt she was crossing the causeways, leaping the gaps, swimming between bridges to reach the shore, and returning to me with slabs of well-cooked meat stolen from the table of a Spanish captain. But in reality she did not leave the city. In the morning she brought what she could find in the streets and presented it to me as though I were her pup: a bird, a rat, a mouse. Not appetizing fare, but enough to keep death at bay.

The Spanish force held our warriors within the city. And when we were sufficiently weakened with hunger, our enemy came across makeshift bridges. With huge guns they battered a toehold for themselves in the southern districts of Tenochtitlán. Daily they came nearer, fighting their way north towards Tlaltelolco.

Every street the Spanish took, each leafy avenue they conquered, was then laid waste so that our warriors could not take to the roofs and hurl rocks down at them. The magnificence of Tenochtitlán was turned into a pyre of flaming buildings, a wilderness of smoking rubble. The bathhouses, the temples – all fell. We knew they had reached the palace when the cries of burning birds were carried on the wind, and singed feathers and blackened fur blew about the ruined streets. Screaming roars of panthers pierced the sky. For they had put torches to the emperor's aviaries. The menagerie.

The air was noxious with the sulphurous reek of gunpowder and the stench of bodies. The dead lay unclaimed, unburied, rotting in the open air.

Francisco had once told me of a goat that lived in his land: a creature with fearsome horns. In the springtime, when the fresh grass sends forth its shoots, the males fight, rearing up on their hind legs and ramming their skulls together with such force that the sound of their blows echoes across the valleys. Sometimes their horns become entangled and the beasts cannot pull apart no matter how hard they struggle. Locked together, they lose their footing and plunge into the crevasse, smashing down onto the rocks below.

Our leaders were locked in such a battle. Neither would yield; neither would surrender. And the prize each fought to win – the splendid city of art and flowers – was daily dashed into smaller and smaller fragments and rendered worthless.

Driven before the Spanish came refugees from the south of the city. A slow trickle at first: those who sought sanctuary with relatives, friends. But soon the trickle became a stream, and then a raging torrent which flooded into Tlaltelolco until the district seemed to drown in people. Old men bloodied and beaten, dying of their wounds. Women and children wide-eyed with shock, arms and legs as brittle as sticks, bellies swollen with desperate hunger, too shocked to whimper or cry at their distress. Too weary to speak at all. My home was mine no longer, but the last refuge of any who had survived thus far. Ours was the last stone building of the district. Beyond lay only peasants' huts, chinampa fields, the lake, Spanish boats.

No one could look upon the faces of these people and not burn with anger. It was rage that drove Cuauhtemoc. Fury. And the more hopeless the fight, the stronger burned the hatred. Not only in him but in us all.

They reached the edge of Tlaltelolco on the eightieth day. And when our emperor called for wives to take up their fallen husbands' weapons and fight our enemy, they went forth, hearts full of courage, looking small and foolish in their borrowed armour.

I found Mitotiqui's cudgel. Thus armed, I went into the street to fight.

I had no knowledge of killing. In times past I could not even wring the neck of a chicken – such tasks had always been Mayatl's. If I could not take a bird's life, I doubted I could take a man's. Yet neither could I sit and quake in a corner. I was possessed of a wild, reckless courage, for I knew I could not die. Those gloriously slain in battle entered paradise. The gods would not allow me that honour. When I set forth, I knew I was invincible.

The familiar road before me was empty. But from beyond the houses of my neighbours came the sounds of battle. Yells of warriors. Screams of women. Gunfire. Smoke.

Mouth parched, palms wet with sweat, I strode towards it. I had pulled most of my skirt between my legs, and tucked the cloth into my waistband to fashion a pair of makeshift breeches. I would not be impeded by my clothes. Eve was beside me, her trotting gait transformed into a reluctant slink, ears low, mouth frothing anxiously.

I came to the corner, rounded it, and my warrior's career almost came to an end. A horse reared above me, iron hooves thrashing through the air by my head. There was no time to think. Grasping it with both hands, I swung Mitotiqui's cudgel, shutting my eyes as I did so, expecting those hooves to strike me at any moment.

A terrified whinny. A loud clatter. Spanish screams.

I opened my eyes and saw my blow had struck. The horse was down, flailing upon the stones, its belly ripped wide open, insides spilling, bloody and hot, on the street. Its weight held the rider pinned to the ground and his face was contorted in agony.

I had no pity. The sorrow and rage of all I had suffered and seen flared from me, and with a great cry I swung once more. Felt the obsidian bite. Heard his gasp. Saw the gaping wound and knew the man was dead. Startled by my success, fearful of the thrashing hooves and bellows of the dying horse, I fled.

Running, I made for the market, where the noise of the fiercest fighting seemed to be. I came swiftly round the corner, where a narrow alley ran beside the canal, to find my path blocked. A bloodied Spaniard, sword raised, stood before me. With a yell I held my cudgel aloft, but his sword was already above me. I dodged, though I knew I could not avoid the blow.

But Eve was barking. A loud, joyful sound. A greeting.

And I saw the clay fragment about his neck. The imprint of my lips.

“Francisco?”

The Spaniard twisted. The sword sliced past my face and fell clattering onto the stones.

For a moment, we stared, too shocked to move. And then, with a cry of rapture, I was locked in his fierce embrace. We clung together so hard that we could not get any closer, and yet still it was not enough. I dug my fingers into his flesh, for I could scarce believe that he was real. He was solid! Warm, vibrant – not the lost spirit I had mourned. A sob tore from my throat. Hot tears spilt from my eyes and ran into his golden hair. Francisco pressed fervent kisses on my neck, my face, and I laughed aloud in joy. He was alive! How was it possible?

Drawing my head back, I took a long, starved look at Francisco.

I would not have known him. His face – once perfect as Tezcatlipoca's – was scarred and distorted by the blow that had severed his ear. His once-smooth skin was pockmarked by the sickness that had killed so many in my city. And his eyes, which had once blazed with laughter and life, were now dulled by horror and despair. Seeing me dressed as a fighter he wept, the tears running down his cheeks.

Wiping them away tenderly, I whispered, “I thought you were dead!”

He pulled me against him, and his breath was soft and warm in my hair. “Knocked senseless … but not dead.”

“But Eve came to me…”

He laughed, and the sound was dry and cracked with lack of use. “She ran from the battle. Did I not tell you she was a coward?”

I did not say how she had saved me. For as we stood, arms wrapped tightly about each other, an eerie quiet descended on the city.

Our emperor was slain. I knew it. The strange calm could mean nothing else. Cuauhtemoc was gone. The battle was lost. The empire was no more.

But still I lived.

As did Francisco.

We listened to the sounds of warriors throwing down their weapons. The taut hush was strung out like a thread and then snapped by a Spanish yell. A triumphant shout. And then came the swell of their chatter. Laughter. Excitement. Relief. And above it all, Cortés's dreadful cry.

“We have victory! Now we shall find where they have hidden the gold.”

Francisco seized my hand. “We must get away from here,” he said urgently. “God alone knows what our soldiers will do now they are victorious.”

I laughed. A strange, high sound that rang with hysteria. “Where, Francisco? Where are we to go? You think there is anywhere in this city we can hide?”

“There must be somewhere, Itacate. Think! Believe me, you do not want to be found.”

His eyes begged, pleaded with me to provide an answer; to offer a place of safety. He grasped my hand, tugging it as my brother had once done.

With that small gesture came the reply.

“There is somewhere,” I answered, and I saw the faintest flicker of hope ignite in his deadened eyes. “How well can you swim?”

Slipping into the murky canal that ran beside us and swimming slowly northwards, we moved in the direction of the chinampa fields. What was left of the streets was now full of my people fleeing the city. For as soon as the battle was over, the Spanish had begun to loot it.

The water was putrid, choked with the remains of the dead, and it was a repellant task to swim through it. But only here did we have a chance of moving unobserved. Eve kept to the land, following us like a grey shadow, passing unremarked amidst the chaos and ruination.

When soldiers ran by, we had to plunge our faces into that poisoned water and float, corpse-like, hoping that not even a Spaniard would loot a drowned body. When we reached the main canal, we moved so slowly that to an observing eye it would look as though our lifeless forms were carried by a current. Before us was the causeway. We drifted towards it.

Much effort it took us not to cry out at the sight before us. A bridge had been laid, and starved, gaunt women with their bony-faced, round-bellied children made a slow, limping procession across it towards the distant shore. A group of soldiers stood clustered at the far side. Before anyone was allowed to pass, they were searched, lest they carried gold upon them. Children's mouths were yanked open, women's skirts ripped apart. In view of all, rough Spanish fingers probed their most private places.

Stiff with rage we passed beneath the bridge and edged onwards. Here sharpened poles had been thrust into the bed of the lake as defence against the Spanish boats. With care we squeezed between them, but we could not avoid cutting our flesh and tearing what few clothes remained on our persons.

Reaching the chinampa fields undetected, we lay pressed close together in the decaying vegetation where once I had played with Mitotiqui. I could feel my brother's presence. See the ghost of his infant self spinning. Calling. Laughing.

When night came, we moved once more. We dared not cross to the nearest shore: it was too full of Spanish soldiers and their Tlaxcalan allies. With the aid of a broken canoe we aimed to swim across the lake to the eastern shore and escape over the distant mountains.

It was nigh impossible. I knew it even as we began.

We swam, clinging to the upturned vessel with Eve between us. There was no moon and the sky was so cloudy that not even a star was reflected in that black water. It seemed to stretch infinitely before us – we were crossing a drowned world. We dared not speak, but forced ourselves onwards while I shivered with both cold and terror. I feared we would be spun into Pantitlan, or that Tlaloc would seize me by the ankles and drag me down to the lake bed.

Yet he did not. After a long time the canoe bumped against the land. So weary that we knew not where we were or how close was the Spanish force, we dragged ourselves onto the grass.

“And now?” I asked Francisco.

“We wait for sunrise.”