Aztec Autumn - Jennings Gary (книга бесплатный формат .TXT) 📗

My being continuously busy had at least one gratifying aspect: it kept me from having anything to do with the Yaki woman G'nda Ke. While I was occupied with affairs of state, she occupied herself with overseeing the palace household and its domestics. She may have been a nuisance to those servants, but she had little opportunity to be a nuisance to me. Oh, occasionally we might meet in a palace corridor, and she would utter some taunting or teasing remark:

"I weary of waiting, Tenamaxtli. When do you and I go forth together and commence our war?"

Or "I weary of waiting, Tenamaxtli. When do you and I go to bed together, so that you may kiss every one of the freckles that sprinkle my most intimate parts?"

Even if I had not been kept too busy to bed anybody, and even if she had been the last human female in existence, I would not have been tempted. Indeed, during my tenure as Uey-Tecutli—when by custom I could have had any Aztlan woman I wanted—I was having none at all. Pakapeti seemed staunch in her determination never again to couple with any man. And I would not have dreamed of intruding myself into Ameyatl's sickbed, even though she was getting healthier and stronger and more beautiful every day.

I did visit my cousin's bedside whenever I had a free moment, simply to converse with her. I would apprise her of all my activities as Uey-Tecutli, and of all happenings in and about Aztlan—so that she could the more easily resume her regency when the time came. (And, frankly, I was yearning for that time to come, so I could be off to war.) We talked of many other things, too, of course, and one day Ameyatl, looking vaguely troubled, said to me:

"Pakapeti has taken loving care of me. And she looks lovely, now that her hair is nearly as long as my own. But the dear girl might as well be repellently ugly, because the anger in her is so very nearly visible."

"She is angry toward men, and she has reason. I told you of her encounter with those two Spanish soldiers."

"White men, then, I could understand. But—excepting only you—I think she would gladly slay every man alive."

I said, "So would the venomous G'nda Ke. Perhaps her propinquity has influenced Pakapeti to an even deeper hatred of men."

Ameyatl asked, "Including the one inside her?"

I blinked. "What are you saying?"

"Then you have not noticed. It is just beginning to show, and she is carrying it high. Tiptoe is pregnant."

"Not by me," I blurted. "I have not touched her in—"

"Ayyo, cousin, be at ease," said Ameyatl, laughing despite her evident concern. "Tiptoe blames that encounter of which you spoke."

"Well, she could reasonably be bitter about carrying the mongrel child of a—"

"Not because it is a child. Or a mongrel. Because it is a male. Because she detests all males."

"Oh, come now, cousin. How could Pakapeti possibly know it will be a boy?"

"She does not even refer to it as a boy. She speaks savagely of 'this tepuli growing inside me.' Or 'this kuru'—the Pore word for that same male organ. Tenamaxtli, is it possible that Tiptoe's distress is causing her to lose her mind?"

"I am no authority," I said with a sigh, "on madness or women. I will consult a ticitl of my acquaintance. Perhaps he can prescribe some palliative for her distress. In the meantime, let us both—you and I—be watchful that Tiptoe does not try to do some hurt to herself."

But it was a while before I got around to summoning that physician, because I had other distractions. One was a visit from one of the guards at the Coyolxauqui temple, come to report that the imprisoned warriors were most miserable, having to sleep on their feet, eating nothing but mush, being so long unbathed, and so forth.

"Have any of them yet suffocated or starved?" I demanded.

"No, my lord. They may be near dead, but one hundred thirty and eight were confined in there, and that number still remain. However, even we guards outside the temple can hardly endure their stink and their clamor."

"Then change the guard more frequently. Unless those traitors begin to die, do not trouble me again. Near dead is not punishment enough for them."

And then Nocheztli returned from his mission as a quimichi in Compostela. He had been gone for about two months—and I had begun to worry that he had again defected to the enemy—but he came back, as promised, and came brimming with things to tell.

"Compostela is a much more thriving and populous town, my lord, than when I last saw it. Most numerous of the male white inhabitants are the Spanish soldiers, whom I estimate to number about a thousand, half of those horse-mounted. But many of the higher-ranking soldiers have brought their families, and other Spanish families have come as colonists, all of those families having built houses for themselves. The governor's palace and the town church are of well-worked stone; the other residences are of dried-mud brick. There is a marketplace, but all the goods and produce for sale there have been brought by trains of traders from the south. The whites of Compostela do no farming or raising of herds—they all prosper on the output of the many silver mines now being worked in the vicinity. And evidently they prosper sufficiently to afford the expense of importing all their comestibles and other necessities."

I asked, "And how many of our own people are resident there?"

"The indio population is about equal to that of the whites. I speak only of those who serve as domestic slaves in the households of the Spanish—and there are numerous black slaves as well, those creatures called Moros. If the slaves are not domiciled with their masters, they have derelict huts and shacks on the town's outskirts. There is another considerable population of our men working the mines under the earth, and in surrounding buildings atop the earth, called mills. I fear I could not estimate the number of those men, because so many of them work underground, turn about, half of them daylong, the other half during the night. Also, they and their families, if they have any, live penned in locked and guarded compounds where I could not enter. The Spanish call these places obrajes."

"Ayya, yes," I said. "I know about the infamous obrajes."

"The word is that those laborers—since our people never before had to slave underground or in such wretched conditions—keep dying off, several every day. And the mine owners cannot replace them as fast as they die, because, of course, all the indios in New Galicia not already enslaved have made haste to move and hide themselves far beyond the reach of the slave-catchers. So Governor Coronado has asked the Virrey Mendoza in the City of Mexico to send to Compostela quantities of Moro slaves from—from wherever those Moros are brought from."

"Some land called Africa, I have been told."

Nocheztli grimaced and said, "It must be a place akin to our fearsome Hot Lands in the far south. Because I hear that the Moros can easily endure the terrific heat and closeness and clangor of the mines and mills. Also the Moros must be more like the Spaniards' beasts of burden than like human beings, for it is also said that they can labor unceasingly, under crushing loads, without dying or even complaining. It may be that if enough Moros are imported into New Galicia, Coronado will cease trying to capture and enslave our own people."

"This Governor Coronado," I said. "Tell me about him."

"I glimpsed him only twice, when he was reviewing his troops, elegantly costumed and astride a prancing white horse. He is no older than yourself, my lord, but his rank, of course, is inferior to yours of Revered Governor, for he is answerable to superiors in the City of Mexico, and you are answerable to no one. Nevertheless, he is clearly determined to make a more lordly name for himself. He is remorseless in demanding that the slaves extract every pinch of silver ore—not just for the enrichment of himself and his New Galicia subjects, but for all of New Spain and that ruler called Carlos in distant Old Spain. On the whole, though, Coronado seems less of a tyrant than his predecessor. He does not allow his subjects to torment or torture or execute our people at whim, as the Governor Guzman used to do."