The picture writing inscribed on the wall near the fair showed an Aztec warrior in full battle dress pulling the hair of a warrior from another city—thus war and battle were raging. An Aztec king or noble whom I could not identify, although I knew that each Revered Speaker had a personal symbol, was speaking. This was indicated by a little scroll coming from the mouth of the speaker. I had also seen it expressed as a wagging tongue. After he spoke, Aztec warriors marched, shown by footprints, toward a temple atop a mountain. The temple was burning, indicating that the tribe that owned the temple had been conquered.
As I read the tale aloud in Spanish, which was the language I thought in, I was startled when I caught another presence out of the comer of my eye. Don Julio was standing nearby watching me.
"You can read Aztec sign language?"
Pride loosened my tongue. "A little. The inscription is a boast—and a warning. Probably put here by the Aztecs to impress upon traveling merchants of other tribes what happens to towns that don't pay their tribute."
"Very good. I also can read the pictures, but it's almost a lost art." He shook his head. "My God, the history, the knowledge, that was lost when the frays burned them. The library at Texcoco was enriched with literary treasures gathered by the great king, Nezahualcoyotl. It was the New World equivalent of the great library of antiquity at Alexandria. And it was destroyed."
"My Aztec name is Nezahualcoyotl."
"An honorable name, even if it labels you a hungry coyote. Your namesake was not just a king, but a poet and writer of songs. But Like so many kings, he also had human vices. Lusting for the wife of one of his nobles, he sent the man into battle with secret orders to his captains to see that the man was killed."
"Ah, the crime the Comendador Ocana tried to commit against Peribanez."
"You know Vega's comedia?"
"I—I heard it described once by a priest."
"A priest interested in any drama but a passion play? I must meet this man. What is your Spanish name?"
"Sancho," I said, without hesitation.
"Sancho, how do you, as an indio, feel about the fact that the Spanish have come and the indios' culture and monuments were destroyed or abandoned?"
He called me an indio. That made me comfortable talking to him again.
"The Spanish god was more powerful than the gods of the Aztecs."
"Are the Aztec gods all dead now?"
"No, there are many Aztec gods. Some were vanquished, but others merely went into hiding to wait until they regain their strength," I said, mimicking what the Healer had told me.
"And what will they do when they regain their strength? Drive the Spanish from New Spain?"
"There will be another great battle, like the wars in Revelations where fire and death and famine stalked the earth."
"Who told you that?"
"The priests in church. Everyone knows that there will be a great war between good and evil someday, and only the good will survive."
Don Julio chuckled and walked along the ruins. I followed along. I knew I was supposed to avoid being around gachupins, but the man had a depth of knowledge and wisdom not unlike that which I had sensed about the Healer and Fray Antonio.
It had been several years since I had been around people with the European-type knowledge that the fray had possessed. Like the fray, this man was a scholar. I bubbled over with enthusiasm to display my own knowledge.
"Besides the Bible," I said, "it is also said that the Jaguar Knights will drive the Spanish from this land."
"Where did you hear that?"
There was an inflection in his voice that suddenly made me cautious. But he only smiled when I looked at him with a question in my eyes.
"Where did you hear that?" He asked again.
I shrugged. "I don't remember. In the marketplace, I guess. There is always talk like that among the indios. But it is harmless."
Don Julio gestured at the ruins. "You should be very proud of your ancestors. Look at the monuments they left. There are many more like this, and many others that are the size of cities."
"The priests say we should not be proud; that our ancestors were savages who sacrificed thousands of people and even ate some. They say we must be thankful that the Church has stopped this blasphemy."
He murmured his accord to what the priests said, but I had the impression that he was only giving the sort of respect everyone gives the Church, even if one disagrees.
We walked among the rains for a moment before he spoke. "The Aztecs did practice savage rites, and for those there is no excuse. But perhaps they would look at us Europeans, at our wars with each other and the Infidels, at the cruelty and violence, and ask if we should cast the first stone. But regardless of how we judge their actions, there is no doubt that they built a mighty civilization and left behind monuments that, like those of the pharaohs, will survive the sands of time. They knew more about the movement of the stars and planets than we do today and had a more accurate calendar than us.
"Your ancestors were master builders. Along the eastern coast was a nation of people who harvested rubber from trees at a time when Christ was born. They were the ancestors of the Aztecs, Toltecs, and other indio peoples. They left behind great monuments. Like the Aztecs, they intricately carved the stone of monuments. But with what? They had no iron or even bronze tools. How did they etch the stone?
"Like the Aztecs, they were people without carts or beasts of burden. Yet they hauled great blocks of stones weighing as much as hundreds of men, stones so heavy no cart and team of horses in Christendom could carry them. They transported them great distances, up mountains and down the other side, across rivers and lakes, many leagues from the source of the stone. How? The secret was no doubt revealed in those thousands of books burned by the frays."
"Perhaps there was an Archimedes among them," I said. Fray Antonio had spoken of the accomplishments of the indios who built pyramids that violated the heavens and compared them to Archimedes. "Perhaps in those days there was such a man who, if he had had a long enough pole and a place to stand, could have lifted the world. Omnis homo naturaliter scire desiderat."
"Man naturally inclines to know more and more," Don Julio said, translating the Latin phrase. He stopped walking and locked eyes with me. There was a glint of humor in them. "You read Aztec picture writing, speak of an ancient Greek, quote Latin, and have knowledge of Spanish literature. You speak Spanish without an indio accent. A moment ago I lapsed into Náhuatl, and you spoke the language without even thinking about it. You are taller and lighter than most indios. These accomplishments are as mysterious as how these giant stones were moved over mountains."
Cursing my own stupid impulse to show off my knowledge, or Fray Antonio's knowledge to be more accurate, I had raised questions in the man's mind about me. ¡Ay de mí! it had been three years since the murders and the hunt for me began, but this visit to a fair was bringing it back to me.
I fled the man called Don Julio, not looking back.
FIFTY-FIVE
We left the next morning for the south, along a well-traveled, but frequently difficult to traverse road on which many of the fair merchants had already preceded us with their mule trains.
Besides Mateo, included in the band were two disreputable mestizos. These were stupid street scum who would be unwelcome in the meanest places in Veracruz—or quickly find their way to the gallows if they stayed around the town. Sancho and the mestizos were obviously a gang of banditos, the sort who laid-in-wait to ambush travelers, cutting throats for whatever was in the victim's pockets.