Incidentally, Your Majesty, the brand on the convict's cheek is no longer the demeaning "G," which imputes the dishonor of defeat in war. We now apply the initials of the slave's designated owner (unless the convict is a comely woman whom the owner prefers not to deface). Besides being a mark to identify property and runaways, such a branding eventually serves also to mark those slaves who are hopelessly rebellious and unfit for work. Many such intractable malcontents, having passed through several changes of ownership, now bear numerous and overlapping initials upon their faces, as if their skin were a palimpsest manuscript.
There is touching evidence of Your Compassionate Majesty's goodness of heart, in this same latest letter, when you say of our Aztec chronicler, anent the death of his woman, "Although of inferior race, he seems a man of human emotions, capable of feeling happinesses and hurts quite as keenly as we do." Your sympathy is understandable, since Your Majesty's own abiding love for your young Queen Isabella and your baby son Felipe is a tender passion remarked and much admired by all.
However, we respectfully suggest that you expend not too much pity on persons whom Your Majesty cannot know as well as we do, and especially not on one who, over and over again, shows himself undeserving of it. This one may in his time have felt an occasional emotion or entertained an occasional human thought which would do no discredit to a white man. But Your Majesty will have noticed that, though he professes to be now a Christian, the old dotard maundered much about his dead mate's still wandering the world—and why?—because she did not have a certain green pebble by her when she died! Also, as Your Majesty will perceive, the Aztec was not long cast down by his bereavement. In these ensuing pages of the narrative, he again ramps like a colossus, and behaves in his old accustomed ways.
Sire, not long ago we heard a priest wiser than ourself say this: that no man should be unreservedly lauded while he still lives and still sails upon the unpredictable seas of life. Not he nor anyone can know whether he will survive all the besetting tempests and the lurking reefs and the distracting Siren songs, to make safe harbor at last. That man alone can rightly be praised whom God has guided so that he finishes his days in the port of Salvation, for the Gloria is sung only at the end.
May that guiding Lord God continue to smile upon and favor Your Imperial Majesty, whose royal feet are kissed by your chaplain and servant,
(ecce signum) Zumárraga
OCTAVA PARS
My own personal tragedy naturally overshadowed everything else in the world, but I could not help being aware that the entire Mexíca nation had also suffered more of a tragedy than the demolition of its capital city. Ahuítzotl's frantic and rather uncharacteristic plea for Nezahualpili's help in stopping the flood was the last act he ever performed as Uey-Tlatoani. He was inside his palace when it collapsed and, though he was not killed, he would probably have preferred that he had been. For he was struck on the head by a falling beam, and thereafter—so I was told; I never saw him again alive—he was as witless as the timber that struck him. He wandered aimlessly about, talking to himself in gibberish, while an attendant followed the once great statesman and warrior everywhere he went, to keep changing the loincloth he kept soiling.
Tradition forbade that Ahuítzotl be divested of the title of Revered Speaker as long as he lived, even if his speaking was a babble and he could be revered no more than could an ambulatory vegetable. Instead, as soon as was practical, the Speaking Council convened to choose a regent to lead the nation during Ahuítzotl's incapacity. No doubt vengefully, because Ahuítzotl had slain two of their number during the panic on the causeway, those old men refused even to consider the most eligible candidate, his eldest son Cuautemoc. They chose for regent his nephew, Motecuzóma the Younger, because, they announced, "Motecuzóma Xocoyotzin has proved his ability successively as a priest, a military commander, a colonial administrator. And, having traveled so widely, he has firsthand knowledge of all the farthest Mexíca lands."
I remembered the words Ahuítzotl had thundered at me one time: "We will not set upon this throne a hollow drum!" and I decided that it was probably as well that he was out of his wits when that very thing occurred. If Ahuítzotl had been killed outright, so that he died in his right mind, he would have clambered up from the nethermost pit of Mictlan and sat his cadaver on the throne in preference to Motecuzóma. As things turned out, a dead ruler might almost have been better for the Mexíca. A corpse at least maintains a fixed position.
But at that time I was not at all interested in court intrigues; I was myself preparing to abdicate for a while, and for several reasons. For one, my home had become a place full of painful memories from which I wished to get away. I felt a pang even when I looked at my dear daughter, because I saw so much of Zyanya in her face. For another reason, I thought I had devised a way to keep Cocóton from feeling too poignantly the loss of her mother. For still another, my friend Cozcatl and his wife Quequelmíqui, when they came to comfort me with condolences, let slip the news that they were homeless, their own house having been among those toppled by the flood.
"We are not as downcast about it as we might be," Cozcatl said. "To tell the truth, we were getting rather cramped and uncomfortable, with our home and the school for servants both under one roof. Now that we are forced to rebuild, we will put up two separate buildings."
"And meanwhile," I said, "this will be your home. You will both live here. I am going away in any case, so the place and the servants will be all yours. I ask only one favor in return. Will you two be substitute mother and father to Cocóton as long as I am absent? Could you play Tene and Tete to an orphan child?"
Ticklish said, "Ayyo, what a lovely idea!"
Cozcatl said, "We will do it willingly—no, gratefully. It will be the one time we shall have had a family."
I said, "The child gives no trouble. The slave Turquoise tends to her routine needs. You will have to provide nothing but the security of your presence... and a show of affection from time to time."
"Of course we will!" Ticklish exclaimed, and there were tears in her eyes.
I went on, "I have already explained to Cocóton—meaning I lied to her—about her mother's absence these past several days. I said that her Tene is out marketing, buying the necessities she and I will need for a long journey we must undertake. The child only nodded and said, 'Long journey,' but it means little to her at her age. However, if you keep reminding Cocóton that her Tete and Tene are traveling in far places... well, I hope she will have got used to being without her mother by the time I return, so that she will not be too dismayed when I tell her that her Tene has not returned with me."
"But she would get used to being without you, too," Cozcatl warned.
"I suppose so," I said resignedly. "I can only trust that, when I do come back, she and I can get reacquainted again. In the meantime, if I know that Cocóton is well cared for, and is loved..."
"She will be!" Ticklish said, laying a hand on my arm. "We will live here with her for as long as need be. And we will not let her forget you, Mixtli."
They went away, to prepare for the moving in of what possessions they had saved from the ruins of their own house, and that same night I put together a light and compact traveling pack. Early the next morning I went into the nursery and woke Cocóton, and told the sleepy little girclass="underline"
"Your Tene asked me to say good-bye for us both, Small Crumb, because... because she cannot leave our train of porters, or they will scatter and run away like mice. But here is a good-bye kiss from her. Did not that taste exactly like her kiss?" Surprisingly, it did, to me at least. "Now, Cocóton. With your fingers, lift Tene's kiss from your lips and hold it in your hand, like that, so your Tete can kiss you, too. There. Now take mine and hers, and hold them both tight in your hand while you go to sleep again. When you get up, put them safely away and keep the kisses to return to us when we come back."