"You know she will not," said Cozcatl, and he pointed to Cocóton, who was admiring herself in the mirror held by Turquoise. "She has only to do that whenever she wishes to see her mother. And you, Mixtli, you have only to look at Cocóton." As if embarrassed by his show of sentimentality, he cleared his throat and said, with an emphasis meant for Ticklish, "I think the temporary parents had best be going now."
It was obvious that Cozcatl was eager to move from my house to his own rebuilt one, where he could better supervise his school for servants. But it was equally obvious that Ticklish had grown to feel for Cocóton the love of an otherwise childless mother. That day's parting entailed a struggle—almost a literal, physical struggle—to peel the young woman's arms from around my daughter. During the subsequent days, when Cozcatl and Ticklish and their porters made repeated trips to remove their possessions, it was Cozcatl who directed the removal. For his wife, each trip was an excuse to spend "one last time together" with Cocóton.
Even after Cozcatl and his wife were ensconced in their own household and she should have been helping him with the management of the school, Ticklish still contrived to invent errands which brought her to our neighborhood so that she could drop in for a visit with my daughter. I could not really complain. I understood that, while I was trying to win Cocóton's love, Ticklish was trying to relinquish it. I was making every effort to have the child accept as her Tete a man who was almost a total stranger. So I sympathized with the pain it was costing Ticklish to cease being a Tene, after two years in the role, and her need to do it gradually.
I was fortunate in that there were no other demands on me during my first several days back home, and I was free to devote that time to renewing my acquaintance with my daughter. Though the Revered Speaker Ahuítzotl had died two days before my return, his funeral—and Motecuzóma's coronation—naturally could not take place without the attendance of every other available ruler and noble and notable personage from every other nation in The One World, and many of them had to come from afar. During that time of gathering the celebrants, Ahuítzotl's body was preserved by a continuously supplied packing of snow brought by swift-messengers from the volcano peaks.
The funeral day came at last, and I, in my Eagle Knight regalia, was among the multitude filling the grand plaza, to cry the owl hoot when the litter bearers brought our late Uey-Tlatoani on his last journey through the upper world. The whole island seemed to reverberate to our long-drawn "hoo-oo-ooo!" of lament and farewell. The dead Ahuítzotl sat upright on the litter, but hunched, knees to chest, his arms wrapped around his knees to hold them so. His First Widow and the lesser widows had washed the body in water of clover and other sweet herbs, and had perfumed it with copali. His priests had clothed the body in seventeen mantles, but all of cotton so fine that they did not make a bulky wad. Over that ritual swathing, Ahuítzotl wore a mask and robe to give him the aspect of Huitzilopóchtli, god of war and foremost god of us Mexíca. Since Huitzilopóchtli's distinguishing color was blue, so was Ahuítzotl's garb, but not colored with mere paints or dyes. The mask over his face had its features ingeniously delineated in a mosaic of bits of turquoise set in gold, with obsidian and nacre for the eyes, and lips outlined in bloodstones. The robe was sewn all over with jadestones of that sort which tend more to blue than green.
We of the procession were formed up in order of precedence, and we several times circled The Heart of the One World, with muted drums beating a soft counterpoint to the dirge we chanted. Ahuítzotl on his litter led the way, accompanied by a continuous hoo-oo-ing of the crowd. Alongside the litter walked his successor, Motecuzóma, not triumphantly striding but dolefully shuffling, as befitted the occasion. He walked barefooted and wore nothing pretentious, only the ragged black robes of the priest he had once been. His hair hung unbound and disheveled, and he had put lime dust in his eyes to redden them and make them weep unceasingly.
Next marched all the rulers come from other nations, among them some old acquaintances of mine: Nezahualpili of Texcóco and Kosi Yuela of Uaxyacac and Tzimtzicha of Michihuácan, who was present as the representative of his father Yquingare, by then too old to travel. For the same reason, the aged and blind Xicotenca of Texcala had sent his son and heir, Xicotenca the Younger. Both of those latter-mentioned nations, as you know, were rivals or enemies of Tenochtítlan, but the death of any nation's ruler imposed a truce and obliged all other rulers to join in the public mourning of the departed, however much their hearts might rejoice at his departure. Anyway, they and their nobles could enter and leave the city in safety, for an assassination or other treachery would have been unthinkable at the funeral of a nation's ruler.
Behind the visiting dignitaries paraded Ahuítzotl's family: the First Lady and her children, then the lesser legitimate wives and their several children, then the more numerous concubines and their considerably more numerous children. Ahuítzotl's eldest recognized son Cuautemoc led, on a golden chain, the small dog that would accompany the dead man on his journey to the afterworld. Others of the children carried the other articles Ahuítzotl would need or want: his various banners, batons, feather headdresses, and other insignia of his office, including a great quantity of jewelry; his battle uniforms and weapons and shields; some of his other symbolic possessions which had been unofficial but dear to him—including that awesome skin and head of the grizzled bear which had adorned his throne for so many years.
Behind the family marched the old men of the Speaking Council and various others of the Revered Speaker's wise men, sorcerers, seers, and sayers. Then came all the highest nobles of his court and those noblemen who had arrived with the foreign delegations. Behind them marched the warriors of Ahuítzotl's palace guard, and old soldiers who had served with him in the days before he became Uey-Tlatoani, and some of his favorite court servants and slaves, and of course the three companies of knights: Eagle, Jaguar, and Arrow. I had arranged for Cozcatl and Ticklish to take a front-rank position among the onlookers, and for them to bring Cocóton so she could see me parade in my uniform and in that exalted company. It made an odd note among the murmurous hoo-oo-ing and drumming and chanting of lamentation when, as I passed her, the little girl gave a squeal of glee and admiration and cried, "That is my Tete Mixtli!"
The cortege had to cross the lake, for it had been decided that Ahuítzotl would lie at the foot of the Chapultepec crag, directly under that place on it where his magnified likeness had been carved from the rock. Practically every acáli, from the elegant private craft of the court to the plain ones of freighters and fowlers and fishermen, had been commandeered to carry us of the funeral retinue, so not many citizens of Tenochtítlan were able to follow. However, when we reached the mainland, we found an almost equal crowd of people from Tlácopan, Coyohuacan, and other cities gathered to pay their final respects. We proceeded to the already dug grave at the foot of Chapultepec and there we all stood sweating and itching in our ceremonial finery, while the priests droned the lengthy instructions Ahuítzotl would need to make his way through the forbidding terrain that lies between our world and the afterworld.
In recent years, I have heard His Excellency the Bishop and quite a few other Christian fathers preach sermons inveighing against our barbaric funeral custom—when a high personage died—of slaughtering a numerous company of his wives and servants so that he might be properly attended in the other world. The criticism puzzles me. I grant that the practice should rightly be condemned, but I wonder where the Christian fathers have encountered it. I thought I was acquainted with just about every nation and people and set of customs in all The One World, and nowhere have I known such a mass burial to have occurred.