"I am sorry I received you so gruffly, sister Béu. I am unaccustomed to such early visitors, and my manners are not at their best until some considerable while after dawn, and of all possible visitors I least expected you. May I inquire why you are here?"
She looked unbelieving, almost shocked. "You need ask, Záa? Among the Cloud People our family ties are strong and binding. I thought I could be of help, of use, even of comfort to my own sister's widower and the motherless child."
I said, "As for the widower, I have been abroad ever since Zyanya died. And so far, at least, I have survived my bereavement. As for Cocóton, she has been well tended during those same two years. My friends Cozcatl and Quequelmíqui have been a loving Tete and Tene." I added drily, "During those two years, your solicitude was nowhere in evidence."
"And whose fault is that?" she demanded hotly. "Why could you not have sent a swift-messenger to tell me of the tragedy? It was not until a year ago that your wrinkled and dirt-smudged letter was casually handed to me by a passing trader. My sister had been dead more than a year before I even knew of it! And then it took me the better part of another year to find a buyer for my inn, and to arrange all the details of its transfer, and to prepare for moving myself permanently to Tenochtítlan. Then we heard that the Revered Speaker Ahuítzotl was weakening and soon to die, meaning that our Bishosu Kosi Yuela would of course attend the ceremonies here. So I waited until I could travel in his retinue, for convenience and protection. But I stopped in Coyohuacan, not wanting to breast the crush of people here in the city during the funeral. That was where I gave the boy a bean to come and tell you I would soon be here. It was not until near dawn this morning that I could procure porters for my luggage. I apologize for the time and manner of my arrival, but..."
She had to pause for breath and I, feeling quite ashamed of myself, said sincerely, "It is I who should apologize, Béu. You have come at the best possible moment. The parents I borrowed for Cocóton have had to return to their own affairs. So the child has only me, and I am dismally inexperienced as a father. When I say you are welcome here, I am not merely mouthing a formality. As a substitute mother for my daughter, you are surely the next best to Zyanya herself."
"The next best," she said, without showing great enthusiasm for the compliment.
"For one thing," I said, "you can bring her up to speak the Lóochi language as fluently as our Náhuatl. You can bring her up to be as mannerly a child as the many I have admired among your Cloud People. Indeed, you should be the one person who can bring her up to be all the things Zyanya was. You will be devoting your life to a very good deed. This world will be the better when it has another Zyanya."
"Another Zyanya. Yes."
I concluded, "You are to regard this as your home from now forever, and the child your ward, and the slaves yours to command. I will give orders this moment that your room be totally emptied and scoured clean and refurnished to your taste. Whatever else you need or desire, sister Béu, you have only to speak, not ask." It seemed she was about to say something, but changed her mind. I said, "And now... here comes the Small Crumb herself, home from the market."
The little girl entered the room, radiant in a light mantle of sunshine yellow. She looked long at Béu Ribé, and tilted her head as if trying to recollect where she had seen that face before. I do not know if she realized that she had seen it often in mirrors.
"Will you not speak?" said Béu, her own voice breaking slightly. "I have waited so long...."
Cocóton said shyly, tentatively, breathlessly, "Tene...?"
"Oh, my darling!" exclaimed Waiting Moon, as her tears overflowed, as she knelt and held out her arms, as the little girl ran happily to be enfolded in them.
"Death!" roared the high priest of Huitzilopóchtli, from the top of the Great Pyramid. "It was death that laid the mantle of Revered Speaker upon your shoulders, Lord Motecuzóma Xocoyatl, and in due time your own death will come, when you must account to the gods for the manner in which you have worn that mantle and exercised that highest office."
He went on in that vein, with the usual priestly disregard for his hearers' endurance, while I and my fellow knights and the many Mexíca nobles and the visiting foreign dignitaries and their nobles all sweltered and suffered in our helmets and feathers and hides and armor and other costumes of color and splendor. The several thousand other Mexíca massed in The Heart of the One World wore nothing more cumbersome than cotton mantles, and I trust they got more enjoyment out of the ceremony of inauguration.
The priest said, "Motecuzóma Xocoyotzin, you must from this day make your heart like the heart of an old man: solemn, unfrivolous, severe. For know, my lord, that the throne of a Uey-Tlatoani is no quilted cushion to be lolled upon in ease and pleasure. It is the seat of sorrow, labor, and pain."
I doubt that Motecuzóma sweated like the rest of us, though he wore two mantles, one black, one blue, both of them embroidered with pictures of skulls and other symbols intended to remind him that even a Revered Speaker must die someday. I doubt that Motecuzóma ever sweated. Of course, I never in my life put my finger to his bare skin, but it always appeared cold and dry.
And the priest said, "From this day, my lord, you must make of yourself a tree of great shade, that the multitude may take shelter under your branches and lean upon the strength of your trunk."
Though the occasion was solemn and impressive enough, it may have been a little less so than other coronations during my lifetime which I had not witnessed—those of Axayácatl and Tixoc and Ahuítzotl—since Motecuzóma was merely being confirmed in the office which he had already held unofficially for two years.
And the priest said, "Now, my lord, you must govern and defend your people, and treat them justly. You must punish the wicked and correct the disobedient. You must be diligent in the prosecution of the necessary wars. You must give special heed to the requirements of the gods and their temples and their priests, that they do not lack for offerings and sacrifices. Thus the gods will be pleased to watch over you and your people, and all the affairs of the Mexíca will prosper."
From where I stood, the softly waving feather banners that lined the staircase of the Great Pyramid appeared to converge toward the top, like an arrow pointing to the high, distant, tiny figures of our new Revered Speaker and the aged priest who just then placed the jewel-encrusted red leather crown on his head. And at last the priest was finished and Motecuzóma spoke:
"Great and respected priest, your words might have been spoken by mighty Huitzilopóchtli himself. Your words have given me much upon which to reflect. I pray that I may be worthy of the sage counsel you have dispensed. I thank you for the fervor and I cherish the love with which you have spoken. If I am to be the man my people would wish me to be, I must forever remember your words of wisdom, your warnings, your admonitions—"
To be ready to shatter the very clouds in the sky at the close of Motecuzóma's acceptance speech, the ranks of priests poised their conch trumpets, the musicians raised their drumsticks and readied their flutes.
And Motecuzóma said, "I am proud to bring again to the throne the estimable name of my venerated grandfather. I am proud to be called Motecuzóma the Younger. And in honor of the nation which I am to lead—a nation even mightier than in my grandfather's day—my first decree is that the office I occupy will be no longer called Revered Speaker of the Mexíca, but that it have a more fitting tide." He turned to face the crowded plaza, and he held high the gold and mahogany staff, and he shouted, "Henceforth, my people, you will be governed and defended and led to ever greater heights by Motecuzóma Xocoyotzin, Cem-Anihuac Uey-Tlatoani!"