Béu was, as I have said, frail and unwell, and she was clearly less than enthusiastic about leaving our house. But she was not unaware of the secret meetings I had attended, so she knew something was going to happen, and she complied without protest. She would visit a woman friend who lived in Tepeyáca on the mainland. As a concession to her weakened condition, I let her stay at home, resting, until shortly before the causeway bridges should be lifted. It was in the afternoon that I sent her off in a little chair, the two Turquoises walking alongside.
I remained in the house, alone. It was far enough from The Heart of the One World that I could not hear the music or other sounds of the feigned revelry, but I could imagine the plan unfolding as the twilight deepened: the causeways being sundered, the armed warriors beginning to replace the female celebrants. I was not particularly elated by my imaginings, since my own contribution had been to kill by stealth for the first time in my life. I got a jug of octli and a cup from the kitchen, hoping the strong beverage would dull the twinges of my conscience. Then I sat in the gathering dusk of my downstairs front room, not lighting any lamps, trying to drink to numbness, waiting for whatever might happen next.
I heard the tramp of many feet in the street outside, and then a heavy banging upon my house door. When I opened it, there stood four palace guards, holding the four corners of a plaited-reed pallet on which lay a slender body covered by a fine white cotton cloth.
"Forgive the intrusion, Lord Mixtli," said one of the guards, sounding not at all anxious for forgiveness. "We are bidden to ask you to look upon the face of this dead woman."
"No need," I said, rather surprised that Alvarado or Motecuzóma had so quickly guessed the perpetrator of the murder. "I can identify the bitch coyote without looking."
"You will regard her face," the guard sternly insisted.
I lifted the sheet from her face, lifting my topaz to my eye at the same time, and I may have made some involuntary noise, for it was a young girl I could not recognize as anyone I had seen before.
"Her name is Laurel," said Malintzin, "or it was." I had not noticed that a litter chair was at the foot of my stairs. Its bearers set it down, and Malintzin stepped from it, and the guards bearing the pallet edged aside to make room for her to come up to me. She said, "We will talk inside," and to the four guards, "Wait below until I come or unless I call. If I do, drop your burden and come at once."
I swung the door wide for her, then closed it in the guards' faces. I fumbled about the darkening hall, seeking a lamp, but she said, "Leave the house in gloom. We do not much enjoy looking at each other, do we?" So I led her into the front room, and we sat on facing chairs. She was a small, huddled figure in the dusk, but the threat of her loomed large. I poured and drank another copious draft of octli. If I had earlier sought numbness, the new circumstances made either paralysis or maniac delirium seem preferable.
"Laurel was one of the Texcalteca girls given me to be my personal maids," said Malintzin. "Today was her turn to taste the food served to me. It is a precaution I have been taking for some time, but unknown to the other servants and occupants of the palace. So you need not reproach yourself too harshly for your failure, Lord Mixtli, though you might sometime spare a moment's remorse for the blameless young Laurel."
"It is something I have been deploring for years," I said, with inebriated gravity. "Always the wrong people die—the good, the useful, the worthy, the innocent. But the wicked ones—and, even more lamentably, the totally useless and worthless and dispensable ones—they all go on cluttering our world, long beyond the life span they deserve. Of course, it requires no wise man to make that observation. I might as well grumble because Tlaloc's hailstorms destroy the nourishing maize but never a disagreeable thornbush."
I was indeed maundering, belaboring the self-evident, but it was because some still-sober part of my mind was frantically busy with a much different concern. The attempt on Malintzin's life—and no doubt her intent to return the attention—had so far distracted her from noticing any unusual doings in The Heart of the One World. But if she killed me quickly and returned there immediately, she would notice, and she could yet warn her masters in time. Aside from my not being over-eager to die to no purpose, as the unfortunate Laurel had done, I was sworn to insure that Malintzin would be no impediment to Cuitlahuac's plans. I had to keep her talking, or gloating—or, if necessary, listening to me plead cowardly for my life—until the night was full dark and there came an audible uproar from the plaza. At that, her four guards might rush off to investigate. Whether they did or did not, they would not much longer be taking orders from Malintzin. If I could keep her with me, keep her occupied, for just a while.
"Tlaloc's hailstorms also destroy butterflies," I babbled on, "but never, I think, a single pestiferous housefly."
She said sharply, "Stop talking as if you were senile, or I were a child. I am the woman you tried to poison. Now I am here—"
To parry the expected next words, I would have said anything. What I said was, "I suppose I still do think of you as a child just turning woman... as I still think of my late daughter Nochipa...."
"But I am old enough to warrant killing," she said. "Lord Mixtli, if my power is such that you deem it dangerous, you might also consider its possible usefulness. Why try to end it, when you could turn it to your advantage?"
I blinked owlishly at her, but did not interrupt to ask what she meant; let her go on talking as long as she would.
She said, "You stand in the same relation to the Mexíca as I do to the white men. Not an officially recognized member of their councils, nevertheless a voice they hearken to and heed. We will never like each other, but we can help each other. You and I both know that things will never again be the same in The One World, but no one can say to whom the future belongs. If the people of these lands prevail, you can be my strong ally. If the white men prevail, I can be yours."
I said, with irony, and with a hiccup, "You suggest that we mutually agree to be traitors to the opposing sides we have separately chosen? Why do we not simply trade clothes and change sides?"
"Know this. I have only to call for my guards and you are a dead man. But you are not a nobody like Laurel. That would imperil the truce that both our masters have tried to preserve. Hernán might even feel obliged to hand me over for punishment, as Motecuzóma handed over Cuaupopoca. At the very least, I could lose some of the eminence I have already won. But if I do not have you eliminated, I must forever be on my guard against your next attempt on my life. That would be a distraction, an interference with my concentration on my own interests."
I laughed and said, almost in genuine admiration, "You have the cold blood of an iguana." That struck me as hilarious; I laughed so hard that I nearly rocked myself off my low chair.
She waited until I quieted, and then went on as if she had not been interrupted. "So let us make a secret pact between us. If not of alliance, at least of neutrality. And let us seal it in such a way that neither of us can ever break it."
"Seal it how, Malintzin? We have both proved ourselves treacherous and untrustworthy."
"We will go to bed together," she said, and that rocked me back so that I did slide off the chair. She waited for me to get up again, and when I remained sitting stupidly on the floor, she asked, "Are you intoxicated, Mixtzin?"
"I must be," I said. "I am hearing impossible things. I thought I heard you propose that we—"