Aztec Autumn - Jennings Gary (версия книг .txt) 📗

I said, "Nino ixnentla yanquic in tlaui pocuiahuime. Ayquic."

"The indio says, Your Excellency, that he knows nothing about arcabuces. And never has."

Coronado drew the sword sheathed at his waist, and said calmly, "Tell him that you will ask again. Each time he pleads ignorance, he will lose a finger. Ask him how many fingers he can spare before he gives a satisfactory answer."

The interpreter repeated that in Nahuatl, and asked the same questions again.

I tried to look properly intimidated, and spoke haltingly, "Ce nechca..." but I was temporizing, of course. "One time... I was traveling in the Disputed Lands... and I came upon a guard post. The sentinel was fast asleep. I stole his thunder-stick. I have saved it ever since."

The interpreter sneered. "Did that sleeping soldier teach you how to use it?"

Now I tried to look stupid. "No, he did not. He could not. Because he was sleeping, you see. I know one squeezes the little thing called a gatillo. But I never had the chance. I was captured before—"

"Did that sleeping soldier also show you all the inner parts and workings of his thunder-stick, so that even you primitive savages could make a replica of it?"

I insisted, "Of that I know nothing. The replica you speak of—you must ask the warrior who carried it."

The interpreter snapped, "You have already been told! That man was killed. Struck by one of the balls of the trip-string trap. But he must have thought he was facing actual soldiers. As he fell, he discharged his own thunder-stick at them. He knew well enough how to use one!"

What I had said, and what he had said, the interpreter again relayed in Spanish to the governor. I was thinking: Good man, Comitl, a true Mexicatl "old eagle" to the last. You are by now enjoying the bliss of Tonatiucan. But then I had to start thinking about my own predicament, for Coronado was glaring at me and saying:

"If his comrade was so dexterous with an arcabuz, so must he be. Tell the damned redskin this. If he does not instantly confess to me everything he—"

But the governor was interrupted. Three other people had just entered the room, and one of them said, in some astonishment:

"Your Excellency, why do you bother employing an interpreter? That indio is as fluent in Castilian as I am myself."

"What?" said Coronado, confounded. "How do you know that? How could you possibly know?"

Fray Marcos de Niza simpered smugly. "We white men like to say that we cannot tell the damned redskins apart. But that one—I noticed when I first saw him—is exceptionally tall for his race. Also, at that time, he was wearing Spanish attire and riding an army horse, so I had further reason to remember him. It happened while I was accompanying Cabeza de Vaca to the City of Mexico. The teniente in charge of the escort let this man pass the night in our camp, because—"

Now it was Coronado who interrupted. "This is all exceedingly puzzling, but save your explanation for later, Fray Marcos. Right now, there is more urgent information I require. And by the time I have whittled it out of this prisoner, I think he will no longer be so tall."

The interpreter was again required, because now spoke up the other man who had entered with the Lying Monk, my loathsome cousin Yeyac. He had few words of Spanish, but evidently he had caught the tenor of Coronado's remark. Yeyac protested in Nahuatl, and the interpreter translated:

"Your Excellency holds a naked sword and speaks of paring pieces off this person. I can tell you that a flake of obsidian is keener than steel, and can pare even more artfully. I may not have told Your Excellency that I carry inside me a thunder-stick ball put there by this person. But I remind Your Excellency that you promised the chipping and mincing of him to me."

"Yes, yes, very well," Coronado said testily, and slammed his sword back into its scabbard. "Produce your damned obsidian. I will ask the questions and you can hack away at him when his answers are unsatisfactory."

But now it was Fray Marcos who protested. "Your Excellency, when first I met this man he claimed to be an emissary of Bishop Zumarraga. Furthermore, he introduced himself as Juan Britanico. Whether or not he has ever been anywhere near the bishop, he has incontrovertibly been baptized at some time, and given a Christian name. Ergo, he is at the least an apostate and more likely a heretic. It follows that he is primarily subject to ecclesiastic jurisdiction. I myself would be happy to try him, convict him and condemn him to the stake."

I was already beginning to sweat, and I had yet to hear anything from the third person who had entered with Yeyac and the Lying Monk. That was the Yaki woman, G'nda Ke, and I was not surprised to see her in that company. It was inevitable that having survived the ambush—or having known of it in advance—she would now have given her allegiance to the victors.

The soldier-interpreter was looking quite giddy from having to turn from person to person while he translated all the foregoing conversations to the various participants. What G'nda Ke now said, and said most oilily, he translated into Spanish:

"Good friar, this Juan Britanico may be a traitor to your Holy Mother Church. But, Your Excellency Coronado, he has been much more a traitor to your domain. I can aver that he is responsible for the numerous attacks—by persons unknown and so far unapprehended—all over New Galicia. Were this man to be tortured properly and lingeringly, he could enable Your Excellency to end those attacks. That would seem, to me, to take precedence over the friar's intent to send him straight to the Christian hell. And in that interrogation I would be pleased to assist your loyal ally, Yeyactzin, for I have had much practice in the art."

"?Perdicion!" shouted Coronado, irritated beyond measure. "This prisoner has so many claimants on his flesh and his life and even his soul that I almost feel sorry for the wretch!" He turned his glare again on me and demanded, in Spanish, "Wretch, you are the only one in this room who has not yet suggested how I should deal with you. Surely you have some ideas on the subject. Speak!"

"Senor Gobernador," I said—I would not concede him any excellency—"I am a prisoner of war, and a noble of the Azteca nation that is at war with yours. Exactly as were the Mexica nobles dethroned and overthrown by your Marques Cortes so many years ago. The marques was and is no weak man, but he found it compatible with his conscience to treat those earlier defeated nobles in a civilized manner. I would ask no more than that."

"There!" Coronado said to the three latest arrivals. "That is the first reasonable speech I have heard during all this turbulent confabulation." He came back to me to ask, but not menacingly, "Will you tell me the source and the number of the replica arcabuces? Will you tell me who are the insurgents beleaguering our settlements south of here?"

"No, Senor Gobernador. In all the conflicts among our nations of this One World—and I believe in all that your own Spain has fought with other peoples—no prisoner of war was ever expected by his captors to betray his comrades. Certainly I will not, even if I am interrogated by that hen-vulture yonder, so boastful of her scavenger skills."

The scathing glance that Coronado gave G'nda Ke indicated, I was sure, that he shared my opinion of her. Perhaps he really had begun to feel some sympathy for me, because when G'nda Ke, the friar and Yeyac all began indignantly speaking at once, he silenced them with a peremptory slash of his hand, then said: