When Malinali went to fetch Lady Tecuichpo's morning atole, an eerie silence fell over the kitchen. Everyone stared as she ladled the watery maize-meal mash into a bowl and added honey, forcing her to wait until she was in the hallway alone before adding the medicinal herbs. The same disquieting silence lay over the halls too, so she hurried up the stairs to the royal living quarters on the second floor, eager to fill that void with Tecuichpo's cheery greetings.
She stopped short when she saw the emperor's bodyguards standing outside Tecuichpo's quarters. Had Cuauhtemoc stayed the night there? Should she come back later, after he'd left?
But when a black-robed priest pushed his way past her—a stench of rot following him—and went into Tecuichpo's quarters, Malinali edged forward, her stomach sinking. The guards made no move to bar the door from her, so she went inside, her nerves buzzing.
Priests, doctors and slaves crowded her mistress's rooms. The girl who usually sat outside the door overnight huddled in the corner, sobbing, her arms wrapped around her head. Cuauhtemoc stood next to the bed, his face hard set as he turned something over and over in his hand. On the bed, Tecuichpo lay in deep sleep.
Yet when Malinali pressed closer, she realized her mistress's chest lay too still for sleep. Dear gods, she's dead! Uttering a strangled cry, she dropped the bowl and it shattered with a heavy thud, covering her bare feet with warm atole. "What happened?"
"Lady Tecuichpo has passed on to Mictlan," one of the priests answered, his blood-wetted hair hanging around his face like decapitated snakes.
"Her heart gave out on her, from her prolonged illness." Cuauhtemoc squeezed whatever he held in his hand. "I found her dead when I came to see her this morning."
The priests and doctors cast him questioning looks.
Another lie. Malinali stared at Tecuichpo's body, not trusting herself to not glare at him in front of everyone. You honored your wedding night promise and it killed her, didn't you? You couldn't wait until she was stronger, could you, you murdering dog?
"Everyone but the priests out, now," Cuauhtemoc ordered. "They have much work to do, to prepare her for her funeral." He knelt to set a stone on the bed next to Tecuichpo; it was one of the polished jade stones husbands gave their wives the day they laid their wedding bed—a promise to give them children.
Malinali clenched her own fists, overwhelmed by the urge to hit him, but instead she left, thankful for the dismissal. She followed the others, keeping to the back of the group until she reached the first floor, then she broke away and ran for the slave quarters, shaking.
Only a few women sat in the common room when she arrived and they called out their condolences, but she didn't answer as she hurried past. She slashed aside the patio doorway's dirty white curtain and stormed out into the bath yard, which was empty except for two square steam bath houses. Thankfully the women's one was empty when she ducked inside.
Falling to her knees on the damp reed mats, she let out a whooshing breath, as if someone had kicked her in the chest. "He killed her! He killed her!" she gasped, her snarls giving way to sobs.
Someone pulled aside the mat covering the doorway but Malinali didn't recognize the face through the blur of tears. "Are you all right?" It was her friend Xochitli's voice.
Malinali shook her head. "My Lady...."
Xochitli pulled her into a hug. "I know. It's all over the palace. The poor girl." She patted Malinali's back. "Certainly you knew this was a possibility? She wasn't the same when she came back from Huaxtepec."
"She was getting better," Malinali insisted. "This shouldn't have happened."
"Certainly no one did anything to her." When Malinali didn't answer, Xochitli gasped. "Did someone hurt the huey tlatoani's wife?"
"He killed her," Malinali muttered again between hiccupping sobs.
"Who?"
Malinali nearly growled Cuauhtemoc's name, but someone might overhear them; the more incessant gossips took great joy in spreading every little rumor they heard. "No one," she mumbled, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "I'm just upset."
Xochitli smoothed her friend's hair from her face. "I know Lady Tecuichpo meant a great deal to you, so losing her must be like losing a child."
Her friend's words meant to comfort but instead they cracked open the jars in Malinali's heart where she stored the memories she couldn't bear to look at anymore. Such as holding her son Ollin for the first time, making her chest swell with more love than she'd ever thought possible. Or the potent terror when his father wrestled the boy from her arms. "He was never yours, slave, no more than I ever will be."
"Are you all right?" Xochitli asked, concern creasing her brow.
Malinali nodded. "I'm going to wash then report to the head steward for reassignment. I’m certain the kitchens will need help with the funerary feasts."
Xochitli nodded. "We honor Lady Tecuichpo by performing our duties to her family the best we can."
Including Cuauhtemoc? Remembering how he'd stared at her last night made her shiver. I suppose six years without being forced to be my master's bed toy is as long a reprieve as the gods will grant me this time.
¤
"Poison?" Ixtlil waved off the servant offering him another steaming golden tortilla. He and Cuauhtemoc sat on feathered mats at a stone slab cluttered with platters of food in the royal gardens, under the broad-branched copal tree.
The colorful, whistling parrots overhead usually made for a calming ambience, but today they gave Cuauhtemoc a headache. He motioned for the servant to take the birds away and the man quickly gathered their tethers and left with them. "She did it after I left." Cuauhtemoc poked absently at his fried quail eggs. "Made that poor slave girl show her where the gardeners kept it, then she mixed it with the chocolate I left there."
Ixtlil cleared his throat. "Not to be insensitive, but...certainly you weren't that bad."
Cuauhtemoc chuckled mirthlessly. "She did it because I wouldn't bed her."
"What...why...why ever not?"
"She was still sick and so fragile, and...." Cuauhtemoc averted his gaze to the pair of silent quetzal birds watching him from the wooden cage next to the stone table. "She was like a daughter to me, Ixtlil. It didn't feel right."
"I could see that."
Cuauhtemoc shook his head. "I should have made more effort to see her as a grown woman. I drove her to this." He ran his hands over his face, feeling too sick to eat. "And she accused me of sleeping with her handmaiden."
"You were leering at her last night."
"Looking and leering are two different things. I look at women whereas you leer."
"Thank you for that clarification," Ixtlil said with a chuckle. "Not that it's Tecuichpo's business if you have your way with the servants. The huey tlatoani is entitled to his pleasure."
"I'm not interested in bedding Malinali, and I said as much to Tecuichpo last night."
"And she believed that as readily as she believed she could take as many lovers as she wanted and you wouldn't blink about it? You didn't call this insignificant slave girl by her name last night, did you?"
"Call who by their name?" an older woman asked from the doorway to the garden. Her bright, red-feathered robe announced her arrival louder than her voice as she swept up to the table, her personal guards following at a discreet distance.
Cuauhtemoc rose to embrace her, and when she held her cheek out for a kiss, he obeyed. "I thought you went back to Tlatelolco last night, Mother."
She knelt on one of the mats, making certain her feathers lay smoothly over her lap as a servant brought her a platter of food. "Good thing I decided to stay. Was our dear Lady Tecuichpo truly poisoned?" When Cuauhtemoc nodded, she added, "Why hasn't the servant been executed yet?" She gave her son a pointed stare.
He reclaimed his mat. "The handmaiden didn't poison her. My Lady took it willingly."
His mother wrinkled her nose. "There's no honor in taking your own life. I hope Lord Death punishes her appropriately; no eternal rest for putting you through this."
"I hope he shows her some shred of mercy, for the gods know she was never granted any in her life."
"She was too much like her father, and he was insufferable. Don't worry. I'll find you a new wife."
"She's not even dead half a day, Mother. It's inappropriate to talk as if she's been gone a month."
She glared back at him. "Dear gods, you're not going to mourn her for a full month, are you?"
"Maybe not that long, but—"
"She gave you no children, and probably not even any pleasure. I bore your father three children and I would have remarried the day after he died, if the Council would have let me. If it were you, she wouldn't weep any more than she did the other two times. And the Council wouldn't hesitate to untie your cape from hers as quick as spit and tie her to your replacement. Marriage is political, Cuauhtemoc. Never forget that."
His face heated. "My marriage to Cuicatl may have been political, but I cared for her, greatly."
"And see how much it hurt to lose her?" his mother chided, shaking her heavily-ringed finger at him. "Love is for commoners." When Ixtlil stifled a laugh, she snapped, "And what are you guffawing about, you scoundrel?"
"Nothing." Ixtlil smiled as he took a drink.
"You should follow your friend's example," she told Cuauhtemoc. "Don't give out your heart, because you'll only get it back broken and bleeding. Love doesn't create legacies; children do, and one woman can only produce so many before you wear her out. Every emperor needs a healthy supply of willing concubines to see to his legacy."
Cuauhtemoc glowered at his breakfast plate. "Can we please talk of something else?"
His mother laughed then made to pinch his cheek, but she didn't touch him; not even his mother was allowed that privilege anymore. It made him sad. "Don't you worry, my precious jade stone. I'll find a good, sturdy noblewoman who will give you strong boys. And some pretty ones to make you feel regal."
"I'm not entertaining any proposals until the appropriate mourning period has passed," he warned her.
She waved him off then told Ixtlil, "He must have at least one woman in his bed by nightfall, even if you must go to the House of Warriors and hire an auianime. It's unsavory for the huey tlatoani of the One World to spend even one night without companionship. But no slaves." The latter she directed at Cuauhtemoc.
Ixtlil grinned. "Too bad."
Cuauhtemoc cast him a scathing glare.
"You might not remember it, but your father was indiscriminate with whom he took to his bed, and that brat he bore by that slave woman nearly killed you," his mother reminded him. "Slaves are so low, and the fastest way to rise out of that is to manipulate their way into the bed of a powerful man such as yourself."
¤
That night Cuauhtemoc entered his quarters with apprehension, fearing Ixtlil had done as his mother told him, but only his body servants awaited him. Not that the distraction of a beautiful woman wouldn't be nice tonight. Except the woman he really wanted was gone a long time now.
When he was learning the art of war in Ixcateopan, neither he nor Ixtlil went more than a few days without at least taking one of the military school's many courtesans to their beds, but he'd given up that life once he married Cuicatl. An honorable nobleman didn't seek out auianimes anymore, and though the marriage hadn't started with love, after several years, he'd found Cuicatl to be all he needed.
But then Tecuichpo came along.
I should have fought the Council harder about that marriage. I should have stood up for Cuicatl's rights. But he'd been concerned about losing the throne if he defied them.
It wasn't until after his first time with another woman that he realized the acuteness of his loss; he'd thought he could go back to the long-past days of taking a different woman to bed each night, but instead he found that love had tainted that privilege, and then loss had stabbed it to death. He hadn't been with another woman since, dreading the prospect of reliving that moment when he opened his eyes and realized it was not someone he loved lying under him, but a complete stranger. He hadn't expected it to hurt as badly as it did.
As he finished dressing, the bells on his curtain rang. Ixtlil, you dog, he thought, annoyance cutting through his melancholy. "I'm not taking visitors tonight."
"But I want to see you, Tatli!" a little girl's voice whined behind the curtain.
A joyful light in his otherwise terrible day. "Come in." He smiled as his daughter shuffled in, still wearing her day dress and her braided hair pinned against the back of her head so the two ends jutted up from her crown, in typical noblewoman fashion. She walked with dignified straightness; an achingly sweet reminder of her mother. He knelt before her. "Are you all right, Achicatl?"
"I am well." She fidgeted.
"I suppose you heard what happened this morning?"
She nodded, her eyes wide and bright. "The guards said Lady Tecuichpo died."
Cuauhtemoc bowed his head. "She did."
"But how?"
After a hesitation, he said, "She drank some poison."
Confusion in her eyes, Achicatl asked, "Is that how Nantli died too?"
"No. She was trying to wrest a baby from the gods, and they wounded her. She died bravely, as a warrior, so she went to Teteocan, where all women warriors go."
"Is there a heaven for those who are poisoned?"
He shook his head. "Tecuichpo will go to Mictlan, but don't worry; Lord Xolotl will help her conquer the trials and she will find eternal peace."
Achicatl frowned, tears welling up in her eyes. He hugged her, patting her back for comfort. "I'm a dishonorable little girl, Tatli," she whispered into his shoulder.
"Why would you say such a thing?"
She wiped her tears as still more came. "I'm sad she's dead, but I'm glad she's not in our family anymore. She thought she was better than me, and she always said she'd send me away if I didn't obey her, and that I wouldn't get to see you again."
He hugged her tighter. "I wouldn't have let her, my precious feather."
"Will you tuck me under my blankets tonight?"
"Absolutely."
The nursery was twice as big as his quarters and divided into many smaller rooms, each partitioned off by screens. Toys and dolls filled the large playroom, but at this hour only the oldest children sat awake, playing patolli on the cross-shaped boards painted on the floor near the hearth. When Cuauhtemoc became huey tlatoani, he’d inherited responsibility for the former emperors' children, and they bowed when he entered. The old women who monitored them quickly herded them off to their rooms, giving him privacy with his daughter.
The three curtains to the left bore the glyph of Motecuhzoma the Younger—a turquoise diadem atop a crop of hair and a cylindrical nose plug—while the mark of Cuitlahuac—a curl of water—adorned the curtains to the right. Cuauhtemoc's own eagle glyph decorated the three doorways straight ahead, and he went through the middle curtain, into the only one in use. He sat Achicatl on the reed-mat bed and covered her with colorful cotton blankets. When she wiggled her fingers at one of her dolls propped against the wall next to him, he put it in her arms then stroked its corn silk hair.
"Chitli is going to make you marry again, isn't she?" Achicatl asked.
"The huey tlatoani must have a wife."
"Please, no one from the nursery this time. They're practically my sisters."
"Someone older would be a better choice," he agreed. "Someone who would be more of a mother to you."
She smiled then rolled onto her side. He kissed her forehead again then bade her goodnight, but when he reached the doorway, she called after him, "You're not going away again, are you? Like when Nantli died?"
Her question shot an arrow into his heart. When Cuicatl died, he'd left Tenochtitlan for a year, touring the allied cities and waiting for the ache to lessen, so he could look upon his own daughter again without breaking down. He'd been so wrapped up in his own pain that he'd given no thought to how his absence might have affected her. He gave her a fierce hug. "I promise I won't do that ever again."
¤
With daily funerary feasts to honor Lady Tecuichpo's passing, Malinali kept busy. The head cook assigned her maize-grinding duties on the patio with thirty other slave women, and she spent hours sweating over the metlatl stones overlooking the gardens in full summer bloom. Flour-making wasn't mentally challenging, so she had too much time to think about that final conversation with Tecuichpo, leaving her feeling surly and snappish, particularly when the other women pried for details about her mistress's death.
"They're vultures," Xochitli remarked when they sat down to their own late meal in the slave quarters after the final mourning feast. "They feel better hearing other people's sorrows. Stay quiet and maybe the huey tlatoani will assign you to attend to his next wife."
Malinali hoped not; after that confrontation on the portico, she'd welcomed kitchen duties, for it kept her from crossing paths with Cuauhtemoc. Being reassigned to wait upon the new lady of the house could mean falling under his gaze again.
The next afternoon, while she ground the maize on the patio, the head cook called for her, so she dusted flour from her hands and hurried to see what he wanted.
"Take this upstairs to the huey tlatoani's quarters." He held out a tray of food. "He wishes to see you."
She stared at the tray, grasping for an excuse to get out of it, but when the man barked at her about keeping the emperor waiting, she finally took the tray.
At least I've been taking the chipahuacxihuitl. She'd sworn after her first pregnancy that she'd never let it happen again, and with visiting noblemen often availing themselves of their host's slave women—and with a few of the younger slaves being ambitious enough to encourage such advances—it meant any woman in service to the emperor risked unwanted attention. One couldn't be too prepared.
When she reached the top, a little girl rushed past, nearly upending the heavy tray. Malinali grabbed it harder and backed against the wall as the girl pounded down the stairs, yelling, "I'm not wearing any face powder, and you can't make me!"
A young slave woman chased after the girl, but she paused to murmur an apology before continuing the pursuit. At the bottom of the stairs, the girl jutted out her chin and shouted, "I don't have to do anything you tell me to. You're supposed to do what I tell you!" She then disappeared down one of the side corridors, the handmaiden calling after her.
Malinali chuckled and shook her head, but then she remembered where she was going. Letting out an exasperated sigh, she went down the hall, to the doorway around the bend.
The guards standing outside the door curtain gave her only a cursory glance before pulling aside the crimson fabric emblazoned with a swooping eagle. "The huey tlatoani is in his study."
The emperor's quarters had the same layout as Tecuichpo's. Various weapons—both traditional and Spanish—decorated the anteroom walls, and a bright white skull sat on the mantle of the hearth, grinning at her. Reed mats and grass-stuffed pillows lay on the floor, marking an informal meeting area. A broad, blue linen curtain closed off the sleeping area. She followed strange scratching noises to an open doorway to the right.
Cuauhtemoc sat hunched over a flat block of polished wood on the floor, bits of fig-bark paper and codices spread out over it. The scratching came from the goose feather he wrote with. Another man—dressed in the tunic of a royal food tester—rose when she entered, prompting the emperor to glance up at her. "Excellent. Right over here." He cleared a section of the table to make way for the tray.
Kneeling opposite him, Malinali cleared the tray one dish at a time. After removing her hand from each dish, the royal taster immediately sampled the food, working it over carefully in his mouth. She spared Cuauhtemoc a glance when she finished, expecting to find him sizing her up like the head cook picking a turkey for the night's feast, but he remained focused on his papers, not even watching his man testing his food for poison.
Maybe I can slip out unnoticed. But when she rose, Cuauhtemoc pointed to a mat at her feet. "Sit."
After a hesitation, she obeyed, straightening her dress over her knees as she knelt. The young man finally moved away and bowed as he backed out the doorway, leaving them alone.
When the emperor pushed a bowl of chile-roasted nuts across the table to her, Malinali shot a sharp glare at him. An all too familiar ploy: a friendly gesture to lower her guard enough to convince her to share her body with him. She refused to play such games anymore, even if it pushed aside all the nice pretenses. Let's see how much of a lake slug you really are, Cuauhtemoc.
But again his dark eyes took her captive before she could avert her gaze. "Not hungry?"
She wanted to snarl, but her good sense wouldn't let her. But at least she tore loose from his intense gaze. "Nuts make me ill, My Lord, nor would I encourage you to break decorum on my account."
Chuckling, he swished his feather at her. "Sometimes you surprise me, Malinali. Yet other times you're exactly how I imagined you to be."
The thought that he "imagined" her in any fashion made her seethe inside, but she kept her voice even as she asked, "What do you require of me, Revered Speaker?"
Cuauhtemoc finished his scribbling then pushed his papers aside and gathered a handful of nuts. "Each day you will bring me my afternoon meal and you will sit on that mat and tell me about yourself."
She stiffened. What is this nonsense? She'd almost rather he had his way with her and be done with it. What did he care about who she was? Besides, there were things a wife-murderer wasn't entitled to know.
But only a foolish slave refused their master's demands, no matter how distasteful. "What do you wish to know?" She struggled to keep the anger from her voice.
"How did you come to be in my service?"
"I was part of a tribute gift to huey tlatoani Cuitlahuac, from Cholula, in celebration of the one year anniversary of your defeat of the Spanish." She and three dozen other slaves had carried the baskets of gold, feathers, cloth, and cacao. Ten days of revelry and song followed, including a reenactment of the bloody battle on the beach of Potonchan, and everyone had crowded into the sacred precinct to get a look at Cuauhtemoc—then only the army's general—hoping to stand in the presence of the man who had cut off the head of Hernán Cortés.
Cuauhtemoc gave a start. "I marched that shipment here myself, but I never saw you."
"I'm certain you were busy with other matters, My Lord. The army's general has better things to do than hover over tribute slaves."
"Then you've been here for about six years. How is it I've never seen you prior to the other night?"
What a pointless question. "You have many slaves, Revered Speaker."
He nodded. "And I am away quite a lot."
If only you knew how often Tecuichpo had lamented that fact.
"Have you been a slave a long time?"
She hesitated before replying, "Most of my life."
"But certainly you long for more?"
The question nearly made her laugh but she stopped at an incredulous smile. "Most girls don't aspire to be slaves any more than young princes do."
Cuauhtemoc chuckled. "I don't suppose so. Your father was a king, wasn't he?"
Now the guards manning the walls fortifying her emotions started shouting warnings. How does he know about my father? Who could he have possibly spoken to who would know anything about that? "He was."
He leaned forward. "Then you're royalty? But how did you end up a slave?"
The anger and sadness swelled in her chest, cutting off her breath. You may own my body, but not my spirit, and my pain is not for your amusement. She needed to steer the subject away before she did something stupid, such as lose her patience. "It was so long ago, it hardly matters anymore. I feel lucky for having found my way here, and I'm especially fortunate to have served your wife, even if only for a few years. She was a wonderful mistress, always kind and decent to us slaves." A half-truth; Tecuichpo treated her well, but any slaves who ventured into her room knew of her propensity for screaming and throwing things when she was in a bad temper.
Cuauhtemoc shifted uncomfortably, and Malinali nearly let slip a laugh. Time for him to squirm like the leech he is. "She was quite taken with you, Revered Speaker; extremely proud to be your wife. She spoke fearfully about her previous husband, but you...she told me about how you cared for her when she was sick; so very brave, putting yourself in danger for her. Is the pox truly as terrible as I've heard?"
He blinked, lost for words; slaves didn't ask him questions—and it was definitely a risk doing so—but eventually he stammered, "It's not to be taken lightly—"
"I don't imagine so, especially given how slowly she was recovering. Other men might have grown impatient waiting for their wife to recover her strength, but your restraint and sense of honor are legendary. She was very lucky to have you, My Lord." The sweetness of her compliments threatened to choke her into laughter. "I'm certain your father would have been extremely proud of your accomplishments, my most gracious Lord."
Whereas before he'd looked dumbfounded and confused, now he flinched as if she'd slapped him. She hadn't expected that; powerful men enjoyed being complimented, and who wouldn't want to be compared favorably to the single greatest huey tlatoani of the Mexica? Instead he looked piqued. "Perhaps that's enough for today," he muttered.
She resisted the urge to let out a gushing breath. "They need me in the kitchen anyway." She itched to leave, but remained sitting, obeying protocol to the last breath.
He nodded as he stared down at his clenched fist, the nuts he held completely forgotten in her verbal assault. "You're dismissed."
Malinali rose carefully and bowed as she backed out the door, but once past the curtain, she turned and went fast for the main door, exhilaration throbbing in her veins. She'd so easily befuddled him; he wouldn't dare try fishing any more sensitive personal information out of her again, of that she was certain.
But when she reached the main doorway, Cuauhtemoc called out to her again. She froze with her hand on the fabric, her heart skipping before she turned back to him and bowed. "My Lord?"
Cuauhtemoc gave her a sharp, predatory smile. "I'll see you tomorrow, same time. And we'll...talk some more."
Her stomach dropped, but she maintained a neutral expression. "Of course, My Lord." The words tasted mealy in her dry mouth. She backed out the door into the hallway and walked stiffly towards the stairs.
There was no outer wall on the upper level where the stairs went down to the ground floor, so she stopped to stare out into the sacred precinct, where the many temples stood tall and brightly-colored in the afternoon sunlight. Behind them, in the distance, the majestic purple and blue mountains stood watch, a reminder that the world stretched beyond these palace walls. But cutting her off from it—and all other land in any direction—was the dishearteningly vast, bluish-green expanse of Lake Texcoco. It's really been six years since I last stepped foot on the mainland, she realized, her melancholy intensifying.
She glanced back up the hallway, and her mood darkened. "Not this time. I won't be any man's plaything again." Even if it meant risking death to run away and gain her freedom. She couldn't allow a repeat of what happened in Tlaxcala.
Getting past the palace guards wouldn't be easy, but she'd work out some means. Until then, she would do her best to keep Cuauhtemoc at bay.