a fool does not dread the gods.”
“Perhaps he is a fool.”
“Why tell me this?” Tizoc again raised his voice. “It’s as if I were not afflicted with enough adversity that you should add to it.”
Tlalalca was astounded that she should be reproached for cautioning Tizoc on what she felt was in his best interest. “But… but I only wished to alert you,” she told him. “It’s my concern for you that prompted me to say this.”
“It has compounded my problem.”
“I meant to help you and thought you would appreciate it. I am dismayed that you do not.”
Tizoc’s irritation was mollified by her apparent dejection. “Forgive me,” he was moved to say, “I’m such an ingrate. Maybe I do underestimate his aspirations. It’s just that this comes as an added blow to one I received in today’s assembly. It has not been a good day for me.”
At first, Tlalalca was averse to probing into the matter as she was no longer confident if she was of any assistance, but then her inquisitive nature demanded an answer.
“What happened?” she asked.
“The priest!” Tizoc trembled as the encounter flashed across his mind again. “I asked him if any prognostications concerning our proposed Toluca operation had been imparted. As he stepped forward to reply, he looked at me and was suddenly overcome with abject fright. His panic braught him to a halt. You should have those eyes!—as though he gazed upon cruel death. He recovered from his paralysis, but too late. Nothing said in conciliation afterward could have erased the horrifying impression dealt me.”
“What did he say?” a tense Tlalalca asked.
“That he was siezed by—by an uncontrolled reflex induced by the potions he drank.”
“It’s possible. The juices of the ololiuhqui plant, which the priests drink to attain their visions, have such an effect. I learned this when I served the goddess, Tlazolteotl.”
“No! No! This was different! I know about the divine potions. No drug could have struck him with such immediacy. His alarm was ignited by something he saw—in me!”
Tlalalca was at a loss for words. His mere description of the encounter infused her with dread—to have actually undergone it, as Tizoc did, and worse, been the object of it, as Tizoc was, would have unnerved her completely. Yet her instincts drove her to allay his fears.
“You misread it,” she said. “Priests are known to exaggerate. They are a pretentious lot.”
“Their interpretations are not subject to our conjecture. They voice the words of the gods.”
“It’s not the words they receive I dispute, but rather the manner in which they relate them to you. I suspect there is some effort applied in presenting them more dramatically than is necessary.”
“I disagree.”
“I’m trying to comfort you and you thwart me at every turn. If the actions of the priest caused you this distress, why not call on him and speak to him about it? Get a further clarification.”
“Protocol will not permit it. They are granted their immunity.”
“Then there’s no help there, but as for your brother, I believe I can learn his intentions concerning you. He is enraptured with one of your court ladies—Pelaxilla. Perhaps through her we can discover what he hides within himself.”
“Just like him to tamper with my women—another show of contempt for me! Pelaxilla? The little charmer?”
“You have too many mistresses.”
“I’m too often with you to notice the others. What do you expect Pelaxilla to learn?”
“Ahuitzotl’s true regard for you. Whether he schemes against you, or contrives disloyalty among our lords, or encourages disobediance. If he seeks your throne. A lot could be learned.”
“By the gods!” groaned Tizoc. “Has it come to this, that I should harbor such fears. If indeed these things are learned, what am I to do then?”
Tlalalca was amazed at his timorousness and wondered how she had failed to notice it previously. “Why, you bring him before the Tlacxitlan, the tribunal for the nobles,” she said, “with charges of treason.”
Tizoc studied the prospect at length, viewing it more as an imposition upon himself than a justifiable cause on which to prosecute Ahuitzotl. Then he gave his consent. “Very well,” he said, “find out what you can. I shall decide what steps to take once I see the kind of information we get.”
By now Tizoc had sufficiently recovered from his earlier despair to turn his attention on the amatory sensations Tlalalca so readily aroused in him. As he caressed her, smelled her exotic perfumes, and felt the soft brushes of her raven hair on his flesh, fire flared in his loins and overwhelmed him with a passion to possess her. He removed her clothing with an adeptness acquired from practice and smothered her body lavishly with kisses and strokes. Then he slipped off his own attire and the two lay interlocked in erotic embrace upon the many layers of matting. While he expended himself in his ardor, Tlalalca gazed blankly at the ceiling and was, for the first time in her memory, unmoved by Tizoc’s efforts. She uncovered much from her talk with him and questioned if she ever had really ever known him, and whatever else she may have thought of him, there was one thing she came to realize: he was somehow diminished in her eyes.
VII
Pelaxilla stood nervously and by herself before Tlalalca and Xoyo. She had been earlier summoned by the empress and was now obediently in her presence expecting the worst that could befall anyone who evoked her displeasure. Her moment had come, she fretted; she was about to receive sentence that she would suffer expulsion from the court. It meant she would probably return to the city of her parents and live with them in utter disgrace. She was but a child of nine years when she was taken from them, upon the recommendation of a high priestess who, noticing her and taking a liking to her, wanted her for servitude to the goddess Coatlicue. Then the Revered Speaker Axayacatl, also drawn to her, removed her from the temple and brought her into the royal house—being herself the daughter of nobility made this transition simple—to serve as a future concubine and she became a mistress of Tizoc when he acceded to the throne. Her seven years in the court had been an enriching experience, rewarding and enjoyable, and she knew that she would never be able to readjust to the mundane existence facing her in the place of her childhood. Perhaps, if the empress chose to be kind, she would be transferred back to one of the many temples to again be trained in the duties of a priestess. This was preferable. She could then stay in Tenochtitlan and spare her parents the humiliation they surely would suffer from their peers over having a daughter evicted from the Revered Speaker’s palace.
Tlalalca was seated in her royal chair, appearing altogether elegant in her attire and tenor, while Xoyo stood next to her unsmiling as was her usual comportment.
“So, my dear,” began Tlalalca in a cheerful tone, “How are you today?”
“Uh, well enough I suppose, my Lady,” answered Pelaxilla.
“You are horribly tense, child. One so young should not be burdened with such stress—it will untimely age you and detract from your beauty. And there’s no reason
