doing what is prudent at this time.”
“Allowing a cowardly ruler to deprive us our happiness?”
“Cowardly? Then you know.”
“Everyone in Tenochtitlan knows. The rumors are rampant.”
“What do they say?”
“That your brother, our Revered Speaker Lord Tizoc, if he may still be called that, fled from the enemy to the disgrace of all who saw it.”
“Anything else? About me?”
“Yes, I’ve also heard that you threatened Lord Tizoc.”
At first Ahuitzotl eyed Pelaxilla in utter amazement, then his demeanor turned to anger. “You knew this,” he glowered, “and yet you insisted I should confront him and ask for a favor.”
“Because I thought you had a higher regard for our happiness and deemed the risk worth taking. Evidently I was wrong.”
“I swear there are times I think I hardly know you. Beneath that lovely face of yours lurks a deviousness I find dismaying. All this time I believed you were sincerely distraught, you were merely exercising your pretensions over me. Isn’t that so?”
“Only partly,” she admitted, worried about how he might react. “I was very despondent on hearing of more delays. Those were my true emotions. I could not have feigned the disappointment I felt. How can it be that this weak brother of yours should stand between our being together?”
“This ‘weak brother’ of mine happens to be the Revered Speaker, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“He certainly did not act the part in Toluca, did he?”
Until this moment, Ahuitzotl had no idea that Pelaxilla held Tizoc in such low esteem and this revelation did not please him. Tizoc was still a royal lord and, while it may have been acceptable for him and the ministers to find fault with their monarch, for a mistress, whose dealings with Tizoc were of a personal nature rather than an official one, to declare him in contempt was quite another matter. Ahuitzotl’s own hostility for Tizoc was centered on the ineffective manner in which he ruled the state and a bitterness over not having been bestowed the throne himself, and as far as knew, Cihuacoatl’s animosity was based upon his legitimate concerns over the realm weakening under Tizoc. These were justifiable reasons for despising Tizoc, but to resent him and ridicule him out of mere personal dislike, such as Pelaxilla seemed to do, was distasteful to Ahuitzotl; it had a jaundiced aspect to it which he thought offensive. Tizoc did not deserve this kind of deprecation over his personal qualities, for he was essentially a good man—he was just not a good ruler. It troubled him that the woman he so loved should possess such negative notions.
“That does not change anything,” Ahuitzotl finally replied.
“I think it should,” she countered.
“Of course it should,” Ahuitzotl’s ire mounted, “but Tizoc rules—for life! We are all his subjects. Demean his character all you want—I’ll still have to go to him.”
“But you won’t!”
“Did I say I won’t?”
“You keep putting it off!”
“All right!” Ahuitzotl shouted, “All right! It’s against my better judgment, but if it means so much to you, then—very well!—I’ll see him about this tomorrow.”
“Please don’t be upset with me,” Pelaxilla pleaded. “It’s because of my love for you that I’m unable to wait any longer. I should not be castigated for this.”
“It will be a mistake,” Ahuitzotl said, still feeling uneasy.
Pelaxilla found his recalcitrance exasperating, but she saw that she was coming perilously close to provoking his volatile temperment and instead brooded over her unpromising predicament. She meant nothing to Tizoc; the number of times he had requested sensual pleasures from her she could count on her fingers in spite of all the years he ruled. Yet this man wielded the authority to prevent her from obtaining what she desired above all else. She hated Tizoc for this and, if she had to, by whatever method available, she would press Ahuitzotl to instill a similar loathing in him.
“Why are you so intractable?” she languished. “I thought you loved me.”
“You know I do.”
“Then ease my fears that you will let the matter rest if he refuses to give me to you.”
“What do you suggest I do? Steal you from him?”
“That’s not a bad idea, but I have a far bolder scheme in mind. You were once surprised when I told you I preferred men who had great aspirations. I’ve always believed you to be such a man—indeed, that may even be why I’m so attracted to you.”
“Get to the point, Pelaxilla.”
She decided to risk it all on a most daring proposition, one she had never previously considered and deemed quite horrible yet felt it necessary to put forth in order to force his hand.
“Why should you beg for me and crawl like a dog before Tizoc? You are a better man than he is. If a Revered Speaker cannot be replaced while he lives, then, if you are ever to rule, well, uh, you know what I mean.”
Ahuitzotl was stunned. He could not believe this was Pelaxilla speaking, the darling of the court whom everybody adored, who charmed them all and who possessed not a single disparaging bone in her body. There was a time when he was assured that he was the only person alive to think such thoughts, and now it seemed as though everyone was inferring this. But from sweet Pelaxilla?
“You’re serious,” Ahuitzotl concluded in his astonishment. “How can you hate him so?”
Pelaxilla fretted if she had not overextended herself. The court rumors must have been wrong in their allusion that Ahuitzotl aspired for the throne. But then, why did Tlalalca fear this so much. There had to be something to it—why else would she have been implored by the empress to ascertain what he planned?
“I have you to thank for that. Had we never met, and had I not fallen so in love with you, I should have been happy enough to expend my days in service to him. Because you engendered this desperate anticipation in me—for our being together—you also instilled a loathing for that which prevents this. Yes, you created this abhorrence I bear for Lord Tizoc. And all this since our last meeting in this garden!”
“I did this to you?”
“By promising we would be united after this war. I was so thrilled! What hopes you gave me! And now you tell me it may not be? Oh, you have most severely hurt me! But it is Tizoc who holds our future in horrid abeyance and who stands in our way. Why should it be a surprise I now possess such evil wishes upon him?”
Distressed, Ahuitzotl groped for words which momentarily eluded him. It seemed that every aspect of his life somehow entailed a connection to Tizoc, and he grabbled if he would ever be independent of the monarch’s ever-present predominance over him, viewing this as increasingly oppressive, and irritated that he could not function within its confines. All the pressures directed him towards one incontrovertible conclusion—against Tizoc.
“I
