MOTECUHZOMA
            If, past this moment, you persist in lies,
            Know I shall bury you beneath my halls,
            Pull down your house till sludge seeps through the planks,
            And wipe your family name from off the earth,
            Yea, to the unborn fragments in the womb.
            Now, wouldn’t you recant this little fib?

FISHERMAN
            Forgive me lord, but what I tell is truth.

TLACAELEL
            Most like it is.

MOTECUHZOMA             Then know, you brave, bold slave,
            These spectral archipelagos you saw,
            Were giantlike canoes, with alien crew.
                                        He gestures to a servant, who produces a trunk.
            One year ago, the waves cast up this trunk
            Of jewels, foreign frocks, and silver swords:
            Most like, the precious jetsam of this launch.

FISHERMAN
            May my aviso aid your eminence.

MOTECUHZOMA
            One see him nobly boarded in our suites.
                                                                  Exit Servant with the Fisherman.

                                       Enter a Majordomo.
                    
TLACAELEL
            Well, watch, where are your hocus-pocus wards?

MAJORDOMO          My lord, command that I be cut to pieces or whatever you wish, for you should know that when I reached the cell, there was no one there. I had my best sentries there, trustworthy men I’ve known for years, but none of them heard the sorcerers escape.

TLACAELEL
            Then how, pray tell me, have they flown the coop?

MAJORDOMO
            Perhaps they flapped away.

TLACAELEL                                       What, gallows-meat?
          
MAJORDOMO        They can sprinkle themselves with fern-spores, and
shimmer into invisibility.

TLACAELEL
            Buzz, buzz! These twice-told tales upend my trust.
            Rope’s end-

MOTECUHZOMA          No. Suffer him.

TLACAELEL                                             As you see fit.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Some say such wizards take wing every night,
            And soar unto the fringes of the earth.

TLACAELEL
            His majesty’s broad magnanimity
            Has spared you this time, turnkey, but repair.
            Not all wards will be such skilled hide-and-seeks.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Now: Torch the hovels of their families,
            And witness if those new lighthouses’ beacons
            Will call their wandering rooks home to re-roost.
                                                                                     Exit Majordomo.
TLACAELEL
            And what of these vast dugouts?

MOTECUHZOMA                                        Time will tell.
            Our steward Teuhtlilli eastward creeps,
            To see what tricks are offered from the deeps.             *They exit.

TLACAELEL
            My lord, your wives entreat you to carouse,
            And tend a show of juggling acrobats.

MOTECUHZOMA
            When work is done. Recall those sorcerers.               Exit Servant.
            Till concrete facts come in, abstractions must suffice.

                                        Enter a Servant.

SERVANT
            Your majesty, a humble fisherman
            Brings news pertaining to these prodigies.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Admit him. [Exit Servant.] Lord, when peons paint my way!

                      Enter the Fisherman and Servant. He trails his hand            
                  on the ground toward him, and kisses his ***** fingertips.

FISHERMAN
            O master, ruler, lord, great gentleman,
            If witless lips which kiss the unswept earth
            Be fit to thus accost an emperor,
            Regard me, if it please your majesty.

TLACAELEL
            Speak, boy. Sublime Motecuhzoma hears.

FISHERMAN
            I come from Hellwood, at your southern shores,
            Where this week past, upon a beetling bluff,
            I glimpsed a buoyant, surging reef of hills
            With twining towers carousing on the waves,
            That seemed a transport for intruding rarities:
            A fear which whisperings in the wind confirmed.

TLACAELEL
            **, **, **!
            Was this the Spirit speaking, or the spirits?
            Some extra mushrooms in your salad, sir?

FISHERMAN
            Discard me if I lie! Hail, lords! All hail!

TLACAELEL
            All hail and sleet and snow, and all things cold.
            And chill reception from this wintry prince,
            For I suspect you seek remuneration.

SANDOVAL
            At home, they say Death takes a female form,
            And in her cave a billion candles burn
            Which mark the dwindling measure of our lives-
            Short stubs for the infirm, fresh spires for babes.
            When our own taper sputters at the base,
            This fickle life winks out.

CORTÉS                                            What said he next?

AGUILAR
            “You see our signal fire on the butte,
            Whose dark clouds broadcast swift alarms for war.
            If our old friends push off with crowded sails
            Before those flames to embers smolder low,
            Then shall they safely coast from Mayaland,
            And may God blunt what mischiefs are to come.
            But, if they loiter when this fire is cold,
            We’ll ***** their lingering lives, for at that time
            Shall I raise up my droves of rabid braves
            To course this quarry like the hounds of hell.”

CORTÉS
            I wish I’d that false truant in my hands,
            For it will never do to leave him here.

OLMEDO
            Those of the breed to grapple their own hearts
            Must own that something in their soul is stirred
            In answer to the awful frankness of these howls,
            And if, by our own shared humanity,
            We may uplift them to civility,
            So might they pull our most self-searching down,
            To dance, to stamp and rage. We, to resist,
            Must be as much a man as they. If not,
            Rebarbarism claims her wayward natures,
            And our prim, mincing minuets may yet
            Yield to innate impulse: leaps, bones and blood.

CORTÉS
            Clear out! Our foe’s friend orders we embark,
            With sails puffed by this sometime Spaniard’s threats.
            These titles- “Captain,” “Chief”- these are but breath,
            Yet- backed with tooth- are words which utter death.
            Speed North! At merrier campfires will we rest.                  *All exit.

AGUILAR
                                                         ­        But a happy few
            Broke from our cages and were spared for slaves,
            Within the warlike clutch of Na Chan Can.
            My freedom have your wax and honey bought.
            One stubborn soul, Guerrero, stays behind.          

CORTÉS
            And with slave’s ransoms, we must rescue him.

AGUILAR
            He will not come.

ALVARADO                          You must mean “could not,” man.
            What exile, broiling in the pits of hell
            Is tossed a rope from heaven and will not come?
            Your Spanish rusted in these humid airs.

AGUILAR
            These Mayas have seduced him to their cause.
            When I confronted him, he spoke to me:
            “I am a wartime chieftain, and their judge,
            And see how lovely are my wife and sons!”
            Three handsome half-castes nestled at his hip.
            “You go,” he said, “and may God go with you.
            But black tattoos have spiraled round my eyes,
            And broad, thick discs now pierce my ears and lips.
            Would Christians welcome one so scarified?”

CORTÉS
            God only scorns the scars of souls.

OLMEDO                                                   ­   Well said.

AGUILAR
            His crabbed wife waved in my face and spat:
            “What grimy scarecrow dares provoke my lord?
            Shove off!” But our Guerrero caught my arm.
            “I’ve warned our Mayas of Castile,” he hissed.
            “If Spanish visitations will be suffered,
            The scabies of their ‘culture’ will erupt,
            And Europe’s slow, inexorable flow
            Must soon encrust and case these florid lands
            As running wax will coat a candlestick.
            Then must I trim Death’s wicks.”

CORTÉS                                                 What can that mean?

DÍAZ
            Captain Cortés, at last our man is found.
            From two days inland, natives ferried him.
            Father Olmedo greets him as we speak-
            A fellow priest it seems.

CORTÉS                                      Bring him to me.                        Exit Díaz.
            From Cozumel to here in Yucatán,
            We’ve hunted this elusive castaway.
            These Indians hustle us from shore to shore,
            And, when their gifts of jade fail, toss us rocks.

ALVARADO
            Their dizzying synthesis of amity
            Backed up with menace proves unsettling.

                       Enter OLMEDO, SANDOVAL, and AGUILAR.

SANDOVAL
            Now, wayward beadsman, meet our strategist.

CORTÉS
            Who is this Indian? Where’s our long-lost priest?

AGUILAR
            Hail, Christian knights! Sweet accents of Castile!

CORTÉS
            Great welcome, cabined friar, you are free!

AGUILAR
            Is it a Wednesday?

OLMEDO                              It’s the Lord’s day, friend.
                
AGUILAR
            Of course it is! Grace to the only God!
            My only link with Europe, all these years,
            Has been to count the crawling calendar.

CORTÉS
            We’ll need your past, to learn their policies.

AGUILAR
            I wish I could. But of their etiquette
            I’m ignorant, save slavish drudgery.

CORTÉS
            You speak the language, though?

AGUILAR                                                  Why, like a native.

CORTÉS
            Your name?

AGUILAR                       Gerónimo de Aguilar.

OLMEDO
            Dear Aguilar! Your mother, home in Spain,
            On hearing you’d been snatched by cannibals,
            Abstained from meat, and cringed at frying flesh,
            For fear, by chance, it might be part of you.

AGUILAR
            Oh, rush me home to Écija, back where
            The only blood drunk is the wine of Christ,
            The only flesh consumed, our sacrament.

CORTÉS
            What fate befell your fellow countrymen?

AGUILAR
            The luckless women were harassed to death,
            The men, dishearted. But a happy few
            Broke from our cages and were spared for slaves,
            Within the warlike clutch of Na Chan Can.
            My freedom have your wax and honey bought.
            One stubborn soul, Guerrero, stays behind.

SORCERER 3
            We’ll break our seal and thus unpen
            Two breeds of vision we may show:

SORCERER 1
            The first of these, and you might know
            Your fate, engraven by your star-
            Which fortune gods permit or bar.

SORCERER 2
            But why disturb your dreamy sleeps
            To know your death-date daily creeps?

SORCERER 3
            It finds us all, and- though you hate it-
            Since what must be, shall be, await it.

SORCERER 1
            The second brand of prophecy
            Is not what will, but what may be.

SORCERER 2
            Yet what might not? Our lord can see
            These “what-if” figments well as we:
            Might not strange soldiers from the waves
            Rise forth to claim our sires for slaves,
            As, for their footstool, bows our liege,
            Exempt from their street-sweeping siege?

SORCERER 3
            And yet, might not our lord disband
            Such aliens, overcreep our land,
            And rig mean regions to his suit,
            The mumbling Mayas render mute,
            The frostbit northern climes to claim,
            And sway the fitful gods to frame
            His portrait in a constellation?
            What fate might not recast his nation?

MOTECUHZOMA
            There is a third chance-medley you omit:
            The several forking paths of fortune’s walks.
            Seeing a panther lurking on my left,
            Would you not show your lord the right-hand path?
            When looking back, we do not note that fork,
            Yet fate allows some swing for the intrepid.

SORCERER 2
            To cure these feline fears, don’t run
            From either, or your jaunt is done.
            But left and right will both hold good,
            If you’re the panther in the wood.

SORCERER 1
            Ah, brother, who are we to armor
            Arguments against this charmer?
            What use, to change into a cat
            As we can? He can diplomat
            His way through spells, and alchemize
            Pure, golden truths from steely lies.

SORCERER 2
            From impotence to abstinence,
            Humility from arrogance,
            Plunder into philanthropy,
            And sadism to justice.

SORCERER 3                                  See?
            No bird bones nor no wands are heeded,
            Only no character is needed.

ALL SORCERERS
            All hail the high and mighty mage,
            The gazing stock of this flat age!

MOTECUHZOMA
            Cart off to jail these jaunting cavaliers!
            Let them chirp out their pert remarks through bridles,
            And fix their flippant eyes on cold stone floors.
            Sans voice, sans books, sans tricky hands, we’ll see
            What muffled incantations might avail.
                                                                Guards exit with the Sorcerers.
            
PRIEST OF TLALOC
            These were but three. More might more prophets know.

TLACAELEL
            Well, these ones missed the mark.

MOTECUHZOMA                                         I fear not so.
                                                                                                  *All exit.

SORCERER 1
            Fell prince, what can we say? Shall we
            Wring fingers, gazing nervously
            Into our black, obsidian mirror?

SORCERER 2
            Or, in our water jugs, to peer,
            Unbinding and retying twine,
            In hope epiphanies shall shine?

SORCERER 3
            Or shall we three, like puzzling mages,
            Cast bright corn-kernels ‘cross the pages
            Of scripture, wincing to descry
            Some omen there?

SORCERER 1                        Or shall we lie?

SORCERER 2
            Were not your lethal gaze forbidden,
            Our eyes from yours no longer hidden,

SORCERER 3
            These mirrors unfilmed to windows-

SORCERER 1                                                 Wink
            We not, you might their contents drink.
                                                           They look at Motecuhzoma.
                    
TLACAELEL
            Bold, brass, and bungling open-sesames,
            Whose saucy tongues shall spice my hangman’s stew,
            You dare let sink your cataracted gaze
            Upon the solar luminance of our king?
            Who meets these eyes, beholds the face of death.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Shackles shall seal their eyes. Clap them away.
            My hopes were stillborn by these blind-man’s bluffs.

SORCERER 1
            A grand charade shall come to pass,
            As marching mysteries amass,
            And urgently these lurkings gather.

SORCERER 2
            If that is what your lord had rather
            Hear from us, so be it, then.

SORCERER 3
            We’ll break our seal and thus unpen
            Two breeds of vision we may show:

MOTECUHZOMA
            Our priests have proven green and tenderfoot
            By goggling at our late, ill auguries:
            Dumbfounded, counselless, they scan their toes.
            For this have I agreed to pawn my pride
            In dabbling with questionable cures
            By calling forth the aid of sorcerers.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Dread lord, how might your grace with confidence
            Place mercenary warlocks in your trust,
            Who twist their gifts toward late-night banditry,
            It’s said, to paralyze their shaky preys.
            Tezcatlipoca, our capricious master,
            Might cloud our muddy minds yet murkier
            For slumping to such dubious helps as these
            If they make mock of his peculiar knowings.

TLACAELEL
            Don’t worry. If they cool your fevered fears
            We’ll hail their hocus-pocus as white physic.
            If not, then as black fiends in iron they’ll rot.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Bring in these esoteric ministers.

                                  A guard leads in three Sorcerers

            You three obscure and dicing conjurers:
            Have you beheld grim omens in the clouds,
            Or prodigies upon the earth? You three,
            Who fathom ‘neath earth’s black and gem-jammed caverns
            To skim atop cold pools of stone-blind fish
            And witness those who have not winked at day;
            Who sink into the water’s murky deeps,
            And loiter drowsily among the weeds,
            Mustering fronds and nightshades for your charms.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Have you encountered stray and mongreled men?
            Or lightless nooks congeal as dead men’s shades?
            Or midnight women, crablike, creep in broods?
            Shall we be leveled flat by strange disease,
            Or locusts, pirating their greedy shares?
            From sudden deaths, from wars or wild beasts?
            Shall rainstorms sink our rooftops down to jetties,
            And Tlaloc drown us in a tide of bounty,
            Or broil us in cruel sabbatical?

MOTECUHZOMA
            You must not candy up **** truth for me.
            Have you not heard our thirsting goddess cry,
            And nightly croaking from the earth’s deep faults?

TLACAELEL
            Great, gold-eyed Eagle, greet our messenger,
            We offer his most precious fluid, Lord.
            Bright Hummingbird, accept Thy rubied fruit.
            In tawny plumes, Thou chaperonest the day.
            [To worshipers] We are collaborators with the gods,
            Performing our transcendent duty here.
            For by this action lie the only means
            To eternalize the circuits of the sun:
            An aloe balm to all the sufferings
            Of his interminable pilgrimage.

WORSHIPERS       Blue Prince, may Thou incline Thy heart, that by Thy grace for yet a while may we see in dreams.

TLACAELEL
            For we are God’s own chosen tribe, elect,
            As kernels gleaned and winnowed from the chaff,
            To side in cosmic struggle with the sun,
            To side with goodness, vowed to ascertain
            Its triumph over evil’s looming storm,
            And to bestow to all humanity
            The heavenwide profits of the victory
            Of the resilient forces of the light
            Over the gathering powers of the night.
            Let us pray.                                                          Exit.

WORSHIPERS       Huitzilopochtli, perform Thy office. Do Thy work. May I not reject Thee. May I not falter before Thee. May Thy heart desire whatsoever Thou mayest desire. This is all.
                                                                                   *Trumpets, drum. All exit.

ALVARADO                                              Old friend, admit,
            You have not crossed this river Styx before,
            But I and that long-suffering soldier have,
            And seen such sights to make your codstones crawl:
            I mean the hell of human sacrifice.
            When trumpets howl, and myrrh infects the air,
            A wall-broad drum resounds a thundering knell,
            To call the cultists to their grisly pyramid.
                                               A drum is heard, repeating at intervals.
            One victim strains across the clammy slab,
            A ghoul down-wrenching at each tortured limb,
            To keep the spinal shambles tautly arched;
            To see the black, satanic hangman leer,
            With clotted snarls of hair, and clawlike nails,
            Lifting the cutlery to tremble skyward,
            And to this brittle bird cage plunge the flint;
            He loots the poor chest of its jewel. The heart,
            Exhumed, hot from the plundered cavity,
            Reluctant to desist its wonted pulse,
            Still shudders in the fiend’s vampiric gripe,
            Which he uprears to slake the smoldering sun.
            Unearthly, braying like a beast possessed,
            And, wielding disarticulated joints-
            The fleshless femurs of a ****** maid-
            Or, glaring through a mask of patchwork flesh,
            The druid forges down the crannied steps,
            Cascading with a rill of molten marrow.
            He kicks the corpse to tumble in the throng,
            Who spring to ****** his gobbets for their dish,
            And chant (the word goes) “Now our gods are coming . . .”
                                                                                                     *They exit.

CORTÉS
            But how to learn their Tower-of-Babel tongues?
            I think I have an inkling. Sandoval,
            Bring me that Díaz from the footmen’s ranks-
            A proud alumnus of this school of vice.                     Exit Sandoval.
            Young Sandoval shows promise of promotion,
            But, Alvarado, you’re my confidante,
            As well as in effect my deputy.
            We must concur about these Indians.
            They are not possibly the “natural slaves”
            Of which the pagan Aristotle spoke,
            And can be raised to all the dignity
            Of sons of Christ.

ALVARADO                         I’ll take your word.

CORTÉS                                                            Take God’s.

                                          Enter DÍAZ.

DÍAZ      God save you, captain! What mighty business of state pulls my
rare proficiencies away from tent-tying?

CORTÉS
            So Díaz,
            Twice now have you arrived in Cozumel
            With this old villain, who reveals to me,
            When last you pitched your tents, a year ago,
            Your fleet encountered awestruck Indians,
            Who nodded at the whiteness of your hides
            And uttered, “Castilán . . . Castilán.”
            Who came before, that they knew you by face?

DÍAZ
            Some say that eight years past, lost in the fog,
             A Spanish galleon shattered on these reefs.
            Her ribs discharged a dash of castaways
            That disappeared into these gloomy woods.

ALVARADO
            And thus within hide our interpreters.

DÍAZ
            So: Castellano . . . Castilán.

CORTÉS                                             Well done.
            Commune with these glad-handed Indians,
            And sleuth it out through means of pantomime
            If any of our cast-off countrymen
            Might swelter yet in this unsparing clime.                      Exit Díaz.

ALVARADO
            And as regards your noble savages?

CORTÉS
            I shall induct them to the host of Christ.
            I’ll give them scissors, candles, silver mirrors,
            With tops and kites to cheer their little ones.
            As your bombastic threats have scattered them,
            I must so kindly call to coax them back.

ALVARADO
            With prayer and kindness- Save us all! Kind words!

CORTÉS
            Speak now, or hold your peace. . .

SANDOVAL
            Your brigs of bustling pilgrims light at last
            On this sweet-scented isle called Cozumel.
            Depopulating half of Cuba’s farms,
            The skills of our six hundred souls, or so,
            Erupt now in a pitched activity.
            We’ve confiscated idols, and our cross
            Now overlooks the rising ropes and tarps;
            Our cannons hedge the campground, with our horse,
            As secret weapons, hidden in the ships.

ALVARADO
            Now what a breezing cakewalk will it be
            To pacify this docile flock of lambs!
            Let’s ****** the sweetmeats from their trembling lips,
            And wean them to the yoke of servitude.
            Vassals alone make masters out of men.

CORTÉS
            Not yet so fast. For Cuba’s stewardship
            Forbids such a carnivorous regime.
            Father Olmedo warns us not to tease,
            Much less ******, the native nymphs.

ALVARADO                                                        Cortés,
            We trust that you, like all stargazing men,
            Crave glory, fortune, and above all, fame;
            That royal favor and divine accord
            Will light on those who quell idolatry,
            And carve new lands for God and His Castile.

CORTÉS
            But like a gentlemanly pirate, I.
            For Cuba’s governor deceives himself.
            His pure concern for human chattel, gold,
            And bandying the Indies as it were
            A distant annex of the Moorish war
            Has wrought a desert from a paradise.
            Long-term success requires a colony.
            And with what wherewithal! These islanders
            Stand head and shoulders o’er Carribbeans,
            With their rich-painted books and towering keeps,
            The graceful girding of their modesties-

SANDOVAL
            Their slave trades, and their binding bright bouquets-

ALVARADO
            Distilling liquor: Culture’s surest sign.

CORTÉS
            Our prime directive is to baptize them,
            Not march before their eyes the Seven Sins.
            But how to learn their Tower-of-Babel tongues?