CORTÉS
            How now? What’s the debate?

AGUILAR                                              The­ Inquisition:
            It’s linked itself with tethers to our church,
            Like two, aloof, reluctant mountaineers.
            I fear, when that unholy office trips,
            And plummets in the popular regard,
            Its drop down estimation’s precipice
            Will pull down our religion in its tow.

OLMEDO
            We cavil, boys, as if there were two Spains.

CORTÉS
            One good, one evil?

OLMEDO                              Not so simple. Yet,
            One, global-bent, one isolationist,
            One liberal, one counter to reform,
            One, eyeing Greece, one stirring with the Moors,
            Who, like the fatal twins of Oedipus,
            Will not consent to reign in tandem more,
            But rather wound each other mortally.
            In Europe, there’s a word in currency:
            Renaissance- It is not a Spanish word,
            And there’s a reason.

CORTÉS                                And it is?

OLMEDO                                               Some flaw
            In Spain’s own character that’s culpable-
            Catholic fanaticism, feverish pride,
            Or warped deliriums of vanity.
            We thought we were the new elect of God,
            Mistook our patriotic egoism
            For fealty to the church. Hence, our divorce
            And isolation from the rest of Europe.

CORTÉS
            No, it’s not Spain, not Catholics, nor our race,
            But frailties of the human constitution,
            Which frequently reverse the gains achieved
            By previous generations, in the name
            Of progress, culture, and civility.                          Trumpet is heard.
            A parley sounds! See what those Mayas want.

ALVARADO
            Well, now we’ve a translator, we can hear
            How much the Mayas hate us.

SANDOVAL                                          We should leave.
            As yet, we merely beg to buy their corn,        
            But fears impel them to combat with us.
            We’ve sixty wounded, heat stroke swoons the horse,
            And not a flake of gold for all these streams.
            Their ruins lurk like wrecks dredged from a swamp.

ALVARADO
            A stark reminder for aspiring minds
            That cultures often fall as well as rise.
            Here comes the father, with our medicine man.

                                       Enter AGUILAR and OLMEDO.

AGUILAR
            And so back home the Inquisition, brother,
            Still rules the roost?
    
OLMEDO                              It does so.
            
AGUILAR                                                 Grim regime!
            It clouds the air upon a thousand wings,
            Whose shadows spread to pall the gloomy sun.
            The cool, luxuriant trees on which it lights,
            It dries. How it decays! It browns green grass,
            And desolates the leafy countrysides
            Until they wither as the Syrian wastes.

OLMEDO        So it does.

SANDOVAL          [aside] Hark! The moral landslide rumbles.

OLMEDO
            Those fires of the Inquisition, lighted
            Exclusively to doom the Jews, one day
            Are destined to consume their smug oppressors.

SANDOVAL [aside to Alvarado]
            He strains a bit to shield the circumcised.
            Though I’ve a ***** mouth, my blood is pure.

ALVARADO [aside to Sandoval]
            Hush, Sandoval. You go too far.

OLMEDO                                                 And you?
            Know, Alvarado, there are many men
            Who, through misguided zeal- yes, Sandoval-
            Convince themselves that they commit no sin
            So long as those they **** and violate
            Are of a different faith.

ALVARADO                               It’s not our fault.
            I hate the Grand Inquisitor myself.

SANDOVAL
            Like any little-loved policing force,
            However, it preserves our way of life.

OLMEDO
            For its unwanted eye that never slumbers,
            Its arm, unseen and ever raised to strike,
            Does not o’ercast its gloom on you, but rather
            On deviants, foreigners, and heretics.

AGUILAR
            It bars all doors of human entry to them-
            Marginalized, shorn lambs it ferrets out,
            And scapegoats as the enemies of Rome.
            Thus, it condemns not only deeds, but thoughts.

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.