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
            They say the first, inchoate age of man
            Met its demise by monsters from the earth,
            The second, brought extinct through violent winds, 
            The third by fire, the fourth by worldwide floods. 
            This fifth and final age, as we all know,
            By earthquakes’ rampant motion shall dissolve. 
            And yet, who could foresee this cataclysm
            Would find its epicenter in this room?
            For now my oscillation shakes the realm,
            My rattling teeth, my quivering, palsied hands, 
            The fearful quaking of my feeble knees,
            So agitates the contents of the earth
            To pitch its crust in spasms to a wrack,
            And crack the planetary fundament.
            Ach, what a bandied shuttlecock I’ve been!
            But from henceforth, by heaven’s crowded hall, 
            I’ll shake my feeble fears, or rattle all.                     *Exit.

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?

OLMEDO
            Cortés, I have a new, but nagging, fear.
            I sense the premonition of a time
            When you might be corrupted by the taint
            Of evils lying latent in our task,
            That vice, which our assignment permeates,
            Will tempt resolve to heinous compromise.

CORTÉS
            Our mission is implicit in its vice,
            In evils ineradicably steeped,
            And our grand charge requires that we submit
            To its contamination and decay.
            A man who would embrace the human lot,
            To do so, must consent to be a sinner.

OLMEDO
            Blood has been shed- For what? Lives squandered- Why?
            You, having tripped in sin’s attractive trap,
            To thus, in fragrant snares so feebly flail,
            Through frail and flagrant failings such a way,
            How can you say to me you are contrite?

CORTÉS
            But father, mercy with my malice mingles.
            These dicey circumstances find me now
            In both a ruthless and reluctant role.
            What seems intolerable of this plight
            Is that it simply will not be reduced
            To trite antitheses of right and wrong.
            My conscience both opposes and demands
            A rouse to action.

           Enter AGUILAR, ALVARADO, MALINALLI, and a Mayan Girl.

AGUILAR                              Captain, by your will,
            These endless battles have despoiled your foe,
            Who offer you these slave girls as a bribe.
            The terrorized Chontal surrender now.
            They will be baptized, and befriend our king,
            Provided that we leave their country soon.
            
CORTÉS
            Easy to break that promise once we’re gone.
            Tell them we shall release all Mayan soil,
            And nomadize into the unknown North.                             Exit Aguilar.
            Here, Alvarado, [indicates girl] guide her to your tent.
            We’ll see what use for this one we can find.
                                                                                           Exit all but Malinalli.
MALINALLI
            Now, silly Malinalli, drop your sights,
            You pretty poppet for these bearded frights.

TLACAELEL [to audience as spectators]
            Hear ye! Of these five games, his majesty
            The emperor has won the first two rounds,
            And Hungry Prince has crowned the third and fourth.
            Who takes this final set will clinch the match.

HUNGRY PRINCE [aside to Motecuhzoma]
            Motecuhzoma, why not call it quits,
            While thus we tilt in equilibrium,
            So time may be arrested in his stride,
            And nothing will be proven to your loss.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Oh yes, well, well you should prevaricate,
            Since you recoil, and your horoscope
            Is but a bunk, evasive, spurious sham.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            We used to sport like willful brothers once.
            This pointless schism scathes me to the core.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Play on! Your grace, equip him for the serve.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Behold this little token of a ball-
            Through this ordeal, symbolic of the sun
            When- swallowed nightly by the earth’s dark mouth-
            He spars with demons of the underworld,
            To birth anew at dawn. So does this sphere,
            Across the blood-bathed flagstones of this court.
            Regard it so. The gods assort you both.
            To one: bask in divine approval’s nod,
            The other: dark ignominy. Engage!

                He throws the ball to HUNGRY PRINCE. MOTECUHZOMA          and HUNGRY PRINCE leave the stage separately.

TLACAELEL
            A solid serve.

PRIEST OF TLALOC          A capital return.

TLACAELEL
            These salt-and-pepper gents belie their age.
            Look how they swoop, like eagles ******-beaked.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Our monarch springs, a glistening dynamo.

TLACAELEL
            And his contender sheds years as he runs.
            Tell me, your eminence,
            What are your sentiments on Hungry Prince?

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Though not a brilliant statesman, he remains
            The most perceptive prophet of the earth,
            With whom the gods must share their captain’s logs,
            His auspices so rarely miss their mark.

TLACAELEL
            You’d buy his soothsaying?

PRIEST OF TLALOC                           I'd say I would.

TLACAELEL
            That’s to the heart of this imbroglio.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            What is the real dispute, then, of this duel?

TLACAELEL
            You’d know their true contention?

PRIEST OF TLALOC                                     Tell me.

TLACAELEL                                                                 So . . .

CORTÉS
            Trailblazing pioneers, God’s harbingers:
            The shining daylight of the Renaissance
            Now swiftly dissipates the blindfold gloom
            Of this benighted, dark, and iron age.
            And as this dawn of culture greets the globe,
            Our own Castile, of all the hosts of Europe,
            Emerges as its greatest modern power.
            If we receive the bounty of these lands,
            So must we bear our duty to convert,
            And shall redeem these hell-bound debutantes.
            Coincidence?- That as the graceless Moors
            Were drubbed and shunted from our Christian sands,
            And in the very year our spiring cross
            Eclipsed that toenail paring of a moon-
            That new horizons opened in the west?
            Do you not feel, my fresh adventurers,
            That you are precious to the Lord, and chosen?
            Strike sail!                                                          E­xit.
              
ALVARADO                  You heard the captain. Up and at ‘em.
            You porters, lash the tents to tame these winds.
            The horsemen will untwine the provender.             Exit Garrido.

SANDOVAL
            The women must find tinder, turf, and fuel.
            The sun is down. We race against the dusk.           Exit María.

ESCUDERO
            These heavy, gathering clouds have opened up,
            And threaten to bestow unwanted gifts.

DÍAZ
            It is the cyclone season out at sea.

SANDOVAL
            Such scuddy weather bodes a sudden turn.

ALVARADO
            Let’s hustle then to fumble up a camp,
            And save our “oo-” and “ahh”ing for the dawn.
                                                           ­                           Exit all but Olmedo.
OLMEDO
            Thus shall the ardent lights of Europe come,
            And pour upon these newfound neophytes.
            But will they be enlightening Catholic lamps,
            Or a consuming fire to destroy them?                     *Exit.

MOTECUHZOMA
            I stand here, lords, a humbled man, to bow
            Before divine arbitrament with you.
            Tell me the damage of my botchery,
            And do not let my title tie your tongue.
            Unfold his ballot, and unveil my doom.

TLACAELEL
            Great Speaker of the state of Mexico,
            It is my solemn duty to report
            That, by the power vested to my role
            In this most sacred trial by tournament,
            Your bounty due unto this king shall be . . .
                                                           [Opens the second wager.]
            Three turkey *****, of prime and grade-A stock.

MOTECUHZOMA
            You staked your kingdom on three gobbling birds?
            Why did you shy to wager higher, man?

HUNGRY PRINCE
            My father always warned me, never bet
            For more than what you know you might receive.

MOTECUHZOMA
            But- grinning simpleton- what will you do
            With burlap sacks of poultry for a prize?

HUNGRY PRINCE
            Why, I’ll farm out a new triumvirate.
            The old one closed from lack of membership.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Not hamstrung by a certain turkey’s qualms?

HUNGRY PRINCE
            But poachered by the greater gobbler.

MOTECUHZOMA
            So you shall never gain my kingdom now.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            And you can never keep your kingdom now.

MOTECUHZOMA
            That fails to follow. Who could rival me?

HUNGRY PRINCE
            You’ll follow my allusion soon enough,
            Once your own subjects fail to follow you.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Fool! What I banked on was your fantasy.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            Friend, what you staked on was my prophecy,
            And what I prophesied, the gods confirm
            By our ill-tilting trial in this field.
            I have foretold your empire shall be lost,
            And lost it shall be, to my heart’s dismay.
            And therefore, farewell Mexico! Or else,
            Farewell, Motecuhzoma. I’m afraid
            One must be sacrificed to speed the other.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Why know you not, straw man, I am the empire.
            My doctrines are her laws; her braves, my brawn.
            It is my veins her riches run through, sir,
            And when she prays, it is my vows she breathes.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            But when she suffers, you repose and dream,
            And when she starves, her rumblings go unheard,
            As you crack crab shells at the groaning board.
            A pretty study, then, in symbiosis.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Why bandy taunts with this malingerer?
            Let’s penitently tender sacrifice,
            And leave this dreamer to his reveries.
            It seems such visions reign these days.

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?

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 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?

CUITLAHUAC
            It’s said Huitzilopochtli’s temple burns.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            It does so, to the sinking of my gut.
            Great rains of sparks dripped on his chapel’s thatch,
            Which torched our war god’s crematory pyre,
            And lit the flabbergasted rabble’s face,
            Their eyes and open mouths like perfect ‘O’s.
            Afar, the old, old fire god, aloof,
            And chortling at his native element,
            Was in his shrine extinguished nonetheless
            When shards of lightning from a cloudless sky
            Forked up his walls. It seems the gods contend,
            And waste their earthly halls as game-board chips.

CUITLAHUAC
            Have you beheld the floods?

PRIEST OF TLALOC                               No. Floods? The floods?

CUITLAHUAC
            The boundless lake that rounds our rafty town
            Shrugged off her boiling banks, uncorked her wrath,
            And, in a breaker to out-swell the sea,
            Has drowned our residential waterfront.
            House after house bobs in a flotsam fleet-
            A drear, domestic archipelago.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            What does the emperor your brother say
            Of these most inauspicious auguries?

CUITLAHUAC
            It’s in the bag and in the box with him.
            He closets up his fear in *******-up shrugs.
            And yet I can not blame his fickleness.
            If judgment’s based on past experience,
            How to interpret, then, such spectacles,
            When what is weighed has never once before
            Been seen or rumored in the known-of world?

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Lord Tlacaelel claims that Hungry Prince
            Tonight held council with the emperor,
            To state his gloss on these phenomena.

CUITLAHUAC
            He stands on shaky ground. How did he fare?

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Like to a hummingbird trapped in a hive.
            Motecuhzoma’s bellows rattled rafters.
            He challenged him at dawn to the arena.
            The sacred ball-game shall resolve their feud.

CUITLAHUAC
            The stakes?

PRIEST OF TLALOC        Unknown, but speculated high.

CUITLAHUAC
            We’ll meet then in the morning at the court.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Let’s get inside, lest Tlaloc should suspect
            We dare the tempest-****** to his worst.                    *They exit.

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.

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.

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.

TLACAELEL                                                            
            The weeks since last we met found Hungry Prince
            Of late locked in his tower, casting scrolls
            Which chart the star-crossed charms of the occult.
            And in the predawn darkness of his arts,
            He broke through to a voice from the beyond
            Which whispered that the throne of Mexico
            Must soon come to be ruled by foreigners.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            And thus the emperor submits to trial,
            And these, their wagers, are red herrings, then.

TLACAELEL
            To spare us the demoralizing news.
            The spirits’ hands will steer them to reveal
            If this prognostication failed or not.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            The ball’s in motion. Let the gods decide.

TLACAELEL
            Motecuhzoma falls! The ball is down! The ball is down!

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Dust rises, and our lord is lost to view!

TLACAELEL
            Three in a row! Were we left hanging, then,
            For torturers to **** by small and small?

                              MOTECUHZOMA and HUNGRY PRINCE reappear.

MOTECUHZOMA [aside]
            I’ve lost then, but the full significance
            Of that word “lost” I’ve yet begun to know.
            Gods need not lie, and here we have their words.
            Well, let it come. [to Tlacaelel] Unseal the wagers, lord,
            And read before these noble witnesses
            The stakes we trusted to you at the serve.

TLACAELEL
            First, the abortive fee for Hungry Prince:
            King of Texcoco, had this victory
            Been won by his imperial majesty,
            And you had failed, your forfeiture had been . . .
                                                             [Opens the first wager.]
            The loss of all your lands, your courts, your throne,
            And all, for your opponent’s acquisition,
            Decoronation to a common man,
            And forced prostration to this gentleman.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            A staggering ransom! I must thank the gods,
            Not for their championing me, but truth.

TEUHTLILLI [aside]
            The unknown guests which call me to the east
            Are such a hoax-like sighting as may lend
            To superstition credence; rumors, weight.
            I fear some rash infection has arrived.
            Reports pour in of towers on the waves,
            Maneuvered by a spectral race of men,
            The truth of which I must submit to test.
            And so it goes: The fleet of hueless troops
            Approaches from the seashore as I speak.
            Now, after weeks of waiting in the sticks,
            At last, my first glimpse of these lily-skins.
            Gods grant that they behave.

                          Enter CORTÉS, ALVARADO, SANDOVAL, AGUILAR.

AGUILAR                                              Be­hold, Cortés,
            Your foremost model of a Mexican.

TEUHTLILLI
            Hail, friends of Mexico! Which is your chief?

                                         Enter MALINALLI.

CORTÉS
            Well, Aguilar?

AGUILAR                        He speaks a nonsense tongue.
            We’re too far north. I can no longer help.

TEUHTLILLI
            I ask again: Where is your leader, friends?

MALINALLI [aside]
            (Now, silly girl, or never.) [indicating Cortés] This is he.

TEUHTLILLI
            What’s this? A mediating concubine?

AGUILAR
            You speak his language, girl, as well as mine?

CORTÉS
            What, will this slave girl double-cross us all?

MALINALLI
            Our humble chieftain greets your emperor
            And many times does kiss those regal hands.

TEUHTLILLI
            That’s well.

AGUILAR                That’s well!

CORTÉS                                   This all seems to be well.

AGUILAR
            Rejoice, Cortés! This maid is double-tongued.
            She’ll translate his words into my Chontal-
            From him to her, from her to me, to you.

CORTÉS
            Then let us test these true but tedious links.

MALINALLI      You were saying, sir?

TEUHTLILLI      How many braves trail in your train?

MALINALLI       How many warriors tread in your wake?

AGUILAR          How many soldiers shadow you?

CORTÉS           Five thousand.

AGUILAR          Uh, five thousand.

MALINALLI       They’ve a thousand, sir.

TEUHTLILLI
            I’ll see your thousand and I’ll raise you two.
            [to a servant] Deploy two thousand men to build them huts,
            [aside] But crammed with warlocks, witch doctors, and spies.
                                                          ­                                          Exit a servant.
AGUILAR
            This works well.

CORTÉS                           Thus the fragile chain is forged.
            Friend, you must look upon our advent here
            Not with unease, but as a world of good.

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.

TEUHTLILLI
            Then down to brass tacks: These wan wanderers
            Indeed match those who skimmed our shores last year.
            See- Here’s my schoolyard scribbling of their looks:

MOTECUHZOMA
            What are these? Iron pipes on lumbering wheels?

TEUHTLILLI
            A roaring, dragon-mouthed machine of war,
            Whose entrails discharge hails of shooting stars.
            When leveled at a mountain’s rocky crags,
            The cliff face cracked, disgorging its rich veins,
            Then, splintered into chips a knotted pine.
            Their porters picked their teeth with the remains,
            Like sullied spirits in a sulfurous haze.

MOTECUHZOMA
            What is this shambling menagerie?

TEUHTLILLI
            Some over-magnifying strain of hound,
            Whose *****-yellow eyes flash sparks of flame,
            And lolling tongues lob down to glut for blood.

MOTECUHZOMA
            And these? Some hybrid hash of man and stag?

TEUHTLILLI
            No, sire, but merely stilted, toothy does
            That suffer men to play at pick-a-back.
            Their plate-wide hooves dig wells at each impress,
            And lofty eyes peep over the city walls.

MOTECUHZOMA
            What is their destination?

TEUHTLILLI                                   Here, my lord.
            They’re full of inquiries, but send you gifts:
            These chokers of green glass- Quite lovely things.

MOTECUHZOMA
            What is the subject of their questions?

TEUHTLILLI                                                     You, my lord.

TLACAELEL
            Two hundred years have we known only strife,
            Kept innocent of peace, to fortify
            Huitzilopochtli, our grand god of conquest,
            Who hoists aloft our death-denying sun
            And handsomely escorts him through the east.
            Such toil demands the selfless sustenance
            Of that most precious sacrifice, our hearts;
            Small, hot, red gems- we grant them gratefully.
            Our god need not stand waiting for affronts
            Or hissing disrespect to rattle arms.
            No, rather let us seek convenient markets
            Where our Blue Prince of war, when whimsy strikes,
            Might carve downed captives to refresh his plate
            And tie his bib with dead men’s winding-sheets,
            As if he strolled through cheap tortilla stalls,
            And clutched our legions for his currency.
            To this emporium shall we caravan,
            Procuring crocks of blood and priceless hearts
            By bartering to swap our solvent lives.
            Oh, let it be Tlaxcala, gentlemen!
            For if we pitch this depot to the north,
            The taxing hike to those unconquered tribes
            Should prove an inconvenience to our troops.
            Besides, the tough and stringy flesh of those
            Bare-bottomed grunts, rock-knocking savages,
            Must strike our god as stale as sandal-leather.
            Then let Tlaxcalans be his board of fare:
            Moist cutlets, fresh and steaming from the range,
            Shall furnish forth his sanguinary feasts.
            We must not waste these others totally,
            But make a handy pantry of this foe,
            For war- alone undying- must endure.

CUITLAHUAC
            Bravo. I’ll side with you to storehouse them,
            So that we hamstring their free trafficking,
            And thus declaw our sole belligerent.

TLACAELEL
            I’m pleased your verdicts are adaptable.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            Either to weaken or to waste this threat,
            You’ll have my armies at your hand.

TLACAELEL                                                   That's nice.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Now, Hungry Prince, let’s brace for weighty words. . .

ALVARADO
            Yes, raise the curtain of this maiden world!
            Now, shall we find the halls of El Dorado,
            Where princes make an almshouse of their mines,
            And paupers plate their lumber-shacks with gold.
            
SANDOVAL
            See where the jungle frowns against the shore:
            A burial-ground of bright, backwater wealth.
            Might there the Seven Enchanted Cities lie,
            Where opals roll like pebbles in a brook?

                                    Enter ESCUDERO.

ESCUDERO
            My failing eyes still seek the Fount of Youth.
            What waste is it to search for sixty years
            When one charmed beverage shall reset my clock?
            If I should find this spring, then- like Apollo-
            I’d shrug at heaven’s everlasting souls,
            And strut till doomsday on a deathless earth.
          
                             Enter MARÍA DE ESTRADA and GARRIDO.
            
MARÍA DE ESTRADA
            A premiere world!

GARRIDO                         The theme of long-lost songs.

MARÍA DE ESTRADA
            Are there tall tribes of savage Amazons,
            Who bend their husky bows with coppery arms,
            And lop their milkless ******* to aid their aim?

GARRIDO
            Are there foul-featured men- if men they be-
            Whose ox-like trunk supports two partnered heads?
            Or, floppy-eared and dog-faced manikins,
            Who live (they say) on but the scent of blooms?
            And yet, if in this thicket dwell such men
            As dark as they who cheered me at my birth,
            We’ll call you Spanish but a schoolboy’s tale.
            And what a pretty picture that will make!

ALVARADO
            Cortés alights!

SANDOVAL                    All silent for Cortés!

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.

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.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Ah, Tlacaelel, ghost limb of my father,
            Who was a lord when I but governed dolls,
            The foremost man once more at our grave council.

TLACAELEL
            Those at life’s twilight like to rise at dawn.
            Good day, Motecuhzoma, emperor
            Of all the notable of known-of realms.

                                                        ­   Enter CUITLAHUAC

MOTECUHZOMA
            And here’s Cuitlahuac in his finest weeds,
            With darkened circles under bloodshot eyes.
            Well, little brother, you’re a paradox-
            My junior for a senior senator!

CUITLAHUAC
            Those two short years that separated us
            Must have profoundly aged and seasoned you,
            You point them out so often. But go on.
            Motecuhzoma, happy new year, sir.

TLACAELEL
            Good boy, Cuitlahuac. Stick it to the bully!

CUITLAHUAC
            Lord Tlacaelel, you’ve out-fathered Father,
            And middle age must curtsy to your years.

                     Enter a Priest of Tlaloc. Others trickle in, as many as may be.

MOTECUHZOMA
            High priest of Tlaloc, come. How fares our god
            Of fruitful springs and thunderstorm today?

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            He banquets with your captive warriors’ souls,
            And incense fumes his rosy breakfast, sire.

TLACAELEL
            Your grace, you know the judgment we have reached
            Regarding Hungry prince?

PRIEST OF TLALOC                               I have been briefed.
            But here Texcoco’s king himself arrives.
                                    
                   ­                                         Enter HUNGRY PRINCE.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Well, Hungry Prince! Co-sovereign of Texcoco,
            Comrade-in-arms, my true facsimile,
            Who’s shared the ruling of our empire, welcome.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            Hail, grand triumvir and my counterpart,
            A bright new year, you lords of Mexico.
            Our best regards from my side of the lake!
            And yet, it is a Triple Alliance we lead.
            Where’s brave Tlacopan’s king, our third accomplice?

MOTECUHZOMA
            That languid chief seemed spent and in decline,
            And, sadly, has been ordered back to bed;
            Our trident’s but a single spear today.
            But welcome all, and may we welcome here
            The first day of a new, uncharted year.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            A New Year’s Day, which- due to the complex
            And interlocking gears of calendars-
            Comes only every fifty-second year.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            It is the year One-Reed, and on this date
            Lord Quetzalcoatl, from this earthly throne,
            Long, long ago departed for the East,
            And on One-Reed it’s known he will return.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            One-Reed: It is a fatal year for kings.
            Our scriptures teach that when a murderous streak
            Finds black Tezcatlipoca, lord of chaos,
            On year One-Crocodile, he hunts our elders,
            One-Jaguar or One-Deer, he claims our children.
            But if he strikes on ominous One-Reed,
            Death swoops for princes.

MOTECUHZOMA                             On that jolly note,
            I open business for this syndicate,
            Myself presiding. All may find their seats.
            Now Tlacaelel, venerable friend,
            What progress on the state’s scholastic front?
            When last we met, the annals of our past
            Were deemed due for aesthetic overhaul.

TLACAELEL
            Lords, as you know, our eldest histories
            Have painted base and barbarous accounts
            Of our bewildered, wandering origins
            As meek and muddy natives, which- though true-
            Do not keep pace with our notorious present.
            Those earth-born tracts have all been commandeered
            And each one cast to char in heaping bonfires.
            Ah, what a purifying blaze that was!
            The inks of black and reds were rarefied
            To sheets of flame and wells of fluid coals.
            Now is our culture cleansed of heresies!
            So far from mourning that scholastic loss,
            The rabble whooped, and, singing rowdy reels,
            Made merry at that bedtime barbecue.
            And now, to re-devise those lowly annals,
            I move that we enlist our liveliest dreamers
            To craft extravagant and stately archives
            And claim the pedigree that we deserve.
            For what are histories but wrangling theses,
            Or dogma, but the darlings of a moment?
            So on this same authentic evidence,
            Let’s breed imaginary ancestors-
            Or ***** their deeds out- with a flourished pen.

CORTÉS                            
            Friend, you must look upon our advent here
            Not with unease, but as a world of good.

AGUILAR     [simultaneously] . . . but as a world of good.
            My potent monarch rules beyond the seas,
            And rumors tease his ears of Mexico.
            I come to you as his ambassador,

MALINALLI      [simultaneously] . . . to you as his ambassador,
            With gifts I must in person grant your lord,
            And bring him tidings that will save his life.

TEUHTLILLI
            [aside] (Fresh off the boat, and asks for audience!)
            My ruler also is a busy king,
            Like yours, and he will send for his desires.

            MALINALLI     [simultaneously] . . . he will send for his desires.
            He’s locked in caucus from his island throne:
            The teeming, lacustrine metropolis
            Of Mexico, called also, “Cactus Rock,”

AGUILAR         [simultaneously] . . . called also, “Cactus Rock,”
            Whose minions by the millions stir with drive,
            And fructify the land on floating farms.

CORTÉS
            A land with gold in hand?

TEUHTLILLI                                  By heaps and mounds.

CORTÉS
            “Why ask?” you’ll ask. I ask because I know
            That precious metal heals an arrant heart.
            My men are languishing from that complaint.

TEUHTLILLI
            We have the cure to purge bad-hearted men.
            [aside] (By god, his helmet flashes on my mind:
            Dead ringer to the one our war god wears.)
            [to him] May I, sir, as a token of goodwill,
            Present my lord your brilliant helm?

CORTÉS                                                     You may,
            If you return it filled with grains of gold.
            We’ll test by trial if this New World’s veins
            Are worth the circulation of the Old.
            Come sir, we’ll further parley by the fire.
            Escort this minister to my retreat.
                                           Exit Alvarado, Sandoval, Teuhtlilli, and servant.
            Well now, young lady. What whelp have we here?

AGUILAR           Your name, child.

MALINALLI           Malinalli.

AGUILAR             Ah, Malina.

CORTÉS        Well! Marina, then.
            I’ll sponsor you, in my kind custody.
            Mellifluous and honey-throated dame,
            Your golden tongue must buy us a good name.                  *All exit.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Now, Hungry Prince, let’s brace for weighty words.            
            You know that since our founding fathers’ reign
            Our kingdoms have been linked like tilting twins,
            Sharing the fruits and frowns of war alike,
            Two striding shanks, each foot outreaching each,
            My Mexicans, the eagles of this island,
            Across the lake, your leopards of Texcoco,
            Dainty Tlacopan third and least of all.

CUITLAHUAC
            But, since the death of wise Hungry Coyote-
            Your father- one alone has hitched the wind,
            One arm engirdling our fractious state,
            Which on one mighty truncheon hops her way.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Our Triple Alliance therefore is dissolved.
            Now must this galled umbilical be clipped,
            Tlacopan liquidated for our bullion,
            And you to trudge your solitary trail,
            With gods’ best blessings for your bond and bail.

HUNGRY PRINCE [aside]
            Oh, let my heart freeze up at this cold news,
            For if this tongue should blab the ****** thoughts
            These staunchless chambers seal inside my chest,
            The tyrant should extract this swollen fruit,
            And make my skull the drinking cup of God.
            Thus should I truly mirror this prodigy-
            A heartless sap, who’s plainly lost his head.

TLACAELEL
            Hungry Prince,
            Take aim at only what is possible,
            For you and I alike both know the fancy
            Of human justice only enters where
            The pressure of necessity is equal,
            And that the stout and rivalrous exact
            All that they can, the weak grant what they must.
            Of gods we do believe, of men we know,
            That by a natural proclivity,
            Wherever they can wield the whip, they will.
            This primal rule was not drawn up by us,            
            Nor were we first to heed its nascent call.
            The trail’s long blazed, and we do but inherit
            This trait, and shall bequeath it to all time,
            Content to know that you and all mankind,
            If once enfranchised vast as we are now,
            Would do as we now do.
                                              Exit all but Motecuhzoma and Hungry Prince.

HUNGRY PRINCE                                Thus it must be,
            Since thus you have declared it for a rule.
            And though this outlook seems the sophistry
            Of inharmonious and immoderate minds,
            Who will say ‘no’ when you have said ‘it’s so?’

MOTECUHZOMA
            Do not return, when taxmen come to call,
            And whine that I require too much of you,
            Since now you nod assent to my decree.
            You know the fortune of capricious war:
            Today for you, tomorrow it’s for me.                       Exit.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            Then revel it, old ruffian, while you may.
            Tomorrow’s but a fitful sleep away.                         *Exit.

MOTECUHZOMA
            My torch that does not smoke, your will be done.
            We’ll, with a clean-slate log, draft dignity.
            Yet what events may come to canonize?
            The wider our domain has stretched her range,
            The weaker our elastic hold becomes,
            As one half of our empire is employed
            With forceps to extract the other half.
            Our reign superimposes all the earth
            From the volcanic groves of Mayaland
            Up to the shifting wastelands of the North.
            But there is one last nest of brigandry,
            A murky pocket glowering in the east:
            That vile Tlaxcala, left to roam at large,
            And, as a single bed flea spoils my sleep,
            So does this fractious county drain my humor.
            Brother- What pesticide must flush these flies?

CUITLAHUAC
            We have the force to raze those traitors down,
            And what we might attempt, our might must crown.
            Our fertile empire rounds their toxic realm
            As healthy flesh imprisons cancerous rot;
            If eagles nursed a stranger’s egg to find
            Their warm embrace has thawed a rattling asp.
            We once did stalk Tlaxcalans for our sport,
            And prize their trophied hides like ten-point bucks.
            But these stray pups have hardened to coyotes,
            On crouching haunches, like a nightmare, hunched
            Upon a flowerlike land that should support
            A million civilized and happy men.
            Their population’s health should be no more
            Than called for by an enterprising nation
            For water-drawers and hewers of our wood.
            Let’s pinch this pest we coddle at our breast,
            And clip these hatchlings’ wings while in the nest.

MOTECUHZOMA
            So should we compromise our Mexico,
            By thus unpopulating her of men.
            What says our loving minister of war?
            Speak, Tlacaelel, and pronounce their doom.

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. . .

MOTECUHZOMA
            I tried to bear up to necessity,
            To steel self-conquest through my fears, and thus, 
            In stoic resolution, greet my fate.
            But then this temperance, to the common eye, 
            Seemed but a fatalistic resignation,
            A shrug, a sigh that what shall be shall be,
            In abdication to a fancied doom.
            So then I heap my irons in the fire
            To undertake all means I can devise,
            And now that versatile defense is seen
            As paranoia, and hysteria,
            The fickle indecision of a fool,
            Who- like a pup between two bowls of food- 
            Would waver till the flyblown point grew stale. 
            And they are right, these forward serfs are right:
            I am a knock-knee, and a juggler!
            Who could foresee the vortex of my mind
            Should be the whirlpool that would drain the sea?

MOTECUHZOMA
            It is their chief that most perplexes me.
            Send him my greeting, and convey to him
            The gifts I have equipped for your encounter:
            A turquoise serpent mask, a pearl-decked shield
            With feathered fringe as gossamer as foam,
            I’ll send the rain god’s legendary headdress
            Of quetzal feathers, green as sprouting grass,
            Fine, snail-shell collars, dainty golden bells,
            A saffron helmet chased with dazzling stars,
            Sandals obsidian-black- What riches more,
            I have not breath in this old chest to list.

TEUHTLILLI
            By your good will, I might unfold for him
            The vestments which are worn by several gods:
            Tezcatlipoca’s mirror, and Tlaloc’s jades,
            Huitzilopochtli’s gilded helm, and such.
            If he reach straight for the regalia
            Of Quetzalcoatl- Well, who need say more?

MOTECUHZOMA
            A thoughtful move. And, if not gods themselves,
            They yet may be our wandering ancestors.
            See if their speaker is the picture of
            A homeward-bound, long-absent patriarch.
            Especially take note if he admits,
            Or claims, he is your rightful king. What more?

TEUHTLILLI
            Should I purvey a spread of birds and game,
            And mark how fluently he dines or not?
            If he is from our far-flung lineage,
            He ought to be familiar with our fare.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Do so. But if, by chance, he shuns your board,
            And does not hanker for such bill of fare,
            But rumbles with a yen for human flesh,
            Why, then allow yourself to be consumed.
            I will ensure the welfare of your wife,
            And guide your children.

TEUHTLILLI                                 As you wish, my lord.           *Exit.

MARÍA DE ESTRADA
            Freeze, *****! It’s your mistress bids you halt.
            Let’s see what trulls the latest nets have trawled.
            Not bad, sad slave. You’ll fit your new career:
            A teenage tartlet to refresh their tents.
            Don Alvarado keeps a natty ring
            Pranked up with goads, whose stingers top its face,
            To spur reluctant steeds through rocky rides.
            You’ll buckle underneath such battery.
            I hope your yelps won’t stir my husband’s sleep.
            María de Estrada, at your service, serf.
            I reign sole victrix of this manly camp,
            For I’m not fit to mince and kiss my hand,
            Like all those gingerbread girls back in Spain.
            No, Cuba was a rowdy, lax frontier
            Where I was raised to tussle with the boys,
            And now stand champion in these warlike ranks-
            For boundaries built up by prejudice
            Are not reformed by mediocrities.
            Once I have overmatched your Amazons,
            I’ll force those tomboy squaws to nurse my brats-
            If but a single, over-muscled pap
            Can fortify the husky chaps I’ll breed.

                Enter GARRIDO with baggage, and passes over the stage.

            Look to your maidhood, miss, or be dismayed.
[to Garrido]
           Hold, boy! You’ve got my bag of needments there.     Exit.

MALINALLI
            What gibberish! So much chin-music to me,
            But something of her drift I comprehend.
            I must assert my merit here. But how?
            My ***? A trump card every girl here holds.
            But what my prodigy at languages?
            I’ll trail their chieftain, and my gift of tongues
            Shall lift his veil unto this ****** world.                          *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?

CUITLAHUAC
            Who goes there? Speak!

PRIEST OF TLALOC                         Another wandering soul.

CUITLAHUAC
            God save your heart, your grace.

PRIEST OF TLALOC                         And yours, my lord.

CUITLAHUAC
            This is no night to sleepwalk thus abroad.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            The shouts and whimpers chased me from my bed,
            And stir me in somnambulating fright.

CUITLAHUAC
            These whirlwinds pour forth torrents from the sky,
            But what is worse- the horrid portents seen
            From every roof, spark tears from every eye.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Our crops droop as if weary of this world,
            And beasts, most manlike, brood on shapeless fears.

CUITLAHUAC
            The time’s as if our wives around the hearth
            Spun yarns of winter’s tales to fright our tots,
            And woke to find their nursery-romance real.
            Now, fairy-fabled bugbears lurk in alleys.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            The sallow moon, a lop-eared phantom looms;
            Her astral lantern threats pale devilry,
            More fearsome on display than in eclipse.

CUITLAHUAC
            A sulfurous comet brands the starry sphere;
            Its tail points like a trail towards Mayaland,
            And nightly northward does it come- It creeps.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            If ever man has offered prayer for omens,
            He could not ask for signs more palpable.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Unpack your thoughts. Be free and frank with me.
            Pretend yourself my junior cabinetman,
            For my own court is often at a loss.
            What vague agenda does this fleet announce?

TEUHTLILLI
            They masquerade as peaceful legates sent
            To haggle wares and flaunt their god, no more.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Ridiculous!
      
TEUHTLILLI              My sentiments as well.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Then what’s your own misgivings of their aim?
            Don’t gild the pill for me. Who are these men?

TEUHTLILLI
            I’d bank they’re vigorous, new, cruel foes,
            Now swiftly winging from the Eastern Sea
            To spoil, maraud, shed sheathes and buccaneer.
            We’ve Mayan authority to warrant this,
            Hence their determination for the fray.

MOTECUHZOMA
            But I have poor rapport with Mayaland.
            What do my coastal subjects make of this?

TEUHTLILLI
            They call them minor, maverick deities,
            As yet unknown, yet fancied devilish.

MOTECUHZOMA
            And what if they will prove, as prophesied,            
            Our long-lost rulers coming home?

TEUHTLILLI                                                Perhaps.

Fisherman's intro, from "The Floral War."

FISHERMAN
            Well well, what have we here? Some field of view:                      
            The turquoise circle of the dazzling sea
            Blazes her setting of bright-banded sands,
            Where on this first, chill morning of the year,
            Our sun arises to peruse his course,
            And I, to tease my living from the deeps.
            Come, gilded fishes, hither to my net,
            You shimmering schools of perch, soft octopi,
            White-shingled shad, and jade-scaled terrapins,
            Plump, krill-fed dwellers of the pickling brine,
            Come now to me. To pray you have no fear
            Would shuffle with the truth, as I intend
            To angle for your lives, yet spoil me,
            For I who come to act unneighbourly
            Am poor, and strapped, and only bother you
            Compelled by leaky-seamed necessity.
            I have my wife’s own hatchery at home,
            And you, my friends, must make their maintenance.
            So, rush my meshes and forgive my faults.
            Whoa there! What vision’s this? Green goddess, say,
            What monstrous marvels wander on your face?
            This cannot be! I am awake, and sane,
            Yet seem to see a wading range of hills,
            A chain of dizzy-peaked and scraggy steeps
            Whose groundworks bob like buoys in the surf.
            Yet now this restless reef flows closer still,
            Resolving as spray-freighted citadels,
            Wave-buttressed towers romping on the breakers,
            Their canvas banners snapping at the breeze,
            Whose men wing down from ropes to pace the decks,
            And screen their eyes as if to locate me.
            I’ll hustle to my chieftains with this news,
            And let their cry of ominous novelty
            Alert each ear from here to Mexico.
            My life thus far was bright and fancy-free.
            Oh, why must change then come to quiet me?                        Exit.

HUNGRY PRINCE                                              
            Last night, I watched a comet scorch the stars,
            And thaw the moon to melt into her sea.
            It detonated in a shower of sparks,
            A fiery triad, hissing to the lake.
            To me, a clear-cut message there shall be
            Three final, leading lights of Mexico-
            But I, alas, shall not be one of them.
            Farewell, old man, but hoard what friends you have.
            For now whatever well-planned path you take,
            Dark hearts and dusty bones ride in my wake.                        *Exit.

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.

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.

TEUHTLILLI
            My family looks for me. Why, then, do I,
            Here in this hideous House of Serpents, wait?
            A hellish bestiary of constrictors.
            But now, behold where, from the grisly gate,
            Our golden eagle lights like daybreak’s rays.
                                                                    Enter MOTECUHZOMA.
MOTECUHZOMA          
            Well met, bright steward. Rise, and meet me, sir.

TEUHTLILLI
            When might a mortal’s eye behold the sun?

MOTECUHZOMA
            When, sir? Why, when he dwindles in the west,
            When, blushing red and swollen full with care,
            A man might ogle with unwinking eyes
            Before his flickering orb of day winks out.
            Look up, my scout. I wish your sights were high,
            And eyed a brighter orbit for your liege.

TEUHTLILLI
            I do, your majesty.

MOTECUHZOMA                   Come, your report.

MOTECUHZOMA
            The locusts swarm in ever tighter arcs,
            And dizzy whisperings pollute the air.
            The time was, in my long-lost halcyon days,
            I hubbed the compass of this spiraled realm
            Like to the turbine of a tempest’s eye,
            The axis of a great panopticon,
            Whose every vassal gaze was trained on me,
            Arrested in a well-lit wheel of cribs.
            The glaring of my ever-watchful eye
            Flushed out all glint of scandal from my slaves.
            I was the copy-text to check their conduct,
            And all examples I would radiate
            Reflected warmly from each ardent face.
            But now this ring of watchers weighs on me.

MOTECUHZOMA
            My lowly hoop of servile sycophants
            Arise to stands of judges, triple-tiered,
            Grave, gyral, escalating arbiters,
            Who shake their damnatory, hooded heads
            At me- Their blotch, their convict, and their prey, 
            Caught in their spotlight of interrogation,
            To twitch and quiver in disclosure’s sight.
            And now, what plan can salvage my appeal?

[May 1; In a Mexican-controlled territory on the Gulf Coast.]

                          Enter AGUILAR and MALINALLI.

AGUILAR             Blood.
MALINALLI         Sangre.
AGUILAR             Gold.
MALINALLI         Oro.
AGUILAR             War.
MALINALLI        Guerra.
AGUILAR            God.
MALINALLI        Dios. Yo soy Marina. Yo soy traducidora. Enough lessons, Aguilar!

AGUILAR
            Cortés insists you must perfect his tongue.
            I’ll have succeeded once I’m obsolete.

MALINALLI          
            Aguilar,
            Sometimes, I think of that Guerrero.

AGUILAR                                                                 Why?

MALINALLI
            He entered my world; now I enter his.
            At first, a forced exchange, but in the end,
            We both embrace our foster families,
            And shall go as enigmas to our graves.

AGUILAR
            Hush now, here comes that meddling Mexican.

                     (Enter TEUHTLILLI, with two attendants.)

MALINALLI
            Where do you come from?

TEUHTLILLI
                                                                 From where do I come?
            From Mexico.

MALINALLI                         You may, or you may not.
            Perhaps you tease. I know we all would like
            To claim that we’re from Mexico these days.

TEUHTLILLI
            I come to greet my sovereign, who is here.

MALINALLI [to Aguilar]
            He says he’s here to meet his sovereign lord.

AGUILAR
            You err, my dear. He must’ve said, “your lord.”

MALINALLI
            In fact, he claims his king is here with us.

AGUILAR
            Captain, come forth! Our emissary’s here.
            And, sir- I’d look as kingly as you can.

Enter CORTÉS and ALVARADO.

CORTÉS
            Hail, friends, from the Atlantic potentate!
            [of ALVARADO] This wandering star is my bright satellite.

ATTENDANT
             He glitters like a flax-haired god of hell.

TEUHTLILLI    [aside]
             A god? Gaudy, perhaps.

ALVARADO                                  Hail, gentlemen.

TEUHTLILLI    [to Malinalli]
             How like a brilliant sun does he arise!
             Let’s drench them with these superfluities.

                          (Enter SANDOVAL, ESCUDERO, DÍAZ,
                          MARÍA DE ESTRADA, and GARRIDO.
             TEUHTLILLI produces the helmet, filled with gold dust.)

             Your helmet, with its brim-full quarry, sir.
             A drained mine’s monthly yield all ground to dust.
             What fortunes else, I furnish for your eyes.
                                                                              (The gifts are presented.)
CORTÉS
             See, Alvarado, how much more they give,
             When left to give it voluntarily?

TEUHTLILLI
             Will you now, otherworldly men, make march
             To where Motecuhzoma, in your name,
             Still keeps the throne warm for his ancestor?

MALINALLI
             They will enjoy the presence of the king,
             Wherever he might be, to lavish him
             And do all he might order us to do,
             For to this end, they’ve charted seven seas,
             And journeyed distant lands.

TEUHTLILLI                                          Then let them come.
             [Aside]  (Let’s see how far they’ll take their godly fraud.)
             Let us now pierce our tender tongues with thorns,
             For your divine desire, if gods you be,
             That you may taste our blood.

CORTÉS                                                    Certainly not!
             We’re no more gods than you are penitents.
             If this is all you have to offer, go.
             I’ll summon you at leisure, by and by.
                                                       (Exit Mexicans. The Spanish converse.)
SANDOVAL
             [indicating gifts] What do you make of these gratuities?

ALVARADO
             A gesture of submission.

CORTÉS                                            No, not so.
             It was to be a show of dominance:
             Great wealth in unmatched liberality,
             Which their profuse humility in giving
             Makes glorious. But they mistake their man,
             For I might mask this bounty as a meek,
             Submissive yielding, binding legally.
                                                       (Exit Cortés, Alvarado, and Sandoval.)

MARÍA DE ESTRADA
             But oh, to storm so rich a capital!

AGUILAR
             We’re far too insignificant a force.

GARRIDO
             I wish that we already lived with them.
                                                                 (Exit all but Escudero and Díaz.)