The Tezcucan hesitated.
“Is the believer to boast himself wealthier by the wager?” said Maxtla, profoundly interested. “A thousand cocoa would buy a jewel or a slave: surely, O prince, surely they were worth the winning!”
Iztlil’ frowned again, and said bitterly, “A thousand cocoa I cannot well spare; they do not grow on my hard northern hills like flowers in Xochimilco. I did my best to save the wager. Old habit lures me to the great teocallis;[15] for I am of those who believe that a warrior’s worship is meet for no god but Huitzil’. But, as the girl was supposed to be down in the cells of the old temple, and none but Mualox could satisfy me, I began going there, thinking to bargain humilities for favor. I played my part studiously, if not well; but no offering of tongue or gold ever won me word of friendship or smile of confidence. Hopeless and weary, I at last gave up, and went back to the teocallis. But now hear my parting with the paba. A short time ago a mystery was enacted in the temple. At the end, I turned to go away, determined that it should be my last visit. At the eastern steps, as I was about descending, I felt a hand laid on my arm. It was Mualox; and not more terrible looks Tlalac when he has sacrificed a thousand victims. There was no blood on his hands; his beard and surplice were white and stainless; the terror was in his eyes, that seemed to burn and shoot lightning. You know, good chief, that I could have crushed him with a blow; yet I trembled. Looking back now, I cannot explain the awe that seized me. I remember how my will deserted me,—how another’s came in its stead. With a glance he bound me hand and foot. While I looked at him, he dilated, until I was covered by his shadow. He magnified himself into the stature of a god. ‘Prince of Tezcuco,’ he said, ‘son of the wise ’Hualpilli, from the sun Quetzal’ looks down on the earth. Alike over land and sea he looks. Before him space melts into a span, and darkness puts on the glow of day. Did you think to deceive my god, O prince?’ I could not answer; my tongue was like stone. ‘Go hence, go hence!’ he cried, waving his hand. ‘Your presence darkens his mood. His wrath is on your soul; he has cursed you. Hence, abandoned of the gods!’ So saying, he went back to the tower again, and my will returned, and I fled. And now,” said the cacique, turning suddenly and sternly upon his hearers, “who will deny the magic of Mualox? How may I be assured that his curse that day spoken was not indeed a curse from Quetzal’?”
There was neither word nor laugh,—not even a smile. The gay Maxtla appeared infected with a sombreness of spirit; and it was not long until the party broke up, and went each his way.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CÛ OF QUETZAL’, AND MUALOX, THE PABA.
Over the city from temple to temple passed the wail of the watchers, and a quarter of the night was gone. Few heard the cry without pleasure; for to-morrow was Quetzal’s day, which would bring feasting, music, combat, crowd, and flowers.
Among others the proclamation of the passing time was made from a temple in the neighborhood of the Tlateloco tianguez, or market-place, which had been built by one of the first kings of Tenochtitlan, and, like all edifices of that date properly called Cûs, was of but one story, and had but one tower. At the south its base was washed by a canal; on all the other sides it was enclosed by stone walls high, probably, as a man’s head. The three sides so walled were bounded by streets, and faced by houses, some of which were higher than the Cû itself, and adorned with beautiful porticos. The canal on the south ran parallel with the Tlacopan causeway, and intersected the Iztapalapan street at a point nearly half a mile above the great pyramid.
The antique pile thus formed a square of vast extent. According to the belief that there were blessings in the orient rays of the sun, the front was to the east, where a flight of steps, wide as the whole building, led from the ground to the azoteas, a paved area constituting the roof, crowned in the centre by a round tower of wood most quaintly carved with religious symbols. Entering the door of the tower, the devotee might at once kneel before the sacred image of Quetzal’.
A circuitous stairway outside the tower conducted to its summit, where blazed the fire. Another flight of steps about midway the tower and the western verge of the azoteas descended into a court-yard, around which, in the shade of a colonnade, were doors and windows of habitable apartments and passages leading far into the interior. And there, shrouded in a perpetual twilight and darkness, once slept, ate, prayed, and studied or dreamed the members of a fraternity powerful as the Templars and gloomy as the Fratres Minores.