There stands to this day in Cuernavaca a graven bowlder bearing a shield, a sheaf of arrows and a record in hieroglyphs of the fatal hour when the painted warriors of Tenochtitlan swept down upon Quauhnahuac. Then the City of Flowers withered before a rain of flint and a wind of flame. And among the men and women carried away as slaves or more honorable sacrifice was Five-eagle. This young man had disclosed, in the stress of that sudden attack, the qualities of true leadership. Out of the confusion he had emerged at the head of his people, leading them vainly against the foe. Yet he was captured at last and taken to Tenochtitlan without degradation, wearing still his ear-plugs of jade, sandals, and the embroidered mantle of his rank.
And then the prophecy of his birth was justified. For, because of his beauty, his daring and his arts of music and song, Five-eagle was raised to wealth, honor and the power of kings. He was made that other Tezcatlipoca to live among men and enjoy life and be granted every wish while the year turned slowly round to the feast of Toxcatl. His laughter meant good fortune to all the land, and his momentary sorrow spelled calamity. But at the end, replete with every honor, accomplished in every grace, surfeited with every joy, he must go freely under the black knife of glass. And the offer of his youth must be made so that the youth of Tezcatlipoca should be eternal, so that his powers should not wither with the creeping infirmities of time, so that his mysteries should still give forth life and happiness to the sad tribes of men.
What wonderful beings are the gods that men have imagined out of hopes and fears in the twilight of faith! They are creatures of beauty and terror, shaped from stars and storm winds and green waters and from the subtle and powerful beasts. Or they rise still higher to the very form and mind of their creator, man. They loom forever majestic, immortalized by the sincerities of human sacrifice, by prayers and incense and devoted lives, by ceremony and all its pictured train of magnificence and centered power, by temples and songs and statues that artists, in the grip of common thought, yield up and create. They are the over-souls of nations made visible from afar. But to their makers they are the blinding light of a great presence.
And what more gallant god ever bestrode the heavens than Tezcatlipoca of the Mexicans? He was a Lord of Magic, inscrutable, pitiless, magnificent. He combined the wisdom of white hair and wrinkled cheeks with the reckless joy of never-passing youth. He was swift and cunning and unconquerable, making and breaking fates, snaring his brother gods in wizard traps. He was not alone the Smoking Mirror in which the world lay reflected, he was the Sun that looked down into the hearts of men, he was the prowling Jaguar, he was the night wind stealing across land and sea. Yet in his proper guise he was Youth with all its wiles and enchantments: Youth that was graceful, debonair, beguiling as music, subtle as the perfume of flowers,—but cruel, swift and terrible as the lightning bolt.
The greatest feast of the Mexican year was the feast of Toxcatl, made in honor of Tezcatlipoca. It fell in the springtime when thirsty fields called for rain. Scarcely had one young warrior, chosen from the clean-limbed and accomplished prisoners of a sacred war, been sacrificed on the last day of his fictitious glory than another stepped into the empty rôle. And, as had been said, it was the fate of Five-eagle, after his arrival at the Aztecan capital, to be chosen as a fit candidate for this dramatic death. With a true knowledge of the symbolism and significance of the ceremony in the emotional fabric that then was Mexico, he assumed the part proudly, and made ready his mind to play out the drama to the end, with minute regard for all the details and effects.
A retinue of pages, the sons of chiefs and great merchants of Tenochtitlan, accompanied him in his daily wanderings about the city. These were six in number. They were dressed in fine liveries and it was their duty to see that their master, whom they addressed as Tezcatlipoca, did not fall into sad thoughts. A sacred college of girls embroidered new garments for Five-eagle and each day braided fresh garlands of fragrant blossoms to hang about his neck. Later, from this house of virgins, it was fated that four maidens should be chosen to act as his brides, during the last month of his earthly life, the month of Toxcatl, crowded with gayeties and tears.
So Five-eagle, as the Youth of Toxcatl, walked through the public squares of Tenochtitlan and over the many bridges that spanned its canals, and on the great wall that held back the storm winds of the lake. Clothed in the bright habiliments of divinity, with a laughing retinue, he played upon his flutes and chanted songs and danced. And no one in all the city remembered to have seen an understudy of the great God of Magic in other years so skilled in all the graces or so well taught to tread the brief stage of vanity and pride. Five-eagle, a captive from the enslaved city of Quauhnahuac, where Xochiquetzalli had been worshiped in happier times, ruled great and small in Tenochtitlan.
He chanted many songs that the people loved, but none that was so great a favorite as a splendid lament of fallen soldiers, a requiem of the young men who died in the sacred service of arms. All Mexico knew this song composed by a famous ruler of the Toltec cities whose name was a smile and a benediction after the passing of many years.
Words like the saddest, drooping flowers I seek
I, the Singer, weaving my tears in song,