Well, the Huaxtéca and others could contrive to make their sudden attack-then-flee forays almost with impunity. But I was now commanding what was practically a traveling city—warriors, slaves, women, whole families, many horses and a herd of cattle—unwieldy, to say the least, to move from battlefield to battlefield. I decided that we needed a permanent place to settle, a place stoutly defensible, whence I could lead or send either small forces or formidable forces in any direction and have a safe haven for them to return to. So I summoned various of my knights who, I knew, had done considerable traveling in these parts of The One World, and asked their advice. A knight named Pixqui said:
"I know the very place, my lord. Our ultimate objective is an assault upon the City of Mexíco, southeast of here, and the place I am thinking of lies just about midway between here and there. The mountains called Miztóapan, 'Where the Cuguars Lurk.' The few white men who have ever seen them call them in their tongue the Mixton Mountains. They are rugged and craggy mountains interlaced with narrow ravines. We can find a valley in there commodious enough to accommodate our whole vast army. Even when the Spaniards learn we are there—as doubtless they will—they would have a hard time getting at us, unless they learn to fly. Lookouts atop the crags around our valley could espy any approaching enemy force. And since any such force would have to thread its way through those narrow ravines almost in single file, just a handful of our arcabuz men could stop them there, while our other warriors would rain arrows and spears and boulders down onto them from above."
"Excellent," I said. "It sounds impregnable. I thank you, Knight Pixqui. Go, then, throughout the camp and spread the order for everyone to prepare to march. We will leave at dawn for the Miztóapan Mountains. And one of you find that slave girl Verónica, my scribe, and have her attend me."
It was the Iyac Pozonáli who fetched you to me that fateful day. I had long been aware that he was often in your company, and regarding you with yearning looks. I am not oblivious to such things, and I have frequently been in love myself. I knew the iyac to be an admirable young man and—even before the revelation that transpired between us that day, Verónica—I could hardly have been jealous if it turned out that Pozonáli found favor in your eyes, as well.
Anyway, you had already written your account of Nochéztli's assault on the estancias—since you had been present there—so now I dictated the account of my own much more difficult assault on the trading post, you writing down all the words foregoing here, concluding with the decision to move to the Miztóapan. When I had done, you murmured:
"I am happy, my lord, to hear that you intend soon to attack the City of Mexíco. I hope you obliterate it as you did Tonalá."
"So do I. But why do you?"
"Because that will also obliterate the nunnery where I lived after my mother died."
"That convent was in the City of Mexíco? You never mentioned its location before. I know of only one nunnery there. It was very near the Mesón de San José, where I myself once lived."
"That is the one, my lord."
A somewhat disturbing but not dismaying suspicion was already dawning on me.
"And you hold some grudge against those nuns, child? I have often meant to ask. Why did you flee that convent and become a homeless wanderer, finally to find refuge among our slave contingent?"
"Because the nuns were so cruel, first to my mother, then to me."
"Explain."
"After her Church schooling, when my mother had had sufficient instruction in that religion, and had attained the age required, she was confirmed as a Christian and immediately took what they call holy orders—became a bride of Christ, as they say—and took residence in the convent as a novice nun. However, not many months later, it was discovered that she was pregnant. She was stripped of her habit and viciously whipped and evicted in disgrace. As I have said, she never told even me who it was that made her pregnant." You added bitterly, "I doubt that it was her husband Christ."
I pondered awhile, then asked, "Might your mother's name have been Rebeca?"
"Yes," you said, astonished. "How could you possibly know that, my lord?"
"I briefly attended that same Church school, so I know—some little—of her story. But I left the city about that time, so I never knew the whole story. After Rebeca's eviction, what became of her?"
"Bearing a fatherless bastard inside her, I daresay she was ashamed to go home to her own mother and father—her white patrón. For a time, she earned a precarious living, doing menial odd jobs about the markets, literally living on the streets. I was birthed on a bed of rags in some alley somewhere. I suppose I am fortunate to have survived the experience."
"And then?"
"Now she had two mouths to feed. I blush to say it, my lord, but she went—what you call in your language 'astraddle the road.' And, she being a mulata—well, you can imagine—she could hardly solicit rich Spanish nobles or even prosperous pochtéca merchants. Only market porters and Moro slaves and the like—entertaining them in squalid little inns and even in back streets outdoors. Toward the end—I could not have been more than four years old—I remember having to watch her do these things."
"Toward the end. What was the end?"
"Again I blush, my lord. From some one of her straddlings, she contracted the nanáua, the disease of uttermost shame and revulsion. When she knew she was dying, she went again to the convent, leading me by the hand. Under the rules of that Christian order, the nuns could not refuse to take me in. But of course they knew my history, so I was despised by all, and I had no hope of being accorded a novitiate. They simply used me as a servant, a slave, a drudge. Of all the work that needed doing, I did the lowliest, but at least they gave me bed and board."
"And education?"
"As I have told you, my mother had imparted to me much of the knowledge that she herself had earlier acquired. And I have some facility at being observant and attentive. So, even while I labored, I watched and listened and absorbed what the nuns were teaching their novices and other respectable young girls in residence there. When finally I decided I had learned all that they could, however viciously, teach me there... and when the drudgery and beatings had become intolerable... that was when I ran away."
"You are one supremely remarkable girl, Verónica. I am immeasurably glad that you survived your wanderings and came at last to—to us."
I pondered some more. How best to say this?
"From what little acquaintance I had with my schoolmate Rebeca, I believe it was her mother who gave you your white blood, and her father would have been a Moro, not some Spanish patrón. But that does not matter. What matters is that your father—whoever he was—I believe to have been an indio, a Mexícatl or Aztécatl. Thus you have three bloods in your veins, Verónica. That combination, I suppose, accounts for your uncommon comeliness. Now, mind you, I can only surmise the rest from the few hints dropped by Rebeca. But, if I am right, your paternal grandfather was a high noble of the Mexíca, a man brave and wise and truly noble in all respects. A man who defied the Spanish conquerors to the very end of his life. His contribution to your nature would account for your uncommon intelligence, and especially your astounding facility with words and writing. If I am right, that grandfather of yours was a Mexícatl named Mixtli—more properly Mixtzin—Lord Mixtli."