Pochotl was no more woebegone than I at being dismissed from the Cathedral roster of workers. He had cannily invested the wages he had been paid, having built for himself a more than decent house and workshop in one of the better colaciones of the city set aside for native settlement. His house was, in fact, right on the edge of the Traza reserved for the Spaniards. And such numbers of those Spaniards had been dazzled by the articles Pochotl had crafted for the Cathedral that he was already being solicited to do private commissions.
"The white men are finally striving to emulate us in culture and refinement and good taste," he said. "Have you noticed, Tenamáxtli? They no longer even smell so bad as before. They have acquired our habit of bathing, though perhaps not so frequently or thoroughly as we do. And now they have learned to appreciate the kind of jewelry that I have always done—much finer and more ingenious works than those of their own clumsy artificers. So they bring me their gold, their silver, their gems, and tell me what they want—a necklace, a finger ring, a sword hilt—and leave me to determine the design. None yet has been less than overjoyed at the results or failed to pay me handsomely. And none has yet remarked on my always somehow having a bit of the metal left over to keep for my own."
"I am mightily glad for you," I said. "I only hope that you have some time free for—"
"Ayyo, yes. The arcabuz is almost complete. I have finished the metal works of it, and now have only to mount those properly in the wooden stock. I was much aided, odd though it may seem, by the order of my dismissal from the Cathedral. The bishop bade me empty and clean my workrooms, and he set guards to make sure that I did not carry off any of the valuables with which I had been entrusted. And I did not, but I did take the opportunity, seeing the soldiers' weapons up close, to ogle every detail of the way those arcabuces are put together. Now—how are you faring in the making of the pólvora?"
I was still engaged in the seemingly never-to-end process of trying different mixtures of the powders, and I will not recount all the dreary time and infuriating attempts I had to endure. I will merely say that I finally achieved success—with a mixture that was two-thirds salitre and one-third comprising equal measures of charcoal and azufre.
When, one afternoon, I used my new lente to bring a dot of sunlight down to ignite that little heap of grayish powder—what would prove to be the ultimate and conclusive trial—the alley outside our house was empty of any of the local children. They all had got even more bored than I by the repeated puny fizzles. On this occasion, however, the powder absolutely spewed sparks, and only a modest puff of the acrid blue smoke. But, most important, it uttered that angry sound like a muted snarl—what I had heard when the young soldier let me pull the gatillo and fire his arcabuz. At last, I knew how to make pólvora, and could make it in significant quantities. After doing a small, private victory dance and giving silent but heartfelt thanks to the war god Huitzilopóchtli—and to my revered late father Mixtli—I hurried off to Pochotl's house to announce my grand achievement.
"Yyo ayyo, I stand in awe of you!" he exclaimed. "Now, as you can see, I too am very nearly done." He gestured at his workbench, bearing the metal components I had already examined, and now also the wooden stock that he was shaping. "While I finish my work, I suggest that you do what I suggested before: test the pólvora in some kind of firmly constricted container."
"I intend to," I said. "Meanwhile, Pochotl, make for the arcabuz also some round lead balls for it to discharge. They must be of a size to ram down into the hollow tube, but must fit snugly in there."
I went again to the market and begged a lump of common clay from a potter there. I took it home and, while Citláli watched pridefully, poured onto that a very modest measure of pólvora, rolled the clay tightly around it to make a ball about the size of a nopáli fruit, punched a tiny hole in that with a quill, then set the ball to dry near the hearth. The next day, it was as hard as any pot, and I took it out to the alley.
This being something new to them, the local children did gather around again, and were equally interested by the lente I was about to use. But I waved them off to a respectful distance—and also put an arm up to shield my face—before I touched the crystal's hot spot to the quill-hole. I am glad that I took those precautions, because the ball disappeared on the instant, with a flash that was dazzling even in the daylight, a cloud of the pungent blue smoke, a noise almost as loud as was made by the arcabuz I had once discharged—and a spray of sharp fragments that stung my raised arm and bare chest. Two or three of the children uttered small yelps, but none of us was more than slightly nicked. Rather too late, it occurred to me that there might have been a roving patrol somewhere near enough to have heard the report. No one came to investigate, but I decided to do my experimenting, from then on, well away from the city.
So, a few days later, carrying a pólvora-packed hard pottery ball as big as my fist, and some of the powder carried loose in a pouch, I took a ferry acáli at the western edge of the island and crossed to the mainland bluff called Chapultépec, Grasshopper Hill. I could easily have walked there; this part of the lake was only about knee-deep, green-brown and fetid. The rocky front of the bluff had formerly, so I was told, been carved with gigantic faces, the many-times-magnified visages of four of the Revered Speakers of the Mexíca. But the faces were gone, because Spanish soldiers had boisterously used them for practice in firing the immense, wheel-mounted, big-mouthed thunder-tubes called culebrinas and falconetes. The bluff was now just a rocky-fronted bluff again, its only notable feature being the aqueduct that jutted out from it, carrying the water from Chapultépec's springs to the city.
All about, the parkland that the last Motecuzóma had laid out—with gardens and fountains and statues—likewise had been obliterated. There existed now only grass, wildflowers, underbrush and, here and there, the great, towering oldest-of-old trees, the ahuehuétquin cypresses, too invulnerably tough for even the Spaniards to chop down. The only people I saw anywhere around were the slaves who were at work every day, repairing the ever-occurring leaks and fractures in the aqueduct. I had to trudge but a short way inland to find myself alone, and to find a spot of ground clear of underbrush, on which to place the object I carried.
This time, I had made the clay ball with a flattened base, and had put there the quill-hole, so the hole was on a level with the ground when I set down the thing. I opened my pouch, and starting from that quill-hole, I dribbled a thin stream of the pólvora to a considerable distance and around the root spread of a big cypress. There, safe behind the tree's trunk, I took out my burning-glass, held it in a sunbeam that had made its way through the foliage, and kindled a small flame at the very end of my powder train. As I had hoped, the loose pólvora began sparking and snarling, and the sparks danced merrily back the way I had come. I realized that this would not always be a practical way to ignite my experimental balls; any breath of wind would interrupt its progress; but that day no wind did. The sparking went around the cypress's bole and out of my sight, but I could still smell the distinctive sharp odor of the pólvora trail's burning.
Then, though I had anticipated it, or at least fervently hoped for it, there erupted such a roar of noise that I jumped in spite of myself. The tree that shielded me seemed to rock, too. Countless birds burst from the greenery all about, screeching and cawing, and the underbrush rustled violently to the scampering of unseen animals. I heard the whizzing sound of the pottery shards flying in all directions, and a few of them going thunk against the limbs of my sheltering tree, while leaves and twigs cut loose by them came fluttering down, and the blue smoke spread its pungent miasma far and wide in the windless air.