"Please, Tenamáxtli, no more," she said sadly. "In my sleep I confronted all those obstacles in my dreams, one after another. And you are right. They are formidable. Nevertheless, little Ehécatl is all that I have left of Netzlin and our life together. That little I wish to keep."
"Very well, then," I said. "If you mustpersist in this folly, I insist on helping you to do so. You will need a friend and an ally against those obstacles."
She looked at me unbelievingly. "You would encumber yourself with both of us impediments?"
"For as long as I can, Citláli. Mind you, I do not speak of marriage or of permanence. There will come a time when I expect to be doing—other things."
"That plan of which you have spoken. To drive the white men out of The One World."
"Yes, that. But, for right now, I had already decided to move out of the mesón and seek private lodgings. I will stay here with you—if you agree—and contribute my savings to the household. I think I need no further classes in my study of Spanish, and I knowI want no more in the study of Christianity. I will continue to do my work with the Cathedral's notarius, to keep on earning those wages. In my free time I will occupy Netzlin's concesión stall in the market. I see there is a supply of baskets yet to be sold, and when you regain your strength, you can make more. There will be no need for you ever to leave Ehécatl's side. In the evenings, you can assist me in my experiments at making pólvora."
"It is more than I could have hoped for, and you are kind to offer it, Tenamáxtli." But she looked vaguely troubled.
"You have been kind to me, Citláli, ever since we met. And already helpful, I believe, in that matter of the pólvora. Have you some objection to my offer?"
"Only that I, too, have no intention of marrying anyone. Or to be anyone's woman. Even if that is the price of survival."
I said stiffly, "I suggested no such thing. Nor did I expect you to infer it."
"Forgive me, dear friend." She reached out a hand and held mine. "I am sure you and I could easily become... and I know the powdered root that safeguards against... but it does not alwaysavert mishaps... Ayya, Tenamáxtli, I am trying to say that I very well might yearn someday to have you—but notto chance having another deformed child like—"
"I understand, Citláli. I promise, we shall live together as chastely as brother and sister, bachelor and spinster."
Which is what we did, and for quite a long time, during which many things occurred, of which I shall try to tell in sequence.
That first day, I removed my belongings—and the sloshing axixcáli pot—from the Mesón de San José, never to go there again. I also took away with me the artificer Pochotl, and led him to the Cathedral, and introduced him to the notarius Alonso, and highly recommended him as the one man best qualified to devise all those sacramental baubles that were wanted. Before Alonso, in turn, led him off to meet the clerics who would instruct and supervise him, I told Pochotl where I would be living from now on, and then told him in an undertone:
"I will, of course, be seeing you here at the Cathedral, and will be much interested in your progress with this work. But I trust you will report to me at my new lodgings your progress in that otherwork."
"I will, to be sure. If all goes well for me here, I shall be immeasurably indebted to you, Cuatl Tenamáxtli."
And that very night I began my attempts at concocting pólvora. All the traveling the axixcáli had endured had not dissolved or disturbed the little whitish crystals that, true to Citláli's word, had formed in the bottom of the pot. I gingerly extracted those from the xitli, and set them to dry on a piece of bark paper. Then, simply at a venture, I set the pot itself on the hearth fire until the remaining urine came to a boil. It produced a fearful stink and made Citláli exclaim, in mock horror, that she was sorry she had let me move into the house. However, my venture proved worthwhile; when all the xitli had boiled away, it left still more of the little crystals.
While all of those were drying, I went off to the market and easily found lumps of charcoal and of the yellow azufre for sale, and brought home with me a quantity of each. While I pounded those lumps into powder with the heel of my Spanish boot, Citláli, though still abed, ground the xitli crystals on a métlatl stone. Then, on my piece of bark paper, I thoroughly mixed the black, yellow and white grains together in equal measure. For the sake of caution against accident, I took the paper to the muddy alley outside the house. A number of the neighborhood children, already attracted by the stench I had inflicted on the locality, watched with curiosity as I touched an ember from the hearth to that powder mixture. And then they cheered, though the result was no thunder or lightning, merely a small, sparkly fizzle and a cloud of smoke.
I was not too disappointed to make a gracious bow to the children in thanks for their applause. I had already perceived, in the pinch of pólvora I had got from the young soldier-fowler, that the mixture was not compounded equally of black, white and yellow. But I had to start somewhere,and this first attempt had been a success in one important respect. Its cloud of blue smoke smelled exactly like the smoke that had erupted from the arcabuces at the lakeside. So the crystal derived from female urine mustbe the third ingredient of pólvora. Now I had only to try various proportions of those ingredients to achieve the proper balance. My chief problem, obviously, would be the procurement of enough of those xitli crystals. I half thought of asking the gathered children to run home and bring me all their mothers' axixcáltin. But I dismissed that idea; it would cause questions from the neighbors—the first, probably, being their asking why a demented man was at large in their streets.
Some months went by, during which I kept boiling urine at every opportunity, until I think the neighborhood in general had got used to the smell, but I personally was getting thoroughly sick of it. Anyway, that labor did yield the crystals, though still in minute quantities, making it difficult for me to try differing measures of the white powder and the other two colors. I kept track of all my experiments, recording them on a piece of paper that I was careful not to misplace—listing them like this: two parts black, two yellow, one white; and three parts black, two yellow, one white; and so on. But no mixture I tried gave any more heartening result than the very first, when the proportions had been one and one and one. That is to say, most mixtures provided only a sparkle, fizzle and smoke, and some gave no result at all.
Meanwhile, I had explained to the notarius Alonso why I was ceasing to attend the classes at the Colegio. He agreed with me that my fluency in Spanish would be best improved, henceforward, by my actually speaking and hearing it, rather than studying the rules of it. He was not so approving, however, of my retirement from Tete Diego's teachings about Christianity.
"You could be imperiling the salvation of your immortal soul, Juan Británico," he said solemnly.
I asked, "Would not God count it a good deed that I hazard my salvation in order to support a helpless widow woman?"
"Well..." he said, uncertain. "But only until she is able to support herself, Cuatl Juan. Then you must resume your preparation for Confirmation."
At intervals thereafter, he would inquire as to the health and condition of the widow, and every time I could tell him honestly that she was still housebound, having to care for her crippled child. Thereafter, too, I believe Alonso kept me employed long beyond the time that I was really of any use to him—finding ever more obscure, even dull and valueless pages of word-pictures made far away and long ago, for me to help him translate—just because he knew that my wages went mostly for the upkeep of my little household.