The Spaniard's Innocent Maiden

My Dear Benicio,

I love you, but I must take care to marry well. Seek a fortune. I will wait for you as long as I can.

Your Luisa

Benicio’s heart overflowed. There it was, written in her own hand: her answer to his proposal. She loved him as he loved her. She would wait for him and become his wife. All she required was a bit of wealth, to keep her in the lifestyle she wanted. The lifestyle she deserved.

Benicio looked up and saw the old captain, still there, still waiting at the other end of the plaza. He might have been the Devil himself, considering whether or not to take Benicio’s soul.

Benicio began to walk towards him, letting his book of formulas drop upon the ground. Benicio was a man, after all, and the purpose of a man was not to sit at a desk, but to seek a fortune. To make himself worthy of the woman he loved.

Luisa, I promise, he murmured.

He caught the captain’s eye. The old man flashed Benicio a knowing grin.

Chapter One (#ulink_46cea795-fa45-5da1-803b-1686b49e76aa)

Cempoala City, Totonac Territory,

Mexican Empire—March 1519

Tula was not afraid of the dark. She was not afraid of the spirits that lurked in the shadows, whispering their complaints. The darkness was good; it concealed her. It wrapped around her like a magic cloak, letting her pass unseen to the places where she kept her secrets.

Even now, as she walked softly between the mats of her sleeping family members, she felt no need for the aid of light. The warmth of their breath told her where to place her feet and she could feel the fresh air that seeped through the front doorway, beckoning her.

She pushed open the thin wooden door and closed it gently behind her, stepping out into Cempoala’s central plaza. She scanned the sprawling space for movement. Not a single living thing stirred beneath the moonless sky and the darkness of night greeted her like a trusted friend. No, Tula did not fear the dark.

What Tula feared was the colour black. Black was the colour of the Tribute Takers’ hair. They wore it pulled back, tight to their skulls, and trapped it in buns at the bases of their necks. They lived in a great floating city high in the mountains, where their leader, Montezuma, whispered to the gods.

Black was the colour of the ink on the scrolls the Takers carried—long lists noting the tribute the Totonac people were required to provide every eighty days: four pots of vanilla, twenty-eight bins of maize, twenty-one bins of smoked fish, two thousand feathers, four thousand cotton cloaks.

Black was the colour of the mushrooms the Takers ate—mushrooms that gave them visions of the end of the world. A menace from the heavens was coming, they told the Totonacs, and it could only be prevented with the blood of sacrifice.

Totonac blood.

Tula walked around her stone house and into the garden behind it. She dug beneath the tomato plants and found her stash of spears and arrows. Digging deeper, she seized her atlatl, which would send those arrows to their marks. She had killed so many creatures in her lifetime—far too many than was good or right. But the Takers demanded meat, more and more of it, and the Takers had to be fed. She ran her finger softly across the sharp, obsidian blades.

They, too, were black.

‘Daughter?’ whispered her father’s voice.

‘Father?’

The shadowy figure of her father appeared in the back doorway. ‘Why do you rise in the useless hours? Where do you go?’

‘I go to catch the fish, Father, and the birds. Coalingas and macaws. Perhaps even a quetzal.’

‘Nahuatl. Speak to me in Nahuatl.’

Tula sighed. ‘I go to find the...the...swimming creatures...’ she faltered ‘...and the flying creatures.’ Of all the languages her father had taught her, Tula liked Nahuatl the least. It was the language of the Mexica, the language of their oppressors, yet her father would not speak to her in any other tongue.

‘Why do you not wait for the Sun God to be reborn?’ he asked her, pointing at the eastern horizon.

‘I do not wait because the swimmers do not wait,’ she lied.

‘You rush to find fish, but you delay finding a husband.’

‘Why seek a husband if he is doomed to die?’ She bit her tongue. She had spoken too quickly and too loudly. Her father bent his neck inside the house, listening for her elder sister, Pulhko, who slept lightly and without rest. Satisfied with the unbroken peace, he shook his head. ‘Your sister Pulhko will remarry as soon as she is well,’ said her father.

But she will never be well, thought Tula, saying nothing.

‘And your sister Xanca seeks a husband already.’

‘Xanca is young and her head is full of colours. She knows little of the cruelty of the world.’

Her father did not respond and she knew that it was because he agreed. Xanca was not old enough to remember when Pulhko’s husband and two boys were taken. Nor had Xanca been instructed in the history of the world, as Tula had been. As a result, Xanca’s spirit remained light. Too light, perhaps.

‘Your husband is your protection,’ her father said finally. ‘As long as you are unmarried, you are exposed.’

‘We are all exposed. Marriage matters little.’

Now he whispered, ‘The Takers have asked our Chief to provide women for the festival of the fifteenth month. They seek noble young women, Tula,’ he said significantly. ‘Women without carnal knowledge.’

Women like me, Tula thought. ‘If they come for me, Father, they will not find me.’

‘The Takers are everywhere. They will find you.’

‘I am slippery like a fish,’ she said in Totonac.

‘You must marry.’

‘Pulkho was married. Now look at all she has lost. I will not follow a path that leads only to blackness.’ A lump of anguish plugged Tula’s throat.

‘I cannot protect you always, Daughter. If you do not marry, you will be taken. Then, it will not matter that you speak their language, or that you know the history of the world, or that you are slippery like a fish. You will suffer the flowery—’

‘The place of fish is four hours’ journey,’ Tula interrupted.

Tula’s father sighed. ‘There are fishing grounds much closer to Cempoala. Why must you travel so far away?’

‘Where I go, there are so many fish that you can walk upon their backs!’ said Tula, hoping that exaggeration would help conceal the lie she told. ‘In a single day, I can obtain our family’s entire contribution.’

She knew he could not argue with her. Their family’s share of tribute was fixed—there was nothing to do but make and gather it each cycle and be done.

‘I will return late tonight with my basket overflowing,’ Tula assured him.

‘Be safe,’ he whispered.

‘I will, Father,’ she replied. She pointed to where her atlatl poked out of her basket. ‘You taught me how.’ She blew him a kiss and set off across the plaza.