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CHAPTER 1

Losing my name

The Spaniards stopped us from using our Indian names. When I feel particularly rebellious I order my friends to call me by my real name - Tecuichpo - I’m not an Empress and a Princess for nothing. When Cortés came he instructed everyone to change to Christian names so as not to anger his god, but I never hear the gods talking to anyone, let alone call our names.
     The name I have now is Isabel, after some old Spanish queen or goddess. Cortés gave it to me when he was my lover.  The reason for worrying about my name more than I ever did is that I am going to write about my life and to say ‘I’ all the time would be puzzling and mysterious if the reader never knew who I was, and I hate mysteries. Let me be honest – losing my name saddens me whenever I think about it and I often plot great revenges. Perhaps when I can at last use my Aztec name - and the time will come - I will insist on naming my palace after it.  This gold-filled farmhouse certainly has no soul and, so far, no real name apart from my husband’s – Casa Juan Cano.
     Juan says I’m writing what the Spanish call a diary but I certainly do not intend to be dictated to by days, to have to fill in that accusing white space every evening and feel guilty if I don’t. The best idea is to write when you’re excited, or interested or angry and then keep it secret –that at least is a good Spanish idea. They love secrets. Juan gave me a leather book with a gold lock and key which was kind of him but suggests he isn’t too interested in my great opinions.
     I was born in Tenochtitlán which we now have to call Mexico City: I treat all these Christian changes with fairly good humour because I sense it was what my father, the Emperor Moctezuma the Second, would have wanted. He may have been uncertain and possibly wrong about the Spanish invaders being white gods but who can ever be sure? I think that if the gods can’t be bothered to make themselves a bit clearer, then why should we care? I must definitely keep this book locked because Juan seems nervous, positively terrified, if you talk about gods. Or 'my God' as he has it, almost as if he knows one personally.
     You must all know the story of how my people thought that Cortés and his soldiers were long-awaited, tall, fair-skinned gods from the east.  Poor things, they must have thought that all their praying and sacrificing had paid off, but my trusting father must have been high on coca at the time to imagine that the short, swarthy, belligerent Spaniards were deities worthy of worship.
     Another confession to this secret book and its unknown readers: I can’t remember much about my father, but when your father was an emperor people expect him to have made such a big impression that you have total recall.  He is only a hazy, kindly shadow - more of a warmth and a comforting smell. When I try to remember his face no picture comes or, if it does, it is one drawn by a Spanish painter to send back to King Charles in Spain. There were several copies made before he got it right and Cortés approved, with my father in full plumed regalia and looking angrier than he usually did. I never felt him to be angry.  Perhaps I should be grateful to that painter because a princess ought to remember her father if she is to have any credibility. I play the regal card quite a lot.  Juan rather likes it and everyone remarks how like my father I am and how I can’t help being overbearing considering how I was spoilt.  I did have a brother some years older, but I can’t remember him either. He was killed – not by the Spaniards as people say - but by a northern tribe, the same ones that killed my father. There’s one advantage to being a girl, no one thinks you are worth killing.
     Another thing about my father (I don’t usually talk about him this much but it seems a good idea to set the record straight at the beginning) was that he was about to sacrifice me when fate took a hand. Or was it the gods? Needless to say I don’t remember any of this but it’s a popular story round here and the locals love to tell it. What greater act could a man do than to sacrifice his only daughter? I hear you muttering about sons, but my brother was already toddling about with a sword and proving himself too useful to sacrifice.  They tell me my father was quite captivated by me. I was a terror even then and thoroughly spoilt, so he felt it was quite a big gesture to sacrifice me and it’s always easy to impress people with ceremony. He used to stage a lot of that kind of thing – thousands of sacrificed villagers sort of equalled one royal son or daughter - and of course the sacrificial offerings were stoned out of their minds on mescal and had coca lavished on them days beforehand, so that when their time came all they could think of was an easy time in the afterlife.. But how come we never heard back from all those thousands of happy souls? Total silence, not even a message saying ‘wish you were here’.
     Have you noticed how scandalized the Spaniards always are about human sacrifice?  Soon after their so-called conquest of Mexico there was a second invasion of Catholic priests and nuns, looking shocked and making the sign of the cross at every step, going on about bloodthirsty rituals and terrified peasants hurled from the pyramids to the rocks below.
     It wasn’t like that at all because there were always lavish parties for days on end with lots of music and poetry and heaps of gold and cocoa beans for the families of the sacrificed, or so I am told. Christians, on the other hand, take great delight in slaughtering thousands in battle with never a thought for what will happen to their souls and they are always so depressingly sad and neurotic about it. And did you hear about the burnings at the stake and the torture? Real gods would never stoop to such pettiness. In my case, father and mother entered into the spirit of the thing. There were presents and a new dress and I could invite whoever I wanted and have them to stay the night before the ceremony. Imagine their disappointment when I broke out in the most hideous scarlet pustules and swellings, so bad that the gods would probably have sent me back. Another doubt creeps in there; how come none of the thousands we sent on were ever sent back as rejects? There must surely have been a few undesirables that were unsuitable for the afterlife because I'm sure my father never vetted anyone thoroughly. He never liked to disappoint the chosen ones.  So I was considered unfit for sacrifice by the priests and I think several of my friends –they were of course all children of court dignitaries – got to go instead of me. If I’d been a year or so older I’d probably have thrown a strop but, as I say, I was only a baby and can’t remember it.
     My father made the big mistake of treating the adventurer, Hernán Cortés, as an equal and from then on the Spaniards have ruined everything we and our ancestors have created. I was very young when Cortés first made love to me, still thinking that perhaps - who could be sure - perhaps he was an envoy of the gods? He was never as murderous as we Aztecs like others to believe; any commander has to be firm, but I never forgave him for failing to save my brother Topiltzin when he could have stopped him being tortured and killed. Hernán said that he did not know my brother had been taken prisoner, so he certainly was not an all-seeing god. He certainly knew about my young husband, the Emperor Cuautemoc, and had him hanged because he and I together would have been more than a match for the Spaniards.
     My maidservant, Tona, is clattering across the courtyard on the mare that Juan gave her last year.  She’s taken to it surprisingly well, apart from trying to dismount which is always a laugh. I think my husband was trying to encourage me to take up horse riding but the first time I tried to mount the beast it rolled furious eyes at me and trod on my foot. Juan won’t give up – I think all Spaniards were born on horseback – but riding on the backs of animals seems most unnatural to any civilized Aztec and it was one of the reasons for our defeat.  Our warriors had never seen horses before and the priests had foretold not only of white gods but of strange beasts half animal, half man, so when they saw horsemen they were awestruck. Neither had our warriors ever seen vessels the size of galleons before and they took them for floating palaces of the gods and went into a dither about those as well. If only we could start the past few years again, knowing what we know now about the Spaniards, they never would have defeated us.
     I still can’t get used to horses - the way they roll their eyes and rear up at almost nothing; I am quite happy in my carriage pulled by two of the monsters - a more dignified means of transport for a princess - and I’m even happier to travel by canoe because the lakes here are so vast that you can travel to many places by water. Many of the market traders run their business from floating stalls, and trees and flowers growing among the shallow waters provide a pleasant, shady pleasure ground where the Spaniards seldom venture. I plan to have secret meetings with some of the tribal leaders in the middle of the lake where we cannot be spied upon by priests or informers; things cannot stay as they are forever.
     When we travelled by road my imperial family was always carried on chairs by several bearers and I still go into town like that sometimes when I want to make an impression, especially if it is a festival. Cortés has forbidden it because he knows I remind the people of the old days, of the emperor and his family in procession, their jewels and feathers swaying in time to the march of the bearers. I take no notice, but have to bribe the men with more and more silver. 
     I see Tona has fallen off rather than dismounted. She landed in an ungainly heap and then scrambled to her feet after a bit of rolling about. She seems in a hurry to tell me something  and is heading up here at a trot. Better lock this away for now, but I plan to write about the real Mexico, the spirit that is bubbling away under the surface and carries on the old ceremonies, the dancing and wonderful poems set to music with age-old sounds that float on warm, spice-scented air; about the hard-working people who smile and sing and who still can’t believe that these few invaders with steel, gunpowder and other magic tricks are really here to stay.

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