4. The Second Giving
Tenochtitlan, Mexico, 1519
It was broad day when the high priest arrived at the First Speaker's palace, but the fine cotton shades that had been drawn at all the windows made it quite dim and almost cool inside, in the inner room where Montezuma waited alone, seated on a low chair.
"Lord, lord my great lord!" growled the high priest in deep reverence, entering barefoot and crouching. His gaze was lowered to the floor. The article he had brought-a small oaken chest-he carried as a symbolic burden upon his back.
"Get up and open the petaca," ordered Montezuma. From an arrow's flight outside the room's white, dim walls came priestly voices chanting. They were preparing human sacrifice at the great altar of Huichilobos, god of death and war.
The high priest set down the chest and opened it. What it contained he handed to the First Speaker, who sat upon his little stool and looked steadily for some time upon that familiar and yet, to him, enigmatic golden smile.
Thongs of leather made from human skin were tied now between the flange-holes. A great drum boomed outside. Montezuma suddenly hooked his thumbs inside the straps and raised the Mask and put it on. The high priest, who had dared to rise halfway, once more shrank down.
The Mask's eyes cleared for Montezuma, and he could see a small lizard looking down at him from a high corner of the room. Then the vision came.
Today the vision did not last long, and the First Speaker soon took off the Mask again. He said: "Quetzalcoatl and the other white-skinned, bearded gods are coming, as has been long foretold. The Gift of the Dark Gods we will no longer need." And he held out the Mask.
The priest took it back, restored its wrapping of soft cloth, and stowed it back in the small chest and closed the lid. He said nothing. There was subtle disapproval in his bearing.
"Is it in your mind," Montezuma asked him, "that this stranger from the sea is not Quetzalcoatl after all? That he and his companions, who come in floating houses from the direction of the sunrise, are only men? I tell you, I see through the Mask their leader's face, and I know in my heart who he is-Quetzalcoatl the divine. The god for whose return I long have yearned with all my strength. Of course he is a man. A god may be a man, too, may he not? Even as it is with the First Speaker who now sits before you?"
The high priest had fallen to his lowest crouch. A verbal answer was now required. "It must be as my great lord says."
Montezuma rose to his feet. "I tell you, Quetzalcoatl returns from the sea to rule his people, as the Gift of the Dark Gods long ago foretold. So take it to him now, along with the rest of the gold that we are sending him-what further need will I have of its help, when he for whom we yearn is here? But see that the Mask is given to him secretly, for his use alone; that he may know that I have recognized him from afar."
The high priest did not speak again, but trembled as he backed away.