Corrie opened her mouth to speak, but Ford beat her to it. “Well, Dr. Mejía over here thinks she’s Chimalli’s descendant.” His voice carried an air of skepticism—and a healthy dose of arrogance. He didn’t believe her. Few people did, in fact, so she typically kept that information to herself.
Now she was regretting ever mentioning it to Ford, especially seeing as he’d used that information to get her here in the first place.
“Seriously?” Sunny asked, her eyes wide and full of wonderment.
“Well, uh, yes. My grandfather traced my family history, and it appears that, yes, I could be one of Chimalli’s descendants.”
“Except for the fact, however, that it was widely assumed that Chimalli was infertile, having been castrated with the very knife he took when he fled Tenochtitlán,” Ford felt the need to clarify.
Corrie glared at him. “Yes, that’soneversion. But Diego Mendoza’s account presents a different version of the events.”
“Oh, right! You mentioned that in your dissertation, didn’t you?” one of the interns asked.
Her dissertation? She perked up in her seat.
“You... you’ve read my dissertation?”
“We all have. Required reading assigned by Dr. Matthews,” Sunny clarified.
She shot a glance over to Ford, sitting with his elbows on the table and taking a swig of water. “What? It’s a good paper. I mean, it’s practically the textbook on Chimalli,” he explained.
Was that... was that a compliment? Well, fuck. She pressed her knees together. His now calm, casual demeanor oozed with sex appeal, but a compliment? Ifthatwasn’t the biggest turn-on Corrie had ever experienced...
Sure, there wasn’t much concrete documentation on Chimalli, and shehadgathered almost everything there was to know about him within that one document, but surely Ford didn’t admit—to his own students, no less—that she knew more about Chimalli than he did. Did he?
Nearly speechless at the revelation, Corrie finally turned back to the students. “Well, I... uh, yes. I mentioned it. But, as evidenced by your professor, it’s not a widely believed account.”
“Can you tell us a little more?” Mateo asked.
Corrie glanced at Ford again, as if checking to make sure hewas okay with her telling the tale. It was his dig, after all. Not that Corrie really felt she needed his permission, but it was a professional courtesy that even Ford was worthy of receiving. It was still surprising, though, when he motioned with his hands as if to say,By all means.
“Okay. Well... there are two main theories about what happened to Chimalli. The first and most widely believed is that Chimalli was a high-ranking official in Moctezuma the second’s army and that to pledge his allegiance, he allowed himself to be castrated, signifying that his commitment would be to no one other than the gods. Not a woman. Not a family. Only the gods. But once the Spaniards arrived, Chimalli got scared and fled the city alone, stealing the knife, thinking he could trade it once he was far enough away from the empire.
“The problem with that theory, in my opinion, is that it doesn’t make sense that he would be so dedicated to the gods as to be castrated, but then flee at the first sign of the Spaniards, especially when their initial arrival didn’t appear hostile. It doesn’t add up.”
“Yeah, except that people do strange things when their lives are on the line,” Ford chimed in.
True. But Corrie knew many men, and any who would be brave enough to get their balls cut off—i.e., none of them—wouldn’t then be afraid of a foreign invasion.Especiallynot if they thought they had the backing of literal gods on their side.
“Then what was Mendoza’s version?” Mateo asked.
Her favorite part.
“In Mendoza’s account, Chimalli had actually fallen in love with a macehualtin, a commoner named Yaretzi from a village near Tenochtitlán, but their relationship was frowned upon because Chimalli was a member of the pipiltin, the noble class ofwarriors. Some of the high priests found out and set to have her used as a sacrificial offering during the festival of Panquetzaliztli. But on the eve of her scheduled death, Chimalli rescued her and stole the tecpatl—the sacrificial knife. After they fled the city, they then had a child and lived a relatively peaceful life away from the demise of the Aztecs.”
“How did they have a child if he’d been castrated, though?” Sunny asked.
“He wasn’t castrated. According to Mendoza, that was a lie Moctezuma the second’s most loyal disciples had started as a way to discredit Chimalli, or lessen his worth as a man,” Corrie explained.
“Do you know what the tecpa... tepa—”
“Tecpatl,” she clarified.
“Right, the tecpatl,” one of the interns said. “Do you know what it looks like?”
She shook her head. “No, though a few tecpatl have been discovered, so we have some general idea. The double-edged blade is likely made of flint, possibly white flint. And the handle is likely elaborate, possibly a carved figure such as an animal made out of wood. Maybe adorned with a mosaic of shell pieces or gemstones like turquoise, malachite, or mother-of-pearl. They’re quite beautiful, considering what they were used for. But it was all part of their culture.”
“If there are these two versions, then why don’t most people know about Mendoza’s? Or, better yet, why don’t they believe it?”
