All that I have recounted, reverend scribes, had been arranged by Cuitlahuac in every detail, long before our arrival in Cortés's presence. It had been at his order that the crowd of Mexíca men and women gathered to clamor outside the palace. It had been at his order that they then dispersed to fetch food and drink for the white men. But—what none of the Spaniards had noticed in the confusion—it was only the women in that crowd who had left the plaza at that command. When they returned, they did not again enter the encampment, but handed their trays and jars and baskets to the men who had remained. So there were no longer any women in the danger area, except for Malintzin and her Texcalteca maids, for whose safety we cared nothing. And our men were still coming and going, in and out of the palace, back and forth through the camp, dispensing meat and maize and such, bringing dry wood for the soldiers' fires, cooking in the palace kitchens, doing every kind of duty that would account for their being on the scene... and would keep them there until the temple conch trumpets signaled midnight.

"Midnight is the striking time," Cuitlahuac reminded us. "By then, Cortés and all these others will have become used to the constant traffic and the apparent servility of our nearly naked and clearly unarmed men. Meanwhile, let Cortés hear the music and see the incense smoke of what appears to be a jubilant ceremony preliminary to my inauguration. Find and collect every possible priest. They have already been told to await our instructions, but you may have to nudge them, since they, like the white men, will balk at having this rainfall wash them clean. Assemble the priests at the pyramid of Tlatelólco. Have them put on the loudest, most firelit performance they have ever done. Also assemble there all the island's women and children and every man excused from fighting. They will make a convincing multitude of celebrants, and they should be safe there."

"Lord Regent," said one of the Council elders. "I mean, Lord Speaker. If the outlanders are all to die at midnight, why did you press Cortés to name a date for his departure?"

Cuitlahuac gave the old man a look; I wagered that the old man would not much longer be a member of the Council. "Cortés is not such a fool as you, my lord. He certainly knows that I wish to be rid of him. Had I not spoken testily and insistently, he would have had cause to suspect a forcible ouster. Now I can hope he feels secure in my reluctant acceptance of his presence. I fervently hope he has no reason to feel otherwise between now and midnight."

He did not. But, while Cortés evidently felt no anxiety for the security of himself and his fellows, he apparently was most anxious to get the plundered treasury out of reach of its owners—or perhaps he decided that the rain-wet streets would make the sledges easier for his horses to pull. Anyway, despite their having to work in drenching rain, his carpenter-soldiers had the two crude land-boats hammered together not long after dark. Then other soldiers, helped by some of our own many men who were still making themselves useful to the Spaniards, carried the gold and jewels out of the palace and distributed them in equal piles on the sledges. Meanwhile, other soldiers used an elaborate tangle of leather straps to hitch four horses to each load. It was still some while before midnight when Cortés gave the order to move out, and the horses leaned into their leather webbing, like human porters bending against their tumplines, and the sledges glided quite smoothly across the wet marble paving of The Heart of the One World.

Though the bulk of the white army remained in the plaza, a considerable escort of armed soldiers went with the train, and they were led by the three highest-ranking Spaniards: Cortés, Narváez, and Alvarado. Moving that immense treasure was a laborious task, I grant you, but it hardly required the personal attention of all three commanders. I suspect that they all went because no one of them would trust either or both of the others to be in possession of all those riches, unwatched, even for a little while. Malintzin also accompanied her master, probably just to enjoy a refreshing excursion after her long time spent in the palace. The sledges slid west across the plaza and onto the Tlácopan avenue. None of the white men evinced any suspicion at finding the city outside the square empty of people, for they could hear the throb of drums and music coming from the northern end of the island, and could see the low clouds yonder tinted red by the glow of urn fires and torchlights.

Like our earlier, unexpected opportunity to remove Motecuzóma as a possible obstacle to our plans, Cortés's unexpectedly sudden removal of the treasure was an unforeseen circumstance, and impelled Cuitlahuac to make his attack earlier than planned. Like Motecuzóma's demise, Cortés's precipitate move worked to Cuitlahuac's advantage. When the treasure train slithered onto the Tlácopan avenue, it was obviously taking the shortest crossing to the mainland, so Cuitlahuac could recall the warriors he had posted to man the other two causeways, and add them to his striking force. Then he passed the word to all his knights and cuáchictin: "Do not wait for the midnight trumpets. Strike now!"

I must remark that I was at home with Waiting Moon during these events I am recounting, for I was one of the men whom Cuitlahuac had charitably described as "excused from fighting": men too old or unfit to take part. So I did not personally witness the happenings on the island and the mainland—and no single witness could have been everywhere, in any case. But I was later present to hear reports of our various commanders, so I can tell you more or less accurately, lord friars, all the occurrences of what Cortés has ever since called "the Sad Night."

At the command to strike, the first move was made by some of those men of ours who had been in The Heart of the One World ever since the stoning of Motecuzóma. Their job was to loose and scatter the Spaniards' horses—and they had to be brave men, for never in any war had any of our warriors had to contend with any but human creatures. While some of the horses had gone with the treasure train, there still remained about eighty of them, all tethered in the corner of the plaza where stood the temple that had been converted to a Christian chapel. Our men untied the leather head straps that held the horses, then plucked burning sticks from a nearby campfire and ran waving them among the loosed animals. The horses panicked and charged away in all directions, galloping through the camp, kicking over the stacked harquebuses, trampling several of their owners and throwing all the other white men into a confusion of running and shouting and cursing.

Then the mass of our armed warriors poured into the square. Each of them carried two maquahuime, and the extra weapon he tossed to one of the men who had already been long inside the plaza. None of our warriors wore the quilted armor, because it was not much protection in close combat, and would have been constrictive when sodden by the rain; our men fought wearing only their loincloths. The plaza had been but dimly lighted all night, since the soldiers' cooking fires had had to be sheltered from the rain by propping shields and other objects to lean over them. The running and plunging horses pounded most of those fires to pieces, and so disconcerted the soldiers that they were quite taken by surprise when our nearly naked warriors leaped out of the shadows, some slashing and chopping at any glimpse of white skin or bearded face or steel-wearing body, others forcing their way inside the palace Cortés had so recently quit.

The Spaniards manning the cannons on the palace roof heard the commotion below, but could see little of what was happening, and anyway could not discharge their weapons into the camp of their comrades. Another circumstance which worked in our favor was that the few Spaniards in the plaza who could lay hands on a harquebus found that it had got too wet to spit lightning and thunder and death. A number of the soldiers inside the palace did manage to use their harquebuses just once, but had no time to recharge them before our swarming warriors were upon them. So every white man and Texcaltecatl inside the palace was killed or captured, and our own men suffered few casualties in the process. But our warriors fighting outside, in The Heart of the One World, were not so quickly or entirely victorious. After all, the Spaniards and their Texcalteca allies were brave men and trained soldiers. Recovering from their first surprise, they staunchly fought back. The Texcalteca had weapons equal to ours, and the white men, even deprived of their harquebuses, had swords and spears far superior to ours.