“Neil! Are you all right?” he asked desperately.
Two soldiers started after Dave, but the old man snapped an order and they stopped short, the dust rising up around them. In deference, they touched their hands to their foreheads and watched the proceedings respectfully.
Neil clasped Dave’s hands. “It’s okay,” he said. “Everything’s okay, Dave. These people are friends.”
“They’re Mayas, you know,” Dave said, his eyes blazing. “We’ve found Yucatan after all, pal.”
“I know, I know,” Neil said excitedly. He turned to the old Maya and pointed at him.
“This is Talu.”
The old man smiled. “Talu.”
Dave caught on and pointed to himself. “Dave.”
Talu nodded.
“I think he’s a big wheel,” Neil whispered to Dave. “He orders these other guys around like waiters.”
“Probably a priest,” Dave murmured.
Neil snapped his fingers. “That’s it! I should have known. He
Suddenly the street seemed to fill itself with milling bodies. They gathered around the group of strangers, inquisitive brown eyes taking in the curious scene.
Talu addressed the people softly as Neil looked over the crowd. The men were dressed differently than either Talu or the soldiers. They wore a waist garment that passed between their legs, and their chests were bare except for a square mantle thrown over the shoulders.
Skilfully embroidered into the ends of the waist covering with colored threads, were complicated designs-and some of the men had feathers colorfully decorating their garments in intricate mosaics.
The women’s garments extended far enough up to cover the base of their chests. Many of them wore colorful jewelry.
Neil noted with surprise that many of the men and women were tattooed on their faces.
Talu went on speaking to the people, and they listened quietly. When he had finished, they took up a chant, waving their arms over their heads.
Then they began laughing and shouting, and running off to various parts of the city, leaving the street almost deserted again, with the dust leaping into the air in playful gusts.
Talu spoke to Neil. Neil listened carefully and then shrugged his shoulders.
Dave slapped his forehead. “Oh, no! Wonder boy understands Maya too. He must.”
“No, Dave, I don’t. Look, he’s trying to explain something to us.”
Talu had opened his mouth wide, and was now putting his fingers into it. He dropped his fingers, pantomimed the lifting of an imaginary object, and then put his fingers back into his mouth.
“Food,” Neil said in sudden understanding.
“I’ll be darned,” Dave agreed. “The old boy is inviting us to dinner.”
They sat at low, rectangular tables piled high with food. Four persons sat at each table on small wooden stools provided by Talu. In addition to the stools, Talu had given each of his guests a cloak of fine feather mosaic work and a painted pottery vase which rested on the table before them.
Neil sat at a table with Erik, Dave, and Talu. The other Norsemen were seated at tables arranged in a large square within a court in front of one of the big buildings.
Food in great variety, some foods that Neil knew and others he could only guess at, stretched out in abundance at each table, and Neil realized that this was no ordinary meal but a banquet prepared in honor of the visitors.
Many different types of meat, all cooked to a succulent brown, melted in Neil’s mouth as he tasted each hungrily-deer, wild boar, turkey, small birds that were delicious to the palate.
Bright red tomatoes and sweet potatoes, fat, ripe squashes and juicy beans, avocado pears, plums, papaya, all were spread in colorful profusion before them.
A drink prepared from the cacao bean, boiled with chili pepper before the eyes of the guests and stirred into a froth with a carved stick, was served in great wooden cups.
There was honey, too, in abundance. The only thing Neil missed was bread.
And then the dancing started when they sat back after their meal.
Drumsticks began beating a lively tattoo on various types of drums-a large, slitted, horizontal drum and small round drums, as well as tall, thin ones. Several musicians pounded on turtle shells. A series of flutes, reed, bone, wood, shrieked into being. Large conch shells were pressed to the lips of musicians and blared forth as trumpets. Whistles screamed and calabash mouthpieces were fitted into wooden trumpets. And there were rattles, and together with the rest of the instruments they beat out a wild rhythm while the dancers whirled and gyrated in the center of the square formed by the tables.
The dancers formed a circle, linking hands. Two of the troupe leaped to the center of the circle, one of them armed with slender lances. He drew these back and snapped them across the circle at his partner, his muscles gleaming in the light of the torches, his feet stamping on the paved court in time to the drumbeat. His partner squatted, his feet moving rhythmically, parrying the lances as they came with a small shield no wider than a pole.