The Fair God; or, The Last of the 'Tzins

“No, you are free.”

Hualpa kissed the floor, and arose, and hurried from the palace to the house of Xoli on the tianguez. The effect of his appearance upon that worthy, and the effect of the story afterwards, may be imagined. Attention to the wounds, a bath, and sound slumber put the adventurer in a better condition by the next noon.

And from that night he thought more than ever of glory and Nenetzin.

CHAPTER III

THE PORTRAIT

Next day, after the removal of the noon comfitures, and when the princess Tula had gone to the hammock for the usual siesta, Nenetzin rushed into her apartment unusually excited.

“O, I have something so strange to tell you,—something so strange!” she cried, throwing herself upon the hammock.

Her face was bright and very beautiful. Tula looked at her a moment, then put her lips lovingly to the smooth forehead.

“By the Sun! as our royal father sometimes swears, my sister seems in earnest.”

“Indeed I am; and you will go with me, will you not?”

“Ah! you want to take me to the garden to see the dead tiger, or, perhaps, the warrior who slew it, or—now I have it—you have seen another minstrel.”

Tula expected the girl to laugh, but was surprised to see her eyes fill with tears. She changed her manner instantly, and bade the slave who had been sitting by the hammock fanning her, to retire. Then she said,—

“You jest so much, Nenetzin, that I do not know when you are serious. I love you: now tell me what has happened.”

The answer was given in a low voice.

“You will think me foolish, and so I am, but I cannot help it. Do you recollect the dream I told you the night on the chinampa?”

“The night Yeteve came to us? I recollect.”

“You know I saw a man come and sit down in our father’s palace,—a stranger with blue eyes and fair face, and hair and beard like the silk of the ripening maize. I told you I loved him, and would have none but him; and you laughed at me, and said he was the god Quetzal’. O Tula, the dream has come back to me many times since; so often that it seems, when I am awake, to have been a reality. I am childish, you think, and very weak; you may even pity me; but I have grown to look upon the blue-eyed as something lovable and great, and thought of him is a part of my mind; so much so that it is useless for me to say he is not, or that I am loving a shadow. And now, O dear Tula, now comes the strange part of my story. Yesterday, you know, a courier from Cempoalla brought our father some pictures of the strangers lately landed from the sea. This morning I heard there were portraits among them, and could not resist a curiosity to see them; so I went, and almost the first one I came to,—do not laugh,—almost the first one I came to was the picture of him who comes to me so often in my dreams. I looked and trembled. There indeed he was; there were the blue eyes, the yellow hair, the white face, even the dress, shining as silver, and the plumed crest. I did not stay to look at anything else, but hurried here, scarcely knowing whether to be glad or afraid. I thought if you went with me I would not be afraid. Go you must; we will look at the portrait together.” And she hid her face, sobbing like a child.

“It is too wonderful for belief. I will go,” said Tula.

She arose, and the slave brought and threw over her shoulders the long white scarf so invariably a part of an Aztec woman’s costume. Then the sisters took their way to the chamber where the pictures were kept,—the same into which Hualpa had been led the night before. The king was elsewhere giving audience, and his clerks and attendants were with him. So the two were allowed to indulge their curiosity undisturbed.

Nenetzin went to a pile of manuscripts lying on the floor. The elder sister was startled by the first picture exposed; for she recognized the handiwork, long since familiar to her, of the ’tzin. Nor was she less surprised by the subject, which was a horse, apparently a nobler instrument for a god’s revenge than man himself.

Next she saw pictured a horse, its rider mounted, and in Christian armor, and bearing shield, lance, and sword. Then came a cannon, the gunner by the carriage, his match lighted, while a volume of flame and smoke was bursting from the throat of the piece. A portrait followed; she lifted it up, and trembled to see the hero of Nenetzin’s dream!

“Did I not tell you so, O Tula?” said the girl, in a whisper.

“The face is pleasant and noble,” the other answered, thoughtfully; “but I am afraid. There is evil in the smile, evil in the blue eyes.”

The rest of the manuscripts they left untouched. The one absorbed them; but with what different feelings! Nenetzin was a-flutter with pleasure, restrained by awe. Impressed by the singularity of the vision, as thus realized, a passionate wish to see the man or god, whichever he was, and hear his voice, may be called her nearest semblance to reflection. Like a lover in the presence of the beloved, she was glad and contented, and asked nothing of the future. But with Tula, older and wiser, it was different. She was conscious of the novelty of the incident; at the same time a presentiment, a gloomy foreboding, filled her soul. In slumber we sometimes see spectres, and they sit by us and smile; yet we shrink, and cannot keep down anticipations of ill. So Tula was affected by what she beheld.

She laid the portrait softly down, and turned to Nenetzin, who had now no need to deprecate her laugh.

“The ways of the gods are most strange. Something tells me this is their work. I am afraid; let us go.”

And they retired, and the rest of the day, swinging in the hammock, they talked of the dream and the portrait, and wondered what would come of them.

CHAPTER IV.

THE TRIAL

Hualpa’s adventure in the garden made a great stir in the palace and the city. Profound was the astonishment, therefore, when it became known that the savior of the king and the murderer of the Tezcucan were one and the same person, and that, in the latter character, he was to be taken into court and tried for his life, Montezuma himself acting as accuser. Though universally discredited, the story had the effect of drawing an immense attendance at the trial.

“Ho, Chalcan! Fly not your friends in that way!”

So the broker was saluted by some men nobly dressed, whom he was about passing on the great street. He stopped, and bowed very low.

“A pleasant day, my lords! Your invitation honors me; the will of his patrons should always be law to the poor keeper of a portico. I am hurrying to the trial.”

“Then stay with us. We also have a curiosity to see the assassin.”

“My good lord speaks harshly. The boy, whom I love as a son, cannot be what you call him.”

The noble laughed. “Take it not ill, Chalcan. So much do I honor the hand that slew the base Tezcucan that I care not whether it was in fair fight or by vantage taken. But what do you know about the king being accuser to-day?”

“So he told the boy.”

“Incredible!”

“I will not quarrel with my lord on that account,” rejoined the broker. “A more generous master than Montezuma never lived. Are not the people always complaining of his liberality? At the last banquet, for inventing a simple drink, did he not give me, his humblest slave, a goblet fit for another king?”

“And what is your drink, though ever so excellent, to the saving his life? Is not that your argument, Chalcan?”

“Yes, my lord, and at such peril! Ah, you should have seen the ocelot when taken from the tank! The keepers told me it was the largest and fiercest in the museum.”

Then Xoli proceeded to edify his noble audience with all the gossip pertaining to the adventure; and as his object was to take into court some friends for the luckless hunter more influential than himself, he succeeded admirably. Every few steps there were such expressions as, “It would be pitiful if so brave a fellow should die!” “If I were king, by the Sun, I would enrich him from the possessions of the Tezcucan!” And as they showed no disposition to interrupt him, his pleading lasted to the house of justice, where the company arrived not any too soon to procure comfortable seats.

The court-house stood at the left of the street, a little retired from the regular line of buildings. The visitors had first to pass through a spacious hall, which brought them to a court-yard cemented under foot, and on all sides bounded with beautiful houses. Then, on the right, they saw the entrance to the chamber of justice, grotesquely called the Tribunal of God,[37 - Prescott, Conq. of Mexico, Vol. I. p. 33.] in which, for ages, had been administered a code, vindictive, but not without equity. The great door was richly carved; the windows high and broad, and lined with fluted marble; while a projecting cornice, tastefully finished, gave airiness and beauty to the venerable structure.

The party entered the room with profoundest reverence. On a dais sat the judge; in front of him was the stool bearing the skull with the emerald crown and gay plumes. Turning from the plain tapestry along the walls, the spectators failed not to admire the jewels that blazed with almost starry splendor from the centre of the canopy above him.

The broker, not being of the class of privileged nobles, found a seat with difficulty. To his comfort, however, he was placed by the side of an acquaintance.

“You should have come earlier, Chalcan; the judge has twice used the arrow this morning.”

“Indeed!”

“Once against a boy too much given to pulque,—a drunkard. With the other doubtless you were acquainted.”

“Was he noble?”

“He had good blood, at least, being the son of a Tetzmellocan, who died immensely rich. The witnesses said the fellow squandered his father’s estate almost as soon as it came to him.”