The Fair God; or, The Last of the 'Tzins
A body of men crossing the court-yard attracted Cortes; then four horsemen approached, and stopped before him.
“Is it thou, Sandoval?” he asked.
“Yes, Señor.”
“And Ordas, Lugo, and Tapia?”
“Here,” they replied.
“And thy following, Sandoval?”
“The cavaliers of Narvaez whom thou gavest me, one hundred chosen soldiers, and the Tlascalans to the number thou didst order.”
“Bien! Lead out of the gate, and halt after making what thou deemest room for the other divisions. Christ and St. James go with thee!”
“Amen!” responded Olmedo.
And so the vanguard passed him,—a long succession of shadowy files that he heard rather than saw. Hardly were they gone when another body approached, led by an officer on foot.
“Who art thou?” asked Cortes.
“Magarino,” the man replied.
“Whom have you?”
“One hundred and fifty Christians, and four hundred Tlascalans.”
“And the bridge?”
“We have it here.”
“As thou lovest life and honor, captain, heed well thine orders. Move on, and join thyself to Sandoval.”
The bridge spoken of was a portable platform of hewn plank bolted to a frame of stout timbers, designed to pass the column over the three canals intersecting the causeway to Tlacopan, which, in the sally of the afternoon, had been found to be bridgeless. If the canals were deep as had been reported, well might Magarino be charged with particular care!
In the order of march next came the centre or main body, Cortes’ immediate command. The baggage was in their charge, also the greater part of the artillery, making of itself a long train, and one of vast interest; for, though in the midst of a confession of failure, the leader did not abate his intention of conquest,—such was a peculiarity of his genius.
“Mexia, Avila, good gentlemen,” he said, halting the royal treasurers, “let me assure myself of what beyond peradventure ye are assured.”
And he counted the horses and men bearing away the golden dividend of the emperor, knowing if what they had in keeping were safely lodged in the royal depositaries, there was nothing which might not be condoned,—not usurpation, defeat even. Most literally, they bore his fortune.
A moment after there came upon him a procession of motley composition: disabled Christians; servants, mostly females, carrying the trifles they most affected,—here a bundle of wearing apparel, there a cage with a bird; prisoners, amongst others the prince Cacama, heart-broken by his misfortunes; women of importance and rank, comfortably housed in curtained palanquins. So went Marina, her slaves side by side with those of Nenetzin, in whose mind the fears, sorrows, and emotions of the thousands setting out in the march had no place, for Alvarado had wrapped her in his cloak, and lifted her into the carriage, and left a kiss on her lips, with a promise of oversight and protection.
As if to make good the promise, almost on the heels of her slaves rode the deft cavalier, blithe of spirit, because of the happy chance which made the place of the lover that of duty also. Behind him, well apportioned of Christians and Tlascalans and much the largest of the divisions, moved the rear-guard, of which he and Leon were chiefs. His bay mare, Bradamante, however, seemed not to share his gayety, but tossed her head, and champed the bit, and frequently shied as if scared.
“Have done, my pretty girl!” he said to her. “Frightened, art thou? ’Tis only the wind, ugly enough, I trow, but nothing worse. Or art thou jealous? Verguenza! To-morrow she shall find thee in the green pasture, and kiss thee as I will her.”
“Ola, captain!” said Cortes, approaching him. “To whom speakest thou?”
“To my mistress, Bradamante, Señor,” he replied, checking the rein impatiently. “Sometimes she hath airs prettier, as thou knowest, than the prettinesses of a woman; but now,—So ho, girl!—now she—Have done, I say!—now she hath a devil. And where she got it I know not, unless from the knave Botello.”52
“What of him? Where is he?” asked Cortes, with sudden interest.
“Back with Leon, talking, as is his wont, about certain subtleties, nameless by good Christians, but which he nevertheless calleth prophecies.”
“What saith the man now?”
“Out of the mass of his follies, I remember three: that thou, Señor, from extreme misfortune, shalt at last attain great honor; that to-night hundreds of us will be lost,—which last I can forgive in him, if only his third prediction come true.”
“And that?”
“Nay, Señor, except as serving to show that the rogue hath in him a savor of uncommon fairness, it is the least important of all; he saith he himself will be amongst the lost.”
Then Cortes laughed, saying, “Wilt thou never be done with thy quips? Lead on. I will wait here a little longer.”
Alvarado vanished, being in haste to recover his place behind Nenetzin. Before Cortes then, with the echoless tread of panthers in the glade, hurried the long array of Tlascalans; after them, the cross-bowmen and arquebusiers, their implements clashing against their heavy armor; yet he stood silent, pondering the words of Botello. Not until, with wheels grinding and shaking the pavement, the guns reached him did he wake from his thinking.
“Ho, Mesa, well met!” he said to the veteran, whom he distinguished amid a troop of slaves dragging the first piece. “This is not a night like those in Italy where thou didst learn the cunning of thy craft; yet there might be worse for us.”
“Mira, Señor!” and Mesa went to him, and said in a low voice, “What thou saidst was cheerily spoken, that I might borrow encouragement; and I thank thee, for I have much need of all the comfort thou hast to give. A poor return have I, Señor. If the infidels attack us, rely not upon the guns, not even mine: if the wind did not whisk the priming away, the rain would drown it,—and then,”—his voice sunk to a whisper; “our matches will not burn!”
At that moment a gust dashed Cortes with water, and for the first time he was chilled,—chilled until his teeth chattered; for simultaneously a presentiment of calamity touched him with what in a man less brave would have been fear. He saw how, without the guns, Botello’s second prediction was possible! Nevertheless, he replied,—
“The saints can help their own in the dark as well as in the light. Do thy best. To-morrow thou shalt be captain.”
Then Cortes mounted his horse, and took his shield, and to his wrist chained his battle-axe: still he waited. A company of horsemen brushed past him, followed by a solitary rider.
“Leon!” said Cortes.
The cavalier stopped, and replied,—
“What wouldst thou, Señor?”
“Are the guards withdrawn?”
“All of them.”
“And the sentinels?”
“I have been to every post; not a man is left.”
Cortes spoke to his attendants and they, too, rode off; when they were gone he said to Leon,—
“Now we may go.”
And with that together they passed out into the street. Cortes turned, and looked toward the palace, now deserted; but the night seemed to have snatched the pile away, and in its place left a blackened void. Fugitive as he was, riding he knew not to what end, he settled in his saddle again with a sigh—not for the old house itself, nor for the comfort of its roof, nor for the refuge in time of danger; not for the Christian dead reposing in its gardens, their valor wasted and their graves abandoned, nor for that other victim there sacrificed in his cause, whose weaknesses might not be separated from a thousand services, and a royalty superbly Eastern: these were things to wake the emotions of youths and maidens, young in the world, and of poets, dreamy and simple-minded; he sighed for the power he had there enjoyed,—the weeks and months when his word was law for an empire of shadowy vastness, and he was master, in fact, of a king of kings,—immeasurable power now lost, apparently forever.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE PURSUIT BEGINS
In the afternoon the king Cuitlahua, whose sickness had greatly increased, caused himself to be taken to Chapultepec, where he judged he would be safer from the enemy and better situated for treatment by his doctors and nurses. Before leaving, however, he appointed a deputation of ancients, and sent them, with his signet and a message, to Guatamozin.
The ’tzin, about the same time, changed his quarters from the teocallis, now but a bare pavement high in air, to the old Cû of Quetzal’. That the strangers must shortly attempt to leave the city he knew; so giving up the assault on the palace, he took measures to destroy them, if possible, while in retreat. The road they would move by was the only point in the connection about which he was undecided. Anyhow, they must seek the land by one of the causeways. Those by Tlacopan and Tepejaca were the shortest; therefore, he believed one or the other of them would be selected. Upon that theory, he accommodated all his preparations to an attack from the lake, while the foe were outstretched on the narrow dike. As sufficient obstructions in their front, he relied upon the bridgeless canals; their rear he would himself assail with a force chosen from the matchless children of the capital, whose native valor was terribly inflamed by the ruin and suffering they had seen and endured. The old Cû was well located for his part of the operation; and there, in the sanctuary, surrounded by a throng of armed caciques and lords, the deputies of the king Cuitlahua found him.
If the shade of Mualox lingered about the altar of the peaceful god, no doubt it thrilled to see the profanation of the holy place; if it sought refuge in the cells below, alas! they were filled by an army in concealment; and if it went further, down to what the paba, in his poetic madness, had lovingly called his World, alas again! the birds were dead, the shrubs withered, the angel gone; only the fountain lived, of Darkness a sweet voice singing in the ear of Silence.
So the ’tzin being found, this was the message delivered to him from the king Cuitlahua:—
“May the gods love you as I do! I am sick with the sickness of the strangers. Come not near me, lest you be taken also. I go to Chapultepec to get ready for death. If I die, the empire is yours. Meantime, I give you all power.”
Guatamozin took the signet, and was once more master, if not king, in the city of his fathers. The deputies kissed his hand; the chiefs saluted him; and when the tidings reached the companies below, the cells rang as never before, not even with the hymns of their first tenants.
While yet the incense of the ovation sweetened the air about him, he looked up at the image of the god,—web of spider on its golden sceptre, dust on its painted shield, dust bending its plumes of fire; he looked up into the face, yet fair and benignant, and back to him rushed the speech of Mualox, clear as if freshly spoken,—“Anahuac, the beautiful,—her existence, and the glory and power that make it a thing of worth, are linked to your action. O ’tzin, your fate and hers, and that of the many nations, is one and the same!” and the beating of his pulse quickened thrice; for now he could see that the words were prophetic of his country saved by him.
Then up the broad steps of the Cû, into the sanctuary, and through the crowd, rushed Hualpa; the rain streamed from his quilted armor; and upon the floor in front of the ’tzin, with a noise like the fall of a heavy hammer, he dropped the butt of a lance to which was affixed a Christian sword-blade.
“At last, at last, O ’tzin!” he said, “the strangers are in the street, marching toward Tlacopan.”
The company hushed their very breathing.
“All of them?” asked the ’tzin.
“All but the dead.”
Then on the ’tzin’s lip a smile, in his eyes a flash as of flame.
“Hear you, friends?” he said. “The time of vengeance has come. You know your places and duty. Go, each one. May the gods go with you!”
In a moment he and Hualpa were alone. The latter bent his head, and crossing his hands upon his breast said,—
“When the burthen of my griefs has been greatest, and I cried out continually, O ’tzin, you have held me back, promising that my time would come. I doubt not your better judgment, but—but I have no more patience. My enemy is abroad, and she, whom I cannot forget, goes with him. Is not the time come?”
Guatamozin laid his hand on Hualpa’s:—
“Be glad, O comrade! The time has come; and as you have prepared for it like a warrior, go now, and get the revenge so long delayed. I give you more than permission,—I give you my prayers. Where are the people who are to go with you?”
“In the canoes, waiting.”
They were silent awhile. Then the ’tzin took the lance, and looked at the long, straight blade admiringly; under its blue gleam lay the secret of its composition, by which the few were able to mock the many, and ravage the capital and country.
“Dread nothing; it will conquer,” he said, handing the weapon back.
Hualpa kissed his hand, and replied, “I thought to make return for your preferments, O ’tzin, by serving you well when you were king; but the service need not be put off so long. I thank the gods for this night’s opportunity. If I come not with the rising of the sun to-morrow, Nenetzin can tell you my story. Farewell!”
With his face to his benefactor, he moved away.
“Have a care for yourself!” said the ’tzin, regarding him earnestly; “and remember there must be no sign of attack until the strangers have advanced to the first causeway. I will look for you to-morrow. Farewell!”
While yet the ’tzin’s thoughts went out compassionately after his unhappy friend, up from their irksome hiding in the cells came the companies he was to lead,—a long array in white tunics of quilted cotton. At their head, the uniform covering a Christian cuirass, and with Christian helm and battle-axe, he marched; and so, through the darkness and the storm, the pursuit began.
CHAPTER XVIII
LA NOCHE TRISTE
The movement of the fugitive army was necessarily slow. Stretched out in the street, it formed a column of irregular front and great depth. A considerable portion was of non-combatants, such as the sick and wounded, the servants, women, and prisoners; to whom might be added the Indians carrying the baggage and ammunition, and laboriously dragging the guns. The darkness, and the rain beaten into the faces of the sufferers by the wind, made the keeping order impossible; at each step the intervals between individuals and between the divisions grew wider and wider. After crossing two or three of the bridges, a general confusion began to prevail; the officers, in dread of the enemy, failed to call out, and the soldiers, bending low to protect their faces, and hugging their arms or their treasure, marched in dogged silence, indifferent to all but themselves. Soon what was at first a fair column in close order became an irregular procession; here a crowd of all the arms mixed, there a thin line of stragglers.
It is a simple thing, I know, yet nothing has so much to do with what we habitually call our spirits as the condition in which we are at the time. Under an open sky, with the breath of a glowing morning in our nostrils, we sing, laugh, and are brave; but let the cloud hide the blue expanse and cover our walk with shadow, and we shrink within ourselves; or worse, let the walk be in the night, through a strange place, with rain and cold added, and straightway the fine thing we call courage merges itself into a sense of duty or sinks into humbler concern for comfort and safety. So, not a man in all the column,—not a cavalier, not a slave,—but felt himself oppressed by the circumstances of the situation; those who, only that afternoon, had charged like lions along that very street now yielded to the indefinable effect, and were weak of heart even to timidity. The imagination took hold of most of them, especially of the humbler class, and, lining the way with terrors all its own, reduced them to the state when panic rushes in to complete what fear begins. They started at the soughing of the wind; drew to strike each other; cursed the rattle of their arms, the hoof-beats of the horses, the rumble of the carriage-wheels; on the houses, vaguely defined against the sky, they saw sentinels ready to give the alarm, and down the intersecting streets heard the infidel legions rushing upon them; very frequently they stumbled over corpses yet cumbering the way after the day’s fight, and then they whispered the names of saints, and crossed themselves: the dead, always suggestive of death, were never so much so to them.
And so, for many squares, across canals, past palaces and temples, they marched, and nothing to indicate an enemy; the city seemed deserted.
“Hist, Señor!” said Duero, speaking with bated breath. “Hast thou not heard of the army of unbelievers that, in the night, while resting in their camp, were by a breath put to final sleep? Verily, the same good angel of the Lord hath been here also.”
“Nay, compadre mio,” replied Cortes, bending in his saddle, “I cannot so persuade myself. If the infidels meant to let us go, the going would not be so peaceful. From some house-top we should have had their barbarous farewell,—a stone, a lance, an arrow, at least a curse. By many signs,—for that matter, by the rain which, driven through the visor bars, is finding its way down the doublet under my breastplate,—by many signs, I know we are in the midst of a storm. Good Mother forfend, lest, bad as it is, it presage something worse!”
At that moment a watcher on the azoteas of a temple near by chanted the hour of midnight.
“Didst hear?” asked Cortes. “They are not asleep! Olmedo! father! Where art thou?”
“What wouldst thou, my son?”
“That thou shouldst not get lost in this Tophet; more especially, that thou shouldst keep to thy prayers.”
And about that time Sandoval, at the head of his advanced guard, rode from the street out on the open causeway. Farther on, but at no great distance, he came to the first canal. While there, waiting for the bridge to be brought forward, he heard from the lake to his right the peal long and loud of a conch-shell. His heart, in battle steadfast as a rock, throbbed faster; and with raised shield and close-griped sword, he listened, as did all with him, while other shells took up and carried the blast back to the city, and far out over the lake.
In the long array none failed to interpret the sound aright; all recognized a signal of attack, and halted, the slave by his prolong, the knight on his horse, each one as the moment found him. They said not a word, but listened; and as they heard the peal multiply countlessly in every direction,—now close by, now far off,—surprise, the first emotion, turned to dismay. Flight,—darkness,—storm,—and now the infidels! “May God have mercy on us!” murmured the brave, making ready to fight. “May God have mercy on us!” echoed the timid, ready to fly.
The play of the wind upon the lake seemed somewhat neutralized by the density of the rain; still the waves splashed lustily against the grass-grown sides of the causeway; and while Sandoval was wondering if there were many, who, in frail canoes, would venture upon the waste at such a time, another sound, heard, as it were, under that of the conchs, yet too strong to be confounded with wind or surging water, challenged his attention; then he was assured.
“Now, gentlemen,” he said, “get ye ready; they are coming. Pass the word, and ride one to Magarino,—speed to him, speed him here! His bridge laid now were worth a hundred lives!”
As the yells of the infidels—or, rather, their yell, for the many voices rolled over the water in one great volume—grew clearer their design became manifest.
Cortes touched Olmedo:—
“Dost thou remember the brigantines?”
“What of them?”
“Only, father, that what will happen to-night would not if they were afloat. Now shall we pay the penalty of their loss. Ay de mi!” Then he said aloud to the cavaliers, Morla, Olid, Avila, and others. “By my conscience, a dark day for us was that in which the lake went back to the heathen,—brewer, it, of this darker night! An end of loitering! Bid the trumpeters blow the advance! One ride forward to hasten Magarino; another to the rear that the division may be closed up. No space for the dogs to land from their canoes. Hearken!”
The report of a gun, apparently back in the city, reached them.
“They are attacking the rear-guard! Mesa spoke then. On the right hear them, and on the left! Mother of God, if our people stand not firm now, better prayers for our souls than fighting for our lives!”
A stone then struck Avila, startling the group with its clang upon his armor.
“A slinger!” cried Cortes. “On the right here,—can ye see him?”
They looked that way, but saw nothing. Then the sense of helplessness in exposure smote them, and, knightly as they were, they also felt the common fear.
“Make way! Room, room!” shouted Magarino, rushing to the front, through the advance-guard. His Tlascalans were many and stout; to swim the canal,—with ropes to draw the bridge after them,—to plant it across the chasm, were things achieved in a moment.
“Well done, Magarino! Forward, gentlemen,—forward all!” so saying, Sandoval spurred across; after him, in reckless haste, his whole division rushed. The platform, quivering throughout, was stancher than the stone revetments upon which its ends were planted; calcined by fire, they crumbled like chalk. The crowd then crossing, sensible that the floor was giving way under them, yelled with terror, and in their frantic struggle to escape toppled some of them into the canal. None paused to look after the unfortunates; for the shouting of the infidels, which had been coming nearer and nearer, now rose close at hand, muffling the thunder of the horses plunging on the sinking bridge. Moreover, stones and arrows began to fall in that quarter with effect, quickening the hurry to get away.
Cortes reached the bridge at the same time the infidels reached the causeway. He called to Magarino; before the good captain could answer, the waves to the right hand became luminous with the plashing of countless paddles, and a fleet of canoes burst out of the darkness. Up rose the crews, ghost-like in their white armor, and showered the Christians with missiles. A cry of terror,—a rush,—and the cavaliers were pushed on the bridge, which they jammed deeper in the rocks. Some horses, wild with fright, leaped into the lake, and, iron-clad, like their riders, were seen no more.
On the further side, Cortes wheeled about, and shouted to his friends. Olmedo answered, so did Morla; then they were swept onward.
Alone, and in peril of being forced down the side of the dike, Cortes held his horse to the place. The occasional boom of guns, a straggling fire of small arms, and the unintermitted cries of the infidels, in tone exultant and merciless, assured him that the attack was the same everywhere down the column. One look he gave the scene near by,—on the bridge, a mass of men struggling, cursing, praying; wretches falling, their shrieks shrill with despair; the lake whitening with assailants! He shuddered, and called on the saints; then the instinct of the soldier prevailed:—
“Ola, comrades!” he cried. “It is nothing. Stand, if ye love life. Stand, and fight, as ye so well know how! Holy Cross! Christo y Santiago!”
He spurred into the thick of the throng. In vain: the current was too strong; the good steed seconded him with hoof and frontlet; now he prayed, now cursed; at last he yielded, seeing that on the other side of the bridge was Fear, on his side Panic.
When the signal I have described, borne from the lake to the city, began to resound from temple to temple, the rear-guard were yet many squares from the causeway, and had, for the most part, become merely a procession of drenched and cowering stragglers. The sound alarmed them; and divining its meaning, they assembled in accidental groups, and so hurried forward.
Nenetzin and Marina, yet in company, were also startled by the noisy shells. The latter stayed not to question or argue; at her word, sharply spoken, her slaves followed fast after the central division, and rested not until they had gained a place well in advance of the non-combatants, whose slow and toilsome progress she had shrewdly dreaded. Not so Nenetzin: the alarm proceeded from her countrymen; feared she, therefore, for her lover; and when, vigilant as he was gallant, he rode to her, and kissed her hand, and spoke to her in lover’s phrase, she laughed, though not understanding a word, and bade her slaves stay with him.
