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

The feeling of the chief spread rapidly; first, to the cavaliers; then to the ranks, where soon there were shouting and singing; and simultaneous with the trumpetry, over the still waters sped the minstrelsy of the Tlascalans. Ere long they had the answer of the garrison; every gun in the palace thundered welcome.

Cortes settled in his saddle smiling: he was easy in mind; the junction with Alvarado was assured; the city and the king were his, and he could now hold them; nevertheless, back of his smile there was much thought. True, his enemies in Spain would halloo spitefully over the doughty deed he had just done down in Cempoalla. No matter. The Court and the Council had pockets, and he could fill them with gold,—gold by the caravel, if necessary; and for the pacification of his most Catholic master, the Emperor, had he not the New World? And over the schedule of guerdons sure to follow such a gift to such a master he lingered complacently, as well he might. Patronage, and titles, and high employments, and lordly estates danced before his eyes, as danced the sun’s glozing upon the crinkling water.

One thought, however,—only one,—brought him trouble. The soldiers of Narvaez were new men, ill-disciplined, footsore, grumbling, discontented, disappointed. He remembered the roseate pictures by which they had been won from their leader before the battle was joined. ‘The Empire was already in possession; there would be no fighting; the march would be a promenade through grand landscapes, and by towns and cities, whose inhabitants would meet them in processions, loaded with fruits and flowers, tributes of love and fear,’—so he had told them through his spokesmen, Olmedo, the priest, and Duero, the secretary. Nor failed he now to recall the chief inducements in the argument,—the charms of the heathen capital, and the easy life there waiting,—a life whose sole vexation would be apportionment of the lands conquered and the gold gathered. And the wonderful city,—here it was, placid as ever; and neither the valley, nor the lake, nor the summering climate, nor the abundance of which he had spoken, failed his description; nothing was wanting but the people, THE PEOPLE! Where were they? He looked at the prize ahead; gyres of smoke, slowly rising and purpling as they rose, were all the proofs of life within its walls. He swept the little sea with angry eyes; in the distance a canoe, stationary, and with a solitary occupant, and he a spy! And this was the grand reception promised the retainers of Narvaez! He struck his mailed thigh with his mailed hand fiercely, and, turning in his saddle, looked back. The column was moving forward compactly, the new men distinguishable by the freshness of their apparel and equipments. “Bien!” he said, with a grim smile and cunning solace, “Bien! they will fight for life, if not for majesty and me.”

Close by the wall Father Bartolomé overtook him, and, after giving rein to his mule, and readjusting his hood, said gravely, “If the tinkle of my servant’s bell disturb not thy musing, Señor,—I have been through the files, and bring thee wot of the new men.”

“Welcome, father,” said Cortes, laughing. “I am not an evil spirit to fly the exorcisement of thy bell, not I; and so I bid thee welcome. But as for whereof thou comest to tell, no more, I pray. I know of what the varlets speak. And as I am a Christian, I blame them not. We promised them much, and—this is all: fair sky, fair land, strange city,—and all without people! Rueful enough, I grant; but, as matter more serious, what say the veterans? Came they within thy soundings?”

“Thou mayest trust them, Señor. Their tongues go with their swords. They return to the day of our first entry here, and with excusable enlargement tell what they saw then in contrast with the present.”

“And whom blame they for the failure now?”

“The captain Alvarado.”

Cortes’ brows dropped, and he became thoughtful again, and in such temper rode into the city.

Within the walls, everywhere the visitors looked, were signs of life, but nowhere a living thing; neither on the street, nor in the houses, nor on the housetops,—not even a bird in the sky. A stillness possessed the place, peculiar in that it seemed to assert a presence, and palpably lurk in the shade, lie on the doorsteps, issue from the windows, and pervade the air; giving notice so that not a man, new or veteran, but was conscious that, in some way, he was menaced with danger. There is nothing so appalling as the unaccountable absence of life in places habitually populous; nothing so desolate as a deserted city.

“Por Dios!” said Olmedo, toying with the beads at his side, “I had rather the former reception than the present. Pleasanter the sullen multitude than the silence without the multitude.”

Cortes made him no answer, but rode on abstractedly, until stopped by his advance-guard.

“At rest!” he said, angrily. “Had ye the signal? I heard it not.”

“Nor did we, Señor,” replied the officer in charge. “But, craving thy pardon, approach, and see what the infidels have done here.”

Cortes drew near, and found himself on the brink of the first canal. He swore a great oath; the bridge was dismantled. On the hither side, however, lay the timbers, frame and floor. The tamanes detailed from the guns replaced them.

“Bartolomé, good father,” said Cortes, confidentially, when the march was resumed, “thou hast a commendable habit of holding what thou hearest, and therefore I shame not to confess that I, too, prefer the first reception. The absence of the heathen and the condition of yon bridge are parts of one plan, and signs certain of battle now ready to be delivered.”

“If it be God’s will, amen!” replied the priest, calmly. “We are stronger than when we went out.”

“So is the enemy, for he hath organized his people. The hordes that stared at us so stupidly when we first came—be the curse of the saints upon them!—are now fighting men.”

Olmedo searched his face, and said, coldly, “To doubt is to dread the result.”

“Nay, by my conscience! I neither doubt nor dread. Yet I hold it not unseemly to confess that I had rather meet the brunt on the firm land, with room for what the occasion offers. I like not yon canal, with its broken bridge, too wide for horse, too deep for weighted man; it putteth us to disadvantage, and hath a hateful reminder of the brigantines, which, as thou mayest remember, we left at anchor, mistresses of the lake; in our absence they have been lost,—a most measureless folly, father! But let it pass, let it pass! The Mother—blessed be her name!—hath not forsaken us. Montezuma is ours, and—”

“He is victory,” said Olmedo, zealously.

“He is the New World!” answered Cortes.

And so it chanced that the poor king was centre of thought for both the ’tzin and his enemy,—the dread of one and the hope of the other.

CHAPTER III

LA VIRUELA

A long interval behind the rear-guard—indeed, the very last of the army, and quite two hours behind—came four Indian slaves, bringing a man stretched upon a litter.

And the litter was open, and the sun beat cruelly on the man’s face; but plaint he made not, nor motion, except that his head rolled now right, now left, responsive to the cadenced steps of his hearers.

Was he sick or wounded?

Nathless, into the city they carried him.

And in front of the new palace of the king, they stopped, less wearied than overcome by curiosity. And as they stared at the great house, imagining vaguely the splendor within, a groan startled them. They looked at their charge; he was dead! Then they looked at each other, and fled.

And in less than twice seven days they too died, and died horribly; and in dying recognized their disease as that of the stranger they had abandoned before the palace,—the small-pox, or, in the language which hath a matchless trick of melting everything, even the most ghastly, into music, la viruela of the Spaniard.

The sick man on the litter was a negro,—first of his race on the new continent!

And most singular, in dying, he gave his masters another servant stronger than himself, and deadlier to the infidels than swords of steel,—a servant that found way everywhere in the crowded city, and rested not. And everywhere its breath, like its touch, was mortal; insomuch that a score and ten died of it where one fell in battle.

Of the myriads who thus perished, one was a KING.

CHAPTER IV.

MONTEZUMA A PROPHET.—HIS PROPHECY

Scarce five weeks before, Cortes sallied from the palace with seventy soldiers, ragged, yet curiously bedight with gold and silver; now he returned full-handed, at his back thirteen hundred infantry, a hundred horse, additional guns and Tlascalans. Surely, he could hold what he had gained.

The garrison stood in the court-yard to receive him. Trumpet replied to trumpet, and the reverberation of drums shook the ancient house. When all were assigned to quarters, the ranks were broken, and the veterans—those who had remained, and those who had followed their chief—rushed clamorously into each other’s arms. Comradeship, with its strange love, born of toil and danger, and nursed by red-handed battle, asserted itself. The men of Narvaez looked on indifferently, or clomb the palace, and from the roof surveyed the vicinage, especially the great temple, apparently as forsaken as the city.

And in the court-yard Cortes met Alvarado, saluting him coldly. The latter excused his conduct as best he could; but the palliations were unsatisfactory. The general turned from him with bitter denunciations; and as he did so, a procession approached: four nobles, carrying silver wands; then a train in doubled files; then Montezuma, in the royal regalia, splendid from head to foot. The shade of the canopy borne above him wrapped his person in purpled softness, but did not hide that other shadow discernible in the slow, uncertain step, the bent form, the wistful eyes,—the shadow of the coming Fate. Such of his family as shared his captivity brought up the cortege.

At the sight, Cortes waited; his blood was hot, and his head filled with the fumes of victory; from a great height, as it were, he looked upon the retinue, and its sorrowful master; and his eyes wandered fitfully from the Christians, worn by watching and hunger, to the sumptuousness of the infidels; so that when the monarch drew nigh him, the temper of his heart was as the temper of his corselet.

“I salute you, O Malinche, and welcome your return,” said Montezuma, according to the interpretation of Marina.

The Spaniard heard him without a sign of recognition.

“The good Lady of your trust has had you in care; she has given you the victory. I congratulate you, Malinche.”

Still the Spaniard was obstinate.

The king hesitated, dropped his eyes under the cold stare, and was frozen into silence. Then Cortes turned upon his heel, and, without a word, sought his chamber.

The insult was plain, and the witnesses, Christian and infidel, were shocked; and while they stood surprised, Tula rushed up, and threw her arms around the victim’s neck, and laid her head upon his breast. The retinue closed around them, as if to hide the shame; and thus the unhappy monarch went back to his quarters,—back to his captivity, to his remorse, and the keener pangs of pride savagely lacerated.

For a time he was like one dazed; but, half waking, he wrung his hands, and said, feebly, “It cannot be, it cannot be! Maxtla, take the councillors and go to Malinche, and say that I wish to see him. Tell him the business is urgent, and will not wait. Bring me his answer, omitting nothing.”

The young chief and the four nobles departed, and the king relapsed into his dazement, muttering, “It cannot be, it cannot be!”

The commissioners delivered the message. Olid, Leon, and others who were present begged Cortes to be considerate.

“No,” he replied; “the dog of a king would have betrayed us to Narvaez; before his eyes we are allowed to hunger. Why are the markets closed? I have nothing to do with him.”