Captain from Castile (26 page)

"No. But what has that to do with the Inquisition?"

"Everything. It was founded to protect the Faith—I say founded for that purpose. It may be that it is not accomplishing its purpose; it may be that its means are wrong; it may be that it is in the hands of evil

shepherds. But let me say this: not all of the Santa Casa are evil men, and not all who are condemned are innocent."

Pedro pressed his point. "Father, what do you think of the Santa Casa as it is now?"

Olmedo replied bluntly. "I shall not answer that question, my son, except to an Inquisitor himself. If that time should come—" But he broke off. "Son Pedro, let me tell you something. When we reach Yucatan, I shall preach the gospel; I shall do what I can to prevent human beings from eating human flesh and making human sacrifices-I shall overturn, when possible, the blood-filthy idols that Captain Gnjalva speaks of, for it is not fitting that men should bow down before devils. But for the rest, I shall use love, mercy, and meekness, not the rack and the scourge. Judge of my behefs by my deeds. It is how we hve, not how we talk, that counts. . . . Now, let me ask you a simpler question. Why haven't you been to mass?"

Such transparent honesty looked through Olmedo's eyes that Pedro could not evade it. He felt a growing lightness. It occurred to him that the talk they had just had would have been unthinkable in Spain. Perhaps the New World meant something more than new land.

"I'll tell you. Padre," he said, "if you'll answer me one thing. What do you think of a priest who uses a confession he hears against the man who makes it?"

"That's easy," Olmedo nodded. "Whatever the man did, I think that priest is damned. Now, what's on your conscience?"

"Well, then," said de Vargas. "I, Pedro, confess to Almighty God ..." 

He told the whole story, while Olmedo listened and nodded now and then m encouragement. What he had most feared to reveal, he told smiply and without fear, as man to man. When he had finished, he felt as if he had been released from, prison.

"You see," he added, "I've put Garcia and myself in your hands." Olmedo's reply was startling. "No, my son, you've been in my hands since this morning." He drew a paper from his wallet and unfolded it Except for de Silva, you've told me little that I did not know; but I wanted to hear it from your own lips. ... Can you read Latin?"

Pedro's heart had turned to ice. "Not well."

"This is an order from the Bishop of Santiago to Hernan Cortes for your and Juan Garcia's arrest at the petition of Ignacio de Lora, now m Santo Domingo on the business of the Holy OflSce. What you have told me is set forth here, though hardly from your standpoint "

So the forebodings of the last few days had been justified. De Lora

in the Islands! Pedro remembered now what de Silva had said about the Inquisitor's sailing. He and Garcia were lost. In view of this order, Cortes and Olmedo, even if they were inclined to pity, could do nothing.

"The General handed it to me," Olmedo added. "He said that he had no time today for bishops and Latin: they were my province."

"Then he hasn't read it yet?"

"No."

Pedro got up and stood a moment gazing at the ocean. In his mind, he saw the sailing of the fleet for Yucatan without him and Garcia. He bit his lips.

"I'm ready. Father. What are we waiting for?"

He turned to face Olmedo, but what he saw amazed him. The friar was tearing the Bishop's letter across, forth and back. When he had finished, he let the small pieces flutter down the breeze.

"So much for that!" he remarked. "The equerry who brought it wants to enroll with us. Letters can be lost. We'll be a long time out of Cuba."

"We?" Pedro repeated.

"Yes, we."

"Then, you mean—"

The friar put on his sandals and stood up. "I mean a great deal, Pedro de Vargas. If you had not confessed, I would not have destroyed that letter. Honesty covers a multitude of sins, and Fray Bartolome de Olmedo hates injustice."

"But the General?"

"I shall tell him part of the letter—that the Bishop of Santiago sends his blessing."

Pedro kneeled in front of Olmedo's brown robe.

"Father, what can I do to show you—"

"You can perform your penance, my son."

"Yes—anything. What is it?"

Olmedo said gently, "It is to take up the burden of God's forgiveness and to pray for the soul of Diego de Silva."

For a moment, Pedro did not answer. At last he said, "I swear it."

The friar laid a hand on Pedro's head and bent it back so that he could look down into his face.

"Boy, it's more of a penance than you think. God's love is a heavy burden. Remember that when we sail tomorrow and in the days to come."

XXV//I

If Ortiz the Musician had lived four centuries earlier, he would have been called a troubadour. As it was, he had the qualities and temperament of one without the name. A gentleman and good swordsman, half-owner of one of the sixteen horses of the expedition, the proprietor of a comfortable hacienda near Trinidad de Cuba, he combined with these solid assets a talent for music and song and a command of the ute and the fiddle. He had a wide repertory of old romances and popular airs, which inspired topical ballads of his own to the amusement and admiration of the army. A handsome man with a short, straight nose and intense hght blue eyes, he was created for the joy and sorrow of women.

Pedro de Vargas, who had a respectful fondness for music and poetry, but not the least skill in them, was drawn to Ortiz by the law of opposites and sought him out with the reverence of the untalented for the artist.

On Holy Thursday, when the fleet had been two months out of Cuba, the two young men sat on the forecastle of the capitana, sharing the support of the mast and within the shadow of the sail, which cut off the burn of the April sun. The pitching of the bow kept others away and secured them a privacy impossible in the crowded, but steadier waist oi the ship. '

Humming to himself, Ortiz plucked absent-mindedly at the strings ot his lute, absorbed in the effort of composition. "What's it going to be?" asked Pedro.

"I don't know," Ortiz murmured. "Some serenata or other. I got the idea this morning when the sun struck those mountains over there."

He nodded toward the near-by coast of the mainland, alone which the eleven ships of the armada, scattered irregularly over the sea, were heading north The land lay close enough for all eyes to make out the sand flats with their backing of jungle, the upslope beyond that, and at length, like clouds, the snow peaks of the interior.

"Far in the west [Ortiz hummed]. The white sierras bloom In gold and fire To meet the coming day . .

Something like that. Then apply it to the lady. But I haven't got far. . . . Hell s blisters! How can a man make verse with all the noise and

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stench of this cursed ship on top of him? Demonio!'' He gave the strings a resentful twang and sHd the instrument between his legs. "No use."

Six feet below them in the waist, a throng of men babbled like frogs. A double row along the bulwark gazed at the land, exchanging loud comments. A dice game was in progress on one of the water casks. Barefooted, red-coifed seamen puttered as usual with gear and tackle. The three horses carried by the flagship stamped in their deck stalls. Sandoval, Garcia, and some others were cleaning their equipment to the tune of much clanging and joking. Some of the Yucatan women, acquired at Tabasco, perched on a pile of galley firewood and held court for the lovesick; while Isabel Rodrigo and Maria de Vera, hard-pressed by the competition, ran a court of their own at the starboard rail. The wind from astern swept forward the smells of the ship—garlic, salt fish, horse manure, rancid oil, and the everlasting stench of the hold. And there were always occupants of the outboard seats hung over the rail as a latrine.

But the effect of crowd and commotion did not stop with the waist. Beyond rose the quarter-deck, thronged by gentlemen of the afterguard; and beyond that again, higher than anything but the masts, towered the poop deck with the General's quarters, where Cortes with the pilot Alaminos, Dofia Marina, the prize of the Indian bevy from Tabasco, Puertocarrero, and a group of men from Grijalva's expedition, could be seen studying the land.

"AnimOj friend!" said de Vargas. "Cheer up! The words will come; it isn't any noisier than usual. Until they do, give me some stanzas of that ballad about Bernardo del Carpio. You know, the one that goes: —

''En corte del Casto Alfonso Bernardo a placer v'wia . . .

I love that one."

Ortiz shook his head. "No, I'm not in the mood. Besides, it's such mossy old stuff. I respect the old, mark you, and at times a cantar de gesta suits me better than anything else. But by and large I'm modern and like the up-to-date. Why keep on about the Cid and Bernardo del Carpio when we're on a venture that's ahead of any of theirs?"

Pedro felt shocked. "I'd hardly say that."

"Well, I'll say it for you. When did the Cid or Bernardo ever start off to win an unknown continent? When did they ever fight with forty thousand howling savages like the handful of us did less than a month

ago at Ciutia? When did they ever convert so many infidels as we have

since landing on Cozumel Island?'*

I'Still, you'd hardly call us paladins, homhre. We aren't in that class." "Why not? We don't have to be so cursed humble because we're alive

and they're dead. How do you know that there won't be ballads about

us sometime? For example:

"Don Pedro lays his lance in rest:

Hark to the battle cry! He spurs his mighty horse, Soldan: A thousand pagans die.

I tell you what, Pedrito, let's make up a romancero of our own." "Is that an example of it?" Pedro grinned.

"No, seriously," urged Ortiz, "let us give thought to it. Whenever anything happens—hey, pronto, a ballad! What do you think ought to be celebrated up till now?"

Lending himself to the game, Pedro ventured: "What about Alva-rado's looting Cozumel Island before Cortes got there and the rage the General was in and how he made Alvarado's people hand everything back to the Indians?" 

"No," said Ortiz, "not epic enough. You can't make a ballad out of robbmg a hen roost, which was about what it came to. And Alvarado's crowd acted like boys with their breeches down ready to be birched. Nothing heroic in that."

"Well, then: Olmedo preaching the Faith and the rest of us bounc-mg the idols down the temple steps."

"Certainly. There's color and action. We'll start with that one. And we'll add that the Indians considered their devils a weak lot when they couldn't even protect themselves against Redhead de Vargas and Bull Garcia. They became good Christians in ten minutes. Ballad number one. Next?"

"You know, I think Jeronimo de Aguilar deserves a romance" The two men glanced at a swarthy individual squatting Indian fashion in the waist not far from Sandoval. Ordained in the Church, he had been shipwrecked eight years ago on the shores of Yucatan and had been the slave of a Mayan cacique until ransomed by Cortes. He was now invaluable as an interpreter, though his Spanish had grown rusty, and he spoke with the guttural accent of an Indian. His stories of native barbarism fascinated the army: how all but one of his companions in shipwreck had been sacrificed and eaten; how he himself had been fattened for the sacrifice and had escaped. But what he liked

most to describe were the erotic temptations by Indian damsels to which his master, the cacique, incredulous of his chastity, had exposed him. Faithful to his vow, he overcame the demon.

"Hm-m," pondered Ortiz. "Yes, we could make a Saint Anthony out of Aguilar. Nothing gives more of a spice to poetry than sex. . . . Well, what next? We cross from Cozumel Island to the mainland. We reach Tabasco. Now comes the battle of Santa Maria de la Victoria, which deserves a half-dozen ballads."

The poet struck an attitude and gave a mock-heroic lilt to his voice. "The air's a fog of sling-stones, arrows, and javelins. Seventy of us wounded at the first volley. Foot-to-foot we meet them with their lances and two-handed swords. (You know, Pedro, those cursed obsidian edges cut like a razor.) They don't enjoy our steel. Mesa lets loose his artillery. The Indian devils yell 'Alala!' and throw dust in the air to hide their losses. They fall back to gain space for their bowmen; they come on again. Where the deuce is the damn cavalry? Why doesn't Cortes charge?"

"You know perfectly well why we didn't," put in Pedro. "We were stuck in a swamp."

"Don't interrupt. I'm talking from the standpoint of verse. . . . We're half-dead from heat, wounds, and exhaustion. We're giving ground. Then—ha!—we catch a glimpse of the horses. 'Santiago, y a ellos!' . . . Now, you take it up. That's your part."

Pedro scratched his head. "Well, after we got out of the swamp, there wasn't much to it."

"Fie!" exclaimed Ortiz. "You've got a prosy mind! Shocking. . . . But Dona Marina," he added in a different tone—"there's something else."

He gazed aft toward the poop deck, where the graceful figure of the Indian girl stood out against the sky. She had been presented to Cortes as a peace offering with nineteen other women after the battle. He had handed her over to Puertocarrero, though, it was said, with an amorous eye for her himself. She was well-bred, finely featured, and of a pale color. It turned out that she came from the interior and belonged to another race known as Aztecs and ruled by a kind of emperor called Montezuma. Of noble birth, she had been sold as a child by an unscrupulous mother to itinerant slave dealers. Aguilar, who spoke Mayan, could talk with her; and Cortes, who missed no openings, foresaw her usefulness later on as an interpreter to her own people. She and the nineteen others, being baptized with Christian names, were now fit for Christian embraces. But she alone was called dona.

"We'll put her in—and at length," declared Ortiz. "Also the gold we got from the caciques. Remember, Pedro, how Aguilar got out of them where it came from? Culua, Mexico, beyond the mountains. I knew after that we wouldn't be sticking in Yucatan. Remember the General's eyes lighting up? 'Culua, eh? Beyond the mountains? Do you hear, gentlemen, gold beyond the mountains?' "