Captain from Castile (27 page)

"Don't forget our Palm Sunday procession, Ortiz. That ought to go in," Pedro reminded him. "The Indians couldn't get over the white teules carrying palms and kneeling before the Virgin and Child. We must have converted a pack of them."

Ortiz yawned. "Yes, and that brings us up to date: once more on the cursed ships. There'll be plenty to write ballads about before we get to Culua, believe me." His eyes wandered over the main deck below and stopped on a man who stood talking to the dicers around the water cask. "We've left out our villain, Pedrito. Got to have a villain in our cantar de gesta. There he is."

It was a broad-shouldered man with a curling black beard. He wore a gilded steel cap and a flame-colored doublet with full sleeves. Standing arms akimbo and legs wide, he suited himself easily to the pitching of the ship. He was a minor officer, Juan Escudero, a henchman of Governor Velasquez. There were rumors of bad blood between him and Cortes.

Escudero stood for something more dangerous than Indian armies, something that had been growing since the battle at Ciutla and, leechlike, was sucking away the force of the expedition. Everyone felt the spirit of mutiny flickering here and there like a half-smothered fire. It showed itself in grumbling, in dissension, in prudent forebodings, in high-sounding loyalty to the Governor of Cuba. Its source was fear— fear not only of that empire beyond the mountains, of which vague rumors had begun to filter through, but fear also of Hernan Cortes. For greatness cannot wholly mask itself; and greatness in a leader is not only inspiring but, to the timid, disquieting. Of this fear and uncertainty, the Velasquez faction in the army made the most.

Leaving the dice players thoughtful, Escudero sauntered on and stopped casually next to Sandoval.

"Tending to your equipment, gentlemen? Gad, that's sensible. I think you'll be needing it again." He spoke in a fierce, somewhat halting voice.

Pedro hitched over to the edge of the forecastle to catch what he said. Ortiz, yawning again, returned to his lute.

"So much the better," answered Sandoval.

"There're some who don't agree with you."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. We came out here to trade, didn't we?—and have a look at the land. We brought enough men to protect ourselves and to hold an outpost, not to fight pitched battles or conquer empires. That ought to be plain to anybody but a fool. We lost some men at Tabasco, remember?"

"It's the luck of war."

"Yes, young man, but we didn't come to make war. We came to trade—"

"Your pardon, sir," interrupted Garcia, voicing the issue that split the army, "we came to settle, to colonize."

"And your pardon, sir, we did nothing of the kind. There's not a word about settlement in the Governor's instructions to Cortes."

"And there wasn't a word about anything else in the public cry. The Governor heard the proclam.ation. Did he correct it? He did not. Do you think five hundred good men and eleven ships sailed with the idea of copying Grijalva forth and back? I should say not."

"Well, sir," retorted Escudero, "whatever their idea, there are such things as law and obedience. We sailed under Governor Velasquez's orders, and I, for one, intend to obey them—let alone the folly of doing anything else."

Cold silence answered. Legally he was right, but law suffers from distance and salt water.

From behind Pedro, Ortiz exclaimed: "I've got it! Here you are!"

Standing up, his back to the mast, the lute properly tilted, he announced to the deck below: "Ladies and gentlemen, A Serenata to a Lady in Spain." Then in a smooth baritone voice, he sang: —

"Far in the West, The white sierras bloom In gold and fire To meet the coming day: So shall my heart, O Queen of my desire, At thy approach. Itself in fire array.

"Far in the West, The mighty waters bear Our reckless sails Of venture to the shore:

Thus, borne on mightier tides, My love assails Thy love, adventuring. Lady, evermore.

"Far in the West, The echoes of our fate, The do and dare. Witness of God and Spain: So let my song A gentler witness bear Across the seas, To tell my love again."

A roar of applause followed the singing. "By God, Ortiz," said Juan Pilar, who was standing near by and who had a smattering of letters, "you're another Orpheus. Didn't he stand on the prow of the Argo and speed the ship with music toward the Golden Fleece? You ought to claim a bounty from the General."

Ortiz, gratified, slung the lute over his shoulder. "I'll do that, Juan. How much do you think he'll pay me—a maravedi?"

Bull Garcia heaved a sigh and went on cleaning his breastplate. "Love's one thing," he muttered; "marriage is another."

Pedro, still lost in the song, stared into space.

Only Sandoval, who was tone-deaf and also a privileged character, expressed mock disapproval. "Bah!" he called out. "If you weren't such a good swordsman, Ortiz, I'd put you down as a chicken liver. This lady stuff! I've never had taste for it. What do you mean by 'Queen of your desire,' 'borne on mightier tides'? Vete enhoramala!"

Garcia laughed. "Ask Pedro what he means. Since the Lady Luisa de Carvajal traded him her handkerchief for half his wits, he's been as dame-struck as Ortiz. Friend Sandoval, I share your feeling. To the devil with ladies! They do not fit into this part of the world. Use your influence on Pedro."

De Vargas continued to dangle his legs from the forecastle deck.

"Look at him!" Garcia rumbled on. "Catana Perez, that wench in Jaen who saved our two lives, is a pearl of a female, fit for bed, board, or march. She'd give her soul for him. But hell! She isn't a lady. You couldn't sing poetry at her."

Sandoval grinned. "How about it, Pedro?"

De Vargas thumbed his nose in reply.

On the afterdeck, Cortes stood with smiling, eager eyes intent on the coast. If now and then a glance took in the ship—if he was aware of Ortiz and de Vargas on the forecastle, of Sandoval and Garcia scrubbing their equipment, of Escudero making his rounds, of the ten scattered vessels in the wake of the capitana —it was a casual glance that showed nothing but gaiety and anticipation.

He wore a rough woolen cap, pulled down to shield his eyes from the sun, and a seaman's cloak to protect him from the spindrift that now and then spat aboard from the following sea. Even the tropical glare had not given more than a light tan to his pale cheeks.

A gaily dressed youth, who had sailed with Grijalva, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, pointed out landmarks. A couple of others eagerly seconded him with information.

"We called the mountains yonder Sierra de San Martin, my Captain. There was a fellow in the company, named San Martin, a good soldier—"

"That river?" Cortes interrupted. "Or is it a bay, forward there?"

The pilot, Alaminos, who answered, had served not only on the Grijalva expedition, but as pilot to Columbus on his Fourth Voyage. "No, a river."

"The River of Banners," went on Diaz, not to be put out of the conversation. "The Indians signaled us with white banners."

"So, that's where you went ashore, is it?"

"Aye, sir," put in another of the Grijalva men eagerly. "It's where we picked up the fifteen thousand pesos of gold in trade for a peso's worth of green beads. They say that it came from across the mountains, from the king there."

"Ha!" said Cortes. "A rich prince. And if fifteen thousand, why not a hundred thousand, why not a million, sefiores? We might pay him a visit unless—"

He glanced from one to the other of the gold-hungry faces, but left the sentence unfinished and turned to look at the coast again.

"Unless what?" demanded Puertocarrero, who stood with a languid arm about the waist of Doiia Marina. She leaned against him, but her handsome fawn eyes were on Cortes.

"Unless we return to Cuba, Gossip, as some of our friends require. Far be it from me to disobey His Excellency's orders. It could only be on compulsion, sirs, you understand—against my will."

His eyes, suddenly inscrutable, shifted from face to face; but the inscrutability was intentional, and his hearers smiled. They did not belong to the Velasquez party. In front of them, beyond the mountains,

a land of gold; behind them, across the sea, a royal governor. No difficult choice for stout-hearted men, orders or no orders. But of the ten ships following the capitana, four were commanded by the Governor's friends, and homesickness was spreading.

"That island there?" pointed Cortes, leaving the unnecessary unsaid.

"The Isla de los Sacrificios, sir," replied Diaz, "where we found the heathen dogs sacrificing children to their devils."

"Wouldn't it be a sin beyond pardon to leave this country in darkness?" said Cortes gravely. "And beyond the island lies the harbor we're making for?"

"Yes, San Juan de Ulua."

"You know," grinned Puertocarrero, twisting up his mustache, "it reminds me of the old ballad Ortiz was singing yesterday.

"Here is France, Montesinos,

And Paris, the fair city. And here the Duero River

Flows down to meet the sea.

Remember?" Cortes nodded. "How about a new verse?" added Puertocarrero.

"Behold the rich lands, Captain, As far as eye can see. And let not pass untaken The chance awaiting thee.'*

Knowing looks were exchanged. Cortes smiled. "I'm as good a poet as you are, com padre. What do you think of this?

"Luck of paladin Roldan,

God grant us mercifully: Then do your part, brave gentlemen.

And leave the rest to me."

He winked without winking. The teeth showed above the scar on his lower lip. The others laughed. Disloyalty to Governor Velasquez? Not at all. It was only verse.

"Understand, Dona Marina?" he asked the Indian girl.

She answered eagerly, ''Si, senor," using the two words she had picked up.

"By my conscience," said Cortes, "we'll have her speaking Castilian

in a month. . . . You know, that's an idea of yours, friend: 'Behold the rich lands.' We go ashore tomorrow on Good Friday, the day of the True Cross. If we were permitted to settle by the Governor's orders— and surely that must have been his intention, but I say if —we might have called our town the Rich Town, Villa Rica de Vera Cruz. It would have suited both our religion and our future. Names are important."

Filling his lungs with the offshore breeze, he exhaled lingeringly. "Ah, senores, the smell of new lands! No fragrance like it this side of heaven."

XXIX

The memory of that last day on shipboard crossed Pedro's mind more than two months later, as he stood guard over the military chest in the teocalli or temple enclosure at Cempoala. Perhaps what made him think of it was the contrast between the bracing sea air, vibrant with sunlight, and this mosquito-laden dankness of the tropical night shut in by the pagan-smelling walls of the teocalli.

Since then the army had "compelled" Cortes to renounce his allegiance to the Governor of Cuba, and had set itself up as the independent colony of Villa Rica de Vera Cruz. It had left its long encampment at San Juan de Ulua and had marched northward; a few tentative walls of the new city of Villa Rica had been built; Cortes had made allies for himself here at Cempoala and among other Totonac tribes along the coast, bringing them to a state of revolt against the Aztec power of Mexico. With these and Villa Rica as a backing, the march inland drew always nearer.

Pedro remembered the words of Cortes's tag to the old ballad, which had made a hit with the army: —

Luck of paladin Roldan

God grant us mercifully . . .

He glanced at the stout chests in the center of the room, which formed one of a line of similar rooms surrounding the temple precincts. Though half cut off by the sharp slant of the sacred pyramid outside, the moonlight through the doorway rested on the chests and gave them a dreamlike, richer outline.

Talk about the luck of Roldan! Dios! If a man had half the gold in

those boxes, he could set himself up as a prince in Spain and marry whom he wanted. But unfortunately the plan now was to send the whole of it to the King in order to secure recognition of the new colony as independent of Cuba. Montejo and Puertocarrero had been selected as representatives, and a ship would be placed at their disposal. It was probably a good plan—it wouldn't do to have Velasquez forever on one's tail—but the price came high and hurt like sin. The whole intake thus far on the mainland, what every individual had gleaned by trade with the Indians, plus Montezuma's gifts from the still unknown inland empire. The gifts composed by far the major part of the treasure.

Pedro lingered over them in thought as he gazed at the chests. He remembered most of the inventory.

One large alligator's head of gold.

A bird of green feathers, with feet, beak, and eyes of gold.

Six shields, each covered with a plate of gold.

Two collars made of gold and precious stones.

A hundred ounces of gold ore.

Animals of gold resembling snails.

Five fans with rods of gold.

Sixteen shields of precious stones.

A plate of gold weighing seventy ounces.

A wheel of silver weighing forty marks . . .

He could still see the pompous ambassadors of Montezuma with their outlandish feathered headdresses and harlequin-colored clothes, jangling with ornaments, jade plugs in their ear lobes and lower lips. Haughty dogs, strutting too much. One of them had reminded him of Coatl and had raised speculations in his mind about the homeland of de Silva's former servant. It might be that Coatl, with his talk about marvels in the West, belonged to this same race.

Pedro could still see the ambassadors' slaves spreading their mats, heaping up these treasures, while the ring of bearded Spaniards elbowed each other for a better view.

Aguilar, the interpreter, and Doiia Marina had informed Cortes that Montezuma sent his gifts and greetings and bade the white teules keep away from his dominions. That was funny. There had been a big laugh about that around the campfires. Send nuggets of gold to prospectors and invite them kindly not to visit the mines. These gifts made possible the bribe to Spain, made inevitable the march across the mountains.