Captain from Castile (43 page)

isn't to be sneezed at. Hardly! I'll warrant you there's not the quarter of that much at home in His Majesty's coffers. We used to talk big about our prospects before sailing from Cuba; but, between you and me, gentlemen, I kept my tongue in my cheek. After the crack-up of other expeditions. By God, we're the first venture which has paid on the investment. Paid a thousand to one. If we have another year like this last—"

He twiddled the new, immense gold chain into which he had converted a part of his takings.

"And why shouldn't we?" put in Olid. "What's to stop us? These Indians?" He glanced down at the brightly dressed throng of natives in the central square. "They can't fight, but they can work. We've got them bridled in any case, with their king or Uei Tlatoaniy or whatever he's called, dancing to the crack of the General's whip. Set them in the mJnes. I vow we can sweat ten million castellanos out of them by this day twelvemonth."

Father Bartolome de Olmedo, who was carrying his vestments over one arm after celebrating mass, exclaimed angrily: "Ufy seiiores! Have we no thought but for gold in this enterprise? Is it a castellano or a cross that we bear on our banner? Is it the peso we follow in true faith and in that sign conquer? Que verguenza! There are souls here to save and treasures to win for heaven. But you talk of slavery and mines like so many Moors."

"Amen!" said Pedro de Vargas, who, since their interview on the hill above Trinidad, backed Father Olmedo on every occasion.

"Amen!" said young Andres de Tapia, a gallant soldier, serious for his years. "Vive Dios! I count my chances in purgatory more improved by the last few days of temple-cleaning than by anything else accomplished on this expedition. Good night to Demon Witchywolves! Ave Maria!" He turned to Cortes. "We've risked something for God, as Your Excellency said when you struck the gold mask from that devil's image."

But surprisingly Father Bartolome looked dubious. He rubbed his stubby nose with the back of his hand and coughed. Pedro recalled that the friar had never approved of Cortes's idol-breaking fervor.

"When it's time for idols to fall," he remarked, "they fall of themselves. Take care when you pull them down that you don't set others up. For my part, I'd rather see our Faith planted in men's hearts by love than thrust into their temples by force. But I'm no statesman."

"No, Your Reverence," smiled Cortes, "you're not. And history belies

you. Did not Constantine set up our Church by force? Did not Carlo-magno convert the Germans by hanging ten thousand of them? And see what a Christian land that is."

"Humph!" said Father Olmedo.

Careless of the argument, Cortes once more looked out across the city.

"We'll have a count taken; but I wager we've got here no less than sixt)' thousand hearths. Three hundred thousand souls. A great city. And ours!" He brought his clenched fist down on the pommel of his sword. "Ours! What a jewel to place at His Majesty's feet! Was ever so mighty a kingdom won at so small a cost?"

As usual, the men about him caught his fire. They pictured themselves, small planters as they once had been, received by the King, welcomed at court, they who had given New Spain to Spain—viceroys, grandees.

"What Latin are you mumbling. Fray Bartolome?" Cortes added.

"A verse from Holy Writ, Captain General."

"Which runs?"

"Why, sir, the Prophet Daniel says: gradientes in superbia . . that those who walk in pride Our Lord is able to abase."

"Who doubts it?" returned the other. "Look you, fraile, for the black bile, there's nothing so good as a purge." He drew his head back, and his eyes hardened a moment. Then he winked at the others. "Well, gentlemen, remember the Prophet Daniel—especially when you're going down these steps."

And, turning, he began the almost ladderlike descent, while the others followed. As befitted their youth, Pedro and Tapia came last. Down to the first break in the steps, where a sloping terrace led round the pyramid to a second flight of steps immediately below the first. Down these to a second terrace, and so four times in all around the teocalli to its base. The Spaniards were fully armed—a precaution never omitted when they left their quarters—and the clash of steel mingled with laughter and tones of voices.

"Friend Pedro," said Tapia, "do you ever rub your eyes as I do sometimes?"

"How so, Andres?"

"Wondering whether you or I or any of us are the same men who sailed last year from Cuba?"

"I see what you mean," Pedro nodded.

For they were not the same men; not the same happy-go-lucky

company. Indeed, it took almost an effort to remember the Cuban days. Cortes, the once popular planter, the genial manager; Sandoval, the rough country boy; Olid, typical soldier of fortune; de Vargas, fresh from Spain; Bull Garcia with his talk (now so antiquated) of Columbus—all the captains, every ranker, had aged, had changed. One was not a conquistador for nothing. They had accomplished incredible things, had seen too much, had faced death too often, not to have hardened, deepened, become pre-eminently fighting men. Though unconscious of it, they had been forged somehow into a troop as disciplined as Toledo steel. But this sort of thing, however glorious, gives a peculiar temper to the human soul.

"Yes," Pedro added almost with a sigh, "it's true enough. . . . We'd better close up ranks, Andres." They were now crossing the courtyard of the teocalli. "What's your opinion of this rabble? The dogs look ugly. See that bastard in the eagle helmet scowling at us?"

Two by two, shoulder to shoulder, the dozen or so men fell mechanically into close formation, outwardly ignoring the black looks of the crowd but alert as a steel trap. Their armor clanged rhythmically as they marched; the plumes on their helmets fluttered.

It was clear that the overthrow of the war god and the appropriation of his temple, even though it had been wrung from Montezuma, did not find acceptance among the hitherto patient Aztecs. As usual the throng in the square was quiet (the Spaniards were always impressed by the absence of hurlyburly in an Indian crowd), but the quiet had a sullen, menacing vibration. The muttered echo of Cortes's Aztec nickname, Malinche, sounded like a hiss. Noteworthy, too, was the presence of numerous warriors, picked men of the military orders, in traditional dress, their dark features visible through the jaws of an ocelot helmet or under the beak of an eagle. Black-coped priests were everywhere, flitting back and forth.

The Spanish quarters in the palace, or rather compound, which had belonged to Axayacatl, Montezuma's father, lay at no great distance across the square from the temple enclosure; but before the cavaliers had gone more than halfway, the quiet around them had turned to a rising mutter. Without hurrying their pace by the fraction of a second, impersonal and undeviating as a steel plow, they advanced through the crowd, which opened grudgingly to let them pass.

Mobs everywhere are inherently the same. A period of fermentation, a slow heaving, then a spark and explosion. Cortes, an expert in timing, sensed that the explosion was near and made his move at the proper psychological instant.

"Espadas, senores!" he said in his clear, level voice. "Swords!" And in the same moment that every blade leaped from its scabbard, he swept the steel vambrace of his left forearm against the chest of an Indian warrior too slow in making way for him. "Would you shoulder me, dog! Must I teach you manners!"

The hulking fellow, evidently a leader, reeled back and would have fallen except for the press behind him.

"By fours!" said Cortes; and at once the file became a compact square.

"Vizors!"

The steel lips of the helmets shut.

"Now, adelante quietly, gentlemen."

It was enough. The crowd, distracted by the precise, bewildering maneuver and overawed by the terrible swords, did not reach the explosion point. Though a few yells sounded from its fringes, it opened meekly for the group, who marched on at the same steady pace to the near-by gateway of their palace. The massive doors swung open, disclosing the vast courtyard inside, the sentries at their posts, the cannon in position. They closed again, leaving the Aztecs on the outside to ferment and murmur.

"It seems to me," said Cortes, removing his helmet, "that our friends out there may be needing a lesson—a sharp one. But perhaps this show of teeth will be enough. I hate unnecessary bloodshed."

The Prophet Daniel had been forgotten.

XLV/

A YEAR AGO the incident in the square would have excited Pedro de Vargas as a novelty. Now it started a train of reflex professional thought. As the group of officers broke up, he remarked to Tapia: —

"You know, we could stand four or five more feet on that outer wall as well as some bastions. Eight foot's nothing to scale, especially when there're no flanking redans. I wonder the General doesn't see to it."

The "palace" of Axayacatl, a vast, irregular rectangle of open spaces and of one-story stone buildings (terraced occasionally in the center to provide an upper apartment), was surrounded by a massive stone wall. It had been honeycombed by the Spaniards with embrasures for cannon and loopholes for arquebuses, but these would be of small use at close quarters. An active man could easily leap high enough

to catch a purchase on the coping; and a shove from behind would lift him to the top. In the absence of outjutting bastions, no flanking fire to clear the wall of attackers was possible.

Tapia nodded. "Yes, and take a look at the teocalli there." He pointed back at the great pyramid they had just left. Only a couple of hundred yards distant in a straight line, it dominated the courtyard of the Spanish quarters. "Did it ever strike you that slingers and bowmen up there would make this place too hot for fun? I'm wishing for the hundred and fifty men down country with Captain Velasquez de Leon. Perhaps we could use them better here than at Coat-zacoalco."

He referred to the largest of the detachments which Cortes had sent out to explore the countr)\ Statesman as well as soldier, the General had spent the recent months appraising resources—mines, plantations, harbor facilities. The number of Castilians in Mexico City amounted at present to little better than two hundred men. They were barracked together with several hundred Tlascalan allies; but, when it came to a pinch, it was the white force that counted.

Pedro absently rubbed his hair, which had been pressed flat under his helmet.

"And the General spoke of three hundred thousand people in this town alone." He grinned. "Well, Andres, we need exercise. We're getting soft, homhre."

The young captains gazed at the mixed crowd thronging the huge courtyard within the walls: bands of half-naked Tlascalan warriors, who camped here in the open; dozens of native women (for concubines were plentiful); here and there Aztec noblemen in attendance on Montezuma; scores of slaves. The place hummed with Indian life and showed a riot of color. Only the sentries, hard and bearded under their steel caps, the gunners on constant duty at their cannon, or an occasional soldier represented the white element. In the background stretched the low, stone-faced buildings, separated from each other by irregular courts and passageways, and sometimes rising in a terrace to a second story. It was here in their long rooms capable of housing a hundred and fifty men and in their own patios that the Spaniards kept to themselves, enjoyed their women, and were waited on by their naborias or native servants.

"Yes, soft," de Vargas repeated. "We've been cooped up here too long. If four hundred of us could beat fifty thousand Tlascalans at ' Tecoacinco, we've still enough here to handle these Aztec gallinas."

"Send God you're right," returned Tapia. "But remember that the

Aztecs conquered this country before we came. They might surprise us. . . . Hasta la vista. Redhead."

Pedro returned the farewell and clanked off to his quarters, which lay in an opposite angle of the compound. On the way, he stopped to watch a fencing bout between two good swordsmen, Luis Alonso and Juan Escalona; stopped to bet a peso in a card game (the gold of the army was in constant flux from pocket to pocket); stopped to drink a cup of pulque with Francisco de Morla; and at last reached the patio upon which his room opened, to find Juan Garcia seated on the ground between Catana's legs, getting his hair cut.

"Careful now!" boomed Garcia. "Don't rattle Catana, Pedrito. It's a critical moment when she clips the hairs from my ears. I am most ticklish in that place, and if she cuts me—"

"Be still," said Catana, laying a firm hand on Garcia's huge skull. "There, I got it. A whoreson long one, sticking out like a Swiss pike."

"What a picture!" smiled Pedro. "Shocking! All I can say is that it's good I'm not jealous, amigos mios."

Since the end of March, Catana had put on feminine clothes— marvelous reds and yellows cut out of Indian cotton stuffs and stitched by herself. But the year she had spent in hose and doublet had left her confused. She was apt to take strides unsuitable to skirts; or at times she forgot, as now, to keep her gown below her knees.

She clipped a final point from Garcia's forehead and brushed off her skirts.

"There you are. For Dios, Soldan's mane is no thicker than yours."

Getting up, she raised her lips to Pedro for a kiss, then set about the straps and buckles of his armor, removing it piece by piece and hanging each in the right order on its appointed rack against the wall.

"Is that better, sefior?"

Pedro stretched contentedly. "Much better, pichon."

Meanwhile Garcia admired his improved reflection in the small patio pool. "A good haircut, muchacha," he nodded. "Here, I'll give you a buss for it."

She let him kiss her, and the three of them sat down in the shadow of the wall. Since her brother, Manuel Perez, had fallen in one of the first Tlascalan battles, Garcia in a sense had replaced him. The big man and Catana were devoted in a half-kindredly, half-comradely fashion. It was a warm relationship, which derived from the experiences in Jaen and from Garcia's genius for affection. A friend to almost everyone in the army, he adored Catana as his ideal of an all-weather girl.