Captain from Castile (44 page)

"There's a wench for New Spain!" he would rumble to Pedro. "There's a mujercita to rub shoulders with in a new country! A fe mia, I don't know which of you I love best. That's the thing about love: you can't weigh or measure it."

Garcia would heave and expand with affection.

"But I know this," he added once, "if you broke her heart with your grand hidalgo ways, chasing off after some high-stepping dama" (he harbored a bitter grudge against the handkerchief which Pedro still carried under his doublet), "I'd—" He opened and closed his hand, staring down at the fingers.

"You'd do what?" Pedro teased.

"I don't know," the other gloomed. "I don't know. I guess it would break my heart too, comrade."

They sat on cushions in the cool of the patio wall, while servants, whom Montezuma had supplied for the Spanish invaders, set forth low tables and an array of dishes for the noon meal. Shallow braziers with live coals in them kept individual bowls hot. It was a varied menu consisting of poultry, fish, chili peppers, corn, beans, tortillas, and pineapples; thickish chocolate, flavored with vanilla, furnished the beverage.

"Blessed Virgin!" grunted Garcia through a full mouth. "What would I give to clamp my jaws over an honest hunk of salt pork again! No work for the teeth in these messes. Ah, well, what can't be cured must be endured."

Loading her case knife with fish and succotash, Catana nodded. "Yes, Christian victuals for me too, Juan. They're chewier." She slid the food skillfully between her lips. "But just wait. This is a good country for hogs."

"Or beef," put in Pedro, cracking a turkey wing. "The General plans to bring in cattle before another year. Also grapes. No reason for us to go on putting up with pulque or this heathenish chocolatl. Too cursed sweet."

So, enjoying the tastiest food they had ever known, they seasoned it with the time-honored army grousing and had a satisfying meal.

Pedro related the incident in the square. Having survived the hard Tlascala campaign, neither Garcia nor Catana took the news lightly; but their reactions were different.

"Isn't that like Indians!" the big man exclaimed. "No gratitude. We come here in all gentleness to show them how to live—stop them from eating each other, teach them Spanish ways, make them subjects of Don Carlos, the greatest king on earth, and they want to murder

us. It was the same in the Islands. They leave us no choice but fighting, when, if they would only settle down, everything would be happy."

Catana demurred. "They don't want to be slaves. That's natural."

"They have slaves of their own," retorted Garcia. "But who's speaking of slaves? Servants, yes. Doesn't it stand to reason that dark-skinned ignorantes should be servants of Castilian cavaliers? Haven't their chiefs sworn allegiance to His Majesty, and aren't we the King's factors in New Spain? What they want doesn't matter. If they rise against us, they're a pack of rebels."

This logic was too much for Catana: it would have been too much, indeed, for almost anyone in the army.

"I suppose you're right," she faltered. "But if they should rise, they're a pretty big pack."

During the last minute, she had been growing curiously pale and now got up unsteadily.

"Siesta time, hombres."

Pedro was staring at her. "Are you ill, dulce mia?"

"No, I'm specially happy."

"What about?"

She ran her fingers through his hair. "I'll tell you sometime."

"Why not now?"

"Oh, because— Hasta luego"

Ruffling his curls again, she walked inside, her vivid dress and black hair framed a moment in the doorway.

"Catana looks dashed peaked," said de Vargas uneasily.

But Garcia, absorbed by the Indian problem, returned an absent-minded grunt. "I'd give a thousand pesos if we had our camp on the mainland, Pedrito. Those causeways and drawbridges across the water make a nasty line of retreat. Remember how we felt about them that first day when we marched in? I was with Bernal Diaz del Castillo. We looked at each other when we came to the first bridge. 'What's in your mind, Juan?' he says. 'The same that's in yours,' I told him. 'A beautiful trap.' "

Pedro smiled. "What's the saw about crossing bridges before you come to them? That business in the plaza amounted to nothing. Why worry?"

"Because I know Indians by now," Garcia frowned. "If they show anything, it means a lot. You wait. They run deep and quiet, quiet as this damned city."

During the siesta pause, the hush of the town, derived partly from the absence of wheeled vehicles and beasts of burden and partly from

the Indian nature itself, was more obvious than at other hours. But today, imagination coloring it perhaps, the stillness seemed to have another quality—hurricane weather, hard and breathless. To alert superstition, it was as if a gigantic invisible pressure brooded over the city, perhaps the dethroned war god of Anahuac, alias Satan himself, poised to strike.

Pedro and Garcia sat clasping their knees, listening to the silence.

"Quiet!" Garcia repeated. ''Maldito sea! I had a dream like this once. It comes back to me now. I was in just such a place . . ." He seemed to be groping through his mind. "I remember that all at once came a sound of footsteps running—"

He broke off, his mouth agape; Pedro's scalp prickled. For at that moment sounded a hurry of footsteps, breaking the hush between the buildings and drawing nearer.

Gaspar Burguillos, one of Cortes's pages, rounded the corner of the patio.

It took him a second to catch his breath.

"The General requires your presence, Captain de Vargas. He has been summoned to council by the Lord Montezuma. He wishes you, and the Captains de Olid, Alvarado, and Marin, to accompany him. The matter presses. You will wear light armor."

Pedro, already up, took down his casque from the rack and put it on, then unhooked the corslet from its pegs.

"Lend me a hand, will you, Juan." And when Garcia, still shaken by the fulfillment of his dream, was tightening the buckles, de Vargas whispered, "What happened then—after the footsteps?"

"I don't know, I've forgotten."

Pedro adjusted his sword. "Well," he muttered, "we'll soon find out."

XLV\l

It was a distinction to be invited to this conference, and Pedro walked more erect because of it, as he and Burguillos made their way through the irregular grouping of buildings toward the General's quarters. Since Escalante had been killed In battle on the coast and Gonzalo de Sandoval had been promoted to succeed him in command of the vital fort at Villa Rica, de Vargas ranked as Cortes's favorite among the younger officers. Perhaps the Captain General, whose proceedings were usually dictated by more than one good reason, looked beyond

Pedro to Spain and to the possible advantage that Don Francisco's support might bring him. He knew (none better) the de Vargas family connections. But if this had something to do with Pedro's rise in the General's favor, there were other more obvious reasons from the standpoint of the army. De Vargas had borne himself well and was admittedly one of the foremost captains. Even the beloved Sandoval was hardly more popular.

Conversing in a low tone with Cristobal de Olid, Cortes stood at the foot of the steps leading up to his quarters, when Pedro and Burguillos arrived. His pale face looked unusually grave, an expression which brought out the glinting of his dark eyes. Near by, the page, Orteguilla, to whom Montezuma had taken a fancy and who had learned enough Aztec to spy on the captive Emperor, stood with a crestfallen cast on his shrewd young face.

Cortes turned to him. "This jumps with what you reported day before yesterday, ninOj when the Seiior Montezuma shut you out from his interview with the chief priests, the tlamacazquis, or whatever he calls them. You said then that he had changed toward you. When did this change start?"

"As I look back, my lord, it was four evenings ago, on the day when Vuestra Senoria broke down the great idol on the teocalli."

"And since then he has had many parleys with his priests, eh? I told you at all costs to find a means of overhearing them."

"I did my best," Orteguilla flushed; "but the council room is large; I had no hiding place, and the Senor Montezuma's guards kept me from the doors."

"Well," observed Cortes, who rarely spent time on regrets, "I doubt if your overhearing them would have helped much."

He greeted the several officers as they came up: Alvarado, florid and magnificent as always, the hawklike de Olid; bowlegged Luis Marin with his red beard and pockmarks. Last of all. Dona Marina joined them.

Cortes gave her a slight bow. "Now that we have our 'tongue,' we can wait on His heathen Majesty, sirs. . . . Orteguilla, come with us. And note well: if at any time I should hook my thumb into my belt— so—you will slip out of the council room and report to Captain Andres de Tapia, captain of the watch, with my orders that all our company stand to arms."

Then, leading the way with Dona Marina, he turned toward the large central building of the compound, which served as Montezuma's residence.

Between two one-story wings, a flight of steps mounted to a terrace upon which the numerous apartments and patios of the Indian Emperor, his wives, and his suite, were located. Beneath the square, massive entrance to them, a Spanish sentinel stood guard; but beyond the threshold Cortes and his officers entered an Aztec world. Here the air was heavy with the smell of copal incense and flowers; here the dignitaries of the court or feudal chiefs in gaudy, varicolored garments, and wearing jade or turquoise or metal ornaments, came and went; messengers from the fringes of the Aztec jurisdiction arrived with reports; tributary caciques waited to do homage; officers from distant garrisons in their green military plumes received orders; black-gowned priests bore messages from the gods. For if Montezuma actually was the prisoner of the Spaniards, if he could leave the palace of his father only under Spanish guard, in face-saving fiction he chose to live among the white teules as a friend; and in fact he remained the despotic War Chief and supreme priest of Anahuac, the focal administrative center through which Cortes, master-puppeteer, could conveniently manipulate his strings.

Conducted by several Aztec noblemen, acting as ushers, the little alien group of white men and Dofia Marina followed the length of the vast low-ceilinged apartment, while the throng of native courtiers drew back on either side. But the admiring curiosity of several months ago was gone. The cavaliers walked between sullen defiant walls. If they carried themselves proudly, they did not excel the bystanders in that respect. It was stare for stare, pride for pride.

"By gad. Captain Marin," said Pedro, letting his half-smile flick down the line of faces, "these dogs are in sore need of physic. Have you ever seen a more bilious pack? What dose would you prescribe?"

"Iron," laughed Marin from the corner of his mouth, "iron in the liver."

"Given externally, eh?"

But at that instant Pedro's smile faded and his glance sharpened. That tall, high-nosed fellow several yards down the line with a turquoise in his lower lip and a plug of gold in one nostril looked startlingly familiar. He wore a nodding panache of quetzal plumes, the sign of high rank, and a gorgeous featherwork corslet. But however transformed and embellished, if he was not Coatl, Diego de Silva's escaped servant, then Pedro could not trust his eyes about anyone.

Before he could catch himself, he half-raised his hand and exclaimed, "Hola, Coatl!" But though the dark eyes rested on his for a moment,

there was no sign of recognition. The man stared, then turned away.

"Friend of yours?" Marin grinned.

"I thought I knew him," Pedro muttered, "but after all, these Indians are as much alike as peas in a pod."

The apartment opened upon a smaller apartment, where the cavaliers waited while the ushers drew coarse henequen cloaks over their finery and slipped off their sandals in order to enter Montezuma's presence abject and barefooted. Then, with eyes on the ground and bowed shoulders, they led the way through an opposite door into the council hall beyond.

Montezuma, the Uei Tlatoani, "he who speaks," ruler of Mexico and of the conquered provinces, sat on a low, high-backed throne at the end of the room facing the entrance. He was a slight, though well-proportioned, man of forty with a sparse beard and shoulder-long black hair. A gold crown, shaped in front like a miniature mitre, and jade earrings marked his rank, though otherwise he dressed simply. Instead of the characteristic Indian features, heavy and immobile, he had a curiously expressive face, kindly but grave and in every mood noble.

Living in the midst of them, he was familiar to all the Spanish garrison. On his side, he knew many of his captors by name and had won their affection by his generosity, tact, and princely ways. They thought and spoke of him as the Great Montezuma.

Only a few—among them Cortes and Pedro de Vargas—did not share the general regard for him. He seemed too supple, too courteous and obliging. They mistrusted his gifts and his kind speeches, considered him either feeble or false. They felt the unbridgeable chasm between their minds and his. Not all the gold he showered on them personally, not even his oath of allegiance to the King of Spain nor the treasure he had collected as tribute, atoned for the death of Juan de Escalante and the murder of several Spaniards near Villa Rica by his orders. They suspected him constantly of plot and double-dealing, unable to understand that right or wrong in the Spanish sense had no meaning for Montezuma at all. To this smaller group, he seemed only a smooth, unpredictable savage.

But today his friends and detractors alike, among the handful of officers who approached him across the matted floor of the great room, felt at once a change. The usual smile did not greet them. He sat motionless, almost statue-like, his hands on the golden-wrought arms of the throne. When the obsequious ushers had faded out, he rose

and returned Cortes's bow with little better than a nod; then coldly waved him toward a chair, leaving, contrary to wont, the other cavaliers standing casque on arm. His dark eyes looked as cool and impenetrable as agates.