Captain from Castile (61 page)

"I work for my people," said the Indian. "In my place, you do the same."

The point was too true to be debated.

"But now, Sefior Cacique," Garcia put in, "what's the state of things? Are we prisoners or free?"

"Free," Coatl nodded. "I send you to Malinche. I even go with you two days' march. . . . You leave Sefiora Catana here?"

With a start, Pedro recalled what he had momentarily forgotten. No, he could not return at once to the army. Catana daily expected the birth of their child.

Two WEEKS LATER a ncw voicc in the world, a little voice but furious, urgent and protesting, reached the ears of Pedro and Garcia, who stood anxiously waiting outside the door of Catana's room.

The two men looked at each other. "Ho!" said Garcia.

After a while an Indian girl peered around the curtain.

"How is she?" Pedro whispered.

He was for entering, but the girl pushed him back. The new voice gathered strength. He felt a queer tingle at the sound of it.

Garcia slapped him between the shoulders. "Hoho, comrade! Listen, will you! How now! How now, eh! My word!"

The girl reappeared, drew back the curtain, and beckoned. Pedro entered, while Garcia tactfully remained behind. Catana's angular, pale face stood out against the blackness of her hair spread over the cushions. Her eyes seemed larger and darker.

She smiled faintly. "It's a girl after all, sehor. Does it matter?"

He kneeled beside her, raising her hand to his lips.

"Amada miar'

"But does it matter? Are you disappointed?"

A nudge from one of the Indian women fixed his attention on the small bundle now presented to him. Holding it awkwardly, he perceived in the folds of it a wee, red face and two tiny, quivering fists. Through its wrappings, he could feel the throb of the little body against his hands. He felt curiously warm and shy.

"Lord love us!" he muttered. "Well, well!"

"You are disappointed," repeated Catana.

"About what?"

"That it's a girl."

Too absorbed to answer, he had reached the point of opening one of the little fists, which promptly closed on his thumb. He laughed, delighted.

"By the mass! Well, well! And every finger perfect—only so small! It's a miracle of God." Some pink toes crept out of the other end of the bundle. He discovered them and laughed again. "Look, Catana."

"Then you are not disappointed?"

"Disappointed! How so? Why? Name of God! Such a little rose! Que vergiienza! It wasn't I who wanted a boy. I wanted another Catana." Then, remembering Garcia, he shouted, "Hey, Juan, come in here. I've got something to show you."

381

The big man appeared, grinning broadly.

"What do you think of this for a lusty wench?" demanded Pedro. "Feel her—firm, beefy, skin like silk, eh? She's got green eyes."

Garcia made sounds like a cooing bull. He ran his forefinger cautiously over the fuzz on the baby's head.

"And red hair, faith! Isn't she the spitting image of you! God's blessing on her!"

"You can hold her a moment."

Honored but uneasy, Garcia stood with his mighty arms tense as if he were embracing a hundredweight. The baby, sensing danger, protested and was snatched away by the Indian woman.

"Give me my darling," said Catana. "You'll tear her to pieces between you." And when the little bundle lay in the hollow of her arm, she murmured, "Be still, mozuela. My heaven's treasure! Who would want anything but thee, heart's dearest!"

The two men unconsciously worshiped in silence.

With every day, tidings of the great events in the north came thick and fast. Cortes had taken Tacuba. Now he was marching on Xochi-milco and Coyoacan. Nothing but the city of the Tenochcas, Tenoch-titlan, remained. He held Mexico. The Tlascalans were butchering and devouring, the Spaniards burning and robbing. The Valley of Cities was a valley of flames and death.

One evening, at their private vesper service in the improvised chapel, the three Spanish worshipers recited as much of the Te Deum as they could remember. Once more God had performed a miracle for Spain. Out of the broken company fleeing from the Valley of Mexico had been wrought a victorious host. The martyrs who had died on the stones of sacrifice would now be avenged. The True Faith would be established forever.

"And yet," Catana observed afterwards, "I'm sorry for women and children, senor—the little ones like ours. They're as innocent as lambs. And do you recall our first sight of the Valley from the sierra of Ahualco? Lakes and white cities and green hills? Lord! It was lovely! I remember I could hardly get my breath, and even El Fiero next me crossed himself. Such a picture of heaven! I suppose it'll never be the same."

Pedro shrugged. "It's war."

There was no answer to this—at least none that she could find—but instinctively she drew her baby closer to her, as if it represented something above and beyond war.

A footstep interrupted them, and the stately figure of Coatl appeared around the corner of the terrace. He gave the impression of urgency but paused to exchange salutations with each in turn.

"Senoresj" he said, "I need help. My son ill. Our medicine men not know. Many others of my people burn with the sickness. I hear it is in the north. Your ships bring it. Maybe you know the cure."

"We aren't leeches, Coatl," Pedro answered, "but Juan Garcia here has traveled much on ships and seen many sick men. We will go with you."

They followed the Indian to his own section of the palacio and into a room full of copal incense, where some women were weeping beside a mat on the floor, while two physicians, or tepati, squatted in front of them over the patient. A sorcerer chanted charms in one corner, thus reinforcing science with magic.

"It is fever, we know," said Coatl. "We give him medicine for it: ground roots, stomach stones of birds, powdered jewels and burnt human bone. We also bind tooth of dead man on his head, as you see. But no help."

Garcia and Pedro glanced down at the boy's fever-racked body on which a faint rash had begun to show. They did not need any special skill to recognize what was wrong. They had seen that disease too often.

"ViruelaSj eh?" said Garcia. "I heard there was an outbreak in Cempoala."

The ships from Cuba had indeed brought something to New Spain even more fatal to the Indians than the civilization they represented: they had brought the smallpox.

"He's a sick boy, Coatl," Garcia declared, "but I'll tell you what to do. Wrap him up in furs, give him something hot to drink, and make him sweat. He may go out of his head with the fire in him, but it can't be helped. It's sweat that brings out the pocks. When they show up, he'll feel better. Keep the room dark. Don't let him scratch, or he'll disfigure himself."

Pedro did not miss the chance to add, "If you'll tie a cross around his neck, it will help him more than that dirty tooth."

Within a couple of days, half the pueblo was stricken. On the whole, because of Garcia's rough but comparatively sensible treatment, the community fared better than most. Elsewhere people, mad with fever, bathed in the mountain brooks and died like flies. Whole villages were emptied while the epidemic ranged south to the ocean. But in the Zapotec valleys, though mortality ran high, the greater number recovered.

Pedro and Garcia, who had had the disease, went here and there, exhorting, threatening, holding things together. As superior whites, who knew the secret of the dreadful sickness, they were often asked for the charm of baptism and felt that the time was not ill-spent. To reward Coatl's kindness by leaving him at such a time would have been shameful; but Pedro got off a messenger with letters to Cortes, reporting his whereabouts, describing the richness of the country, and announcing his return as soon as possible.

In the midst of it, upon re-entering his quarters one day, Pedro found Catana croucliing over the basket which served the baby, Ninita, as a cradle.

"She's so hot, seiior. She won't take the breast—only cries. God! If something should happen . . ."

Pedro managed to say, "Probably nothing," but he held his breath as he walked over and looked down at the tiny form in its wrappings. Then he stooped over and laid his hand against the baby's cheek.

"Do you think," breathed Catana, "that it's . . . ?"

"No," he said, trying to conceal his fear.

"My precious! My little one!" Catana grasped the edges of the basket. "Dear Lady of Heaven!"

Her voice chilled him. "Queriddj it is nothing. It will pass."

The baby began crying thinly, helplessly. Lifting it in her arms, Catana swayed back and forth. "Lady of Heaven," she whispered. "Mother of God . . ."

Night came on; the crying stopped, to be followed by quick, hard breathing. The fever rose. Catana held the baby in her arms hour after hour.

Standing in front of her, Pedro and Garcia stared down; or they moved aimlessly on tiptoe about the room. They had faced death so often; but now as its shadow deepened here, they felt daunted and humble like little children.

Towards morning, Catana suddenly murmured: "Pray for her, sefiores, pray hard."

Sinking to their knees close by, their faces bowed upon clasped hands, they prayed as they best could, broken, clumsily. Vows to their patron saints, promises of barefoot pilgrimages to the Virgin of Guadalupe, to St. James of Campostello.

All at once, long past midnight, Catana uttered a low cry. "She's dead! My baby's dead!"

But she continued to hold the little bundle, cuddling it against her, drawing the embroidered wrap closer about it. "No, Niiiita, it isn't true.

Precious! My little rose! Look, darling, look at Madrecita again!" Her voice hardened, sharpened.

Pedro said, "Give her to me, querida/'

"No! No!"

He put his arms around her. "She's mine too."

Then the desolate tears came. Gradually she released the small body. Pedro held it a moment, then placed it gently in Garcia's arms.

He glanced at Catana. "We'll go out a moment, Juan. Come, vida mia."

She hid her face against him as they went out.

And Juan Garcia stood for a while staring blindly at the opposite wall. At last, with infinite tenderness, he stooped and laid Nifiita in the gay woven basket, folding the miniature hands one upon the other. He drew the little coverlet over her and turned it back carefully, like a giant absorbed with a doll. Then all at once, flinging an arm in front of his face, he wept like a child.

They buried Ninita in the palacio garden under a tree with flowers resembling small, white musk roses—baby flowers. It filled the air with freshness and, swaying in the breeze, strewed the ground beneath it with delicate petals. Being handy with tools, Garcia fashioned a rough coffin of sweet-smelling cedar. His breast heaved often as he worked, and he shook his head, thinking vague, heavy thoughts. When he had finished, he covered the small casket with a dark cloth, and Coatl's women lined it with blossoms. Nifiita seemed no longer dead, as Pedro carried the open coffin in his arms to its place beneath the flowering tree. She had died too soon to be disfigured by the disease and looked merely asleep.

Coatl, solemn and stately, laid a small golden rattle near the baby's hands, and a little tortoise of gold.

"You allow, seiiora?" he said. "She play with them in that other land."

Then, at the edge of the grave, the coffin was closed; but Catana asked Garcia to open it again.

She leaned down and pressed her lips against the baby's forehead. At last she said, "Now I shall always remember her—how sweet she was."

Pedro repeated what he could recall of the funeral mass. It was not much, but he knew the great comforting words: "Requiem aeternam dona eij Domine; et lux perpetua luceat ei"

He slipped his arm around Catana when the coffin, finally closed, was lowered into the grave.

"It's so deep/' she said. "Does it have to be so deep?"

He could feel her shrink as the earth was thrown in. At last nothing remained but a small mound of flowers, which the Indian women cast upon the spot—that and a cross upon which Pedro had carved the baby's name and the requiescat.

Considerately, the others moved away, leaving them alone.

"My arms feel very empty," she said.

He did not answer for a moment. He had wakened that morning to the leaden desolation which follows death, and in that desolation God had spoken. He felt sure that it was God who had brought him to a decision so alien to one of his caste, who had made it clear to him that he must choose one of two ways.

"Listen, Catana," he said finally. "Our Lord has taken the little one to Himself. All is well with her. Ours is the sorrow because ours has been the sin. Twice now He has punished us. And the sin is mine, not yours. I have not made you my wife as His law commands."

At first she looked at him fearfully, but when he paused, she nodded. "Yes, senor, we have sinned. It is as you say." Her voice caught, but she went on bravely. "Of course it would have had to end sometime. We knew that. It is best now."

"End?" he repeated. "No."

"What else is possible?"

"Are there no priests with Cortes? Father Olmedo can make us man and wife."

She stared up at him. "What is it you said, my lord?"

"I said Father Olmedo shall marry us."

A light sprung up in her eyes, then faded.

"You're mad, seiior! Hidalgos don't marry camp girls. I love you— do you tliink I would have that? How could you return to Spain?"

"I shall not return." His hands closed upon her shoulders. "We'll stay here. It's the New World, muchacha. It belongs to us. Tomorrow's a bigger word here than yesterday."

"I won't have vou dishonored."

His grasp tightened. "You'll do what I say. You belong to me."

"Yes, God knows I do." Her eyes filled. "But not to your hurt. I'd rather die. You feel this way now—because of Ninita. Afterwards, when you've forgotten—"

"I love only you. I'll love you always. I ask you to marry me."

Again the light shone in her face, lingered. "Senor, wait. I'll answer you when we're back with the company."

Finally the messenger returned from his mission to Cortes, his eyes full of what he had seen: burning cities, warriors, cannon, ships on the lagoon, captains in armor on their barbed horses, the great Malinche, who had received him as if he had been a chief for the sake of his news from Captain de Vargas.