Captain from Castile (63 page)

But he steadied himself. "Why should I fear? If your devils are inside, we will go to them, and I shall call upon the name of Our Lord and San Pedro. What happens then will be according to their will. But you might have warned me to bring my sword."

"What use swords against gods?" Coatl returned. "You not fear, so let us enter."

Crossing the stream on a series of rocks, they reached the portal of the cavern, where Coatl, drawing out a supply of pine torches from a secret crevice in the cliff, kindled one of them with a wooden fire drill from his pouch and lighted another for Pedro. Touching hand to forehead, he uttered a few words, evidently a traditional prayer.

Pedro said, "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti"

Then the man of the Stone Age and the man of civilized Europe advanced into the darkness.

By the light of the torches, Pedro could see a tunnel-like corridor slanting down, and. he could feel the slope beneath his feet. Comparing great things with small, it reminded him a little of the passageway under the main tower of the Castle at Jaen. Only here a mountain was the tower, and the passageway extended five hundred feet.

Almost at once a swarm of bats darted around the two men, fanning their cheeks with furry wings and uttering mouse-Hke pipings. Everyone knew that bats were lackeys of the devil.

"Let them come/' thought de Vargas grimly. "They're to be expected, for this is surely the road into hell. Let them come or change themselves to demons. Though, curse me, I wish I had my sword!"

Then suddenly, at the foot of the decline, his heart leaped to his throat.

He beheld, as far as the light could reach, a gigantic hall—but one so vast that the cathedral at Jaen would have been lost in a corner of it. To his dazzled vision, this infinity seemed encrusted with ice, frozen masses pendent from the roof, upsoaring from the pavement, wrought into huge forms and statues, a crystal world.

He had never seen stalactites and stalagmites. Only half-emerged from the Middle Ages, his mind stocked with fairy tales, his courage tensed for battle with Satan, it seemed to him a thing incredible and devilish. He and Coatl were dots—fireflies—in the glittering space about them.

Imagination soared. He saw in one mass of crystals an enormous throne, surely the high seat of Lucifer himself, but at the moment vacant. He heard, or fancied he heard, the thunderous accents of an approaching voice.

"Rivers beneath us," said Coatl, reading his face.

That might be true or not, de Vargas thought, but no river could make the sound he heard.

"This worth seeing?" Coatl went on. "I waste your time, my friend, bringing you here?"

"It is wonderful," answered Pedro gravely. "But God knows whether mortal men have the right to look at such things."

AValking forward across the vast floor, they seemed to crawl. The torchlight fell on white trees hung with diamond moss, fountains of frozen water, crystal baths to cool the heat of devils, an amphitheater crowned by a pipe organ to make music for Beelzebub, triumphal obelisks, sheeted phantoms doomed to stone, lifelike statues of lost souls.

All at once Pedro started so that the torch shook in his hand. An enormous white goat stood before them. A goat big as a horse, the very chairman of Witches' Sabbaths.

"Ha!" said de Vargas, crossing himself and relieved that the animal did not move. "Satan's image."

But at that moment something else moved. Coatl jerked Pedro back. It was a large rattlesnake, which had struck from its coil. In an instant

Coatl, stooping, had caught the reptile by the tail and snapped its head against the flank of the goat. It stretched limp and quivering in the circle of the light.

"Watch out," said the Indian. "Once I meet an ocelot here, but the torch scare him."

Pedro remembered Dante's adventure with the leopard. It was all of a piece with the great poet's description of hell.

"Remember how we go," said Coatl. "You come again—alone."

Pedro did not relish the thought. "I'll bring the General and my friends here. It will amaze them."

"No, you come alone."

"Why should I?"

"Because something you not see yet."

It was unpleasant talking in the vasty place. Their voices were multiplied by echoes, some loud, some faint, as if the words were passed from mouth to mouth around a circle of ghosts.

"Not see yet'' came the whisper.

"Remember way lie straight to this beast." Coatl pointed to the goat. "That easy. We turn now to left. Give heed."

"Give heed" warned the echoes.

De Vargas had a natural sense of direction and now took note of turnings and landmarks. They passed along galleries, down declines, through other gigantic halls, stopping now and then to light another torch. Occasionally Coatl rehearsed him, as if everything depended on his remembering this particular route.

"It drawn here," said the Indian, showing the end of a parchment in his pouch. "But if this lost, you must remember."

Then, without warning, Coatl stopped before a natural archway.

"Here," he said.

Upon entering, Pedro saw another huge cavern hung with crystals, and in the center of it a high, white pyramid. StepjiJ, whether natural or cut by hand, ascended toward the apex, which met the roof in an odd contorted form. It looked like a monstrous head supporting the vault, while the pyramid itself resembled a white robe, completing one giant figure. Then Pedro noticed that the steps were of a rusty color as compared with the snowy surface on either side of them.

"Blood," said Coatl. He pointed at a small, dark mound some distance off. "Bones of many men, long ago, in ancient times."

Having prostrated himself before the lowering face above, Coatl now led the way around the pyramid to a passage descending under it.

"We go down here."

"Look you, friend/' said Pedro, "I have not troubled you with questions. You have shown me marvels, but there must be an end. Our torches are half-spent."

"End is here." Coatl pointed down the tunnel-like shaft. "Few paces more." Then, turning, he plunged down the sharp decline with Pedro-behind him.

The torchlight fell on a hollow space under the pyramid, a bubble in the rock formation, irregular in shape, and perhaps no more than twenty feet long. Pedro, however, saw nothing but its contents.

No longer the white or crystal glittering of the halls above. Here the torches brought out a warm, yellow reflection, more dazzling and incredible.

Gold!

Except for Montezuma's treasure room, de Vargas had never seen, such riches. But here they were concentrated in a narrower space. Grains, nuggets, hand-wrought ornaments in piles.

He muttered, "What's this, Coatl?"

The answer had no meaning. "Seiior, this the two pesos you give me once in that barranca near Jaen."

"Two pesos?" echoed de Vargas.

"Gold is like maize," said Coatl. "Sow one, two grains, get many."

"I still don't understand."

"Is this not parting gift?"

On Pedro's stupefied mind, the words did not register.

"I hope it bring you good," Coatl went on. "To many Spaniards it bring evil."

Pedro turned on him. "Explain for God's love! Do you mean you're giving me this gold?"

"To you alone. That is why I say you come back here alone."

"But explain. How? Whose gold?"

He could hardly hear through the clatter of his thoughts. An ancient treasure . . . An offering to priests long ago beyond memory . . . Perhaps, even, they were priests of another race, for this god of the cavern was an old god . . . Coatl alone had the secret, transmitted from chief to chief through the far past . . . What need had the Zapotecs of this gold? They had enough in their mines and rivers.

Stooping down, Pedro ran the fingers of one hand through the precious grain, while the torch he held with the other cast yellow flickerings. Looking more closely, he could see that the treasure, when melted into bars, would not quite equal Montezuma's—perhaps seven hundred thousand pesos. A fifth of this belonged by law to the King, a

fifth to Cortes, a share to the company. He could see the gold shrinking as he gazed, but still it left him rich beyond heart's desire. The treasure made him equal with any grandee. It opened every door.

"What can I say?" he burst out. "What return can I make?" "No return." Coatl stretched out his hand. "I tell you one time your god give you what you want. We not meet again. But you go with me; I go with you. What we do for each other is seed of good or bad harvest. It is so, senor, with all we do in life." Then after a pause, he added, "Torches almost gone. It is time we leave."

In a half daze, Pedro followed him through the windings of the cavern, crossed the hall of the throne, and at last emerged into the purity of daylight. Lost in his dream, he stumbled more than once over the coiled serpent roots of the lovely trees, which seemed to writhe and close about his ankles.

He reached the pueblo after dark.

"Where the devil have you been?" demanded Garcia, while Catana's anxious frown relaxed. "You step out for a minute and you're gone three hours."

"Walked with Coatl," Pedro answered. "He showed me a cave."

"Hell! You must like exercise!"

De Vargas said nothing. The master of seven hundred thousand pesos must guard his tongue even among those he loves. They would be the more surprised later on, he told himself to quiet his conscience.

LXVlfl

Because of rain and the difficulty of the fords, it took two hard days from Cacahuamilpa before Pedro, Catana, and Garcia with their escort of Zapotecs reached the heights of Ajusco and looked down on their journey's end. The clouds having lifted toward sunset, they could view the entire reach of the Valley: at their feet, Xochimilco and Coyoacan; in the middle distance, outstretched on the lake, Tenoch-titlan with its three tentacle causeways; to the left, Chapultepec and Tacuba; to the north, Tepeyac, not yet known as Guadalupe; and in the far distance on the right the city of Tetzcuco, formerly the Aztecs' chief ally but now a deserter to the Spaniards.

From one point or another in the surrounding mountains, Pedro and his two companions had often overlooked the Valley in the past and

retained so vivid a memory of it that they could recall each detail of its towns and configuration. Little prepared as they were for the changes which a year had brought, its present aspect startled them.

Xochimilco, "field of flowers," once gay and glittering and fronted by its floating gardens, looked black and deserted, like a burned-out hulk. In his recent letter, Cortes had mentioned the burning of it "to punish the dogs for their resistance," a passing reference that mocked the mournful reality.

Looking farther, it seemed to Pedro that Tenochtitlan itself had changed. It appeared somehow shrunken, though its teocallis of evil memory still towered over the spread of roofs. Then he pointed out what had happened. Sections of the suburbs had been gnawed away; the buildings once standing there were gone, leaving acres of rubble, ovTr which hung a thin haze of dust and smoke. The canals also had disappeared, being evidently filled up by the ruins of demolished houses. At a loss to understand the reason for this, he and Garcia finally hit on the answer. It was furnished by the large camps to be seen at the end of the three causeways: one directly below at Xoloc to the south of the city; another to the west of it in Tacuba; and a third to the north at Tepeyac. The dikes themselves no longer showed gaps as before, but stretched solidly from the mainland. Apparently the siege consisted in a slow leveling of the town itself, a leveling which gave constantly wider scope for the use of cavalry and cannon, wliile it herded the enemy back from the lake toward the center of the city. Attack by day, a certain amount of demolition, would be followed by retirement to camp at night. As they looked, they could see a dense column of men, like ants at that distance, returning to their quarters at Xoloc, while the Aztecs, advancing from the town, harried the rear guard. The rattle of musketry, the far-off boom of cannon, marked this action.

Pedro noticed other changes. Once the lake had swarmed with canoes, the come-and-go of pleasure traffic. Now it lay empty as a blind eye. He was asking himself what could have swept it bare, when he caught sight of the obvious explanation. He had forgotten the eleven brigantines mentioned in Cortes's letter. Some five of them now appeared heading from the mainland with the evident aim of covering the retirement of the column on the causeway. Gallant little two-masted vessels with billowing sails and fluttering pennons. Their invention was the crowning stroke of Cortes's genius. They held the key to conquest by cutting off supplies from the starving city and by enfilading any attack along the causeways. Puffs of smoke leaped from their sides as they coasted in toward the skirmish. Then, after a pause, came the dull thud of the cannon.

The Zapotec warriors stared goggle-eyed.

"Vaydj' Pedro said to them, "you'll see more wonders than that before you're through. Forward, if we're to make camp before dark."

The trail descended in coils from the thinner air of the upland. Soon evergreens were left behind, giving place to cactus or to fields of maguey with their pepper trees. As the party drew closer to the lake, they encountered increasing numbers of encamped Indian bands drawn from all the different tribes of Anahuac and from the eastern plateau. They had chosen between the Aztec yoke of fear and Cortes's promises. Knowing the former only too well, they embraced the latter, prompted also by revenge and greed, but happily ignorant that with every blow for Spain they were forging their future fetters. These warriors looked askance at the unfamiliar Zapotecs, noting differences in paint and equipment. But the Spaniards needed no passport, and the party proceeded unchallenged.

As they threaded their way through the separate encampments, de Vargas identified some of the tribes. Here were Cholulans, there Tetz-cucans, there Tlascalans; but the fact that many were strange brought home his year of absence from the army. Once he could have distinguished the markings and war gear of every people with which the company had had dealings.