The Infidel; or, the Fall of Mexico. Vol. I.

So saying, the hunchback flung out of the room, and securing the thick door of plank, Juan was again left to his meditations.

CHAPTER XV

Then followed another period of silence and dejection, in which the prisoner wasted away as much in body as in spirit, becoming so listlessly indifferent to everything, that he no longer betrayed any desire to draw Najara into conversation, nor even to meet the advances which his jailer now often made. The thought of escaping from confinement, perhaps, never entered his mind; for, had he been even less resigned to his fate, the strict watch kept over him, and the condition of his prison, added to his apparent friendlessness, must have been enough to banish all such thoughts. His chamber was neither dark nor damp, but made strong by its bulky door, barred on the outside, and by windows, high above the floor, so very narrow that no human being could hope to pass through them.

Narrow as they were, however, it was the jailer's custom to examine them very closely each morning; a degree of vigilance that Juan had, in the earlier days of captivity, remarked with some surprise. He became acquainted with Najara's object at last. One morning, he was roused out of his stupefaction by a harsh exclamation from his jailer, and looking up, he beheld him take from the floor, immediately under one of the loopholes, what seemed a slip of paper, tied to a little stick, which appeared, some time during the night, to have been thus thrust into the prison. What were its contents he never could divine; for Najara had no sooner cast his eyes over it, than mingling a laugh of satisfaction at its miscarriage with some natural compassion for the profound wretchedness which had sealed the ears and eyes of the prisoner, he immediately departed with the prize.

From this time, Juan became more vigilant and wary; but the following night, he was admonished, by the clank of armour and the occasional sound of voices without, that sentinels were now stationed under the windows, thus precluding all hope of friendly communication from that quarter.

Before he had again entirely relapsed into his listless gloom, he began to have a vague consciousness that the Indian slave, who accompanied Najara, was becoming more officious than of old, in setting his meals before him, and particularly in placing the jar of water at his side, instead of depositing it on his table, as he had done before. His suspicion was confirmed, when, one morning, as Najara was making his wonted survey of the windows, the slave gave him a quick, impatient look, and shaking the jar as he set it down, made him sensible, by a rattling sound within it, that there was something besides the innocent element concealed at the bottom. As soon as Najara had departed, he made an examination of the mystery, and drew forth, with some astonishment, a plate of transparent obsidian, on which had been scratched by some hard instrument or precious stone, a few words which he was soon able to decypher. "If thou wilt leave Mexico, and live, take the stone from the pitcher."

He strode about the apartment for a moment in disorder; then, crushing the glassy temptation under his heel, and returning the fragments to the jar, he sat down again to brood over his despair. – The next morning the pitcher contained nothing but water.

Thus, then, the time passed away, in the ordinary listlessness of confinement, – the dull and sleepy torture of solitude; until Najara, waxing more compassionate as his prisoner grew more obviously indifferent to light, to food, and to speech, bethought him of a mode of indulgence from which no danger could be apprehended, and accordingly introduced the dog Befo into the apartment.

The loud yells of joy with which Befo beheld his young master, recalled Juan from his lethargy; and Najara was touched still further with compunction at the sight of the animal's transports.

"He has been whining every day at the prison gate," he muttered; "and doubtless he would have whined full as much, though he were to be let in only to be beaten. Such a fond fool is this young Juan himself: he returns to his master, though he knows the scourge is ready. It were better he had taken my advice, and passed to the sea by Otumba: He should have known Cortes would never forgive him."

The presence of this faithful animal, if it did not recall Juan's spirits, at least preserved him from sinking further into stupefaction; and nothing gave him more evident delight, than when, each morning, having prevailed upon Najara to lead his dumb companion into the air for exercise, he could hear Befo, in the joy of a liberty which he did not share, dashing frantically through the garden, now coursing by the water-side, now prancing by the palace, and, all the time, yelping and barking with the most clamorous delight. From these daily sorties the dog was used to return, with fresh spirits and increased attachment, to share, for the remainder of the day, the confinement of his master, upon whom, at his entrance, he jumped and fawned almost as boisterously as when enjoying his sports in the garden.

One day, however, he returned with a much graver aspect than usual, and stalking up to where Juan sat, he stood, wagging his tail, and gazing up with a look exceedingly knowing and significant. Somewhat surprised at this, and finding that Befo refused, even when invited, to begin his usual rough expressions of friendship, he took him by the leathern collar, by which the servants of Cortes had been wont to secure him at night, and pulled him towards him. The motion of the collar released a little packet, that had been carefully secured beneath it, and which now fell upon Juan's knee. As soon as the sagacious animal perceived that he had accomplished a task, not often committed to such a messenger, he returned to his usual demonstrations of satisfaction; and, for a moment, Juan was unable to examine the singular missive. When Befo became composed, he opened it, and read, with no little agitation, the following words: "Not for me, but for thyself. – There is but a day more to choose. Leave Mexico, and shed not thine own blood: make not thy friends curse thee. – Return but a fragment of the paper, or tie but a hair round the collar, – and thou shalt be saved. – Not for me, but for thyself."

The morning came, and Juan, taking the paper from his bosom, tore it to pieces. When Najara offered as usual to liberate the dog, he perceived that Juan held him fast by the collar.

"How now, señor, shall the dog play?"

"It is cruel to rob him of his hour's liberty," said Juan, with a subdued voice; "but, this day, suffer him to remain with me."

"Well, señor, as you will," said Najara; "but I would you had some better friend, – at least, some one who could counsel you. There are runners arrived from the northern towns; and, at midday, Cortes will march into the city."

"The better reason, then, that I should have this friend, who have no other," said Juan, calmly.

"Harkee, señor," said Najara, with a sort of petulant sympathy, "if you would but curse yourself and your foes, or bemoan your fate a little, I should like it better than this stupid, womanish resignation. – Hark ye, – I care not if I tell you: I thought you had come athwart the fancies of Don Hernan, in the matter of the Doña, not that Don Hernan had wronged your own: I knew not that there was any old love between you."

"What art thou speaking of, Najara?" said Juan, with a hasty and troubled voice.

"This does, in some sense, weaken the sin of drawing sword upon him," continued the hunchback, "for no man loves to be robbed of his mistress. – Well, – the señora is sorry for you. – She thought to bribe me to let her speak with you. – Bribe me! – And yet I pitied her, for she was sorely distressed."

"For God's sake," exclaimed Juan, in extreme suffering, "speak me not a word of her; let me not hear her name."

"Well, be not cast down; she has much power with the general, and, doubtless, she will plead for you. Well, fare you well. – I did think to let Cortes know of her acts: but that might harden him against you still more. – Why should I waste thought upon him," muttered the deformed as he passed from the prison. "It is hard, or it seems hard, that heaven should give up a frame so beauteous and majestical, to be marred by the hangman's axe or rope, and leave a deformed lump like me, to scare little Indian girls and boys, and to be jibed at by all the craven loons of the army. But this is naught: if I am crooked, I am neither fool, traitor, nor coward, as most others are, in one degree or other, and sometimes in all."

As Najara had foretold, the army returned to Tezcuco about noon, as was made evident to Juan, by the sound of trumpets and cannon, and other warlike noises of rejoicing; which, continuing to fill the city for many hours, came to his ears like the tumult of a distant storm, and began to die away, only when the last twinkle of sunset, shooting through his narrow windows, had faded from the opposite wall.

CHAPTER XVI

It was now midnight. Audience after audience, and council after council, in the great hall of the palace, had shown how rapidly were approaching to a climax the involved events and schemes, which had for their object the overthrow of the Indian empire, as well as some that looked to an end equally dark, though of less public import. The Captain-General had despatched several audiences entirely of a private nature, and hoped to be relieved of his toil, while discharging from his presence an individual already known to the reader as Gaspar of the Red Beard. Whatever might have been the subject of the conference, its conclusion was unsatisfactory to both parties; for Olea departed with a visage both sullen and vindictive, while Cortes strode to and fro, evidently affected by vexation and anger.

As Olea, who had long since got rid of the 'infidel gait,' which had drawn a remark from Cortes, and which, doubtless assumed to assist his disguise, only adhered to him through habit, – as he vanished through the great door, another character made his appearance, entering by one of those doors which opened from the garden. It was the señor Camarga; who, from the friar's habit, again flung over his armour, seemed to have been engaged, a second time, in his maskings.

"What news, señor? what news hast thou?" demanded Cortes, in a low voice, making a sign to the visitor to imitate his cautiousness. "Hast thou gathered aught of my dog Villafana? By my conscience, we are at a fault; the fox is scared into virtue: Najara hath seen no ill in him, Guzman avers he hath detected no sign of guilt, and not a spy is there of all, who does not swear that his fright in the matter of Olin, (that knave, too, cajoled me!) has reduced him into submission and honesty. Hast thou found nothing?"

"Nothing to be thought of, perhaps," replied Camarga. "Villafana is either returned to his allegiance, as your excellency hints, or he is too deep in distrust, to confer with me any further. He swears, if one could believe him, that he has thought better of his schemes, and is now resolved that they were foolish and unjust, – and therefore that he has ended them."

"He lies, the rogue!" said Cortes; "you have pursued him too closely. – It was an ill thought to league Najara with him. – These things have made him suspicious, not penitent. I have taken the hunchback away, restored Villafana to his prisonward, and, in short, taken all means to seduce him into security. You will see the cloven foot again, and that right shortly."

"Perhaps what I have to say will make your excellency believe it is displayed already. He has admitted one to speak with the prisoner – "

"Hah!" cried Cortes, – "a file of spearsmen! – But no; it matters not. There is no fear of escape; and this were too aimless an explosion. Know you the person he has admitted?"

"I do not," said Camarga; "but from the glance of the garment, methought 'twas some such godly brother as myself. And yet 'twas a taller man than Olmedo."

"By my conscience," said Cortes, quickly, "methinks I can divine the mystery: but of that anon. Hark thee, friend Camarga, dost thou still burn for this wretched man's life? I tell thee, there is much intercession made for him. It was but a moment since that the Barba-Roxa, – a good soldier, i'faith, – made certain fierce moans for him, mingled with divers mutinous reproaches. I vow to heaven, I could have struck the knave dead, but that he saved my life at Xochimilco."

"I have heard that Juan Lerma did the same thing, on the plains of Tlascala," replied Camarga, dryly.

"Thou art deceived!" exclaimed Don Hernan, with a sudden shudder. "The attempt, I grant you, the attempt be made; but I needed no help. Yet do I remember the act; and, by heaven, I would I might forgive him, – I would I might! I would I might! for the thought of judging him to death, is like a wolf in my bosom. Once I loved him as my son, – yes, as my very son," he repeated, with extraordinary agitation; "and when he played with my little children, I swear, I looked upon him but as their elder brother. What will men say of the act, since they cannot know the cause?"

Apparently Camarga looked upon this burst of relenting feeling, (for such it really was,) with too much dissatisfaction and alarm, to notice the allusion to a cause differing from any with which he was acquainted. He exclaimed, hastily, and with a darkening visage,

"If open mutiny and resistance be not excuse enough, have I not spoken an argument that should steel thy heart for ever? Shall I utter it again? I swear to thee then, that this miserable creature, Magdalena, – this wretch that even thou wouldst have made the slave of thy pleasures, and thereby added upon thy soul a sin never to be forgiven, – no, never! – is a true NUN, – forsworn, lost, condemned! Wilt thou refuse to punish the author of a horrible impiety? Would that I had strangled her, when an infant, though with mine own hand! – Thou talkest of a wolf in thy bosom; couldst thou feel one fang of the agony, that this act of horror has planted in mine, thou wouldst deem thyself happy. Let the wretch die: ask not for further cause; think not of any."

"The cause is, indeed, enough," said Cortes, crossing himself with dread, "to ensure not death only, but a death at the stake of fire; and I am not one to think the punishment should be made easy. I could tell thee a story of the end of broken vows, and the vengeance of God upon the robber of convents; but it needs not. – Sleep in thy grave, poor wretch! and be forgotten." He muttered a few words to himself, and then banishing, with an effort, what seemed a mournful recollection, he resumed, – "Tell me but one thing, Camarga, and I am satisfied. The cause is enough, (though this is a crime to be judged by ecclesiastics,) to ensure the young man's fate; but it is not enough to explain the rancour of thy hatred. Speak me the truth – Is this unhappy creature child of thine?"

"Think so, if thou wilt," said Camarga, with a lip ashy and quivering, "but ask not, ask not now. Give the young man to the block, and commit the girl into my hands, with the means of leaving this land; then, if thou hast the courage to listen, thou shalt hear a story that will freeze thy blood. – Is he not guilty of this thing?"

"Is he not guilty of more?" muttered the Captain-General. "It is enough; thou hast steeled my heart. I leave him in the hands of the Alcaldes and De Olid, who have no such faintness of heart as confounds mine. Fare thee well, señor: I know thee better, and I like thee well. Turn not thine eye from Villafana."

Thus, mingling the suggestions of a native policy with passions not the less constitutional, Cortes dismissed his disguised visitant. The curtain of the great door had scarce concealed the retreating Camarga, before he heard a footstep behind; and looking round, he beheld the figure of La Monjonaza steal in from the garden, and cross the apartment.

"What sayst thou now, Magdalena?" he cried, striding up to her, and viewing with interest a countenance sternly composed, yet bearing the traces of recent and deep passions. "Thou shouldst have told me of this. – Yet what sayst thou now?"

"Nothing," replied the maiden, calmly, but with tones deeper than usual, – "Nothing. – Do thy work."

With these brief and mystic expressions, she passed among the secret chambers; and the Captain-General, stalking into the garden, until the chill breezes from the lake had cooled his feverish temples, betook himself, at last, to his couch, to subdue, in slumber, imaginary empires, and contend with visionary foes.

CHAPTER XVII

The day after the Feast of the Holy Ghost, or Whitsunday, early in May, 1521, opened upon the valley of Mexico with clouds and vapours, which, sweeping over the broad lake, collected and lingered, with boding fury, around the island city, discharging thunder and lightning, while the sunbeams shone clear and uninterrupted over Tezcuco, and the rich savannas which surrounded it. It was the morning of a novel and impressive ceremony. A rivulet, deepened by the labours of many thousand Indians, into a navigable canal, and bordered for the space of half a league on either side, by narrow meadows, separated the city from another scarce inferior in magnitude, but which yet seemed only a suburb. The whole space thus extending between the two cities, from the lake, as far as the eye could see, was blackened by the bodies of Indian warriors, armed and decorated as if for battle, while the housetops in the cities were equally thronged with multitudes of aged men and women and children. A narrow space was left vacant on each bank of the canal, from which the feathered barbarians, two hundred thousand in number, were separated by the Spanish army, drawn up in extended lines on either bank, the companies of footmen alternating with little squadrons of mounted cavaliers, from whose spears waved bright pennons.

As they stood thus, in gallant array, a flourish of trumpets drew their eyes up the stream, and they could behold over the housetops, winding with the sinuosities of the canal, a line of masts and of sails half let loose to the breeze, advancing slowly towards the lake, drawn, as it presently appeared, by double rows of natives, gayly apparelled, who occupied the space on the banks left vacant by the military.

As they approached nigh and more nigh, it was seen that each vessel bore no little resemblance to some of those light and open brigantines which have been, from time immemorial, the chosen delights of Mediterranean pirates, and the scourge of the sea from Barbary to the Greek Islands. Each carried twenty-five men, twelve of whom were rowers, the others musketeers, crossbowmen, cannoniers, (for a falconet frowned over the prow of each,) and sailors. Besides a multitude of little pennons with which they were covered, two great banners waved over each, the one bearing the royal arms of Spain, the other being the private standard which had been assigned, along with an appropriate name and a solemn benediction, by a priest, at the dock-yard, after the celebration of the mass of the Holy Ghost; for with such ceremonies of religion and pomp, the fatal galleys were committed, that morning, to their proper element.

One by one they passed into the lake, and ranged in a line before the mouth of the little river, fourteen in number. At this point, the mummeries of celebration were concluded by another and final benediction, pronounced from the shore; which was succeeded by a combined uproar of artillery, trumpets, and human voices, more loud and tumultuous than any which had yet shaken the borders of Tezcuco.

When the smoke of the cannon had cleared away, the brigantines were seen parting and flitting along in different courses, like a flock of wild-fowl, frightened and separated by the explosion. Their evolutions should be rather likened to the gambols of vultures, escaped from some dreary confinement, and now fluttering their wings in the joy of liberation, and the expectation of prey. Castilian navigators were at last launched upon the sea of Anahuac, and they seemed resolved at once to confirm their dominion, by ploughing through each rolling surge, and penetrating to every bay and creek. As they divided thus, some standing out into the lake, and others darting along the shores, the admiring and shouting spectators began to observe and point out to one another certain pillars of smoke, rising one after the other, from the hills and headlands; by which was conveyed from town to town the intelligence of an event long since expected by the watchful infidels.