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

"Let some one of you look to the door," said Cortes, quickly: "and see that the sentinels keep their eyes open. – How now, Gaspar! what is this thou sayst? Art thou indeed a villain? I should have struck on the mouth any soldier that had said it of thee."

"I am what I said," replied Gaspar; "your excellency refused to listen to me, when I pleaded for Juan Lerma; and I was incensed. I said to myself, señor, 'I have saved your life, and yet you deny me the life of my friend, who, in ignorance, broke a decree, yet knew no malice.' Besides, señor, you called me a dog, – 'an officious, presuming dog;' whereas I was not a dog then, but now. Well, señor, while I was in a passion, the devil came to me, and tempted me, and I signed my name to my perdition."

"What!" said Alvarado, recoiling with devout horror, "hast thou really signed over thy soul to Satan? We will burn thee, thou devil's penitent, in a hot fire!"

"Speak on," said Cortes. "What meanest thou by this mummery? What devil is this? for, though Satan be walking now among us, yet, I think, it could not be he."

"It was Villafana," replied Gaspar; "and heaven pardon me, for I think it must be Apollyon in his likeness!"

At this communication, the cavaliers all stared at one another, and Cortes exclaimed,

"Two hundred and forty men! What! are there so many knaves of his party?"

"Ay, and many more, who will help, but will not put down their names upon paper," replied Gaspar. "But your excellency says nothing of Juan Lerma. If you will pardon him, your excellency shall hear all."

"How, sirrah!" cried Cortes, sternly, "Do you avow yourself a sworn traitor, and yet dictate to me terms of mercy? Speak, or you shall have that to your brows, which will bring out words with screams."

Gaspar sprang to his feet, – boldly, fearlessly, and even insolently, returning the look of the Captain-General:

"Your excellency has no heart, and I have," he cried. "Do your will upon us both; and reckon my death to your conscience, as you do that of Juan Lerma. You shall not have a word more. Here are my arms. – What cavalier will demean himself to tie them? I will meet your excellency at the judgment-seat."

"Thou art but a fool," said Cortes, moderating his anger, – or, at least, mollifying the severity of his accents; for his countenance yet gleamed with wrath. "Thou knowest, that, having saved my life at Xochimilco, I can, in no case, take thine."

"But I leave that to the laws, without asking any mercy," said the Red Beard, obstinately: "I ask the life of Juan Lerma, condemned without law."

"Dost thou impugn my justice, fellow?" cried the ferocious De Olid. "I swear to thee, when thou art brought to be judged, I will give thee a double quantity, for this very reason."

While the cavalier gave utterance to so excellent a proof of his equity, Alvarado, with whom Gaspar had been a favourite, whispered in his ear,

"Speak out, and fear not. It stands not with the captain's honour to barter men's lives for knave's confessions; yet he shall pardon the young man, thy friend, as I am thy guarantee."

"What say ye, cavaliers?" cried Cortes: "does it become me, to remit a sentence of death, at such mutinous intercession?"

Before any of the officers could reply, Gaspar, confiding in the promise of Alvarado, threw himself again at the general's feet, crying,

"Señor, I am not a mutineer, but a penitent. I am mad to think that one, – so good a friend, so valiant a soldier, so true a follower, (for there is no falsehood in Juan Lerma,) should die for a small matter, – saving Don Francisco's presence, – when there are so many rogues about us, that go unpunished. But I leave him to your excellency's mercy, trusting that your excellency will reconsider the judgment, and release him. Therefore I will speak, in this trust; and I pray heaven to remember the act, be it merciful or be it cruel. – This is what I have to say: In my passion, I betook me to Villafana; who, promising to save Lerma's life, I signed with him; though the first act of guilt was to take your excellency's life. Holy mother of heaven! pardon me; but I was very much incensed. Well, señor, I found on the paper the names of two hundred and forty men, and I will tell you such as I remember; but if you will send to the prison, and suddenly seize the Alguazil, you will find the list in his bosom. – "

"Quinones, see thou to this," said Cortes, turning to the master of the armory, who made one of the council. "Take with thee none but hidalgos, and be sudden, making no noise and shedding no blood – Yet stay: this will not do, neither. Hark thee, Gaspar, man, when shall this precious earthquake rumble into the upper air?"

"To-morrow," replied the soldier; and then, to the horror and astonishment of all present, he divulged the whole scheme of assassination, as Villafana had himself spoken it in the prison.

"With a letter from my father, too!" cried Cortes, apparently more struck with the heartless barbarity of the stratagem, than with anything else in Gaspar's communication: "This is indeed the Judas-kiss, the – Faugh! these were the words of Magdalena!"

While he muttered these words to himself, he was roused by a sudden voice at the great door, and heard distinctly the unexpected voice of Villafana, saying, as he wrangled with the guards,

"Oh, 'slid, you take upon you too much. I come at the order of the general."

"Admit Villafana," said Cortes, in tones that penetrated loudly to the farthest limits of the room, for the cavaliers were stricken into a boding silence at the accents of the Alguazil: "Admit my trusty Villafana." And Villafana entered.

He was evidently flushed with wine, and it was for that reason, doubtless, that he did not seem to observe the presence of his forsworn associate, nor the suspicious act of two cavaliers, who stole from the group, and took possession of the door by which he had entered. He approached with a reckless and confident, though somewhat stupid, air, exclaiming, after divers humble scrapes and salaams,

"I come at your excellency's bidding, according to appointment. This was the hour, please your excellency – But 'tis a scurvy night, with much thunder and lightning."

"Ay, truly," said Cortes, with a mild voice, while all the rest stood in the silence of death; "but, being so observant, Villafana, how comes it you have not remarked that you are here without the Indian Techeechee, whom I commanded you to bring hither at this hour?"

"Señor," said the Alguazil, a little confused, "that old Ottomi is a sly dog, and, I doubt me, not over-honest."

"I doubt me so, too," said Cortes, in the same encouraging tones; "yet, honest or false, sly or simple, methinks thou shouldst not have suffered him to escape."

"Escape! what, Techeechee escape!" cried Villafana with unaffected surprise: "Ho, no! I did but give the gray infidel a sop of wine, and straightway he hid himself in a corner, to sleep off his drunkenness. And, – and, – " continued he, with instinctive though clumsy cunning, – "and I thought it would be unbeseemly to bring him to your excellency, in that condition. I beg your excellency's pardon for making him acquainted with such Christian liquor; but it was out of pity, together with some little hope of converting him to the faith; and, besides, I knew not his head was so weak. I will fetch him to your excellency in the morning."

"Why, this is well," said the Captain-General, with such insinuating gentleness as characterizes the snake, when closing softly on his prey; "and I doubt not thou canst give me as good an account of the ambassadors. It is said to me, that they also have escaped."

"Good God!" cried Villafana, startled not only out of his confidence, but, in great measure, out of his intoxication, by such an announcement; "the ambassadors escaped? It cannot be!"

"Pho, they have hurt thee more than I thought, – even to the point of destroying thy memory," rejoined the Captain-General, with the blandishment of a smile. "There is blood upon thy shoulder: I doubt not, thou wert severely hurt, while attempting to prevent their flight. No one ever questioned the courage of Villafana."

"Yes, señor, yes – no – yes; that is, – I mean to say – Saints of heaven!" – And here the Alguazil paused, completely sobered, – that is, restored to his senses, but not to his wits; for he perceived himself in a difficulty, and his invention pointed out no means of escape. He rolled his eyes, haggard at once with debauch and alarm, over the cavaliers, and, though the lofty figure of Alvarado concealed Gaspar from his view, he beheld enough in the extraordinary sedateness of all present, to fill him with the most racking suspicions. He turned again to Cortes, and commanding his fears as much as he could, went on, with an appearance of boldness,

"Alas, noble señor, if the ambassadors be escaped, I am a lost man, – for I trusted too much to the vigilance of others, and I should not have done so. Alas, señor," he continued with more energy, as his mind began to work more clearly, "I have committed a great offence in this negligence; but I vow to heaven, it was owing to my fears of Juan Lerma, who made many efforts to escape, and had strong friends to help him. Your excellency may see the necessity I was under, to give all my thoughts to him; for, some one having furnished him with a dagger, he foully attacked me, not on my guard, giving me this wound; and had it not been for the sudden rushing in of the guard, I should certainly have been killed."

Thus spoke the Alguazil, with returning craft, mingling together fiction and fact with an address which astonished even himself:

"Yes, señor," he continued, satisfied with the strength of his argument, and now elated with a prospect of providing against the effects of his imprudent disclosures in the prison; "yes, señor, and the young man, besides thus wounding me, swore he would have me hanged for a conspiracy; stating roundly, as the guards will witness, (I am certain that Esteban, the Left-Handed, heard him,) that, being a notorious grumbler, any such fiction would be believed of me. As if this would make me a conspirator! whereas, your excellency knows, according to the proverb, Barking dogs are no biters." And the audacious ruffian, relapsing into security, attested his innocence by a gentle laugh and the sweetest of his smiles.

"Again I say, thou speakest well," said Cortes, carelessly descending from the platform, on which he had mounted at the approach of Villafana. "Thine arguments have even satisfied me of the folly of certain charges, brought against thee by this mad fellow, here, at thy elbow."

As he spoke, Alvarado, taking his instructions rather from a consentaneous feeling of propriety than from any hint of Don Hernan's, moved aside, and Villafana's eyes fell upon the figure of Gaspar.

"Think of it, good fellow," said Cortes, laying his hand upon Villafana's shoulder, as if to support himself a little; "the things he said of thee are innumerable, and excessively preposterous. He averred, for instance, that thou wert peevishly offended, because I had not invited thy presence to the festivities of the morning banquet, and wert resolved to come, whether I would or not, and that with a letter from my father in one hand, and a dagger in the other. Eh! is not this outrageous? He said, besides, – But, o' my life, thou hast bled too much from this wound! Juan Lerma strikes deep, when the fit is on him. I hope thou art not faint, man!"

To these benevolent expressions, the Alguazil replied by turning upon the general a countenance so bloodless, and an eye filled with such ecstacy of despair, (for if the poniards of all had been at his throat, he could not have been more perfectly apprized of his coming fate,) that Cortes must have been struck with some feeling of commiseration, had not his nature been somewhat akin to that of a cat, which delights less to kill than to sport with the agonies of a dying victim. As it was, he continued to torment the abandoned wretch, by adding, pleasantly,

"And what thinkest thou of this, too, my Villafana? Two hundred and forty conspirators, to rush in when the blow was struck! – doubtless to carve their dinners from the ribs of my cavaliers! – Ah, Villafana, Villafana! thou shouldst have a care of thy friends. Our enemies are harmless, but our friends are always dangerous. – What dost thou say to all this, Villafana? – Knave! hadst thou twenty daggers in thy jerkin, thou wert still but an unfanged reptile!"

While he spoke, in this jestful mood, he was sensible that Villafana, (doubtless with an instinctive motion, of which he was himself unconscious, being apparently turned to stone,) was stealing his hand up towards his bosom, as if to grasp a weapon. The moment the member had reached the opening of his garment, Cortes caught him by the throat, and giving utterance to his last words with a voice of thunder, and employing a strength irresistible by such a man as Villafana, he hurled him to the floor, at the same instant placing his foot on his throat. Then stooping down, and thrusting his hand into the traitor's bosom, he plucked out, at a single grasp, a poniard, a letter, and the fatal list of conspirators. He pushed the first aside, read the superscription of the second with a laugh, and casting his eye upon the third, devoured its contents with an avidity that left him unconscious of the murmurs of the fierce cavaliers, and the groans of the wretched Alguazil, strangling under his foot.

"What, señor! will you rob the gallows of its prey?" cried Alvarado, pointing his sword at the prostrate traitor, as, indeed, did all the rest, (having drawn them at the moment when Cortes seized him by the throat:) "His crime is manifest to all: what need of trial? Every man his steel through the dog!"

"Hold!" cried the Captain-General; "this were a death for an hidalgo. Up, cur! up, and meet thy fate! Up!" And he spurned the wretch with his foot.

The Alguazil rose up, his face black with blood, which, not perfectly dispersing even at release from strangulation, remained in leopard-like blotches over his visage, ghastfully contrasted with the ashy hues that gathered between them. As he rose, his arms were seized by two or three cavaliers; and Sandoval, as quick in action as he was sluggish in speech, snatching the rich sword-sash of samite from his own shoulders, instantly secured them behind his back.

"For the love of God, señores!" cried Villafana, finding speech at last, "what do you mean? what do you design? You will not kill an innocent man? Will you judge me at the charge of a liar? Gaspar is my sworn foe. I will make all clear. – Señor, I have been drinking, and my mind is confused: take me not at this disadvantage. Oh, for God's sake, what do you mean? – The list? what, the list? 'Tis for a merry-making – a rejoicing for my birthday. I will explain all to your excellencies. – I am an innocent man. – Gaspar is a forsworn caitiff – a caitiff, señores, a caitiff! – I claim trial by the civil judges." —

"Gag him," cried one.

"Strike him on the mouth," said another. And Villafana, gasping for breath, uttered, for a moment, nothing but inarticulate murmurs.