The Fair God; or, The Last of the 'Tzins

The face of the listener softened; she saw his love, and all his heroism, but said, coldly,—

“I have heard that wise men do such things only of necessity.”

“I do not pretend to wisdom,” he replied. “Had I been wise, I would not have loved you. Since our parting at Chapultepec, where I was so happy, I have thought you might be a prisoner here, and in my dreams I have heard you call me. And a little while ago, on the temple, I said to Io’, ‘Nenetzin will despise me, if I come not soon.’ Tell me, O Nenetzin, that you are a prisoner, and I will take you away. Tell me that the stories told of you on the streets are not true, and—”

“What stories?” she asked.

“Alas, that it should be mine to tell them! And to you, Nenetzin, my beautiful!”

With a strong effort, he put down the feeling, and went on,—

“There be those who say that the good king, your father, is in this prison by your betrayal; they say, too, that you are the keeper of a shrine unknown to the gods of Anahuac; and yet more shamelessly, they say you abide here with the Tonatiah, unmindful of honor, father, or gods known or unknown. Tell me, O Nenetzin, tell me, I pray you, that these are the tales of liars. If you cannot be mine, at least let me go hence with cause to think you in purity like the snow on the mountain top. My heart is at your feet,—O crush me not utterly!”

Thereupon, she arose, with flushed face and flashing eyes, never so proud, never so womanly.

“Lord Hualpa, were you more or less to me than you are, I would make outcry, and have you sent to death. You cannot understand me; yet I will answer—because of the love which brought you here, I will answer.”

She went into a chamber, and returning, held up the iron cross, more precious to her, I fear, as the gift of Alvarado than as the symbol of Christ.

“Look, lord Hualpa! This speaks to me of a religion better than that practised in the temples, and of a God mightier than all those known in Anahuac,—a God whom it is useless to resist, who may not be resisted,—the only God. There, in my chamber, is an altar to Him, upon which rests only this cross and such flowers as I can gather here in the morning; that is the shrine of which you have heard upon the street. I worship at no other. As to the king, I did come and tell the strangers of the attack he ordered. Lord Hualpa, to me, as is the destiny of every woman, the hour came to choose between love and father. I could not else. What harm has come of my choice? Is not the king safe?”

At that moment, the noise which had all the time been heard in the patio, as of a battle up in the air, swelled trebly loud. The tendrils of the vines shook; the floor trembled.

“Hark!” she said, with an expression of dread. “Is he not safer than that other for whom I forsook him? Yet I thought to save them both; and saved they shall be!” she added, with a confident smile. “The God I worship can save them, and He will.”

Then she became silent; and as he could tell by her face that she was struggling with a painful thought, he waited, listening intently. At length she spoke, this time with downcast eyes:—

“It would be very pleasant, O Hualpa, to have you go away thinking me pure as snow on the mountain-top. And if—if I am not,—then in this cross”—and she kissed the symbol tearfully—“there is safety for me. I know there is a love that can purify all things.”

The sensibilities are not alike in all persons; but it is not true, as some philosophers think, that infidels, merely because they are such, are incapable of either great joy or great grief. The mother of El Chico reviled him because he took his last look at Granada through tears; not less poignant was the sorrow of Hualpa, looking at his love, by her own confession lost to him forever; his head drooped, and he settled down and fell forward upon his face, crushed by the breath of a woman,—he whom a hundred shields had not sufficed to stay!

For a time nothing was heard in the patio but the battle. Nenetzin stirred not; she was in the mood superinduced by pity and remorse, when the mind merges itself in the heart, and is lost in excess of feeling.

At length the spell was broken. A woman rushed in, clapping her hands joyfully, and crying,—

“Be glad, be glad, O Nenetzin! Malinche has come back, and we are saved!”

And more the Doña Marina would have said, but her eyes fell upon the fallen man, and she stopped.

Nenetzin told his story,—the story women never tire of hearing.

“If he stays here, he dies,” said Marina, weeping.

“He shall not die. I will save him too,” said Nenetzin, and she went to him, and took his hands, bloody as they were, and, by gentle words, woke him from his stupor. Mechanically he took his cap, shield, and mace, and followed her,—he knew not whither.

And she paused not until he was safely delivered to Maxtla, in the quarters occupied by the king.

CHAPTER X

THE WAY THROUGH THE WALL

“Al templo, al templo! to the temple!” shouted Cortes, as he charged the close ranks of the enemy.

“Al templo!” answered the cavaliers, plunging forward in chivalric rivalry.

And from the column behind them rolled the hoarse echo, with the words of command superadded,—

“Al templo! Adelante, adelante!—forward!”

Not a Spaniard there but felt the inspiration of the cry; felt himself a soldier of Christ, marching to a battle of the gods, the true against the false; yet the way was hard, harder than ever; so much so, indeed, that the noon came before Cortes at last spurred into the space in front of the old palace.

The first object to claim attention there was the temple against which the bigotry of the Christians had been so suddenly and shrewdly directed,—shrewdly, because in the glory of its conquest the failure of the mantas was certain to be forgotten. In such intervals of the fight as he could snatch, the leader measured the pile with a view to the attack. Standing in his stirrups, he traced out the path to its summit, beginning at the gate of the coatapantli, then up the broad stairs, and around the four terraces to the azoteas,—a distance of nearly a mile, the whole crowded with warriors, whose splendid regalia published them lords and men of note, in arms to die, if need be, for glory and the gods. As he looked, Sandoval rode to him.

“Turn thine eyes hither, Señor,—to the palace, the palace!”

Cortes dropped back into his saddle, and glanced that way.

“By the Mother of Christ, they have broken through the wall!”

He checked his horse.

“Escobar,” he said, calmly, through his half-raised visor, “take thou one hundred men, the last in the column, and attack the temple. Hearest thou? Kill all thou findest! Nay, I recollect it is a people with two heads, of which I have but one. Bring me the other, if thou canst find him. I mean the butcher they call the high priest. And more, Señor Alonzo: when thou hast taken the idolatrous mountain, burn the towers, and fear not to tumble the bloody gods into the square. Thy battle will be glorious. On thy side God, the Son, and Mother! Thou canst not fail.”

“And thou, Olea,” he added to another, “get thee down the street, and hasten Mesa and his supports. Tell them the infidels are at the door of the palace, and that the captain Christobal hath scarce room to lift his axe. And further,—as speed is everything now,—bid Ordas out with the gun, and fire the manta, which hath done its work. Spare not thy horse!”

With the last word, Cortes shut his visor, and, griping his axe, spurred to the front, shouting,—

“To the palace, gentlemen! for love of Christ and good comrades. Rescue, rescue!”

Down the column sped the word,—then forward resistlessly, through the embattled gate, into the enclosure; and none too soon, for, as Cortes had said, though at the time witless of the truth, the Aztecs were threatening the very doors of the palace.

Escobar, elated with the task assigned him, arranged his men, and made ready for the assault. The infidels beheld his preparation with astonishment. All eyes, theretofore bent upon the conflict in the palace yard, now fixed upon the little band so boldly proposing to scale the sacred heights. A cry came up the street: “The ’tzin, the ’tzin!” then the ’tzin himself came; and as he passed through the gate of the coatapantli, the thousands recognized him, and breathed freely. “The ’tzin has come! The gods are safe!” so they cheered each other.

The good captain led his men to the gate of the coatapantli. With difficulty he gained entrance. As if to madden the infidels, already fired by a zeal as great as his own, the dismal thunder of the great drum of Huitzil’ rolled down from the temple, overwhelming all other sounds. Slowly he penetrated the enclosure; closely his command followed him; yet not all of them; before he reached the stairway he was fighting for, the hundred were but ninety.

Twenty minutes,—thirty: at last Escobar set his foot on the first step of the ascent. There he stopped; a shield of iron clashed against his; his helmet rang with a deadly blow. When he saw light again, he was outside the sacred wall, borne away by his retreating countrymen, of whom not one re-entered the palace unwounded.

Cortes, meantime, with sword and axe, cleared the palace of assailants; and, as if the day’s work were done, he prepared to dismount. Don Christobal, holding his stirrup, said,—

“Cierto, Señor, thou art welcome. I do indeed kiss thy hand. I thank thee.”

“Not so, captain, not so. By my conscience, we are the debtors! I will hear nothing else. It is true we came not a moment too soon,”—he glanced at the breach in the wall, and shook his head gravely,—“but—I speak what may not be gainsaid—thou hast saved the palace.”

More he would have said in the same strain, but that a sentinel on the roof cried out,—

“Ola, Señores!”

“What wouldst thou?” asked Cortes, quickly.