by G. A. Henty
At ordinary times the appearance of two seeming Aztecs in the streets would have been the signal for their instant destruction, but at the present time the people were solely occupied with the presence of their white conquerors; with whom, as Roger soon learned, they had made treaties of friendship, and whom they now viewed as friends and allies.
The whole of the Spaniards were lodged in one of the palaces. The crowd of people proceeding in that direction was a sufficient index to its position; and Roger and his companion, joining the throng, were soon in front of the palace. Some Spanish soldiers were standing as sentries at its gate, but none came out or mixed with the people—Cortez having given the strictest orders that they should remain in their quarters, as he feared that, did they go abroad, some brawl might arise between them and the inhabitants, and so break the newly-formed alliance, which was of the most extreme importance to them.
Presently some Spanish officers, and several richly dressed chiefs, came out from the palace. The people raised a shout, and it was evident to Roger that, in spite of the terrible losses suffered by their troops in the attacks upon the white men, their admiration for their visitors far outweighed any animosity for the defeats inflicted upon them.
Near the officer, whom Roger judged to be the leader of the expedition, were an elderly man and a young woman. The Spaniard addressed the old man, who spoke to the girl, and she translated it to the chiefs.
Roger recognized her at once—it was certainly his friend, the slave girl of Tabasco. In the eight months since he had seen her, she had grown to complete womanhood; and now—richly attired as she was, and evidently regarded as a person of great importance, both by the Spaniards and the native chiefs—carried herself with an air of confidence and pride; and was, Roger thought, the most beautiful woman he had seen in Mexico.
As the party moved down the steps of the palace, and along the street, evidently discoursing on some important business, Roger followed them closely. He waited until Malinche happened, for a moment, to be at the outside of the party, then he pressed forward and said to her:
“Malinche, do you remember your white friend?”
She looked up, and would have cried out with astonishment, had he not touched his lips.
“I want to speak to you alone, first. Where can I meet you?”
“In an hour I shall be able to slip away from their meal,” she said; “be near the palace gate.”
Roger at once fell back into the crowd, and soon took an opportunity to extricate himself from it, and to go down a side street. He and Bathalda then ascended to the top of the wall, where they were likely to be undisturbed, and waited there for an hour. They then went back to the palace.
The square in the front of it was almost deserted now; for the Spaniards had retired, half an hour before, and were not likely to appear again until the evening; especially as it was known that, at noon, there was to be a great council held in the palace.
Ten minutes later Malinche appeared at the entrance. As soon as her eyes fell on Roger she raised her hand and, leaving Bathalda, he at once went up to her. The two sentinels looked with some surprise at this tall native, but as they saw that he was known to Malinche, they offered no opposition to his entering the palace with her.
She led him down some corridors and then out into a garden. As soon as she saw that they were in a spot where they could not be overlooked, she turned and seized his hands; and would have pressed them to her forehead, had not Roger prevented her doing so, and put her hands to his lips.
“Ah!” she exclaimed. “How happy you have made me, today! I have wondered so much how it has fared with you, and have dreamed at night, so often, that you were being sacrificed on the altars of the gods.”
“I have thought of you very often, also, Malinche; and I was surprised, indeed, when I heard that you—for I felt sure that it was you—were with the Spaniards, and were not only an interpreter, but in high honor with them.”
“But why do you not join them?” she asked. “Why do you come to me first? What can I do for you? I will take you at once to Cortez, and when I tell him that you were my friend, and were so kind and good to the slave girl, he will welcome you most warmly.”
“Yes, Malinche; but that is why I wanted to see you first alone. You remember that I told you all about the Spaniards, and how they owned the islands, and would some day surely come to Mexico; but that I belong to another white people, who are forbidden by the Spaniards, under pain of death, to come to these parts. They must not know that I am not of their nation.
“You see, I cannot speak their tongue. I see that you have learned it fast, for I saw Cortez speaking to you.”
“What are we to do, then?” the girl asked, with a puzzled look. “When they find that you cannot speak their language, they will, of course, see that you are not of their people.”
“Yes, Malinche; but they might think that I had forgotten it. That is just where I want you to help me. If you take me to Cortez, and tell him that, years ago, a ship was wrecked on the coast of Tabasco, and that all were drowned except a little white boy; and that he was brought up at Tabasco, and that you were great friends with him, until he was sold to some Mexican traders—they will think that I have altogether forgotten my native language. They are not likely to ask you how many years ago it is, or how big I was then, and will imagine that I was quite a child, and that I belonged to a Spanish ship, for they will not dream of an English vessel having been in these parts. When you introduce me to Cortez, you must tell him that I have quite forgotten the language, save a few words—for I picked up a few sentences when in their ports.”
“They will easily believe that you may have been wrecked,” said Malinche; “for they rescued a man who had been living many years among a tribe at Yucatan, to the west of Tabasco. There were other white men living among them, though these they could not recover. You saw him by me this morning—he is an old man, a priest; and he translates from the Spanish into the Yucatan dialect, which is so like that of Tabasco that I can understand it, and then I tell the people in Mexican.
“There will be no difficulty at all. Cortez and the Spaniards know that I love them, and they trust me altogether, and I am able to do good to my country people, and to intercede with them sometimes with Cortez. Now tell me what has happened since I last saw you.”
Roger gave her a sketch of what had happened in Mexico, and how he had escaped, by flight, from being sacrificed.
“It is terrible—these sacrifices,” Malinche said, shuddering. “I did not think so in the old days, but I have learned better from the Spaniards and from their priests; and I rejoice that the white men will destroy these horrible idols, and will teach the people to worship the great God and His Son. They will suffer—my heart bleeds to think how they will suffer—but it will be good for them in the end, and put a stop to rivers of blood that flow, every year, at their altars.”
Although Roger was not imbued with the passion for conversion which animated the Spaniards, and led them to believe that it was the most glorious of all duties to force their religion upon the natives, he had been so filled with horror at the wholesale sacrifices of human victims, and the cannibal feasts that followed them, that he was in no way disposed to question the methods which the Spaniards adopted to put a stop to such abominations. But for the friendship of Cacama he would himself, assuredly, have been a victim to these sanguinary gods.
He and his father had—like the Beggs, and many other of his friends at Plymouth—been secretly followers of Wycliffe, but they were still Catholics. They believed that there were many and deep abuses in the Church, but had no thought of abandoning it altogether. The doings of the Inquisition in Spain were regarded by all Englishmen with horror, but these excesses were as nothing to the wholesale horrors of the Mexican religion.
He talked for some time with Malinche, and saw that she was completely devoted to the Spaniards, and regarded Cortez as a hero, almost more than mortal; and was in no slight degree relieve
d at observing that, although ready to be friendly in every way, and evidently still much attached to him, the warmer feeling which she had testified at their parting no longer existed, but had been transferred to her present friends and protectors.
“Come with me,” she said at last. “The meal will be over, now. I will take you to an apartment near the banqueting hall, and will leave you there while I tell Cortez about you, and will then lead you to him.”
Seeing how confident Malinche was as to the reception she could procure for him, Roger awaited her return, to the chamber where she had placed him, with little anxiety. In a quarter of an hour she returned, and beckoned him to follow.
“I have told him,” she said. “It did not seem to him strange that some vessel should have been driven by the storms and wrecked here. He asked no questions as to how many years ago it was. I told him you were a young boy at the time, and have forgotten all but a few words of the language; and how, when you grew to be a man, you were sold to some Mexican merchants, and would have been sacrificed to the gods had you not made your escape. As I had told him, before, that there had been a white man living at Tabasco, who had been very good to me, he was not surprised at the story.”
She took Roger to an apartment in which Cortez, and several of his principal officers, were standing. As Malinche had told them that he was painted, and disguised as a native, they were not surprised at his appearance; although his height, which was far beyond that attained by Spaniards, somewhat astonished them.
Roger approached the group, and at once fell on one knee before Cortez, took his hand and kissed it. Cortez raised him, and embraced him warmly.
“I am delighted to find another of my countrymen,” he said; “and all the more, since Marina tells me that she knows you well, and that you were most kind and good to her.”
“Senor,” Roger said, in broken Spanish, “I do not understand. I have forgotten.”
“You will soon recover it,” Cortez said.
“Tell him, Aquilar, that he will soon learn to speak his native language again.”
The interpreter repeated the words to Roger in the Yucatan dialect, adding that he himself had been a prisoner for eight years among the natives; and that, although a man when captured by them, had with difficulty spoken Spanish when restored to his friends; but it had now quite come back to him.
“You were but a boy when you were wrecked, Marina tells me?” Cortez said.
“Only a boy,” Roger repeated, when Marina translated this to him.
“Do you remember anything of Spain?” Cortez asked.
Roger shut his eyes, as if considering.
“I seem to have a remembrance,” he said, “of a place with many great ships. It was a city built on a rock rising from the sea. It had high walls with great guns upon them, which fired sometimes, with a terrible noise, when vessels came in and out.”
When this was translated by Aquilar, Cortez said:
“It was Cadiz, of course. Doubtless the ship he was wrecked in sailed from that port.”
A murmur of assent passed round the other Spaniards.
“Show him a cross, Aquilar. See if he remembers his religion.”
Aquilar took out a cross from under his doublet, and held it out towards Roger, who, after looking at it for a moment, fell on his knees and kissed it.
“He remembers much, you see,” Cortez said. “Father Aquilar, you will succeed soon in making a good Catholic of him, again.
“Well, gentlemen, I think we may congratulate ourselves upon this new companion. Every arm is of assistance; and if he is as brave as he is big and strong, he will prove a doughty comrade. Besides, he will be able to tell us something of Mexico; although, as Marina says, he was only once at the capital.
“Question him, Aquilar, and find out from him whether its magnificence is as great as we hear.”
Roger told all he knew of the capital, and said that, although he himself could not say more than that it was a great city, he had heard that its population was nearly three hundred thousand; and that it certainly seemed to him fully three times as large as that of Tezcuco, where he said there were one hundred thousand people.
“And it stands on an island in a lake?” Cortez asked.
“There are three causeways leading to the land, each wide enough for six horsemen to ride abreast,” Roger replied; “but it would be a difficult thing to force an entrance, by these, in the face of Montezuma’s army.”
“Well, gentlemen,” Cortez said, “it is time for us to be going to the council.
“Marina, do you take your friend to my private apartment, and bid Juan furnish him with a suit of clothes; and with armor, from that belonging to our friends who fell in the fights the other day. We will soon make a true cavalier of him.”
As soon as Roger was equipped, he went out to the steps of the palace, and presently descried Bathalda in the crowd. He beckoned to him and, taking him into the garden, had a long talk with him. He would have rewarded him largely for his services, but Bathalda refused to accept anything.
“I came at my lord’s orders,” he said; “and am rejoiced to have been of service to one who is at once so kind, so strong, and so valiant.”
“As you will. We shall have further opportunities of meeting, Bathalda. Do you now make your way back to Tezcuco. Tell your lord all that has happened, and that I am with the Spaniards, and shall accompany them if, as I believe, they go forward to Mexico; that I hope to see all my friends again, before long; and that I always think of their kindness to me.”
CHAPTER 13
The Massacre Of Cholula
The Tlascalans had, from the moment when they admitted themselves beaten by the Spaniards, laid aside all hostility; and had, indeed, accepted the alliance with enthusiasm. They had a right to be proud of their own valor, for they had resisted all the attempts of the great Aztec monarchy to conquer them, and had defeated, with slaughter, greatly superior forces; and that a mere handful of white men should be able to withstand their attacks, day after day, and to defeat their best and hardiest troops, led by generals who had hitherto been always successful, excited their surprise and admiration in the highest degree. They were not gods, they knew, for some had been killed in the conflict; but as men they seemed to them infinitely superior, in strength and courage, to any that they had before heard of; and they were proud to enter into an alliance with such heroes. Moreover, they saw they would now have an opportunity of turning the tables upon their enemies of the plains.
They did not believe, for a moment, that Montezuma would admit the white men to his capital, and in that case there would be great battles, and perhaps much plunder to be gained; and therefore, when the Spaniards were again ready to advance, the whole fighting force of Tlascala was placed at their disposal. Cortez, however, declined to take with him so large an army. The appearance of such a force, composed of the bitter foes of the Aztecs, would have combined against him the whole strength of that empire, and would have destroyed any hope that might remain of peaceful arrangements. Moreover, the difficulty of feeding so large a body of men would be great, indeed; and as his authority over them would be but feeble, constant broils with the Aztecs would be the inevitable result. He therefore, with many thanks, declined the offer; but said that he would gladly take with him a force of six thousand volunteers.
The first march was to be to Cholula, whose people had sent a warm invitation to Cortez to visit them; and Montezuma, by his last envoys, also requested them to journey forward by way of that city.
The Tlascalans had strongly urged him to refuse the invitation. The Cholulans were, they said, a treacherous people and not to be trusted. They were bigoted beyond the people of other cities, Cholula being the holy city of Anahuac. It was here the god Quetzalcoatl had remained for twenty years on his way down to the coast, instructing the people in the arts of civilization. Here was the great temple of the god, a pyramid whose base covered forty-four acres, and whose height was a hundred and eighty feet; the
platform on its summit, where the sacrifices took place, being an acre in size.
Cortez, however, decided upon visiting Cholula. He deemed the reports of the Tlascalans to be prejudiced, as there was a long-standing animosity between the two peoples; and he thought that, were he to avoid visiting this important town, which lay almost on his road to Mexico, it might be set down by the Aztecs to distrust or fear.
The departure from Tlascala was witnessed by the whole of the population of the state, who assembled to bid the white men farewell, and to wish them success upon their way. A day’s march took them to within a mile or two of Cholula. Here they were met by many nobles from the city, who urged them to enter it that evening; but Cortez, bearing in mind the warnings he had received, and thinking it dangerous to enter the streets of an unknown and possibly hostile city after dark, declined to move forward until morning. Seeing the hostility and distrust excited in the minds of his visitors at the sight of the Tlascalans in his camp, he ordered his allies to remain in camp when he advanced in the morning, and to join him only when he left the city on his way to Mexico.
The Spaniards, as they entered Cholula, were greatly struck with the appearance of the city and its inhabitants, it being a very much larger and more highly civilized place than any they had yet met with. The buildings were large and handsome, the streets wide, the population very large, and exhibiting in their dress every sign of wealth and luxury. There was, too, a great variety among the population; for, as it was the sacred city of the empire, people from all other parts were in the habit of making pilgrimages there, and most of the towns had their own temples and establishments. So numerous were the temples that fully two hundred towers could be counted, rising above the city, with the stupendous pyramid towering above them all.
The Spaniards were quartered in the court of one of the temples, and in the surrounding buildings. As soon as they were established there, the principal nobles of the town paid them visits of ceremony; and presents of everything necessary for their comfort and accommodation, and stores of provisions of all kinds, poured in.