Captain from Castile

by Samuel Shellabarger; Internet Archive

  "Ha, son Pedro! It's a fine scare you gave us, but I rejoice to see that you're on the mend. You had my letter? Good! Don't thank me: thank your patron saints."

  His gaze took in Catana, sharpened, twinkled.

  "And who is this—gentleman?"

  Pedro caught the gleam in his chief's eye and, knowing his amorousness, resolved to forestall it.

  "My very good friend, Catana Perez from Jaen, Your Excellency. She arrived with her brother on Captain Salcedo's ship. Mi amiga carisima."

  His arm slipped from the girl's shoulder to her waist.

  Cortes understood. He pinched Catana's ear.

  "Damiselaj we've been calling Captain de Vargas 'Pedro the Redhead.' He should now be called 'Pedro the Fortunate.' "

  xxx/x

  Every company has at least one buflfoon, professional or amateur, a show-off and rattlehead, who plays the clown in order to attract notice, and prefers rather to be kicked than forgotten. In Cortes's army, this post was filled by Cervantes the Mad, formerly jester to Governor Velasquez. And because a fool says anything that pops into his mind, Cervantes sometimes expressed thoughts that wise men kept secret. It was he who had warned the Governor against his choice of Cortes to head the expedition and had told him frankly: "Friend Diego, rather than to see you weep over this bad bargain you have made, I want to go along with Cortes myself to those rich lands." So, one eighth a soldier and seven eighths a clown, he became jester to the army, a perpetual chatterbox and cut-up, getting sometimes a laugh and sometimes a cuff for his efforts.

  Cervantes, then, led the march on August sixteenth, the long-projected march inland, through the hot jungle lands of Cempoala, toward the mountain rampart of Cofre de Perote—toward distant Mexico. He grimaced and capered and played an imaginary flute, strutting and high-stepping, ahead even of Pedro de Vargas with his scouts, while far behind him stretched the snakelike winding of the army.

  "What's itching you, man?" called de Vargas, making ready with a handful of horsemen to cover the country several miles in advance. "Save your breath for the climb. What are you dancing for?"

  "A parade, valiant Captain," proclaimed the jester, who had been fishing for the question, "a parade of fools, led by Cervantes the Mad! For when all the wise men of the army turn loco, it behooves a madman to lead them."

  Since he was waiting for de Laris, one of the scouts, who was tightening his saddlegirth down the line, Pedro continued to lead his troop at a foot pace and drew the joker out to fill in time.

  "Get it off your chest, senoritingo/' he said, with a backward glance for the missing Laris. "What's the point?"

  "Luckily something that you haven't the sense to grasp, friend Redhead."

  "Why luckily?"

  "Because Escudero and Cermeno got hanged for grasping it. Because Umbria's toes were chopped off and the stumps of them fried on Master Escobar's iron for the same reason. Because two hundred lashes apiece made mincemeat of the Gallega seamen's backs for the same reason. No, seiior, heaven preserve you from sense, which is the worst crime in this army."

  Sandoval, who was riding with the scouts, broke in. "Look you, rascal, that pack of traitors was gently dealt with, as you well know. Many's the general who would have hanged the lot of them for a less cause. If you talk treason, your own back will scorch, let me tell you."

  Cervantes cut a caper beyond the reach of Sandoval's lance point.

  "Exactly. And therefore I do not talk sense, caballero. I wouldn't talk treason for the world. Tootle-oo! Tootle-oo! A parade of fools led by Cervantes the Mad!"

  He drew a laugh at that. "What do you call sense?" demanded Sandoval.

  "Why, sir," replied the other, walking backward to face the horsemen, "my grandmother told me that he who throws all his gold through the window is not apt to have any in his pocket. It is an example of sense, sir—or treason, as you would say—but the old lady is dead and can't be whipped for it."

  This allusion to the sailing of the treasure ship, now headed for Spain, was not lost on the cavaliers, who exchanged glances.

  "She used also to say/' continued Cervantes, "that he who climbs to the top of a wall should not kick over his ladder, as he might wish sometime to climb down again; or thai he who scuttles the ship he

  arrives in may have to swim when he leaves. A bit of treason, sir, which in other parts of the world is called sense."

  "By the Cross," swore Sandoval, who had been ardent in promoting the destruction of the ships, "if you lay your dirty tongue to matters above your judgment, I'll have it torn out for you. How, in God's name, were we to march forward, if the chicken livers like you were forever looking back to the ships—ha?"

  Ortiz the Musician, who was riding next to Sandoval, shook his head. "No, I agree with El Sefior Loco. It was folly true enough. Magnificent folly, sirs, which will be to our honor. But magnificence and honor don't make sense—do they, fool? Nor does song or music."

  "Not to the dead, Senor Musico," grimaced the jester. "They mean nothing to the dead."

  A moment of hollow silence fell, broken only by the sucking of the horses' hoofs on the wet trail. Sandoval scowled but did not find his tongue. Cervantes, prancing backward between the jungle walls on either hand, made the most of his opening.

  "When we're properly cooked and served up on Indian platters, magnificence and honor will have changed their tune. The magnificent chops of Ortiz the Musician! The honorable hams of Pedro de Vargas! Bless you, masters, what yearning and toiling over mountains toward the grave! What panting for death! Elsewhere people strive to eat; here they strive to be eaten. Viva topsy-turvy! Tootle-oo! I dance at the thought of the banquets in Mexico. Here comes the procession of fools led by Cervantes the Mad!"

  The hoofbeats of a horse at the gallop sounded along the column. Laris arrived in a spatter of mud.

  "Vaya! At last!" exclaimed Pedro. "Adelante, gentlemen!" And to Cervantes, "Go tell your jokes to Cortes and see what he gives you."

  Clapping spurs to Soldan, he bounded forward, closely followed by Sandoval and Laris, with the other riders at their heels. Cervantes leaped to the side in time but missed his footing and sat down in a thorn bush to the amusement of the oncoming pikemen.

  While he picked himself up, grimacing and clowning, the ranks slogged by. Being a fool, he had expressed what others kept behind their beards or passed off in bravado. There was a ticklish feeling that morning in many bellies. Now and then, as the trail wound upward, men turned their heads to look back. At what? Nothingness. Beyond the woods and savannas lay a pale vacancy which marked the sea. But the sea no longer assured retreat; it denied retreat. It was an impassable gulf and dead limit. The familiar ships, that were a bit of

  Spain, no longer rode in the harbor at Villa Rica. Gone. Destroyed because they were a temptation to weakness, a distraction from conquest. Destroyed by the very men who now could hardly realize that they had done so mad a thing. In front, thousands of feet high, the mountains. Beyond the mountains, what? The army had left itself no choice but to find out. One did not have to be a Cervantes that day to feel like a fool.

  Returning several hours later from the reconnaissance, Pedro halted his troop on a spur of the foothills which overlooked the entire extent of the winding column, except where an occasional coil of it disappeared in the carpet of jungle. Some four hundred Spaniards, a throng of Totonac warriors in full feather panoply, and a thousand native bearers to haul the cannon and carry supplies, made up the line of march.

  Pedro smiled at the thought of the impression it would have made on his father, used to the order and equipment of continental armies. Many of the soldiers wore native one-piece cotton armor, that looked like harlequin suits. Wear and tear and the tropical sun made sport of convention. Better to survive in a wadded suit thick enough to stop most of the Indian weapons than to stifle and grill in steel. The captains and a few swells clung to Christian armor and paid for prestige in sweat, but the rank and file chose convenience.

  "Well," thou
ght Pedro of the continental dandies, "they can have their finery. When it comes to fighting—"

  He clenched his hand resting on the peak of the saddle. This was his army. He belonged to it, and it to him. Since last November, he and the army had matured together, on shipboard, in battle, on the march, and in camp, its varied elements kneaded into one by masterful leadership. He would not have exchanged his place in it, his stake in its adventure, for a captaincy in the King's guard. He was proud even of its shabbiness, that after a deed of foolhardy, breathtaking heroism in destroying the ships and thereby its only means of retreat, it did not look heroic. He was proud even of its fears.

  "You know," he remarked to Sandoval, "I believe that there're a good many who think with Cervantes—but they're climbing the mountains."

  "Aye," returned the other in his harsh, stammering voice, "they'll climb them. I've heard that there're other mountains beyond these before Mexico. They'll climb them too. They won't be stopped by the devil, if Hernan Cortes lives. Cowards? By God, I wouldn't give a louse for a man who isn't afraid. Fear's the spice that makes it interesting to go ahead."

  "Philosopher!" bantered Pedro, rattling his knuckles against Sandoval's corslet. "Well, let's take our report to the General, though there's nothing to tell him."

  They dropped down to the level of the column and headed toward the rear guard, which Cortes was overseeing at the moment. As they edged past the advancing file along the narrow trail, they rode among a shower of ha's and hola's because everybody knew everybody else in the company.

  Pedro threw a kiss and a grin at Catana as he went by. She was holding Ochoa by the hand. He was one of Cortes's pages, a ten-year-old boy, whose young legs were already beginning to feel the strain of the climb. Gone were the relatively fine clothes of her arrival. Instead of the cap and feather, she now wore a battered steel cap, acquired from one of the older, less active foot soldiers who had remained at Villa Rica. A dirty tabard of Indian cotton armor hung to her knees and was drawn in at the waist by a belt supporting dagger and pouch on one side and a short, heavy sword on the other. She carried the usual foot soldier's buckler and cloak on her back. As it was the height of the rainy season, her broad-toed shoes, like everybody else's, were clogs of mud. Under the curving edges of the headpiece, her lean, sunburned features stood out sharply; but they softened and lightened at Pedro's greeting. She turned her head an instant to gaze after him.

  Beyond the artillery and baggage, Cortes rode at the head of the pikemen and arquebusiers who formed the rear guard. He was in conversation with Olid, his second-in-command, and with Father Olmedo. At the General's stirrup walked Dona Marina, now his mistress and ever-ready interpreter, her handsome eyes fixed on him. A group of Totonac dignitaries, half-allies and half-hostages, wearing lofty aigret plumes and varicolored cotton garments, trooped along, remote as the stone age. Except for sign language, their one means of communication with the mysterious whites was Doiia Marina.

  Cortes, was discussing the country, which began to spread out as the trail ascended. The tropical fragrance of the lowland rose like the perfume of an infinite garden.

  "It lacks but the sugar cane and orange," he was saying. "We'll have them brought from the Canaries and Andalusia. Also draught animals." As usual his thought ranged statesmanlike far ahead of the present, creating, devising. "Then, with the maize, the maguey, cocoa, and other excellent new plants with which Our Lord has blessed this land, what wealth, sirs! On my honor, I often think the produce of the soil will outvalue the gold of Montezuma." He made a gesture with his arm. "Look you, is it not like Andalusia, only richer? And these mountains

  in front recall the Sierra Morena and the Sierra de Granada, only they are higher. And I hear that beyond are mesas and barrancas Uke to those of the Castiles, only wider and deeper. We must call it New Spain, sefiores, the fairest name for the fairest country."

  "Yes," nodded Olmedo, "Nueva Espana. And may it have all the good of the old with none of the ill!"

  "Amen to that. Father! So it shall be, with the help of Nuestra Senora and Santiago" He broke off as Pedro and Sandoval reined up. "Well, de Vargas?"

  "All clear, sir, to the distance of four leagues. We noted a good camping place, well-drained and with ample water, at about three and a half leagues."

  "How easily defendable?" Cortes asked. It was characteristic that even in allied and friendly territory, he marched (as the phrase went) beard on shoulder.

  "Sheltered from attack on three sides. Your Excellency."

  "Doha Marina," Cortes smiled at his interpreter, "ask these caciques how far three and a half leagues from here would make it to the town they call Jalapa."

  "About halfway from Cempoala, my lord," she answered in her faltering Spanish, after inquiring.

  "Well then, Cristobal," Cortes directed Olid, "we'll pitch camp at the place de Vargas suggests. Give your orders. As for you, son Pedro, keep well in advance of the army. It is likely enough that the Indians this side of the sierra mean peace. But we'll not gamble on likelihoods."

  With mock innocence, but loud enough to be heard by the men in front and behind, Ochoa piped to Catana when Pedro had disappeared, "Is Captain de Vargas your lover. Aunty?"

  He was a precocious imp, a parentless waif, whose bright eyes and chubbiness had got him a place in Cortes's household. He handled the General's cup, carried his prayer book, and played a small role in the ceremony with which Cortes, who knew the value of display, liked to surround himself. Bullied by the half-dozen older pages and spoiled by the soldiers, he was in a fair way to perdition when Catana, who was fond of children, took him under her wing. She avenged him furiously on his persecutors, frowned the company into reticence when talk grew too broad for young ears, shielded him from such spectacles as the hangings and floggings that followed the Escudero mutiny, made him say his prayers, spanked or mothered him as the case demanded. On his side, Ochoa worshiped her; but, being a brat, he could not resist teasing.

  "He is your amante, isn't he, Tia?"

  Her cheeks flushed, and she pretended not to hear. Several of the men sniggered.

  "Tut, tut, boy," grinned one of them, "what do you know of such matters? Why do you think he is?"

  "I saw him kiss her," Ochoa announced, deHghted to be the center of attention. "I saw her on his knee."

  "Is that all? Didn't you see anything else? Let's hear, nifio.''

  The man, Alvaro Maldonado, nicknamed El Fieroj the Tough, was in the rank behind. Catana looked back.

  "Nosing into my affairs, hocon?" she drawled.

  There was a quality in the drawl that Maldonado did not miss and that no one missed. The grins vanished and eyes shifted in other directions. From the day of her arrival, every man in the army knew instinctively that Catana could take care of herself. The skill she displayed in knife-throwing at a target strengthened this conviction. Moreover, the respect that surrounded her did not lose in glamour by the report of Hernan Soler's killing, a deed which Manuel Perez was too proud of to conceal.

  The tough one mumbled something about a joke between pals.

  "That's all right, chico," she answered. "I'm camarada to any man in this company, but my personal concerns are nobody's shuttlecock. Do I make that plain? ... As for you," she blazed at Ochoa, "take yourself off. You're no boy of mine any more. Vete enhoramala!''

  Shut into outer darkness, the little fellow trailed a pace or so behind, his face growing longer at each yard. In the end, he crept up and tugged at her sleeve.

  "Aunty," he whispered, "Tia querida."

  But she paid no attention except to brush away his hand. He fell back again, and after a minute his face crumpled suddenly. He burst into a thin wail, stumbling along, his fists in his eyes. Catana set her jaw and stared at the neck of Diego Ponce in the rank in front. El Fiero, who had a fellow feeling for Ochoa, gave him a nudge and a comforting wink, but the child flung away and at last disappeared.

  During the next halt, Catana wandered off for a drink at a neig
hboring brook and was surprised upon getting up from her knees to find Ochoa at her side. He carried a stout switch in his hand and had just finished smoothing off the twigs with his knife.

  ''Tia querida," he said earnestly, "if you whip me, can't I be your boy again? Here's the strongest switch I could find—one that will hurt. Please—"

  She stood a moment between tears and amusement.

  "Please," he said anxiously, thrusting the switch on her and unbuckling his belt. "I'll be quiet as I can. You won't be mad with me afterwards, Aunty, will you?"

  She caught him in her arms, and when he began to cry she kissed both his eyes.

  ''Muchacite!'' she smiled. "Little rogue! Tunantuelo!"

  "I ought to be spanked, Tia querida. I'll never tell on you and Captain de Vargas again."

  The trumpet sounded the march. They went back to the trail hand in hand.

  XL

  That evening on the mountain slope, within the radius of his company's campfire, Botello the Astrologer, who was said to know the future, sat deep in thought. Perhaps his mind was on nothing more remote than the evening meal which Catana and some other women were preparing, or perhaps he was absorbed by the cloudy outlines of things to come. In any case, the men, awe-struck by his rapt expression, left him alone.

  He was a grave, dignified person, highly respected in the company not only for his arts but for his knowledge of Latin, and because he had been to Rome. He did quite a little business in horoscopes. Even Cortes, who had a strain of superstition mingled wdth his hard-headed qualities, now and then consulted him. Though technically an astrologer, Botello leaned somewhat toward necromancy. It was certain at least that he had a powerful talisman, an uncanny leather thing, half a span long and shaped like a man's genitals, which, according to rumor, the devil in person had given him. It contained flock wool—for what magic purposes no one knev.

  As the steam of cooking rose, Botello's expression changed and his eyes brightened. It was an excellent smell, more savory than usual. Two caldrons, hanging on a crossarm between forked stakes, bubbled over the fire and were stirred by Isabel Rodrigo; while Catana had charge of turning the spits, which supported several game birds, since known as turkeys, and a haunch of venison.