Captain from Castile

by Samuel Shellabarger; Internet Archive

  "Panfilo!" drawled Catana Perez, fist on hip among a group of soldiers. "Pdnfilo! What a name! Makes you think of a strutting peacock, God help me! I'll bet he's a pompous wind-sack. Anyone called Panfilo has to be."

  "And he is," nodded Garcia. "Talks like a voice in a vault. I know him, and he can kiss what I sit on. But there's one consolation, hombres,

  it's not a bullfrog like him who can match our fox—and no disrespect to Cortes."

  The talents of the fox soon showed, and Pedro de Vargas learned another lesson in the art of war. One day three ambassadors from General Narvaez appeared on the mainland side of the southern causeway. Having had the imprudence to summon the faithful Sandoval to surrender his post at Villa Rica, that officer had had them bound hand and foot, trussed up like turkeys on the backs of native carriers, and under the guard of Pedro de Solis, with twenty men, had dispatched them to Cortes. Leaving his charges in Iztapalapan across the lake, de Soils announced their arrival and told the story to the General. It sounded so much like Sandoval that Pedro, who was present, felt homesick for his friend even as he laughed.

  It appeared that the names of the three unwilling envoys were Guevara, a priest, Vergara, a notary, and Master Amaya, a soldier.

  "The fat-bellies got a jouncing on the tlamemes' backs, I can vouch to Your Excellency," concluded de Solis. "And they saw some country. It opened their eyes to the richness of New Spain. And now they sit gaping across the water at this great city and know not whether they are dreaming or bewitched. What's Your Lordship's will respecting them?"

  Though the Spaniards would lose face if their white brothers entered Tenochtitlan, like bales of goods, on the backs of slaves, it seemed to Pedro that Cortes overdid it in keeping up appearances. Guevara and company were to ride in on horseback; were to be apologized to for Sandoval's barbarity; were to be given gifts; were to be shown the beauties of the city as they approached.

  "Son Pedro," Cortes replied when de Vargas protested, "you've got a deal to learn about management. A spider spins his web strand by strand. Do you think four hundred odd of us can fight nine hundred with steel only? Go to!"

  As a result, by the time Father Guevara and his companions, propitiated by excuses and presents, had followed the palace-lined avenue through the city, crossed the great central square, been received by the company in full regalia, been greeted affectionately by the General himself, they had shed their allegiance to Narvaez like a worn-out shirt. One strand of the spider's web held them fast, and that strand was made of gold. How fortunate were the soldiers of the free-handed Cortes, who shared the booty of such an empire!

  With admiration, Pedro watched the further spinning of the web during the next ten days. Much against their will, Guevara and the

  others, heavy with bullion, went back to Narvaez to sing Cortes's praises in that camp and exhibit their wealth. The Cuban armada buzzed. Why fight? There were gold and land for all, and a big-hearted general waiting to parcel it out. Why fight for Panfilo de Narvaez, who didn't part with a copper if he could help it? And why fight? asked Cortes in tactful letters to the Cuban general, aimed not so much at him as at his captains. Why not meet as friends? Of course this talk of punishment and rebels applied to the loyal colony of Villa Rica made no sense. Villa Rica, indeed, would punish any infringement of its rights. But negotiate. Come to an agreement. Why play into the hands of Montezuma, destroying a year's labor of settlement and conversion by war between Spaniards?

  A diplomatic offensive.

  Fray Bartolome de Olmedo, whose priestly rank gave him immunity, carried these letters and a rich supply of gold to grease the palms of key people among the invaders.

  "My son," he told Pedro on the eve of departing, "if by management or bribery I can prevent bloodshed among friends, nay, among kinsmen, it will be a good work, and therefore I am undertaking it." He sighed but added, "Would that it were possible to do this by preaching the simple gospel of peace and good will; but in this world, we must sometimes use the ways of the world to do God service."

  Sauntering together, he and de Vargas had come to the apartment in Cortes's quarters which was used as a chapel, and they now stood within the doorway. The altar light and a few votive candles faintly illumined the long, low room.

  "Yes," said Pedro, "and meanwhile it's good news that Captain Velasquez de Leon holds with us and is marching to Cholula. We'd have made a poor front without him. The General doesn't expect to avoid a fight for all your parleying, Father."

  "God send he's wrong!" Olmedo put in.

  De Vargas went on, "What frets me is to see the gold we've sweated and bled for going into the pockets of loons who hadn't the heart to join up with our enterprise and now come bawling for the fruit of it."

  "That too is the way of the world, my son."

  Pedro grumbled, "I suppose you've a list of all in Narvaez's herd who have to be fattened."

  "Yes, all—thanks to Father Guevara—Cubans and Spaniards."

  "Spaniards? Who are they?"

  The friar shook his head. "Not direct from Spain of course." He

  changed the subject, "Hijo mio, I leave tomorrow at dawn. Life being uncertain, we may not meet again. Do you remember a talk we had once on the hill above Trinidad de Cuba?"

  "I'm not likely to forget it, Father—nor your kindness."

  Olmedo laid his heavy hand on the other's shoulder. "God's kindness, if you please. You were guilty of black sin. Your enemy had done you a great wrong, but you sought to do him greater wrong by destroying his soul. God's forgiveness of you depended on your forgiveness of Diego de Silva and on your prayers for him. You made a vow to do this. Have you kept the vow?"

  Pedro flushed. "Not recently," he shifted. "Anyway, the man's alive."

  Why, he wondered, was Olmedo bringing that up now?

  "Since then," the friar went on, "God has protected and prospered you. Think—at Cempoala, on the Gallega ship that night, how often in skirmish and battle. You are a captain, high in the General's favor. You who had nothing are now rich. Think! And in return God asked only that you forgive and pray for your enemy."

  "By the Cross," Pedro muttered, "I forgive him. It was forgetful-ness—"

  "Forgetfulness!" echoed the friar. "Mark you, Pedro de Vargas: if you forget your vow, God will forget you. At this moment, kneel before the altar and repeat that vow. And do not forget again. I'll kneel with you."

  Pedro thought of the unborn child in Catana's womb. A shiver passed through him. "Ay de mi, pecador!" he muttered.

  So at Olmedo's side in front of the altar, he renewed the vow.

  But if Cortes, sleepless and untiring, spun his protective web—now with gold, now with promises, now with steel—over the land he had conquered and meant to hold, the Uei Tlatoani, Montezuma, in his quarters near by, did certain spinning of his own. It was clear that he had established relations with Narvaez and that Aztec gold found its way into the latter's chests; clear too that he was stirring up the coast Indians in favor of Narvaez. Report insisted that he had promised to hand over Cortes, dead on alive, to the invaders in return for their promise of delivering him from Malinche's protection.

  "How small a thing would cure all that, Hernan!" mused Alvarado at one of the council meetings.

  The General nodded. "Yes, Gossip, but patience is the virtue of our necessity. If Montezuma died, we'd have the devil loose here as well as on the coast. Even so—" He shook his head. "We're on a tightrope,

  padrino. Remember that and keep your temper till we get to the other side."

  Then too, as Olmedo's letters reported, all the captains sent by Velasquez did not prove open to bribes; and some considered it wiser to take over and take all than to negotiate and share. Narvaez, unmoved by diplomacy, still thundered, lightened, and marched to Cempoala. Sandoval's dispatches from Villa Rica spoke of Indian unrest and desperate measures of defense. The time had come for more than scheming. And for that, too, Cortes was ready.

  "Senores," he summed up at the last
council, "we have a hard choice to make, or rather we have no choice at all. It's one thing or nothing. Act, thrust, and by Our Lord's help we may clear one danger in time to deal with the next. Wait, and we're caught between the two, Narvaez and the Aztecs. Therefore half of us march tomorrow. . . . You'll say, divide our force? Leave but ninety of us with five hundred Tlascalans to hold this city? What danger! Aye—bitter danger indeed! Danger for them who stay and for us who go. A handful here against thousands; a handful there when we meet nine hundred Castilians at Cempoala. Why then do we not march all together? Cavaliers, the answer is plain. Once leave this city, and we shall not lightly enter it again. Once lose this city, and we're out of the saddle of New Spain, which can be ruled only from here—our chief prize lost."

  He paused a moment, then went on in a ringing voice, "So, with the help of Saint James, we take up the gage of Fortune. It may be that the Indian dogs will hold off till they see how it fares with us at Cempoala. If it fares badly, you who stay here are but dead men; if it fares well, we'll have another cast of the dice. Do I make myself clear?"

  "Wonderfully!" laughed Captain Marin, who was jabbing at the table with his knife. He tossed the blade up and caught it by the hilt. "Wonderfully clear!"

  "And you agree, gentlemen?"

  A mutter of assent followed.

  "Then I appoint Captain de Alvarado to my place during our absence." The General's eyes circled the group and stopped on Pedro. "With Captain de Vargas second in command."

  "But Your Excellency—" Pedro burst out. He had been thinking in terms of the march to the sea, of head-on combat with Christians. To stay here, penned up and waiting! Why pick on him? "Your Excellency—"

  "The post of danger, Senor de Vargas. And, by the way, you'll keep Juan Garcia as your ensign. It behooves you and Alvarado to guard

  well our pearl of cities. I say guard it well—with wit and cunning which will help you more than strength. Guard it well."

  Post of danger. The words snuffed out protest like a candle flame.

  Next morning (it was early May) the company assembled after mass in the great courtyard of the compound. Polite farewells between the General and Montezuma, veiled menaces on either side, the flickering of Hghtning behind clouds. Farewells, not so polite, between comrades; tears perhaps, for the tough veterans were not ashamed of tears. The drums rolled; trumpets sounded to horse; the ranks fell in. Cortes swung to his saddle; El Molinero reared.

  "Hasta luego! — Hasta la vista! — Buena suerte! Adios!" The gates opened before Corral riding in front with the black standard. It did not take long for the little band of horse and foot to file out. The courtyard seemed huge and untenanted to Pedro when they were gone.

  Nerves. Not that Pedro de Vargas knew what nerves were, but they still functioned. Nerves that reduced sleep to fits and starts, that magnified trifles. At night the roaring of the beasts—the pumas, jaguars, ocelots, bears, and wolves—in the royal menagerie attached to Montezuma's now vacant palace across the central plaza became symbolic of encircling, savage forces. By day the murmur of the city grew to a sinister mutter of treachery and plot. What was Montezuma brewing behind the guarded approaches of his quarters? Dofia Marina gently reported her fears and suspicions. And always the breathless question: what was happening on the coast? Always the weight of crushing responsibility : this queen of cities, the Aztec emperor, seven hundred and fifty thousand pesos' value in gold, to guard and keep.

  "Enough food," said Pedro to Juan Garcia one morning in mid-May, as they returned from inspecting the supplies, "enough water, enough powder. But enough brains?"

  He put the question half to himself. Though often unexpressed, it was the all-important question at the back of everybody's mind. With Cortes gone, his master hand no longer at the helm, the difference in leadership was felt through every rank: by Montezuma, craftily smiling and assured; by the officers, short-tempered and covering up anxiety

  with bluster; by the Tlascalans, who whispered of Malinche; not least by the commanders themselves, Alvarado and Vargas. Good intentions, consciousness, courage, did not make up for genius, and genius alone could cope with the situation. Everything that was done seemed tentative and imitative. It was haunted by the afterthoughts: Was that right? Would the General have done that?

  Was it right, for instance, to have granted permission, at Montezuma's request, for the feast of Toxcatl, the annual dances in honor of Witchywolves and some other unpronounceable god ? The festival lasted twenty days. It meant a gathering of chiefs from all Mexico and tributary provinces. Clearly the Aztecs meant to strike if Cortes lost his battle against Narvaez. But if they were denied the use of the central teocalli on this occasion they might strike at once? It meant a gain of twenty days. Under such circumstances, to grant the permission, barring only human sacrifice, looked like a sort of compromise that Cortes would have made. One couldn't be sure, however.

  "Brains?" Pedro repeated.

  Garcia tipped his steel cap to one side and scratched his head.

  "Brains? Ah, I see what you mean, comrade."

  He glanced at the distant figure of Alvarado, who stood sunning himself on the terrace of his quarters. The sunlight, playing on his golden beard and splendid equipment, gave him a glittering appearance which deserved the Aztec nickname, Tonatiuh, Sun God. On the other hand, Pedro sometimes thought of him in terms of a glorified onion. Peel off his genial and popular manner which captivated everybody, and you came to his marvelous physique, his flawless daring; peel that off, and you found cold greed, edged with cruelty; peel that off, and what lay under it? Shrewdness, ability—or nothing?

  "No, I didn't have Alvarado in mind, Juan. I meant myself, perhaps all of us. Christ! Little I knew what it meant to be a captain two weeks past. Carry out orders, lead a detachment, do a certain job—yes. But this weighing and balancing, groping, guessing! Makes me feel like a schoolboy. It's beyond me."

  Garcia grunted. "You're doing all right—as well as anybody could in your place. Don't take it to heart, nino. What we need here is the General. Seems a long time since he and the comrades marched, doesn't it?"

  They were crossing the courtyard past a group of Tlascalan warriors, who were painting their naked bodies white and yellow. One of the number tapped a hand drum and sang monotonously, like the howling of a moon-struck dog.

  "Hm-m," muttered Garcia, "painting for war, eh? Maybe they're right. They've got a feeling for it."

  "What I want to know," de Vargas went on out of his own thoughts, "is why he picked me out to stay behind—us. We'd have fitted in on the march or down there at Cempoala. There's no question about Alvarado; he's a senior captain and would have to be chosen. But for my place, why not Ordas, Morla, Marin, a half-dozen others? Why us?"

  "I'll tell you," answered Garcia in his literal fashion. "I've given much thought to the matter. The General always has two or more reasons for everything he does. One's on the surface; the rest he keeps to himself. It's in my mind that he remembered Catana's promising condition. He knew that she can't march and that you wouldn't want to leave her at this time. He says to himself, 'De Vargas would be torn two ways, half with us and half with his wench. He's a good man— none better, certainly not Ordas, Marin, or Morla. He's of more use to me in the city, looking out for his leman and the company's stakes at the same time, than he would be languishing on the march.' But he couldn't tell you any of that. As to why he chose me," Garcia added complacently, "it's plain as my foot. He wanted a seasoned man of experience to steady you, my lad. And who in this company has more experience than I?"

  Pedro laughed, but Garcia had made a point about Catana; perhaps he was right.

  "Well," he returned, "for whatever reason, here we are. Now see what we'll make of it."

  They strolled over to the front wall of the courtyard, which had been heightened by a palisade since the alarm in April, discussed its merits for defense, then passed the time of day with the two sentinels on guard at the gates. Since one panel of them s
tood open, they crossed the threshold, standing outside for a look at the great plaza.

  It was crowded today, but the first glimpse revealed a different crowd than usual. The place blazed with festival garments, the chiefs in their panaches, quilted armor, jewels, featherwork, and skins, the mighty of Mexico. There was a general thronging toward the portals of the Wall of Serpents, surrounding the temple pyramid, where rites of a religious character were about to begin. For if the Virgin and Child occupied one of the shrines on its broad summit, the neighboring shrine still contained Aztec idols, a joint tenancy which every right-minded Spaniard and Aztec alike, for opposite reasons, lamented and was bent on abolishing as soon as possible.

  "How many would you say?" queried Pedro, appraising the con-

  course of people, while a steady stream along the avenue near at hand continually swelled it. "Two thousand? Three thousand?"

  Garcia spat judicially. "Hard upon ten, comrade, hard upon ten. What a load of gold and precious stones wasted on those heathen carcasses! If you could collect it all, it would swell our hoard by two hundred thousand pesos. Well, the time's coming. But note this. The bastards are all fighting men."

  "They're unarmed."

  "Aye, but when people of war meet together, arms aren't far off."

  ScowHng at the two Spaniards before the gates, or with eyes stonily overlooking them, the crowd along the avenue passed. Arms akimbo and legs wide, Garcia and Pedro stared back.

  Then all at once a curious procession appeared. Two youths, wearing garlands of flovers on their heads and with hair cut short, drew near, blowing reed flutes and strutting in a kind of ceremonial dance. They were the handsomest native boys Pedro had seen, perfectly shaped, finely featured, not too dark. A gorgeous retinue of pages and maidens attended them, strewing flowers, dancing and posturing. The crowd made way for them, some touching hand to ground and then to forehead, others actually prostrating themselves in evident worship.