Captain from Castile

by Samuel Shellabarger; Internet Archive

  "Who doubts it?" returned the other. "Look you, fraile, for the black bile, there's nothing so good as a purge." He drew his head back, and his eyes hardened a moment. Then he winked at the others. "Well, gentlemen, remember the Prophet Daniel—especially when you're going down these steps."

  And, turning, he began the almost ladderlike descent, while the others followed. As befitted their youth, Pedro and Tapia came last. Down to the first break in the steps, where a sloping terrace led round the pyramid to a second flight of steps immediately below the first. Down these to a second terrace, and so four times in all around the teocalli to its base. The Spaniards were fully armed—a precaution never omitted when they left their quarters—and the clash of steel mingled with laughter and tones of voices.

  "Friend Pedro," said Tapia, "do you ever rub your eyes as I do sometimes?"

  "How so, Andres?"

  "Wondering whether you or I or any of us are the same men who sailed last year from Cuba?"

  "I see what you mean," Pedro nodded.

  For they were not the same men; not the same happy-go-lucky

  company. Indeed, it took almost an effort to remember the Cuban days. Cortes, the once popular planter, the genial manager; Sandoval, the rough country boy; Olid, typical soldier of fortune; de Vargas, fresh from Spain; Bull Garcia with his talk (now so antiquated) of Columbus—all the captains, every ranker, had aged, had changed. One was not a conquistador for nothing. They had accomplished incredible things, had seen too much, had faced death too often, not to have hardened, deepened, become pre-eminently fighting men. Though unconscious of it, they had been forged somehow into a troop as disciplined as Toledo steel. But this sort of thing, however glorious, gives a peculiar temper to the human soul.

  "Yes," Pedro added almost with a sigh, "it's true enough. . . . We'd better close up ranks, Andres." They were now crossing the courtyard of the teocalli. "What's your opinion of this rabble? The dogs look ugly. See that bastard in the eagle helmet scowling at us?"

  Two by two, shoulder to shoulder, the dozen or so men fell mechanically into close formation, outwardly ignoring the black looks of the crowd but alert as a steel trap. Their armor clanged rhythmically as they marched; the plumes on their helmets fluttered.

  It was clear that the overthrow of the war god and the appropriation of his temple, even though it had been wrung from Montezuma, did not find acceptance among the hitherto patient Aztecs. As usual the throng in the square was quiet (the Spaniards were always impressed by the absence of hurlyburly in an Indian crowd), but the quiet had a sullen, menacing vibration. The muttered echo of Cortes's Aztec nickname, Malinche, sounded like a hiss. Noteworthy, too, was the presence of numerous warriors, picked men of the military orders, in traditional dress, their dark features visible through the jaws of an ocelot helmet or under the beak of an eagle. Black-coped priests were everywhere, flitting back and forth.

  The Spanish quarters in the palace, or rather compound, which had belonged to Axayacatl, Montezuma's father, lay at no great distance across the square from the temple enclosure; but before the cavaliers had gone more than halfway, the quiet around them had turned to a rising mutter. Without hurrying their pace by the fraction of a second, impersonal and undeviating as a steel plow, they advanced through the crowd, which opened grudgingly to let them pass.

  Mobs everywhere are inherently the same. A period of fermentation, a slow heaving, then a spark and explosion. Cortes, an expert in timing, sensed that the explosion was near and made his move at the proper psychological instant.

  "Espadas, senores!" he said in his clear, level voice. "Swords!" And in the same moment that every blade leaped from its scabbard, he swept the steel vambrace of his left forearm against the chest of an Indian warrior too slow in making way for him. "Would you shoulder me, dog! Must I teach you manners!"

  The hulking fellow, evidently a leader, reeled back and would have fallen except for the press behind him.

  "By fours!" said Cortes; and at once the file became a compact square.

  "Vizors!"

  The steel lips of the helmets shut.

  "Now, adelante quietly, gentlemen."

  It was enough. The crowd, distracted by the precise, bewildering maneuver and overawed by the terrible swords, did not reach the explosion point. Though a few yells sounded from its fringes, it opened meekly for the group, who marched on at the same steady pace to the near-by gateway of their palace. The massive doors swung open, disclosing the vast courtyard inside, the sentries at their posts, the cannon in position. They closed again, leaving the Aztecs on the outside to ferment and murmur.

  "It seems to me," said Cortes, removing his helmet, "that our friends out there may be needing a lesson—a sharp one. But perhaps this show of teeth will be enough. I hate unnecessary bloodshed."

  The Prophet Daniel had been forgotten.

  XLV/

  A YEAR AGO the incident in the square would have excited Pedro de Vargas as a novelty. Now it started a train of reflex professional thought. As the group of officers broke up, he remarked to Tapia: —

  "You know, we could stand four or five more feet on that outer wall as well as some bastions. Eight foot's nothing to scale, especially when there're no flanking redans. I wonder the General doesn't see to it."

  The "palace" of Axayacatl, a vast, irregular rectangle of open spaces and of one-story stone buildings (terraced occasionally in the center to provide an upper apartment), was surrounded by a massive stone wall. It had been honeycombed by the Spaniards with embrasures for cannon and loopholes for arquebuses, but these would be of small use at close quarters. An active man could easily leap high enough

  to catch a purchase on the coping; and a shove from behind would lift him to the top. In the absence of outjutting bastions, no flanking fire to clear the wall of attackers was possible.

  Tapia nodded. "Yes, and take a look at the teocalli there." He pointed back at the great pyramid they had just left. Only a couple of hundred yards distant in a straight line, it dominated the courtyard of the Spanish quarters. "Did it ever strike you that slingers and bowmen up there would make this place too hot for fun? I'm wishing for the hundred and fifty men down country with Captain Velasquez de Leon. Perhaps we could use them better here than at Coat-zacoalco."

  He referred to the largest of the detachments which Cortes had sent out to explore the countr) Statesman as well as soldier, the General had spent the recent months appraising resources—mines, plantations, harbor facilities. The number of Castilians in Mexico City amounted at present to little better than two hundred men. They were barracked together with several hundred Tlascalan allies; but, when it came to a pinch, it was the white force that counted.

  Pedro absently rubbed his hair, which had been pressed flat under his helmet.

  "And the General spoke of three hundred thousand people in this town alone." He grinned. "Well, Andres, we need exercise. We're getting soft, homhre."

  The young captains gazed at the mixed crowd thronging the huge courtyard within the walls: bands of half-naked Tlascalan warriors, who camped here in the open; dozens of native women (for concubines were plentiful); here and there Aztec noblemen in attendance on Montezuma; scores of slaves. The place hummed with Indian life and showed a riot of color. Only the sentries, hard and bearded under their steel caps, the gunners on constant duty at their cannon, or an occasional soldier represented the white element. In the background stretched the low, stone-faced buildings, separated from each other by irregular courts and passageways, and sometimes rising in a terrace to a second story. It was here in their long rooms capable of housing a hundred and fifty men and in their own patios that the Spaniards kept to themselves, enjoyed their women, and were waited on by their naborias or native servants.

  "Yes, soft," de Vargas repeated. "We've been cooped up here too long. If four hundred of us could beat fifty thousand Tlascalans at ' Tecoacinco, we've still enough here to handle these Aztec gallinas."

  "Send God you're right,
" returned Tapia. "But remember that the

  Aztecs conquered this country before we came. They might surprise us. . . . Hasta la vista. Redhead."

  Pedro returned the farewell and clanked off to his quarters, which lay in an opposite angle of the compound. On the way, he stopped to watch a fencing bout between two good swordsmen, Luis Alonso and Juan Escalona; stopped to bet a peso in a card game (the gold of the army was in constant flux from pocket to pocket); stopped to drink a cup of pulque with Francisco de Morla; and at last reached the patio upon which his room opened, to find Juan Garcia seated on the ground between Catana's legs, getting his hair cut.

  "Careful now!" boomed Garcia. "Don't rattle Catana, Pedrito. It's a critical moment when she clips the hairs from my ears. I am most ticklish in that place, and if she cuts me—"

  "Be still," said Catana, laying a firm hand on Garcia's huge skull. "There, I got it. A whoreson long one, sticking out like a Swiss pike."

  "What a picture!" smiled Pedro. "Shocking! All I can say is that it's good I'm not jealous, amigos mios."

  Since the end of March, Catana had put on feminine clothes— marvelous reds and yellows cut out of Indian cotton stuffs and stitched by herself. But the year she had spent in hose and doublet had left her confused. She was apt to take strides unsuitable to skirts; or at times she forgot, as now, to keep her gown below her knees.

  She clipped a final point from Garcia's forehead and brushed off her skirts.

  "There you are. For Dios, Soldan's mane is no thicker than yours."

  Getting up, she raised her lips to Pedro for a kiss, then set about the straps and buckles of his armor, removing it piece by piece and hanging each in the right order on its appointed rack against the wall.

  "Is that better, sefior?"

  Pedro stretched contentedly. "Much better, pichon."

  Meanwhile Garcia admired his improved reflection in the small patio pool. "A good haircut, muchacha," he nodded. "Here, I'll give you a buss for it."

  She let him kiss her, and the three of them sat down in the shadow of the wall. Since her brother, Manuel Perez, had fallen in one of the first Tlascalan battles, Garcia in a sense had replaced him. The big man and Catana were devoted in a half-kindredly, half-comradely fashion. It was a warm relationship, which derived from the experiences in Jaen and from Garcia's genius for affection. A friend to almost everyone in the army, he adored Catana as his ideal of an all-weather girl.

  "There's a wench for New Spain!" he would rumble to Pedro. "There's a mujercita to rub shoulders with in a new country! A fe mia, I don't know which of you I love best. That's the thing about love: you can't weigh or measure it."

  Garcia would heave and expand with affection.

  "But I know this," he added once, "if you broke her heart with your grand hidalgo ways, chasing off after some high-stepping dama" (he harbored a bitter grudge against the handkerchief which Pedro still carried under his doublet), "I'd—" He opened and closed his hand, staring down at the fingers.

  "You'd do what?" Pedro teased.

  "I don't know," the other gloomed. "I don't know. I guess it would break my heart too, comrade."

  They sat on cushions in the cool of the patio wall, while servants, whom Montezuma had supplied for the Spanish invaders, set forth low tables and an array of dishes for the noon meal. Shallow braziers with live coals in them kept individual bowls hot. It was a varied menu consisting of poultry, fish, chili peppers, corn, beans, tortillas, and pineapples; thickish chocolate, flavored with vanilla, furnished the beverage.

  "Blessed Virgin!" grunted Garcia through a full mouth. "What would I give to clamp my jaws over an honest hunk of salt pork again! No work for the teeth in these messes. Ah, well, what can't be cured must be endured."

  Loading her case knife with fish and succotash, Catana nodded. "Yes, Christian victuals for me too, Juan. They're chewier." She slid the food skillfully between her lips. "But just wait. This is a good country for hogs."

  "Or beef," put in Pedro, cracking a turkey wing. "The General plans to bring in cattle before another year. Also grapes. No reason for us to go on putting up with pulque or this heathenish chocolatl. Too cursed sweet."

  So, enjoying the tastiest food they had ever known, they seasoned it with the time-honored army grousing and had a satisfying meal.

  Pedro related the incident in the square. Having survived the hard Tlascala campaign, neither Garcia nor Catana took the news lightly; but their reactions were different.

  "Isn't that like Indians!" the big man exclaimed. "No gratitude. We come here in all gentleness to show them how to live—stop them from eating each other, teach them Spanish ways, make them subjects of Don Carlos, the greatest king on earth, and they want to murder

  us. It was the same in the Islands. They leave us no choice but fighting, when, if they would only settle down, everything would be happy."

  Catana demurred. "They don't want to be slaves. That's natural."

  "They have slaves of their own," retorted Garcia. "But who's speaking of slaves? Servants, yes. Doesn't it stand to reason that dark-skinned ignorantes should be servants of Castilian cavaliers? Haven't their chiefs sworn allegiance to His Majesty, and aren't we the King's factors in New Spain? What they want doesn't matter. If they rise against us, they're a pack of rebels."

  This logic was too much for Catana: it would have been too much, indeed, for almost anyone in the army.

  "I suppose you're right," she faltered. "But if they should rise, they're a pretty big pack."

  During the last minute, she had been growing curiously pale and now got up unsteadily.

  "Siesta time, hombres."

  Pedro was staring at her. "Are you ill, dulce mia?"

  "No, I'm specially happy."

  "What about?"

  She ran her fingers through his hair. "I'll tell you sometime."

  "Why not now?"

  "Oh, because— Hasta luego"

  Ruffling his curls again, she walked inside, her vivid dress and black hair framed a moment in the doorway.

  "Catana looks dashed peaked," said de Vargas uneasily.

  But Garcia, absorbed by the Indian problem, returned an absent-minded grunt. "I'd give a thousand pesos if we had our camp on the mainland, Pedrito. Those causeways and drawbridges across the water make a nasty line of retreat. Remember how we felt about them that first day when we marched in? I was with Bernal Diaz del Castillo. We looked at each other when we came to the first bridge. 'What's in your mind, Juan?' he says. 'The same that's in yours,' I told him. 'A beautiful trap.' "

  Pedro smiled. "What's the saw about crossing bridges before you come to them? That business in the plaza amounted to nothing. Why worry?"

  "Because I know Indians by now," Garcia frowned. "If they show anything, it means a lot. You wait. They run deep and quiet, quiet as this damned city."

  During the siesta pause, the hush of the town, derived partly from the absence of wheeled vehicles and beasts of burden and partly from

  the Indian nature itself, was more obvious than at other hours. But today, imagination coloring it perhaps, the stillness seemed to have another quality—hurricane weather, hard and breathless. To alert superstition, it was as if a gigantic invisible pressure brooded over the city, perhaps the dethroned war god of Anahuac, alias Satan himself, poised to strike.

  Pedro and Garcia sat clasping their knees, listening to the silence.

  "Quiet!" Garcia repeated. ''Maldito sea! I had a dream like this once. It comes back to me now. I was in just such a place . . ." He seemed to be groping through his mind. "I remember that all at once came a sound of footsteps running—"

  He broke off, his mouth agape; Pedro's scalp prickled. For at that moment sounded a hurry of footsteps, breaking the hush between the buildings and drawing nearer.

  Gaspar Burguillos, one of Cortes's pages, rounded the corner of the patio.

  It took him a second to catch his breath.

  "The General requires your presence, Captain de Vargas. He
has been summoned to council by the Lord Montezuma. He wishes you, and the Captains de Olid, Alvarado, and Marin, to accompany him. The matter presses. You will wear light armor."

  Pedro, already up, took down his casque from the rack and put it on, then unhooked the corslet from its pegs.

  "Lend me a hand, will you, Juan." And when Garcia, still shaken by the fulfillment of his dream, was tightening the buckles, de Vargas whispered, "What happened then—after the footsteps?"

  "I don't know, I've forgotten."

  Pedro adjusted his sword. "Well," he muttered, "we'll soon find out."

  XLVl

  It was a distinction to be invited to this conference, and Pedro walked more erect because of it, as he and Burguillos made their way through the irregular grouping of buildings toward the General's quarters. Since Escalante had been killed In battle on the coast and Gonzalo de Sandoval had been promoted to succeed him in command of the vital fort at Villa Rica, de Vargas ranked as Cortes's favorite among the younger officers. Perhaps the Captain General, whose proceedings were usually dictated by more than one good reason, looked beyond

  Pedro to Spain and to the possible advantage that Don Francisco's support might bring him. He knew (none better) the de Vargas family connections. But if this had something to do with Pedro's rise in the General's favor, there were other more obvious reasons from the standpoint of the army. De Vargas had borne himself well and was admittedly one of the foremost captains. Even the beloved Sandoval was hardly more popular.

  Conversing in a low tone with Cristobal de Olid, Cortes stood at the foot of the steps leading up to his quarters, when Pedro and Burguillos arrived. His pale face looked unusually grave, an expression which brought out the glinting of his dark eyes. Near by, the page, Orteguilla, to whom Montezuma had taken a fancy and who had learned enough Aztec to spy on the captive Emperor, stood with a crestfallen cast on his shrewd young face.

  Cortes turned to him. "This jumps with what you reported day before yesterday, ninOj when the Seiior Montezuma shut you out from his interview with the chief priests, the tlamacazquis, or whatever he calls them. You said then that he had changed toward you. When did this change start?"