CHAPTER XXXIII
ISABELLA DE SIGUENZA IS AVENGED
For many years after the death of Guatemoc I lived with Otomie at peacein the City of Pines. Our country was poor and rugged, and though wedefied the Spaniards and paid them no tribute, now that Cortes had goneback to Spain, they had no heart to attempt our conquest. Save some fewtribes that lived in difficult places like ourselves, all Anahuac wasin their power, and there was little to gain except hard blows in thebringing of a remnant of the people of the Otomie beneath their yoke, sothey let us be till a more convenient season. I say of a remnant of theOtomie, for as time went on many clans submitted to the Spaniards, tillat length we ruled over the City of Pines alone and some leagues ofterritory about it. Indeed it was only love for Otomie and respect forthe shadow of her ancient race and name, together with some reverencefor me as one of the unconquerable white men, and for my skill as ageneral, that kept our following together.
And now it may be asked was I happy in those years? I had much to makeme happy--no man could have been blessed with a wife more beautiful andloving, nor one who had exampled her affection by more signal deeds ofsacrifice. This woman of her own free will had lain by my side on thestone of slaughter; overriding the instincts of her sex she had notshrunk from dipping her hands in blood to secure my safety, her wit hadrescued me in many a trouble, her love had consoled me in many a sorrow:surely therefore if gratitude can conquer the heart of man, mine shouldhave been at her feet for ever and a day, and so indeed it was, and in asense is still. But can gratitude, can love itself, or any passion thatrules our souls, make a man forget the house where he was born? CouldI, an Indian chief struggling with a fallen people against an inevitabledestiny, forget my youth and all its hopes and fears, could I forget thevalley of the Waveney and that Flower who dwelt therein, and forswornthough I might be, could I forget the oath that I once had sworn? Chancehad been against me, circumstances overpowered me, and I think thatthere are few who, could they read this story, would not find in itexcuse for all that I had done. Certainly there are very few who,standing where I stood, surrounded as I was by doubts, difficulties, anddangers, would not have acted as I did.
And yet memory would rise up against me, and time upon time I would lieawake at night, even by the side of Otomie, and remember and repent,if a man may repent of that over which he has no control. For I was astranger in a strange land, and though my home was there and my childrenwere about me, the longing for my other home was yet with me, and Icould not put away the memory of that Lily whom I had lost. Her ring wasstill upon my hand, but nothing else of her remained to me. I did notknow if she were married or single, living or dead. The gulf between uswidened with the widening years, but still the thought of her wentwith me like my shadow; it shone across the stormy love of Otomie, Iremembered it even in my children's kiss. And worst of all I despisedmyself for these regrets. Nay, if the worst can have a worse, there wasone here, for though she never spoke of it, I feared that Otomie hadread my mind.
Heart to heart, Though far apart,
so ran the writing upon Lily's betrothal ring, and so it was with me.Far apart we were indeed, so far that no bridge that I might imaginecould join that distance, and yet I could not say that we had ceasedfrom being 'heart to heart.' Her heart might throb no more, but minebeat still toward it. Across the land, across the sea, across the gulfof death--if she were dead--still in secret must I desire the love thatI had forsworn.
And so the years rolled on, bringing little of change with them, tillI grew sure that here in this far place I should live and die. But thatwas not to be my fate.
If any should read this, the story of my early life, he will rememberthat the tale of the death of a certain Isabella de Siguenza is piecedinto its motley. He will remember how this Isabella, in the last momentsof her life, called down a curse upon that holy father who added outrageand insult to her torment, praying that he might also die by the handsof fanatics and in a worse fashion. If my memory does not play me false,I have said that this indeed came to pass, and very strangely. For afterthe conquest of Anahuac by Cortes, among others this same fiery priestcame from Spain to turn the Indians to the love of God by torment and bysword. Indeed, of all of those who entered on this mission of peace, hewas the most zealous. The Indian pabas wrought cruelties enough when,tearing out the victim's heart, they offered it like incense to Huitzelor to Quetzal, but they at least dismissed his soul to the Mansions ofthe Sun. With the Christian priests the thumb-screw and the stake tookthe place of the stone of sacrifice, but the soul which they deliveredfrom its earthly bondage they consigned to the House of Hell.
Of these priests a certain Father Pedro was the boldest and the mostcruel. To and fro he passed, marking his path with the corpses ofidolaters, until he earned the name of the 'Christian Devil.' At lengthhe ventured too far in his holy fervour, and was seized by a clan of theOtomie that had broken from our rule upon this very question of humansacrifice, but which was not yet subjugated by the Spaniards. One day,it was when we had ruled for some fourteen years in the City of Pines,it came to my knowledge that the pabas of this clan had captured aChristian priest, and designed to offer him to the god Tezcat.
Attended by a small guard only, I passed rapidly across the mountains,purposing to visit the cacique of this clan with whom, although he hadcast off his allegiance to us, I still kept up a show of friendship,and if I could, to persuade him to release the priest. But swiftly as Itravelled the vengeance of the pabas had been more swift, and I arrivedat the village only to find the 'Christian Devil' in the act of beingled to sacrifice before the image of a hideous idol that was set upon astake and surrounded with piles of skulls. Naked to the waist, his handsbound behind him, his grizzled locks hanging about his breast, his keeneyes fixed upon the faces of his heathen foes in menace rather than insupplication, his thin lips muttering prayers, Father Pedro passed on tothe place of his doom, now and again shaking his head fiercely to freehimself from the torment of the insects which buzzed about it.
I looked upon him and wondered. I looked again and knew. Suddenly thererose before my mind a vision of that gloomy vault in Seville, of awoman, young and lovely, draped in cerements, and of a thin-facedblack-robed friar who smote her upon the lips with his ivory crucifixand cursed her for a blaspheming heretic. There before me was the man.Isabella de Siguenza had prayed that a fate like to her own fate shouldbefall him, and it was upon him now. Nor indeed, remembering all thathad been, was I minded to avert it, even if it had been in my power todo so. I stood by and let the victim pass, but as he passed I spoke tohim in Spanish, saying:
'Remember that which it may well be you have forgotten, holy father,remember now the dying prayer of Isabella de Siguenza whom many yearsago you did to death in Seville.'
The man heard me; he turned livid beneath his bronzed skin and staggereduntil I thought that he would have fallen. He stared upon me, withterror in his eye, to see as he believed a common sight enough, that ofan Indian chief rejoicing at the death of one of his oppressors.
'What devil are you,' he said hoarsely, 'sent from hell to torment me atthe last?'
'Remember the dying prayer of Isabella de Siguenza, whom you struck andcursed,' I answered mocking. 'Seek not to know whence I am, but rememberthis only, now and for ever.'
For a moment he stood still, heedless of the urgings of his tormentors.Then his courage came to him again, and he cried with a great voice:'Get thee behind me, Satan, what have I to fear from thee? I rememberthat dead sinner well--may her soul have peace--and her curse has fallenupon me. I rejoice that it should be so, for on the further side ofyonder stone the gates of heaven open to my sight. Get thee behind me,Satan, what have I to fear from thee?'
Crying thus he staggered forward saying, 'O God, into Thy hand I commendmy spirit!' May his soul have peace also, for if he was cruel, at leasthe was brave, and did not shrink beneath those torments which he hadinflicted on many others.
Now this was a little matter, but its results we
re large. Had I savedFather Pedro from the hands of the pabas of the Otomie, it is likelyenough that I should not to-day be writing this history here in thevalley of the Waveney. I do not know if I could have saved him, I onlyknow that I did not try, and that because of his death great sorrowscame upon me. Whether I was right or wrong, who can say? Those who judgemy story may think that in this as in other matters I was wrong; hadthey seen Isabella de Siguenza die within her living tomb, certainlythey would hold that I was right. But for good or ill, matters cameabout as I have written.
And it came about also, that the new viceroy sent from Spain was stirredto anger at the murder of the friar by the rebellious and heathen peopleof the Otomie, and set himself to take vengeance on the tribe thatwrought the deed.
Soon tidings reached me that a great force of Tlascalan and otherIndians were being collected to put an end to us, root and branch, andthat with them marched more than a hundred Spaniards, the expeditionbeing under the command of none other than the Captain Bernal Diaz, thatsame soldier whom I had spared in the slaughter of the noche triste, andwhose sword to this day hung at my side.
Now we must needs prepare our defence, for our only hope lay inboldness. Once before the Spaniards had attacked us with thousands oftheir allies, and of their number but few had lived to look again on thecamp of Cortes. What had been done could be done a second time--so saidOtomie in the pride of her unconquerable heart. But alas! in fourteenyears things had changed much with us. Fourteen years ago we held swayover a great district of mountains, whose rude clans would send up theirwarriors in hundreds at our call. Now these clans had broken from ouryoke, which was acknowledged by the people of the City of Pines aloneand those of some adjacent villages. When the Spaniards came down on methe first time, I was able to muster an army of ten thousand soldiers tooppose them, now with much toil I could collect no more than between twoand three thousand men, and of these some slipped away as the hour ofdanger drew nigh.
Still I must put a bold face on my necessities, and make what play Imight with such forces as lay at my command, although in my heart Ifeared much for the issue. But of my fears I said nothing to Otomie, andif she felt any she, on her part, buried them in her breast. In truth Ido believe her faith in me was so great, that she thought my single witenough to over-match all the armies of the Spaniards.
Now at length the enemy drew near, and I set my battle as I had donefourteen years before, advancing down the pass by which alone theycould approach us with a small portion of my force, and stationing theremainder in two equal companies upon either brow of the beetling cliffsthat overhung the road, having command to overwhelm the Spaniards withrocks, hurled upon them from above, so soon as I should give the signalby flying before them down the pass. Other measures I took also, forseeing that do what I would it well might happen that we should bedriven back upon the city, I caused its walls and gates to be set inorder, and garrisoned them. As a last resource too, I stored the loftysummit of the teocalli, which now that sacrifices were no longer offeredthere was used as an arsenal for the material of war, with water andprovisions, and fortified its sides by walls studded with volcanicglass and by other devices, till it seemed well nigh impossible that anyshould be able to force them while a score of men still lived to offer adefence.
It was on one night in the early summer, having bid farewell to Otomieand taking my son with me, for he was now of an age when, according tothe Indian customs, lads are brought face to face with the dangers ofbattle, that I despatched the appointed companies to their stations onthe brow of the precipice, and sallied into the darksome mouth of thepass with the few hundred men who were left to me. I knew by my spiesthat the Spaniards who were encamped on the further side would attemptits passage an hour before the daylight, trusting to finding me asleep.And sure enough, on the following morning, so early that the first raysof the sun had not yet stained the lofty snows of the volcan Xaca thattowered behind us, a distant murmuring which echoed through the silenceof the night told me that the enemy had begun his march. I moved downthe pass to meet him easily enough; there was no stone in it that wasnot known to me and my men. But with the Spaniards it was otherwise,for many of them were mounted, and moreover they dragged with themtwo carronades. Time upon time these heavy guns remained fast in theboulder-strewn roadway, for in the darkness the slaves who drew themcould find no places for the wheels to run on, till in the endthe captains of the army, unwilling to risk a fight at so great adisadvantage, ordered them to halt until the day broke.
At length the dawn came, and the light fell dimly down the depths ofthe vast gulf, revealing the long ranks of the Spaniards clad in theirbright armour, and the yet more brilliant thousands of their nativeallies, gorgeous in their painted helms and their glittering coats offeathers. They saw us also, and mocking at our poor array, their columntwisted forward like some huge snake in the crack of a rock, till theycame to within a hundred paces of us. Then the Spaniards raised theirbattle cry of Saint Peter, and lance at rest, they charged us with theirhorse. We met them with a rain of arrows that checked them a little, butnot for long. Soon they were among us, driving us back at the point oftheir lances, and slaying many, for our Indian weapons could worklittle harm to men and horses clad in armour. Therefore we must fly, andindeed, flight was my plan, for by it I hoped to lead the foe to thatpart of the defile where the road was narrow and the cliffs sheer,and they might be crushed by the stones which should hail on them fromabove. All went well; we fled, the Spaniards followed flushed withvictory, till they were fairly in the trap. Now a single bouldercame rushing from on high, and falling on a horse, killed him, thenrebounding, carried dismay and wounds to those behind. Another followed,and yet another, and I grew glad at heart, for it seemed to me that thedanger was over, and that for the second time my strategy had succeeded.
But suddenly from above there came a sound other than that of therushing rocks, the sound of men joining in battle, that grew and grewtill the air was full of its tumult, then something whirled down from onhigh. I looked; it was no stone, but a man, one of my own men. Indeed hewas but as the first rain-drop of a shower.
Alas! I saw the truth; I had been outwitted. The Spaniards, old in war,could not be caught twice by such a trick; they advanced down the passwith the carronades indeed because they must, but first they sent greatbodies of men to climb the mountain under shelter of the night, bysecret paths which had been discovered to them, and there on its summitto deal with those who would stay their passage by hurling rocks uponthem. And in truth they dealt with them but too well, for my men of theOtomie, lying on the verge of the cliff among the scrub of aloes andother prickly plants that grew there, watching the advance of the foebeneath, and never for one moment dreaming that foes might be upon theirflank, were utterly surprised. Scarcely had they time to seize theirweapons, which were laid at their sides that they might have the greaterfreedom in the rolling of heavy masses of rock, when the enemy, whooutnumbered them by far, were upon them with a yell. Then came a fight,short but decisive.
Too late I saw it all, and cursed the folly that had not providedagainst such chances, for, indeed, I never thought it possible that theforces of the Spaniards could find the secret trails upon the furtherside of the mountain, forgetting that treason makes most thingspossible.