By Right of Conquest; Or, With Cortez in Mexico by G. A. Henty (color ebook reader TXT) 📗

indeed, Bathalda," Roger said; "for when I was at Tabasco, I knew a Mexican slave girl of that name, and if it is the same she will befriend us."

It was nearly three weeks before Roger again obtained news. Bathalda had injured his leg in a fall down a precipice, while stalking a deer; and was obliged to lie up in the hut for more than a fortnight. As soon as he was well enough to get about again, he joined Roger in a turkey hunt, and started the next day for the city.

He returned with surprising news. The white men had marched from the coast through Naulinco and the Pass of Obispo. They had been everywhere well received by the natives, who all belonged to the Totonac tribe. They had gone to Yxtacamaxtitlan, a great city, where they had stayed three days. They had then marched on towards Tlascala, the republic that had so long resisted the strength of all Mexico.

They were said to number four hundred foot and fifteen strange creatures, who were partly man and partly some fleet animal; and they had seven great black tubes that made thunder. Thirteen hundred Totonac fighting men accompanied them, and a thousand porters to drag the tubes and carry their baggage. They had sent embassies to the Tlascalans, but the latter had chosen war, and there had been some terrible battles fought. But the white men were invincible, and had defeated the Tlascalans with great slaughter; and the news had arrived, only that morning, that they had captured the city.

The sensation throughout the country was that of stupefaction. It seemed absolutely incredible that a state which had successfully defied the armies of Montezuma and his predecessors should, after four or five days of fighting, be overthrown by this handful of white strangers. There seemed but one comfort. It was said that several of the Whites had been killed, and this showed, at least, that they were not superhuman creatures, and that it might yet be possible to destroy them.

No sooner did Roger hear the news than he determined to start, at once, to join the Spaniards, who were already far to the west. Accordingly, the next morning at daybreak, he started with Bathalda, and late on the following afternoon arrived in sight of Tlascala. They thought it better not to enter the city until the following morning, and therefore passed the night in a clump of bushes.

The next day they boldly entered the town. The city was a large one, divided into four quarters separated by lofty walls, and each ruled over by one of the four great chiefs of the republic. Its population was very large, and the town was strongly and solidly built.

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 relieved 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