The Infidel Volume I Part 23

"Why, this is well," said the Captain-General, with such insinuating gentleness as characterizes the snake, when closing softly on his prey; "and I doubt not thou canst give me as good an account of the amba.s.sadors. It is said to me, that they also have escaped."

"Good G.o.d!" cried Villafana, startled not only out of his confidence, but, in great measure, out of his intoxication, by such an announcement; "the amba.s.sadors escaped? It cannot be!"

"Pho, they have hurt thee more than I thought,--even to the point of destroying thy memory," rejoined the Captain-General, with the blandishment of a smile. "There is blood upon thy shoulder: I doubt not, thou wert severely hurt, while attempting to prevent their flight. No one ever questioned the courage of Villafana."

"Yes, senor, yes--no--yes; that is,--I mean to say--Saints of heaven!"--And here the Alguazil paused, completely sobered,--that is, restored to his senses, but not to his wits; for he perceived himself in a difficulty, and his invention pointed out no means of escape. He rolled his eyes, haggard at once with debauch and alarm, over the cavaliers, and, though the lofty figure of Alvarado concealed Gaspar from his view, he beheld enough in the extraordinary sedateness of all present, to fill him with the most racking suspicions. He turned again to Cortes, and commanding his fears as much as he could, went on, with an appearance of boldness,

"Alas, n.o.ble senor, if the amba.s.sadors _be_ escaped, I am a lost man,--for I trusted too much to the vigilance of others, and I should not have done so. Alas, senor," he continued with more energy, as his mind began to work more clearly, "I have committed a great offence in this negligence; but I vow to heaven, it was owing to my fears of Juan Lerma, who made many efforts to escape, and had strong friends to help him. Your excellency may see the necessity I was under, to give all my thoughts to him; for, some one having furnished him with a dagger, he foully attacked me, not on my guard, giving me this wound; and had it not been for the sudden rus.h.i.+ng in of the guard, I should certainly have been killed."

Thus spoke the Alguazil, with returning craft, mingling together fiction and fact with an address which astonished even himself:

"Yes, senor," he continued, satisfied with the strength of his argument, and now elated with a prospect of providing against the effects of his imprudent disclosures in the prison; "yes, senor, and the young man, besides thus wounding me, swore he would have me hanged for a conspiracy; stating roundly, as the guards will witness, (I am certain that Esteban, the Left-Handed, heard him,) that, being a notorious grumbler, any such fiction would be believed of me. As if this would make me a conspirator! whereas, your excellency knows, according to the proverb, Barking dogs are no biters." And the audacious ruffian, relapsing into security, attested his innocence by a gentle laugh and the sweetest of his smiles.

"Again I say, thou speakest well," said Cortes, carelessly descending from the platform, on which he had mounted at the approach of Villafana.

"Thine arguments have even satisfied me of the folly of certain charges, brought against thee by this mad fellow, here, at thy elbow."

As he spoke, Alvarado, taking his instructions rather from a consentaneous feeling of propriety than from any hint of Don Hernan's, moved aside, and Villafana's eyes fell upon the figure of Gaspar.

"Think of it, good fellow," said Cortes, laying his hand upon Villafana's shoulder, as if to support himself a little; "the things he said of thee are innumerable, and excessively preposterous. He averred, for instance, that thou wert peevishly offended, because I had not invited thy presence to the festivities of the morning banquet, and wert resolved to come, whether I would or not, and that with a letter from my father in one hand, and a dagger in the other. Eh! is not this outrageous? He said, besides,--But, o' my life, thou hast bled too much from this wound! Juan Lerma strikes deep, when the fit is on him. I hope thou art not faint, man!"

To these benevolent expressions, the Alguazil replied by turning upon the general a countenance so bloodless, and an eye filled with such ecstacy of despair, (for if the poniards of all had been at his throat, he could not have been more perfectly apprized of his coming fate,) that Cortes must have been struck with some feeling of commiseration, had not his nature been somewhat akin to that of a cat, which delights less to kill than to sport with the agonies of a dying victim. As it was, he continued to torment the abandoned wretch, by adding, pleasantly,

"And what thinkest thou of this, too, my Villafana? Two hundred and forty conspirators, to rush in when the blow was struck!--doubtless to carve their dinners from the ribs of my cavaliers!--Ah, Villafana, Villafana! thou shouldst have a care of thy friends. Our enemies are harmless, but our friends are always dangerous.--What dost thou say to all this, Villafana?--Knave! hadst thou twenty daggers in thy jerkin, thou wert still but an unfanged reptile!"

While he spoke, in this jestful mood, he was sensible that Villafana, (doubtless with an instinctive motion, of which he was himself unconscious, being apparently turned to stone,) was stealing his hand up towards his bosom, as if to grasp a weapon. The moment the member had reached the opening of his garment, Cortes caught him by the throat, and giving utterance to his last words with a voice of thunder, and employing a strength irresistible by such a man as Villafana, he hurled him to the floor, at the same instant placing his foot on his throat.

Then stooping down, and thrusting his hand into the traitor's bosom, he plucked out, at a single grasp, a poniard, a letter, and the fatal list of conspirators. He pushed the first aside, read the superscription of the second with a laugh, and casting his eye upon the third, devoured its contents with an avidity that left him unconscious of the murmurs of the fierce cavaliers, and the groans of the wretched Alguazil, strangling under his foot.

"What, senor! will you rob the gallows of its prey?" cried Alvarado, pointing his sword at the prostrate traitor, as, indeed, did all the rest, (having drawn them at the moment when Cortes seized him by the throat:) "His crime is manifest to all: what need of trial? Every man his steel through the dog!"

"Hold!" cried the Captain-General; "this were a death for an hidalgo.

Up, cur! up, and meet thy fate! Up!" And he spurned the wretch with his foot.

The Alguazil rose up, his face black with blood, which, not perfectly dispersing even at release from strangulation, remained in leopard-like blotches over his visage, ghastfully contrasted with the ashy hues that gathered between them. As he rose, his arms were seized by two or three cavaliers; and Sandoval, as quick in action as he was sluggish in speech, s.n.a.t.c.hing the rich sword-sash of samite from his own shoulders, instantly secured them behind his back.

"For the love of G.o.d, senores!" cried Villafana, finding speech at last, "what do you mean? what do you design? You will not kill an innocent man? Will you judge me at the charge of a liar? Gaspar is my sworn foe.

I will make all clear.--Senor, I have been drinking, and my mind is confused: take me not at this disadvantage. Oh, for G.o.d's sake, what do you mean?--The list? what, the list? 'Tis for a merry-making--a rejoicing for my birthday. I will explain all to your excellencies.--I am an innocent man.--Gaspar is a forsworn caitiff--a caitiff, senores, a caitiff!--I claim trial by the civil judges."--

"Gag him," cried one.

"Strike him on the mouth," said another. And Villafana, gasping for breath, uttered, for a moment, nothing but inarticulate murmurs.

"De Olid, Marin, De Ircio," cried Cortes, rapidly, and with inexpressible decision, "ye are judges of life and death; Sandoval and Alvarado, by right of office, ye can sit in judgment; Quinones, Guzman, and the rest, I make you, in the king's name, special a.s.sociates of the others.--Why, here is a court, not martial, but civil; and the dog shall have judgment to his content! He stands charged of treason.--Guilty, senores? or not guilty?"

"Guilty!" cried all with one voice: and De Olid added, "Let us take him into the garden, and hang him to the cedar-tree."

"To the window," said Cortes, pointing with his sword to the stout cords, hanging so invitingly from the serpent's-head; and in an instant the victim was dragged upon the platform.

Up to this moment, his fears had been uttered rather in vehement complaints than in outcries; but now, when he perceived that he was condemned by a mockery of trial, doomed without the respite of a minute's s.p.a.ce to pray, the rope dangling before his eyes, and already in the hands of a cavalier, who was bending it into a noose, he uttered a piercing scream, and endeavoured to throw himself on his knees.

"Mercy!" he cried, "mercy! mercy! I will confess--I can save all your lives--Mercy! mercy!"

Of all the sights of horror and disgust, villany, transformed at the death-hour, into its natural character and original of cowardice, is among the most appalling. Villafana was as brave as a ruffian could be; but when imagination is linked in the same spirit with vice, courage expires almost at the same moment with hope. With a weapon in his hand, and that at liberty, Villafana, perhaps, would have manifested all the valour in which despair perceives the only hope, and died like a man. As it was, bound and grasped in the arms of strong men, entirely helpless and equally without hope, his death staring him in the face, he gave himself up at once to unmanly fears, and wept, screamed, and prayed, until the guards, at watch in the vestibule, sank upon their knees and conned over their beads, to divert their senses from cries so agonized and so horrible.

As he strove to prostrate himself before his inexorable judges, he was pulled up by the cavaliers, and among others by Don Francisco de Guzman, whose countenance he recognized.

"Save me, Guzman! save me!" he cried; "for thou wert once of the party--Save me!"

"Peace, wolf--"

"Mercy! mercy! n.o.ble senor!" he continued, turning to Cortes: "I am but one of many. Guzman is as false as I; I charge him with treason: he has abused your excellency's ear!--Listen, senores, and spare me my life: give me a day--give me but to-night, to pray and confess, and you shall have all. There are cavaliers among us--Mercy, for the love of heaven!--Camarga, the Dominican,--Don Palmerino de Castro,--Muertazo of Toledo, Carabo of Seville,--Artiaga, Santa-Rosa, Bravo, Aljaraz, and an hundred more--"

"Peace, lying villain!" cried the Captain-General--"What ho, the rope!

quick, the rope!"

"A moment to repent! a moment to repent!" shrieked the victim, struggling so violently to bring his hands before him, as if to clasp them in prayer, that the silken band crackled behind him, and his hands turned black with congested blood; "a moment to repent! for I am a sinner. What! would you condemn my soul, too? Saints, hear me! angels, plead for me! A priest, for the love of heaven! I killed Artiaga of Cadiz; I scuttled the s.h.i.+p at Alonso, drowned the nuns, and stole the church-plate--Call Magdalena--Where's Magdalena?--You are murdering me!

Mercy! mercy! I killed Hilario, too--I poniarded him in the old wounds, inflicted by Juan Lerma--I have much to repent--A priest, for the love of G.o.d! A priest, oh, a priest!"

Thus raved the villain, stained with a thousand crimes; and if aught had been wanting to steel the hearts of his executioners, enough was divulged in the unavailing abandonment with which he accused himself of misdeeds, so many and so atrocious. While his neck was yet free from the rope, he struggled violently, but without any attempt to do a mischief to his unrelenting murderers; his resistance was, indeed, like that of a cur, under the chastis.e.m.e.nt of a cruel and brutal master, which howls and contends, and yet fears to employ its fangs against the tyrant. But when he found, at last, that the cavaliers were actually putting the hasty halter about his neck, his struggles were not greater to escape than to inflict injury. He shook and tossed his head in distraction, and Don Francisco de Guzman, endeavouring to seize him by the beard, he caught the hand of the cavalier betwixt his teeth, and held it with the gripe of a tiger.

"h.e.l.l confound thee, wolf!" cried Guzman, groaning with pain, and striking him over the face with the hilt of his sword, but in vain: "Help me, cavaliers, or he will have my hand off!--Villain, unlock thy teeth.--"

"Stand aside--This will unloose thee," said one, thrusting his rapier into the thigh of the vindictive wretch; who no sooner felt the cold steel penetrate his flesh, than he opened his mouth to utter a yell.

"Whip him up _now_.--So much for traitors!"

It was the last scream of the a.s.sa.s.sin. His lips uttered one more cry to heaven; the name of Magdalena was cut short, as the noose closed upon his throat, and ended in a hoa.r.s.e, rattling, gulphing whine, that did not itself prevail beyond the s.p.a.ce of a second. As he shot up to the top of the window, an intense glare of lightning flashed through the alabaster, and his figure, traced upon that l.u.s.trous and ghastly medium, was seen dangling and writhing in the death-agony. The next moment, the huge curtain was drawn over the dreadful spectacle: but those who paused a moment, to look back, could behold the convulsions of the dying miscreant giving motion, and sometimes protrusion, to the dark folds of the drapery.--When all was silent, in the darkness of the night, the watchmen in the vestibule could yet hear the pattering of blood-drops falling from his mangled limb, upon the sonorous wood of the platform.

But there were other scenes now occurring, which, for a time, drove from their thoughts the memory of Villafana.

CHAPTER XXI.

The scene of death in which they were engaged, had so employed the thoughts of the cavaliers, that they were, for a time, insensible to many tumultuous noises in the city, which, beginning at the moment when the struggles and outcries of Villafana were fiercest and loudest, increased every instant, until all was uproar.

At first, as they rushed in disorder to the doors, they thought the din was caused by a renewal of the storm, or rather the sudden outbursting of a tornado; which, overwhelming the houses of some of the poorer citizens, and burying them among the ruins, might account for the screams and yells, that were mingled with other noises. But they soon exchanged this fear for one more stirring, when, as they rushed into the air, they heard an alarum ringing from the chapel-bell on the top of the pyramid, drums beating to arms, arquebuses firing in several different quarters, and were made sensible that a conflict was raging in the town.

"Dios!" cried one; "the conspirators are upon us! Let us back to the hall and defend ourselves!"

"My life upon it," said Gaspar, "the conspirators will not stir till Villafana opens his lips to them.--Heaven rest his soul!--Hark! these are the yells of Indians."

"On, friends!" exclaimed Cortes, perceiving the garden full of soldiers, rus.h.i.+ng from various parts of the palace, as if to seek the fray. "This is Tlascalan work--a knavery of Xicotencal. Hah! hark! see! 'tis an a.s.sault upon the prison! Ho, Castilians! ho, Christians! cavaliers and soldiers, to arms! haste, to arms!"

While the soldiers, collecting together at the well-known voice of the Captain-General, began to rush with him towards the prison, over which, besides hearing the shouting of the watchmen at the doors, they beheld three blazing arrows shot up into the air, their alarm was directed to another quarter, by a violent cannonade from the squadron, moored yet at the entrance of the little river; and looking that way, they perceived to their astonishment and fear, no less than four of the brigantines suddenly enveloped in flames.

"Guzman and Quinones!" cried Cortes, with instant determination, "to the prison, with what force ye can pick up on the way. Shoot all fugitives, as well as all a.s.sailants. The rest follow me to the river; for I would mine arms should be burned, rather than my vessels."

By this time, all the Spaniards who were capable of bearing arms, were in the open air, and following not less the shouts of Cortes than the crash of the falconets, ran hastily towards the fleet, which, it was now evident, was furiously beset by mult.i.tudes of Indians in canoes. The flash of the explosions and the flames bursting ruddily out from sails and cordage, revealed them cl.u.s.tering with impetuosity around the devoted vessels, whose crews, it was equally apparent, were making a gallant resistance. In this light, the houses bordering upon the water were seen covered with citizens, looking on with a tranquillity, which showed that their share in the unexpected hostilities, if indeed they had any, was entirely pa.s.sive. A more agreeable sight was disclosed to Cortes, as he ran onwards, in the appearance of many thousand Tlascalans, rus.h.i.+ng down the narrow meadows which bordered the ca.n.a.l, with such alacrity of speed and such furious cries of 'Tlascala!' and 'Castilla!' as convinced him of their fidelity and affection.