CHAPTER XI
IN WHICH THE BROTHER OF THE SUN WELCOMES
THE CHILDREN OF THE MOON
THE Brother of the Sun, overjoyed at the opportunity now before him to offer hospitality to guests upon whose white faces he gazed with mingled admiration and astonishment, had come in state to the confines of the forest to testify to the cordiality of a greeting that illuminated his well-cut, strong, and mobile countenance. The Great Sun, as he was called—his exact relationship to the orb of day being, to a large extent, a matter of conjecture—was an elderly man, fully six feet six inches in height, with a light-mahogany complexion, hair still jet-black, and brilliant, dark eyes gazing proudly forth upon a world which, from the hour of his birth, had paid abject homage to his exalted rank.
He was enthroned in a litter resembling a huge sedan-chair, which was carried upon the shoulders of eight stalwart men in white attire but bare-footed. The four long arms of the litter were painted red, and its body was decorated with embroidered deer-skins, leaves of the magnolia-tree, and garlands of red and white flowers. His head was ornamented by a diadem of white feathers. Inserted in the lobes of his shapely ears were rings of decorated bone. He wore a necklace made of the teeth of alligators, and against the background of his raven-black hair gayly colored beads shone in the sunlight.
Behind his litter marched a mighty army of three thousand stalwart men, bare-armed, bare-legged, in a uniform of flowing, white, plaited mulberry bark, relieved by dyed skins, striped with yellow, black, and red, thrown across their broad shoulders. They carried bows made of the acacia-wood, and arrows of reed tipped with bird-feathers. Gigantic, muscular, stern-faced warriors, the army of the sun-worshippers broke upon the gaze of the astonished Europeans with startling effect.
It has been asserted that the immediate ancestors of these children of the sun, angered at Montezuma, had joined Cortez in his victorious campaign against that unfortunate monarch. Later on, crushed and rebellious under Spanish tyranny, they had migrated toward the north and had found peaceful lands to their liking near the banks of the lower Mississippi. Whatever may be the truth of this, the fact remains that upon the afternoon which found Sieur de la Salle’s envoys the honored guests of the Brother of the Sun, the latter’s army defiled to the eastward of the city with ranks which begot in the eyes of the Count de Sancerre and the veteran de Tonti a gleam of mingled amazement and admiration. Not only were the warriors of the sun, individually, men suggesting prowess and endurance, but they, as a body, gave evidence of having learned, from sources beyond the reach of native Americans further to the northward, tactics indicating a European origin. If the sun-worshippers had, in fact, suffered from Spanish cruelty, they had also derived from their tyrannical allies valuable hints pertaining to the art of war. As he gazed at this army of athletes, Henri de Tonti, for the first time since he had left de la Salle’s camp, felt regret for the protest he had made against the expedition which his leader had decreed. Here before him stood a splendid band of soldiers who might be made, with some diplomacy, loyal friends to the on-pushing French.
To the mind of Zenobe Membré the martial array before him presented a magnificent collection of lost souls, well worthy, in outward seeming, of the saving grace of the cross. To snatch from the grasp of Satan so many glorious exponents of manly vigor would be, indeed, a triumph for Mother Church. Something of this he breathed into the ear of the motionless and silent Chatémuc, who stood with the friar upon a low hillock, overlooking the plain, viewing with amazement this imposing regiment, each member of which seemed to be taller by several inches than the stately Mohican.
“Look, Katonah!” cried de Sancerre, seizing the Indian maiden by the arm. “See, there, at the side of his dark-brown Majesty’s peripatetic flower-garden, stands my aged midnight prowler! Her old face is turned up to his. Can you see her, ma petite?”
Katonah stretched her shapely limbs to their utmost to look above the press in front of her, and presently her eyes lighted upon the shrivelled crone with whose discovery she had been intrusted by de la Salle.
“Go to your brother and keep the friar by his side until I return, Katonah,” whispered the Frenchman, excitedly. “I must have speech at once with this old hag.”
The sun-worshippers, pouring in throngs from their abandoned city—men, women, and children following and preceding the army in the fervor of their welcome to the white-faced children of the moon, who had come to them so mysteriously from the bosom of a wonder-working stream—impeded, by their respectful but exacting curiosity, the progress of de Sancerre toward the royal group. Women, scantily clad but gay with flowers and feathers, would put forth their brown hands to touch the tattered velvets of the Frenchman’s travel-stained but once gorgeous costume. Naked boys and girls squirmed toward him unabashed, marvelling at the pallor of his face and the splendor of the buckles upon his shoes.
“Peste!” muttered the annoyed courtier under his breath. “If they but knew how hard I have to strive to hold these outworn garments to my back, they’d keep their hands away. I’ll reach the royal presence as naked as a baby unless they grow more gentle with my garb.” And all the time he smiled and bowed, while men and women, boys and girls, cried out in wild approval of his courtly grace.
Henri de Tonti, who had lost much of his European polish through the long friction of camps and the wilderness, had reached the Great Sun’s flowery throne without winning the enthusiastic good-will of these impressionable adult children, who seemed to feel instinctively that the unbending, sallow, grim-faced Italian was less worthy, somehow, of their friendship than the fascinating, smiling Frenchman who followed gayly in the footsteps of the unmagnetic captain toward their king. In the presence of royalty the advantage in address possessed by de Sancerre over de Tonti was emphasized at once. With curt ceremony the Italian had saluted the smiling, black-eyed monarch, and had then stood silent, gazing helplessly upon the expectant throng pressing toward the litter, in the vain hope of finding some way to communicate with the royal sun-worshipper.
De Sancerre’s triumphal progress toward the throne had attracted the attention of the Brother of the Sun, and the plaudits of his subjects had led the latter to believe that the leading personage among his pale-faced guests was now before him. Falling gracefully upon one knee, the Frenchman kissed the out-stretched hand of the beaming King with a flourish and a fervor which aroused the admiring multitude to a fresh outburst of delighted shouts.
“Ma foi, your Majesty!” exclaimed de Sancerre, in French, as he arose to his feet, “the encore warms my blood like wine! I like your people! They see at once the difference ’twixt a curmudgeon and a cavalier.”
His eyes rested triumphantly upon the countenance of the disconcerted de Tonti for a moment, and then looked forth upon the sea of dusky, smiling faces upturned to his. Almost within reach of his hand stood the old woman who had borne to his bedside a welcome from the children of the sun.
“Well met, señora!” cried de Sancerre, in Spanish, to the grinning hag. “Come to me here! Your tongue shall bind the ties of love between your king and mine!”
With the quickness of perception which his bright eyes indicated, the Brother of the Sun seemed to grasp the significance of de Sancerre’s last words, for he beckoned to the aged crone to approach the royal presence. With a rapidity of motion strangely out of keeping with her time-worn appearance, the old woman reached de Sancerre’s side on the instant, and, having made her obeisance to the throne, stood looking up at the Frenchman expectantly. To the latter’s astonishment he saw in her small, black, beady eyes a gleam of saturnine humor which assured him that between his soul and hers stretched at least one sympathetic bond.
“Say to his Majesty for my king, my people, and myself,” went on de Sancerre, in Spanish, holding the gaze of the interpreter to his, “that our hearts beat with joy at the welcome you extend to us. Say to him that the king of kings, far beyond the great water of the sea, sends greeting to his Brother of the Sun, and craves his friendship for all time to come. This much at once; but, later on, assure his Majesty I hope to lay before him plans and projects worthy of his warlike fame, that he, your monarch, and my king of kings may know no equals ’neath the sun and moon.” De Sancerre paused to give the interpreter a chance to turn his words into her native tongue. (“In sooth,” he muttered to himself, as he turned to smile again upon the now silent throng surrounding the low hillock upon which the King’s litter stood, “had I but shown myself so great a diplomat in France, I might have changed the map of Europe with my tongue and pen.”) “And what, señora, saith the Son of Suns?”
“He answers you with words of deepest love,” answered the old woman, turning toward the Frenchman from the royal sun-worshipper, whose dark-hued face glowed with the delight de Sancerre’s adroitly-framed sentences had begotten. “He offers the hand of friendship to your king, the Brother of the Moon, and will divide with him the waters and the lands in perfect amity. He bids me say to you that in this day the children of the sun find glorious fulfilment of ancient prophecies. Before the East had parted from the West, and North and South were wrapped in close embrace, ’twas told by wise, inspired tongues that some day by the waters of a boundless sea a goddess in deep sleep, sent to our people by the sun itself, would meet the eyes of roving huntsmen, wandering far afield. Our seers have told us that when she had come—Coyocop, the very spirit of the sun, our god—our race would meet our brothers of the moon, and all the world would bow beneath our yoke.”
De Sancerre, impatient by temperament, and finding difficulty in fully understanding the disjointed Spanish patois used by the old woman, had paid but little real attention to this long speech, in spite of the attitude of absorbed interest which he had assumed, knowing that the piercing eyes of the sun’s brother were scanning his face attentively.
“Your name is, señora—is—” he asked, as the wrinkled hag paused an instant to regain her breath.
“Noco,” she answered, simply.
“Doña Noco, say to his Majesty that others of our suite are approaching the throne to lay their homage at his feet, and that I, his servant, crave further speech with him anon. Then, señora, if you love me, draw aside a pace or two, that I may have a word with you alone.”
Hardly had de Sancerre ceased to speak when through an opening in the throng made by the courteous sun-worshippers came toward the throne the gray-frocked friar, Zenobe Membré, followed by Katonah and Chatémuc, side by side. The Franciscan, chanting in a light but well-rounded voice a Latin hymn, bore aloft before him a rudely-carved wooden crucifix. With his large gray eyes raised to heaven, and his face radiant with the religious ecstasy which filled his soul, he looked, at that moment, to the eyes of the overwrought sun-worshippers, like a man created of shadows and moonbeams, bearing toward their sovereign a mystic symbol potent for good or ill.
The effect of the friar’s dramatic approach upon the impressionable Brother of the Sun served de Sancerre’s purpose well. Unobserved by the King, whose eyes were fixed upon the chanting priest, the Frenchman seized this opportunity to draw Noco aside. Removing from his breast the piece of mulberry bark upon which was scrawled the name of Julia de Aquilar, he asked, in a whisper which did not disguise his excitement:
“Who wrote this name? Tell me, Doña Noco, for the love of God!”
“Coyocop,” muttered the hag, in a voice indicating the fear that she felt of the Frenchman’s impetuosity. Her answer conveyed no meaning to the straining ear of de Sancerre.
“Tell me more, good Noco,” he implored, glancing furtively at the Brother of the Sun, who had arisen to greet the oncoming Franciscan.
“I dare not—now,” whispered Noco, nervously. “Anon, perhaps, if the chance should come.”
With this unsatisfactory promise the interpreter returned to resume her duties at her sovereign’s side, and de Sancerre, mystified and morose, turned to watch the efforts of Zenobe Membré to dethrone the deified sun in favor of the true God.