CHAPTER XIV
IN WHICH THE RESULTS OF CHATÉMUC’S ENTHUSIASM
ARE SEEN
“COURAGE, ma petite! We’ll find your Chatémuc; then learn the mysteries of yonder sun-kissed town. That the stubborn captain has deserted us is hardly strange. Always in fear of de la Salle’s displeasure, Monsieur de Tonti has grown erratic, unreliable, jealous. As for the friar, his retreat surprises me. He lacks not courage nor persistence. He would not leave our brother of the sun without, at the least, one more attempt to show him the path which leads to Mother Church.”
Released from the enthusiastic arms of the noblemen who had carried him in triumph to their king, de Sancerre was now following the royal litter toward the City of the Sun, walking the well-beaten path with the mincing step of a courtier whose feet, though swifter than the winds, pay homage gayly to Grace as a worthier deity than Speed. On either side of the victorious runner, whose eyes still glowed with the joy of triumph, walked Noco and Katonah. The latter, downcast and apprehensive, gazed gloomily toward the city, whose roofs could now be plainly seen, while she listened apathetically to the Frenchman’s encouraging words. Changing the tongue he used from French to Spanish, de Sancerre, turning toward Noco, who looked, in the twilight, like a hideous heathen idol carved in mahogany, said:
“I trust, señora, that your courageous grandson, my very worthy opponent, will bear me no ill-will because my slender body was less a burden than his giant frame.”
Noco, to whom de Sancerre’s overthrow of the erstwhile invincible Cabanacte had appeared like a miracle wrought by some mysterious moon-magic, gazed reverentially at the Frenchman with beady, black eyes, which seemed to be fully half a century younger than the other features of her wrinkled face. Her countenance was a palimpsest, with youth staring out from beneath the writings made by time.
“My grandson, Cabanacte, O Son of the Full Moon, will ever do your bidding with a loyal heart. According to the customs of our land, your triumph in the race entitles you to service at his hands until his feet wax swift enough to fly away from yours.”
“Caramba!” exclaimed de Sancerre, whose expletives bore testimony to the cosmopolitan tendencies of his adventurous career, “your words, señora, rejoice my heart! I stand in sore need of a servitor to save me from the nakedness which one more heated foot-race would beget. If Cabanacte can repair the rents which make my costume such a marvel to the eye, I’ll free him from his villein socage and make him proud again.”
Enough of this the old hag understood—enlightened, to a great extent, by the Frenchman’s eloquent gestures—to emphasize the grin upon her ugly but intelligent face.
“Cabanacte is a warrior, not a maker of flowing robes!” she exclaimed, with a raucous chuckle. “But to-night old Noco will repair the holes in the Son of the Full Moon’s garb. Look at this.” Fumbling at her waist, she presently held out to de Sancerre’s gaze a needle made of fish-bone. Lowering her voice, she said: “Coyocop, the spirit of the sun, has not disdained to let my needle prick her sacred dress. She weeps, and cares for nothing but to lie upon her couch and whisper secrets to the mother of the sun. ’Tis sad, but so she must fulfil her mission to our race. Our nation’s wise men and the priests who tend the temple-fire had told us she would come. My grandson, Cabanacte, bore her from the sea.”
De Sancerre listened attentively to the old crone’s words. He recalled Noco’s assertion that Coyocop had scrawled his inamorata’s name upon the mulberry bark, though, at the time, he had not grasped the full significance of her mumbled, mongrel Spanish words, rendered less clear to him by the use of the meaningless name, Coyocop. But now, as they hurried on behind the porters who carried the King’s litter, followed by a hundred chattering noblemen, a veil seemed to be lifted from de Sancerre’s mind. His heart beat with suffocating rapidity, and his voice trembled as he looked down at Noco, trying to catch her eyes in the darkening twilight, and exclaimed:
“’Twas Coyocop who scratched that name upon the bark? But why, good Doña Noco? Tell me why.”
The old woman glanced over her shoulder, to assure herself that they could not be overheard. Then she whispered:
“I told her the white-faced children of the moon had come to us upon the bosom of the flood, according to an ancient prophecy. The temple priests would strangle me with cords if they should learn how my old tongue has wagged. They watch me closely, for they worship her. But once she found a moment, when no priest was near, to scratch the mystic symbols on the bark. I crept away at night and, lo, your god, the moon, was guide to my old feet—and, so, I came to you from Coyocop.”
That Noco had told him all she had to tell, the Frenchman did not for a moment doubt. But, even then, she had thrown little light upon the mystery which confronted him. A mondain to his finger-tips, at heart a sceptic, de Sancerre fostered no belief in miracles. Surrounded, as he had been all the days of his life, by men and women steeped in superstition, his spirit had revolted at the impostures which had served to blind mankind through centuries of human history. Had de Sancerre been wrought of the stuff of which his age was made, he would have reached the conclusion at once that here in the wilderness the avenging spirit of the Spaniard whom he had slain in France was haunting him at night to play him tricks to drive him straight to madness. ’Twould be so easy to account thus for what his reason could not now explain. But de Sancerre was a man who, intellectually, had pressed on in advance of his times. By policy a conformist to the exterior demands of his avowed religion, he had long lost his faith in the active interference in earthly affairs of saints and devils. How the name of Julia de Aquilar had found its way to a piece of vagrom bark in a wilderness, thousands of miles across the sea from the land of her nativity, he could not explain, nor could he harbor, for an instant, the wild idea that Coyocop and his inamorata would prove to be identical. In spite of the malicious horns of his dilemma, nevertheless, he eliminated from his thoughts the possibility that he had become the plaything of supernatural agencies. But who was Coyocop? He must look upon her face without delay.
“Señora, listen!” exclaimed de Sancerre, seizing Noco by the arm. “I must see the spirit of the sun to-night! From the mountains of the moon, where reigns our god in silvery state, I bear a message to the goddess Coyocop. Peste, Doña Noco! Have you gone to sleep?” He shook her gently, striving hard to find her eyes.
“It cannot be,” muttered the old crone, trembling under his grasp as if the night wind chilled her time-worn frame—“it cannot be. ’Twould mean your life—and mine.”
“Hold, señora! Remember Cabanacte—and pin your faith to me! No matter what the odds may be, the brother of the moonbeams always wins! Bear that in mind, good Noco, or the future may grow black for thee. Be faithful to my fortunes—and I’ll make your grandson noble once again.”
How deep an impression his words had made upon the beldame, de Sancerre could not tell, for at that moment there arose behind him a weird chant, sung by a hundred tuneful voices, rising and falling upon the evening air with thrilling effect. Suddenly beyond them from the very heart of the City of the Sun arose a mightier chorus than the King’s suite could beget, and the night grew vibrant with a wild, menacing song which chilled de Sancerre’s heart and caused Katonah to press close to his side, in vain striving for the comfort she could not find.
Presently the litter of the King, passing between two outlying houses, turned into a broad avenue which led directly to the great square of the city, at one side of which stood the temple of the sun. The moon had not yet arisen, and what was twilight in the open had turned to night within the confines of the town. De Sancerre, who was a close observer, both by temperament and by habit, strove in vain to obtain a satisfactory view of the dwelling-houses between which the royal litter passed. But when the King and his followers had reached the outskirts of the great square, the Frenchman forgot at once his curiosity as a traveller; forgot, even for a moment, the problem to solve which he had dared to enter this pagan city, in defiance of all discipline and in direct disobedience to La Salle’s lieutenant. The scene which broke upon his staring eyes stilled, for an instant, the beating of his heart, which seemed to bound into his throat to choke him.
The square between the King’s litter and the entrance to the temple was thronged with men and women, in front of whom stood long lines of stalwart warriors, the flower of the army which had recently astonished the eyes of the wanderers from over-sea. Waving lights and shadows, the quarrelsome offspring of flaring torches, changed constantly the grim details of the scene, as if the night wind strove to hide the horrors of a dancing, evil dream.
Directly in front of the main entrance to the temple of the sun-worshippers stood a post to which Chatémuc had been tied by cords. On either side of him white-robed priests, wielding long wooden rods, the ends of which had been turned to red coals in the sacred fire, prodded his hissing flesh, while they sang a chant of devilish triumph, in which the populace, enraged at the sacrilege attempted by the Mohican, joined at intervals.
Facing the dying martyr, who gazed down at him with proud stoicism, knelt the gray-frocked Franciscan, Zenobe Membré, holding toward the victim of excessive zeal the crude crucifix, for love of which Chatémuc, the Mohican, was now freeing his soul from torment.
“Nom de Dieu!” cried de Sancerre, placing his hand upon his rapier, “this savage sport must end!” In another instant the reckless Frenchman, carving his way to death, would have challenged an army, single-handed, had not Katonah, reeling from the horror of her brother’s death, fallen senseless into his reluctant arms.