CHAPTER XVI
IN WHICH A SPIRIT SAVES DE SANCERRE FROM DEATH
THERE reigned in Noco’s hut intense silence. Stretched upon a bench in the centre of the room lay de Sancerre, his head bent forward and his eyes agleam, while he listened apprehensively to the murmurs of the night outside. On the ground at his feet squatted his aged hostess, quick to interpret every sound which echoed from the sleeping town. Her eyes still burned with the light of her marvellous vitality, but her present posture indicated that her old bones had grown weary of the friction begotten by a long and exacting day.
“All is well, señora? You hear no threatening sound?” De Sancerre’s voice bore witness to the excitement under which he labored at that crucial moment.
“A dog barks, near at hand; an owl hoots, far away. Our friends are safe beyond the town—and all is well!”
“Bien! Doña Noco, I trust the keenness of your ears. I feared the searching gaze of wakeful spies. ’Tis possible your priests have gone to sleep.”
The old hag grinned. “Make no mistake,” she exclaimed, in her broken Spanish. “Their eyes have seen your people, but, fearing Cabanacte’s wrath, they dared not search beneath the white robes at his side. Within the temple chattering priests will ask each other whom my grandson guides. They’ll ask in vain! But, hark! The night’s as quiet as a sleeping babe.”
“Then, when I’m in the mood, I’ll vow a candle to St. Raphael,” cried de Sancerre, lightly. “He travelled safe by wearing a disguise! But tell me, Doña Noco, is the coast now clear? I’ve set my heart upon a look at Coyocop’s abode. I cannot sleep until I know where this fair spirit of the sun is lodged.”
The beldame’s black eyes flashed with excitement. Her overwrought frame seemed to renew its vigor as she arose to her feet and hurried toward the low-cut entrance to the hut. An instant later, de Sancerre found himself the solitary occupant of a dreary and disordered room. He peered through the shadows toward the exit through which Noco had passed and, for a moment, doubt of her good faith entered his mind. He fully comprehended the perils of his environment, and realized that upon the loyalty of the old hag who had just left his side depended his escape from the dangers which beset him. While it might be that he, an envoy from the moon, helped to fulfil an ancient prophecy in which these fickle sun-worshippers put faith, the fact remained that their chief, the Great Sun, had failed to give him countenance before the temple priests. It had become painfully apparent to de Sancerre that the real centre of authority in this land of superstitions was to be looked for near the sacred fire and not at the King’s throne. The fact that the Brother of the Sun had found it inexpedient to lodge the Frenchman in the royal residence bore testimony to the strong ties which bound the palace to the temple, to the close relationship of church and state. To a man who had spent years at Versailles, the influence exerted by a priesthood upon a king was not a marvel.
“Ma foi!” muttered de Sancerre to himself, as he rested his aching head upon his hand and watched expectantly the hole in the wall through which Noco had departed. “The old finesse which served me well at courts has worn itself to naught. In France or in this wilderness my fate’s the same. I jump to favor—then the King grows cold and potent priests usurp the place I held. But, even so, the tale is not all told. I’m here to solve a puzzle, not to fawn upon a prince nor tempt the vengeance of a temple’s brood. So be that Noco’s true, I yet may work my will upon a stubborn mystery.”
At that moment a hideous grin, weird offspring of ivory and bronze, rewarded de Sancerre’s straining gaze.
“Follow me, señor,” whispered Noco through the hole which served as a door to the hut. “There’s no one in the city now awake save nodding priests who feed the fire with logs. I’ll show you in the moonlight where Coyocop’s at rest.”
In the white light of a cloudless night the City of the Sun lay disguised in a beauty which the bright glare of its own deity destroyed by day. Grouped around the temple, the houses of the sun-worshippers, rising gracefully from artificial mounds, were softened in their outlines by the moonbeams until they formed a city upon which de Sancerre, accustomed, as he was, to the architectural splendors of the old world, gazed with surprise and pleasure. Choosing the shadows cast by the sun-baked walls for her pathway, Noco led the stranger past the most pretentious building in the town, the sacred temple in which a mystic fire was ever kept alive. Like an earthen oven, one hundred feet in circumference, the stronghold of a cruel priesthood impressed the Frenchman with its grim significance. As he and his withered guide crept noiselessly past the silent, shadow-haunted fane, de Sancerre succumbed to a shudder which he could not readily control. Upon a palisade above his head, surrounding the temple upon all sides, skulls gleamed in the moonlight, bearing sombre witness to the horrors of the cult by which a noble race was brutalized.
“Dios!” he muttered in the old hag’s ear, as he clasped her by the arm. “The shambles of your creed offend my sight! If you love me, señora, we’ll leave this place behind!”
They had not far to go. Beyond the temple and facing the east stood the spacious cabin in which the Brother of the Sun maintained his royal state. It was silent and deserted as they stole by it, to take their stand in the shadow cast by a house proud of its nearness to the home of kings. White and silent, the night recalled to de Sancerre’s mind an evening in the outskirts of Versailles when, having eluded the watchful eyes of his Spanish rival, he had tempted Doña Julia de Aquilar to a stroll beneath the moon. His heart grew sick with the sweetness of his revery. He could see again the dark, liquid eyes, the raven hair, the pale, perfect face of a woman whose splendid beauty mocked him now as he stood there a waif, blown by the cruel winds of misfortune to a land where grinning skulls stared down at him at night, as if they’d heard the story of his lost love and rejoiced at his cruel plight.
“Come! Come, señora,” he murmured, fretfully, turning to retrace his steps, and seemingly forgetful of the object of his perilous pilgrimage. “Come! Let us go back!”
“Hush, señor! Listen!” whispered the old crone, hoarsely, pulling him closer toward the house in the shadow of which they lingered. “Listen! ’Tis Coyocop!”
De Sancerre leaned against the wall of the hut, made dizzy for a moment by the wild beating of his heart. In perfect harmony with the melancholy beauty of the night arose a sad, soft, sweet-toned voice, which came to him at that moment like a caress bestowed upon him in a dream and made real by a miracle. De Sancerre clutched old Noco’s arm with a grasp which made her wince. Gazing at the moon-kissed scene before him with eyes which saw only a picture of the past he listened, white-lipped, breathless, trembling, to an old Spanish song, into which Juan Fernandez Heredia, more than a century before this night, had breathed the passion and the melancholy of a romantic race.
“To part, to lose thee, was so hard,
So sad that all besides is nought;
The pain of death itself, compared
To this, is hardly worth a thought.”
A sob set to music, despair turned into song, a voice telling of unshed tears echoed through the night and gave way to silence for a time.
“Nom de Dieu! Do I dream, or am I going mad?” muttered de Sancerre to himself, peering down at his silent companion as if seeking an answer to the questions that beset him. Suddenly the voice, whose tones spoke to his heart in the only language known to all the world, again made music out of misery:
“There is a wound that never heals—
’Tis folly e’en to dream of healing;
Inquire not what a spirit feels
That aye has lost the sense of feeling.
“My heart is callous now, and bared
To every pang with sorrow fraught;
The pain of death itself, compared
To this, is hardly worth a thought.”
The song gave way to silence, and, drawing himself erect, like a man who awakens from a trance, de Sancerre turned to Noco:
“’Tis the spirit of the sun,” whispered the old crone. “’Tis Coyocop. She sings at night the songs we cannot understand.”
“Listen, señora,” muttered the Frenchman, striving to check the impetuosity which tempted him to defy the perils surrounding him and to enter the hut without more ado. “’Tis the spirit of the sun—of life and hope and love! I worship her, señora. By what astounding chance— But let that pass! Doña Noco, you must speak to Coyocop at once. Tell her—”
De Sancerre’s words died upon his lips, for the wiry old hag had dragged him by the arm around a corner of the cabin before he could end his sentence.
“Silence,” she murmured. “A priest of the temple has come this way to listen to the spirit’s voice. ’Tis well for us that my old eyes are quick.”
Not heeding the angry protests of the Frenchman, whose longing to send a word of greeting to a singer whose voice seemed to have reached him from a land far over-sea was driving him to desperate deeds, Noco led de Sancerre rapidly, by a circuitous path they had not trod before, toward the quarter of the sleeping town in which her hut awaited them. Beneath the ghastly sentinels grinning down at them from the temple’s palisades they stole for a space, and then turned to pick their way toward Noco’s home behind cabins which cast long shadows toward the east.
Stepping from the gloom into the moonlight, Noco, holding the Frenchman like a captive by the arm, was about to enter her hut with her rebellious guest when there arose around them, as if the earth had suddenly given birth to a night-prowling priesthood, the white-robed figures of a score of silent men.
“What have we here?” exclaimed de Sancerre, breaking away from Noco’s clutch, and drawing his rapier from its sheath. “My sword is fond of moonlight! Ask these ghostly cowards, señora, how they dare to dog the footsteps of the Brother of the Moon. Just say to them that in this blood-stained blade there’s magic, made of silver-dust, to kill a thousand men.”
“Be silent, señor,” implored Noco. “I’ll save you, if I can.” Then, facing the chief priest, who towered above them a few paces in front of his silent and motionless brethren, she exclaimed, in the tongue of the sun-worshippers:
“What would you with this scion of the moon? He worships Coyocop.”
“How know we that?” asked the chief priest, sternly, a bronze giant questioning a bronze dwarf surrounded by sentinels of bronze. In the very centre of the dusky, white-garbed group stood the pale, desperate Frenchman, his rapier pointed at an angle toward the ground, while his keen eyes, bold and unflinching, travelled defiantly from face to face of the scowling priests.
“What says the Inquisition? Will they dare the terrors of my hungry blade, señora?” cried de Sancerre, mockingly.
“’Tis dread of the gray chanter that inspires them,” muttered Noco. Then she turned to the Frenchman. “I’ve told them that you worship Coyocop. They have no proof of it.”
“Pardieu!” exclaimed the Frenchman, elevating his rapier. “The blood of a sulky Spaniard on this blade is proof enough. But, I have it! Say to his holiness, the chief priest, that I will scratch a message to the spirit of the sun upon a piece of bark. Bid him, in person, take it straight to Coyocop. If he obeys not what she says to him, the City of the Sun is doomed.”
Quickly translating de Sancerre’s defiant words into her native tongue, Noco, at a gesture from the chief priest, entered her hut. She was absent but a moment and, upon her return, handed a piece of virgin mulberry-wood to de Sancerre. Drawing his dagger from its sheath, the Frenchman scrawled these words upon the white bark:
“Louis de Sancerre, of Languedoc, sends greeting to Coyocop. Warn the bearer that my person must be sacred in the City of the Sun. To-morrow I will speak to you the words I cannot write.”
Noco, without more ado, handed the note to the guardian of the sacred fire, who received it with evident reluctance. Ignorant of the art of writing, he looked upon the gleaming bark as a bit of moon-magic which might, at any moment, cast upon him an evil spell. But, for the sake of his prestige with his order, he dared not give way to the dread which filled his superstitious soul. Stalking away, with Noco hurrying on behind him, he strode through the moonlight toward the house in which the spirit of the sun was lodged.
The minutes which preceded his return were like weary hours to the distraught Frenchman, surrounded, as he was, by pitiless faces from which black, piercing eyes seemed to singe his velvets with their spiteful gleams. A tattered courtier, with drawn sword, he stood there motionless, silent, awaiting with foreboding the return of his most influential foe. If fancy, or a fever begotten of a long and exciting day, had played him a trick; if the song of Coyocop had been voiced by Julia de Aquilar only in his imagination, he knew that he was doomed. Presently he drew from his bosom the piece of bark upon which was written the Spanish maiden’s name. The sight revived his drooping courage. Whatever might be the explanation of the presence of Julia de Aquilar in this grim outland, his reason told him that his eyes and ears had not deceived him.
At that moment the chief priest, breaking through the circle of his subordinates, strode quickly toward de Sancerre. Falling upon his knees, he raised his long arms toward the sky and uttered a harsh shout which was repeated by the onlooking priests.
“You are saved!” whispered the panting Noco, an instant later, to the Frenchman. “Coyocop has rescued you from death!”
Having paid homage to the misunderstood scion of the moon, the guardian of the sacred fire handed to de Sancerre the bark, within which the former had found no evil spell. Scrawled beneath the Frenchman’s words were these:
“The Holy Mother has heard my prayers. All glory be to her for this strange miracle. I await your coming with a grateful heart. No harm can fall upon you, for I have warned the temple priest. May the saints guard you through the night.
“JULIA DE AQUILAR.”
Turning to Noco, who had regained her breath, de Sancerre said:
“Say to this servant of the sun that I grant him pardon for his foolish threats. But warn him to take heed of how he walks. Unless he payeth abject homage to my power, it may go hard with him.”
Waving his rapier ’til it flashed before the eyes of the overawed priest like a magic wand made of silvery moonbeams, de Sancerre strode with studied dignity toward Noco’s hut, and disappeared from sight. The sun-priests, headed by their subdued chief, filed solemnly toward their blood-stained temple, and presently the moon, drooping toward the west, gazed down upon a city apparently abandoned by all men.