CHAPTER XX
IN WHICH A WHITE ROBE FAILS TO PROTECT
A BLACK HEART
SEATED upon a low couch of plaited reeds, Julia de Aquilar, her white, slender hands folded upon her lap, and her dark, eloquent eyes turned upward as if they rested upon the Virgin Mother’s face, listened for the footsteps of a worldling and a sceptic, whose irreverent tongue had often in her hearing made sport of love itself. Her year in captivity as a celestial guide and counsellor to a half-savage race had softened, while preserving, the splendid coloring of her flawless complexion. Paler than of old, her face had lost none of its marvellous symmetry, and the warm hue of her curving lips bore witness to the triumph which youth, in its abounding elasticity, had won over the allied forces of loneliness and despair. The shadows beneath her expectant eyes had but added to their glowing splendor. Long days and nights of revery and introspection had changed the dominant expression of her face, somewhat too haughty aforetime, and a gentle radiance seemed to emanate from a countenance which had gained an added fascination from the spiritualizing touches of a sorrow too deep for tears.
The room in which Doña Julia sat at this moment, watching and praying for a rescuer whose advent had been made possible only through a miracle vouchsafed by Mary and the saints, testified to the homage which was paid by the sun-worshippers to the spirit, Coyocop. Bunches of early spring flowers, borne to her cabin by devotees who had never looked upon her face, were scattered in profusion upon the earthen floor and along the wooden shelves fitted into the gray walls. Offerings of dried fruits, and more substantial edibles, indicated the anxiety of an afflicted people to propitiate the unseen powers in this day of peril to their prostrate chief. Fabrics woven with commendable skill in various colors, and bits of pottery showing artistic possibilities in the makers thereof, added to the polychromatic ensemble of Coyocop’s sacred retreat. At that very instant Doña Julia could hear the murmurs of a group of devout sun-worshippers, who had come from the budding forest to pile before her door great heaps of magnolia blossoms to bear witness to their reverence for the beneficent spirit of the sun, and to their hope that she would save them from their threatening doom. The skull-bedecked temple of the sun stood for all that was most savage in a cult demanding human blood. The hut of Coyocop, wellnigh hidden from the noonday by sacrificial flowers, gave forth a fragrant incense which arose from an altar built of loving hearts.
It was the assurance, which had come to her in many ways, that she possessed the reverential affection of thousands of men and women upon whom she had never gazed that had lightened Doña Julia’s captivity, and had vouchsafed to her lonely soul a source of inspiration without which her faith in heaven might have lost its strength. Horrified to find herself worshipped as a goddess, but fearful of the fate which might befall her should she make denial of her divinity, she had passed long months in silent misery, theoretically omnipotent, but practically a helpless captive; used, for their own selfish purposes, by a few schemers, and adored at a distance by priest-ridden thousands who cherished, in their heart of hearts, the hope that Coyocop would mitigate the cruel cult which stained their temple red.
The Great Sun came in state to visit her at times, and, more often, Manatte, his nephew and heir-apparent, presuming upon his royal prerogatives, would enter her cabin to feast his black eyes upon the beauty of a countenance which he was bound to look upon as sacred from the touch of human lips. The tall, dusky youth, whose handsome, wilful face Doña Julia had grown to loathe, had never dared to rebel against the restraints which Coyocop’s divine origin forced upon him, but his restless eyes told the girl what was in his protesting heart, and she would watch his reluctant steps, as he stole from her hut, with mingled relief and dread. Well she knew that fear of the Brother of the Sun and of the chief priest alone prevented Manatte from defying the Great Spirit and making her his own.
The afternoon was growing old, and Doña Julia, with a bunch of white flowers upon her bosom, relieving the black monotony of her sombre garb, still awaited in loneliness the coming of Louis de Sancerre, whose presence in that remote corner of the globe only the saints in heaven could explain. That Coheyogo and Noco, who came to her daily to play a solemn farce in which she had long ago lost all interest, had not made their accustomed advent to her cabin filled her with increasing alarm. The uproar in the city at noonday, the mournful outcries of an agitated people, had aroused in Doña Julia’s soul a dread foreboding which the subsequent silence which had fallen upon the hysterical town had done nothing to relieve.
Presently the overwrought girl, from whose lips the cup of hope seemed to have been snatched just as she was about to drink deep of its grateful draught, fell upon her knees beside her bed and breathed a fervent prayer to the Mother of Christ for strength in this hour of doubt and discouragement. Soothed by her devotions, she arose and, standing erect, listened for the sound of a footstep which should precede an answer to her supplication; but an ominous silence reigned outside her hut. Readjusting the flowers upon her breast, and smoothing her rebellious, raven hair with a trembling hand, Doña Julia, cold with a sense of loneliness which had fallen upon her heart, moved hesitatingly toward the hole which served as a clumsy entrance to the room. Bending down, her hungry eyes eagerly scanned the deserted square, upon which the sun was shining as if in search of its secreted worshippers. To the overpowering sweetness of the spring blossoms, lying in heaps outside the doorway, she gave no heed, as she sought in vain for signs of life in a city upon which the blight of a great fear had recently descended. Suddenly, as Doña Julia gazed in consternation at this lonely centre of a populous town, a tall form issued from the cabin of the Great Sun. Drawing himself up to his full height, the man, glancing in all directions, as if to assure himself that he was unobserved, made straight toward the hole in the sun-baked wall through which the girl was peering. The white feathers in his hair bore witness to his royal rank, and as he came into the full glare of the sunlight just beyond her cabin Doña Julia saw that her approaching visitor was Manatte. To rush forth into the square and arouse the city by her cries was her first impulse, but before she could give way to it the youth had cut off her escape.
“Coyocop!” he exclaimed, as he stood erect, after he had crawled through the entrance, driving her back in affright toward the centre of the flower-bedecked room. “Coyocop!”
There were in his voice passion, triumph, desperation; an appeal to the woman and a defiance to the gods. The Great Sun lay dying. Even the chief priest would hesitate to offend him—Manatte, who would soon be king!
“Coyocop!” he repeated more gently, holding forth to her a hand, like a beggar asking alms, while his eyes rested upon the white flowers which rose and fell upon her throbbing bosom.
But, though her body trembled, there was no flinching in Doña Julia’s glance. Hopeless, as she was, for she realized that sacrilege such as this could spring only from an opportunity in which Manatte could find no peril, her eyes gazed into his with a proud scorn which left no need for words. With head thrown back, she strove to conquer the brute nature of the youth by the mere force of her strong will and the purity of her virgin soul. But she knew full well that the silent prayers which she offered up to God would reach His throne too late.
For a moment they stood thus confronting one another; Purity attired in black, and License enrobed in spotless white. Never afterward could Julia de Aquilar sense the sweet, haunting odor of magnolia blossoms without a sinking of the heart which made her breath protest. No sound broke the intense stillness save the twittering of birds which wooed the flowers outside the hut and the stifled words which Manatte strove to speak. Suddenly he sprang toward her and seized her wrists, while his bronze face burned her cold, white cheeks.
“Coyocop,” he muttered, in a tongue which she could not understand, “you shall be mine, ’though every star the midnight sky reveals should send a god to save you from my love!”
A maiden’s despairing cry startled the silent town.
“Mother of God, have mercy! Help! O Christ, save me!”
A light, nervous footfall echoed from the square, and the entrance to the hut was darkened for an instant. Rapier in hand, de Sancerre sprang into the centre of the room. As Manatte, with an oath upon his swollen lips, turned upon the intruder, the Frenchman drove his sword straight through a snow-white robe into a black heart. Without a groan, the evil scion of a royal race fell dead upon the ground.
“Thank God, I came in time!” exclaimed de Sancerre, as he withdrew his rapier from Manatte’s breast and turned toward Doña Julia, who, faint and breathless, leaned against the wall facing him. “Doña Julia de Aquilar,” he cried, tossing his dripping sword to the ground and crossing the room at a stride, “I kiss your hand.” Falling upon one knee the courtier pressed his lips to the cold, trembling fingers in his grasp.
“Mother of Mary, I thank thee for thy care,” murmured Doña Julia raising her eyes to heaven from the smiling, upturned face of de Sancerre.
It was upon a tableau which might have suggested, to other eyes, a worldling praying to a saint for pardon for the murder of a giant that Coheyogo, followed by Noco and Cabanacte, gazed as he entered the hut and attempted to read the story of the grim picture by which he was confronted. De Sancerre, who had doffed his white robes in the Great Sun’s cabin, still knelt at the feet of the pale and agitated girl. Near the centre of the room lay the bleeding, motionless body of the sacrilegious sun-worshipper. Thrown from a shelf by the recent tumult in the room, a great bunch of magnolia blossoms lay scattered close to Manatte’s head, a floral halo of which death itself still left him most unworthy.
Springing to his feet and pointing toward the youth he had slain, de Sancerre said, calmly, to Noco:
“Tell the chief priest this, that yonder scoundrel insulted the spirit of the sun. For this he died. It was this sword,” he went on, picking up his rapier and wiping the blood from the blade with a handful of flowers, “which saved Coyocop from his polluting kiss. I know not who he is, but were he ten thousand times a son of suns he well deserved his death.”
Coheyogo stood gazing down at the set face of Manatte as Noco repeated to him the Frenchman’s words.
“Stand at the entrance outside the hut,” said the chief priest, curtly, to Cabanacte, “and bid no one enter upon pain of death. Of what has happened here, breathe not a word. Go!”
Crawling through the entrance, Cabanacte drew himself erect in the sunlight, a sentry against whose behests none of the chattering sun-worshippers, who had poured into the square to learn the meaning of the cry which had echoed from Coyocop’s abode, dared protest.
“Say to the Brother of the Moon that what he did was well done,” went on Coheyogo to Noco. “If the draught which he made for the Great Sun gives life as surely as his silver wand brings death, then shall the shadow pass from our weeping race. Go, then, Noco, to the temple quickly, and bid four priests to hasten to me here. Answer no questions, but, as you go, inform the people that Coyocop has destroyed with flowers, brought to her cabin by the faithful, the evil spirit which strove to kill our king and bring destruction upon the City of the Sun. Say to them further, if they should whisper the name of yonder chief, that Manatte has gone to the foot-hills to offer prayers for the Great Sun’s life. Go at once, for the day grows old and we have much to do.”
Turning toward de Sancerre, who had been whispering to Doña Julia words of hope and cheer, Coheyogo pointed to the feet of the dead sun-prince, and then strode to the head of the corpse. The Frenchman and the chief priest raised the heavy body and placed it upon Doña Julia’s reed-plaited bed. With armfuls of magnolia blossoms Coheyogo covered Manatte’s face and shoulders, while de Sancerre, comprehending vaguely the scheme which the chief priest had in mind, strewed flowers upon the trunk of his sword’s gigantic prey.
“May God defend us!” he muttered. “I fear the keenness of this crafty priest! He has an agile mind. He turns a nightmare to a dream of spring with most exquisite skill. And, for some reason which I cannot find, he takes great pleasure in this gay youth’s death. I trust that Doña Julia has learned to read his mind. I dread him either as an ally or a foe!”
Before de Sancerre could find an opportunity for holding further converse with the Spanish maiden, whose presence in the City of the Sun had wellnigh restored his boyhood’s faith in miracles, Noco, followed by four silent elders from the temple of the sacred fire, had entered the hut. A few moments later the voiceless, expectant throng in the great square gazed with awe and wonder upon a picturesque procession which moved with slow and solemn tread from Coyocop’s abode to the outskirts of the town, beyond which point a word from the temple priests prevented the dusky crowd from following it.
At the head of the cortège walked the chief priest, accompanied by de Sancerre, whose drawn rapier gleamed like a sword of fire as the red rays of the setting sun made a plaything of the blade. Behind them came four white-robed bearers carrying a plaited bier, upon which lay the body of a tall man concealed from view by a trembling shroud of fragrant flowers. Following this strange funeral, upon which the sun-worshippers gazed with awe-stricken eyes, as if they looked upon a marvel wrought by spirits, hobbled the aged Noco, mumbling to herself as she grinned at a people for whose blind superstition she had no respect. Cabanacte had remained as sentry at Coyocop’s abode, to chafe under the useless task consigned to him; for to him it seemed more fitting that he should guard Katonah than stand as sentinel before a cabin upon which high heaven smiled.
When the cortège had reached the twilight shadows outside the city, the chief priest gave a few simple directions to the bearers of the corpse and, accompanied by de Sancerre and Noco, turned back toward the temple of the sun.
“Come with me, señora!” cried the Frenchman, when they had reached the square, pointing toward the Great Sun’s cabin. “Say to the chief priest, Doña Noco, that you and I must watch by the good King’s side to-night.”
“It is well,” answered Coheyogo, as he listened to the old crone’s words. “May the great spirit grant you the skill to save his life. ’Tis best for you that he should live.”
With this significant hint, the chief priest strode through the dusk toward the temple of the sacred fire.
Before de Sancerre and Noco had reached the cabin in which the Brother of the Sun lay tossing upon a feverish couch, the Frenchman, whose mind was filled with the vision of a pale, dark-eyed woman, garbed in black, with spring flowers upon her breast, recalled, for an instant, another face which seemed to accuse him in the twilight there of strange forgetfulness.
“Wait, señora,” exclaimed de Sancerre, seizing Noco by the arm at the very entrance to the royal hut. “Katonah! It is not well to leave her all alone. Go to your home and bring her here at once. This town’s a seething cesspool of dark-brown, white-robed treachery! Peste! If harm should come to her, I dare not look into the saintly Membré’s good gray eyes again. Come back at once. The Great Sun needs your care.”
With these words de Sancerre bent down to enter the royal cabin, while Noco hurried away to rescue Katonah from a lonely night.