CHAPTER XXII
IN WHICH THE CITY OF THE SUN ENJOYS A FÊTE
THE moon of strawberries had been succeeded by the moon of old corn, and there was joy in the land of the sun-worshippers. In other words, the month of April had gone by and the month of May had found the Great Sun’s grateful subjects making ready to celebrate his restoration to health by national games and a thanksgiving feast.
The laggard weeks had told many a flattering tale of hope to Count Louis de Sancerre, but at the end of a month’s sojourn in the City of the Sun he still found himself, in all essential particulars, a helpless stranger in a fickle and jealous land, honored by the Great Sun and the chief priest, and admired by the people, but closely watched by sharp black eyes, from which flashed gleams of malice and suspicion. Impatient and impetuous though he was, the Frenchman dared not force the issue to a crisis. Easy of accomplishment as the kidnapping of Coyocop seemed to be, de Sancerre realized that he would rush to certain death if he took a false step and attempted a rescue hampered by his ignorance of the surrounding country and of the movements of Sieur de la Salle. Day succeeded day and no word came from the river to the pale and haggard Frenchman, whose only joy in life during those dreary weeks sprang from the voice of Julia de Aquilar, which reached his grateful ears now and then as he prowled around her cabin late at night. Even this source of delight he was obliged to forego after a time, receiving from the chief priest a broad hint regarding the dangers which menaced a stranger in the town after dark, and learning from Noco that Coheyogo had discovered in the temple the existence of a fanatical faction among the sun-priests which had sworn to overcome de Sancerre’s moon-magic by physical force.
But it was Cabanacte’s failure to return from his quest of Katonah that had wound the strongest cord around the Frenchman’s hands. Could he have had the giant’s assistance at this crisis, de Sancerre felt confident that any one of a number of schemes which he had been obliged to reject for lack of an ally could have been forced to the goal of success. But Cabanacte had disappeared, had made no further sign, and old Noco, to whom her grandson was as an open book, had said sadly to de Sancerre that the youth would not return.
The restless and wellnigh discouraged Frenchman had, through his success as a physician, won the enthusiastic gratitude of the Great Sun, who had insisted upon making his Brother of the Moon the honored guest of the royal cabin, within which de Sancerre was compelled, much against his will, to spend the major portion of the time, talking to the convalescent king by the aid of Noco’s nimble tongue.
It was the dawn of a cloudless day near the middle of the moon of old corn when de Sancerre, opening his eyes after a night of dreamless, restful sleep, enjoyed, for a moment, that sensation of physical well-being which suggests the possibility that nature harbors no enmity to man. Outside the royal cabin the morning vibrated with the melody of birds and the distant rumors of a forest springing gladly into life. There was movement and bustle inside the hut, and de Sancerre turned lazily upon his gayly-bedecked couch to watch the Great Sun as he paid homage to his risen god. With a spotless white robe flowing from his royal shoulders, the King, still feeble from his recent illness, stood in the centre of the room gravely lighting his calumet from a live ember which one of his wives held out to him. Then striding toward the dawn-beset exit to the cabin, which led straight to the rising sun, the convalescent chief blew three puffs of tobacco-smoke toward the deified orb of day.
“Pardieu,” muttered de Sancerre, “if they would but sacrifice more tobacco and less blood to their shining god, this city would not be so repulsive to a man of tender heart.” The Frenchman had thrown his slim legs over the side of the plaited bed and sat gazing at the Sun-Chief with a quizzical smile upon his clean-cut, thin and colorless face. Suddenly upon the air of morning arose the shouts of a joyful multitude approaching the Great Sun’s cabin. As if born of the dawn, the noisy throng poured into the square, carrying to the palace of their king offerings of fruit, flowers, vegetables, meats and fish. Into the cabin crowded the smiling, chattering sun-worshippers, their white teeth gleaming and their black eyes flashing fire as they piled their gifts around the Great Sun’s hand-painted throne, interfering with de Sancerre’s toilet but treating him with the respect due to a son of the full moon, in whose magic they had reason to rejoice. A noisy, picturesque, light-hearted crowd, delighting in the escape of their king from death, and in the postponement of the general slaughter of men, women, and children which would have followed his demise, they impressed the Frenchman as overgrown, frolicsome, unreliable children, beneath whose gayety lurked the capacity for bloody mischief.
Half-dressed and somewhat weary of the glad uproar, de Sancerre, having withdrawn to a distant corner of the hut, stood watching a ceremony which was destined to replenish the royal larder, when he felt a tug at his arm, and, looking down, met the keen eyes of Noco.
“’Tis from Coyocop,” she muttered, slipping into his hand a piece of mulberry bark. The corner in which he stood was not well-lighted, but de Sancerre was able, at length, to decipher the scrawl made by Julia de Aquilar. Her words were few:
“Eat no fish at to-day’s banquet,” ran the message. De Sancerre glanced down at the old hag questioningly, but there was nothing in her face to suggest that she understood the warning which had been scratched upon the bark. The moment seemed to be ripe for putting into operation a plan upon which de Sancerre’s mind had been at work for several days.
“Tell me, señora,” he said, observing with satisfaction that no prying eyes were fixed upon them at that moment, “would it please you to find your grandson, Cabanacte, and lure him from the forest to his home?”
There was a gleam in her small, black eyes as they met his which assured de Sancerre that he had pressed a finger upon the beldame’s dearest wish.
“It cannot be done,” she croaked, turning her back to him as if about to mingle with the laughing throng. De Sancerre seized her by the arm.
“Listen, Noco,” he urged, bending down to whisper eager Spanish into her old ears. “Coyocop and I, going to the forest side by side, could find Cabanacte and the maiden from the north. Tell this to Coyocop, that I will come to her when the banquet nears its end at dark. I leave the rest to you, for you must lead us from the city to the woods. The moon of old corn will give us light to-night to find your grandson in the forest glades or where the river floweth toward the sea. Will you take my word to her?”
“Si, señor,” muttered Noco, gazing up at de Sancerre with eyes which strove to read his very soul. “But if we fail—if Coyocop is missed—it will be death for you and me.”
“We cannot fail, señora, for the full moon is my god! We’ll find your Cabanacte ere the night is old—and none will ever know. And now, begone! Between the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon I’ll come to you and Coyocop. Be true to me, señora, and by the magic of my silver wand you’ll look upon your grandson’s face to-night.”
In another moment Noco, eluding the Great Sun’s glance as she stole between the tall sun-worshippers, had crept from the cabin into the rosy light of day.
The hours which followed her departure passed like long days to de Sancerre. He watched the Great Sun’s wives as they became surfeited with the petty tyranny which they exercised at the expense of a throng of lesser women, upon whom rested the drudgery necessitated by the approaching feast. Cares of state—an inventory of the tribute paid to his divine right—occupied the attention of the King until noon had long been passed and left de Sancerre to his own devices. Seated at the entrance to the cabin, the Frenchman could observe what was passing in the sunny square outside, while he still kept an eye upon the Great Sun and his busy household. Half-naked boys and girls, gay with garlands of flowers, were arranging long lines of wooden benches in front of the royal dwelling under the direction of a master of ceremonies who had escaped death with his king.
The bench upon which the Great Sun, the chief priest, and de Sancerre, the nation’s guest, were to sit stood just in front of the King’s cabin, and had been covered with painted skins and surrounded by a carpet of magnolia blossoms.
As the hour for the banquet approached the nobly-born sun-worshippers gathered in groups at the further end of the square, awaiting a signal from royalty to seat themselves upon the benches, hot by this time from the glare of a cloudless day. Gayety, suppressed but impatient, reigned in the City of the Sun. Black eyes flashed above smiling lips, and now and then a chorus of happy voices would raise a chant in praise of a deity who had blessed the earth with fecund warmth. Even the stealthy, silent, keen-eyed temple priests failed to cast a damper upon the joyous children of the sun as they mingled with the throng or lurked in the shadow of their skull-crowned palisade.
The banquet had been under way for more than an hour before de Sancerre, seated between the Great Sun and Coheyogo, had been able to revive the hope which had sprung up in his breast earlier in the day. His environment, as it met his eyes at the outset of the feast, seemed to preclude all possibility of a successful issue to the plan which he had impulsively put into operation. A group of plebeians, watching the nobility as it made merry—apparently at the King’s expense, but, in reality, at theirs—stood directly in front of Coyocop’s abode and were laughingly driving de Sancerre’s heart into his pointed shoes. Would the gaping throng disperse as the sun sank low in the sky, and leave to the Frenchman one chance in a thousand for the triumph of his daring scheme? The hours, as they passed, left de Sancerre less and less self-confident, while they increased the joyous hilarity of the feasters among whom he sat. The mud-made walls of the houses on either side of him had begun to throw long shadows across the square before de Sancerre was able to cull from his surroundings a bud of hope. It sprang from the tongue of Noco, who, as she passed behind his back, muttered in Spanish:
“I will touch your arm at dark. Then follow me.”
At that moment the women serving the royal table placed before the Great Sun and his guests of honor bits of bark upon which rested fish still hissing from the heat of a wood-fire. De Sancerre, who had turned to nod to Noco, caught a gleam of excitement in the black eyes of the serving-woman who had stretched her scrawny, brown arms between him and the chief priest. As he faced the feast again the fish in front of him recalled the written warning which he had received that morning from Julia de Aquilar.
“Touch no fish at to-day’s banquet,” repeated de Sancerre to himself. “’Twas good advice, I think. I’ll let this schemer, Coheyogo, eat my dish.” Acting upon the impulse of the moment, the Frenchman touched the chief priest upon the arm, and, as Coheyogo’s black eyes met his, he made a gesture toward the retreating form of Noco, as if he invoked the aid of the temple to recall the interpreter to his side. The spontaneity of de Sancerre’s action had its effect upon the sun-priest, for he turned instantly and called aloud to the double-tongued and two-faced hag. With a rapidity and deftness worthy of a prestidigitateur, do Sancerre transposed the fragments of fish-laden bark upon the bench, and, as Coheyogo resumed his former attitude, he was confronted, unknowingly, with a dish with which a fanatical but disobedient priest, hating moon-magic, had tampered.
There is but short shrift given to the day when the sun deserts it in southern climes. Twilight had already begun to cast a gloom upon the feast, against which the forced gayety begotten of cinnamon-flavored wine could not prevail, when de Sancerre again felt old Noco’s touch upon his arm. Before he turned to her the Frenchman, whose heart was beating wildly beneath his rusty velvets, cast a glance at the Great Sun. To his great satisfaction he discovered that his royal patient had wholly disregarded the warning vouchsafed by his recent illness and had been indulging in the pleasures of the table to an extent that had placed again in jeopardy the lives of those of his subjects who were doomed to accompany him in state to the spirit-land. But it was the condition of Coheyogo at that moment which gave to de Sancerre the greater cause for joy. The chief priest sat blinking down at a half-eaten fish, as if he struggled vainly to read the grim secret which it held. Now and then his head would drop forward as if he had been overcome by sleep. Then, by an effort of will, he would straighten his spine and attempt to collect his thoughts. The Frenchman watched him searchingly for a moment, and observed with delight that the struggle which the chief priest was making against a slothful but resistless foe would end in full defeat.
“Ma foi,” muttered de Sancerre, as he crawled softly from between the intoxicated State and the bedrugged Church into the shadow into which Noco had stolen, “had I not learned a trick or two in camps, ’tis I who would be nodding, not Coheyogo. I would I could remain to see the outcome of this contest between a poison and a snake!”
Noco had grasped him by the arm, and in another instant de Sancerre found himself stealing toward Doña Julia’s cabin through the darkest corner of the crowded square. Either the saints or the moon-god, or senseless chance, granted the Frenchman favors at that crucial hour; for, as he approached Coyocop’s sacred abode, wellnigh hidden from sight beneath hillocks of cut flowers, a group of enthusiasts at the feast, still unconquered by the fermented juice of the cassia-berry, had mounted the food-stained benches and raised a maudlin, monotonous chant, in which the onlooking plebeians accompanied them. At the same moment a crowd of boys and girls at the further end of the square had begun a weird, ungraceful, unseemly dance, in which, as time passed, men and women joined with shouts of wild laughter. Presently the kettle-drum added its barbaric clamor to the din which fretted the darkness as it crept across the disordered square. Even the sun-priests, heated by the epidemic of gayety which had seized the town, had left their sacred fire to the care of a chosen few, and were now mingling with the shouting, dancing, delirious multitude upon a pretext of good-fellowship, which was not too well received.
“Wait here, señor,” whispered Noco, in a guttural voice which shook with excitement, pushing de Sancerre against the wall at the rear of Doña Julia’s hut. “Don’t stir until I return. I fear some priest may still be watching me.”
The old crone disappeared around the corner of the cabin, and de Sancerre stood, trying to swallow his insistent heart, as he listened to the uproar in the square and, presently, to the voice of Julia de Aquilar whispering to Noco almost at his very side.
“Come,” hissed Noco, at his shoulder, seizing him by the wrist, and dragging Doña Julia toward the black shelter of the forest by the other hand. “No word! No rest! There will be no safety for us until we reach the trees.”
Followed through the gloom by the harsh discord of a mad town’s revelry, Doña Julia de Aquilar, of Seville, and Count Louis de Sancerre, of Languedoc, linked together by a wrinkled beldame, who looked at that moment like a grinning witch escaping to the wilds with the helpless victims of her spite, hurried, with hearts growing lighter with every step, toward a pathless wilderness, in which a thousand lurking perils would menace them at every turn.