Aztec Autumn - Jennings Gary (книга бесплатный формат .TXT) 📗

The lower floor of that stone building had been the soldiers' barracks, and it was expectably in disorder, since its inhabitants had so wildly scrambled out a little while before. We climbed the stairs and found ourselves in a warren of small rooms, all furnished with chairs and tables, some rooms full of books, others full of shelved maps or stacked documents. In one was a table on which lay a thick sheaf of fine Spanish paper, an inkhorn, a penknife and a jar full of goose quills. Beside them lay an ink-stained quill and a paper only half written over, by whatever scribe had been at work there the day before. I stood looking at those things for a moment, then said to Nocheztli:

"I was told that there is, among our slave contingent, a certain girl who can read and write the Spanish language. A Moro or a mongrel, I forget. Ride back to our encampment, right now, at a gallop, find that girl and bring her here, as quickly as you can. Also send in some of our men to scavenge whatever is useful from the soldiers' quarters downstairs. I will wait here for you and the girl, after I have visited the church next door."

The Tonala church was as modest in size and appointments as was the church Bishop Quiroga currently occupied in Compostela. One of the three men in there was a priest, decently dressed in the usual black, the other two were pudgy, merchant-looking men, ridiculously clad in nightwear and whatever other clothes they had had time to fling over them. They both quailed back from me, against the altar rail, but the priest boldly came forward, thrusting a carved wooden cross at me and babbling in that Church language that I had heard at the few Masses I had once attended.

"Not even other Spaniards can understand that nonsensical guirigay, padre," I said sharply. "Speak to me in some sensible tongue."

"Very well, you heathen renegade!" he snapped. "I was adjuring you, in the name and language of the Lord, to depart from these sacred precincts."

"Renegade?" I repeated. "You seem to assume that I am some white man's runaway slave. I am not. And these precincts are mine, built on the land of my people. I am here to reclaim them."

"This is the property of Holy Mother Church! Who do you think you are?"

"I know who I am. But your Holy Mother Church gave me the name of Juan Britanico."

"Dear God!" he exclaimed, appalled. "Then you are apostate! A heretic! Worse than a heathen!"

"Far worse," I said pleasantly. "Who are those two men?"

"The alcalde of Tonala, Don Jose Osado Algarve de Sierra. And the corregidor, Don Manuel Adolfo del Monte."

"The town's two foremost citizens, then. What are they doing here?"

"God's house is sanctuary. Holy refuge. Inviolable. It would be sacrilege were they to be harmed here."

"So they cringe cowardly behind your skirts, padre, and abandon their people to the storm and the strangers? Including their own loved ones, perhaps? Anyway, I do not share your superstitions."

I stepped around him and, with my sword, stabbed each of the men to the heart.

The priest cried, "Those senores were high and valued functionaries of His Majesty King Carlos!"

"I do not believe that. Anyone of any majesty could hardly have been proud of them."

"I adjure you again, you monster! Begone from this church of God! Remove all your savages from this parish of God!"

"I will," I said equably, turning to look out the door. "As soon as they tire of it."

The priest joined me at the door and said, beseechingly now, "In God's name, man, some of those poor females yonder are children. Many were virgins. Some of them are virgin nuns. The brides of Christ."

"They will shortly be with their husband, then. I hope he proves tolerant of his wives' impairments. Come with me, padre. I wish you to see something, probably less distressing than this sight."

I ushered him out of the church, and there I found, among others of my men not busy at the moment, the trustworthy Iyac Pozonali, to whom I said, "I am putting this white priest in your charge, Iyac. I do not think you need expect him to make mischief. Only stay by him to keep him from harm by any of our people."

Then I led them both into the palace and upstairs to that writing room, and pointed to the partly done document, and told the priest, "Read that to me, if you can."

"Of course I can. It is merely a respectful salutation. It says, To the very illustrious Senor Don Antonio de Mendoza, viceroy and governor for His Majesty in this New Spain, president of the Audiencia and the Royal Chancellery...' That is all. Evidently the alcalde was about to dictate to the scribe some report or request to be sent to the viceroy."

"Thank you. That will do."

"Now you kill me, too?"

"No. And for that, be thankful to another padre whom I once knew. I have already instructed this warrior to be your companion and protector."

"Then may I take my leave? There are last rites to be bestowed on my many, many unfortunate parishioners, and short shrift it is that I can give them."

"Vaya con Dios, padre," I said, meaning no irony, and gestured for Pozonali to go with him. Then I simply stood and looked out the window of that room, at what was still going on in the square below, and at the fires beginning to spring up at more distant places in the town, and I waited for Nocheztli to return with the reading-and-writing girl slave.

She was a mere child, and certainly not a Moro, for her complexion was only a slightly darker copper color than my own, and she was too pretty to have had much black blood in her. But she obviously was some kind of mongrel female, for those have bodies maturely developed at a very young age, and so did she. I supposed she must be one of the more complex breeds that Alonso de Molina had once told me about—pardo, cuarteron, whatever—and that fact might account for her having been given some education. My first test of that was to speak to her in Spanish:

"I am told that you can read the writing of the Spaniards."

She understood, and said respectfully, "Yes, my lord."

"Read this to me, then." I pointed to the document on the table.

Without having to study it or laboriously puzzle it out, she immediately and fluently read, "Al muy ilustrisimo Senor Don Antonio de Mendoza, visorrey e gobernador por Su Majestad en esta Nueva Espana, presidente de la Audiencia y la Chancelleria Real... It stops there, my lord. If I might say so, the scribe is not highly accomplished in his spelling."

"I am told that you also can write in that language."

"Yes, my lord."

"I wish you to write something for me. Use a different piece of paper."

"Certainly, my lord. Only give me a moment to prepare. The materials are dry."

"While we wait, Nocheztli," I said to him, "go and find that church's priest. He is somewhere in the crowd outside, in company with our Iyac Pozonali. Fetch the priest here to me."

In the meantime, the girl had laid the scribe's stained quill to one side, plucked a fresh one from the jar, expertly used the penknife to whittle a point to it, spat delicately into the inkhorn, stirred it with the new quill and finally said, "I am ready, my lord. What shall I write?"

I looked out the window, briefly meditating. The day was darkening now, the fires were more numerous and blazing higher; the whole of Tonala would soon be aflame. I turned back to the girl and spoke just a few words, slowly enough that she had finished her scribbling almost as soon as I stopped speaking. I went and reached over her shoulder, laying the scribe's paper and hers side by side. Of course, I could make nothing of either of them, but I could tell that the girl's writing was, to the eye, more bold and forthright than the spidery lines of the scribe.