To Thee we sacrifice!
Save us, O Huitzel, Huitzel, lord god!
I rushed forward, and turning the angle of the temple I found myself face to face with the past, for there as in bygone years were the pabas clad in their black robes, their long hair hanging about their shoulders, the dreadful knife of glass fixed in their girdles; there to the right of the stone of sacrifice were those destined to the god, and there being led towards it was the first victim, a Tlascalan prisoner, his limbs held by men clad in the dress of priests.
Near him, arrayed in the scarlet robe of sacrifice, stood one of my own captains, who I remembered had once served as a priest of Tezcat before idolatry was forbidden in the City of Pines, and around were a wide circle of women that watched, and from whose lips swelled the awful chant.
Now I understood it all.
In their last despair, maddened by the loss of fathers, husbands, and children, by their cruel fate, and standing face to face with certain death, the fire of the old faith had burnt up in their savage hearts.
There was the temple, there were the stone and implements of sacrifice, and there to their hands were the victims taken in war.
They would glut a last revenge, they would sacrifice to their fathers’ gods as their fathers had done before them, and the victims should be taken from their own victorious foes.
Ay, they must die, but at the least they would seek the Mansions of the Sun made holy by the blood of the accursed Teule.
I have said that it was the women who sang this chant and glared so fiercely upon the victims, but I have not yet told all the horror of what I saw, for in the fore-front of their circle, clad in white robes, the necklet of great emeralds, Guatemoc’s gift, flashing upon her breast, the plumes of royal green set in her hair, giving the time of the death chant with a little wand, stood Montezuma’s daughter, Otomie my wife. Never had I seen her look so beautiful or so dreadful.
It was not Otomie whom I saw, for where was the tender smile and where the gentle eyes?
Here before me was a living Vengeance wearing the shape of woman.
In an instant I guessed the truth, though I did not know it all.
Otomie, who although she was not of it, had ever favoured the Christian faith, Otomie, who for years had never spoken of these dreadful rites except with anger, whose every act was love and whose every word was kindness, was still in her soul an idolater and a savage.
She had hidden this side of her heart from me well through all these years, perchance she herself had scarcely known its secret, for but twice had I seen anything of the buried fierceness of her blood.
The first time was when Marina had brought her a certain robe in which she might escape from the camp of Cortes, and she had spoken to Marina of that robe; and the second when on this same day she had played her part to the Tlascalan, and had struck him down with her own hand as he bent over me.
All this and much more passed through my mind in that brief moment, while Otomie marked the time of the death chant, and the pabas dragged the Tlascalan to his doom.
The next I was at her side.
‘What passes here?’ I asked sternly.
Otomie looked on me with a cold wonder, and empty eyes as though she did not know me.
‘Go back, white man,’ she answered; ‘it is not lawful for strangers to mingle in our rites.’
I stood bewildered, not knowing what to do, while the flame burned and the chant went up before the effigy of Huitzel, of the demon Huitzel awakened after many years of sleep.
Again and yet again the solemn chant arose, Otomie beating time with her little rod of ebony, and again and yet again the cry of triumph rose to the silent stars.
Now I awoke from my dream, for as an evil dream it seemed to me, and drawing my sword I rushed towards the priest at the altar to cut him down.
But though the men stood still the women were too quick for me.
Before I could lift the sword, before I could even speak a word, they had sprung upon me like the jaguars of their own forests, and like jaguars they hissed and growled into my ear:
‘Get you gone, Teule,’ they said, ‘lest we stretch you on the stone with your brethren.’
And still hissing they pushed me thence.
I drew back and thought for a while in the shadow of the temple.
My eye fell upon the long line of victims awaiting their turn of sacrifice.
There were thirty and one of them still alive, and of these five were Spaniards.
I noted that the Spaniards were chained the last of all the line.
It seemed that the murderers would keep them till the end of the feast, indeed I discovered that they were to be offered up at the rising of the sun.
How could I save them, I wondered.
My power was gone.
The women could not be moved from their work of vengeance; they were mad with their sufferings.
As well might a man try to snatch her prey from a puma robbed of her whelps, as to turn them from their purpose.
With the men it was otherwise, however.
Some of them mingled in the orgie indeed, but more stood aloof watching with a fearful joy the spectacle in which they did not share.
Near me was a man, a noble of the Otomie, of something more than my own age.
He had always been my friend, and after me he commanded the warriors of the tribe.
I went to him and said,
‘Friend, for the sake of the honour of your people, help me to end this.’
‘I cannot, Teule,’ he answered, ‘and beware how you meddle in the play, for none will stand by you.
Now the women have power, and you see they use it.
They are about to die, but before they die they will do as their fathers did, for their strait is sore, and though they have been put aside, the old customs are not forgotten.’
‘At the least can we not save these Teules?’ I answered.
‘Why should you wish to save the Teules?
Will they save us some few days hence, when WE are in their power?’
‘Perhaps not,’ I said, ‘but if we must die, let us die clean from this shame.’