‘We have a new counsellor among us, who is skilled in the warfare and customs of the white men, who till an hour ago was himself a white man. Has he no word of comfort for us?’
‘Speak, my brother?’ said Guatemoc.
Then I spoke. ‘Most noble Cuitlahua, and you lords and princes. You honour me by asking my counsel, and it is this in few words and brief. You waste your strength by hurling your armies continually against stone walls and the weapons of the Teules. So you shall not prevail against them. Your devices must be changed if you would win victory. The Spaniards are like other men; they are no gods as the ignorant imagine, and the creatures on which they ride are not demons but beasts of burden, such as are used for many purposes in the land where I was born. The Spaniards are men I say, and do not men hunger and thirst? Cannot men be worn out by want of sleep, and be killed in many ways? Are not these Teules already weary to the death? This then is my word of comfort to you. Cease to attack the Spaniards and invest their camp so closely that no food can reach them and their allies the Tlascalans. If this is done, within ten days from now, either they will surrender or they will strive to break their way back to the coast. But to do this, first they must win out of the city, and if dykes are cut through the causeways, that will be no easy matter. Then when they strive to escape cumbered with the gold they covet and came here to seek, then I say will be the hour to attack them and to destroy them utterly.’
I ceased, and a murmur of applause went round the council.
‘It seems that we came to a wise judgment when we determined to spare this man’s life,’ said Cuitlahua, ‘for all that he tells us is true, and I would that we had followed this policy from the first. Now, lords, I give my voice for acting as our brother points the way. What say you?’
‘We say with you that our brother’s words are good,’ answered Guatemoc presently, ‘and now let us follow them to the end.’
Then, after some further talk, the council broke up and I sought my chamber well nigh blind with weariness and crushed by the weight of all that I had suffered on that eventful day. The dawn was flaring in the eastern sky, and by its glimmer I found my path down the empty corridors, till at length I came to the curtains of my sleeping place. I drew them and passed through. There, far up the room, the faint light gleaming on her snowy dress, her raven hair and ornaments of gold, stood Otomie my bride.
I went towards her, and as I came she glided to meet me with outstretched arms. Presently they were about my neck and her kiss was on my brow.
‘Now all is done, my love and lord,’ she whispered, ‘and come good or ill, or both, we are one till death, for such vows as ours cannot be broken.’
‘All is done indeed, Otomie, and our oaths are lifelong, though other oaths have been broken that they might be sworn,’ I answered.
Thus then I, Thomas Wingfield, was wed to Otomie, princess of the Otomie, Montezuma’s daughter.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE NIGHT OF FEAR
Long before I awoke that day the commands of the council had been carried out, and the bridges in the great causeways were broken down wherever dykes crossed the raised roads that ran through the waters of the lake. That afternoon also I went dressed as an Indian warrior with Guatemoc and the other generals, to a parley which was held with Cortes, who took his stand on the same tower of the palace that Montezuma had stood on when the arrow of Guatemoc struck him down. There is little to be said of this parley, and I remember it chiefly because it was then for the first time since I had left the Tobascans that I saw Marina close, and heard her sweet and gentle voice. For now as ever she was by the side of Cortes, translating his proposals of peace to the Aztecs. Among those proposals was one which showed me that de Garcia had not been idle. It asked that the false white man who had been rescued from the altars of the gods upon the teocalli should be given in exchange for certain Aztec prisoners, in order that he might be hung according to his merits as a spy and deserter, a traitor to the emperor of Spain. I wondered as I heard, if Marina knew when she spoke the words, that ‘the false white man’ was none other than the friend of her Tobascan days.