The Flute of the Gods Part 9

Pious e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n--thanks to all the saints he could think of--horror that the son of an Eminence should be thus abused--prophecies of the wrath to come when the d.u.c.h.ess, his mother--At this Don Ruy groped for a sword, and found a boot, and flung it, with an unsanctified word or two, in the direction of the lamentation.

"You wail worse than a dog of a Lutheran under the yoke," he said in as good a voice as he could muster with a cut in his lip. "What matter how much Eminence it took to make a father for me--or how many d.u.c.h.esses to make a mother? I am labelled as plain Ruy Sandoval and shipped till called for. If you are to instruct my youth in the path it should tread--why not start in with a lesson on discretion?"

At this hopeful sign of life from the bundle of bandages on the monk's bed, Maestro Diego approached and looked over his ill.u.s.trious charge with a careful eye.

"Discretion has limped far behind--enterprise, else your highness would cut a different figure by now--and--"

[Ill.u.s.tration: TO DON RUY, A MESSAGE IN THE MOONLIGHT _Page 63_]

"Choke back your infernal highnesses!" growled the younger man. "I know well what your task is to be here in this new land:--it is to send back reports of duty each time I break a rule or get a broken head. Now by the Blood, and the Cross, if you smother not your t.i.tles, and let me range free, I tell you the thing I will do:--I will send back a complaint against you to Seville--and to make sure that it goes, no hand shall carry it but your own. Ere they can find another nurse maid for my morals, I'll build me a ship and go sailing the South seas for adventure--and your court tricksters will have a weary time in the chase! I like you better than many another G.o.dly spy who might have been sent, and I promise myself much joy in the journal of strange travels it is in your mind to write. But once for all, remember, we never were born into the world until a week ago!"

"But your Excellency--

"By the Great Duke of h.e.l.l! Will you not bridle your tongue when the d.a.m.ned monks are three deep at the key hole?"

By which it will be seen that the travels of the pious Don Diego were not all on paths of roses.

A little later the still faced priest of the stealthy glances came in, and Don Ruy sat on the side of the bed, and looked him over.

"You are the one who picked me up--eh? And the gentlemen of the streets had tossed me into a corner after discreetly starting my soul on its travels! Warm trysts your dames give to a stranger in this land--when you next confess the darlings, whisper their ears to be less bloodthirsty towards youth innocence!"

The man in the robe smiled.

"That unwise maid will make no more trysts," he said quietly,--"not if she be one important enough to cause an a.s.sault on your Highness."

"Did they--?"

"No--no--harm would not be done to her, but her destiny is without doubt a convent. The men who spoiled your tryst earn no purses as guard for girls of the street,--sacred walls will save them that trouble for a time--whether maid or wife I dare promise you that! It is as well you know. Time is wasted seeking adventure placed beyond mortal reach."

"Convent--eh? Do your holy retreats teach the little tricks the lady knew? And do they furnish their vestals with poems of romance and silks and spices of Kathay?"

He drew from an inner pocket a little scarf of apple green with knotted fringes, and b.u.t.terflies, various colored in dainty broidery.

As the folds fell apart an odor of sweetness stole into the shadowy room of the monastery, and the priest was surprised into an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n at sight of such costly evidence, but he smothered it hastily in a muttered prayer.

After that he listened to few of the stranger's gibes and quips, but with a book of prayers on his knee he looked the youth over carefully, recalled the outburst of Don Diego as to origin, and the adventurer's own threat to build a ship and sail where chance pointed. Plainly, this seeker of trysts, or any other thing promising adventure, had more of resource than one might expect from a battered stranger lifted out of the gutter for the last rites.

The priest--who looked a good soldier and who was called Padre Vicente "de los Chichimecos" (of the wild tribes) read further in his book of hours, and then spoke the thing in his mind.

"For a matter of many years in this land of the Indies I have waited for a man of discreet determination for a certain work. The virgin herself led me to the gutter where you groaned in the dark, and I here vow to build her a chapel if this thought of mine bears fruit."

"Hump! My thanks to our Lady,--and I myself will see to the building of the chapel. But tell me of the tree you would plant, and we'll then have a guess at the fruit. It may prove sour to the taste! Monkly messes appealed to me little on the other side of the seas. I've yet to test their flavor on this sh.o.r.e of adventure."

Padre Vicente ignored the none too respectful comment--and took from his pocket a bit of virgin gold strung on a thread of deer sinew.

"Your name is Don Ruy Sandoval," he said. "You are in this land for adventure. You content yourself with the latticed window and the strife of the streets--why not look for the greater things? You have wealth and power at your call--why not search for an empire of--this?"

Then he showed the virgin gold worn smooth by much wearing.

Don Ruy blinked under the bandage and swore by Bradamante of the adventure that he would search for it gladly if but the way was shown.

"Where do we find this golden mistress of yours?" he demanded, "and why have you waited long for a comrade?"

"The gold is in the north where none dare openly seek treasure, or even souls, since Coronado came back broken and disgraced. I have waited for the man of wealth who dared risk it, and--at whose going the Viceroy could wink."

"Why wink at me--rather than another?"

"That is a secret knotted in the fringes of the silken scarf there--"

said Padre Vicente with a grim smile. "Cannot a way be found to clear either a convent or a palace of a trouble breeder, when the church itself lends a hand? You were plainly a breeder of trouble, else had you escaped the present need of bandages. For the first time I see a way where Church and the government of the Indies can go with clasped hands to this work. In gold and converts the work may prove mighty.

How mighty depends whether you come to the Indies to kill time until the day you are recalled--or improve that time by success where Coronado failed."

"And if we echo his failure?"

"None will be the wiser even then! You plan for a season of hunting in the hills. I plan for a mission visit by the Sea of Cortez. Mine will be the task to see how and where our helpers join each other and all the provisioning of man and beast. Mine also to make it clear to the Viceroy that you repent your--"

"Hollo!"--Don Ruy interrupted with a grimace. "You are about to say I repent of folly--or the enticing of a virgin--or that I fell victim to the blandishments of some tricky dame--I know all that cant by rote!--a man always repents until his broken head is mended, but all that is apart from the real thing--which is this:--In what way does my moment with a lady in the dark affect the Viceroy of the Indies? Why should his Excellency trouble himself that Ruy Sandoval has a broken head--and a silken scarf?"

Padre Vicente stared--then smiled. Ruy Sandoval had not his wits smothered by the cotton wool of exalted pamperings.

"I will be frank with you," he said at last. "The Viceroy I have not yet addressed on this matter. But such silken scarfs are few--that one would not be a heavy task to trace to its owner."

"Ah!--I suspected your eminence had been a gallant in your time,"

remarked Don Ruy, amicably--"It is not easy to get out of the habit of noticing alluring things:--that is why I refused to do penance for my birth by turning monk, and shrouding myself in the gown! Now come--tell me! You seem a good fellow--tell me of the 'Dona Bradamante' of the silks and the spices."

"The destiny of that person is probably already decided," stated the priest of the wild tribes, "she is, if I mistake not, too close to the charge of the Viceroy himself for that destiny to be questioned. The mother, it is said, died insane, and the time has come when the daughter also is watched with all care lest she harm herself--or her attendants. So I hear--the maid I do not know, but the scarf I can trace. Briefly--the evident place for such a wanton spitfire is the convent. You can easily see the turmoil a woman like that can make as each ship brings adventurers--and she seeks a lover out of every group."

"Jesus!--and h.e.l.l to come! Then I was only one of a sort--all is fish to the net of the love lorn lady! Maestro Diego would have had the romance and the lily if he had walked ahead instead of behind me!--and he could have had the broken head as well!" Then he sniffed again at the bit of silk, and regarded the monk quizzically.

"You have a good story, and you tell it well, holy father," he said at last,--"and I am troubled in my mind to know how little of it may be truth, and how much a G.o.dly lie. But the gold at least is true gold, and whatever the trick of the lady may be, you say it will serve to win for me the privilege to seek the mines without blare of trumpets.

Hum!--it is a great favor for an unknown adventurer."

"Unknown you may be to the people of the streets, and to your ship mates," agreed the Padre. "But be sure the Viceroy has more than a hint that you are not of the rabble. The broils you may draw to yourself may serve to disquiet him much--yet he would scarce send you to the stocks, or the service of the roads. Be sure he would rather than all else bid you G.o.d speed on a hunting journey."

"But that you are so given to frankness I should look also for a knife in the back to be included in his excellency's favors," commented Don Ruy. "Name of the Devil!--what have I done since I entered the town, but hold hands with one woman in the dark--and be made to look as if I had been laid across a butcher block on a busy day! h.e.l.l take such a city to itself! I've no fancy for halting over long in a pit where a gentleman's amus.e.m.e.nts are so little understood. If the Dona of the scarf were aught but an amiable maniac the thing would be different. I would stay--and I would find her and together we would weave a new romance for a new world poet! But as it is, gather your cut throats and name the day, and we'll go scouring the land for heathen souls and yellow clinkers."

Padre Vicente de Bernaldez was known by his wonderful mission-work to be an ecclesiastic of most adventurous disposition. Into wild lands and beyond the Sea of Cortez had he gone alone to the wild tribes--so far had he gone that silence closed over his trail like a grave at times--but out of the Unknown had he come in safety!

His fame had reached beyond his order--and Ruy Sandoval knew that it was no common man who spoke to him of the Indian gold.

"Francisco de Coronado," stated this padre of the wilderness, "came back empty handed from the north land of the civilized Indians for the reason that he knew not where to search. The gold is there. This is witness. It came to me from a man who--is dead! It was given him by a woman of a certain tribe of sun worshippers. To her it was merely some symbol of their pagan faith--some priestly circle dedicated to the sun."

"It sounds well," agreed Don Ruy--"but the trail? Who makes the way?

And what force is needed?"

For a guide the Padre Vicente had a slave of that land, a man of Te-hua baptized Jose, for five years the padre had studied the words and the plans. The man would gladly go to his own land,--he and his wife. All that was required was a general with wealth for the conquest. There were pagan souls to be saved, and there was wealth for the more worldly minds. The padre asked only a tenth for G.o.dly reasons.

Thus between church and state was the expedition of his Excellency Don Ruy Sandoval ignored except as a hunting journey to the North coast of the Cortez Sea--if he ranged farther afield, his own be the peril, for no troops of state were sent as companions. The good father had selected the men--most of them he had confessed at odd times and knew their metal. All engaged as under special duty to the cross:--it was to be akin to a holy pilgrimage, and absolution for strange things was granted to the men who would bear arms and hold the quest as secret.

Most of them thought the patron was to be Mother Church, and regarded it as a certain entrance to Paradise. Don Ruy himself meekly accepted a role of the least significance:--a mere seeker of pleasure adventures in the provinces! It would not be well that word of risk or danger be sent across seas--and the Viceroy could of course only say "G.o.d speed you" to a gentleman going for a ride with his servants and his major domo.