There reigned an ominous silence in the stifling, ill-smelling room for a time, broken only by the malicious crackling of the sacred fire or the impatient grunt of some overwrought priest. Coheyogo, fearing to lose his power by accepting the proffered alliance, but too superstitious to defy the unseen rulers of the universe by rejecting it, stood, grim and self-absorbed, scanning a distressing problem from many points of view. He dared not offend Coyocop, but he resented de Sancerre’s claim to a share in the supernatural authority which the sun-worshippers had attributed to her. After long reflection, the chief priest looked down at the grinning Noco and said:
“Say to the Brother of the Moon that if he has sufficient power to bring down destruction upon this City of the Sun, or even to cast an evil spell upon our king, he is wise enough to cure the latter of the sickness which has laid him low. If he will lead the Great Sun back to us from the very gates of death, he will find within this temple none but servants glad to pay him homage and obey his words. But, if he fails to raise our king, ’twill prove to us he either boasts too much or bears us no good-will.”
De Sancerre’s lips turned a shade lighter, but the mocking smile did not desert them, as Noco translated Coheyogo’s ultimatum into her clumsy Spanish. But even in that moment of supreme dismay, when his life, so he reflected, had been staked against loaded dice, the Frenchman could not refrain from casting a glance of admiration at the crafty priest who had played his game so well. If de Sancerre should undertake the restoration of the Great Sun’s health and should fail to save his life, even Coyocop would be powerless to protect him from the fate which had befallen Chatémuc. He had planned to visit the sick-bed of the King, and to send for Julia de Aquilar to meet him there, should he find that the Great Sun lay afflicted by no contagious disease. But de Sancerre had not foreseen that his boastfulness—which had served him well at times—would place him in his present plight, making his very life dependent upon his skill as a physician. He dared not hesitate, however, to accept the gauntlet thrown down by the keen-witted schemer, whose black eyes were now fixed upon him with a sardonic, defiant gleam.
“It will give me great joy to restore my friend, the ruler of this land, to health,” said de Sancerre calmly to Noco, his gaze still meeting Coheyogo’s unwaveringly. “Will you request the chief priest to accompany me to the royal bedside?”
With these words, the Frenchman turned his back upon the sacred fire and its jealous guardian, and strode haughtily toward the temple’s exit.
“Nom de Dieu,” he muttered to himself, “I know more about the slaying of my fellow-men than how to save them from the jaws of death! I would I could recall the odds and ends of medicine I’ve gathered in my time! But, even then, I fear my skill would not suffice. The Great Sun, if I mistake not, has no more to gain from me than I from him. St. Maturin, be kind to us!”
CHAPTER XX
IN WHICH A WHITE ROBE FAILS TO PROTECT
A BLACK HEART
Seated upon a low couch of plaited reeds, Julia de Aquilar, her white, slender hands folded upon her lap, and her dark, eloquent eyes turned upward as if they rested upon the Virgin Mother’s face, listened for the footsteps of a worldling and a sceptic, whose irreverent tongue had often in her hearing made sport of love itself. Her year in captivity as a celestial guide and counsellor to a half-savage race had softened, while preserving, the splendid coloring of her flawless complexion. Paler than of old, her face had lost none of its marvellous symmetry, and the warm hue of her curving lips bore witness to the triumph which youth, in its abounding elasticity, had won over the allied forces of loneliness and despair. The shadows beneath her expectant eyes had but added to their glowing splendor. Long days and nights of revery and introspection had changed the dominant expression of her face, somewhat too haughty aforetime, and a gentle radiance seemed to emanate from a countenance which had gained an added fascination from the spiritualizing touches of a sorrow too deep for tears.
The room in which Doña Julia sat at this moment, watching and praying for a rescuer whose advent had been made possible only through a miracle vouchsafed by Mary and the saints, testified to the homage which was paid by the sun-worshippers to the spirit, Coyocop. Bunches of early spring flowers, borne to her cabin by devotees who had never looked upon her face, were scattered in profusion upon the earthen floor and along the wooden shelves fitted into the gray walls. Offerings of dried fruits, and more substantial edibles, indicated the anxiety of an afflicted people to propitiate the unseen powers in this day of peril to their prostrate chief. Fabrics woven with commendable skill in various colors, and bits of pottery showing artistic possibilities in the makers thereof, added to the polychromatic ensemble of Coyocop’s sacred retreat. At that very instant Doña Julia could hear the murmurs of a group of devout sun-worshippers, who had come from the budding forest to pile before her door great heaps of magnolia blossoms to bear witness to their reverence for the beneficent spirit of the sun, and to their hope that she would save them from their threatening doom. The skull-bedecked temple of the sun stood for all that was most savage in a cult demanding human blood. The hut of Coyocop, wellnigh hidden from the noonday by sacrificial flowers, gave forth a fragrant incense which arose from an altar built of loving hearts.
It was the assurance, which had come to her in many ways, that she possessed the reverential affection of thousands of men and women upon whom she had never gazed that had lightened Doña Julia’s captivity, and had vouchsafed to her lonely soul a source of inspiration without which her faith in heaven might have lost its strength. Horrified to find herself worshipped as a goddess, but fearful of the fate which might befall her should she make denial of her divinity, she had passed long months in silent misery, theoretically omnipotent, but practically a helpless captive; used, for their own selfish purposes, by a few schemers, and adored at a distance by priest-ridden thousands who cherished, in their heart of hearts, the hope that Coyocop would mitigate the cruel cult which stained their temple red.