"What are we to do, then?" the girl asked, with a puzzled look. "When they find that you cannot speak their language, they will, of course, see that you are not of their people."
"Yes, Malinche; but they might think that I had forgotten it. That is just where I want you to help me. If you take me to Cortez, and tell him that, years ago, a ship was wrecked on the coast of Tabasco, and that all were drowned except a little white boy; and that he was brought up at Tabasco, and that you were great friends with him, until he was sold to some Mexican traders--they will think that I have altogether forgotten my native language. They are not likely to ask you how many years ago it is, or how big I was then, and will imagine that I was quite a child, and that I belonged to a Spanish ship, for they will not dream of an English vessel having been in these parts. When you introduce me to Cortez, you must tell him that I have quite forgotten the language, save a few words--for I picked up a few sentences when in their ports."
"They will easily believe that you may have been wrecked," said Malinche; "for they rescued a man who had been living many years among a tribe at Yucatan, to the west of Tabasco. There were other white men living among them, though these they could not recover. You saw him by me this morning--he is an old man, a priest; and he translates from the Spanish into the Yucatan dialect, which is so like that of Tabasco that I can understand it, and then I tell the people in Mexican.
"There will be no difficulty at all. Cortez and the Spaniards know that I love them, and they trust me altogether, and I am able to do good to my country people, and to intercede with them sometimes with Cortez. Now tell me what has happened since I last saw you."
Roger gave her a sketch of what had happened in Mexico, and how he had escaped, by flight, from being sacrificed.
"It is terrible--these sacrifices," Malinche said, shuddering. "I did not think so in the old days, but I have learned better from the Spaniards and from their priests; and I rejoice that the white men will destroy these horrible idols, and will teach the people to worship the great God and His Son. They will suffer--my heart bleeds to think how they will suffer--but it will be good for them in the end, and put a stop to rivers of blood that flow, every year, at their altars."
Although Roger was not imbued with the passion for conversion which animated the Spaniards, and led them to believe that it was the most glorious of all duties to force their religion upon the natives, he had been so filled with horror at the wholesale sacrifices of human victims, and the cannibal feasts that followed them, that he was in no way disposed to question the methods which the Spaniards adopted to put a stop to such abominations. But for the friendship of Cacama he would himself, assuredly, have been a victim to these sanguinary gods.
He and his father had--like the Beggs, and many other of his friends at Plymouth--been secretly followers of Wycliffe, but they were still Catholics. They believed that there were many and deep abuses in the Church, but had no thought of abandoning it altogether. The doings of the Inquisition in Spain were regarded by all Englishmen with horror, but these excesses were as nothing to the wholesale horrors of the Mexican religion.
He talked for some time with Malinche, and saw that she was completely devoted to the Spaniards, and regarded Cortez as a hero, almost more than mortal; and was in no slight degree relieved at observing that, although ready to be friendly in every way, and evidently still much attached to him, the warmer feeling which she had testified at their parting no longer existed, but had been transferred to her present friends and protectors.
"Come with me," she said at last. "The meal will be over, now. I will take you to an apartment near the banqueting hall, and will leave you there while I tell Cortez about you, and will then lead you to him."