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.
“You see that you are fortunate in having found place among us Aztecs, Teule,” said Guatemoc with a laugh, “for your own people would greet you with a rope.”
Then he answered Cortes, saying nothing of me, but bidding him and all the Spaniards prepare for death:
“Many of us have perished,” he said; “you also must perish, Teules. You shall perish of hunger and thirst, you shall perish on the altars of the gods. There is no escape for you Teules; the bridges are broken.”