"These things are vanities," said Gregorio, gloomily. "Let my brother's children be first plucked from the nest of infidels, if it be not too late."
"Heaven will not now forsake them, after protecting them through so many and greater perils," said Cortes, kissing the little cross and restoring it to his bosom. "The best men in the army, cavaliers and all, have sworn they will fetch them from the palace, in which they are now surrounded. And hark thee, Gregorio: The only daughter of the Count of Castillejo is too noble a prize for a nunnery.—We will have another dispensation."
The further disclosures of these two men, both villains, and both penitents, after their ways, were arrested by the commencement of the attack upon the palace; and Cortes calling some of his attendants to support his companion's steps, they descended from the terrace.
CHAPTER XX.
Juan Lerma, or Castillejo—for such we must now call him—yet lay in confinement. His cell was in a quarter of the palace remote from the royal apartments; and without being altogether exposed to the cannon-shots, with which the attack was begun, was yet so nigh the garden-wall as to make its luckless inhabitant an auditor of all the fearful yells and outcries, with which the besieged and assailants contended for possession of the breaches. He was still bound, and some dozen or more dark-browed pagans kept watch at his doors, one of which led into a broad passage, and the other he knew not whither. They were designed rather to protect him from the fury of the warriors, now concentrated in the garden and palace, than to guard against escape, which the wounds he had received in the defence of Guzman, had but ill fitted him to attempt. All that Guatimozin could do to prolong an existence, now almost insufferably wretched, he did; and at the very moment of the assault, while taking measures to effect his own retreat from an empire now utterly demolished, and a post no longer tenable, he gave hasty instructions to the Ottomi, Techeechee, to secure the escape of his friend. It will be presently seen in what manner fortune defeated this plan, as well as all others now devised by the fallen monarch.
It was with a listlessness amounting almost to apathy, that Juan listened to the first discharges of the cannon and the roar of hostile voices. Such sounds had been awakened for several days in succession, and each day they were nearer and louder. If they promised him deliverance, they promised little else; for, having reflected upon the eventful enterprise of the causeway, and digested at leisure and in gloom, many of those details which had almost escaped his notice, in the heat and hurry of contention, he saw but little reason to anticipate from his countrymen, any other reception than such as might be vouchsafed to a condemned criminal and avowed renegade. He remembered, that he had been struck down by a Spaniard, while in the very act of giving life to the Captain-General; and he had a vague suspicion, that the blow was struck by the Barba-Roxa. If Gaspar (of whose death he was entirely ignorant), had met him with such vindictive ferocity, what else could be expected from men who had never looked upon him with friendship? Yet fear for himself made the lightest weight in his load of suffering: his thoughts dwelt upon the captive princess, and not less often, though with perhaps less gnawing anxiety, upon his equally captive sister.
Such were the reflections that darkened his mind during the first hours of conflict, and made him almost indifferent to his fate. Yet, notwithstanding his gloom, there arose a circumstance at last, which gave such an appalling character to his confinement, as prevented his remaining any longer indifferent to his situation. He became suddenly aware that volleys of smoke were beginning to roll into the apartment, and perceived, at the same time, that his guards, driven away by fear, or by an uncontrollable desire to mingle in the conflict, as was more probable, had fled from the doors, after satisfying themselves that he was secured in such a manner as to prevent his flying in their absence. He was indeed bound, or rather swathed, hand and foot, with robes of cotton, so as to be incapable of rising from the couch on which he lay: and it was his consciousness of the miserable helplessness of his condition, left to perish, as it seemed, in a burning palace, without the power of raising a finger in self-preservation, that stung him out of his lethargy.
The smoke was now rolling into the room, in denser masses than before, accompanied by the stifling odour of burning feathers, which entered so largely into the decorations of the palace; and he began to apprehend lest he should be suffocated outright, even before the flames had extended to his prison. He called aloud for relief; but his voice was unheeded in the din that shook the palace walls; he struggled to release his limbs, or to rise to his feet, but in vain; and even the poor expedient of rolling over the floor, availed him but little, so much were his muscles cramped by the barbarous bonds. To crown the horror of the scene, a gush of heated air shook the curtains of the door opposite to that which communicated with the passage, and was almost instantly followed by another, whirling smoke and flames.
But even in this extremity, hope was brought to his ears, in the sound of a voice not heard for many days, but not yet forgotten. From among the very flames that came flashing into the chamber, consuming the door-curtains, and darting upon the little canopy that surmounted his couch, he could distinguish the eager and clamorous howlings of Befo; as if this faithful friend were seeking him in his imprisonment. He answered with a shout, which was responded to not only by the joyful bark of the dog, but by the wild cry of a woman; and in the next instant, Magdalena, preceded by Befo, rushed through the flames into his dungeon.