OF THE ANCIENT GARDENS OF THE GOLDEN TEZCUCAN
He supposed that Zoraida was conducting him to the barbaric chamber in
which she had received him the other evening. For she led, as the
little maid had done, out under the stars, along the rear corridor,
into the house again by the same door. Once more in the building they
came to that heavy door which in time was thrown open by the
evil-looking Yaqui with the sinister weapons at his belt. The man
bowed deeply as Zoraida swept by him. Another moment and Zoraida and
Jim were in the room which appeared always to be pitch black. But from
here on the way was no longer the same.
He heard Zoraida's quiet breathing at his side. She stood a long time
without moving, apparently waiting or listening, and he stood as still.
Then she put out her hand and caught his sleeve and he followed her
again. Their footfalls were deadened by a thick carpet; Kendric could
see nothing. Never a sound came to him save that of their own quiet
progress. They went forward a dozen steps and Zoraida paused abruptly.
Another dozen steps and again a pause. Then he heard the soft jingle
of keys in her hands; lock after lock she found swiftly in the dark
until she must have shot back five or six bolts; a door opened before
them. He could not see it, since beyond was a dark no less
impenetrable, but caught the familiar creak of hinges. He heard the
door close softly when they had gone through; he heard the several
bolts shot back. Then Zoraida left him, groped a moment and thereafter
the tiny flare of a match in her upheld hand showed her to him and,
vaguely, his surroundings. They stood in a low-vaulted, narrow
passageway through what appeared to be rock.
Set in a shallow niche in the wall was a small lamp which Zoraida
lighted. She held it high and continued along the passageway. Now
Kendric saw that a long tunnel ran ahead of them, walls and ceiling
rudely chisseled, the uneven floor pitching gently downward. Herein
two men, their elbows striking, might walk abreast; here a man as tall
as Kendric must stoop now and then. The tunnel ran straight a score of
paces, then turned abruptly to the right. Here was another door with
its reenforcement of riveted steel bars and its half dozen bolts and
padlocks. Zoraida gave him the lamp to hold, then produced a second
bunch of keys and one after the other opened the padlocks. The door
swung back noiselessly; they went through, Zoraida closed it and
dropped into place the steel bars.
"Doors and bars and locks and keys enough," mocked Kendric, "to guard
the treasure of the Montezumas!"
She turned upon him with her slow, mysterious smile.
"And not alone in doors and locks has Zoraida put her faith," she said.
"If I had not prepared the way neither you nor another man, though he
held the keys, could ever have come so far! I have been before and
removed certain small obstructions. Come! I will show you others,
Zoraida's true safeguards."
They were in a small square chamber faced with oak on all sides
excepting ceiling and floor which were of hewn rock. The panels of the
walls, each some two feet wide, had, all of them, the look of narrow
doors, each with its heavy latch. Zoraida put her hand to the nearest
latch and opened the door cautiously. Kendric saw only a long, very
narrow and dark passageway.
"Listen," commanded Zoraida.
He heard nothing.
"Toss something down into the passage," said Zoraida. "Anything, a
coin if you have no other useless object upon you."
So a coin it was. He heard it strike and roll and clink against rock.
Then he heard the other sound, a dry noise like dead leaves rattling
together. Despite him he drew back swiftly. Zoraida laughed and
closed the door.
"You know what it is then?"
He knew. It was the angry warning of a rattlesnake; his quickened
fancies pictured for him a dark alleyway whose floor was alive with the
deadly reptiles and he felt an unpleasant prickling of the flesh.
"If you went on," she told him serenely, "and you chose any door but
the right one--and there are twelve doors--you would never come to the
end of a short hallway. And, even though you happened to choose the
right door, it were best for you if Zoraida went ahead. Come, my
friend."
She opened another door and stepped into the narrow opening. Though he
had little enough liking for the expedition, Kendric followed. Once
more he heard a rustling as of thousands of dry, parched leaves, and
was at loss to know whence came the ominous sound. Again Zoraida
laughed, saying: "I have been before and prepared the way," and they
went on. Then came another door with still other bars and locks.
Zoraida unlocked one after the other, then stood back, looking at him
with the old mischief showing vaguely in her eyes.
"Open and enter," she said.
He threw back the door. But on the threshold he stopped and stared and
marveled. Zoraida's pleased laughter now was like a child's.
"You are the first man, since Zoraida's father died, to come here," she
told him. "And never another man will come here until you and I are
dead. It is a place of ancient things, my friend; it is the heart of
Ancient Mexico."
The heart of Ancient Mexico! Without her words he would have known,
would have felt. For old influences held on and the atmosphere of the
time of the Montezumas still pervaded the place. He forgot even
Zoraida as he stepped forward and stopped again, marveling.
Here was a chamber of colossal proportions and more than a chamber in
that it gave the impression of being without walls or roof. And in a
way the impression was correct for straight overhead Kendric saw a
ragged section of the heavens, bright with stars, and at first he
failed to see the remote walls because of the shrubbery everywhere.
Here was a strange underground garden that might have been the
courtyard to an oriental monarch's palace, a region of spraying
fountains, of heavily scented flowers, of berry-bearing shrubs, of
birds of brilliant plumage. It was night; the stars cast small light
down here into the depths of earth; and yet it was some moments before
the startled Kendric asked himself the question: "Where does the full
light come from?" And it was still other moments before he located the
first of the countless lamps, lamps with green shades lost behind
foliage, lamps set in recesses, lamps everywhere but cunningly placed
so that one was bathed in their light without having the source of the
illumination thrust into notice.
That here, at some long dead time of Mexican history, had been the
retreat of some barbaric king Kendric did not doubt from the first
sweeping glance. He knew something of the way in which the ancient
monarchs had builded pleasure palaces for their luxurious relaxation;
how whole armies of slaves, captured in war, were set at a giant task
like other captives in older days in Egypt; he knew how thousands, tens
of thousands of such poor wretches hopelessly toiled to build with
their misery places of flowers and ease; how to celebrate many a temple
or palace completed these poor artificers in a mournful procession of
hundreds or thousands as the dignity of the endeavor required, went to
the sacrifice. Now, standing here at Zoraida's side in this great
still place, these thoughts winged to him swiftly, and for the moment
he felt close to the past of Mexico.
"What was once the country place of Nezahualcoyoti, the Golden King of
Tezcuco," said Zoraida, "is now the favorite garden of Zoraida. For
the great Nezahualcoyoti captive workmen, laboring through the days and
nights of many years, builded here as we see, my friend. Here he was
wont to come when he would have relief from royal labor and intrigue,
to shut himself up with music and feasting and those he loved. Here he
came, be sure, with the beloved princess whom he ravished away from the
old lord of Tepechpan. And here she remained awaiting him when he
returned to the royal place at Tezcotzinco. And here were placed, four
hundred and fifty years ago, the ashes of the golden king and of his
beloved princess--and here they remain until this night. Come, Señor
Americano; you shall see something of Zoraida's garden which after
Nezahualcoyoti came in due time to be Montezuma's and after him,
Guatamotzin's."
Kendric found himself drawn out of his angry mood of a few minutes
past, charmed out of himself by his environment. Following Zoraida he
passed along a broad walk winding through low shrubs and lined on each
side with uniform stones of various colors that were like jewels.
These boundaries were no doubt of choice fragments of finely polished
chalcedony and jasper and obsidian; they were red and yellow and black
and, at regular intervals, a pale exquisite blue which in the rays of
the lamps were as beautiful as turquoises. They passed about a screen
of dwarf cedars and came upon a tiny lakelet across which a boy might
have hurled a stone; in the center, sprayed by a fountain that shone
like silver, was a life-sized statue in marble representing a slender
graceful maiden.
"The beloved princess," whispered Zoraida.
They went on, skirting the pool in which Kendric saw the stars
mirrored. Now and then there was a splash; he made out a tortoise
scrambling into the water; he caught the glint of a fish. They
disturbed birds that flew from their hidden places in the trees; a
little rabbit, like a tiny ball of fur, shot across their path.
Before them the central walk lay in shadows, under a vine-covered
trellis. A hundred paces they went on, catching enchanting glimpses
through the walls of leaves. Here was a column, gleaming white,
elaborately carved with what were perhaps the triumphs of the golden
king or some later monarch; yonder the walls of a miniature temple,
more guessed than seen among the low trees; on every hand some relic of
the olden time. Suddenly and without warning amidst all of this tender
beauty of flowers and murmurous water and birds and perfumes Kendric
came upon that which lasted on as a true sign to recall the strange
nature of the ancient Aztec, a nation of refinement and culture and
hideous barbarism and cruelty; a nation of epicures who upon great
feast days ate of elaborately-served dishes of human flesh; a people
who, in a garden like this, could find no inconsistency, no clash of
discordancy, in introducing that which bespoke merciless cruelty and
death, a grim token and reminder that a king's palace was a slaughter
house as well; a strange race whose ears were attuned to ravishing
strains of music and yet found no breach of harmony if those singing
notes were pierced through with the shrieks of the tortured dying.
Just opposite the most enchanting spot in these underground groves of
pleasure was a great pyramidal heap of human skulls, thousands of them.
"The builders," explained Zoraida calmly. "Those who obeyed the
commands of the Tezcucan king, who made his dream a reality, who were
in the end sacrificed here. Five priests, alternating with another
five, were unremitting night and day until at last the great sacrifice
was complete. The records are there," and she pointed to a remote
corner of the garden where vaguely through the greenery he made out
stone columns; "I have seen them and I have made my own tally. Not
less than ten thousand captives expired here." It struck Kendric that
there was a note of pride in her tone. "Look; yonder is the great
stone of sacrifice."
He drew closer, at once repelled and fascinated. A few yards from the
base of the heap of skulls was a great block of jasper, polished and of
a smoothness like glass. Upon this one after another of ten thousand
human beings, strong struggling men and perhaps women and children had
lain, while priests as terrible as vultures held them, while one priest
of high skill and infinite cruelty drove his knife and made his gash
and withdrew the anguished beating heart to hold it high above his
head. Again Zoraida pointed; on the stone lay the ancient knife, a
blade of "itztli," obsidian, dark, translucent, as hard as flint, a
product of volcanic fires.
Kendric turned from stone and knife and human relics and looked with
strange new wonder at Zoraida. She claimed kin with the royalty of
this ancient order; perhaps her claim was just. He had wondered if she
were mad; was not his answer now given him? Was she not after all that
not uncommon thing called a throw-back, a reversion to an ancestral
type? If in fact there flowed in her veins the blood of that princess
of the golden king of Tezcuco who could have smiled at the whisperings
of her lord and the tender cadences of music floating through the
gardens his love had made for her, while just here his priests made
their sacrifices and she, turning her eyes from his ardent ones, now
and then languorously watched--was Zoraida mad or was she simply
ancient Aztec or Toltec or Tezcucan, born four or five hundred years
after her time? Her slow smile now as she watched him and no doubt
read at least a portion of what lay in his mind, was baffling; he might
have been looking back through the long dead years upon the Tezcucan's
princess: in her eyes were tender passion and a glint that might have
been a reflection of light from the sacrificial knife.
Speculation aside, here was one point which Zoraida herself had vouched
for: since girlhood she had been accustomed to coming here. It would
appear inevitable that the atmosphere of the place would have deeply
influenced young fancies; that what she was now was largely due to
these conflicting influences. What wonder that she saw nothing
unlikely in her dreamings of herself as queen of a newly created
empire? All that Zoraida was, all that she did, all that she
threatened to do, the passion and the regal manner and the look of a
naked knife in her eyes, was but to be expected.
Zoraida led on and he followed. Their way led toward the stonework he
had glimpsed through the shrubs and vines. Here was a many-roomed
building, walls richly carved into records of ancient feasts and
glories, battles and triumphs. They passed in through a wide entrance;
within the walls were lined with satiny hardwoods, the panels chosen
with nice regard to color and grain. Doors opened to right and left
and ahead, giving views of other chambers on some walls of which still
hung ancient cloths; there were chairs and tables and benches and
chests. Zoraida went on, straight ahead and to the doorway of a much
larger, high-vaulted chamber. And again was Kendric treated to a fresh
surprise.
As she stood in the door and he looked over her shoulder, six old men,
evidently awaiting her arrival, bent themselves almost to the floor in
a reverential posture that expressed greeting and adoration. Again
Kendric's fancies were drawn back into ancient Mexico. They wore loose
white cotton robes; their beards fell on their aged breasts; in their
sashes were long knives of itztli, like that upon the sacrificial
stone. They might have been the old priests who sacrificed for the
Tezcucan, their existences prolonged eternally here in an atmosphere of
antiquity.
Zoraida spoke and they straightened, and one man answered. Kendric
could not understand a word. Then, shuffling their sandaled feet, the
six went out through a door at the side.
"I thought you said," said Kendric, "that since your father's death no
man had entered here?"
"And do these six look as though they had come here recently from the
outside world?" she retorted, smiling. "The youngest of them, Señor
Jim, first came to Nezahualcoyotl's gardens more than sixty years ago.
When he was less than a year old, hence bringing with him no knowledge
of any other place than this."
"And you mean that they have never gone out from here?"
"Would they thrust their heads through solid rock? Would they tread
along corridors carpeted with snakes? Would they grow wings and soar
to the stars up there? Not only have they never gone out; they do not
so much as know that there is an Outside to go to."
"But you come to them!"
Zoraida laughed.
"And I am a spirit, a goddess to worship, the One who has always been,
the power that created this spot and themselves!"
"They are captives and caretakers of a sort?" he supposed. "But when
they are dead? Who then will keep up your elaborate gardens?"
"Wait. They are returning. There is your answer."
The six ancients filed back. Each man of them led by the hand a little
child, the oldest not yet seven or eight. All boys, all bright and
handsome; all filled with worship for Zoraida. For they broke away
from the old men and ran forward, some of them carrying flowers, and
threw themselves on their knees and kissed Zoraida's gown. And then,
with wide, wondering eyes they looked from her to Jim Kendric.
"Poor little kids," he muttered. And suddenly whirling wrathfully on
Zoraida: "Where do they come from? Whose children are they?"
"There are mysteries and mysteries," she told him, coldly.
"Stolen from their mothers by your damned brigands!" he burst out.
She turned blazing eyes on him.
"Be careful, Jim Kendric!" she warned. "Here you are in Zoraida's
stronghold, here you are in her hand! Is act of hers to be questioned
by you?"
She made a sudden signal. The six little boys withdrew, walking
backward, their round worshipful eyes glued upon their goddess. Then
they were gone, the old men with them, a heavy door closing behind them.
"Again I did not lie to you," said Zoraida. "Since though these have
come recently, they are not yet men. Follow me again."
They went through the long room and into another. This time Zoraida
thrust aside a deep purple curtain, fringed in gold. Here was a
smaller chamber, absolutely without furnishings of any kind. But
Kendric did not miss chairs or table, his interest being entirely given
to the three young men standing before him like soldiers at attention.
Heavy limbed, muscular fellows they were, clad only in short white
tunics, each with a plain gold band about his forehead. In the hand of
each was a great, two-edged knife, horn handled, as long as a man's arm.
"These came just before my father gave his keys to Zoraida," the girl
told him: "There are three more of them who sleep while these guard."
Again Kendric saw in the eyes turned upon them a sheer worship of
Zoraida, a wonder at him. Zoraida lifted her hand; the three bowed
low. She spoke softly and they withdrew slowly to the further wall,
walking backward as the children had done. Then one of them lifted
down the five bars across a door, employing a rude key from his own
belt. And when he had done so and stepped aside Zoraida with her own
keys in five different heavy steel locks opened the way. She swung the
door open and Kendric followed her. As in the adobe house here was a
place where a curtain beyond the doorway hid from any chance eyes what
might lie in this room. Only when the door was again shut and locked
did Zoraida push the curtain aside. Another match, another big lamp
lighted--and Kendric needed no telling that he was in an ancient
treasure chamber.
There were long gleaming-topped tables of hardwood; there were
exquisitely wrought and embroidered fabrics covering them; strewn
across the tables were countless objects of inestimable value. Vases
and pitchers and plates of hammered gold; golden goblets set with rich
stones; ropes of silver; vessels of many curious shapes, some as small
as walnuts, some as large as water pitchers, but all of the precious
metals; knives with blades of obsidian and handles of gold; mirrors of
selected obsidian bound around in gold; necklaces, coronets, polished
stone jars heaped with gold dust. One table appeared to be heaped high
with strange-looking books; ancient writings, Zoraida told him,
heiroglyphs on the _mauguey_ that is so like the papyrus of the Nile.
"And look," laughed Zoraida. "Here is something that would open the
greedy eyes of your friend Barlow."
She opened a cedar box and poured forth the contents. Pearls, pearls
by the double handful, such as she had worn that night at Ortega's
gambling house, many times in number those which Barlow had declared
would make Kendric's twenty thousand dollars "look sick." In the
lamplight their soft effulgence stirred even the blood of Jim Kendric.
"When the great Tzin Guatamo knew that he would die a dog's death at
the hands of the conquerors," Zoraida said, "he had as much of the
royal treasury as he could lay his hands on brought here. The
Spaniards guessed and demanded to be told the hiding place.
Guatamotzin locked his lips. They tortured him; he looked calmly back
into their enraged eyes and locked his lips the tighter. They killed
him but he kept his secret."
She had mentioned Barlow, and just now Kendric's thoughts had more to
do with the present and the immediate future than with a remote and
legendary history.
"So," he said, "while Barlow and I made our long journey south, seeking
the treasure of the Montezumas, you already had had it safe under lock
and key for God knows how long!"
"Choose what pleases you most, Señor Jim," she said. "That I may make
you a rich gift."
But though for a moment the glowing pearls, the gold and silver
trinklets held his eyes, he shook his head.
"It strikes me," he said bluntly, "that you and I are not such friends
that rich gifts need pass from one to the other of us."
"Then not even all this," and with a quick gesture she indicated all of
the wealth that surrounded him, "can move you? Are you man, Jim
Kendric, or a mechanical thing of levers and springs set into a man's
form?"
"I have never had the modern madness of lusting for gold; that is all,"
he told her.
"Not entirely modern," she retorted, "since here are ancient hoardings;
nor yet entirely mad, since it is pure wisdom to put out a hand for the
supreme lever of worldly power. You are a strange man, Señor Jim!"
"I am what I am," he said simply. "And, like other men, content with
my own desires and dreamings."
She studied him, for a while in open perplexity, then in as frank a
glowing admiration. That he should set aside with a careless hand that
which meant so much to her, but made of him in her eyes a sort of
superman.
"The thing to do," said Kendric out of a short silence, "is to open
your doors and let me go back to the States. I came here looking for
treasure trove; your claim antedates mine and I am no highwayman."
Zoraida seated herself in a big carved chair by the long table whereon
lay the ancient writings, folded like fans and protected between leaves
of decorated woods of various shapes and colors.
"Let me tell you two things, my friend. Three, rather. You saw the
sky just now and thought to yourself that all of my safeguards here
would be foolish and unavailing if a man sought the way to make his
entrance from above? Be sure the way is guarded there, too. Above us
towers Little Quetzel Hill, which is a long dead volcano; the hole you
saw was in the bottom of the cone. If a man sought to come to it,
first he must climb a steep and dangerous mountain flank. The old
kings did not forget so obvious a thing. Captives toiled up there
while their fellows burrowed down here; the hazardous way through
infinite labor continuing through many years, was made infinitely more
hazardous. There are balanced rocks of a thousand tons' weight that
are secure in the outward seeming, placed to hurl to destruction the
adventurer who sets an unwary foot on them; there is a spring, and it
is death to drink of it; there are pits for a man to slide down into
and in the bottoms of these pits are countless venomous snakes; there
are traps set such as men of our time know nothing of. There have been
chance travelers up yonder at infrequent intervals and for every such
traveler there has been a death so that the mountain bears an evil
name. And, further, should a hardy spirit once win to the hole in the
bottom of the volcano's cone and find the way to lower himself hundreds
of feet into the gardens, there is always, night and day, one of
Zoraida's guards at the spot where he must descend, and that guard,
night and day, is armed and eager to grapple with a devil whom he has
been told to expect soon or late."
"I have told you," said Kendric, "that I have no wish to steal that
which is another's."
"One thing I have told you; here is another. I speak it frankly
because I may gain by it and am not in the least afraid of losing,
since your destiny lies in my hands! It is that only a portion of the
great treasure is here with us; another portion was hidden outside."
She put her hand on one of the tinted manuscripts. "The tale is here.
The treasure bearers were trapped in the mountains by the Spanish; they
had no time to come here. One by one they were killed. They hid much
gold where they must. That is the 'loot' of which your friend Barlow
speaks; that is the treasure which the Spanish priests knew of and held
accursed. And that, Señor Jim, I would add to what I have here!"
She amazed him. Her eyes glittered, the fever of gold lust was in her
blood. With all this hers--his eye swept the wealth-laden tables and
chests--she still coveted gold, other gold!
"The third thing," said Zoraida sharply, "that you may understand why I
mention to you the second, is this: You will never go free until I say
the word! And I shall never say the word until you and I have brought
the rest and placed it here!"
So there was other treasure! Like this, rich, wrought vessels, fine
gold, pearls perhaps! And Zoraida did not yet know where it was;
Barlow had had enough sense to keep his mouth closed. Jim Kendric's
thoughts flew back and forth rapidly; the strange thing was that at a
time like this the vision which shaped itself, vivid and clear cut in
his mind, was of little Betty Gordon with a double string of pearls
around her throat!
"Of what are you thinking?" demanded Zoraida sharply. She had been
watching him keenly. "There is a look in your eyes----"
For an instant she almost dared think that that look was for her; Jim
flushed. Zoraida's black brows gathered, her eyes went as deadly cruel
as ever were the eyes of her ancient forebears though they watched the
priests at the sacrificial stone.
"You think of her!" she cried angrily. She stamped upon the stone
floor, she clenched her hands and lifted them high above her head in a
sudden access and abandon of rage. "You think that, having made mock
of me, you shall turn to her? Fool! Seven times accursed fool! I
will show you the doll-faced, baby-eyed girl--and you will see, too,
what fate I have reserved for her. To cross the path of Zoraida
means---- But what are words? You shall see!"
With a strange sick sinking of his heart Kendric followed her,
forgetting the treasure about him.