IN WHICH THE GRAY FRIAR DONS THE LIVERY OF SATAN
“It was a miracle! A voice from heaven whispered in my ear, and,
turning back, I left de Tonti, angry, threatening, to take his way
alone. To give my Chatémuc the words of absolution at the last, the
Virgin Mother led me by the hand. And now in Paradise he wears a
martyr’s crown. The saints be praised!”
The earnest eyes of the Franciscan were turned upward in an ecstasy of
gratitude and devotion. Seated upon a wooden bench by the gray friar’s
side, de Sancerre listened musingly to Membré’s account of the Italian
captain’s attempt to entice him back to de la Salle’s camp before he
had learned the outcome of Chatémuc’s effort to extinguish a flame from
hell.
Noco, well understanding the present temper of the sun-worshipping
priesthood, and acting upon a command given to her by the Great Sun
himself, had managed, with considerable difficulty, to persuade
de Sancerre and Katonah to secrete themselves for a time in her
unpretentious but not comfortless hut. Her rescue of Zenobe Membré
from his threatening environment at the martyred Mohican’s side had
been, she flattered herself, a triumph of adroitness, and she sat in
a dark corner of the room at this moment whispering to her gigantic
grandson. Cabanacte, warm praise of her own cleverness. She had saved
the Franciscan from the immediate vengeance of the sun-worshipping
priests by suggesting to the latter that the summary execution of the
gray-frocked singer of unorthodox chants might arouse the anger of
Coyocop, whose coming, prophecy had told them, was connected, in some
occult way, with the predicted advent of the white-faced envoys from
the moon. Sated with the cruel entertainment vouchsafed to them by the
death-twitchings of the stoical Chatémuc, the white-robed guardians
of the sun-temple had permitted the Franciscan to depart with Noco,
although the latter well knew that thenceforth every movement which she
and her gray-garbed companion made would be noted by the dark eyes of
fanatical spies.
The room in which the refugees--for such the antagonism of the dominant
sun-priests had made them--had found shelter for the night was a
picturesque apartment, fifteen feet in length and breadth, and lighted
by flickering gleams from the embers of a fire of walnut-wood. Upon a
bed of plaited reeds, resting upon a wooden frame two feet high, lay
Katonah, grief-stricken, motionless, making no sound. Heart-broken
at her brother’s awful fate, the Indian maiden nursed her sorrow in
loneliness and silence. In vain had the good friar attempted to console
her for her irreparable loss by painting, in eloquent words, the
rewards awaiting a martyr who died for love of Mother Church. Katonah
was too recent a convert to the Franciscan’s faith to realize and
rejoice in the unseen glories of her brother’s heroic self-sacrifice.
She had listened to Membré’s soothing words with a grateful smile
upon her strong, symmetrical face, but evident relief had come to her
when the gray-frocked enthusiast had retired from her bedside to seat
himself beside de Sancerre in the centre of the room.
“Pardieu!” muttered the Frenchman, casting a searching glance at the
corner in which Noco and Cabanacte were engaged in earnest, low-voiced
converse, “these people show outward signs of enlightenment, but they
have a most brutal way of putting a man to death. The savage delight
which those white-robed devils seemed to take in basting poor Chatémuc
made my sword-point itch. ’Twas well for me Saint Maturin was kind.
He checked my folly just in time! But listen, father! The martyrdom
of Chatémuc must now suffice. Those imps of hell will have your life,
anon, unless you foil their craft by craft. I think I hear their
stealthy footsteps menacing these sun-cooked walls and making challenge
of our god, the moon.”
The Franciscan put up his hand to enforce silence that he might
listen to the furtive footfalls outside the hut. At that moment Noco
and her grandson stole toward the centre of the room. The stalwart
sun-worshipper, who now looked upon de Sancerre as a supernatural being
worthy of the most reverential treatment, towered aloft in the narrow
chamber like a keen-eyed, sun-burnt ogre who had lured a number of
unlucky dwarfs to his den to have his grim way with them. Stretching
his long body at full length before the sputtering fire, Cabanacte
turned his admiring gaze toward the troubled face of his fleet-footed
conqueror and waited for Noco to put into words the thoughts which
fretted him.
“You--all of you--must leave here to-night, señor,” said the old woman
in a guttural whisper. “The Brother of the Sun is your friend, but
the priests of the temple look with suspicion upon you and the gray
chanter. They would not dare to defy openly the King, but they have
tracked you to this hiding-place and will work you mischief if they
may.”
“But, señora, I fear them not!” exclaimed de Sancerre, drawing his
rapier and allowing the fire-flashes to gleam along the steel. “Saving
the father’s presence here, one sword against a priesthood is enough.
My tongue’s as boastful as a Gascon’s, is it not? But list to this,
señora! I leave here only when I’ve had some speech with Coyocop,
the spirit of the sun. When that may be I do not know, but Louis de
Sancerre, a moonbeam’s eldest son, has sworn an oath--and so, señora,
my welcome I must stretch.”
Cabanacte, who had learned a little distorted Spanish from his
loquacious grandparent, had caught the drift of the Frenchman’s speech.
Putting forth a large, brown hand, shapely in its massiveness, he
touched the buckles upon de Sancerre’s shoes and exclaimed, in what
sounded like a parody upon Noco’s rendition of an alien tongue:
“Good! Good! The son of moonbeams has a lofty soul! And Cabanacte is
his body-guard! No harm shall come to you, despite the oath our priests
have sworn!”
The smile upon de Sancerre’s ever-changing face was the visible sign
of varied emotions. Pleased at the cordial proffer of Cabanacte’s
friendship, the Frenchman was astonished to discover that the giant
had picked up a Spanish vocabulary which, in spite of his peculiar
pronunciation, was not wholly useless. That the survival of a Spanish
_patois_ among these sun-worshippers suggested a pathetic page of
unwritten history de Sancerre realized, but his mind at that moment
was too disturbed to linger long over an ethnological and linguistic
problem. Turning to face the Franciscan friar, he said:
“Père Membré, these pagan priests seek vengeance upon you. They have no
reason yet for hating me, a splinter from a moonbeam who makes no open
war against their creed. But, for the cause of Mother Church, we must
lure them from their grim idolatry. Let Cabanacte use his strength and
wits to find a pathway leading to our camp by which you may return.
Here I shall stay until our leader, coming North again, shall send me
word to quit this place, leaving behind me a friendly race, soil ready
for the seeds of living truth.”
It was not excessive self-laudation which had led de Sancerre to
believe that he possessed the qualifications essential to success in
diplomacy. Whenever he had set out to effect a purpose seemingly worthy
of studied effort, he had found no difficulty in checking the satirical
tendencies of his flippant tongue. At this moment he was gazing at the
Franciscan’s disturbed countenance with eyes which seemed to gleam
with the fervor of his zeal for Mother Church. Wishing to convince
Père Membré that the ultimate conversion of these pagans from their
worship of hell-fire to the true faith depended upon their possession
of a hostage who should study their manners and customs and learn the
shortest path by which their unregenerated souls might be reached, de
Sancerre explained his plan of action to the friar with an unctuous
fervor which convinced the latter that he had underestimated the errant
courtier’s enthusiasm as a proselyter.
“But the Mohican maiden, monsieur? I owe it to Chatémuc, the martyr,
now with the saints in Paradise, to place her in the care of de la
Salle. His sword, my crucifix, must guard Katonah for her brother’s
sake.”
The walnut embers in the clumsy fireplace had grown black and cold. For
some time past no sound had reached the ears of the schemers from the
menacing environment outside the hut. The moon had touched its midnight
goal, and sought, in passing, to probe the secrets of old Noco’s home.
“_Bonnement!_” exclaimed de Sancerre. “Go to her at once, good father,
and tell her that ’tis best she should return with you to-night. I’ll
join you presently. Meanwhile, I must have further speech with Noco and
her grandson.”
Presently the moonbeams, which had stolen into the hut through chinks
between the timbers and the hardened mud, threw a dim light upon a
most impressive tableau. The white face of the Frenchman was bent
close to the dusky visage of the athletic sun-worshipper, while Noco,
squatting upon the ground, bent toward them her wrinkled, grinning
countenance, an effigy of “Gossip,” wrought in bronze. Bending over the
reed-made couch upon which Katonah, dumb with misery, lay listening,
stood the gray friar, whispering to the phlegmatic and seemingly
obedient maiden the Frenchman’s late behest.
Before the moonbeams could take their tale abroad, the scene had
changed. From a corner of the hut Noco had brought to the Franciscan
and his charge flowing garments of white mulberry bark, in which
Katonah and the friar reluctantly enrobed themselves. With a harmless
dye, old Noco, whose time-tested frame seemed to defy fatigue, deftly
changed the protesting Membré’s white complexion to light mahogany.
“Mother of Mary! I fear me this is sacrilege,” muttered the friar,
nervously seeking his breviary beneath the white uniform of a lost
sun-worshipper. “_Satis, superque!_ You’ll make my face, old woman,
as black as Satan’s heart! The saints forgive me! Were not my life of
value to the Church, I’d gladly die before I’d don this ghostly livery
of sin.”
Meanwhile de Sancerre had been straining his weary eyes in the effort
to scratch a message to de la Salle with his dagger’s-point upon a slip
of white bark.
“The Spanish have tampered with a mighty nation,” he wrote. “I remain
to learn the truth; to find a way to win them to our king. Camp where
you are when you return. I’ll learn of your approach, rejoin you
then, and bring you news most worthy your concern. _Au revoir, mon
capitaine!_ For France, with sword and crucifix!”
As he scrawled his signature beneath these words, Katonah glided
silently to his side, a maiden whose grace was not destroyed by her
unwonted garb, a costume enhancing the dark beauty of her proud,
melancholy face. Her light hand rested gently upon his arm for a moment.
“The good father tells me that you would have me go,” she murmured in
a voice of mingled resignation and regret. De Sancerre, handing her
the slip of mulberry bark upon which he had scratched a message to his
leader, smiled up into the yearning face of the lonely girl.
“Give this to our captain, Sieur de la Salle,” he said, sharply. “Fail
not, Katonah! My life, I think, depends upon this scrawl.”
A smile flashed across the maiden’s mournful face as she pressed the
bark to her bosom, heaving with a conflict of emotions to which no
words of hers could give relief.
“His hand shall hold it ere the sun is up,” she said, simply.
“Farewell!”
De Sancerre, looking up into the girl’s eyes felt, with amazement, the
tears creeping into his. He bent his head and imprinted a kiss upon her
slender, trembling hand, which felt like ice beneath his lips.
“Courage, _ma petite_!” he cried, with forced gayety. “You will return
anon! And then, the river once again, and home--and friends--and--”
His voice broke, and when he had regained his self-control he saw that
Katonah had joined Cabanacte and the friar at the entrance to the hut.