The King's Fifth: Chapters 17–21

Now that I was alone I opened my hand and looked at the nugget. Before, when I had seen it at dawn, the color was subdued, but in the sun the whole thing glittered and shone.

Carefully I wrapped it in a piece of cloth cut from my jerkin.

He left the fire and in a short time returned with his dirk and a small stone. He sat down, thrust his bare feet toward the blaze, and began to sharpen the knife.

Mendoza said nothing more, but the knife slid back and forth across the stone. The honing ceased.

Father Francisco glanced at the gold. “You have reaped much,” he said, “but I have reaped more. When the sun rises tomorrow it will shine on a new cross. We have built one from oak and it stands eight cubits high.”

Mendoza feigned surprise.

When the Moors were driven from the city, to save their lives and possessions they rushed to accept the Faith. So many infidels filled the churches that it was necessary to baptize them by mops twirled over their heads.

Waiting stiffly as the incantation was three times repeated, Father Francisco suffered the pagan ceremony because he must.

“I go to ask his forgiveness. Although I myself do not forgive this act.” Mendoza was sullen.

In a short time Father Francisco returned to say that the cacique had absolved us of wrongdoing.

I looked for Father Francisco, wondering if he had seen, but he was hidden by a willow copse.

Mendoza said, “The fire is a great misfortune, revered Father. I thought that it had died out. But the wind, the wind searched around in the ashes and found a spark.”

But so regretfully had the captain spoken, so humble were his words, that if any doubts crossed the priest’s mind they were fleeting.

These are not his own papers, therefore, but papers sent to him from somewhere, possibly by the Viceroy or from the frontier in Guadalajara.

I hear Don Felipe whispering over and over, “Madre de Dios," like an old crone, and the onlookers muttering among themselves and Counsel Gamboa on his feet with a shout and one of the judges rapping on the table.

It is another hot day, with waves of heat rising above the leaden sea, but chills run down my back, thinking of the charge that has now been brought against me.

Gamboa insists upon speaking to me alone, so Don Felipe is forced to leave. This displeases him because he thinks of me, or so he says, as a son, and therefore should be privy to all that I do.

My supper is fulsome, made up as it is of delicacies from the officers’ table. Though I have no hunger, I make a show of eating to please Don Felipe, who hovers over me as if it is to be my last meal.

My supper is fulsome, made up as it is of delicacies from the officers’ table. Though I have no hunger, I make a show of eating to please Don Felipe, who hovers over me as if it is to be my last meal.

But it was now a race against the storm and we did not tarry.

He himself took the halter of the mule that carried the gold.

By a series of handholds cut into the cliff, we clambered aloft to the lower lip of the cave.

You first cut the hide into pieces of the right size to fit the pot. These you singe over a hot fire, removing all hair.

“How is the taste?” Roa asked again.
“Like glue,” said Torres. “Loathsome.”

I shouted an alarm to those who were asleep beside the fire and began my precarious descent of the cliff.

He sat astride the blue roan.

I was behind Torres now, so close I could touch his horse. My hope was to seize the bridle and thus stop him for a moment, long enough for Roa to use the matchlock.

Mendoza had chosen the best of the horses that were left, a big sorrel, which was no match for the roan, either over a short distance or long.

“You are a lout, Tigre. And your former master was a lout. I know now why he wished to sell you. It was for the reason that you should belong to some old lady.” He gave the big dog another slap on the head, and glanced at Roa. “You did not teach him much.”

So vast, indeed, that once, standing on the balcony of his palace in Spain, the King shaded his eyes and peered intently toward the west.

“For what is Your Majesty looking?” asked a courtier.

“All the way from the City of Mexico, safe and sound, though the messenger twice was accosted by bandits, once came near to losing his life in a flooding river, and arrived just before the storm!”

Late in the afternoon of that day we forded a stream where snow-water ran swift between greening banks.

There before us, less than a league away, jutting up from the plain, we saw a small mountain.

It was seemingly an entrance to the city, but between us and the entrance rose a sheer stone barrier, without crevice or handhold.

Father Francisco with his tonsored hair and long, gray robe, a wooden cross slung upon his back.

At last from among the throng a man, who had the bearing of a cacique, stepped forth and gave a lengthy speech of welcome.

Slowly turning the ratchet, he spanned the bow and aimed at a wall three times the distance the cacique could reach with an arrow.

On the ground Zia laid out a row of glass bangles, necklaces, thin bracelets of Toledo steel, and other oddments.

And among those tribes with whom he bartered, he must have gained a wily reputation.