"What is this?" I asked, surprised, because he was ordinarily so amiable of nature. "Why do you revile our meritorious warrior women?"
"That one has not told you, Tenamáxtzin? Of the two they so incompetently killed?"
Butterfly and I regarded him with puzzlement, and I said, "Two white soldiers, yes, who surprised them while they were very capably doing their duty."
"Our two white soldiers, Tenamáxtzin. The men you called Señor Uno and Señor Dos."
"Yya ayya," I murmured, really sadly.
"They were our allies?" asked Butterfly. "How should we have known? They were mounted. They were armored and bearded. They waved swords. They shouted."
"They would have been shouting encouragement, you blundering woman!" said Nochéztli. "Could you not see that their horses were without saddles?"
Butterfly looked chagrined, but shrugged. "Ours was a dawn attack. Not many people were dressed."
To me, Nochéztli said ruefully, "They had been riding before me, so I came upon their remains right after they were blown to pieces. I could not even tell which man was which. Indeed, it would have been hard to tell their fragments from those of their horses."
"Be easy, Nochéztli," I said with a sigh. "We shall miss them, but there are bound to be such casualties in any war. Let us just hope that Uno and Dos are now in their Christian heaven, if that is where they would wish to be, with their Harry and George. Now, back to the business of our war. Give orders that the men, as soon as each has had his satisfaction with the captured women, are to fan out through the town and loot it. Salvage everything that might be of use to us—weapons, pólvora, lead, armor, horses, clothes, blankets, any portable provisions. When every ruin and every surviving building has been emptied, it is to be set afire. Nothing is to be left of Tonalá except the church and palace here."
Nochéztli dismounted and went among his under-officers, passing along those orders, then returned to me and asked:
"Why, my lord, are you sparing these two buildings?"
"For one thing, they will not easily burn," I said, dismounting also. "And we could not possibly make enough granadas to tear them down. But chiefly I am leaving those for a certain Spanish friend—a truly good Christian white man. If he outlives this war, he will have something around which to build anew. He has already told me that this place will have a new name. Now, come, let us have a look inside the palace."
The lower floor of that stone building had been the soldiers' barracks, and it was expectably in disorder, since its inhabitants had so wildly scrambled out a little while before. We climbed the stairs and found ourselves in a warren of small rooms, all furnished with chairs and tables, some rooms full of books, others full of shelved maps or stacked documents. In one was a table on which lay a thick sheaf of fine Spanish paper, an inkhorn, a penknife and a jar full of goose quills. Beside them lay an ink-stained quill and a paper only half written over, by whatever scribe had been at work there the day before. I stood looking at those things for a moment, then said to Nochéztli:
"I was told that there is, among our slave contingent, a certain girl who can read and write the Spanish language. A Moro or a mongrel, I forget. Ride back to our encampment, right now, at a gallop, find that girl and bring her here, as quickly as you can. Also send in some of our men to scavenge whatever is useful from the soldiers' quarters downstairs. I will wait here for you and the girl, after I have visited the church next door."
The Tonalá church was as modest in size and appointments as was the church Bishop Quiroga currently occupied in Compostela. One of the three men in there was a priest, decently dressed in the usual black, the other two were pudgy, merchant-looking men, ridiculously clad in nightwear and whatever other clothes they had had time to fling over them. They both quailed back from me, against the altar rail, but the priest boldly came forward, thrusting a carved wooden cross at me and babbling in that Church language that I had heard at the few Masses I had once attended.
"Not even other Spaniards can understand that nonsensical guirígay, padre," I said sharply. "Speak to me in some sensible tongue."
"Very well, you heathen renegade!" he snapped. "I was adjuring you, in the name and language of the Lord, to depart from these sacred precincts."
"Renegade?" I repeated. "You seem to assume that I am some white man's runaway slave. I am not. And these precincts are mine, built on the land of my people. I am here to reclaim them."
"This is the property of Holy Mother Church! Who do you think you are?"
"I know who I am. But your Holy Mother Church gave me the name of Juan Británico."
"Dear God!" he exclaimed, appalled. "Then you are apostate! A heretic! Worse than a heathen!"
"Far worse," I said pleasantly. "Who are those two men?"
"The alcalde of Tonalá, Don José Osado Algarve de Sierra. And the corregidor, Don Manuel Adolfo del Monte."
"The town's two foremost citizens, then. What are they doing here?"
"God's house is sanctuary. Holy refuge. Inviolable. It would be sacrilege were they to be harmed here."
"So they cringe cowardly behind your skirts, padre, and abandon their people to the storm and the strangers? Including their own loved ones, perhaps? Anyway, I do not share your superstitions."
I stepped around him and, with my sword, stabbed each of the men to the heart.
The priest cried, "Those señores were high and valued functionaries of His Majesty King Carlos!"
"I do not believe that. Anyone of any majesty could hardly have been proud of them."
"I adjure you again, you monster! Begone from this church of God! Remove all your savages from this parish of God!"
"I will," I said equably, turning to look out the door. "As soon as they tire of it."
The priest joined me at the door and said, beseechingly now, "In God's name, man, some of those poor females yonder are children. Many were virgins. Some of them are virgin nuns. The brides of Christ."
"They will shortly be with their husband, then. I hope he proves tolerant of his wives' impairments. Come with me, padre. I wish you to see something, probably less distressing than this sight."
I ushered him out of the church, and there I found, among others of my men not busy at the moment, the trustworthy Iyac Pozonáli, to whom I said, "I am putting this white priest in your charge, Iyac. I do not think you need expect him to make mischief. Only stay by him to keep him from harm by any of our people."
Then I led them both into the palace and upstairs to that writing room, and pointed to the partly done document, and told the priest, "Read that to me, if you can."
"Of course I can. It is merely a respectful salutation. It says, To the very illustrious Señor Don Antonio de Mendoza, viceroy and governor for His Majesty in this New Spain, president of the Audiencia and the Royal Chancellery...' That is all. Evidently the alcalde was about to dictate to the scribe some report or request to be sent to the viceroy."
"Thank you. That will do."
"Now you kill me, too?"
"No. And for that, be thankful to another padre whom I once knew. I have already instructed this warrior to be your companion and protector."
"Then may I take my leave? There are last rites to be bestowed on my many, many unfortunate parishioners, and short shrift it is that I can give them."
"Vaya con Dios, padre," I said, meaning no irony, and gestured for Pozonáli to go with him. Then I simply stood and looked out the window of that room, at what was still going on in the square below, and at the fires beginning to spring up at more distant places in the town, and I waited for Nochéztli to return with the reading-and-writing girl slave.