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Updated: June 18, 2025
Thus Lily spoke, sobbing as she spoke, then my arms closed round her and she said no more. And yet as our lips met I thought of Otomie, remembering her words, and remembering also that she had died by her own hand on this very day a year ago. Let us pray that the dead have no vision of the living!
'You are timid as a girl who will not utter the love she burns to tell, Otomie answered with a proud and bitter laugh. 'Well, I will speak it for you. It is in your mind that we must die to-night. 'It is, I said; 'death now, or shame and agony to-morrow and then death at last, that is our choice. Since God will not protect us, we must protect ourselves if we can find the means.
Now my uncle, and you, lords, I tell you this: Slay yonder man if you will, but know that then you must find another than me to lure the Otomie from their rebellion, for then I complete what I began to-day, and follow him to the grave. She ceased and a murmur of amazement went round the chamber, for none had looked to find such love and courage in this lady's heart. Only Cuitlahua grew angry.
Never did I see folk so much amazed, and when I came to speak of the last sacrifice of the women of the Otomie, and of the horrid end of de Garcia who died fighting with his own shadow, or rather with the shadows of his own wickedness, they cried aloud with fear, as they wept when I told of the deaths of Isabella de Siguenza and of Guatemoc, and of the loss of my sons.
Otomie, who although she was not of it, had ever favoured the Christian faith, Otomie, who for years had never spoken of these dreadful rites except with anger, whose every act was love and whose every word was kindness, was still in her soul an idolater and a savage.
Now the soldiers who had carried me, making certain that our death was at hand, and having no wish to share it, set my litter down upon the stones and slipped back into the palace, but all this while Otomie never so much as moved, no, not even when the spear hissed past her.
Still I must put a bold face on my necessities, and make what play I might with such forces as lay at my command, although in my heart I feared much for the issue. But of my fears I said nothing to Otomie, and if she felt any she, on her part, buried them in her breast.
Well, my son was left to me and with him I must be satisfied; at the least he knew nothing of his mother's shame. Oh! I thought to myself as I climbed the teocalli, oh! that I could but escape far from this accursed land and bear him with me to the English shores, ay, and Otomie also, for there she might forget that once she had been a savage. Alas! it could scarcely be!
Moreover, though he was obliged to countenance them, because of the power of the priests, like Otomie, Guatemoc never loved the horrid rites of human sacrifice.
The gulf between us widened with the widening years, but still the thought of her went with me like my shadow; it shone across the stormy love of Otomie, I remembered it even in my children's kiss. And worst of all I despised myself for these regrets. Nay, if the worst can have a worse, there was one here, for though she never spoke of it, I feared that Otomie had read my mind.
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