University of Virginia Library

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE FALL OF THE CURTAIN.

The efforts to save Vasco Nunez from the cruel and unjust
doom which threatened him, were not confined to the
Indian woman, in whose heart he had so dear an interest.
There were many good citizens at Acla, who heard with
sorrow the judgment passed upon him, who, at the instigation
of Micer Codro, joined in a petition to Pedrarias to
pardon the supposed criminal, or, at least, to commute his
sentence to banishment and fine. They presumed, though
trembling at their own audacity, to suggest doubts of his
criminality, and to question the honesty of those upon
whose testimony he had been condemned. They dwelt
upon the wondrous discoveries he had made, and their
great importance to the crown of Spain and to the fortunes
of the Spanish people; and though they especially avoided
hinting such a conviction, in their application for mercy to
a tyrant who had ever before shown a temper the most
merciless, their petition was warmed into enthusiasm as
they felt that, though Vasco Nunez might be guilty of the
alleged crime, there was even in that a noble daring which
amply sustained all their previous impressions of his eagle
character, and made his so sudden doom a matter not
merely of severity but cruelty. Micer Codro himself appeared
before the arbiter of his friend's fate, and on bended
knee, implored for a remission of his doom as a gift of
mercy rather than a due of justice—a concession, however,
which the proud spirit of Vasco Nunez had especially
commanded him not to make. But the bloody-minded
Pedrarias was inflexible. He had no reason now
to keep any terms with his rival. The power was in his

own hands, and his fear of the man he had so frequently
wronged, and had now so completely dishonoured, left him
no alternative of safety, but in the consummation of the
long list of his wrongs by the last penal act of murder. He
dared not suffer him to live; and his passion of jealousy
had now reached that stage of excitation which excluded
every consideration of policy, no less than humanity, from
his mind.

“No!” he exclaimed, as he dismissed the petitioners
from his presence—“I would sooner perish on the block
myself than spare him.”

It was a day of gloom and consternation in Acla which
had been assigned for the sacrifice of this noble victim.
Lamentations were heard in all the streets. The populace,
though, under the dominion of so jealous a tyrant as Pedrarias,
and surrounded by his soldiers, they did not dare to
complain, were yet every where in tears. Few or none
among them regarded him as guilty, but all esteemed him
as a brave and noble gentleman, sacrificed to the base enmity
of a cruel and vindictive rival. In the dungeon of
the prisoner there was, perhaps, more sunshine. The
soul of Vasco Nunez grew more and more calm and fearless
as the hour of his fate approached; and his heart, if
more tender and subdued than ever by some of the circumstances
of his situation, was, at the same time, more
free than before from many harassing doubts and bitter
self-childings. He had sought to banish from his mind the
remembrance of Teresa Davila, and the hope being for
ever banished which made him think of her as his wife,
he was the better able to do justice to the claims of the
devoted woman of Coyba, who was a silent mourner at
his side. When the astrologer returned from the presence
of Pedrarias, and declared to him the rejection of all the
prayers which had been made in his behalf, a smile of the
most perfect resignation passed over the features of the
condemned.

“I looked not for other answer, Micer Codro—I warned
you of the hopelessness of your mission. You have bent
your knee in vain—dishonoured yourself without serving
me. I trust he denies me not the presence of the holy
man?”

“No. The Jeronimite is in waiting.”

“Let him attend,” said Vasco Nunez, “I will the

sooner be prepared to die when I have done the last act of
justice.”

The friar was summoned, and shortly made his appearance.

“Father,” said Vasco Nunez, “ere I make my last confession,
and receive from your hands the holy sacrament,
there is another no less solemn sacrament which I would
have you perform. It is needful as an act of expiation, to
heaven no less than earth. I would have you unite me in
the bands of wedlock with this woman of Coyba. Arise,
Careta, and give me thy hand.”

She rose passively, and they, whom the sharp stroke of
death was so soon to separate, were united for ever.

“Careta!”

“My lord!”

“Leave me now with this holy man. Go with Micer
Codro, he will take care of thee, and be thy friend and
father, when I shall be sleeping.”

“Alas! my lord, wherefore wilt thou send me from thy
side? Let me not go. What need that we should separate?
Has not the holy man made us one by the Christian
law—and should I leave thee now to lose thee for
ever? Send me not hence—let me be with thee until—”

She could not speak the rest; but burying her face in his
bosom, her sobs completed the sentence. Long and fondly
did he clasp her within his manacled arms, and the sorrow
was no less sweet than sacred with which he contemplated
so much love. He put her away at length.

“For awhile, Careta, until the holy father and myself
have spoken of matters most needful to my soul's peace.
Go thou with Micer Codro. We shall meet again.”

The astrologer was about to lead her away, when the
prisoner summoned him to his side. In a whisper he
said—

“Keep her close—let her not see me again till all is
over; then—remember!”

The unfinished sentence contemplated some previous
instructions which he had given the astrologer, about the
removal of Careta to the dominions of the Cassique of
Coyba, her father. Another fond look, another embrace,
and Careta was borne from the dreary cell of her lord.

An hour after, and the prisoner was joined by the astrologer.

“Hast thou secured her?” was the question of the
former. “I trust thou hast deceived her as to the time of
execution.”

“All, all, my son—it is done according to thy wish,”
was the reply.

“That pang, at least, is spared me. I could wish,
Micer Codro, my friend and my father, that thou too wert
far from the sight of this bloody act. Were it not well
that thou too shouldst be away?”

“I will be with thee to the last, my son. For long
years of pride and pleasure, we have dwelt, and moved, and
toiled, and suffered, together. I will not leave thee now—
when we are to be torn asunder by these cruel hands. I
will stand by thy side when the sword falls, that I may
feel a pang in my heart no less sharp than that which thy
body must undergo.”

“Ah! Micer Codro, it will add to my pang to behold
thee at that instant. I would there were no other pang;
but I fear, Micer Codro—it is like a fiery arrow in my
brain, the fear—that Teresa Davila knew of her father's
purpose, when she wrote me that letter from Darien.”

“Think'st thou so, my son?”

“Careta, when she left us so suddenly last night, sought
her out in her father's dwelling. She has kept from me
all that took place between them, the single fact excepted,
that she saw and pleaded with her, and that her prayers
were without avail. I pressed to know from her the truth,
but the noble creature refused to speak, and her refusal has
oppressed me with this cruel fear. I know that Careta
would not do her wrong—I know that in mercy to me she
would forbear any speech which could give me sorrow.
Had Teresa betrayed a feeling which had been grateful to
her heart, the generous creature would have poured it forth
into mine, with the impatience of a spirit that loves all
forms of justice and humanity. A mournful look—sometimes
a bitter smile—has answered all my entreaties on this
subject; and when I have chided her with her reluctance,
she wept bitterly, and, imploring my forgiveness, as resolutely
continued silent.”

“Said she nothing?”

“Yes,—her first words as she came to the prison, may,
perhaps, sufficiently declare the meaning of her silence.
`I have seen her, the Spanish lady,' she exclaimed, `I

have seen her, my lord, I have looked upon her, and my
words have answered hers. Oh! wherefore did my lord
suffer her words to bring him from Isla Rica?' I asked
her, striving to smile as I did so, `Dost thou not think her
beautiful, Careta?'—`Beautiful!' she exclaimed, covering
her face with her hands, while a shiver went through her
frame at the instant, rattling the chains which my arms had
partly thrown around her.”

“There was meaning enough in that, my son. I have
long counselled thee against this woman. She hath none
of the sweet juices of humanity within her heart. It will
wither, my son, long years before she herself shall perish
—it will begin to wither in that moment when the axe
shall fall upon thy neck.”

“Nay, nay! Curse her not with a doom so cruel.”

“It is her own doom. Her heart hath cursed itself.”

“Alas! if it be true!” exclaimed Vasco Nunez.
“Never yet was beauty to vie with hers. Ha! the bell!
It tolls! It strikes my heart with a hollow, ringing sound
like its own. The hour is come, my father, for our parting.
Leave me, I pray thee. I will look more firmly upon
the crowd and the scaffold, if I meet none of the faces that
I love.”

“I will leave thee never, my son—never, while you
have life. Jesu forbid, that I should shorten by a single
instant, the time left us for communion.”

“Be thou firm, falter not, Micer Codro—I should prove
feeble wert thou to fail.”

The guards were at the entrance in the next moment;
and with a free step, erect carriage, and placid countenance,
Vasco Nunez emerged into the open air, amidst the crowd
of sorrowful and exulting faces which encountered him at
the portals of the prison. Their various aspects produced
no change in his. He walked forward with as little seeming
emotion, as if he had the least interest of all in the terrible
proceedings, until he reached the public square of
Acla, when the whole dreadful array of death met his
sight—the scaffold and the executioner, and the grim
guards already surrounding it and in waiting. A slight
shudder of his frame might have been visible to a close
eye as he approached the scaffold, but it passed away in
another moment, and he ascended the ignominious eminence
with a firm martial tread, and looked with unblenching
cheek and fearless aspect upon the assembly.

“Is thy weapon keen?” he asked of the masked headsman,
whose slender frame seemed to promise but little of
that strength which was required for such a duty as that
before him. The man lifted the axe in silence, and presented
the edge to the destined victim. Vasco Nunez, utterly
unawed, passed his finger over the blade.

“It will do, if thou strike but firmly. It needs that it
be keen in thy hands, which do not seem to justify the task
thou hast chosen.”

“Thou wilt have no reason to reproach me again with
feebleness, Señor Vasco, nor wilt thou have the power,
when I have struck but a single stroke at thy neck,” was
the reply of the executioner.

“Surely that voice is not strange in my ears,” exclaimed
Vasco Nunez as he heard it, “who art thou?”

“One who promised, long months ago, to stand beside
thee in the last moments of thy life,” said the other,
partially lifting his mask so as to show his face only to
the victim.

“Ha! Pedro! Unhappy young man, wherefore hast
thou pursued me with such bitter malice? Why hast
thou perjured thy soul to hell for ever, that thou mightest
shed the blood of one who hath ever bestowed care and
kindness upon thee?”

“Pedro no longer, Señor Vasco,” replied the other,
“that name was but assumed, that I might win thy confidence
and secure an opportunity for vengeance. Know
me for Andres Garabito—the brother of that Jorge Garabito
whom you so basely murdered by night in the town
of Santo Domingo.”

“And for this have you pursued me to the death, and
for no other cause?”

“Ay! for this—for this cause and no other.”

“Then let it blast thy hope, and sicken thee for ever,
unhappy youth, to know that Vasco Nunez is utterly
guiltless of thy brother's death. Weapon of mine never
touched his life—this I swear in the presence of the great
Judge, before whom my soul shall shortly appear.”

“I believe thee not! I cannot—dare not believe thee,
murderer,” cried the executioner with hoarse and choking
accents. “Bend thyself to thy doom, lest my arm tremble
with the rage and passion of my soul.”

Vasco Nunez regarded him with a countenance of mingled

pity and aversion; but he turned away as the public
crier announced the moment fixed for the fatal blow. His
proclamation changed the current of the victim's thoughts,
and converted all of his feelings into indignation.

“Hear, hear, ye people of Acla! This is the punishment
inflicted by command of the king and his lieutenant,
Don Pedrarias Davila, on this man, Vasco Nunez, as a traitor
to the crown of Castile, and a usurper of its territories.”

“It is false, people of Acla!” exclaimed Vasco Nunez,
in reply. “It is false! I am guiltless of this crime, and
here, in the equal sight of God and man, I declare to ye
that I have ever served my sovereign with truth and
loyalty, and sought rather to augment than take from his
dominions.”

These words, says the historian, of no avail in his extremity,
were yet fully believed by the people of Acla,
with the exception of those who were the creatures of
Pedrarias. That tyrant, meanwhile, heard the proud denial
of his victim, while, with gloating hate, he watched
in secret, from between the reeds of a house near the
scaffold, the progress of the bloody scene. At this moment,
and while the deep tones and indignant words of
the victim yet vibrated in the ears of the populace, a
wild, piercing shriek—a woman's shriek—rang through
the multitude. The keen, quick eyes of Vasco Nunez
turned in the direction of the sounds, and his heart quivered
with a new emotion which he vainly strove to suppress,
when he beheld Careta, with flowing hair and frantic footstep,
making her desperate way through the crowd.

“Micer Codro,” he exclaimed, hastily, “she hath escaped.
Deathsman!” he said, turning to the executioner,
whose own emotions were almost perceptible—and kneeling
down to the block as he spoke—“see that thou strike
quickly and fairly. Let it be over ere she comes. Micer
Codro—farewell!”

“Stay!” said the executioner, “burden not thy soul
with a lie. Confess—say that thy hand slew my brother.”

“Traitor and perjurer—strike! and damn thy soul with
the concluding crime. Whatever may be the guilt of
Vasco Nunez, his soul is innocent of that. His arm
touched not the life of Garabito.”

“Thou liest! I will not believe thee! I know thou
liest!” was the hoarse cry of the deathsman, as the keen
weapon descended. The bloody head rolled along the

scaffold at the moment when Careta rushed up the gory
steps. One wild shriek of horror burst from her lips, and
she fell—fell like a stone—upon the body of her lord;—
and when Micer Codro lifted her up from the corse, life had
departed from her also. The ligaments that secured her heart
had cracked and given way in that awful instant; and the
immortal spirit of Vasco Nunez had scarcely risen from the
spot where his body suffered death, ere it was joined by the
most devoted soul that had ever loved and valued it before.
The mask dropped from the face of the secretary, while he
gazed upon the mighty man whom he had destroyed.

“Thou!” exclaimed the astrologer, “thou hast carried
out thy malice to the last.”

“He slew Jorge Garabito, my brother!” cried the secretary;
“had he not, Micer Codro, I had worshipped
him.”

“He slew him not!” replied the astrologer solemnly.

“Were the dead to arise and say so, I should be sworn
against them. I have the proofs written by the Bachelor
Enciso, and Ortado, the matador, the last of whom beheld
the deed.”

“They have sworn falsely then,” said Francisco Pizarro,
who came forward at this moment, with a grin of bitter
satisfaction on his features—“here is one who beheld the
death-bed of Ortado, the matador, and heard his last confession,
by which we learn that he was employed by Jorge
Garabito and Enciso to slay Vasco Nunez as he came from
the bohio of Teresa Davila, whom he was known to seek
nightly in San Domingo. Garabito went with the matador,
and stood in waiting behind a tree, where he was
slain by one unknown, at the very time when Vasco Nunez
was advancing towards him, the said Ortado, in front.
This he knows, for he beheld Vasco Nunez plainly. It
was the purpose of Enciso to destroy Vasco Nunez, and
hence the assassination was placed to his score. The
Jeronimite will show all this.”

Wild with fear, hoarse with agitating and conflicting emotions,
the perjured secretary rushed to the friar, who laid
before him the written confession of the matador, confirming
all that Pizarro had said. Long did the miserable
youth strive against conviction—for days did he seek every
associate in Acla, from whose conjectures he might hope to
find any basis for that belief which had prompted him to
the crime which he had committed. But the dreaded

truth rose triumphant over the fond artifices of his hope
ann thought; and when he could no longer baffle it, the
conviction became fatal to his sanity—madness followed;
and crying aloud to all he met, “that hell was already in
his heart,” he disappeared for ever from the scene of his
dreadful crimes, and blind, reckless vengeance. By the
paternal care and fond friendship of Micer Codro, the victims
of his perjury found a humble burial place at Acla.
Of the fate of Micer Codro himself, a brief notice is given
by Irving, taken from the relation of the historian Oviedo,
who happened to be in Darien at the period of these events.
“It appears,” says this writer, “that, after the death of
Vasco Nunez, he continued for several years rambling
about the New World, in the train of the discoverers; bent
upon studying the secrets of its natural history, rather than
searching after its treasures. In the course of his wanderings
he was once coasting the shores of the Southern
Ocean, in a ship commanded by one Geronimo de Valenzuela,
from whom he received such cruel treatment as to
cause his death. Finding his end approaching, he addressed
Valenzuela in the most solemn manner. `You
have,' said he, `caused my death by your cruelty; I now
summon you to appear with me, within a year, before the
judgment-seat of God.' The captain made a light and
scoffing answer, and treated his summons with contempt.
They were then off the coast of Veragua, near the verdant
islands of Zebaco, which lie at the entrance of the Gulf of
Paria. The poor astrologer gazed wistfully with his dying
eyes upon the green and shady groves, and entreated the
mate of the caraval to land him upon one of the islands
that he might die in peace. `Micer Codro,' said the mate,
`these are not islands, but points of land.' `They are,
indeed, islands,' replied the astrologer, `good and pleasant
and well-watered, and near to the coast. Land me, I pray
you, upon one of these islands, that I may have comfort
in my dying hour.' The pilot was touched by the prayer
and conveyed him to the shore. He laid him on the herbage
in the shade, where the poor wanderer soon expired.
The pilot buried him at the foot of a tree, and carved a
cross on the bark to mark the grave. Some time afterward,
Oviedo was on the island with the same pilot, who showed
him the cross on the tree, and gave his testimony to
the good character and worthy conduct of Micer Codro.
Oviedo, as he regarded the nameless grave, passed the eulogium
of a scholar upon the poor astrologer. `He died,'
said he, `like Pliny, in the discharge of his duties, travelling
about the world to explore the secrets of nature.' According
to his account, the prediction of Micer Codro held
good with respect to Valenzuela, as it had in the case of
Vasco Nunez. The captain died within the term in which
he had summoned him to appear before the tribunal of
God.”

The various fortunes and fate of Pizarro and Pedrarias
are well known. The history of Teresa Davila is less so,
but a few words will suffice for her. Her heart, even as
the astrologer had emphatically spoken, withered within
her. She lived, like her father and his brutal ally, unblessing
and unblest. Let none accuse the justice of God, because
death does not follow the evil deeds of the criminal.
To those who have in their hearts no choice spring of humanity,
life is but a weary trial and a vexing strife; and
better had it been for these cruel persons, had they suffered
the sharp pang of death, like their victim, a thousand
times, than endure the continual sappings of hope in their
hearts—the bitterness of that desolation which is the due
reward of a mean and narrow selfishness—the absence of
all confidence among men—the constant dread of treachery
—the distrust of friendship—the doubts of love—the death,
in short, of all those joys of the heart and mind which can
alone make life an object of desire. They lived, indeed,
to triumph above the graves of many other victims, only
less great and less noble than Vasco Nunez; but they were
wretched even in their conquests, and though the shame
and dishonour which hang about their memories, may not
depict the misery of their secret souls, during their bitter
and merciless career of life, it will not be difficult to imagine
what seeds of bitterness and sorrow must have sprung
in such wretched soil—how they must have been haunted
ever by the shadows of evil deeds, and the goadings of evil
thoughts, and perished at length, looking back without satisfaction
to the past, and forward, to the future, without
hope. Let us leave them.