Montezuma's DaughterHaggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
History
Montezuma's Daughter
Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
Mexico -- History -- Conquest, 1519-1540 -- Fiction
It may be thought that while I was employed thus I had forgotten the
object of my coming to Spain, namely to avenge my mother’s murder on
the person of Juan de Garcia. But this was not so. So soon as I was
settled in the house of Andres de Fonseca I set myself to make
inquiries as to de Garcia’s whereabouts with all possible diligence,
but without result.
Indeed, when I came to consider the matter coolly it seemed that I had
but a slender chance of finding him in this city. He had, indeed, given
it out in Yarmouth that he was bound for Seville, but no ship bearing
the same name as his had put in at Cadiz or sailed up the Guadalquivir,
nor was it likely, having committed murder in England, that he would
speak the truth as to his destination. Still I searched on. The house
where my mother and grandmother had lived was burned down, and as their
mode of life had been retired, after more than twenty years of change
few even remembered their existence. Indeed I only discovered one, an
old woman whom I found living in extreme poverty, and who once had been
my grandmother’s servant and knew my mother well, although she was not
in the house at the time of her flight to England. From this woman I
gathered some information, though, needless to say, I did not tell her
that I was the grandson of her old mistress.
It seemed that after my mother fled to England with my father, de
Garcia persecuted my grandmother and his aunt with lawsuits and by
other means, till at last she was reduced to beggary, in which
condition the villain left her to die. So poor was she indeed, that she
was buried in a public grave. After that the old woman, my informant,
said she had heard that de Garcia had committed some crime and been
forced to flee the country. What the crime was she could not remember,
but it had happened about fifteen years ago.
All this I learned when I had been about three months in Seville, and
though it was of interest it did not advance me in my search.
Some four or five nights afterwards, as I entered my employer’s house I
met a young woman coming out of the doorway of the _patio;_ she was
thickly veiled and my notice was drawn to her by her tall and beautiful
figure and because she was weeping so violently that her body shook
with her sobs. I was already well accustomed to such sights, for many
of those who sought my master’s counsel had good cause to weep, and I
passed her without remark. But when I was come into the room where he
received his patients, I mentioned that I had met such a person and
asked if it was any one whom I knew.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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