Nearlya week had passed since the massacre—for not even the Spanish chroniclers themselves have the hardihood to describe it as a battle—and Atahuallpa, but a few days ago the leader of a conquering host and the master of all the broad domains of the Incas, was now a close prisoner in that very House of the Serpent which he had ordered to be prepared for his reception before he came to his doom in Cajamarca.
It was early evening, and in one of the apartments of the great building which the fallen Inca had selected as his hall of entertainment he was sitting at one end of a long table of carved stone, covered with goblets and dishes of gold and silver containing the remnants of the evening meal, and round it sat the chiefs of the Adventurers, the Captain himself at the other end facing the Inca, with Filipillo at his elbow.
During the meal Atahuallpa had been strangely cheerful for one who within a few days had fallen from one of the loftiest pinnacles of human power and glory into the depths of a degradation which even he himself was not to fathom until he was about to take his last look upon the land that had so lately owned him as its Lord. But now that the feast was over he had sunk into silence and dejection, and the boisterous stream of conversation flowed by him unheeded.
The architecture of the room was similar to his own banqueting-hall in the palace at Quito, and its adornments, or such as the despoiling hands of his conquerors had left, were also somewhat similar. It may have been that, though his body was there, his spirit was far away in the City of the Great Ravine. His eyes were closed as though in sleep, but with other eyes he might have been watching that convulsion of nature which followed so swiftly upon the unnatural crime that had left him the sole heir of Huayna-Capac, and which he might now look upon as the forerunner of another catastrophe more fatal to himself, his dynasty and people even than the earthquake which had rent his capital in twain. In the darkening of the sun, too, he may well have seen the harbinger of the swift eclipse of the glories of his imperial race.
But although the thoughts of such a man in such a position may well be unfathomable to eyes which look upon them across the gulf of three centuries, it is yet within the limits of reason to suppose that one at least of his sentiments was a bitter though unavailing regret that he had not taken the advice of his war-worn and battle-taught old General, worthy brother of his own conquering father, who, even in the midst of the disaster that had overwhelmed his master, had had the skill and address, not only to withdraw the pick and flower of his regiments from the open fields where they would have fallen an easy prey to the Spanish cavalry, but also to conduct them in swift and orderly retreat into the mountains on the other side of the valley, where the dreaded war-beasts of the strangers would be of but little avail.
Had he but listened to him and accepted the wise and loyal counsel he had given these so-called guests of his, instead of being his masters, might have been his prisoners. His nobles might have learnt the mastery of these strange brutes which had trampled them down in scores on the pavement of the plaza, and the use of those terrible flame-and-thunder weapons which had wrought such fearful havoc among them, and then, if that had only come to pass, who should have set bounds to the glory and dominion that might have been his? Yet here he was a helpless prisoner, with even his life at the mercy of a few strangers from some unknown land, whose numbers were to his legions as a few pebbles might be to the sands of the sea shore!
How had the miracle come to pass? Was there no explanation of it? What was the power that had drawn these men from lands which to him were only names, and across oceans whose magnitude he could not even dimly guess at? What did they come for? How could their master, seated on some far-away throne, and, as they had told him, Lord Paramount of the world, covert so eagerly these distant dominions?
So far his train of thought had reached, and then his eyes opened, and his glance fell by chance on Carvahal, who at that moment, as it happened, half-drunk with wine and chicha, was holding up a great goblet of massive gold and crying in his thickly-laughing voice—
“Ah, comrades and soldiers of Spain! whether ye be servants of Heaven or Hell, as some of our enemies might call you, is not that a glorious thing to get in the grip of an honest man’s fist? Carrajo! It’s all very well to talk at home of the glories of conquest and the bringing of religion to the heathen, but there—thereis the thing we adventure for and fight for.Thisis that for which we have crossed the world. It was the hope of this that kept us from dying of much despair and little food on the sands of Gallo. Look at the sweet yellow shine of it in the light of those fair silver lamps—that is the lustre of the day-star or night-star or will-of-the-wisp—call it what you please—that has brought us here. Gold, good gold, solid and shining and heavy—heavy—ay, Cristo y Santiago! mine is no woman’s arm, yet the weight of this pretty bauble is so preciously great that it drags it down.”
“Ay! and see thou well to it that its weight is not great enough also to drag thy soul down to Hell, blasphemer of our holy enterprise!”
The voice, harsh and cold, was that of Valverde, who had risen from his seat on the opposite side and was pointing across the table with his lean forefinger at Carvahal’s drink-flushed face.
“Remember you, Carvahal, and every man here, gentle or simple, who thinks with thee that gold is the highest object of his adventuring and the best reward of his labours, remember how it was said of old: ‘No man can serve two masters!’ Gold is the lawful reward of those who venture life and limb and dare great things in a good cause, but woe to him who would set the lust of gold before his duty to God. It is God’s work that ye have come here to do; I pray you, for your souls’ sake, beware of that which befalls him who would seek to serve God and Mammon with the same heart and hands!”
The shrill, harshly vehement tones of the priest, his attitude as he stood pointing over the table at Carvahal, and the great contrast between the garb and figure of the lean, ascetic priest and those of the burly swashbuckler, roused the dreaming Inca in an instant out of his reverie. He did not understand the words, but the gestures were more eloquent than speech, and his keen mind quickly made its way to a new revelation. He caught Filipillo’s eye and beckoned to him, and the interpreter, after a word of permission from Pizarro, went to him and stood by his chair waiting, with bowed head, for him to speak.
“If thou wouldst have thy heart’s desire, whatever it is, answer me this question truly, keeping nothing back either in thy mind or on thy lips: What is it that these strangers who have made thee their slave desire above all other things on earth?”
And Filipillo, for once at least in his life, spoke honestly, telling the truth as he had found it, and said—
“It is gold, Lord. Saving the lean man yonder in the strange garb, who bade the thunders slay thy people, I know not one of them who does not live for gold, and would not stake his life on the chance of getting it. From their talk I have learnt that in the lands they come from the vilest of men can buy all things he desires if he has but gold enough to give for them. They say much about their God and the great king who sent them hither, yet they speak ever of gold as the first reward of their labours.”
“So I have heard from others, and I believe that thou speakest truth. Now I am going to speak to all of them here, but more especially to their leader yonder, who hath falsely been called the son of Viracocha, and see thou that my words pass faithfully to their ears from thy lips.”
As he said this the Inca rose from his seat and went to the wall on his right hand. A line of white, which was part of the decorations of the room, ran along it level from end to end of the great chamber, at a height about half as high again as a man’s stature. He reached his hand up to this and laid his fingers on it and said—
“Tell them that if they have come here for gold and not to steal my life or the land of my fathers away from me they shall have gold. What is it to me? Have I not plenty? Is not the land full of it? Tell them that I will fill this room with gold, from the floor to this line, if when it is full they will give me back my freedom and depart from my dominions in peace. The wrongs that they have done shall be forgiven them, and my own servants shall carry it for them across the mountains to the sea. Tell them that, neither more nor less. Now speak.”
Filipillo bowed his head with his accustomed mock reverence; but before he could answer Pizarro beckoned to him and said somewhat sharply—
“What is it that he hath been saying to thee, boy? Out with it, and speak straightly if thou hast any love for thy back.”
The interpreter was but an unarmed lad amongst armed men; but he knew his power too well to be frightened at the threat, so he smiled and answered in his best Spanish—
“The Inca has just asked me, most mighty Captain, if it could become agreeable to your pleasure to release him on payment of a ransom, and if that be so he pledges his royal word that he will fill this room which you now honour by your presence with gold up to the level of the line he has just touched. In this land gold is of no value, and he promises, further, that, if after he is restored to his throne, you will lend the aid of your valour and your strange and terrible weapons to his service in the conquest of the peoples of the South, he will give to every man as much more as he can carry away with him.”
“Cuerpo de Cristo!” howled Carvahal before Pizarro could reply. “Mira! Mira! Caballeros! a room like this three-parts full of gold. A king’s ransom! By the sword of Santiago it would be more than the price of an empire! Surely the heathen hound must be lying, for never was such a thing as that seen in the world before!”
“Hold thy peace, fool—hold thy peace!” said Pedro de Candia, who sat beside him, dragging him down by the belt. “Canst thou not see the Captain is about to speak?”
He spoke in a voice that had a touch of awe in it, and indeed something of the same spell seemed to have fallen upon all present. Even the steadfast soul of Pizarro himself seemed shaken by the tremendous tidings which had so suddenly come to them. For some moments they sat round the table in silence, staring at each other and at the man who had spoken of giving away a treasure vast beyond even their wildest dreams as lightly as they would have spoken of throwing dice for a few pesos.
Then they stared round the great chamber and tried to picture it filled with gold up to the white line, and to attain to some calculation, however vague, of its value. All the treasury of Spain did not hold so much, and yet to them it would be but the price of a few hours’ slaughter of victims who were as helpless as sheep or little children under their weapons.
Soon too came the thought: Could it be believed? Was such a glorious golden dream possible of fulfilment on earth? Well, at least the Inca had said it, and they knew that they held him fast enough to make him pay with his body should he fail to pay with his gold. Then the thread of their thoughts was broken by the voice of the Captain. His emotion had already passed, or at least been overcome, and he spoke with all his wonted calmness.
“Tell the Inca,” he said to Filipillo, “that, greatly as his words have astonished us, we are well pleased to hear them. Let the ransom be paid, and we pledge our master’s honour and our own faith as good Christians and soldiers of Spain that he shall be restored to full freedom and all his dignities as the brother and ally of our lord the Emperor. Moreover, for a fair price that shall be agreed upon between us, not only myself and those with me here but others of our fellow-soldiers, who are even now coming across the mountains, shall teach his armies our own way of warfare, and fight beside his regiments until all the land is his from north to south and sea to sea. Have I spoken well, Caballeros?”
“Ay, well, well as ever, Señor!” rolled in a murmur round the table, and again the drink in Carvahal cried out—
“Cuerpo de Cristo! Tell him that if this side of the world is not big enough for him we will make shift to carve him out a piece of the other. Carrajo! how much gold, I wonder, has the heathen got? If he could fill one room, why not two, or twenty, or even one for each of us?”
It was the very thought that had been rising in the minds of most of them, so quickly does the greed of man grow when fed on dreams of countless wealth, but none of them spoke, for Pizarro was already holding up his hand for silence, and Filipillo, with grave deference outwardly, but laughing in his evil little heart, addressed the Inca and said—
“Son of the Sun, thy words are pleasing to the leader of the Christians and all his people. The truth is as I told thee, it is gold they come for, and for gold they will do anything and venture all things. The Captain bids me tell thee that when the room is filled to the mark thou shalt again sit on the throne of the Four Regions, provided always that it shall be found on inquiry to be made in the meanwhile that it is lawfully thine and not thy brother Huascar’s.”
The blood rushed into the Inca’s face, turning it to a ruddy bronze, and his eyes, always somewhat bloodshot, gleamed redly under his black, lowering brows. His broad chest heaved quickly with something like a sob, for now indeed was the dread and dismal truth fully brought home to him. These strangers were not only his captors and masters, they would make themselves his judges too, and if Huascar, whom his armies had already conquered and made captive, would but bid against him and throw the countless treasures of the City of the Sun into the balance, what hope had he of being able to buy even his life?
Thus did the thought so subtly put into his mind by a lad who was but little better than the slave of the strangers first stain the soul of Atahuallpa with the dark purpose whose carrying out became the excuse for his own doom. Low indeed had the Son of the Sun fallen! Better a thousandfold that he should have died a warrior and a king, or even as a martyr in the midst of his murdered people!
It was some little time before he could speak or subdue the emotions that were choking him, but at length the old kingly habit of self-command came to his aid, and he said with a strange, forced calmness—
“Tell thy masters that in the matter of the ransom I will do as I have said, but that concerning my brother Huascar there can be no question between us. My armies have carried out the will of my Lord and father, and Huascar no longer reigns in Cuzco, nor ever can again. Tell the strangers this, and for thyself, slave, learn that if I ever know thee to have spoken falsely between us thou shalt be flayed alive, and thy body shall be eaten by ants under the full noon-day sun.”
Filipillo bowed low and laughed again in his heart. Then he translated the first part of the Inca’s speech to Pizarro, and added instead of the latter part—
“My Lord the Inca trusts in the justice of his cause by right of birth and of arms, and fears no inquiry, but he would have your worships know that Huascar is already conquered and a captive, and by this time it may be dead, slain by hands which the Inca can no longer restrain.”
“By Santiago that must not be if we can prevent it!” cried Pizarro, bringing his hand down heavily on the table. “With the first light of dawn a force must be dispatched to his place of captivity to bring him hither in safety. Tell the Inca that we must know where Huascar is, and that we must have his orders for his instant surrender to us. We cannot have one who may be so precious to us murdered like a rat in a hole. Tell him that his own life shall answer for Huascar’s if need be.”
Verysoon after the capture of Atahuallpa had been accomplished, and when Challcuchima had withdrawn his regiments into the mountains, whither the Spaniards, by reason of the smallness of the force with which they had to guard so great a treasure as they had gained, could not follow them, Pizarro proclaimed peace in the name of the Inca, and Atahuallpa, so soon as he found that his captors intended no violence or indignity towards him, had given this the sanction of his royal word, which, fallen and captive though he was, was yet the sole law of the Land of the Four Regions.
Now the proclamation of this peace had had two effects, both of which worked momentously on the future fortunes of captors and captive. Most sorely against his will, Challcuchima believed that his master—still stricken by the same stupor of madness that had caused him to reject the plans which might have placed the invaders at his mercy—had abandoned his people at the very moment when the tide of victory was rolling at full flood towards the South. Clearly divining the true character and purpose of the invaders, he had given him up for lost, and was already considering in the privacy of his own soul how the deeds of the Day of Massacre might be best undone and how, should Atahuallpa prove helpless or unworthy, the forces which he had so far led to victory might be best employed in upholding the throne of the Four Regions.
In the direct line of descent there were three princes of the Blood who possessed an almost equal right to wear the imperial borla. Of these the first was Huascar, whose title was better even than that of Atahuallpa himself, for Atahuallpa was the son of Huayna-Capac and Zaïma, Princess of Quito, and this marriage was by the Ancient Law inferior to the union between Huayna-Capac and Amara-Coyllur, his own sister and Coya, who was the mother of Huascar.
But Huascar himself was already conquered and a prisoner, and at any moment Atahuallpa might find means to send the order for his death to those who were guarding him. After him came his younger brother Manco, also of the pure blood-royal, and he, after the death of Huascar, would be the true heir to the throne. Lastly, there was the Prince Toparca, also a son of Huayna-Capac, but not born within the circle of the Sacred Blood, and he, following in the train of Atahuallpa, had shared his fate and was already a prisoner in the hands of the Spaniards.
Upon Huascar the old General, well versed as he was in the ways of his master, looked as already lost. To rescue him would be to raise the standard of open revolt and once more to open the wound of dissension between Quito and Cuzco, and, moreover, Huascar, as he knew well, was but a dreamer of dreams and a lover of women, who lived such a life as no man could live who had great things to do; and even if he could have released him by force of arms he was but too well assured that he would lend a ready ear to the vain legend which had already deceived Atahuallpa, and greet the Spaniards, not as invaders and hungry adventurers, but as the true sons of Viracocha who had come to raise the Empire of the Children of the Sun to a height of glory before undreamt of. Toparca was a mere lad, unformed alike in mind and body, already the Spaniards’ captive, and, it might be, ready to become their puppet and their slave.
But Manco, bearer of the Divine Name, still remained. He was free, his blood was pure, and as for his manhood—the old General’s thoughts went back to the Day of Terror in the City of the Great Ravine when he stood with his brother chieftains, Quiz-Quiz and Ruminavi, on the terrace of the palace and saw the gallant lad leap up over the fagots piled around the scaffold on which stood Nahua, his beloved, and all her kindred awaiting the fiery death. He saw the sun, so soon to be darkened, flashing upon the blade of polished copper in his hand, and he saw that blade raised high above Nahua’s breast ready, in defiance of the sentence of his Lord, to fall and rob her doom of its worst terror.
Manco had done this and lived. Out of the ruin and desolation that had overwhelmed the whole city he had brought Nahua, his beloved, fairest of the Virgins of the Sun, unharmed. Since then he had fought gallantly against himself in the armies of Cuzco, and even after the defeat and capture of Huascar had made Atahuallpa master of the land, he had withdrawn his own regiments into the fastnesses of Yucay and Ollantay-Tambo and there had defied all the efforts of himself and his brother generals to reduce him to subjection. Upon whom, then, if not upon him should the hopes of the Children of the Sun rest?
So reasoned Challcuchima, brother of Huayna-Capac and General-in-Chief of the armies which the great Inca had so often led to victory. Yet, as he pondered over all these things, sitting by his camp fire high up in the mountains overlooking the plain of Cajamarca, the love of the Warrior-Prince who by some strange fatality was now lying captive in the city below him came back strong upon him, and he resolved even at the risk of his own liberty, and it might be his life, to make one more effort to break the spell that bound his master and to nerve him to the supreme effort which even now might save his life and his throne.
If this failed and he himself survived the failure, then he would lead his regiments to the South, leaving Atahuallpa to the fate that he had chosen, and, in the name of the army and the people, place the borla on Manco’s brow and hail him Inca and Lord of the Four Regions.
Of this resolve the upshot will be made plain in due course, but meanwhile other events were in progress in Cajamarca which, though small-seeming in themselves, were destined to produce results which would have made even the stout heart of Challcuchima quail could he have foreseen them.
The capture of the Inca and his instalment as a prisoner of state in the House of the Serpent had been followed after a few days by the gathering of a mock court, a poor semblance of the imperial state from which he had so swiftly fallen. Mama-Oroya, his Queen-Wife or Coya, together with the rest of the princesses and ladies of his household, had been brought from the pleasure-house by the hot springs on the other side of the valley under an escort of Spanish horse, and installed with perfect freedom of movement in the house of his captivity.
At the same time there had come into the city hundreds of other nobles and ladies of the court with their households and retinues, and these the Conquerors, as they may well now be called, after it had been decided in solemn council neither to slay them nor, as had also been proposed, to cut off their right hands before driving them out of the city, had taken as their attendants, or, as some have said, their slaves, so that, in the words of the old chroniclers, the meanest soldier that followed the banner of Pizarro lived in better style than many a noble of Castile.
Those who had so far endured unheard-of hardships and toil found themselves in a moment exalted to a position of undreamt-of luxury and ease. The spoils of the Inca’s camp had been so great that every man ate his rations and drank his liquor from dishes of silver and vessels of gold; and as iron became too precious, by reason of its rarity, such of the horses as wanted shoes were shod with silver instead of it.
Every cavalier in the army had taken to himself a mistress or two chosen from among the dark-eyed beauties of the Inca’s court, saving only Alonso de Molina, who had left his heart behind him far away in old Castile, and still remained faithful to her who had it in her keeping, although, as the wayward Fates would have it, the day was not to be far distant when his eyes should behold one fairer even than she.
Even Pizarro himself, yielding to an example he would gladly have controlled had he been able, had succumbed for a while to the luxurious temptations which beset the Conquerors in the hour of their first victories, yet, with true policy and chivalrous generosity, he had insisted that the sanctity of the Inca’s person and household should be respected. In the eyes of every Spaniard the House of the Serpent was sacred ground, and not even the Captain himself entered it save as the guest of his captive.
But there was one who laughed at these restrictions, though outwardly he obeyed them with all humility. This was Filipillo the interpreter, and he, though born in such a condition as might have fitted him to be the slave of the humblest member of Atahuallpa’s court, now dared to aspire to nothing less than the possession of the Princess Pillcu-Cica, whose beauty had fired his lawless fancy when he had first seen her sitting by the Inca’s throne at the Pleasure-House of the Hot Springs.
Moreover, Filipillo had cunningly made such use of his office as interpreter that he had got himself regarded in a measure as one of the Inca’s household, and had used the privileges attaching to this office to gain admittance to the House of the Serpent and the presence of the Inca and his court at such times as suited his convenience. It was some three hours later on the night of the banquet after which Atahuallpa had made his splendid offer of ransom, that he, unknown to the Spanish captains, succeeded, on pretence of important business, in having private speech of the Inca.
Atahuallpa was alone in his sleeping-room, walking with slow, unequal strides to and fro on the fur-carpeted floor. Filipillo stopped in the doorway and waited till the Inca’s eyes fell upon him. He paused in his walk, and, looking sternly at him, said shortly—
“Well, slave, what now? Has thy master and mine, as he doubtless thinks himself, sent thee with a message?”
“No, Lord,” replied the interpreter with his ever-unruffled humility, yet taking encouragement and some inspiration from the Inca’s words and tone. “I come without the Captain’s knowledge, and in thy service rather than his, yet I have a message which, though it comes but from my poor self, may not be unworthy of the ears of the Son of the Sun.”
The Inca turned his piercing glance on him as though he would read the inmost thoughts of his evil soul, as in truth it would have been well for him to do had he been able, but Filipillo’s smooth and boyish face was all outward innocence and gave no sign of the plot, so far beyond his years in its complexity, which he had that evening begun to work out.
“A message?” at length said the Inca curtly. “And from thee? Well, I have heard strange things of late, and it will scarcely harm me to hear that, so speak and let thy tongue be straight.”
“I have come to tell thee, Lord, of what Pizarro the Captain said to-night after mention had been made of thy brother, the Lord Huascar, which I was not permitted to translate. Orders have been given for messengers to start for Andamarca with the first light of to-morrow, and their mission is to bring Huascar here and confront him with my Lord, so that, as the Spaniards say, their relative claims may be judged and assessed, but as my Lord’s slave would rather think, guessing from what he has heard in the camp, to try them and prove which will give the greatest amount of gold for his liberty and the throne.”
Few half-truths had ever been more skilfully told, and the words went straight to Atahuallpa’s heart, and carried with them the conviction that their meaning, if they were true, could only be greater degradation and after that hopeless ruin for the land and its people, since none could believe that the invaders, having thus learnt its wealth, would go away contented till they had stripped it bare. He kept silence for some moments, for it was a weighty matter that had to be decided quickly. His decision was soon arrived at. Whether Filipillo’s news was true or false, the more quickly Huascar was removed from Andamarca to some place of safe keeping unknown to the Spaniards the better. He turned to the youth, and said more gently and with a faint note of pleading in his voice—
“Boy, can I trust thee to get me a message swiftly and faithfully conveyed to Challcuchima in the hills yonder above the hot springs? If I can, then thou mayst ask me for any reward that I can give thee.”
Filipillo’s small dark eyes twinkled as the Inca said this, and he looked up and answered meekly—
“Yes, Lord. So slight a service for thee is its own reward. There are several of thy runners in the city. I have but to make some excuse to walk with one of them beyond the sentries, tell him the message, and within an hour or so he will be telling it in the ears of Challcuchima.”
“This, then, is the message, and let it go quickly,” said Atahuallpa. “Let the runner take my greeting to Challcuchima, and tell him that my will is that he shall instantly send an escort to Andamarca with such speed that it shall arrive there before the Spaniards; that in my name he shall take over the charge of my brother Huascar from the Curaca, and convey him with all speed that he may to such a safe and secret retreat as his judgment shall select, and let his hiding-place on no account come to the knowledge of the invaders, and in token of my authority and command let him take this. Now, begone, and come for thy reward when Challcuchima has done my bidding.”
As he said this the Inca plucked a thread of crimson intertwisted with gold from the borla that he still wore in his fallen state, and gave it to Filipillo. The interpreter received it with great show of reverence and with a thrill of delight in his heart, for he knew that the bearer of such a token was the very mouthpiece of the Son of the Sun, and could give orders as sacred as the command of his own lips. He pressed it to his forehead and bowed almost to the ground, saying—
“The word of my Lord is the law of his slave. Within a few moments the runner’s feet shall be casting the leagues behind him.”
He shuffled out of the imperial presence backwards, and managed to leave the House of the Serpent unseen. Less than half an hour later one of the royal post-couriers was speeding swiftly and silently through the star-lit darkness, not across the valley towards the camp of Challcuchima, but straight along the great post-road due south to Andamarca, carrying the imperial token in his turban, and on his lips the mandate of Atahuallpa to the Curaca in whose charge Huascar lay, bidding him, on pain of his own life, and the lives of all his kindred, to take such means as his judgment might find best to ensure that his captive should no longer be a living man when the Spaniards came to seek him.
Withthe first gleam of dawn Pizarro’s envoys set out on their already bootless errand to Andamarca. He made no secret of their object during an interview which he had that day with the Inca, and Atahuallpa, fully believing that he had forestalled them, contented himself with a feeble show of protest, saying that what he had not only inherited from his father but also won by the sword was surely his beyond all reach of foreign arbitrament; but very soon he took refuge in a dignified silence, as though he had made up his mind that the inquiry could result only to his own advantage—with which Pizarro, having his own plans, as he thought, already well matured, was well content.
Now Andamarca lay at such a distance from the Spanish camp that not even the imperial post-runners could convey a message there and bring an answer back in less than a week, and Pizarro had been given to understand that the roads were so unsuited for horse travelling that two weeks at the least would be necessary for his envoys to make the journey there on horseback and return with the captive Huascar, whose exalted station would render it imperative that he should be carried by bearers in one of the royal litters.
This, as Filipillo had foreseen, gave him ample time to push forward the plot which, with a cunning far beyond his birth and years, he had conceived with a daring as great as the ruthlessness with which he put it into execution. The day following the departure of the escort intended for Huascar he let fall certain vague hints about the camp and in the hearing of the Captain himself as to the stealthy departure of runners from Cajamarca for unknown destinations, and spoke of rumours that had reached him of movements of the army under Challcuchima which boded no good to the Spaniards, and promised but ill for the accumulation of the gold which was to pay Atahuallpa’s ransom.
It was but in reason that Pizarro, placed in circumstances still so difficult and dangerous, should be to some extent disquieted by this. He himself could neither read nor write his own language and knew not a word of the Quichua tongue, and none of his better-learned followers had deigned to make any acquaintance with it, saving only Hernando de Soto, and he knew but a few words and phrases which had served well enough on his embassies with Filipillo at his elbow, but were of no use in the lengthy conversations which they were obliged to hold with the Inca.
Thus the sole channel of communication between the Spaniards and their captive or any of his people was the youth, whose precociously keen intellect had been quick to perceive and make use of the advantages of his singular position, an advantage which, as has been shown, he was ready enough to use for his own purposes rather than in the service of those who, powerful as they might be in other respects, were yet utterly at his mercy in this one.
So far he had used all the opportunities that his position gave him to procure even a few minutes alone with the Princess Pillcu-Cica, whose girlish beauty had inspired him with a passion whose gratification was so far the sole object of his plotting. On the one side there were the stern commands of the Pizarro that the Inca’s household should be held sacred and inviolate, even by the greatest of those among whom he was the least. On the other was the immeasurable gulf which lay between one such as he and a princess of the Blood upon whom the Son of the Sun had looked with favour. The slightest outward sign of his passion might mean, not only the final ruin of his daring hopes, but such punishment as his heart quailed at the thought of. Yet day by day, almost hour by hour, he saw her and looked ever more and more longingly upon her beauty, and at last, when the time for the return of the envoys was growing near, he determined upon a bold and, as he hoped, decisive stroke.
The Inca had been growing impatient for news from Challcuchima, and on a suitable pretence had summoned him to his presence in his private apartment.
“Are there no tidings from the army yet?” he said as he entered the room.
“None, Lord,” he answered, “nor is any news to be had of the General himself. The runner whom I sent with thy mandate should have returned the next day, or at latest the day after, but I can learn no tidings of him. It may be that some of these Unbelievers, who are ever prowling about the valley, have met him and slain him for their sport, for every hour I hear people talk of such doings outside the city. Truly it was an evil day that they came into the Land of the Four Regions, and bitterly do I now repent the service that they have forced me into! Yet, though appearances may have deceived my Lord, still am I his faithful servant and would most gladly see him freed from the base bondage they have put upon him.
“Thou, Lord,” he went on, dropping on to his knee and spreading out his hands towards the Inca, “hast had but too good cause to know that, despite all their courtesy and present gentleness, these Unbelievers hold thee here a prisoner when thou shouldst be seated free and lord of all the land on thy father’s golden throne in the City of the Sun.”
The Inca’s brows lowered angrily, and his blood-shot eyes gleamed darkly as he listened to these bold words from the lips of one who was little better than a slave, yet in his heart he knew, bitter as they were, that they were true. He kept a moody silence for a minute or two, and then he said with the manner of one who is musing aloud—
“Ay, true—too true! Would that I had taken faithful old Challcuchima’s counsel! What madness made me trust these strangers who have murdered my people, and, with fair speeches, broken their faith to me! But it is too late. My madness has earned my doom, for even if the captains of my hosts led them here to victory I should be dead before it could avail me anything. What is lost is lost!”
“Yet not all lost, Lord,” said Filipillo, in his gentle boyish voice; “though what thou hast said is true, for I have heard the Spaniards talking of what they will do should thy Generals attack them. They will put thee and thy wives and children in front of the battle; their war beasts will be behind thee, and thine own legions before thee, so that they can strike only through thy sacred person. Of this I am well assured, for it is the common talk of the Camp.”
He paused for a moment or two to watch the effect of his words on the Inca, and seeing him shrink back and shudder with an irrepressible emotion of horror, he went on, speaking even more softly and insinuatingly than before—
“But there is another way, Lord, another path which the devotion of thy slave might open for thee to freedom and the regaining of thy lost empire.”
“Another way?” said the Inca, starting from the seat into which he had thrown himself in an attitude of dejection that was almost like despair. “Another way—a way to freedom and the empire that was mine! Boy, if thou knowest such a way—if thou canst open these prison doors of mine—speak, and when I am once more on the throne of Huayna-Capac, nay, when I once more stand a free man at the head of my hosts, thou hast but to ask and have. I would even bind the yellow Llautu round thy brow and have thee hailed one of the noble Blood, however base thy birth may be, for such a deed would make thee worthy to rank with the noblest. Speak now and open thy mind freely to me.”
“Know then, Son of the Sun,” replied Filipillo, speaking almost in a whisper, “that Mama-Zula, the Palla, the Wise Woman, has journeyed hither from Pachacamac, the temple of the Supreme One. I have spoken with her in secret and she hath put into my mind the thought that I am about to speak to thee. She knew of the coming of these strangers long ago, since she dwells in the temple by the sea-shore and saw their ships go by many moons ago. She knew how their white shining clothing and thunder-smiting weapons made them irresistible to all assault of battle. She knows, as she told me but yesternight, that though thy hosts came against them a thousand to ten yet would they be conquered, even as unnumbered waves are beaten back from the face of one rock.
“But, though some have called them the sons of Viracocha, they are but mortal men like the meanest of thy servants, for some of them have died since they came into the land, and some of their war-beasts too. Therefore, though the weapons of thy warriors are harmless against them, there are others that may prove of more avail.”
He paused here and looked up at the Inca again as though mutely asking his permission to proceed.
“And those, if I mistake thee not, boy,” said Atahuallpa, with a thrill of honest anger in his voice, “are not the weapons of kings and warriors. I know the Palla’s fearful power, but it was given her by the demons, not by the gods. If that is thy way say no more, for my ears are closed. Captive and fallen I may be, but I am still a warrior and a king.”
“Ay, Son of the Sun, but king by no better deed than that which would now rid thee of thy tyrants!”
The voice came from the doorway. The Inca started back and looked up and saw the tall, lean figure of a woman who might almost have been Mama-Lupa herself come back from the fiery death to which he had consigned her years ago. She stretched her long, skinny arm out and pointed at him and said again—
“Shall those eyes of thine which looked upon thy great father’s death shrink from beholding the death of thy masters and plunderers? Have they not slain thy helpless people in thousands with pitiless treachery? Have they not already sent to bring hither Huascar, who, if thy father’s will had been made known before he died by thy mother’s hand, would have been sharing the double throne of the Four Regions with thee now? Will they not set him up against thee when he comes? Will they not play the two Sons of the Sun off against each other like two counters in a game and perchance slay them both when the game is played out? Wherefore shrink then, O Son of the Sun, from using my arts to strike the only blow that thou now canst strike for liberty—ay, for life itself?”
As she said these terrible words the Palla had advanced with slow steps towards where the Inca was standing, staring with fixed eyes and dropped jaw at her.
“How—how knew you—from whence had you such lies?” he gasped, retreating before her as he might have done from a spectre.
She laughed a low, wild laugh at him as she answered—
“How do I know, Son of the Sun? Did not Zaïma the Queen shriek out her confession as the wives of Huayna-Capac dragged her away to join their Lord? Did she not scream it out again louder than before as the flames touched her and she called upon his spirit to be merciful to her, and did not many hear her whose lips thou hast closed as thou didst those of Mama-Lupa, my sister—yet not before she had sent me trusty word of the truth?
“But that is past. It was not thy hand that did the deed. For thee the question is now: Wilt thou be Inca or slave? Wilt thou live or die? The price to pay is not great. In a few hours I can have potions ready, distilled from my roots and herbs, enough to slay every unbeliever in the city so swiftly that none of them shall know the manner of his death. The boy here who speaks for them can see that they are secretly mixed with their food and drink, and an hour after they have eaten and drunk thou art free, and Lord of thine own land again.”
“And the price?” said the Inca in a hoarse whisper, once more dropping on to his seat and covering his eyes with his hands.
“For me,” replied the Palla, “the office of Chief Priestess of the Sun and Mother of the Virgins in Cuzco—a gift that a word of the Inca’s can give me. The boy can ask for himself.”
“And thine?” said Atahuallpa, raising his head and looking at Filipillo.
It was a moment when, strange as the saying may seem, the fate of an empire hung on the word of a boy. Had Filipillo had but a few years more of life’s discipline to teach him wisdom and restraint, had he even known how enormous was the mistake he was about to make, he would have asked only what the Inca had already promised him—elevation to noble rank and the right to wear the insignia of the Sacred Blood—and trusted to the course of events to cool a passion which the Inca could no more gratify, even if he had the will, than he could have diverted it from the Princess Pillcu-Cica to a more attainable object. But instead of that his wayward love and longing flamed up hot in his untaught heart, and, seeing, as he thought, the prize within his grasp, he said, with somewhat less of meekness in his voice than he had used before—
“My Lord has already promised me the right to wear the yellow Llautu and to take my place among the nobles of the land. That would have been more than his slave had dared to hope for had not the service demanded of him been so great and full of danger. Mine is the only hand that can put the poison into the Spaniards’ meat and drink; but were I discovered—nay, even suspected—nothing less than a death of fiery torment would be mine. Therefore, Lord, to give me greater hope and a better heart in so deadly an enterprise, I pray thee add to thy promise the gratification of a love that has so far consumed my heart with hopeless longing.”
He paused for a moment, and the agile intellect of Atahuallpa instantly went back to the scene of de Soto’s embassy at the hot springs, and he remembered the lad’s bold and lawless glances at the princess, and the disquiet, as she had afterwards told him, they had caused her. His black brows met suddenly over his eyes, and fixing a steady, staring gaze upon him, he said in a cold hard tone—
“Say on and tell me which it is of my handmaids’ handmaids that thou hast honoured with thy choice.”
The note in the Inca’s voice and the flash in his eyes told Filipillo plainly that the crisis had come. One older or wiser or less ignorantly daring would have taken the warning and deferred the request, or asked only that his Lord should have given him a mate befitting the new rank that was to be his. But he, puffed up by the arrogant sense of the power which he knew to be his, lifted his head and said boldly—
“I love none of thy slaves, Lord. If I did those other masters of mine would give me as many as I needed. If I am to stand by thy favour among the other Children of the Blood I would wed only one of its daughters. Such a one does my heart already long for. Give me thy royal word that the Princess Pillcu-Cica——”
Before he could say another word the skinny hand of the Palla was clasped tightly over his lips. The Inca had staggered back, his face purple-red with rage, stricken aghast by the bare mention of such a sacrilege as had never before even been thought of in the Land of the Four Regions.14He could find no words in his speechless wrath, but the voice of the Palla broke the silence with a low, fierce hissing sound as, with the sudden strength of passion, she flung him back against the wall—
“O thou, base-born and accursed, canst thou know what thou hast said! Wouldst thou make the price of thy Lord’s salvation the dishonour of himself and his whole race? Dost thou not know that, by the Ancient Law that may not be broken, the very telling of thine impious love hath already doomed, not only thee, but also her whose fame thou hast sullied by the foul breath of thy passion, together with all her kindred, to the fiery death? Thou fool, why didst thou not ask for the borla itself? Thou couldst have had it as easily as this! Henceforth and for ever thy name and thy memory are accursed among the Children of the Sun! Slay him, Lord! Slay him—worthless as he is for thy sacred hands to touch—ere he hath time to add some deadly mischief to thy dishonour!”
Atahuallpa started at the shrilly-spoken word, and, with a low cry like that of a sorely-wounded wild beast, he came across the room with outstretched hands.
A cry of fear burst from Filipillo’s lips. He saw nothing else but swift death in the awful aspect of Atahuallpa’s countenance. With an effort whose vigour was far beyond his years he tore the Palla’s clinging hands away from him, hurled her to the floor in front of the Inca, and fled swiftly and silently from the room and through the passages and chambers of the House of the Serpent till he reached the gate that was guarded by Spanish sentries. They stopped him with crossed halberds. But already his quick wit had found, even in the few short moments of his flight, a way to safety and revenge.
“Let me go!” he gasped breathlessly. “It is life or death for the Captain and all of you! Let me go, or one of you take me with you to the Captain. It is life or death, I tell you! Let me go!”
Then, with a swift, sudden motion he slipped under one of the halberds and sped away across the square towards Pizarro’s quarters as fast as his fleet and fear-winged feet could carry him.
Thetwo sentries, knowing the peculiar position in which Filipillo stood, as it were, between the Inca and his captors, contented themselves with laughing at his escape, and they were the more content because they had no mind to call out the guards and engage in a matter of explanations which might have kept them a good hour or so beyond the time of their stated duty.
It was a dark, cloudy night, and Filipillo’s swiftly-moving form had traversed the plaza and he had reached the entrance to Pizarro’s quarters before any of the soldiers lounging about the square had noticed him. The crossed halberds again barred his way. He stopped breathless and panting in front of the sentry-guarded door.
“How now, lad, how now? Whither in such haste?” growled one of them, who was the same Michael Asterre who had plucked the borla from Atahuallpa’s brow. “Is the Foul Fiend behind thee, or dost thou expect some fair Inca princess waiting for thee inside?”
“Let me to his Highness the Captain at once, I pray you,” he gasped. “It is a matter of life or death!” he went on, using the same words that he had used to the sentries on the other side of the square only a few yards away, and yet measuring, as it proved, the interval between the fall of one empire and the establishment of another. “Let me in, or else go one of you and tell his Highness that I must speak with him at once. Quick, quick, if you are true servants of your master!”
Michael Asterre gripped him by the shoulder and turned him round so that the light from a torch burning in a copper socket in the doorway fell upon his face. He stared at him for a moment or so and then said to his fellow-sentry—
“There is earnest in the lad’s face, Andreaz, whether it be honest earnest or no, and so I will risk a breach of duty and take him to the Captain. Do thou call up one of those idlers about the square and let him mount guard with thee till I come back. Now come along, boy. The Captain has already gone to rest and for the sake of thy worthless skin I hope thy tidings will merit the trouble of awakening him. Come on!”
With that, still gripping Filipillo by the arm, he led him into the house and to the door of Pizarro’s sleeping-chamber, which was also guarded by a sentry. A woollen curtain hung across the doorway, and through it could be seen the faint glow of a light burning in the room. The sentry brought his halberd to the charge and said—
“What would you? By strict orders no one passes here to-night.”
“Orders or no orders,” said Asterre, “I have made bold to bring this lad here. He came running across the plaza from the house where the Inca is lodged, out of breath and babbling about matters of life or death, and seeing that he is his Highness’s own interpreter, I make bold to bring him to him.”
Before the sentry at the door could reply they heard a quick, heavy tread on the floor of the room inside, the curtain was pulled away and Pizarro himself stood in the opening.
“What is this I hear about life and death?” he said shortly. “Thou, Asterre, hast left thy post, and thou, Filipillo—from the Inca’s house! what does this mean? Come in, boy, and thou, Asterre, back to thy post. We shall see whether his tidings are grave enough to excuse thee from thy breach of duty.”
Asterre, who had not forgotten the Captain’s words when, a few days before, he had torn the borla from the Inca’s brow, saluted and fell back somewhat abashed. Pizarro caught Filipillo by the arm and pulled him into the room, letting the curtain fall behind him. The interpreter looked in a half-dazed way about him, coming thus suddenly from the darkness into the light. He soon saw that the Captain, instead of having retired to rest, was holding a council, for, standing and seated about the room, were the chiefs of the adventurers, Pedro de Candia, Riquelme, the king’s Assessor, Alonso de Molina, Carvahal, now sober and sententious, Hernando Pizarro, Juan, the youngest scion of that famous family, Hernando de Soto, Pedro de Mendoza, and the priest Vincente de Valverde.
“Now, lad, what is this that thou wouldst tell us about at such an untimely hour of the night?” said Pizarro in a low tone, bringing Filipillo into the middle of the room.
The boy seized his hand and dropped on one knee before him, and said—
“It is treachery, master——”
“Hush!” whispered Pizarro, who, as has been said before, was a man who never knowingly gave away chances in the desperate game that he was playing against Destiny. He loosed himself from the boy’s grasp and went to the door again.
“Ciezo,” he said to the sentry, “go and join the guard at the outer door, and send round word for every man to awake and hold himself in readiness instantly, in case he’s wanted.”
The sentry saluted and tramped away, and Pizarro, coming back into the room, said—
“Señor de Candia, and you, de Molina, do me the kindness of crossing your swords over the doorway, and see to it that no one comes within earshot of the room. It may be that this is a serious matter. Now, boy, stand up and speak shortly and to the point, for we have no time to waste.”
Filipillo rose from his knee, and facing the Captain with an air of unwonted assurance which no doubt he thought justified by the gravity of the tidings he brought, said—
“Master, I have sought to serve you well so far, and I know that you are strong to protect your servants as well as generous to reward them. I have just come from the House of the Serpent, from which I escaped at the peril of my life. A strange woman, an ancient witch, one of the heathen priestesses from the great temple of Pachacamac down by the sea-shore, has this night come to Cajamarca, and is even now in audience with the Inca. She is deeply skilled in poisons, and between them they have made a plot to set Atahuallpa free by poisoning the meat and drink of my Lord and all his brave followers.
“Knowing that, in a certain measure, I have gained the confidence of your Lordship, the Inca sought to win me over by promises of gold and rank—nay, he even promised to give me one of the princesses of the Blood for my wife if I would secretly put this poison which the Palla, Mama-Zula, would give me into the cooking-pots and drinking-vessels of my Lord and his followers, and when I refused Atahuallpa would have strangled me with his own hands, but I escaped and fled hither with all speed to tell my Lord of his danger.”
“Humph!” said Pizarro, stroking his beard and looking steadily into Filipillo’s eyes. “That is a story which at another time and in another place I should much misdoubt, but here it will be none the worse for the proof. Caballeros,” he went on, turning to the others, “this is a matter which, true or false, brooks but little delay. Buckle on your swords and come with me. We will sift this to the bottom at once. What say you, Hernando?”
“As you say,” replied his brother. “Let us front the accuser with the accused.”
“There is no faith to be found in the heathen,” said Valverde the next moment. “It was but to be expected that, being conquered by arms, the Inca should seek to regain what he had lost by foul treachery and murder.”
“Powers of light and darkness!” growled Carvahal. “Treachery and murder! That was well put. May I have such an advocate as the holy father when my own good and bad deeds come to be assessed! Cuerpo de Cristo! I thought I was somewhat of a liar myself, but until the holy father and that heathen lad shall have settled which of the two is the greater, I will henceforth call myself a speaker of the truth. Well, let us go.”
“There are lies and lies, friend Carvahal,” whispered Riquelme, who was standing close beside him and heard the soliloquy, “and surely thou hast heard by this time of the end that justifies the means.”
“I know but one end and that is my sword-point, and as long as I can swing good steel I will see to it that it well justifies all the means that I may have to employ!” replied Carvahal with a chuckle, as he followed the Captain and the rest out of the room.
They left the house, Filipillo walking between Pizarro and his brother Hernando, and marched across the square to the House of the Serpent. By this time Asterre had given his message, the drum had beat to quarters, and every Spaniard in the city, drunk or sober, was standing to his arms as best he could.
Scarcely fifteen minutes had passed from Filipillo’s flight from the Inca’s sleeping-chamber to his return with Pizarro and his captains. Without any ceremony, and not even being announced, the Spaniards marched with heavy steps straight into the Inca’s presence. They found him seated in his chair, his face buried in his hands, and the Palla standing beside him speaking to him in vehement accents.
“There she is, Master, the priestess, the witch, the poisoner!” cried Filipillo as they entered. “She is even now telling the Inca to dissemble with you until her plot shall be executed.”
Mama-Zula turned as he spoke and faced them, her old eyes blazing again with the angry fires of youth, and her hands suddenly thrown up above her head.
“Ah, slave and son of a slave!” she cried shrilly, “so thou hast returned with thy new masters to whom thou hast betrayed thy Lord. Truly his doom lies heavy upon him since his life is at the mercy of so base a thing as thou art!”
“What is that, she says?” said Pizarro.
“She says, Master,” he replied, “that though I may have saved you from her poisons, and though you may slay her and the Inca too, yet none can save you from the tempest of spears that is about to burst upon you.”
“Take her and search her, some of you,” said Pizarro shortly. “Let us see if she has brought her poisons with her.”
He looked round at his followers as he said this. They were men of a hard and cruel age, men with but little mercy or gentleness in their hearts, and all, saving Vincente, who had incited them to it, had wetted their steel with innocent blood but a few days before; yet it seemed that this was a business but little to their liking; still it had to be done, and Pizarro, seeing their hesitation, smiled one of his grave almost sorrowful smiles, and said—
“Caballeros, I know it is mean work for soldiers’ hands to do, yet it must be done if we would know the truth. De Candia and de Molina, go you and guard the Inca yonder so that he does no harm to himself or any other. De Mendoza and Avila, take hold of the witch, if so she be, and Holy Father, since it may be yours to exorcise the evil spirit in her hereafter, your hands will be most fitting to make the search.”
So this was done, though by no means willingly, Atahuallpa remaining seated all the while in the stoical silence of despair, and when the search was over Vincente had found some half-score of little bags of finely-dressed leather concealed about the Palla’s garments, and when these were opened they were found to contain fine powders of greyish-white and red-brown colours.
Mama-Zula, seeing that all was hopeless, had relapsed into silence and bore the degrading ordeal with the stoical resignation of her race, and when the search was over she stood between her two captors, looking at the little bags of powder in Valverde’s hands with an angry glow in her eyes and a smile of scornful defiance on her thin, withered lips.
“Such things, Caballeros, may be carried for good purposes or ill,” said Pizarro drily, when the angry murmurs that had greeted this discovery had died away. “These may be harmless and healing medicines, simples such as these Indians have ever been renowned for the use of. So, too, they may be poisons intended for the deadly use which Filipillo here has warned us of. We have the proof at hand. Fetch a goblet of water one of you.”
De Molina went out and presently returned with a silver cup three parts full of water.
“Now,” said Pizarro, taking the cup in his hand, “you, Filipillo, ask His Majesty which of these powders he will drink in this water.”
The interpreter did as he was bidden, and Atahuallpa, taking his hands from his eyes, stared in stony silence first at him and then at Pizarro and his companions, but neither spoke nor moved a muscle of his countenance.
“Well?” said Pizarro again. “I have seen innocence look more innocent than that, yet if they be poisons it would scarce become us to do His Majesty to death by force in such a manner. Take a little of all the powders, mix them in the water, and you, boy, tell the old woman to choose between drinking it and being burnt at the stake to-morrow morning at sunrise.”
Valverde instantly took the office of mixing the powders, while Filipillo translated the order to the Palla with certain additions of his own which speedily proved to her that her case was hopeless.
“Give me the drink!” she said. “Since I have failed to save my Lord as I would have done, and since the day of doom has come for the Children of the Sun, let me no longer live in a land that is made vile by so foul a thing as thou art—yet shall thy death when it comes be worse than mine, for I die old and at my life’s end, and thou shalt die while thou art yet young with every desire of thy heart unfulfilled.”
Filipillo shrank back as though smitten by the force of her bitterly spoken words, and the next moment Valverde held the cup to her lips. Avila, who was holding her right hand, released it. She took the cup and with an unfaltering hand put it to her lips and drank a little. Then, with a swift motion, she dashed the rest of its contents full in Filipillo’s face, crying out—
“There is thy baptism of death, accursed one! Now go and ask thy princess if she will look with favour on thee.”
The next moment a swift and fearful change passed over her. Her limbs grew stiff and her face grey and rigid, her jaws came together with a sharp snap and her eyes, fixed in their sockets wide open and staring, glared at Pizarro for one never-to-be-forgotten moment, and then, like a figure of wood or stone, she leaned forward without the bend of a joint and fell at his feet face downwards on the floor.
At the same moment scream after scream of agony rang through the room, and Filipillo, with his hands clasped over his eyes and face, ran, bent double with torment, blindly about the chamber, butting his head against the bodies of the Spaniards and stumbling from them against the walls, till at last he fell down writhing and shrieking on the floor, and tearing at his eyes and mouth with his nails.
“Take him out and wash that vile stuff from his face, and see if you can give him some ease,” said Pizarro in a voice that had but little pity in it. “Santiago, Caballeros! that was a narrow escape for us! We should soon have changed El-Dorado for a land where gold has but little value had any of that devil’s mixture got into our meat or drink. De Candia, it is time we had done with courtesies so far as His Majesty is concerned. Henceforth he is not our guest but our prisoner. I charge thee strictly to see to it that he is placed forthwith in chains, and removed to the fort on the hill yonder. After this none of his people, not even his wives or women, must have speech with him save in the presence of two trusty guards at least. To-morrow we will inquire further into this matter and see what is to be done.”
And the first news that the morrow brought came by the envoys who had been dispatched to Andamarca, and they brought the tidings that on the night before they arrived Huascar, the Inca of the South, had been put to death in accordance with the secret and urgent orders of Atahuallpa.
Atsuch a juncture as this it needed all the clear insight and instant decision of the true leader of men to decide upon the best course of action. The all too successful stratagem of Filipillo, although it had failed in its object as regards himself and his own desires, had so far entrapped Atahuallpa in the snares of his own scheming as to give Pizarro sufficient reason for changing his honourable captivity into a more sternly-guarded durance.
On the other hand the death of Huascar, although it had closed one road to him, had opened another. True, he could now no longer arrogate to himself the office of mediator between Atahuallpa and his brother, but he had now got the Inca of Quito under the shadow of a charge of murder, which, if it suited his plans, he might press even to the death. Then, too, there was the young prince, Toparca, whom he had captured with Atahuallpa’s retinue, and he, so far as he could learn, stood next in succession to the throne of the Incas of Quito.
But there was one other who, if the pure descent alone were counted, stood nearer still, and this was Manco-Capac, own brother to the murdered Huascar, who had an even closer title, now that Huascar was dead, than Atahuallpa himself.
Now between the two possible claimants there was this difference in Pizarro’s eyes. Toparca was a poor lad, weak-willed and indolent, a piece of already wetted clay that could be easily moulded into any shape that his masters might wish for, while Manco, by all accounts, was made of sterner stuff, since, as has already been said, he had withdrawn his own regiments into the mountain fastnesses beyond Cuzco, and had seemingly prepared for a struggle to the death either with the invaders themselves or the Army of the North should the captive Inca ally himself with the Strangers.
For a day and a night the Captain took counsel, chiefly with himself, although he held more than one conversation with those for whose judgment he had some respect, and the result of this was that he did three things.
First he had the young Prince Toparca placed in a safe lodging, and took care that no one should pass between Atahuallpa and himself without the intervention of one or more of his own men. Second, he dispatched his brother Hernando with twenty horse and a sufficient number of Indian followers to the great temple of Pachacamac, which was reputed to be one of the greatest of the treasure-houses of the Incas as well as the shrine of their chief deity. This he was to despoil, not only of its treasures, but also of the repute of sanctity with which it was encircled. Third, as he knew nothing beyond mere hearsay of Cuzco, the true City of the Sun, or the disposition of its inhabitants, he determined to send, under the sanction and with the authority of Atahuallpa, an embassy which, like the envoys of Joshua of old, should spy out the weakness or strength of the land as the case might be.
For this embassy he chose Hernando de Soto, Pedro de Candia, Alonso de Molina, and Sebastian ben-Alcazar as being, after his own brothers, the most trusty of the cavaliers in his train, but he was forced to delay their departure for nearly a fortnight on account of the pitiable state into which the interpreter Filipillo had been cast by the potency of the poison which Mama-Zula, with the last gesture of her life, had flung into his face.
Not enough of it had gone into his mouth to poison him, but for five days he had lain in great agony and almost at the point of death, and, moreover, what had gone into his eyes had well-nigh destroyed them, and so far blinded them that he never afterwards saw anything clearly; which in itself was something of a just punishment for his double treachery and the presumption which had prompted him to look with unworthy longing upon the beauty of the Princess Pillcu-Cica.
It was necessary that he should accompany the embassy for two reasons, since he was the only one who knew enough of Spanish and Quichua to bring back an intelligible account, and, moreover, after what he had been guilty of, there was no telling what Atahuallpa might cause to be done to him, even in the strict captivity in which he was now placed.
For reasons best known to himself Atahuallpa, from whom Pizarro, with true state-craft, had carefully kept his own knowledge of Huascar’s death, not only consented to the dispatch of the embassy, but sent one of his own secretaries with it with authority to procure for it the same conduct over the royal roads and the same entertainment at the resting-places on the way as he would himself have exacted. It may be that he saw in this a means of hastening the collection of his own ransom, or it may have been that he had deeper designs, but the truth is that, like many other incomprehensible things that he did, he here again played completely into the hands of his enemies.
So it came about that, some ten days after Hernando Pizarro had started to Pachacamac by way of the northern coast-road, de Soto and his three comrades departed with their retinue southward through the central valleys between the two great ranges of the Andes on their way to the City of the Sun.
They had been told that a great part of the way was almost impossible for horses, and further that the bridges over the many rivers they would have to cross were made only for foot-passengers, and would break down under the weight of such heavy beasts. More than this, the journey with horses would be very long and tedious, as well as not a little dangerous, so after due deliberation it was decided that they should leave their chargers behind them and make use of the litters and relays of bearers which the Inca had provided for them; and on the morning of the thirteenth day after the death of Mama-Zula—whose body had been burnt the next morning in the plaza to satisfy the scruples of the Fray Valverde—they took their places in their strange vehicles and started for the South.
For twelve leagues they were conveyed down the valley with what was to them incredible ease and swiftness. At every three leagues there was a rest-house, where the relays of bearers were changed. They did not know then that they were being borne by the same bearers who carried the royal litter, men who had been trained from generation to generation to the same work, and who knew that the penalty of even a stumble was death, and so they marvelled as much at the ease of their progress as they did at the splendour of their entertainment, the richness of the country, and the absolute order which everywhere prevailed.
Of this last they had an example as they crossed the pass leading over a transverse range of mountains out of the valley of Cajamarca. At the narrowest and steepest part, where the hills rose up like walls on either side, and where ten resolute men might have held the road against a thousand, they found themselves suddenly surrounded, front and rear and all along the rocks on both sides, by a multitude of men armed with bows and arrows, slings and lances and swords and axes of polished, tempered copper.
Perforce a halt was called, and after the first parleyings were over an old warrior, glittering from head to foot with gold and jewels and gaily-coloured feather-work, came down the pass and spoke with the Inca’s secretary. It was Challcuchima himself, who all this time had been keeping watch and ward over the passes leading out of the valley, determined to let none of the hated strangers escape from it with their lives. Yet when the Inca’s envoy had showed him the thread of intertwisted scarlet and gold which was the token of his authority, and had explained to him the purpose of the embassy, so strong was the loyalty bred in his blood through many generations, that he pressed it to his forehead and gave it back, saying—
“Strange though it seems to me, yet it is well, since my Lord the Son of the Sun has said it. Not on me or my children be the evil if it comes! As for me I have heard and seen, and it is enough.”
Then, without deigning to look at the Spaniards, who had alighted from their litters and got their weapons ready against any possible trouble, he turned and walked slowly up the pass, followed by his attendants. A few moments later the soft, singing notes of some reed instrument sounded on both sides of the road, and the soldiers who had barred the way vanished as rapidly and as silently as they had appeared.