CHAPTER IX.

“SACRIFICE! SACRIFICE!”

That night the utmost precautions were taken to prevent surprise and rescue. The guards at all points of entrance to the city were doubled, and the difficult roads that led down the mountains towards the fortress where Atahuallpa was spending his last night on earth were strictly guarded. But the most potent safeguard of all for the Spaniards was the full moon which rose high in the cloudless heavens, filling the valley with a flood of light and making the mountain-paths stand out white and clear, so that no human shape could pass along them without being instantly seen.

But to make assurance doubly sure Pizarro had caused the Curaca to send out about half a score of his spies to go to the different divisions of the army as though they came from Atahuallpa, and these told the General and the captains of the advanced posts that the Inca had come to an agreement with the Spaniards by which they entered his service and would, for a certain payment in gold every month, help him to crush the insurrection of Manco in the South and restore his rule over the whole land.

Now since this was exactly what Quiz-Quiz and Ruminavi had said in their argument with Challcuchima that he would do, and as they believed that the Spaniards had been overawed and brought to reason by the threat of cutting off all provisions and the water from the city and afterwards assailing it with overwhelming numbers, they took the cunning story as truth and contented themselves with sending messengers into the city assuring the Inca of their undying loyalty and their willingness even to fight by the side of the Strangers against the people of Cuzco, since it was his will that they should do so. These messengers, who arrived very early in the morning, were no sooner safely within the Spanish lines than they were instantly taken prisoners and kept in close confinement till the tragedy had been completed.

By sunrise the whole Spanish force, now amounting to nearly four hundred men with sixty arquebuses and five pieces of cannon, were under arms and in all respects ready for battle in case at the last minute the Peruvian General should discover the fraud that had been practised upon them and attack the city.

In the centre of the square a great stake had been planted, and near this were piled heaps of fagots and dried grass, for in spite of the desire of the Captain-General that his royal prisoner should die, as became his rank, by the headsman’s axe, the rest of those who had made up the majority of the court, instigated by Valverde, had overridden his scruples, and it had been decreed that if the Inca persisted in his idolatry to the last he should die by fire. But they granted that if at the last moment he recanted his errors and received the Sacrament of Baptism at the hands of the holy father he should suffer by the milder death of the garrote and his body, instead of being scattered in ashes to the winds, should receive Christian burial and all honour due to his rank.

The whole of the next day was passed by the soldiery in anxious watching and by Valverde and his attendant monks in prayer for the turning of Atahuallpa’s soul--as they faithfully believed--from the path of inevitable damnation, and in exhorting him to abjure the error of his ways and escape the torment of the fire here and hereafter by embracing the Cross while yet there was time. But Filipillo, whose head was still singing and whose bones were still aching from his last night’s rough treatment, had determined that, so far as he could bring it about, the Inca should die by fire and not by the garrote, and therefore, with pitiless malice, he took care to turn all their pious words into the most ribald nonsense.

It was nearly two hours after sunset when Pizarro, at the head of a file of soldiers, at length went up to the fortress to tell the Inca that the fatal moment had come. As he entered the room Valverde and his monks stopped and Atahuallpa looked up. An expression of scornful reproach more eloquent than many words lit up his noble features, now made more noble than ever by the dignity of near-approaching death. His lips moved as though he would say something, but the same instant he bethought him that he could say nothing save through the interpreter, so he closed them again and turned his face away from Pizarro as though he could no longer bear to look upon the man who had taken his gold as ransom and then betrayed him to death.

“How goes it with his Highness, holy father?” said Pizarro affecting not to notice the Inca’s silent reproach. “Have thy sacred ministrations yet been crowned with success?”

“For his soul’s sake and to my own sorrow I say that though I have striven with him all day, he still hardens his heart against the blessed unction of our holy Faith and still clings to his false gods, not even confessing that he hath sinned, but remaining like one of his own dumb idols and refusing the grace that is offered to him. Greatly would I have loved to be the means of saving so great a sinner, and for many hours I have wrestled in spirit to this end; but the ways of Heaven are inscrutable, and it would seem that it is not to be. There is but one hope now, and that is that the fear of the fire may even at the last moment melt him into repentance.”

“It hath been found ere now a more potent reasoning than even such eloquence as thine, holy father,” replied Pizarro grimly, “and for my part, and not only for his soul’s sake, should I rejoice to see it, for truly he hath had hurt enough at our hands without dying by a death of torment.”

Valverde frowned at this and said sternly--

“Señor, he who could find mercy for the heathen or the idolater in his heart hath commonly little room left for the love of God. The Inca hath already passed beyond the civil power into the keeping of the Church, which now by my hands gives him back into thine for the execution of his body as an obstinate heretic and idolater as mercifully as maybe and without shedding of blood. Do thou, as a true son of the Church, see to this, and, shouldst thou need any excuse to thy conscience, find it in this charge of mine.”

Pizarro bowed and crossed himself, feeling now much lighter at heart, for to such a man in such an age this was full and sufficient warranty for the doing of any cruelty or injustice.

“Since it is the Church that bids me, by thy lips, holy father,” he said gravely, “my responsibility in the matter is discharged. I have come to tell thee and the prisoner of the Church that all things are ready for the carrying out of the sentence.”

“Then let us go,” said Valverde, solemnly clasping his hands and casting his eyes up to the roof; “and may God and the Saints in their infinite mercy change his heart even at the last minute of the eleventh hour!”

The Inca’s chains were then struck off and he was led out from the room into the forecourt of the fortress, and there the procession of death was formed between two rows of torchbearers. First went Brother Joachim bearing the great white crucifix aloft, then came Valverde in his full canonicals chanting the Mass for the Dying with the four monks who came behind him walking two and two on either side of the Inca, who, with his hands clasped behind him, gazed upwards to the sky gemmed with the innumerable stars of two hemispheres and flooded by the white radiance of the moon, the sister-wife of his Father and Lord the Sun.

Beneath him lay the broad moonlit valley spread out in ghostly and almost unearthly beauty, and to his mourning eyes it seemed as though it had never looked so beautiful before. Over against him the dim horizon was closed in by range after range of terraced hills, capped by their domes and pinnacles of bare rock, and behind him towered the tremendous snow and ice-crowned bulwarks which he, in the mad confidence of his strength and ignorance, had left unguarded, and which had so failed to keep out these pitiless and arrogant strangers who were now taking him helpless to his doom.

In the plaza the guards were drawn up in a hollow square round the stake, on either side of which stood a company of torchbearers. The procession moved slowly round to the side of the square which had been left open, and there, halting in front of the stake, the Notary stood out with a parchment in his hand, and in a loud voice read the indictment on which the Inca had been found guilty and the sentence that the court had passed upon him. All round the sides of the plaza stood dense throngs of the people, silent, cowed, and helpless, yet even now scarcely believing that their deity would permit his crowned and sceptred son to die without launching some fearful vengeance upon the heads of the impious strangers.

But there was no thought now of revolt or rescue, for the moment of the massacre with all its horrors was still fresh in their minds, and in every direction they saw the terrible war-beasts ready to ride them down, and the still more dreaded fire-tubes, or llapa-pipes as they called them, ready to rain fire and death and thunder upon them as they had done before.

Pizarro had expressly ordered that they should be permitted to be present, for now that he had finally decided that the Inca’s death was inevitable he was determined that his end should be made as awful and impressive as possible, so that the news of it might be carried throughout the length and breadth of the land and convince those who had not beheld it how vain all opposition to his will must ever be.

When the Notary had finished his reading Valverde went to the Inca’s side with a small crucifix in his hand and, pointing to the crucifix and then to the stake with the fagots piled about it, he gave him to understand by signs and the few words of Quichua that he had acquired that the moment of his final choice had now come. If he would take the symbol of the faith in his hand and speak the one word, “Credo,” then a swift and painless death should be his, and after that salvation. If he refused--there were the fagots and the torches, a death of lingering agony, and after that damnation and eternal torment.

In such an awful moment it could not but be that the doomed Inca’s thoughts should go back to that hour in Quito when he had himself doomed three generations of men, women, and children, and among them his own brother, to the same death of fiery torment which awaited him now.

He looked mutely from the crucifix to the priest, and from the crucifix to the stake and the executioner standing beside it with the torch that was to light his death-pyre. Then his thoughts flew back again into the past, and he saw his guilty mother dragged away to the fagot-piled scaffold. He saw the torches waving in the frenzied hands of the great Huayna’s wives, then he saw them hurled into the fagots, and as the flames sprang up he heard the shrieks and screams of agony mingling with the shrill strains of the Death Chant.

That which neither threats nor exhortations had done the memory of that dreadful hour and the result of his own pitiless sentence did. Once more the terrible words of Mama-Lupa rang shrilly in his ears--

“Sacrifice! Sacrifice! The gods are wroth and nought but sacrifice can appease them!”

Now the moment of sacrifice had come indeed, and _he_ was to be the living sacrifice offered up to assuage the anger of the Powers whom his own crimes had provoked against his people. The spirit of his murdered father seemed to come back and tell him of the unjust doom of those who had died by his command, and suddenly his heart melted within him. He put out his hand and took the crucifix from Valverde and pressed it to his breast, and with bowed head murmured the saving syllables.

“Laus tibi Domine! Gloria, Gloria!” cried Valverde, spreading his hands out towards the heavens. “Shall there not be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth? Brother Francis, the font quickly, ere the moment of grace shall pass!”

The monk immediately came forward with a silver vessel containing the holy water. Valverde signed to the penitent to kneel down, and as he did so he dipped his finger in the water and, making the sign of the Cross on the Inca’s brow, he cried in a loud, triumphant voice--

“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritūs Sancti, I baptize thee, Juan de Atahuallpa.[16] By the prayers of our Blessed Mother and the intercessions of the Holy Saints thou hast been brought out of the darkness of heathendom into the light of the true Faith. By the authority given me by our Holy Father the Pope, God’s vicegerent upon earth, lawful heir and successor of him to whom it was said: That whosoever he should bind on earth should be bound in heaven, and whosoever he should loose on earth should be loosed in heaven, I now absolve thee from the sins and errors of thy past life, seeing that they were committed while thy soul was yet in darkness. That which was as scarlet hath been washed whiter than snow. Go now, son of the Church, and enter into the glory of thy new inheritance!”

They were strange words with which to send one who but a few months before had been lord of wide lands and master of many millions to the ignominious death of a common malefactor, and yet not even old Carvahal was able to look upon the face of Valverde as he uttered them and doubt his perfect faith. For him the miracle of the Church’s Sacrament had been accomplished by his hands, and no man believed anything more truly than he did that the heathen soul of the Inca was at that moment as white and pure as the soul of a little child.

He saw none of the mockery, none of the cruelty, none of the murderous injustice of which they were the sanction. If Atahuallpa could have understood them he might have taken them for the words of pardon and release, but a few moments would have bitterly undeceived him. In their inner meaning they were nothing less than a command to his executioners, the surrender of the body of the doomed man from the keeping of the Church to the secular arm in accordance with the hideous formula which has sent thousands of men, women, and children to the agonizing death of the flames.

But the Inca’s tardy recantation had saved him at least from the physical torments of such an end. The fagots were cleared away from the stake, and the fatal torch was extinguished. Two men-at-arms put their hands under his shoulders and raised him to his feet. He walked between them to the stake passively and in seeming unconsciousness of what was being done. Behind it Michael Asterre had taken his place with a noosed rope in one hand and a short thick staff of wood in the other. Then the Inca was placed against the stake and bound to it with cords. Before his right hand was bound he raised it and, looking towards Pizarro, beckoned to him. The Captain-General approached with Filipillo at his side, but Atahuallpa, with almost the last action of his life, turned his head aside and angrily waved him away. So another interpreter was brought, and by him he said to Pizarro.

“That other who speaks for you is a liar and a traitor both to you and me, and I would have my last words to come truthfully to your ears.

“You have entrapped me and betrayed me. You have plundered me and my people, as no doubt you came to do and as you will still do when you have murdered me as you are going to do. Since you have done me so much injury give me at least one pledge in return. When I am dead let my body be taken to my own city of Quito and there dealt with according to the customs of my race and the honour of my name. Protect those whom I leave desolate behind me, and let them suffer neither insult nor injury at the hands of your soldiers. Now I am ready, let me die!”

Even the iron soul of the Conqueror was shaken by these simply and solemnly spoken words, uttered as they were on the threshold of another world. The accusation struck him for the moment to the heart, and he bowed his head as though abashed by the force of it. Then he looked up and said shortly and in a husky voice--

“You have my pledge, Inca, and all that can be done shall be.”

Then he stepped back quickly and made a sign with his hand to Asterre. The next instant the rope was thrown round the Inca’s throat, noosed and knotted. As he felt the touch of it Atahuallpa started in his bonds and opened his eyes which a moment before he had closed. The next instant Asterre had passed the staff through the noose and given it a quick, wrenching turn. A short gasping cry broke from the Inca’s lips only to be instantly silenced as his executioner gave the staff another and yet stronger turn.

Those who stood round saw by the light of the flaring torches a hideous change pass over the face of the doomed man. Yet another turn and his jaw fell and his tongue shot out as though forced from his crushed throat. For a few moments there was an awful silence broken only by the spluttering of the torches and the dull murmuring of prayers for the safety of the departing soul, and then Asterre released the staff. It spun round and dropped to the earth, and as it did so Atahuallpa’s head fell forward on his breast, and so died the son of Huayna-Capac and Zaïma, his queen and murderess.

As soon as the Inca was proved to be dead the trumpet sounded and the square was cleared. In the midst stood the stake with the body still bound to it, left to a grim and solemn solitude, but after about an hour the Inca’s wives and sisters came in a sorrowful procession to Pizarro, praying that he would allow them to go and mourn by the body of their Lord, and this he, no doubt feeling some softness of soul, if not remorse, for the thing that he had helped to do, not only granted, but ordered that all the guards should draw back to the walls of the houses and the entrances to the square, leaving them unmolested for as long as they pleased.

Then presently upon the still night air there rose the soft, wailing sounds of the Death Chant, and hour after hour this went on, ever growing fainter and fainter, till at last it ended in the long, shrill, piercing cry of a woman’s voice, and then all was still.

The Spaniards thought that one by one they had worn themselves out with wailing and so fallen asleep; but when with the first light of dawn they went to take the Inca’s body away to lay it in the newly-built church of San Francisco, they learnt the true cause of the silence, for there in a circle round the stake at which their Lord had died they lay, maid and matron, each with her eyes upturned to his downbent head, and each with a slender dagger of gold taken from her dark unloosed tresses and plunged deep into her faithful heart.

And so too died the wives and sisters and daughters of Atahuallpa, and among them lay the Princess Pillcu-Cica, fairest form of all, saved thus from dishonour by the parting of the gentle soul which had gone in the fulness of its simple faith to rejoin its murdered Lord in the Mansions of the Sun.

BOOK IV