CHAPTER II.
NAHUA’S OATH
It was after sunset one day early in the year 1535, and the young Inca Manco, the titular ruler of the Land of the Four Regions, was sitting moody and disconsolate in a chair, whose framework was carved out of massive silver, in a small apartment of the palace of the Inca-Rocca, which stood on an ample terrace about half-way up the slope leading to the great fortress of the Sacsahuaman, and which had been assigned to him as a residence by those whom he had now learnt to recognise were not his allies but his masters. A thousand trifles, and one fact that was anything but a trifle, had at last brought the bitter truth home to him. All the fair promises of the Spaniards had been lies. If they had overthrown the Usurper it had been only to help themselves, not him. He was no more sovereign here in the city of his fathers than Atahuallpa had been in captivity at Cajamarca.
After the fair seeming ceremony of his establishment there had been feasting and dancing and revelry, for the lighthearted, childlike people had believed as honestly as he had done in the sincerity and friendliness of the Strangers. But then had come the rude awakening. The Spaniards had appointed their own officers over the city; their priests had carried a new worship into the temples sacred to the Sun; the soldiers, in spite of their General’s own strict command, had plundered both palaces and temples of their treasures, and, worse than all, they had broken open the great House of the Virgins and the other convents about the city and had inflicted the foulest indignities upon their innocent dwellers. He had himself once sought to escape from the hideous thraldom of this royal mockery with Nahua, his one beloved, and of so little account did the Spaniards hold him that he was allowed to go unnoticed, and they would have escaped to the friendly shelter of the mountains had it not been that Talambo, the chieftain of the Cañaris, a northern tribe which had revolted from the rule of Atahuallpa and joined the invaders, went to Almagro and persuaded him that he had gone to join Ruminavi and bring all the remaining hosts of Peru in an irresistible swarm down upon the devoted city, and this had led to his being pursued and brought back to be thrown into prison like a common malefactor.
The coming of Hernando Pizarro to take command of the city in place of Almagro had led to his release and his restoration to the pretence of royalty. But now the iron had entered into his soul and he knew himself for what he was, a captive and a slave, a puppet dressed in the robes of sovereignty whose business it was to dance at his master’s orders for the delusion of his own people.
Nearly half an hour had passed in his sombre reverie when suddenly the vision of Atahuallpa, bound to the stake and surrounded by these pitiless Strangers, seemed to rise before his view as it had been told to him by many of those who had stood round the square of Cajamarca on that fatal night. Then he saw the morning light breaking over the circle of devoted women lying dead, slain by their own hands, round the stake, and among them the Princess Pillcu-Cica, his own half-sister. He remembered her in the old days at Quito as the friend and playmate of Nahua, and then suddenly again the picture before his half-dreaming eyes changed and he saw himself bound to such a stake with Nahua lying lifeless at his feet.
It needed no more to stir the latent heroism in his soul to revolt. He sprang from his seat, nerved by a sudden impulse of almost despairing anger, and snatching the fringed diadem from his brow he dashed it to the ground, and at the very moment that he did so the heavy curtains that covered the doorway were drawn apart and his uncle Anda-Huillac entered with bowed head and slow steps, followed by Mama-Oello, his mother, the sister-wife and Coya of Huayna-Capac, and Nahua.
When the high priest had given him the customary greetings, his eyes fell upon the borla lying on the floor, then he raised them and looked at the young Inca, and said--
“It is the first time, Lord, that the crown of the Four Regions has lain where it might be trampled underfoot, yet I call our Father the Sun to witness that I would rather see it there--ay, I would rather see it spurned by the foot of the merest slave in Cuzco--than on thy brow.”
“Because that brow is not worthy to wear it? Is that so, brother of my father?” exclaimed Manco, turning half angrily and half reproachfully upon him.
“Not so, Lord,” replied the old priest, “since I for one believe that if the true spirit of the great Huayna yet burns in the breast of any of the Children of the Sun it burns in thine. It is the crown that is not worthy of the brow since it was placed on it by the hand of the Stranger and the Unbeliever.”
“And the conqueror. Forget not that Anda-Huillac,” the young Inca added, clasping his hands behind his back and looking down upon the discarded crown.
“Conqueror until now only, my son and my Lord,” said Mama-Oello, coming forward and laying her hand lightly upon his arm, “and conquerors only because the Usurper had split the power of the land in twain and set one half of it against the other. Had there been but one Lord over the Four Regions, and had all our armies been united under such a rule as his whose love was my joy and my honour, then these few Strangers, despite their strange weapons and terrible war-beasts, would have been but as feeble reeds in a rushing torrent, to have stood perchance for a while and then fall overwhelmed. My son, is there no hand in all the Four Regions that can draw together what the hands of Atahuallpa parted? Is there no heart whose valour can fire the thousands who yet remain faithful to us with the high resolve to win back what is lost, and to overwhelm these cruel Strangers in the midst of the ruin that they have brought upon us? If there is such a hand and such a heart left in all the Four Regions, surely they shall be thine, my son.”
“Why have you come to tell me this now?” said Manco, turning almost roughly upon her. “Have you waited till I am something worse than a slave, powerless and a captive, degraded before the eyes of my people and accursed in my own? See, there lies the borla which I may never wear again. I am sick of pretence. Henceforth I will be and seem what I am. Oh, Nahua, Nahua, wisest and dearest of my counsellors, what evil spirit stopped my ears to the wisdom of your counsels and opened them to the smooth-spoken lies of these accursed strangers? But why do you three come to me now, now when it is too late?”
“Because it is not yet too late, Lord,” replied Anda-Huillac, motioning to Nahua to be silent till he had spoken, “and because while thou hast been brooding here in thy captivity, since it is nothing else, over the misfortunes of thy people two of the vilest outrages that could have befallen them and thee have this day come to pass.”
“What are they?” said Manco, looking gloomily at him. “What worse can befall the Children of the Sun or him who should be their lawful Lord?”
“My Lord knows,” replied Anda-Huillac solemnly, “that these impious Strangers have already despoiled the House of the Sun of its most sacred treasures. At noon to-day they robbed it even of its holiness, and dedicated it to the worship of their own gods. To-day, too, the common soldiers of the Strangers forced their way for the third time into the House of the Virgins, penetrating this time into its most secret and holiest place, and by order of the same four who came to thee many moons ago as friendly envoys, rifled it of its last priceless treasure, and at this moment the Princess Lalla-Cica and her sisters, fairest save one of the Virgins of the Sun, are the slaves and playthings of these false-tongued and black-hearted Strangers whom we have welcomed as friends only to know them as enemies and oppressors.”
No other tidings could have carried such shame and horror to the heart of a true Son of the Sun as these, and as he heard them Manco staggered back, and the red blood faded out of his cheeks leaving them a dull greyish brown. The Temple of the Sun was the last spot left undefiled in all the land, and the maidens who had been torn from the most sacred recesses of the House of the Virgins were, saving only Nahua herself, the pick and flower of the royal race that had been destined, according to the custom of the land, for the Inca’s own harem. How black was the insult and how deep was the injury may be guessed from the fact that the Temple of the Sun was looked upon as the actual first dwelling-place of the Divine founders of the Inca race, and that not even the vestal virgins of Rome were held in higher honour or guarded more jealously than were the Virgins of the Sun.
There was a little silence in the room before Manco spoke again. Nothing, not even his own captivity, could have shown him how far he and his race had fallen from almost unearthly splendour, or how utterly the imperial fabric which his ancestors had reared, had crumbled into fragments at the touch of these strange and terrible invaders. Then his eyes fell on the fair face and graceful form of Nahua and a new ray of hope seemed to shine through the gathering gloom of his despair. Brushing past his mother and Anda-Huillac he took two quick strides towards her holding out both his hands, and said in a voice that shook with the strength of his mingled sorrow and passion--
“All is lost, and yet not all whilst thou art left to me, my Nahua. If the Children of the Sun are false to their gods and themselves, if they give the land into the hands of the Strangers by fighting for it among themselves, is there not many a remote and unknown valley hidden away among our eternal mountains to which thou mayst fly with me and with a remnant of our people who may remain faithful? The land from the sea stretches away for ever so they tell me. Can we not escape out of this prison-house and in some far distant land, where these accursed Strangers can never follow us, found another empire and a new line of royal Incas?”
To his amazement Nahua drew herself up and shrank back for the first time from his proffered embrace, and as he stopped short and stared wide-eyed at her she said with distant and yet gentle dignity--
“My Lord has offered me the greatest honour that can befall a Daughter of the Sun. He has asked me to be not only his wife but his Coya and queen. He has the power to make me his slave, even as these brutal Strangers have made Lalla-Cica and her sisters their slaves. But by the Ancient Law he cannot make me his queen without my full and free consent, and his queen I will never be until he has taken that which is his own again. Not from the hands of the Strangers as he took this dishonoured diadem, but that which he shall have won in battle by the strength of his own right hand, and by the right hands of those who shall still bow faithful to him and the memory of his fathers. It is not that I love you less, my Lord,” she went on in a gentler tone, “for that would be impossible. It is that I love your honour and that of our ancient race more than life itself. Your slave I may be at your will, but--by the glory of our Father the Sun, by the unspeakable might and majesty of the Unnameable, I swear it--your wife and queen I will never be till I can take my lawful place beside you to rule over a people that is free!”
“And free it shall be!” cried Manco, roused by her words to all his old enthusiasm. “That holy oath which thou hast taken I take too. As thou hast sworn, so will I swear never to claim thee for my queen till I can set a worthy diadem upon thy brow. I will find a means of escape and this time I will not be caught. Ruminavi is still free and I will find him, and with him I will either win back what is lost, or thou shalt find me waiting for thee in the Mansions of the Sun. Surely there must be some way of escape even now.”
“There is, Lord, for we have found one for thee,” she said, her eyes suddenly filling with tears, and her voice broken by a sob which she tried in vain to repress. “But of that Anda-Huillac can tell thee better than I. Farewell, my Lord and my love--farewell!”
So saying she clasped her hands to her eyes, and before the Inca could make a motion to stop her or even say a word to call her back, she had fled swiftly and silently from the room.