CHAPTER IV.
A GENTLEMAN OF SPAIN
That night, soon after sunset, a body of five cavaliers, preceded and followed by a score of native auxiliaries of the Cañaris tribe, left the city by the causeway leading to the north-west across the Sierras in the direction of the lovely valley of Yucay--once the scene of the gorgeous revels of a long line of absolute monarchs, and now the mustering-ground of the last of their armies.
Four of the cavaliers were old acquaintances, Hernando de Soto, Pedro de Candia, Sebastian ben-Alcazar, and Alonso de Molina. The moment that they had heard of the terms that Hernando Pizarro had made with the Inca they had gone to him and not only volunteered themselves for the service, but had practically demanded that it should be entrusted to them and to no others. They had asserted that, after the Pizarros themselves, they stood highest in rank and honour in the old army of the Conquerors, that Almagro’s men were not to be trusted since they had shown themselves traitors already to the Governor by supporting their leader in his claim to a part of his territory, and that if they once set eyes on the treasure they would be quite capable of murdering the Inca and claiming that they had themselves discovered the gold, in which case their comrades in Cuzco would be certain to insist on the lion’s share of it, if not indeed the whole, saving only the royal fifth.
Hernando Pizarro, who, according to the chroniclers of the Conquest, always seemed to have been more kindly disposed towards the conquered people than any other of the Spanish leaders--which, after all, is not saying very much--had seen the force of this logic and consented, and he had also consented, after some further persuasion, to permit Alonso de Molina to lend the Inca one of his chargers, so that he might be spared the indignity of going on foot among the native guards.
Thus it had come about that the fifth cavalier was Manco himself, and he sat his horse as firmly and easily as any of the Spaniards; for, like the rest of the royal youth of Peru, he had been trained to hardy exercises almost from the time that he could walk, and ever since he had made what he had believed to be his alliance with Pizarro on the plain of Jauja, the four envoys who had come first into the City of the Sun had taken a delight in teaching him horsemanship and the better use of the Spanish arms in return for the kindness that he had shown to their lost and destitute countrymen, José Valdez and his comrade Alonzo de Avila.
When they were well out of the City and beyond the farthest outposts which had been placed on the slopes of the hills to guard against surprise, Manco, who was riding in the midst of the four cavaliers, saw a movement among them which at first sight seemed to betoken treachery. They pulled aside a little, allowing him to ride on alone between them and the advance guard of Indians, and then he heard them whispering in the still night together.
Perhaps to disarm his suspicions, but more probably on the representations of his guards, he had been allowed to wear his own arms and armour. José Valdez’ sword hung at his side, a good steel battle-axe was hooked on to his saddle-bow, and a long, keen dagger rested in its sheath at his right hand. His armour, too, was as perfect as that of any of the Spanish cavaliers, and so he was well prepared, if not to guard his life from attack, at least to sell it dearly. Presently he heard de Soto say aloud--
“Go to, Molina. Thou art the man to say and do it. Who better? Who else in the army hath a smoother tongue and a readier wit than thine? Thou art the lover too and the hero of thine own plot. Go on, man, and have no fear for us. We will keep well out of earshot. All the blame and all the glory shall be thine, though if there be danger afterwards thou shalt not find us lacking.”
Then the Inca heard the canter of hoofs behind him. His right hand instantly closed on the haft of his battle-axe; as he turned half round in the saddle he saw Alonso de Molina coming up on his left-hand side.
Instead of the sword-thrust or axe-stroke that he half expected there came a light, good-humoured laugh, and as the young cavalier reined his horse up alongside his he threw up his unarmed right hand and said--
“Nay, nay, your Majesty, it is well for a good soldier to be ever on his guard, more especially against those who come from behind, but thou art not now with Almagro’s men, but with true knights of Spain, who do not tempt a friend out into the open that they may fall on him four to one, so hook on thine axe again and listen to me, for I have something of moment to tell thee for myself and my comrades yonder.”
Manco, whose heart was too sore and whose soul was too utterly steeped in gloom and filled with hatred of all things Spanish to recognise the ring of truth and honesty that there was in Molina’s voice, laughed bitterly as he put his battle-axe back and said--
“Majesty and friend! Those words have a strange sound in my ears from one of those who are my conquerors and enemies. As I am now I would rather have a straight thrust than a crooked word. So far I have had nothing but fair promises and foul lies from your people, even as the Usurper himself had. What better am I to expect from you, Don Molina?”
“All that one brave man may expect from another, Señor Manco,” replied de Molina a little more gravely; “and more than some in thy position might have reason to hope for, even from honest enemies.”
“How can one such as I believe that those who came to me as friends can now be honest or honourable enemies? I and my people are not accustomed to believe those whose lips say one thing and whose hands do another. That is an art which the Children of the Sun have not yet learnt.”
“The rebuke is a just one!” replied de Molina, slightly bowing his head, and as the Inca turned sharply round he fancied he saw, even by the starlight, a deeper flush on the young cavalier’s sunburnt cheeks. “Yes,” he went on, “it is true that there is much to be laid to our charge in that respect, but your Highness must remember that guile was ever the weapon of the weak. What else were we when we first came here, a few score among multitudes?”
“Can a full-armed man be weak among a multitude of children who have no arms to hurt him? Would a god armed with the Llapa and guarded by impenetrable armour be weak among a host of men? If that is so, then you were weak among the hosts of the Children of the Sun.”
“That is true again in a measure, Inca,” replied de Molina, “and, more than that, I grant that we have not used the strength that our better knowledge has given us fairly or honourably against you, but that is a matter for our leaders, not for us. And yet,” he went on, lowering his voice and bringing his horse a little nearer to Manco’s, “not all the guile has been or is on our part. What of this treasure at Yucay? What of the thousands of men who are swarming in the passes and above the mountain roads we shall have to traverse? What of the rocks that are even now being poised ready to hurl down without warning upon us? What of the captured Spanish arms and armour already in Ruminavi’s possession----”
“You have said enough, Don Molina,” interrupted Manco in cold, steady tones. “I see that I have been betrayed, and the great price that has been paid for this, my last hope of freedom, has, like Atahuallpa’s ransom, been paid in vain. Well, you yourselves are four to one, and these barbarians are your slaves, but I at least can die as the last of my race should do.”
He never raised his voice, nor was there a trace of passion in his tone, but as he said these last words he drove the spurs into his horse’s flanks and swung him sharply round to the left, striking de Molina’s heavily on the forequarter and throwing it back on to its haunches, then he leapt him forward and wheeled again, and confronted the troop with battle-axe swung aloft. He knew that escape was hopeless for the hillside along the road sloped sharply upwards, and the Cañaris were already spreading before and behind to cut off his retreat. He believed that the plot had been discovered and that all was lost, and his only hope was to die fighting, and not as a captive. He had gained a little ’vantage ground up the hillside, and in another moment he would have charged the four Spanish cavaliers, and then to his utter amazement they all burst into a hearty laugh, and de Molina, who had been almost unseated by the violence of the shock, rode towards him with his right hand outstretched, and saying between his laughs--
“Santiago, Señor Inca! it seems that thou art made of different stuff to him whom we strangled down in Cajamarca yonder. A gallant foe may make a good friend. You and I may be foes hereafter, but for the present we will be friends. Come, come, I meant no harm by my words, however evil they may have sounded. If I had done it would have fared ill with thee by now, in spite of all thy valour. Come, let us ride on as friends, at least to our journey’s end. We love thee none the less for choosing as thou hast done the death of a brave man, and it has made us the more determined to serve thee as we set out to do. Come back, ere these heathen dogs do thee some damage.”
Manco was himself too honest and brave a man not to feel instinctively that de Molina’s words were sincere, and he was too good a warrior not to know that if the four Spaniards had been so minded they could by this time have flung him from the saddle and trampled the life out of him under their silver-shod horses’ hoofs. Yet their laugh and Alonso de Molina’s words not a little bewildered him, and as he put back his battle-axe he answered in some confusion--
“What does this mean, Señores? Is it possible that you are friends and not enemies? Are you not Spaniards?”
It was a bitter rebuke though spoken almost by chance, and it went home. Already the name of Spaniard had come to have the same meaning as a curse in that new world in which their memory is to-day one of ruthless greed and pitiless cruelty. The generous soul of de Molina felt it even more keenly than his companions did, and as he grasped the Inca’s hand half against his will he said half in sorrow and half in shame--
“Yes, Inca, that is true, we are Spaniards, but all Spaniards are not brute beasts such as thou, to our shame, hast seen amongst us. Even in this army of ours, adventurers and plunderers though in truth we may be, there are yet as thou shalt find some who know how an honest enemy should be treated by gentlemen of Spain. Come back, then, and let us ride along, for I have something to say to thee of those thou hast left behind.”
The last words instantly disarmed the Inca’s suspicion. He bowed his head in consent and returned de Molina’s hand-clasp, and when the cavalcade had been re-formed and the march resumed, he said gravely and yet with a thrill of expectation in his voice--
“Señor, I ask your pardon and that of your comrades for my suspicions. Now what of the lost ones I have left behind me?”
“They are not lost while they and thou have friends in Cuzco, even though those friends be Spaniards,” replied de Molina gravely.
Manco’s heart leaped with newborn hope at his words, though another moment’s thought seemed to show him that they were too fair-spoken to be truthful, and so he simply looked up and said again, somewhat coldly--
“Friends--Spanish friends to them in Cuzco? How can that be, de Molina? You know all, therefore you know that Mama-Oello the queen and the Princess Nahua, who one day I had hoped to make my queen, have delivered themselves up knowingly to a fate of shame and torment to buy one more chance of freedom for me. Who is there among you who could wish or could dare to save them?”
“From what we have done so far, Inca,” replied de Molina in a somewhat altered voice, “thou mayest have seen that there is little that gentlemen of Spain cannot dare. As to the wish, that is another matter, and springing from that there is a tale which concerns myself not a little, and for that reason my comrades yonder have chosen me to tell it. It hath also some interest for thee, if thou art willing to hear it; it may at least beguile a portion of our march.”
“I hear a friend speaking through your lips, my Lord,” replied the Inca quietly, although it took all his native stoicism to keep the eagerness of his expectations from showing itself in his voice. “Say on; I am listening not with patience but with the deepest interest.”
Then there was a little silence as though de Molina hardly knew how to begin his tale, and when he did begin his words were at first slow and halting.
“Inca,” he said, “I have told thee, and I trust I and my comrades have already given thee reason to believe, that we Spaniards, whatever else we may be, are not all thieves and ravishers like that one-eyed scoundrel Almagro and his fellow-villains. Nevertheless thou hast heard much against us of which I will now speak first of one charge. The high priest of thy faith told thee this morning that we who are here with certain of our men-at-arms broke into the most sacred recesses of the retreat that you call the House of the Virgins and took thence by force four of the noblest-born maidens, of whom the Princess Lalla-Cica, destined as they say to adorn thine own court, was one. That is true, but that is not all the truth. We took them with mock violence to save them from the real violence of Almagro’s men, who have to-night leagued themselves to commit just such a crime as ours would have been. The maidens are now safe under the charge of the holy father Valverde, who has received them into the sacred asylum of the Church, which no man among us may violate save at the peril of his own soul.”
“May the blessing of the Unnameable, even though He be not the same god as yours, rest upon you for that good deed for ever!” exclaimed Manco, holding out his right hand.
“It may be that after all He is the same,” replied de Molina, grasping it, “and therefore I take the blessing and thank thee for it. Now for the rest of my story.
“Years ago in old Castile, before these dreams of El-Dorado had fired my soul with visions of adventure and sudden riches, I loved a maiden of my own blood and country, as fair and sweet a maid as the sun of Heaven ever shone on, the fairest of all I thought till I came hither to El-Dorado itself. Thou wilt remember, Inca, how on that first day that we came to thee as an embassy from his Highness the Governor we were led into the great square to the foot of thy throne, and how ere thou didst take thine own place thou didst lead to the seat beside thee her who hath now given herself as hostage for thee. In that moment I saw that earth held a maiden fairer far than her who till then had been my soul’s mistress, and that moment I became a traitor to my own love and a slave of thine. Since then, sleeping or waking, the vision of her beauty has never left mine eyes. Again and again without thy knowledge I have sought by every art I knew to gain her favour, and once, but a few days since, to my eternal shame I say it, I hired force to do what my arts of love had failed to do. She was taken and brought to my house. I could not speak to her as I would in her own language, although, as thou knowest, I know some little of it, and so for want of a better way I sought to bring her to my mind through the lips of the interpreter Filipillo. If I had trusted to what he said I should have taken her as willing to betray thine honour and her own, but happily, when, misled by his lies, I sought to do so, she pleaded so sweetly for herself and thee, and I, more happily still, understood so much of her pleading, that the falsehood was made plain to me. Within the hour she was back unharmed in her home, and it may do thy heart good to know that within the same hour the vile slave who had deceived me, and would have betrayed her, shrieked out his last breath under the lash.”
“It was a fate justly decreed, my friend, for now I may well call you that,” said Manco in a voice that was broken by a faint sob. “Henceforth, whether I live or die, thy name shall be one of honour among our people. What more?”
“The rest may be told in a few words. When we heard this morning of the noble sacrifice that the Princess Nahua had vowed herself to make for the sake of thee and her people, I called my comrades here together and told them all the story, and when they had heard it we plighted our honour as good Christian knights and gentlemen of Spain that in so far as in us lay, even to the shedding of our own blood, we would prevent so foul a shame from falling upon our faith and nation.
“Hernando Pizarro is our leader and captain, but only under our sovereign lord the king, than whom there is no more knightly soul in Christendom, and it would go hard with the greatest among us did he know he had consented to do so vile a thing. Moreover, we know well that it is only these ruffians of Almagro’s who have driven him to it in the hope of getting more treasure, so, though it be called treachery or what it may, we have sworn to save thee this night and thy mother and thy princess so soon as God shall put it in our way to do it. That horse which thou bestridest so well is thine. Take it as a free gift from one who is to-night thy friend and whose duty may to-morrow make him thine enemy. I speak for every Christian and good knight here. Now see, here we have come at last to a fair level plain. None know the way to Yucay better than thou dost. Those slaves ahead are but the knaves who serve him who betrayed thee the other day--nay, waste no time in words or thanks, for time is priceless. Charge through their midst and begone. We shall pursue thee for show’s sake, but thou needst not fear we shall overtake thee. Farewell, friend Manco, and begone with all speed and take thy freedom for thy sweet princess’s sake.”
As the last words left his lips de Molina whipped out his long sword and gave Manco’s charger a slash across the haunches with the flat of it. The animal bounded forward and the next moment Manco found himself in the midst of the front guard of Cañaris. His battle-axe was already unhooked and swung high in air. It came down straight and true on the skull of a warrior who was making a stab at his horse with his spear and clove him to the shoulders. The next moment he had burst through the scattering troop and the next he was free. His battle-cry rose by instinct to his lips and rang out loud and clear as he swung his bloody axe above his head in the fierce exultation of freedom. Behind him he heard the hoarse shouts of the Spaniards mingled, as he thought, with laughter as well as with the stamping of their horses’ hoofs. He looked back and saw them cantering heavily after him with the Indians labouring behind them. He put his own horse to a harder gallop. The Indians vanished in the darkness, then the shouts of the Spaniards and the echo of hoofs grew fainter and fainter and at last they too faded into the star-lit dusk, and Manco sped on alone, exulting in his new-found freedom and with the new-born hope which had driven despair out of his soul.