THE SISTER STARS
For five long days we travelled slowly and toilfully on our way from the
valley of Cuzco to that other where Golden Star lay sleeping beside the
lake. Over high plains and pleasant valleys, through deep, dark gorges
and ravines, to whose lowest depths the sun but seldom reaches, and then
but for an hour or two, along narrow pathways cut into the living rock
on the mountain side, with precipices on one hand falling thousands of
feet into the dark abysses, where the torrents roared and foamed, and on
the other the great rock-walls of the mountain soaring up into the sky
yet more thousands of feet above us.
I saw the mighty crests of Saljantai and Umantai rising snow-crowned
from earth to heaven, unchanged in their eternal grandeur since the
long-distant day on which I had last beheld them. I rode with saddened
heart past the ruins of Lima Tambo, remembering how fair and stately a
city it had been in the days before the plunderer and the oppressor
came. We toiled slowly over the great, sharp-ridged range which parts
the waters of the Vilcamayo from those of the Apurimac--the 'Great
Speaker'--then, descending again by the gorge of the river which is now
called the Rio de la Banca, we came to the long bridge which swings in
mid-air from rock to rock across the chasm through which the Great
Speaker rolls his swift, roaring flood.
Its cables were loosened and its floorway broken, for, like all things
else in the land, the Spaniards had suffered it to fall well nigh to
ruin; and, as I led Joyful Star across it by the hand, I thought of what
it had been in the olden times, when not a rope or a stick was suffered
to be out of place, and when the Son of the Sun had been borne across it
in his golden travelling litter, with long processions of his adoring
people going before and behind him, strewing his way with flowers, and
waking the echoes of these gloomy gorges with the melody of their songs
and laughter.
From here we journeyed on, ever facing the setting sun, for two days
more, still winding higher and higher up into the mountains, until at
length, on the third evening, I, riding alone many yards in front of
the others, found the sign that I was looking for--a rock with three
seats carved on the top of it--and turned my mule from the track and
rode over the rough, stony ground up the side of the mountain until what
looked from the road a single rock-built peak opened into two. I
beckoned to the others to follow me, and when they came up I said to the
professor,--
'Do you know where you are now? Have you ever been here before?'
He looked about him and shook his head, saying,--
'This may have been the place where we got off the road when my mule
gave out, but I don't recognise it. Do you mean that we are near the
valley?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Do you not remember seeing yonder two peaks from the
shore of the lake near where you found me?'
He looked at them for a moment, and then said,--
'Yes, I remember them; but they don't look the same, and I don't believe
I could find my way back into the valley from here to save my life. It's
very strange how I can have forgotten it so completely.'
I smiled as he said this, knowing that I had brought them purposely many
miles out of the way by which he had found the valley by accident, for
I had no desire that the way should be known to any but myself and those
I had chosen from among the remnant of the Children of the Blood. Then I
bade them follow me again, and once more rode on alone ahead, for, as
you may well believe, I was too full of my own thoughts and hopes and
fears to be in any mood for conversation, even with Joyful Star herself.
They, too, talked but little, and as we rode on in the deepening gloom
amid the solemn silence and the gaunt grandeur of the mountains, their
words became fewer and fewer, till at length thought took the place of
speech, and the silence was broken by no sound save the patter of the
mules' feet and the rattle of stones under their iron-shod hoofs.
Hour after hour I led them on, turning from valley to valley on the road
that was visible only to my own eyes, and ever rising higher and higher
towards the twin peaks that now stood out dark and sharp against the
starry sky. At last, when our watches were nearly marking ten o'clock, I
stopped before a cliff covered with bushes and creeping grasses, and
calling Tupac to me, I bade him seek for an opening under these.
He groped about among the bushes for a while, and then suddenly, with a
short cry of surprise, he vanished, as it seemed, through the face of
the rock itself. I dismounted and followed him, and found him standing
behind the bushes, facing a square doorway cut in the rock and lined
with masonry. Behind it, and closing it completely, was a great slab of
dressed stone. Down the sides of the doorway were two square pillars of
stone, and in the middle of one, to the left hand, three little lines
had been cut about a finger's breadth apart, but so faintly that only
one who knew they were there could find them.
I stretched a string across from the middle one of these to the
right-hand pillar, and where the string ended in the centre of the
pillar I felt with my finger-tips and found a little circle about as big
round as an English two-shilling piece. Tupac had in his hand the iron
rod that I had used on the Rodadero. I took it from him, and, pressing
the end against the circle, told him to push with me, and, to his
wonder, the rod sank, seemingly, into the solid stone, forcing out a
bolt which had been fitted so cunningly into the pillar that the end of
it looked no more than a circle traced on the face of it.
When we had pushed the rod in about six inches I bade Tupac help me to
pull it round towards the door. The pillar turned on a central hinge as
we did so, and the great stone slab swung back by its own weight, which
we had thus released, opening the entrance to a tunnel high enough for a
man to walk through erect. This tunnel sloped somewhat sharply upwards,
and looking up it I could see, shining in the clear sky beyond the upper
entrance, the stars that I knew were reflected in the still waters of
the little lake by which Golden Star was sleeping the sleep out of which
we had come to wake her.
As the passage was not large enough for the mules to go through with
their burdens, I bade my men unload them and carry their loads through
into the valley. Then we followed, leading our own animals by the
bridle, and after us the cargo-mules were driven through. The load of
one of them was a long, narrow case of wood like that in which the
professor had taken my own dead body to London, but this was thickly and
softly padded inside with wool, and lined with white linen, and at one
end was a little pillow of the softest down, on which the head of Golden
Star would soon be resting.
As soon as we were all standing outside the upper mouth of the tunnel I
looked at Joyful Star and said,--
'Is not this a fitting resting-place even for the daughter of kings? Are
not the stars bright in the heavens and on the bosom of the lake? Are
not the mountains great, and strong, and silent? Do they not guard her
couch well, and does not the snowy peak of Umantai yonder point the
straight way to the Mansions of the Sun, where the soul of Golden Star
is even now waiting for the arts of your brother to call it back to
earth as he called mine?'
'Yes,' she said, looking about her, first at the stars and then at the
vast shapes of the mountains which loomed huge and dim on every side.
'Yes, Vilcaroya, it is a good place for sleep, but--is not the world
beyond a good place to wake in? Have _you_ not found it so?'
I caught the gleam of her eyes in the starlight as she looked towards me
saying this, and, by the glory of the Sun, had we stood alone where we
were, I might have forgotten all save the knowledge that I was the
lawful lord of all this land, and that she was there in the midst of it
with me. For the instant I had gone back to my old life, with all its
old-world thoughts and customs, and then, before I could answer her, my
dreaming soul was called back to the present by the cold, quiet voice of
her brother saying,--
'I don't think that very many would find the world an unpleasant place
to wake in, either for the first or second time, if they could also wake
up lord of illimitable treasures as Vilcaroya here has done. But come,
Your Highness, and you, professor, it is getting late. Don't you think
it is time to be thinking about camping?'
The matter-of-fact words scattered my dreams in an instant, and I woke
from them into the present. I bade Tupac have the animals tethered and
fed, and the tents we had brought with us pitched in the most sheltered
place he could find; and while they were doing this, and Djama and the
others were busy seeing that the work was done to their satisfaction, I
went to Ruth and said--my words, which I strove so hard to keep steady,
trembling with I know not how many mingled passions,--
'Will Joyful Star come with me and see the place where her sister and
mine is lying, waiting to come forth and greet her?'
'Your sister, Vilcaroya?' she said, turning her face up to me so that
the starlight shone upon its fairness and lost itself in the lustrous
depths of her eyes. 'Do you mean your sister only--not--your--'
'No,' I said, 'not my wife, for I have thought upon your words and
pondered them deeply; and though they wounded me sorely at first, yet
now I see that they were wise and just, like all the other words that
Joyful Star has spoken to me. I have learned that lesson, like many
others which you have taught me. That bridal of ours is already to me a
dream of the long-lost past, the vision of a time that is dead and a
people that is no more. When Golden Star wakes, if she ever does, I will
greet her as a sister and a friend, as one of my own people who has
come back to me out of my own times, and she shall help me in the work
that I swore with her to do--but that is all; and I will find others of
the Blood who shall sit upon the restored throne of my ancestors, and be
the parents of the generations of Incas that shall come after me.'
'What do you mean, Vilcaroya?' she said, in a voice that was half angry
and half fearful. 'Do you mean--no, I cannot say it--for I am sure you
do not mean that.'
'How could that be?' I answered, guessing her meaning. 'Is it not _you_
who have taught me the ways and thoughts of the world into which I have
come back? No, what I mean is that I am not the only one now alive in
whose veins the old blood of the Incas flows. Tupac, yonder, is the son
of the son of the son of that Tupac-Amaru who died torn asunder in the
square of Cuzco, because he had dared to raise the Rainbow Banner in the
Land of the Four Regions, and called the Children of the Sun to revolt
against their oppressors. He, more blessed than I who am his lord, has
both wife and child, and if the prophecy is to be fulfiled, and I am to
reign in the City of the Sun, then I will take his firstborn and
instruct him in all the lore of our people and the duties of their
ruler, and if he proves worthy he shall wear the Llautu after me.'
She looked up at me again as I ceased speaking, just one swift, bright
glance that seemed to pierce to the most secret depths of my soul, and
read the unuttered thoughts that were hidden there, thoughts which I did
not dare to speak even to myself in the loneliest hour of my musings.
Then she looked down again, and side by side we walked in silence round
the shore of the lake until I stopped in front of a great black cliff
that jutted out from the mountain side and hung impending over the dark,
still waters of the lake. I pointed into the black shadows in which its
base was hidden, and said,--
'There lies Golden Star, and there I lay beside her through all the long
years that were to pass from the night when I pledged my troth with her
before the Altar of the Sun until this night when I stand with you,
Joyful Star, a new being in a new world, before her resting-place.'
'Is it really true?' she said, stopping as she spoke, and staring
straight before her into the darkness. 'Is it really true that you, who
are standing alive and strong here beside me, lay there under that great
rock for all those years, while ten generations of men and women were
born, and lived and died, and the whole world changed again and again?
And is the Golden Star lying in there now really the Golden Star you
have told me so much of, and I have thought about until she seems to me
more like some living friend that I have known and loved, than a dead
body that has been in the grave for more than three hundred years? Is it
really true, Vilcaroya, or have we all only been dreaming some wild
dream, like that Frankenstein story that I was telling you the other
day?'
As she spoke she laid her hand for a moment upon my arm, as though to
satisfy herself that I was really made of human flesh and blood, and not
a phantom standing beside her in the starlit darkness.
Scarce knowing what I did, I laid my own hand, warm and strong and firm,
upon hers. For an instant I felt it tremble beneath mine. I would have
given all the boundless wealth that I knew was mine for the courage to
close upon it a grasp that it could not have escaped if it would. My
heart seemed to swell as though it would burst in my breast, my tingling
blood ran fire, and wild words rose choking to my lips. Then her hand
slipped away from under mine. Once more I saw her eyes shine in the
starlight, and then I knew that I had learned the last and greatest
lesson that Joyful Star could teach me.
I knew now why to think of Golden Star as my wife and my queen, filled
me with the same untold horror which I had heard that night thrill in
the tones of her who stood beside me, for now I--the son of a lost race
and a long-past age--loved this daughter of the new time. For good or
evil, for hope or despair, I was hers until I went again, and for the
last time, into the shadows through which I had already passed, and
then--yes, there he was, this tall, stalwart, golden-haired son of her
own race and her own time, whose eyes I had seen looking love into hers!
He was coming towards us round the lake with his long, easy, swinging
strides, this man who was already my friend, and who would one day be
the captain of my armies. For one blind moment of madness I thought how
completely I had him and the others in my power; of the lonely, unknown
valley where we stood; of the men who were already my slaves, and who
looked upon me as a god. I thought, too, of the dark, deep waters of the
lake, and the secrets that they held for me alone. How well they could
hide others for me, too! What if Golden Star never awoke? Would she not
be as well lying there in the peace of her endless sleep as coming back
into the world, perhaps to love in vain and to suffer as I was doomed to
suffer?
The shadowy forms of the mountains began to waver and reel around me;
the stars danced up and down in the sky, and a red mist seemed to swim
before my eyes. Then, through the hoarse, dull murmur that was sounding
in my ears, I heard the sweet, low voice of Joyful Star saying,--
'Ah, Captain Hartness, I suppose you have been wondering what had become
of us! I am afraid I have been neglecting my household duties, and you
have been attending to them for me, but really I could not resist coming
here with Vilcaroya. Look, that is where Golden Star is lying, in a cave
under that great rock down there where those dark shadows are. Doesn't
it look cold and lonely and eerie?'
'Yes,' he answered, with a laugh that did not sound to me like his own.
'But I don't suppose that matters very much now to Her Highness any more
than it did to Vilcaroya. But, to descend to less romantic matters, I
have come to tell you that the affairs of our temporary household are
already in order, supper is ready, and we are all ravenously hungry, and
I suppose you are about the same. This mountain air puts an edge on
one's appetite like a razor's.'
'Supper--yes, I had forgotten all about it, thinking of poor Golden Star
lying there all alone in the darkness. Of course, I am desperately
hungry, now that you remind me of it. Come, Vilcaroya, I am sure you are
hungry too. Another night alone won't matter much to poor Golden Star
after all these years. You can dream of her to-night, as I suppose we
all shall, and to-morrow we shall see her. Oh, how I wonder what she
will be really like!'
As Joyful Star said this in a voice that was half sad and half merry,
she turned away towards Francis Hartness, and I followed her with some
light words on my lips and many heavy thoughts in my heart, and we
walked together to the tents, talking of the things that were to be done
on the morrow.
The next morning I was afoot before the stars had begun to pale in the
coming dawn. I had not slept for two hours together through the night,
yet, waking and sleeping, many dreams had come to me. I had been back to
the past among my people, living again that strange old life, with all
its light and colour and gaiety, which was now every day becoming more
and more like a vision that had been told to me by some other dreamer.
I had talked with Golden Star, seeking to teach her the lesson that my
dear instructress of the new time had taught me, and had awakened half
mad with the perplexities of my divided love--the love of the past that
was dead and of the present that was alive. I had seen my sister-bride
come forth out of her tomb to greet me, clothed in her bridal robes,
with the dust of the grave in her hair and on her face. I had clasped
her in my longing arms and kissed the dust from her lips, and while I
yet held her in my embrace her form had grown cold and stiff again.
Then, in the agony of my sorrow, I had strained her to my breast, and,
under the pressure of my arms, she had crumbled in my grasp and fallen,
a little heap of grey bones and dusty garments, at my feet.
Once more I had awakened with my gasping cry of horror still sounding in
my ears, and then, not daring to seek sleep again, I had risen and gone
out to watch for the rest of the night before her grave under the rock.
There they found me when they came from the camp at daybreak. I went
back with them, and our hasty morning meal was eaten and drunk almost in
silence, for we were all too busy with our thoughts to have leisure for
conversation, and my friends, knowing how much that day's work must mean
to me, respected my unspoken feelings, and left me to the silent company
of my own hopes and fears.
Breakfast over, we took our lanterns and tools and went to the rock,
followed by Tupac and two of my men carrying the coffin-like case in
which Golden Star's body was to be laid. Under the rock was a long heap
of loose stones which the professor had wisely piled up in front of the
upright courses of masonry through which he had broken into my
resting-place. He scanned them eagerly to see if they had been
disturbed since his visit, and told us that they had not. Then I bade
Tupac and the men clear them away, which they speedily did, laying bare
the courses of stone behind them, still standing as the professor had
re-built them after taking out my body.
A few minutes' more work opened a passage large enough for a man to walk
in, stooping. As if by a common instinct they all stepped aside and
looked at me. I saw what they meant, and, turning the light of my
lantern into the entrance, I walked back, a living man, into the grave
where I had lain dead while ten generations of men had lived and died. I
saw the place where I had lain, for a few mouldering scraps and shreds
of cloth and furs still lay where my bed had been. Then I flashed my
lantern round the walls of the cavern, and on the side along which my
own couch had been spread by Anda-Huillac and his brother priests I
found what they had told me to seek while I was preparing to fulfil the
oath that I had sworn with Golden Star.
It was a wedge of stone fitted in to a crevice in the wall and left
rough and jagged at its outer end, so that one who did not know its true
purpose would have taken it to be nothing more than a natural projection
in the rough side of the cavern.
With a mallet that I had brought with me I struck the end of the wedge
softly above and below until it was loosened in its socket. Then,
standing to one side, I struck it harder. It dropped from its place, and
the same instant a part of the cavern wall swayed outwards and fell with
a rumbling crash across the floor.
For a moment I stood breathless and motionless on the threshold of
Golden Star's grave. Then, with trembling hands, I turned the light of
my lantern into the inner chamber, and as the dust that the falling
stone had raised fell slowly back to the ground I saw through the
particles dancing in the lantern rays the dim outline of a human form
lying on a couch of skins.
Still, not daring to set a foot within that sacred place, I stood in the
doorway and let the light fall full upon the figure. A glance showed me
that so far all was well. No profaning hand had disturbed the peace and
sanctity of her long slumber. She lay there as perfect in form and
feature as she had lain beside me that night in the little chamber in
the Sanctuary of the Sun.
Then I thought of Joyful Star. Hers should be the first eyes after mine
to look upon that dead loveliness. So I turned and went out to where
they were all standing round the outer entrance, and, taking no notice
of the others, replying nothing to their half-whispered questions, I
went to Ruth and, holding out my hand for her, said,--
'Come, Joyful Star, and see the sister that the Lord of Life made long
ago in the image that you now wear.'
She said nothing, but, with a look of wondering question, put her hand
into mine and I turned to lead her to the entrance.
Djama, with a sudden exclamation, took a step forward as though he would
stop her, but Francis Hartness put his hand on his shoulder, saying,--
'I think you had better let them go alone. There is no fear for your
sister with all of us here so near; and if what Vilcaroya says is true,
why should she not see her first?'
Djama drew back, though with no very good grace, and I went into the
inner chamber, helping Ruth over the fallen stones. Then I flashed my
light on Golden Star's face and said,--
'Did I not tell you truly that the Lord of Life made her in the same
image as yours?'
I heard her utter a little gasping cry of wonder, and then I saw her
slip forward on to her knees beside Golden Star's pillow, and as the
light fell upon the two faces--the living and the dead--the likeness
between them was so perfect, save for the golden gleam of Joyful Star's
hair and the lustrous blackness of the tresses that framed my dead
love's face, that they seemed to me as sisters, one watching over the
slumbers of the other.
'It is more than wonderful, and it is surely more than chance!' said
Joyful Star, in a tone that was almost a whisper, and turning towards me
her white face and the eyes into which the loving tears of pity were
already springing. 'Why did you not tell me of this before, Vilcaroya?'
'Because,' I said, 'the arts of the priests might not have done for her
what they did for me, and I might have found here that which your eyes
should never have looked upon. But now--is she not beautiful, even as
you are?'
The bright blood came swiftly back into her cheeks as I said this, and,
without answering me she stooped, and with gentle hands put back the
tresses from Golden Star's forehead, and, bending over her, laid her
warm, sweet lips on the cold, smooth brow that I had last seen crowned
with the marriage-garland in our bridal chamber in the Sanctuary.