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.