IV
Dick, clear of the House of the Serpent by what was little short of a miracle, crouched down in a niche of the palace wall, hewn out by some dead Inca hand, and there waited for Huascar throughout the night, watching the door at which he must appear. He was careless of the danger he ran, and his very boldness saved him. Not one of the passing Quichuas, dignitaries of the Interaymi, dreamed for an instant that the poor Indian wrapped in his poncho, and apparently asleep, was the sacrilegious stranger who had slipped from their clutches. The darkness, too, favored him, as it had favored his daring escape; he had merely turned his red poncho inside out, so that it looked like any other poncho, and had joined the howling crowd, stopping in it until Huascar’s order had cleared the hall.
Argue the matter as he would, the young man saw no hope. Garcia’s victory over the Federal troops at Cuzco had given the district into the hands of the Indians. The Spanish population, only an eighth of the 50,000 souls in the ancient city, had fled. Never since the Spanish Con quest had the Quichuas so completely been the masters. Garcia himself had prudently left the town, waiting for the end of the Interaymi; and the few troops he had left behind him were heart and soul with the native population, from which they had been levied, and with which they shared customs, faith and fetichism. In a word, the Cuzco was as much the home of the Incas as it had been in the heyday of their despotic rulers.
When Dick and his companions had reached the outskirts of the city they had hidden their motor in a half-deserted country inn, bribing the landlord. They had at once realized that force was out of the question. Happily, there remained Garcia’s money. The landlord, a poor half-breed who asked no better than to become rich, had listened readily, and the offer of a small fortune had set him off looking for Red Ponchos willing to betray Huascar.
He found four, the very men who were to be the Guards of the Sacrifice, in the House of the Serpent. When these men had explained their functions, the four Europeans could hardly believe their good fortune. Dick and Don Christobal were so absorbed by the idea of getting through to the prisoners somehow, that they did not stop to think how suspiciously easy their task had been. Uncle Francis, a witness of the bargain, was for once not altogether wrong when he shrugged his shoulders at their childish scheme to “take him in.”
The Red Ponchos agreed to everything, and the price was fixed, and they received half-payment. The remainder was to be handed over when the Marquis’ children were free. The traitors promised to help them escape from the sacred precincts, and moreover brought them their disguises.
Uncle Francis, chuckling covertly, accepted the part assigned to him with such readiness, showed such quiet courage in his attitude, that he reconquered at one stroke the lost esteem of both the Marquis and his nephew. Natividad, ever ready to believe anything to the discredit of an Indian, and knowing from experience how easily they were to be bought, was quite confident in the success of the expedition.
Thoroughly fooled by Huascar, they had walked into the trap, and only amazing luck had saved one of them. Where were the others now? Where was the dungeon that held them, and what was to be their fate?
Dick was waiting in the dark street before the palace, determined to shoot Huascar when he saw him. All night through, nobody came out of the House of the Serpent. At dawn, the young engineer suddenly felt a hand on his arm, and, looking up, recognized the old man to whom he had spoken at Arequipa, the father of Maria Cristina de Orellana.
“Why do you stop here?” asked the stranger. “You won’t see the procession if you do. Follow me, and I’ll show you my daughter coming out of the Corridor of Night.”
Dick stared at him. Groups of Indians were passing, all heading in the same direction. The old man spoke again.
“You may as well go with them. They are all off to see the procession of the Bride of the Sun.”
Dick followed him mechanically. Why not, after all? He was nearly mad himself. Why should a madman not be his guide? As they walked, Orellana babbled on tonelessly.
“I know you well. You want to see the Bride of the Sun. I see you have even disguised yourself as an Indian to do so. Not in the least necessary, I assure you. You’ll see her, right enough, if you come with me. I know Cusco, below ground and above ground, better than any living man. I have lived in their secret passages for ten years. When I am not under ground, I guide strangers through the city, and show them where the Bride of the Sun used to pass on her way to the Temple of Death. You know that, of course? It’s the same as the Temple of the Sun, only underneath. I’ll show it you, for it’s worth seeing.
“Fine fêtes this year, señor. Last time, they had to hide themselves in the Corridors of Night, but to-day they are masters both above and below, and that dead king of theirs, Huayna Capac, will see daylight again. They’ll take him all through the city, as they used to do. If you don’t know that, you haven’t been keeping your ears open.
“Where are your friends? I could have shown it to them as well. And I don’t charge much; a few centavos keep me going for weeks. All the innkeepers know me, and send for Orellana when they have visitors. I know you all quite well. I saw you at Mollendo, then at Arequipa, and now here you are again outside the House of the Serpent. That’s where they always go first. Yes, that’s the way they brought Maria Cristina ten years ago. She was the prettiest girl in Lima, so they chose her for their god. I didn’t know then, but this time they won’t have their way quite so easily. When I saw the Interaymi come round again, I said to myself: ‘Orellana, you must get ready for them.’ And I’m ready for them, never fear!”
Thus they crossed the whole city. Dick, walking like a man in a dream, following to the next station in the martyrdom of his sweetheart, paid no heed to the wonderful ruins on all sides of him, the mighty buildings piled rock on rock by demi-gods, and which have not moved, nor will move until the earth dies, long after the winds of heaven and the quivering of the mountains have stamped flat the miserable huts left by the Conquistadors.
They left the city behind them and Orellana, taking Dick by the hand, like a little child, made him climb the mount which the Quichuas call the Hill of the Dancing Monkey. Its gigantic summit, hewn into terraces, galleries and giant stairways by long-dead craftsmen, was already crowned with Indians. All eyes were turned toward that other miracle of Inca work which is Sacsay-Huaynam, a hill of stone fashioned into a Cyclopean fortress, with three lines of defenses rising one above the other, each wall dotted with niches from which on this day, as of yore, armed sentries looked out over the country. On the summit of Sacsay-Huaynam towered the Intihuatana, or “the pillar on which the sun is bound.”
Orellana’s broken voice explained it all to Dick, guide-like.
“This pillar, señor, was used by the Incas to measure time. A religious stone, erected to mark the exact period of the equinoxes. That is why they call it Intihuatana; it means where the sun is bound.’ Look over there! You can see the procession starting.... Don’t you understand? The Corridors of Night run right under the city, from the House of the Serpent to Sacsay-Huaynam. When my daughter comes out, they will take her round the hill, and round the Intihuatana. Then, when the Sun has been freed by the High-Priest, the procession will come down to the gates of the city.”
Dick could now clearly see the procession forming up on the walls, and even distinguished Huascar at its head, giving orders. Leaving Orellana, he hurried toward Sacsay-Huaynam, getting as near as the press of Indians would allow. He could now see that the solstice pillar, placed in the center of a circle, was loaded with festoons of flowers and fruit, while on its summit stood a golden throne. The throne of the Sun, vanished centuries before, had been brought out from the Corridors of Night and replaced there before the dawn.
There was silence on Sacsay-Huaynam; a few priests were grouped round the Pillar, waiting for the hour of noon. Then Huascar appeared, clad in golden vestments. Facing the throne of the Sun, the High-Priest waited a few seconds, turned and cried aloud in Aïmara a phrase which was taken up on all sides in Quichua and Spanish:—“The god is seated on the Column in all his light!” Then he struck his hands together, giving the signal for all to march; the god, having visited his people, had been freed, and continued his voyage through the heavens. The faithful followed him on earth, from east to west.
The sacred procession sprang into life, led by Huascar. First came a hundred servitors of the god, simply dressed, whose task it was to clear the way, chanting paeans of triumph. After them, a group of men in chequer-board tunics of red-and-white, whom the populace greeted with shouts of “The amautas! The amautas!” (the sages). Then others all in white, bearing hammers and maces of silver and copper, who were the apparitors of the royal palace; the guards and the Inca’s body attendants, their azure robes blazing with precious metals; finally, the nobles, with heavy ear-rings marking their rank. The procession wound slowly down from Sacsay-Huaynam to the plain, and then the double throne, borne on the shoulders of the noblest among the Indians, appeared to the multitude. Thousands of throats greeted the dead king and his living companion; a roar of mingled enthusiasm for the descendant of Manco Capac, and hatred for the conquering race, translated by deafening shouts of “Muera la Coya! Muera la Coya!”
Maria-Teresa seemed to hear nothing; pale as marble and beautiful as a statue, she passed unheeding, little Christobal still in her arms. Instead of the bat-skin robes, they now wore vicuna tunics, sheer as silk. Behind them walked the two mammaconas who were to die, their faces veiled with black; the other women and the three Guardians of the Temple had disappeared. The cortège was brought up by a company of Quichua soldiers in modern uniform, rifle on shoulder, tramping to the lilt of the quenia-players, who closed the march.
The contrast between this antique procession and that fragment of a modern army was more than curious. Uncle Francis, the only one who could have really appreciated it under the circumstances, was not there. As to Dick, he was watching Maria-Teresa with the fixed gaze of a madman. Strive as he would, he could get no nearer, and so backed out of the press to run toward the gates of the city, where he hoped to fight his way to the front ranks.
On the last steps of the Hill of the Dancing Monkey he was immobilized by the press of people and forced to look with them to the summit of Sacsay-Huaynam, where, on the top of the highest tower, had appeared the scarlet figure of a priest, sharp-cut against the azure of the sky.
Dick at once recognized the Preacher of Cajamarca, and voices around him further explained that this was the chief officer of the quipucamyas, or Keepers of the Historical Word. His voice, sweeping down from Sacsay-Huaynam, checked the advance of the procession, chanted the glory of by-gone days.
Ringing clear and impassioned, it recalled the day when the Stranger and his diabolical train had first entered those plains after the death of Atahualpa. As to-day, the Sun blazed over the Imperial City, then full of altars sacred to his cult. Then, innumerable buildings, which the conqueror was to leave in ruins, traced white streets in the heart of the valley, and clustered on the lower slopes of the hills. In the conqueror’s train was Manco, descendant of kings, in whose name he gave orders and was obeyed. On that day, when the sun went down behind the Cordilleras, it might well have been thought that the Empire of the Incas had ceased to exist.
“But it still lives!” thundered the voice. “The Sun still shines on his children; the Andes, cradle of our race, still tower to the skies; Cuzco, navel of the earth, still quivers at the voice of his priests; Sacsay-Huaynam and the Intihuatana are still standing; the procession of the Interaymi still starts from these sacred walls!”
At these words, the procession moved on again, and had it not been for the anachronism of the riflemen bringing up the rear, one could almost have believed that five hundred years had brought no change in the plains of the Cuzco.
Dick, finally free to move on, was despairing of ever getting nearer to Maria-Teresa when he met Orellana again.
“What are you looking for?” asked the old man. “A place to see from? Then come with me, and I’ll show you my daughter. I know Cuzco better than the Incas themselves. Come with me.”
Once again Dick allowed the madman to be his guide. They reentered the city by way of the Huatanay ravine, spanned to this day by the Conquistadors’ bridges, and entered a maze of side-streets free from the crowd. Skirting the prodigious Hatun Rumioc, or wall-which-is-of-one-rock, they passed Calcaurpata, which tradition makes the palace of Manco Capac himself, first King of the Incas and founder of Cuzco; then they turned toward the Plaza Principale, called Huàcaypata by the Quichuas of to-day as by the Incas of yore. To reach it, Orellana took Dick through the ruined palace of the Virgins of the Sun, detailing, as he went, the uses and names of the various rooms. The young man’s impatient interruptions left him quite unmoved.
“We have plenty of time. You shall see my daughter from so near that you could speak to her. Stop a minute, and listen to the quenias. The head of the procession has no more than reached San Domingo. That church, curiously enough, was built on the very foundations of the Temple of the Sun.... I have never met a visitor less curious than you are.... This is the cloister of the Virgins of the Sun.... It has always been the home of virtue and piety, for the Christians turned it into a convent under the auspices of Santa Catarina.”
Dick, unable to stand the guide’s jargon any longer, began to run toward the noise of the advancing procession.
“You might pay me!” shouted Orellana in his wake. “Pay me what you owe me!” and stooped to pick up the centavos which the young engineer threw on the ground.
Nearing the plaza principale, Dick again found his way blocked by the crowd, and forgot his anger in the relief of finding a friend when Orellana tugged at his poncho again.
“You might as well stop with me,” urged the old man. “Hurrying won’t help you. I know a little tiny Corridor of Night that will lead us to the Sun, right to the top stone of one of those temples.... It’s a temple dedicated to Venus.... They call her Chasca, or the young man with the long and curly locks, and he’s supposed to be the page of the Sun. Come with me.” Orellana had taken Dick by the hand, and led him to a cellar, in which they found the foot of a narrow staircase. Once at the top of it, they were, as the old man had promised, on the summit of a ruined temple, dominating the crowded square below and the streets radiating to it like the spokes of a wheel to the huh. Around them were other ruins; temples sacred to the moon, to the “armies of the heavens,” which are the stars, to the rainbow, lightning and thunder… walls which still defied the elements, though the temples were now shops, work-rooms or stables.
The head of the procession had appeared, the hundred servitors of the god pressing back the crowd, and slowly wound its way round the square. Then the golden litter came into sight and Huayna Capac, for the first time in centuries, came to the center of the world, the Umbilicus of which he had been lord and master. All heads were bowed before this sovereign shadow and the memory of ancient glories once again brought to life. The crowd even forgot for the moment its hatred of the stranger woman, the motionless Coya with the stranger child in her arms.
The double throne was brought to the center of the square, and the crowd rose with clamoring voices. Around the litter, the caciques and the chiefs, the nobles and the amautas, who are the sages, joined hands and began to circle, dancing as they danced of yore, when each man held a link of the golden chain and danced the Dance of the Chain. Hands made the links to-day, for when the Strangers slew Atahualpa, the nobles of the Cuzco threw that chain, which otherwise would have gone to the King’s ransom, into the deepest water of Lake Titicaca.
“Recuerda!”
Suddenly, as if from the heavens, this cry checked the rhythm of the Dance of the Chain. Maria-Teresa started on her throne, remembering the signal in the House of the Serpent. The child in her arms also lifted its head, and their eyes questioned the blue vault above from which this word of hope had fallen.
“That was Dick’s voice, Maria-Teresa! I told you he would come to save us!”
The girl’s eyes explored the towering walls about her, black with Indians. How could she recognize him in that crowd? Where was he? Again the voice rang out over their heads, so loud that it could be heard by the most distant unit of the crowd.
“Recuerda!”
Every head was turned upwards, and a threatening murmur rose from that human mass, torn from its dream of renascence and liberty by a single Spanish word. Recuerda! What must they remember? That they were slaves? That these fêtes, striving to recall an abolished past, could only last the space of a day? That the sun of to-morrow, forgetting that of to-day, would only shine anew on their servitude?
Maria-Teresa started up from the golden throne with the child in her arms, brought to life and action again by the beloved voice.
Looking higher, they at last saw, on the highest stone in the azure, a pigmy figure holding out its arms to the Coya, and crying, “Maria-Teresa! Maria-Teresa!”
“Dick!”
Then all understood that on high there was a stranger, one of the hated race, come to rob them of the soul of their Coya.
V
Pandemonium reigned in the square. This was sacrilege unspeakable! Did not the Coya already belong to the gods! Muera la Coya! Death to the stranger! There was a huge rush, a scramble of raging Indians along parapets, over rocks and the ruins of temples, while the golden litter was hurried away by the Guards of the Sacrifice and the amautas. Maria-Teresa closed her eyes, carrying to the tomb that supreme farewell which was perhaps to cost Dick his life.
“You must be mad,” said the madman Orellana, when he saw Dick lean over and call to Maria-Teresa, and when she answered, asked almost angrily: “How did you come to know my daughter?”
The roar of the angry crowd surged up to them, surrounded them, and drew nearer. It was with the greatest difficulty that Orellana shook Dick out of his strange torpor, dragged him through the gap from which they had emerged, and finally to the labyrinth below the Temple. Apparently familiar with every twist and turning of the place, he led him through a mile of passages, their darkness relieved here and there by round, square or triangular patches of light sifting down between thousand-year-old stones from the world above. Occasionally he stopped to tell Dick what temple, what palace, they were passing under.
“Yaca-Huasi, which they also call the House of the Serpent, is over our heads now.”
“Perhaps they have taken her there!”
“No, no! That’s against all the rules. The Temple of Death is the next place.”
“Where are we going to? Where are you taking me?”
“To the Temple of Death, of course!”
Dick followed him without another word, but expressed his surprise when they emerged into the open country.
“Where is the Temple, then?” he asked.
“On the Island of Titicaca. You needn’t be afraid. We shall get there before them.”
They hired horses at a wayside inn and rode to Sicuani. Here they took a train which, turning onto a branch line at Juliaca, then ran to Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. On the way, Orellana babbled ceaselessly about the country through which they were passing and the ceremony they were to witness.
No stranger has ever seen it. But he, Orellana, asked nobody’s permission, and since his daughter was to be wedded to the Sun, it was the least of things that he should be present at the marriage, and particularly as he had planned it all so carefully! It had taken him years to find the Temple of Death, but with patience all things could be done. There was not one dried-up river-bed underground, not a deserted goldmine which he did not know so well that he could find his way about it with his eyes shut.
And what fortunes he had discovered under the earth; a fortune equal to all the fortunes on earth! It was obvious that the Incas must have got their gold somewhere. Well, he had discovered where! There was plenty of it left, plenty of it left!… One day, some clever young engineer would find out, and he would only have to stoop to be as rich as Croesus. (A bitter smile from the young engineer, whose thoughts were far from such things.)… But he, Orellana, did not give a fig for all the gold in creation.
He loved only his daughter, whom the Indians had taken to the Temple of Death, and it was only the Temple of Death which he had sought.
It had taken him years, but now everything was; ready and he was going to save her. He had waited long enough to kiss her again! Ten whole years!
So the old man wandered on, while Dick listened eagerly, striving to guess how much was truth, and how much madness.
“But how do they get from Cuzco to the Temple of Death?”
“Don’t you worry about that.... By the Corridors of Night, by the Corridors of the Mountains of Night, by the Corridors of the Lake of Night.... By the way, do you know anything about fishing?”
Dick did not have time to answer this extraordinary question, for the guard had come through to their carriage, and was inviting them to the luggage-van to see the samacuena danced. Everybody else seemed to be going there, and they accepted so as not to draw attention to themselves. They found the van peopled with Indians, dancing, playing the guitar, and drinking hard. At each step, the guard, to celebrate Garcia’s victories, fired a volley of cohetes, the mountains throwing back the echo of the explosions.
Then some of the Quichua soldiers in the train gave themselves up to the pleasures of the chase. Spying flocks of vicuñas in the hills, they went to the observation-car and tried their luck. One of them, something of a marksman, brought down a vicuña, the train stopped with a grinding of brakes, and the guard himself went off to retrieve the bag.
Dick, wild with impatience, would have liked to club the engine driver and take charge of the locomotive himself, but Orellana calmed him down.
“We’re sure to get there before them. You’ll see! Why, we shall even have time to do some fishing!”
Leaving their fellow-travelers to cut up the vicuña, they returned to their carriage, where the stove had been lighted. It had become intensely cold, for they were now in the snow regions, more than fourteen thousand feet above sea-level. Soroche, or mountain fever, threw the young engineer, and after bleeding violently at the nose, he fell into a semi-comatose condition. He did not recover until Punho, when he again remembered the horrible nightmare through which he was living, and savagely demanded to be shown the way to the Temple of Death.
“We’re going there,” replied his strange guide, but first took him to the main square, where about a hundred Indian girls, wearing skirts of a dark material and the low-cut bodices of their race, squatted in orderly rows, selling fruits and vegetables dried in the cold.
“There are usually two hundred of them,” explained Orellana, “but the Red Ponchos have been this way and chosen the best-looking half for the ceremony. It’s the same thing every ten years.”
He made a few purchases with Dick’s money, and after adding a flask of pisco to his stores, led the way out of the city. At nightfall they reached a huge marsh, alive with water-fowl. Next they crossed a heath, llamas and alpacas fleeing at their approach, and finally came to a dismal little bay on the shores of the lake.
Titicaca, in its mountain cradle, is the highest lake in the world. That night, its waters looked somber and heavy, almost dead. A storm, growling in the distance, soon swept down on them with a howl of rain, the waves dashing up the beach mountain-high, and the lightning touching the surrounding peaks with fire.
“Splendid, splendid,” muttered Orellana as the storm broke. “That means fine weather for to-morrow. In the meantime, we may as well have supper.”
He had led the young man under a giant monolith, hewn to the shape of a door. In a niche of it, Orellana managed to light a dung-cake fire, and here they ate a little and warmed themselves with generous pulls at the pisco flask. Dick at last fell asleep, while the old man covered him with a horse blanket and paternally watched over his slumbers.
Just before dawn, Dick awoke to find Orellana reminiscent.
“This place has always brought me luck since I started to look for my daughter, but I cannot make out who to thank for it. Do you know who this god is?”
He pointed to the bas-reliefs which covered the stone. They represented a human being, the head adorned with allegorical rays, and each hand holding a different scepter. Around this being were symmetrically ranged other figures, some with human faces, others with the heads of condors, all holding scepters, and all facing toward the center.
“There’s no doubt about it,” mused Orellana aloud. “This is nothing like the Incas’ work. It is much more sculptural, and much older. There must have been worlds on these shores before the advent of the Incas. They’re only savages who steal children.... Well, come on. We may as well go out in my boat and meet the sun.”
In a little creek, half hidden by rushes, they found a cane pirogue, in which Orellana had soon hoisted a mast and a mat sail.
“Come on,” he said, “we’ll do some fishing. It’s all on the way to the Temple of Death.”
Dick followed him into the fragile craft, and they started for the islands. These came into sight late in the afternoon, a blue blur on the horizon. To Dick’s fevered imagination, they seemed like threatening shadows on the face of the waters, ghostly guardians of the Temple of Death.
Orellana refused to go any nearer that night, hauled down the sail, and threw overboard a heavy stone to anchor his boat. Then he handed Dick a fishing-rod. At his astonished look, the madman replied:
“People come to the islands to fish, because these waters are blessed by the gods and the catches are better than anywhere else. Can’t you do what everybody else does?”
He pointed across the waters to little lights flaring up at the bows of other pirogues, in which sat motionless fishermen.
“All those Indians are fishing,” he said. “You may as well join them. If you can’t, go to sleep, and don’t worry us. You’ll see something worth while when you wake up.”
Orellana woke Dick just before dawn. The last stars were paling in the heavens at the approach of their King. The deep waters of the lake showed uniformly gray, not a light and not a shadow upon them. Not a sound to break stillness, not a breath of wind in the air. Suddenly, in the Orient, the mountain peaks were touched with fire, a giant furnace sprang into being behind the torn curtain of the Cordilleras, and the sun painted scarlet splashes into the shadows of the sacred islands.
When they pass before the largest of them, which is Titicaca, the Indian fishermen in their fragile pirogues never fail to chant the Aïmara Hymn of the Ancestors, for it was from this island, untold years ago, that sprang the founders of the Inca race in the persons of Manco Capac and Mama Cello, husband and wife, brother and sister, both children of the Sun. Coming in sight of the island, the traveler perceives giant ruins and great masses of rock piled up in an inexplicable manner, so strange that science has not yet been able to give them a date. These are the baths, the palaces and temples of the first Incas.
Dick, staring landwards from the pirogue, hardly knew whether he was awake or dreaming. Was this a hallucination born of the terrors of the week, or did his eyes really reveal what other eyes had first adored centuries before, at the dawn of the Inca world? As the shadows of night drew away and the island stood out above the waters in all its terrestrial grandeur, he did not merely see dead stones, lifeless temples, and deserted palaces; the Cyclopean whole was peopled by a vast throng, motionless and silent, its myriad faces turned to the flaming Orient. This immobility and silence were those of a dream; there were thousands there who seemed to live and breathe only in the expectation of some mysterious and sacred event.
The disc of the sun was still hidden behind the Andes, but all Nature heralded its approach; the flanks of the mountains were jeweled with a thousand dazzling stones, brooks and torrents were afire, and the broad bosom of the lake was a roseate mirror bearing the still reflections of palaces and temples. Virgins, bearing, as of old, the most beautiful flowers of the season and the emblems of their religion, peopled the porticoes. At the summits of towers, luminous with the dawn, priests waited for their god to show his face.
Suddenly, he appears… he rises… he blazes down on his empire, and is hailed by a great roar. “Hail, O Sun, King of the Heavens, father of men!” Earth trembles, waters shiver, the heavens even quiver at the call. “Hail, O Sun, father of the Inca!” Arms are stretched toward him, hands heavy with offerings implore his intercession, and every voice chants his glory. “Hear thy children! Hail, O Sun!”
Cries and songs of triumph are swelled by the clamor of barbaric instruments, and the tumult grows as the radiant disc climbs higher in the heavens, bathing the multitude in light.