The Sun Virgin
“You are sure there are only three guards?”
“I’ve seen but three since I entered the fortress. I’ve hidden from
the Sun Virgin, but got all her orders from a maid. No more have been
added. The prisoner is on the first floor.”
“Steady!” she called to the men. “It may be a ruse. I will lose no
Spanish soldiers in this crisis. I’ll enter alone first.”
With torch uplifted high she boldly entered the hall and found it
empty. Calling Gaspara they surveyed each room. The place was deserted.
The kitchen gave signs of use during the day, and live coals still
smoldered in the cooling ashes, but there were no occupants to be found.
A second careful search uncovered the small stairway which led out
through the clump of evergreens at the foot of the cliff. Teresa
examined every crook and turn of the stairs, emerged below, parted the
bushes at the entrance, and stood baffled.
“They’ve just slipped through our fingers by this secret entrance of
the fortress....”
“It’s plain,” Gaspara agreed.
“There’s nothing to do but begin our search all over again--” a
strangled sob caught her voice--“but when I find her I’ll run her
through....”
CHAPTER XX
Within an hour the trumpet called the Spanish soldiers again to the
Plaza of Caxamalca. On its flagstones lay in dark heaps the dead. The
slaughter had lasted barely fifty minutes and more than five thousand
had been slain, an army of forty thousand soldiers had fled through the
bushes in terror and a mighty empire lay within the grasp of Francisco
Pizarro.
The Spanish captain outdid himself in an effort to cheer the fallen
monarch and lighten his gloom. He could well afford in this hour of
bloody triumph to play the generous host.
“You must not be cast down by this misfortune, Your Highness,” he urged
in friendly accents. “You are not alone in such distress. No ruler of
the world has been able to resist the soldiers of Spain. We fight under
the banners of her great Emperor and the banners of the all conquering
Christ whose Kingdom is now overspreading the earth. Your pride was
high; your power was vast. But nothing can stand before our arms....”
He stopped short, smiled and said in cordial tones:
“Take courage. Confide in me as your friend. We found ourselves in a
trap which you had set. Our lives were at stake. We had to strike.”
The Inca nodded his head sadly.
“It is the fortune of war, and I have lost.”
“I would be your friend,” Pizarro urged. “The Spaniards are a generous
race. We war only on those who make war on us, showing grace to all who
submit.”
The Inca lifted sad eyes toward the heaps of his dead and made no
reply. The rain had begun to pour its friendly mercy on the wounded.
Only here and there the groan of a dying man could be heard. The faint
odor of burnt gunpowder that had filled the nostrils of the Inca with
nausea had passed.
Pizarro seated his prisoner at the banquet table generously prepared
for his entertainment and spared no pains to make the feast a memorable
one. A few bottles of choice Spanish wine had been carefully guarded on
their long march for such an occasion. These were served the captive in
battered pewter cups in painful contrast to the solid gold goblets his
officers had seen at their reception the day before.
Pizarro noticed the look of doubt with which Atahualpa stared
bewildered at the dirty cups and apologized:
“I am sorry, Your Highness, that a soldier’s rough camp cannot yet
furnish better plate for your service.”
The Inca smiled sadly and lifted his cup with a bow of instinctive
courtesy.
“Be assured,” the Spaniard continued, “of your personal safety, and the
safety of all your household. We are counting on your aid to restore
complete tranquillity.”
The monarch accepted the situation with philosophy at which the
Spaniards greatly marveled, wondering if it yet concealed the secret of
a counter-attack that might overwhelm them in the night.
“I greatly appreciate,” the Inca finally said to Pizarro, “your
assurance of the safety of my mother and my household....”
Noting the tone of anxiety in which his thanks were expressed, the
captain hastened to assure him:
“Early in the morning, when all evidences of battle have been cleared
from the plaza and the approaching streets, I will conduct your mother
and your household here and establish them with you in the House of the
Serpent.”
The prisoner gravely nodded his thanks.
The Spaniards studied the Inca with keen interest as he sat beside
their commander at the large banquet table, presiding at a feast that
celebrated his own downfall and the butchery of five thousand of his
people. He was in the full strength of youth, well made and more
athletic than the average of his countrymen. His head was unusually
large and his regular strong features handsome, but for his blood-shot
eyes which gave an impression of fierceness to his otherwise agreeable
face. There was no trace of the half effeminate type of the inbreeding
of the royal family which had been practiced for the past four
hundred years. Atahualpa’s mother had been a foreigner, a queen in
her own right as ruler of Quito before its conquest by Huyna Capac.
The conqueror had fallen madly in love with the fifteen-year-old
wife of the conquered ruler of the North and in spite of the fiercest
opposition of his priests and nobles, had made her a queen in the
consolidated Kingdoms.
The young Inca in many ways gave the impression of the perfect
manhood of the true love child. His manner was poised and his speech
deliberate. To his subjects he had ever been the arbiter of life and
death. To his strange host on this tragic occasion he was affable and
courteous.
The longer they watched him the more suspicious some of them became
that this pleasing exterior concealed a daring plan of rescue that
might develop before dawn. Hernando Pizarro was sure of it.
“Don’t allow his soft words to deceive you,” he warned Francisco. “The
sternest discipline must be maintained until our safety is assured.”
The captain nodded his assent. His own keen and careful mind had
already foreseen this possibility.
At the close of the banquet Pizarro conducted his distinguished captive
to the royal suite in the House of the Serpent which had been reserved
for him strictly in accordance with his request. He placed a double
guard over the house and hurried into the hall of the cavalry where he
had ordered an assembly of his entire force not on guard duty.
They were carefully counted and inspected. Not a man had been lost and
not a drop of Spanish blood had been spilled except for the scratch
which Pizarro had received in rescuing the Inca from the sword of an
excited officer.
The commander called his priests and ordered his men to their knees. A
prayer of thanksgiving was made to the God who had so marvelously saved
every life. They had lost four killed and many wounded in a skirmish
with the tribe on Puna island. They had won the first battle of the
attack on the great Empire with a bare scratch from the sword of one
of their own men. It was not to be wondered at that the outcome was
regarded as a miracle. They believed to a man that they had marched
into a death trap and were cutting their way out to a place of safety.
The best witness of Pizarro’s sincerity in this belief was Hernando de
Soto, who fought by his side through the bloody hour. Whatever may be
the opinions of Francisco Pizarro’s character, no chronicler has yet
questioned the lofty motives, the high ideals, or the stern honesty
of De Soto. Had this man believed for a moment that the attack on
Atahualpa was a piece of mere savage cruelty, he would have refused to
lead his men in the attack. And no argument for discipline or claims of
authority could have driven him into the business. De Soto led his own
cavalry into the bloody shambles because, and only because, he believed
that he was cutting his way to safety.
On rising from prayer, Pizarro again addressed his men with a simple
eloquence characteristic of his leadership.
“Comrades, we have given thanks to Him who has led us through a
thousand trials to this deliverance. Without God the miracle could not
have been performed. You have prevailed over thousands and tens of
thousands. Your lives have been spared by Heaven for greater deeds.
You must do your part now as you’ve done it so nobly in the past. The
greatest dangers still confront you. We are in the heart of an empire
of twelve million people deeply loyal to their ruler. He is in our
power and we have in this the assurance of our success if we do our
parts with stern discipline and unswerving obedience. To-night there
must be no rioting, no taking of women, no excesses, no uncalled for
attack. Let every man sleep on his arms, ready at the call of the
trumpet to face our foes. I have stationed a guard at the gates of
the convent of the Virgins of the Sun. Let no man dare invade its
precincts. We must not stir the fires of religious fanaticism in this
crisis!”
The soldiers cheered him and lay down on their arms and slept till
dawn. At the first streak of light in the east the trumpet called and
every Spaniard sprang to his feet.
They rounded up the huddled groups of shivering, hungry Peruvians and
set them to the work of burying the dead and cleansing the flagstones
of the plaza of all traces of blood. To Teresa and Gaspara, the captain
gave permission to take a half dozen horsemen and continue the search
for Molina.
A squadron of thirty, under his brother Hernando, he sent to take the
spoils from the summer house of the Inca at the hot baths and scatter
the remnants of the army. He had already learned of their panic and
flight into the forests.
The squadron met with no resistance, either from the stragglers of the
camp or the household of the sovereign. The entire day was given to
gathering the gold and silver service from the homes of the monarch and
his nobles and collecting ornaments and precious stones from the living
and the dead. Great was the amazement of the natives at this procedure.
Yma had summoned a division of the girls from the convent to minister
to the stricken household of the Inca.
When a trooper had borne the last gold cup from the fountain in the
apartment of the Mother Queen, Pacha turned her sad eyes on the Sun
Virgin.
“Surely these strange beings have not shed all this blood to take so
much rubbish?”
“Yes,” the girl answered. “They are mad with a lust for these metals.
Our priests can give no explanation of their insanity, but my dear
god-man has told me many things of their ranks and titles, wealth and
poverty and the cruel suffering for food and clothes among the poor
in Spain. It seems that the gold and silver which to us mean pots and
bowls, plates and cups out of which to eat, to them mean food and
clothes and shelter and life. It is pitiful, is it not?”
In spite of the terror spread by the slaughter in the Plaza of
Caxamalca, crowds of young men and women gathered about the royal
house at the baths and gazed in wonder at the strange beings who were
looting the palace of its plates and ornaments. They watched with
breathless awe the men who had done the daring and terrible things
of the past night. The most incredible deed of all was that these
invaders had laid hands on the Lord of the Sun, the Inca--God in human
flesh--and held him in chains. That thunderbolts from heaven had not
struck them dead was more than the natives could understand.
They watched with increasing wonder the loads of gold and silver piled
on litters being borne to Caxamalca. Nothing could surprise them now.
The white men were surely superfiends sent from the depths of hell
to scourge the earth and with the Inca in chains his subjects were