Part 22

The Nusta Rava, quite unaware, fortunately, of the agitation with which Manco had quitted her, worn out by stress of mind and the weariness of her journey, at length found forgetfulness in sleep. The next day and evening were spent with her sisters and the Auqui Paullo, but Manco did not return, though he sent a page with inquiries for her health. The day following, and the next, her hope to see him was disappointed. At length he came.

The first glance from his gloomy eyes chilled the warmth from her words as she started to meet him, and she stopped, her smile of welcome fading into startled inquiry. The Inca dismissed the maids, and motioned her to her seat, neither avoiding nor heeding her hand as she laid it hesitatingly upon his arm, nor replying to the question in her face.

The interview was not long nor violent, but when he left and sent in her maids, they found her unconscious. The last of many woes had snapped the frail thread of courage that had sustained her. Manco had questioned her about the crucifix, had requested that she abjure the abhorred religion, had been refused as firmly as gently. His respect for her had prohibited command or reproach, but the coldness of his farewell and its finality had been a stab more cruel than the most passionate denunciation.

The next day Rava did not rise, nor the next, nor for many days thereafter. The _amautas_ came--wise men--three of them. They noted her fever, listened a moment to her delirium, consulted, and administered the simple remedies known to the Peruvian pharmacopoeia. These were few and mostly harmless, so nature fought for her with few hindrances from drugs, and with all the assistance that nursing could give. But it was a long and dreary struggle before the unseeing eyes at last looked sadly but clearly at her attendants, and her whispered words grew intelligible. Almost the first were "Father Valverde," and the maids looked in wonder. But she repeated the name until the priest was sent for and came.

Father Valverde, now Bishop of Cuzco, was an elderly man, well preserved and well fed, with a rugged, determined face, a great slit of a mouth with good lines about it; keen eyes which could look stern beneath their shaggy brows when occasion demanded, or amiably and humorously upon opportunity, and with an ability to storm at lawless soldiery in terms suited to their understanding and their needs with a vigor that would have been creditable to Chrysostom. He was a rabid hater of the devil. Next to the devil he hated an unbeliever. A missionary of fanatical type, he could burn a heathen at the stake for the good of his unassoilzied soul with easy conscience and some satisfaction. But he could, withal, rejoice sincerely over a soul rescued from damnation, and did rejoice over a letter from Father Tendilla regarding the Nusta Rava. The missive, after the usual salutation and some preliminary words, ran as follows:--

"I will leave her long story to a fitter time, and say merely that I found her already a Christian, having been brought to the Faith by the Caballero Cristoval de Peralta, whom thou knowest well. And not only a Christian in belief, but what is more admirable, in fibre, inclination, and bent of mind; being, in truth, a most gentle, saintly girl. I had the ineffable satisfaction of baptizing and receiving her into Holy Communion. Thereafter, she worked with me earnestly in the conversion of her people here, and departed with the hope of pursuing the same good work in Cuzco. I pray, therefore, that thou attend upon her. She hath many sorrows. One is the death of this Cristoval.

"Now, I have thought of this concerning the Nusta Rava, and having broached it gently, found it received not with disfavor and even gratefully, to wit: that as thou dost plan to found, as soon as may be, a convent at Cuzco, she might be led to embrace a holy life. Her preparation, begun here, could be completed at Panama, or even at Seville, where she would doubtless enjoy the interest and favor to which her rank entitleth her."

There followed items of personal concern, and the letter closed. The interest aroused in the mind of Father Valverde was immediate and effective, and once admitted to the palace, he devoted himself to the work so well begun by Cristoval and Tendilla. Like his brother missionaries, he possessed a knowledge of medicine, and was able to hasten Rava's convalescence. It need not be said that he found her all that Tendilla had described, and the desolate girl received his fatherly ministrations with a grateful heart.

*CHAPTER XXVII*

_*The Incarial Diadem on a Spanish Saddle-bow*_

Tavantinsuyu was rousing; was at last aroused. Dark masses of warriors, marching with grim purpose, without song, or drum, or horn, filled the defiles and roads leading toward the City of the Sun. Day after day, week after week, from the most distant quarters of the empire, the converging columns moved upon the capital, swelling as each village or province added its contingent. So rapid and secret was the concentration that before a whisper of their danger had reached the ears of the conquistadors, the fortified valley of Ollantaytambo, a few leagues from Cuzco, had become a vast encampment, and waited only the signal from the Inca to pour forth its avenging legions.

Proud, gloomy, and taciturn; enduring the contemptuous indifference, the unconcealed scorn, and the open insult of the Spanish officers with the patient fortitude of a heart of iron, Manco bided the hour. During the long weeks of preparation, while his forces were gathering, he never left the palace. From dawn to darkness, and often from darkness to dawn again, he sat in his chamber, poring over _quipos_, or feverishly pacing his floor while he listened to the reports of officers or issued his commands. Daily intelligence borne by the _chasquis_ kept him in touch with the advancing columns, and on a map roughly sketched with charcoal on a sheet of cotton lying on his table he marked their approach. His generals came and went unheeded by the quarrelling Spaniards, and the ominous councils held nightly within the palace were unsuspected.

The day was near at hand. Manco was in midnight council with his officers and the Auqui Paullo. The final disposition of his troops was being considered, but the blow was withheld until word should come from the coast that the forces near the newly founded Spanish cities, Ciudad de los Reyes and Truxillo, were ready to strike simultaneously. At Xauxa preparations for investment were complete. All passes and lines of communication between the several Spanish posts were occupied. Already the women of the royal household were being sent, in twos and threes, and with all possible secrecy, to the protection of the fortress at Ollantaytambo. Rava had not gone, but would depart with Paullo on the following night.

The group of nobles about the young Inca as he stood at the head of his table, was one which would have been distinguished in any council of warriors or statesmen. All were veterans of many wars; and all, with the exception of Yumaquilque, commander of the Amahuacas, a warlike mountain tribe to the northeast of Cuzco, were of the pure Inca blood. Two, the generals Mayta and Quehuar, were members of the royal family; the former a cousin, the latter an uncle, of Manco. Quehuar, the eldest and next of kin, stood beside the Auqui Paullo. At his side was Mayta, younger by years, and one of the handsomest of the nobility of Tavantinsuyu. He had the features and form of a Roman, every line indicative of the energy and alertness which had gained him the sobriquet of "The Puma" among his devoted soldiery. He commanded the Incarial Guard and was the head of the military school. Next was Mocho, chief of the fierce Antis. He was a short, dark, irritable genius of aggressiveness, known as the fiercest fighter in all Tavantinsuyu, and the most persistent. There were others of less distinction, but all were of tried courage and ability. Now they listened with close attention to the words of their young lord, whose force and spirit as developed in the last few months had inspired an admiration in which his youth was forgotten, and had filled them with high hope for their stricken country.

"My lords," said Manco, after the business of the council was finished, "I perceive that the current of things is bearing us to early victory. The _Canares_ left in the city number less than a thousand. We scarcely need count them. The Viracochas die hard, as we learned at Vilcaconga," he smiled grimly, "but they are not more than two hundred. Almagro is marching rapidly to the south, and he is now where no cry for help from Cuzco can reach. Should he seek to return he would find the passes closed. Ullulama is within five days' march, but we need not wait. The Villac Vmu will be with us to-morrow, and by the day following the household will be in safety at Ollantaytambo. Then, my lords, we strike. To thee, my Lord Mocho, it will please me to give the honor of taking the Sachsahuaman."

Mocho bowed. "I would better like an honor more dearly gained, Sapa Inca. The place is but feebly garrisoned."

The Inca smiled. "Thou'lt have opportunity, presently, for others less easily won, my lord; do not fear it. The fortress may not be so easily held as taken, for if I mistake not the Viracochas will not be slow to learn its importance. Thou wilt garrison it strongly, therefore, and see it amply supplied." He turned to the senior general. "My Lord Quehuar, thou wilt send a _chasqui_ to Xauxa to-night----"

He was interrupted by commotion and an excited voice in the antechamber. A frown crossed his face, and he motioned to Paullo. The prince hurried out, returned in a moment with precipitation, and as he threw open the door the Inca started. Paullo's face was drawn with horror. At his elbow was a soldier in the uniform of the guard, who, as Paullo strove to speak, sank upon his knees and bent to the floor.

"Manco! Manco!" cried the young prince, in agony. "In the name of Inti!--The Virgins of the Sun!"

The Inca strode toward him, demanding sharply as he seized his arm, "What meanest thou, boy? Speak!"

"The Acllahuasi! The Viracochas are battering its doors!"

Manco rushed across the anteroom to the court without a word. Paullo jerked the soldier to his feet, and followed by the generals, hurried after. As the Inca stepped into the open air a dull roar of voices in the street outside, the sound of blows, and fierce shouts shocked his hearing; then a rending crash of a falling door, and the clamor of a rush. For an instant he was motionless, strained and listening. He turned suddenly, and the light from the open door fell upon his face, distorted by fury.

"Mayta!" he shouted. "Mayta!--where is he?--Mayta, thy battalions! Fly!--Paullo, my arms!"

As Mayta started the soldier grasped his arm. "Hold, my lord!" he said; then, rapidly to Manco: "Sapa Inca, the barracks are surrounded, and but twenty are within the quarters--the rest have gone to Ollantaytambo. I sought to enter, but was driven away."

Manco stamped with impatience and rage, "Follow me!" he cried to his generals, seizing his arms from Paullo. "We will take the guard."

Quehuar blocked his way determinedly. "Rashness, my Lord Inca! We are unarmed, and the guard may be needed at its post before the night is gone."

Manco thrust him aside, maddened by women's shrieks from the convent, but the generals crowded about him. Quehuar laid a strong hand upon his shoulder.

"Prudence, prudence, my lord!" he urged. "A moment's folly now would undo all that hath been done."

Manco shook off his grasp. "Prudence! Dost hear those cries, old man? Release me!"

"God of heaven! do I not hear them? But--hold!--wouldst have vengeance in full? Then abort it not by an act of madness! Dost forget thine army?" Manco checked himself with an effort, and Quehuar went on energetically: "The instrument for punishment is ready for thy hand. Beware thrusting that hand without it into the teeth of wild beasts! What couldst thou--what could our united strength do to-night? Thy death, or even a wound, would seal the fate of Tavantinsuyu. Bethink thee, Inca!"

Manco drew his cloak over his face with a groan. He dropped it and exclaimed hoarsely: "My lords, I go to the army to-night! The hour hath come for action. Mayta, thou wilt go with me. Do you, my friends, remain until the women are in safety. You will join me at Ollantaytambo."

"Sapa Inca----" began Quehuar; but Manco raised his hand and continued vehemently:--

"I go to-night! What wouldst have? That I sit clutching mine ears, or shuffling my feet to drown the wails of these unfortunates? Hear them! Hear them! Oh, by the gods, they drive away my reason! Come, Mayta: we go!"

He grasped the officer's arm, waved back the others, and hurried across the court. At the entrance of the next stood a sentinel, and the Inca halted, checking his salute. "Here, Mayta, thou 'rt unarmed. Take this." With his own hand he drew the soldier's sword and passed it to his companion. They hastened across another court filled with shuddering attendants, and through a third and smaller one to a narrow corridor along which they groped until halted by a door at its end. Manco hastily unbarred. It was a postern opening upon a terrace between the wall of the palace and the rivulet Huatenay. Opposite was a flight of steps leading to the bed of the stream, and they descended.

Meanwhile, within the walls of the Convent of the Virgins and in the street without, a hell-carnival was in progress too hideous to dwell upon. At the moment the Inca was passing through the outskirts of the city Juan Pizarro, mounted bareback, unarmored, and bareheaded, was charging into the tumult, followed by his brother Gonzalo and a few other cavaliers, sword in hand. Bellowing oaths, laying about with the flat of their blades, not infrequently with the edge, and leaping their horses upon the obstinate, they cut their way to the convent and rode in to rescue the unhappy inmates. Behind followed a dozen of the guard, only to throw aside their pikes and join in the fiendish revel, leaving their duty to the black-robed priests and friars who struggled through in their wake. One bore a crucifix; but the stout Valverde did better work with a bludgeon, breaking many a wicked face and ruffianly head in his career through the desecrated halls and gardens.

The night was far spent before the place was cleared, and its doors closed and guarded. Juan Pizarro was riding slowly back toward the square when a Canare, who had lurked about the Spaniard for an hour in a vain effort to approach and be heard without a cleft skull for his pains, touched his leg and sprang back with hands upraised. Juan halted.

"Well?" he demanded brusquely, scowling at the Indio. "Hast business with me? If so, be brisk." The Canare jabbered a stream of broken words in Quichua, not intelligible, but something, it seemed to be, about the Inca,--enough to arrest the attention of Juan Pizarro, and he demanded impatiently of his brother:--

"What saith the dog, Gonzalo? Canst make it out? Here, thou, say it over and slowly."

The Canare repeated his words with better effect,--with immediate and startling effect, for Juan turned with a shout to his companions: "Dost hear, Gonzalo? Do ye hear, Caballeros? The Inca hath fled the city!" He kicked the ribs of his horse and galloped madly to the palace of Viracocha, across the great court and into the hall that served as a guard-room, filling it with the clamor of hoofs, and throwing its occupants into confusion. They seized their arms in a panic.

"Ho! The trumpeter!" he roared. "Out, and sound to horse! Out, and sound to horse! _Presteza_! _Salta_! To horse! To horse!" He went out like a whirlwind. Before he had reached his quarters the shrill, quick notes were rising from the square. Again, and again, and again the stirring measure, and the stable was alive with men, tossing saddles, tugging at straps, swearing, and panting in a frenzy. One after another, and by twos and threes, the mailed riders swung into saddle, seized lances from the rack, and clattered out into the plaza. The line formed rapidly, and the plunging, kicking, and head-tossing of the excited steeds had hardly subsided before it was in column and, led by Juan Pizarro, took up a trot behind the Canare.

The gloomy walls of the violated convent were growing gray in the dawn as the cavalcade roared past down the narrow, echoing streets and through the suburbs.

It was late afternoon when the troop reentered Cuzco. It moved at a walk, and hanging on the pommel of the commander's saddle was the _llautu_ of the Inca Manco. In the foremost rank of the column was a trooper without his helmet, with a bloody bandage across his face below the eyes. A weapon had passed the bars of his visor. Farther back was another, shorn of a pauldron and his right arm useless. In the rear, two Canares carried a third on an improvised litter, dead. But in the middle of the column, between double files of troopers, marched the Inca and the Lord Mayta, blood-stained, bandaged, their arms bound behind their backs. Horses, riders, and the two prisoners, were splashed with mud.

Manco walked with head erect, without a glance at the Canares who hurried into the street as the cavalcade traversed the suburb Munaycenca. Nor did he more than glance at his grief-stricken subjects who cast themselves moaning upon the pavement. Not a line of his stern young face betrayed his emotion at entering the capital a prisoner, nor his torture of mind at the disaster thus befallen his people on the very eve of the stroke for their deliverance.

From Munaycenca the news flew ahead. Canares gathered, too stolid for manifestation, and knots of Spaniards, whom a sign from Juan Pizarro warned into silence. But throughout the remainder of the march every door was closed, and no native of Cuzco looked out upon the fallen majesty of their Inca.

Crossing the bridge toward the Coricancha the column turned northward through the city, passing the palaces of the Yupanquis, of the Inca Rocca, the schools where Manco had won his youthful honors, and entered the road which mounted to the Sachsahuaman. The single company of pikemen constituting its garrison stood in front of the citadel, and to its commander Pizarro surrendered the prisoners. An hour later they were heavily ironed within the keep, and the troop was on its way back to Cuzco.

In the Amarucancha the hours had dragged in a long nightmare. After Manco's departure his lords remained, racked by the shocking sounds to which they listened in helplessness. The war-hardened old Quehuar paced the court. Yumaquilque stood motionless against the wall, his mantle over his face. The others hearkened in silence broken only by an occasional fierce, whispered sentence from Mocho. But from those dreadful hours they imbibed a relentless ferocity of hate for the invaders which no amount of Spanish blood could ever mitigate, and which in the days to follow would send many a conquistador unshriven to his Maker.

Upon the Auqui Paullo, young and uninured, the night's tragedy fell most cruelly; but the anguish of his sisters gathered in Rava's chamber, crouched in speechless horror, and surrounded by wailing maids, nerved him by its reminder of their dependence now upon him. By the time he had restored them to partial calmness the tumult beyond the walls had subsided.

As he stepped into the court again, he heard the call to horse; and a few minutes later, the uproar of the passing troop. The circumstance was alarming. It stirred a sudden fear that Manco's flight had been detected. Paullo sent a page to learn its significance. The youth did not return. He despatched a second, and sought Quehuar. He found the old general with the others in the council room, and had hardly entered before the second messenger returned to announce that a guard of pikemen was at the outer door, and he had not been permitted to pass. The palace was surrounded by guards, and all within were prisoners.

That night the humble native knelt at his evening prayer, shuddering at the infinite indifference of his god to the sorrows of Tavantinsuyu. As twilight came, a few muffled figures stole to the edge of the square, gazed in silence at the guarded doors and sombre walls of the Amarucancha, and slunk away. The capture of the Inca was told in whispers, stirring no cry for vengeance, no move to rescue. The calamity was as irremediable and appalling as if heaven itself had fallen. It was the wrath of Inti, not to be opposed.

A few days later, the nobles were permitted to depart: were, in the case of Quehuar and Yumaquilque, even compelled to go; for these two would have shared the captivity of Paullo and the household, whom the Pizarros retained as hostages for the quiet of the empire, whose patience under this latest blow they doubted.

*CHAPTER XXVIII*

_*Two Comrades Reunited*_

Never a knight rode forth with more of chivalry than dwelt beneath sturdy Pedro's breastplate when he set out in quest of Cristoval. He went with little hope of doing more than saying a few prayers at the grave of the cavalier and marking it with a cross; but for these offices he would have traversed a continent.

Cristoval lay beneath an awning at the villa of the Curaca Huallampo, well bolstered and pillowed, and bandaged to a condition of almost total rigidity. He was looking moodily over the sparkling lake when his reverie was disturbed by the approach of his host, accompanied, unmistakably accompanied, by the familiar sound of a peg. The cavalier was startled half erect, but sank back weakly as Pedro appeared with Huallampo. The cook was breathless from a climb of the hill at his utmost speed. At sight of his friend he increased his pace across the terrace, grasped the extended hand, but instead of speaking, compressed his lips as a spasm crossed his face. Roaring his words to conceal his unsteadiness of voice, he exclaimed:--

"_Hola_, Cristoval! Do I see thee in the flesh? Blessed Virgin, it is so! Why, man, I came to weep over thy grave! But 't is thou, in very truth!"

"God bless thee, Pedro," said Cristoval, with moistened eyes, pressing the cook's hand.

"So He hath done, old friend, in letting me see thee again. But, _Santa Maria_! thou 'lt wrapped, and swathed, and beragged, and swaddled, like a sore finger! Canst wiggle thy toes? Ah! 'T is a comfort. Any broken bones? No? _Bueno_! Just full of holes--pricked, punctured, pinked, and perforated! Hum! It might be worse. The _curaca_ saith thou 'rt mending fast."

Cristoval nodded. "Pedro," he began anxiously, then stopped.

"Well, say on, _amigo_," said the cook, seating himself.

"Dost know--aught of Rava?"

"That I do! She is safe in the care of Father Tendilla."

Cristoval closed his eyes and turned away, his lips moving. Pedro eyed him curiously, and shook his head. Both were silent. "Tell me about it, Pedro," at last.

"Nay," said Pedro. "It is too long a story for the present. The _curaca_ warneth me against much talking. Thou must be content to know that she is unharmed. Shortly I'll tell thee, and much history besides. But the Nusta Rava is in good hands." Permitting no further conversation, he sat long, surveying the cavalier with great satisfaction while Huallampo gave him an inventory of the various hurts.