Part 27

Such his aspect. For the emotions sternly repressed, but racking him to the soul--what words! The sacred city, the favored of the Sun, the home and the monument of the loving care of a mighty line of monarchs, perishing under his hand. The city whose splendor had been the work of generations of great kings; for whose glory countless thousands of their subjects had toiled, had fought, had died, given by him to demolition!--doomed by the mandate of one who had received the _llautu_ from the profane hand of a ravager; who had suffered the scorn of an ignoble band of licentious and greedy invaders and had lived; who had worn fetters like a criminal and had lain in prison under the eyes of scoffing guards! That he--O, Inti!--that he, still wearing the marks of his bonds like a released slave, should be the destroyer! Could Cuzco but have fallen beneath the hand of a hero, even an enemy, and could he have fallen with it, its defender, he had been worthy to take his place with the shades of his ancestors. But he had himself led the enemy to its palace doors, had seen them plunder its temples, ravish its vestals, and befoul its most sacred spots. And now he was giving Cuzco to the flames! Would the Sun ever rise upon him again?

Ah--but--could he dare to address a prayer to that god while Cuzco remained unpurged? By the great Inti, the fire should do its purifying work! From cottage, palace, and temple, the stench of the Viracocha should be burned! Should the last wall be levelled to the earth, the last stone of its streets upturned, no vestige of their defilement should remain. Cuzco would rise again, and the Viracochas be forgotten. Let the dead Incas look on whilst he wiped out the stain of the ancient city's dishonor and his own!

When at length the sky was graying and he turned away, facing his generals, but seeing none of them, they beheld a countenance aged as by years since he had last spoken. In a night the torture of mind and heart had moulded lines usually beaten in only by the blows of long and hard experience.

At the door of his apartments he dismissed his attendants with a word. But, alas! a king before men, alone he was a mortal man. He knelt and prayed for tears. Resting upon his shoulders, with the burden of an empire, was now the weight of a monstrous tragedy; but upon his heart, the unutterable sorrow of a brother and a lover. Within that dread circle of fire were loved ones, and among them the sweetest of consorts. No man looked upon his grief. No man but can know what his grief must have been.

The sun rose upon a scene of devastation shorn of its splendor. Around the city was a belt of blackened ruins from which rolled a volume of smoke which partly obscured the fiercer burning within. To the westward, the direction from which the wind had blown, this district was broad. The fire had been driven rapidly across the suburbs toward Cuzco proper, and the houses being largely of adobe, the destruction was complete. Below the fortress, in the quarter of the palaces, the fire had to fight its way across the wind, and its advance had been less swift. Here the buildings were of stone, and through breaks in the murk were visible walls intact, surrounding desolate courts with charred skeletons of trees. To the east the city was hidden in the huge surging cloud drifting sluggishly off toward the mountains. From the ramparts little could be seen of the fire except occasional glimpses of flame through the rifts; and as Pedro stumped to and fro on the parapet, fuming and praying, harassed by fears, he could only guess at the perils by which Cristoval was surrounded. Before the sun had lifted above the mountains the Antis began straggling in, smoked, scorched, and many of them wounded, bearing the tale of their encounter. Ten or more did not return. Rimachi was one of the last to come, and having reported to Mocho, the latter sought the cook with the news of the probable fate of the cavalier. Pedro made no reply, but turning with his face painfully twitching, he hastened to his quarters--to be seen no more that day.

Once more to Cristoval. Assuring himself that he was the sole occupant of the building, he explored the several courts for its exits, and found, in the rear, the door of a passage which led to the broad street he had recently crossed. This might serve as a line of retreat. Patrols were still moving in the streets, and fixing the location of the passage among the intricacies of dark chambers and courts, he sought next, like a prudent soldier, for the kitchens and larder. This quest was difficult, for the operation of making a light, even could he have found a lamp, would have demanded more time than he could spare. Trusting to his sense of smell, blunted though it was by smoke, he wandered from one room to another, his steps, the rustle of his armor, and the clank of his sword rousing uncanny echoes from the lofty walls of stone. At last he stumbled upon a table still spread with an abandoned supper, and groping among the viands, he hastily made a meal.

A glance at the sky from the court showed a noticeable advance of the fire, though the direction of the wind held it in check and carried the sparks and brands off to the eastward. While he stood he heard the clatter of troopers in the street; but it died away presently, and he made his way to the postern. At the end of the passage he reconnoitred the street, now more brightly illumined than before, and was about to leave his hiding, when two horsemen trotted into the light and halted at the crossing, their lance-heads glittering in the firelight. They were too near to leave a possibility of his quitting the passage unseen. Furthermore, he recognized the unwelcome fact that they were there _en vedette_, and would remain. Evidently, the attack upon the patrol had made the Spaniards vigilant. Cristoval set his teeth. Here was a situation, by the fighting saint! Trapped in a building which would be afire before many hours, with a prospective choice of being burned alive, or run through by a Spanish lance in the effort to escape! For a bad quarter of an hour he watched the troopers with an interest his countrymen had seldom roused in him before, consigning them in vigorous whispers to divers painful fates, until, observing one of them hitch himself in his saddle into a lounging seat, he gave it up and groped back into the palace.

There was one other exit: the door by which he entered. The darkness of that street might favor. He would try it. In the main court nearest the entrance was the fountain, a pool of some ten feet in diameter with steps descending to the water a yard below the level, and surrounded by seats and parterres full of shrubbery. He stopped there and drank deep, for the fire and cinders would not out from his throat. Then to the door. He laid aside his buckler and put hand to the bar. Cautiously now, Cristoval; for with sentinels near, this business should be of an inconspicuous kind. The timber stuck slightly, then yielded, slipped from his grasp, and fell with a crash loud as the crack of doom.

It was answered at once by the sound of a horse spurred to a trot, and snatching up his buckler, Cristoval retreated to the parterres. He gained the shelter just as the trooper pushed open the door. He rode in and halted near the entrance; peered about in the obscurity, called twice or thrice, then rode slowly about the enclosure, looking into the darkness of the open doors. Cristoval watched him, praying that he might push on into the interior courts, or that he might dismount. In the latter event he should find what he sought with a vengeance, and that horse would change owners. But the trooper soon returned, scanning the parterres as he passed. At the entrance he halted and surveyed the place again, only half satisfied. Finally he rode out. Cristoval followed cautiously, to have a look at the street. No hope there. The soldier had taken position a few yards away, and there remained, while the prisoner returned to the fountain and had another bad quarter of an hour. There was no choice but to stay where he was and pray that the sentinels might be withdrawn at daylight, or be driven from their posts by the approaching fire. Then, provided he was not roasted to death in the meantime, he might escape.

He sat through the night, going at intervals to the doors in faint hope, returning with disquietude more profound, to watch the relentless nearing of the conflagration. At last came the dawn, more depressing in its ghastly light than the night. He stretched himself beneath the shrubbery. As the morning advanced the wind veered farther to the south, and this, he hoped, would retard the progress of the fire in his direction until the evening.

Cristoval was blessed with a sanguine temperament, and was, moreover, like most men who follow peril, a fatalist. Death had stood so often beside him, and had so often withheld the blow, that he had lost the appreciation of danger while he could look forward to another minute of life. Now, there were hours before him, at least, and faith that good fortune or resourcefulness would open a way of deliverance. Therefore, why not be comfortable while comforts were at hand? He remembered the spread table. He crept from concealment, went to the door for another look at the sentinels, and entered the dining-hall. He had seated himself when he perceived that the tableware was silver. He rose abruptly. "Oho! that meaneth the tenant will return, else the tenant is not a Spaniard." He selected a generous double handful of the victuals and returned to the fountain. Going to another chamber, he brought forth a rug which he deposited beneath the thickest of the shrubbery, and there made his breakfast calmly.

Now began a weary watch, broken by short spells of uneasy sleep and startled awakenings. Once, roused by voices in the court and hurried steps, he saw two Canares, evidently servants, enter the dining-hall. They came out with the silver, just as a cavalier, a stranger to Cristoval, emerged from another room with a bundle of papers and wearing apparel. The man was in full armor and looked haggard and anxious, but seemed intent only upon the movements of the Canares, whom he ordered impatiently to hasten. He followed them out at length, and again the court was quiet. After a glance at the whirling bank of smoke to the north, Cristoval stretched himself out once more and soon was slumbering.

Toward midday he started out of a tortured dream and sat up. The sun was high in the north, rushing, as it seemed to his bewildered eyes, madly across the sky, a mere disc of burnished copper, now deepening into bronze, now flashing into a brazen glare through the scurrying cloud, but unutterably strange and unnatural. Before he had fully gained his startled senses, he was on his feet and had crossed himself a dozen times, only to grin blankly at his own consternation. Another instant revealed the real peril, grave enough. The flames seemed leaping from the roofs across the street, and the sinister roar and crackle were terribly distinct. Cristoval crossed himself again, took up sword and buckler, and ran to the door. The roofs opposite were untouched, but their immunity would be short. The crossing where the sentinels had stood was vacant. A glance in the opposite direction promptly dashed his hope. The street partly cleared of smoke for a moment, and at its foot were cannoneers and one of Candia's guns covering the bridge across the Tullamayu. They were looking alertly toward the suburbs, and one held a lighted match. Cristoval rushed to the door in the rear. A survey from the end of the passage was sufficient. At the first corner to the south was a cluster of pikemen, evidently part of a column which occupied the cross-street. The prisoner slowly regained his concealment. For the next hour he gloomily watched the fire, until, convinced by the rate of its approach that it was farther away than he had thought, he dozed again. While he slept, the wind shifted to the north.

Sometime in the afternoon--late, it seemed from the uncertain light--he was awakened by the report of a falconet, and smiled grimly. "The Inca's forces are attacking," he muttered. "May no man of them fail to duck in time--and may they come this far! It would--Mother of God!"

A crackling sound, heard vaguely, had started him to his feet. He struck aside the foliage. There was no sky!--only a flying mass of gray and white, near enough, it looked, to be touched with his hand. The palace was afire. At a bound he was clear of the shrubbery. The roof over the entrance was a solid flame. While he stood, transfixed, it swept forward right and left with the speed of wind. He dashed through a shower of fire to the doors. The building opposite was a furnace. "Bang!" snapped the falconet at the foot of the street.

He rushed to the rear, racing with the flames roaring along the roofs on both sides of the court, and reached the passage, now full of smoke. From its mouth he saw the pikemen looking toward him at the fire. Should he venture a dash to cut through their lines? Hopeless, hopeless! But to be burned alive! Yet the main court was broad. Would he not be out of reach of the flames in its centre? It was the one chance. A flash of fire overhead drove him back into the palace. The passages and rooms were dense and stifling, and once he lost his way; found it again, and crept the rest of the distance to the court on his hands and knees; reached it, blind, and half stupefied.

Gasping and choking, he dragged himself to the shrubbery, only half conscious of the leaping, blazing tumult surrounding him. The entrance had disappeared, curtained by burning thatch fallen from the eaves. The air was growing hot, and the open doorways which before had been obscure, now showed a dull illumination. For a few minutes the atmosphere was fairly free to breathe, but as the roof timbers began to give way the rooms filled with burning straw from above, and great spurts and volumes of smoke rolled into the court from the doors and windows.

Cristoval lay with face pressed to the earth for its coolness and the stratum of purer air. Overhead the leaves were shrivelling and drooping. Burning wisps of thatch, then sheaves and armfuls, were soaring upward in the blast and strewing the ground about him. He was protected by his armor, but in danger of suffocation, and his breathing grew momentarily more labored, until every inspiration was like a draught of fire itself.

Cristoval was coughing and breathing stertorously, sweating in his mail. Nothing was visible now but the hot, white shroud through which the nearest shrubs showed like dim skeletons. Strangely, at times they were all in motion, going round and round; vanishing for moments, to reappear slowly and resume their wavering reel. He wondered at it very little, occupied mostly with the effort to breathe, the pain of it, and the torture of the heat. He had ceased to think, connectedly, of anything; but a series of rapidly moving pictures traversed his brain, chiefly of Rava and Xilcala, with others interspersed, of no relevancy. His head was aching, and singing wildly--or, was it the whistling of wind through a ship's rigging? It was that, for he felt the roll and plunge. _Madre_!--dreaming! He saw Pedro, then Father Tendilla, then Rogelio. Something was burrowing beneath his chest, squeaking pitifully, and roused him. A _coy_--guinea pig! Another scurried past, and languidly he wondered whither. Toward the fountain! _Jesu_! At once his mind cleared. Why had he not thought of it before? He began crawling toward the water, reanimated by hope which, but now, had gone. Slowly, for his way was strewn with fire, and his steel of crushing weight. Miles away, the pool; hardly to be attained, but reached at last, and he rolled in at full length.

The shock revived him, but before he could struggle to his knees he thought he must drown. Once upright, he found the air cooler and far less stifling. As he knelt, the water came to his breast, and now he was safe at least from being burned to death, if not from asphyxiation. It was minutes before his thoughts became connected, and then he saw the _coys_ cowering on the steps in front of him.

Beyond the rim of the pool nothing could be seen for the smoke. On every side was the roar of the burning and the muffled crash of falling beams. The air was full of dropping brands, spitting and hissing as they touched the water, or starting frenzied squeaks when they fell upon the rodents. Moved by their common suffering with himself, he dashed water over them with his hands, only half sensible of the mercy of the impulse.

The smoke thickened from minute to minute, and the heat, even in the pool, grew maddening; but by frequent immersions of his head and face he retained his senses, wondering in a stupid, dreamy way, how long he could endure.

At last, daylight was waning. The thatch had burned out by this, and the smoke become less dense, permitting occasional glimpses of the flames still tossing about him. He was growing chilled and stiffened by long immersion, and rose to his feet from time to time, first dropping his visor to protect his face. Through the obscurity he could see the dull red of the doorways, and the walls with their topping of fire, but as evening came on the heat grew less intense, and he found that he could stand, dipping at intervals to cool his armor.

Night fell and grew late. The worst of the fire had passed to the southward. Around him the flames barely reached above the blackened walls, though the glare from the doors revealed the desolation of the court. It was hideous and infernal, and he was seized with a frantic longing to be away from its horror, but hours dragged before he could even quit the pool. Slowly, however, the fire subsided, and he mounted the steps unheeded by his fellow refugees. Now he could see the entrance, with fragments of the doors hanging to the hinges and still feebly burning. He would attempt it.

He found his sword and shield, among the leafless stalks of the bushes, and after a final plunge in the pool, left the court. Filling his lungs, he bolted through the door and into the street. It was full of embers, starting into flame and swirled about by eddies of hot wind. He could see but a short distance ahead, but with a hurried prayer he dashed forward through the stifling heat. The end of the street was not far, but before he had reached it his feet and legs were blistered. In his struggles for breath, and in the dread doubt whether he would attain his goal, he hardly felt the pain, but rushed blindly on, ploughing up a spray of fire in his passage. At length, the foot of the street, and he staggered into the open, across the quay, and down the steps to the stream.

At the farther end of the bridge was the falconet with its gunners. The fire had not crossed the rivulet, but the heat had driven them to the opposite side. One of the cannoneers beheld Cristoval rushing through the fiery dusk of the street, and his affrighted exclamation drew the attention of his mates. They saw the arch-fiend, clad in red-hot steel, with blazing eyes, and brandishing a sword of flame, charging toward them through a burst of fire. There was one gasping yell, and they fled into the darkness.

*CHAPTER XXXV*

_*The Lurking Morisco*_

During the half-hour it took the sergeant commanding the gun to reassemble his panic-stricken cannoneers, Cristoval was passing slowly down the Tullamayu, secure in its shadows. In his thankfulness for escape from death his scorched feet and legs seemed naught, and he was eager only to pass the fire ahead, cross the city to the other stream, and find the Amarucancha. To find the Amarucancha; for not an instant did his purpose flag, nor would while he had strength to creep.

He reached the point where the stream is bridged by the Rimac Pampa, climbed a stairway, and found himself at the edge of that square. The entire district south and east had burned the night before, and the ruins were still smouldering, with small fires here and there in the _debris_ lighting up the plaza, but rendering its greater extent the more obscure. To the north-east, the suburbs of Toco Cachi and Munay Cenca were burning fiercely, but the advance of the conflagration thence had been retarded by the wind, so that between the burning zone and the Tullamayu lay an area yet untouched, while the fire which had swept over him was now in the rear. In the west was a huge, roseate bank of smoke, rolling upward in colossal and endless transformation. Overhead were fragments of sky, densely black, with sickly stars briefly seen, then extinguished by the pallid fleece whirled and driven by the wind. Everywhere above the horizon, a stupendous activity impressive in its silence.

Cristoval turned from it oppressed, to listen and reconnoitre before venturing from shelter. About him, gloom and stillness profound, the desolation of vacant streets, the mournfulness of abandonment; and over all, a wan, unnatural twilight. He felt the weight of loneliness and a vague dread of the shadowy thoroughfares and sombre buildings. He shook it off with resolution, and stole out into the street. Not far ahead an intersecting way admitted a narrow illumination from the north. He was within fifty paces of this when a dim figure crossed the light and vanished in the darkness beyond. It appeared and disappeared so quickly and silently that he was uncertain lest he had been deceived by a swirl of smoke. He paused uneasily, unresolved whether to advance or go back. "No Spaniard, that," he reflected, "and _cierto_, not a sentinel! A mere rag of a figure--if not a rag of mine imagination. But what an unholy, shivery manner of gait!--a flit, and 't was gone. Murder! I had liefer seen a pikeman." He stood for a moment peering and hearkening, then advanced with drawn sword.

Arriving at the strip of light, he crossed it hastily, and halted by the wall. Farther up the street was another lighted spot, and he watched it with vigilance. Again the form, seen for an instant, and lost in the gloom. Now, Cristoval's courage was proof as his own mail against tangible danger, but volatile as ether before the uncanny or mysterious. The fleeting form was both. The cavalier was daunted, and admitted it to himself. But he braced himself with a sign of the cross and stole forward. "After all," he muttered, "belike 't is naught but some poor devil of a native, burned out and homeless. But the fiend take a man who moveth with so ghastly locomotion! Neither a walk, trot, nor canter. Anyway, he seemeth to have as little appetite for me as I for him, and man or spook, I'll not crowd him, I swear it!"

At the next corner he halted, inspecting the dimly lighted street for signs of soldiery, but no living being moved. The spectre-like stranger had vanished. While the cavalier stood, he heard distant cavalry. It was wholesome and earthly at least; and although it called for caution, yet it was in some sort reassuring, and he went on in greater ease of mind. A few minutes later he entered another square flanked on the left by a large edifice recognizable by the glow on its gilded roof as the Temple of the Sun. He had his bearings, and knew that the Huatenay was not far beyond. The plaza was the ancient Coricancha, or Place of Gold.