Part 3

In fact, Pizarro was having a bad night. On his stone table, weighted down by one of his steel gauntlets, lay the record of the summary court, left there by his secretary hours before. He could not read it, for he was unlettered; but he knew every word of its content. It told of sedition. He could only guess how far disaffection had spread, but the knowledge that the spirit was abroad had come with stunning effect. Hour after hour he paced the room, his footfall a dismal accompaniment to dismal reflections. After years he had almost reached his goal with an army at his back, only to feel the earth crumbling beneath him, undermined by cowardice and treachery. As he walked, his thin lips moved as if in prayer. But Pizarro was not praying. He was heaping black curses upon his riffraff soldiery.

Jose relieved Pedro at daybreak, and an hour after reveille the cook returned with breakfast for the wounded man. His jovial countenance was perfectly blank.

"Well, what news?" asked Jose. "Do the conspirators get the rack or the garrote?"

Pedro put down his burden with deliberation. "Thou 'rt a fool at guessing, Jose, and I another. Neither rack, nor yet garrote! Let me tell thee. After roll-call and reports the general stepped forward. He looked along the line, and the line stopped breathing. Torres, of the infantry, let fall his pike. Then Pizarro began to speak--as quietly as I am speaking now. He said it had come to his attention,--had come to his attention, Jose!--that there are certain ones among us who have lost enthusiasm--not that they are damned traitors, Jose, but have lost enthusiasm! He would say to these that the hour is critical; that it is big with events which it will need all our courage to meet bravely, as becometh Spaniards. He would have no man go forward who goeth not with a whole heart, and to such as had liefer return the road is open. With those who choose to follow him, few or many, it is his purpose to pursue the adventure to its end."

Jose resumed tearing bandages. "_Jesucristo!_" was his only comment.

"Stew me to rags!" observed Pedro with slow emphasis. After a pause he continued, "Didst ever see such a man, Jose? He staked much on a single throw. On my oath, I should not have been surprised to see half the army take the route to San Miguel! Hah! He would have no coacted, weak-kneed service, quoth he; but to my mind he chose a perilous way of stiffening it and weeding out discontent. The rack were better. However, every cook hath his own way of cooking."

Before noon nine malcontents slunk out of the _tambo_ and started back to San Miguel. Three wore bandages.

In a few days the march was resumed. Little fever resulted from Cristoval's wounds, and Jose pronounced him in condition, to go forward, borne in a litter.

*CHAPTER IV*

_*The Inca's Encampment*_

Six weeks later the Army of the Conquest was descending the eastern slope of the Maritime Cordillera into the interior valley of Caxamalca. Here, Pizarro learned, the Inca Atahualpa lay with fifty thousand warriors.

The march over the mountains had been one of toil and hardship, but the few Peruvians encountered had displayed nothing but hospitality. Two embassies from the Inca had met the invaders, bearing presents and assurances of welcome. The messages were translated by a young native, called by the soldiers Felipillo, who had been picked up on a former expedition, taught the Spanish language, many Spanish vices, and retained as interpreter. Through him the commander sent courteous replies, and, while neglecting no precaution, marched with a sense of security always.

To Cristoval, stretched helpless on his rude litter, the first few days had been torture. Later, however, a halt was made at a mountain village whose friendly _curaca_, or governor, proffered the use of his sedan with native bearers. They were hardy, sure-footed mountaineers, and thereafter Cristoval swung along with little discomfort. Halts were frequent, and some were protracted, for Pizarro hoped for reenforcements from San Miguel if ships should come from Panama, whither his partner, Almagro, had sailed in quest of fresh recruits. He tarried in vain, but the halts were favorable to Cristoval. His rugged health, aided by the bracing mountain air and the vigilant care of Pedro, hastened his recovery; and by the end of October his wounds were healed, though he had yet to regain his strength. He bore his inactivity with what patience there was in him, but with no prevision of the gratitude he should one day feel for those very wounds.

The Fifteenth of November saw the last day's march in the mountains. The column had for hours trailed down a rocky gorge, which at last opened upon a full panorama of the valley of Caxamalca. It stretched out far below, a fertile and verdant plain, checkered with fields, damaskeened with the silver of rivulets and canals for irrigation, and traversed throughout its length by a fair river. Near its centre, gleaming in its setting of green, lay the town of Caxamalca, surrounded by orchards and gardens, and groves of willows, quinuars, and mimosas, in whose shelter could be descried the tinted walls of the cottages and villas of the suburbs.

Involuntarily, when the scene burst upon him, Pizarro reined his horse. His trumpeter sounded a halt, and De Soto, whose troop was in advance, rode up beside him, joined straightway by the officers of the staff. They surveyed the valley with amazement. Pizarro was the first to speak.

"_Maravilloso_!" he exclaimed. "Ha! Senores, what say you to it? Have your eyes ever beheld a fairer vale? Did I not know better, I could think myself in Andalusia--but, _Santa Madre_!--look beyond the river--at those hills!"

"Tents, as I live!" ejaculated De Soto, "and by the ten thousand."

"By the soul of me!" growled Hernando Pizarro, the eldest of the commander's four brothers. "Methinks, Francisco, thy dreams of conquest have overreached. Ho! good Father," he continued, turning with a grin to Valverde, the square-jawed chaplain of the expedition, "I'll presently call upon thee for a shrift. Meanwhile, do thou pray a little."

"Aye!" muttered Candia, the Greek captain of artillery, "pray a little, and have the other frocks at it with thee. We'll need all your supplications, and,"--to himself,--"the devil's aid besides."

The priest did not reply even with a glance. The commander had ridden a few paces in advance and was looking over the vast encampment below with as little emotion in his thin, sallow face as if the Inca's army were a flock of goats.

When the leading files of the column first caught sight of the distant encampment a shout arose and was quickly carried to the rear: "_El Inca! El Inca! El ejercito del Inca!_" and pikes and halberds were brandished with fierce enthusiasm. But as realization of the magnitude of the host came over them the demonstration gave place to ominous silence, and they gazed with something akin to consternation. Pizarro noticed the change, and looked back over the ranks with a barely perceptible curl of his lip. "Forward!" he said to the trumpeter, and moved down the trail.

The command wound its descent through the foothills, and at midday halted again. Pennons were affixed to lances, plumes to helmets, and the banners were uncovered and spread to the breeze. Here Cristoval demanded his horse, and, when Pedro protested, declared with emphasis that he was well, and if not well, then well enough; that in any event he would not go into the presence of an enemy borne in a litter, like a woman. So he mounted, though without his armor. The formation most favorable for action in case of attack was now adopted. The infantry and artillery were placed in the middle of the column with cavalry in front and rear; and, with a small advance guard, the army debouched upon the plain.

No hostility met the Spaniards. As on the coast, they came upon knots of the natives gathered at the roadside, and these gazed upon the glittering, bannered pageant as if stupefied. When the outskirts of the town were, reached the afternoon was late, and rain, for some time threatening, set in with dreary steadiness. To their surprise they found here no sign of life. The last group of Indios had long been passed, and as the troops plashed along the muddy highway through the suburbs they were greeted only by silence and desertion. Cots and villas were numerous, but all closed and tenantless. They marched through a desolation emphasized by every mark of recent habitation. The people had fled at their coming as from a pestilence.

At length they were in the town. Here, too, vacancy and silent thoroughfares, awakened now to unwonted echoes by the ring of horses' hoofs and the rumble of the guns on the pavements. They entered through one of the poorer quarters, where the dwellings were of bricks of sun-dried clay, heavily thatched with straw, all of a single story, substantial, and severely plain. Toward the middle of the town they passed larger buildings of heavy masonry, whose blank walls, unbroken by window or decoration, wore a dull gloom and mystery which, indeed, pervaded the very air. The gray streets, depressingly regular and paved throughout, were unrelieved by a single tree or shrub or patch of sward. Over all a sombreness profound; no sign either, of welcome or hostility; only the apathy of abandonment everywhere.

The thoroughfare opened into a great plaza. Pizarro rode to the centre to direct the deployment of the column: on the right, cavalry; in the centre, artillery and foot; on the left, cavalry again; and in the rear, the pack train. The line formed in silence--a spiritless, sullen line, rain-soaked, mud-splashed, with drooping plumes and dripping banners; and oppressed withal by yonder vast encampment and the sense of being in the toils. The march was ended.

Patrols were detailed, scouring the town and its outskirts to make sure the desertedness was not merely apparent. Pizarro assembled his officers. He began with his customary terseness:--

"Senores, I purpose sending an embassy to the Inca at once. We must know better than we can judge from the cold reception he hath seen fit to accord to us how he regardeth our coming. We must know to-night. To-morrow we will govern our actions accordingly. So do thou go, Soto, and tell him we have come. Say that we have sailed across the seas from a great prince,--God save him!--to offer service and impart to him and his people the True Faith. Put it in a courtly way, but with no servility--thou knowest how--and say that we pray he will honor us with a visit to-morrow.

"Remember that to these people we are superior beings, almost more than mortal. Carry thyself as a superior even to this emperor, and he'll not fail to credit thy assumption. Did he know our estate, do not doubt that he would hotly resent our pretension. In a word, by every look, gesture, and tone of thy voice strive to impress him. Display thy horsemanship, if there be opportunity,--he hath never seen a horse,--and hold thy chin well in the air. 'Tis important, Soto! Now go, and _Dominus vobiscum_. Take Felipillo and a dozen lances,--more if thou wilt."

The captain saluted, and, turning his horse, cantered to his troop to select a following for the perilous mission. In a few minutes, with fifteen chosen cavaliers, he was clattering down the street. Pizarro looked after him, and said, turning to his brother:

"Hernando, take twenty more and go with him. He hath too few."

The second detachment followed at a gallop.

Pizarro briefly surveyed the place. The plaza was enclosed on three sides by low stone buildings, thatched like the others, with great doors opening upon the square. At the western end, toward the Inca's encampment, rose a redoubt or citadel, overlooking the country and commanding the plaza, from which it was entered by a flight of steps. Hither Pizarro rode, dismounted, and ascended to the _terre-plein_, followed by his officers. Here he could view the Inca's position with the intermediate plain and its river. The road followed by De Soto led over a causeway extending from the town to the bank of the stream, and from time to time the watchers caught glimpses of the cavalcade, until it was finally lost to sight.

It was twilight when the detachment returned, but the dusk could not conceal its gloom. The result of the mission had not been cheering. De Soto and Hernando Pizarro dismissed their detail, and hastened to the commander to report the interview.

Cristoval was in his quarters in one of the large buildings on the square, seated with Jose over a flask of _chicha_ when, an hour later, Pedro entered.

"Good evening, Senores," said he, smiling benignly. "My blessing--a cook's blessing. Ah, Cristoval, thou 'rt the first cheerful-looking man I've seen this night! 'Tis most commendable. Put a good face on 't, and discountenance the devil. _Hilarum semper fac te et lubentem_!--which meaneth, gentlemen, be cheerful and good-humored always--a good maxim just now, is it not?"

"Excellent!" replied Cristoval. "Sit and have a cup with us, Pedro. These be serious times."

"True!" said the portly cook, squeezing himself between the bench and the table with difficulty. "And there is something like demoralization abroad among the men. So many are clamoring to Father Valverde to be shriven that the good priest is beside himself. _Terror incidit exercitui, bonum facit militem_--fear striketh the army and maketh the soldier good. They have just consecrated the building next the infantry quarters for a chapel--and 't is well placed, I'll swear, for not a pikeman but is a thief!--and there will be services all night. Pizarro goeth about among the men like their own father, blowing upon the embers of their extinguished courage. What a man! He knoweth neither fear nor doubt, and he can talk both out of any man who weareth ears. _Cara_! To-morrow might be a _fiesta_ so far as it fasheth him. Just now I met him on the square. '_Hola_, Pedro!' quoth he, 'hast heard? This pagan king cometh to-morrow for a visit, and I would give him a taste of Christian cooking. Canst scrape up a meal?' What d'ye think of that, Senores?--with the army in a cold sweat from looking at the Inca's camp and counting his tents!"

Cristoval smote the table with his fist. "By the fighting Saint Michael, he hath not his peer in armor!"

"No!" Pedro concurred with emphasis. "Thou sayst right, Cristoval. But the poor _veedor_! Have ye seen him? He hath been waddling about the square, swollen with consternation, now climbing to the fortress to stare at the campfires on the hills, now scuttling down again to tell how many there are; one minute praying, the next swearing, and the next bellowing like a calf that he is a civilian, no fighting man, and is misplaced. And misplaced he is, I'll take my oath! Pizarro locked him up at last, to prevent the panic he was beginning to spread. Gods, gentlemen! were I the commander I'd melt him and make him into tallow dips."

A bugle sounded in the square, and Cristoval exclaimed, rising, "Officers' call! The general hath something to say."

Pizarro had something of moment to say, and was in council with his officers through the night.

*CHAPTER V*

_*The Monarch and the Princess Rava*_

The entry of the Spaniards into Caxamalca had not been spirited, nor jubilant. But the rain, which had conspired with other depressing circumstances to dishearten them, ceased during the night, and the sixteenth of November broke with a cloudless sky. Its first light was greeted in the Peruvian camp by the clamor of trumpets, the wailing of conches and horns, and the thunder of drums--a warlike and mighty dissonance which struck faintly upon the listening ears of the invaders in the town, and set many a good Christian making the sign of the cross and murmuring his prayers. The army of the Inca was portentously astir.

The monarch was quartered in a villa at the edge of the eastern foothills. Not far away, their position marked by columns of rising steam, were the hot mineral springs which had made the place a resort of the Incas for generations.

The villa itself differed little in its severe simplicity from other structures of the country. It was massively built of stone, with the usual high-pitched covering of thatch--a form of roof far from primitive in this instance, for the thatches of Peru were artfully and durably constructed, often highly ornate in the weaving and gilding of their straw. The building was without exterior decoration except for the sculptured geometrical design bordering the entrance. This doorway, like the small windows set high up under the eaves, and the numerous niches with growing plants, which served to modify the severity and blankness of the walls, narrowed from threshold to lintel as in the architecture of ancient Egypt. The walls, too, broad at the base and sloping inward as they narrowed to the top, further suggested the comparison.

On either side of the villa entrance stood sentinels in the blue of the Incarial Guard, in heavily pourpointed tunics or gambesons, similar to those worn by the European men-at-arms of the fourteenth century. Each wore a casque of burnished silver, with heavy cheek-plates descending to the point of the jaw, and surmounted by the figure of a crouching panther, the device of their corps. Above the head-piece rose a high crescent-shaped crest, not unlike that on the helm of the warrior of ancient Greece. Their arms were bare to the shoulder, but encircled by heavy bands of silver above the elbow and at the wrist. Their legs were protected only by the blue and silver lacings of their sandals, which entwined them to the knees. They were armed with javelins, small round shields of polished brass, and from their broad, heavily plated belts hung small battle-axes and short swords of bronze, an alloy which the Peruvians tempered almost to the hardness of steel.

At an early hour the throne-room was filled with officers and nobles costumed as brilliantly as the court of an Oriental potentate. The majority were Quitoans, but among them were a small number of the nobles of Cuzco, recent adherents of Huascar, who had tendered their allegiance to the successful Atahualpa, or whose presence at the court the latter had commanded. All were in the sleeveless outer garment of the country, belted at the waist, with skirts falling to the knees, and not unlike the _tunica_ of the Roman. The stuff was of wool, woven in fanciful and often elegant patterns, and not infrequently decorated with elaborate passementerie, or with braid or scale-work of gold and silver. Every stalwart form glittered with jewelled armlets, bracelets, necklaces, and girdles in the precious metals, while the nobles of Cuzco wore, as a distinguishing mark of their order, heavy discs of gold let into the lobes of their ears.

The apartment in which they awaited the coming of the monarch was no less splendid than the assemblage, and showed the same lavish use of gold and silver, which in the empire of the Incas had no value except for ornamentation. It was a lofty chamber with walls of polished porphyry, divided by pilasters into panels bordered with vines in precious metal, perfect in leaf and stem. Suspended from silver brackets wrought in forms of serpents, lizards, and fanciful monsters, were lamps burning perfumed oil, filling the room with faint aroma, and dispelling the obscurity of the early morning with their radiance. The ceiling, panelled by heavy rafters, was of rushes, gilded and elaborately woven in squares and lozenges. At intervals the walls were niched like those of the exterior, to receive natural plants or imitations of them in the metals.

In the rear of the apartment, beneath a canopy resplendent with embroidery and featherwork, was a dais of serpentine on which stood the Inca's seat, a low stool of solid gold, richly chased and jewelled. Back of this, against the wall, was the imperial standard, on whose folds blazed and sparkled in embroidery and precious stones a rainbow, the insigne of the Incas.

The room was nearly bare of furniture, but its marble floor was softened by richly dyed rugs and the skins of animals. In a word, in this country villa of the ruler of an empire of the farthest West was a wealth of decoration that would have dimmed the splendor of the palace of a maharajah.

Presently, a door in the rear swung open, and a silence fell as a grizzled veteran in the splendid uniform of a general of the Quitoan troops entered and raised his hand. He was followed by two officers of the Incarial Guard, who halted and took post at each side of the doorway. A breathless moment, then came the Inca Atahualpa, attended by his personal staff. The nobles went upon their knees, bending until their foreheads touched the floor, and so remained until the monarch, moving with brisk, soldierly pace, had gained the dais, where he turned with a brief command that they arise.

Atahualpa was then close to his thirtieth year. His countenance was one which would have been striking among men of any race. He had the warrior-face of the American aborigine--the aquiline nose, the high cheekbones and firm jaw and mouth, the calm pride and dignity of expression--but refined by generations of Inca culture. It was the face of a fighter, and a slumbering ferocity was perhaps lurking in the dark and somewhat bloodshot eyes; but it was also an intellectual one, clear-cut in line and contour, and backed by a well-formed head, handsomely poised. His complexion, of the usual bronze of the Indian, was yet not more swarthy than that of many Spaniards. His black hair was closely trimmed, and on his head was the royal diadem, the _llauta_, a thick cord or band of crimson, wound several times around, with a pendant fringe covering his forehead to his brows from temple to temple. Set closely in the _llauta_ above the fringe, diverging as they rose, were two small white feathers, each with a single spot of black. These were taken from the wings of the _coraquenque_, a rare bird sacred to the Incas. He was simply clad in deep red, the royal color. His tunic was quite devoid of decoration, but the cloak thrown over his shoulders glittered with embroidery and scales of gold, and besides his heavy ear-ornaments he wore at his throat a collar of emeralds worth an emperor's ransom.

A powerful man, well and serenely accustomed to his power, mentally and physically equal to its exercise, and sufficiently wonted to it not to be self-conscious, is truly a fit object of admiration. There is nothing more sublime, in its way, on earth: nothing more majestic, and only suggested by the brute kingliness of the lion. Atahualpa, the descendant of a long line of absolute monarchs, a line believed by the Peruvians to have sprung from Inti, the Sun-god himself, wore his majesty as naturally as he wore his cloak and with as little thought of it.

On this occasion the audience was short, and the Inca did not seat himself. Having heard the reports of his generals, he directed that supplies be sent to the Spaniards in Caxamalca, gave a few orders concerning the disposition of his troops and the formation of his escort for the visit to Pizarro that afternoon, and retired, while the nobles went again upon their knees until he had quit the apartment. In the court outside he dismissed his staff and descended a terrace into the garden in the rear of the palace.