Part 5

“But, bad as the tribute was,” José continued, recovering calmness, and turning again towards the monk, “men did not curse it, as they did the mita. It was long before I could understand aright what the mita was. I stayed in Nasca, to learn the laws of my people from the old men there; and then I went northwards. Having crossed a desert, I came to another valley, broad and fertile. It was evening. A little village lay amongst fields of quinoa. I thought it had a lonely look. Soon I saw a group of women returning thither from their work. But I saw no men. The women walked hand in hand, chanting a mournful yaravi:—

‘The stranger has taken our husbands to work in his mines, And we toil in the fields for our children’s bread.’

When I talked with them, they told me the Spaniards take away every seventh man to work in the mines and the obregas.[19] If that is not enough, they take more. The men die quickly, and more and more are ever needed. Year after year fewer men in the villages; year after year more men in the mines and obregas.—Where will it end, patre?”

“But,” said Fray Fernando, “the term of their service is only a year.”

“So said I to the women in my simplicity—‘Your husbands will come back to you in a year.’ And they answered, weeping, ‘They will never come back—no, never again. They will die. Or if haply they live, the Spaniards will say—they are in debt,—and will keep them for yanaconas[20] for ever.’”

“Is such done?” asked Fray Fernando.

“Every day,” answered José. “At last I said to the poor women of Yea, ‘I will go and see your husbands at the mine.’—They blessed and thanked me, and gave me a store of coca leaves to carry to them, such as I have here” (touching a little ornamental bag, curiously woven of twisted threads in different colours, which hung by his side). “One, the widow of a curaça, gave me this dress to put on; for everywhere the children fled from me in terror, because I was clothed as a Spaniard. It was the holiday dress of her only son. Two years ago a Spanish traveller had taken him by force, with another youth, to carry his baggage to Cuzco. Neither of them ever returned.”

“This again is a practice forbidden by the laws,” said Fray Fernando.

“What good are _your_ laws? We obeyed the laws of our Inca, because we both loved and feared him. But Spaniards fear nothing, and love nothing—except gold.”

“José! José!”

“True, patre,—too true. As I journeyed to the mine, I met a sorrowful company of women, some leading children by the hand. They said they were going to their husbands, at work in the obregas, else they would never see them again. When I said, ‘I am going to the mine,’ they answered me, ‘Tell the miners to thank Ynty for their lot.’ This I thought strange, for the women of Yea had talked to me of the miseries of the miners till my heart was sore. But these said, ‘Better is it with those who dig the silver from the depths of the earth, than with those who weave the llama’s fleece in the obregas.’ Worked far beyond their strength, fed with food we would not offer to a beast, beaten cruelly, or else—patre, I could not tell you all. But God has mercy on them, and they die. They die soon; but others must be found to fill their places—ay, though they have to be hunted with blood-hounds. Now they take little children, six or seven years old. I saw myself—” But here José stopped, and covered his face with his hands. Soon large tears fell slowly through them. “No words!” he cried passionately; “no words. Only tears. Would they were tears of blood! And this is Tahuantin Suyu, that my fathers made so happy!”[21]

Fray Fernando was moved to compassion for the gentle unoffending race, the unresisting victims of such cruel wrongs. “A poor and harmless people, created of God, and that might have been won to his knowledge,” as Sir Walter Raleigh says pathetically. He answered in a softened tone, “You could say with the prophet, ‘O that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.’”

“The daughter of my people!” José repeated, with eyes that turned his tears to sparks of fire. “O patre, I have not told half—I cannot! They have broken into the houses of the Virgins of the Sun. They have taken them away by violence. I know now—too well!—why my mother died rather than be captive to the Spaniard. They have left us nothing sacred, nothing holy—not even the grave. They have dug open the tombs of our fathers to search for hid treasures. They have torn the ornaments from our temples; they have turned them into stables for their horses. They have robbed our store-houses, where the Incas laid up maize, quinoa, wool, cotton, to supply the people in years of scarcity. They have slaughtered by thousands the gentle, useful llamas, that bore our burdens and clothed us with their fleeces—only that they may feast upon their brains!—Are these the favourites and messengers of Pacha-camac, sent to teach us his will? No; they are the children of Supay—the devil. I will never believe God loves them, or commands us to obey them. I will never become as one of them, to learn their ways, to wear their dress, to serve their gods—”

“José, hush!” interposed the monk. Five minutes ago those two hearts had been very near, had almost met. But José’s words, blasphemous in the ears of Fray Fernando, broke down the bridge between them. “I can hear my countrymen reproached,” he said, “and I sorrowfully admit there is too much cause;—but I cannot hear my Faith blasphemed. Still,” he added, more gently, “I would fain believe your heart does not mean all your lips have said. Changed as you are, I can hardly think you have forgotten all the past—you whom I taught, watched over, tended in sickness. See, here is the holy emblem of our Faith.” He took the crucifix, with the rosary attached, from his girdle, and held it out to José. “Take it, my son; kiss it, in token of your penitence and your attachment to the Christian faith; and I will forgive your wild words and forget them.”

José took the crucifix,—but held it at arm’s length.

“Kiss it, my son,” said the monk.

José did not move.

“Kiss it,” Fray Fernando repeated more sternly. Unfortunately he added,—“as a sign that you renounce the vain idols of your race.”

What! Was Ynty an idol—Ynty the glorious? What then was this bit of wood—not even gold or silver—to which the patre bade him do reverence. José’s anger was not often roused, but when roused, it was incontrollable. He made a step forward towards a steep cliff, near the edge of which he was standing. The crucifix swung and shook over the precipice in his extended hand.

“Dare you?” cried the monk, springing forward to arrest him, horror-stricken at his profanity.

“I dare!” the Indian answered, the wrongs of his race all crowding on his memory, and the cross seeming nothing, in that moment’s passion, save an emblem of the creed of the destroyer. “Behold!”

The deed was done. His passion began to die away the moment it was indulged. And at the same time the last rays of the sun were dying from the sky.

“Enough!” said Fray Fernando, and he spoke very coldly. The white man’s anger needs no loud words, no fierce gestures for its expression. “I was a fool to expect gratitude or love from an Indian. You never knew what either means, José. You have never loved me, and the love I gave to you I wasted. This is our last parting. Let me pass.” José moved aside at his command, and stood watching him, with a stupified air, until he was out of sight.

Then he ran to the place whence the cliff could be descended with the least difficulty. Leaping and scrambling, and clinging now and then to a stray tuft of ychu, he soon reached the spot where lay the crucifix. He took it up, and placed it carefully in the little bag by his side.

From this spot he could see the valley, winding far beneath. He stood gazing until the short twilight was past, and the rapidly increasing darkness hid it from his view. Then he threw himself on the ground, and gave way to a passionate burst of weeping. For the patre had parted with him in fierce anger, telling him he had never loved him.

He had no sense of fear in that lonely spot. The tracks of the puma were seldom seen in the district; and the hardy Indian youth thought little of a bed on the alfalfa, and less of the want of food, especially whilst some fragrant leaves still remained in his coca-bag.

But he was sore in need of help and comfort, for himself and for his people. And, because he saw none, either in the darkened heavens or on the miserable earth, he wept and wailed, plucking up the alfalfa by the roots and flinging it from him in his bitter grief.

At last he looked up. Ynty was gone long ago. Not even a faint glow remained now on the horizon. He remembered the words of the great Inca Huayna Capac, taught him in his childhood. Ynty could not be lord and governor, thought the wise monarch, because so often absent from the earth; nay, he seemed like a servant who himself obeyed a master, or like an arrow shot from a bow by a strong hand. It was plain enough now that Ynty could not help his children in their hour of need. There was no one to hear and help in those cold distant heavens to which they cried in vain. Were the Spaniards right? Was God on their side? Instead of the departed sun, there burned above his head the bright stars of the Southern Cross, which the patre told him was the sacred emblem of the Christian Faith, written on the heavens in characters of fire. No hint of the true meaning of the cross had ever found its way to José’s heart, though he was, of course, familiar with the historical fact. He had never heard the message of divine love.

And through the best human love that he knew came the bitterest pain of that bitter hour. The patre had saved him from his cruel enemy, tended him in sickness, fed him, clothed him, taught him. And now the patre said, “You have never loved me, and the love I gave to you I wasted.”

The Indian lay quite still for a long time. Thoughts he had no power to express were struggling in his soul. José and Viracocha were at strife within him.

At last came a decisive moment. “Arri! rantihuarcca,” he said, half aloud. “Yes; he bought me.” That was the argument that turned the scale. José—for he it was who won the victory—started up, shook the alfalfa from his dress, tied his sandals more firmly, and again repeating, “Arri; rantihuarcca,” peered cautiously around through the darkness.

An hour afterwards the Indian youth was treading noiselessly through the sleeping galpon. He reached the door of Fray Fernando’s hut, and pushed it gently. As of old, it was only on the latch. The monk had his own reasons for not adopting precautions that, in real danger, would inevitably prove futile. José entered. All was still. Fray Fernando lay on his pallet fast asleep, for the hour was now very late. Whereupon José, with that peculiar kind of _sang froid_ characteristic of his race, turned quietly into his accustomed corner, and, as though he had never forfeited his right to be there, laid himself down to sleep.

VIII.

Vindicated.

“But prove me what it is I would not do.”

TENNYSON.

Fray Fernando returned to the galpon sorrowful and desolate. All the tenderness that life had left in his blighted heart had been gathered up and poured forth on the head of the Indian youth, who had truly been as a son to him. He never dreamed how much he had given, until he awoke to the consciousness that all was given in vain.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, was left him now to care for. He had not a hope remaining; just then he had scarcely a fear. His heart was too weary for conflict; it only ached with a dull and constant pain. Listlessly he went through the prescribed course of his evening devotions, repeating unfelt prayers and praises that found no echo in his heart. If he had ever really prayed, he had prayed for the child he fondly dreamed God had sent to comfort him in his misery. But that was over now; José was gone back to his people and to his gods, and his work and his prayers for him—like all his other work and all his other prayers—were wasted.

In this mood he laid himself down to sleep. Of late the slumbers that sealed those eyes had been fitful and broken. But it happened that upon this occasion Nature, usually capricious, saw fit to reassert her power and exact her revenge, and ere long he fell into a sound dreamless sleep.

He awoke with a start. A sharp cry rang in his ears. The room seemed full of furious men, struggling for mastery, clinging desperately to each other’s throats. Then some bright thing, a knife or dagger, known by its glitter in the moonlight, fell to the ground at his side.

Less than a minute restored his senses fully, and reduced the shadowy host of combatants to two—a gigantic negro and a slender stripling, who seemed about to pay for the frantic tenacity with which he clutched his adversary’s throat, by being crushed to death in his strong grasp.

That moment Fray Fernando forgot his peaceful calling, his sacred character, everything but the youth’s danger. Seizing the weapon so opportunely left at his hand, he made third’s-man in the fray to such good purpose, that the negro fled for his life, like an evil spirit of night chased by returning day.

With the dagger still in his hand, the monk stood and gazed about him in bewilderment. But he could see scarcely anything, for the moon had retreated behind a cloud.

“Much-hani Pacha-camac!” exclaimed a well-known voice. Then in Spanish, “Deos gratias!”

“José! Is it you, José? How came you hither? What is it all about?”

“It was Pepe!” gasped José. “Villain, traitor, _aucca_! May I see him hurled from the highest rock on Cerro Blanco! Patre, are you hurt?”

“No, thank God. But am I dreaming or awake? What has happened?”

“He wanted to drink your blood, but God preserved you,” said José.

Then Fray Fernando had recourse to his flint and steel. But it was some time before the tiny sparks availed to kindle the tinder. At length, however, the feat was accomplished; and a little oil-lamp shed as much light as in it lay upon the monk’s perplexities.

The first thing it revealed startled him considerably. “O José!” he exclaimed in great distress, “why did you not tell me you were wounded?” For the lad’s white tunic was covered with blood.

“It is nothing,” said José, in whose code of morality the silent endurance of pain occupied a prominent place. “Only,” he added, his dark face glowing with satisfaction, even with triumph, “the patre knows if I love him now.”

“You have saved my life,” Fray Fernando answered. But it was not his fashion to waste time in words when deeds were needful. He bound up José’s severely wounded arm, quickly and carefully, with a piece of linen torn from one of his consecrated vestments. Then he took some wine from the little store reserved for the celebration of mass, and gave it to his patient to drink. Not until all this was done, did he ask an explanation of the events of the night.

“I came back to you,” José answered simply, “because you bought me. Finding you asleep, I lay down in my place. By-and-by Pepe crept in, still and silent, as a snake creeps through the grass. I cried aloud to wake you, and sprang at his throat. What else could I do? He had a weapon, I had none. I clung to him like the puma; he struggled and struck me with his knife; but his hands were not free enough to do much harm. I pressed my fingers into his throat for very life—your life and mine. Until at last, in his pain, he lost his _think_, and dropped the knife. Then I knew you were saved.”

Fray Fernando stretched out his hand to him. “You are a brave lad,” he said; “God bless you!”

“Patre,” said José, “say ‘my son’ as you used to do.”

The monk was touched. “God bless thee, my son!” he answered warmly.

There was a silence; then José resumed,—“Patre, come with me to my people. No one will hurt you amongst them.”

Fray Fernando started at the suggestion. A hasty “No” trembled on his lips; but he began to reflect that his present position was worse than perilous. What would the morning bring? Pepe’s attempted crime could scarcely remain a secret. Should Diego pass it over, he would proclaim his own guilt; should he undertake to punish it, the negro, in his despair, would reveal everything. Clearly neither Diego nor Pepe had now any alternative but to complete their work. While a man might have repeated half a score of Paternosters, Fray Fernando pondered. Then he spoke in a decided, even cheerful tone, “José, I am going to Cuzco. Will you go thither with me?”

“To Cuzco!” José cried in rapture. “Will the river go to the Mother Sea?”

“Not so loud. We must go at once, and in silence. I must needs speak with our lord, Don Marcio Serra; and he lives at Cuzco.”

“_Chachau!_” said José. The exclamation meant, “I am heartily willing, and very glad.”

Then the monk began to put together the few articles he thought necessary for the journey.

“We need not be troubled with baggage,” said José coolly. “The men will give us all we want by the way.”

“And what of the way, José? How shall we find that? You know no more of it than I. You have only travelled along the coast, never towards Cuzco.”

“The way, patre! How could we miss it? We have only to go by the road.”

For if in the days of Roman ascendancy the proverb, “All roads lead to Rome” expressed an almost literal truth, it was yet more strictly true that in the empire of the Incas all roads led to Cuzco. Their policy was, in the highest degree, one of centralization.

“Will you take the books, patre?” José inquired. He regarded his patron’s books with almost superstitious reverence. Indeed, it is quite possible that he thought each of them possessed what his race styled a “Mother,” or spiritual essence of its own.

“I will take this,” said the monk, laying his hand on a Breviary. “Not the others.”

Two bundles comprised all that the travellers cared to take; more indeed than José, who thought he had a child’s right to everything he needed in Tahuantin Suyu, would willingly have encumbered himself with.

When his other preparations were completed, the monk took a key from the bosom of his frock, and unlocked a small strong coffer, placed for security in a kind of rude press which he had contrived in the wall of his hut. He took out some pieces of money; then paused for a moment in evident doubt. Something else was there, which he scarcely liked either to take or to leave behind; something which belonged of right to José, and which indeed his conscience told him he ought to have given him long ago. He had withheld it, fearing the memories it might awaken. But now all his precautions had been proved useless, if not worse. Better to do the thing that was right, without too much regard to consequences. “José,” he said, showing him the curiously wrought pin he had received from Don Ramon, “do you remember this?”

“My mother’s topu!” José exclaimed, eagerly taking it from his hand. For some moments he looked at it in silence, then he pressed it to his lips, while a tear glistened in his eye.

“Keep it,” said the monk. “But we must not loiter now, for the hours of darkness are waning. Are you ready?”

“Let the patre wait but for a moment,” said José. He fastened his treasure securely into his tunic; then, with some difficulty, caused by his only possessing the use of one hand, he took the crucifix from the coca-bag by his side. “This belongs to the patre,” he said, with the air of a person a little ashamed of himself.

Fray Fernando wisely accepted the unspoken apology. He restored the crucifix to its place at his girdle, merely saying, “It is a precious symbol of a still more precious Thing.”

Then they passed silently through the sleeping galpon; and, before the morning dawned, were far beyond the reach of the astonished Diego.

IX.

The Journey.

“The high Peruvian solitudes among.”

HEMANS.

Now did Fray Fernando and his young companion behold in all their glory “the works of the Lord, and the wonders of His hand.” For their way to Cuzco led them across the mighty Andes. Of these Cerro Blanco, though in any other land it would have taken rank as a monarch mountain, was only a kind of sentinel, or advanced guard. It looked down protectingly on the valleys beneath, but it looked up reverently to the white and shadowy peaks of snow which rose, one above the other, far as the eye could reach. Fray Fernando had been wont to think of the Andes as a “corderilla,” or chain; now he knew them as a vast gigantic army—God’s great army—at His creative word arising from the earth, and ranging themselves in what to the eye of man seemed magnificent confusion, but was majestic order in His sight, who saw the whole. “In His hand,” said Fray Fernando, “are the high places of the earth, and the strength of the hills is His also. He, and He alone, telleth their number, and calleth them all by name; even as He doth the stars, which their ice-crowned pinnacles almost seem to touch.”

As, in compliance with the advice of José, the travellers began their journey by descending to the vale of Nasca, in order to avail themselves of an Inca road from thence to Cuzco, they had occasion to traverse, and that more than once, each of the zones into which different gradations of altitude divide that wonderful region. They passed through valleys where tropical vegetation displayed all its gorgeous magnificence. There rose the giant palms, slender, tall, and graceful; there flourished many a wondrous flowering tree; there bloomed the magnolia, the cactus, the balsam, spreading out purple, white, or scarlet petals to the hot, heavily perfumed air; while “strange bright birds, on their starry wings,” glittering with clear hard metallic lustre, flitted from bough to bough, from blossom to blossom.

José, who took upon himself almost entirely the direction of the journey, gathered for his patron sweet dates, or luscious chirimoyas, looking like large green oranges. But he warned him that they must not linger in these valleys. “They are the abodes of fever,” he said. And indeed Fray Fernando himself was willing enough to pass on to a purer and cooler atmosphere.

Marvellous was the beauty of their next stage. It brought them to the region of the Peruvian-bark tree, which José called quina-quina, with its light-green leaves and its little clustered flowers, rose-coloured or white, filling the air with their delicious fragrance. But the cypress and the palm were the monarch trees of those primeval forests, and they gave shelter to an almost incredible undergrowth of vegetation. Their long slender stems were climbed to the very top by tangled lianas, with luxuriant leaves and gorgeous flowers. It was the land of flowers. There hung the large violet blossoms of the melastoma, there gigantic fuchsias drooped their graceful crimson bells; whilst beneath them blossoms of every hue enamelled the living green of the turf. Fray Fernando could not help asking, “Is not this Paradise?”

Just then José stooped down, and from the sweet tangle of flower-covered bushes selected and gathered a single spray. It was a cluster of curious slipper-shaped blossoms, bright yellow spotted with crimson—the calceolaria of our modern conservatories. “Amongst us,” he said, “this flower means pity and kindness. With garlands of it, mingled with the cantut[22] and the evergreen, our fathers used to crown the heads of the noble youths at the great belting festival, to teach them that as the sun brings forth flowers from the earth for the joy of man, their hearts should bring forth pity and kindness. But pity and kindness are gone now; the Spaniards have driven them away.”

And then Fray Fernando knew that this was not Paradise.