Part 8

Fray Fernando answered,—“Don Alfonso at length suggested a plan which seemed feasible. His sisters, at his request, obtained a place for Juanita as waiting-woman to a noble lady, who was both rich and liberal; so it was hoped that after a year or two spent in her service, Melchior’s bride would have something to call her own besides her velvet bodice and her silver ear-rings. Melchior, too, had his plans. He had already distinguished himself by coolness and daring in more than one bull-feast.—I have told you of the bull-feasts of Spain, José?”

“Yes,” said José briefly. They were, to him, amongst the many incomprehensible things on the other side of the sea.

“Melchior dreamed of winning gold as well as glory by his feats as matador. In truth, he was far too daring. I sometimes warned him that he might tempt fortune once too often. An hour came when I wished to God that he had bled his young life out beneath the horse-hoofs on the sand of the arena!”

“Then you knew those foster-brothers, patre?” asked José with interest.

“Yes,” Fray Fernando answered. He resumed after a pause, and in an altered tone, “What comes next is not easy to tell. Yet it must be told. You know what heresy is, José?”

“Anything against the Catholic Faith—such as what the Jews believe,” José replied promptly.

“Right. In Seville, just before the time I speak of, there had been many heretics, but they were discovered and punished by the Holy Inquisition.”

“I pray you tell me, patre, what is the Holy Inquisition?”

“A tribunal for the discovery, trial, and punishment of heretics.”

“Are people, then, in your country punished for believing wrong?”

“Most assuredly. What can be more necessary and proper?” said Fray Fernando with decision, and perhaps with a little sharpness. “The lady whom Juanita served,” he continued, “though to all outward seeming truly pious, was in heart a confirmed heretic. And she dropped the subtle poison of her false faith day by day into the unsuspecting ear of the simple peasant-girl. Poor Juanita thought her words good and holy, and very comforting to the heart. In truth, these people often begin with good words, such as no Catholic could object to, and thus they deceive the unwary. You know what the Gospel says of wolves in sheep’s clothing, José! Juanita used to remember what she heard, and repeat it all to Melchior, who dreamed of harm no more than she did. They were children, playing at the mouth of a volcano, gathering flowers unconscious of the fire that slumbered beneath, ready to break forth and overwhelm them.

“One day Don Alfonso came home from walking on the Prado. He was light of heart; the solid earth seemed air beneath his feet; for those blue eyes of which I spoke had beamed graciously upon him. He said within himself, ‘I will cross the bridge of boats to Melchior’s dwelling, and tell him.’ But as he took again the montero he had laid aside, his little foot-page came to say, ‘Melchior del Salto is in the patio, desiring to see you.’ Gladly did he go thither, but on entering, his mood changed in an instant. There sat Melchior on the settle, his head bowed upon its oaken arm, over which his curled hair fell in disorder. His attitude spoke despair; and neither at the step nor at the voice of his friend did he move or look up. Don Alfonso’s anxious and repeated questions at last drew forth the murmured answer, ‘She’s gone!’

“‘Gone!’ reiterated the other, in utter bewilderment. ‘Gone!—whither?—when?’

“Melchior spoke again,—‘At midnight—the alguazils of the Holy Office.’

“José, you know not the despair, the dread despair, where _that_ doom falls upon a loved one. They who sit and weep beside their dead,—they it is who are envied then. For we know, at least, that the dead are safe from the troubles of this miserable world—that they are in the hands of God, not of man. But years may pass before the watcher without hears so much as a whisper of the fate of him—or her—upon whom the gates of the Triana once have closed.”

“O patre!” cried José in horror, “is that the justice they do in your country?”

Fray Fernando now became conscious that he had said more than he ought to the unlearned Indian youth, thus “offending one of the little ones,” as his class were wont to speak. So he drew the monk’s frock over the man’s beating heart, and hastened to explain:—“You must not think there is any injustice, José. God forbid. Their reverences, the lords inquisitors, are wise and holy men. Heresy is fearful sin, and when the Church has to deal with it, as one of her ablest doctors has most truly said, ‘Severity is mercy, and mercy severity.’”

José listened with becoming awe. “But then, patre,” he ventured to say, “that poor girl meant no harm. It seems hard she should suffer thus.”

“You cannot understand,” said Fray Fernando wearily. “Indians never can understand.”

José was not at all convinced of the natural disabilities of his race, but he was very anxious for the rest of the story. So he said presently, “Tell me about Melchior, patre.”

“The dark hour that saw the gate of the Triana closed behind Juanita changed Melchior into another man. He grew moody, restless, sometimes even fierce. No more bull-feasts, no more gay walks on the Prado, no more dances in the evening—one absorbing occupation filled every moment snatched from work or sleep. Love alone could teach the patience with which day after day, night after night, he used to take his stand beneath the wall of that gloomy fortress. Not quite in vain. The first tears that relieved his breaking heart fell as he told his friend how he caught a glimpse of the face he loved—pale and changed—behind the bars of a grated window.

“Months passed; and Melchior’s despair gave way to a fierce and frantic hope—a hope first whispered cautiously to Don Alfonso, but so eagerly shared by him that the flame was fanned to sevenfold strength. The suburb of the city where Melchior lived was close to the prison of the Inquisition, and took its name from it—the Triana. Though the Holy Office, for wise purposes, keeps its proceedings secret as possible, things must needs ooze out sometimes, and men will talk about them. At the particular time of which I speak, there was much indignation, especially in the neighbourhood of the Triana, called forth by the robberies and cruelties of the head-jailer, Gaspar Benevidio—a wretch abhorred of God and man, and afterwards righteously punished by his superiors. The Triana suburb abounded in lawless characters, many of whom, being of Moorish blood, were not particularly zealous for the Catholic Faith or the Holy Inquisition. Whenever Gaspar Benevidio went abroad, men scowled and laid their hands on their daggers, and women cursed him as he passed. Some of Melchior’s friends of the bull-ring were often heard to murmur, ‘’Twere a better deed to send a lance through a hard heart than through a tough hide.’ ‘But what use in that?’ Melchior would say. ‘That would save no one. If now we were to attack the Triana, God only knows what we might accomplish!’

“This was the project hinted to Don Alfonso. And he answered promptly, ‘Do all that is in thine heart. I am with thee, according to all that is in thine heart.’ Then they laid their scheme. In the midst of their madness they were prudent in details. They organized the conspirators, armed them, concerted signals, even corrupted some of the lower officials within the castle. At last came the night agreed upon.[28] Melchior and Don Alfonso headed the rioters—the latter disguised in his foster-brother’s clothes, to save the honour of his noble house. There was an hour of fierce excitement, of wild fighting, of frenzied hope—then confusion, terror, despair. It was madness all—from first to last! As soon, José, might your people stand victorious against the might of Spain, as force or fraud prevail to rescue one captive from the dungeons of the Triana.”

It was well, perhaps, that the monk could not see the “dark lightning” that flashed from José’s eyes as he said, “Madness is strong, patre. _Did_ they not rescue any?”

“None. The morning light found the rioters broken, scattered, flying. Most of them were themselves soon made prisoners of the Inquisition. Spite of all precautions, Don Alfonso’s share in the matter was suspected; but his family sheltered him, and placed him in concealment. Of course, his career was ruined, his prospects blighted. And if _that_ had been but all! But besides his share in the riot, a great and guilty secret lay upon his heart. He knew that in the conflict his hand had dealt a mortal blow to an alguazil of the Inquisition. That was a crime to rank with heresy itself. Like heresy, blood could not wash it out—fire must burn its stains away.”

“I do not understand, patre,” José said, half shuddering.

The friar’s answer was slow and faltering. “I mean, the punishment was—_death by fire_!”

“Horrible!” cried José. “Was Don Alfonso saved?”

“From _that_ doom, yes. His relatives managed to procure for him, under a feigned name, a passage in a vessel bound for these unknown shores. It was the best they could do; and he was grateful for it—more than grateful, because they did not hate and curse him, though he had sinned against the Holy Inquisition. Father and mother blessed the wanderer—the last comforting memory left him to cling to.”

Fray Fernando was silent, until at last José asked, “Where, all this time, was Melchior?”

“Don Alfonso often inquired after him; and was assured that he was safe, and in hiding. But he believed too easily. In due time he embarked. The vessel dropped down lightly from Seville to San Lucar, a port on the coast; where she lay at anchor waiting for merchandize. Don Alfonso, standing at her side, gazed listlessly, through the golden evening light, on the quiet waters, and the low green shore, where the herds of oxen were browsing peacefully. From the shore came a little boat, with a passenger, whom business or pleasure had detained in Seville, and who, not to lose his passage, had ridden hard from the city. On board, he met an acquaintance, with whom he discussed the news of the day, walking up and down the deck, within earshot of Don Alfonso. But he heeded little; till at last a word was spoken that thrilled his soul. ‘To-day is taking place the great and long-expected _Auto-da-fé_.’”

“The—_what_, patre?”

José had to repeat his question. The monk seemed unwilling or unable to answer.

“What is an _Auto-da-fé_?”

“A solemn sacrifice,” Fray Fernando said at last; and he said no more.

“Let me make an end,” he resumed presently. “The stranger named the names of the victims, as he had heard them from his uncle, a Dominican. Happily, Juanita was not amongst them. I suppose she died in prison. There were some notorious heretics, several foreigners. And at last—”

“Patre, what ails you? Are you ill?” asked José, who was himself trembling at the vague, imperfectly understood horrors of the tale.

“No,” said the monk, lifting up his hand with a forbidding gesture, as José, now thoroughly alarmed at what the firelight revealed of his looks, seemed about to spring to his side.

He continued, though with evident effort:—“At last Don Alfonso heard the words ‘Melchior del Salto also is to be burned alive.’ The sky grew black, and the earth reeled around him. Yet, gathering all his strength, he held himself from swooning, that he might hear the end.—‘Why _that_ doom for him—never once suspected of heresy?’—The voices seemed to come from a great distance, but the words were clear and distinct.—‘He dealt a mortal blow to an alguazil of the Holy Office. The thing was proved beyond dispute. The poor man lived two days; and though he had not seen the face of his assailant, he swore to the dress, discerned by the torchlight. Nor did the prisoner deny the fact.’—At that word, Don Alfonso fell senseless. Better had he died thus,—save for his unhappy soul!”

“Patre,” said José, with decision, “you shall tell me no more such stories. This one is killing you.”

Fray Fernando wrestled in silence with some strong emotion ere he answered:—“What is begun shall be ended. José, that man did not die. When consciousness returned, he would fain have thrown himself from the ship, and rushed back to Seville. But too late! All was over now, all gone—save blackened ashes. So he let the winds and waves bear him onward where they would, with broken heart, and memory filled evermore with the image of the brother who died for him.”

“Did he kill himself?” asked José, whose race parted with life too lightly.

“No. He feared God, against whom, in His ministers, he had sinned most grievously. But he carried the mark of Cain on his brow—the doom of Cain in his heart. ‘My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, Thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from Thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth.’”

“Poor, unhappy man! Does he live yet, patre?”

“It may be. To me it seems that, were he near death, he ought to confess his deed. Not simply to a priest, for his soul’s sake, but also to some faithful friend, who for love of him would cross the sea, and, by revealing the truth, clear away the stain of infamy from the name of him who died in his stead.”

“A faithful friend, who for love of him would cross the sea!” José repeated. “Has he such, patre? Then there is hope for him yet.”

It was some time before Fray Fernando answered. When he did, his voice was choked and faltering, like the voice of one that wept. “Your words are wise,” he said. “Perhaps wiser than you think. Never ask me more of this, José. Never speak of it, to me or to another.”

“You may trust me, patre.”

“I do. Now lie down and sleep.”

José lay down obediently. But the command to sleep was more easily given than obeyed. Never in his life had he been more thoroughly awake. His mind was full of new, bewildering, fearful thoughts. What was this _Auto-da-fé_—this sacrifice, which seemed a horrible execution? Did Christians then offer human sacrifices? Where and how had the patre known the Melchior—and, still more, the Don Alfonso—of his tale? Was he, perchance, the faithful friend of the unhappy young nobleman? Or—at last there flashed unbidden on his mind another thought, so frightful that he drove it away with all the force of his will, loathing himself for having allowed it even to enter his imagination.

XIII.

The Doctors.

“But where is the iron-bound prisoner, where? For the red eye of battle is shut in despair. Say, mounts he the ocean wave, banished, forlorn, Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?”

CAMPBELL.

“Patre,” said José, as soon as the sun had risen, “will it please you now to permit me to run to the nearest dwellings and seek for food?”

Fray Fernando did not refuse the desired permission; and José, delighted to obtain it, first made his patient as comfortable as he could, then started on his errand.

In a few hours he returned, accompanied by a party of five or six Indians, whom, with much apparent satisfaction and some ceremony, he ushered into Fray Fernando’s presence, saying, “Here, patre, are the doctors.”

The men were comfortably clothed, after the native fashion, in tunics, short trousers, and mantles, with bright-coloured turbans, or caps, on their heads. But they looked worn and haggard, as men who followed a toilsome calling. Each had a kind of wallet strapped on his shoulders by a cord of maguey. The foremost of the group unbound his, and laid it at the feet of Fray Fernando, in token of his respect and desire to serve him.

But Fray Fernando naturally hesitated to receive medical advice from those whom he accounted mere barbarians; and expressed as much to José. The latter assured him, however, that the doctors were very wise—very skilful. “They spend many months together in the forests,” he said, “collecting herbs and plants of great healing virtue. Then they travel through the whole country, giving them in exchange for food or clothing, and making the sick men well. This knowledge has been handed down to them from the grandfathers of their grandfathers.”[29]

Upon this, Fray Fernando, thinking it probable they would not poison him, and perhaps also thinking it little matter if they did, consented to allow one of them to examine him; which he did by feeling his pulse, not at the wrist, but at the top of the nostrils, and under the eyelids.

José was soon informed in Quichua, which he translated into Spanish for the patient’s benefit, that the patre’s disease was the _sorachi_, an ailment to which travellers in those mountainous districts are liable. But the worst of the attack seemed to be over. The patient would be the better for pursuing his journey as soon as he felt at all able to do so. By the time he reached the plain he would probably be as well as ever. For his headache, he was to take a draught of herbs, and to use the powdered leaf of the _sayri_, a supply of which the doctor produced from his wallet. This was, in fact, the tobacco of modern Europe, which the Peruvians only employed as a medicine. José having hinted, however, that food was just then more needful to them than medicine, all the wallets were explored, and a sufficient quantity of parched maize, chuñu, and charqui (dried meat) was produced to make an abundant meal for the whole party. A portion of the latter was carefully cooked for Fray Fernando; but José and the other Indians did not use so much ceremony with their own food.

When the repast was finished, the “doctors” had some further conversation with their countryman; then they strapped up their wallets, and prepared to go their own way, from which they had been diverted by José’s earnest entreaties that they would come to the aid of his sick friend. Fray Fernando asked José what recompense he ought to bestow on them. But José told him none was needed. “They are very glad to serve you,” he said, “because you are my friend.” There was no arrogance or assumption in this: it was the simple truth. The words, “Yntip Churi” (Child of the Sun), had a magic in them to bow all hearts in Tahuantin Suyu. Fray Fernando, however, gave the doctors a few silver coins, which were thankfully accepted; and they parted with mute demonstrations of respect and good-will.

When they were gone, José silently prepared and administered the prescribed remedies, replenished the fire, gathered together and put aside the food that had been left. That done, he sat down, and looked at Fray Fernando with the air of a person who had tidings, heavy tidings, to communicate.

“Of what are you thinking, José?” the monk inquired. He rather expected that José would urge him to get up, and to make some effort to resume his journey.

But José’s thoughts were very differently occupied.

“Before they went away the doctors told me something,” he said.

Fray Fernando asked rather languidly what it was.

“Nothing good,” José answered sadly. “Another crime for the Spaniards, another wrong for the children of my people. The Inca is a captive.”

“Whom do you mean by the Inca?” Fray Fernando might be excused for asking, since seven years had passed since José named in his hearing the exiled prince whose right it was to wear the llautu. Moreover, much confusion was created in Spanish minds by the fact that _all_ the male descendants of Manco Capac were permitted to assume the cognomen of Inca.

“Whom should I mean but the sole Inca, Tupac Amaru? The viceroy has sent an army to Vilca-pampa. They have made him prisoner, and led him to Cuzco. Patre,” José continued, with scarce an effort to conceal his deep anxiety, “you understand your own people. Tell me what they will do with him.”

“How can I tell you, José?” Fray Fernando answered. And in truth it would have been hard for him to tell. But he knew something of the Viceroy Toledo, the kinsman of the notorious Alva, a stern, determined man, little likely to have taken the trouble of making the Inca a captive without a settled purpose and still less likely to shrink from executing that purpose, whatever it was.

“Three things are possible,” José continued, thoughtfully. “The Spaniards may desire to wring from us yet more of those treasures they covet so madly. They are wise. If for the usurper, Atahualpa, we filled the great hall of Caxa-marca breast high with gold, we will not do less, sorely as they have robbed us since, for the true heir of Manco Capac. But my heart misgives me they have worse thoughts than that. They may keep him in captivity, or even send him beyond the Mother Sea. Either way, it would be his death; for his spirit is brave and free, like the condor of the mountain.”

Fray Fernando knew there was yet another course possible to the Spaniards, but he did not care to name it.

José continued, “I can tell you at least what they will _not_ do with him. What they did with Sayri Tupac. To no deed renouncing the rights of his birth will the hand of Tupac Amaru be ever set.”

“When we arrive at Cuzco we shall learn all,” Fray Fernando said. “And, José, I will try to pursue the journey. I see we cannot remain here.”

“The doctors have left food enough to last us for to-day, patre. To-morrow, I hope, with God’s help, you will be able to travel a little.”

An expectation that was happily fulfilled. But Fray Fernando was still too weak to proceed far. He succeeded, however in reaching a little Indian village, where rest and refreshment were readily obtained.

Ten or twelve leagues of very mountainous country had yet to be traversed before Cuzco could be reached. It was not until the evening of the third day that the still invalided monk, with his Indian companion, stood at last upon one of the heights which overlook the ancient City of the Sun.

Cuzco nestles at the head of a fair and fertile valley, which forms an angle between two mountain ranges. José, whose demeanour all day had been solemn and reverent, like that of one about to participate in some religious rite, long gazed in silence on the scene spread out before him. But Cuzco was not only the sacred city of his dreams; it was also the first city he had ever seen. The mass of buildings confused and bewildered him, until at last he turned with a sigh of relief to the snowy peak of Vilcañota, which rose majestically above the hills that bounded the valley on the other side. Yet he soon turned back again to gaze upon the city of his fathers—the home of his imagination, the goal of his longings. “And was _that_ indeed the city? Was that beautiful Cuzco, the centre and the heart of Tahuantin Suyu?” Here seemed only shapeless masses of building, tangled mazes of streets, and the flash of a river here and there amidst a wilderness of thatched roofs and tumbled heaps of stone. Nothing was like what he expected.

All at once, however, his eye kindled, his whole countenance lighted up. He laid one hand on Fray Fernando’s arm, and with the other pointed to a rocky eminence on the north side of the city. It was crowned by three great semicircular walls of massive masonry, one within the other; and again within these were three lofty towers, built of light-coloured stone. “Look there!” he cried in rapture. “Yonder is the great fortress of Sachsahuaman, built by my renowned forefathers. Yes, it is; ofttimes have I heard it described. Every wall, every tower, I know already.” Long and fondly did his eye rest upon them; then he slowly turned his gaze to the other buildings, as if he would learn to understand them also, and imprint them on his memory. He felt no longer a stranger, but a child—a child going to his father’s home.