The Romance of Golden Star ...

  THE STORY OF VILCAROYA

  CHAPTER I

  BACK THROUGH THE SHADOWS

  As the time passes between dreaming and waking, so for me did the longyears pass, flowing like a smooth and silent stream seen from afar, outof the darkness that fell so slowly and so sweetly over my eyes thatnight when I sank into the death-trance beside Golden Star, my beloved,in the bridal chamber that they made for us in the Temple of the Sun,into the light that shone into them when they opened upon a scene sodifferent, and saw a white, haggard face bending over me, and two black,burning eyes looking into them.

  Then I closed them again and slept, and when I woke again there were twofaces looking at me, both white and full of fear and wonder, and I sawtwo beings who seemed very strange to me, such as I had never seen amongthe Children of the Sun, standing by the couch on which I lay, and oneof them fell down as though sore stricken, and I tried to think whatthis could mean, and, thinking, fell asleep again.

  Then I dreamt a long, sweet dream of the days that I now know were farpast, when I, Vilcaroya, son of the great Huayna-Capac, lived in theLand of the Four Regions, a prince among princes, a warrior and a childof the Sacred Race, whose blood had flowed unmixed through manygenerations from the divine fountain of life and light, our Father theSun. I dreamt of Golden Star, and the days when I loved her in timidsilence, for she was the fairest of all our race, and so, as it seemedto me, destined to no less a lot than the motherhood of a long line ofIncas, in whom should live and grow to ever greater splendour theglories of the race that owned no earthly origin.

  I called her in my dream, but she made no answer. I saw her lying by myside in that well-remembered chamber, with the shadowy forms of thepriests standing about us as I had seen them long before; but, alas! shelay still with closed eyes and lips which seemed to have forgotten howsweetly they once could smile. I whispered her name, mingled with many aloving word, into her ear, and still she moved not. I put my arms abouther and kissed her, and instantly I shrank back shivering with a fearunspeakable, for the form that should have been so warm and soft andyielding, was chilled and pulseless and rigid, as though some foul magichad changed it into stone, and the lips that should have given me backkiss for kiss were still and cold and senseless.

  Then I saw, as it seemed with half-closed eyes, that dear shape of hersbeing borne away from me, while I, longing to snatch her from the handsof those who were robbing me of her, yet lay helpless on the couch,without strength to move or speak, until all grew dim around me, and Ifelt myself raised by invisible hands, and borne far away through thedarkness--and so my dream melted away into the night of sleep.

  Then, yet again, I woke and saw the two strange men that I had seenbefore, and one came and spoke to me kindly in my own tongue, and calledme by my own name, and gave me food and drink, and told me in a few, butto me terrible, words that the dreams I had dreamed were dreamsindeed--dreams of a time that was long gone by, of things that hadpassed away, perchance for ever, and men and women whose names were onlymemories.

  Thus did I come from the evening of one age into the morning of another,falling asleep in the prime of my strength and manhood, and waking againeven as I had fallen asleep--though those who had closed my eyes hadbeen dead for many generations, and the name of our ancient race wasbut a bitter memory to the sons and daughters of my own land amidst themountains.

  Then I went forth into the wondrous new world into which I had awakened,the world which you who read this hold so common, and which I foundcrowded with wonders so many and marvellous that if it had not been forthe loving care of her who guided my first footsteps on my new journey,as she might have guided those of a little child, my re-awakening reasonmust soon have been quenched in the night of madness.

  Many and strange as were the things that happened to me during the firstdays and months of my awakening, there is little need that I should nowwrite of them at any length. Yet something I must say of them in orderthat the still stranger things of which I shall have to tell may be thebetter understood.

  And first I must tell of her whose gentle hand led me from weakness tostrength, and guided my unwonted footsteps through the mazes of that newwonderland in which I had awakened, and from whose lips I learnt thefirst words that I spoke of the strong and stately English speech inwhich I am striving so lamely and imperfectly to write down the story ofmy new life.

  This was Ruth, the sister of Djama, whose smile was the first ray ofsunshine that shone into my second life, and whose laugh was so sweetand gladsome, that when it first sounded in my ears, like an echo fromthe dear dead past, I named her forthwith Cusi-Coyllur, which in Englishmeans Joyful Star--after that royal maiden of my own race who loved thehandsome rebel Ollantay, and, refusing all others, waited for him in theHouse of the Virgins of the Sun until he came in triumph to claim her.She came with us to the south, rejecting all contrary counsel andbraving the labours of the long, toilsome journey, so that she might bethe first woman to welcome Golden Star back into the world of life.

  Yet what words can I find in this new speech that I have yet but halflearnt to tell fitly of her beauty and sweet graciousness, and of allthe magic which made her seem in my eyes like an angel that had comedown from the Mansions of the Sun to greet me in a world in which I wasa stranger? Better that you who may read what I write should learn toknow her for yourself through the sweetness and grace of her own wordsand deeds, as I shall strive, however unworthily, to tell of them. So,then, let it be.

  But there is another of whom I must say something before I go on to tellof my return to my own land--now, alas! mine no longer--and that isFrancis Hartness, a captain among the warriors of the English, and afriend of him who was called the professor, because of his learning--hewho had helped Djama to bring me back into the world of living men.

  He was a man of about thirty years, tall of stature and strong of limb,brief of speech and straight of tongue, with eyes as blue as the skieswhich shine on Yucay, and hair and beard golden and bright as the rayswhich flow from the smile of our Father the Sun. Him we met by chanceone evening in the square of the town which is called Panama, named,they told me, after that older city, whence the conquerors of my peoplesailed to ravish the realms of Huayna-Capac. There was peace in his ownland and all the neighbouring countries, and so he was journeying to theregion which is now called South America, where the descendants of theSpaniards are nearly always fighting among themselves over the spoils ofmy people, to see what work he could find to keep his sword fromrusting.

  As he was greatly skilled in that strange, new warfare of flame andthunder and far-smiting bolts, which had but begun to be when our Fatherthe Sun hid his face from the eyes of his children, I took counsel withJoyful Star--who was ever my wisest as well as my most faithful guidein all things--and we together told him my story as we went south, andafter that I had asked him if he would help me in the task which I wasgoing to essay, which was nothing less than the taking back of the landof my fathers, and the raising of the children of my people to theancient glories of that state which I alone of living men remembered. Tothis, after some shrewd questioning, he consented--for it was adesperate venture, such as his brave heart loved--and when he had givenme his hand on it, and promised, after the simple fashion of his nation,to be true to me in peace and war, I told him of the means that I couldemploy to gain my end, and how I would use that lust of gold which hadled to the ruin of my people, so that it should conquer the children oftheir conquerors and give me back the empire that had been my father's.

  At Panama we took ship again and travelled swiftly and straightly south,driven by that wondrous power which had come into the world to serve menlike a tireless giant since I had fallen asleep; and day after day onthe southward voyage I walked alone up and down the deck, or stoodgazing, rapt in thought, at the desert foreshore along which the steamerwas running, and at the great masses of the dark brown barren mountains,as they towered range beyond range till they overtopped the cloudsthemselves and stood serene and sharply out
lined against the bluebackground of the upper sky.

  Behind those mighty, rock-built ramparts lay the well-loved,well-remembered land over which my fathers had ruled in the days ofpeace, before the stranger and the oppressor had come. On the other sideof them I knew that I was now fated to find only the poor fragments ofthe great cities and stately pleasure-houses that I had known in alltheir strength and beauty--only the silent and deserted ruins of themighty fortresses which had guarded the confines of our lost empire, andwere the portals through which the Children of the Sun had marched tounvarying conquest.

  I thought, too, of the broad, green, level plain of Cajamarca,surrounded by its guardian ramparts of terraced hills; of the long,verdant valley of Cuzco with its hundred towns and villages nestlingamidst the foliage which shaded their streets and squares, and lookingout over the level fields of the valley and the countless tiers ofterraces that rose green and gold with maize, or glowing with flowers,to the summits of the hills; and of that earthly paradise of Yucay,wherein the Gardens of the Sun, the golden shrines of my ancient faith,and the wondrous pleasure-palaces of many generations of Incas hadglowed in almost heavenly beauty, embosomed in green and gold andscarlet in the midst of inaccessible mountains which themselves wereovertopped by the mighty peaks of eternal snow that I had so often seenglimmering white and ghostly in the moonlight, like guardian spiritsround an enchanted realm, on many a night of delicious revelry now farpast and lost in the swift flood of the years that had rolled by sincethen.

  It was to the poor remnants of all these glories that I wasreturning--returning to find, as they had told me, the homes of myancestors laid waste and the descendants of my people the slaves ofstrangers. The desolation which it had taken centuries to accomplishwould be to me but the swift, magical change of a day and a night and amorning.

  Think, you who read, of the dread and the horror of it! I had seen thelast day of the stately empire of my fathers the Incas! I had fallenasleep and I had awakened, and now, on the morrow of my sleep, I wascoming back to the silent and ghastly ruins which the slow, pitilesswork of the years and centuries had left behind it!

  But over the gulf of these same centuries the hand of my Father the Sunwas swiftly stretched out to help and uphold me, for no sooner did Iagain tread that soil which had once been sacred to Him, than myfainting heart grew strong with the memory of that ancient prophecywhich I had come to fulfil, and of which this new life of mine was ofitself a part fulfilment. If one part, and that not the least, hadalready been made good, then why not the rest?

  Far away behind those towering tiers of mountains lay Golden Star inthat resting-place to which she had been borne with me, sleeping soundlyin the impassive embrace of their mighty arms; and within thesafe-keeping of those arms lay, too, that uncounted treasure, that vastlegacy which the long-dead leaders of my people had bequeathed to me forthe sacred purpose of restoring those glories which all men, savemyself, believed to be but a dream of the distant past, thatincomparable inheritance of which I was the sole lawful heir on earth,and which I was coming to share with Golden Star when I had once moreraised the Rainbow Banner above the restored throne of the divine Manco.

  As I thought of all this, the blood that had lain stagnant through thelong years of my magical death-sleep began to pulse like living firethrough my veins. My new life with all its marvels became glorified intoa waking vision of new conquests and re-won empire. The past was a dreamboth sweet and bitter in its vivid memories, but still a dream that hadbeen dreamt and was done with. The present and the future wererealities, golden and glorious with a hope justified by the miracle thathad made them possible. I had learnt enough of the new age in which Ihad awakened to know that the lust of gold which had brought theconqueror and the oppressor into the land of the Children of the Sunburnt every whit as fiercely in the hearts of the men who were livingnow as it had done in theirs, and that lust, as I had told Hartness andthe others, should now work for me and for the redemption of my peopleso that that which had been their ruin should yet prove their salvation.

  Thus, through the long sunny days and cool, starlit nights did I,Vilcaroya, last of the Incas, muse and dream until I once more stood inthe Land of the Four Regions, hale and strong, and burning with theardour of my sacred mission, ready to dare and do all things, and to usewithout ruth or scruple that dread power which would so soon lie withinmy hands to fulfil my oath and Golden Star's, and to accomplish the workthat I had come through the shadows of death to do.

  So I came back to the shores of that well-loved land of mine which, bythe reckoning of the new time into which I had come, had been for morethan three hundred years the sport and prey of the generations ofstrangers and oppressors who had followed those first conquerors of theChildren of the Sun, whose coming had sounded the hour of doom and ruinthrough the length and breadth of that glorious land of green plains andverdant valleys, of terraced hills and towering mountains, which hadonce been our empire and our home.

  From the mean coast town of wooden houses where the railway begins wetravelled ever upward over great, grey, sloping deserts, and by ruggedravines with steep, broken walls of red earth and ragged rock; throughrange after range of mountains that were all strange and hateful to me,until we swung round the shoulder of a great crag-crowned mountain, andI saw across a vast plain, into which range after range of lesser hillssloped down, the crystal-white peaks of the snow-mountains towering farbeyond the clouds into the blue sky above them.

  Then I knew that I was coming nearer to the land that had once beenmine, and ere many hours had passed we stopped in a great city whichstill bore its old name of Arequipa, the Place of Rest, which my ownancestors had given to it. It was no longer the place of palaces andpleasure-houses, of flowery gardens and leafy woods that I had seen it,but above it still gleamed the white snow-fields and shining peaks ofCharchani and Pichu-Pichu, and between the two great white ranges stilltowered the vast, black, snow-crowned cone of Misti, the smoke-mountain,rising sheer in its lonely grandeur twelve thousand feet above thesloping plain on which the city lay.

  As I looked at it again for the first time after so many years, I askedthe professor, as we all called him, if, since I had been asleep, themountain had been rent asunder again as it had been in the olden times,long before the Spaniards came to seek gold and blood in the Land of theFour Regions. He was very learned in such matters, even as Djama, hisfriend, was learned in secrets of life and death, and when he told methat the fires within it had slept for more years than men couldremember, I was glad. Yet I said nothing of my inward joy, for had Itold them all that I knew about the valley of black sand and yellow rockthat was hidden behind the far-off wall of snow which shone so whitelyagainst the blue of the midway heaven, it might have been many a longday before we had again set out on our journey towards the place thatwas the goal at once of my hopes and fears.

  We stayed seven days in Arequipa, making our last preparations for thework that lay before us and then we went on again by train to Sicuani,in the valley of the Vilcanota. Then from Sicuani we journeyed on byroad, riding on mules through a land that was lovely even in my eyes,though its loveliness was to me only the beauty of ruin and decay, forthis was the heart and centre of that vanished empire whose glories noliving eyes but mine had ever seen.

  I saw wildernesses where there had been gardens, and gaunt, treelessmountains lying bare to the glare of the sun. Lakes that had shoneencircled with gardens now spread out dull and stagnant over theneglected fields. A few ragged fragments of grey clay walls still rosefrom the green plain of Cacha, where I had last seen, in all its gloryof gold and rainbow colours, the holy Temple of Viracocha; and the greatguardian fortress of Piquillacta, which I had seen stretching itsimpregnable length and rearing its unscalable height from mountain tomountain across the entrance to the once lovely valley of Cuzco, lay, ahuge ragged mass of towering ruins, splendid even in decay.

  As we passed through the one half-choked portal that still lay open, Ithought, with heavy heart and bowed-do
wn head, of the great fortress asI had seen it in the glory of its pride and strength, of the gallantwarriors that had defended it, and the gay processions that I had seenwinding in and out of its stately gates, making its hoary walls ringwith songs and laughter, and, farther on, as we rode along the valley onthat sad and yet eager three days' march of ours, I saw, on thehill-spurs about me, the black and ragged ruins of the fair cities andstately temples and palaces that I had seen crowded with happy throngs,bright with gold and colours, and so fair and strong that no man couldhave dreamed of the ruin the oppressor had brought upon them.

  And so, journeying amidst all these sad memories through a land which,for me, was peopled with the ghosts of my long-dead friends and kindred,we came out at length on the broad, green Plain of the Oracle, and therebefore me, still nestling under her guardian hills, lay, glimmeringwhite and grey under the slanting sun-rays, all that was left of whathad once been Cuzco, the City of the Sun and the home of his children.Then, as I lifted my eyes and gazed upon it through the rising mist ofmy tears, I bowed my bared head towards it and swore, in the sadness andsilence of my desolate heart, that, to the full extent of the powerwhich I believed was soon to be mine, I would take life for life andblood for blood, and I would give sorrow for sorrow and shame for shame,until I had paid to the full the debt which the long years of plunderand cruelty and oppression had heaped up against those who, fromgeneration to generation, had brought this shame and ruin on the oncebright home of the Children of the Sun.