The Romance of Golden Star ...
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George Chetwynd Griffith >> The Romance of Golden Star ...
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He stared about him, open-eyed and open-mouthed with amazement. Then his
eyes fell on me, and he started forward and stared me in the face for a
moment. Then he gasped,--
'Vilcaroya, is it you, or am I dreaming? Where have you brought me to?'
'To one of the treasure-houses that you so longed to see,' I said, 'so
that you might see and believe that I told you no idle tale, and that I
can perform my promise if you can perform yours.'
Then I turned my back on him and went to the foot of the pyramid, and,
taking my place in front of it, I said to those who still knelt before
me in silence,--
'Let those of his children who are faithful to their Father the Sun rise
and come without falsehood in their hearts, and say if they now believe
that that which was foretold long ago, when the darkness fell over the
land, has in very truth come to pass.'
They rose from their knees and came towards me in a half circle,
carrying their torches. They stopped about five paces from me, looking
at me through a little space with wondering eyes full of worship. Then
they bowed their heads again, and Tupac came from the midst of them,
and, casting himself prone at my feet, yet not daring even to touch my
sandals, said in a broken voice,--
'Son of the Sun, heir of heaven and lord of earth, we have seen thy
wisdom and thy majesty. None but one of thy royal line--nay, none but
thee, oh, Vilcaroya, son of Huayna-Capac, and brother of Huascar, last
of the Incas, could have known the secret that thou hast brought with
thee from the past into the present. We are thy children and thy slaves,
and all the men of the Blood that are left in the Land of the Four
Regions shall hail thee lord as we do, and own no other master save
thee, Vilcaroya Inca, from now until the hour when their father, the
Lord of Life, shall call them back to the Mansions of the Sun. We are
thine, and we will serve thee, ourselves and our wives and our children,
as our fathers served thy father in the days when there was yet peace
and happiness in the land.'
'And if ye are but faithful,' I said, 'and if the Lord, my father, who
rules the day, and his sister, my mother, who rules the night, shall
give me strength and wisdom to use the power that is mine, I will give
you back peace and happiness, and the stranger and the oppressor shall
be driven from the land, and the homes of the Children of the Sun shall
again be full of light. Rise now, Tupac, and let ten of the men give
their torches to the others and make ready to do my bidding.'
He rose, and it was done. Then I called Djama to me and said,--
'What you have seen here to-night is a dream. When your eyes open again
on the outer world, remember what I have said. Your hand has brought me
from the grave to the throne, and you must obey me as these do. Let me
but know that you have spoken one word, even to Joyful Star herself,
concerning what you have seen here to-night, and I will show you how an
Inca deals with one who dares to disobey him. Keep silence and have
patience, and perform that which you have promised, and you shall go
back to your own land loaded with gold and jewels. Fail, and the
fragments of your body shall be sent north and south and east and west
throughout the Land of the Four Regions, and your name shall be one of
shame in the ears of my people for ever.'
For a moment he looked me in the eyes, and I saw his lips moving as
though he was striving to shape some answer to my words. Then his face
grew grey, and his knees shook as he stood. Then I called to Tupac, and
bade him bind his eyes again and lead him away, and as soon as his sight
was taken from him I bade the ten men who had given up their torches
take off their ponchos and fill them with as many of the golden bars as
each one could carry, and when this was done, I ordered all the torches
save one to be extinguished. This one I took, and went with it into the
passage where I had left my lantern. Then I dashed it against the wall
and vanished into the darkness.
I took my lantern, and hiding the light carefully, went back to the
little chamber, where I took off my robes and sandals and the imperial
Llautu, and put them back into the chest. Then I put on my mean attire
again and went back into the Hall of Gold. Signing to the others to
follow me, I turned the stone door on its pivot again, and watched them
file past me as before. Then, going out last, I closed the portal after
me and lighted them up the steps with my lantern.
When we all once more stood in the open air by the cleft I went to the
hole and released the chain. Instantly the roar of waters broke out
again, and I bade them fill the hole up and put turf over it, and
trample it down and scatter the bushes over it; and that being done, we
took our way back again across the plain towards the fortress, still
leading Djama blindfold in our midst.
We took him by the gate of Viracocha into the fortress, across its upper
part, where the three crosses stood, and down on to the zigzag road
which leads into the eastern part of the city, and there we unbound his
eyes, and I bade him go to the house and make ready to receive me early
in the morning, telling our friends that I should arrive with some
packages of Indian merchandise and metals from one of my mines, for, as
I should have told you before, I had come to Cuzco in the character of
an owner of mines who had lived long in Europe and had returned to
supervise the working of my property.
I and Tupac and his companions then went back into the hills, and
without entering the city made our way by twos and threes into the
village of San Sebastian. We met at Tupac's house, and there I explained
to them as much of my plans and purposes as I thought fit for them to
know, and showed them that the time was not yet come for them to make
use of the treasures that I would share with them. But to each man I
gave two pounds' weight of gold to be left in Tupac's care till it could
be taken into the cities of the south and there changed for silver
coins. Then I had a list made of their names, and promised them, after
reminding them of their oaths, that when I once more sat on the throne
of the divine Manco, their fidelity should be well remembered.
The next morning we loaded the gold in bales of the coca-leaf, great
quantities of which are taken every day into Cuzco, upon four mules, and
these I sent to our house while I went back with Ullullo and put on my
English clothing. Then I followed, and found that the bags of coca had
already arrived. They were carried up to my own room, and there, in the
presence of Djama and Joyful Star, the professor and Francis Hartness, I
took out the gold ingots and built them up in a pyramid before them.
I could see from their amazement that, whether from fear or faith, Djama
had obeyed me, and said nothing of what he had seen during the night. As
for me, I said but little. I gave them the gold, and that day the
professor and Djama, acting as my agents, sold it to some of the
merchants of Cuzco as the product of my mines. The price was more than
twice as much as was needed for the hacienda, so with the rest I
discharged my debt and made myself once more a free man.
There is no need for me to dwell upon our dealings with the owner of the
hacienda, and therefore it will suffice for me to say, before ten days
more had passed the purchase-money had been paid, we had taken up our
abode there, and installed Joyful Star as housewife, with faithful
servants chosen by myself from among the Children of the Blood. Djama,
who had been strangely silent and reserved with all of us since the
lesson I had taught him in the Hall of Gold, had taken possession of the
chamber which was devoted to his uses, and had put all his apparatus in
order for the great work that was to be done there.
So on the fourteenth day, such was the power of my gold and of my
longings, all things were ready, and at daybreak on the fifteenth day we
rode at the head of our little mule train out of the courtyard of the
hacienda on our way to the resting-place of Golden Star.
CHAPTER IV
THE SISTER STARS
For five long days we travelled slowly and toilfully on our way from the
valley of Cuzco to that other where Golden Star lay sleeping beside the
lake. Over high plains and pleasant valleys, through deep, dark gorges
and ravines, to whose lowest depths the sun but seldom reaches, and then
but for an hour or two, along narrow pathways cut into the living rock
on the mountain side, with precipices on one hand falling thousands of
feet into the dark abysses, where the torrents roared and foamed, and on
the other the great rock-walls of the mountain soaring up into the sky
yet more thousands of feet above us.
I saw the mighty crests of Saljantai and Umantai rising snow-crowned
from earth to heaven, unchanged in their eternal grandeur since the
long-distant day on which I had last beheld them. I rode with saddened
heart past the ruins of Lima Tambo, remembering how fair and stately a
city it had been in the days before the plunderer and the oppressor
came. We toiled slowly over the great, sharp-ridged range which parts
the waters of the Vilcamayo from those of the Apurimac--the 'Great
Speaker'--then, descending again by the gorge of the river which is now
called the Rio de la Banca, we came to the long bridge which swings in
mid-air from rock to rock across the chasm through which the Great
Speaker rolls his swift, roaring flood.
Its cables were loosened and its floorway broken, for, like all things
else in the land, the Spaniards had suffered it to fall well nigh to
ruin; and, as I led Joyful Star across it by the hand, I thought of what
it had been in the olden times, when not a rope or a stick was suffered
to be out of place, and when the Son of the Sun had been borne across it
in his golden travelling litter, with long processions of his adoring
people going before and behind him, strewing his way with flowers, and
waking the echoes of these gloomy gorges with the melody of their songs
and laughter.
From here we journeyed on, ever facing the setting sun, for two days
more, still winding higher and higher up into the mountains, until at
length, on the third evening, I, riding alone many yards in front of
the others, found the sign that I was looking for--a rock with three
seats carved on the top of it--and turned my mule from the track and
rode over the rough, stony ground up the side of the mountain until what
looked from the road a single rock-built peak opened into two. I
beckoned to the others to follow me, and when they came up I said to the
professor,--
'Do you know where you are now? Have you ever been here before?'
He looked about him and shook his head, saying,--
'This may have been the place where we got off the road when my mule
gave out, but I don't recognise it. Do you mean that we are near the
valley?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Do you not remember seeing yonder two peaks from the
shore of the lake near where you found me?'
He looked at them for a moment, and then said,--
'Yes, I remember them; but they don't look the same, and I don't believe
I could find my way back into the valley from here to save my life. It's
very strange how I can have forgotten it so completely.'
I smiled as he said this, knowing that I had brought them purposely many
miles out of the way by which he had found the valley by accident, for
I had no desire that the way should be known to any but myself and those
I had chosen from among the remnant of the Children of the Blood. Then I
bade them follow me again, and once more rode on alone ahead, for, as
you may well believe, I was too full of my own thoughts and hopes and
fears to be in any mood for conversation, even with Joyful Star herself.
They, too, talked but little, and as we rode on in the deepening gloom
amid the solemn silence and the gaunt grandeur of the mountains, their
words became fewer and fewer, till at length thought took the place of
speech, and the silence was broken by no sound save the patter of the
mules' feet and the rattle of stones under their iron-shod hoofs.
Hour after hour I led them on, turning from valley to valley on the road
that was visible only to my own eyes, and ever rising higher and higher
towards the twin peaks that now stood out dark and sharp against the
starry sky. At last, when our watches were nearly marking ten o'clock, I
stopped before a cliff covered with bushes and creeping grasses, and
calling Tupac to me, I bade him seek for an opening under these.
He groped about among the bushes for a while, and then suddenly, with a
short cry of surprise, he vanished, as it seemed, through the face of
the rock itself. I dismounted and followed him, and found him standing
behind the bushes, facing a square doorway cut in the rock and lined
with masonry. Behind it, and closing it completely, was a great slab of
dressed stone. Down the sides of the doorway were two square pillars of
stone, and in the middle of one, to the left hand, three little lines
had been cut about a finger's breadth apart, but so faintly that only
one who knew they were there could find them.
I stretched a string across from the middle one of these to the
right-hand pillar, and where the string ended in the centre of the
pillar I felt with my finger-tips and found a little circle about as big
round as an English two-shilling piece. Tupac had in his hand the iron
rod that I had used on the Rodadero. I took it from him, and, pressing
the end against the circle, told him to push with me, and, to his
wonder, the rod sank, seemingly, into the solid stone, forcing out a
bolt which had been fitted so cunningly into the pillar that the end of
it looked no more than a circle traced on the face of it.
When we had pushed the rod in about six inches I bade Tupac help me to
pull it round towards the door. The pillar turned on a central hinge as
we did so, and the great stone slab swung back by its own weight, which
we had thus released, opening the entrance to a tunnel high enough for a
man to walk through erect. This tunnel sloped somewhat sharply upwards,
and looking up it I could see, shining in the clear sky beyond the upper
entrance, the stars that I knew were reflected in the still waters of
the little lake by which Golden Star was sleeping the sleep out of which
we had come to wake her.
As the passage was not large enough for the mules to go through with
their burdens, I bade my men unload them and carry their loads through
into the valley. Then we followed, leading our own animals by the
bridle, and after us the cargo-mules were driven through. The load of
one of them was a long, narrow case of wood like that in which the
professor had taken my own dead body to London, but this was thickly and
softly padded inside with wool, and lined with white linen, and at one
end was a little pillow of the softest down, on which the head of Golden
Star would soon be resting.
As soon as we were all standing outside the upper mouth of the tunnel I
looked at Joyful Star and said,--
'Is not this a fitting resting-place even for the daughter of kings? Are
not the stars bright in the heavens and on the bosom of the lake? Are
not the mountains great, and strong, and silent? Do they not guard her
couch well, and does not the snowy peak of Umantai yonder point the
straight way to the Mansions of the Sun, where the soul of Golden Star
is even now waiting for the arts of your brother to call it back to
earth as he called mine?'
'Yes,' she said, looking about her, first at the stars and then at the
vast shapes of the mountains which loomed huge and dim on every side.
'Yes, Vilcaroya, it is a good place for sleep, but--is not the world
beyond a good place to wake in? Have _you_ not found it so?'
I caught the gleam of her eyes in the starlight as she looked towards me
saying this, and, by the glory of the Sun, had we stood alone where we
were, I might have forgotten all save the knowledge that I was the
lawful lord of all this land, and that she was there in the midst of it
with me. For the instant I had gone back to my old life, with all its
old-world thoughts and customs, and then, before I could answer her, my
dreaming soul was called back to the present by the cold, quiet voice of
her brother saying,--
'I don't think that very many would find the world an unpleasant place
to wake in, either for the first or second time, if they could also wake
up lord of illimitable treasures as Vilcaroya here has done. But come,
Your Highness, and you, professor, it is getting late. Don't you think
it is time to be thinking about camping?'
The matter-of-fact words scattered my dreams in an instant, and I woke
from them into the present. I bade Tupac have the animals tethered and
fed, and the tents we had brought with us pitched in the most sheltered
place he could find; and while they were doing this, and Djama and the
others were busy seeing that the work was done to their satisfaction, I
went to Ruth and said--my words, which I strove so hard to keep steady,
trembling with I know not how many mingled passions,--
'Will Joyful Star come with me and see the place where her sister and
mine is lying, waiting to come forth and greet her?'
'Your sister, Vilcaroya?' she said, turning her face up to me so that
the starlight shone upon its fairness and lost itself in the lustrous
depths of her eyes. 'Do you mean your sister only--not--your--'
'No,' I said, 'not my wife, for I have thought upon your words and
pondered them deeply; and though they wounded me sorely at first, yet
now I see that they were wise and just, like all the other words that
Joyful Star has spoken to me. I have learned that lesson, like many
others which you have taught me. That bridal of ours is already to me a
dream of the long-lost past, the vision of a time that is dead and a
people that is no more. When Golden Star wakes, if she ever does, I will
greet her as a sister and a friend, as one of my own people who has
come back to me out of my own times, and she shall help me in the work
that I swore with her to do--but that is all; and I will find others of
the Blood who shall sit upon the restored throne of my ancestors, and be
the parents of the generations of Incas that shall come after me.'
'What do you mean, Vilcaroya?' she said, in a voice that was half angry
and half fearful. 'Do you mean--no, I cannot say it--for I am sure you
do not mean that.'
'How could that be?' I answered, guessing her meaning. 'Is it not _you_
who have taught me the ways and thoughts of the world into which I have
come back? No, what I mean is that I am not the only one now alive in
whose veins the old blood of the Incas flows. Tupac, yonder, is the son
of the son of the son of that Tupac-Amaru who died torn asunder in the
square of Cuzco, because he had dared to raise the Rainbow Banner in the
Land of the Four Regions, and called the Children of the Sun to revolt
against their oppressors. He, more blessed than I who am his lord, has
both wife and child, and if the prophecy is to be fulfiled, and I am to
reign in the City of the Sun, then I will take his firstborn and
instruct him in all the lore of our people and the duties of their
ruler, and if he proves worthy he shall wear the Llautu after me.'
She looked up at me again as I ceased speaking, just one swift, bright
glance that seemed to pierce to the most secret depths of my soul, and
read the unuttered thoughts that were hidden there, thoughts which I did
not dare to speak even to myself in the loneliest hour of my musings.
Then she looked down again, and side by side we walked in silence round
the shore of the lake until I stopped in front of a great black cliff
that jutted out from the mountain side and hung impending over the dark,
still waters of the lake. I pointed into the black shadows in which its
base was hidden, and said,--
'There lies Golden Star, and there I lay beside her through all the long
years that were to pass from the night when I pledged my troth with her
before the Altar of the Sun until this night when I stand with you,
Joyful Star, a new being in a new world, before her resting-place.'
'Is it really true?' she said, stopping as she spoke, and staring
straight before her into the darkness. 'Is it really true that you, who
are standing alive and strong here beside me, lay there under that great
rock for all those years, while ten generations of men and women were
born, and lived and died, and the whole world changed again and again?
And is the Golden Star lying in there now really the Golden Star you
have told me so much of, and I have thought about until she seems to me
more like some living friend that I have known and loved, than a dead
body that has been in the grave for more than three hundred years? Is it
really true, Vilcaroya, or have we all only been dreaming some wild
dream, like that Frankenstein story that I was telling you the other
day?'
As she spoke she laid her hand for a moment upon my arm, as though to
satisfy herself that I was really made of human flesh and blood, and not
a phantom standing beside her in the starlit darkness.
Scarce knowing what I did, I laid my own hand, warm and strong and firm,
upon hers. For an instant I felt it tremble beneath mine. I would have
given all the boundless wealth that I knew was mine for the courage to
close upon it a grasp that it could not have escaped if it would. My
heart seemed to swell as though it would burst in my breast, my tingling
blood ran fire, and wild words rose choking to my lips. Then her hand
slipped away from under mine. Once more I saw her eyes shine in the
starlight, and then I knew that I had learned the last and greatest
lesson that Joyful Star could teach me.
I knew now why to think of Golden Star as my wife and my queen, filled
me with the same untold horror which I had heard that night thrill in
the tones of her who stood beside me, for now I--the son of a lost race
and a long-past age--loved this daughter of the new time. For good or
evil, for hope or despair, I was hers until I went again, and for the
last time, into the shadows through which I had already passed, and
then--yes, there he was, this tall, stalwart, golden-haired son of her
own race and her own time, whose eyes I had seen looking love into hers!
He was coming towards us round the lake with his long, easy, swinging
strides, this man who was already my friend, and who would one day be
the captain of my armies. For one blind moment of madness I thought how
completely I had him and the others in my power; of the lonely, unknown
valley where we stood; of the men who were already my slaves, and who
looked upon me as a god. I thought, too, of the dark, deep waters of the
lake, and the secrets that they held for me alone. How well they could
hide others for me, too! What if Golden Star never awoke? Would she not
be as well lying there in the peace of her endless sleep as coming back
into the world, perhaps to love in vain and to suffer as I was doomed to
suffer?
The shadowy forms of the mountains began to waver and reel around me;
the stars danced up and down in the sky, and a red mist seemed to swim
before my eyes. Then, through the hoarse, dull murmur that was sounding
in my ears, I heard the sweet, low voice of Joyful Star saying,--
'Ah, Captain Hartness, I suppose you have been wondering what had become
of us! I am afraid I have been neglecting my household duties, and you
have been attending to them for me, but really I could not resist coming
here with Vilcaroya. Look, that is where Golden Star is lying, in a cave
under that great rock down there where those dark shadows are. Doesn't
it look cold and lonely and eerie?'
'Yes,' he answered, with a laugh that did not sound to me like his own.
'But I don't suppose that matters very much now to Her Highness any more
than it did to Vilcaroya. But, to descend to less romantic matters, I
have come to tell you that the affairs of our temporary household are
already in order, supper is ready, and we are all ravenously hungry, and
I suppose you are about the same. This mountain air puts an edge on
one's appetite like a razor's.'
'Supper--yes, I had forgotten all about it, thinking of poor Golden Star
lying there all alone in the darkness. Of course, I am desperately
hungry, now that you remind me of it. Come, Vilcaroya, I am sure you are
hungry too. Another night alone won't matter much to poor Golden Star
after all these years. You can dream of her to-night, as I suppose we
all shall, and to-morrow we shall see her. Oh, how I wonder what she
will be really like!'
As Joyful Star said this in a voice that was half sad and half merry,
she turned away towards Francis Hartness, and I followed her with some
light words on my lips and many heavy thoughts in my heart, and we
walked together to the tents, talking of the things that were to be done
on the morrow.
The next morning I was afoot before the stars had begun to pale in the
coming dawn. I had not slept for two hours together through the night,
yet, waking and sleeping, many dreams had come to me. I had been back to
the past among my people, living again that strange old life, with all
its light and colour and gaiety, which was now every day becoming more
and more like a vision that had been told to me by some other dreamer.
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