Dick at once recognized the Preacher of Cajamarca, and voices around him further explained that this was the chief officer of the quipucamyas, or Keepers of the Historical Word. His voice, sweeping down from Sacsay-Huaynam, checked the advance of the procession, chanted the glory of by-gone days.
Ringing clear and impassioned, it recalled the day when the Stranger and his diabolical train had first entered those plains after the death of Atahualpa. As to-day, the Sun blazed over the Imperial City, then full of altars sacred to his cult. Then, innumerable buildings, which the conqueror was to leave in ruins, traced white streets in the heart of the valley, and clustered on the lower slopes of the hills. In the conqueror’s train was Manco, descendant of kings, in whose name he gave orders and was obeyed. On that day, when the sun went down behind the Cordilleras, it might well have been thought that the Empire of the Incas had ceased to exist.
“But it still lives!” thundered the voice. “The Sun still shines on his children; the Andes, cradle of our race, still tower to the skies; Cuzco, navel of the earth, still quivers at the voice of his priests; Sacsay-Huaynam and the Intihuatana are still standing; the procession of the Interaymi still starts from these sacred walls!”
At these words, the procession moved on again, and had it not been for the anachronism of the riflemen bringing up the rear, one could almost have believed that five hundred years had brought no change in the plains of the Cuzco.
Dick, finally free to move on, was despairing of ever getting nearer to Maria-Teresa when he met Orellana again.
“What are you looking for?” asked the old man. “A place to see from? Then come with me, and I’ll show you my daughter. I know Cuzco better than the Incas themselves. Come with me.”
Once again Dick allowed the madman to be his guide. They reentered the city by way of the Huatanay ravine, spanned to this day by the Conquistadors’ bridges, and entered a maze of side-streets free from the crowd. Skirting the prodigious Hatun Rumioc, or wall-which-is-of-one-rock, they passed Calcaurpata, which tradition makes the palace of Manco Capac himself, first King of the Incas and founder of Cuzco; then they turned toward the Plaza Principale, called Huàcaypata by the Quichuas of to-day as by the Incas of yore. To reach it, Orellana took Dick through the ruined palace of the Virgins of the Sun, detailing, as he went, the uses and names of the various rooms. The young man’s impatient interruptions left him quite unmoved.
“We have plenty of time. You shall see my daughter from so near that you could speak to her. Stop a minute, and listen to the quenias. The head of the procession has no more than reached San Domingo. That church, curiously enough, was built on the very foundations of the Temple of the Sun.... I have never met a visitor less curious than you are.... This is the cloister of the Virgins of the Sun.... It has always been the home of virtue and piety, for the Christians turned it into a convent under the auspices of Santa Catarina.”
Dick, unable to stand the guide’s jargon any longer, began to run toward the noise of the advancing procession.
“You might pay me!” shouted Orellana in his wake. “Pay me what you owe me!” and stooped to pick up the centavos which the young engineer threw on the ground.