Nearing the plaza principale, Dick again found his way blocked by the crowd, and forgot his anger in the relief of finding a friend when Orellana tugged at his poncho again.
“You might as well stop with me,” urged the old man. “Hurrying won’t help you. I know a little tiny Corridor of Night that will lead us to the Sun, right to the top stone of one of those temples.... It’s a temple dedicated to Venus.... They call her Chasca, or the young man with the long and curly locks, and he’s supposed to be the page of the Sun. Come with me.” Orellana had taken Dick by the hand, and led him to a cellar, in which they found the foot of a narrow staircase. Once at the top of it, they were, as the old man had promised, on the summit of a ruined temple, dominating the crowded square below and the streets radiating to it like the spokes of a wheel to the huh. Around them were other ruins; temples sacred to the moon, to the “armies of the heavens,” which are the stars, to the rainbow, lightning and thunder... walls which still defied the elements, though the temples were now shops, work-rooms or stables.
The head of the procession had appeared, the hundred servitors of the god pressing back the crowd, and slowly wound its way round the square. Then the golden litter came into sight and Huayna Capac, for the first time in centuries, came to the center of the world, the Umbilicus of which he had been lord and master. All heads were bowed before this sovereign shadow and the memory of ancient glories once again brought to life. The crowd even forgot for the moment its hatred of the stranger woman, the motionless Coya with the stranger child in her arms.
The double throne was brought to the center of the square, and the crowd rose with clamoring voices. Around the litter, the caciques and the chiefs, the nobles and the amautas, who are the sages, joined hands and began to circle, dancing as they danced of yore, when each man held a link of the golden chain and danced the Dance of the Chain. Hands made the links to-day, for when the Strangers slew Atahualpa, the nobles of the Cuzco threw that chain, which otherwise would have gone to the King’s ransom, into the deepest water of Lake Titicaca.
“Recuerda!”
Suddenly, as if from the heavens, this cry checked the rhythm of the Dance of the Chain. Maria-Teresa started on her throne, remembering the signal in the House of the Serpent. The child in her arms also lifted its head, and their eyes questioned the blue vault above from which this word of hope had fallen.
“That was Dick’s voice, Maria-Teresa! I told you he would come to save us!”
The girl’s eyes explored the towering walls about her, black with Indians. How could she recognize him in that crowd? Where was he? Again the voice rang out over their heads, so loud that it could be heard by the most distant unit of the crowd.
“Recuerda!”
Every head was turned upwards, and a threatening murmur rose from that human mass, torn from its dream of renascence and liberty by a single Spanish word. Recuerda! What must they remember? That they were slaves? That these fêtes, striving to recall an abolished past, could only last the space of a day? That the sun of to-morrow, forgetting that of to-day, would only shine anew on their servitude?