The virgin of the sun

by George Chetwynd Griffith

His brother Hernando, too, had returned from Pachacamac, followed by a train of thirty-five bearers, each carrying as much gold as he could stagger under. Meanwhile, too, streams of treasure from the other coast and inland towns had been flowing steadily into Cajamarca, and now the golden tide in the Banqueting Hall of the House of the Serpent was at length approaching the mark that the Inca had set for it.

But the higher it rose the more remote grew the chances of Atahuallpa’s freedom. The coming of Almagro and his men had put a new face on the whole situation. The sight of the treasure heaped up in the House of the Serpent and scattered so lavishly about the city had roused the gold-lust fiercely within them. They began to clamour loudly for the division of the spoils that they had had no share in winning, and, as was but natural, Pizarro’s own men, who had borne the burden and toil of which it was the reward, began to demand the payment of their shares into their own keeping. But again it was plain that the treasure could not be divided until the ransom had been completed and the Inca released—that is, if he was ever to be released at all.

Sitting after sitting of the court that had been constituted to try Atahuallpa had been held, and at each one of them his guilt had been more and more openly urged, until even Pizarro himself had come to look upon his death as the shortest way out of all difficulties. There were three whose voices were raised with ever-increasing insistence to this end, and these were Almagro, Riquelme, and Vincente de Valverde, each of whom had his own reasons for such a course. At length Pizarro yielded to them, and this he did the more readily and with the better conscience as authentic reports of the gathering of great armies from all parts of the Empire were now coming in every day, each one of which added more and more colour of truth to the story which Filipillo had brought with him from Cuzco.

So it came about that at the last council it was resolved to melt the treasure down, to send the King’s fifth to Spain under the care of Hernando Pizarro, and to impeach Atahuallpa on the various counts that had already been formulated against him. How immense the treasure already was may be seen from the fact that the King’s fifth alone amounted to a million, three hundred and twenty-six thousand, five hundred and thirty-nine pesos of pure gold, which in modern English money is over three hundred and thirty thousand pounds sterling.

With this huge sum Hernando Pizarro, with an escort of twenty horse and a long train of Indian bearers, started out for the coast. The most of the simple folk believed that the others would soon follow and that their Inca would be immediately set free. But Atahuallpa had no such delusion, for when the Captain’s brother went into his prison-room to bid him farewell he shook his head mournfully and said, with the air of a man who believes himself already doomed—

“I am deeply grieved to see you go, for you are a good man and would be my friend and see justice done to me; but I know that when you are gone that fat man and that one-eyed man and that other one who is always seeking to make me worship his strange gods will most certainly kill me.”

Then Hernando Pizarro shook his head too and sought to reassure him, saying that he was going to the great king who was lord and master of all the Spaniards, and that he would see justice done to him. And then he took leave of him as quickly as he could, for he knew that his fate was already sealed, and was eager to get away out of so black a business.

No sooner had he gone than Atahuallpa, feeling now that if he remained in the power of the Spaniards his fate was sealed, and knowing that he could be no worse off whatever happened, suddenly resolved to do that which Challcuchima had so earnestly prayed him to do the night before he was taken prisoner, and in taking this resolve he gave his worst enemies among the Spaniards the one pretext that was now wanting to them. It may have been that at this last hour, when face to face with his fate, the old warrior spirit burnt up afresh within him, and he resolved that if he must die he would do so in the midst of battle and massacre rather than be slain like a felon after a mock judgment, and that at least he would not leave the world without the knowledge that some of his enemies had paid for the indignities they had put upon him with their lives.

The fifth day after the departure of Hernando Pizarro he managed, after four days of watching and waiting for an opportunity, to dispatch a knot of the fringe of the borla—which he still wore even with his chains in mournful mockery of his former imperial state—to Quiz-Quiz and Ruminavi, with orders to march instantly with every regiment at their command upon the city, first laying waste the whole country about it, and after that to fall upon it with fire and sword and avenge his insulted honour, even if rescue of his person was impossible.

Now the Curaca of Cajamarca, which was one of the cities that had owed allegiance to Huascar and had about a year before been seized by Atahuallpa, had never borne him any goodwill, and through the agency of Filipillo he had become a firm ally of the Spaniards, deceived, as many others of his simple race were, by their promises of kindness and protection. He had made it his business to organise a small army of spies, who had kept close watch on the movements of every one who had access to the Inca and afterwards left the city.