“Yes, Inca, that is true, we are Spaniards, but all Spaniards are not brute beasts such as thou, to our shame, hast seen amongst us. Even in this army of ours, adventurers and plunderers though in truth we may be, there are yet as thou shalt find some who know how an honest enemy should be treated by gentlemen of Spain. Come back, then, and let us ride along, for I have something to say to thee of those thou hast left behind.”
The last words instantly disarmed the Inca’s suspicion. He bowed his head in consent and returned de Molina’s hand-clasp, and when the cavalcade had been re-formed and the march resumed, he said gravely and yet with a thrill of expectation in his voice—
“Señor, I ask your pardon and that of your comrades for my suspicions. Now what of the lost ones I have left behind me?”
“They are not lost while they and thou have friends in Cuzco, even though those friends be Spaniards,” replied de Molina gravely.
Manco’s heart leaped with newborn hope at his words, though another moment’s thought seemed to show him that they were too fair-spoken to be truthful, and so he simply looked up and said again, somewhat coldly—
“Friends—Spanish friends to them in Cuzco? How can that be, de Molina? You know all, therefore you know that Mama-Oello the queen and the Princess Nahua, who one day I had hoped to make my queen, have delivered themselves up knowingly to a fate of shame and torment to buy one more chance of freedom for me. Who is there among you who could wish or could dare to save them?”
“From what we have done so far, Inca,” replied de Molina in a somewhat altered voice, “thou mayest have seen that there is little that gentlemen of Spain cannot dare. As to the wish, that is another matter, and springing from that there is a tale which concerns myself not a little, and for that reason my comrades yonder have chosen me to tell it. It hath also some interest for thee, if thou art willing to hear it; it may at least beguile a portion of our march.”
“I hear a friend speaking through your lips, my Lord,” replied the Inca quietly, although it took all his native stoicism to keep the eagerness of his expectations from showing itself in his voice. “Say on; I am listening not with patience but with the deepest interest.”
Then there was a little silence as though de Molina hardly knew how to begin his tale, and when he did begin his words were at first slow and halting.
“Inca,” he said, “I have told thee, and I trust I and my comrades have already given thee reason to believe, that we Spaniards, whatever else we may be, are not all thieves and ravishers like that one-eyed scoundrel Almagro and his fellow-villains. Nevertheless thou hast heard much against us of which I will now speak first of one charge. The high priest of thy faith told thee this morning that we who are here with certain of our men-at-arms broke into the most sacred recesses of the retreat that you call the House of the Virgins and took thence by force four of the noblest-born maidens, of whom the Princess Lalla-Cica, destined as they say to adorn thine own court, was one. That is true, but that is not all the truth. We took them with mock violence to save them from the real violence of Almagro’s men, who have to-night leagued themselves to commit just such a crime as ours would have been. The maidens are now safe under the charge of the holy father Valverde, who has received them into the sacred asylum of the Church, which no man among us may violate save at the peril of his own soul.”