Pizarro instantly called his brother Hernando to him, and sent him with de Soto and Molina to bid the Inca welcome in his name, and entreat him to come forthwith into the city, as he had prepared an entertainment for him, and had many weighty matters to discuss with him which would ill brook delay.
“Tell him that I hope to sup with him to-night,” he said as Hernando mounted his horse.
And so, as will be seen, it came to pass.
It has been well said that whom the gods would undo they first make mad, and so it must have been with the Last of the Incas, for a writer of romance would be laughed at as an outrager of all the possibilities were he to relate what followed as his own story. Yet it is but sober fact that Atahuallpa, impelled by what impulse none may know, listened with open ears to the persuasions of the treacherous embassy, and not only left the protecting shelter of his army, but set out for the city attended by an unarmed escort.
Hernando and his companions rode swiftly back to tell of their good fortune.
“It is not the least of thy services to our master that thou hast done to-day, Hernando,” said Pizarro as his brother told him of the result of his embassy, “for now truly hath the Lord delivered the heathen into our hand.”
It was nearly an hour later that their expectant eyes caught sight of the head of the Inca’s cavalcade advancing up the broad street into the square. First came a body of some two or three hundred slaves carrying brooms of feathers, with which they removed every particle of dust and dirt from the path. These were followed by a band of gaily-dressed girls, crowned with garlands and carrying baskets of flowers, which they strewed in the way, chanting songs of strange and yet sweet harmony, which the pious chronicler tells us sounded “like songs of hell” in the ears of the faithful.
Then came the advance guard, brilliant in gorgeous liveries and plumed head-dresses, and after these rank upon rank of nobles with plumed casques of burnished silver on their heads and their bodies covered with armour of golden scales from shoulder to thigh. Then a body of priests, bare-headed and robed in flowing garments of snowy whiteness. Then followed a brilliant and orderly throng of nobles and warriors blazing with gold and silver and bright-hued uniforms shining with gems, and, borne aloft in the midst of these was the open litter, gorgeous with bright and many-tinted feather work, in which Atahuallpa sat in his golden chair, blazing with gold and gems, and motionless as a statue hewn out of pale bronze.
Not a Spaniard was to be seen as the splendid pageant reached the entrance to the square. Those who came in front separated into two long lines, and between them the Inca’s bearers advanced into the great open space. As they reached the middle of it the Spanish trumpets rang out, and the guard of honour sallied forth in all the bravery of polished steel and gay caparisons to meet it.
The first salutations were exchanged with a gravity befitting the occasion, and, these being over, Vincente de Valverde, Bible in hand, and attended by Brother Joachim bearing the great crucifix on his right hand, and the interpreter Filipillo, carrying the recollection of the fair face and bright eyes of the Princess Pillcu-Cica in his heart, on his left, advanced with slow steps towards the side of the Inca’s litter.