Heart of the World

by H. Rider Haggard

Of all that followed I need not write. Indeed, I cannot do so, for so great was my horror at this scene, and so intense the strain which was put upon my vital force during these hours, that I have little memory of what chanced after Zibalbay’s death, till I found myself lying exhausted upon the bed in my prison cell.

Somehow we calmed and silenced Maya; somehow we escaped from that hateful Sanctuary, and by slow degrees brought her and the dead body of her father up the narrow stairs and passages to the hall above, where we laid the corpse upon its bed. Then Mattai left us, and I remember no more till the next morning when nobles and leeches came to watch by the body of the dead cacique, and to embalm it in readiness for the tomb.

The next two days went heavily for the three of us, oppressed as we were by the silent gloom of our prison and the memories of that dreadful night. The love between Maya and her father had never been deep, for they were out of tune with each other; still, now that he was dead she mourned him, the more perhaps because he had died hating and cursing her. By degrees she recovered from her superstitious fears, born of the writing in the symbol; but her father’s maledictions she never could forget, and though she was willing to earn and to bear these for the sake of her love for the señor, I think that their memory lay between them like a shadow.

“Oh! why did I ever love you?” she would say. “What have you to do with me, whom race and law and fate have set apart from me?” And yet she went on loving him even more dearly.

I, also, was unhappy, for though I put little faith in these omens, or in the vapourings of dead prophets and the tricks of living charlatans, I felt that the ill-luck which had clung to me in the past was with me still. Things had gone cross with me; Zibalbay was dead, and Woman, the inevitable, had drawn away the heart of my friend and dragged me and my plans into the whirlpool of her passion, whence, if at all, they must emerge ruined and shapeless. Still, summoning the patience of my race to my aid, I bore these secret troubles as I might, giving counsel and comfort to the lovers, who, lost in their own doubts and difficulties, thought, as was natural, little of me and my lost ambitions.

At length they carried away the corpse of Zibalbay to be wrapped in its winding-sheet of gold and set with all ancient pomp and ceremony by those of its forefathers in the Hall of the Dead. Maya wept indeed, but I for my part was glad to see the last of him, and so, I think, was the señor, whose spirits had begun to fail him in the presence of so much remorse and grief.

That day—it was the day previous to the night of the Rising of Waters, on which we were to appear before the Council of the Heart in the Sanctuary—Tikal came to visit us. To Maya he bowed low, but on the señor and myself he looked with an angry eye,—with the eye, indeed, of one who would have killed us if he dared. First, with many fine words and empty compliments, he offered her his sympathy upon the death of her father. For this she returned her thanks, quoting, however, with a flash of her old spirit, a certain proverb of her own people, of which the meaning is that the death of one man is the breath of another.

“My father was your foe, Tikal,” she added, “and now that he is gone you will be able to sleep and reign in peace.”

“Not altogether so, Lady,” he answered, “seeing that he has left behind him a more dangerous rival to my power, namely, yourself. I will not hide from you, Maya, what you soon must learn, that a large portion of the people, and with them many of the nobles, accusing me of your father’s murder, clamour that I should be deposed, and that you should be set in my place as cacique of the City of the Heart. Some few days ago I might have stilled their outcry by commanding you to be put to death, but now it is too late, for, since then, Time has fought for you, and doubtless your end would be followed by my own. When last we met, cousin, I asked you a certain question, to which you promised me an answer when your father was dead or recovered, and to-day I have come to hear that answer. While Zibalbay lived I had much to offer him and you in exchange for your hand, and I offered it freely. So high a value did I place upon it when it seemed lost to me, that I was prepared to lay down my power, to suffer your father to violate the laws, and to incur the eternal hate and active enmity of Mattai, his daughter, and his party. Now I must make you a lower bid: that of equal power for yourself; and for your friends here, whatever they may desire. Should you refuse me, this is the alternative: civil war in the city till one of us is destroyed, and instant death as the portion of these strangers.

“But, Maya, I pray you not to refuse me, for I have something more to offer you—my undying love. From a child I always loved you, Maya, although you have treated me coldly enough, and now day by day I love you more. Indeed I believed that you and your father were dead yonder in the wilderness, for then I had faith in Mattai, whom now I know to be a rogue, and Mattai swore that it was written in the stars. Even so I would not have wed another woman, for my heart bled at the loss of you, had not Mattai made this marriage the price of his support, without which I could not hope to be anointed cacique, seeing that I have many jealous enemies. It was ambition that led me to consent, and bitterly have I regretted my folly ever since; for if she who is called my wife loves me, I hate her, and by this means or by that I will be rid of her. Forgive me, then, my sin against you, remembering only that I have loved and served you in the past as I will love and serve you in the future, and that it was you who brought about these troubles because, though I prayed you to stay and did all in my power to prevent you, you determined to accompany your father upon his mad journey into the wilderness. Now I have spoken, and I thank you for the courtesy with which you have listened to me.”