Heart of the World

by H. Rider Haggard

“We say that it is true,” answered Maya calmly. “We were forced to choose between the loss of our lives and the doing of this deed, and we chose to live. It was Mattai who hatched the fraud and executed the forgery, and now it seems that we must suffer for his sin as well as for our own. One word more: Ignatio here did not enter into this plot willingly, but was forced into it by my husband and myself, and chiefly by myself.”

Dimas made no answer, but at a sign the two priests who guarded the altar with drawn swords came forward and drove us into the passage that led from the Sanctuary to the Hall of the Dead, where they shut us in between the double doors, leaving us in darkness.

Here, as all was finished, I knelt down to offer my last prayers to Heaven, while Maya wept in her husband’s arms, taking farewell of him and of her child, which wailed upon her breast.

“Truly,” he said, “you were wise, wife, when you urged us not to enter this Country of the Heart. Still, what is done cannot be undone, and, having been happy together for a little space, let us die together as bravely as we may, hoping that still together we may awake presently in some new world of peace.”

While he spoke, the door was opened, and the priests with drawn swords led us back into the Sanctuary. As Maya crossed the threshold first of the three of us, she was met by Tikal, who with a sudden movement, but without roughness, took the child from her arms. Now we saw what was prepared for us, for the stone in front of the altar had been lifted, and at our feet yawned the black shaft from which ascended the sound of waters. They placed us with our backs resting against the altar; but Tikal stood in front, and between him and us lay the mouth of the pit.

“Maya, daughter of Zibalbay the cacique, Lady of the Heart; white man, Son of the Sea; Ignatio the Wanderer; and Mattai the priest, whom, being dead in the body, we summon in the spirit,” began Dimas in a cold and terrible voice, “you by your own confession are proved guilty of the greatest crimes that can be dreamed of in the wicked brain of man and executed by his impious hands. You have broken your solemn oaths taken in the presence of heaven and your brethren; you have offered insult to the god we worship, and violated his Sanctuary; and you have palmed off as their god-sent prince, upon the people who trusted you, a bastard and a child of sin. For all these and other crimes which you have committed,—why we know not,—it is not in our power to mete out to you a just reward. That must be measured to you elsewhere, when you have passed our judgment-seat and your names are long forgotten upon the earth.

“This is the sentence of the Council of the Heart, that your name, Mattai, be erased from the list of the officers of the Heart; that your memory be proclaimed accursed; that your dwelling-place be burned with fire, and the site of it strewn with salt; that your corpse be torn from its grave and laid upon the summit of the pyramid till the birds of the air devour it; and that your soul be handed over to the tormentors of the lower world to deal with according to their pleasure for ever and for aye.

“This is the sentence of the Council of the Heart upon you, Maya, daughter of Zibalbay the cacique, Lady of the Heart; white man, Son of the Sea, and Ignatio the Wanderer: That your names be erased from the roll of the Brethren of the Heart, and proclaimed accursed in the streets of the city; that you be gagged, bound hand and foot, and chained living to the walls of the Sanctuary, and there left before the altar of the god which you have violated, till death from thirst and hunger shall overtake you; that your corpses be laid upon the pyramid as a prey to the birds of the air; and that your souls be handed over to the tormentors of the under-world to deal with according to their pleasure for ever and for aye. It is spoken. Let the sentence of the Council be done. But first, since this bastard babe is too young to sin and suffer punishment, let him be handed into the keeping of the god, that the god may deal with him according to his pleasure.”

As the words passed his lips, and before we fully understood them, dazed as we were with the terror of our awful doom, Tikal stepped forward and—even now I shudder when I write of it—holding the poor infant, which at this instant began to wail again as though with pain or fear, over the mouth of the pit, suddenly he let it fall into the depths beneath.

The shriek of the agonised mother ran round the walls of the holy place, and before it had died away the señor had leaped forward—leaped like a puma—across the gulf of the open well and gripped Tikal by the throat and waist. He gripped him, and, rage giving him strength, he lifted him high above his head and hurled him down the dreadful place whither the child had gone before.