“But where is the iron-bound prisoner, where?
For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.
Say, mounts he the ocean wave, banished, forlorn,
Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?”
CAMPBELL.
“PATRE," said Jose, as soon as the sun had risen, will it please you now to permit me to run to the nearest dwellings and seek for food?”
Fray Fernando did not refuse the desired permission; and Jose, delighted to obtain it, first made his patient as comfortable as he could, then started on his errand.
In a few hours he returned, accompanied by a party of five or six Indians, whom, with much apparent satisfaction and some ceremony, he ushered into Fray Fernando's presence, saying, "Here, patre, are the doctors.”
The men were comfortably clothed, after the native fashion, in tunics, short trousers, and mantles, with bright-colored turbans, or caps, on their heads. But they looked worn and haggard, as men who followed a toilsome calling. Each had a kind of wallet strapped on his shoulders by a cord of maguey. The foremost of the group unbound his, and laid it at the feet of Fray Fernando, in token of his respect and desire to serve him.
But Fray Fernando naturally hesitated to receive medical advice from those whom he accounted mere barbarians; and expressed as much to Jose. The latter assured him, however, that the doctors were very wise—very skilful. "They spend many months together in the forests," he said, "collecting herbs and plants of great healing virtue. Then they travel through the whole country, giving them in exchange for food or clothing, and making the sick men well. This knowledge has been handed down to them from the grandfathers of their grandfathers.”
Upon this, Fray Fernando, thinking it probable they would not poison him, and perhaps also thinking it little matter if they did, consented to allow one of them to examine him; which he did by feeling his pulse, not at the wrist, but at the top of the nostrils, and under the eyelids.
Jose was soon informed in Quechua, which he translated into Spanish for the patient's benefit, that the patre's disease was the sorachi, an ailment to which travelers in those mountainous districts are liable. But the worst of the attack seemed to be over. The patient would be the better for pursuing his journey as soon as he felt at all able to do so. By the time he reached the plain he would probably be as well as ever. For his headache, he was to take a draft of herbs, and to use the powdered leaf of the sayri, a supply of which the doctor produced from his wallet. This was, in fact, the tobacco of modern Europe, which the Peruvians only employed as a medicine. Jose having hinted, however, that food was just then more needful to them than medicine, all the wallets were explored, and a sufficient quantity of parched maize, chun͂u, and charqui (dried meat) was produced to make an abundant meal for the whole party. A portion of the latter was carefully cooked for Fray Fernando; but Jose and the other Indians did not use so much ceremony with their own food.
When the repast was finished, the "doctors" had some further conversation with their countryman; then they strapped up their wallets, and prepared to go their own way, from which they had been diverted by Jose's earnest entreaties that they would come to the aid of his sick friend. Fray Fernando asked Jose what recompense he ought to bestow on them. But Jose told him none was needed. "They are very glad to serve you," he said, "because you are my friend." There was no arrogance or assumption in this: it was the simple truth. The words, "Yntip Churi" (Child of the Sun), had a magic in them to bow all hearts in Tahuantin Suyu. Fray Fernando, however, gave the doctors a few silver coins, which were thankfully accepted; and they parted with mute demonstrations of respect and good-will.
When they were gone, Jose silently prepared and administered the prescribed remedies, replenished the fire, gathered together and put aside the food that had been left. That done, he sat down, and looked at Fray Fernando with the air of a person who had tidings, heavy tidings, to communicate.
“Of what are you thinking, José?" the monk inquired. He rather expected that Jose would urge him to get up, and to make some effort to resume his journey.
But Jose's thoughts were very differently occupied.
“Before they went away the doctors told me something," he said.
Fray Fernando asked rather languidly what it was.
“Nothing good," Jose answered sadly. "Another crime for the Spaniards, another wrong for the children of my people. The Inca is a captive.”
“Whom do you mean by the Inca?" Fray Fernando might be excused for asking, since seven years had passed since Jose named in his hearing the exiled prince whose right it was to wear the llautu. Moreover, much confusion was created in Spanish minds by the fact that all the male descendants of Manco Capac were permitted to assume the cognomen of Inca.
“Whom should I mean but the sole Inca, Tupac Amaru? The viceroy has sent an army to Vilca-pampa. They have made him prisoner, and led him to Cuzco. Patre," Jose continued, with scarce an effort to conceal his deep anxiety, "you understand your own people. Tell me what they will do with him.”
“How can I tell you, Jose?" Fray Fernando answered. And in truth it would have been hard for him to tell. But he knew something of the Viceroy Toledo, the kinsman of the notorious Alva, a stern, determined man, little likely to have taken the trouble of making the Inca a captive without a settled purpose and still less likely to shrink from executing that purpose, whatever it was.
“Three things are possible," Jose continued, thoughtfully, "The Spaniards may desire to wring from us yet more of those treasures they covet so madly. They are wise. If for the usurper, Atahualpa, we filled the great hall of Caxa—marca breast high with gold, we will not do less, sorely as they have robbed us since, for the true heir of Manco Capac. But my heart misgives me they have worse thoughts than that. They may keep him in captivity, or even send him beyond the Mother Sea. Either way, it would be his death; for his spirit is brave and free, like the condor of the mountain.”
Fray Fernando knew there was yet another course possible to the Spaniards, but he did not care to name it.
Jose continued, “I can tell you at least what they will not do with him. What they did with Sayri Tupac. To no deed renouncing the rights of his birth will the hand of Tupac Amaru be ever set.”
“When we arrive at Cuzco we shall learn all," Fray Fernando said. "And, Jose, I will try to pursue the journey. I see we cannot remain here.”
“The doctors have left food enough to last us for today, patre. Tomorrow, I hope, with God's help, you will be able to travel a little.”
An expectation that was happily fulfilled. But Fray Fernando was still too weak to proceed far. He succeeded, however in reaching a little Indian village, where rest and refreshment were readily obtained.
Ten or twelve leagues of very mountainous country had yet to be traversed before Cuzco could be reached. It was not until the evening of the third day that the still invalided monk, with his Indian companion, stood at last upon one of the heights which overlook the ancient City of the Sun.
Cuzco nestles at the head of a fair and fertile valley, which forms an angle between two mountain ranges. Jose, whose demeanor all day had been solemn and reverent, like that of one about to participate in some religious rite, long gazed in silence on the scene spread out before him. But Cuzco was not only the sacred city of his dreams; it was also the first city he had ever seen. The mass of buildings confused and bewildered him, until at last he turned with a sigh of relief to the snowy peak of Vilcanota, which rose majestically above the hills that bounded the valley on the other side. Yet he soon turned back again to gaze upon the city of his fathers—the home of his imagination, the goal of his longings. "And was that indeed the city? Was that beautiful Cuzco, the center and the heart of Tahuantin Suyu?" Here seemed only shapeless masses of building, tangled mazes of streets, and the flash of a river here and there amidst a wilderness of thatched roofs and tumbled heaps of stone. Nothing was like what he expected.
All at once, however, his eye kindled, his whole countenance lighted up. He laid one hand on Fray Fernando's arm, and with the other pointed to a rocky eminence on the north side of the city. It was crowned by three great semicircular walls of massive masonry, one within the other; and again within these were three lofty towers, built of light-colored stone. "Look there!" he cried in rapture. "Yonder is the great fortress of Sachsahuaman, built by my renowned forefathers. Yes, it is; ofttimes have I heard it described. Every wall, every tower, I know already." Long and fondly did his eye rest upon them; then he slowly turned his gaze to the other buildings, as if he would learn to understand them also, and imprint them on his memory. He felt no longer a stranger, but a child—a child going to his father's home.
Yet he entreated Fray Fernando to defer his entrance into Cuzco until the following day, that the Sun himself might welcome them to his own city. Fray Fernando looked on this as an instance of the childishness which seemed strangely interwoven in the tangled web of Jose's character with manly sense and feeling. Still, he granted the request, and all the more readily because he was very weary, and comfortable Indian dwellings were close at hand, in which they might rest for the night.