Produced by John Bickers; Dagny; David Widger
THE VIRGIN OF THE SUN
By H. Rider Haggard
First Published in 1922.
DEDICATION
My Dear Little,
Some five-and-thirty years ago it was our custom to discuss many
matters, among them, I think, the history and romance of the vanished
Empires of Central America.
In memory of those far-off days will you accept a tale that deals with
one of them, that of the marvellous Incas of Peru; with the legend also
that, long before the Spanish Conquerors entered on their mission of
robbery and ruin, there in that undiscovered land lived and died a White
God risen from the sea?
Ever sincerely yours, H. Rider Haggard. Ditchingham, Oct. 24, 1921.
James Stanley Little, Esq.
THE VIRGIN OF THE SUN
INTRODUCTORY
There are some who find great interest, and even consolation, amid the
worries and anxieties of life in the collection of relics of the past,
drift or long-sunk treasures that the sea of time has washed up upon our
modern shore.
The great collectors are not of this class. Having large sums at their
disposal, these acquire any rarity that comes upon the market and add
it to their store which in due course, perhaps immediately upon their
deaths, also will be put upon the market and pass to the possession of
other connoisseurs. Nor are the dealers who buy to sell again and thus
grow wealthy. Nor are the agents of museums in many lands, who purchase
for the national benefit things that are gathered together in certain
great public buildings which perhaps, some day, though the thought
makes one shiver, will be looted or given to the flames by enemies or by
furious, thieving mobs.
Those that this Editor has in mind, from one of whom indeed he obtained
the history printed in these pages, belong to a quite different
category, men of small means often, who collect old things, for the most
part at out-of-the-way sales or privately, because they love them, and
sometimes sell them again because they must. Frequently these old things
appeal, not because of any intrinsic value that they may have, not
even for their beauty, for they may be quite unattractive even to the
cultivated eye, but rather for their associations. Such folk love to
reflect upon and to speculate about the long-dead individuals who have
owned the relics, who have supped their soup from the worn Elizabethan
spoon, who have sat at the rickety oak table found in a kitchen or an
out-house, or upon the broken, ancient chair. They love to think of the
little children whose skilful, tired hands wrought the faded sampler and
whose bright eyes smarted over its innumerable stitches.
Who, for instance, was the May Shore ("Fairy" broidered in a bracket
underneath, was her pet name), who finished yonder elaborate example on
her tenth birthday, the 1st of May - doubtless that is where she got
her name - in the year 1702, and on what far shore does she keep her
birthdays now? None will ever know. She has vanished into the great
sea of mystery whence she came, and there she lives and has her being,
forgotten upon earth, or sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. Did she die young
or old, married or single? Did she ever set _her_ children to work other
samplers, or had she none? was she happy or unhappy, was she homely or
beautiful? Was she a sinner or a saint? Again none will ever know. She
was born on the 1st of May, 1692, and certainly she died on some date
unrecorded. So far as human knowledge goes that is all her history, just
as much or as little as will be left of most of us who breathe to-day
when this earth has completed two hundred and eighteen more revolutions
round the sun.
But the kind of collector alluded to can best be exemplified in the
individual instance of him from whom the manuscript was obtained, of
which a somewhat modernized version is printed on these pages. He has
been dead some years, leaving no kin; and under his will, such of his
motley treasures as it cared to accept went to a local museum, while
the rest and his other property were sold for the benefit of a mystical
brotherhood, for the old fellow was a kind of spiritualist. Therefore,
there is no harm in giving his plebeian name, which was Potts. Mr.
Potts had a small draper's shop in an undistinguished and rarely visited
country town in the east of England, which shop he ran with the help
of an assistant almost as old and peculiar as himself. Whether he made
anything out of it or whether he lived upon private means is now unknown
and does not matter. Anyway, when there was something of antiquarian
interest or value to be bought, generally he had the money to pay for
it, though at times, in order to do so, he was forced to sell something
else. Indeed these were the only occasions when it was possible to
purchase anything, indifferent hosiery excepted, from Mr. Potts.
Now, I, the Editor, who also love old things, and to whom therefore Mr.
Potts was a sympathetic soul, was aware of this fact and entered into
an arrangement with the peculiar assistant to whom I have alluded, to
advise me of such crises which arose whenever the local bank called Mr.
Potts's attention to the state of his account. Thus it came about that
one day I received the following letter: -
Sir,
The Guv'nor has gone a bust upon some cracked china, the ugliest that
ever I saw though no judge. So if you want to get that old tall clock at
the first price or any other of his rubbish, I think now is your chance.
Anyhow, keep this dark as per agreement.
Your obedient, Tom.
(He always signed himself Tom, I suppose to mystify, although I believe
his real name was Betterly.)
The result of this epistle was a long and disagreeable bicycle ride in
wet autumn weather, and a visit to the shop of Mr. Potts. Tom, alias
Betterly, who was trying to sell some mysterious undergarments to a fat
old woman, caught sight of me, the Editor aforesaid, and winked. In a
shadowed corner of the shop sat Mr. Potts himself upon a high stool, a
wizened little old man with a bent back, a bald head, and a hooked
nose upon which were set a pair of enormous horn-rimmed spectacles that
accentuated his general resemblance to an owl perched upon the edge of
its nest-hole. He was busily engaged in doing nothing, and in staring
into nothingness as, according to Tom, was his habit when communing with
what he, Tom, called his "dratted speerits."
"Customer!" said Tom in a harsh voice. "Sorry to disturb you at your
prayers, Guv'nor, but not having two pair of hands I can't serve a
crowd," meaning the old woman of the undergarments and myself.
Mr. Potts slid off his stool and prepared for action. When he saw,
however, who the customer was he bristled - that is the only word for it.
The truth is that although between us there was an inward and spiritual
sympathy, there was also an outward and visible hostility. Twice I
had outbid Mr. Potts at a local auction for articles which he desired.
Moreover, after the fashion of every good collector he felt it to be
his duty to hate me as another collector. Lastly, several times I
had offered him smaller sums for antiques upon which he set a certain
monetary value. It is true that long ago I had given up this bargaining
for the reason that Mr. Potts would never take less than he asked.
Indeed he followed the example of the vendor of the Sibylline books in
ancient Rome. He did not destroy the goods indeed after the fashion
of that person and demand the price of all of them for the one that
remained, but invariably he put up his figure by 10 per cent. and
nothing would induce him to take off one farthing.
"What do _you_ want, sir?" he said grumpily. "Vests, hose, collars, or
socks?"
"Oh, socks, I think," I replied at hazard, thinking that they would
be easiest to carry, whereupon Mr. Potts produced some peculiarly
objectionable and shapeless woollen articles which he almost threw at
me, saying that they were all he had in stock. Now I detest woollen
socks and never wear them. Still, I made a purchase, thinking with
sympathy of my old gardener whose feet they would soon be scratching,
and while the parcel was being tied up, said in an insinuating voice,
"Anything fresh upstairs, Mr. Potts?"
"No, sir," he answered shortly, "at least, not much, and if there were
what's the use of showing them to you after the business about that
clock?"
"It was £15 you wanted for it, Mr. Potts?" I asked.
"No, sir, it was £17 and now it's 10 per cent. on to that; you can work
out the sum for yourself."
"Well, let's have another look at it, Mr. Potts," I replied humbly,
whereon with a grunt and a muttered injunction to Tom to mind the shop,
he led the way upstairs.
Now the house in which Mr. Potts dwelt had once been of considerable
pretensions and was very, very old, Elizabethan, I should think,
although it had been refronted with a horrible stucco to suit modern
tastes. The oak staircase was good though narrow, and led to numerous
small rooms upon two floors above, some of which rooms were panelled
and had oak beams, now whitewashed like the panelling - at least they had
once been whitewashed, probably in the last generation.
These rooms were literally crammed with every sort of old furniture,
most of it decrepit, though for many of the articles dealers would have
given a good price. But at dealers Mr. Potts drew the line; not one of
them had ever set a foot upon that oaken stair. To the attics the place
was filled with this furniture and other articles such as books, china,
samplers with the glass broken, and I know not what besides, piled in
heaps upon the floor. Indeed where Mr. Potts slept was a mystery; either
it must have been under the counter in his shop, or perhaps at nights he
inhabited a worm-eaten Jacobean bedstead which stood in an attic, for
I observed a kind of pathway to it running through a number of legless
chairs, also some dirty blankets between the moth-riddled curtains.
Not far from this bedstead, propped in an intoxicated way against the
sloping wall of the old house, stood the clock which I desired. It was
one of the first "regulator" clocks with a wooden pendulum, used by the
maker himself to check the time-keeping of all his other clocks, and
enclosed in a chaste and perfect mahogany case of the very best style of
its period. So beautiful was it, indeed, that it had been an instance of
"love at first sight" between us, and although there was an estrangement
on the matter of settlements, or in other words over the question of
price, now I felt that never more could that clock and I be parted.
So I agreed to give old Potts the £20 or, to be accurate, £18 14s. which
he asked on the 10 per cent. rise principle, thankful in my heart that
he had not made it more, and prepared to go. As I turned, however, my
eye fell upon a large chest of the almost indestructible yellow cypress
wood of which were made, it is said, the doors of St. Peter's at Rome
that stood for eight hundred years and, for aught I know, are still
standing, as good as on the day when they were put up.
"Marriage coffer," said Potts, answering my unspoken question.
"Italian, about 1600?" I suggested.
"May be so, or perhaps Dutch made by Italian artists; but older than
that, for somebody has burnt 1597 on the lid with a hot iron. Not for
sale, not for sale at all, much too good to sell. Just you look inside
it, the old key is tied to the spring lock. Never saw such poker-work in
my life. Gods and goddesses and I don't know what; and Venus sitting
in the middle in a wreath of flowers with nothing on, and holding two
hearts in her hands, which shows that it was a marriage chest. Once it
was full of some bride's outfit, sheets and linen and clothes, and God
knows what. I wonder where she has got to to-day. Some place where the
moth don't eat clothes, I hope. Bought it at the break-up of an
ancient family who fled to Norfolk on the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes - Huguenot, of course. Years ago, years ago! Haven't looked into
it for many years, indeed, but think there's nothing there but rubbish
now."
Thus he mumbled on while he found and untied the old key. The spring
lock had grown stiff from disuse and want of oil, but at length it
turned and reopened the chest revealing the poker-work glories on the
inner side of the lid and elsewhere. Glories they were indeed, never had
I seen such artistry of the sort.
"Can't see it properly," muttered Potts, "windows want washing, haven't
been done since my wife died, and that's twenty years ago. Miss her
very much, of course, but thank God there's no spring-cleaning now. The
things I've seen broken in spring-cleaning! yes, and lost, too. It was
after one of them that I told my wife that now I understood why the
Mahomedans declare that women have no souls. When she came to understand
what I meant, which it took her a long time to do, we had a row, a
regular row, and she threw a Dresden figure at my head. Luckily I caught
it, having been a cricketer when young. Well, she's gone now, and no
doubt heaven's a tidier place than it used to be - that is, if they will
stand her rummagings there, which I doubt. Look at that Venus, ain't she
a beauty? Might have been done by Titian when his paints ran out, and
he had to take to a hot iron to express his art. What, you can't see
her well? Wait a bit and I'll get a lantern. Can't have a naked candle
here - things too valuable; no money could buy them again. My wife and
I had another row about naked candles, or it may have been a paraffin
lamp. You sit in that old prayer-stool and look at the work."
Off he went crawling down the dusky stairs and leaving me wondering
what Mrs. Potts, of whom now I heard for the first time, could have been
like. An aggravating woman, I felt sure, for upon whatever points men
differ, as to "spring-cleaning" they are all of one mind. No doubt he
was better without her, for what did that dried-up old artist want with
a wife?
Dismissing Mrs. Potts from my mind, which, to tell the truth, seemed
to have no room for her shadowy and hypothetical entity, I fell to
examining the chest. Oh! it was lovely. In two minutes the clock was
deposed and that chest became the sultana in my seraglio of beauteous
things. The clock had only been the light love of an hour. Here was
the eternal queen, that is, unless there existed a still better chest
somewhere else, and I should happen to find it. Meanwhile, whatever
price that old slave-dealer Potts wanted for it, must be paid to him
even if I had to overdraw my somewhat slender account. Seraglios, of
whatever sort, it must be remembered, are expensive luxuries of the rich
indeed, though, if of antiques, they can be sold again, which cannot be
said of the human kind for who wants to buy a lot of antique frumps?
There were plenty of things in the chest, such as some odds and ends of
tapestry and old clothes of a Queen Anne character, put here, no doubt,
for preservation, as moth does not like this cypress wood. Also there
were some books and a mysterious bundle tied up in a curious shawl with
stripes of colour running through it. That bundle excited me, and I drew
the fringes of the shawl apart and looked in. So far as I could see it
contained another dress of rich colours, also a thick packet of what
looked like parchment, badly prepared and much rotted upon one side
as though by damp, which parchment appeared to be covered with faint
black-letter writing, done by some careless scribe with poor ink that
had faded very much. There were other things, too, within the shawl,
such as a box made of some red foreign wood, but I had not time to
investigate further for just then I heard old Potts's foot upon the
stair, and thought it best to replace the bundle. He arrived with the
lantern and by its light we examined the chest and the poker work.
"Very nice," I said, "very nice, though a good deal knocked about."
"Yes, sir," he replied with sarcasm, "I suppose you'd like to see it
neat and new after four hundred years of wear, and if so, I think I can
tell you where you can get one to your liking. I made the designs for
it myself five years ago for a fellow who wanted to learn how to
manufacture antiques. He's in quod now and his antiques are for sale
cheap. I helped to put him there to get him out of the way as a danger
to Society."
"What's the price?" I asked with airy detachment.
"Haven't I told you it ain't for sale. Wait till I'm dead and come and
buy it at my auction. No, you won't, though, for it's going somewhere
else."
I made no answer but continued my examination while Potts took his
seat on the prayer-stool and seemed to go off into one of his fits of
abstraction.
"Well," I said at length when decency told me that I could remain no
longer, "if you won't sell it's no use my looking. No doubt you want to
keep it for a richer man, and of course you are quite right. Will you
arrange with the carrier about sending the clock, Mr. Potts, and I will
let you have a cheque. Now I must be off, as I've ten miles to ride and
it will be dark in an hour."
"Stop where you are," said Potts in a hollow voice. "What's a ride in
the dark compared with a matter like this, even if you haven't a lamp
and get hauled before your own bench? Stop where you are, I'm listening
to something."
So I stopped and began to fill my pipe.
"Put that pipe away," said Potts, coming out of his reverie, "pipes mean
matches; no matches here."
I obeyed, and he went on thinking till at last what between the chest
and the worm-eaten Jacobean bed and old Potts on the prayer-stool, I
began to feel as if I were being mesmerized. At length he rose and said
in the same hollow voice:
"Young man, you may have that chest, and the price is £50. Now for
heaven's sake don't offer me £40, or it will be £100 before you leave
this room."
"With the contents?" I said casually.
"Yes, with the contents. It's the contents I'm told you are to have."
"Look here, Potts," I said, exasperated, "what the devil do you mean?
There's no one in this room except you and me, so who can have told you
anything unless it was old Tom downstairs."
"Tom," he said with unutterable sarcasm, "Tom! Perhaps you mean the
mawkin that was put up to scare birds from the peas in the garden, for
it has more in its head than Tom. No one here? Oh! what fools some men
are. Why, the place is thick with them."
"Thick with whom?"
"Who? why, ghosts, of course, as you would call them in your ignorance.
Spirits of the dead I name them. Beautiful enough, too, some of them.
Look at that one there," and he lifted the lantern and pointed to a pile
of old bed posts of Chippendale design.
"Good day, Potts," I said hastily.
"Stop where you are," repeated Potts. "You don't believe me yet, but
when you are as old as I am you will remember my words and believe - more
than I do and see - clearer than I do, because it's in your soul, yes,
the seed is in your soul, though as yet it is choked by the world, the
flesh, and the devil. Wait till your sins have brought you trouble; wait
till the fires of trouble have burned the flesh away; wait till you have
sought Light and found Light and live in Light, then you will believe;
_then_ you will see."
All this he said very solemnly, and standing there in that dusky room
surrounded by the wreck of things that once had been dear to dead men
and women, waving the lantern in his hand and staring - at what was he
staring? - really old Potts looked most impressive. His twisted shape and
ugly countenance became spiritual; he was one who had "found Light and
lived in Light."
"You won't believe me," he went on, "but I pass on to you what a woman
has been telling me. She's a queer sort of woman; I never saw her
like before, a foreigner and dark-hued with strange rich garments and
something on her head. There, that, _that_," and he pointed through the
dirty window-place to the crescent of a young moon which appeared in
the sky. "A fine figure of a woman," he went on, "and oh! heaven, what
eyes - I never saw such eyes before. Big and tender, something like those
of the deer in the park yonder. Proud, too, she is, one who has ruled,
and a lady, though foreign. Well, I never fell in love before, but I
feel like it now, and so would you, young man, if you could see her, and
so I think did someone else in his day."
"What did she say to you?" I asked, for by now I was interested enough.
Who wouldn't be when old Potts took to describing beautiful women?
"It's a little difficult to tell you for she spoke in a strange tongue,
and I had to translate it in my head, as it were. But this is the gist
of it. That you were to have that chest and what was in it. There's a
writing there, she says, or part of a writing for some has gone - rotted
away. You are to read that writing or to get it read and to print it so
that the world may read it also. She said that 'Hubert' wishes you to
do so. I am sure the name was Hubert, though she also spoke of him with
some other title which I do not understand. That's all I can remember,
except something about a city, yes, a City of Gold and a last great
battle in which Hubert fell, covered with glory and conquering. I
understood that she wanted to talk about that because it isn't in the
writing, but you interrupted and of course she's gone. Yes, the price is
£50 and not a farthing less, but you can pay it when you like for I know
you're as honest as most, and whether you pay it or not, you must have
that chest and what's in it and no one else."
"All right," I said, "but don't trust it to the carrier. I'll send a
cart for it to-morrow morning. Lock it now and give me the key."
In due course the chest arrived, and I examined the bundle for the other
contents do not matter, although some of them were interesting. Pinned
inside the shawl I found a paper, undated and unsigned, but which from
the character and style of the writing was, I should say, penned by a
lady about sixty years ago. It ran thus: -
"My late father, who was such a great traveller in his young days and so
fond of exploring strange places, brought these things home from one of
his journeys before his marriage, I think from South America. He told
me once that the dress was found upon the body of a woman in a tomb and
that she must have been a great lady, for she was surrounded by a number
of other women, perhaps her servants who were brought to be buried with
her here when they died. They were all seated about a stone table at the
end of which were the remains of a man. My father saw the bodies near
the ruins of some forest city, in the tomb over which was heaped a great
mound of earth. That of the lady, which had a kind of shroud made of the
skins of long-wooled sheep wrapped about it as though to preserve the
dress beneath, had been embalmed in some way, which the natives of the
place, wherever it was, told him showed that she was royal. The others
were mere skeletons, held together by the skin, but the man had a long
fair beard and hair still hanging to his skull, and by his side was a
great cross-hilted sword that crumbled to fragments when it was touched,
except the hilt and the knob of amber upon it which had turned almost
black with age. I think my father said that the packet of skins or
parchment of which the underside is badly rotted with damp was set under
the feet of the man. He told me that he gave those who found the tomb a
great deal of money for the dress, gold ornaments, and emerald necklace,
as nothing so perfect had been found before, and the cloth is all worked
with gold thread. My father told me, too, that he did not wish the
things to be sold."
This was the end of the writing.
Having read it I examined the dress. It was of a sort that I had never
seen before, though experts to whom I have shown it say that it is
certainly South American of a very early date, and like the ornaments,
probably pre-Inca Peruvian. It is full of rich colours such as I have
seen in old Indian shawls which give a general effect of crimson. This
crimson robe clearly was worn over a skirt of linen that had a purple
border. In the box that I have spoken of were the ornaments, all of
plain dull gold: a waist-band; a circlet of gold for the head from which
rose the crescent of the young moon and a necklace of emeralds, uncut
stones now much flawed, for what reason I do not know, but polished and
set rather roughly in red gold. Also there were two rings. Round one
of these a bit of paper was wrapped upon which was written, in another
hand, probably that of the father of the writer of the memorandum: -
"Taken from the first finger of the right hand of a lady's mummy which I
am sorry, in our circumstances, it was quite impossible to carry away."
This ring is a broad band of gold with a flat bezel upon which something
was once engraved that owing to long and hard wear now cannot be
distinguished. In short, it appears to be a signet of old European make
but of what age and from what country it is impossible to determine.
The other ring was in a small leathery pouch, elaborately embroidered
in gold thread or very thin wire, which I suppose was part of the lady's
costume. It is like a very massive wedding ring, but six or eight times
as thick, and engraved all over with an embossed conventional design of
what look like stars with rays round them, or possibly petalled flowers.
Lastly there was the sword-hilt, of which presently.
Such were the trinkets, if so they may be called. They are of little
value intrinsically except for their weight in gold, because, as I have
said, the emeralds are flawed as though they have been through a fire or
some other unknown cause. Moreover, there is about them nothing of the
grace and charm of ancient Egyptian jewellery; evidently they belonged
to a ruder age and civilization. Yet they had, and still have, to my
imagining, a certain dignity of their own.
Also - here I became infected with the spirit of the peculiar
Potts - without doubt these things were rich in human associations. Who
had worn that dress of crimson with the crosses worked on it in gold
wire (they cannot have been Christian crosses), and the purple-bordered
skirt underneath, and the emerald necklace and the golden circlet from
which rose the crescent of the young moon? Apparently a mummy in a tomb,
the mummy of some long-dead lady of a strange and alien race. Was she
such a one as that old lunatic Potts had dreamed he saw standing before
him in the filthy, cumbered upper-chamber of a ruinous house in an
England market town, I wondered, one with great eyes like to those of a
doe and a regal bearing?
No, that was nonsense. Potts had lived with shadows until he believed in
shadows that came out of his own imagination and into it returned again.
Still, she was a woman of some sort, and apparently she had a lover or
a husband, a man with a great fair beard. How at this date, which must
have been remote, did a golden-bearded man come to foregather with a
woman who wore such robes and ornaments as these? And that sword hilt,
worn smooth by handling and with an amber knob? Whence came it? To my
mind - this was before expert examination confirmed my view - it looked
very Norse. I had read the Sagas and I remembered a tale recovered in
them of some bold Norsemen who about the years eight or nine hundred
had wandered to the coast of what is known now to be America - I think a
certain Eric was their captain. Could the fair-haired man in the grave
have been one of these?
Thus I speculated before I looked at the pile of parchments so evidently
prepared from sheep skins by one who had only a very rudimentary
knowledge of how to work such stuff, not knowing that in those
parchments was hid the answer to many of my questions. To these I turned
last of all, for we all shrink from parchments; their contents are
generally so dull. There was a great bundle of them that had been lashed
together with a kind of straw rope, fine straw that reminded me of that
used to make Panama hats. But this had rotted underneath together with
all the bottom part of the parchments, many sheets of them, of which
only fragments remained, covered with dry mould and crumbling. Therefore
the rope was easy to remove and beneath it, holding the sheets in place,
was only some stout and comparatively modern string - it had a red thread
in it that marked it as navy cord of an old pattern.
I slipped these fastenings off and lifted a blank piece of skin set upon
the top. Beneath appeared the first sheet of parchment, closely, very
closely covered with small "black-letter" writing, so faint and faded
that even if I were able to read black-letter, which I cannot, of it
I could have made nothing at all. The thing was hopeless. Doubtless
in that writing lay the key to the mystery, but it could never be
deciphered by me or any one else. The lady with the eyes like a deer had
appeared to old Potts in vain; in vain had she bidden him to hand over
this manuscript to me.
So I thought at the time, not knowing the resources of science.
Afterwards, however, I took that huge bundle to a friend, a learned
friend whose business in life it was and is, to deal with and to
decipher old manuscripts.
"Looks pretty hopeless," he said, after staring at these. "Still, let's
have a try; one never knows till one tries."
Then he went to a cupboard in his muniment room and produced a bottle
full of some straw-coloured fluid into which he dipped an ordinary
painting brush. This charged brush he rubbed backwards and forwards over
the first lines of the writing and waited. Within a minute, before my
astonished eyes, that faint, indistinguishable script turned coal-black,
as black as though it had been written with the best modern ink
yesterday.
"It's all right," he said triumphantly, "it's vegetable ink, and this
stuff has the power to bring it up as it was on the day when it was
used. It will stay like that for a fortnight and then fade away again.
Your manuscript is pretty ancient, my friend, time of Richard II, I
should say, but I can read it easily enough. Look, it begins, 'I, Hubert
de Hastings, write this in the land of Tavantinsuyu, far from England
where I was born, whither I shall never more return, being a wanderer
as the rune upon the sword of my ancestor, Thorgrimmer, foretold that
I should be, which sword my mother gave me on the day of the burning of
Hastings by the French,' and so on." Here he stopped.
"Then for heaven's sake, do read it," I said.
"My dear friend," he answered, "it looks to me as though it would mean
several months' work, and forgive me for saying that I am paid a salary
for my time. Now I'll tell you what you have to do. All this stuff
must be treated, sheet by sheet, and when it turns black it must
be photographed before the writing fades once more. Then a skilled
person - so-and-so, or so-and-so, are two names that occur to me - must be
employed to decipher it again, sheet by sheet. It will cost you money,
but I should say that it was worth while. Where the devil is, or was,
the land of Tavantinsuyu?"
"I know," I answered, glad to be able to show myself superior to my
learned friend in one humble instance. "Tavantinsuyu was the native name
for the Empire of Peru before the Spanish Invasion. But how did this
Hubert get there in the time of Richard II? That is some centuries
earlier than Pizarro set foot upon its shores."
"Go and find out," he answered. "It will amuse you for quite a long
while and perhaps the results may meet the expenses of decipherment, if
they are worth publishing. I expect they are not, but then, I have read
so many old manuscripts and found most of them so jolly dull."
Well, that business was accomplished at a cost that I do not like to
record, and here are the results, more or less modernised, since often
Hubert of Hastings expressed himself in a queer and archaic fashion.
Also sometimes he used Indian words as though he had talked the tongue
of these Peruvians, or rather the Chanca variety of it, so long that he
had begun to forget his own language. Myself I have found his story very
romantic and interesting, and I hope that some others will be of the
same opinion. Let them judge.
But oh, I do wonder what was the end of it, some of which doubtless was
recorded on the rotted sheets though of course there can have been no
account of the great battle in which he fell, since Quilla could not
write at all, least of all in English, though I suppose she survived it
and him.
The only hint of that end is to be found in old Potts's dream or vision,
and what is the worth of dreams and visions?
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
THE SWORD AND THE RING
I, Hubert of Hastings, write this in the land of Tavantinsuyu, far from
England, where I was born, whither I shall never more return, being
a wanderer as the rune upon the sword of my ancestor, Thorgrimmer,
foretold that I should be, which sword my mother gave me on the day of
the burning of Hastings by the French. I write it with a pen that I have
shaped from a wing feather of the great eagle of the mountains, with ink
that I have made from the juices of certain herbs which I discovered,
and on parchment that I have split from the skins of native sheep, with
my own hands, but badly I fear, though I have seen that art practised
when I was a merchant of the Cheap in London Town.
I will begin at the beginning.
I am the son of a fishing-boat owner and was a trader in the ancient
town of Hastings, and my father was drowned while following his trade
at sea. Afterwards, being the only child left of his, I took on his
business, and on a certain day went out to sea to net fish with two of
my serving men. I was then a young man of about three and twenty years
of age and not uncomely. My hair, which I wore long, was fair in colour
and curled. My eyes, set wide apart, were and still are large and blue,
although they have darkened somewhat and sunk into the head in this land
of heat and sunshine. My nose was wide-nostrilled and large, my mouth
also was over-large, although my mother and some others used to think
it well-shaped. In truth, I was large all over though not so tall, being
burly, with a great breadth of chest and uncommon thickness through the
body, and very strong; so strong that there were few who could throw me
when I was young.
For the rest, like King David, I, who am now so tanned and weather worn
that at a little distance were my hair and beard hidden I might almost
be taken for one of the Indian chiefs about me, was of a ruddy and a
pleasant countenance, perhaps because of my wonderful health, who had
never known a day of sickness, and of an easy nature that often goes
with health. I will add this, for why should I not - that I was no fool,
but one of those who succeed in that upon which they set their minds.
Had I been a fool I should not to-day be the king of a great people and
the husband of their queen; indeed, I should not be alive.
But enough of myself and my appearance in those years that seem as far
off as though they had never been save in the land of dreams.
Now I and my two serving men, sailors both of them like myself and most
of the folk of Hastings set out upon a summer eve, purposing to fish all
night and return at dawn. We came to our chosen ground and cast out the
net, meeting with wonderful fortune since by three in the morning the
big boat was full of every kind of fish. Never before, indeed, had we
made so large a haul.
Looking back at that great catch, as here in this far land it is my
habit to do upon everything, however small, that happened to me in my
youth before I became a wanderer and an exile, I seem to see in it an
omen. For has it not always been my lot in life to be kissed of fortune
and to gather great store, and then of a sudden to lose it all as I was
to lose that rich multitude of fishes?
To-day, when I write this, once more I have great wealth of pomp and
love and power, of gold also, more than I can count. When I go forth, my
armies, who still look on me as half a god, shout their welcome and kiss
the air after their heathen fashion. My beauteous queen bows down to me
and the women of my household abase themselves into the dust. The
people of the Ancient City of Gold turn their faces to the wall and the
children cover their eyes with their hands that they may not look upon
my splendour as I pass, while maidens throw flowers for my feet to
tread. Upon my judgment hangs life or death, and my lightest word is as
though it were spoken from heaven. These and many other things are mine,
the trappings of power, the prerogative of the Lord-from-the-Sea who
brought victory to the Chanca people and led them back to their ancient
home where they might live safe, far from the Inca's rage.
And yet often, as I sit alone in my splendour upon the roof of the
ancient halls or wander through the starlit palace gardens, I call to
mind that great catch of fishes in the English sea and of what followed
after. I call to mind also my prosperity and wealth as one of the first
merchants of London Town and what followed after. I call to mind, too,
the winning of Blanche Aleys, the lady so far above me in rank and
station and what followed after. Then it is that I grow afraid of what
may follow after this present hour of peace and love and plenty.
Certainly one thing will follow, and that is death. It may come late
or it may come soon. But yesterday a rumour reached me through my spies
that Kari Upanqui, the Inca of Tavantinsuyu, he who once was as my
brother, but who now hates me because of his superstitions, and because
I took a Virgin of the Sun to be my wife, gathers a great host to follow
on the path we trod many years ago when the Chancas fled from the Inca
tyranny back to their home in the ancient City of Gold and to smite us
here. That host, said the rumours, cannot march till next year, and then
will be another year upon its journey. Still, knowing Kari, I am sure
that it will march, yes, and arrive, after which must befall the great
battle in the mountain passes wherein, as of old, I shall lead the
Chanca armies.
Perchance I am doomed to fall in that battle. Does not the rune upon
Wave-Flame, the sword of Thorgrimmer my ancestor, say of him that holds
it that,
"Conquering, conquered shall he be,
And far away shall sleep with me"?
Well, if the Chancas conquer, what care I if I am conquered? 'Twould be
a good death and a clean, to fall by Kari's spear, if I knew that Kari
and his host fell also, as I swear that fall they shall, St. Hubert
helping me. Then at least Quilla and her children would live on in peace
and greatness since they can have no other foe to fear.
Death, what is death? I say that it is the hope of every one of us and
most of all the exile and the wanderer. At the best it may be glory; at
the worst it must be sleep. Moreover, am I so happy that I should fear
to die? Quilla cannot read this writing, and therefore I will answer,
No. I am a Christian, but she and those about her, aye, my own children
with them, worship the moon and the host of heaven. I am white-skinned,
they are the hue of copper, though it is true that my little daughter,
Gudruda, whom I named so after my mother, is almost white. There are
secrets in their hearts that I shall never learn and there are secrets