The Seven Serpents Trilogy

by Scott O'Dell

  La Macarena wore priceless jewels in her hair and around her neck and on her bodice. They dazzled my eyes, but it was her face that moved me. She had pink cheeks and a mouth like a rosebud that has just begun to open. But it was not these things. It was her eyes. I was so entranced by them that my friends left me kneeling there in the church and went on their way.

  The little princess had a different face from that of the Virgin of Hope, not rounded and pink, and her mouth was not a rosebud. It was her eyes that were the same as the Virgin’s. Large, black, flecked with amber—a midnight color—they enthralled me.

  I forgot where I was, and for an instant I was again in Seville kneeling before La Macarena. I heard a shout from de Soto and turned in time to see the last of the troops leave the courtyard. Hurriedly getting to my feet, wordlessly bowing to the girl, I jumped on my horse and fled. Overtaking my friends, I was greeted by jibes, to which I made no reply.

  When we reached Cajamarca and looked back, we saw that thousands of watch fires had begun to show on the hill sides. ‘They’re as thick as the stars of heaven,” Pizarro ob served.

  At once he called a council of his officers, Father Valverde, Felipillo, and myself.

  “We’re faced with appalling danger,” he said to us. “We’re surrounded by danger. But it is too late now to fly. And whither could we fly? At the first sign of retreat, the whole Inca army would be upon us. The causeways, the roads, the passes through the mountains would be occupied. We would be hemmed in on all sides.”

  Yet for all these serious words, Pizarro seemed lighthearted. He limped back and forth through the room, his eyes flashing in the light of a fire we fed with the Inca’s furniture.

  “We have been decoyed across the mountains,” he said, “a step at a time. We are now in the net Atahualpa has artfully prepared for us. Yet we have time, a day perhaps, to escape it. Not by fleeing his fury, but by turning fury upon him.”

  He went on to describe his plans at length, even to such small details as the fixing of bells to the horses’ breastplates in order to startle the Indians when the fighting began. The plan was similar to the barbarous attack Cortés had carried out at Cholólan and of his captain, Alvarado, at Tenochtitlán.

  It was well past midnight when the council broke up. Sen tinels were posted at the gateway to the city and on the roof of the main fortress. We then bedded down in the quarters Atahualpa had prepared for us.

  Sleep came slowly. I kept hearing bird calls, the same calls I had heard when we entered the city, hours before. However, it was not danger that kept me awake. It was the dark gaze of Chima Atahualpa and her wild, flowery scent. And the sound of the little bells when she moved her head.

  CHAPTER 24

  THE STORM ENDED DURING THE NIGHT. IN THE MORNING FATHER Valverde celebrated a solemn mass, and everyone joined in the fervent chant, “Rise, O Lord, and judge thine own cause.” The chant went on and on and grew in volume until it was shortened by exhausted throats to “Exsurge, Domine.” I was kneeling to the fore, not far from Valverde, when, looking up from his book, he made a note that I was taking no part in the chant.

  After the service was over he sought me out. “You don’t wish the Lord to join our cause?” he said.

  There were no differences between me and Father Valverde—none that I was aware of—and I wanted none. Since the day on the trail when he spoke about the amethyst ring and said that Pedroza was a dear friend, I had viewed him with suspicion. He reminded me of that hard-headed, martyrdom-seeking bishop.

  “On the contrary,” I said. “I devoutly wish that the Lord will help us.” I could not say and still remain in camp, “Help us all, the Indians especially.”

  “Then why did you not join our humble plea to the Lord in this hour of peril?”

  “Because,” I lied with a serious face, “my voice is not suited at all for chanting. Or for singing, either. Even my speaking voice, as you may have heard, has an unpleasing twinge to it. The results of a boyhood brawl, in which I was at fault, sir.”

  “The Lord,” Valverde replied, “listens to all sounds. Be they croaks, squeals, or grunts. He hears all.”

  “Then next time, sir, I’ll be bold and add my humble voice to the chants.”

  “There will be no next time,” Valverde said with godly confidence, froth clinging to his lips. “The heathen savage and his minions shall be vanquished, scattered to the four winds of the world.”

  Father Vincente de Valverde, chaplain and spiritual adviser to Francisco Pizarro, was right—there was no “next time” for Atahualpa and his people, ever again.

  Late that afternoon, before sunset, the Inca led a royal pro cession through the gates of the city. Hundreds of menials with hundreds of brooms swept every hindrance from his path, sing ing songs of triumph as they came.

  “They sound,” Father Valverde remarked, “like songs hatched in hell.”

  The procession filled the square, which was twice as large as the largest square in Seville. Atahualpa rode high above everyone, in an open litter lined with the plumes of tropical birds and shining plates of gold and silver. In the very center of the square, he halted and glanced around at his vassals, who by now numbered seven thousand or more.

  “Where are the strangers?” he shouted in a voice that carried to us as we stood hidden behind the stone walls of the barracks. “Strangers, come forth, I have not a whole day to talk.”

  At this moment Father Valverde strode forward with Little Philip, and I followed at their heels. The crowds divided be fore us. No voice was raised. There was not a sound as we made our way to where the Inca stood waiting beside his litter.

  Valverde carried a Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the other. He held the crucifix at arm’s length toward Atahualpa, as if to ward off evil spirits, and then spoke quickly in a dry voice, as Felipillo and I took turns changing his Spanish to the language of Peru.

  It was a long recital, beginning with the fall of man and his redemption by Jesus Christ. After every sentence I picked up the priest’s words and as best I could translated them for Atahualpa.

  He stood only a few paces away from us, a regal figure in his long white gown and collar of flashing emeralds. He seemed to understand little of what I said, but when Felipillo took over the task of translating, he began to listen more intently.

  At times he smiled and nodded his head. But at the end, hearing Valverde’s final demand, spoken in a rising voice and clearly explained by Little Philip, that he must acknowledge the supremacy of the Christian faith and the power of the Spanish king, he raised his hand in a menacing gesture and suddenly took a step toward us.

  “I will be no man’s tributary,” he shouted. “I am willing to hold your emperor as a brother, but not as one who gives me commands. For my faith, I will not change it.”

  He paused to glance back at the nobles who stood behind him, adding their outrage to his own. When they were silent he spoke in a quiet voice.

  “Your own God was put to death by the very men He created,” the Inca said and pointed to the sun. “But mine still lives in the heavens and looks down on his children.” Then he turned to Valverde. “By what authority do you say these things and make these demands?”

  Valverde thrust the Bible toward him. The Inca took it and ruffled the pages, muttering to himself as his face darkened.

  “Go tell your comrades,” he said, “that they shall give me a full account of their doings in my land. And that I shall not go forth from here until they do.”

  With these angry words, he flung the Bible at Valverde’s feet. The priest picked up the holy book, pawed his way through the crowd, and I followed him. Pizarro was waiting inside the barracks door.

  “Did you not see,” Valverde cried out, “that while I stood there talking to this dog, full of pride as he is, the square and the fields beyond filled with savages?”

  “I have seen it all,” Pizarro said.

  “Then act, I pray you,” Valverde said.

  Pizarro said not
hing. It was at this moment that I should have spoken. Not that any word from me, or a thousand words, could have stayed his hand. The plan had been thought out, was complete. Nothing, no one, could have changed it—not Valverde, not King Carlos himself.

  Yet if I had raised my voice against the dark act it would have given me peace of mind, at least, for to be silent in the face of evil is to condone it. It was out of cowardice that I held my tongue. To have set myself against Pizarro would have meant my death.

  “The time is now,” Valverde said.

  “It is past the time,” Pizarro said. “It is late.”

  “Not too late,” Valverde said. “Set on at once. I absolve you.”

  Pizarro was not waiting for absolution, only for himself. At last he waved a white scarf—the agreed-upon sign. A fal conet was fired from the roof of the fortress, and men poured into the square, shouting, “Santiago, and at them!”

  The massacre lasted for nearly an hour. The Indians who tried to escape were hacked down. Their bodies piled up and choked the gateway. Some broke through the wall that en closed the square and fled into the countryside. Others were cut down by the horsemen or trampled to death.

  My own part in the hideous act was small and very con fused. At the first rush I rode out with Pizarro to be on hand if he saw fit to talk to Atahualpa. I had no thought of using the sword, yet I couldn’t keep from trampling the Indians in the stallion’s path.

  I found myself near the center of the square, not far from Pizarro, who was trying to reach Atahualpa, and surrounded by a flood of fleeing bodies, when a young Indian became en tangled in my reins. We looked at each other in surprise—two strangers who had accidentally bumped together in the street.

  For an instant I thought he was about to apologize. Then I saw that it wasn’t an accident. The man had a good hold on the reins and was putting all his weight on them. Suddenly, as the stallion reared, he was lifted from the ground. He swung in the air but held on. The reins were wrapped around one of his wrists.

  “Let go, you fool!” I shouted above the din, fighting to keep my seat in the saddle.

  The Indian said nothing. He wore heavy gold rings in his ears—a sign of nobility—and his bare chest was painted with bars and circles. His hand had turned white from the pressure of the reins wrapped around his wrist.

  “Let go!” I shouted again.

  In answer he took a grip on the reins with his other hand. He was on his feet one moment and in the air, his feet dangling, the next. He carried no weapons in his breechclout. He was bent upon only one thing—unseating me, dragging me to the ground.

  Above the din of screams and moans and the neighing of horses, leaning toward him so that our bodies almost touched, I shouted in his face, “Let go, Inca, or I will kill you.”

  His hold on the reins loosened, and I thought that he wanted to let me go. But then he took another grip and as he did so, swung toward me and spat upon my chest.

  The sword was rusted to its sheath. I yanked it free and lunged at him. The heavy blade fell across his wrists. He stared up at me for a fleeting moment, as if he was surprised that I really meant the blow. A second blow severed his hands, and he staggered away and was lost in the crowd.

  I found Pizarro. He was still working his way toward Atahualpa. The air was gray with smoke from our muskets and falconets.

  We reached the center of the square. Atahualpa was in his litter, enclosed by a band of nobles who had no weapons but were protecting him with their bodies. As we came upon him, the litter was overborne and he was thrown to the ground. Swordsmen rushed to finish him off. Pizarro stopped them.

  “Let no man strike the Inca,” he shouted. “On pain of death!”

  Like the massacres at Cholólan, when Cortés destroyed the city, and at Tenochtitlán, when Alvarado slew most of the Azteca nobles, this slaughter ended at sundown. By rough count, Pizarro and his soldiers on that day killed more than six thousand in the town of Cajamarca and wounded half that number.

  Pizarro saved Inca Atahualpa from the swords, not out of sympathy, but because he was far more important to him alive than dead. Before dusk settled on the square, while the last of the Indians were being hunted down, he whisked Atahualpa from the mob and led him to safety.

  That night Pizarro held a banquet for the emperor in one of the halls facing the great plaza, the scene only hours before of the massacre. Moans of the dying could be heard as we sat down to eat. With Little Philip seated next to me, eager to correct any mistakes I might make, I translated Pizarro’s words to the stunned emperor.

  “I beseech you,” Pizarro said to him in the gentlest and most pleading of voices, “not to be downcast by what has befallen you. Similar misfortunes have befallen all those who have re sisted us.”

  Atahualpa, who sat across the table from me, received these words, which were meant to be comforting, in stunned silence. He was a broad-shouldered, rugged man of thirty or less, much larger than the nobles around him, with a hawklike eye and the proud bearing of an emperor.

  “We have come to this land,” Pizarro went on, “to proclaim the creed of Jesus Christ. It is small wonder, therefore, that He has protected us. And that heaven itself has allowed your pride to be humbled because of your hostile thoughts about us. As well as the insult you offered to our sacred book, the Bible.”

  Atahualpa’s expression didn’t change at these words. He was sitting next to Pizarro and never glanced at him. His eyes were on me, watching every word that came from my mouth, as if they came not from his conqueror but from me.

  “And yet, my friend, I ask you to take courage,” Pizarro said. “We Spaniards are a generous race, warring only against those who war against us. We wish to show grace toward all who submit.”

  As I finished with these words, silence fell upon the hall, and I heard the cries of the wounded who were lying in the square. Pizarro heard them also, crossed himself, and waited for the Inca to answer. The Inca said nothing. And when the others at the table drank and began to eat, he sat gravely, his jeweled hands clasped in his lap.

  Father Valverde, seeing that I was troubled by the sounds that came from the square, whispered in my ear.

  “Remember,” he said, “that Charlemagne converted the Germans by hanging ten thousand of them.” He paused to drink from the golden goblet he had been given the previous day. “We shall do this in Peru also, God willing.”

  CHAPTER 25

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER THE BANQUET, PIZARRO WARNED US THAT WE WERE still in the heart of a powerful kingdom, surrounded by foes who were deeply attached to their emperor. We must be ever on guard, he said, ready to spring from our slumbers at the first call of the trum pet. He then posted sentinels throughout the town and placed a heavy guard on the chambers of Atahualpa.

  In the morning the prisoners were set to work digging trenches outside the walls, in which they were told to bury their dead. A troop of thirty horsemen was sent to the Inca’s pleasure house to gather up all the spoils it could find, to kill or drive off any nobles who still clung to the place. Captain Alvarado led the troop, and I went with him to serve as interpreter.

  We arrived in midmorning to find the gate open but the courtyard deserted. Not until a trumpet had been sounded and a musket fired did a fat, elderly nobleman appear, bowing deeply each step or two as he came toward us.

  “There is no one here but me, Pacha Camac,” he said in a feeble voice. “Me and the wives and children of Inca Atahualpa. What is it that you desire?”

  “We desire,” Alvarado said, “gold and silver and emeralds. Jewelry of value. Rich fabrics. And we desire these things without delay. Stir yourself, or else it will go hard with you.”

  He added a few insults to his speech, none of which I trans lated. The troopers did not wait for the old man to answer. They were already in the pleasure house, running from room to room.

  Shortly thereafter, as the first of the troopers appeared with armloads of treasure and piled them in the courtyard under the watchful eye of Al
varado, I heard the rustle of a dress and glanced around to find someone standing behind me.

  The sun was in my eyes and until she spoke I didn’t see that it was Chima, Atahualpa’s daughter. Her face had changed. Her hair was done neatly, but not with the tinkling bells she had worn when we had met before. In her hands, clutched to her breasts, was a golden cup.

  “You didn’t remember when you went away to take this with you,” she said.

  “Yes, in all the excitement I forgot.”

  “I saved it for you,” she said. “Just now someone tried to take it from me—one of your men—but I screamed and drove him off. Did you hear me then?”

  I was too embarrassed to answer. My tongue clove to my mouth. I wanted to fall to my knees and beg forgiveness for the disaster Pizarro had visited upon her father, upon her people, upon the girl herself.

  “This is a dark time,” she said.

  “Dark.” I managed to repeat the word. “Dark.”

  “Do you think the dark will go away?” she said.

  Chima spoke without the least hint of anger. I marveled that she could. Thousands of her people slain, her father held cap tive, her home at this very moment being ransacked by a band of gold-mad adventurers, their shouts echoing in the courtyard. The treasure they hauled out piece by piece, like frantic ants, was growing rapidly before her eyes.

  “Will these men go away?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said, still appalled, still at a loss for words. “When they have all the gold they can carry, they will go. They and the darkness together,” I said, not to comfort her, for she apparently was in no need of comfort. “Soon.”

  I was amazed that she still showed no emotion. She looked older, a year older, than when I had seen her last, but there was nothing in her voice to betray the sorrow she must feel. And yet, it was possible that she felt nothing. After all, her father had sat through the banquet without a trace of emo tion. I remembered that Moctezuma had watched his kingdom slip away with scarcely a word, accepting his fate because it was ordained. Chima could feel the same—that her fate was likewise ordained.