The Virgin of the Sun

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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
in mine from which they cannot draw the veil because our bloods are
different. Yet God knows, I love them well enough, and most of all that
greatest of women, Quilla.

Oh! the truth is that here on earth there is no happiness for man.

It is because of this rumour of the coming of Kari with his host that I
set myself to this task, that I have long had in my mind, to write down
something of my history, both in England and in this land which, at any
rate for hundreds of years, mine is the first white foot to press. It
seems a foolish thing to do since when I have written who will read, and
what will chance to that which I have written? I shall leave orders that
it be placed beneath my feet in the tomb, but who will ever find that
tomb again? Still I write because something in my heart urges me to the
task.



I return to the far-off days. Our boat being full with merry hearts we
set sail before a faint wind for Hastings beach. As yet there was little
light and much fog, still the landward breeze was enough to draw us
forward. Then of a sudden we heard sounds as of men talking upon ships
and the clank of spars and blocks. Presently came a puff of air lifting
the fog for a little and we saw that we were in the midst of a
great fleet, a French fleet, for the Lilies of France flew at their
mast-heads, saw, too, that their prows were set for Hastings, though
for the while they were becalmed, since the wind that was enough for our
light, large-sailed fishing-boat could not stir their bulk. Moreover,
they saw us, for the men-at-arms on the nearest ship shouted threats and
curses at us and followed the shouts with arrows that almost hit us.

Then the fog closed down again, and in it we slipped through the French
fleet.

It may have been the best part of an hour later that we reached
Hastings. Before the boat was made fast to the jetty, I sprang to it
shouting:

"Stir! stir! the French are upon you! To arms! We have slipped through a
whole fleet of them in the mist."

Instantly the sleepy quay seemed to awaken. From the neighbouring fish
market, from everywhere sailormen and others came running, followed by
children with gaping mouths, while from the doors of houses far away
shot women with scared faces, like ferreted rabbits from their burrows.
In a minute the crowd had surrounded me, all asking questions at once in
such a fashion that I could only answer them with my cry of:

"Stir! the French are upon you. To arms, I say. To arms!"

Presently through the throng advanced an old white-bearded man who wore
a badge of office, crying as he came, "Make way for the bailiff!"

The crowd obeyed, opening a path, and soon we were face to face.

"What is it, Hubert of Hastings?" he asked. "Is there fire that you
shout so loudly?"

"Aye, Worship," I answered. "Fire and murder and all the gifts that the
French have for England. The Fleet of France is beating up for Hastings,
fifty sail of them or more. We crept through them in the fog, for the
wind which would scarce move them served our turn and beyond an arrow or
two, they took no note of a fishing-boat."

"Whence come they?" asked the bailiff, bewildered.

"I know not, but those in another boat we passed in the midst shouted
that these French were ravaging the coast and heading for Hastings
to put it to fire and sword. Then that boat vanished away, I know not
where, and that is all I have to tell save that the French will be here
within an hour."

Without staying to ask more questions, the bailiff turned and ran
towards the town, and presently the alarm bells rang out from the towers
of All Saints and St. Clement's, while criers summoned all men to the
market-place. Meanwhile I, not without a sad look at my boat and the
rich catch within, made my way into the town, followed by my two men.

Presently I reached an ancient, timbered house, long, low, and rambling,
with a yard by its side full of barrels, anchors, and other marine
stores such as rope, that had to do with the trade I carried on at this
place.

I, Hubert, with a mind full of fears, though not for myself, and a
stirring of the blood such as was natural to my age at the approach
of my first taste of battle, ran fast up to that house which I have
described, and paused for a moment by the big elm tree that grew in
front of the door, of which the lower boughs were sawn off because they
shut out the light from the windows. I remember that elm tree very
well, first because when I was a child starlings nested in a hole in the
trunk, and I reared one in a wicker cage and made a talking bird of it
which I kept for several years. It was so tame that it used to go about
sitting on my shoulder, till at last, outside the town a cat frightened
it thence, and before I could recapture it, it was taken by a hawk,
which hawk I shot afterwards with an arrow out of revenge.

Also this elm is impressed upon me by the fact that on that morning when
I halted by it, I noted how green and full of leaf it was. Next morning,
after the fire, I saw it again, all charred and blackened, with its
beautiful foliage withered by the heat. This contrast remained upon my
memory, and whenever I see any great change of fortune from prosperity
to ruin, or from life to death, always I bethink me of that elm. For
it is by little things which we ourselves have seen and not by those
written of or told by others, that we measure and compare events.

The reason that I ran so hard and then paused by the elm, was because
my widowed mother lived in that house. Knowing that the French meant
mischief for a good reason, because one of their arrows, or perhaps a
quarrel from a cross-bow, whistled just past my head out there upon the
sea, my first thought was to get her away to some place of safety, no
easy task seeing that she was infirm with age. My second, that which
caused me to pause by the tree, was how I should break the news to her
in such a fashion that she would not be over-frightened. Having thought
this over I went on into the house.

The door opened into the sitting-room that had a low roof of plaster and
big oak beams. There I found my mother kneeling by the table upon which
food was set for breakfast: fried herrings, cold meat, and a jug of ale.
She was saying her prayers after her custom, being very religious
though in a new fashion, since she was a follower of a preacher called
Wycliffe, who troubled the Church in those days. She seemed to have gone
to sleep at her prayers, and I watched her for a moment, hesitating to
waken her. My mother, as even then I noted, was a very handsome woman,
though old, for I was born when she had been married twenty years or
more, with white hair and well-cut features that showed the good blood
of which she came, for she was better bred than my father and quarrelled
with her kin to marry him.

At the sound of my footsteps she woke up and saw me.

"Strange," she said, "I slept at my prayers who did so little last
night, as has become a habit with me when you are out a-fishing, for
which God forgive me, and dreamed that there was some trouble forward.
Scold me not, Hubert, for when the sea has taken the father and two
sons, it is scarcely wonderful that I should be fearful for the last of
my blood. Help me to rise, Hubert, for this water seems to gather in my
limbs and makes them heavy. One day, the leech says, it will get to the
heart and then all will be over."

I obeyed, first kissing her on the brow, and when she was seated in her
armed chair by the table, I said,

"You dream too well, Mother. There is trouble. Hark! St. Clement's
bells are talking of it. The French come to visit Hastings. I know for I
sailed through their fleet just after dawn."

"Is it so?" she asked quietly. "I feared worse. I feared lest the dream
meant that you had gone to join your brothers in the deep. Well, the
French are not here yet, as thank God you are. So eat and drink, for we
of England fight best on full bellies."

Again I obeyed who was very hungry after that long night and needed food
and ale, and as I swallowed them we heard the sound of folk shouting and
running.

"You are in haste, Hubert, to join the others on the quay and send
a Frenchman or two to hell with that big bow of yours?" she said
inquiringly.

"Nay," I answered, "I am in haste to get you out of this town, which I
fear may be burnt. There is a certain cave up yonder by the Minnes Rock
where I think you might lie safe, Mother."

"It has come down to me from my fathers, Hubert, that it was never the
fashion of the women of the north to keep their men to shield them when
duty called them otherwhere. I am helpless in my limbs and heavy, and
cannot climb, or be borne up yonder hill to any cave. Here I stop where
I have dwelt these five-and-forty years, to live or die as God pleases.
Get you to your duty, man. Stay. Call those wenches and bid them fly
inland to their folk, out Burwash way. They are young and fleet of foot,
and no Frenchman will catch them."

I summoned the girls who were staring, white-faced, from the attic
window-place. In three minutes they were gone, though it is true that
one of them, the braver, wished to bide with her mistress.

I watched them start up the street with other fugitives who were pouring
out of Hastings, and came back to my mother. As I did so a great shout
told me that the French fleet had been sighted.

"Hubert," she said, "take this key and go to the oak chest in my
sleeping room, lift out the linen at the top and bring me that which
lies wrapped in cloth beneath."

I did so, returning with a bundle that was long and thin. With a knife
she cut the string that tied it. Within were a bag of money and a sword
in an ancient scabbard covered with a rough skin which I took to be that
of a shark, which scabbard in parts was inlaid with gold.

"Draw it," said my mother.

I did so, and there came to light a two-edged blade of blue steel,
such as I had never seen before, for on the blade were engraved strange
characters whereof I could make nothing, although as it chanced I could
read and write, having been taught by the monks in my childhood. The
hilt, also, that was in the form of a cross, had gold inlaid upon it;
at the top of it, a large knob or apple of amber, much worn by handling.
For the rest it was a beauteous weapon and well balanced.

"What of this sword?" I asked.

"This, Son. With the black bow that you have," and she pointed to the
case that leaned against the table, "it has come down in my family
for many generations. My father told me that it was the sword of one
Thorgrimmer, his ancestor, a Norseman, a Viking he called him, who came
with those who took England before the Norman time; which I can well
believe since my father's name, like mine, till I married, was Grimmer.
This sword, also, has a name and it is Wave-Flame. With it, the tale
tells, Thorgrimmer did great deeds, slaying many after their heathen
fashion in his battles by land and sea. For he was a wanderer, and it is
said of him that once he sailed to a new land far across the ocean, and
won home again after many strange adventures, to die at last here in
England in some fray. That is all I know, save that a learned man from
the north once told my father's father that the writing on the sword
means:--