Генри Хаггард - Heart of the World

"Now, lords," she added, when the reading was finished and the signatures had been examined, "you will understand how it happened that in my rage at this tidings I strove to kill yonder infant, who has been palmed off upon you as the seed of the god, and I leave it to you to deal with those who planned the fraud."

Nahua ceased and sat down, and so great was the astonishment—or rather the awe—of the Council at the tale that she had told, that for a while none of them spoke. At length Dimas rose, and said:

"Maya, Lady of the Heart, and you strangers, you have heard the awful charge that is brought against you. What do you say in answer to it?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With a hoarse scream, Tikal vanished, and for a moment there was silence. It was broken by the voice of Maya, crying aloud, in accents of madness and despair—

"Not all the waters of the Holy Lake shall wash away our sin, yet may they serve to avenge us upon you, O you murderers of a helpless child!"

As she spoke, followed by the señor and myself, who I think alone of all the company guessed her dreadful purpose, Maya ran round the altar, and with both her hands grasped the symbol of the Heart which lay upon it.

"Forbear!" cried the voice of Dimas, but she did not heed him. Before he or any of us could reach her, dragging at it with desperate strength, she tore the ancient symbol from its bed, and with a loud and mocking laugh had cast it down upon the marble floor, where it shattered into fragments.

For one second all was still; then from the altar there came a sudden twang as of harp–strings breaking, that was followed instantly by another and more awful sound, the sound of the roar of many waters.

"Fly! fly!" cried a voice, "the floods are loosed and destruction is upon us and upon the People of the Heart!"

Now the Council rushed one and all towards the door of the Sanctuary; but I, Ignatio, by the grace of Heaven, remembered the outer door, the secret door through which we had entered, that the priest had left ajar.

"This way!" I cried in Spanish to the señor, and seizing Maya by the arm I dragged her with me into the passage. When all three of us were through I turned to close the door, and as I did so I saw an awful sight.

Out of the mouth of the pit before the altar sprang a vast column of water, which struck the roof of the Sanctuary with such fearful force that already the massive marble blocks began to rain down upon the crowd of fugitives, who struggled and in vain to open the door and escape into the Hall of the Dead. One other thing I saw; it was the corpse of Tikal, vomited from the depth into which the señor had hurled him, a shapeless mass ascending and descending with the column of water as alternately it struck and rebounded from the roof.

Then, before the flood could reach it, I closed the door, and, possessing myself of the bunch of keys that still hung in the lock, we fled up the passages and stairs till we came to the hall where we had been imprisoned. Here, however, we dared not stay, for already strange gurgling sounds struck upon our ears, and we felt the mighty fabric of the pyramid shake and quiver beneath the blows of the imprisoned waters as they burst their way upward and outward. Seizing lamps, we ran to the copper gates at the head of the hall, and not without trouble found the key that opened them. We had no time to spare, for as we left it the water rushed in at the further end of the chamber, a solid wave that in some few seconds filled it to the depth of six or eight feet. On we fled before the advancing flood, and well was it for us that our course lay upwards, for otherwise we must have been drowned as we searched for the keys to open the different gates and doors. But now fortune, which for so long had been our foe, befriended us, and the end of it was that we reached the summit of the pyramid just as the dawn began to break.