Dominic Sandbrook

He goes to see Atahualpa and he says, I've heard rumors that your men are going to come and rescue you and you're communicating with them through your knotted strings.

And Atahualpa scoffed at him.

Are you joking?

What chance would my men have against men as brave as you?

Stop mocking me like this.

And clearly some of the Spaniards do believe him.

So one of the younger men, a guy called Pedro Catano, remembers that Atahualpa called

Pizarro's bluff.

If any warriors did come from Quito, they would be coming on my orders.

Find out whether it's true.

If it is true, then go ahead.

You can execute me.

And the Spanish sources say that Pizarro found this very stressful.

He couldn't decide what to do.

He ordered Atahualpa to be chained by the neck at this point to stop him escaping.

As we will see, he knows perfectly well that Charles V will go ballistic if he finds out that Pizarro has murdered a monarch.

I mean, even in this Aztec story, Cortes had to make up a load of nonsense about Montezuma rebelling, having agreed in order to justify murdering Montezuma.

And I think this is exactly what Pizarro is facing right now.

Mid-July 1533, he calls a big meeting to decide Atahualpa's fate, and all the big guns are there.

We're told that Pizarro and the men who had been there from the very beginning want to keep Atahualpa alive.