The Gold Eaters (18 page)

She lets it drop for now, lets Molina get used to the idea. If he digs in his heels she'll suggest a compromise. Not a move but a visit. So he can meet Tika in Huanuco Pampa and her kindred at Puma Hill. Once there, she is sure, he'll come around. He'll see it's a far better refuge than Little River. With ways of escape into the great jungle, where the only towns are made of leaves and the only roads of water.

10

W
aman smells land: spices, blossom, guano; a wet bonfire reek of cleared fields. The World on the wind.

How long has it been, this time?

More than a quarter of his life.

Mother and Father, Tika, Grandfather. His mind is already with them in Little River. They will slaughter a llama and roast it in the earth with hot stones and fragrant leaves, with peppers, cassava, sweet potatoes. Beer and palm toddy will flow. A banquet for everyone in town.

These anticipations are undercrept by doubt, by dread. Will they forgive him? Will they even know him, dressed as a Christian now? Doublet and hose, tan boots, red velvet cap. Even a black goatee, sparse though it is, which he grows to draw the eye from his scars. Perhaps, he thinks, I smell like a Christian too. What will Tika make of him? Will his worldliness, his outlandishness, impress her? Tika will be a woman now. She might have a husband, even a child. Foolish to think everything here will have stayed the same, awaiting his return as if time had stopped when he left.

And how will he get away to Little River, away from these men who mean to seize his homeland. The Old One has two ships now; two hundred men, not thirteen. With seventy horses and three dozen war-dogs. If I run, they will run me down.

The nightmares have been many. Blood, death, armoured men, armoured horses and mastiffs, trampling, tearing. Spaniards flensing helpless people with their swords, as when they captured him five years ago. He has spoken to no one of these fears, not even Candía. Nor has he been able to think them through with a clear mind. To face such things is to face himself, to probe his own soul with steel and fire like an inquisitor. Waman or Felipe? Which is he? Has he become a
converso
, an
indio ladino
? There are no words for such a being in his language, which in the years since he last saw Qoyllur has become an abandoned garden, overgrown, half forgotten, avoided for the thorns it holds. The only words that seem to fit are
iskay sunqo
—a man of two hearts. And the Castilian for that is
traitor
.

He stares across the whaleback sea at the growing smudge of land. What am I doing here? What will I bring down upon all those I love?

—

The distant settlement whose outline staggers in the haze seems squat, drab. This can't be Tumbes. Pilot Ruiz must have made some navigational mistake. Or is it simply a Tumbes diminished by the new eyes he brings after so many years, so many wonders and strange sights? Yet the Commander is frowning too.

Unable to clamber to the crosstrees himself, the Old One sends up man after man, every sharp-eyed lookout aboard. “Do you see it?” he shouts. “Do you see the golden temple on the hill?” Pizarro has been worn out by the slow voyage down the seaboard of the hotlands, once again fighting currents, headwinds, warriors. And before that by the months in Panama, wrangling with officials and investors; above all with his partner One-Eye.

Waman watched the two arguing—shouting, shoving, even drawing swords—on the day the Old One reached Panama. Everyone
knows the reason. The King's licence to conquer Peru denied Almagro the thing he most craved: shared command. All he got is to be Mayor of Tumbes, the vague title of Adelantado, and the promise of any realms he may find beyond those granted to Pizarro. He is also outnumbered now. The Old One has brought three half brothers, all young enough to be his sons: Hernando, the grandest, the only Pizarro born in wedlock, a plump fellow in his thirties with fleshy lips and a strawberry nose bloated by drink; Juan, the boldest, though barely twenty, always the first in a fight; and Gonzalo, the youngest and most unruly, the best-looking, cruel with women.

Waman shrinks at the thought of One-Eye's gaze: ice-blue, reptilian, the ball swivelling like a lizard's in the bald orb of his head. At least that eye is an hour astern, aboard the other ship.

A hand alights on his shoulder. Candía, with the lute. On the voyage he has played often, and given lessons to Waman.

They go to the foredeck, where the Greek checks the swivel gun, then sits on his haunches, strumming a few chords. Still a lovely sound to Waman's ears; still unearthly, especially here. He watches the fretwork, hoping one day to become so deft himself.

“Here.” Candía hands him the instrument. “Play something. From home, your home.” He glances landward. “Go on. Let's hear Peru.”

“I'm sorry . . .” The interpreter looks down at the sun-warped planking by his feet. “I can't remember.”

“Nonsense. What about those songs you used to sing, that flute you played?”

“I remember nothing.”

Candía pats his shoulder. “Anything. A nursery rhyme will do. All right?”

“I'll have to change your tuning.”

“Change it.”

“I'll have to sing along. I'm not much good . . .”

“Sing!”

Munankichu willanayta

Maymantachus kanichayta?

Do you want me to tell you

Where I come from?

Waman stops, disheartened, makes to hand back the lute. He shakes his head, saying it's a song his mother used to sing for him when he was little. A mountain song.

“Go on! It's lovely. Start again.”

Munankichu willanayta

Maymantachus kanichayta?

Haqay urqo qhipanmanta,

Sachakuna qhipanmanta,

Tikakuna chawpinmanta.

Do you want me to tell you

Where I come from?

From behind that hill,

Beyond the woods,

Amid the flowers.

Amid the
flowers.
Waman thrusts the lute fiercely into Candía's hand. He runs to the rail and empties his guts into the sea. Tika, a girl named Flower.

Now they are near enough for a clear sight from deck. There's no
longer any doubt. The commanding feature of the Tumbes skyline—the lofty roof of the Sun's House with its golden crest—has gone. Pizarro, tight-jawed, sucking cheeks, says nothing.

Terse commands from Pilot Ruiz as the ship enters the channel through the mangroves. A taut flutter of reefed sail, shouts from a man taking soundings at the prow.

The platinum light of noon pours down on emptiness. No ships in the haven, no fleet with the rainbow pennant at the masts. Only old fishing smacks and sun-bleached rafts strewn haphazard on the beach. The long jetty where Waman talked his way onto the traders' ship is nothing but a row of stumps, burnt to the waterline. The shops and eating houses along the waterfront are wrecked. Not a person to be seen, not a dog.

—

When both ships have moored, Commander Pizarro leads a hundred men through broken streets to the middle of the city. Still no word escapes him. They move with a clatter of weapons, creaking armour, hoofbeats, and murmuring from the men like the buzz of an uneasy hive.

Tumbes has been sacked. The fortress is empty, its gate thrown down. The temple walls stand open to the sky, rafters burnt, images and treasures torn away. The only grand building spared by the fires is the Governor's house, which stands whole, though looted, its colourful murals defaced with cuts, soot, lewd scribbles. Filth and broken pottery are strewn through the rooms, and in the courtyard bodies lie—skeletons torn apart by dogs and vultures. Almagro draws his sword, pokes furiously through rags of clothing, carcasses, nests of human hair.

The Old One barks at his men to clean the place, toss out the
bones. He assigns rooms, orders stores brought ashore. He sends Almagro and a dozen horse along the road for a look at the hinterland (and to be rid of One-Eye for the afternoon).

Waman and Candía he sends into the streets on a search for survivors. It takes them an hour to find anyone besides some wild-haired children, who shriek and run as if from fiends. Eventually they come upon two elderly women hiding in a courtyard. One, who seems from her dress to be a highborn lady, regards Candía fixedly. She approaches, studies his face, rubs a finger on his steel breastplate, even lightly strokes his beard.
Qollqi runa!
she exclaims, the silver man. She tells her companion she recognizes him from years ago, when she was Mother of the Chosen who lived beside the temple. She saw this silver man, or one just like him, in the Sun's window, eyeing her girls. She also walked out to the fields that day and heard the thunder of his blowpipe.

“Mamakuna,”
Waman asks respectfully, surprising the women with his Quechua, “there was another bearded one who stayed behind in Tumbes. Molina by name. Have you seen or heard anything of him?”

“Mulina?”
She looks at her companion. Both shake their heads in the local way: a single side-to-side with the eyes half shut and raised to the sky. He had forgotten the gesture. It makes him homesick as a child.

They hear angry voices from the Governor's house as they draw near, bringing the women. Another row between the Commander and One-Eye, already back from his excursion: “. . . lies, Pizarro. More of your damned lies! Where's your great kingdom? Where are your temples filled with gold? Even the bridge is down. This land's already sacked. By whom, I wonder. Answer me that. God's blood! By whom?”

Waman despairs. What can such men accomplish? How can he escape them? Candía returns his glum look as they go inside. “At it again,” the Greek says, rolling his big dark eyes.

“How should I know what's happened?” the Old One is saying. “But it doesn't matter, does it? It's obviously just Indians against Indians. And the fewer of them left the better. The gold is here somewhere. Can't you smell it?” He sniffs the air. “You'll get your gold, Don Diego. Even if we have to dig it from the ruins of every city in Peru. Upon my honour.” He makes to clasp his partner by the forearm.

“Your
honour
?” One-Eye twists away. He drives a fist into the wall, dislodging a scab of plaster. “I'd sooner trust a Moor!”

The two women look at each other in dismay. Waman recalls the ways of his country. Great men do not show anger; they are feared most when they smile.

“Is this the best you can do, lads?” Pizarro calls, glad of the interruption. “A pair of old whores?”

“Don Francisco,” Candía says, “these are worthy ladies, fallen on hard times. This is the Mother Superior of their convent, the very one I saw five years ago. She remembers me!”

“What about Molina? What of the Emperor's man? The lady Governor? What in God's name has happened here?”

The Mother Superior says nothing while Waman relays these questions. Then she unleashes a torrent, keening like a mourner. Many times she repeats
hatun unqoy
,
hatun
wañuy
, great sickness, great death. And
hatun auqay
, a great war. He has trouble following—so long since he's heard the language—and it's impossible to slow the woman and render her words phrase by phrase. But he gets the gist.

“She says a terrible pestilence ravaged the Empire from Quito to Chile, Commander. Two-thirds of the people have died. Among the
first was the Emperor Wayna Qhapaq. His chosen heir died too. Dead before his father's body was embalmed.”

Waman feels the ground tilt. A storm breaks in his mind. If Tumbes is like this, and all the World, what horrors will he find in Little River? The floor drops from under him. He falls, and falls.

While Waman is being helped to his feet and revived with a swig of wine, five men, men of importance, are escorted in by the Commander's guard.

“Ah,” says Pizarro, glaring at Almagro. “Now we can get some real information.”

The leader, who wears a red turban, big earspools of gold, and a striped blue-and-yellow tunic, enters as confidently as if he met Spaniards every day. He has a lazy eye, and his young face is pitted like a rusty cannonball. One like me, Waman thinks, one who caught the pox yet lived. He tells Waman he is Chillimasa, Governor of Tumbes, son of Lady Sian, the former Governor who died in the Great Death. He was there as his mother's attendant when Candía dined with the All-Seer years ago. Asking Waman to point out the bearded ones' leader, he strides up to Pizarro, claps him on the shoulder and bids him welcome to his house.