The Light of Machu Picchu

by [Incas 03] The Light of Machu Picchu (retail) (epub)

  ‘Well and truly dead. I arrived just in time, didn’t I?’

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘Brother Bartholomew, of course. He told me that I’d find you stuck here like a rat. It took me some time to get here, because I had to get my hands on this…’

  Sebastian pulled a steel awl and a little hammer from his leather skirt.

  ‘Your fat jailer friend proved reluctant to be found. Still, he’s a cheerful fellow, the kind of man I like: he confided in me that he had to father six children with six different Indian girls before one of them gave him a son. In any case, he had this damned awl, which is the only way to break your irons. Without it, all I could do would be to rip out the chain from the floor, and you’d have to carry it around with you.’

  Sebastian set about breaking the irons as he spoke, setting the awl against the shackle that held the irons to the chain and striking it with small, precise blows with the hammer.

  ‘Don’t move, I’ll be finished in a moment. Watch the walls, and make sure that our Inca friends don’t return to surprise us with their company!’

  The tinkling sound of his irons opening was, for Gabriel, more precious than the chinking sound of gold coins. As soon as they were off, he immediately breathed easier.

  ‘There, you’re free,’ said Sebastian, affectionately taking Gabriel by the wrist.

  ‘Sweet Jesus, I was sure that I was going to roast like a chicken between these walls,’ said Gabriel, massaging his ankles, which suddenly felt as though they were being pricked by a thousand needles. ‘I am deeply grateful to you, Sebastian.’

  ‘By God, you do smell like roasted flesh!’ said Sebastian, with an amused grimace. ‘Come, we must go. But first…’

  He drew his dagger and kneeled down beside the dead warrior. Without flinching, he plunged the blade into the corpse’s chest.

  ‘…I must take back my arrow,’ he explained. ‘It’s too valuable, we don’t have enough ammunition to waste.’

  ‘Where are Hernando and the others?’ asked Gabriel, averting his gaze from what Sebastian was doing.

  ‘In the cancha on the great square. It didn’t burn. Don Hernando placed slaves on the roof to put out fires as they started. A dozen of them were killed, but now we’re all sheltered there, and the horses too. There, I’m finished.’

  Without showing the slightest emotion, Sebastian wiped the blood off the short arrow with the dead man’s tunic.

  ‘Come, I’ll lead you there,’ chuckled Sebastian. ‘I look forward to seeing the surprise on their faces when they see you alive and walking about!’

  ‘Like this, in these rags?’

  Sebastian’s hearty laugh rung out over the cacophony of the city under siege.

  ‘No, no, milord! I’ve something far more appropriate than that!’

  * * *

  To Gabriel’s astonishment, Sebastian didn’t take the shortest, most direct route back to the great square. Quite the opposite: in total silence, and with feline agility, he followed the route through the small alleys around the square, smoke still rising from the burned-out roofs of their houses. They came out onto a road that Gabriel recognized as the one leading to the palace of Hatun Cancha. Sebastian stopped in front of a door made of guanaco skin and pushed it open. The skin was still fresh – and hence damp – enough to have survived the blaze.

  ‘Wait in here a moment,’ whispered Sebastian, closing the door behind him. ‘Don’t go anywhere – I’ll be right back.’

  Sebastian disappeared into the smoke. Gabriel didn’t recognize the cancha. Like most of the other buildings in the city, its roof had gone. Its walls, however, seemed to have survived well, and were decorated in the Spanish manner. Recently built walls covered in dun-colored roughcast joined the long Inca structures so that the space within was surrounded by an unbroken barricade. Doors and windows had been fitted – real European doors and windows – giving the enclosure a familiar feel.

  ‘All’s well,’ whispered Sebastian when he returned. ‘I just wanted to check that we have no unwelcome visitors.’

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Gabriel.

  Sebastian’s laugh was as clear as a child’s.

  ‘Ho! Where are we! Why, we’re in my palace, of course!’

  ‘This is yours?’

  ‘Have you forgotten that I’m rich? A true Croesus!’

  Gabriel shook his head, smiling wryly. He looked at Sebastian, almost naked and holding a crossbow, and it was hard to imagine him as the owner of this palace.

  ‘If the truth be told, I’d forgotten. And I’d forgotten precisely how rich you’ve become… what a house!’

  ‘Oh, it’s much better when you see it with its roof and furniture,’ grumbled Sebastian, leading him in. ‘Come, let’s not stay here.’

  There was a smell of stale smoke in the room they entered, a smell of soot and ash. Only the leather seats of the wooden chairs remained, all cracked, along with a few corner irons from a table and a candelabra’s dented base.

  ‘What a waste!’ lamented Sebastian.

  He pushed aside the charred debris of a bed and pulled to one side a carpet of mantas stitched together. The broad flagstones underneath looked perfectly ordinary. Before Gabriel had a chance to express his surprise, Sebastian wedged an iron bar between a couple of flagstones and levered up first one and then two more. By the faint light of the stars and a crescent moon that was at last finding its way through the clouds of smoke, Gabriel made out a heavy wooden trapdoor.

  ‘Lend a hand,’ said Sebastian. ‘It’s as heavy as three sawhorses.’

  The trapdoor seemed to open into a well of darkness. Still, Sebastian made his way through the gloom until he felt the rungs of a wooden stepladder. He groped around with his hand until he found a piece of candle and a tinderbox.

  ‘We’d better move quickly. There’s no reason to let anyone see us!’

  A few moments later Gabriel stood absolutely flabbergasted. His evident surprise gave Sebastian a feeling of deep satisfaction. They were in a cellar, an underground space that was both a comfortably appointed room and a warehouse full of clothes and weapons.

  ‘Rich is what I am,’ chuckled Sebastian, ‘and in a city like Cuzco, you could say that the political situation is far from stable. I could well find myself poor again tomorrow, either because of the Indians or through a change of de Almagro’s or the Pizarros’ mood. And if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from life, it’s that black is what I am and black is what I shall always be. In other words, I’ll always be a little bit the slave! So Prudence, God bless her, dictates that I don’t reveal my treasures for all to see. You’re the first person apart from me to enter here, and you see before you my insurance for hard times. In other words, what you see here in this cellar is an illusion. It doesn’t exist.’

  While Sebastian climbed back up the ladder to close the trapdoor properly, Gabriel, amazed, took stock of the treasures that his friend had accumulated. There were a few trunks filled with new clothes: fine shirts, doublets, split-sided stockings, and even bolts of velvet, cambric, and linen waiting for the tailor’s knife. Coats of mail padded with leather and cotton hung from various wall-mounted hooks. Morions were piled up in baskets. Four saddles, richly decorated with silver, sat on trestles, and a large box contained swords, daggers, and two cranequins. Gabriel couldn’t see any gold but he was sure that a few ingots were hidden away somewhere even more secret.

  ‘I can’t believe my eyes,’ he confessed, amazed.

  ‘Come, I’ve something else to show you,’ replied Sebastian.

  They went to the far end of the cellar, lighting their way with the candle. A narrow passage led into a cold room. Gabriel heard running water without being able to see it.

  ‘Look,’ said Sebastian, raising the candle so that its feeble light revealed a natural pool in the stone floor. ‘It’s absolutely freezing, but at least we can wash ourselves, then rest until dawn. What’s more, we can barely hear the Incas’ tumult down h
ere. And tomorrow, you can choose yourself a fine tunic and a sword worthy of you. You’ll cut a splendid figure!’

  ‘Sebastian…’

  ‘Now, now, Gabriel, don’t argue with me. It gives me boundless pleasure to be able to offer you these trifles, and I will be even happier tomorrow when I see the surprise on some of our friends’ faces when they see you walking about, well and truly alive. Ha ha ha!’

  * * *

  At dawn, dressed in clean clothes, with new boots on his feet, a thick leather tunic and chain mail covering his shirt, and a Toledo sword embellished with a silver-encrusted guard hanging against his purple velvet breeches, Gabriel left Sebastian’s house. Smoke was still rising from the city. At least half of Cuzco was in Manco’s warriors’ hands.

  The two men had to go back twice the way they had come, running as fast as they could, dodging sling stones, before they managed to reach the Spaniards, who were holding out in the only cancha still standing on the great square. Thick sheets, like enormous sails, had been hung over the courtyards with vast quantities of rope, to protect the conquistadors from the Incas’ stones and arrows. Soldiers stood guard at the entrances, using unhinged doors as shields, and they immediately let Gabriel and Sebastian enter. Gabriel didn’t recognize any of the faces and, in the jam-packed interior, no one paid him any attention.

  Gabriel walked among the soldiers for a while, observing their worried faces, before he heard Hernando’s voice suddenly ring out. Hernando stood between his brothers Juan and Gonzalo, facing a small troop of cavalrymen. Gabriel watched as he struck a hastily drawn map of the city spread out on a large table in front of him with his finger and said:

  ‘According to the Canaries, all the alleys in the north of the city are now blocked by barricades between eight, ten, or even twelve codos high. In any case, far too high for the horses to clear. And it’s the same here, in the east, and here, in the south. They didn’t waste any time…’

  ‘They’re tightening the noose, I tell you! They’re going to cut our throats like pigs!’ cried a man, the back of whose doublet was burned through so that his shirt could be seen.

  ‘Let’s not turn into poltroons because a few flames singed our arses, Diego!’ cried Hernando.

  ‘The barricades in the northern part of the city are the most troublesome,’ intervened Juan Pizarro. ‘They prevent us from charging against the Sacsayhuaman fortress. And it’s from up there, unfortunately, that the Incas are bombarding us day and night with sling stones and arrows. It is intolerable! It’s as though we were ants at the mercy of giants!’

  Hernando, irritated by Juan’s disillusioned tone, interrupted him with a gesture.

  ‘Brother, this is no time to wax lyrical. From now on, we must be especially careful about how we move around. We can no longer leave this cancha in small groups, or else we’ll go down under a hail of stones – and we might lose our valuable horses. We’d best wait patiently and contain our rage, and then mount a massive charge towards the plain in two or three days. Let’s be clever, and play on their nerves. Let us lead them to believe that we’re weak and terrified, then break through their siege, shattering their lines as though they were made of glass.’

  ‘Weak and terrified! If they’ve heard the cries that have risen from this city over the last few days, we’ll have no trouble convincing them of that! We are weak, and they know it. How can you be so sure of your tactic, Don Hernando? There are two hundred thousand of them and just two hundred of us. And we have no more than fifty or sixty horses!’

  ‘That’s fifty more than were with my brother the Governor at Cajamarca, my lord del Barco! There, we defeated Atahualpa’s hundred thousand warriors in a few short hours. It was God’s will, and he gave us our strength. Never forget that a Spaniard with a good sword can cut down ten Indians like a peasant scything wheat, whereas they need fifty arrows to pierce through one of our leather and cotton breastplates. Contrary to what my beloved brother Juan suggested a few moments ago, we are not ants, gentlemen. And so what if we’re frightened? That’s good: it makes our balls bigger!’

  Gabriel came further into the room, a room that stank of soot, sweat, and fear, and met Bartholomew’s surprised and direct gaze. Gabriel gave him an amused smile and put his fingers to his lips, indicating that he should say nothing, while a young man, his eyes sunken from lack of sleep, protested vehemently:

  ‘But Don Hernando, I don’t understand! Why wait for tomorrow or the day after to charge? Why not charge right away, and get ourselves out of this death-hole?’

  ‘Because we must not fail, Rojas. Given the unequal numbers, we will have but one chance. These last few hours have made us weary. Look around: whether horseman or foot soldier, we all need some rest. And so do you, perhaps more than anyone: you can hardly stand!’

  ‘Staying holed up in here, Don Hernando, means giving them the city! Giving them the city means condemning ourselves to die like rats! And now you suggest that we should waste our time sleeping!’

  ‘No, Rojas, we won’t be wasting our time. We shall annoy the Indians by not moving. They’ll wear themselves out with their shouting and by throwing their stones!’

  ‘And what will stop them from simply coming here and burning us alive tonight? There are tens of thousands of them, Don Hernando. If they want to, they can jump over the walls into this cancha like fleas hopping into a priest’s habit!’

  ‘But they don’t want to, my lord del Barco!’ growled Don Hernando, growing livid with irritation. ‘Don’t you see that they’re content to remain at the other end of the square, hurling stones at us? If they weren’t frightened of us, of our swords and horses, then we’d all be dead already! They’re frightened of us, del Barco! There may be thousands of Indians, but they are thousands of frightened Indians! One charge, I tell you, one charge, with all our strength concentrated, and we shall throw their rank and file into panic.’

  You delude yourself, Don Hernando,’ interrupted Gabriel quietly. ‘We aren’t at Cajamarca. You were there, true, but so was I. I have just come from outside, and I can assure you that the fear that you say grips the Inca warriors is wishful thinking. On the contrary, they are very determined. Looking at your faces, my lords, and without wishing to offend you, I would say that fear reigns in here rather than out there!’

  Standing his ground, Gabriel met their astonished gazes as each man turned to face him.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ spat Gonzalo. ‘Who freed him?’

  He took a couple of steps towards Gabriel. He was still limping from their last encounter. Juan grabbed him by the elbow, both to help him stand and hold him back.

  ‘I am as overjoyed as you are to find myself still alive,’ said Gabriel, glaring at him before bowing especially low, the mockery of his gesture clear to all. ‘Having regained my liberty by my own efforts, Don Hernando, I forgive you for taking it from me and I put myself at your service for the fine battle that awaits us!’

  Gonzalo shoved Juan aside and reached for his sword. But Gabriel’s was already out of its scabbard.

  ‘I could fight my lord your brother, Don Hernando, and we could well disembowel one another. But might I suggest that the moment is ill chosen? After all, you need as many men as possible and, in any case, no doubt there will be a great many opportunities to die during the coming days. Don Gonzalo might even choose to do just that himself!’

  ‘Brother!’ cried Gonzalo in a hoarse voice. ‘You cannot allow this fucking mongrel of a spy to join us! You cannot take on this liar and murderer! He will betray us at the first chance he gets!’

  ‘Why don’t you shut your stupid mouth, Gonzalo?’ replied Gabriel. ‘There’s nothing to betray here, except honor. Or have you so little of that left to realize it?’

  ‘Enough!’ cried Hernando. ‘We will settle our scores later. Do not think that you have escaped justice, Montelucar!’

  ‘It is not in my nature to flee justice, Don Hernando. It’s just that one encounters it so rarely around here. I believe that I’v
e proven that to you on more than one occasion.’

  ‘My lords! Don Hernando! Don Gonzalo!’ interrupted Bartholomew, raising his deformed hand. ‘This is not the time for your squabbles. Whatever grievances you hold against Don Gabriel, you must admit that he has fought the Indians as often, if not more often, than any man here. His advice must therefore be of some worth. Why not listen to him?’

  ‘Very true,’ agreed Juan Pizarro, looking at Gonzalo, ‘Brother Bartholomew gives wise counsel. Let us leave our differences aside and join forces. Once the battle is over – and if we win it – then we shall have plenty of time to study Don Gabriel’s defects of character!’

  When Gonzalo made to reply, Hernando sighed and stopped him with a wave of his hand. Then he asked:

  ‘Since you are so erudite, Montelucar, why don’t you enlighten us with your wisdom? How should we deal with your Indian friends?’

  ‘They have been observing us for years now,’ declared Gabriel, addressing the whole company and ignoring Hernando’s gibe. ‘They have learned what our weak points are and how to put our horses out of action. The days when they panicked whenever we charged, and when they let us cut them down like hay, are over. They know how to sling their stones so that they break our arms or our horses’ legs. As for hand-to-hand combat, they are far superior to us: they are far more agile, and far more efficient—’

  ‘What grand news!’ spat Gonzalo. ‘You’re not telling us anything we don’t already know.’

  ‘What they are waiting for, what they are hoping for,’ continued Gabriel, totally ignoring Gonzalo, ‘is that our arrogance gets the better of us, and that we give in to our impatience. They’re hoping that hunger and thirst will drive us onto the plain, leaving us at the mercy of their troops. They hope that once again we will simply throw our cavalry at them, just as you have suggested, Don Hernando, in an attempt to break their stranglehold on us and escape beyond the plain. The difference this time is that they are expecting it, my lords! I promise you that, whatever path we take out onto the plain, we will find their resistance unusually light – until we start falling into their traps, into the pike-lined ditches that they have dug, and grow confused among all the hidden obstacles that they have created. Go ahead with your charge as you intend, Don Hernando – and our horses will all have their legs broken before we have even brushed an Inca neck with our swords!’