The Light of Machu Picchu

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

  ‘Faster, horse! Faster!’

  Manco bounded around on the carpets and pillows that covered almost the entire floor area. The room’s luxurious furnishings seemed even stranger, in Anamaya’s eyes, than the sight of the Inca-cum-horse ridden by a little boy and bounding around amid the feathers and the finest cumbis.

  ‘Look, Anamaya!’ cried Titu Cusi. ‘I can ride a horse, just like my father!’

  Manco now slipped his son gently off his back and took him up in his powerful arms, hugging him tightly.

  ‘Go, now,’ he said, putting the child back on the ground.

  The little boy, whose long black hair framed an impish and intelligent face, dashed across the room, crying:

  ‘I will be back for another lesson tomorrow, Horse! Be ready!’

  Anamaya smiled at Manco.

  ‘Of all his brothers, he’s the one, isn’t he?’

  Manco’s face darkened.

  ‘He’s the oldest. And he’s the one who has the most flair, the most confidence. He was raised by Curi Ocllo. He was nursed on the milk and the strength of the woman I love. Whenever I hold him in my arms, I think of how much I love the Coya, and for a moment I forget about the war and about your absence.’

  His last two words resonated like the beat of a drum.

  ‘My absence?’

  ‘I know that you’re here, and I know that you’re looking after the Sacred Double, but…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I feel as though you’ve already left with him, and that you’re indifferent to the outcome of our war.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Manco. I rejoice when I hear of our victories, and the news of our defeats makes my heart heavy. But your father Huayna Capac’s words are always in my mind, and they concern a time after the war.’

  Manco laughed dryly.

  ‘So, there’s to be a time after the war? You’ve always been at my side, Anamaya. It was you who urged me to lead the uprising. And now you speak to me of a time after the war! Now, at this decisive moment! My beloved brother Quizo Yupanqui has failed in his attack on Lima. He died in battle. Luckily Illac Topa and Tisoc and many others have taken over. But what about you? There was a time when it seemed to me that you would hurl sling stones yourself, to further our cause in the war! What happened to you that you now only want to speak about a time “after”?’

  ‘I will tell you, brother Manco.’

  * * *

  Anamaya spoke to Manco for a long time. She affectionately recalled their long acquaintance, which had begun when she had been a young princess who had narrowly avoided death. He reminded her of the snake that she had removed from his path; they spoke of Guaypar, Manco’s sworn enemy, and about how there was now a rumor spreading that Guaypar had resurfaced, leading an army alongside the Spaniards. But throughout their conversation, Anamaya felt a hesitation within her as she recalled Huayna Capac’s words: ‘You will know what must not be spoken, and you will not speak it.’ What was she to tell Manco, and what was she to keep to herself?

  ‘I promised that I would stay at your side, and I have. I promised it when you found me with the Strangers. You know how I’ve kept that promise ever since.’

  ‘I spoke to Katari, but he told me nothing. I speak to you, and you too tell me nothing. I know that you’ve kept your promise. And you know that you’ve never heard me reproach you. Have you seen how the Sage Villa Oma looks at you? Have you ever heard me say a word to encourage him in his attempted intimidation of you? But your silence… your silence makes my heart heavy, your silence echoes through my soul at night, and sometimes I ask myself…’

  As he told her of his doubts, Anamaya heard Huayna Capac’s thundering voice: ‘…We, the Incas, we will have to know humiliation, we will become slaves to our own shame… But we will not die… The brother’s blood and the friend’s blood are shed far more than the enemy’s: It is the sign.’

  ‘…I ask myself, why am I fighting if Paullu and you – who have both been with me from the beginning – turn away from me? Even Villa Oma is thinking of making his own war. Illac Topa is in the north and Tisoc is in the south, but they only rarely send me reports. Each of us on his own! It’s madness!’

  Anamaya wanted to give Manco an answer, but she realized that she didn’t have one. She couldn’t tell him that, according to Huayna Capac’s words, he was hopelessly doomed. And so her silence imprisoned him in an unavoidable war in which he was alone, like a child fighting against shadows and trees.

  ‘You were the one who urged me on,’ continued Manco, ‘who called me ‘the first knot of the future time’. But it meant nothing, it was mere noise, as empty as the wind, nothing more…’

  ‘You are brave, Manco. The flame of honor blazes within you.’

  ‘But it’s useless! If I learn to ride a horse, then the horse will die. If I learn to wield a sword, then it will smash into pieces. If I send off a thousand arrows, they’ll all fall back to the ground…’

  ‘What your father told me,’ said Anamaya regretfully, ‘is unclear even to me. I turn the words over and over, and they are in my mind when I’m awake and in my dreams when I sleep. They are enigmas that I decipher differently each time I think about them. The more I consider them, the more ignorant I feel. All I know is that the destruction has a purpose. But I don’t know what comes after that.’

  ‘Is that purpose our own?’

  ‘Ask Katari: he’s the one who knows time.’

  Manco turned a black stone with sharp corners around in his fingers. He dropped it at her feet.

  ‘The man who can do anything can do nothing,’ he sighed. ‘Isn’t that so?’

  Again, Anamaya stayed silent.

  ‘But there is something,’ said the Emperor.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Puma.’

  Anamaya’s breath quickened, and the anxiety that had left her now returned and almost overwhelmed her.

  ‘If he’s the Puma, then he should help us. But his words prove that he is nothing.’

  ‘He can help us without picking up a weapon.’

  Manco brushed aside her objection with a disdainful wave of his hand.

  ‘What kind of friend refuses to fight when his enemy attacks? A coward, nothing more.’

  ‘You know that he’s a brave man.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But I also know that if Villa Oma ever hears what your mad Puma said, he’ll be executed on the spot, and I’ll be powerless to stop it. You don’t want to know what’s being whispered about him on the terraces and in the quarry. All the men here would like to see him ritually sacrificed—’

  ‘You can’t let that happen!’

  Manco breathed quietly, letting a moment pass. Then:

  ‘That’s what’s so strange. No, I won’t let that happen.’

  CHAPTER 14

  Ollantaytambo, October 1536

  The face in front of Gabriel had screamed before its owner had died. Now the mouth was twisted into a rictus of suffering and atrocious fear. But the eyes would never tell what had happened, because they had been torn out from their cavities, and in their place was a mass of putrefied flesh and blackened, hardening crusts of blood.

  Nauseous, Gabriel turned away from the sight to stop himself vomiting.

  The broad avenue leading from the canchas to the Willkamayo River was filled with the kind of hustle that one would expect in a market place in Spain. But instead of merchants haggling over fabrics or spices, there were only corpses.

  The avenue was lined by two walls in which dozens of niches, each one about the size of a man, had been carved. And there were indeed men displayed in each one, for the admiration of all. The Indians, usually so impassive, now pointed them out to one another, talking loudly and laughing.

  The most prized trophies had been placed in the niches closest to the canchas – the bodies of a dozen Spaniards. Their bones had been removed, and they had been turned not into drums but into windbags, literally. Their flayed skins had been sewn up again and then inflated, so
that they formed grotesque balloon parodies of human bodies.

  Gabriel, though sickened, couldn’t help but ponder on the cruel irony: these men, created by God in His own image, had been recreated by foreign gods in the image of their crimes – deformed, loathsome, unnatural. And yet their essential humanity could still be seen clearly in these lifeless puppets, as though the Indian warriors’ cruelty had peeled back their skin and revealed the true nature of the man-monster within each of them.

  Each corpse was attached to a stake and had its own niche.

  Gabriel choked back his revulsion and fear and forced himself to look carefully at their faces to see if he could recognize a comrade. It was true that he had hated most of his fellow soldiers and that by confronting the Pizarros, as well as through his relationship with Anamaya – which they had never understood – he had isolated himself from them. But now he surprised himself by suddenly feeling close to his countrymen – a belated kinship, as though he himself had been tortured and killed by bands of howling, joyful Incas intoxicated by their first taste of victory after the many bitter humiliations of defeat.

  He was profoundly happy not to recognize any of the Spanish corpses. No doubt they were reinforcements recently arrived from Panama. They all had something of the aghast and terrified look of young men who had come to find gold and instead had found death.

  After the Spaniards came the corpses of black slaves from the Panama isthmus, and then those of the conquistadors’ Indian allies, although these last hadn’t been given the same treatment as their masters.

  They had simply been decapitated and their heads stuck on spikes wrapped in horse skin, to some of which a mane or tail or even hooves were still attached. Gabriel thought of pagan idols: these were grotesque versions of the demigods that some Indians had at first imagined the conquistadors to be.

  Poor gods… the slaves’ white teeth had all been wrenched out, and the multicolored feathers of the headdress of one Indian, who had evidently been a chief when he was alive, were now black with dust and mud and hung down over his forehead, pathetically broken. Some of the Canary caciques still had their colored headbands, although these had slipped down past their vacant eyes to the blood-encrusted space where their necks had been.

  In the middle of the loud, busy crowd, Gabriel suddenly felt brutally and inescapably alone.

  He jumped into the air when a hand landed on his shoulder.

  ‘Katari!’

  The Master of the Stone wore a grave look on his face.

  ‘Let’s not stay here.’

  Gabriel followed him. The two men made their way through the narrow alleyways between the canchas toward the steep flight of steps leading to the Great Temple. Gabriel began to breathe easier once there was some distance between him and the macabre spectacle in the avenue.

  When they reached the Temple’s esplanade, they sat down on a stone block not yet hewn and fitted to the wall. Gabriel saw that two more giant monoliths had been placed in position since he had first seen the Temple, both of them separated from each other and the rest by a thin stone spike shaped like a reed.

  ‘You are in danger,’ said Katari.

  ‘I’ve been in danger ever since arriving here,’ said Gabriel quietly. ‘And in any case, I’m in less danger than those poor souls down in the avenue. What barbarity…’

  Katari said nothing for a moment, then:

  ‘A dead man is a dead man.’

  ‘You’re right. He’s not any more dead because he’s been chopped up into pieces, or because his balls have been sewn into his mouth, or because he’s been turned into a skin flag or a balloon…’

  As he spoke, Gabriel became aware that his words were bitter with a cutting irony. He realized that although he had thought that he had become a stranger to his fellow Spaniards he still considered himself, deep within, to be one of them.

  ‘The men who did those things would like me to teach them how to use our weapons so that they can kill more people and fashion more abominable trophies for themselves. But they don’t know me: I shall never again take up arms. That is how it is.’

  ‘Even if it costs you your life?’

  Gabriel was surprised to hear a slight quiver in Katari’s voice.

  ‘My life…’ murmured Gabriel. ‘Do I really know what it is, my life? It’s been taken from me and given back without my consent so many times…’

  ‘You are the Puma,’ replied Katari in a serious tone. ‘You must survive.’

  Whenever he was with Anamaya, his love for her made Gabriel so breathless that his mind grew fuddled. When he was with Katari, on the other hand, he felt unusually lucid.

  ‘Not if I have to take up arms to—’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Katari interrupted impatiently, ‘and I’m not saying that you have to. But Anamaya and I cannot protect you for much longer, and soon Manco will no longer be able to resist Villa Oma. The Sage sees this blood-sodden victory as an unhoped-for opportunity.’

  ‘Well? What should I do?’

  ‘You must leave.’

  ‘When?’

  An explosion boomed out before Katari could answer.

  As they raced down the steps toward the canchas, Gabriel’s heart beat furiously. But he wasn’t sure whether it was because he was alarmed by the possibility of yet another horror, or because he now knew for certain that he would have to leave Anamaya once again.

  * * *

  Villa Oma’s long, thin, corpselike arms emerged from his blood-red unku.

  ‘Do you want to end up like them?’ he screamed, pointing at the dead bodies in the niches.

  He was talking to two Spanish prisoners who were trying to maintain some modicum of dignity but who were both trembling from head to toe. Gabriel could imagine the horror that they must have been feeling at the sight of their slaughtered and mutilated companions.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked in a determined voice.

  ‘Why, here’s the Puma of the Shadows!’ yelped Villa Oma. Gabriel stood facing the Sage. A crowd had gathered around them, but he could see neither Manco nor Anamaya. Katari was still at his side and, more importantly, on his side, the only one supporting him in this blindly hostile crowd that had the taste of blood in its collective mouth, spurred on by the fear emanating from the two bound prisoners.

  ‘Our warriors tried to use your weapons that spit fire,’ said Villa Oma. ‘But all they managed to do was frighten themselves without hitting their target.’

  He pointed again at the niches. Not only had those Spaniards died in terror, but now their cadavers were being used for target practice.

  ‘And these two,’ continued Villa Oma, waving wickedly at the prisoners, ‘were pretending to help us. But they tricked us, and the fire exploded in one warrior’s face.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Gabriel, turning to the Spaniards this time.

  ‘They packed too much powder into the arquebus. It exploded,’ said the younger of the two in a blank voice.

  ‘It was an accident,’ Gabriel said to Villa Oma.

  ‘An accident? No, it was a trick by those mongrel Strangers. Now they shall die!’

  Some Indians grabbed the two prisoners, who offered little resistance, and shoved them towards the niches. The Indians pulled out the stakes on the ends of which two heads were fixed. They laughed as the heads came off and fell into the dust.

  Gabriel stood in front of the two Spaniards.

  ‘I want your men here to know who you really are, Villa Oma.’

  The crowd fell silent. Villa Oma was so taken aback that he too said nothing.

  ‘When I was in the south, I saw how the most ignoble of my companions inflicted terrible suffering on your people. I tried to tell this man about it,’ Gabriel said loudly, pointing at the Sage. ‘He had the power, then, to stop it, for his opinion, along with Paullu Inca’s, was important to the Spaniards. Yet he did nothing…’

  ‘Don’t listen to him!’ screamed Villa Oma. ‘He’s lying!’

  But th
e crowd remained silent and listened to the Stranger.

  ‘Oh, he’ll tell you that he was preparing for the war, that you would at last wreak vengeance on the Strangers. But I tell you that this man you call Sage is in fact a madman whose cruelty knows no limits and who will ultimately lead all those who follow him to their deaths! War is what it is, I grant you. But if you kill these two men here, then Inti will unleash his wrath against you!’

  This was the last straw for Villa Oma. He cried:

  ‘Listen to him, invoking our gods! How dare he! Tie him up with the others, so that he may share their fate.’

  Some soldiers came forward and grabbed Gabriel. Others scooped up gunpowder from a powder keg and stuffed it into the two Spanish prisoners’ mouths. Still others advanced, holding firebrands.

  Gabriel fought furiously, but to no avail. He looked around for Katari.

  ‘Enough!’ thundered Manco.

  The Inca had come through the crowd unseen by Gabriel. Soldiers and noblemen made way for him. Only Villa Oma stood his ground, facing the Emperor. A steady trickle of green coca spittle dribbled from his lips down his chin.

  ‘Prostrate yourself before your Emperor!’ Manco ordered Villa Oma.

  The Sage had, for a long time now, exempted himself from the natural gestures of respect due to an Inca. His bloodshot eyes stared defiantly at Manco for a moment before he bowed, very slightly.

  Gabriel at last saw Anamaya, half hidden behind Manco.

  ‘Look around you, Manco!’ said Villa Oma. ‘See that the pachacuti has already begun, and surrender to a force greater than yourself. Some of us used to call the Strangers gods. Look what we’ve done to them now.’

  Villa Oma pointed to the niches, at the horrors that had once been men, horrors held up by bronze-pointed spikes.

  ‘It is the beginning of the upheaval, it is peace returning, for us and our people…’

  ‘The pachacuti began a long time ago, Villa Oma. My father Huayna Capac was its first victim. Yet he guides us still from beyond.’