The Light of Machu Picchu
Page 33
Gabriel said nothing. Sebastian released him and hammered his finger into his chest, emphasizing each word as he said:
‘They concluded that Don Francisco felt he was in danger and that he has summoned you to save him! You, his follower from the beginning of the conquest, the one he called “son” for so long. Gabriel de Montelucar y Flores, the “Santiago” of the siege of Cuzco! Don’t you realize how terrified they are of you?’
‘They’re insane.’
‘No. They’re angry and they’re frightened. They see threats and traps everywhere. And not always without reason.’
‘What he says is true, Gabriel.’
‘Of course it’s true, Brother Bartholomew. And what will happen, my dear Gabriel, is that if you don’t hurry as fast as your feet will carry you to the Governor and warn him, they will kill you along with him. Unless they decide to kill you first, so that they feel safer.’
The door hinge creaked, startling them all. Her dress rustling, Anamaya entered, carrying a bowl containing a hot, dirty brown liquid. She smiled, handed it to the monk and said:
‘Come, drink this. Your god will not hold it against you. There’s nothing in it that he didn’t make himself.’
‘I’m pleased to see that you haven’t remained immune to the teachings of Christ.’
Bartholomew smiled waggishly. He was about to push the wooden bowl away, but then changed his mind and, with a shrug, took it.
‘Since it means so much to you,’ he murmured.
Anamaya turned to Gabriel as Bartholomew drank and said: ‘Sebastian is right. You must go and warn the Governor.’
‘Anamaya,’ protested Gabriel, ‘I told you before: the only intelligent thing for us to do is to leave Lima immediately.’
‘No. Everything begun must be finished. Only then may we return to the mountains.’
Gabriel scowled gloomily. Sebastian leaned close to him and said in a deep, serious tone:
‘Please, my friend, I beg you.’
Gabriel was startled by the solemnity in his voice.
‘As I told you,’ continued Sebastian, ‘they’re harrying me to join them. Herrada made it clear that if I didn’t join them, sword in hand, then my boat and my plans were finished.’
‘Then I shall go to Don Francisco,’ said Gabriel.
* * *
Gabriel had to insist that the door of the Governor’s house should be opened to him. It was only after he had announced his entire name – ‘I am Gabriel de Montelucar y Flores!’ – and then had waited a little while longer that the heavy studded door creaked open. Two peasant faces appeared on top of bodies dressed in blood-red livery and scrutinized him warily before letting him pass.
‘His Lordship the Marquis is waiting for you in the garden,’ said the younger of the two pages.
Gabriel walked out into the courtyard and saw a dozen other faces staring at him from the gallery. He recognized some of them, old companions from Cajamarca or more recently arrived courtiers whom he had briefly met in Cuzco. But none of them doffed their hats in greeting, so nor did Gabriel. The heels of his boots clacked against the courtyard’s round flagstones, and he followed the page down a corridor. He saw Don Francisco as soon as he passed through the low door leading into the garden.
His shoulders were perhaps a little more stooped, but on the whole his tall figure was still upright beneath the long, black garb he wore draped down to his ankles. He wore a gold-studded belt around his waist from which hung a silver scabbard holding a dagger. His felt hat was as immaculately white as his deerskin boots. He had his back to Gabriel, and he held a copper watering can from which he slowly trickled water onto the base of a young fig tree. Old age had marked his hands with large brown stains, which clearly suffered only slightly from rheumatism. His voice hadn’t changed at all, and it remained slightly abrasive but with a note of tenderness, as was evident when, without turning around or even uttering a greeting, he declared:
‘This is the first fig tree planted in this country. I water it every day, and even speak to it a little. Did you know that plants like to be spoken to as they grow?’
‘Don Francisco,’ said Gabriel dryly, ‘de Almagro’s people have decided to kill you as you make your way to the cathedral later.’
Don Francisco didn’t react; he showed no sign that he had even heard Gabriel’s words. He kept pouring his trickle of water into the base of the fig tree, creating a little hole in the loose, crumbly earth.
‘Governor, did you hear what I just said?’ asked Gabriel in a harsh voice. ‘Don Herrada has been rousing his troops all night. They have unsheathed their swords.’
The trickle of water ended. Gabriel heard someone opening the louvres of a shutter at one of the windows, and he could sense eyes watching them both, studying their every move.
Don Francisco turned around at last and looked at Gabriel with his faded eyes, his pupils like dagger points. Gabriel searched them in vain for some flash of the truth. Although the Governor still trimmed his beard neatly, it no longer hid the lines that had accumulated on his face. And when he smiled, parting his lips, Gabriel saw only three bad teeth jutting out of gums as pink as a baby’s.
‘No one calls me “Governor” anymore,’ he almost whispered. ‘Rather, they call me “My Lord Marquis”.’
‘God’s blood, Don Francisco, this is no time for simpering airs! Two hundred men are bent on killing you!’
‘Bullshit!’
‘You know very well that it’s true! Half the Spaniards in this country hate you and are furious with you, baying for your blood!’
‘They’ve no reason to be furious. It’s nothing more than spitefulness and treason.’
‘They have very good reasons, Don Francisco,’ said Gabriel, raising his voice in irritation. ‘As you know very well!’
‘What reasons? Haven’t I been like a father to everyone? Do you know what I do when I see someone destitute? I invite him to play skittles!’
‘Don Francisco—’
‘Listen to me, Gabriel! I invite him to play skittles. Ten pesos a game, sometimes more, twice as much if he can afford it. Sometimes, if he’s a man with a name, for a gold piece. And then I lose. I take my time, because I like playing, but I lose. I always lose, do you see? That way, the poor man is no longer poor, he keeps his honor, I haven’t condescended to him by offering him alms. People speak ill of me, and no one lets me have a moment of peace. I have no other concern than the good of all, and yet people spread lies about me – they twist my words, they betray me!’
‘Allow the boats belonging to de Almagro’s people to leave, and you’ll have peace.’
‘Why have you come to tell me these things, my boy? And dressed, I see, as the good Spaniard that you are?’
‘I didn’t come to Lima to see you, Governor. I came to meet the judge sent by the Crown.’
‘Ah?’
‘But apparently you drowned him.’
‘That’s a lie! Another damned lie! I offered to bring him here on one of my galleons, but he preferred his leaky boat. But he will come. He’s not drowned at all. What do you want to say to him?’
‘That it’s time to give the Indians of this country the respect that is due all human beings. I will tell him that they are humans just like us, and that the pope shares this opinion.’
‘You know the pope’s opinion?’
‘Do I know yours? I will tell him how you and your brothers inflicted suffering on hundreds, on thousands of innocent souls.’
‘And you’re innocent?’
‘Oh no, I did too, foolishly following your orders. I followed you blindly until the cries of agony and the horrors that we brought everywhere we went opened my eyes for good.’
‘In that case, my friend, you will tell him how you and I had to fight those savages to make this land a Christian one. You will tell him how the Very Blessed Virgin saved us from perdition a thousand times, and that without Her nothing would have been accomplished. You will tell him how, at Cajamarc
a, we were nothing more than Almighty God’s instrument!’
‘No, Don Francisco.’
‘Well then, you will be a liar, like the rest of them! You, whom God favored above all others. Have you forgotten how He protected you during the siege of Cuzco?’
‘I don’t know what it was that protected me.’
‘You dare to renounce us!’ shouted Pizarro all of a sudden, brandishing his watering can about. ‘You dare to renounce your God, and to renounce me? Who brought you here? Who gave you a name when you were nothing more than a louse crawling on the surface of the world?’
‘You’re referring to a story that is no longer mine to tell, Don Francisco. Those gentlemen over there, leaning at your windows and listening to us, who shower you with compliments every day, will tell it, I’m sure. But I can’t play that tune anymore, Don Francisco: my eyes and my heart remember too many things that you never even wanted to prevent, too much suffering that you never tried to check, and some vilenesses that you even caused!’
‘So, you too are angry with me, my son?’
‘That word means nothing anymore between us, My Lord Marquis. What’s more, it is useless. I got used to having no father a long time ago.’
‘And yet you worry about me. You don’t want me to die – you’re prepared to draw your sword to defend me.’
‘I didn’t say that. I won’t fight for you. I came to warn you because your death could very well lead to mine, and I still have much to do before leaving this world.’
‘Ha! What could you possibly have to do that’s so important?’
Don Francisco’s bitter sarcasm took Gabriel by surprise, and his surprise restored his calm. He smiled and stepped away.
‘I don’t believe that I could explain it to you, My Lord Marquis. It would take a lifetime.’
Don Francisco’s face closed like the door of some very old, isolated, and dilapidated cottage. The furrows on his face deepened, and his eyes showed nothing but a haughty contempt.
‘I’m going to have Mass performed here, in my room,’ he announced in an even voice. ‘Then we’ll see if Herrada and his bums dare to come for me here! As for you, you can drink some juice from my oranges while I pray. They’re the first ever to be picked in this country.’
‘I’m not thirsty, Don Francisco.’
The Marquis extended his hand toward Gabriel’s shoulder, a gesture that he had made many times before, one that coupled a mark of friendship with his demand for submission. But something new in Gabriel’s eyes, an expression of determined calm, caused him to stop in mid-movement.
Don Francisco remained like that, his hand suspended in the air between them, his black eyes desperately peering into his ‘son’s’. Then he slowly let his hand fall.
‘It shall be as you wish,’ he grumbled, his voice low.
Gabriel was moved more by this evidence of powerlessness than he had been by all the words that had preceded it.
‘Be careful not to die.’
The hint of weakness and of doubt that had appeared on the Marquis’s face immediately disappeared. And it was with a straight spine and a firm voice that he declared arrogantly:
‘A man like me doesn’t die.’
* * *
‘Long live the King! Long live the King! Death to the tyrant!’
About thirty men emerged from an alley and made their way across the square in front of the cathedral. Anamaya had taken Bartholomew to the top of the scaffolding, and though she was too far away to make out their features, their fervor electrified the increasingly muggy air of Lima.
Again they howled: ‘Long live the King! Long live the King! Death to the tyrant!’, working up their frenzy and waving their weapons about. They had crossbows, pikes, spears and lances, and even two arquebuses.
‘They’ve gone mad,’ murmured Bartholomew, involuntarily tightening his grip on Anamaya’s arm. ‘Are they trying to provoke a pitched battle?’
Anamaya was scanning the square for Sebastian’s giant figure, and she didn’t answer the monk right away. But before she had spotted the huge black man, a thunderous clamor shook the scaffolding. Two or three hundred men, most of them on horseback and wearing breastplates or coats of mail and all of them shouting, emerged from the alleys that had been empty just a moment before. Some of them had been concealed in the apparently lifeless houses surrounding the square.
‘Sweet Jesus,’ exclaimed Bartholomew, his face pale and running with beads of sweat.
‘Are they so frightened of the Governor that there have to be so many to kill him?’ asked Anamaya.
‘Certainly they’re frightened of Don Francisco. But they fear Gabriel, the “Santiago of Cuzco”, and his magic powers far more.’
Anamaya couldn’t help but giggle, surprising Bartholomew.
‘That makes you laugh, Coya Camaquen?’ he murmured anxiously. ‘I find you unreasonably calm.’
He was interrupted by the sound of a blank being fired from an arquebus, and he almost shouted as he continued:
‘Just look at them! If things continue at this rate, Pizarro will be dead within the hour, and maybe Gabriel as well. That doesn’t worry you?’
‘Don’t worry, Bartholomew, my friend. Gabriel isn’t going to die.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
Bartholomew looked up angrily. But when his gaze met Anamaya’s, he realized instantly that she was right – and also that he could never know from whence came her knowledge and her certainty.
He closed his eyes and crossed himself fervently. Down on the square, the mob rushed Don Francisco Pizarro’s house.
* * *
‘To arms! To arms! They’re trying to break down the door! They want to murder the Marquis!’
The page’s alarmed cry echoed throughout the enormous building and caused a panic in the courtyard. Gabriel saw the courtiers stumbling over one another up in the gallery, more desperate to flee than to draw their swords. An iron fist grabbed his arm and pulled him back. He turned around and found himself so close to Don Francisco’s face that he could count the number of furrows leading away from his eyes into his beard.
‘Follow me. Come to my room – you can at least help me put on my breastplate. They’ll all have run like hares soon enough, and there won’t be many of us left to defend this place.’
And indeed, only three or four men joined Don Francisco in the antechamber at the corner of the building, a room that had the advantage of having only one point of access.
‘Stand by the door,’ Pizarro ordered two lords, each of whom had a dagger in one hand and a sword in the other.
He took off his long coat and said to his ever-present page:
‘My dear Diego, watch what they’re doing, and tell me everything.’
As he opened the chest containing his old breastplate wrapped in a cotton sheet, he glanced at Gabriel, who was certain that he saw a smile flash across the old man’s face.
‘My Lord, my Lord!’ cried the page. ‘They’re in! They’ve broken down the door, and they’re in the outer courtyard!’
‘How many?’
‘Ten… no, fourteen, maybe fifteen. They’re rushing about, I can’t count them exactly.’
‘The poltroons. D’ye hear, Gabriel? Two hundred of them out of the square, and only fifteen who dare to enter. They’ve balls like peas.’
‘My Lord! Lieutenant Velasquez and Secretary Salcedo took fright and jumped through the window to the garden.’
‘Ah! Two more with nothing but air between their legs!’
There was mirth in Don Francisco’s roar.
‘In the name of God, Gabriel, undo these straps while I put on my armor. They don’t know what they’re in for, trying to murder me!’
‘My Lord, Don Herrada and his men are coming up the stairs of the inner courtyard. They’re fighting… oh, my Lord, Don Hurtado and Don Lozano are wounded!’
‘It’s happening quickly. Shut the doors to the gallery and post three men behind each of them.’
‘The damned cowards! May they eat dust and swallow their own bile! Gabriel, my boy, pull! Pull it tight!’
Gabriel yanked at the straps that joined the front and the back of the breastplate. With growing distaste, but also with a calm that surprised even him, he felt as though he was entombing the clamorous old man in an iron grave. Meanwhile, the sound of fighting drew closer and closer.
‘Oh, my Lord, his Lordship Chavez has been killed! They’ve stuck knives into his neck! My Lord, they’re killing everyone!’
‘The mongrels! In the neck, ten against one! The whoresons! Shame on them!’
The shouts and curses grew suddenly louder, and the door was forced open so hard that it swung inwards violently and bounced off the wall. Pizarro’s loyal page stumbled wordlessly backwards, his throat slashed open, and fell to the ground, never to rise again. For a brief moment, everybody was frozen, wide-eyed and holding their breath. Then the cry ‘Death to the tyrant!’ reverberated through the room.
Gabriel instinctively jumped to the side, and although he had promised himself to leave it in its scabbard, his blade was now bare. The room descended into chaos. There was a whirlwind frenzy of sword striking sword, of men screaming ferociously, their stinking breaths mingling in the air. In the chaos, no one paid Gabriel much heed as Don Francisco defended himself like a demon disguised as a man. He waved a lance about with his left hand as his right whipped his sword through the air, parrying blows and slicing through the enemy. He showed no sign of his age, no sign of weakness. Even his beard seemed to be made of metal sharp enough to cut. He furiously forced back the conspirators, who seemed to be weakening.
‘Death to the tyrant!’ screamed Don Herrada, pale-faced and shoving his men ahead of him.
‘Traitors! Buffoons! Your souls to the devil!’ answered Don Francisco.
A second wave of conspirators rushed into the room. Gabriel saw Sebastian’s tall figure enter with them, awkward and stiff in the confusion.