The Gold Eaters

by Ronald Wright

  “His brother?” Atawallpa speaks at last, without looking up. “That’s better. Why is he here?”

  Hernando Pizarro bends from his saddle and grasps Waman’s shoulder hard. “Say my brother sends me to request the pleasure of this Indian’s—this King’s—company tomorrow in the city square. He wishes to eat and drink with him and become his dearest friend.”

  “My friend?” Atawallpa returns with a sarcasm the interpreter doesn’t miss. “Perhaps my friend should be here himself to explain what I’ve learnt of his brigands’ activities. They have been killing my subjects on the coast for months. They’ve put hundreds in chains. They’ve fed them to their dogs. They burn people alive. They even boil men down for fat to salve their wounds. I do not need such friends.”

  Waman softens the Inca’s words, substituting Christians for brigands. Still, Soto reddens furiously.

  “This savage will find out what we’re made of soon enough. Tell him Maytawillka is a lying rogue. Tell him the men of Tumbes fled like women.” He spits on the ground between the horses.

  “What is the angry one saying? Is it because my people in Tumbes killed three of them and a horse?”

  Hernando Pizarro whispers to Soto, “Those were our losses exactly. The tyrant is well-informed. Let’s not waste our breath gainsaying him. I’ll give the rest of my brother’s message. Then we’ll go.”

  “Now, Felipillo,” Hernando resumes, “tell lord Atawallpa that my brother loves him dearly. That we Christians never attack except in self-defence. But if the King has any unquelled enemies we’ll crush them for him. My brother will send ten horsemen. Ten will be more than enough. Atawallpa won’t need his own troops except to round up those who flee.”

  Waman translates the boast. Atawallpa looks at the Spaniards for the first time. A scornful smile is his only reply.

  “Did you mark that?” Hernando Pizarro says to Soto. “He takes us for nothing!”

  The Inca’s attention has already left the bearded ones. It is the horses he is watching. Fascinating creatures, a dignity about them. A dignity their owners lack. Meeker than llamas, maybe, but evidently stronger. He will breed them. He wonders if it’s true what Maytawillka thought, that the beasts can’t run at night. Is that why the barbarians are in such haste to leave?

  The interpreter, who is keeping his head down, feels the royal gaze upon him. “You,” Atawallpa says. “Who are you? Where are you from?”

  “I am Waman, Only King. From Tumbes Province. A small fishing town called Little River.”

  “Are you their only chaka, the only bridge between tongues?”

  “Yes, Sapa Inka.”

  A vile accent. But the boy seems bright. He will be useful.

  “Tomorrow you and I will speak. You will tell me everything I want to know. Now tell these barbarians to get down and stand on their own feet. They will dine with me before they go. Their animals may browse the shrubbery in here.”

  “Tell him it’s late,” Soto answers. “We must go back, as our leader commands.”

  The Inca insists they at least have a drink.

  “All right. We’ll take a quick swallow, Felipe. Just one.” The Spaniards nervously dismount.

  Two young women of Waman’s age, utterly lovely to his eyes, their hair long enough for them to sit on, bring beer, sky-blue dresses swishing about slim ankles. Like Qoyllur, he thinks. And Tika. She’d be like these now.

  Lifting his drink in both hands, the Inca smiles thinly at his guests. He tips an offering to Mother Earth.

  “Do the same,” Hernando Pizarro hisses to Soto. “And pour it all. It may be poisoned.”

  The Inca drains his tankard in one long, gorgeous, fast-breaking draught. The first drink, besides sulphurous water, that he’s taken in five days.

  The Spaniards empty theirs on the floor, quickly putting the beakers to their lips, pretending to drink what isn’t there. But Atawallpa has seen. He does not mistake the trick for an accident, or for an excess of piety. The bearded ones’ deed is unforgivable. They reject his hospitality in front of his women and courtiers. They insult the Earth.

  Noting the Inca’s anger, Soto slips a jewelled ring from his finger and tries to give it to him. Atawallpa looks away in refusal and whispers to his spokesman. Waman catches a phrase: the behaviour of these people makes no sense.

  “They may go now,” the spokesman says. “The Sapa Inka will visit their leader tomorrow. Tell them to spend the night in the public halls around the square. But they are forbidden to climb the usnu.”

  Waman ponders this word, recalling the raised fountain in the square of Tumbes where he ate his meagre lunch so long ago. It was called the usnu, he thinks; people said the Emperor’s men would make long speeches there. “In the city plaza,” he tells the Spaniards, “there will be some kind of platform. You are not to use it.”

  It is nearly dark. Women are lighting lamps in niches along the walls and braziers on the courtyard. Atawallpa’s anger seems to subside. Another hushed exchange with his spokesman, who passes on this afterthought:

  “Sapa Inka Atawallpa asks one last thing. He would like very much to see your animals run.”

  The two Hernandos remount and glance at one another. “This one’s yours, Soto. You’re the better man for it.”

  Soto nods—the compliment is no more than the truth—and almost before his nod has ended he is standing in the stirrups, hauling on the reins, making his stallion rear and turn on its heels. Leaning into the horse’s neck, he brings it down and gallops past the bath towards the gate and the Inca’s guard. Most of the guardsmen stand their ground, but a handful shrink from the onrushing beast. Wheeling suddenly, horseshoes sparking on stone, Soto canters back along the courtyard—straight towards the Emperor, emerging like a demon from a nimbus of firelit steam.

  Lords spring forward to interpose themselves; a few draw back. At the last moment Soto rears his steed, holds it aloft, then lets its forefeet hammer the paving. So near that the horse’s breath stirs the royal fringe on Atawallpa’s brow.

  Seated and still throughout, the Inca shows no emotion. But he hasn’t been this angry since his brother’s general took him prisoner. First these barbarians insult him by spilling their drinks; now some of his men show fear—fear of a big black llama with a stinking thief on its back! His wrath is hard to tame. Beer on an empty belly has gone straight to his head.

  He inclines the befuddled head so the maskhapaycha eaves his eyes. A strange smell is lingering in the crimson fringe: the grassy breath of Soto’s horse.

  —

  As soon as the Spaniards have left, Atawallpa calls his highest official, the earl of the Empire’s western quarter, a trusted friend. “Apu Chincha, some flinched from the barbarian’s display. Did you note them?”

  The Apu is alarmed by Atawallpa’s icy tone.

  “It was only a few, Sapa Inka. A handful. Regrettable, yet understandable. Who could know what that barbarian—”

  “Find all who flinched and execute them.”

  “Execute them?”

  “Behead them right away.”

  “All, Sapa Inka? Even the lords?”

  “Especially the lords.”

  The morning is half gone when Atawallpa awakes in a shaft of sunlight between two concubines on the richly woven chaos of his bed. His head throbs and his heart is racing. It takes some time for a dream to ebb—a recurring nightmare of captivity in Tumipampa, of his brother Waskhar’s short-lived triumph. Relief washes over him as reality returns. The events of the evening begin to play before his eyes. The barbarians! And a discussion with his advisers until dawn. Much talk, much drink, little sleep.

  His hand strokes a breast, the nipple firm under his palm. The girl murmurs but stays lost in sleep. So does the other. He can’t even remember what fun they had, if any. Drinking wasn’t the wisest way to break his fast. Atawallpa shakes the
m awake. “Bring me guava juice and beer, mixed half-and-half. With salt and avocado. A dish of cherries.” They take up their gowns and flee.

  Today he will kill the barbarians. Though it might be amusing to castrate a few, keep them unsexed to guard his women. Especially that cocky blackbeard on the rearing beast.

  —

  At noon, feeling somewhat better, Atawallpa sends his cousin into Cajamarca to tell the Spaniards he will visit them later.

  When Maytawillka returns from this errand, he is reassured to find the Inca conferring with Wayta Yupanki and the other advisers. He gives them a message from Pizarro: the Inca should come as soon as possible to enjoy a feast in his honour, which the women are preparing.

  “What women? Have they taken Chosen women again?”

  “I believe not, Sapa Inka. The ones I saw seem to be slaves and camp followers picked up along their way to cook and share their beds. There are also some townsfolk drifting about in curiosity.”

  “What are the barbarians doing?” Wayta Yupanki asks his son.

  “Lurking in the public halls. Every one of them. The locals are jeering at them, calling them cowards, saying they’ll all be dead by nightfall. The barbarians are deeply afraid. I saw some pissing themselves in terror.”

  “Let them wait and fear,” says Atawallpa. “Meanwhile send runners to clear the streets. All citizens must leave until it’s over.”

  “Do you still propose to go today?” asks Wayta Yupanki.

  “The sun is high. It’s time to put an end to them.”

  “But why go yourself? Why not send in General Rumiñawi? His men can seize the leaders and bring them to you. You can deal with them when you’re . . . rested.”

  Wayta Yupanki does not trust Atawallpa’s judgment, and not only because of his drinking on top of a fast. In his nephew’s heart is the rat that gnaws at the sons of all great men: the fear he’s not the equal of his father. This makes him rash. And cruel, as he was last night with those who flinched. Not that Waskhar would be any better, the uncle reflects sadly. The Empire’s in unsteady hands. If only Wayna Qhapaq were alive!

  “Why hurry?” the old man adds. “Time is with you. It weakens them. I think my brother—your late father—would wait for a new day.”

  “I’m the Sapa Inka now!” Atawallpa glares round the room with bloodshot eyes. “The Inca doesn’t hesitate. Nor does he lead from behind. I shall squash them in their nest today like wasps.” He rubs his left shoulder to remind his advisers of the wound he’s been treating in the baths—a wound from the spear of Hanku, the Cusco general whose head he keeps. The head has now been unfleshed and lined with gold to make a drinking cup. It came back this morning, nicely done.

  At length Apu Chinchaysuyu speaks. “No one in this room or in this Empire doubts your courage, Only King. But you could be entering a trap. The barbarians could run you down with their animals. Or shoot you with their blowpipes.”

  “My dear Chincha, do you think I haven’t foreseen all that? We know they have only a handful of the fire-shooters, which are little better than a sling and take much longer to reload. I shall enter the city amid five thousand: enough to fill the square and shield me. The open side has been walled up. The barbarian llamas will have no room to run. We—all of you are coming with me—we shall be on the usnu, high above harm’s way. Then Rumiñawi will move in with his troops and round them up.”

  If we get to the usnu, thinks Apu Chincha.

  “The barbarians aren’t fools,” Atawallpa adds, after another draught. (How well beer helps him think!) “They know I have fifty thousand men outside the city. If they attack us they will die. We’ll go this afternoon. And”—the Inca pauses for effect—“and to show how little we fear them, we’ll go unarmed.”

  “Unarmed?” Wayta Yupanki gives his nephew a shocked, imploring look.

  “That is all.”

  The Spaniards, too, have had a restless night. Pizarro was not cheered by his brother’s report of the meeting at the Inca’s baths. Such discipline in native troops? Troops who have never seen a Spaniard or a horse before? To say nothing of the King himself, seated calm as a milkmaid before an oncoming warhorse in full cry.

  Waman, also sleepless, saw the Commander walking the halls all night, handing out words of encouragement to his men. Meanwhile, on hills above the city, the myriad lights and campfires of the Inca army sparkled like a star-filled sky.

  The bleary men have been at the ready since first light; horsemen in the saddle, the rest standing, fidgeting, whispering, scratching at lice roaming scrotums tight with fear. Townsfolk come by to mock and gloat on their way out of the city, which already feels besieged. Even the Spaniards’ women seem to be melting away, as if warned of things to come.

  Who has the initiative now? Pizarro asks himself. Not I! We wait on this dog to stir from his kennel.

  It is mid-afternoon before Atawallpa and his entourage at last draw near, halting briefly on the road while squads of men and courtiers take their places in the line. Waman and Pizarro watch for a while from the hilltop fort where Candía has set up the guns: six arquebuses and a small brass cannon loaded with grapeshot. Not enough, the Greek knows, to kill more than a few—and only if the rain holds off. As it is, his matchcords smoulder feebly in the highland air. He shrugs. Old soldiers have often lectured him in taverns, saying guns are newfangled toys, for cowards, and the battles of their youth were all the better for not having them.

  Pizarro knows his one hope is surprise. It must be soon, before the men lose their edge.

  He clutches Candía in a sudden embrace, startling the gunner, who does not expect such intimacy from the old, cold man. “Keep out of sight, Candía, until the King is in the square. Then watch me closely.” He draws a scarlet kerchief from his sleeve. “Fire the moment I wave this flag. And not before.”

  The Commander takes Waman back to the plaza. There they find Friar Valverde gliding among the men in his long robes, sprinkling holy water, holy words. What is in that priest’s sour soul? the interpreter wonders. Is he driven by greed like the others? Or is it power: King Charles’s promise to make him Bishop of Peru?

  Again the Old One walks the echoing halls, cheering his troops with rough eloquence, telling them all are one, there’s no gulf between great and small, between the most blue-blooded hidalgo and the duskiest son of a Moor. On this day every man is a knight. A knight of Christ and Santiago!

  “Now hear this and remember: take good care not to harm the King. He’s mine alone. I must take him alive. If he dies, so will we all. Make no move until you hear the gun. That’s your signal. Then you burst out and mow the Indians down like hay.”

  —

  Candía, in his nest, sees Atawallpa’s vanguard start to move: a squadron in red-and-white checkered uniforms, sweeping the road and singing a lilting song. Then other squadrons, each with a different livery, singing and swaying in a graceful dance to flutes and drums. The music floats towards him on the crystalline air. Strange and lovely.

  Waiting where he’s told—in the gloom at the back of a hall behind the Spanish foot—Waman catches the spraint of fear, an acid sharpness on the usual stench of the unwashed men. That and the smell of the mastiffs, big as pumas and as fierce, fitted with steel jackets and spiked collars, their handlers barely able to restrain them. The interpreter prays his shell of Christian clothes and grime will be enough to save him from their taste for Indian flesh.

  The Inca’s vanguard comes, marching through the gate, forming up around the square in squadrons. Then two columns of lords in blue tunics—eighty all told—shouldering the Inca’s great palanquin with its silver poles, sides of gold, and iridescent canopy fledged with the plumage of hummingbirds. Smaller litters, carrying lords and ladies—even some highborn children—bring up the rear.

  Hearing a ripple of surprise and relief among the Spaniards, Waman stands on a bench for a better lo
ok. It is true: the Inca’s men have brought no weapons; nothing but ceremonial knives of gold with little half-moon blades.

  The great square of Cajamarca is filled but by no means crowded. The middle is open. There the Inca sits aloft in his throne at the foot of the usnu steps. This platform is much grander than the one where Waman ate his lunch in Tumbes. It is a tiered stone pyramid, some thirty feet high, with a single flight of stairs to the top, where twin seats are hewn from a single block of stone.

  The litter curtains are drawn back, revealing the Intiq Churin, Son of the Sun. All in the square look down, as if afraid to burn their eyes. Waman does not observe this rule. Atawallpa, he sees, is wearing a purple tunic. Around his neck is a collar of emeralds. The crimson fringe hangs at his brow beneath a plain gold band.

  The plaza falls still but for the susurration of five thousand breaths. The halls, too, are quiet. Waman hears only a few sharp whispers, the snort of a horse, low growls and whimpers from the war-dogs as their handlers make ready to let slip.

  In the square, nobody moves except four men in orange uniforms, who run up the usnu stairs to raise the imperial standard: the rainbow and twin serpents of Tawantinsuyu, United Quarters of the World.

  “Where are the bearded ones?” Atawallpa calls out in a loud voice.

  “They are hiding, Only King,” comes a chorused reply.

  He stands up in the palanquin—the effect marred by his unsteadiness—and beams at the assembly. Triumph lights his face.

  “Then the barbarians are my prisoners!”

  Atawallpa is about to step from his vehicle to the usnu stairs. But at this moment Pizarro approaches on foot with Waman, doffs his feathered helmet, and makes a sweeping bow. “Felipe, beg the Inca to come down so we may embrace and speak together.”

  For a moment Atawallpa acts as if they are not there. Then he resumes his seat in the palanquin and speaks up without looking at Waman or Pizarro.

  “Tell the Old One I shall not stir from here until he has made good all the damage he has done in my Empire. Until he has compensated the families of everyone killed, everyone maimed, everyone raped. Until he has returned everything stolen, right down to the last pair of shoes. The records are exact. I know all.”