“Who?”
“I don’t know them—men of Almagro’s. With respect, I beg you, my lord, to bear in mind that everything I’ve heard is mere rumour and low gossip. Except Hernando Pizarro’s preparations for going to Spain, which are plain to see. He’s taking gold for their King.”
Atawallpa falls still. Only his eyelids move, nervously batting the lashes in an oddly girlish way. Waman has not seen this tic since the first days of the Inca’s overthrow.
“You’ve spoken plainly,” the Inca says at last. “Come back tomorrow. We’ll finish the game then. Keep your ears open.”
As Waman gets up, bowing and backing to the door, his head strays towards the girl. He reins it just in time.
“You needn’t worry about her,” Atawallpa adds, undeceived. “She won’t talk. She can’t. She is upa.”
“She is simple, my lord?”
“Not simple. Struck dumb. This makes her useful. My women say no word has passed her lips since the night the barbarians attacked. She was a novice in the House of the Chosen.
“That is all.”
The sun is slipping behind the mountains when Waman returns to his room on the back courtyard. Carpenters are sweeping up and armourers dousing their forge for the night. The place, he thinks, is starting to resemble a barrio of some Spanish town. Men are playing cards in doorways. Others are drinking, laughing. A fellow from Seville with faraway eyes and a mysterious air has set up shop as an astrologer. He tells fortunes, makes horoscopes, conjures messages from home, speaks with angels in a crystal. Waman has noticed Pizarro himself go in there. Also, at other times, Almagro. Atawallpa isn’t the only leader scrying the future.
He lingers by the warm bricks of the forge, thinking over the afternoon. How can he contrive to pick up another message, if there is one? How can they talk? How can he even get a good look at her? Since hearing Atawallpa’s parting words, half of him hopes she is not Tika. He has heard what happened when the Spaniards broke into the Chosen House after the massacre.
Waman can learn nothing more. There are no more chess games with the Inca. Atawallpa’s confinement is now solitary. The Commander and One-Eye have made up their minds. They will not leave Peru. Pizarro won’t abandon his prize for hollow honours, like his cousin Cortés. Almagro is in a rush to advance south, where his fortune beckons from the city of Cusco and whatever lies beyond. Atawallpa is no longer needed; he must die. They will rid themselves of this northern tyrant now, and thereby befriend the southern side in the Empire’s civil war. In Cusco they’ll find a new Inca to set in Atawallpa’s place.
—
At the bottom of the usnu glides the vulturine figure of Valverde, flesh wattled by the highland sun, clutching a silver cross and breviary, overseeing the preparation of firewood around a stake at the foot of the stairway. Here he will burn the Antichrist alive.
It is late afternoon when Atawallpa is brought into the plaza. Pizarro, Almagro, and their officers form an avenue of dignitaries leading to the stake. Behind them stand hundreds more Spaniards, under arms, jostling for a view. The rest of the square is thronged by slaves, townsfolk, and Atawallpa’s wives and courtiers, many weeping.
Waman, made to stand beside Pizarro, searches the crowd for Tika, eyes darting like a hummingbird, alighting on each likely face. If she is here he cannot see her. Or, rather, he sees a dozen Tikas everywhere he looks.
Late rays of sunlight are gilding the great square. The last act in the tragedy that began at this hour and place eight months ago is about to be played out.
The Inca, ankles hobbled, is brought up to the Old One and Waman. He is blinking in the glare, his skin almost as pale as a Spaniard’s from being locked indoors so long.
“Where is your charity now?” Atawallpa demands, pointing his lower lip at Valverde. “If you burn me, will you not burn forever in your own god’s house of fire?”
“Not if I offer you mercy, Lord Inca,” the Old One answers. “Mercy is an everlasting gift. Repent and become a Christian.”
“And if I do?”
“We won’t burn you.”
Atawallpa brightens, though only for an instant.
“You will die by the garrotte instead—by throttling—a merciful end. And you’ll go straight to Heaven and eternal life. These are the mercies I can give you.”
The Inca has foreseen something like this. “To understand your beliefs,” he says thoughtfully, “will take time. They must enter my mind. My heart. There is much to learn.”
“Ah, no.” Pizarro stifles a smirk. “There you’re mistaken, Lord Inca. Father Valverde has spoken to you many times of our True Faith. All that remains is baptism. He’ll baptise you now.”
The Inca is bareheaded, dressed in a simple white tunic and plain sandals, without any trappings of kingship except his bearing. He stands arms folded, stoic, rigid with outrage. And with dread, Waman thinks, seeing the eyelashes flutter again.
“If I do this—if I receive your god—you must promise me one thing. You must look after my wives, my children. There are seven little ones—four girls, three boys. They are in Tumipampa.” The Inca recites their names, showing the height of each one with his hand. At this a great surge of pity washes through Waman. He has not loved this man, but he has come to know him as much as any outsider could. He is filled with sorrow and disbelief at this injustice, and with fear—fear of what it may unleash upon the World. Water runs from his eyes. For Atawallpa, for Tika, for the times to come.
“Tell him to forget his brats and whores,” Valverde hisses at Pizarro, “and think instead of his immortal soul.”
“That I shall do, and do gladly, Lord Inca,” the Commander answers Atawallpa, ignoring the priest.
The Inca consents to be baptised—not to escape the flames, or to live forever in the Christians’ heaven, but so his body will endure on Earth along with all the kings and queens before him.
Valverde approaches at once, pouring holy water on his head, scattering a pinch of salt and drops of chrism, hastening through the service, afraid his victim may yet change his mind. To convert this heathen monarch is a fine moment in the priest’s career. And when reports of the doings in Cajamarca reach King Charles in Spain, the crime of regicide is more likely to be overlooked if the deed was merciful and pious.
Do you renounce Satan and all his works? the priest intones, barely pausing for Waman to translate. Then: Ego te baptizo in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
The Inca is tied in a wooden chair against the stake.
“My own name!” Pizarro says grandly. “I give the Inca my own Christian name.”
Sapa Inka Atawallpa Q’aqcha Yupanki becomes, for these few moments, Don Francisco de Atahuallpa.
The last earthly sound Atawallpa hears is the creak of the strangling cord and the cracking of his neck.
15
Atawallpa . . . Atawallpa . . . Atawallpa. A woman’s voice deep in the royal palace, calling for the Inca as one calls a lost child. No guard at the door, no one in sight. Only a few lamps burning in niches, their light soaking into grey stonework and red tapestry. Atawallpa . . .
He follows the voice through dim halls until he sees her. A royal lady, perhaps a wife or sister—stumbling more than walking—steadying herself with a hand against the wall, twitching aside tapestries and door curtains, searching behind them. She gives a start as Waman comes up, turns with a triumphant smile. “Ah,” she says, brushing his forehead with her fingertips, “you are here! I knew you were.”
Even in the gloom Waman can see the grief-madness in her eyes, the clawed cheeks, the wild cascade of wet and bloody hair. She has torn clumps from her scalp.
“Come, now. Come with me,” says a soothing voice. An older woman enters and settles her arm across the other’s shoulders. “Come, now, Ñaña. We’ll get some rest, shall we? There’s nobody here.”
“He is
here! Our mighty brother. Look!”
The older one glares at Waman. “How dare you come in,” she hisses, her whisper like a curse. He apologises meekly. “I’m the interpreter,” he adds, to explain his Spanish clothes. “I’m looking for someone. The girl who can’t speak. Have you seen her?”
Without a word, the lady turns her back. Waman makes his way out into cold night filled with howls and weeping. Everyone else has gone to the square, swelling the dark whirlpool of mourners slowly circling the Inca’s body slumped in its chair at the foot of the usnu steps. All are cowled like monks in black shawls. He examines every face he can for Tika, until night drowns the dismal scene.
—
Tika is looking for Waman. She couldn’t find him in the square, nor in the palace. Where else might he be? She sees a wedge of light spilling from the door of the Sun’s hall, which the barbarians have made their church. It is crowded and noisy inside, chaotic. She does not go in. Keeping to one side, in shadow, she scans the faces in the temple. The barbarian priest is directing workers to prise up the stone floor and dig Atawallpa’s grave. Women are shrieking at him, tugging his robes, saying the Inca must be mummified, not buried. Others are demanding the tomb be much wider, so they can fling themselves in beside their lord. Some are openly mocking, their grief turned to anger. That’s your own grave you’re digging. Show us your resurrection! Make your dead god bring our Inca back to life!
If Valverde understands any of this, he gives no sign. He and his workers are the only men within. Waman is not there. Tika is about to walk on when she spies the outline of a Spaniard coming down the street. She shrinks back into the doorway, ready to mingle with the women inside if the barbarian comes too near. The man stops, looks in. That scarry face. Waman!
She comes up behind him, grabs the tuft on his chin and puts her mouth to his ear. “If you and I are to become friends again, Cousin,” she says, “the first thing we do is pluck this out.”
She releases the goatee and he whirls around to wrap her in his arms. They lean back, still clasped, study each other in the glow, wonder and joy on both faces. Only then does he realize she has spoken.
“Achachaw, Tika! You can speak! Mother Earth!” He buries his fingers in her hair, pulls her face to his chest. “What—” he begins.
“Not here,” she whispers, breaking free. “No talking here.”
Her hand takes his. She pulls him down the street into the night, away from public buildings, from people. Waman follows like a child, too elated to care where they are going. There are stars between black walls, a breath of fog. Soon he hears the rush of water. She stops here, sits down on a low wall. His eyes make out a pearly glow. The water is loud; they are beside the river.
“Tika. You’re all right! Your voice. When did it come back? I thought you were upa. I want—”
Her hand finds his face. She rests a finger on his lips.
“Not here,” she whispers again. “We’ll go somewhere warm. Safe. I know where. Nobody will be there now.”
Gripping his hand fiercely, she tows him back towards the centre, the only light a scatter of weak stars between black eaves. He recognizes a back entrance to the palace and takes the lead, treading softly into the familiar courtyard with its smells of sawdust, hoof glue, quenched iron. No light. No sound.
He kindles a flame with flint and steel in his small room, lights the lamp and sets it in a niche, and she comes up to him again, taking his hands in hers, searching his face. She sees him flinch from the light. “You needn’t be shy about this,” she says softly, stroking the rough skin with a finger. “Half the people in the World have that, or worse. It makes you look . . . lived. Someone who’s seen a thing or two. A survivor.”
She shrugs off her mourning cowl, lets it drop to the floor. She is dressed as she was in Atawallpa’s rooms: blue skirt sweeping to her feet, dark-red belt at her thin waist, spoon-shaped brooch fastening her embroidered shawl. Waman takes her chin in his hand, turns her to the lamp. His gaze roams over the strong cheekbones, the fetching underbite, the spirit and resolve in the set of her jaw. Her lower lip is full and flushed, her beauty etched by cares, by fine lines on her forehead and beneath her eyes, by the tiny scar above an eyebrow, the one visible trace of her burial alive as a child.
Still the same Tika. Or is she? He feels giddy, as if looking down on her from a height, the piled years since they lived in Little River. Are the Tika who was, and the Tika who is, the same person? Of course they are, he tells himself, then doubting. What has she seen and suffered?
She returns his gaze, looking into one eye, then the other. She kisses his ruined cheek.
“Here,” she says at last, patting his ridiculous beard as if bidding it farewell, “I’ve been waiting a long time to give you this.” From a small bag at her waist she draws out a knotted string.
“You’ll have to read it out to me,” Waman says. “I was never much good with quipus.” Ashamed of this, and keen to impress her, he adds, “But I’m learning the bearded ones’ letters. I . . .” Her face has frozen. What a foolish thing to say. How she must hate them. His mind casts back to his capture, those first days on the barbarian ship, when he feared they might be cannibals or demons. To her they’re still beings from nightmare. And it’s all too likely, as Atawallpa implied, that they attacked her.
She puts the string in his hand, closes his fingers around it as she did with the thread from her hem. “I think even you, Waman, will be able to read this one.” She folds her arms, leans back with a challenging smile.
Yes. He does know these childish knots. Tied by his own hand and given to Molina all those years ago in Tumbes.
“How did—”
She stops him with a tap on his lips. “I’ll tell you all I can, Waman. But first I must think where to begin. Is there anything to eat or drink in here?”
He glances in the corners, the niches, rummages in a leather chest. “I did have. Must have finished it the other day.”
“I’ll fetch some from the kitchens.”
“No you won’t, Tika. We’ll fetch it together. I’m not letting you out of my sight. Never again. Not after waiting . . . what? Six years?”
“Six and a half. Since I kicked you on your foolish way.” They start laughing and can’t stop, embracing like drunks, a shattering cloudburst of laughter, from relief and remembrance, and at the unfathomable luck of finding each other, of feeling the unknown years between them drop away.
The great halls are deserted, though a light still burns here and there. “If we meet anyone,” she warns in a whisper, “you do the talking. Don’t forget, I’m dumb. I want to stay that way. Same around your bearded friends.”
In the kitchens they find beer and bread, take it back to his room and eat hungrily. They talk most of the night. He is careful not to ask about her time in Cajamarca, how she came to the Inca’s household. All that is for her to tell when—and if—she chooses. She says only that she did lose her voice for a while, for a week or two after the massacre, and that the Mother of the Chosen brought her to the palace along with other girls saved from the barbarians.
“I remember you wanting to join the Chosen,” Waman says. “After I left I hoped you wouldn’t. I hoped you’d stay in Little River with my parents. At least for a year or so.”
“You could hardly expect me to make up for you! Not after you just . . . ran off like that. I thought you’d be back soon, a few months at most. We all did. Your grandfather was wonderful. He told us not to worry, that one voyage to the hotlands would be enough to cure you. He was proud of having done that himself, running to sea as a boy. Anyway, I did wait half a year. Then I got the chance to go to Huanuco. It was too good to miss. That’s where my people were from. And your mother’s. Aunt Chaska backed me. She came with me. And when we said goodbye at the door of the House there, she told me a secret—that she thought she was going to have another child. And she did!
I haven’t met him, but I know he’s lovely and his name is Atuq.” She stops suddenly. “Waman, I’m not thinking. How much do you know? About your father and grandfather, I mean.”
He tells her what he heard at Little River. She takes a hand in hers. “What you heard is true. I’m so sorry, Waman. Your father was a father to me too.” She waits, holding his eye. Then: “Atuq was born just before the sickness struck. Somehow he and your mother didn’t catch it. At least your father and granddad lived to see the baby.”
Waman says nothing, still in the ruins of Little River. She pauses, looks round the room as if baffled to find herself there.
“That all happened after I went to Huanuco. Chaska didn’t know what had become of you until that barbarian turned up. The one your mother married. Turtle, she calls him. I call him Monkey. Her monkey-man. They’re all so hairy. I still can’t believe she did it. What’s he like, really?”
“You mean you haven’t met him? How did you get the quipu? When I heard they left Little River for the highlands, I assumed they must have gone to be near you.”
“That was their plan. Aunt Chaska sent me a message saying they’d be coming soon—she sent your quipu with it. Then the war between the Incas broke out.” Tika stops herself, hands him her empty cup. “Time for another round. And time I let you do the talking. I’m like a broken dam. All those months of silence.”
They pour Mother Earth her share, hoist their cups, look at each other without speaking. She must watch what she says, she warns herself. Best to keep quiet about where Chaska, Atuq, and the monkey-man might be. The less Waman knows, the safer for everyone. She must throw him off the scent, at least for now.
“To our dead,” says Tika.
“To Father and Grandfather,” Waman answers. “All our lost, wherever they are.”
“I doubt they ever made it to Huanuco Pampa,” she says after a while. “Not with the war. If they did, they wouldn’t have found me. The Chosen House was evacuated when war broke out and we were taken to Cajamarca. No one told us why. Or who ordered it. There weren’t many of us left by then anyway.”
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