Until Cusco, until that moment when she rested her chin on his shoulder, he had felt the reverse. After their reunion in Cajamarca the easy conversations had all been had; the hard ones, unspoken, were a wall between them. He feared he was losing her; that instead of growing towards him, accepting his life as a bridge between worlds, she was withdrawing into herself, shrinking not only from the invaders but from him, from the past they shared.
Now, by the river, in a capital at peace filled with music and song, the barrier between them seems to be crumbling away. That night, they sleep together—not as lovers, but side by side in the same bed like the children they used to be.
The new Inca’s first task is to assign lodging to his allies from across the sea. Pizarro is given the Qasana, the largest palace on the square, with a great hall that can seat four thousand under one roof. Manku thought all the bearded ones and their auxiliaries might fit into this comfortably, but the Old One—fearing a trap and keen to assert his standing—keeps it for himself and his retainers, demanding another palace for One-Eye, and a third for his brother Hernando when he gets back from Spain. Friar Valverde (whose application to become Bishop of Cusco is already on its way to Rome) demands the Sunturwasi, the Roundhouse tower, at the eastern corner of the square, for a church.
Manku assents with good grace. The clans affected will grumble, but the palaces are half empty nowadays, and no one lives in the Roundhouse anyway. Besides, it is only for the time being, a small price for peace. Manku also assigns the bearded ones most of the remaining gold and silver from public buildings. The sooner they satisfy that curious hunger, the sooner they can leave.
The Cusco treasure is melted—as much again as Atawallpa’s ransom—and shared more fairly with Almagro and his men.
The Inca’s priority is to put his alliance with the barbarians to work, to crush all pockets of resistance to his rule. To this end he raises an army and marches north for many months, pursuing the rump of Atawallpa’s forces with Almagro, Soto, Candía, and sometimes Pizarro himself. Cusco he leaves in the untried hands of his half brother Pawllu, given the office of Inkaq Rantin, Inca’s Deputy.
To their relief, Waman and Tika are also left in Cusco, with a room each on a back courtyard of the Old One’s ample billet. There are other interpreters now, both Peruvian and Spanish; none nearly as fluent as Waman, but several good enough for military duties. Only he can handle the work in Cusco, which includes religious translations for Valverde, matters of law and custom, and communications with sixteen-year-old Pawllu.
A brittle calm falls over the city. The two worlds, Inca and Spanish, run on in parallel, largely unaware of each other’s workings. Pizarro’s conquest has been thwarted by Manku’s acceptance of the Requirement. The Peruvian King is now, by Spanish law, a vassal of Emperor Charles. Yet Charles is far away. The young Inca still rules his World.
Manku and Pizarro: each thinks himself master of the Empire. And each has doubts.
The Commander decides to build a city of his own on the coast, far from the Inca capital. The sea is his lifeline and, if need be, his escape. He chooses the irrigated valley of Rimaq, which the locals pronounce as Lima.
Several mornings a week Waman has the pleasant task of giving lessons at the Yachaywasi, or House of Learning, the imperial college near Cusco’s square. This is interesting work in itself and an honour, for it puts him among the amawta, Tawantinsuyu’s leading scholars, who train sons and daughters of the royal clans and officials from across the Empire. Waman teaches Spanish to these pupils—who sit cross-legged in rows, heads bent, fingers busy over their quipus—and Quechua to any Spaniards wishing to learn. The latter, who bring folding chairs and sheets of paper, are mainly notaries and friars.
The Empire rewards Waman for this work with food, beer, fine cloth. His bearded students—wealthy men now—sometimes offer to pay him in silver and gold. But he never takes it. The metals have no worth as currency. In the highlands everything is by government issue and reciprocal exchange; even the copper money of the coast is seldom used. Instead, he asks for help with reading and writing. He has the alphabet already but is still baffled by the spelling. Sometimes more than one sign is used for a single sound, while other signs have several sounds within them. And his informants do not always agree on which to use, even when writing their own names. Is it Xéres or Jérez, Valencia or Balenzia? Then there are numerals of two different kinds, Roman and Arabic. Besides these hurdles there’s his own clumsiness with quill and ink.
Still, after a couple of months Waman can write Castilian. He finds he can also make the letters work for Quechua. These accomplishments he keeps to himself. It would be unwise to flaunt a skill lacked by the Commander.
Best about his mornings at the House of Learning is that Tika often comes too. With the departure of so many barbarians to the north and the seaboard, her confidence has returned. She is no longer silent in public. And things are easier between them. Although they still treat each other as siblings, Tika is warmer, more trusting; sometimes (it seems to Waman) even a little flirtatious. Yet if he is rash enough to flirt back she withdraws, stiffly polite. At first he wondered why she came to the college—he can teach her all the Spanish she wants at home—but she is there mainly to polish her Quechua, to mingle with other students and pick up the fine speech of the capital.
Tika does not tell Waman this—it would only get his hopes up—but since coming to Cusco she has found new respect for her cousin. During their months on the road she saw him as a prisoner. She pitied him. And pity left no room for admiration. But here at the House of Learning, Waman has become a somebody, an expert on the foreigners with whom the new Inca has chosen to cooperate.
She likes the imperial school, its cloistered atmosphere reminiscent of her years with the Chosen. And when she found out that some of the women who came to study were from the great Akllawasi, the Chosen House on the south side of the square, she befriended them. She spoke of her life in Huanuco, and asked if any Chosen in Cusco might have come from there. The Mothers were reticent at first, perhaps leery of her link with the barbarians through her “brother.” The mass rapes in the north have not been forgotten. But once they get to know Tika better, they invite her to visit them. Though well below full strength, the capital’s Akllawasi holds thousands. It takes several visits before Tika finds girls—young women now—whom she used to know. After that she becomes a regular guest, often spending her mornings at the school and afternoons in the House, where she takes up a loom beside her old friends or helps with brewing the beer consumed in the city’s many feasts and rituals.
—
One evening Tika and Waman walk up to the fortress, as they often do. They sit on a terrace below the ramparts, gazing down on Cusco’s beautiful roofs and, beyond, the grey-green hillsides darkening to purple. He has brought a bag of toasted corn, a flask of beer. They sip and munch, both drowsy from the climb. Her head tilts against his. The first stars show above the icy mountains; night settles on the city below, its darkness broken by braziers in the squares and pools of light from doors and windows. Smells of woodsmoke and cooking drift towards them. Their fingers interlace.
“You know, Tika,” he says after a while, “all that time I was in Spain, and at sea, not a day went by when I didn’t think of you. I wanted time to roll back, to live that morning over again—the morning I left home. To respond like a man when you kissed me. Not the silly boy I was. I swore I’d come back all grown up and win you. Make you my wife.” He pauses, tries to feel her reaction in her touch.
“Oh, Waman.” Her chest falls in a sigh. She looks away, sighs again. “We were children! I can’t remember what I said. Or did. I suppose I may have thought of you that way—for a moment. Perhaps only to make you stay. Or because I was starting to think about boys, and you were the one within reach. We didn’t know what we were doing. Neither of us. We were thirteen.”
Crestfallen, he ponders t
he cruelties of time and space, how two lives can tear apart. How hard it is to stitch them back together.
“Of course I missed you, worried about you,” Tika adds more softly. “We all did, terribly. When we heard of the barbarians for the first time—their attack on a trading ship soon after you left—we were beside ourselves. Your parents went to Tumbes many times, searching for any word. Your mother even went to priests and soothsayers. They told her you were all right—far away, happy, safe. That’s what they always say, isn’t it? Chaska’s not the kind to be consoled by that for long.”
It’s still light enough to see her press the heel of her hand to an eye. She misses Chaska, as does he. Finding no words, he offers the bag of corn. He becomes aware of evening sounds rising from the city. A flute on the air, mournful and pure; a horse’s whinny; the Angelus tolling from Valverde’s makeshift church in the Sunturwasi. She may not have known what she felt for him when he ran away to sea, he thinks, but she seems to know now. And it’s not what he has longed for all these years.
“We must go and look for her,” he says. “For my mother and the others. We’ll start in Huanuco. What about that village you and she both came from?”
“There’s nothing there,” Tika answers quickly. “I already told you. We saw Yaruwillka, Chaska and I. Nothing but the dead.”
“There must be others. Other villages around there where she might be.”
“Perhaps, but how can we go? Huanuco’s shattered by war. Worse than we saw. I’ve heard things. At the House.”
“We have to see for ourselves. We could leave tonight. Or tomorrow. I’ll always protect you, Tika.”
“Oh, Waman,” she says again, in a tone that makes him feel like a boy. “How can you? You can’t protect yourself.” She pats his hand. “There’s nothing I want more than to find Chaska. To get away from these barbarians. To be gone with you. Someday we will do it. But not now. We’re safer here—at the eye, in Manku’s city. If they’re alive, they’ll be safe too. In hiding. But getting there, even if we knew where . . . No. Not until we see how things are going. Or war breaks out in Cusco and we have no choice.”
Late that night, sleepless, his mind runs over everything awakened by their talk. Little River. His parents. His desertion. The need to find his mother, the little brother he’s never met. As for Tika, he will always love her. He doesn’t doubt that she loves him, though not in the same way. Perhaps nothing he can do or become will change her feelings, ever. Perhaps she will never want any man.
He must learn to love her in a way she can accept. And he asks himself whether he too is caged by the things that have happened since he ran away. Whether wanting Tika as his wife has all along been something else: a way into the past, a way home.
17
The Inca Manku returns at last to his capital, as do many of the bearded allies who have helped him overcome his foes. The Old One stays in Lima, leaving his interests in Cusco to his brothers Gonzalo and Juan, both young, both bastards, and both troublemakers; Gonzalo the worse. Almagro reappears, deepening the tensions. The rains are beginning: sudden downpours that turn streets into waterfalls, fill drains to the brim, set the twin rivers raging and bucking under their bridges of corbelled stone.
Candía is back in Cusco too, though it’s some time before he and Waman are sitting across a chessboard in the great Qasana hall. Milky daylight is spilling through the door from the plaza, where figures hurry by, bent against wind and rain.
“Health and wealth, Felipe!” The Greek tips some beer on the floor.
“And time,” Waman says, more cheerily than he feels. His friend has aged: grey strands in the glossy beard, cheeks withered by the highland sun; even, it seems, a measure of sadness or resignation in the dark pools of his large eyes.
“Time. Yes,” Candía replies sagely with a wag of his head, nudging a pawn onto the field. “I think time is running out.”
With the return of armed men, horses, war-dogs, the capital’s months of calm have ended. And many more barbarians are arriving, new would-be conquerors drawn by the fame of Peruvian gold. At night the streets echo with shouts and singing in Castilian. There are scuffles, especially between newcomers seeking their fortune and the first cohort with their hoards of treasure. Treasure they are willing to gamble but not to share. Waman feels thunder building in the city, as it did in Cajamarca during Atawallpa’s captivity. When wealth sticks to a few hands, peace can’t hold for long.
“I think the Inca Manku would agree with you,” Waman says. “Have you seen him lately? He’s looking haunted. Like a man who can’t sleep. He feels time flowing against him too.” Waman refills their cups, goes on. “The other day—I was interpreting for Almagro—Manku asked me why his Christian guests have put up that gallows right beside the usnu fountain. The square may be called War, he said, but it’s a place of nourishment not death. I could see how angry he was, though he hid it well. One-Eye said it was merely to remind the Christians to behave themselves.”
“A good answer.”
“When Manku finds out what it really means, anything could happen.”
“How so?” says Candía, thoughts elsewhere. He brings a knight into play.
“They’ve ‘founded’ Cusco as a Spanish city—Santiago del Cusco. They’ve formed a town council. And it seems the first thing every Spanish city has to have is a gallows! They’ve also been discussing how to cut up the royal halls into houses and shops. That’s on the quiet. But I thought you might have heard.”
Candía looks up from the board to the window, lets out a low whistle. “Those Pizarros! They don’t waste time, do they?” He pours another round, changes the subject. “How’s your sister doing?”
“Last time I saw Manku,” Waman continues, “he had me stay behind. He said his knotkeepers are counting the bearded ones. A year ago they were hundreds, now they’re thousands.”
“He’s right. Look around you, Felipe. All the new men here. Countless more on the coast. As soon as Hernando Pizarro reached the Isthmus with the gold for Spain, everyone rushed here like flies. Santo Domingo is empty of Spaniards. So’s Guatemala. Yucatán. All they do in Panama is throw ships together for Peru. Flimsy as you like—built to last one way. They’re landing in droves. A year ago I was the only Greek. There’s a dozen of us now.”
“So that’s what you’ve been doing since you came back. Greeking with Greeks.”
“It’s good to speak my own tongue again! You know how that is, Felipe. And one can have enough of Spaniards. I needn’t tell you that either. Anyhow, you’ve been scarce yourself. I hear you’ve become a scholar.”
Waman nods, falls silent. His thoughts are on Tika. The new men are dangerous enough. But worse are the unseen killers they bring with them: smallpox, measles, influenza. She survived the Great Death by isolation. The next outbreak could take her.
“Felipe! You’re in check.”
Waman glances at the board. He could win, but the need for it has left him. He topples his king. Candía shoots a worried look, says nothing.
“The Inca also asked me this,” Waman says. “How much gold and silver would he have to send the King of Spain to make his people stop coming. To make all the barbarians go home. I didn’t know what to say. I told him the King of Spain was the least of it, because he takes only a fifth. Then Manku ordered a helper to pour a big jar of corn on the floor and he picked up one kernel. All the gold the bearded ones have taken so far, Manku said, is like this one grain compared with what there is in the World. Answer me as best you can.”
Candía makes a wry smile, pours the last of their beer. “What answer did you give? Did you tell him wealth is nothing without health and time to enjoy it?”
“What Spaniard truly thinks so? I said all the gold in all the mountains of Peru would never be enough. Because their King couldn’t stop them coming if he tried.”
18
The rains end, the harv
est ripens, filling granaries and silos; the highland winter brings its sunny days and freezing nights. It is the season for campaigns. Troubles in Cusco have worsened. More infighting among the barbarians; more plundering of the people, their homes, their tombs, their shrines. The Inca kindreds are restless, doubting the wisdom of Manku’s policy, fearing the barbarians will never go.
Down in Lima, the Commander has had no news of when his brother Hernando will get back from Spain. But plenty of news from Cusco has reached his ears, none of it good. He decides he must leave his beloved new city and make the long trek to the Inca capital.
Within a month he is walking the polished floor of the Qasana. The solution is obvious: Diego de Almagro must leave the city and take most of the new men with him. Now is the time for One-Eye to claim his great prize: the whole southern half of the Empire, still untrodden by a horse’s hoof. All of Qollasuyu and Kuntisuyu, including the province of Chile.
Pizarro finds it easier than expected to persuade his turbulent partner. Control of the Inca capital is moot until King Charles’s wishes are known. There is little more gold in Cusco anyway. Almagro is keen to move on, to seize his own kingdom at last. Pizarro hopes his partner will indeed find great cities and treasures. Enough to keep him there.
“Take all the men you want, Don Diego,” the Commander is saying by the Qasana’s main door, where a crowd of Spaniards has gathered. “Lots of fine fellows here.” He doffs his plumed helmet and flourishes it at the hopefuls. They raise a cheer. “And Manku’s brother Pawllu has offered to escort you to Chile himself.”
Waman is in earshot but unseen, he thinks, in the shadows of the hall. “Furthermore,” the Old One adds expansively, “I will give you the best interpreter.” He turns on Waman like a hound. “Felipillo! Stop your eavesdropping and come here. You’ll be leaving with Don Diego soon as Pawllu’s ready. Until then you stay in town where we can find you. No wandering in the hills with your whore.”
The Gold Eaters Page 25
