Book 16 - The Wine-Dark Sea

by Patrick O'Brian

  Eduardo had given him a detailed account of Pachacutic Inca, the first great conqueror, and of his family down to Huayna Capac, the Great Inca, to Atahualpa, strangled by Pizarro, and the Inca Manco, Eduardo's ancestor, and of the many still-existing collateral families descending from Huayna Capac. It did not surprise Stephen to hear of bitter enmity between cousins, nor of feuds lasting from the earliest times to the present, nor indeed of brother murdering brother—there were after all well-established precedents—but it did surprise him after a while to find that the general drift of his friend's conversation seemed more and more to be in the direction of outside support for one particular branch of the royal line, so that it might neutralize the other Quechua clans and unite a sufficient force of Indians and well-wishers to liberate at least Cuzco, their ancestral home. It surprised him because he would have sworn that a man of Eduardo's intelligence must have seen the impossibility of such a scheme—the unbelievable number of totally conflicting interests—the extreme unlikelihood of reconciliation between the hostile groups—the wretched outcome of Tupac Amaru's rising not long since, drowned in blood by the Spaniards with the help of other Indians, some of the royal blood. He concealed his surprise, but he let the words flow past his ears, deliberately forgetting to record the genealogies, the names of those likely to support the cause, and of those already committed.

  Yet as he lay there unsleeping in the cold his perversely retentive memory rehearsed these lists, and he was still with the descendants of Huascar Inca when a barefoot friar came in with a charcoal brazier and asked him whether he was awake, because if he was, the Prior thought he might like to join them in a novena addressed to Saint Isidore of Seville, begging for his intercession in favour of all travellers.

  Returning to his now warmer room from this exercise Stephen fell into a dreaming sleep: Diana, sentenced to death for some unquestioned murder, stood before the judge in an informal court, guarded by a civil but reserved jaileress. She was wearing a nightgown, and the judge, a well-bred man obviously embarrassed by the situation and by his task, was slowly tying a hangman's knot in a fine new piece of white cordage. Diana's distress increased as the knot reached completion; she looked at Stephen, her eyes darkening with terror. He could do nothing.

  Still another barefoot friar, looking casually into his cell, expressed some astonishment that Stephen should not yet have joined don Eduardo and his company. They were there in the courtyard, the pack llamas already loaded and the sun rising over Anacochani.

  So it was: yet the western sky was still dark violet at the lower rim and as he looked at it Stephen remembered the words he had intended to write to Diana before he put his letter to the candle: 'in this still cold air the stars do not twinkle, but hang there like a covey of planets', for there they were, clear beads of unwinking gold. He could not relish them however; his dream still oppressed him, and he had to force a smile when Eduardo told him he had reserved a piece of bread for their breakfast instead of dried potatoes, a piece of wheaten bread.

  The high querulous voice of the llamas as they set off, the steady clop of his mule striding along the road, the glorious day rising huge overhead in a sky of immeasurable height, and on every hand brown mountains capped with white, the thin and piercing air growing warm as the sun climbed well above the peaks.

  Nobody spoke much; nor would they do so until the warmth and the exercise had loosened their powerful chests—the breath still came steaming from them all and all seemed totally absorbed by their own reflexions. Yet the train had not gone two miles or three before a long wavering Aymara howl stopped each man in his stride.

  It was a short stocky Indian just coming into sight behind them, rounding a curve in the mountain side. He was a great way off, but in this brilliant clarity Eduardo at once said 'Quipus', on either side of him his followers murmured 'Quipus'.

  'I am sure you have often seen quipus, don Esteban?' said Eduardo.

  'Never in life, my dear,' replied Stephen.

  'You will see them presently,' said Eduardo, and they watched the far small man as he came running steadily along the track, his coloured staff rising and falling. 'They are knotted cords and thin strips of cloth: our kind of writing, concise, ingenious, secret. I am a sinful creature, but on no more than a few inches I can record all I must remember at confession; and only I can read it, since the first knot gives the clue to all the rest.'

  The messenger came running along the line; his face was blue, but his breath was even, unhurried. He kissed Eduardo's knee, unwound the coloured cords and strips from his staff and handed them up. The train moved on; Stephen gathered his reins. 'No,' said Eduardo. 'Pray watch. You will see me read them as quick as a clearly-written letter.'

  This he did, but as he read his expression changed. His pleasant ingenuous young face closed and at the end he said, 'I beg your pardon, don Esteban: I had thought it was just my agent in Cuzco asking whether he might send a draft of llamas to Potosi, this being the runner who usually brings his messages. But now it is quite another matter. We must go no farther south. Gayongos has a ship for Valparaiso that will touch at Arica. We must cut across by the Huechopillan . . . it is a high pass, don Esteban, but you will not mind a high pass. I am very sorry I must forego the pleasure of showing you the rheas of the altiplano this time and the great wastes of salt; but not far from the Huechopillan there is a lake on which I can almost promise you some most uncommon ducks and geese: gulls too and rails. Forgive me.' He spurred along the track, and as Stephen slowly followed he heard him giving orders that sent three quarters of the train back along the road, such as it was.

  Stephen was intimately convinced that the quipus had brought news of some hostile cousins waiting for Eduardo in the context of that movement for liberation he had touched upon the day before as well as word of Gayongos' ship, which might more sensibly have put in a little farther south, in the realm of Chile. For Arica, as both he and Eduardo knew, was still in the government of Peru: yet pointing out the obvious could only cause distress, fruitless argument, bad blood.

  The greater part of the returning band flowed round him as he sat there on his mule, passing silently, with apparent indifference or at the most a certain veiled disapproval. Riding on to join those who remained he saw Eduardo's face, impassive and firmly in command, though his eyes sometimes wandered towards Stephen with some hint of anxious questioning. Stephen still said nothing, yet he did observe that now their company was made up of the abler looking (and indeed more amiable) men leading the stronger beasts, and they with larger packs. On, and within half an hour their quiet rhythm had returned.

  At noon they were on a broad stony platform, bare flat rock at the convergence of three mountain spurs, hot in the sun; and here their track could no longer be seen at all. Yet neither Eduardo nor his men seemed in any way concerned; they marched steadily across and turned right-handed where the westernmost spur ran down to the little plain, travelling steadily on through a sheltered and relatively fertile stretch of country, green here and there with tola bushes and shaggy with coarse yellow grass.

  The going was easier, much clearer in direction and smoother by far. 'We have struck into one of the Inca post-roads,' said Eduardo, breaking the silence. 'In a little while, where there is marshy ground by day, it is paved. My ancestors may not have known the wheel, but they did know how to make roads. Beyond the marshy piece, where we may put up some wildfowl, there is a great tumble of boulders from an earthquake so long ago that they are covered with lichen, and not only lichen but a very curious woody fungus that I believe you may not have seen. It is called yaretta, and it grows at this height from here to the westward; and together with guanaco dung the heads make excellent firing. The rock-fall abounds with viscachas, and if we take our guns we may be spared guinea-pig for a great while: viscachas are capital eating. But Doctor, I am afraid you are sad. I am so sorry to have disappointed you of our altiplano rheas.'

  'I am not at all disappointed, friend. I have seen a little flock
of white-winged finches and a bird I took to be a mountain caracara.'

  Eduardo was unconvinced. He looked into Stephen's face and said, 'Still, if only this weather holds'—glancing anxiously at the pure sky overhead—'we should reach the pass in three days, and we will surely find wonders on my lake.'

  On the morning of the second day the pass was clearly to be seen, a little above the snow-line between two matching peaks that soared another five thousand feet, brilliant white in the almost horizontal sun.

  'There is the post-house,' said Eduardo, pointing his glass, 'just under the snow and a little to the right. It was built by Huayna Capac, and it is as strong as ever. The pass is high, as you see, but on the far side there is an easy road, downhill all the way to one of my brother's silver-mines and a village where they grow the best potatoes in Peru as well as corn and barley, and they breed excellent llamas—these animals all came from there, and that is one of the reasons that they step out so well. It is true that after that we have to cross a chasm, with the Uribu flowing far below, but there is a hanging bridge in quite good repair, and you do not dislike heights that fill weak minds with horror. Sailors pay no attention to heights—a circumnavigator is inured to prodigious heights. What have you found, don Esteban?'

  'A curious beetle.'

  'Very curious indeed. One day I shall really set myself to the study of beetles. My lake too is on the far side. It seems to me that we should reach the post-house in plenty of time for the men to settle in and for you and me to go on to my lake. At this time of year it will not even skim over with ice until well after sunset, and we may find ducks and geese by the hundred. We will take Molina, the best llama, to carry what we shoot.'

  'If you are as mistaken about the birds as you are about my head for heights, Molina will have no great burden to carry, at all,' reflected Stephen, who had often heard, each time with deeper dismay, of the spidery Inca bridges upon which intrepid Indians crossed torrents raging a thousand feet below them, even hauling immobilized animals over by means of a primitive windlass, the whole construction swaying wildly to and fro as even a single traveller reached the middle, the first false step being the last.

  'How long does it take to fall a thousand feet?' he asked himself, and as the troop set out he tried to make the calculation; but his arithmetical powers were and always had been weak. 'Long enough to make an act of contrition, at all events,' he said, abandoning the answer of seven hours and odd seconds as absurd.

  On and on: up and up. This had been the pattern for a great while, but now the up and up was growing far more pronounced ; now it was often a question of leading his mule again; and now he had to concentrate his mind on keeping up wherever the road grew steep. His breath was coming short; his heart beat a hundred and twenty strokes a minute; his eyesight wavered.

  'You are in a brown study, I find,' said Eduardo, whose spirits had revived with the altitude.

  'I was contemplating on the physiology of animals that live in a rarefied atmosphere,' said Stephen. 'Surely the exact dissection of a vicuña would show some very remarkable adaptations?'

  'There can be no doubt of it,' replied Eduardo. 'And at present we too mean to adapt our own persons for the last stretch with a draught of maté. Do you choose to dismount?'

  Stephen did so, very carefully avoiding the least hint of unsteadiness. He could scarcely see, but he was most unwilling to show any sign of the mountain-sickness that had certainly come upon him. When his head cleared from the effort of swinging out of the saddle he looked up and saw to his relief that they were now quite near the snow-line, above sixteen thousand feet. He had never been so high, and he had every right to be mountain-sick: this was no discreditable weakness.

  Already smoke was rising from the guanaco dung, the woody fungus heads and a few of those bushes that burned green; and presently the gourds of maté were passing round. Stephen drew in the hot cheering gusts through his silver tube, ate a dried peach from Chile, and then like all the rest he drew out his pouch of coca-leaves, preparing a moderate ball spread with quinoa ash, chewed it slightly to start the flow and then eased it into his cheek. The familiar tingling began almost at once, followed by the beginning of that curious numbness which had so startled him many years ago.

  Mountain-sickness faded, anxiety with it; strength returned. He gazed at the climbing road, the last stretch, three steep traverses zigzagging up to the post-house, into the snow and over the pass. It would be walking every step of the way. He did not mind at all.

  'Will you not ride, don Esteban?' asked Eduardo, holding the stirrup for him.

  'No, sir,' said Stephen. 'The animal is extremely tired—look at his hanging lip, God be with him—whereas I am now quite recovered, a sprightly popinjay.'

  A little less sprightly by the time they reached the massive post-house, built, like some of those sections of the road cut deep into the mountainside, of vast rocks so exactly shaped that they outstripped all reasonable conjecture, a little less sprightly, but perfectly human. He took the liveliest interest in the yaretta fungus growing on these rocks and on the inner walls, and Eduardo said to him, 'How glad I am to see you so brisk. Although we reached here in such good time I was afraid you might be too tired to see my lake. Do you think that after say an hour's rest you would like to go? There is some cloud in the east, and as you know winds sometimes get up in the evening; but an hour's rest would still leave us time.'

  'Dear Eduardo,' said Stephen, 'the earlier we go the more we shall see. I fairly dote on alpine lakes, and this one as I recall has a fine fringe of reeds.'

  It had indeed a fine fringe of reeds, a very fine deep fringe, unique in Stephen Maturin's extensive experience of reeds in that they grew not out of glutinous mud but from a layer of broken stones brought down by some not far distant combination of earthquake and flood from one of the nearby glaciers. This allowed them to walk out dryfoot with their guns and spyglasses, leaving Molina on a long tether among the clumps of spiny ichu grass.

  When first they had seen it from above, at some distance, the lake was clearly full of wildfowl—rafts of duck, geese at the far end where a stream from the northern glacier came in, and gulls over all—but by the time they had made their way through to a sheltered point near the open water that allowed them a clear view although they remained unseen, they found that there were also remarkable numbers of rails, waders and the smaller herons.

  'What wealth!' they cried, and began a first eager census of genera at least before the identification or attempted identification of species. Presently they grew calmer, leaving the fine-work until they could obtain specimens, and they sat at their ease, gazing over the water at a distant crowd of flamingoes, gabbling steadily in their goose-like manner. A straggling line of newcomers, pale pink, scarlet and black in the declining sun, passed over to join the rest; and Stephen, watching them as they crossed from left to right, observed, 'For me flamingoes belong essentially to the Mediterranean lagoons, by definition at the level of the sea; and to find them up here, in an air so thin it is a wonder that their wings can bear them, gives the whole landscape something of the qualities of a dream. It is true that their voices are slightly different and that their plumage has a deeper red, but that if anything strengthens the impression, like losing one's way in a familiar town—a sense of . . .' He broke off as a little band of teal came racing across well within range and both men cocked their fowling-pieces. Eduardo was poised, but seeing Stephen lower his gun he did not fire. 'How absurd,' said Stephen, 'I quite forgot to ask you how you manage without a dog. We could not have brought them down on land, and no man would ever wade far less swim for all love in that cruel bitter cold wetness for anything short of a two-headed phoenix.'

  'No,' said Eduardo. 'What we cannot bring down on the shore, we leave where they fall. The lake freezes hard by night and we pick them up in the morning. But it is strange that you should have spoken of a dream—waking dream. I have the same feeling, though not at all for the same clear reason. There i
s something strange here. The birds are not settled. As you see, they are perpetually moving, the groups breaking up. And there is too much noise. They are uneasy. So is Molina: I have heard him three times now. There is something unnatural. God send there may not be an earthquake.'

  'Amen.'

  After a long pause Eduardo said, 'I do not believe I shall kill anything this evening, don Esteban . . . What do you say to sitting here and counting and naming as well as we can until the sun is half an hour from Taraluga over there—I have a quipu in my pocket to record them—and then going back across the Huechopillan to the post-house, where you can write them down at your leisure?'