The Gold Eaters (17 page)

“Has Qoyllur come back too?” Waman asks.

“No. No, she hasn't. Not yet.” A pause. “But I saw her. She asked after you, said to wish you well and
buen viaje
. She speaks Castilian now.” A sweet lie, to spare the lad. Candía hopes that others won't expose it.

“Almagro got nothing,” he adds quickly. “Nothing worth having. It's all in Pizarro's hands.” The two partners, he explains, had agreed in Panama to share command. One-Eye has been bilked.

Waman has never understood the Spaniards' politics. Men seem to rise and sink in a moment, like carp in a pond. And devour one another like carp, too.

“That Pizarro.” Candía shakes his head, beard brushing chest. “What a bastard! Oh, I forgot. We can't call him that anymore—the King legitimized him.”

Now Pizarro goes home
to Trujillo, to the little lion-hued town of granite towers on its sunburnt hilltop overlooking the treeless plain. It is his first visit in more than half his life. And it will be his last. He takes Waman, Candía—all his officers—and an entourage of servants befitting the big man he has suddenly become.

The celebrations last for days. Waman watches in amazement as the would-be conqueror presides from a high oak chair beneath an awning by a church. The Old One has shed years. Overnight he has changed from a brigand into a lord.

Wine flows and hogs are roasted—descendants, perhaps, of the bristle-back swine Pizarro herded as a boy. But no one speaks of such things now. All are eager to add their breath to the wind of promise in his sail. A scribe sits at a table, enlisting the hopeful and the reckless. A painter sets up an easel to immortalize the new hidalgo posing with his coat of arms: a twin-headed eagle between two columns, wings spread over the city of Tumbes, over its ships and camels, its fortress with a lion and tiger rampant at the gate.

“Say lion and tiger in Peruvian,” someone asks. Waman is an object of great curiosity, treated like a rare beast, asked to open his mouth and give these barbarians a sound from his land.

“For lion we say
puma
. And
uturunku
for tiger, though the hotlanders call it
jaguar
.”

“And gate. Say gate and castle and city!” It is a girl no older than himself, laughter in her eyes.

“
Punku
is gate. Castle is
pukara
. And for city we say
llaqta
.”

“Look after that tongue of yours, Felipillo,” remarks one of Pizarro's lesser officers, a self-important man named Torres, passing by. “It's the only one we've got.”

“No, two. Once Qoyllur gets here. Her Castilian must be good by now.” He longs to see Qoyllur. Yet he fears what she may think of him, his ruined face. Will she ignore him again, as she did at the beginning?

“Has no one told you?”

“Told what?”

“You'd better ask your friend the gunner.”

Waman stares at the man walking off. He looks around wildly, guessing the worst. No sign of Candía. He runs along the crooked street, threads his way down alleys to the plaza. There, predictably, he finds the Greek in a tavern. Waman bursts in, not even seeing the others at the table.

“Get up! Outside! You have to tell me everything. Right now.”

“What?” The shock on his friend's face is genuine. But Waman sees it change to understanding as Candía lowers his big eyes.

“You lied to me!” Waman shouts, tears running down his scarry cheek. “You lied! Qoyllur's dead, isn't she?”

“Come here, lad,” the Greek says quietly. “Let's go somewhere we can talk alone.” He tries laying an arm on the boy's shoulder. Waman shrugs it off, his breath frantic, whooping in gasps and gusts.

“The truth is,” Candía says, when he has succeeded in calming Waman and drawing him to a quiet corner of the square, “the truth is that Qoyllur caught the pox as you did. In the winter. I don't know exactly when. None of us knew until we went with the Commander to get the royal licence. Yes, I lied when I came back. I lied for you. To spare you while you were still so weak yourself. And yes, I should have told you by now.” Candía sighs, rests a hand on Waman's shoulder. “The time never seemed right. For a thing so sad, Felipe, there's never a right time.

“One thing we can do,” he adds after a long pause. “We go into that church over there. We go in and we light a candle for Qoyllur, a tall one. And we think of her and nothing else.”

At some point Candía leaves, but Waman doesn't notice. Nor does he feel the passing hours. He is there until nightfall, when a sexton comes to lock the church. He walks away spent, unsteady, reeling down streets lit only by tongues of candlelight from open doors.

Among the conditions
of Pizarro's licence are these: he must take royal officials with him to collect one-fifth of all treasure for the King, and friars to convert the Indians; he must raise an army of three hundred; none can be New Christians, former Jews and Moors, lest the New World be tainted by the falsehoods of the Old.

The Commander gives not a turd for such minutiae. His first reaction to any order or entreaty is always to say no, or to ignore. How can he be expected to know what lurks in others' souls?

He takes his recruiting desk to all the likeliest towns in the hard province of Extremadura—to the medieval warren of Cáceres, the Roman streets of Mérida, the border town of Badajoz, and lastly the holy village of Guadalupe, high in the wooded hills beyond Trujillo.

There in the Gothic shrine Pizarro lights a field of candles and gets down on his stiff knees before the tiny Virgin, with all his leading men around.

They pray, but Waman does not hear their words.

He stares a long time at the holy face darkened by centuries of smoke and piety. It seems to look at him, draw near, become a face he knows. She smiles. She
winks
. Then a hurricane of sound, a blinding rainbow, a smothering breath of roses and gardenias. Or is it the flowers that roar, the music that dazzles, the light that smells so sweet?

He looks again.

It is Qoyllur.

Again.

The face of
Tika.

Northern Peru

1531–
33

9

M
olina comes back from fishing to a feast laid out in Chaska's patio. Along with squash and sweet potatoes, there is highland quinoa, which reminds him of rice, though nuttier and more toothsome. Best of all: a steaming heap of roast llama, dug from a
pachamanka
filled with hot stones and aromatic leaves. Some neighbours are already there, three fishermen with their wives, and several children playing with little Atuq. From the slack grins on one or two faces he guesses the jug on the dining board has already made a few rounds.

“What thing?” he asks, in his fluent though still uneven Quechua.

“You can't guess?” says Chaska. “How long have you been living here?”

“Oh, maybe three years or so . . .”

“Yes. And two years to the day since you and I were wed.”

Two years already! Lucky she doesn't expect him to know the Peruvian calendar; a Spanish wife would be offended.

He raises the beaker she hands him, toasts Mother Earth and the guests. “Here's to all of us. Above all to my Star. Hard times these may be in Little River, but for me the best in my life.” Chaska glows. He's said the right thing, which isn't always so.

After the meal, Atuq is taken to bed and the other children left to play downstairs while their elders go up on the roof for a last drink
under the night. As often these days, the talk turns from banter and gossip to remembrance of the dead and how things used to be before the pestilence.

Little River was forgotten for months after the Great Death, as people call it now. Runners and knotkeepers no longer came. The Empire made no demands, nor issued any supplies. The shrunken community struggled on as best it could.

Those who'd escaped the sickness by fleeing into the wilds slowly trickled back, rebuilding on the wreckage of their former lives. But even now most houses are still empty, most fields gone to brush.

Not long before he died, Waman's father, Mallki, had been appointed town headman, known as the Hundred-Leader, since Little River then had about that many households. His duties were to make sure each family received its correct share of the common land; to settle disputes over water and grazing rights; to oversee the public feast in the plaza on weekends; and to report to the Thousand-Leader, the next rung on the ladder that reached all the way to the Apu of Chinchaysuyu—earl of this quarter of the Empire—who answered only to the Sapa Inka.

Around the time that Chaska and Molina married, government was restored and a new Emperor proclaimed, a young prince named Waskhar. Nobody in Little River had heard of him. He was merely one of Wayna Qhapaq's surviving sons in Cusco, picked by the imperial clan to replace the designated heir, who had been taken by smallpox only a week after his father. One of Inca Waskhar's first decrees was to assess the catastrophe, province by province. Overseers of a thousand reported to those of ten thousand, and so on up the ranks until a full census was gathered in the capital's archive, a great library of thread where row upon row of quipus hung like wigs on racks and walls. There the Empire's head accountants made the final reckoning, and made it known. Of some twenty-one million
citizens before the Great Death, only nine million still draw breath. More than half the World has died.

Little River suffered rather worse, along with Tumbes Province. Despite returned refugees and new births, the town is barely a fourth of its old strength.

Besides her new husband, Chaska has two consolations: little Atuq, now a sturdy three-year-old; and the wonderful news, when the posts ran again, that her niece Tika escaped the plague in the highlands.

—

“So,” Molina's wife says in bed, once the guests have left and the house is quiet except for the rasp of crickets, the scurry of guinea pigs, and Atuq's steady breathing. He knows the tone: something weighty on her mind. “So,” she says again, “this summer it'll be four years since your shipmates kidnapped my Waman in the hotlands. Do you still think they're coming back?”

She has asked this many times. Molina looks through the window at the stars and a sliver of new moon. With an inner smile he recalls that night on the roof when she drove him off her. Ah, Chaska. A tough nut to crack. But so sweet within the shell. Enough to make a man forsake the land of his birth. Even his faith, such as it was. He dresses as a Peruvian, greets the Sun with a blown kiss, and never takes a drink without first pouring a drop for the Earth. I'm a heathen now, he thinks, and so be it. What did the God of Spain ever do for Badluck Molina? All the best in life has come to him here, on the far side of the world.

“Who knows, my love? They could land in Tumbes tomorrow. Or it might be ten years.”

He sees her eyes moisten with longing for her son. Chaska cannot truly rest until she learns what happened to Waman.

“Don't spare me, Husband,” she persists, with a sharp nudge from her knee. “Tell what you really think. Even if it's
never
.”

What does he think? What can he? He's heard nothing of the world beyond Peru.

“If I know them, they'll be back. Sooner or later. Even if the Old One has died, others will follow his lead.” He explains that his countrymen won't have been hit nearly so hard by the smallpox.

“My land was crowded and poor,” he adds. “No doubt it still is. Your land is rich. And badly weakened now. To them it's a ripe orchard and the farmer who guards it has been crippled. Some day they will come. Especially if they hear about the plague. And when they do, they'll come in force.”

She says nothing more, reaches for him. They make love fiercely yet quietly, careful not to wake the boy. Soon Molina is fast asleep, wheezing like a seal. But Chaska's mind runs on. What is there to keep them in Little River? Isn't it foolish to linger here, so near the port of Tumbes and the royal highway? The longer she waits, the more she asks herself this. She would like to stay put for Waman's sake, so he can find her quickly when he returns. And because her dead are here. But she must think of the living. Being here when the barbarians return would put them all at high risk. There are also other barbarians—nearby—hotlanders just beyond the frontier who may well try to raid the stricken Empire. The old Emperor needed ships and garrisons to keep them out. There's the new Emperor to consider, too; his people might come looking for Molina. No, she decides, they must move to the highlands, far from any invaders or officials who might suddenly appear. Somewhere off the main roads, yet near enough to Tika at her House of the Chosen in Huanuco.

She remembers when the examiner came to Little River, a stout lady with a wattled chin, asking to see any promising girls who had had their first monthlies and wanted to join the order. Only the most
accomplished and best-looking were considered. It was a great honour. But Chaska found it hard to let her niece sit the exams, especially so soon after Waman's disappearance. She privately hoped the girl would be found lacking in some way. But Tika did well, especially in weaving and singing. When she was offered the one thing she requested—a place with the Chosen in the city of Huanuco Pampa, not far from where she had lived before the earthquake orphaned her—Chaska could hardly object. Especially as Chaska herself had come from that same village when she was little. Yaruwillka, it was called. A lovely name.

Yaruwillka,
she says beside Molina, startling herself from the threshold of sleep with her own voice.

Chaska decided she would accompany her niece to Huanuco and take the opportunity to see their birthplace. She also hoped some kin of theirs, however distant, might still be living in the region. Huanuco would be too far from Little River for Tika to get home for holidays, so it would be a great comfort if they could find people nearby whom the girl could visit.

The journey was indeed long, almost a month, the first half by ship down the coast. When they disembarked they were met by a Mother from the House with two other new girls in tow and some llamas to carry their things. Then came a long trek from one way station to the next, up and up into the mountains, over staircase roads and snowy passes, across misty gorges spanned by hanging bridges. She remembers their escort (a rather pompous woman) officiously waving a small quipu at the bridgekeepers, exempting the party from tolls.

Before going on to the city of Huanuco, Chaska and Tika left the others and took some days to find their childhood home. The road to Yaruwillka, overgrown as they drew near, was swallowed at the landslide's edge, running on through an underworld, a village of the
dead. Where terraced fields and farmhouses had climbed the lower slopes, there was only a scree of gravel and boulders dotted with cactus. They found nothing else, not even the corner of Tika's house that had saved her. Perhaps an aftershock had toppled it.

There, where the house might have stood, they knelt and made offerings of coca leaves and seashells. They wept and sang a stately
harawi
, the lament's high tones cleaving the burdened air. But neither spoke except to pray to the Earth, the Sun—even, in scolding and propitiation, to the icebound peak who had smothered the people in his charge.

Not until evening, beside a fire in the nearest way station, did Tika speak of the memories unfurling in her mind. Her parents tall as trees above her. The hideouts she made with her brother in the standing corn; the two of them scaring birds from seeded fields, fleeing wasps and bees through shoulder-high wildflowers. The old house with its sheltering eaves and smoky warmth. Then nothing.

It was thirty years since Chaska had lived there, yet her own recollections were vivid as Tika's, if not more so with the burnish of age and nostalgia. The highlands were still lovely to her. The pure skies and racing clouds, the wandering herders in bright clothes, the llamas and alpacas in heavy fleece. But Yaruwillka itself was only a scar. It was as if her early life must have happened somewhere else, near yet unreachable. Save for the outline of that baleful mountain shouldering the sky, she did not recognize the place at all.

Upon Chaska's request next morning, an old knotkeeper at the way station went to work on records from the time of the earthquake. He seemed glad of something to do, pulling dusty quipus from earthenware jars, humming to himself, scratching his chin. They found one family related to Tika on her father's side, second cousins, she thought. These lived in Lower Huanuco, in a remote
hamlet of coca growers called Puma Hill. Not a long trip for a condor, the knotkeeper said, but a tough one on foot, for the path was narrow and steep, winding down into the lush eastern flanks of the Andes, halfway to the great rainforest.

Chaska recalls the welcome they were given there, after walking for two days. A big feast outdoors. A warm, clear evening. They all sat on a terrace above the coca fields, watching the shadows of the Andes lengthen across a mossy sea of treetops spread below.

With this memory Chaska falls asleep at last.

—

Some days later, when Molina seems in a receptive mood, she raises the matter of moving. He says what she thought he might. The only real home he's ever had is Little River. He fishes and farms, he has friends. He's happy here. And are the highlands really so much safer?

“In my land there's a saying, Chaska: better the devil you know.”

“Just think on it,” she says. “Take your time. I'm not suggesting we leave tomorrow. But if your people come back to Tumbes, what's the first thing they're going to do?”

“I think,” he answers dryly, “that you're about to tell me.”

“Won't it be to look for you, so they can find out everything that's happened since they left? And they'll take you away, to have two interpreters. Is that what you want?”

For a while he makes no reply. Then: “You know I don't want that. I want to be with you always. But what about Waman? If we move so far, how will he ever find us?”

“Look.” She lifts her index finger. “Waman is one.” She spreads her whole hand. “The rest of us are four, counting Tika. I must think of what's best for us all, especially Atuq. No matter where we are, Waman can find us safely only if he gets away from his captors.
Assuming he wants to. He was a child when he left. He'll have grown into a man. We can't know what he might have become. I have to face up to that. But of course I'd leave word here for him somehow.”