The Gold Eaters (6 page)

Now an even odder sight: behind the crowd is the bobbing head of a man borne aloft as if on others' shoulders. He seems to be wearing a close-fitted skullcap, shiny and red. As the crowd parts to let this man through, Waman sees that he is sitting on a beast—tall as a llama but with a thicker neck and build.

His eyes return to the rider's head. What he took for a red hat is the barbarian's scalp—shiny, sunburnt, bald as a gourd. The face below, furrowed and liver-spotted, wears a short white beard like the muzzle of an old dog, but its outstanding feature is a lone blue eye swivelling up and down, back and forth, scanning around warily. The other is merely an empty socket, rough-healed, puckered like an anus.

The man climbs down from the animal's back, showing himself to be much shorter than the Old One, whom he approaches with arms spread in welcome. The two embrace, smiling and clapping each other on the back. The Old One breaks free first and snaps his fingers at the boatmen. Some pieces of loot—gold cups and dishes—are brought forth in a strongbox and shown to the one-eyed man, who inspects them closely, turning them in the sunlight, weighing them in his hands, even biting the metal and uttering cries of delight. Waman is shocked. He has never seen men of importance show feelings publicly. In the World, as his father and mother taught him, people of rank carry themselves with reserve. And lesser folk do well to follow their example.

The half-starved rabble comes suddenly alive, thrusting in on all sides, elbowing, fighting for a sight of gold. Not until the Old One
draws his sword and waves it above his head does the clamour begin to die down.

Once the onlookers have been driven back and the gold returned to the boat, the Old One grasps Waman by the shoulder, pushing him towards the one-eyed man. He feels a tap on his chest, hears himself called
Pilipillu
. Then the Old One puts a whiskery mouth to Waman's ear, points to the other and says a word that sounds like
amaru
. But Waman has already named the bald rider: Sapa Ñawi, One-Eye.

The Commander rations out
food taken from the Indian freighter. As soon as the men are somewhat stronger he has them careen his ships, hauling the vessels from sea to sand with a windlass and long hawsers at high tide. The wormy hulls are scraped, caulked, given a coat of stolen tar. This done, he sends his partner to forage on the mainland. Almagro is always keen to raid Indians, especially these hotlanders, for it was one of their arrows that took his eye.

Pizarro installs Waman in a back room of his own quarters, a strong timber-framed house that survived the fighting when he took the island. Recalling that many of the natives escaped by swimming, he keeps the boy chained to a post. Few of us Christians know the art of swimming, Pizarro muses, but the Indians on this coast are eels.

To teach his prisoner Spanish, he picks out men who got to know the boy on Ruiz's ship: Molina, a hothead but good talker; Tomás the cookboy; and Candía, the genial Greek gunner. Having two languages each, these men are well suited to the task. True, Candía speaks with a thick accent, and the cookboy's first tongue is Arabic, but their Castilian is good enough. And though Molina also knows Arabic—may
indeed be half Moor or even a full-blood passing as a Christian—his Spanish is as good as the Commander's own. Maybe better, Pizarro thinks sourly, recalling his unschooled youth in Trujillo.

Within a fortnight
the prisoner suddenly falls ill, racked by sweats and chills, babbling deliriously, his life running from every pore and orifice. Each day he is thinner and weaker. The Commander begins to fear he won't pull through. How easily these Indians die! Everywhere Spaniards have been in the Indies—the Caribbean, Mexico, Panama—it's as though the mere smell of a Christian is enough to kill the natives. Measles, mumps, chickenpox, even a cold, cut healthy men and women down like babes. To say nothing of smallpox, the deadliest plague of all, but luckily Felipillo does not seem to have that.

“Well, Father?” Pizarro asks the camp's priest, who has spent much time on this expedition ministering to the sick. “What's wrong with my interpreter? Will he live? If he won't, give him the rites. But first baptise him. Christen him Felipe.”

“Why Felipe, Commander? We're nowhere near Saint Philip's Day.”

Pizarro shoots a withering glance at the weedy, black-frocked young churchman—how dare he question an order—then relents.

“He's been called Felipillo ever since we found him. He may as well come by the name honestly. And mind you pray well for his life—for your sake as much as his. Christen him now.”

—

Waman slowly crawls back from the borderland of death. All his life he has enjoyed good health. Now he knows what it is to feel
old, to be weak and worn, to be sucked like a drowning dog into the underworld. Sometimes he woke from his delirium to moonlight falling from a window, burning his eyes like the sun no matter how tightly he shut them. His skin was on fire. His hands looked unfamiliar, like another's; or some animal's claw, a bear's, a crab's. He willed them to leap at his throat but they wouldn't stir. He begged Mother Moon to take him:
Mama Killa,
yanarimuway, wañuchirimuway. Hina kachun.
Please help me, please kill me. May it be so.

Now he is glad Lady Moon didn't heed his prayers, that he lives after all, in rekindled hope of going home, of killing these barbarians or at least escaping before they make him lead them back to the World. Dimly he recalls one in a black gown like a widow coming to his bedside, uttering long incantations, sprinkling him with water, saying
Pilipi
. A sorcerer? Is that what brought him back to life?

The Old One was there too.
¿Cómo te llamas?
he kept saying. Why was he speaking of llamas? They have none.

But now he knows.

Wamanmi sutiy.
My name is Waman.

¡No!
The Old One again. A curse, a cuff on the head.
¿Cómo te llamas?

Pi-li-pi my name.

Better. Say it better, Felipillo!

I am called Felipe.

To himself he adds,
Qanllarayku.
Only by you.

The lessons resume with Candía, the big man with the thicket of raven beard, and with Tomás the cookboy. Molina sometimes comes too, good-humouredly correcting their pronunciation. Soon Waman has a smattering of the barbarian tongue. His first words are
questions. Where are his shipmates? What happened after he blacked out? His teachers try to be evasive, but the Greek and the Spaniard are talkative by nature. Little by little Waman learns something of that day.

He is healthier now, built up with extra rations. But when the Old One at last unbolts the chain and lets him walk outside—unsteady on weak legs, yet still with a heavy shackle on one ankle—Waman sees that most of the barbarians look as underfed as they did when he got here. One-Eye still raids the mainland if the winds are fair, but each time he comes back with less food. And with fewer men and horses.

On the island itself there is nothing to eat but crabs and limpets and mangrove nuts, a seal if they are lucky, or a thin broth of barnacles and seaweed. Waman is set to work digging shellfish or casting his net from the small boat, chained to a thwart and rowed out to likely spots. But the weather is seldom good enough to go to sea. For weeks they are stranded by thunderstorms and drenching rains, by great waves crashing on reefs and headlands. The days crawl as if the sun were slowing in the sky. Men die—three or four taken each week by fever, scurvy, knife fights, festered wounds. Waman hopes some of these deaths are his own work, for when he can he befouls the food he brings them, adding seal dung, even his own filth, and bad herbs that he has seen the horses never touch. Once, he believes, he killed in a manly way—hurling a stone at the head of one foraging in a pool among the rocks. Waman did not linger to make sure, but he heard a sound like the cracking of an egg, saw the man pitch forward into the water. With that deed he has begun to fulfill his vow.

Even though the Old One allows himself more food than his men, Pizarro is growing hollow-faced and sickly, the whites of his
eyes almost as yellow as the irises, the beard sparser and greyer. How old can he be: fifty? sixty? Waman can't easily tell, and those he asks don't seem to know. Certainly much older than all except Almagro, who has about the same years. But One-Eye seems more vigorous, as if feeding on his anger. The Old One is withdrawn by nature, stern, saying little, watching all. At first Waman took him to be better bred—a man in command of himself, as those who lead must be. But now Pizarro's temper is no better than Almagro's. The two leaders snap at each other like hounds, slapping the hilts of their great knives, shouting torrents of harsh words.

In desperation
, for it is risky on many counts, Pizarro sends one ship back to Panama with Almagro and Pilot Ruiz to resupply and recruit fresh men.

They are gone more than a month.

Sight of the returning sail sparks jubilation in the camp. All rush to the beach to greet them, even the lame and sick. But once Almagro lands, the Commander hears his news in wrath and disbelief. The ship brings food, but no reinforcements, no new men, no horses. Worst, Almagro comes with strict orders from the Governor of Panama: all who wish to leave Pizarro's failing enterprise must be allowed to sail home without delay.

Home? Not mine, Waman thinks. Now the barbarians don't need him, they will kill him. Or maroon him here to starve. His parents will never know what befell him, or even where to find his bones. And he will never be able to make amends to them and Tika.

He wishes he had killed the Commander before things came to this, had crushed the Old One's head with a stone in the night.

—

Two days later, at dawn, Pizarro summons the men to the bay where both ships ride at anchor. When all have assembled—what a sorry lot in rags and rust!—he draws his sword and holds it high, the risen sun flashing from its blade into the sunken eyes around.

“Friends and comrades. In His mercy the Lord God has looked kindly on us, and His weather smiles at last. You have all suffered. And I no less than you.” Hearing a snort, a guffaw, Pizarro halts and searches the faces like a bird of prey. “We have
all
suffered,” he goes on. “But our suffering is not in vain. You have seen the wealth we took from the Indian ship—gold, silver, silk, plump bags of jewels. Such goods and riches have never been seen in the Indies before, not even in Mexico. The Indian boy Felipillo can now speak. He tells of a southern kingdom with many ships, much gold, great cities, and strange camels like those on the drawings we saw years ago in Panama. What else can this be but the golden kingdom of Peru? That land still has her maidenhead. Let us go there and take it!”

Another murmur from the men. Sounds of doubt, unrest.

Enough!
some call.
No more of your dreams, Pizarro.

The Commander lowers his sword and scratches a line on the beach. Then shakes his blade at the north.