The Gold Eaters (9 page)

From his roof terrace the All-Seer watched the pair of runners take off like antelope along the great north road, first link in the chain of relays who will bear his message more than two hundred miles over sand and snow in a single day and night. How lucky the court is only one day's mail away at present, instead of five to the capital. Soon the barbarians will not be his burden alone.

—

Candía is dressed to dazzle—striding along the jetty in shining helmet and chainmail, arquebus over his shoulder, Toledo sword at his belt, his beard oiled and glossy as sable. Tomás follows, bare-chested, wearing only a pair of white cotton britches and heavy brass rings in nose and ears. Onlookers swarm them as they walk up from the haven towards the middle of town, where the temple's golden roof
rises steeply above the flat-topped buildings. Women come from their doors, laughing and smiling, stroking the Greek's beard, patting the African's springy hair, exclaiming at the white skin and the black, especially the latter with its cruel brand. One girl gives Candía's hairy cheek a pinch, and giggles. By God he could use a woman! But the Greek has travelled and fought in many lands. He knows better than to form hasty notions about the ways of foreigners.

“Some pretty ones, eh, Tomás? What do you think? Do they want to be our friends or our lovers?” Tomás grins in reply, white teeth splitting the darkness of his face. Pizarro claims that the youth lacks reason—like all Africans, according to the Church, which makes them lawful slaves. But Candía thinks the black is merely a lad of few words; when he does have something to say it's often worth hearing.

Before they have gone far, four men in red helmets and tunics of black-and-yellow squares come to escort them to the plaza, taking them to the great hall whose front is covered in bold paintings of whales, birds, and fish. Sentries flank the doorway and others stand at attention in tall niches along the building's façade, all in the same uniform, heavy pikes with bronze blades in hand.

Candía and Tomás are led into a courtyard and seated on stools beneath a cotton awning. The escort withdraws, leaving the visitors to themselves. Water is flowing from a fountain in the middle—a large eight-sided basin carved from a single stone. The water crosses the courtyard by a channel and runs under a wall into the building. Around the patio are earthenware pots with flowering shrubs. The only sounds are the purl of water and the quarrelsome buzz of hummingbirds making their way from bloom to bloom, their tiny bodies iridescent in the sun.

Door curtains are drawn aside and a man and woman enter from right and left, both middle-aged. Recognizing the All-Seer, Candía
rises to greet him but is pressed firmly back onto his stool by an attendant. Lord and lady sit down calmly, saying nothing. Who is she? the Greek wonders, admiring her ankle-length dress of some silky green fabric with embroidered borders, pinned at her chest with a brooch like a chased silver spoon. His wife? Or the ruler? Felipe said something about Tumbes being governed by a woman. Maybe she's a queen—a Peruvian Cleopatra—and this lord her Antony. Candía chuckles privately within his beard.

Uniformed servants spread a cloth on a low dining board and set out food and drink. Everything is served in vessels of gold or silver, beginning with tall beakers of corn beer. The lord and lady's tankards are in the shape of a human pair, naked, sexes visible. A gold Adam, thinks Candía, a silver Eve.

“Kunan,”
says the lady, hoisting her beer in both hands and nodding at the foreigners.
“Pachamamapaq.”
She tips a few drops on the ground. Candía understands not a word, but knows the gesture—Felipe used to do this on the island until the priest forbade it. Mother Earth drinks first. A damned heathen custom, though not without charm. He does the same.

A feast of smiling, miming, watching, aping. Candía wishes Pizarro had sent Felipe along, though he sees the wisdom in keeping him on the ship. The All-Seer, too, understands the boy's absence. The interpreter is a weapon. With two edges. Whoever wields him skilfully has the advantage, the initiative. For now, until he hears the Emperor's wishes, he must do these barbarians honour and weave a spell of friendship that will charm them off their boat. Especially the Old One, the leader, with yellow eyes like a dog.

He is pleased that Lady Sian, the Tumbes Governor, has offered to hold this meeting at her official residence. The arrival of the barbarians concerns her province as much as it does the Empire, possibly more. He will be glad of her advice. Over the years they have
worked together, he has found her to be shrewd and experienced in many things. No one reads men better.

As the imperial inspector for Tumbes, a highlander and member of the royal kindred, the All-Seer knows he is sometimes seen as a meddling outsider. Indeed, his relations with Lady Sian have occasionally been delicate, especially in their early days, requiring tact. She is a well-born lowlander, a descendant of the old kings and queens of Chimor, who controlled the seaboard before their kingdom was annexed to the World. (Without bloodshed, the All-Seer reflects proudly; though it is true that highland forces persuasively diverted the headwaters of Chimor canals, to show what war would bring.) That was a long time ago now, when the Emperor's father was young. It has since become imperial policy to govern the coast through its old nobility, and to allow local customs to continue, not least the appointing of women to high office whenever they are abler than their male kin.

The All-Seer's eyes settle fondly on Lady Sian, noting a rime of beer on the fine pleating of her upper lip. They have grown to trust and respect each other. Not only professionally but personally, he believes.

—

Restored by the meal, the All-Seer thinks over what he has learnt about the outlanders so far. Their interpreter is one weapon—unfortunate the boy's not here—but there are other weapons to investigate. The Governor has suggested they get the tall blackbeard to demonstrate the iron blowpipe he carries on his shoulder. It would be wise to do that out of town. But first these two should be shown the sights that made such a deep impression on the one who came yesterday with gifts. Sights to draw their leader from his floating lair.

Candía and Tomás are taken across the square to the great building with the golden roof that crowns the city skyline, the temple Molina called a “mosque.” They pass through an outer doorway, plain and unadorned except for the perfect fit of its massive stonework. Candía inspects the work closely. No mortar has been used. He can't imagine how it was done, even if the stone were soft—not granite—and the masons had good steel. Can there be iron in this land, he wonders, or some other metal equal to it? Perhaps steel is kept for special use, as rare in Peru as gold in Spain. The Emperor's official looked glad to receive Pizarro's parting gift of a Toledo axe head yesterday. Glad, but not amazed. Nothing seems to surprise the man.

The temple is cool, dark, empty. As if the priests have been forewarned to hide themselves and any evidence of their heathen rites. There is no sign of the idols or bloody sacrifices he expected from tales of Mexico. The place is simply a great house—four halls around a courtyard, like the house where they ate, though grander and smelling of incense and lamp oil. Each hall they are shown is devoted to a power of nature. One has a rainbow painted on the wall; one an image of the stars, skilfully done with an array of gems on a jet background; the third holds a large silver disc of the moon.

The fourth hall is unlike the others, being longer and half round in plan. A mass of bedrock, carved with small basins and ledges, rises through the floor like a miniature mountain. A tall eastern window faces the sunrise over the icefields, and on the wall across from this hangs a sun—a great wheel of heavy gold a man's height in diameter.

Incense twists lazily from a brazier below.

“God's blood, Tomás! For once Molina told us the bare truth. If that sun is as solid as it looks”—Candía moves to touch the great disc
but feels the Governor's hand on his arm—“it would buy a pair of ships and outfit a hundred cavalry!”

The All-Seer moves to the window, beckoning palm-down in the Peruvian way, fluttering his fingers. Candía sees the lady shoot him a dark look, as if to object. What does she want them not to see?

Below is a walled garden crisscrossed with water channels. Among trimmed fruit trees and a stand of maize are statues—men, women, and Indian camels. All life-size. All made of precious metal: the men gold, the women silver, the strange beasts of gold with silver fleeces on their backs and necks.

“Am I bewitched?” Candía breathes, after a long silence. “Do you see it too, Tomás? They say gold can make a man lose his wits.” He grips the youth's elbow. “Tell me! Tell me everything you see down there.”

The African begins to confirm what the Greek beholds, but before he can finish they hear girlish laughter. In shade on the far side of the garden is an open building, a kind of cloister, filled with women. Some are seated at looms, weaving brightly coloured cloth. All are young, save for two or three older ones in charge. There are no men.

One looks up from her work. She shrieks; stifles her cry with a hand. All eyes follow hers to the strange sight in the window of the Sun. The white man and the black man wave. Most of the maidens lower their eyes; a few wave back.

The lady speaks to the lord sharply (it seems to Candía) and the party returns through the temple courtyard to the square. They are then led out of town in the opposite direction from the ship, crossing the river by a long wood-decked bridge hung from stout cables between stone piers. Candía is intrigued by this ingenious structure, but uppermost in his mind is that the Peruvians may be about to play
some trick. Good thing he brought the arquebus. Then he realizes he forgot his flint and steel: no way to light the matchcord.

The All-Seer, too, is thinking about this weapon: like a blowpipe, yet heavy as a crowbar. Time to see what it can do. Once they reach open fields, he orders a wooden board set up on the wall of a government granary a hundred paces off. A good slingsman or archer could hit that. The right range, he guesses, for a test.

It takes Candía some time to understand he's being asked to fire the gun. He is lost in the sights of this new land: the watered fields spread like green carpets on the desert, the purple foothills beyond—range behind range—and, far above these, the fleshy bulk of great snow-crowned mountains. And the works of the people: the road with its canal, side walls, flagstones; runners and pack trains plying between distant cities; and the bridge suspended over the river—such a clever idea, a thing never seen in all his travels. But will the horses cross it?

Some crops are young; others are being reaped by teams of farm folk, singing as they go. The stubble is given over to Indian camels, who raise their long necks to watch him with the same feminine lashes and disdainful eye of camels he recalls from his Turkish war. These are only half the size, but they must be akin, as a spaniel is to a bulldog. How can there be camels here yet none in Mexico or Panama? What
is
this southern land?

A small throng of onlookers has gathered from houses and fields, their eyes upon Candía when he sees what the All-Seer wants and sets to work. He taps powder into the muzzle, rams down wad and ball, primes the pan, cocks the lock. He has trouble miming his need of a light for the matchcord. Eventually a live coal is brought from a nearby kitchen.

Candía did not much like the yeasty beer served at lunch, but had
to drink with the others. The arquebus feels heavier than usual, the target dances in the heat. He takes a sight. Unsteady, and he hasn't a gun-rest. “Tomás, lend me your shoulder. Stand still as a post. Stop your ears.”

He lays the barrel on the lad's dark shoulder.

The smouldering cord pecks the touch-hole.

Thunder and lightning in the desert sun.

—

All-Seer and Governor keep their composure, but many onlookers drop to the ground, hands over ears. Others rush up to Candía and jostle for a look at the weapon. The All-Seer tells his guards to keep order.

Candía has missed narrowly, making a small crater in the granary's adobe wall. He must swab and reload. Every move, he notes, is watched closely by the All-Seer. Is the man counting how long it takes? Maybe so.

This time the Greek shoots well, splitting the board in two.

The All-Seer sniffs the gunsmoke. Sulphurous, like a volcanic vent. He sends a man to fetch target and balls for further study. The iron blowpipe does not seem much more effective than a war sling in good hands, but there's no doubt of its power to startle.

“Extraordinary!” he observes to the Governor. “Such smoke, such stink. Such noise. But you kept your head.”

“And you. As always.”

The All-Seer accepts the compliment (if that's what it is) with a bow.

“What do you make of them?” he says, with a jut of his chin at the strangers. “What brings them here? Are they lost?”

The lady of Tumbes tilts her head to one side as she thinks, a winning gesture. “They're men like any others. I see how they look at
women, especially that white one. They've been away from their homes a long time. As if they are lost.” She straightens her head and looks him hard in the eye. “But I don't think they are.”

In her view, she adds, these barbarians are likely the same as some who raided the eastern border of the Empire two years ago, coming up the Pillkumayu from the great jungle with a force of Chunchu bowmen. “They too had beards and metal pipes and helmets. The local garrison killed all the bearded ones and drove the Chunchus back into the forest. A pipe and a barbarian skin were brought to the capital and put on show in the Roundhouse. I saw them myself last time I was in Cusco. The pipe was just like this one.”

“Was the skin pale or dark?”

“Couldn't tell. It was dry, withered. Brown hair on the chest. Like a monkey.” She laughs; then frowns. “Think what this may mean: that these new people are coming from both seas. From both sides of the World. These may be only the first of many, only the scouts.”