The entire war with the Moors was predicated on the idea that the Moors, although they knew about his existence, refused to pledge their allegiance to the nailed god. They recognised the father but not the son. They also had different dietary habits, and a different language. Apparently this was enough to justify making war on them mercilessly for hundreds of harvests. A third tribe, the Jews, although more ancient, had customs similar to the Moors. For example, they snipped off part of the male baby’s penis just after birth, refused to eat pig, and only ate other meat after it had been consecrated by their priests and killed in accordance with certain rites. (On the other hand, they could drink the black drink, which the Moors forbade.) They also did not worship the nailed god, despite the fact that he had been one of theirs. But, unlike the Moors, who had been permitted to stay after the defeat and exile of their last king Boabdil, the Jews, who had neither a king nor a kingdom, had been violently expelled from Spain unless they demonstrated their allegiance to the nailed god and renounced their old customs. Those who went through all this in order to stay, known as conversos, were mistreated and constantly suspected of remaining faithful to their former beliefs. The Inquisition persecuted and often burned them. The shaved man Loyola did not approve of this policy, or of the policy he called limpieza de sangre, the purity of blood that ultimately made it impossible to change from one tribe to another. ‘Our Lord Jesus is not in our veins,’ he said. ‘He is in our hearts.’
Having learned all this, Atahualpa decided it was time to find some allies. He suggested to Charles that he should enact a law authorising the different cults to practise throughout his kingdom, then simply add to that list the cult of the Sun. Charles Quint gaped at him, apparently unable to understand what he was talking about, although Higuénamota, now very skilled in her role, had translated the Inca’s proposition perfectly. Then the emperor with the prominent jaw started shouting indignantly and spitting like a llama. In the end, he simply refused.
Atahualpa was in no position to impose his decrees upon the Empire, or even upon Spain, but he told Chalco Chimac and Pedro Pizarro to communicate his proposal to the inhabitants of Granada. It created a stir in the white backstreets of the Albaicín, and all the way up to the neighbouring hill of Sacromonte, where the Inquisition had sown fear and dismay. They had begun by burning Jews. Everybody knew what that meant: soon, they would burn Moriscos. The believers in the Moors’ religion, however, were unhappy at the prospect of increasing the number of divinities. ‘Allah is the greatest!’ they repeated ad infinitum. At first, they had no intention of extending their pantheon. However, the example of the conversos, which was close at hand (because they didn’t persecute the Jews and lived in harmony with them), led them to give it more thought: hadn’t the conversos been forced to adopt the rites and beliefs of their Christian masters? And also to abandon their own customs, on pain of death?
After all, ‘Allah is the greatest’ didn’t mean that only Allah is great. Their motto perhaps allowed for the coexistence of their unique god with other secondary divinities.
Some of them began to regard the sun in a different light.
19. Marguerite
Imprisoned in his unfinished palace, whose very roundness seemed to him oddly ironic and bitter (though he didn’t know why, exactly), Charles struggled to rise above his melancholy, but he soothed his nerves and recovered his health by playing a game similar to hnefatafl. On a wooden board divided into sixty-four squares, an army of black figurines opposed an army of white ones. The irony, in this case, could hardly escape him: the aim of the game was to capture the enemy king.
He had taught the rules to the Inca generals and, while Chalco Chimac quickly became a formidable opponent, it was Quizquiz who, when his duties allowed, spent his evenings with the emperor, playing the game over and over again and almost always losing.
One day, Quizquiz’s lookouts announced the arrival of a female visitor. It was a queen, the sister of the king of France, who was coming to the Alhambra to seek an audience with the two emperors. She was accompanied by a large retinue and her litter was drawn by four snow-white horses. Her hair was styled with infinite care and she was dressed in a coat of the most exquisite texture. Her face and her Castilian were both extremely graceful, although her complexion was pale and her accent different from the people of this region.
Moreover, she spoke with Charles in an unknown language, so that none of the Quitonians could tell what was said between them. Witnesses noted, however, that Charles’s face flushed crimson and he almost choked on his anger, while Marguerite (for this was the queen’s name) addressed him in the coldest tone imaginable.
Nevertheless, young Lorenzino, who had not yet returned to Florence, was able to fill in the blanks: this was not the first time that the queen had visited the emperor. When Lorenzino was a child, he remembered that the king of France had lost a battle and then been taken prisoner by imperial troops. His sister, Marguerite, had come to Charles to plead for his release, but in vain. King Francis had finally been freed only after promising to cede vast swathes of his kingdom to the emperor.
Now, in all likelihood, it was those territories that Queen Marguerite had come to reclaim, in the name of her brother and of France.
Having discovered this, Atahualpa agreed to receive her in the ambassadors’ hall.
Although he was getting much better at understanding the language of this country, he still wanted Higuénamota to serve as his spokeswoman, partly because he had more time to think while she was translating the Levantines’ words, and partly because her presence was dear to him and she had always brought him luck. Her nudity also tended to intimidate his visitors.
To his right, Lorenzino had, for this occasion, taken Ruminahui’s place, so that he would be able to clear up any ambiguities in what the queen was saying.
And there were plenty of those.
The queen’s kingdom, Navarre, lay between Spain and France, and one of Marguerite’s requests was that Charles renounce all claim to her lands.
The king of France wished to recover certain territories in the north, Artois and Flanders, which had been lost under the terms of the Treaty of Cambrai four harvests before.
He wanted the king of Spain to definitively renounce all claim to Burgundy, a region that seemed especially important to both sides.
He also claimed sovereignty over two cities in Italy, Milan and Genoa.
And then there was talk of a land called Provence and the cities of Nice, Marseille and Toulon.
None of this was very interesting to Atahualpa. Why should he care about Burgundy or Artois? What did Milan or Genoa matter to him? They didn’t. Each city was just an idea. Less than an idea. A word. He hadn’t even known that these places existed a year ago, a moon ago, a week ago, yesterday. Atahualpa’s horizon was Andalusia: he had swept aside the claims of a certain Boabdil, who had tried to reclaim what had once been his. But he could, without any qualms, give away bits of an empire that didn’t belong to him. He could toss them to the dogs – who cared! They were just dots on a map.
But equally … why would he?
Marguerite de Navarre lowered her voice. She had understood that Atahualpa had come from over the seas, and not from the east or the south but from the west. Perhaps from the Indies or the Maluku Islands or Cipango, or perhaps from somewhere else. In any case, she knew that he was a long way from home, but that following a certain turn of events, fortune having been on his side, he now held at his mercy Charles Quint, the Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain, King of Naples and Sicily, Duke of Burgundy. It was a remarkable situation.
She spoke in a voice that was gentle but firm. Never would Christianity accept such a state of affairs. The Pope wouldn’t accept it. He would order a crusade to retake Granada, even though his relationship with Charles was not the best. The Inquisition would inevitably declare the Sun worshippers to be heretics. Ferdinand, the Austrian Archduke, would soon come at the head of a formidable army to help his brother. But
the great king who came from the sea – at these words, Marguerite made a small bow – could, if he desired, count upon the support of the king of France. Hadn’t Francis, her brother, made an alliance with Suleiman, the emperor of the Sublime Porte and chief of the infidels? Unlike Charles, Francis the Very Christian King had not always been a fierce defender of Christianity. Amid the religious disputes that were inflaming the north, he had shown moderation and understanding towards the Lutherans. Which led to only one conclusion: if the emperor from beyond the seas was in agreement, an indissoluble alliance could be forged between the two countries. Francis I, king of the French, offered his friendship and support to Atahualpa. Because, ultimately, who wanted the Sun as his enemy?
Atahualpa listened very carefully to all of this. The queen of Navarre’s eloquence, allied to what he understood about the balance of power in the New World, persuaded him to give her everything she asked for, in exchange for the much-needed military aid. In reality, the king of France’s offer was providential. But there was one major obstacle: contrary to what Marguerite wanted to believe, Atahualpa was in possession of a king but not a kingdom, and Charles, although a hostage, was still the king and emperor. He alone was in a position to cede the territories of his empire. Atahualpa already knew that no form of pressure or threat could make him give way.
Marguerite returned to France with a parrot and some promises.
The Inca gathered his council in the Court of the Lions. Coya Asarpay suggested killing Charles or making him abdicate in favour of his son, whose extreme youth – he was not yet six harvests old – would guarantee his docility. Quizquiz opposed the death of the king on the basis that it would expose the Quitonians to the vengeance of his subjects. As for Charles, why would he abdicate? He knew that his sovereignty was his best protection; without it, he would be no use to anybody. So the Quitonians were unable to satisfy the king of France’s demands. With Charles alive, they couldn’t give away his land without his consent. With Charles dead, they had no defence against the imperial army. As it was, the only guarantee they could make was that no offensive would be ordered against the kingdom of France.
The military question was, therefore, unresolved. They needed men to defend themselves and gold to recruit them. In the end, they decided to recall the Fuggers’ envoy, who had no objection to advancing them funds, but he demanded guarantees that the Inca was in no position to provide.
So Atahualpa gave Higuénamota a secret mission. The Cuban princess must return to Lisbon. At her request, she would be accompanied by young Pedro Pizarro. They would take with them a few conversos, who – with the aid of mules – would transport several barrels of the black drink, some good swords from Toledo, some fire sticks, some talking cases, some wheat, some paintings and maps of the New World. Charles had agreed to send a message for King Joao III, his brother-in-law, bidding him, for the love of the emperor, to provide the Quitonians with a good ship and the best captain he could find. Atahualpa also gave his Cuban mistress a quipu composed of numerous threads, the arrangement of knots meticulously prepared by his personal archivist, the contents of which even Higuénamota, who had his total trust, was ignorant.
This quipu was a message to be delivered exclusively to his brother Huascar.
20. Sepúlveda
Among Charles’s entourage was an amauta who had two tasks: to write the chronicle of the king’s reign and to educate his son, little Philip.
This man showed an interest in the Quitonians that seemed sincere. He was always keen to talk with them, asking them many questions about their history, their customs, their beliefs, and demonstrating what appeared to be a genuine sympathy for them. So he was the first Levantine to understand where they were from and what had brought them to Spain.
His name was Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda.
He had one master whose name he often invoked, Aristotle, and two enemies whom he railed against at every opportunity: Erasmus and Luther.
In fact, this man was deceitful and so skilled at hiding his true intentions that he won the trust of the Quitonians, who sent him as an envoy to Santa Fe. His mission was to assure the Spaniards that their king was well treated, as were his wife and children, that he had lost none of his privileges except for freedom of movement, and that he would remain thus protected as long as the Alhambra was not attacked. Consequently, the king ordered the commanders of his army to make no rescue attempts.
Instead of which, Sepúlveda told the Spanish commanders that if they did not intervene their king was at risk of death at any moment, that the queen and the heir were treated so badly that they were wasting away, that they bathed in their own excrement, and that if nothing were done, this would be the end of the royal family and the Spanish monarchy.
He added that Atahualpa and his men were infidels and unbelievers, worshippers of Mohammed, demons sent from hell, heathens who knew and cared nothing about Christ, fornicators and whores who went around naked with no notion of modesty, insulting the eyes and souls of good Christians.
He also repeated what he had learned from those Quitonians who had recklessly confided in him: that their chief had been expelled from his own land by his brother, and that they were, all in all, nothing but a band of fugitives roaming the earth like Jews.
He confirmed that there were fewer than two hundred barbarians, some of them women and children, and added that – from what he had been able to observe – they barely knew how to use an arquebus, or artillery in general.
Antonio de Leyva, the cripple from Salamanca, greeted these words with enthusiasm. But the others – Tavera, Granvelle, Cobos – were more circumspect. The foreigners might be bloodthirsty barbarians, they said, but they were not immune to reason, as attested by all the reports on their actions since they arrived on this continent. They knew that their salvation was dependent on Charles’s life: their hostage was valuable only if alive. So, in fact, their weakness and lack of numbers was the best guarantee of the emperor’s life.
On the other hand, there were factors that argued in favour of a rapid intervention. They had to pay the troops and were short of money. Fugger refused to lend more until the situation was clarified. Meanwhile, the Swiss were grumbling, the landsknechts impatient. Already, in Flanders, Galicia and Italy, there were reports of violence, pillaging, mutiny. Nobody wanted to live through the fall of Rome again. And if the imperial army collapsed, it would give France the opportunity to attack, something that the council of Spaniards feared more than anything.
Then Tavera pronounced a name, in a threatening voice, although the others weren’t sure whom exactly he was addressing: ‘Ferdinand will come.’ It was highly unlikely that he would countenance these delays.
And so it was decided that Sepúlveda should return to the king to spy on the foreigners and report on their words and actions. He was to prepare an escape plan for Charles or ensure that he was safe in the event of an assault being launched. When the time came, he would open the gates of the Alhambra. Until then, he would continue to pretend to be the Quitonians’ friend.
21. The Incades, Book I, Verse 20
When Thor, the god who with a thought controls
The raging seas, and balances the poles,
From heav’n beheld, and will’d, in sov’reign state,
To fix the Eastern World’s depending fate,
Swift at his nod th’ Olympian herald flies,
And calls th’ immortal senate of the skies;
Where, from the sov’reign throne of earth and heav’n,
Th’ immutable decrees of fate are given.
22. The Alhambra
Moons passed. Atahualpa missed Higuénamota’s company, but he no longer needed a translator. Coya Asarpay was expecting his baby. He spoke with Charles and practised his Castilian. Together, they drew up plans to triumph over Suleiman, reconquer Jerusalem and invade the Moors’ country. Atahualpa dreamed of that southern sea that Charles called the Mediterranean. Sepúlveda explained to him the mystery of the Euchari
st, and in return Atahualpa told him the story of his ancestor Manco Capac. Quizquiz played with little Prince Philip and his sister, Marie. Ruminahui inspected the fortress’s defences. Quispe Sisa and Cusi Rimay begged Lorenzino to take them to Italy; laughing, he promised to buy them the most beautiful dresses. They planted tomatoes in the gardens of the Generalife, on the hills above the Alhambra. Chalco Chimac watched Sepúlveda because he didn’t trust him. And he was right: the Spaniard was planning his king’s escape.
Charles wavered between dejection and determination. He would pray for hours on end in the Hall of the Kings in the Palace of the Lions, the very room where his grandmother Isabella and his grandfather Ferdinand had taken their first Mass after the capture of the Alhambra. It was not part of the unfinished palace where he was supposed to reside but was located in the section occupied by Atahualpa and his court. The Inca had generously granted him this freedom, as a mark of esteem and respect for a fellow sovereign.
In reality, Charles was not so dejected that he felt the need to pray for entire evenings. It was Sepúlveda’s idea. The Hall of the Kings gave him access to the Palace of the Lions, which in turn adjoined the Comares Palace. Long before, the young Boabdil, held prisoner by his father in a dungeon of the Comares Tower, had escaped out of the window by sliding down a rope made of scarves tied together by his mother.
Charles would adopt the same plan. Atahualpa’s men guarded him, but there weren’t enough of them for such a large palace, and nobody had seen any point in guarding an empty prison.
The escape attempt failed because, on the day it was to take place, Charles was struck down by gout and could not leave his bed.
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