The Light of Machu Picchu

by [Incas 03] The Light of Machu Picchu (retail) (epub)

  ‘No, Don Francisco, you don’t see at all. The lust for war is everywhere. It infects all your men. You allowed de Almagro to be murdered…’

  ‘I didn’t know…’

  ‘Come now – you didn’t know? Just as you didn’t know that Atahualpa was going to be executed? You knew, Don Francisco, but you turned your head away and averted your gaze until the deed was done. And now the desire for vengeance corrupts the air itself. Each man hates his neighbor and dreams only of grabbing as much as he can, everyone feels that an injustice has been done to them, and that violence is the only law! And now you are so blind that you cannot see in your lieutenants’ docile eyes which of them is going to betray you, which ones are perhaps already plotting to take your life…’

  Pizarro tried many times to interrupt but Gabriel’s impassioned statement left him no opportunity. Now, though, he raised his voice mockingly and said:

  ‘Come now, my boy, they would never dare!’

  Gabriel paused for breath, then said:

  ‘You had – you still have – the chance to be remembered in the history books as the man who conquered a land and made a nation of it! But you’re squandering that opportunity.’

  ‘I cannot do anything else, Gabriel!’ cried Francisco in despair. ‘I know your courage, and I know your generosity, and I’m prepared to listen to whatever you have to tell me. I don’t deny that much of what you say is true, and sometimes, when I’m alone at night, I pray to the Sacred Virgin, I cry and beg for mercy for the crimes that are being committed. I have no harsher judge than myself, not even you. No one, apart from Almighty God, knows what I know! But what you’re proposing is impossible, don’t you see, it’s simply impossible…’

  ‘Is it true that the purpose of Gonzalo and Paullu’s mission is to capture Anamaya and the gold statue?’

  ‘Yes, and Manco as well. But Gonzalo convinced me that Manco would be easier to take if we have his priestess in our hands, as well as that gold statue with God knows what magical powers…’

  ‘And then there’ll be peace, you say,’ said Gabriel, but sarcastically, almost hissing it through his teeth. He continued:

  ‘Do you really think that by simply destroying what they hold most precious you’ll make peace? No, it’ll be the opposite, Don Francisco: you will simply cause more war. When – or if – you get rid of Manco, you’ll have to deal with Villa Oma, the Sage turned warrior, and then with Illac Topa. And when they fall, others will rise behind them. And when, in turn, you’re finished with them, you’ll have to face your own men, you’ll have to remain forever on your guard, unable to trust anybody at all. Don’t you see that by behaving like this you’re leaving everybody, Spaniards and Indians alike, with a legacy of war, one that they’ll never give up?’

  ‘You don’t understand, Gabriel. You’re still too young. I know all that. But I also know things that you don’t. Over there,’ he said, pointing to the west, ‘they’re growing nervous, and news has reached me that they plan to send a viceroy here. If I don’t take Manco and crush his rebellion first, then it’ll be finished.’

  ‘What will be finished? Your power? The extortions and murders?’

  ‘My dream. My dream will be finished…’

  Don Francisco’s pale, thin lips quivered as he spoke these last words, and Gabriel held back from continuing his castigation of the aged leader. He had nothing to say about the substance of the dream of an old man, a man who had risen high above his humble origins; he knew that each man has his own secret, his own pathetic and magnificent dream.

  Both men paused to gather their breath. Their anger subsided, evaporated into the night, was absorbed in the stones – absorbed, perhaps, into the wisdom of the mummies that had been observing them.

  ‘Let me go to them,’ said Gabriel. ‘Let me take them the order to negotiate a peace with Manco immediately. You know that I know him well. I’m probably the only Spaniard that he’ll agree to talk to.’

  ‘No.’

  Gabriel tensed. He walked a few steps across the square. All his emotions had fused into a deep tiredness, a weariness that was the sum of all his years in Peru, of the immense sadness of being unable to convince the man whom he had both hated and most admired.

  He stared at the mummy with the broken nose: Huayna Capac. A wave of long-forgotten emotions passed through his body, and he shivered as though he had suddenly been transported through the night to the terraces overlooking Ollantaytambo.

  He turned around.

  Francisco Pizarro hadn’t moved.

  ‘Adieu, Don Francisco.’

  The Governor still didn’t move. Gabriel turned away and made to head back into town. Suddenly he heard the old man’s voice from behind him:

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Gabriel turned to face him, but he could no longer make out Pizarro’s features through the darkness.

  ‘I’ve thought about the story of what happened on Gallo Island, Don Francisco. I believe that you really did trace that line in the sand with the tip of your sword. And I believe that, sooner or later, every man has to choose: which side is he on?’

  He paused and filled his lungs with the cool night air.

  ‘I believe that there comes a point in every man’s life when, like you, he can draw his sword and trace a line in the sand. I think that every man has a choice.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘What I must.’

  Gabriel disappeared into the night.

  CHAPTER 25

  Cuzco, June 1539

  ‘You’ve lost your mind!’ howled Sebastian.

  Gabriel raised his hands to appease his friend. He had never seen him so enraged.

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘You’re telling me to calm down?’

  ‘Let me explain it to you again—’

  ‘Do you take me for some dumb nigger?’

  Gabriel lowered his arms, defeated.

  ‘I take you for my friend.’

  Bolts of fury flashed from Sebastian’s eyes. A single torch and a few candles on the small inlaid table at which the two men were sitting were the only sources of light in Sebastian’s palace. His servants and women had gone to bed, and the two men spoke in low voices.

  ‘Does a friend,’ continued Sebastian, calmer now, ‘wish for the death of his friend? Does he commit suicide alongside him?’

  ‘All I’m asking—’

  ‘All you’re asking is for me to bankrupt myself by financing an expedition into the depths of the jungle to save one Indian girl – I can get you fifty much prettier ones simply by snapping my fingers! Oh, and to devise a peace that no one wants. Oh yes – I was forgetting – and to help a gold statue escape, a gold statue that will in any case end up in the smelting forge at La Cassana anyway, or else in one of those noble hidalgos’ palaces. Let me tell you again, my friend: you’ve lost your mind. And if I listen to another word from you, then I’m as mad as you are.’

  ‘And so am I,’ said a third voice from the shadows. ‘I am struck with the same insanity, or one very like it. But I still want to believe in the truth of it.’

  ‘You do, Bartholomew?’

  The monk came forward into the light. He stared at a sketch of the Sacsayhuaman fortress.

  ‘Can it be,’ began Sebastian, ‘that since Bishop Valverde’s return you have lost your position in this fine city’s religious hierarchy?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Doesn’t your office make you their ally?’

  ‘My friend, my office – and its burden – has made of me the witness and, for far too long, the accomplice of horrors and those who carry them out. I didn’t come here to help massacre the natives in God’s name. And this man – your friend – represents my opportunity to end it. Two years ago, when his Holiness Paul III issued his papal bull, I believed that we had won a decisive victory. But that hasn’t turned out to be the case. I wanted Gabriel to go to Spain and bear witness to what is happening here, to insist upon the
King’s intervention in the name of God’s law. Yet I understand what you call his madness, and I would go with him if I could…’

  Sebastian looked from one man to the other.

  ‘And may I know how – purely out of curiosity – you’re going to find men to go with you?’

  ‘I’ve got a few friends,’ said Gabriel, smiling.

  ‘Who? Our old comrade de Candia has already lost half his fortune trying to get into that damned jungle! If I’m to part with my gold, may I at least know the names of these friends?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better for you not to know, so that you can enjoy your prosperity the more?’

  ‘How gracious of you, Your Grace! He gives me permission to enjoy my prosperity! What touching generosity…’

  ‘Sebastian—’

  ‘Never mind “Sebastian”. You would ruin me and have me killed – and you want me to thank you?’

  Gabriel and Bartholomew fell silent. There was no more space left in the night to argue, to convince Sebastian, to cajole, to complain, to joke around. All that they could do was to look at the ex-slave’s face, and to see the expressions of anger, of doubt, of temptation, and of resistance pass across it.

  ‘What if I refuse?’

  * * *

  It was a moonless night. Gabriel and Bartholomew hurried through the darkness along Cuzco’s alleys. They crossed the Aucaypata and headed down toward the Temple of the Sun. Hurrying along beside it, Gabriel gasped in shock: its walls had been demolished, and only the heavy stones of its foundations remained, no doubt either because its conquerors hadn’t had the power to destroy them or because they planned to build on top of them.

  ‘What have they done with the garden of gold?’ hissed Gabriel. ‘Turned it into a trough for their pigs?’

  Hidden in the night, he remembered the Inca’s prophetic words that Anamaya had revealed to him on their last night together, the meaning of which had remained a mystery to him. But he knew that it was his faith in that prophesy as much as the love in his heart that now made him prepared to defy anything.

  When they reached the Pumachupan canchas, he put his hand on Bartholomew’s shoulder. The monk said nothing, but simply turned to him and smiled. His scar was a dark shadow across his face. He didn’t hesitate as he headed toward a door leading into a modestly built cancha.

  ‘It’s here,’ said the monk.

  The cancha’s courtyard was dark and deserted. They woke a few guinea pigs as they entered, and the animals darted between their legs, squealing.

  Then a torch came toward them at chest height. Its light blinded Gabriel, and he shielded his eyes. A familiar, throaty voice spoke to him in good Spanish.

  ‘Welcome, my lord.’

  Gabriel discerned the outline of the dwarf silhouetted behind the torch. He followed him, fearing nothing, feeling as though he had come across an old friend. They had only ever met by night and had never spoken more than a few words to one another, but the dwarf had always been there to help Gabriel get closer to Anamaya. And now, once again, he was going to help.

  He led them through a door whose humble hanging belied the luxury that lay behind it. It was as though the dwarf had been crowned Inca of a miniature kingdom created for and ruled over by him, and destined to be known by him only. Everything in the room was exceptionally valuable: the goblets, jars, and trays were all of gold or silver and decorated with jewels. There were vicuña wool carpets and a table made of precious wood and inlaid with emeralds, like the two chairs and the bench around it. Gabriel noticed the familiar shapes of llama and condor figurines in the room’s niches, but he also saw some items that were far more terrifying than anything he had yet seen in the Inca world. The most surprising was an icon of the Virgin. What was more, everything was particularly small, as though it had all been made on a scale befitting the dwarf by artisans working in his court.

  The dwarf invited them to sit, which they did as best they could. The time when he had worn a long red robe, the only robe he’d possessed, its fringe always dragging in the dust, was long gone. He now wore yellow linen breeches, a yellow doublet, and a four-pointed hat of the sort that Gabriel had seen on Kollas by Lake Titicaca’s shores.

  ‘I’m afraid this place is far humbler than my house in Yucay,’ said the dwarf. ‘But I am happy to welcome you here, nevertheless.’

  ‘Your destiny has brought you good fortune, it seems,’ said Gabriel, smiling.

  ‘A slave I was, and a slave I shall always be. But in the meantime, I allow myself to enjoy – discreetly – what Fate has given me, and I watch my sons grow. They are five and seven years old, yet they are both already taller than me. Which proves that Fate knows how to be seduced. But you haven’t come to listen to my life story.’

  ‘We have come to ask you for help.’

  The dwarf laughed and slapped his thighs with his disproportionately large hands.

  ‘Who would have thought it? Who would have thought it, indeed?’ he said over and over.

  When the dwarf had finished laughing, his last ‘Who would have thought it?’ lost in a hiccup of mirth, Gabriel explained that he needed a guide and a dozen men to take him to Ollantaytambo, and to guide him through the impenetrable jungle where Gonzalo was hunting down Anamaya and Manco.

  The dwarf asked no questions. He looked seriously at Gabriel for a long time.

  ‘I have always taken you to her,’ he said.

  Gabriel nodded.

  ‘When do you want to leave?’

  ‘This very night.’

  The dwarf whistled through his teeth.

  ‘We will go to my house in Yucay. I’ll gather the men we need there. But do you have enough gold?’

  ‘Yes, he does.’

  The door hanging lifted and Sebastian’s giant shape appeared.

  ‘He has it,’ said Sebastian, lowering his head as though the smallness of everything surrounding him obliged him to shrink himself. He continued:

  ‘He doesn’t want to waste any time, I assume?’

  Sebastian laughed at the surprised look on Gabriel’s face.

  ‘It’s worth risking torture just to see that look on your face, Your Grace. Come on, let’s hurry, my neck hurts just standing here.’

  The four men went outside. Gabriel, moved, took Bartholomew’s arm and squeezed it. The two ex-slaves walked side by side in front of them, not speaking a word. The dwarf trotted along but the giant still had to restrain his pace so that the smaller man could keep up. They passed by a number of silent canchas before coming out onto the paved road to Collasuyu.

  When they had passed the last of the houses and they could see nothing ahead of them but crop fields and the dark outline of the mountain behind which lay Yucay, Bartholomew and Sebastian stopped in their tracks. Sebastian whistled softly.

  Two Indians appeared, leading a white shape through the night.

  ‘Itza!’ cried Gabriel.

  ‘I told you that I’d keep her for you.’

  ‘Itza!’

  ‘The range of your vocabulary amazes me. Will you say it a third time, I wonder?’

  Ignoring his friend’s jibe, Gabriel stroked the mare’s muzzle affectionately. When he turned to face his friends, his eyes were aglow.

  The monk raised his joined fingers toward Gabriel.

  ‘You’ll allow me to bless you,’ he said, smiling. ‘May the One True God be with you!’

  ‘And don’t forget your big cojones,’ muttered Sebastian. ‘Keep them tucked well between your legs.’

  Gabriel looked at his two friends before embracing both of them briefly. He opened his mouth, about to thank them.

  ‘Don’t say a word,’ growled Sebastian. ‘You bore me already. You’re going to sob like a woman, I know it. You’re going to cry, “Itza! Itza!” and I hate that kind of thing. Now hurry.’

  Gabriel hesitated, then turned aside and climbed effortlessly into the saddle. He and his horse galloped away into the night.

  CHAPTER 26

  Vilcabamb
a, Vitcos, July 1539

  Anamaya watched the men and women working on the terraces below Vilcabamba for a moment before approaching them. Under Katari’s watchful eye, women were kneading clay before carefully spreading it inside wooden molds. Then men would carry the gleaming, thick slabs to a spot a little further away, where they would sit and fold the slabs over themselves on their thighs, before carefully setting them to dry in the sun on a bed of leaves. Further away, other men put the dried, light gray wedges into a round furnace.

  Anamaya joined Katari. He watched as he called to one of the workers to bring him a clay slab that he had just folded over itself. The Master of Stone quickly etched an outline of a little snake into the still-soft substance with a reed stylus.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Anamaya. ‘What are these clay slabs for?’

  ‘To cover your roof, Coya Camaquen, and to keep you dry from the coming rains.’

  Anamaya screwed up her face and looked on without comprehension.

  Katari etched another snake on another slab. He worked so quickly and easily that the snake appeared as suddenly as a real reptile would from the grass.

  ‘These are what the Strangers call tiles,’ he explained, his eyes gleaming. ‘Once these clay slabs have been baked, all we have to do is set them over the frame of a roof for the building to become absolutely rainproof. I decided to do your roof first, Coya Camaquen, as a homage to you. Then we’ll set them over all the conchas of Vilcabamba, and make our Emperor’s new Royal City truly beautiful.’

  Katari showed her the tile that he had just decorated and added:

  ‘My only worry is that our men’s thighs are smaller than those of the Strangers, so our tiles are not as large as those I watched being made in Cuzco. We’re going to have to adjust the frameworks of our roofs to accommodate the difference in size.’

  ‘You surprise me, Master of Stone,’ said Anamaya, smiling softly. ‘You, the guardian of our Ancestors’ knowledge, the custodian of our traditions, are going to replace Inca roofs with something invented by the Strangers?’