The Light of Machu Picchu

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

  ‘Sebastian!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t stay there! Get out of the way – let them fight!’

  Sebastian deflected Pizarro’s lance with an awkward flourish, but one of the Governor’s men struck his arm. Grimacing with pain, blood already spurting through the gash in his sleeve, he turned to Gabriel, who moved toward him. But Don Herrada, as though he had guessed Sebastian’s intention, used both his hands to shove Sebastian forward onto Don Francisco’s deadly sword.

  ‘Sebastian!’

  Gabriel whipped his sword through the air in an attempt to deflect Don Francisco’s. But the Governor had stabbed with all his might. His sword, a veteran of so many battles, found the gap at the bottom of Sebastian’s coat of mail. It pierced Sebastian’s flesh so easily that Don Francisco, carried along by the momentum of his thrust, stumbled forward into the African giant’s chest as he let out a long, quiet groan.

  And then everything happened at once. As Sebastian collapsed, Don Francisco’s sword still embedded in his side, the Governor froze with surprise. And in that instant, ten daggers plunged simultaneously into him, with ten voices crying as one:

  ‘Kill him! Kill him! Death to the tyrant!’

  Gabriel grabbed Sebastian’s shoulder and with great difficulty managed to drag him back. As Gabriel pulled the blade out of his friend’s guts, Don Francisco collapsed onto the floor not two paces away, his toothless mouth agape in a silent cry. Blood streamed from his mouth as he gasped:

  ‘Confession! I beg you, let me confess! For mercy’s sake, let me kiss the image of the Very Blessed Virgin one last time!’

  Gabriel felt Sebastian’s body convulse in agony in his arms.

  ‘Hold on!’ he begged, pressing his hand over his friend’s gaping wound and noticing without feeling it that his own hand had slipped on the blade, leaving a large gash across his palm. ‘Hold on – don’t die, Sebastian. Anamaya will fix you.’

  ‘Let it be, Gabriel. It’s better this way.’

  Sebastian placed his hands on his friend’s, smiled, and looked over at the Governor’s twisted face. In response to Don Francisco’s final plea, one of his murderers had smashed a jug into his face, ripping his mouth apart and silencing his prayers.

  ‘He’s already dead,’ breathed Sebastian, ‘and soon I shall no longer be a slave.’

  ‘Hold on, hold on.’

  Gabriel felt his tears stream down his cheeks and mingle with his sweat as the words came out of his mouth.

  ‘I’m going to ask you yet another favor, Sebastian.’

  ‘Ha! I know you, your grace. You want to win a little more time…’

  ‘I promise you, I need you!’

  ‘You’ve always tended to sob like a woman at farewells, Gabriel. Shut up and hold my hand.’

  And as his friend closed his eyes and boarded the vessel that would carry him to his final and absolute freedom, Gabriel never once let go of his hand.

  * * *

  A clinging, muggy fog rolled in from the ocean and blanketed the meandering coastline of ocher rock. The haze repelled the assaults of the merciless sun that scorched the immense desert to the north of Lima.

  It took only three hours’ ride on horses and mules for the green opulence of Lima to disappear behind them, along with the madness that had reigned over the city since Don Francisco’s death. The cries of hatred had given way to demented dances, farandoles of revengeful unleashed emotion. The old Governor’s slashed body had been paraded through the great square like an old rag, as though it was some tattered banner taken from the enemy on which to wipe old grudges and fears engendered by too many years of lawless living.

  As the Pizarros’ palaces were looted amid a cacophony of raucous yells and sinister laughter, Bartholomew pressed Gabriel to leave town before Don Herrada came after him.

  ‘I must bury Sebastian first,’ Gabriel had protested, his eyes completely bloodshot.

  ‘It’s impossible, they won’t give you the opportunity. You’re the last remaining person who frightens them. Don’t think that they’re going to forget about you just like that.’

  Then Anamaya had suggested that they leave and take the former slave’s body with them.

  ‘Why not?’ Bartholomew had murmured, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I’ll consecrate a plot to bury him in, and he won’t be any less at peace there than he would be here.’

  And now they were at that place and had dug a grave between two stones standing like two giant, welcoming arms. From two pieces of driftwood they had erected a cross as tall as a man, and its shadow shrouded the rectangle of dusty earth. Bartholomew was on his knees, murmuring a prayer, but Gabriel didn’t join him.

  With his uninjured hand, he held Anamaya’s, and he let the memories come back to him like a flight of dark-feathered birds. He remembered the first time that his friend had smiled at him, at the inn called the Bottomless Jug in Seville, and he remembered his first words: ‘We’ve discovered a new country.’ He remembered Sebastian repeating: ‘Never forget, my friend, that I’m black and a slave. Even if things look like they’ve changed, I’ll never be anything else.’ He remembered Sebastian tightening the garrote that had killed Atahualpa. He remembered Sebastian saving his life, protecting him, mocking him, unfailingly faithful until the very last.

  ‘He will rest well here,’ murmured Bartholomew as he stood up and stared at Anamaya as though he didn’t dare look into Gabriel’s eyes. ‘This was another of your good ideas, princess.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Gabriel, his face twisted with bitterness. ‘For a man who lived his life like another’s shadow, he’s definitely on his own here. No doubt Herrada and his people have already seized his boat. He will have vanished from their minds in only a few days, as though he had never existed.’

  His lips quivered with rage. Bartholomew looked at him with his gray eyes.

  ‘I’ll never forget that it was I who baptized him,’ he murmured.

  ‘Baptized? Sebastian?’ said Gabriel, astonished.

  ‘Yes. He asked me to baptize him shortly before I left Cuzco. But I promise you, I didn’t bother examining his faith too closely. Let’s just say that he wanted to put his mind at rest.’

  Bartholomew wrapped his hand with the joined fingers around Gabriel and Anamaya’s.

  ‘I baptized him with as much love as I married you two.’

  Gabriel was startled.

  ‘I don’t remember any marriage ceremony, Brother Bartholomew.’

  ‘Be at ease, my friend. Wasn’t I the first person to urge you to go to her? And didn’t I come to fetch you both in the heart of the jungle? I married you privately that day, in my heart, although I do believe that my friend Katari assisted me during the rite. There have been times when words have stood between us, Gabriel, but I don’t want to leave you without first having given you my friendship and a sign of divine as well as human love. Will you agree? Will you both agree?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Anamaya, and Gabriel nodded his head.

  ‘No, Coya Camaquen, it is for me to thank you. And for much more than you can imagine. I know that, if it had not been for you, the shame and suffering in this land would be far greater than it is. I shall never forget you. And when I speak to Judge de Castro, and when I go to Toledo and plead your case, and that of all Peru, it is your face that I shall see in my mind.’

  They shared a moment of silence together, joined as much by their shared emotion as by the touch of their three hands. The heat of the desert and the crash of the surf on the nearby coast enveloped them in a feeling of solitude as immense as the sense of peace they shared. Gabriel was surprised to feel his sadness ebbing away, as though the vastness surrounding him was absorbing him and revealing to him the true beginning of his life.

  Bartholomew drew his hand away first. He ran his joined fingers along the scar on his face, a gesture that had become automatic to him whenever he was embarrassed by emotion. He laughed and said:

  ‘As you can see, my fever has been lifted. We’ll never know whether God
answered my prayers or whether it was the princess’s brew. But it doesn’t matter. Know that I intend to live for a long while yet!’

  And with that Bartholomew clambered onto his mule and headed north. Anamaya and Gabriel stood enfolded in each other’s arms, watching him go. She said:

  ‘Don’t you think it’s strange that he too talks about a sign from his god?’

  Gabriel knew to what she was referring. The Emperor Huayna Capac’s words were running through his mind as well:

  War visits the Sons of the Sun and war visits the Strangers; it is the sign.

  The brother’s blood and the friend’s blood are shed far more than the enemy’s: it is the sign.

  The Stranger who worships a woman rather than his Ancestors is killed: it is the sign.

  Yes, each thing had now reached its end.

  ‘Come,’ murmured Anamaya. ‘It is time to go to the mountains and free the Sacred Double from our presence.’

  ‘Never doubt me. Remain in my breath, and trust the Puma,’ replied Gabriel, looking one last time at Sebastian’s grave.

  CHAPTER 31

  Machu Picchu – Caral, 1542

  They had said little to each other since leaving Lima.

  Each was lost in their own thoughts, reliving the chaos, the passions, and the amazing events that had happened in their lives. Gabriel would stare at the stone ribbon of the Inca royal road stretching ahead of him and imagine that he was bobbing on a choppy sea; Anamaya would gaze at the mountain peaks and occasionally stretch her arms to remind herself that she was only a human being. Any pride that they might have harbored had disappeared: the Coya Camaquen and the white knight of Santiago were now only a woman and a man traveling along a road, accompanied by a few porters. Their love required no words: it lived in their gestures and glances.

  They had stayed dressed in their Spanish clothes. Gabriel looked at his wounded hand by the morning light. It was slowly cicatrizing, and a strip of young skin, as smooth as a child’s, had formed next to his hardened adult skin. He thought about Sebastian. The giant African’s death had torn the fabric of Gabriel’s soul, and like the wound on his hand, he knew that it would never fully heal. It was strange to be alive after Sebastian had died, thought Gabriel. It had taken so many deaths for him to realize such a simple thing.

  They had reached the Apurimac valley, and Gabriel turned every now and then to look at the perfect triangle of a mountain rising over the steep-sided valley up which they were traveling.

  They were a day away from Rimac Tambo.

  Constant reminders of battles haunted Gabriel throughout the journey: a rushing river here, a mass of fallen rocks there. Beyond them was the unknown.

  Yet he didn’t feel any need to ask where they were heading.

  He knew.

  He knew that, when they reached the tambo, the porters would leave them and they would stay there alone.

  He knew that then they would take off their Spanish clothes, never to wear them again, and that he would once again put on his unku and she her añaco of fine white wool.

  He knew that she would look to the north and show him where the comet had appeared to her; that they would then enter the thick jungle, taking the road down which the sage Villa Oma had first led her.

  She would say: ‘This is the place.’

  Night was coming, and a thick fog rose up and blanketed them so that they were almost invisible to each other. Gabriel couldn’t help but imagine her disappearing in the fog, and his fingers tensed involuntarily. He swung around like a drunkard, only stopping when she took him by the hand. He stood still, his heart pounding. She took his wounded hand and brought it to her soft lips.

  * * *

  Katari felt the thousands of drops of water brought by the sea wind gather on his forehead.

  Everything receded from sight.

  The sky, the sea and the earth were all shrouded in the same mother-of-pearl whiteness. He had to touch his skin to be sure of its texture, to be sure of his own physical existence. His other senses had been all but annihilated, as though the three Worlds had merged into one, as though all the elements had been concentrated into one.

  Yet he continued walking toward the north, guided only by the light within him.

  He had walked every day since leaving Vilcabamba and Manco’s vacant stare. The Inca hadn’t even noticed him leave, and hadn’t paid any attention to the preparations that had been made for the Sacred Double’s voyage. Manco only interrupted his solitude by giving the occasional brief order, and the only sign of life he showed was in the middle of the night, between the legs of one or other of his concubines. What had once been gestures of respect by members of his court had been reduced to signals of fear. He woke every morning screaming at the top of his voice, and he ordered all his soothsayers to his bedside to interpret the dreams and visions that terrified him and twisted his features. His lips had been trembling uncontrollably when Katari had taken his leave of him, as though the Inca had been trying to say something to him but the effort was too great and he had found it impossible. Oblivion was consuming Manco from within.

  Katari had entrusted the Sacred Double to his Kolla kinsmen, who obeyed his commands without demanding any explanations and who, since boyhood, had maintained an inflexible tradition of saying very little. They would escort the statue’s palanquin through the jungle, making as little noise as an anaconda. They would take it where it was to go, in keeping with Huayna Capac’s words, to meet with Anamaya and the Puma, and so to its eternal resting place.

  Katari had preferred to leave and travel on his own.

  The mere presence of another human being would have disturbed his thoughts, and perhaps would even have led him astray. For almost a month, he had lived with only the sounds of nature, had breathed only the perfume of orchids, their leaves dripping dew, and had conversed only with birds.

  He had slept very little, but he always had the same dream in which he knew exactly where he was, despite never having been there before. He had woken happy and full of a certainty that made him leap to his feet and push on ever faster. His strong legs had led him through many landscapes, from heat to cold and back to heat.

  He had left the jungle for the undulating plateaus of the puna, where the hills receded to the vanishing point of the horizon. He had gazed upon the yellow tufts of ichu growing under the pure blue sky. Whenever he had seen a dust cloud, he had known that it wasn’t men who had kicked it up but a herd of vicuñas, the ground trembling beneath their collective tread.

  Heading down toward the coast, Katari had crossed stony deserts, occasionally intersected by streams on the luxuriant green banks of which sat almost completely naked Indians, perfectly immobile, who watched him approach without uttering a word.

  As he had approached the sea, he saw an increasing amount of fog banked across the sky, filling the air with dampness and moistening his skin. Now it was so thick that it surrounded him entirely, and though it obscured his vision he could see everything. It made it seem that the atmosphere was made of wool, and that it absorbed all sounds. But he could hear everything. The fog brought with it the odor of the sea, but he could smell scents from much further away.

  ‘You have arrived,’ Katari whispered to Anamaya and Gabriel. ‘You are far off, yet you are very close to me. We are together.’

  * * *

  The fog lifted as Anamaya and Gabriel journeyed into the mountains, leaving the Apurimac behind them. They had walked throughout the night and now, in the cool dawn, she was in his arms. He surrendered to the blue in her eyes – the blue of the sky, the blue of the night, the blue of the sea, and the blue of the lake into which he had dived to find her again.

  When they had passed the stone columns rising up toward the sky, Anamaya had passed her hands over Gabriel’s eyes, making him close them. As they continued climbing the stairs suspended between sky and earth, he was overcome by a profound apprehension. Then Anamaya squeezed his hand, signaling that he could now open his eyes.
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  The sight that greeted him was more beautiful and more powerful than anything that he could have imagined. It was as though, here in this secret place, a covenant had been struck between Man, the sky, the mountains and the river to build a temple in which to glorify the gods on nature’s, rather than Man’s, scale.

  ‘Picchu,’ murmured Anamaya.

  Gabriel’s eyes shone, and his lungs were filled with an exalted, serene and altogether other-worldly air. He knew that he was where he was meant to be, that he had reached the end of his pilgrimage. He let his gaze slide over the stepped terraces, over the houses and temples, he let it follow the murmuring water, the smoke spiraling in gray columns from the ichu roofs, beyond which he could see a vast square. But his gaze was repeatedly drawn to the mountain looming over the place. His heart thudded as he recognized its shape as the same as that of the rock with four niches in Ollantaytambo, and he saw in its stone the form of a puma coiled around itself, looking down over the city, dozing yet still terrifying and watchful.

  There were so many questions to ask yet no answers to be had: everything was there.

  Anamaya stood at his side.

  ‘I made a promise,’ she murmured. ‘I promised that I would never reveal the secret, that I would never pass through this door with a Stranger.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you’re doing now?’

  ‘You’re not a Stranger. You are the Puma. The secret belongs to you. You are home.’

  Gabriel felt happy and free, and the young child asleep within him would have rushed down the terraces, would have darted through the narrow alleyways that came out onto the vertiginous slopes beneath which shimmered the silver ribbon of the river. But the place radiated such solemn dignity that he contained his excitement and stilled his soul.

  Anamaya descended the steps that led to the monumental door through which, many years before, she had watched Villa Oma disappear. The same heavy wooden palisade was in place, securely sealing the access to Picchu’s centre. She placed her hands on it and it immediately swung open, revealing a street lined with low-roofed houses. Three impassive guards bearing spears welcomed them, their faces completely neutral, and wordlessly led them to a huge house with carefully roughcast walls and a steep-sloped gabled roof. Two trapezoid windows offered a view over the entire valley.