by Scott O'Dell
She held out the golden cup. I hesitated to take it.
“You admired it the other day here in the courtyard,” she said with a touch of spirit, the first I had heard from her. “You almost forgot to drink because you admired it so much.”
“The beauty is what I admired.” She knew I was lying and showed it by the hint of a smile.
“You did forget the cup,” she said. “You put it down and went away, although you did admire it. I saw your eyes shine.”
“I admired you more,” I said. “That’s why I forgot and left the cup behind.”
Having said this, I was silent, astounded at myself. The words seemed to hover above her, sharp and clear, a wreath of flowers of all colors. Her face seemed to be the face of La Macarena. Then my blood went rushing through me so loud I could hear it. I was dumb with fright, gazing with words again stuck to my tongue at the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Miracles have never been explained. All we know is that they happen when least expected as a sign of Christ’s love.
The stored treasure now was piled high in the courtyard, and a noisy argument had broken out among the troopers. Some, who thought that the Inca had hidden most of his gold, were for tying the old nobleman to the tail of a horse and dragging the truth out of him, as I had seen it done at Chichén-Palapa.
The girl heard the shouts. “I know my father is a prisoner in Cajamarca. The news came this morning. Will he be harmed by these men, do you think?”
There was fear in her voice, the first I had heard. “Pizarro is in command at Cajamarca,” I said. “He can be trusted to protect your father.”
I said this with all the conviction I could muster, knowing full well that Pizarro would do only what was in his interests. He was a man without scruples, fear of God or the devil. He certainly would put Atahualpa to the torture should the need arise.
The argument between the troopers grew more heated. One of them seized the old man by the throat and would have choked him had I not intervened. For my efforts, I received a painful bruise; when I went back to the garden where Chima and I had been talking, I found her gone.
Soon afterward she appeared riding with her mother. They were in a red litter supported on the shoulders of a dozen men. In their wake came other litters, carrying other women, a crowd of menials on foot, a herd of llamas burdened with clothes and household goods, and a long line of unarmed guards. It took most of an hour for the caravan to take the trail to Cajamarca.
Meanwhile the pleasure house was now empty. The troopers left nothing behind. The gold and silver were loaded on the horses, the other less valuable things were bundled up and carried by a flock of llamas that Alvarado had collected nearby.
We passed the Incas before we reached Cajamarca. I rode up as close to the litter bearing Chima and her mother as courtesy permitted, close enough to see her receive my greeting with the faintest of smiles and follow me with her dark, troubled gaze as I rode on. When we reached Cajamarca, I sought out Pizarro. He was at supper with his officers, not seated but limping up and down in front of them, his jaw set, stabbing the air with his fore finger, his food untouched.
“Give thought,” he was saying as I sat down at the table, “to the fact that Cuzco is high in the most monstrous mountains in the world, a good three hundred leagues from where I now stand.”
“But it is the center of the Inca empire,” Morales, the in spector of metals, said. “It is the home of the Inca gold. It is the place where the Inca palaces outshine the sun. We waste our time in deserted Cajamarca.”
Pizarro turned to Alvarado, who had followed me in. “What did you bring us?” he asked the captain.
“It is stacked in the square, sir.”
“In value, how much?”
“As a guess, a thousand gold pesos.”
“You got it all?”
“All, sir.”
“Well, less than I expected,” Pizarro said, disappointed.
I spoke up. “The Inca’s wives and children and servants are on their way here. They’ll arrive soon. Where will you house them?”
“Alvarado,” Pizarro said, “give this your attention. We want the women and their servants treated with the utmost hospital ity. How about the House of the Serpents?”
“That’s where we stable the horses.”
“Have it swept out,” Pizarro said. “And amply furnished. We’ll move Atahualpa in among his women and children. We want everyone to be respectfully treated. Happy.”
I met his eyes as he spoke these last words. I saw a fierce light that told me he had already decided on a plan to wring the last ounce of gold from Inca Atahualpa.
He motioned for the servants to fill the golden cups. Limping to the table, he picked up his own and lifted it high. “To the Inca,” he shouted. “To the richest king in the world.” He paused, then added under his breath to himself, “Now but not forever.”
He drank the toast at one long gulp. As his officers drank theirs, I raised the heavy goblet to my lips. The taste of the chicha was bitter. Its color—a dark brown streaked with red—looked like the blood that ran underfoot on the day of the massacre. I turned away and quietly spat it on the floor.
Among the officers at supper was a Captain Almagro. He had arrived that morning with credentials from the king that gave him the right to explore lands to the south of Peru. But he didn’t speak of exploration during the meal. He was inter ested in the gold Pizarro had collected, and because he had stationed himself in San Miguel for months protecting Pizarro’s interests and was now present with a band of well-armed sol diers, he demanded a share of the treasure.
Pizarro treated him politely and said that there was more than enough gold for everyone, but when the meal was over he led me outside and asked what had taken place at the Inca’s pleasure house.
“Alvarado claims to have collected only a thousand gold pesos in goods today,” he said. “What value would you give them?”
“I am not a goldsmith,” I said.
“As a guess.”
“A thousand gold pesos.”
“Did Alvarado collect all?”
“Everything.”
“He left nothing behind?”
“A few dogs.”
“Nothing was hidden along the trail on your way back?”
“Nothing that I saw.”
His men had quarreled for months now over the division of treasure, envying King Carlos his royal share, suspicious of each other, suspicious of Pizarro himself. But this was the first time I had heard Pizarro doubt the honesty of one of his own officers.
“The buzzards gather,” he said. “Soon they will darken the heavens. Someday soon there will be more buzzards than gold.”
While we talked in the dusk the caravan of women entered the square, led by a mayordomo resplendent in gold and feathers, flanked by torchbearers. In their midst were two musi cians, one with a thin flute and the other with a deep-voiced drum.
The caravan stopped in the square, not far from us, and Pizarro sent me out to direct the mayordomo to the House of the Serpents, which I did, pointing to a vast, low-lying struc ture on the far side of the square, where fires had begun to show.
I stood aside as the caravan passed, the long line of menials now walking in front, sweeping a pathway as they went. Night had fallen. The litter that carried the princess and her mother slipped by me without a sound. The reed curtains were drawn and I caught not the smallest glimpse of the girl.
My heart was pounding as I walked back to where Pizarro brooded, in the light of a lantern a servant had brought him. He was moving up and down, dragging one foot, muttering to himself.
“Yesterday,” he said, “it was news from the scoundrel Ibañez. Today it’s Almagro, a gentleman. Gentlemen are hard to refuse—they make you think that God is watching when He really isn’t. God is not concerned with gold—with nothing, as far as I can see. Now that He’s set everything in motion, like a child’s top of many colors, it’s up to us humans to make the most of it. Life
’s a blur, señor, a spinning puzzle with many answers. You’re lucky, amigo, if in a long life you find just one.”
He stopped pacing. In the lantern light I saw that although the night was cold, drops of sweat stood on his brow.
“My own men quarrel among themselves,” he said. “My officers, the king’s inspectors, even Father Valverde, scheme to slit Pizarro’s purse. They drain his blood with their sharp claws.”
“Divide the gold,” I said.
“And take the edge off their appetites? I wish to keep them hungry. There’s more out there in Peru, ten times a hundred, yet to be gathered.”
“Their appetites will be all the keener once they have a taste of the feast.”
“Young man, you don’t know the rules of human greed.”
He began to pace again, swinging the lantern, muttering to himself about zopilotes that darkened the heavens with their soft black wings. He was a man possessed.
I glanced across the square. In the tower high in the House of the Serpents, where Atahualpa often lived before Pizarro arrived, I saw that a fire was burning. The girl was there now, warming herself against the cold, pale and frightened of what the next day would bring. The firelight made a path across the stones. It somehow joined us together in the dark night.
Pizarro shone the lantern in my face. “Why do you stare into the night?” he said. “What do you see there? Mounds of gold? Like the rest of the spiders, do you spin webs?”
I didn’t answer. If I said, or so much as hinted, that I was appalled by his massacre of the Inca thousands, that from the hour I saw the streets of Cajamarca run deep with blood the very sight of gold had sickened me, then at this moment I would be driven from the town.
Offended by my silence, Pizarro discarded his lantern and walked away to inspect the sentries who watched from the roof and all sides of the stone prison that held the priceless hostage, Atahualpa Capac, Emperor of Peru.
CHAPTER 26
PIZARRO WAS NOT PLEASED BY THE BOOTY ALVARADO BROUGHT BACK from his raid on the pleasure house, consisting of rich plates from the royal table and massive emeralds left behind by the slain nobles. It did not quench his thirst, nor the thirst of his officers and men, who grew more restless day by day.
The bulk of the emperor’s vast treasure was yet to be found. Elsewhere, all reports agreed; in Cuzco, the cloud city high in the Andes. But Cuzco was far away. The Spanish forces were small, and many were needed to see that Atahualpa did not escape. It was dangerous to go marching off with a small force on a journey of three hundred leagues among enemy thou sands, leaving a horde of prisoners behind. Some of the officers suggested that Pizarro render them helpless by cutting off their hands.
Pizarro brooded on his problems for days, then put the restless soldiers to work changing one of the Indian temples into a Christian church, thereby giving them something to think about besides gold. He also gave thought to how best to handle the caged eagle, Inca Atahualpa Capac.
Meanwhile the Inca had worries of his own. He was a pri soner, guarded night and day, well treated, encouraged to play games of dice and chess, but still a hostage facing an uncertain future. His half brother, Huáscar, whom he had deposed as emperor, was busily collecting an army, not to use against Pizarro but to make peace with him and thus to regain the throne he had lost.
One of these problems was suddenly solved. Mysteriously, Huáscar turned up dead—killed, some said, on Atahualpa’s orders. Having taken note of Pizarro’s love of gold, the Inca attempted to solve the second problem by an unusual appeal to his greed.
I first heard of this scheme when I went at Atahualpa’s re quest as a translator for a meeting with Pizarro. I had not seen the Inca since the day of his imprisonment. His quarters, a series of gloomy rooms connected by a narrow passage, ad joined the chambers where his favorite wife and daughter were kept. Father Valverde said as we walked through the maze, “The corridors of hell must be like this. A proper place for the savage.”
We found Atahualpa seated on the gold throne he had sat upon the day of the massacre, listening to a message from an Indian who had just come from Cuzco. The man was dressed in beggar’s clothes, carried a small burden on his back, as tokens of respect, and spoke in the humblest of tones, though he was said to be the most powerful noble in Peru. I made out little of what he said, but judging from the few words I did understand, he was pledging undying trust in the emperor.
There were a half-dozen petitioners present, and we were kept waiting until the last had been heard—I believe de liberately to impress Pizarro. The general was both impressed and angered.
“You get the idea,” he said to me, not once but twice as we waited impatiently, “that the brown man thinks he is King Carlos of Spain, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire!”
However, when our time came, Pizarro greeted him with a low, respectful bow. In return, there was only a slight move ment of the Inca’s heavy lids—and I may have imagined this. He sat on his golden throne, impassive as a gold idol. He was an idol. He was more. He was the offspring of the sun, Lord of the Winds and Lightnings, Emperor of the Four Quarters of the World—or so he was raised to believe.
Atahualpa Inca took his time in speaking, while Pizarro stood and quietly fumed. The child of the sun, dressed all in gold cloth, wore the royal circlet on his forehead; his eyes were shielded by a green jade mask. He tilted the circlet just so, as if he were alone, making ready for a royal appearance, and carefully adjusted the mask.
“You took what you wished from my pleasure house,” he said at last. “I hear that it weighed much. I hear that it took all your beasts and a large flock of my llamas to carry it. Yet your men still ask for more. They yammer at my window. What is this sickness that besets them?”
Pizarro glanced at his polished boots, grasped his graying beard, freshly trimmed for the occasion, and said nothing.
Pizarro was a proud and arrogant man, proud that he was born of a dishonored girl, not knowing his father, a bastard raised in a pigsty, for twenty years and more driving muddy pigs down filthy streets, a ragged outcast. He could boast of all this—and often did—because he had climbed out of the mire, left it behind, become Balboa’s right hand, stood with him on a peak in Darién and claimed for Spain the blue Pacific, and at this moment was known to the world as the governor general of Peru, the fabulous land of El Dorado. Yet as he stood before the Inca, searching for an answer, he was again a bastard boy rooting in the mire, awed and uncertain.
“Do you have control over this clamor your people set up night and day like a nest of sick cats?” the Inca said.
Pizarro woke himself from self-doubt. “They have come a long distance, these men,” he answered. “A greater distance ten times over than the distance from here to Cuzco. They have suffered pain and torture. They have earned a reward.”
“Who asked them to come?” the Inca said. “Who asked them to suffer so much?”
“They came at the bidding of the all-powerful emperor of Spain and of other famous lands,” Pizarro said, suddenly angered, ashamed that a moment before he had acted like an ignorant pig boy. “They are here under the protection of God the Almighty to spread the word of his Son, Jesus Christ. To harvest souls in your beautiful kingdom.”
“Harvest souls?” Atahualpa said contemptuously.
He studied the words, which he had heard before. I repeated them, but he shook his head.
“The Inca grows weary hearing about souls,” he said. “My people have no souls to harvest. We are happy, we sun people, without souls. We are content to harvest, not souls, but our maize crops and potatoes.”
“You are the great emperor of a great nation,” Pizarro said, using his softest voice in a courtly manner. “However…”
Atahualpa interrupted him in an equally soft voice. “Great,” he repeated. “My kingdom is great. An eagle can fly north and south, east and west, from the sea to the highest mountains, for days it can fly and never reach the end to Atahualpa’s kingdom. I know the birds of
the air. And I know my people’s names, each one. I give each boy when he becomes a man a fitting parcel of land for him and his wife to hold and use and share its fruits with his neighbors, who share lands and its fruits with him likewise. They work and beget children. They are too busy to go away to other lands—there are many strange ones beyond the high mountains eastward where the vast rivers run. But we do not go there and hurt the people in the name of our god the sun. We do not go there and point a book at them with one hand and with the other a sharp sword, saying solemnly to them, ‘ Do this, stranger, do that, or else we’ll kill you.’ ”
“¡Absurdo! ” shouted Valverde. “We come here with love in our hearts. We bring with us Christ’s mercy and the hope of heaven. We ask little in exchange for this. Nothing, really, be cause you have no use for gold, except to fashion it into trin kets to adorn yourselves and your wives and your concubines.”
“You tell me I place no value upon gold,” Atahualpa said. “This is not true. People far from here, the Azteca, call gold the excrement of the gods. But this is wrong. It is a bad thought. To me, Atahualpa Inca, gold is the tears of the sun, tears of happiness, which he sheds in tribute to a great king dom.”
“Enough,” said Pizarro, suddenly tired of the talk. “It is also stuffed with gold, as full as a crow’s crop in a blind man’s cornfield. We wish our rightful share. We wish it soon.”
“Now,” Valverde said, “or else we shall have you burned.”
It was then that Atahualpa, sensing the proper moment had come, rose from his throne chair, strode to the end of the room, and slowly returned, waving his jeweled hand, the golden bells on his sandals tinkling as he moved. He pointed to the four walls, one after the other, and to the ceiling.