The Gold Eaters

by Ronald Wright

  The strange ship matches the change of course. It will catch them. The captain knows this. As the vessel draws near he sees it is indeed the new thing he has heard about from other seafarers, the thing he dreads.

  2

  Francisco Pizarro is sick of salt horse. “Horseflesh is for riding, not eating,” the Commander growls at the cookboy as they all sit down to another meal of the same foul stew in the caravel’s sterncastle.

  Pizarro stares at the hollow faces, mangy beards, and dull eyes around the table. A skeleton crew—eight lads and a brace of old men, counting himself and Pilot Ruiz—and beginning to look like skeletons too. The Commander tests the slackness of his belly with a clutch. It was firm when the expedition sailed from Panama in such hope and pride: two ships, two hundred men, three dozen horses, and enough stores to feed them all (so he gambled) until they reached the golden kingdom of the south.

  Pizarro’s belief in this rich land—Perú, as some call it—is still unshaken. The rumours have been many and consistent. But in Christ’s name, how much further can it be? He asks himself this every day. How can native traders reach such a far country with their clumsy craft, while his ships meet only headwinds, squalls, tempests, eerie becalmings, thwarting currents? To say nothing of the shipworm, who never sleep, gnawing their little tunnels through the hull.

  Sometimes he wonders if Pilot Ruiz has missed Peru somehow, overshot it in fog or darkness. But the kingdom sounds too big for that—a vast country of dry sands stretching forever along the shore, a land without trees except where rivers run down to the South Sea from ranges of snow-capped mountains. They have seen no hint of anything like this. Quite the contrary. Nothing but gloomy jungles, impenetrable mangroves, endless rains, snakes that can swallow a man whole, and enough mosquitoes to bleed the hordes of the Great Turk dry. And the few open spots where Christians might rest, might even settle and live—all teeming with cannibals and sodomites who fight like tigers, unfazed by horses and guns.

  The Commander keeps these musings to himself. Outwardly he is confident, as the leader of any pack must be lest his fellows tear him down. Thank God his irascible partner, Almagro, isn’t aboard. He’d be making mischief by now, to be sure. It is all too clear to Pizarro, and doubtless to others, that this southerly reconnaissance is the last hand he has to play, its opening provided by a lucky change of wind two weeks ago. Months before, with supplies exhausted and his men on the brink of mutiny, he had no choice but to halt and make camp on a small island. Until conditions improved. They did not, though costly raids on the mainland for corn, meat, women, and whatever gold could be sacked from Indian towns and villages bought him a little time. Almagro, the other ship, and the bulk of the force are waiting back on that island, barely one hundred men all told—reduced to half strength by hunger, illness, wild beasts, and poisoned arrows, one of which took out Almagro’s eye. Half strength! he thinks ruefully, scratching his ribs. He could say that of himself. His shirt sags loose, his belt has been shortened, and in the looking glass his cheeks hang like rags.

  Pizarro seldom allows himself to feel his years, though he’s old enough to be the father or even the grandfather of his shipmates, all in their late teens and early twenties. All except for Pilot Ruiz, the gaunt fellow of forty or so presiding self-importantly in the captain’s chair. The Pilot, too, might be the father of this lot. Not that there’s anything fatherly about him. A master shipman without doubt, but what a pious, humourless, ascetic stickler. The Commander sighs, releasing a foul gust. Every one of his fifty years, it seems lately, weighs upon him like an incubus.

  The Commander’s dislike for the Pilot is reciprocated. Ruiz has not forgotten that Pizarro was among the betrayers of poor Balboa, beheaded on false charges. Eight years ago now. Long enough to be set aside in mutual interest, maybe. Not long enough to forgive.

  What does Pizarro know about horseflesh anyway? Ruiz asks himself on hearing the growled complaint. Our leader he may be, but everyone laughs behind his back whenever he’s fool enough to get on a horse. The man rides like a drunk on a donkey.

  The Pilot also glumly scans the men around the Santa Elena’s table. And these the best: the fittest from the base camp. What a relief to have left the rest of that mob behind! Better at sea with ten starving men than ashore among a hundred. If the damned Indians hadn’t killed so many horses, there wouldn’t even be this filthy meat. And if so many Christians hadn’t died, there’d be even more mouths to feed. Mouths willing to eat rats, dogs, seagulls, perhaps even their own dead—a thing he’s seen more than once in thirty years at sea. A feast for the Devil.

  The Pilot notes several men drooling as the miserable fare is ladled into their bowls, especially the Greek Candía, Pizarro’s gunner and the tallest aboard. They can barely wait for the grace. Time to put matters before them all, once we’ve eaten. Time to give up before we die, one by one, and slide into the sea. Although Ruiz is master of this ship, the decision to turn round cannot be his alone—once back in Panama (God willing), Pizarro would gladly make him the scapegoat for yet another failed expedition. Rotten wood sinks, the Pilot says to himself, but rotten men tend to float above their betters.

  He raps his pewter mug on the table.

  “Commander Pizarro. Gentlemen. Two weeks have now passed since we left Gallo Island and our comrades. The stores”—the Pilot waves his hand at the cleaned-out bowls—“well, we’ve barely enough left for another fortnight. Furthermore, it has pleased God to keep the wind behind us until now. Unless He turns His winds around when we do, they’ll be against us heading back.

  “By my reckoning”—the Pilot pauses theatrically, straightening in his chair to give the listeners time to reflect that Bartolomé Ruiz is the best pilot in the Indies, his navigation not to be doubted—“by my reckoning we’ve made four degrees of latitude since Gallo: a little under three hundred miles, give or take. Land miles, that is.” His eyes settle on the Commander to underline Pizarro’s ignorance of seamanship. “The astrolabe tells me we are now upon the equator. No Christian has ever sailed so far into the great South Sea. Yet what have we seen of the southern kingdom we seek? Have we come to a desert land where people ride camels, where they dwell in stone cities, where gold is common as iron?”

  The Pilot searches the faces to gauge the effect of his rhetoric. “It is true the forest savages have some gold and emeralds on them,” he adds, to forestall any argument on those grounds. “But only enough to lure us on, to make us hazard our God-given souls.”

  Murmurs and nods around the table. Pilot Ruiz’s frustration is widely shared.

  Commander Pizarro sits rigidly upright, glaring like an eagle over their heads. Without a glance at the Pilot, or any sign he’s even listened, he speaks at last.

  “We’ll hold our course. I have no doubt the golden land draws near. And we must cross the equatorial line decisively so none can deny that ours is the first Christian ship to do so. This honour is within our grasp. Let us seize it for King Charles!”

  He gets up from the table abruptly and goes on deck, into a moonless night.

  —

  Has my luck forsaken me at last? Francisco Pizarro asks himself, clutching the rail and staring towards the distant shore which lies like a black whale basking under the stars.

  He conjures a boyhood memory from Spain, an inner talisman he summons whenever he’s especially low. A spring evening in the year his whiskers sprouted. The church of Santa María in Trujillo. He was praying to the Virgin for good fortune, kneeling on a floor paved with the gravestones of dead Pizarros. Often he came here to greet their bones and beseech their souls to help him, since the living Pizarros never did.

  As he left the church, his sleeve was plucked. A ragged man stood there, a cripple with an arm hanging like the writhen stem of a dead vine. For Holy Mary touch this shrivelled arm, young man, the beggar said. For God’s love give me a coin and I shall tell you all. One day you shall be great!
Francisco looked into eyes like boiled onions framed by a filthy hood. The man was blind. Yet the sightless gaze had some unearthly hold, the gaze of a seer. Pizarro had two maravedís in his pocket. He gave one, and did not shrink from tapping the handless arm, for somehow the words seemed more than beggar’s lies. Your sword-arm shall be as mighty as this arm of mine is weak. You shall win wars in a far land. You’ll be the greatest warrior since Alexander. You’ll become the richest conqueror in the world!

  When, old man, and where? Granada? Italy? Tell me!

  But the beggar slid away, saying nothing more except to turn his head towards the west and hiss, The sea, the Ocean Sea.

  So not Granada, the infidels’ last nest in Spain. Nor Naples, where his father had gone to war. Did the beggar mean the Canaries, the Azores? Even a boy knew those islands had no riches.

  Young Francisco walked on in a trance, stopping beside the chapel of Santiago, Slayer of Moors. There, watching the daylight flare and fade behind the Moorish castle on the height, he thought of the great sea that swallows the sun. He had to give his last coin and hear more! He ran back through narrow streets and thickening shadows to where the fellow had accosted him. But nobody was there. The evensong worshippers had left for home, the iron-bound doors were locked. Only swallows scything the sky, stray dogs regarding him with shifty eyes, storks on the bell tower clacking their bills like doleful castanets.

  For weeks Pizarro sought the man, roaming all Trujillo, accosting monks and shopkeepers, even searching shepherds’ huts in rocky outcrops where the hills break up in a stony surf on the Extremadura plain.

  A beggar! people said, laughing. You seek a beggar? Look in any doorway. And Pizarro, given to daydreams born of hunger and solitude, eventually came to doubt the meeting had ever happened; even to fear he’d been tempted by a minion of the Devil.

  Then, just two or three years later, Admiral Columbus found the islands of the Indies across the Ocean Sea. When the Admiral sought men for a second voyage, Francisco Pizarro was on board.

  —

  The following day, about mid-morning, a lookout sings from the crosstree. He has spied a sail—another caravel—beating towards them from the south. The Pilot orders the man down and goes aloft himself, hoisting his worn body up the shrouds, no easy task for an underfed man of his years. Ruiz has been scrupulous in giving the same rations to all, making no exception for himself—nor for the Commander, however much that mastiff growls. He stays aloft half an hour, until certain the lookout is not mistaken. The unknown ship is still hull-down, but her rig and twin masts must be a caravel’s.

  The Pilot regains the deck in a fury. Not only have they failed in their errand to find the golden land, but the consolation prize of being first to sail these waters has been snatched away. What has he, a devout man, done to so anger the Lord? And who in God’s name could those seafarers be? One of Magellan’s long-lost ships? Some other navigator sent round the Horn by King Charles? Or a Portuguese from the Spice Islands, blown here by storms or—worse—daring to trespass on realms the Pope has given by treaty to the King of Spain?

  He draws the Commander aside, out of earshot from the rest, who might well look on this unwelcome surprise as a deliverance. Pizarro shares the Pilot’s thoughts.

  Their misgivings sharpen when the other ship goes about and falls off, as if to avoid them and run for land. But she is slower. Soon the two close to half a mile, and the sharp-eyed Pilot—again at the crosstree—is more baffled than ever. Though rigged like a caravel, the other ship is long and low on the water, with a house amidships. Unlike any vessel he has seen.

  Drawing nearer, Ruiz sees she is built of buoyant timber like the rafts made by Indians along the coast. But this is far bigger, with two masts, and her sails are indeed as tall and shapely as his own. There are stacks of freight or provisions and some twenty people on deck, watching him as he watches them. What can they be but survivors of some shipwreck—most likely a Spanish wreck—who have made a craft from local timber and their salvaged rig? Yet the striped pennant at her masthead bears no sign of a cross. And the folk aboard are outlandishly dressed in turbans and bright tunics, as if they were Moors or Jews.

  The Pilot runs alongside and hails the strange craft, calling in Spanish and Portuguese to the only figure now on deck—a bear of a man, half naked, at the helm of a long steering oar. This must be the master, for he ordered his shipmates into the deckhouse. Ruiz then tries a few words of the Mexican language, words used both by Indian and Spanish traders on the Isthmus.

  Getting no answer, Ruiz has grappling hooks thrown and winched. The tied ships begin a slow, ungainly dance to the harsh music of scraped wood and clapping sailcloth.

  The Commander takes over from the Pilot, ordering Candía the Greek to man the swivel gun on the foredeck. He picks out a boarding party: García, good with a blade; Molina, who speaks Arabic; and four others.

  “Salaam aleikum!” says Molina, forcing a smile—more a foxy grin—as his feet touch the slatted deck of the unknown ship. “Kaliméra!” Candía shouts from the caravel, more warmly, more persuasively.

  Candía should lead the boarding party, Ruiz tells Pizarro. The big Greek is the only man equal in build to the strange helmsman. He is also a friendly fellow by nature, a sunny, carefree soul. Candía would be the best ambassador. The Commander ignores him. This fool would take the gunner off the gun?

  The bronze helmsman with the blue tattoos neither moves nor speaks. Molina strides up and prods the man’s chest lightly with his sword. Stow that! Ruiz calls from the caravel, but his words are lost on the wind. Molina pokes harder; a trickle of red runs over the band of blue.

  “Imatan munanki?” the man says at last.

  The words mean nothing. But the tone is clear. Outraged, imperious. As one might say, How dare you!

  The deckhouse light is dim, filtering through the wicker walls in pinpricks like a starry sky. Waman is afraid, and thankful others cannot see his fear. The room has a comforting smell of wool and cotton, oiled wood, grass mats, buckets of pitch. But there is no comfort now. They all watched the approach of the foreign vessel riding high on the waves like a wooden tub. They all heard the skipper’s warning, followed his order to go inside: “Stay there till I call you. Strip off your jewellery. Hide it in the cotton. If you have weapons, keep them out of sight, but keep them handy. Defend yourselves if it comes to a fight, but above all do not start one.” At this, several traders protested, saying they’d take their own chances and would not hide from thieves.

  “Listen,” the captain answered. “Now I’ll tell you what I know. Last season one of our ships returned from northern waters beyond the Empire—not far from the region for which we’re bound. When they put in to trade at a place they knew, they found it burnt and abandoned. In the streets and fields were many dead, mere bones by the time they got there. From a few survivors they learnt that a new kind of barbarian had appeared in strange ships. From a distance the hotlanders had mistaken the ships for ours. But the men on board—they were all men, no women, no children—were short and very hairy, with long beards and pale skin, pale as maggots. They looked sickly, and when they came ashore some of them rode like sick men on big llamas. The hotlanders thought they might be the dead, returning from the underworld. But they had the appetites of living men. They seized food, drink, gold, women. They killed anyone who tried to stop them. They killed easily but were hard to kill.

  “For your lives’ sake, do as I say. Go into the house. Stay there until I give word. That is all.”

  For a long time, it seems to Waman, nothing happens. There is only the fear, the blood throbbing in his ears. Something strikes the ship. Shouts on the wind. Heavy footfalls on deck. More shouts in a strange tongue, and the captain demanding, “What do you want?”

  The deckhouse door is torn open. Sunlight blinds him. But he can hear and smell. Cries, strange laughter, women shrieking, knives ripping
into bales, the breaking of jars, a reek of sweat and blood. A hand. Leather fingers closing on his throat.

  Could the day’s work have gone another way? the Pilot asks himself, preparing to write up his log that night. Perhaps bloodshed might have been avoided. He should have been more forceful with Pizarro. They should have acted more slowly, with restraint. Would that have exposed them to any higher risk?

  On the Commander’s orders, the helmsman was seized and tied to his own mast. The others were rousted from the deckhouse. There were men, women, an unconscious boy, limp yet breathing. The Commander ordered the boy brought aboard the caravel at once. Youngsters learn fast.

  Then one man—a tall fellow, middle-aged, richly dressed—flourished a weapon, a kind of knife or axe, of bronze or gold. This he held out in his right hand while reaching slowly with his left for García’s sword, holding the young Spaniard’s eye. From where the Pilot stood, it looked like an offer to trade. But García thought otherwise. With a single blow he struck off the stranger’s hand. He insisted afterwards that he was threatened, would do the same again without a moment’s dither. Who knew what weapons those Indians had hidden in their clothes?

  At that, some of the Indians—if such they be—leapt overboard and swam for their lives. They swam well, but the man with the bleeding stump was soon overtaken by sharks. So were others. The sea boiled red. Meanwhile the boarding party killed several more before Ruiz could cross to the foreign ship and stop them. Pizarro stayed where he was, looking on from the caravel’s rail, absorbed yet indifferent, as if watching a second-rate cockfight.

  The Pilot cannot quell the scenes before his eyes. The women’s shrieks and tears, the futile valour of men armed only with small blades. And the worst: an old man, his belly opened by a sword, cradling his innards in his arms, spilling them in panic, snaring his feet with his own guts and toppling into the sea.