by David Harris
Castillo undid his backpack and took out a loaf of thick yellow cornbread, about the size of a dinner plate. He tore it apart and passed lumps to each man.
Hiram ripped out the soft centre and shoved it into his mouth. He chewed without swallowing until the bread turned sweet in his mouth. The other men pushed bread into their mouths and, like Hiram, gnawed on the hard crusts.
He thought back to formal dinners at Yale University. Silver spoons, cut-crystal wine glasses … a bit different from this. But what could taste better than this plain bread?
Castillo unwrapped a cloth holding boiled potatoes with wrinkled brown skins. Hiram split his open and held it for Castillo to sprinkle salt from a matchbox. Hiram sighed and took the first salty bite.
Another cloth unfurled in Castillo’s hands. He poured crunchy green beans into Hiram’s hand. When Hiram bit the hard husks, they squeaked on his teeth.
Then Castillo opened a small round tin. He dipped his fingertips in and lifted out a golden, dripping piece of honeycomb. Hiram tore off another slab of bread. Carefully, so not a drop of honey was wasted, Castillo eased the honeycomb onto the piece of bread. Hiram bit quickly where the honey was about to drip. Sweetness filled his mouth. The flavour flooded his entire body and soul. When the last crumb of bread was gone, he licked his palm and every hint of honey from his fingers. He kept chewing the wax until it was a hard, bitter lump, then spat it out.
Castillo handed Hiram a bottle of chicha, brewed from corn. He gripped the cork between his teeth and pulled. The cork squeaked like a baby parrot and popped out. Hiram swigged the creamy scum and kept gulping beer until the bottle was half-empty. He lay back, took another drink, and gazed at high cirrus clouds that glinted with rainbow colours where they’d turned to ice.
The porters and Castillo shifted their backpacks into comfortable positions and leaned against them. They rolled dried coca leaves into little parcels, put them in their mouths, and settled into chewing.
Hiram wondered if it was true, as Castillo said, that coca gave them more strength and kept away the mountain headache. Hiram remembered his last attack of altitude sickness. Dizzy, weak, nauseous. He had to get to lower altitude fast or die.
Castillo and the porters chatted. Then Castillo turned to Hiram. ‘My friends want to know why you do this?’
‘What do they think?’
‘Our friend, Nuñez, says maybe you are a little crazy …’ Nuñez heard his name, smiled and nodded.
Castillo went on, ‘He thinks you are here to hunt gold in ruins, but gold of Choqqequirau turns men mad.’
Hiram held his beer to the light and closed one eye to look at the sun through the bottle. ‘Tell him, yes, a little crazy. Here I am. Today we had the bridge, the cliff, heat, and I’m sitting here on top of the world with you, and,’ Hiram swirled the bottle, ‘drinking chicha. What could be better?’
Castillo told the men and Nuñez smiled.
‘But,’ Hiram added. ‘I am also here because I teach the history of South America. I want to know more about Peru. The old maps and books are full of mistakes, contradictions, and maybe lies. So I was travelling across the Andes, exploring Inca trade routes and climbing the highest mountains. In Cuzco, the Prefect asked me to look for the ruins of Choqqequirau, where you are taking me. I’m not here for the gold, but as a favour for the Prefect in Cuzco.’
Castillo leant close and whispered. ‘Cacerez saw your compass and map. He watched you writing secret things in your book last night. He thinks you are American spy.’
Hiram dragged his backpack closer and unclipped a smaller work bag hanging from it. ‘You want to know why I am in your land? I have the answer in here.’
The men sat forward eagerly.
He took out a compass, his gold fob watch with the lid that clicked open, his pencils, diary, small binoculars, books, envelopes filled with pages copied from ancient documents, first-aid kit, camera, tape measure, pocket knife, matches, and the Royal Geographical Society book, Hints to Travellers, with its pages on how to examine an archaeological site. Professional historian he might be, but as an archaeologist, he was an amateur.
Hiram reached deep into the work bag. ‘Here it is.’
He lifted out a waterproof oilcloth package. ‘I carry this with me every day I am away from home.’ He unrolled the oilcloth, revealing an old wooden box about as long as a pencil case, but narrow and thin. The wood was cracked, and the paint faded. Holding it as if it was a sacred object, he said, ‘This is why I want to know about the past.’
He showed them the lid. It was a painting of a galloping horse and its rider — a Sioux Indian chief. The horse was flying high above mountains. Three eagles flew around the rider’s head. He had eagle feathers stuck in his hair and he laughed as he rode towards the rising sun.
Hiram touched the Chief. ‘He is Black Elk, a Chief of the Sioux.’
The men sat, mesmerised.
‘When my grandmother was a little girl, she lived for a year with the Sioux. Her best friend was the Chief’s daughter, Little Brown Bear. The day my grandmother had to leave the tents of the Sioux and return to the city, she and Little Brown Bear held each other and wept. Little Brown Bear gave her this box. My grandmother kept the box as her most precious treasure.
‘Every time I visited her, I went straight to her desk and stared at this lid. I made up all kinds of stories about Black Elk and Little Brown Bear. The box fascinated me, still does. Whenever I open the lid, it is a door to another, secret world of the past.’
Hiram opened the lid. The inside was padded with the grey fur of a wolf. With trembling fingertips he lifted out an eagle’s feather. All eyes were on the brown feather with streaks of gold. None of the men spoke. As if under a spell, each man felt a meaning given to them by the feather.
Hiram gently laid the feather back in its bed. ‘A few days before she died my grandmother gave me the box. She said to me, “Now Little Brown Bear’s gift is yours. I know you’ll look after it. Remember Little Brown Bear. Remember me whenever you look at the box. Remember the joy of Black Elk’s ride through the sky towards the sun.” Then my grandmother touched her old fingertips to her heart and to mine. “Remember, Hiram, we must keep the past alive. People don’t die until we stop thinking about them.’”
Chapter 11
‘Nearly there.’ Castillo strode faster through the jumble of rocks beneath the peak — a jagged knife edge of split boulders.
Hiram rushed to catch up and they raced to the top, weaving around boulders, scrambling up shortcuts. Hiram had the longer legs but, at the last moment, Castillo found a burst of energy. He powered ahead, his backpack bobbing, and slapped his hand on the side of the highest boulder.
Ignoring Castillo’s wide grin, Hiram staggered past him and kept going to the other side of the peak. He stopped and closed his eyes. Ruins floated as an after-image on the back of his eyelids. But what ruins? Eyes closed, his chest heaving, he wanted to keep that first image burnt on his retina —a bleak spur of rock jutting from the mountain side, held on by the narrowest of ridges, with precipices falling away from Inca walls.
He yearned for that first vision to be true. But he’d seen what was really there. Walls, yes, but what pitiful, tumbled-down wrecks.
Opening his eyes, Hiram left the peak and walked to the razorback ridge. ‘Courage,’ he said to himself bleakly. The high gate that defended this path was a heap of smashed rubble. Like a ghost in a desolate, ruined graveyard he passed broken rocks that might once have been houses. He followed a fractured stone stairway to a flat rock, maybe an altar stone, but who could tell?
His boots crunched on broken stones and the sound brought him back to a reality harsher than he could imagine. Gaping holes like craters pitted the ruins. He peered at blast lines radiating from the nearest hole like fractures from impact craters on the moon.
A sob caught in his throat. Beautiful houses, graceful streets, the central marketplace, storehouses — all shattered to dust by massive explosions
of gunpowder. In this rubbish dump he could not even tell which pile was once a temple.
A fallen slab was daubed with faint graffiti. The murderers of this city had callously scrawled their signatures on the corpse.
Hiram felt sick in the pit of his stomach. So much for the Prefect’s words. ‘Professor Bingham, do me one small favour. Find the lost city Choqqequirau. Legend says it has a palace filled with treasures of the last Inca. I will give you men and mules and equipment.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ Hiram turned angrily on Castillo.
Tears welled in Castillo’s eyes. ‘I did not know. This is place I have not seen. Nobody comes here for long time. Maybe hundreds of years. The Prefect, he tell me this place is full of gold. He tell me I am his best mountain scout and to look out for you.’
Hiram swung around and glared at the porters. ‘You must have known.’
Castillo was dangerously quiet when he talked with the men.
Closer to rage than tears, Castillo told Hiram, ‘Cacerez says you are famous professor. The Prefect sent him instructions and say you have clever ways to find the gold. Cacerez asks maybe you will give him some of gold when you find it.’
‘I don’t want to even look at him.’ Hiram marched furiously away, then suddenly turned and yelled at the porters, ‘Well, what are you waiting for? Make yourselves useful. Set up camp.’
He wandered distractedly among the ruins. Kneeling, he turned over rocks and found fragments of a grinding stone. He ran his fingers over the hollow where long ago a cook had ground corn for bread. Under another stone was a broken spindle, once used for spinning alpaca threads into wool.
Standing up, he gazed away from the city and into the mountains. No wonderful artefacts were here to be discovered, no signs of people’s hopes, their meals shared, their music and dancing. All signs of those lives were demolished.
He thought of the walls of Troy carted off by farmers for stone fencing. Treasures of Pompeii and the Forum of Rome reduced to skeletons by house builders. The Tower of Babel, the pyramids of Egypt, Solomon’s Temple … was there any glorious monument not stripped or smashed?
Hiram couldn’t sense the past here. Nothing but emptiness. It wasn’t forlorn and eerie, like the old battleground out in the plains. These ruins had no sense of past greatness, like the massive, beautiful wall that enchanted him in Cuzco. In a horrible way, this was a lost city, after all. Not just its people or their homes were lost in time, the spirit had fled.
Thick clouds rolled across the ruins. Rain set in. It was far too wet and dull to take photographs. Not that there was much to photograph in this wasteland. With a long sigh he thought, At least, I must give this place the dignity of a serious examination. Measure, map, photograph. Rescue what I can. He took off his backpack, unclipped the work bag and slipped it over one shoulder.
Was there anything the robbers hadn’t destroyed? Where could he look?
The only undamaged structures were crop terraces on the eastern side of the ruins. Nothing there for the treasure hunters. Probably nothing for me. But, you never know.
Before the cliff plummeted down, long flat terraces curved around the hillside. Carved from rock, supported by walls of cut stone, the strips of earth had been used to grow crops. They were like giant steps, about the height of two men. Hiram climbed down stairways of stone from one terrace to the next. Rain battered his jacket as he slipped and slid towards the edge of the cliff. All the way down he checked right and left in case some tools, or an unusual mound, or anything of interest was visible. Nothing. Each terrace was a barren stretch of earth.
At the edge of the cliff, he couldn’t resist one look. He saw a sheer drop, some boulders bulging from the cliff. Then clouds. His boots splashed in running water as he climbed back. The stairs had become little cascades. Part way up he stopped. What was it? Something was nagging at him. Something he’d seen on the cliff, or imagined. Whatever it was, if he was right …
Hiram leapt down the steps three or four at a time.
Chapter 12
Bare boulders pushed from the cliff like the tops of skulls. With a wild hope Hiram picked out a boulder with a flatter top, like an overhang, about thirty feet below.
He leant out and looked for a way down. A crack ran down the rock face, almost as far as the overhang. Hiram eased his legs over the edge and jammed one foot in the split. It took his weight and he carefully climbed down to just above the overhang.
Despite the rain and wind, his head was hot with excitement. Had the treasure hunters missed the most likely place?
Now came the tricky bit. Toehold by toehold, fingertip by fingertip, he worked his way around the roof of the overhang and down its side.
‘Yes!’ he cried to the sky.
There was a cave. And just visible inside it was a wall of cut granite rocks.
‘Got you.’ He savoured the moment of triumph. He stepped into the cave entrance. The wall of rocks completely blocked the cave.
Where were the taboo sticks? Oh, well, that was okay. The big thing was that the protective wall hadn’t been opened. And it didn’t want to be. He couldn’t get his fingertips between the rocks. Quickly taking off his work bag, he took out the pocket knife.
His fast breathing surprised him. Tense, exhilarated, hoping against hope … Today’s swaying bridge, smothering jungle, hard climb were all worth it. This moment made the entire journey wonderful.
On the left side of the overhang, one brick was not absolutely snug against the curved wall of the cave. Hiram slid the tip of his knife into the gap and wriggled the rock loose. He squeezed his fingertips into the wider gap and shook the rock until it broke away and clattered at his feet.
Hiram put one eye to the hole.
Chapter 13
Too dark. A vague shape, that’s all.
Like a maniac, he dragged rocks from the wall. He punched, shoved, dragged, until the jigsaw of rocks fell apart.
Empty eye sockets stared at him. Purple hair fell around brown cheekbones. Her hair was neatly combed and the ends braided with red seedpods. A strap of skin, as if the top lip had slipped down, stretched across her top teeth, but the bottom jaw gaped down — strings of muscle and sinew rotted away. Skeletal hands clutched shreds of red cloth to her breastbone. She sat, propped against the back wall of the cave, facing east, towards the rising sun. Her knees were drawn up, tied together and squashed against her stomach and lower ribs.
At her feet, a smaller skull looked up into its mother’s face. Near the baby’s head was a tiny wooden doll with big brown eyes, a button nose and a painted mouth with orange-coloured lips.
Hiram had seen Egyptian mummies, and one mummified corpse in Cuzco. In the Amazon jungle he’d held shrunken heads. The Amazon headhunters cut off the enemy’s head, peeled the skin from the skull, stitched up the mouth and eyes to keep the spirit trapped, boiled the skin until it shrunk, then stuffed it with hot sand and smooth pebbles, giving the small face chubby cheeks and an expression of blind surprise. When he held those heads his fingers wrapped around an ancient tribal hatred. He imagined the cry of agony and the whispered insistence, ‘Vengeance’.
But the corpse of this woman and her baby gave out no hatred or horror. Her hair was lovingly combed and braided. The doll nestled against the baby as if they slept peacefully together.
Hiram reached across centuries and touched the mother’s shin bone. At his touch, thin bone crumbled to dust. He whipped his hand away.
As the leg broke her body shifted with a soft sigh, and her head nodded once at him.
‘I mean you no harm.’ His voice whispered around the cave.
He examined the floor around the mother and child. The only other artefact was a small pottery jar. He picked it up. Empty. He sniffed it, but any aroma had evaporated centuries ago. Spices maybe, or honey or coca leaves?
Who were you? He felt a sadness that he couldn’t quite name. Maybe the ancient Egyptians were right … the living and the dead share this world.
Crouching, he peered closely at the decayed mummy. The woman’s wrists had no bangles of bronze or silver. Her neck was bare. No necklace with a circlet of gold beads.
You aren’t a princess, or even a noble. No riches for you. Just one small jar to last into eternity. Were you a servant? But why did they give you, a commoner, a burial tomb?
Hiram wanted to pick up the baby’s doll, but he couldn’t do it. Yet. He wondered what lullaby the mother sang to the baby. What finger games did she play? With a shiver of dismay he thought, Little baby, were you stillborn? Did your mother die in childbirth?
A tumult of sorrows shook Hiram.
To steady himself he searched in his work bag and took out his notebook, tape measure and a pencil.
To appease the woman’s spirit he explained to her, ‘I want you to share my world. I am here to rescue you and your baby from this darkness, to bring you from oblivion, into the light.’
He put one end of the tape measure near her foot then hesitated. One of his old books had recorded an Inca warning to those who disturbed the dead. You will die before your time has come. The arrow will pierce your belly, cut through your entrails, pierce your heart.
Chapter 14
When Hiram turned to crawl out, the tomb entrance framed the world outside of mountains and clouds lanced with rays of the sun. Climbing out, he stood under the edge of the overhang. Drops of water hanging from the stone roof glinted with rainbow colours. Outside, along the cliff, were other boulders and caves. How many more graves were there?
Adjusting his eyes to the light, Hiram cautiously climbed back onto the cliff and up to the split, which was his safe path to the terraces above. When he was part way up, a shadow flickered across him and something moved in the sky. He made sure of his next foothold before he turned to look.
A condor circled gracefully. The predator’s wingspan was at least ten feet across. No, now as it turned, more like fourteen feet from wingtip to wingtip. Yet it rode the wind with no effort, only the ends of its wings ruffling. Its beauty and grandeur stunned Hiram. It turned its head to look at him, then swung towards him, gliding as smoothly as a skater skimming over ice. In awe of the great bird’s power, Hiram watched it hurtle closer and closer. Feathers hushing, it swooped by, just out of reach. Beneath its belly, talons curved like scythes that could pierce and carry off a full-grown goat. Its cruel, sharp beak would tear apart a throat.