The Gold Eaters Page 12

  The Greek shakes his head, beard sweeping the table like a broom.

  The audience is held in the gardens of a hilltop palace not far outside the city. King Charles and Queen Isabel sit side by side in ornate high-backed chairs on a broad terrace giving onto a lawn and orange grove. It is a fine June day with a fresh breeze.

  The Commander rides up at the head of his procession, only two wagons, two Peruvians, three llamas. Outwardly he seems confident, but the Queen detects the swagger of a coarse man unsure of himself among grandees. He sits awkwardly on his horse, which is more a dray than a charger. The wagons he has are no better than his steed. Their cracked boards are masked by colourful Peruvian textiles, but the frames creak and the axles wail all the same.

  Pizarro is unable to hide the stiffness in his joints as he dismounts. A month in prison did his old bones no good, no good at all.

  So young, he thinks, as he kneels before them; His Catholic Majesty, Emperor of Rome, King of Spain and Naples, Count of Flanders, Duke of Burgundy, must still be in his twenties. Barely half his own years. The grizzled Commander reads the royal face: handsome, clean-shaven, girlish. Unmarked by the cares of the world. And the Queen’s a looker, by Christ: so slight, such dainty feet, and a wide-eyed expression that makes her all the more fetching.

  Charles and Isabel are chatting sotto voce, he smiling and jesting, she chuckling at his words. The morning sun flashes on their finery, the breeze fluttering their robes. The King wears a rich doublet with puffed sleeves, fine burgundy leather and wood-green velvet embroidered with golden threads and sequins. On his head is no crown; only a wide velvet cap, full and plush as a cushion. The Queen is in a gown of olive silk, her face framed by lace flowing from a head-tire and long earrings of silver and pearls. Pizarro takes this in with crafty glances; his head he keeps bowed, seldom daring to stray from those dainty feet, displayed as if on sale by open shoes.

  A small crouching figure shades her with a parasol. A child? No, it is hunched and wizened. A dwarf. When the parasol sways and the sun strikes her cheek, the Queen kicks the dwarf discreetly with her heel.

  “Don Francisco,” His Majesty says at last, “we trust you’ve recovered from the travail of coming to see us.” Not a question, exactly.

  Pizarro launches into the speech he’s had written by a scribe and has committed to memory, telling of gallanter hardships than the hail-swept passes of Castile.

  “Highest Lord and Lady! In Your Majesties’ service my men and I wandered years along the wild shores of the great South Sea, often without sight of the sun, and through endless storms. Assailed by poisoned arrows, giant snakes, ravening crocodiles. Three years of discovery in the service of Christ and for the greatness of your Holy Empire.

  “And at last, when many had lost all hope, it pleased God that we found the fabled land we sought—the mighty southern kingdom of Peru, which exceeded all our dreams with its great size, its riches, its cities, its teeming citizens and mosques full of gold.

  “By then we Christians were a mere thirteen. We could take only what the natives gave us. These few things I bring are therefore no more than a foretaste of what awaits you, should it please Your Majesties to grant what my heart craves—to win Peru for God and Crown.”

  Isabel and Charles hear many speeches of this kind. Spain seethes with would-be conquerors—ever since Cortés sent letters from Mexico and a first haul of treasure some years ago. Most are worthless dreamers, but a few receive a royal licence to conquer in their name. As Pizarro’s small procession rolls across the lawn, the King and Queen ask many questions, less from curiosity than to get the measure of this man. What do the Peruvians keep in those great jars? How do they wear those silks? Are the symbols on it their writing or their heraldry? Can that bird speak, like those of Mexico?

  It is in fact one of the same birds, borrowed by Pizarro from his kinsman so as to be less outdone.

  “Indeed, Majesties. Many Indian tongues. But all nonsense, lacking reason.”

  “Let me hear,” the King says. “I have a few tongues myself. I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, and German to my horse!” He looks around, beaming. Courtiers chuckle loyally at the threadbare joke. “Bring the bird nearer.”

  Pizarro beckons the man who has the parrot in a cage, rueing his impulse to bring the creature at all. He—and the sharper ears at court—can already hear a raucous avian voice uttering something much like hijo de puta, son of a whore, punctuated by wolf whistles. The courtiers’ laughter now is genuine.

  “It is nothing, my lord.” Pizarro raises his voice above the parrot’s, coughing loudly, signalling with a clenched hand behind his back for the bird to be throttled at once. “Nothing at all. Mere nonsense in some Indian tongue. I know not what.”

  A small sound like a walnut underfoot. A flap of wings. Silence.

  “Majesties,” Pizarro continues, still on his knees, “allow me to present two young Peruvians. The boy, I’ve taught to speak. The girl is learning. The lad has become a Christian, baptised Felipe. He speaks Castilian well.”

  “We trust, Don Francisco, that he does,” Isabel says, thinking of the parrot and prodding her husband’s heel with a toe.

  Qoyllur carries herself elegantly in fine fabrics of her land: a sweeping sky-blue skirt embroidered sparely with red and yellow flowers, a shawl woven with black and orange frets pinned across her chest by a long silver brooch like a spoon, and a narrow vermilion cloth folded crisply on her head and flowing down her back, beneath which her hair, plaited with gold beads, swings at her rump in a glossy braid with an orange bow.

  Waman is wearing the best vicuña tunic on hand—one taken by Ruiz from the Peruvian ship. He is uneasy, like Pizarro. He slept fitfully at the inn, awaking from a nightmare of Gallo Island to singing below and cries of love from the room next door.

  “Felipillo here will answer any question you may wish to put to him, Your Highnesses. But first, I have told him to render homage in the manner of his nation. They’re a gentle and obedient race.”

  Waman takes up a thick roll of red cloth, holding it across his shoulders like a shepherd carrying a sheep. Stooped beneath this burden, he approaches shyly, lowering himself with each step until stretched at the royal feet like a Moor at prayer.

  The wagons have halted, and in the stillness the interpreter’s words can just be heard.

  “Sapa Inka, Sapa Qoya, Tumpismantam kani. Wamanmi sutiy, yanaykichik.”

  “Don Francisco,” the Queen says to Pizarro wearily, “have him kneel properly and say it again. In Castilian.”

  Waman’s eyes make a sidelong glance at the Commander. An impatient nod.

  “Only King, Only Queen, I come from Tumbes. I am your servant Waman—as I’m called in my own land. That is what I said, Catholic Majesties.”

  “The savage speaks well!” The King grins at his courtiers. “And that’s not a bad title, Only King.” He bends to Waman. “Who is the man that wears it in your country, boy? How big is the kingdom of this ‘only king’?”

  Waman begins by saying the Peruvian Empire is very great, though he has seen only a little of it himself. “In our tongue it is called Tawantinsuyu, the United Quarters of the World—”

  “Greater than all Europe,” Pizarro cuts in. “More than three thousand miles from end to end! We sailed its coast through fifteen degrees of latitude, and did not see the half of it.”

  The King ignores him, turns again to the boy.

  “This ‘only king’? Has he a name?”

  “He is called Wayna Qhapaq, Majesty.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “In our language this says Young Lord.”

  “A youngster, then. How long on his throne?”

  “I . . . I don’t know, Majesty.” Waman looks beseechingly at Qoyllur, on his right.

  “Machu Apu hina,” she says to him, shooting her brow at Pizarro: like the Old
Commander. She adds that Wayna Qhapaq has ruled the World since her parents were children.

  “He is a man of about Commander Pizarro’s years, Your Majesty. The Emperor has had the name Young Lord since he was young. Before he ruled the World, which he has done more than thirty years.”

  Charles laughs theatrically, for all to hear. “The vanity of savages! There’s only one world and one Emperor. You kneel before him here.”

  “Have you any Latin?” the Queen asks. “Can you pray? Do you confess?”

  Waman produces his rosary and recites a Hail Mary.

  “Good. Good. He and the girl may go.”

  It is time to fetch the llamas. Waman has combed and clipped them, leaving the wool short on the back and neck, but thick on the flanks, with a fringe hanging forward between their upright ears. From the pierced tip of each ear hangs a scarlet ribbon.

  “These are the beasts of the new southern land, Your Majesties,” Pizarro says. “I brought many more to give you, and more Indians too, but they sickened and did not outlast the voyage.”

  “Are they small camels or big sheep, Don Francisco?” Isabel says. “What do the natives use them for—do they ride them, eat them, or shear them?”

  “All three, my lady. Above all, they use them like pack mules in great caravans. To carry gold and silver from their countless mines.” He pauses to let the abundance of mines sink in. “A strong one can carry as much as an ass. But the Peruvians seldom ride them, only the old, the sick, and the young. Their soldiers do not.”

  “Nearer,” says the King. “Bring them nearer.”

  “As you command. But I beg leave to warn Your Highness that they are like camels in their ways, unruly by nature, given to spitting.” It would be disastrous if a well-aimed cud of alfalfa struck the royal eye.

  The King inspects the llamas warily, noting their haughty faces, coquettish eyelashes, and the way they chew, the jaw sliding to one side then the other, pausing in the middle, velvet lips curled in a sneer.

  “Indeed like camels. That will do.”

  Waman leads the animals a safe distance away and unloads a heavy swag of striped black-and-yellow cloth from the first. He returns with this to the terrace and unrolls it like a rug at the royal feet, removing cotton padding from the things inside.

  First to emerge is a funeral mask of beaten gold, a stiff human face with teardrop eyes. Then two gold beakers, a foot high, plain except for jade chevrons inlaid below the lip. Next are ceremonial weapons: a gold battle-axe with blade and handle cast in a single piece, a mace with a silver head, and two knives with silver blades shaped like half-moons and gold figurines for handles. There is a golden breastplate and a set of greaves, and a pair of serving dishes, one gold, one silver, each with a lifelike hummingbird perched on the rim. Lastly, two llama statuettes, a male in solid gold and a silver female.

  The King and Queen say nothing. Pizarro has great difficulty keeping silent. And keeping still; he is growing acutely uncomfortable on his knees. Do these things seem fine to them? Is it enough? He regrets the pieces sold, the ones left with his partner Almagro, and especially those he gave to the Governor of Panama in a vain attempt to get that ass’s backing. Thank God he had wits enough to withhold these—the best—to go over the Governor’s head and bring his suit to Spain.

  He can hold his tongue no longer.

  “Doubtless these things seem few and small to Your Highnesses after the marvels brought by my illustrious cousin, the Marquis Cortés, from New Spain. But I beg your leave to point out that he had already taken that land and therefore could bring you the very best it contains, whereas I have but a sample of the wonders that await us in Peru—a land richer in gold by far. If you will grant me leave to conquer it, why, in two or three years, with God’s help, I shall again stand before you with such treasure that no prince in Christendom—”

  “Your point does not escape us, Don Francisco. Hand us that golden beast and . . . that dish.”

  Charles and Isabel turn the pieces in their hands. The artefacts are plainer than the work from Mexico, but their heft—the weight of metal in them—suggests that this fellow’s boasts of Peruvian wealth may not be overblown.

  For some time the royal pair are silent, a glister of fascination in their eyes. “We should summon that goldsmith again to take a look,” the King says to the Queen. “The Netherlander, the one who paints. Forget the name . . .”

  “Albrecht,” Isabel supplies. “Albrecht Dürer. I think he may have died. A vain man, anyway. He painted too many portraits of himself.”

  “Quite so. But a sound judge of quality.” The King turns to Pizarro. “We sent that fellow to see the first haul of treasure to arrive from Mexico, some years ago. Fellow came back raving! Nothing he’d seen in all his days, said he, gladdened his heart like those arts and wonders from another world. We took his word for it and had them melted down.”

  “To further our holy wars,” the Queen adds primly. “Against the Lutherans and Turks.”

  “The worthiest cause,” Pizarro interjects. “What better work for heathen gold than to afflict the foes of God?

  “All these are my gifts to Your Majesties,” he adds expansively. “The livestock and the girl as well, should it please you to keep her at court. As soon as she learns to speak she’ll be able to tell you more—much more—about her nation.”

  The royal countenance begins to sour. The King is tired of this jumped-up peasant’s gift for stating the obvious. Indeed, almost telling him what to do.

  “Don Francisco, your audience is at an end. You shall have word in due course.”

  —

  The would-be conqueror, the monarchs agree in their bedchamber that night, is ill mannered and ill dressed. A bad horseman too. Certainly no Hernán Cortés. But he seems fearless, driven, dogged, a man who by all accounts has withstood hardship and setbacks that might have defeated many nobler men. Yet his new land is so far away that its importance is unclear. Does he need another Mexico? the young King wonders. Cortés’s New Spain already presents so many problems of conversion and control. Why reach even further overseas when so many troubles beset his realms in Europe? Chief among these the Turks, now threatening Vienna. Also the Lutheran heresy in the Netherlands; uprisings in Spain itself; and the treachery of the French, egged on by the insufferable Pope, who, like his predecessors, deems himself the true Emperor of Rome.

  The royal advisers fall into two camps. Some share the King’s misgivings, see little to be gained in unleashing more conquistadors to run amok at the rim of the known world. What if this land is too strong to subdue, as Mexico so nearly was? They remind him the Mexicans defeated Cortés at first, that his conquest would have failed without the smallpox sent so timely by the Lord. What if this Peru turns out to be a province of some mighty Asian empire, of fabled Cipangu or Cathay? Or even, as some who saw the place are saying, the kingdom of the Antichrist? What then?

  Others, less wary, less superstitious, argue that the dangers are few and the prize enormous. If this ruffian Pizarro fails, it will be merely his own loss, not Spain’s. The Crown, on the other hand, stands to gain a realm of great wealth at little risk. Furthermore, it is the Catholic Emperor’s sacred task to bring the whole world into the fold of Christendom. Surely God has set this golden land in Spain’s path for that very purpose. Its wealth will humble France, make England tremble, quell the heretic, and drive the Turk across the Bosphorus.

  From this flows the last and most compelling argument. If Spain does not take Peru, others will.

  —

  The King’s decision is to make no decision—not until he has heard the view of the Council of the Indies, his board of trade in Seville. Pizarro must go back to that city and make his case there.

  8

  The summer heat of Seville gives way to autumn gales. The wheat is scythed and stooked; leaves carpet the fig and olive groves; snow steals dow
n from the high sierras, which seem to draw nearer as the air clarifies with cold. Pizarro tries all means to sway the Council of the Indies, making theological arguments to the pious, mercenary ones to the greedy, displaying the few bits of treasure left him by the King. And to those on the council susceptible to temptations of the flesh, which is not a few, he stealthily exposes some things withheld from Charles and Isabel; namely a chest of lewd Peruvian pots, an astounding show of erotica, proof to some of savagery, and to others of civilization, in that new-found land.

  —

  The Commander’s men begin to drift away from the muddy camp beside the Guadalquivir—to sea, to war, to hometowns unseen in years—promising to come back when he receives his royal licence.

  Waman’s old life drifts further and further into the past, though his mind reaches yearningly across the Ocean Sea. The worst, in Spain, is the loss of Qoyllur, whom the Queen has added like a lapdog to her retinue. Now Waman is marooned in his own tongue, exiled from the World he cannot hear or share.

  The sight of Spanish families—going to church, sitting under trees in the squares, children running and laughing, the elderly resting on their canes—fills him with homesickness and envy. And remorse for running to sea.

  No longer treated as a prisoner, he finds irregular work on a fishing boat, a small craft that comes and goes with the tide. In this way he earns a little money. Slowly, a new life, lived in the Spanish language, fills some of the void where his old life used to be.

  From time to time, when especially downcast, Waman goes to Seville’s cathedral to plead with the gods who are worshipped there—above all the Holy Virgin, to him a counterpart of Mother Earth. In the great building, breathing its candlewax, damp mortar, stale incense, gazing up at windows as gorgeous as butterfly wings and the roof of lofted stone, he loses himself in storms of music blowing from ranks of mighty pan-pipes hung like stalactites above the choir. Often he kneels there until dusk, begging the Mother of God to look on him, to give some intimation of his fate. But the holy doll stares pale and unmoved.