The Gold Eaters (15 page)

Waman is sick of Spanish food. Bread like cotton, rice like sawdust, meat like boiled dog. Then there's cheese. In the early days on Ruiz's ship he devoured it thankfully, not knowing what it was. But ever since he found out how it is made—squeezed from the teats of mother animals, left to curdle into a rancid lump—it has disgusted him. The stink of it was everywhere: in the ship's stores, the alleys of Panama, the sour odour of the Christians themselves. For months he wouldn't touch cheese at all. Now he can swallow it if he must—the easiest being a good
manchego
—so long as he doesn't allow his mind to dwell on what it is.

“The only trouble with Spanish women,” Candía goes on, “is that a lot of them are hairy. Especially the bluebloods. Moustaches. Stray bristles on their dugs.” He clutches his chest with both hands. “Did you bring any tweezers?”

“Tweezers?”

“What they want above all else from the Indies, I've found, is a
pair of Peruvian tweezers. Nothing better for their whiskers. Wish I'd brought back a sackful.” He chuckles rakishly, leans close across the table with a sidelong glance at Manuela. “Always treat a whore like a lady, Felipe. And a lady like a whore.”

Waman, Felipe (who is he today?), is still puzzled by the notion of
whores
. Treat a whore like a lady seems good advice. But what can the Greek mean about treating a lady like a whore? Should he offer money? To a lady? Waman frowns. Everything comes down to money among Christians.

“What now, lad? Don't tell me you're getting too churchy for the bints?”

“I was thinking about money.”

“Don't you worry about that. This is all on the Commander. Or Cortés. Anyhow, you're earning your keep. Without you, those little camels would be dead.”

While Waman is outside at the loathsome jakes, Candía hands Manuela a coin, thrice her usual fee. “The young dark lad. Needs growing up. This makes you his for two nights. The extra's because he's from the Indies. They're ungodly fastidious over there, so have a good scrub beforehand. Splash on the rosewater.” He pats her rump. “No offence, my love.
I
like you just as you are.”

The Greek is amused, in due course, to see Waman's cocky strut and the looks and touches that pass between him and the wench.

“How was she, my friend?”

“Is it so obvious?”

Candía laughs, lifts his glass, winks across the top of it.

Not until they've eaten does the interpreter say anything. Then:

“I've never touched such skin. So pink, so pale. Her veins are like tiny blue streams.” Waman doesn't want to say more. But his friend, unusually, stays quiet, and the boy can't help filling the void with his excitement, his need to speak her name. “Manuela came fresh from
her bath, like a bride. The first night she smelt of roses. The second night of herself. But the third night was not good. She came to me . . . wet.”

“She must like you, lad.”

“I mean from another man. I could tell.”

“Hmm. Already so worldly wise? It's no use getting jealous over the likes of her. If that was Tuesday night, it may even have been me who paved the way. No harm there. What's a buttered bun between comrades?”

Waman hurls the dregs of his wine in Candía's face. “You filthy rogue. Must you have every girl? Can't you leave mine alone?”

“Yours?”
Candía mops his beard and brow with a kerchief, rolling his big dark eyes. He goes perfectly still for a while, mastering anger. Then takes a coin from his pocket, holds it up between thumb and forefinger. “One of these, Felipe, and she's anybody's.”

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.”