The Gold Eaters (16 page)

“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

T
he summer heat of Seville gives way to autumn gales. The wheat is scythed and stooked; leaves carpet the fig and olive groves; snow steals down 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.

—

Midwinter comes, and still no word from the Council of the Indies or the King. The snows spill lower down the hills. One morning Waman emerges from his lodging, a small room at the back of a mean patio, to find roofs and streets all white. Strange that he has looked on snowfields all his life but has never felt the touch of snow till now, in Spain. Sea and river are too rough for fishing. He feels the bite of cold, of hunger; and everywhere sees want and suffering among the Spaniards. Here there are no weekly banquets hosted by the state, no gifts of cloth and corn. Why such poverty amid such wealth and wonders? Why does the Spanish Emperor shame himself by not relieving it?

Sickness comes to the city.
Children are taken by fevers, fluxes, colds. And one of the fevers is smallpox.

“Candía,” the Commander asks, “you've had the pox, no?” The Greek nods, saying he caught it when eight or nine, on Crete. “Then go to the house where Felipe is. Take food and drink, enough to last all in that household for a month.” He counts gold into the Greek's large hand. “The place must be sealed tight as a cask until the pox has left Seville. Stay there and watch over him. That boy must live. If he dies, it'll be on your blaspheming soul.”

These precautions do no good: Waman comes down with a fever in a week. At first it seems like what he had on Gallo Island, which he remembers more vividly than his illness on the ship to Spain. Candía brings him broth and bread and stewed apples. The only thing Waman wants is water, and water runs from him at every pore.

The Greek pays a girl in the house to help nurse the lad. He takes a room on the same patio, spends each day at the Peruvian's bedside, busying himself by whittling a set of chessmen from some scraps of wood. Felipe was beginning to show an interest in the game, watching him play in Toledo and here in Seville. Candía has told the lad the set will be his as soon as he's well—to give him something to look forward to. As he whittles, he prays silently in old Greek to Christ Pantocrator:
Lord God let this be only a fever, nothing more.

Before his friend has finished shaping the pawns, Waman feels pimples in his throat, burning like acid. Within days the rash spreads to his cheek and hands.

Soon he is delirious—crying out and rambling in his language—a mercy, Candía hopes, for perhaps an unhinged mind feels less of the body's pain. He thinks it too risky to send for a physician, even if one
could be found, for in his view Spanish doctors often carry more evils than they cure. Besides, there's no room for doubt. Felipe has
viruela
, the smallpox, for which the only cure is prayer. Now all that can be hoped is that the boy is strong and has a mild strain. A forlorn hope. In Mexico—Candía has heard—the Indians died in heaps like bedbugs; barely one in three survived.

Waman's pustules fill and swell, growing to the size of small grapes. A foul liquid flows from them for several days. Then, slowly, they begin to dry and scab. The Greek has never been devout—he's a practical fellow, at home with things he can touch, the things of this world not the next. He knows how to cast a bronze gun, ream a bore, make powder and shot. But there in the poor lad's stinking sickroom Candía gets down on his knees, recites every prayer he knows (which are only two or three), and gives joyous thanks to all the great icons of Byzantium. For Felipe, it seems, is on the mend.

“They are done, my friend! Your smallpox, and your chess set.”

Waman smiles up at him weakly, a smile marred by hideous pitting on his cheeks, more the left one than the right. Good thing there's no looking glass in here, Candía thinks. Felipe has won his life but lost his looks.

A few days later, when Waman is well enough to sit up, to take some broth and a few steps, Candía sets out the wooden pieces on a painted checkerboard. He says nothing, drawing the lad into a game by placing his fingers on the men and walking him through the opening moves.

“I thank you for this.” Waman is hoarse, his voice almost too low to hear. Each word tears at his throat. “And for my life. Without you I would be dead.”

“Nonsense!” Candía answers. “It was your luck. Or my God. Most likely both. You had me praying like a monk.”

At first, Waman takes a childish delight in the pieces—in the men, horseheads, tiny buildings like forts or shrines—well carved and stained, half with lampblack, half with lime. But once he has the moves and opening gambits down by heart, he becomes mesmerized by the endless complexity within simplicity, by the game's uncanny power to play out the fates of kings and kingdoms, as if it were a kind of divination.

Spring sun chases
the snow up the hills. Scents of blossom: apple, orange, cherry. There are strawberries to eat. Chess has become an obsession, tied in his mind to his recovery, a rite that saved him. By May he is good enough to beat Candía, though usually when the gunner has been drinking.

One evening over chessboard and wine in a tavern that reminds Waman of their time in Toledo, he asks the Greek why Pizarro seems to have no family. Surely not all his kindred can be dead, even after so many years abroad?

“Oh, he's got family. A half-dozen brothers and sisters. By several mothers and two fathers, so they say.”

“Why hasn't he been to see them? He hasn't gone home once. In a whole year. Is Trujillo so far—as far as Toledo?”

“It's not that he
can't
go, Felipe. He won't. Not until the King has made a decision. And not then, if things don't go his way.”

“Is he afraid of something there?”

“That man fears nothing but the Devil and himself.” The Greek grooms his beard with a mutton-greasy hand, popping nits between his nails. “No. It's pride, my friend. We Christians suffer from the sin of pride. A deadly sin, because it kills our love. Only God knows
the whole of it with Don Francisco, but I'll lay gold that it's his pride. Or his shame, if you like—which comes to the same thing. You've heard the stories. Sired on a serving wench. Cast out to mind the pigs. Many are like that, many of us have things to hide. I haven't been back to Crete myself in more years than I remember”—he sighs, puzzles over his turn; moves a knight recklessly—“but Crete's a long way, further than Rome. Trujillo's only four or five days from here. Even for a shitty rider like Pizarro.” The gunner winks and taps the side of his nose.

Waman is the first to call
Checkmate!

“It would be seemlier,” says his friend mock-sternly, “if you didn't yell out checkmate quite so fast. Or so—how shall I say?—so gleefully. Sometimes you're wrong. I still have a move. And even when you're right—as you often are—it's wiser to let your opponent come to the sorry conclusion himself.” Candía topples his king, looks Waman in the eye. “Like so. Let him resign.” He pats Waman on the shoulder. “I'm a Greek and I can take it. But Spaniards . . . When they're beaten, let them find out for themselves.”

—

In June, the Commander, Candía, and a few others leave Seville abruptly one dawn without a word. They are gone for some weeks, and the news makes its way back before they do. The King has decided to endorse Pizarro's enterprise.

Men unseen for months begin drifting back to the boggy camp on the meadow. Half abandoned all winter, the place fills with life and expectation like a fairground. Tents go up, sea-chests are delivered, the grass is trampled and fouled. By day blacksmiths and armourers set up shop; at night cooks, moneylenders, bootleggers, whores, and card sharps make their rounds among the tents and campfires.

—

“What days in Toledo!” Candía tells Waman. “Don Francisco got everything he asked for—a licence, a coat of arms, and governorship of ‘New Castile.' That's what they plan to call your land. Even some money towards ships and weapons. And horses and war-dogs when we get to Panama. Here's to us. To you, the royal interpreter. We're on our way!”