Ines of My Soul (19 page)

How long and how cruel is the road across the desert! How slow and fatiguing our progress! What burning solitudes! The long days went by, one after another, nothing but that harsh landscape: barren land and stone smelling of burned dust and thornbush painted fiery colors by the hand of God. According to Don Benito, the colors indicated hidden minerals, and it was a diabolical joke that none was gold or silver.

Pedro and I would walk for hours and hours, leading our horses by their bridles to save their strength. We talked very little because our throats were burning and our lips were cracked, but we were together, and every step brought us closer, led us inward, to the dream we had dreamed and that had cost so many sacrifices: Chile. As protection, I wore a broad-brimmed hat with a cloth over my face that had two holes for my eyes, and I wrapped my hands in rags because I had no gloves and the sun was making them peel. The soldiers could not bear the touch of the hot armor, but dragged it behind them. The long line of Indians moved forward slowly, in silence, carelessly guarded by the beaten-down blacks, who never lifted their whips. For the bearers, things were a thousand times worse than they were for us. They were used to hard work and little food, to trotting up and down hills fueled by the mysterious energy of the coca leaves, but they could not endure thirst. Our desperation grew as the days passed and we had not found a clean well; the only ones we came across had been polluted by animal cadavers the furtive Chilean Indians had thrown into them. A few of the Yanaconas drank the putrid water anyway, and died writhing on the ground, their intestines on fire.

When we thought we had reached the limits of our strength, the color of the mountains and the ground began to change. The air stood still, the sky turned white, and every sign of life disappeared, from thistles to the solitary birds we had seen from time to time: we had entered the fearsome Despoblado, the wasteland. At the first light of dawn we would start forward; later the sun would be too strong. Pedro had decided that the faster we moved the fewer lives we would lose, though the effort of each step was brutal. During the hottest hours, we rested in a dead landscape, stretched out upon that sea of calcined sand beneath a leaden sun. We would start again about five and keep going until night fell and we could go no farther in the darkness. It was a world of boundless cruelty. We lacked the spirit to set up tents and organize a camp, since it would be for only a few hours. We were not in any danger of being attacked; no one lived in or ventured into these solitudes.

At night the temperature changed abruptly, from the unbearable heat of the day it dropped to glacial cold. We lay wherever we could, shivering, ignoring the instructions of Don Benito, the only one who insisted on discipline. Pedro and I, embraced between our horses, tried to share our bodies' heat. We were very, very tired. We did not think of making love through all the weeks that part of the journey lasted. Abstinence gave us the opportunity to learn our weaknesses and to cultivate a tenderness that had been superseded by passion. The thing I admired most about that man was that he never doubted his mission: to populate Chile with Spaniards and to evangelize the Indians. He never believed for a minute that we would bake in the desert, as the others said; his resolve never wavered.

Despite the severe rationing Don Benito had imposed, the day came when we ran out of water. By then we were ill with thirst; our throats were raw from the sand, our tongues swollen, our lips covered with sores. Suddenly we would think we heard the sound of a waterfall, and see a crystalline lake bordered with ferns. The captains had to hold the men back by force so they would not die crawling across the sand after a mirage. Several soldiers drank their own urine, and that of the horses, which was meager and very dark. Others, maddened, attacked the Yanaconas and drank the last drops from their llama skins. I think they would have killed them and drunk their blood had Valdivia not kept them in line with strong discipline. That night, in the bright moonlight, Juan de Málaga came again to visit me. I pointed him out to Pedro, but he could not see him and thought I was hallucinating. My husband was looking terrible; his rags were crusted with dried blood and sidereal dust, and his expression was desperate, as if even his poor bones suffered with thirst.

The next day, when we had resigned ourselves to the fact that there was no salvation for us, a strange reptile scurried between my feet. We had not seen any form of life other than our own for many days, not even the thistles that are so plentiful in some stretches of the desert. Perhaps it was a salamander, the lizard that lives in fire. I concluded that however diabolical the little creature might be, it must, from time to time, need a sip of water.

“So now it's up to us, Virgencita,” I told Nuestra Señora del Socorro. I took the tree switch from one of my cases and began to pray. It was high noon, when the multitude of parched humans and animals was resting. I called Catalina to come with me, and the two of us slowly set out, protected by a parasol, I with an Ave María on my lips, and she with her invocations in Quechua. We walked a good while, perhaps an hour, in ever larger circles, covering more and more ground. Don Benito thought thirst had driven me out of my mind, but he was so drained that he asked a stronger, younger man, Rodrigo de Quiroga, to go look for me.

“For the love of God, señora,” the officer begged me with what little voice he had left. “Come rest. We will put up a cloth to make some shade—”

“Captain, go tell Don Benito to send me some men with picks and shovels,” I interrupted.

“Picks and shovels?” he repeated, astonished.

“And tell him, please, to bring some large jugs and a number of armed soldiers.”

Rodrigo de Quiroga left to advise Don Benito that I was much worse than they had supposed, but Valdivia heard him and, filled with hope, he ordered the field marshal to do as I asked. Not long after, I had six Indians digging a hole. Indians have less resistance to thirst than we do, and they could barely hold the tools, but the soil was loose, and before long they were in a pit neck deep. At the bottom, the sand was dark. Suddenly one of the Indians uttered a hoarse cry and we began to see seeping water. First it was only dampness, as if the earth were sweating, but after two or three minutes there was a small pool. Pedro, who had not left my side, ordered the soldiers to defend the hole with their lives; he feared, with reason, the maddened onslaught of a thousand men desperate for a few drops of water. I assured him there would be enough for everyone, as long as we drank in an orderly fashion.

And so it was. Don Benito spent the rest of the day distributing a cup of water for each individual, then Rodrigo de Quiroga, with the help of some soldiers, spent the night watering the animals and filling barrels and the Indians' llama skins. The water flowed with some force; it was dark, and had a metallic taste, but to us it seemed as fresh as the fountains of Seville. People attributed the well to a miracle, and called it Virgin's Spring in honor of Nuestra Señora del Socorro. We set up camp and stayed on for three days, quenching our thirst, and when we continued, a slight stream was still flowing across the blasted surface of the desert.

“This was not the Virgin's miracle, Inés, it was yours,” Pedro told me, deeply moved. “Thanks to you, we will make it across this hell safe and sound.”

“I can find water only where there
is
water, Pedro, I can't create it. I don't know whether there will be another spring farther on, and in any case, it will likely not be as free-flowing.”

Valdivia ordered me to get a half-day's start and look for other sources; I was to travel protected by a detachment of soldiers, with forty auxiliary Indians and twenty llamas to carry the water jugs. The remainder of the caravan would follow in sections, separated by several hours so everyone would not rush at once to drink, should we locate a well. Don Benito designated Rodrigo de Quiroga to command the group that accompanied me. The young captain had earned Don Benito's total confidence in a short time. He was, furthermore, the one with the best vision; his large brown eyes saw even what wasn't there. Had there been danger on the hallucinatory desert horizon, he would have been the first to discover it. But there was nothing. I found several sources of water, none as bounteous as the first, but enough to get us through the wasteland alive. One day the color of the ground changed again, and two birds flew overhead.

When the desert lay behind us, I counted up the days and found that it had been nearly five months since we left Cuzco. Valdivia decided to make camp and wait, for he had word that his closest friend, Francisco de Aguirre, might be in the area. Hostile Indians kept watch from a distance, but they did not approach us. Once again I could set up the elegant tent Pizarro had given us. I covered the ground with Peruvian mantles and cushions, took my china tableware from the trunks—I did not want to keep eating off wood trenchers—and had a clay oven built so I could cook the way one is supposed to; we had been eating nothing but grains and dried meat. In the large room of the tent, which Valdivia used as his general headquarters, audience hall, and court to dispense justice, I placed his large chair and a few leather taborets for the visitors who showed up at all hours. Catalina spent her days wandering around the camp like a wraith, gathering news. Nothing happened among the Spaniards or the Yanaconas that I did not know. The captains who often came to have a meal tended to be unpleasantly surprised that Valdivia invited me to sit at table with them. It is possible that none of them had ever eaten with a woman in his lifetime; that was not done in Spain, but here customs are more relaxed. For light we burned candles and oil lamps, and we heated the tent with two large Peruvian braziers because it was cold at night. González de Marmolejo, who in addition to being a priest was something of a scholar, explained to us that the seasons were reversed here, and when it was winter in Spain, it was summer in Chile, and vice versa. No one could understand, however, and we continued to think that the laws of nature were erratic in the New World.

In the other room of the tent, Pedro and I had our bed, a writing desk, my altar, our trunks, and the tub for bathing, which had not been used in a long time. Pedro's fear of bathing had waned, and from time to time he agreed to get into the tub and let me soap and wash him, but he preferred a half bath with a wet cloth. Those were good days in which we were once again the lovers we had been in Cuzco. Before we made love, he liked to read me his favorite books. He had no idea, because I wanted to surprise him, that González de Marmolejo was teaching me to read and write.

Some days later, Pedro left with a handful of his men to ride over the region and look for Francisco de Aguirre, and also to see if it was possible to parley with the Indians. He was the only one who thought it might be possible to make an agreement with them. One night while he was gone, I bathed and washed my hair with
quillay
, a Chilean tree bark that kills fleas and keeps one's hair silky black to the tomb. I did not receive that last benefit; I have used
quillay
forever and my hair is white, but at least I am not half bald, like so many persons my age. The long trek, walking and riding, had hurt my back somehow, and one of my Indian girls had rubbed it down with a
peumo
balm Catalina had prepared. I felt much better when I went to bed, and Baltasar lay at my feet. The dog was ten months old now, and still puppyish, but he had grown to a good size and I could see he was going to make a guard dog. For once I was not tormented by insomnia, and fell fast asleep.

Baltasar's quiet growling woke me after midnight. I sat up in bed, with one hand feeling in the dark for a shawl to throw around me, and holding the dog with the other. Then I heard a faint noise in the other room, and had no doubt that someone was there. My first thought was that Pedro had come back, because the sentinels at the door would not have let anyone else in, but the dog's behavior put me on the alert. There wasn't time to light a lamp.

“Who is it!” I shouted, alarmed.

After a tense pause, out of the dark someone called for Pedro de Valdivia.

“He is not here. Who wants him?” I asked, now with irritation.

“Forgive me, señora, it is Sancho de la Hoz, loyal servant of the captain general. It has taken me a long time to get here, and I want to give him my greetings.”

“Sancho de la Hoz? How dare you, caballero, come into my tent in the middle of the night!” I exclaimed.

By then Baltasar was barking madly, alerting the guards. In a matter of minutes, Don Benito, Quiroga, Juan Gómez, and others came running with lights and drawn swords to find in my quarters not only the insolent de la Hoz but another four men as well. The first reaction of my companions was to arrest them immediately, but I convinced them that it was all a misunderstanding. I begged them to leave, and as I quickly dressed ordered Catalina to concoct something for the new arrivals to eat. I poured them wine by my own hand, and served them food with the proper hospitality, eager to hear anything they wanted to tell me of the hardships of their voyage.

Between servings of wine, I stepped outside to tell Don Benito to send a messenger to look for Pedro de Valdivia. The situation was very delicate, for de la Hoz had a number of supporters among the slackers and malcontents in our expedition. A few of them had criticized Valdivia for having usurped the right to conquer Chile from the envoy of the Crown, arguing that Sancho de la Hoz's royal documents had more authority than the permission granted by Pizarro. De la Hoz, nevertheless, had no economic backing; he had squandered in Spain the fortune that was his part of Atahualpa's ransom, and had not raised funds or outfitted ships or soldiers for the enterprise. His word was worth so little that he had been imprisoned in Peru over debts and swindling. I suspected that he intended to get rid of Valdivia, take over the expedition, and continue the conquest of Chile alone.