The Gold Eaters (36 page)

“Hamuy, Waman. Wasiykipim kanki.”
Welcome, Waman. You are in your own house.

In my own house? A fine courtesy but a Spanish one. The interpreter has never heard a Peruvian say it. The fellow is a puzzle. So is this Vitcos, or Witkhus, a name for something hidden, something enfolded. A place of mystery, and all the more so because he has come by night. He feels unsettled, unmoored. He goes to the door and looks out, aware for the first time of scattered lights and sounds. Vitcos is around him, but all he knows of it is this room, a moonless night, a scrim of cloud brushing the stars.

Waman sleeps fitfully, fighting for breath. This place must be high as Cusco. A dream of heaving up and down as he runs and takes off through the air in flying strides (why doesn't he move like this always?). He awakes in darkness and the dream dies like a flame. He surfaces briefly, sinks back into rippled sleep. His father comes to him, speaks to him. Brings news of Little River, where all is as it was. The Great Death spared him. He never died! How, Waman asks himself, has he been so mistaken? Then he is in Seville, in the cathedral, his father beside him. Outside he can hear a rattle of hooves and wheels, the cries of beggars by the door.

Adrift between dream and wakefulness, he opens his eyes. Not Spain. Peru. The Bishop's palace? Has he been in Cusco all along?
Daylight is seeping through oiled parchment screens in the windows. He looks around at stone walls and red-lacquered roof beams, the pattern of the ceiling panels. His room in Cusco has no panels. And only one window. And a desk, a chair, a crucifix. Here the niches are empty except for a white marble lamp in the shape of an alpaca.

Thunder outside. No, the rolling beat of running hooves. Warhorses laden with armour and armoured men. A sound he fears. He is wide awake now.

Psst!
A hiss at the door. A door of stretched cloth, of gentler times, unlike the heavy ones studded with iron that are spreading through Cusco as if every home is to become a jail. He gets up, throws on his tunic; unties the door warily, twitching it aside. The hoofbeats are louder.

That man again, the odd tattoos, sitting on the step in the morning sun as if he owned the place. The man looks up over his shoulder, blue cheek creased in something between amusement and mistrust. He stands, puckering his brow, motioning with his eyes that they should go in. Waman feels a spread hand in the small of his back, urging him inside. Once the door is fastened, the stranger lowers his voice and speaks in Spanish.

“Excellent! If you can't see through me, nobody can. I bring us breakfast, Felipe. With coca tea—to rouse you—and new bread.” He takes these items from a carrying cloth, handling the tea jug carefully, setting them on the floor. The room has no furniture beyond cushions, mats, and the stuffed cotton mattress on a platform at the end. The man sits down, unwinds his turban slowly, turning his profile to the window. Waman has heard talk that a few Spanish renegades—foes of the Pizarros—might be sheltering in Vitcos. But this fellow is dark, beardless, tattooed like a cannibal. He's also
wearing native clothes, though in a mix of styles. He regards the interpreter teasingly, a knavish lizard eye.

And with that Waman knows him.

“Molina? Alonso de Molina?”

The man shakes with laughter till his cheeks are wet. “For my sins, Felipillo. For my sins!” His face cracks open like a scallop, a gap-toothed grin from ear to ear.

The old shipmates embrace warmly. Then they pull apart, still clutching forearms, studying faces.

“Molina! I should have known you'd be all right. The Devil looks after his own. How
are
you?”

“Above ground, Felipe. Above ground.”

“Mother and Tika. Are they with you?”

“Neither, sorry to say. But your mother was alive and well last I heard, though that's some time ago. And her boy, Fox—he'll have turned sixteen by now. Tika I never knew. She'd left for a nunnery before I got to Little River. The first thing I thought when I saw you was, Felipe will have news. It was all I could do to go off home last night and let you rest.”

“How did you know who I was?”

“More on that later. Well? Let's hear your news.”

Waman tells how he found Tika in Cajamarca, and what she told him of his mother, Atuq, and Molina. He passes over the circumstances, the time with Atawallpa, her loss of voice. “We had more than a year together in Cusco. Then Pizarro sent me to Chile with Almagro.” Waman stops. He wipes an eye. “So many years ago now. I've been looking for her—for them—ever since. All over Peru.”

Molina pats Waman's shoulder. “People are in hiding everywhere . . .” His voice trails off, as if to avoid something. “What Tika told you is right,” he goes on. “Your mother and I and your little
brother, we took good care to avoid Pizarro's lot. Much better to live with Chaska, I says to myself, than die with that old bastard.” He stops with a sheepish laugh, realizing what he's said is hardly praise. “Your mother was . . .
is
 . . . a wonder. The best woman I've known in all my life. The best person, woman or man. You don't need me to tell you that. I miss her. Atuq too—he's like my own son.”

Waman nods quickly, urges Molina on, and listens rapt to a rambling account full of oaths, digressions, low opinions of man and God. When it looked like war would break out between the Incas they went to Huanuco Pampa, to find Tika. But the city was full of soldiers. Nobody knew, or would say, where the Chosen had been taken. Travel on the main roads was impossible by then anyway. “But Chaska knew a place in Lower Huanuco where she had kin. Coca fields. Out of the way, near the jungle. We thought we'd hide there till the fighting was over. Ended up staying—”

“Where?” Waman cuts in. “Where in Lower Huanuco? I must go there.”

“Chaska made me swear never to tell anyone, not even you if I found you. For your own good. Not until it's safe. That whole province keeps changing hands. That's why I'm not there myself.” Molina's eyes drift away, as if he's wondering whether to say more.

How much is he
not
saying, Waman thinks. How much is even true?

“Your mother always knows best, eh?” Molina laughs, embraces Waman again. “Christ, Felipillo! All grown up. How old are you now?”

“Please don't call me that. I'm Waman. Felipe if you must. And I'm over thirty.”

Molina whistles, leans back and looks at him, shakes his head.

“Well?” says Waman. “How did you fetch up here?”

Molina scratches under his headcloth, examines his nails for nits. “Long story, Felipe. The bones of it will have to do for now. When the Spaniards took Huanuco Province, Chaska made me hide with the Sacha Runa, the jungle folk. Then Manku's men took Huanuco back, and they found me. They worked out I was a barbarian deserter and brought me here. To be an interpreter, like you! Your mother made me an Indian.”

“You may look like one. But you don't sound like one. That accent wouldn't fool a baby.”

“Oh, I'm not a Peruvian. I'm a Mexican! Came with those native troops of Alvarado's. Most of them froze to death in Quito. None got down here. Nobody speaks their language. So it's perfect. And Peruvians are afraid of Mexicans. They think they're berserkers.”

“Who does the Inca Manku think you are?”

“The Inca knows everything. The only one who does. He's very glad to have me. Treats me well. Good house. Even a good woman to keep me warm.” He winks. “Just for the time being, of course. She's from the jungle too. Did my tattoos.” He puffs out his cheeks. “Mexican style, near enough. Becoming, no?”

Molina stops and the good humour drains from his face. He looks up at the window, turns back disconsolate.

“
Ananaw
, Waman! It hurts to be away from Chaska and Atuq. We'll find them one day. I'll take you there. That's what we'll do.”

Waman is deep in thought, going over all he's heard. He doesn't touch the breakfast. Wonderful news! Yet nothing of Tika. Molina is slurping tea and chewing cornbread noisily. Still a ruffian. And now this ruffian is his stepfather—what a thought! But there was something about him Waman liked when he was young. And maybe he still does.

“You heard Candía died?”

“I did, Felipe. A sad end to a good man.” He sighs. “God, so many dead! Gambled their lives on Peru. Won it—more or less. And having won, lost all.”

“What do you think will happen to us if Manku wins? Can Manku win?”

“You know more than I do about the state of things beyond these mountains. I may be safe here, but I'm stuck. Hideouts are always traps.”

Waman nods. “Sometimes I think I've spent my whole life falling into traps.”

Molina gets up and fiddles with the windows, taking down the night screens. A shaft of sunlight strikes the unmade bed. “Sail with the wind, Waman, wherever it takes you. That's my advice. Who can foresee next week? If Manku does win, stay with him. The lords of Peru are as good as any. And so are the gods—better, I say, because they don't mind what others you have.” He blows a kiss to the Sun and winks. “Badluck Molina worships anything that keeps him in one piece.

“Even if Manku wins back his whole Empire,” he adds, “he'll still need people like us. If only to help him keep the rest of us away.”

“Is that why he keeps you?”

“I do certain things for him that no one else can.” Molina lowers his voice, sweeps his eyes from side to side. “From now on, you and I speak only Peruvian. Even in private. My name is Coyotl, if anyone asks. And we never met before last night. If I'm overheard talking Castilian I'm done for. There are some other Spaniards here. To them I'm just a lowly
indio
from New Spain. They treat me like a shitarse. Load my back like a mule.
Hey, Mexicano! Son of a whore. Fetch this, carry that!
That's all they ever say to me. But I listen. I hear. I am the Inca Manku's ears.”

Waman smiles. Molina always was a braggart.

“Is that what I'm hearing out there—these other Spaniards?”

“War games. Come and watch.”

Once outside, Waman sees that his room is in a long block of apartments on a terrace, with the small city spread before him on a sunny spur. The day is bright and clear, a scarf of mist sailing down the valley below. There are other buildings on either hand, roofed with steep thatches in the usual Inca style. And an open square or parade ground with an usnu making one side. On the right, to the east, fields drop away in flights of terraces to the step-road he climbed in the dark. The Willkapampa can't be seen under its white shroud, though its voice echoes from steep crags on the far bank. Beyond these green walls are other walls, darker, more jagged, and above them peaks and icefields.

Townsfolk are gathered round the edge of the plaza. On the usnu—a broad one in a single tier—lords and ladies are standing under sunshades and banners held by attendants. There's a burr of lazy conversation, outbreaks of laughter, the onlookers relaxing during a break in the show.

The tattooed “Mexican”—what did he say his name was?—leads his stepson through the crowd to the parade ground, a dry lawn studded with the yellow heads of dandelions, one of the new weeds come to Peru. Near the middle the turf is broken up by hooves. A musk of horses hangs in the brittle air.

Conch trumpets sound, rising to a howl like high wind in a ship's rig, dying away. Two files of horsemen enter at a trot, half a dozen riders on each side. They are in full armour with steel helms and visors. Some carry lances, all wear swords. One team has white plumes in their crests, the other red. The horsemen canter and joust, wheeling and rearing their mounts.

Then come two squads of infantry, a hundred men each, some in Spanish mail and leather, others in the quilted armour and wicker or
bronze helmets of Inca troops—a mix of this battledress on either side. Several have long pikes, which they stake at an angle in the ground to fend off cavalry. The rest carry Toledo swords—or so it seems. The chime of the blades is of wood, not steel.

A cannon barks from the usnu, followed by a patter of musketry and sulphurous waft of gunsmoke. The fighters take no notice; they are used to the fire-shooters now. In the middle of the square, an imposing figure on a chestnut stallion unhorses a bearded opponent and dominates the fray.

“That one.” Molina at Waman's ear. “That's the Inca Manku.”

The weapon drill adjourns for lunch. Onlookers are chatting and picnicking nearby. So this is Vitcos. Hardly the reclusive fragment of the Empire he'd imagined, ruled by a broken man living on dreams. Here Peruvians become Spaniards, and Spaniards Peruvians. He regards Molina, seeing how easily he fades into the crowd. Yes, the rogue can pass for some kind of Indian here, so long as he remembers to pluck his beard. But what does
he
think he is?

Neighbours in the crowd—a couple with a lively girl of ten or eleven and two small boys—invite Waman and Molina to share steamed corn and bowls of soup. Who are those bearded fighters? the interpreter asks the wife, accepting a warm cob in a leaf from her hand. Women hear more than men. Sometimes they tell more. But all she says is
pipas pillapas
, whoever. Her daughter is more forthcoming:
Almagrista!
Almagrista!
the girl shouts gleefully, as if she's just learnt the word.

Almagro's men?