The Year of the Ransom

3 June 1533 [Julian calendar]

This day the Peruvians brought to Caxamalca another load of the treasure that was to buy their king free. Luis Ildefonso Castelar y Moreno saw them from afar. He had been out exercising the horsemen under his command. They were now bound back, for the sun was low above western heights. Against shadows grown long throughout the valley, the river gleamed and vapors turned golden as they rose from the hot springs of the royal baths. Llamas and human porters plodded in a line down the road from the south, wearied by burdens and many leagues. Natives stopped their labor in the fields to stare, then got hastily on with it. Obedience was ingrained, no matter who their overlord might be.

“Take charge,” Castelar ordered his lieutenant, and put spurs to stallion. He drew rein just outside the small city and waited for the caravan.

A movement on the left caught his glance. Another man emerged afoot from between two white-plastered, thatch-roofed clay buildings. The man was tall; were both standing, he would top the rider by three inches or more. The hair around his tonsure was the same dusty brown as his Franciscan robe, but age had scarcely marked a sharp, light-complexioned visage—nor had the pox—and not a tooth was missing. Even after weeks and adventures, Castelar knew Fray Estebán Tanaquil. The recognition was mutual.

“Greetings, reverend sir,” he said.

“God be with you,” answered the friar. He stopped by the stirrup. The treasure train reached them and went on. Shouts of jubilation sounded from within the city.

“Ah,” Castelar rejoiced, “a splendid sight, no?”

When he got no reply, he looked down. Pain touched the other face. “Is something wrong?” Castelar asked.

Tanaquil sighed. “I cannot help myself. I see how worn and footsore those men are. I think what a heritage of ages they carry, and how it has been wrung from them.”

Castelar stiffened. “Would you speak against our captain?”

This was an odd fellow at best, he thought: beginning with his order, when the religious with the expedition were nearly all Dominicans. It was something of a puzzle how Tanaquil had come along in the first place, and eventually won the confidence of Francisco Pizarro. Well, that last must be due his learning and gentle manners, both rare in this company.

“No, no, of course not,” the friar said. “And yet—” His voice trailed off.

Castelar squirmed a bit. He believed he knew what went on beneath the shaven pate. He himself had wondered about the righteousness of what they did last year. The Inca Atahualpa received the Spaniards peacefully; he let them quarter themselves in Caxamalca; he entered the city by invitation, to continue negotiations; and his litter carried him into an ambush, where his attendants were gunned down and cut down by the hundreds while he was made prisoner. Now, at his bidding, his subjects stripped the country of wealth to fill a room with gold and another room twice with silver, the price of his liberty.

“God’s will,” Castelar snapped. “We bring the Faith to these heathen. The king’s well treated, isn’t he? He even has his wives and servants to attend him. As for the ransom, Christ”—he cleared his throat—“Sant’Iago, like every good leader, rewards his troops well.”

The friar cast a wry smile upward. It seemed to retort that preaching was not the proper business of a soldier. Outwardly, he shrugged and said, “Tonight I will see how well.”

“Ah, yes.” Castelar felt relief at sheering away from a dispute. No matter that he too once studied for holy orders, was expelled because of trouble with a girl, enlisted in the war against the French, at last followed Pizarro to the New World in hopes of whatever fortune the younger son of an impoverished Estremaduran hidalgo might find: he remained respectful of the cloth. “I hear you look every load over before it goes into the hoard.”

“Someone should, someone who has an eye for the art rather than the mere metal. I persuaded our captain and his chaplain. Scholars at the Emperor’s court and in the Church will be pleased that a fragment of knowledge was saved.”

“Hm.” Castelar tugged his beard. “But why do you do it at night?”

“You have heard that too?”

“I’ve been back for days. My ears are full of gossip.”

“I daresay you give much more than you get. I’d like to talk with you at length myself. That was a herculean journey your party made.”

Through Castelar passed a jumbled pageant of the months gone by, when Hernando Pizarro, the captain’s brother, led a band west over the cordillera, stupendous mountains, dizzyingly deep ravines, brawling rivers, to Pachacamac and its dark oracular temple on the coast. “We had little gain,” he said. “Our best booty was the Indio general Challcuchima. Get the lot of them together, under control. . . . But you were going to tell me why you study the treasure only after sunset.”

“To avoid exciting cupidity and discord worse than already afflict us. Men grow ever more impatient for division of the spoils. Besides, at night the forces of Satan are at their strongest. I pray over things that were consecrated to false gods.”

The last porter trudged past and disappeared among walls.

“I’d like to see,” Castelar said. Impulse flared. “Why not? I’ll join you.”

Tanaquil was startled. “What?”

“I won’t disturb you. I’ll simply watch.”

Reluctance was unmistakable. “You must obtain permission first.”

“Why? I have the rank. None would deny me. What have you against it? I should think you would welcome some company.”

“You’ll find it tedious. Others did. That is the reason they leave me alone at my task.”

“I’m used to standing guard.” Castelar laughed.

Tanaquil surrendered. “Very well, Don Luis, if you insist. Meet me at the Serpent House, as they’re calling it, after compline.”

—Stars glittered keen and countless over the uplands. Half or more of them were unknown to European skies. Castelar shivered and wrapped his cloak tighter around himself. His breath smoked, his boots rang on hard-packed streets. Caxamalca enclosed him, ghostly in the gloom. He felt glad of corselet, helmet, sword, needless though they might seem here. Tavantinsuyu, the Indies called this land, the Four Quarters of the World; and somehow that felt more right than Peru, a name whose meaning nobody was sure of, for a realm whose reach dwarfed the Holy Roman Empire. Was it subdued yet, or could it ever entirely be, its peoples and their gods?

The thought was unworthy of a Christian. He hastened on.

The watchmen at the treasury were a reassuring sight. Lantern glow sheened off armor, pikes, muskets. These were of the iron ruffians who had sailed from Panama, marched through jungle and swamp and desert, shattered every foe, raised their strongholds, come in a handful over a range that stormed heaven, to seize the very king of the pagans and lay his country under tribute. No man or demon would get past them without leave, nor stop them when again they fared onward.

They knew Castelar and saluted him. Fray Tanaquil was waiting, a lantern in his own hand. He led the cavalryman beneath a lintel sculptured in the form of a snake, though not such a snake as had ever haunted white men’s nightmares, into the building.

It was large, multiply chambered, of stone blocks cut and fitted together with exquisite care. The roof was timber, for this had been a palace. The Spaniards had supplied exterior entrances with stout doors, where the Indios had used curtains of reeds or cloth. Tanaquil shut the one through which he came.

Shadows filled corners and bobbed misshapen over wall paintings which priests had piously defaced. Today’s consignment lay in an anteroom. Castelar saw gleams beyond. He wondered half dizzily how many hundredweight of precious metal were heaped there.

He must content himself for the present with gloating over what he had seen arrive. Pizarro’s officers had hastily unwrapped the bundles, to assure themselves about the contents, and left everything where they tossed it. Tomorrow they would weigh the mass and put it with the rest. Cords and wrappings rustled under Castelar’s boots, Tanaquil’s sandals.

The friar set his lantern on the clay floor and hunkered down. He picked up a golden cup, brought it near the dim light, shook his head and muttered. The thing was dented, the figures cast in it crumpled. “The receivers dropped this, or kicked it aside.” Did anger tremble in his tone? “They’ve no more care for workmanship than animals.”

Castelar took the object from him and hefted it. Easily a quarter pound, he reckoned. “Why should they?” he asked. “It’ll soon go to the smelter.”

Bitterness: “True.” After a moment: “They will send a few pieces intact to the Emperor, for the sake of whatever interest he may have. I’ve been picking out the best, hoping Pizarro will listen to me and choose them. But mostly he won’t.”

“What’s the difference? Everything is just as unsightly.”

Gray eyes turned aloft to reproach the warrior. “I thought you might be a little wiser, a little able to understand that men have many ways of . . . praising God through the beauty they create. You have an education, no?”

“Latin. Reading, writing, ciphering. A bit of history and astronomy. It’s largely dropped out of me, I fear.”

“And you’ve traveled.”

“I fought in France and Italy. Gained a smattering of those languages.”

“I have the impression you’ve acquired Quechua too.”

“A minim. Can’t let the natives play stupid, you know, or conspire in earshot.” Castelar felt himself under inquisition, mild but probing, and changed the subject. “You told me you record what you see. Where are your quill and paper?”

“I have an excellent memory. As you observed, there is not much point in itemizing things that are to become ingots. But to make sure no curse, no witchcraft lingers—”

Tanaquil had been sorting and arranging articles as he talked, ornaments, plates, vessels, figurines, grotesque in Castelar’s sight. When they were marshaled before him, he reached inside a pouch hung at his waist and drew forth a curiosum of his own. Castelar stooped and squinted for a better look. “What’s that?” he asked.

“A reliquary. It holds a finger bone of Saint Ippolito.”

Castelar signed himself. Nonetheless he peered closer. “I’ve never seen its like.” It was a hand’s breadth in size, smoothly rounded, black save for a cross of nacreous material inset on top and, in front, two crystals more suggestive of lenses than of windows.

“A rare piece,” the friar explained. “Left behind when the Moors departed Granada, later sanctified by these contents and the blessing of the Church. The bishop who entrusted it to me declared it has special efficacy against infidel magic. Captain Pizarro and Fray Valverde agreed it could be wise, and would certainly be harmless, if I subject each piece of Inca treasure to its influence.”

He assumed a more comfortable position on the floor, selected a small gold image of a beast, revolved it in his left hand before the crystals of the reliquary, which he held in his right. His lips moved silently. When he had finished, he put the object down and went on to another.

Castelar shifted from foot to foot.

After a while Tanaquil chuckled and said, “I warned you this would prove tedious. I’ll be at it for hours. You may as well go to bed, Don Luis.”

Castelar yawned. “I think you are right. Thank you for your courtesies.”

A whoosh and thud brought him whirling around. For an instant he poised locked in unbelief.

Over by the wall, a thing had appeared. A thing—massive, dully slick, perhaps of steel, with a pair of handles and two stirrupless saddles—He saw it clear, for light radiated from a baton the rearmost rider held. Both men wore form-fitting black. It made their hands and faces stand forth bone-white, unweathered, unnatural.

The Friar sprang up. He yelled. The words were not Spanish.

In that eyeblink of time, Castelar saw amazement on the aliens. Be they wizards or devils straight from hell, they were not all-powerful, not before God and His saints. Castelar’s sword whipped into his grasp. He plunged forward. “Santiago and at them!” he roared, the ancient battle cry of his people as they drove the Moors from Spain back to Africa. Make such a racket that the guards outside would hear and—

The rider in front lifted a tube. It blinked. Castelar spun down into nothingness.