The Gold Eaters by Ronald Wright Read Free Book Online Page A

island’s foreshore to greet their lord. The sight is both frightening and pitiful, for what he sees is a throng of starvelings, ragged, filthy, hairy—like drowned men draped in seaweed. As he draws nearer he sees that most of these skeletal figuresare only a few years older than himself. The midday light shows up particularities: a weak chin under a thin beard, grey skin spotted with moles, thighs little more than bone beneath torn britches and peeling skin. Men in such straits should be easy to kill when he gets the chance.
    Now an even odder sight: behind the crowd is the bobbing head of a man borne aloft as if on others’ shoulders. He seems to be wearing a close-fitted skullcap, shiny and red. As the crowd parts to let this man through, Waman sees that he is sitting on a beast—tall as a llama but with a thicker neck and build.
    His eyes return to the rider’s head. What he took for a red hat is the barbarian’s scalp—shiny, sunburnt, bald as a gourd. The face below, furrowed and liver-spotted, wears a short white beard like the muzzle of an old dog, but its outstanding feature is a lone blue eye swivelling up and down, back and forth, scanning around warily. The other is merely an empty socket, rough-healed, puckered like an anus.
    The man climbs down from the animal’s back, showing himself to be much shorter than the Old One, whom he approaches with arms spread in welcome. The two embrace, smiling and clapping each other on the back. The Old One breaks free first and snaps his fingers at the boatmen. Some pieces of loot—gold cups and dishes—are brought forth in a strongbox and shown to the one-eyed man, who inspects them closely, turning them in the sunlight, weighing them in his hands, even biting the metal and uttering cries of delight. Waman is shocked. He has never seen men of importance show feelings publicly. In the World, as his father and mother taught him, people of rank carry themselves with reserve. And lesser folk do well to follow their example.
    The half-starved rabble comes suddenly alive, thrusting in on all sides, elbowing, fighting for a sight of gold. Not until the Old Onedraws his sword and waves it above his head does the clamour begin to die down.
    Once the onlookers have been driven back and the gold returned to the boat, the Old One grasps Waman by the shoulder, pushing him towards the one-eyed man. He feels a tap on his chest, hears himself called
Pilipillu
. Then the Old One puts a whiskery mouth to Waman’s ear, points to the other and says a word that sounds like
amaru
. But Waman has already named the bald rider: Sapa Ñawi, One-Eye.

    The Commander rations out food taken from the Indian freighter. As soon as the men are somewhat stronger he has them careen his ships, hauling the vessels from sea to sand with a windlass and long hawsers at high tide. The wormy hulls are scraped, caulked, given a coat of stolen tar. This done, he sends his partner to forage on the mainland. Almagro is always keen to raid Indians, especially these hotlanders, for it was one of their arrows that took his eye.
    Pizarro installs Waman in a back room of his own quarters, a strong timber-framed house that survived the fighting when he took the island. Recalling that many of the natives escaped by swimming, he keeps the boy chained to a post. Few of us Christians know the art of swimming, Pizarro muses, but the Indians on this coast are eels.
    To teach his prisoner Spanish, he picks out men who got to know the boy on Ruiz’s ship: Molina, a hothead but good talker; Tomás the cookboy; and Candía, the genial Greek gunner. Having two languages each, these men are well suited to the task. True, Candía speaks with a thick accent, and the cookboy’s first tongue is Arabic, but their Castilian is good enough. And though Molina also knows Arabic—mayindeed be half Moor or even a full-blood passing as a Christian—his Spanish is as good as the