Ines of My Soul (11 page)

The Spaniards did not go that far because, as some survivors told me, they were in a great rush. Several of Almagro's soldiers who did not die immediately at the hands of their compatriots were massacred by the Indians who came down from the hills at the end of the battle, howling with jubilation because for once they were not the victims. They celebrated by desecrating the corpses, hacking them to bits with stone knives. For Valdivia, who from the time he was twenty had fought on many fronts and against many enemies, that was one of the most shameful episodes in his military career. He often awakened, screaming, in my arms, tormented by nightmares about his decapitated comrades, just as in dreams following the sacking of Rome he saw mothers with children in their arms leaping into the river to escape the marauding troops.

Diego de Almagro, sixty-one years old and greatly weakened by illness and the Chile campaign, was taken prisoner, humiliated, and subjected to a trial that lasted two months. He was not given an opportunity to defend himself. When he learned that he had been sentenced to death, he asked that the enemy field marshal, Pedro de Valdivia, be witness to his last requests; he knew no one more worthy of his trust. Diego de Almagro was still a fine-looking man despite the ravages of syphilis and his many battles. He wore a black patch over the eye he had lost in an encounter with savages before he discovered Peru. On that occasion he himself had pulled out the arrow with one tug—with the eye impaled on it—then continued fighting. When he lost the three fingers of his right hand, chopped off by a sharp stone hatchet, he shifted his sword to the left hand, and in that condition, blinded and dripping with blood, he fought until comrades came to help him. The wound was cauterized with a red-hot iron and boiling oil, which had scarred his face but not destroyed the charm of his generous laughter and amiable expression.

“I want him subjected to torture in the plaza, in front of everyone. He deserves special punishment,” Hernando Pizarro ordered.

“I will not be a party to that, Excellency. The soldiers will not permit it. This fight between brothers has been difficult, let us not throw salt in the wound. We might have a revolt on our hands,” Valdivia counseled.

“Almagro was born a peasant, let him die like a peasant,” was Hernando Pizarro's retort.

Pedro de Valdivia refrained from reminding him that the Pizarros were of no higher birth than Diego de Almagro. Francisco Pizarro had been a bastard child himself; he had no education and had been abandoned by his mother. Both men had been dirt poor before a change of fortune had sent them to Peru and made them richer than King Solomon.

“Don Diego de Almagro bears the titles of adelantado and gobernador de Nueva Toledo. What explanation will you give our emperor?” Valdivia persisted. “I repeat, Excellency, with all respect, that it is not a good idea to stir up the soldiers. They are already on edge, and Diego de Almagro is an honorable military man.”

“He returned from Chile trounced by a band of naked savages!” Hernando Pizarro exclaimed.

“No, Excellency. He returned from Chile to aid your brother, the honorable marqués gobernador.”

Hernando Pizarro realized that the field marshal was right, but it was not in his nature to take back his words, and, even less, to forgive an enemy. His order was to behead Almagro in the main plaza of Cuzco.

In the days prior to the execution, Valdivia was often alone with Almagro in his dismal, filthy cell, his last dwelling place. He admired the adelantado for his heroic feats as a soldier and his reputation for generosity, although he was aware that he had weaknesses and had made mistakes. While a prisoner, Almagro told him what he had experienced during the eighteen months of that expedition to Chile, planting in Valdivia's imagination the prospect of conquest that Almagro himself would not be able to carry out to the end. He described the terrifying march across the high sierras, watched by condors circling slowly above their heads and waiting for them to drop so they could pick their bones. The cold killed more than two thousand auxiliary Indians—the ones they call Yanaconas—two hundred blacks, nearly fifty Spaniards, and quantities of horses and dogs. Even the lice and fleas could not endure the cold, but fell from the men's clothing like showers of little seeds. Though nothing grew there, not even lichen; everything was rock, wind, ice, and solitude.

“So great was our plight, Don Pedro, that we chewed the raw flesh of animals that had died from the cold, and drank the horses' urine. By day we marched at our quickest pace, to keep from being coated with snow, and by night we slept curled up with the horses. At dawn every day we counted the dead Indians and quickly muttered an Our Father for their souls, for there was no time for anything further. Bodies stayed where they fell, like ice monoliths pointing the way for future lost travelers.”

He added that the Spaniard's armor froze, imprisoning them, and when they took off their boots or gloves, fingers and toes fell off without pain. Not even a madman would have attempted that route on the return, he explained, which was why they had chosen the desert, never imagining how horrible it, too, would be. What effort and suffering it costs men to conquer these lands, Valdivia thought.

“During the day the desert is blazing hot, and the light is so strong that it drives both men and horses mad, causing them to see visions of trees and pools of fresh water,” the Adelantado told him. “As soon as the sun sets, the temperature plummets and the
camanchaca
falls, a dew as icy as the deep snows that tormented us in the peaks of the sierra. We were carrying a good supply of water in barrels and wineskins, but soon it was nearly gone. Thirst killed many Indians and made beasts of the Spaniards.”

“In truth, Don Diego, it sounds like a journey to hell,” Valdivia commented.

“It was, Don Pedro, but I assure you that if I were to live, I would try it again.”

“But why, if the obstacles are so harrowing and the reward so meager?”

“Because once the cordillera and the desert that separate Chile from the rest of the known world have been crossed, you find gentle hills, fragrant forests, fertile valleys, bounteous rivers, and a climate more pleasant than any in Spain or anywhere else I know. Chile is a paradise, Don Pedro. It is there we must found our cities and prosper.”

“And what is your opinion of the Indians in Chile?” Valdivia asked.

“At first we encountered friendly savages, the ones they call Promaucae. They are related to the Mapuche, but a different tribe. Then they turned against us. They have mixed with Indians from Peru and Ecuador, and are subjects of the Inca, whose domain reaches as far as the Bío-Bío. We got along with a few curacas, that is, Inca chiefs, but we could not go any farther south because that is the land of the Mapuche, who are very warlike. I must tell you, Don Pedro, that nowhere in any of my dangerous expeditions and battles did I encounter enemies as formidable as those savages armed with clubs and stones.”

“That must be true, Adelantado, if they could stop you and your highly regarded soldiers.”

“The Mapuche know only war and freedom. They have no king and they have no notion of hierarchies; they obey their toquis only during battles. Freedom, freedom—only freedom. It is the most important thing in their lives, and that is why we could not subdue them, and why the Incas failed in their attempt. The women do all the work while the men do nothing but prepare to fight.”

Diego de Almagro's punishment was carried out one winter morning in 1538. At the last minute Pizarro reduced the sentence, fearing the reaction of the soldiers if Almagro were beheaded in public, as he had ordered. Instead they killed him in his cell. The executioner garroted him, slowly tightening a rope around his neck, and then his body was carried to the main plaza of Cuzco, where it was decapitated, though again the order was modified because they did not dare display the head on a meat hook as had been planned. By then Hernando Pizarro had begun to realize the magnitude of what he had done, and was worried about what the emperor's reaction would be. He decided to give Diego de Almagro a dignified burial, and he himself, dressed in severe mourning, led the funeral cortège. Years later, all the Pizarro brothers would pay for their crimes, but that is another story.

I have taken time to narrate these episodes in order to explain Pedro de Valdivia's determination to leave Peru, which was torn by intrigue and corruption, and conquer the still innocent territory of Chile, an undertaking in which I shared.

The battle of Las Salinas and the death of Diego de Almagro occurred a few months before my voyage to Cuzco. At that time I was awaiting news of Juan de Málaga in Panamá, where several persons told me they had seen him. People coming and going between the New World and Spain used that port as a meeting place. Many travelers passed through there—soldiers, employees of the Crown, chroniclers, priests, scholars, adventurers, and bandits—all sweltering in the humid breath of the tropics. I sent messages with them to the four cardinal points, but time was dragging by without any answer.

In the meantime, I was earning my livelihood with the trades I know best: sewing, cooking, setting bones, and treating wounds. I could do nothing to help those suffering from plague, fevers that turn blood to molasses, the French illness, and the incurable bites of the poisonous insects that abounded there. Like my mother and my grandmother, I am as strong as an oak, and I was able to live in the tropics without falling ill. Later, in Chile, I survived the desert, which I learned personally could be hot as fire itself, as well as the winter rains and the grippe that killed men more robust than I. All through the epidemics of typhus and smallpox, it was I who cared for and buried victims of those diseases.

One day, talking with the crew of a schooner anchored in the port, I learned that Juan had sailed for Peru quite some time before, as so many other Spaniards had done when they heard of the riches discovered by Pizarro and Almagro. I bundled up my belongings, took my savings, and since I was unable to get permission to go on my own, arranged to sail south with a group of Dominican priests. I imagine that those priests were associated with the Inquisition, but I never asked them; the mere word terrified me then and terrifies me still. I can never forget seeing heretics burned at the stake in Plasencia when I was eight or nine years old, but I wanted their help in getting to Peru. I went back to wearing my black dresses, and played the role of disconsolate wife. The priests marveled at the marital fidelity that led me through the world searching for a husband who had not sent for me and whose whereabouts I did not know. They could not suspect that my motive was not fidelity but the desire to end the state of uncertainty Juan had left me in. I had not loved him for many years. I barely remembered his face, and feared that when I did see him, I wouldn't recognize him. But I did not intend to stay in Panamá, where I was exposed to the appetites of idle soldiers and the unhealthful climate.

The voyage by ship lasted more or less seven weeks, skittering across the ocean at the whim of the winds. By then, dozens of Spanish ships were traveling the route back and forth to Peru, but their navigation charts were still a state secret. There were as yet no complete sets of charts, and on each sailing the pilots noted down their observations, from the color of the water and the clouds to any new landmark along the coast—when they were sailing close enough to view it. In that way they updated the routes that would later serve other voyagers. We experienced heavy seas, fog, storms, quarrels among the crew, and other unpleasantness that I will not detail here in order not to stray from my story. It is enough to note that the priests said mass each morning and made us pray the rosary in the evening to calm the seas and the contentious spirits of the crew. All voyages are dangerous. I am horrified when I am on a fragile ship at the mercy of the vast ocean, defying God and nature and far from human aid. I would rather find myself surrounded by savage Indians, as I have been many times, than board a ship again. Which is why I have never been tempted to return to Spain, even at times when the threat of attack by the natives forced us to evacuate cities and run like mice. I have always known that my bones would rest in American soil.

On the high seas I was once again hounded by men, despite the eternal vigilance of the priests. I could feel them circling around me like a pack of dogs. Did I emit the scent of a bitch in heat? In the privacy of my cabin, I washed with saltwater, frightened of that power I did not want because it could work against me. I dreamed of panting wolves, tongues hanging out and fangs dripping blood, ready to pounce on me—all of them at once. Sometimes the wolves had the face of Sebastián Romero. I spent my nights waiting and watching, locked in my cabin, sewing and praying, not daring, for fear of that constant male presence in the darkness, to go out into the cool night air to calm my nerves. I was frightened by that menace, it's true, but, I must confess, I was also fascinated. Desire was a terrible abyss yawning at my feet, inviting me to leap in and lose myself in its depths. I knew the festiveness and the torment of passion, as I had lived both with Juan de Málaga during the first years of our union. My husband had many faults, but I cannot deny that he was a tireless and captivating lover. That is why I forgave him again and again. Long after I had lost all love and respect for him, I continued to desire him. To protect myself from the temptation of love, I told myself that I would never find another man who could give me as much pleasure as Juan. I also knew that I had to guard against the illnesses men contract and spread. I had seen their effects, and healthy as I was, I feared them as I feared the Devil, since the least contact with the French illness is all that it takes to become infected. Or I might get pregnant. Vinegar-soaked sponges are not totally reliable, and I had so often prayed to the Virgin for a child that she might grant me the favor at the wrong time. Miracles can be inopportune.