“It is God’s judgment! God’s judgment!” he shouted.
As if it were a distant wave, I first sensed a murmur, then heard the frenetic jabbering of the Indians, and as that wave crashed over the rigid Spanish soldiers, one of them crossed himself and knelt on one knee. Another followed his example, and then another, until every one of us except Pedro de Valdivia was kneeling. God’s judgment . . .
Juan Gómez, acting as constable, pushed the hangmen aside, and he himself removed the noose from Escobar’s neck, cut the bonds around his wrists and ankles, and helped him to his feet. I was the only one who noticed that he handed the gallows rope to an Indian who quickly carried it away before anyone thought to examine it. Juan Gómez owed me no further favors.
Escobar was not set free. His sentence was commuted to exile. He would have to return to Peru, dishonored, on foot, with a Yanacona as his only companion. Should he manage to elude the hostile valley Indians, he would perish from thirst in the desert, and his body, dry as a mummy’s, would never be given a decent burial. It would have been more merciful to have hanged him. One hour later, he left camp with the same calm dignity he had shown walking to the gallows. Soldiers who had teased him to the point of madness formed two respectful lines, and Escobar walked between them, not speaking, but slowly saying good-bye with his eyes. Many of them, shamed and repentant, shed tears. One handed him his sword, another a short hatchet, a third came leading a llama laden with a few bundles and skins for water. I observed from a distance, fighting the animosity I felt toward Valdivia, so strong it choked me. When the boy was already outside camp, I caught up with him, dismounted, and handed him my only treasure, my horse.
We stayed in that valley seven weeks, during which twenty more Spaniards were added to our numbers, among them two priests and a despicable man named Chinchilla. From the beginning, he had sedition on his mind, and conspired with Sancho de la Hoz to assassinate Valdivia. De la Hoz’s fetters had been removed, and he roamed freely about the camp, perfumed and dressed like a prince, eager to have his revenge against the captain general but carefully watched by Juan Gómez. Of the one hundred and fifty men who now composed the expedition, all except nine were hidalgos, sons of rural or impoverished nobility, but acting the hidalgo to the hilt. According to Valdivia, that had no bearing—after all, Spain itself was swimming with hidalgos—but I believe that those founders bequeathed their arrogance to the Kingdom of Chile. To the haughty blood of the Spaniards was added the indomitable blood of the Mapuche, and from that mixture has come a people of demented pride.
Following the expulsion of young Escobar, it took the camp a few days to settle back to normality. People were quick to anger, you could feel it in the air. In the soldiers’ eyes, the blame was mine. I had tempted an innocent boy, seduced him, driven him out of his mind, and led him to his death. I, the shameless concubine. Pedro de Valdivia was merely doing what was demanded: defending his honor. For a long time I felt the rancor of those men like a burn on my skin, as once I had felt their lust. Catalina advised me to stay in my tent until the men’s mood changed, but there was much to be done to prepare for the journey, and I had no choice but to confront the slanderous talk.
Pedro was preoccupied with indoctrinating the new soldiers and with rumors of treachery circulating through the camp, but he had time to take his rage out on me. If he realized that he had gone too far in his desire to avenge himself against Escobar, he never admitted it. Guilt and jealousy fired his lust; he wanted to possess me at every turn, at any time of day. He would interrupt his duties or his conferences with other captains, and drag me to the tent in full view of the entire camp; there was no one who did not realize what was going on. Valdivia didn’t care; he did it partly to establish his authority, partly to humiliate me and defy the gossipers. We had never made love with such violence. He would leave me with bruises and act as if that pleased me. He wanted me to moan with pain, seeing that I did not moan with pleasure. That was my punishment, to suffer the fate of a whore, just as it was Escobar’s fate to perish in the desert. I bore Pedro’s abuse for as long as I could tolerate it, thinking that at some moment his anger would cool, but at the end of a week I lost patience, and instead of obeying when he wanted to do with me what dogs do, I slapped his face, hard. I don’t know how it happened, my hand acted on its own. Surprise left us both paralyzed for a long moment, and immediately the spell in which we were trapped was broken. Pedro put his arms around me, repentant, and I began to tremble, as contrite as he.
“What have I done! What have I done, my love?” he murmured. “Forgive me, Inés, we must forget this, please . . .”
We lay with our arms around each other, our hearts full, murmuring explanations, forgiving each other, and finally falling asleep exhausted, without making love. From that moment, we began to recover our lost love. Pedro courted me with the passion and tenderness of the first days. We took short walks, always with guards, because at any moment we might be attacked by hostile Indians. We ate alone in our tent; he read to me at night; he spent hours caressing me, to give me the pleasure that only a short time ago he had denied. He was as eager for a child as I, but I did not get pregnant despite the rosaries I prayed to the Virgin and the potions Catalina prepared. I am sterile. I had no children by any of the men I loved—Juan, Pedro, Rodrigo—or any with whom I enjoyed brief and secret encounters. But I believe that Pedro, too, was sterile, because he never had children, not with Marina or any other woman. “To earn fame and leave memory of my name” was his motivation for conquering Chile. That may have been his way of substituting for the family dynasty he could not found. He left his name to history, since he could not bequeath it to descendants.
Pedro had the foresight and the patience to teach me to use a sword. He also gave me a horse to replace the one I had given Escobar, and assigned his best horseman to train it. A warhorse must obey instinctively, for its rider is occupied with his weapons. “You never know what will happen, Inés. You have had the courage to come with me, so you must be prepared to defend yourself like any of my men,” he warned me. It was a prudent move. If we had hoped to recover from our fatigue in Copiapó, we were soon disenchanted, for every time we dropped our guard, the Indians attacked.
“We will send emissaries to explain that we come in peace,” Valdivia announced to his principal captains.
“That would not be a good idea,” said Don Benito. “They undoubtedly will remember what happened six years ago.”
“What are you saying? What was that?”
“When I was here with Don Diego de Almagro, the Chilean Indians not only offered us signs of friendship, they also brought us the gold intended for their tribute to the Inca—they had already learned that he had been overthrown. The adelantado, suspicious, and not satisfied, made them promises, and invited them to a meeting, and as soon as he had gained their trust he gave us orders to attack. Many died in the fray, but we captured thirty caciques, whom we promptly tied to stakes and burned alive,” the field marshal explained.
“Why did you do that! Wouldn’t peaceful dealings have been much better?” Valdivia asked indignantly.
“If Almagro hadn’t acted first, the Indians would have done that to us Spaniards later,” Francisco de Aguirre interrupted.
The thing the native Chileans wanted most were our horses, and what they most feared were the dogs, so Don Benito kept the first in corrals, guarded by the second. The Chileans were under the command of three caciques, who in turn were directed by the powerful Michimalonko. He was an astute elder, and he knew that they were not strong enough to rush the camp of the huincas, so he opted to wear us down. His stealthy warriors stole our llamas and horses, destroyed our stores of provisions, kidnapped our Indian women, and attacked the parties of soldiers who rode out to look for food and water. We lost one soldier in that way, and several of our Yanaconas, whom we had, out of necessity, taught to fight, for otherwise they would all have perished.
Then spring appeared in the valley and on th
e hills, which came alive with flowers. The air turned warm, and Indians, mares, and llamas began to give birth. I have never seen a more adorable animal than a baby llama. The spirit of the camp improved; the new births brought a note of happiness to the weathered Spaniards and bone-weary Yanaconas. Rivers that ran dark in winter became crystal clear, and very rapid with the snowmelt from the mountains. There was abundant pasture for the animals, hunting and vegetables and fruit for us. The air of optimism ushered in by spring caused us to relax our vigilance, and then when we least expected it, two hundred Yanaconas deserted, followed by four hundred more. They simply evaporated like smoke, and no matter how many lashes Don Benito ordered as punishment for the work bosses’ carelessness, and to the Indians for helping, no one ever learned how they had escaped or where they had gone. One thing was obvious: they could not have gone far without the help of the Chilean Indians; without a previous arrangement they would have been slaughtered. Don Benito tripled the guard and kept the Yanaconas strung together day and night, with the work bosses constantly patrolling the camp with their whips and dogs.
Valdivia waited until the colts and baby llamas could travel, and then gave the order to continue south toward the Edenic place so highly praised by Don Benito: the Mapocho valley. We knew that Mapocho and Mapuche meant almost the same thing. We would have to confront savages who had turned back Almagro’s five hundred soldiers and nearly eight thousand auxiliary Indians. We had one hundred and fifty soldiers, and no more than four hundred Yanaconas.
We confirmed that Chile lay in the shape of a long, slim sword. It is composed of a string of valleys lying between mountains and volcanoes and crossed by plentiful rivers. Its coast is abrupt, with fearsome waves and frigid water, its forests are dense and aromatic, its hills unending. Frequently we heard a sigh from the earth and felt it move beneath our feet, but with time we became accustomed to the temblors. “This is how I imagined Chile, Inés,” Pedro confessed to me, his voice breaking with emotion as he gazed at the virginal beauty of the landscape.
Everything was not contemplation of nature, however; our trek was demanding. Michimalonko’s Indians trailed us relentlessly, constantly harassing us. As a result, we were able to rest only in turns; if we were careless for an instant, they were upon us. Llamas are delicate animals and can carry only a limited amount of weight; too much will break their backs. That meant that the Yanaconas had to carry the bundles of the Indians who had deserted. Although we discarded everything we did not absolutely need—including several trunks of my elegant dresses, something I had no use for anyway—the porters were bowed over by their burdens and, in addition, roped to prevent their escape. All these factors made our advance very laborious and very slow.
The soldiers lost faith in their serving girls, who had turned out to be less submissive and not as simpleminded as expected. The men continued to use them sexually but did not dare sleep when they were around, and some of them were convinced that their girls were poisoning them little by little. However, it was not poison that was corroding their souls and creeping into their bones, it was pure fatigue. Several of the men mistreated the girls as a way to vent their own misery, at which point Valdivia threatened to take the women away, and, in two or three cases, he lived up to his word. The soldiers rebelled because they could not accept that anyone, not even their leader, should intervene in something as personal as how they handled their women, but Pedro prevailed, as he always did. We must preach by example, he said. He would not allow Spaniards to behave worse than savages. In the long run, the soldiers obeyed, but with resentment, and only halfheartedly. Catalina told me that they were still beating their women, just not on the face or anywhere the marks would be visible.
As the Chilean Indians gradually became bolder, we all wondered how the unfortunate Escobar had fared. We supposed he must have died a slow and atrocious death, but no one dared mention him aloud, so as not to bring him bad luck. If we forgot his name and his face, perhaps he would become as transparent as the breeze, and could slip past the enemy without being seen.
We moved forward at a snail’s pace. The Yanaconas were slowed by the additional cargo they had to bear, and there were many foals and other newborn animals. Rodrigo de Quiroga always rode first because of his amazing vision, and his courage, which never wavered. Guarding the rear was Villagra, whom Pedro de Valdivia had named his second in command, along with Aguirre, always impatient to stir up a skirmish with the Indians. He liked fighting as much as he liked women.
One day a messenger Quiroga had sent from the head of the caravan came racing down the line yelling, “Indians are coming!”
Valdivia immediately installed the women, children, animals, and me in a place more or less protected by rocks and trees, then organized his men for the battle—not in the manner of the Spanish tercios, three infantrymen for one horseman, because on this expedition nearly everyone was on horseback. When I say that our men were mounted, it might sound as if they formed a formidable squadron of a hundred and fifty cavalrymen capable of withstanding ten thousand attackers, but the truth is that the horses were worn to the bone by fatigue, and their riders were outfitted with ragged clothing, badly fitting armor, dented helmets, and rusted weapons. They were courageous, but disorganized and arrogant, each dreaming of winning glory for himself. “Why is it so difficult for Spaniards to be one of a group?” Valdivia often complained. “They all want to be generals!” Another drawback was that we had lost so many Yanaconas, and the ones remaining were so exhausted and resentful from the treatment they’d received that they were very little help; they fought only because the alternative was death.
In battle, Pedro de Valdivia always rode in the lead, even though his captains pleaded with him to be careful because without him, the rest of us would be lost. At the cry “In the name of Santiago! Attaaaack!” that Spaniards had used to invoke the apostle Saint James during centuries of fighting the Moors, Valdivia took his place at the forefront, while his harquebusiers, kneeling, with weapons at the ready, aimed toward the enemy beyond him. Valdivia knew that the Indians would rush into battle bare chested, without shields or other protection, indifferent to death. They do not fear the harquebuses because they are more noise than anything else; the only thing that stops them are the dogs, which in the furor of combat eat them alive. The Indians confront the Spanish swords en masse, suffering devastating losses as their stone weapons ring against metal armor. Atop their mounts, the huincas are invincible, but if they are dragged from their horses, they are massacred.
We were not entirely prepared when we heard the chivateo, the dreaded war cry that announces an Indian attack, a hair-raising yelling that fires them to the point of madness and paralyzes their enemies with terror. In our case, however, it has the opposite effect; we fly into a rage. Rodrigo de Quiroga’s detachment managed to join Valdivia’s moments before waves of enemies poured down from the hills. There were thousands and thousands of them, nearly naked, wielding bows and arrows, lances, and clubs, howling, exultant in ferocious anticipation. The discharge of the harquebuses wiped out the first rows, but it did not stop or slow the onrushing hordes. In a question of minutes they were close enough for us to see their bright war paint, and to be engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Our lances thrust through clay-colored bodies, our swords lopped off heads and limbs, the hooves of our horses crushed the fallen. If they could fight their way near enough, the Indians would stun a horse with their clubs, and as soon as it dropped to its knees, twenty hands would seize the horseman and tumble him to the ground. For a few brief instants, helmet and breastplate would protect the soldier, and sometimes that was enough to give time to a companion to come to his aid. The arrows that were useless against coats of mail and armor were very effective on the unprotected parts of the body. In the uproar and whirlwind of the struggle, our wounded continued to fight, without feeling pain or realizing that they were bleeding, and when at last they fell, someone would rescue them and drag them to me.
I had organized
my tiny hospital, surrounded by my Indian girls and protected by a few loyal Yanaconas interested in defending the women and children of their tribe, and also by the black slaves, who feared that if they fell into the hands of the Indians they would be flayed to see whether the color of their skin was painted on—something that had happened in other places. We improvised bandages from available rags, applied tourniquets to stop hemorrhaging, hurriedly cauterized wounds with red-hot coals, and as soon as the men could stand, we gave them a drink of water or wine, handed them their weapons, and sent them back to continue the fight. “Blessed Virgin, protect my Pedro,” I muttered every time the grisly task of treating the wounded gave me a moment to breathe. The wind carried the odor of gunpowder and horses to us, where it blended with the smell of blood and seared flesh. The dying pleaded for confession, but the chaplain and other priests were in the battle, so it was I who made the sign of the cross on their foreheads and gave them absolution, that they might go in peace. The chaplain had explained that in an emergency, if no priest is available, any Christian can baptize and give extreme unction, though he was not sure that was the case with a Christian woman. Added to the cries of death and pain, the Indians’ chivateo, the horses’ neighing and snorting, the exploding gunpowder were the terrified wails of the women, many of whom had infants bound to their backs. Cecilia, accustomed to being served like the princess she was, for once descended into the world of mortals and worked side by side with Catalina and me. That small and graceful woman was much stronger than she appeared. She worked with us until her fine wool tunic was soaked with the blood of the injured.
At one point, several of the enemy fought their way to within a short distance of where we were treating the wounded. All at once, the yelling was louder, and closer, and I looked up—I had been trying to extract an arrow from Don Benito’s thigh, as other women held him down—and found myself face-to-face with savages who were rushing toward us with clubs and hatchets held high, driving back our ineffective guard of Yanaconas and black slaves. Without thinking twice, I seized the sword Pedro had taught me to use and prepared to defend our small refuge.