Those few minutes that hero won for his friends allowed them, briefly, to pull ahead, but soon the Mapuche had caught up again. A second soldier decided to forfeit his life; he, too, called a last good-bye and turned toward the mass of Indians avid for blood. And then a third. One by one, six soldiers fell. The remaining eight, several of them badly wounded, continued their desperate flight until they came to a narrow pass where yet another must sacrifice himself if the others were to escape. He was dead within minutes. It was then that Juan Gómez’s mount, drained and bleeding from arrow wounds in its flanks, dropped to its knees. It was completely black in the forest, making it nearly impossible to go forward.
“Climb up behind me, Captain!” one of the soldiers shouted.
“No! Ride on, don’t stop for me!” Gómez ordered, knowing he was badly wounded and calculating that the horse could not bear the weight of two riders.
The soldiers had to obey him and ride on, and so feeling his way through the darkness, disoriented, he plunged deeper into the undergrowth. After many terrible hours, the six survivors reached the fort at Purén and warned their comrades before collapsing with fatigue. They stayed there long enough to stanch the blood from their wounds and give a rest to their mounts, before undertaking a forced march toward La Imperial, which then was only a village. The Yanaconas carried anyone with a breath of life in hammocks, but they had to give the dying a quick and honorable death so that the Mapuche would not find them alive.
In the meantime, Juan Gómez was sinking into mud up to his ankles; the recent winter rains had turned the area into a swamp. Though he was bleeding from several arrow wounds, depleted, thirsty, without food for two days, he did not give in to death. Unable to see, he laboriously felt his way through trees and rank growth. He could not wait till dawn, night was his only ally. He could hear the Mapuche’s cries of triumph when they discovered his fallen horse, and he prayed that the noble animal that had accompanied him through so many battles was dead. The Indians often tortured wounded beasts to wreak revenge on their masters. The smell of smoke indicated that his pursuers had lighted torches and were searching for him in the thick vegetation, certain that he could not have gone far. He took off his armor and clothing and buried them in the mud, and naked, walked deeper into the swamp. By now the Mapuche were very close; he could hear their voices and glimpse the flare of their torches.
It is at this point in her narration that Cecilia, whose macabre sense of humor seems entirely Spanish, doubled over with laughter as she told me about that horrible night. “My husband ended up buried in a swamp, just as I warned him he would,” the princess said. Juan Gómez cut a reed with his sword and submerged himself completely in the putrid ooze. He did not know how many hours he lay there, naked, with open wounds, commending his soul to God and thinking about his children and Cecilia, the beautiful woman who had left a palace to follow him to the end of the world. Mapuche brushed by him several times, never imagining that the man they were searching for lay buried in the mud, clutching his sword, gasping for breath through the hollow reed.
At midmorning of the following day, the men marching toward La Imperial saw a nightmarish vision covered with blood and mud pushing his way through the heavily wooded forest. By his sword, which he had never let go of, they recognized Juan Gómez, captain of the famed fourteen.
For the first time since Rodrigo’s death, I slept restfully for several hours last night. In the halfsleep before dawn, I felt a pressure in my chest that weighed on my heart and made it difficult for me to breathe. I did not feel any anxiety, only a great calm and a sense of blessing because I realized it was Rodrigo’s arm, and that he was sleeping at my side, as he had in the best of times. I lay without moving, with my eyes closed, grateful for that sweet weight. I wanted to ask my husband if he had at last come for me, to tell him how happy he had made me through the thirty years we shared, and that my one regret had been those long periods when he was away at war, but I was afraid that if I spoke he would disappear. During these months of solitude, I have learned how timid the spirits are. When the first light of dawn sifted through the chinks of the shutters, Rodrigo went away, leaving the mark of his arm on me and his scent on the pillow. By the time the servants came in, there was no trace of him in the room. Despite the happiness that unexpected night of love gave me, I must not have looked well when I awoke because the women went to call you, Isabel. I am not ill, daughter, I have no pain; I feel better than ever, so don’t look at me with that dreary face. I will, though, stay in bed a little longer; I feel cold. If you don’t mind, I would like to use the time to dictate to you.
As you know, Juan Gómez came out of that ordeal alive, although it took several months to recover from his infected wounds. He gave up the idea of the gold, returned to Santiago, and is still living with his magnificent wife, who must be at least sixty, though she looks thirty. She has no wrinkles, no gray hair, and whether that’s by a miracle or witchcraft, I couldn’t tell you. That fateful December was the beginning of the Mapuche uprising, a merciless war that has gone on for forty years and seems to have no end. As long as one Indian and one Spaniard are left, blood will flow. I should hate them, Isabel, but I can’t. They are my enemies, but I admire them because I know that if I were in their place, I would die fighting for my land, as they are doing.
For several days I have been putting off the moment of telling about Pedro de Valdivia’s death. For twenty-seven years I have tried not to think about it, but I suppose the time has come to do it. I would like to believe a less cruel version, that Pedro fought until he was clubbed on the head and killed, but Cecilia helped me discover the truth. Only one Yanacona escaped the disaster at Tucapel and told what happened that Christmas Day, but he knew nothing about the gobernador’s fate. Two months later Cecilia came to see me and told me that a Mapuche girl who had just come from Araucanía was serving in her house. Cecilia knew that the girl, who did not speak a word of Spanish, had been found near Tucapel. Once again, the Mapudungu I had learned from Felipe—now Lautaro—was useful. Cecilia brought her to me and I was able to talk with her. She was a young girl of about eighteen, short, with delicate features and strong shoulders. Since she did not understand our language, she seemed slow-witted, but when I spoke to her in Mapudungu, I realized she was very bright. This is what I was able to find out from the Yanacona who survived Tucapel, and the Mapuche girl who was present at Pedro de Valdivia’s execution.
The gobernador was in the ruins of the fort, fighting desperately with his handful of courageous soldiers against thousands of Mapuche; the enemy troops were regularly replaced with fresh squadrons, while the soldiers could never put down their swords.
The whole day passed in fighting. At dusk, Valdivia lost any hope that Juan Gómez would arrive with reinforcements. His men were totally drained, the horses were bleeding as profusely as the men, and new enemy detachments kept obstinately ascending the hill to the fort.
“Señores, what do we do?” Valdivia asked the nine men still standing.
“What would Your Mercy have us do but fight and die?” one of the soldiers replied.
“Then let us do so with honor, señores.”
Those ten tenacious Spaniards, followed by any able-bodied Yanaconas, went forward to fight and die face-to-face with the enemy, swords held high and with the name of Santiago on their lips. Within minutes, eight soldiers had been pulled from their horses by boleadoras and lariats, dragged across the ground, and massacred by hundreds of Mapuche. Only Pedro de Valdivia, a priest, and one faithful Yanacona were able to break through the lines and flee along the one route open to them; the others were blocked by the enemy. One other Yanacona was hidden in the fort; he endured the smoke from the fire beneath a pile of rubble, and two days later escaped with his life after the Mapuche had withdrawn.
The way open to Valdivia had been carefully prepared by Lautaro. It was a dead end, leading through the dark forest to a swamp in which the horses bogged down, exactly as Lautaro had planned. T
he fugitives could not turn back, for the enemy was close on their heels. In the afternoon light, they watched hundreds of Indians come from the trees and underbrush as they sank deeper and deeper into that foul mud, which emitted the sulfurous odor of hell. Before the swamp swallowed them up, the Mapuche rescued them; that was not how they planned to end the Spaniards’ lives.
When Valdivia saw that all was lost, he tried to negotiate his freedom, promising that he would abandon the cities he had founded in the south, that the Spaniards would leave the Araucans’ lands forever, and, in addition, that he would give them sheep and other rewards. The Yanacona tried to translate, but before he could finish, the Mapuche beat him then killed him. They had learned to distrust the promises of the huincas. The priest, who had formed a cross with two sticks and was trying to administer the last rites to the Yanacona, as he already had to the gobernador, was clubbed to death. And then began the martyrdom of Pedro de Valdivia, their most despised enemy, the incarnation of all the abuses and cruelties imposed upon the Mapuche people. They had not forgotten the thousands of dead, the burned men, the raped women, the slaughtered children, the hundreds of hands that had floated down the river, the sliced-off feet and noses, the whips, the chains, the dogs.
They forced the captive to witness the torture of the Yanaconas who had survived Tucapel, and the profanation of the Spaniards’ corpses. They dragged Valdivia by the hair, naked, to the settlement where Lautaro was waiting. Along the way, stones and sharp branches tore his skin, and when he was deposited at the feet of the ñidoltoqui, he was a rag soaked in mud and blood. Lautaro ordered that he be given something to drink, to rouse him from his stupor, then had him tied to a post. As a symbolic insult they broke Valdivia’s Toledo steel sword, his inseparable companion, in half and drove it into the ground at his feet. Once the prisoner was conscious enough to open his eyes and realize where he was, he found himself staring at his former servant. “Felipe!” he cried with hope; at least this was a familiar face, someone who could speak Spanish. Lautaro’s eyes bored into his with infinite disdain. “Don’t you recognize me, Felipe? I’m your taita,” the captive persisted. Lautaro spit in his face. He had been waiting for that moment for twenty-two years.
At an order from the ñidoltoqui, the inflamed Mapuche filed before Pedro de Valdivia with sharpened clamshells, gouging out pieces of flesh from his body. They built a fire, and with the same shells cut the muscles from his arms and legs, roasted them, and ate them before him. That macabre orgy lasted three nights and two days before Mother Death took pity on the miserable prisoner. At last, on the morning of the third day, when Lautaro saw that Valdivia was dying, he poured molten gold into his mouth so he would have his fill of the metal he loved so much, and that had caused the Indians so much suffering in the mines.
What pain, what pain! These memories are like a lance here in my own breast. What time is it, daughter? Where has the light gone? The hours have flown backward, it must be dawn again. I believe it will be dawn forever . . .
The remains of Pedro de Valdivia were never found. They say that the Mapuche devoured his body in an improvised ritual, that they made flutes from his bones, and that his skull is used to this day as a vessel for the muday of the toquis. You ask me, daughter, why I hold to the terrible version of Cecilia’s serving girl instead of the other, more merciful one: that, as the poet wrote, Valdivia’s skull was crushed in; after all, that is a custom among the Indians of the south. I will tell you why. During those three ominous days in December 1553, I was very ill. It was as if my soul knew what my mind still did not. Horrendous images passed before my eyes like a nightmare I could not wake from. I thought I saw baskets filled with amputated hands and noses in my house, and in my patio impaled and chained Indians. The air reeked of burned human flesh, and the night breeze carried the sound of cracking whips. This conquest has cost enormous suffering. No one can forgive such cruelty, least of all the Mapuche, who never forget an injustice, just as they do not forget favors received. I was tortured by memories; it was as if I were possessed by a demon. You know already, Isabel, that except for an occasional flurry with my heart I have always been a healthy woman, thanks to God’s grace, so I have no other explanation for the illness that afflicted me those three days. While Pedro was suffering his gruesome death, my soul accompanied him from afar, and wept for him and for all the other victims of those years. I lay prostrate, with such violent vomiting and burning fever that they feared for my life. In my delirium I clearly heard Pedro de Valdivia’s screams, and his voice telling me good-bye for the last time.
“Farewell, Inés of my soul . . .”
Chronicles of Doña Inés Suárez, delivered by her daughter, Doña Isabel de Quiroga, to the Church of the Dominicans to be conserved and safeguarded, in this month of December in the year of our Lord 1580.
Santiago de la Nueva Extremadura
Kingdom of Chile
Author’s Note
THIS NOVEL is a work of intuition, but any similarity to events and persons relating to the conquest of Chile is not coincidental.
The feats of Inés Suárez noted by the chroniclers of her era were nearly ignored by historians for more than four hundred years. In these pages I narrate events as they were documented. My hand merely strung them together with a fine thread of imagination.
MY FRIENDS Josefina Rossetti, Vittorio Cintolesi, Rolando Hamilton, and Diana Huidobro aided me in researching the period of the conquest of Chile, especially in regard to Inés Suárez. Malú Sierra reviewed the material related to the Mapuche. Juan Allende, Jorge Manzanilla, and Gloria Gutiérrez copyedited the manuscript. William Gordon cared for me and fed me during the silent months of writing.
I am grateful to those few historians who mention the importance of Inés Suárez; their works allowed me to write this novel.
Bibliographical Note
THE RESEARCH for this novel took four years of avid reading. I did not keep a record of each of the history texts, works of fiction, and articles I read to saturate myself in the period and in the characters because the idea of adding a bibliography came only at the end. When Gloria Gutiérrez, my agent, read the manuscript, she told me that without a bibliography this account would appear to be the product of a pathological imagination (something I am often accused of). Many episodes from the life of Inés Suárez and from the conquest of Chile seem beyond belief, and I want to demonstrate that they are historical fact. The following are some of the books I consulted, a number of which are still piled in my studio at the back of the garden, where I write.
For the general history of Chile, I was able to call upon two classic studies: Crónicas del reino de Chile (El Ferrocarril, 1865) by Pedro Mariño de Lovera, and Diego Barros Arana’s essential Historia general de Chile (1884); the first volume of Barros Arana’s study records episodes from the period of the conquest. A more contemporary account is found in Historia general de Chile (Planeta, Santiago de Chile, 2000) by Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt Letelier.
Among a sizeable number of works about the Conquest, I found helpful Estudio sobre la conquista de América (Universitaria, Santiago de Chile, 1992) by Néstor Meza; La era colonial (Nascimento, Santiago de Chile, 1974) written by Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, a name closely associated with Chilean history and historiography; and also El imperio hispánico de América (Peuser, Buenos Aires, 1958) by C. H. Harina. To assure the authenticity of the Spanish background, I consulted histories of Spain by Miguel Ángel Artola (Alianza Editorial Madrid, 1988; vol. 3) and Fernando García de Cortázar (Planeta, Barcelona, 2002), among others. And to learn more about the conquistadors, I turned to, among others, Conquistadores españoles del siglo XVI (Aguilar, Madrid, 1963) by Ricardo Majó Framis; Los últimos conquistadores (2001) and Diego de Almagro (third edition, 2001) by Gerado Larraín Valdés; and Pedro de Valdivia, capitán conquistador (Instituto de Cultura Hispánica, Madrid, 1961) by Santiago del Campo.
The bibliography of the Mapuche universe is impressive; among many titles, I want to make speci
al mention of Los araucanos (Universitaria, Santiago, 1914) by Edmond Reuel Smith; the more recent Mapuche, gente de la Tierra (Sudamericana, Buenos Aires, 2000) by Malú Sierra; José Bengoa’s Historia de los antiguos mapuche del sur (Catalonia, Barcelona, 2003); along with a more specialized work, Folklore médico chileno (Nascimento, Santiago de Chile, 1981) by Oreste Plath.
Among these readings, two excellent historical novels should not be overlooked: Butamalón (Anaya-Mario Muchnik, Madrid, 1994) by Eduardo Labarca, and Ay Mamá Inés (Andrés Bello Santiago de Chile, 1993), the work of Jorge Guzmán. To my knowledge, it is the only previous novel about my protagonist.
And last, a special mention for two works from the period: La Araucana (1578), an epic poem published in countless editions (I used the Santillana), including the very beautiful 1842 volume from which the illustrations for this book have been taken, and Cartas, the letters of Pedro de Valdivia. Two editions of the latter are particularly noteworthy: the Spanish version by the Editorial Lumen and the Junta de Extremadura (1991), under the direction of the Chilean Miguel Rojas Mix, and the 1998 Chilean volume published by the Compañía Minera Doña Inés de Collahuasi.
P.S. Ideas, Insights, Interviews & More . . . *
About the author
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2 Life at a Glance
4 Isabel Allende on Destiny, Personal Tragedy, and Writing