Temple

But Renco had been waylaid on his journey to Cuzco, captured in an ambush set up by the Governor with the aid of the Chancas, an extremely hostile tribe from the northern jungles that had been subjugated by the Incan people against their will.

Like many other tribes from this region, the Chancas saw the arrival of my countrymen as a means of breaking the yoke of Incan tyranny. They were quick to offer their services to the Governor as informers and as guides, in return for which they received muskets and metal swords, for the tribes of New Spain have no concept of bronze or iron.

As Renco informed me of his mission and his capture at the hands of the Governor, I saw over his shoulder a Chanca tribesman who was also being held captive inside the San Vicente.

His name was Castino and he was an ugly brute of a man. Tall and hairy, bearded and unwashed, he could not have been more dissimilar to the young articulate Renco. He was an utterly repulsive creature, the most frightening form I have ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes upon.

A sharpened piece of white bone pierced the skin of his left cheek, the characteristic mark of the Chancas.

He always stared malevolently at Renco's back when ever I came to visit the young prince.

The day he told me of his mission to retrieve the idol, he was extremely distressed.

The object of his quest, he said, was locked inside a vault inside the Coricancha, or sun temple, at Cuzco. But Renco that day learned—by eavesdropping on a conversation two guards on board the hulk—that the city of Cuzco had recently fallen and that the Spaniards were inside its walls, sacking and looting it unopposed.

I, too, had heard of the taking of Cuzco. It was said that the looting taking place there was some of the most rapacious of the entire conquest. Rumours abounded of Spaniards killing their fellow soldiers in their lust for the mountains of gold that lay inside the city's walls.

Such tales filled me with dismay. I had arrived in New Spain but six months previously with all the foolish ideals of a novice—desires of converting all the pagan natives to our noble Catholic Faith, dreams of leading a column of soldiers while holding forth a crucifix, delusions of building high-spired churches that would be the envy of Europe. But these ideals were quickly dispelled by the wanton acts of cruelty and greed that I witnessed of my countrymen every day.

Murder, pillage, rape - these were not the acts of men fighting in the name of God. They were the acts of scoundrels, of villains. And indeed at the moments when my disillusionment was at its greatest—such as the time when I witnessed a Spanish soldier decapitate a woman in order to seize her gold necklace—I would wonder whether I was fighting for the right side. That Spanish soldiers had taken to killing each other during their plunder of Cuzco came as no surprise to me.

I should also add at this juncture, however, that I had heard rumours about Renco's sacred idol before.

It was widely known that Hernando Pizarro, the Governor's brother and chief lieutenant, had put up an incredible bounty for any information that led to the discovery of the idol's whereabouts. It was to my mind a tribute to the reverence and devotion that the Incans paid their idol that not one of them—not a single one of them—had betrayed its location in return for Hernando's fabulous reward. It shames me to say that I do not believe my countrymen, in similar circumstances, would have done the same.

But of all the tales I had heard of the looting of Cuzco, nowhere had I heard of the discovery of the treasured Incan idol.

Indeed, if it had been found, word would have spread faster than the wind. For the lucky foot soldier who dis covered it would have been instantly knighted, would have been made a marquis by the Governor on the spot and would have lived the rest of his life back in Spain in unreserved luxury.

And yet there had been no such tale.

Which led me to conclude that the Spaniards in Cuzco had not yet found the idol.

'Brother Alberto,' Renco said, his eyes pleading, 'help me. Help me escape this floating cage so that I can complete my mission. Only I can retrieve the idol of my people. And with the Spaniards holding Cuzco, it is only a matter of time before they find it.'

Well.

I did not know what to say. I could never do such a thing.

I could never help him escape. I would be making myself a hunted man, a traitor to my country. If I were caught, I would be the one imprisoned inside this hellish floating dungeon. And so I left the hulk without another word.

But I would return. And I would talk with Renco again—and again he would ask me to help him, his voice impassioned, his eyes begging.