16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
the royal line, so that it might neutralize the
other Quechua clans and unite a sufficient
force of Indians and well-wishers to liberate at
least Cuzco, their ancestral home. It surprised
him because he would have sworn that a man
of Eduardo's intelligence must have seen the
impossibility of such a scheme – the unbelievable
number of totally conflicting interests –
the extreme unlikelihood of reconciliation between
the hostile groups – the wretched outcome
of Tupac Amaru's rising not long since,
drowned in blood by the Spaniards with the
help of other Indians, some of the royal blood.
He concealed his surprise, but he let the
words flow past his ears, deliberately forgetting
to record the genealogies, the names of
those likely to support the cause, and of those
already committed.
Yet as he lay there unsleeping in the cold his
perversely retentive memory rehearsed these