Looking Calcagorta in the eye Agustin said in a low voice, ‘That is what I believe.’
After a moment’s consideration, Calcagorta nodded.
They came for Iago that evening as he ate his meal of fresh fish, asking him to attend a council meeting.
‘Not go,’ Ah Fong said quickly, but he smiled at her.
‘I must,’ he said simply, ‘it is in our best interests.’
But as he walked off, the watching Ximenez asked, ‘Why did three men come to ask the master to go to a council?’
With one hand flying to her mouth as she watched Iago marched off, Ah Fong shook her head and then, as two of the men seemed to close deliberately behind Iago’s back, she drew in her breath sharply, shuddering with premonition.
At the top of the beach and within sight and sound of the wrecked ship upon which the surf pounded remorselessly, they bound Iago to a palm tree. Agustin asked him to confess his faith. Was he a Protestant? He chose not to answer under duress. Was his name truly Iago Fernandez?
‘What I am is known only to God who knows all . . .’
Calcagorta swiped his heavy hand across Iago’s face so that his ring cut his victim’s cheek. Blood ran from the centre of a red weal seared across Iago’s cheek and nose.
Agustin stepped forward. ‘Leave him to God’s counsel until the morning,’ he urged and Calcagorta, thinking himself of the ripening thighs of the woman he had had last night and who was rapidly recovering her figure after the emaciating experience of recent weeks, nodded agreement.
‘We shall see you in the morning,’ he said grimly. Posting guards and followed by Agustin, the new captain-general retired for the night.
Seventeen
Ximenez
The pain of the night was beyond Iago’s experience. The weight of his tired body tugged at his bonds, his muscles went into spasm, he was wracked with cramp, thirst, constriction, fear and despair. Why he had not simply confessed his devotion to the Roman Catholic faith he had no idea but he had been taken unawares and unsuspecting. Once he had expressed defiance and then showed intransigence, he had left no room for manoeuvre and knew what his fate was to be. Such thoughts tumbled through his mind until increasing waves of pain occluded them altogether.
In the first, excruciating hours, as daylight leached out of the western sky and the tropical night rolled over him, he knew that Ximenez lurked in the offing, for he heard the dwarf’s foul abuse as the attentive guards drove him away. Slowly, however, the pain altered from specific torments to a general, overwhelming agony and he slipped in and out of consciousness as the indifferent constellations marched overhead.
He rallied at first light, his tongue thick in his mouth, his head so exceptionally full that he thought it might simply burst, but then he fainted again. Involuntarily a viscous urine trickled down his leg; later it attracted insects and flies. As he woke to full daylight the bells of hell itself seemed to ring in his ears.
The guards had been relieved at midnight and they remained awake and alert, so that a watchful Ximenez was unable to do anything to help. The faithful dwarf remained within yards of his master throughout the night but at daylight, as the Spaniards stirred in the adjacent huts, he withdrew to await events. After a further hour, during which Ximenez could hear but not see what was happening and therefore remained in ignorant concealment, Calcagorta called a muster of his Basque henchmen. Expecting them to move down to the beach, Ximenez was puzzled by the sound of them all dying away, until with a flash of intuition he realized that they had gone for Ah Fong.
He failed in a frantic attempt to work round the village and reach the fisherman’s hut in time to warn her and was almost caught as he dodged the entire party as it returned with its terrified prisoner. By the time Ximenez returned to a position where he could see the tree to which Iago was lashed, they had brought Ah Fong face to face with her tortured husband.
Ximenez’s heart thundered in his breast, for he was familiar with cruelty during his life in Manila and Cavite under Spanish colonial rule. The black crow of the priest would lead it, of course. With a pang Ximenez recalled that first encounter with the stranger he had come to admire, and the unguarded imprecation against priests that Don Iago had let fall from his lips.
From his hiding place in the undergrowth he could see Fray Agustin approach Iago, whose body was largely obscured by the ribbed bole of the tall coconut palm. The Franciscan, Ximenez thought, raised the crucifix to Iago’s lips and then stepped back while Calcagorta, resplendent in salvaged finery and half-armour, stepped forward from the half-circle of Basques. Two of these stalwarts held Ah Fong who seemed, at this distance, an insubstantial wraith. Ximenez could see Agustin’s mouth asking questions and, in a moment of obvious frustration, one of the men was sent to bring water for Iago. No attempt was made to allow him to drink; instead the bowl was thrown in his face, which made the armed men laugh and Ah Fong flinch.
What seemed like an interrogation went on for some time and then Agustin suddenly stepped back. He seemed to relinquish his prisoner just as Ximenez knew the Inquisitors of the Holy Office did when they made over their victims for execution. Calcagorta now made a gesture and the two men holding Ah Fong shoved her forward. Agustin, facing Iago, gestured towards her and then appeared to be waiting for an answer. All present seemed focused for some time upon Iago’s face which Ximenez, far behind the tree, could not see. Then the spell broke and Ah Fong was forced on to her knees from behind and Calcagorta waved his arm as though giving an order. A man stepped forward and ripped the now grubby grey silk from Ah Fong’s shoulders, exposing her breasts. Ximenez could hear her scream and then watched as she was lugged to her feet and frogmarched to an adjacent palm. Before tying her to the tree, where in order to be seen by Iago she was sideways on to Ximenez, the remainder of her clothing was torn from her slender body.
It was obvious what would happen to her as men shuffled forward, appearing to draw lots by means of straws picked off the ground. At one point Agustin came forward and tried to intervene and Ximenez concluded that Iago – confronted with Ah Fong’s victimization – had acquiesced in whatever Agustin asked of him. It was too late to stop the collective move to dishonour the Chinese woman.
As the first man approached, loosening his breeches to the catcalls of his mates, Ximenez drew in his breath.
‘No!’ he whispered, suppressing the natural cry of the outraged, the tears hot on his cheeks. Falling on to his knees and easing the long knife he kept in his belt, he began to inch forward faster and faster as Ah Fong’s cries rent the morning air. As he moved between and in the shadow of the tall trees Ximenez had no idea how many men spent themselves, only that Ah Fong – the most gracious lady he had ever known and the only woman who had treated him as a human being – was being repeatedly violated. In the last seconds of his stealthy approach, nothing of which had been suspected by the distracted Spaniards, Ximenez was aware of the feral smell. Like the dogs whose acquaintance his fellow men had compelled him to make, he suddenly found the stink triggered a reaction. He was on his feet, the knife in his hand, his short, powerful legs covering the few yards out of the shadow of the palms in less time than it took to draw the attention of the lusting crowd. He crashed into the bulk of Pedro Ruiz de Olalde as the sergeant-major reached orgasm. Ximenez thrust the knife deep into the man’s pink belly and heaved it upwards, extracting it as Olalde fell back, his eyes an astonished and confused mixture of exquisite sensation. Leaving his tumescence inside Ah Fong and his steaming entrails trailing in the wake of his fall, he fell on to his back.
The queue of men behind him saw the rabid form of the dwarf as Ximenez turned towards Ah Fong.
Crying, ‘Forgive me!’ he cut her throat to the spine.
The cry of horror that this threw up from the assembled men was the first of a hue and cry that followed Ximenez as he dashed back into the cover of the palm grove, dodging away under the leafy canopy, his sturdy legs rapidly increasing the distance between him and h
is pursuers. Not all followed, and after half a mile the pursuit ended.
‘We shall catch him.’
‘That little bastard cannot hide . . .’
‘There is nowhere he can go.’
The muttering among the discomfited pursuers, most of whom had not yet taken their pleasure of the Chinese girl, soon ended. Calcagorta stood unsullied alongside an ashen-faced Agustin among those left in the guilty and immobilizing confusion of post-coital satisfaction. All stared at the disembowelled corpse of Olalde and the hideous wreckage of what, a moment ago, they had lusted after.
‘Who told me that freak was with Olivera?’
‘Arrocheros, Excellency,’ someone advised.
The captain-general stared at the Franciscan, who stood looking as though he might faint. ‘Is it the stink of Olalde’s guts, or the shock of a naked woman that disturbs you, Father?’ Calcagorta asked sarcastically.
Agustin put a hand to his mouth and turned his head away. He could not say for shame what he knew in that ghastly moment would lie in his mind’s eye like a mote and accompany his nightmares for the rest of his life. Then Calcagorta addressed another question to him.
‘And what of that other piece of human flotsam?’ he asked the Franciscan, indicating Iago who hung in his bonds like an imitation and blasphemous re-enactment of Christ crucified. ‘Have you finished with him?’
‘Excellency!’
Calcagorta looked up. The men who had chased the dwarf into the forest were remerging from the shadow of the trees. Inexplicably they had all stopped and several were pointing. Calcagorta turned to see what they were indicating.
Behind them the beach was dark with Chamorro warriors. They were advancing slowly in perfect silence; some wore elaborate feather-plumed headdresses; all bore spears.
‘Jesus Christ,’ breathed Calcagorta, crossing himself and lugging out his sword. ‘To me, men, rally around me or we are all lost!’
Behind him he heard Fray Agustin begin to pray as the men under the trees ran forward. Those still stupefied by the sight of the body of the woman they had just violated turned away from the horror. The Spaniards closed on their captain-general and waited for the Chamorro attack.
Iago had no perfect recollection of that morning beyond a vague memory of sunlight following the agonized hours of the night and something terrible happening after water had been thrown over him. He had a vague recollection around a sudden appearance of Ah Fong, but much of this remained mercifully lost beneath the pressing preoccupation of pain. Only when the noise of the furious fighting began did he stir and rally.
Outnumbered by the Chamorros, Calcagorta’s stand was – judged by the odds – a demonstration of the man’s raw courage. He and the last of his companions fought furiously for their lives as instinct and their martial training had conditioned them to. All were wounded before they were killed, and though some died quickly others had ends as painful and humiliating as that of Ah Fong.
In the end it was the stink of it all that finally revived Iago, who raised his head at last to regard the carnage strewn about him. The stench, the steam from the body of Olalde and others opened up by Chamorro weapons, the buzz of the flies that this shambles attracted and the sight of the Chamorros picking over the fallen enemy made him think he was dead and this was Hell. He was, he thought, on the edge of the Inferno and the brown and near-naked men who walked among the dead and dying appeared like so many under-devils, Satan’s henchmen in quest of souls to burn. Among this extraordinary sight he failed to distinguish the pallid form of Ah Fong as she remained, head lolling to one side, tied to the tree to his right.
Instead his returning consciousness – insofar as it could cope with anything other than an all-consuming pain – became occupied with the crowd which grew around him. He was vaguely aware that this was not the first such gathering, but that it was different from the last. Slowly his reason asserted itself and he recalled that what was missing was a threatening figure and then, as if by some magical process, that figure was shoved forward.
Somehow Iago appreciated that matters were different now. The black-habited man was no longer haranguing him. Instead he was on his knees with two of the under-devils bent over him. And the glitter of armour, the red smiles of lips half-concealed by beards and the swaggering, slashed-silken splendour was absent from this crowd. This assembly was bigger too, indeed it seemed to grow constantly as it washed up to stare at the disembowelled figure of Olalde at Iago’s feet.
‘Is that Olalde?’ he asked at last, but his voice was only a cracked whisper and in the general noise of excitement no one heard him, not even the kneeling Agustin who was confronting his own crucifix which one of the two be-plumed men beside him was holding in his face.
It took some time before the terrified Agustin realized the blasphemous connection the ignorant savages were making between the Saviour of Mankind and the heretic bound to the natural stake God had planted for his execution. To the Franciscan the similarity of Iago to the crucified Christ was far less obvious than to the Chamorros. But in due course he made the intellectual connection, feeling a spark of understanding pride before roundly and vehemently denying the appalling and erroneous comparison.
Shaking his head and expressing his negative horror so violently that spittle flew from his lips, Agustin felt the hands of the Chamorro release him. He fell forward, tears of fright, relief and abject misery seeping from his shut eyes on to the dry earth beneath him. Stepping towards the palm tree, the Chamorros cut Iago’s bonds so that he in turn fell forward helplessly like a sack of onions, to lie beside Agustin, their heads scarcely a foot away from each other.
This was how Ximenez and Olivera found them a little later, after the crowd of Indians had dispersed. During the fighting the escaping Ximenez had run to Olivera’s village and roused the pilot from his sickbed against the vociferous protests of the old woman. Helping Olivera to his feet, Ximenez explained himself and Olivera – with a mighty effort of that indomitable will that had brought the Santa Margarita to her final anchorage – rose to the demands of friendship. Hardly able to walk at first, Olivera made better progress as his circulation revived and he felt the benefit of the exercise.
‘Is it not ironic,’ he gasped as he tried to hurry after the capering and impatient Ximenez, ‘at the moment of Don Iago’s extremity, you have done me good.’
‘But I killed the master’s wife,’ wailed Ximenez, dashing the tears from his twisted face. He was beside himself with the urgency of the occasion, furious that Olivera could hobble no faster, but aware that only Olivera could do anything to save Iago’s life as well as his own. He had brought the pilot back with him in the vain hope that Olivera could mediate. On their way they had met the fleeing Sancho, the last Franciscan lay brother, and by now the very last of the Holy Ones. Seeing Ximenez approaching, Sancho had stood stock-still in terror for his life at the hands of the dwarf, before falling to his knees and crossing himself repeatedly until reassured by Ximenez that he meant him no harm. Neither Ximenez nor Olivera understood what Sancho meant by his babbling account of the Chamorro attack until Ximenez drew Olivera’s attention to the faint noise of shouting coming from the beach ahead of them.
By the time they found the scene of the bloody skirmish only a few of the older men and some women remained on the beach, stripping the dead Spanish and carrying off the bodies of a dozen or so Chamorros. Olivera recoiled in horror at the sight of Ah Fong and Olalde and at first they thought both Agustin and Iago were dead, until the former moved and Sancho rushed to his side.
‘Get them water,’ Olivera commanded, almost restored to his old, energetic self and adding ‘At once,’ as the lay brother hesitated.
Agustin came to, staring at the head of Iago, whose eyes opened only when Ximenez moistened his lips. With infinite care the dwarf patiently worked his master up into a sitting position with his back against the tree to which he had so recently been tied. Iago cried out with the agony of returning circulation and the sh
ooting pains that every move caused but at last, as he settled against the palm bole, the waves of pain began to subside.
It was then that he saw Ah Fong.
Arrocheros walked on to the scene of the carnage he had caused to find Ximenez, Agustin and Sancho burying the severed body of the slender Chinese girl. He laughed to see Don Iago Fernandez sitting weeping against the palm tree, and laughed even louder to see the busy dwarf labouring furiously to disguise the stream of tears running down his own face. Had Ximenez not dropped his knife in his retreat from his mercy killing of Ah Fong, he would have plunged it into Don Baldivieso’s stomach and disembowelled the merchant as he had the sergeant-major, but Agustin and Sancho restrained him and in due course Arrocheros simply squatted and watched. Kneeling at Iago’s side Olivera, who could do little more, occupied himself chafing Iago’s limbs. Although still in pain from his legs, he was no longer a prostrated man.
As the three men finished Ah Fong’s burial and crossed themselves for the last time over the low mound under which she lay buried, Iago looked up.
‘Tell me what has happened.’
The three of them looked from one to another and then at the ground. Olivera shook his head. ‘Don Iago . . .’ he began but faltered and stared out over the battleground of the bloody beach with its corpses already crisping in the hot sunshine of noontide.
‘Ah Fong . . .’ a puzzled Iago began, a memory emerging from his pain like a ghost rising from marsh gas, ‘what happened to Ah Fong?’
At this plaintive query Ximenez shuffled like a dog across the ground between Ah Fong’s grave and his master, burying his head against Iago and almost nuzzling up to him in an animal act of abject submission as his back heaved with mighty sobs.
‘Master, oh, master . . . Forgive me, master!’ he sobbed.
Iago shook his head with incomprehension. ‘What is there to forgive?’ he asked falteringly.
‘I killed her, master. I, the dwarf Ximenez, spawn of Satan and eater of dog’s turds . . . It was I who killed her . . .’
The Disastrous Voyage of the Santa Margarita Page 29