Magallanes frowned. “What do you mean?”
Now I fumbled for words, embarrassed, wishing I had not asked. “Minchaca and Segrado, you know, and—and that—that night at the council meeting when I was caught, you know—” My face heated with the memory. I looked away, unable to meet his gaze. What a fool I am! Now he will think me a liar, a spy, and an idiot besides!
“Mateo, on the night of the council meeting, when they first brought you before me, I knew not what to believe. I admit, I was angry. But there was something not right. Something was wrong, something foul, and I knew Cartagena was somehow involved.”
Astonished, I stared at him. “You knew? You knew Cartagena ordered us to do what we did? That we had no choice?”
“Perhaps not entirely, but I knew enough to stay the hand of execution. It was not right that two boys should perish.”
“But Rodrigo spat upon your boot!”
The captain-general’s face darkened. “Aye. It took much control not to have him slain. But”—Magallanes smiled, and a faraway look stole over his face—“my own infant son is named Rodrigo. It would be an evil omen to stain the name with blood, especially if that blood be innocent.”
My mouth hung open. I knew I looked idiotic but could not help myself. Magallanes had known! For all these weeks while I suffered from shame, always wondering what he thought of me, he had known! “Then what about the flogging and the five days in the stocks?”
He waved his hand. “Regulation, only—the standard punishment for resisting a marine. Also a lesson, perhaps, that a boy your age should know better than to get involved with native women. But no matter. It is finished, and I trust it will not happen again.” He lay back and closed his eyes. “Sing me another song, Mateo. Sing until you can sing no more, for tonight, tonight I am triumphant.”
XI
February 2-March 31, 1520
“He is a stubborn man,” said Rodrigo. “Portuguese and stubborn. Any fool with eyes and a grain of sense would realize this is not el paso. It is nothing but a river.”
It was true. After several weeks of exploration, even Magallanes had to admit it. “Turn the ships around,” he said, suddenly seeming years older.
Like Magallanes, I tasted bitter disappointment, as if my mouth filled with ashes. His triumph had turned to failure. What would we do now? What would Magallanes do now that he knew this was not the passage? Would we ever find the passage? Did such a passage even exist?
Back at the entrance, a conference was called. The captains and pilots urged Magallanes to turn east and head toward the Spice Islands by the known route, around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. “At least by that route we will arrive,” they said. “At least by that route the expedition will not be a total failure. We will return with spices for the king.”
The crew had other ideas. “Return to Brazil for the winter,” they begged, I along with them, already feeling Aysó’s warmth and her smooth skin. “When the weather improves in a couple of months, we can sail farther south and try to find the strait again.”
The captain-general’s face hardened. “We continue south now,” he said.
The entire crew broke out in protest.
Beside me, Rodrigo spat and narrowed his eyes. “Here we go again,” he whispered. “Like I said, Portuguese and stubborn. It was a sorry day I signed for this voyage.”
“Silence!” barked Magallanes. “We shall go on!” Then his face softened. “Despair not, my friends. The strait is not here, but we will surely find it a few miles farther down the coast. We will sail through it and spend the rest of winter among the islands of the South Sea, where even the cooking pots are made of gold and the women surpass those of Brazil in beauty.”
With that, Magallanes dismissed us. It was decided: we would continue southward.
“If Cartagena were our captain-general,” mumbled Rodrigo as we prepared for departure, “we would be home by now.”
“Dead, more than likely,” I replied.
“Everyone except the captain-general knows there is no passage. He is a blind fool.”
“How do you know there’s no passage? Have you sailed down the coast and checked for yourself?”
“It is common knowledge.”
“Common to whom?”
“It is what everyone is saying.”
“They may say that, but they know nothing.”
“If you are so smart, Mateo, then tell me what makes you think there is a passage, besides your stupid faith in the captain-general? If you ask me, you’re the one who knows nothing.”
As I hurried off to batten down Magallanes’s quarters, my stomach tightened. Rodrigo is right, I realized. I know nothing. None of us know. Not even the captain-general.
Even before we had reached the entrance to the false passage, we were farther south in latitude than the Cape of Good Hope in Africa.
Cold winds gusted across our decks, whistling through the rigging, ripping the sails apart until they hung like rags. Sleet, hail—weather such as I’d never seen before—pounded us. Ice clung to the rigging, ghostly white. Mountainous waves tossed the ships like empty bottles. Sandbars, reefs, and rocky atolls lay beneath the surface like sea monsters.
The captain-general insisted we probe each inlet. Searching, always searching, for el paso, the passage to the South Seas. He paced the quarterdeck, limping, his clothes caked in ice, his hair and beard heavy with icicles. He crackled when he moved—we all did—and sometimes the ice dropped from his clothes, shattering like glass. Magallanes never slept more than four turns of the sandglass at once. And, like us, he never ate a hot meal. A hot meal was impossible—the winds blew out all shivering attempts to light a fire.
I slept with my rosary, with Rodrigo huddled beside me. Even between the fo’c’sle and the main deck, I suffered from cold. Waves washed over the decks, and I would burst from sleep, gasping, dreaming I was drowning.
For two hundred leagues we did not see another human being. It is not surprising, we said among ourselves, for who could live upon this desolate land? The shore was rocky and barren. We reeled through snowstorms in search of a harbor. It was not to be found. Reefs guarded the steep beaches. Waves half the height of our tallest mast crashed into the shores.
Everything I touched was frozen. My hands cracked and bled. I lost three fingernails. Rodrigo lost two. I was always wet, chafed, raw—like a piece of meat. Salt water made the chafing worse, causing sores that bled and oozed. I winced every time I moved.
And to our confusion, the days grew shorter as February turned to March. This was not supposed to happen. We did not understand. Surely the weather would improve and the days grow longer, for spring was fast approaching. Yet the farther south we went, the more the weather pounded our ships and flattened our hearts. It seemed winter would never end.
Thoughts of Aysó now seemed but a dream. A dream of something long ago. A warm dream that mocked my chilling nights.
One cheerless gray day, when the wind whistled in my ears until they screamed with pain, we anchored in a small bay, rugged and ugly, where the rocks jutted from the ground like bones. On the shore were strange animals that I had never seen before. As I brought out my inks, Espinosa approached. “Mateo, Rodrigo, come with me in the skiff. The captain-general has asked us to find wood and water.”
Rodrigo and I rowed quickly, anxious to reach land.
We scraped bottom and jumped out. Immediately the animals erupted into an awful wailing, a barking almost. I clutched my dagger, ready to kill if one attacked. Up close they appeared ferocious and their teeth looked very sharp. Seawolves, we called them. They were fat, furred animals, forced to slither on the ground. Instead of legs they had a kind of hand, one on each side, which they used to propel themselves forward. Now they fled with a deafening noise, galloping away on their bellies, some flopping into the water. There was also a strange bird, a kind of black-and-white goose that waddled upright but did not fly. It had been a long time since I had tasted fresh meat and my mouth
watered to see these animals.
It did not take us long to discover there was no wood or water ashore, at least none that we found. But before we could return to the Trinidad, a great storm arose.
Blinding snow peppered my eyes. The wind howled. We stumbled in the direction of the skiff, clinging to each other so we would not be separated. Espinosa, then Rodrigo, then me. I could see nothing. My hands, maybe. Or Rodrigo’s shoulders. How could we return to the ship if we could see nothing?
It seemed forever that we stumbled about. My teeth chattered. My lungs ached. My nose and fingers grew numb. Surely we should have reached the skiff by now. Then Espinosa’s face loomed out of the whiteness, ghostly, as if detached from his body. “We’re lost!” he cried, his voice snatched away in the shriek of the wind. “We’ve been walking in circles! We must find shelter and wait out the storm! Follow me!”
My heart began to beat wildly. We staggered on. And through the whiteness I heard sudden movements, first here, then there. Seawolves. Perhaps the beasts would devour us.
And then we were there. A jumble of boulders, a cave almost. Espinosa disappeared into its center. Then Rodrigo. I entered and caught my breath. Masses of seawolves surrounded us. “We will shelter here,” cried Espinosa. And while I fumbled for my dagger, my heart thudding, my ears filled with their barking, imagining their teeth sinking into me, he slaughtered four of them. The rest scattered, slithering out of the shelter. “Gather their warmth while you can!”
Cursing and sweating, the three of us pulled the bodies around us until we sat in their center, huddled together for warmth. Curls of steam rose from the carcasses. Blood pooled under me. It soaked into my breeches, my boots. “What now?” I asked, shivering.
“We wait until the storm ends,” answered Espinosa, his breath steaming.
I gaped at him. “But some storms last for days!”
“Aye.”
“But—but—” I stammered. “What can we do? We have no water. We have no food, unless, of course, we eat them . . . raw.” I prodded the beast behind me.
Espinosa sighed heavily. “For now, you must stay awake. For in cold such as this, sleep means death.”
“That’s all?” I asked.
“Aye.”
I glanced at Rodrigo. “It’s your fault,” I said. I was only half-joking.
Rodrigo scowled. “My fault? How can this be my fault?”
“Remember when we were about to die in that storm? I promised God one-half of my riches to further His work, while you promised only one-third. This is His vengeance.”
“Pah! I always thought you were a fool, Mateo, and now I know it is true. Besides, that was a long time ago, before we even reached Brazil. If God wanted me dead, He would have killed me long ago.”
I shrugged. “God is patient. He waited for the right time to punish you.” When I saw a shadow of fear cross his face, I laughed. “I am teasing, Rodrigo. It is a joke.”
“A poor joke.”
“I thought it funny.” I wrapped my coat as tightly around me as I could and moved closer to Rodrigo, leaning back against one of the carcasses. I could no longer feel my feet. Already they had turned to ice, sitting in pools of frozen blood.
“If you would like to hear a good joke,” said Rodrigo a while later, his teeth chattering, “listen to this. Why does Magallanes keep wandering around?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because he is lost.”
“That is not funny.”
“Neither was yours.”
The sound of the wind filled my ears. Cold crept through me until I could feel nothing, not my legs, nor my hands. All of us shivered uncontrollably. Even Espinosa.
Each hour, each minute, shrouded with ice. I tried to talk, to keep awake, but my mind kept wandering, and I found myself staring at nothing. Thinking nothing.
Sometime during the night, Rodrigo mumbled, “One-half. I will give one-half.”
But I did not understand because a great heaviness pressed upon me and I grew sleepy, as if I were being sucked into the watery eye of a whirlpool. Come, Mateo, it beckoned.
Come . . . come to where it is warm.
. . . Blessed warmth.
Leave the cold behind.
. . . Heat. Stones. Ávila.
There is nothing for you here.
. . . Tomás. María.
Here you are alone.
. . . I am coming home.
Then a face leaned over me, and I heard a voice calling, “Mateo! Mateo! You must awaken!” Someone shook me again and again. Go away, I thought angrily. Leave me.
“You must fight it, Mateo! Awaken now before it is too late!”
Warmth slithered through me, pulling me down, away, away. Come . . . come . . . , it whispered. You need be cold no longer. You need no longer be alone. Come . . .
No! I thought. No! I don’t want to die! I want to live! Someday I shall return to Spain! Suddenly, like an arrow piercing my ribs, I became aware of pain—excruciating pain. My body shrieked with cold.
“Help me!” I cried, hot tears coursing from between my frozen eyelids.
I was dragged from the shelter. Seawolves scattered, barking. Thousands of birds took to the air, their wings thrumming like the beat of my heart. I blinked in the glare of sunlight, scarce able to stand. And I realized in that moment how close I had come to death. Espinosa had saved my life. I clung to him; I clung to Rodrigo, thinking, I am not alone.
“Come!” cried Espinosa. Together the three of us stumbled toward the shore.
At least fifty seawolves littered the beach, each dead in a bath of blood. Men skinned the carcasses. One of our shipmates looked up and saw us. “There they are! We’ve found them!” They hurried to help us and we collapsed into their blood-soaked arms.
On the last day of March, a cleft opened in the coast. The entrance looked forbidding, but Magallanes ordered the Trinidad forward with a wave of his hand. After sliding over a bar, the ship’s bottom scraping sand, we hove to in a bleak harbor, surrounded by towering cliffs.
Magallanes scanned the harbor. He sent Espinosa, Rodrigo, and me ashore. After we returned with a report of both fresh water and wild game, he said in a voice as stark as the shoreline, “I am pleased. We will stay here.”
XII
March 31-April 2, 1520
Mutiny. . . .
It swirled around us like the wind. Merciless. Sweeping down from the plain and howling between the cliffs that encircled the bay. We stood onshore, surrounded by the stench of utter desolation.
Addressing the entire fleet’s company, Magallanes ordered dwellings built.
In response there was nothing but silence. Silence, and that bone-numbing wind. Already my feet were frozen. Now, with a look of steel upon his face, as if smelted in a forge instead of a womb, he ordered rations cut immediately as a precaution.
A deafening cry arose.
“Take us back to Spain!” many cried. “We have enough rations for the return trip. A new fleet can be assembled and then the search for el paso can resume!”
Magallanes pretended not to have heard. “I have named this harbor in honor of San Julián, whose day this is. As well you know, winters are prolonged in extreme latitudes. Therefore we will wait out the rest of winter here, provide our ships with needed repairs, and when the weather improves in a few weeks we will move on.”
“You are afraid,” yelled Cartagena. He had been released from his shackles to assemble with all ships’ companies. It had been many months since I had seen him. Now I tasted my hatred again, remembering how he had used me, how he had been willing to let me die.
Two marines flanked Cartagena on either side, but they could do nothing to keep him silent, and his voice rang through the vast wasteland. “You fear to return to the king with nothing to show. No riches, no passage to the west. You are obsessed with your search for el paso. On the flame of your ambition you will crucify us all!”
The captain-general addressed the assembly as if, again,
he had not heard. “I have received a report of game in the uplands— much game, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of beasts and fowl. Men, I promise you, we will not hunger. The sea teems with fish and shellfish. And as you can see, there is springwater and fire-wood and materials for building shelter. I assure you the shelters will be warmer than the ships, for we can relax before the fires and sup with bread and wine after our chores have been completed. Winter is almost over and—”
“No!” A sailor screamed. “You are a madman! Cartagena is right! You will kill us all! I demand you take us back to Spain!”
Magallanes whirled, his arm outstretched, his finger pointed. I saw the veins in his neck bulge as he roared, “¡Sed Preso!”
A stunned silence followed in which no one dared speak. The wind howled between us, shouting in every ear . . . ¡Sed Preso! . . . ¡Sed Preso! . . .
The marines grabbed the sailor, who now looked about him in panic. He struggled, crying, “Help me! Someone, please! Do not suffer this fool to lead us any longer! Why do you just stand there? Why do you not help me? You are cowards, all of you! Cowards—” There was a strange smack. The sound of wood against bone. The sailor’s knees buckled and he melted to the rocks.
Magallanes’s voice was calm and untroubled once again. “As I have said, winter will not last long, and when it ends, we shall find the passage to the South Seas, where it will only be a short distance, a few weeks at most, before we shall arrive at the Spice Islands.” He limped over to stand before Cartagena.
The Castilian drew himself up and towered over the captain-general.
“I would rather die than return to Spain empty-handed,” said Magallanes. “The king has entrusted me with this enterprise, and I am honor-bound to succeed. Did not the Vikings sail to Iceland, surviving treacherous fogs and seas of ice? If I must, I will sail until my ships are encased in ice and cannot move.” His voice now boomed off the cliffs. “I have heard that Castilians are famed for their pride and courage. Would you now tremble in a brisk wind, a few snowflakes, scurrying back to Spain like a child gone too long from home?”
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