Still far from shore, the longboats’ passage blocked by a coral reef, Magallanes ordered us to drop anchor. “The tide is too low. From here we walk. Remove your leg armor.”
After doing his bidding, I dropped into the sea. Water lapped around my thighs, cool at first, quickly turning warm. Rodrigo handed me my weapons and then lowered himself into the water.
In the pale light of dawn, forty-eight men followed Magallanes. The gunners stayed in the longboats to provide covering fire from the swivel guns. None of us spoke, but we all knew that once we reached but halfway to shore, we would be out of range of the swivel guns. I wondered why we had not waited for high tide.
It took us an eternity to wade to shore in the dim morning light. My legs grew heavy. I stumbled over coral, sharp as daggers, hidden beneath the shallows. Under my armor, moisture drenched my clothing, whether from sweat or from the splashing of water I knew not. My breath came in gasps and the thud of my heart sounded in my ears.
We reached shore silently, without opposition. Magallanes waited until all forty-eight men stood on the beach.
Then he ordered the village burned.
A seaman lit a torch and set the first hut ablaze. It caught quickly and the flames snapped and black smoke roiled as the seaman ran to the next hut. And the next. Soon, twenty huts burned like giant torches and still we saw no natives. The village was deserted.
As the seaman thrust his torch into yet another hut, a black object hurtled toward him. I stared while he staggered back and fell, an arrow protruding from his throat.
Immediately the woods to either side of us erupted with natives. They poured toward us like flame, their mouths open, screaming, terrifying. All became bedlam. Chaos. The whine of arrows. The crack of armor. The snap of crossbows. Screams of dying men. Stones falling like rain. The deafening roar in my ears. The smell of blood, sharp, sickening. My own fear. Knotted. Writhing in my bowels.
O Mother Mary! God in Heaven!
There were hundreds of them. Thousands.
“Retreat! Retreat!” cried Magallanes. He began to back away from the village toward the beach. He slashed at the natives with giant swings of his sword. Along with Rodrigo, Enrique, and several others, I flanked his side. Loaded my crossbow. Fired. Again. Again.
We reached the water. I ran out of crossbow bolts and tossed away the crossbow, pulling my sword from its sheath. I held it in front of me with both hands. Protect him at all costs. You are a warrior.
I glanced behind us, toward the waiting longboats, and what I saw caused my heart to freeze with horror. The rest of our men, twenty, thirty of them, had fled in panic. Already they were halfway to the longboats. “Cowards!” I screamed to their backs. “Cowards!”
By now the natives knew which one was our leader. They hurled their spears at Magallanes, and when the weapons glanced off his armor, they picked up their spears and hurled them again.
Back we stumbled into the water. Warmth lapped around my knees.
They knocked off the captain-general’s helmet. I fetched it from the water and thrust it back on his head. My arms wearied. My muscles screamed. Still I raised my sword and slashed.
You are a warrior.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash. Heard a strangled cry. Then Rodrigo went down. A spear through his throat. I screamed, dropped my sword, and fell by his side. “Rodrigo!” I raised his head from the water. “He’s drowning! He’s drowning!” A wisp of blood spilled from around the spear.
“He is dead! Leave him! Re—” The voice of Magallanes cut off as an arrow pierced his thigh. He cursed with pain. “Mateo!” he gasped. “Retreat! I order you!”
I cried with anguish and laid Rodrigo back into the water. As I fished for my sword, a blow hit me on the back of my head, knocking my helmet away. Another blow, and the waters beneath me swirled in a haze of blue.
Someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me to my feet. Into my hands someone thrust a sword. Again I swung. Again. And with each swing I screamed like a man gone mad.
A man fighting in front of Magallanes twirled around suddenly, and a strange light entered his eyes. With a creak of armor, he crumpled to the waters and sank beneath them.
Magallanes bellowed like a bull and his sword flashed and the head of the native who had slain this man splattered into two pieces. Magallanes charged through the natives, away from the longboats, screaming for us to retreat.
Protect him at all costs!
I lurched toward him, but I was too late.
A flash of light.
A spear.
It flew through the air and struck the captain-general in the face. At the same time a native slashed Magallanes’s leg with a knife and he fell into the water. “Retreat!” was the last word we heard him cry.
I screamed.
Someone grabbed my arm. “Mateo! Hurry, or we will all be slain!”
As I followed, stumbling over coral, lurching toward the longboats, I glanced over my shoulder. A swarm of natives surrounded our captain-general, savagely thrusting their spears into his throat, his legs, his arms. Again a wail of anguish burst from my throat.
Magallanes was dead.
XXII
April 28–May 1, 1521
I lay in a stupor.
I lay like a rat on my sleeping mat, breathing the foulness of below deck. My head ached fiercely. Dull throbs, together with sharp, stabbing pain, pierced my skull. The back of my neck burned and swelled from where a poisoned arrow had grazed it.
I did not care.
I tossed upon my mat, listening to the moans of other injured men, realizing that some of the moans came from me, from deep inside. I could not get the image of a young man from my mind.
The hurtling speed of the spear. His strangled, cut-off cry. His face as I raised it from the water. And when I finally fell into a feverish, shivering sleep, still the image was there. The young man’s eyes filled with blood. In my dream his lips moved and he begged me to remove the spear. “Please, Mateo, please.” I tried to pull the spear from his throat. I pulled and pulled but my arms were too weak. The tide too strong. The water too deep. I could do nothing but let him go and watch him sink beneath the waves, his lips still moving, shedding tears of blood.
I awoke, trembling, crying, chilled with fever. And when I finally pushed the image of the young man from me, another took its place.
A man like my father. Dark, short, limping. A man I loved. He, too, lay injured in the water. He turned toward me, his brooding eyes so sad, so filled with pain, with defeat. He held out his hand and called to me to save him. But when I tried to go to him, someone held me back and I could not move. Then he was surrounded. They beat him and stabbed him. He flailed weakly and then lay still. And the stain in the water blossomed like a crimson flower.
I gasped, awakening.
An injured man beside me groaned. He, too, suffered from the bite of a poisoned arrow, his face so swollen he could not open his eyes. He could scarce open his mouth to talk. “They have taken our light,” he cried. Tears dropped from the slits of his eyes to the sleeping mat. “They have taken our comfort, our true guide. Alas, without him we are lost.”
Another man lay across from me, his back to the hull. A pain slashed through my skull, sharp and jarring, and I knew his name: Enrique, the slave of Magallanes. He, too, lay wounded, yet he never seemed to sleep. Always, always he stared straight ahead, dry-eyed, at nothing. Perhaps, like me, he suffered from a poison in the heart.
I don’t know how long I had lain there—one day, two days, three—when a man with a jagged scar across his nose came to see Enrique. He stood over him with a lantern and we blinked like moles.
He prodded Enrique’s ribs with a booted foot. “Get up.”
Enrique did nothing, stared at nothing.
“Get up. The fleet is preparing to sail. We need you to negotiate with Humabon for some native pilots to lead us to the Spice Islands.”
When Enrique again did nothing, the man cursed and sai
d, “I am captain of the flagship. I am the one who gives the orders now, and you’d do best to follow them.”
Enrique said, “I am injured.”
“You are not so injured you cannot walk and talk.”
Enrique focused on the man who towered above him. “I am no longer a slave. My master wrote in his will that upon his death I was to be freed. As a free man, I choose to stay here and recover from my injury. It is a right afforded any sailor.”
The captain cursed. He reached down and savagely grabbed Enrique’s neck with one hand. “You think you are a free man?” he snarled. “Think again. I promise upon my soul that when we return to Spain, you will remain a slave to the widow of Magallanes! Not one day will pass in your life in which you can call yourself a free man! Now get out of your filthy bed and obey me or I shall have you flogged before the entire crew!”
A silence hung between them, reeking of hatred. Then, like a ghost rising from its grave, Enrique pushed the captain aside and got to his feet. He swayed slightly. “You will be sorry for this,” he hissed before he climbed the companion ladder and left.
The captain stared after him. Then, as if realizing for the first time that we watched him, he smiled and shrugged at us. “One must be firm with slaves, lest they become useless with their whining,” he said with a wink.
The next morning, I staggered out on deck, blinking and squinting, unaware until that moment that my cheeks were slick with tears. I wiped my face on my sleeve. Unable to stop myself, I glanced to see if Magallanes paced the quarterdeck, if perhaps Rodrigo stoked the fire in the sandbox, waiting to tell me a great joke. But they were nowhere . . . nowhere. My heart pressed flat, drained.
My captain . . .
My blood brother . . .
Dead . . .
The man with the swollen face stood by the rail. Today I could see his eyes through puffy slits and followed his gaze to where he looked. Several boats, filled with about thirty of our men, had left the ships and now landed at the docks of Cebu.
“Where are they going?” I asked, my voice cracked and hoarse.
“They have been invited ashore for a feast. Rajah Humabon has promised a gift of jewels.”
“Jewels?”
“Aye. They were earlier promised to Magallanes. Rubies, diamonds, pearls, gold nuggets even.”
Before, such mention of jewels would have made me giddy with wanting. Now, jewels seemed a tarnished possession. I would give all the jewels in the world if it would bring Rodrigo and Magallanes back.
I watched as a delegation from Humabon greeted our crew. Then Serrano, Espinosa, the scar-nosed captain, the padre, and other high-ranking officers disappeared into the city.
The man with the swollen face spoke, “It is said Rajah Humabon cried like a baby when he witnessed Magallanes’s death.”
My vision clouded and I said nothing, remembering.
“He sat in his canoe with his thousand warriors surrounding him and wept until his tears were gone. He must have loved the captain-general deeply, as did I. It is said he begged the ruler of Mactan to release the body of Magallanes, but the ruler refused, saying he would not give up the body of such a man for anything and that he would display it as a memorial to his triumph.”
Smoke from the fires of the great banquet hovered over Cebu. Fishermen, normally gone in their canoes this time of morning, sat motionless on the beach, silent, as if waiting for something. Occasionally one of them glanced at us, gazing at everything from our hull to the pennants hanging lifeless on the halyards high above.
It was then I realized the native children were gone. Normally, they swarmed the shores. Brown-skinned girls and boys surrounded any sailor who stepped ashore, holding out their hands for trinkets. But not today. Today the beaches were silent. A city in mourning.
Suddenly, there appeared on the beach two figures I recognized: Espinosa and a man named Carvalho, the pilot of the Concepción . They ran across the beach, climbed into separate skiffs, and began to row—Carvalho to the Victoria and Espinosa to the Trinidad . When Espinosa climbed aboard, I asked him what was the matter. Why had he returned from the banquet so soon?
“There is something wrong on the island today. Carvalho felt it, too. We’ve returned for our weapons. We think it might be—”
A sudden scream shattered the air.
“—an ambush! ” hissed Espinosa.
Screams thundered in my ears. Savage screams of natives. Screams of dying men. My scalp prickled.
“All hands! All hands!” ordered Espinosa.
“Dear God,” screamed the man with the swollen face. “They’re killing them all!”
“Cut the anchor cables!” Espinosa cried. “Bring the ship in close!”
The deck of the Trinidad erupted with the few men left. We ran in confusion, some slashing the anchor cables, some raising sail, some loading the cannon, some falling to their knees. As I hacked at the anchor cable, sobbing, the wails of my shipmates filled my ears, “Dear God, help them! Serrano, the captains, the astrologer, the padre, so many! Dear God, dear God, dear God, help us . . .”
“Fire a broadside into the city!”
Cannon roared and the deck beneath my feet shuddered.
The air filled with black, rolling smoke and the acrid stench of gunpowder.
The beach swarmed with chaos. Through the smoke I saw one of our men stumble toward the ships, shouting something. A native shoved him from behind. He staggered and then dropped to his knees in the sand.
“Cease fire!” ordered Espinosa.
It was Captain Serrano. He was stripped and bleeding, his hands tied behind his back. Behind him stood the natives.
Then, as the smoke cleared, I saw what I had not seen before.
Enrique.
He stood among the natives, unhurt.
Captain Serrano said, “They are dead. All of them. All except the padre and that lying Enrique.” The words spat from his mouth. “Their throats have been cut. We have been betrayed.”
“Betrayed? Why? Why would Enrique do such a thing? Why would Humabon?” Carvalho spoke from aboard the Victoria, which had drawn alongside us. I realized that besides Serrano, Carvalho was now the senior officer of the fleet.
“They say our Christian god is worthless. They say he did not save Magallanes and he will not save us now.” A native kicked Serrano in the jaw and he fell to the sand.
I crossed myself.
Enrique stepped forward. “For the release of Serrano, Humabon demands two artillery pieces.”
“Traitor!” screamed Carvalho.
Enrique’s eyes narrowed. He shrieked his words, his voice shrill. “You dare call me a traitor? Who was it who refused to fight alongside my master? Who was it who watched from the safety of their vessels while my master was slain? Who ignored the will of my master, treating me like a dog? You are all traitors!”
“No, Carvalho.” Serrano struggled to sit up in the sand. Blood trickled from his mouth. “Do not pay their ransom. They plan to seize whoever brings the ransom ashore. Again it is a trap.” Several natives fell upon him, beating him with their fists, kicking his ribs. “Go!” he cried. “Leave me! There is nothing you can do! Better I should die than the whole fleet perish! As senior officer, I order you to depart at once!”
Like a drowning man gasping for breath before sinking beneath the waves, Serrano shouted his words to us, then disappeared under the flailing fists.
XXIII
May 1–28, 1521
Madness.
Utter madness.
We wandered—lost, alone, grieving—among many islands. Hundreds of them. Thousands, perhaps. Their beaches the same. Their trees the same. Some deserted. Some inhabited. Always we asked, Which way to the Spice Islands? Without Enrique, they could not understand us. We could not understand them.
Madness.
We beached and unloaded the Concepción and then set her afire. Men who had been her crew, who had tended her as if she were a lover, cried openly, weeping to see her
timbers devoured by flame. Of the two hundred seventy-seven men who had embarked from Spain so long ago, only one hundred eight remained—a scant crew, enough to man but two vessels.
It is the way of the sea . . .
Espinosa was captain of the Victoria. Carvalho, as senior officer, was captain-general of the fleet and now captain of the Trinidad .
Already we hated Carvalho.
We hated his pointed nose, his pointed eyebrows, his thin lips. We hated his laugh; he laughed like a dog barks. We hated the fact that he drank rice wine at all hours. We hated him because he had turned coward and left Captain Serrano to his fate, a man who had been loyal to Magallanes from the beginning. We hated Carvalho because he had not even attempted a rescue, had not blown the natives to bits with our cannon. We hated him because he knew not where he was going and so blundered from island to island like a man gone blind. Most of all, we hated him because he was not Magallanes.
Such madness. All of us, mad.
Carvalho ordered us to capture and loot all vessels, as if we were pirates, as if we had never served under such a noble man as Magallanes. Angry, under orders, we attacked junks and captured the people aboard. We kept their goods, always asking, Which way to the Spice Islands?
I lived a personal nightmare of madness as well, forced to live my life whether I willed it or not. I moved my arms, my legs, breathed, sat, ate, as though watching myself from a distance. My mouth flapped like a puppet’s, speaking words that came from far away. And whenever I slept, I awoke thrashing, my chest heaving, dripping with sweat. There were too many, Rodrigo, too many. Forgive me, brother. I should never have let you go.
Once we captured a native who painted my face with strange markings. The man pricked my cheek with a clawlike thorn. Then, using tiny, skilled stitches, he pulled soot-coated thread through my skin with a needle. After a few swirls on my cheekbone, I paid him in trinkets. The next day my face reddened and swelled. At first, my shipmates laughed and called me a fool. But after a week, my swellings disappeared and my scabbings healed and fell. Then they admired my design, saying that, along with my wild hair, it made me look savage and fearsome.
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