The Salt Covenants

by Sylvia Bambola

  When this is done, Luis carries her outside so that all can greet Teresa Maria Vivar, the new member of Holy Mother Church.

  I am among the last to exit the church, and when I do, I find Antonio staring out at the Ocean Sea with such longing that I understand, for the first time, how much he desires to leave this place.

  Of the four ships in the harbor prior to the hurricane, only the Niña survived. The others were destroyed. For several months, shipwrights at the shipyard by the lagoon have been building two new vessels from the wreckage. I stand there now and watch. One ship, which seamen have nicknamed India, is nearly ready. A small crew seals her hull. Others work on the second vessel, scurrying about with spikes and bolts, and a gudgeon for the rudder.

  Many Tainos, imprisoned on the three lost ships, have died, but the great chief, Caonabo, is not among them. He still languishes in the bowels of the Niña. It is difficult to imagine how anyone can survive in the hold of a ship so long. I fill my mind with these thoughts because I do not want to think of Antonio. He has become distant. And no matter the coaxing, he will not reveal what troubles him. Nor will he touch me. Every month I immerse in the mikvah, and every Sabbath I remind him of our sages’ instructions that tell us a man and wife should do the holy deed on this day, but he will not heed.

  Have I become repugnant to him?

  He spends more time at the shipyard watching the men work than he does at home. And I do not know if it is to pass the time or to see how quickly the ships will be ready to sail to Castile. And my growing fear is that when they are, Antonio will want to sail with them.

  “Queen Isabela told me that at Prince Juan’s marriage, his wedding fleet will be one hundred and fifty ships strong, and carry thousands of soldiers. And here . . . here her Indies colony has but one small caravel.”

  I turn at the sound of Antonio’s voice. “But soon to be three.” I smile, determined not to be dreary.

  “Do you know how long it takes for a letter sent from Rome to reach Venice?”

  I shake my head.

  “Three days.” The muscles of Antonio’s face tighten. “Would that it took only three days to get from Isabela to . . . to . . . a place of civility and safety.”

  “You must miss Castile very much. Or is it the court you miss?”

  “The court?” Antonio’s voice is incredulous. “Where lies and intrigue rule? And where poets mock conversos, making rhymes, to everyone’s delight, of the food we eat, saying how the Host becomes twisted into eggplant casseroles and other such nonsense? Oh, how they delight in writing about how we eat chickpeas and fat and stuffed chicken necks! And you should hear what they say about our supposed sacks of money! Miss court? Hardly.”

  “Then, what is it? What is wrong? Is it your father you worry about? I know he has suffered greatly at the hands of the Inquisition, but . . . .”

  “Yes, I worry about Papa. He is old, and in ill-health, and I do not know how much longer he has to live.”

  “Then perhaps you should return to Castile.” I gulp air, for I feel as though I am drowning. “A father should not be deprived of his son’s company during his time of illness.” When there is no reply I turn and see surprise on Antonio’s face.

  “I could never leave you,” he says, as though my statement was utterly foolish. “And you cannot return to Seville as long as Fray Alonso is alive.” There is a long pause. “But I must confess the thought of living here has become detestable, for how can I keep you safe, Isabel? It drives me mad that I know of no place in this world where I can protect you.”

  “Life is hard in Isabela, but I think we are safe enough, and I am content.”

  “How can you be content in a place where you must work like a peasant?” Antonio’s mouth forms a bitter line. “How can you be content in a place where I cannot provide for you as I should? A place where you have nothing when I can afford to give you everything?”

  “I am content because I have you.” I stretch out my hand but he shakes his head and backs away. I move closer, but still he will not take my hand. “You once said though the world is cruel we must never be cruel to one another. Why, then, are you cruel now?”

  “Cruel? I am a man devoured by love. I almost lost you, Isabel. I cannot . . . I will not go through that again.”

  “But I lived,” I say, understanding for the first time my husband’s torment. “God was merciful. Let us rejoice in that. Come home with me and take comfort in my arms.” Again, I hold out my hand.

  Antonio shakes his head. “I will not give you another child, Isabel. I will never risk losing you again.”

  There is famine in the land. Tainos and Christians alike are starving. And everyone in Isabela repeats the old proverb regarding dearth, “If the lark flies overhead, she must take her grain of barley with her.”

  But this famine has come by our hands, and perhaps by the hands of the Just Judge Who sees all, and acts accordingly. Since the capture of the great king, Caonabo, Admiral Columbus has forced every Taino over the age of fourteen to pay tribute. The tribute is in the form of a large hawk’s bell full of gold, panned from the streams of the Vega Real or dug from the Cibao mountainsides. If the Tainos are unable to pay this, then they must give twenty-five pounds of spun cotton in its place, and this every three months.

  When a Taino pays his tribute, he is issued a copper or brass token to wear around his neck. Tainos caught without the token are punished by having their hands cut off, leaving them maimed for life, but more often, to bleed to death. Some soldiers have altered the punishment, out of boredom or cruelty I know not which. So instead of cutting off hands, they make wagers on how many strokes of the sword it will take to cut off a head or split a man in two.

  Can the Merciful One witness this and not pass judgment? Already we are losing His favor as evidenced by the poor harvests. Even Tainos have little food to steal, for the work needed to satisfy the tribute keeps them from planting their own crops or tending their mounds. It is a cruel irony that Tainos now steal food from our poor fields. The tribute system, along with our new Castilian diseases, and the harsh life of forced labor, are killing the Tainos at an alarming rate.

  But my mounds flourish. And I have gutted and removed the heads of so many fish, and dried them in the sun, that I have enough stockfish for Antonio and me to last well into the feast of the Three Kings.

  Maria and I have agreed not to sell our surplus crops. Instead, we give them away, first to those Castilians sick in the hospital, then to the maimed Tainos who cannot care for themselves. And whatever remains, we give to any in need.

  Many nobles and even peasants scour the land for food, but there is so little to be had you can scarcely find a fallen hog plum, even a rotten one, and many is the time I hear a soldier or peasant quote another old proverb, “Fruit by the roadside never gets ripe.”

  Juan and Luis, and sometimes Gonzalo, take turns protecting our mounds, sleeping at Marta by night and patrolling them by day. But since so much of the produce goes to the sick and needy, few attempts are made to pilfer them. Indeed, it is rumored many nobles have ordered that my mounds are not to be touched.

  “Praise be to God for His mercy,” I say, working alongside Maria. We have been at Marta all day, pulling weeds. “It is the dry season and still our mounds grow well.”

  “Yes, well enough that you need not work so hard. Certainly the bell has chimed None. Time to return to Isabela and prepare the evening meal.”

  “Just another mound or two, then we will go.” How can I tell Maria I do not want to return? That I come to Marta more than I need to in order to be away from Antonio? Antonio, who is always polite, always gentle, always distant. It breaks my heart, this wall between us, this wall that Antonio has erected and that I keep trying to tear down. Antonio and I—we who have been great friends and lovers—are becoming strangers. And though I have prayed for the Merciful One to intervene, I wonder if Antonio and I will ever be as we once were.

  Mateo’s voice floats through the do
orway of my hut as I approach. “I saw it once, the necklace King Fernando gave the Queen as a wedding gift. They say it is worth forty-thousand ducats.”

  “Perhaps when the king purchased it, but I think it far more valuable now.” It is Antonio’s voice.

  I wonder at their frivolous conversation, for while I have been tending the mounds at Marta, four new ships have anchored in Isabela’s harbor, all flying the flag of Castile and Leon.

  I step through the door, brimming with curiosity. “More ships, I see.”

  Antonio, who sits at the table, looks up and smiles. But I see the hurt in his eyes when he notices the dirt on my hands and face and clothing, dirt from working the mounds.

  “It is good to see you, Doña Isabel,” Mateo says, ladling some sort of fish stew into a bowl and placing it before Antonio.

  “I have asked Mateo to cook for us,” Antonio says. “But I fear it is another fish stew. Tomorrow, though, there will be beans and beef and rice and wheat and other good things to eat, for new supplies have come from Castile.”

  Mateo fills the washbasin for me, then bows and quietly leaves the hut.

  “The stew smells wonderful,” I say, stripping off my clothes and washing. “But I must confess I would rather fill my mouth with beans and beef, even if the dried beef always tastes like one of Gonzalo’s old leather jerkins.”

  “Oh? How long have you been nibbling on Gonzalo’s jerkins?”

  I laugh, and slip on a clean chemise and unloosen my hair. I care not that I am improperly dressed. I do not even bother tying the strings of my chemise. I so want Antonio and I to be casual and intimate, as we used to be.

  I take a seat opposite him, then quickly fill my mouth with stew, feeling perverse delight in finding it is not as good as the one I make.

  “It is not as tasty as yours,” Antonio says, as though reading my thoughts. For the first time in months I see merriment in his eyes. “But you should not have to cook after . . . .” He reaches and takes my free hand, turns it over, then runs his fingers across the calluses on my palm. “You work hard enough.”

  “Tell me about the ships,” I say, trying to change the subject. “Who has come? Torres?”

  “Would that it were. But no, it is Juan de Aguado.”

  “Someone you know?”

  “Yes, from court; an arrogant and ambitious man. He brings fresh supplies and livestock and many new settlers, and dozens of skilled craftsmen, including the master miner, Maestro Paolo.”

  “So what troubles you?”

  “Christopher Columbus was right. The complaints of Fray Buil and others have reached the ears of our Sovereigns. Queen Isabel has commissioned Aguado to find out why there is such discontentment here. And he has new orders from the Crown. But before reading them to the Governing Council, Aguado roundly denounced Christopher Columbus’s current absence from Isabela as well as his continuous exploration and quest for Quinsay while neglecting the trouble here. Don Bartolome was furious. And when Aguado began talking about the colony’s rations, and how precisely they must be allocated, as though the Crown suspected the Columbus brothers of stealing everyone’s food, Don Bartolome grew as white as one of your linens. Then when Aguado added to this insult by itemizing each man’s monthly ration, saying how they should include eight pounds of bacon, two pounds of cheese, four gallons of wine, wheat—about one and a half pounds, in addition to biscuits, beans, oil and vinegar, and of course, dried fish for the days of abstinence, I feared Don Bartolome would draw his sword. But no, he just sat there clutching the arms of his chair.”

  “Is Aguado’s coming so terrible? Perhaps he will bring sanity to Isabela, for he has what you do not: orders from our Sovereigns. Everyone is weary of Don Bartolome’s severity. He whips men for insubordination, and hangs others for stealing a small bowl of wheat. But soldiers can chop off Taino hands and heads without even a word of reproach from him.”

  “Isabel, we have been over this. There is nothing to be gained by doing it now. Yes, Don Bartolome is severe. But I fear Aguado will only foment more trouble, and make matters worse.” Antonio presses his palms against the table. “If only I could take you to safety. But where in this mad world is there such a place, where we can live in peace?” He rises to his feet. “I fear everything may fall apart now, and I must get you away before it does.”

  “You are not God, Antonio.”

  My husband is silent for a long time. And when he finally speaks, his voice is so strained, I tremble. “Once . . . I saw a man gored by a bull. It split him open from side to side. But he did not die right away, as he should have. Instead, his was a slow, painful death. That is how I felt, Isabel, after the storm when I thought you were going to die. I was like that man, split from side to side. That is how I feel even now. And the only remedy is to take you away from all this.”

  “Do not ask the impossible, Antonio. No one can give you a guarantee that sadness and heartbreak will never touch our lives.” I put out my hand. “Do not waste time anguishing over what you cannot control, and what might never be.”

  Antonio clenches his fist. “I will get you to safety, Isabel. I will do this.” Then he walks out the door.

  I spoon a ladle of hot stew, full of beans and rice and chunks of bacon, into the small ridged bowl Rodrigo holds in his trembling hands. He sits erect on his bedroll, propped against one of the hard poles of the hospital wall.

  “God bless you, Doña Isabel,” Rodrigo says. He is a noble, brought low by sickness; the only noble in the hospital who has told me he knows he is going to die. So, in addition to bringing him food, I occasionally read to him from my Book of Psalms which he claims is a great comfort. “God bless you, Doña Isabel,” he repeats. “God bless all the Señoras.” He makes a feeble effort to jut his chin in the direction of the five women who are busy feeding others in the hospital. “I pray a rosary for you daily.”

  I smile and thank him, and walk to the next bedroll where a man, another noble, sits holding an empty bowl. Mateo walks behind me, carrying the heavy kettle of stew. I fill the man’s bowl, then watch him forsake his spoon and bring the bowl to his lips. His arms, like Rodrigo’s, are covered with sores and “coppery” spots. He is feverish and listless. Like many of the men in the hospital, his body bears sores not unlike the sores I once saw on Catalina’s legs. It is whispered this disease comes from lying with the Taino women. Though the women themselves seem to suffer little from it, among our men it is a killer, as if it were a form of revenge.

  “You are a saint, Doña Isabel,” says the noble, sipping from his bowl. “I swear by the bones of St. Paul I will make a pilgrimage to Chartres after I return to Castile, and there I will crawl the labyrinth of the nave on my knees in your honor. For many of us would die if not for you organizing these other good women, and daily bringing us food.”

  I smile, and move on to the next, then the next and the next . . . . There are so many, not only with skin lesions but with bowel disease and fever. Some are wasting away and no one knows why. Every day, new graves are dug in the cemetery on the outskirts of Isabela. And every day, Antonio becomes more frantic.

  “You will come back tomorrow?” asks the last man I feed.

  “Yes,” I answer. I have been coming every day. Even on those days when I go to Marta to work the mounds, Mateo goes to the hospital and collects a small portion of each man’s rations in order to cook their stew. It is hard to stay away, for the need is so great, and our numbers dwindle daily.

  There are times when I wonder if any of us will ever leave this island alive.

  I am washing my hair in the basin when Bata bursts through the door carrying her baby. At first I think something is wrong with the child for Bata babbles so fast, and mostly in her native tongue, that I only understand a few words.

  “You must speak slower,” I say, wrapping my hair in a towel and coming over to check the infant.

  “No, no, no. Not baby. It Guabancex. Guabancex, Lady of Winds.” With her free hand she clutches her chest. I
t takes me a second to see that hidden beneath her coarse tunic is a zemi. “Hurricane,” she says. “Soon here. You come to cave with Bata.”

  I am doubtful. I hear no wind or rain. But when I go to the door I see the sky has darkened, and that the wind is beginning to pick up. Even so, I do not know how Bata can possibly know a hurricane is coming, though I refrain from questioning her. Instead, I pull a skirt and bodice over my chemise. “First, I must find Don Antonio,” I say, tying back my hair.

  “I go home now.” Bata heads for the door. “You meet me there. You hurry. I no wait long.”

  I rush along the street heading for Casa de Columbus where Antonio said he would be, and as I do, I remember the sick in the hospital. If Bata is right, what will happen to them? So instead of continuing to Columbus’s house, I head for the church and tell Fray Pane of Bata’s visit. I know not if it is because he has studied the Tainos and believes Bata’s zemi can actually tell her of a pending hurricane, or if he believes the Tainos have seen enough hurricanes to know how to read the signs, but whatever the reason, he rings the bell in alarm. And as people come running from every direction, I head for the hospital and Doctor Spinoza.

  “You expect me to move all the sick because one native girl believes a storm is coming?” He looks at me in disbelief. “I will not do it.” There is resentment in his voice. Since refusing to let him bleed Antonio, Doctor Spinoza has held me in contempt. He tolerates me because I am a Villarreal, and because I feed his patients. Even when I lost my son, it was Doctor Martinez who treated me, for Spinoza sent him instead of coming himself.

  “You must go to the church. If the winds are as bad as last time, you will be safer in a stone dwelling.”

  “Do you presume to tell me what I must do?”

  “I do not mean to offend. I hope Bata is wrong. But did you not hear the bell? Fray Pane believes her. And if she is right, can you leave your patients so exposed? Once the storm comes, it will be too late to move them.”