by Shirl Henke
“A sailor fell upon me from behind in the dark,” he replied calmly.
“He tried to kill you?”
He looked at the slash across his shoulder and shrugged. “Had I not shoved his blade aside with my arm he would have sliced my throat cleanly and it would be me, not him, that is fish bait now.”
“Who was he?” the boatswain asked.
”A gromet. I had no quarrel with the fellow that I know of, unless it was a long time past. If I could have disarmed him alive I would have enjoyed asking why he wanted me dead.”
“Let me see to that cut before you bleed to death and make fish bait yet,” Miriam said, suppressing her fear, eager to get him into the safety of their cabin.
Once she had closed the door and latched it securely she fetched her medical supplies from a small trunk in the corner and rummaged through her satchel for some yarrow and clean linens. “Why did that man try to kill you?”
“I truly have no idea. He was a common seaman and I am certain he did not know me. Perhaps he mistook me for someone else.”
He hissed in surprise when she applied the stinging clotting poultice. “We both know that is absurd. You scarce look like any member of the crew, dressed as you are in gentleman's finery.”
“Twas dark.”
“Rigo, you are a head taller than all but the pilot and he is three times your girth. There was no mistake. That man tried to murder you!” Suddenly she was trembling.
He arched one eyebrow wickedly. “And if he had, would you weep for me?”
She daubed at the closing cut with a piece of linen. “You probably deserved his ire for bedding his wife or sister.”
He reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. As was custom on shipboard, he did not shave and his beard was already thick and black. Bristling whiskers tickled her sensitive palm as he pressed a moist kiss upon it. “You have not answered my question, wife.” He felt her pulse race in the slim wrist he had imprisoned.
“What would have me say, Rigo? That I would mourn for you? Then you could scorn me and call me liar.”
“I do not know what to call you, Miriam,” he whispered pensively as he pulled her down to kneel between his knees as he sat upon the low stool.
When his mouth descended to take hers, she reached up and wrapped her arms about his neck.
* * * *
Changing ships in Genoa and then again in the Canaries went smoothly. At last they were aboard a square-rigged Spanish caravel used exclusively for the Atlantic crossing to the Spanish empire of the Indies. Only ships of Spanish registry were allowed to sail into Santo Domingo.
Their cabin was large, with a window and a softer, wider bed. Yet in spite of the increased luxury, Miriam could not enjoy the voyage. Unlike the relatively uneventful Mediterranean weather, the Atlantic was storm tossed.
She was wretchedly seasick. During the first three months her pregnancy had given her not a tinge of the usual complaints she had heard from so many of her patients. She had suffered no morning nausea, no excessive fatigue, not even swelling in her ankles. But the roiling ocean brought forth all the miserable symptoms in a sudden rush the second day out of Tenerife.
Miriam lay abed watching Rigo dress, gracefully adjusting his every movement to the roll of the ship. When he turned to her she feigned sleep, but he was not fooled.
“I will bring you some food to break your fast,” he said as he turned to leave the cabin.
“Please, no. I am not at all hungry, merely tired.”
“You must keep up your strength. Now there are fresh fruits, even bread, and the wine is sweet. All too soon we will have naught but salted meat and weevily biscuit. Enjoy it while you may.”
She swallowed her bile and turned her back on him, pulling the covers over her shoulders and praying for sleep to envelope her. Rigo returned all too quickly with a crisp apple, a wedge of cheese and a slice of fresh bread.
“Sit up and eat,” he commanded, depositing his napkin filled with bounty on the table. “Then we will take a turn about the deck to clear your head.” He helped her up and handed her pieces of the apple as he sliced it with his dirk.
Not wanting to show weakness, Miriam forced down two pieces and then took a sip from the wine cup he had poured. When he handed her a chunk of the pungent cheese, it proved her undoing. Manfully she chewed and tried to swallow. But it would not go down.
Rigo watched her warily. Although he had heard some of his fellow officers speak of their women's sicknesses when with child, he paid them little heed. Miriam had seemed in the bloom of health until yesterday. When she suddenly turned white as new parchment and clutched her throat, he helped her lean over the side of the bed and held her as she wretched up all she had just consumed.
Miriam wanted to die of shame, but was too ill to wish for it with much enthusiasm. She was aware of Rigo holding her hair away from her face and murmuring low, soothing words in Spanish. When the spasm had ceased, he lay her gently back on the bed.
“I will fetch some straw and water to clean this. Lay still,” he commanded.
As soon as he left the cabin she crawled from the bed and began to clean up the noisome mess with a piece of linen from her satchel. She had all but completed the task, wringing the rag into the slop pail, when he stepped through the door.
With an oath he caught her up beneath her arms and dragged her back to the bed. “Lie back. I will do this. You are ill.”
“I am a doctor, far more used to such than you,” she protested.
Rigo turned and looked at her with a scowl of impatience. “Have you ever been on a battlefield, my lady?”
She lay back in silence and let him finish the task, only saying, “There is rosemary in my satchel to freshen the air.”
During the next week Miriam struggled to gain her sea legs, only to lose her stomach again and again. Rigo was amazingly patient and gentle, insisting she drink water and eat plain bread simply to keep some nourishment inside her. He bathed her clammy body and changed her sleeping shifts each evening.
One night when she finally felt strong enough to sit up and munch slowly on a piece of dry bread, she watched him as he readied a large basin of seawater and linens. “You have made a fine physician,” she said softly.
“Tis but a fair return. You tended me in far greater adversity and saved my life, to hear Benjamin tell of it.”
“Rigo, we must speak of Benjamin.” She watched him stiffen in anger.
“No.”
“Yes. I know we have hurt him—me more than you. But I also know he will rebuild his life. He is a fair man...and he would not want you to tear your life apart with this guilt.”
His eyes glowed in the dim light and his beautifully sculpted features were harsh with pain. “How can I not be torn by it? He loved you and I took you. I am on the way to his home with his woman. And now the child I have given you fair kills you on this dangerous voyage. I am the cause of your suffering and his.”
A sudden surge of hope squeezed Miriam's chest. “I am not near death because I am with child, Rigo. Many women have trouble keeping down food when they are pregnant and it does no harm to them or their offspring. The sea complicates matters...tis possible even if I were not with child I would still be seasick.” She finished the piece of bread and took a sip of water, then added, “Benjamin spoke often about your family...about your father. Aaron, too, was fearfully ill when he sailed with the Genoese as fleet marshal. Twas the joke of the family.”
Rigo's expression became guarded. “Then my good sailing skills must come from my savage mother. Bartolome writes me the Taino travel often from island to island in canoas.``
“What will you do when you meet her people?” she asked, shifting from the painful subject of Aaron Torres.
“I do not know. Always I have despised them as cowards and weaklings who must have priests to plead their cause for them—and die for them.”
“Yet Benjamin admired the Tainos and he lived among them.”
“Yes
, he did, as the son of Aaron Torres, golden and magical like his sire. Always remember, Miriam, I am darkness. Cursed and tainted by my birth. Let us speak no further of it. I grow weary of the subject and you need your bath.” He reached out and took her frail wrist, pulling her slowly to the edge of the mattress.
I am darkness. How the words cut her soul. What bottomless pain he felt, what self-loathing for his birth and heritage. Cursed. Tainted. She could feel his bitterness and ached to offer comfort. Suddenly she knew, just as surely as she had understood that she was not in love with Benjamin, that she was in love with his proud, lonely brother.
Over the next few weeks the weather grew more placid and Miriam's dreadful malaise abated. The bloom returned to her cheeks and she began to regain some of the weight she had lost. Rigo remained solicitous and patient, taking her for slow strolls about the deck and bringing her the best of the dwindling rations, urging her to eat. But even when she announced she was fully recovered, he did not attempt to make love to her.
He fears to harm me or the child. How could she convince him to renew their passion? Perhaps as he had bathed and cared for her he had begun to grow disenchanted with her appearance. After all, she was becoming rounded and shapeless, although her bout of seasickness had slowed the weight gain. “First I was a skinny stick, now a plump melon,” she muttered. Then she remembered his unbridled passion for her as a skinny stick and his gentleness when she was wretchedly ill.
Before she grew too fat and ungainly to make the overture, Miriam resolved to act. It would take great courage, but she had to risk it. “What fools we are to throw away happiness for false pride. I love him and fear his rejection. What if he loves me too and is also afraid to say the words?”
She bathed and donned a clean soft shift. After daring to use a bit of the precious drinking water to rinse the salt from her hair, she brushed it until it glistened. Drawing a soft blue silk gown over her head, she laced it up. Her belly was not yet overlarge but her breasts were. Remembering his hands and mouth on them made them ache and the nipples harden with desire.
“Surely after all his kindness, all the fear for my health, he must feel something. I will bring him back to my bed tonight and tell him I love him—Rigo Torres, Navaro, son of Aliyah and Aaron. He is not cursed or tainted.”
Miriam took a deep breath and lay down her mirror, at last satisfied with her appearance. She glided toward the door, in search of her husband.
Rigo stood by the railing with the boatswain. The hour was late and the stars glowed like diamonds in the southern skies—like the silver fire in Miriam's eyes when she lay beneath him in the throes of ecstasy. He ached to go to their cabin and make love to her. But he dare not.
Miriam had already suffered enough, being with child, forced to wed him and cross a storm-tossed Atlantic in winter. He might harm her or the child. Already laden with guilt for what he had done to his brother, he could not bear to cause her more pain. He would take her to his father's people. Aaron Torres was rich, his family was politically powerful on Española. Even if they were conversos, not Jews, they were of her blood. They could offer Miriam the safety of a home, all she had given up when she succumbed to his seduction. If she had wed Benjamin this was most likely where she would have spent her life. Now, disowned by Judah Toulon, she would once more have the security of a family to care for her and their child.
As for him...Rigo could not bear the thought of living on charity from the man who deserted him. Once Miriam was assured of a home, he would leave. Perhaps one day he would return, laden with riches to lay at her feet.
He turned to the boatswain. “You have been to this Mexico? Seen Cortez's golden cities?”
“Nay, not the cities, for they are far inland, but I have been to Cuba, where the treasure fleets put in from the mainland. The galleons fair wallow, their holds loaded with gold and jewels. Tis a land ripe for the plucking, I tell you.”
“I am a soldier. You have seen my horse stabled below deck. Think you if I took passage to Mexico with Peligro and my sword that I could come away as rich as Hernan Cortez?”
The burly boatswain appraised the hard-looking mercenary. He had seen his kind in every port from Havana to Huelva. “Aye. I think you could, Don Rodrigo.”
Neither man saw the stricken woman standing in the shadows behind them. The strong night wind whipped the sails smartly, erasing the sound of her footfalls as she ran back to their cabin.
Chapter Thirteen
Santo Domingo
Rigo stood on the quarterdeck, watching the land of his birth materialize in the clear morning air. Never in his life had he felt more alone. Miriam had seemed to warm to him during the voyage, even been grateful for his care while she was ill. Now that she had recovered from her seasickness, she had withdrawn behind a veil of strained politeness that he did not breech. Perhaps he had only imagined her softening toward him. He would risk no further rejection from his wife. No, he had had enough rejection in his life. Even his foster brother, Bartolome de Las Casas, had left Rigo to minister to the Indians of this savage land.
He scanned the coastline, his eyes involuntarily searching for signs of Tainos, although he had learned enough from Bartolome's letters to know they were no longer allowed to farm and fish freely near the shores, but were enslaved and forced to work in mines and fields for Spanish investors. Benjamin had insisted they were a worthy race and had said Rigo was descended from a noble family. Soon he would learn the truth of that and other matters. He forced thoughts of Aaron Torres from his mind.
The land was beautiful, exotic and luxuriant to his eyes, so accustomed to harsh Iberian landscapes and freezing Alpine mountains. He took a deep breath and found the air incredibly scented, as if by a woman's perfume.
The ship's master, noting his fascination, paused beside him and said, “A fragrance so good and soft, of the flowers or trees of the land, that it was the sweetest thing in the world. Those were the First Admiral's words upon experiencing Española. Tis the flowers and trees, yet even more. Tis the fertile land itself.”
“What are those strange birds?” Rigo pointed to a cluster of brilliant pink birds with long, peculiarly shaped necks and strange stalk like legs. But for their exotic coloring, they could have been an odd form of crane.
“They are fire birds, flamingos, found throughout these islands,” the older man replied, silently wondering at the oddity of an Indian in white man's garb who had never seen the land of his ancestors.
Rigo's eyes moved from the birds at the mouth of the stream, upward to stare at the towering palms and other more massive leafy trees that formed so high and dense a canopy that surely the sunlight could not penetrate. Vines and brilliantly hued flowers insinuated themselves beneath the leafy ceiling. More birds of all sorts, as unfamiliar to Rigo as the trees, cawed and shrieked from the jungle's interior. The landscape was dark verdant green, brilliant yellow and fire orange beneath a sky of blinding azure. Jagged purple mountains faded to pale lavenders and pinks far in the interior of this mysterious island.
The ship's master had told him they would be approaching the Ozama River's mouth and thence the capital city of Santo Domingo before nightfall. This was their only approach close enough to the coast for him to appreciate the beauty and the menace of this bizarre paradise.
“Tis wondrous,” Miriam said as she walked silently to stand beside him at the railing.
“Did Benjamin describe it to you?” At once he wished he had not asked a question about his brother.
Her face betrayed little emotion as her clear gray eyes scanned the rapidly receding coastline. The ship veered into deeper waters. “Benjamin was ever trying to win me to live in his paradise of Española. He did not exaggerate the beauty of the land, or its strangeness.” She paused, then changed the subject abruptly. “We will know no one in Santo Domingo. Your father lives far in the interior. How will we get word to him?”
Again Rigo noted the aloof detachment of her question. “I will search out the Domi
nican monastery where my foster brother has resided these past three years. He will be able to send word to Aaron Torres.”
She noted the coldness whenever he pronounced his father's name. Would he simply deposit her with his Jewish family and set out for gold and glory in Mexico? “What will you say to him?”
Rigo's eyes narrowed as he stared at the distant mountains, as if seeing beyond them to the rich valley where his family lived. “I do not know. Even if Benjamin was right and he did want me to return, that may change once he learns that I have taken you from my brother.”
“I never intended to come between you and Benjamin or to estrange you from your family,” she said in a tight voice.
For the first time since she had recovered from her seasickness, he placed his hands on her shoulders, then quickly released her before she could react. “Tis not you but me who is guilty. This may signify not at all if I am right. My sire and his lady may well decide they want no reminders of the indiscretions of his youth.”
“You know that is not what Aaron and Magdalena will do. You are Navaro, and they have always desired your return. Ever since I first met Benjamin he spoke of you and how his parents searched for you.”
“Well then, they will have to accept me and my wife, will they not?” He looked at her with unreadable blue eyes.
Miriam did not reply but fixed her eyes on the horizon.
The harbor was crowded with all manner of ships. Small caravels and brigantines that plied the intercostal trade were moored alongside big galleons laden with Aztec gold bound for Seville. Rigo observed the stone walls of Santo Domingo from the beach. 'Tis fortified like any Castilian town in Andalusia, but for the strange trees and mountains beyond it.”