by Shirl Henke
“You wear your weapons. That is good, for we have a long journey to make to the great salty waters.”
“We?” Rigo looked at the spear and knife Guacanagari wore. Surely the old man was not going to war against some tribal enemies.
“Your father and our warriors are ready. Come,” was all Guacanagari would reply.
* * * *
Rigo and Aaron rode with nearly twenty armed men, carefully wending their way across the steep, treacherous mountains. The high ridges were almost devoid of trees and the air was surprisingly cool and brisk. Rigo thought of the Tainos far below in the dark heart of the jungle, running afoot on trails so overgrown that the mounted men could not traverse them.
“How fast must they travel to rendezvous with us at the coast?” he asked his father.
Aaron slowed his big chestnut and scanned the sea of dense green filling the long, narrow valleys between the mountains. “They will arrive before us, running at a slow trot on the valley floor. Tis a much more direct route than mounted men can travel.” He saw grudging respect in Rigo's expression as they rode on.
“Even the old chief can run that far?”
Aaron noticed how Rigo kept from calling Guacanagari uncle, but laughed and replied, “Tread carefully. Your uncle is a year younger than I. Before our diseases wasted them, the Tainos were incredible runners and fighters.”
“Soon I will judge that for myself—if their spies have accurate information.”
“Aye, they do, I am sure, and I cannot wait to learn who is behind these depredations.”
As the column of men picked their way carefully along the trail to the sea, Esteban Elzoro stood hidden behind a copse of low, shaggy pines on a ridge across the valley, observing the riders silhouetted against the sky. “Twenty of them that I can see, all armed to the teeth. You will run to Captain Brienne with this message.” He handed a sealed paper to one of his black slaves and watched as the tall, strong youth bowed and took off at a swift pace. A slow smile of satisfaction spread across his face. “So, Torres, at last you fall into my hands. Twas good fortune that my overseer chanced upon your armed party riding out. Brienne and I will beat your accursed luck once and for all.”
Rigo had survived the assassin's attack aboard ship and his own dog had failed to dispatch the Spaniard outside Santo Domingo. This time Etienne Reynard, posing as the Spanish planter Esteban Elzoro, would kill Torres. His associate in Marseilles would be pleased, most pleased indeed.
And without all these defenders, the Torres hato would be ripe for further plucking. He walked back to where his men waited and began to issue orders. They and Brienne's corsairs would have quite a surprise waiting for the planters when they reached the cove.
As the Frenchman rode toward Navidad Bay, he wondered how Torres learned about Brienne's hiding place. “Probably one of his stupid savages spied Luc's ship,” he muttered, dismissing the worry as groundless.
* * * *
“I like it not. French corsairs sitting on a Spanish beach as if they owned it. Surely they should have posted guards,” Aaron said as he watched the crew of the pirate ship passing around a wineskin and laughing drunkenly. He counted fifteen men sprawled about the campfire.
“They do seem a bit careless, even in this remote cove,” Rigo agreed. “Have you any signal from the Tainos?”
“They are in place. Guacanagari and I have fought side by side on more than one occasion.”
“I want to check the perimeter one more time before we fall on them.” At his father's nod, Rigo set off silently, vanishing into the dense, glossy foliage. How could the Indians stay hidden in this steamy inferno, he wondered as he swatted away clusters of tiny, biting gnats. His clothes were soaked to his skin. Every step, every breath in the jungle was pure torture. He followed the curve of the beach that surrounded the small cove, staying well within the concealing embrace of the trees and vines. A tiny yellow bird fluttered in a cluster of fuchsia orchids as he passed, his footfalls swallowed up by the screech of parrots and hum of insects.
Suddenly a sharp, whistling noise rent the heavy air. Years of finely honed instinct led Rigo to throw himself to the ground. He felt the knife slice his tunic sleeve and land with a deadly thunk in the moss-covered tree trunk where he had stood an instant before. He rolled up, drawing his dagger even before he saw his attacker, but he could not free his sword swiftly enough. Two men fell upon him from behind as the knife thrower materialized in front of him.
Rigo kicked the attacker in front of him, doubling the man over in agony. One of the others attempted to seize Torres from behind, but the Spaniard was able to twist partially free of the grip, slashing the man's shoulder with his dagger. Cries of alarm echoed through the jungle as the battle began on the beach. The Frenchmen, no longer drunk or laughing, grabbed hidden weapons and attacked Aaron's men, but Rigo was too busy fighting for his life to notice.
The knife thrower had regained his footing and approached his prey with sword drawn. His two compatriots drew near with blades gleaming.
“Prepare to die, half-caste bastard,” the smaller man whom he had slashed hissed between clenched teeth.
Rigo's reply was to reach out with his left hand, grasping the man's tunic, yanking the fellow in front of him as a shield. The one recovering from the blow to his belly stabbed his partner instead of Rigo. Then the knife thrower was within striking distance with his blade at the ready.
“Let me kill him, Enrique. He has finished Luis,” his companion said as he withdrew his blade from the unfortunate Luis' back.
“No! I will claim the reward from Reynard.” The blade began its thrust, but just then Enrique's eyes opened wide in astonishment and his mouth formed a gurgling ooh.
He pitched forward with a spear embedded in his back. Guacanagari materialized from the dense jungle shrubbery and quickly pulled the weapon free, then turned to defend himself as another attacker hacked through the foliage and swung his blade at the Taino.
Rigo had freed his sword in the brief moment when Enrique went down and he now engaged the dagger-wielding man who wanted to avenge Luis. The contest was short. Rigo disarmed him with one sweep of his blade, knocking the man's knife from nerveless fingers. “Now, who is this Reynard who will pay you to kill me? A French name, Reynard, is it not?” His sword point pressed against the fellow's throat. “Be quick else you join Luis and Enrique.”
“I only know his name. Brienne, the corsair, he said Reynard would pay the one who killed you.” The assassin backed up, raising his chin to avoid the sharp point of Rigo's blade.
“Why me? Have I offended your pirate friend even more than my father, whose horses you steal?”
The man's eyes were round and bulging from their sockets with terror as he looked around him. The big Taino had finished his would-be rescuer with that wicked spear and stood guarding Rigo's back. All through the jungle and out on the beach sounds of fighting rent the air. When Rigo's blade nicked his chin, he put up his hands.
“It is the other Frenchman, the one who—” He fell onto Rigo's blade.
Rigo swore as he scanned the jungle beyond. His one source of information about the attempts on his life had been silenced by an arbalest bolt in the back.
“Perhaps we can capture another one of them and question him about this reward,” Guacanagari said.
“I owe you my life, Uncle.”
Smiling at being called uncle at last, Guacanagari nodded. “Let me show you that Tainos are not always so peaceful.” He headed toward the open beach, where most of the men were engaged in a pitched battle.
Rigo followed closely, but by the time they reached the edge of the melee it was turning into a rout. Several boats of corsairs were rowing furiously for their ship in the cove while the other band of men who had surprised them were making their way to the cover of the jungle. The sounds of horses' hooves pounding into the distance told the tale. Most of them had fled and the others lay bleeding out their lifeblood on the ground.
Rigo had
observed the fearless way the Tainos fought, hand to hand, closing with men armed far more heavily than they. Their spears and blow guns had been remarkably effective. A few of the younger half-castes used daggers and swords. All had acquitted themselves well. Guacanagari signaled two of his warriors to give chase to one of the last fleeing men, but there was scant hope that men afoot could catch those on horseback, even on twisting, overgrown trails.
Aaron surveyed the carnage around them until his eyes came to rest on Rigo, who was unscathed. Aaron approached his son, sheathing his sword. “When you disappeared into the jungle and then the trap was sprung by those men on horseback, I feared you had been taken,” he said.
“The intent was not to capture me but to kill me. And tis not the first attempt. Aboard ship another fellow came at my back with a knife. Then there was the incident with your fellow planter, Elzoro, and his runaway dog.” Rigo studied his father's stricken face.
“Why did you not tell me of the shipboard incident?”
Rigo shrugged. “I thought it of no moment then. What know you of a fellow called Reynard?”
“A French name. I have never heard it on Espanola.” Aaron's expression was frankly puzzled.
“Whoever he is, he is offering a reward for my death. Why, I wonder?” Rigo did not entirely trust his father, but he was growing increasingly certain Aaron had nothing to do with the attempts on his life.
“You have made many enemies, as have I. Think back to France...or to Italy, perhaps?” Aaron looked at Rigo as his son considered the matter.
“I have scores of enemies, from Seville to Santo Domingo, it would seem.” He looked around him and then said, “Tis a pity none of our attackers survived. We could put them to the question.”
“This was planned—the corsairs luring us to leave our horses and creep up on them, then the mounted Spaniards riding down on us. Only the surprise of the Tainos hidden in the jungle turned this from a slaughter. Without Guacanagari's warriors we would have been badly outnumbered and killed.” Aaron paused to consider, then asked Rigo, “Think you this all was a ruse just to murder you?”
“Perhaps. But you have been attacked often in the past year. Both Brienne and Reynard are French names. What does that signify?”
Aaron shrugged. “I always suspected some Frenchman was taking the stolen stock from Espanola as surely as they were pirating our cargoes on the high seas. But why?”
“Maybe there is no connection between the attacks on the hato, which you say started long before Benjamin located me, and the attempts on my life began.” Rigo watched as Guacanagari approached them, then added, “I owe my uncle my life.”
Aaron, too, noticed the words. A smile spread across his face.
“My men were able to catch none of those who fled,” the cacique reported.
“All of us must be on our guard until we solve this puzzle. I will pursue the connection between Esteban Elzoro's deadly meeting with you in Santo Domingo and the other attempts to kill you.” Aaron's face was a grim mask.
“He is a planter who uses slaves and dogs. If the House of Torres fell, he could grow richer by taking your lands and enslaving my people. Now that our friend, the Second Admiral, is gone, who would stop him?” Guacanagari asked.
“Who indeed?” Aaron said in a troubled voice.
As they rode back across the mountains, Rigo pondered the events of the past several months. His whole life—his whole world—had been overturned. Do I only now at the age of thirty years learn who I am? His antipathy toward the Tainos had swiftly changed to respect this day. Perhaps Bartolome was right about them. Perhaps his father was right. Both men were their champions. He looked at the tall blond man riding ahead of him on a narrow stretch of the trail. His father. Was he also changing his feelings toward Aaron Torres?
* * * *
When they rode up to the stone walls of the compound, Guacanagari stood at the gates, as calm and settled as if he had not traversed seventy-five miles of dense jungle in the past two days.
Instinctively, Rigo knew his uncle waited for him. He reined in Peligro and said to Aaron, “I must speak with my uncle. If she asks, tell Miriam I am well.” He dismounted and handed the reins to his father.
Guacanagari nodded in approval and the two men stood side by side watching the Spaniards ride by. Then the older man began to walk toward the lemon orchard immediately outside the walls. Rigo went with him, waiting for his uncle to say the first words, knowing what Guacanagari wanted to tell him.
“I would speak to you of Aliyah, your mother.”
Rigo felt his heart constrict with dread, yet understood at last that he needed to know the truth. “Tell me of her, Uncle,” he said simply.
“Aliyah was the youngest of my sisters. Mahia always said that I spoiled her. She was very beautiful and her mind was quick.” He hesitated, uncertain of how to say what he must. “But her heart was not good. She was proud and bitter, always wanting more power. She wished Mahia's place as eldest sister, for then her son would have ruled after me.”
“And she wanted my father...and his marvelous weapons.” Rigo suddenly began to understand some things, oblique remarks by Tainos and members of his Spanish family.
“Yes. She wanted Aaron to become a warchief and lead us to defeat the other caciques. I even think she wished to turn him against me and the Admiral, although such would not have been possible. The name she chose for you, Navaro, is the name of an ancient warchief among our people. She foresaw using you and your father to make her a great queen, like Anacaona.”
“Then Magdalena arrived and ended all her schemes.”
“If only it had. No, her schemes merely changed. When your father and his wife pleaded with me to give you to them, Aliyah saw that she could use you for vengeance. She wed Behechio, the cacique of Xaragua, and took you far away from your father. Then she gave you to a Spaniard whose canoa took you across the waters. She told Aaron with her dying breath that she had sent you to another Taino village.”
“How did she die?”
“In an uprising in the south. A white cacique named Roldan killed her when she tried to murder him in his sleep.” The older man's face was solemn and filled with pain. His black eyes shone with tears.
Rigo had first scorned the emotionalism of the Tainos as womanish, but now he realized how mistaken he had been. This was a proud and brave man, a wise man who had preserved his own small remnant of people when all around them Tainos were facing extinction. I was mistaken about Guacanagari. Was I also mistaken about my father—and Magdalena?
As if reading his thoughts, Guacanagari said, “Your father searched for you. Never did he give up. And now, he has been rewarded.”
“Has he? I have scarce been a model son, Uncle. I was bitter for so long, twas easier to hold on to my hate than to open my eyes and believe.”
“And risk new pain?” Guacanagari nodded in understanding. “But you must risk pain to reap love. Take the risk, Navaro.”
Chapter Twenty-One
You must risk pain to reap love. As Rigo returned to the big stone house that he now called home, he realized the truth in his uncle's words. “I accused the Tainos of being cowardly, yet I am the one who is afraid.” He considered his family, so large and complicated. Yet they all welcomed him and offered him love. Especially Benjamin. And I betrayed him. No matter what else he was mistaken about, his guilt over Benjamin was a palpable thing. “I am obsessed with it.” He ceased his muttering ruminations as he approached the stone steps of the portico.
“You are deep in thought, Rigo. I hope your talk with Guacanagari went well,” Magdalena said as she emerged from the shadows beyond the fat columns.
Rigo's face, so open while he was lost in reverie, now became shuttered as he regarded his beautiful stepmother. Benjamin's mother. “You surprise me, lady. Yes, my uncle and I had an earnest talk, although twas not an easy subject.”
“He told you of Aliyah.”
His bleak expression revealed that she had int
uited correctly. “She loved your father in her own way. We were all young and foolish then, Rigo. Life has taught much to those of us fortunate enough to grow older.”
”I am no longer young, but the lessons of my life have perhaps made me foolish.”
“And now you think to grow wiser?” She smiled sadly and took his hand, urging him to walk with her along the wide porch that encircled the house.
“My mother was power mad and filled with such hate that she would trade her bastard son as a prize in her private war.”
“You are not the only bastard in this family, Rigo,” Magdalena said bluntly.
He froze, looking incredulously at her.
“Yes, I, too, was born a bastard. Oh, I had a legal father, Bernardo Valdés, who freely admitted he neither knew nor cared who my true sire was. For him, as for my mother, I was but a pawn to be traded for royal favors. My mother was Fernando Trastamara's whore and Bernardo Valdés betrayed the family of my heart—your grandparents—to the Holy Office. Does that shock you?”
“I knew about the fate of the House of Torres. Benjamin told me...but the rest...why are you telling me this?”
She smiled wistfully again. “Perhaps to help you grow wiser yet. Unlike me, you have a father who loves you, Rigo. And a whole family—your mother's people as well as us. We want you to be a part of us—if only you will.”
“I have learned great respect for my uncle and his warriors. I was wrong about them,” he. admitted.
“And what of the rest of us? I know you have come to love your brothers and sisters, but will you soften to your father? He has waited so long, Rigo. I would not see him suffer more. Here, take these and read them.” She pressed several heavy leather-bound volumes in his hands.
Rigo opened the first one and saw that they were diaries. The pages were yellowed and slightly mildewed. The first entry was dated August 3,1492. “These are my father's personal letters. Does he know you have given them to me?”