by Andrew Rowen
“He helps us grow yuca for cazabi [cassava bread] and catch fish.”
Father nodded in approval. “The spirits live with us. Some are fruitful, some destructive. We honor them to obtain the alliance of the fruitful spirits and the forbearance of the destructive.” Father lifted the cemí toward his son’s gaze. “Yúcahu is the supreme fruitful spirit, and we consult him for guidance in farming, fishing, and hunting—like whether we should hunt at this pond. Hunting and the sea are dangerous, and we also want his protection.” He stared directly into Caonabó’s eyes. “Have you spoken with Yúcahu about your hunt?”
“No.” Caonabó shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t know I should, yet.” His eyes blinked.
Father smiled. “Communications with spirits are often led by myself as cacique [chief] or our village behique [shaman]. But it’s also important for each person to consult our spirits directly. You should consult Yúcahu right now, before your hunt. Honor him. Seek his alliance for a successful hunt and your and our men’s protection.”
Caonabó tried to do so, but he felt awkward communicating through thought rather than speech and was unsure how Yúcahu would hear and respond.
Father anticipated this doubt and addressed it unequivocally. “Yúcahu is present, both in the stone and all about us. He hears you. That doesn’t guarantee your hunt’s success, which depends on your skill.” Caonabó blinked again, realizing that success remained his responsibility.
“You will lead,” Father continued. “Stand still whenever a bird becomes suspicious, and remain still until it’s unconcerned. Understand?”
“I already know this.”
“The naborias filled the pond with gourds this morning. Remember, the ducks must believe your helmet is being blown by the wind— that it’s not you. Stay where the pond is shallowest so you can walk on the bottom, and walk no faster than the real gourds are blown by the wind.” Caonabó blinked yet a third time.
Father ordered the villagers present to come no closer. Mother and Father’s fourth wife knelt together on fronds laid by their naborias, and Onaney hid behind a palm tree. A naboria brought Caonabó a small helmet carved for him that morning and placed it over his head.
Caonabó understood his birthright was to lead, and he respectfully asked Father’s men to don their helmets again and follow into the pond. Father stepped closely behind him and soon whispered with condescension that, if he went too fast, there would be nothing to hunt. Father sharply criticized his path—unless they entered the pond upwind, the ducks would be spooked by the subsequent movement of their helmets. Caonabó slowed and change course, gradually arriving at the reeds by the pond’s edge, where he felt the mud ooze between his toes.
Caonabó peered intently through his helmet’s eyelets to sight at least a dozen ducks downwind to the west, as well as gulls, sandpipers, and a few flamingos. The birds were wandering to fish and eyeing him and the men, and he shortened each step forward to mere inches, invigorated that he was now a predator. He felt the sun disappear behind clouds as the water lapped his belly, reappear when his shoulders submerged, and then vanish again when his chin dipped in the water, whereupon he identified a prey.
Father and the naborias were relieved the approach had been accomplished, and the naborias identified their own ducks and began to spread out to deeper areas. The men’s traditional haircut kept their black hair short above the ears but left untouched a few strands at the back, and these emerged from the helmets to trail lightly behind on the water’s surface. They watched Caonabó closely, certain they would have to strike immediately after the boy failed to bring his bird underwater cleanly.
Caonabó inched forward until his prey floated just feet before him. Its eyes stared into his own, and he was astonished that it failed to recognize his presence and the violent end he intended for it. An urge to strike surged within him, and he impulsively honored Yúcahu again. He inhaled deeply and slowly glided his arms underwater beneath the duck’s belly and, without pause, quickly lifted his hands to grab the feet. He got them! The duck lunged upward, its legs extended, and Caonabó fought desperately to hold on, successfully pulling the bird underwater. But the duck thrashed and turned to bite, with terrifying strength and viciousness! It burst to the surface, quacking hoarsely in defiance, and Caonabó heard the resounding crack of many wings flap at once. Dozens of birds bolted into flight, and he panicked that there hadn’t been time for the others to snare prey.
Suddenly, the duck went limp, and Caonabó felt Father by his side. He stood upright, sputtering and panting, and removed his helmet. Father grinned. Caonabó accused Father of breaking his duck’s neck, and Father and the naborias chuckled. Caonabó quickly realized the naborias had killed ducks, too. Father told him to catch his breath and honor Yúcahu and that he had stalked and captured the duck himself. Skills for breaking the neck would be learned over time as he grew older.
The hunters walked to the embankment with their prey. Father smiled to his wives, and they waved and congratulated Caonabó, as did Onaney. Caonabó was unsure whether to show pride, but he wanly acknowledged the onlookers with a return wave. He gazed at his duck’s inert body and, to his surprise, realized he held neither remorse for killing it nor fear of its soul and, above all, that victory invigorated him.
Mother stood—her red shell necklace, bracelets of tiny stones, and gold earrings proclaiming her paramount status—and a litter composed of a reed mat drawn between poles was brought to carry her back to the village. She sat on it, and naborias hoisted her above their shoulders and began the journey home, first south through the forest and then along the southern shore from which tidal flats caked with salt extended more than a mile out to sea.
As she rode, Mother surveyed the desolate expanse of Aniyana. Scrub bush, marsh, mangroves, and beach rose lowly from the sea, leading inland to forest and minor gardens of yuca and sweet potato, with myriad birds and plentiful fish, turtle, lobster, and mollusk, but with slight hills and no mountains or rivers. The windswept flatland baked in the sun. She had come here from Haiti as a girl, given as a bride to Father by her parents. Her mother’s brother ruled the cacicazgo (chiefdom) of Maguana in Haiti, a fertile plain farmed with varied crops and surrounded by mountains.
Mother remembered the beauty and magnificence of Haiti— mountains coursed by streams cascading through forest, field, and glen to enormous valleys and plains verdant with crops and nourished by rivers surging to the sea—a land filled with warmth and cold and tremendous enchantment. It was the cradle of civilization, where men had first come from the earth to populate it. Haiti’s caciques ruled in prosperity and feasted, sang areítos (songs), and danced with an unrivaled sophistication and culture—which was not attainable in this outpost of Taíno society. Mother was not bitter, for Father was the most powerful cacique of these islands and they prospered. Her life was free of need. But she knew Caonabó was fit and meant to lead and, in time, would return to Haiti to seek his uncle’s cacicazgo. This was Mother’s birthright. Mother’s womb, and the wombs of her mother’s younger daughters, bore the succession of potential Maguanan caciques.3
She glimpsed behind and was amused to find her son suppressing a grin to hide his elation. He had caught his duck, and that was enough for him this day. Father soon would begin his education to pursue his greater destiny.
Father ordered that Mother’s naborias cook the ducks for dinner that night for all villagers who wished to eat. The hunters, and Caonabó, could have their share, but no more.
Yúcahu.
CRISTOFORO
Genoa, (March 1460)
Eight-year-old Cristoforo woke to his mother’s touch and command, alert to learn his parents’ customary instruction on the day’s chores. He heard roosters crowing nearby and, in the distance, the murmur of the morning’s first prayer chanted in the neighboring monastery.
“Put on your warm clothes, promptly,” she ordered. “You’re going to port with Father, and it’ll be cold in the wind.” She laid his
wool shirt, trousers, and coat on the cot. She shook his younger brother, Giovanni Pellegrino, asleep on the same cot, and told him to rise quickly, as well. “Hurry, and you’ll see the donkeys that are coming.”
As he dressed, Cristoforo gleaned that a lesson was involved, not so much a chore. He grew curious to understand but wary that Father would judge his performance nonetheless. He gazed from a window to the narrow street two stories below, which curled between homes and shops of three or four stories on either side. The sun had yet to rise over the hills to the east, and the cobblestone walkway was dark and damp. He overheard Father descend to his workshop on the home’s ground floor to wake his teenage apprentice.
Domenico Colombo’s business had suffered over the past few months, and he instructed the apprentice to pack most of the unsold woolen cloth they had woven in sacks for shipment. He stepped outside briefly to check the weather, bracing against the cool March air. At forty-one, he was relieved much of the inventory would be sold that morning.
Genoa’s fortunes, and those of Domenico and its ordinary citizens, were subject to the ambitions and jealousies of its noble merchant families and foreign princes, who frequently fought for control of its politics and commerce, establishing and breaking alliances without apparent scruple to that end. Two years before, a patriarch of the Fregoso family—Domenico’s political patrons—had abdicated Genoa’s dogeship in favor of the French king for protection from the Aragonese, and the French king now ruled Genoa through an appointed governor.4 The Aragonese had blockaded the port in opposition to the French, but the blockade had withered upon the Aragonese king’s death,5 and the Fregoso patriarch then had died attempting to reclaim his authority from the French. Control of the city so changed often, sometimes accompanied by street battles, a recurring chaos that invited plague and injured commerce.
Domenico called above to his wife to hurry the breakfast. On the second floor, Susanna set biscuits and leftover fish on the dining table and summoned Cristoforo and Giovanni to eat, and Domenico and the apprentice joined them. Susanna reminded the boys to say their prayers—which they did perfunctorily—whereupon Domenico instructed that the apprentice would mind the shop while he showed Cristoforo how cloth is sold to the merchant families.
Cristoforo now grasped Father’s intent and was intrigued. He understood weaving, but he had never seen Father trade with a nobleman.
“Who are you meeting?” he asked.
“A Centurione,” Domenico responded, referring to one of Genoa’s leading families. He warmed to his son’s inquisitiveness and intent blue-green eyes, but he noted the innocence and naïveté still betrayed by the boy’s reddish hair, pink cheeks, and freckles.
Shortly, two donkeys arrived tethered in train, their hooves clattering on the cobblestones, and Domenico greeted the Centuriones’ donkey driver. Cristoforo helped cinch the sacks of cloth to the baggage saddles, and, scarcely without pause, the driver started to lead the donkeys uphill to the city gates of Sant’Andrea, looming high above. Cristoforo fell in line behind Domenico at the rear and waved good-bye to Mother and Giovanni.
Father and son passed the Colombo’s small garden and the neighboring monastery, a hymn now resounding within. They entered the old city through the stone gate’s archway and began the descent to the port, their progress slowing as the traffic of people and animals and the number of shops open for business quickly grew. Cristoforo listened to Domenico stoutly greet acquaintances, and Domenico encouraged Cristoforo to greet them forthrightly, too. Domenico occasionally stopped to shake hands, inquiring whether a relative survived an illness or where a child was now living. By chance, Domenico met his friend the tailor and reminded him that Cristoforo’s cousin Giannetto soon would be old enough to apprentice to a tailor. Cristoforo recognized that Domenico might arrange his own apprenticeship as a weaver in just a few years.
They came to the doge’s palace and its open plaza, where Cristoforo and Giovanni sometimes waited to watch noblemen riding in to meet the doge, and Cristoforo studied those lounging or lurking about. Domenico hailed two men on horseback, requested that the donkey driver halt, and took his son’s hand to meet the riders, agents of the Fregosos. Some years before, Fregosos had appointed Domenico as warder of a city gate for brief terms, which eventually expired without reappointment. Domenico asked the riders how the family elders fared, reaffirmed his loyalty, and beseeched the riders to pass on his greetings. Cristoforo perceived that Domenico held ambitions beyond his trade and mused whether they had been frustrated.
Resuming the descent, father and son strode alongside the high walls of St. Lawrence’s cathedral. While Cristoforo and Giovanni frequently wandered in the streets about it, they had never prayed inside, as the nobility did. As always, Cristoforo saw beggars huddled in the shadows of its walls, destitute and imploring passersby for alms. The street now teemed with people, and father and son filed slowly by shopkeepers selling spices, perfumes, gems, and wares imported from foreign lands. There were street stands with pepper from the Black Sea, oranges from Andalusia, mastic from Scio (Chios, Greece), ivory and gold from Alexandria and Tunis, and iron tools and weapons from other kingdoms.
Domenico met an acquaintance who was a silk weaver and halted their walk again to inquire how his business had withstood the city’s recent turmoil. Cristoforo observed a shop where slaves were sold, packed with young women seated, shackled, and motionless, their pale skins like corpses in the shop’s inner darkness. He wondered who had brought them there and where they would go. He pointed them out to Domenico, who surmised that they were from the Balkans, purchased by Genoese traders from the infidel at Scio to be sold as chambermaids to Ligurian nobility. Domenico knew they also would serve as concubines.
The donkey driver recommenced the path to port, and they soon entered the square by St. George’s palace, embraced a strong wind pushing dark clouds from the southwest, and trod through the densely crowded fish market toward one of the shorter piers, where Cristoforo beheld the entire harbor. Ships’ masts crammed the skyline as if a dense forest, and a cacophony of cracking ropes and rigging and cawing seagulls filled the air. The largest merchant ships and the Genoese navy were anchored in the bay of the harbor, their hulls slowly undulating in the waves. The port bustled with men toiling, including carpenters crafting booms, sailors repairing sails, and blacksmiths molding anchors. Beggars and orphans foraged the garbage heaps of the fish market for scraps of food.
They strode onto the pier, passing a few small boats, and the driver brought the donkeys to rest beside a small, single-masted caravel. Two sailors were lowering crates of iron tools into its open hold below the pier. One of the sailors hollered that they were expecting wool cloth and would sail just miles down the coast to Rapallo and Lerici as soon as loaded, and father and son waited as the sacks of cloth were pitched atop the tool crates. Cristoforo had imagined a more distant destination and a larger ship—and perhaps an opportunity for his carrying their sacks of cloth on board. Domenico remained silent, and Cristoforo suspected he also was disappointed.
The driver led them off the pier and through the port to its principal quay, where the largest carracks in the harbor were tended, and stopped beside a three-masted carrack flying the crest of the Centuriones. Its deck rested some feet above the quay, and before it stood the young nobleman Domenico sought for payment, dressed in an exquisitely tailored wool coat. Domenico gritted his teeth, bitterly recognizing that the thread of the coat’s cloth was finer than his own, probably woven in Milan or perhaps even London. Domenico pulled Cristoforo aside, adjusted his collar, and sharply instructed him to speak courteously and agreeably as the family was an important customer—and could remain so when he grew older.
Cristoforo studied his father salute the young nobleman and grandly affect pleasant conversation, remarking that it was a pleasure to find him healthy, a blessing spring approached, and an accomplishment that the wool cloth was already stored on the smaller vessel. Cristoforo was surprised Father act
ed as if the two men were friends. The nobleman was much younger and wore elegant accoutrements, including a silk scarf, leather gloves, and a gold chain and pendant that hung about his neck. A servant kept his horse nearby. Cristoforo pondered whether the nobleman’s wealth exceeded that of a thousand men like Father, and he felt awkward when Father nudged him forward to introduce himself.
“This is Cristoforo, my eight-year-old,” Domenico interjected, before Cristoforo could speak.
“Good morning, sir,” Cristoforo said, raising his voice.
“Have you ever seen a merchant ship this big?” asked the nobleman, foregoing any formal greeting with the weaver’s boy. “It’ll sail for València and Flanders tomorrow morning.”
“No, sir.”
“Your father’s cloth isn’t bound there, but you can go aboard for a moment to watch the cargo stowed—if you wish.”
“Yes, I’d like to.” Cristoforo’s eyes glimmered, his eagerness transparent. The ship was far larger than any boat he had ever boarded. “Thank you.”
“Yes, thank you.” Domenico added, smiling broadly.
The nobleman hailed a teenager standing nearby on the deck above. “Escort this boy about the ship, briefly.” The noblemen turned to Domenico and replied, “My pleasure,” indicating with a nod that their conversation was finished.
Cristoforo ascended the plank to the ship’s main deck, and the two boys recognized each other, possibly from church or simply around the neighborhood, but realized they were not acquainted. Antonio introduced himself, boasting with assurance and pride that he was the assistant to the trader who would manage the voyage on behalf of the family and had been to sea twice before. He led Cristoforo toward the bow and forecastle.