by Andrew Rowen
Inland, Cacibaquel summoned his nitaínos, behique, and Guarionex to his ceremonial bohío. Guarionex entered to find Cacibaquel’s cemí of Guabancex sitting atop the bohío’s table, her arms swirling counterclockwise in a frenzied circle about her face.
“Guabancex will rage,” Cacibaquel said. “Dispatch messengers along the rivers and larger tributaries to warn those living there to take shelter in bohíos above the flood plain and to bring cazabi sufficient for a few days.” Cacibaquel let the nitaínos depart and turned to teach his son.
“I’ve honored Guabancex for the many seasons she’s spared us, but she will remind that her mercy isn’t permanent.” He studied Guarionex. “We now must seek her favor to storm hardest on the sea and spare our people grave harm.”
“We should honor Yúcahu, as well.”
“Yes, and I have. But Guabancex is upon us, so I will direct my thoughts to her. When her floods pass, I will honor Yúcahu as we heal our people. If you become cacique one day, you may decide how best to please the spirits yourself.”
By dusk, villagers throughout Haiti entered the bohíos or caves where they would endure the storm. Torrential rain came after nightfall, swept harshly by the wind. On Haiti’s northern and eastern coasts, the waves rose horrifically and surged beyond the beaches and mangrove swamps to wash lowland fields. The tempest howled relentlessly through the entire island, uprooting and snapping trees as if merely bushes everywhere, including in the mountains of the Cibao.
After midnight, in Magua’s great valley, the gale began to damage bohíos, sheering away reed siding, ripping off rooftops, and breaking beams to flatten them, with the debris flying to wound those inside and forcing them to seek shelter with neighbors. The streams and dry washes quickly filled and breached their embankments, and the rivers Yaque and Camú rose dangerously. Guarionex and his immediate family; his brothers, sisters, and their families; and his father and father’s wives, huddled together in the caney as the wind roared about it, seething through the reed walls. They shuddered from both cold and fear. The thatched roof creaked and heaved upward, and Guarionex grimly surmised that, if they lost it, the rest of the structure would shatter quickly. He admired Baisi, who sat quietly holding Yomabo, his head buried in her swollen breasts. The youngster and other children were sullen and silent, terrified that the wind’s extraordinary howl forebode immanent destruction.
Dawn came darkly, and Cacibaquel and Guarionex emerged naked outside the caney into the hurricane, hunkered low in crouches to maintain their balance. Cacibaquel stepped first toward the plaza, then to the stream, and then back to the caney, and he decided they could stagger through the onslaught. Guarionex studied his father and proudly reflected that Cacibaquel’s august spirituality belied a commensurate fortitude and bravery not often recognized. Father and son struggled side by side against ferocious gusts of wind, sheets of rain, and hurtling debris to inspect the village stream, which spilled through streets and gardens into bohíos on lower ground. They visited bohíos to ascertain their subjects’ safety and shout encouragement. They stood for a moment in the central plaza to survey the valley below and grimly watched the great river breaching its banks.
Soon, a messenger from a village in the valley struggled uphill to report, and Cacibaquel offered him sanctuary, cazabi, and rest in the caney. There were drownings near the Camú, including mothers and children. Many bohíos had collapsed, injuring entire families. There was significant flooding of the yuca fields astride the rivers.
Shrieks pierced the din close outside, and Guarionex struggled into the storm to assist a neighboring family into the caney. Their bohío had flooded, and, soaking wet and shivering, they huddled gratefully with the caciqual family. Most were unharmed, but an older man and woman limped badly and were bleeding, injured by flying debris, and Cacibaquel’s wives attended them.
Finally, by midday, the rain diminished and the wind abated into gusts, occasionally severe but not sustained. Cacibaquel’s naborias blew shell trumpets to summon his and Guarionex’s closest nitaínos to meet in the plaza. One nitaíno reported that people were severely injured in the bohíos in the lowest portion of the village, to which the men descended rapidly. Guarionex beheld the nightmare—the lifeless bodies of a mother and two children pinned by the skeleton of a collapsed bohío to drown in a depression filled with water. There was nothing to be done for them, and the men continued downhill to discover a man and child clinging to a tree by a flooded dry wash, dazed and shivering, trapped by rushing water. Guarionex helped rescue them. Countless similar rescue efforts continued to nightfall.
The weather was balmy the next dawn, and caciques throughout Haiti reviewed the loss of life and destruction. Guarionex’s village had suffered more than a dozen dead or missing and many bohíos were destroyed. There were four that were severely injured, including the two elderly people who had sheltered in the caney. One of Cacibaquel’s brothers-in-law, the local cacique of a mountain village, had been crushed by an uprooted tree and died. But Magua’s food supply, while damaged, remained sufficient. The yuca fields closest to the great rivers had been washed away, as had beds of pineapple and fruit trees, but most productive capacity remained intact and would be shared with the unfortunate.
Guarionex listened and learned as Cacibaquel attended to the dead and injured. The funerals were held within days, and the dead, commoners or naborias, were buried in the cemetery near the village. Cacibaquel presided and offered personal words for each decedent— adult and child—thanking each for his or her contribution to the lives of others and the natural order. He sought to solace the grievers by setting their misfortune in a greater context, explaining that Guabancex’s wrath itself was part the natural order and brought their loved ones not an end, but a transition. Their souls lived on, and they would be remembered and honored.
After the funerals, Cacibaquel asked Guarionex to join him in his ceremonial bohío, where they sat alone on duhos. “I think you’re ready to assume responsibility for my brother-in-law’s funeral.” Cacibaquel saw his son was startled. “You’ve watched me do them for years, as well as moments ago.”
“Won’t his relatives find it a slight?”
“Not at all. You’re ready, you may be cacique one day, and there’s much for me to do here.”
“I won’t do it as well as you would.”
“But you’ll do it well. Sincerity is more important than experience at a funeral anyway, and you’ve had that since birth. You must comport yourself as if a cacique, with unquestioned authority and power, which will comfort and flatter the grieving. A cacique’s subjects must see his resolve to provide for them—and to reconcile the spirits of fertility and destruction—never falters.”
Guarionex soon departed for the mountain village, proud to perform a funeral service. Over years, Cacibaquel had delegated him important assignments—communicating with local caciques, commanding troops when frictions arose, and allocating food among their subjects—but this was the first task that required him to articulate thoughts on the meaning of Taíno life. He believed, and he knew his father believed, that wisdom—of both spirits and men—was the most important attribute of a cacique and that his remarks at the funeral must please both.
When Guarionex arrived, the brother-in-law’s head had already been severed from his corpse, releasing his soul from the body so that it might travel to Coaybay, a place where souls of the dead went. At the funeral, Guarionex comforted the grievers, relating that the decedent had led a virtuous life and that his soul’s journey thereafter would be pleasant. The head’s flesh soon would be burned off and the skull preserved in his memory and to provide his family guidance in the future. Guarionex assured the grievers that the decedent’s soul would be available to counsel them always. The decedent was then interred in a grave lined with wood sticks, as if in a bohío, and buried with food and some possessions, wrapped in cotton. His first wife chose to be buried with him and, heavily sedated and wrapped in cotton, she was lowered by her ni
taínos to his side and the grave covered. All paused as she reunited with her husband.
Guarionex explained that the decedent and his wife were well provisioned for their next journey and departed knowing their neighbors had the resolve to rebuild their village greater than before. Seeing the grievers satisfied, Guarionex completed the ceremony by honoring Yúcahu and Guabancex. He fought to banish from his thoughts the vision of being acclaimed as a wise cacique, a vanity inappropriate in the spirits’ presence.
A few days later, after returning home, Guarionex watched his father finish the decisions relating to the hurricane. Each of the four severely injured had been treated by the village behique, who induced cohaba and then sucked on the injured’s body to extract the infirmity within. Cacibaquel and his council now examined each to determine whether he or she could long survive without others’ significant support. If not, Cacibaquel would order the injured abandoned in a secluded place or strangled.
Guarionex observed as his father listened and asked many questions, thoughtful and dispassionate. The council deliberated, and then Cacibaquel ordered that one should live and three be abandoned or strangled. As his father spoke, Guarionex stared at the ground, breathless with the knowledge that each of the injured had been Father’s friends, or the children of Father’s friends, for many years. Cacibaquel gazed at his son and reflected that, in one’s youth, one did not truly understand that one’s soul continued upon death.
Guabancex.
ISABEL AND FERNANDO
Death and Marriage in Castile, 1468–1469
At the end of June 1468, Isabel rose at dawn in her childhood bedroom in Mother’s tiny castle in Arévalo, with exhilaration, pride, and foreboding. King Alfonso—as the fourteen-year-old was now addressed— had freed her from Enrique’s custody in Segovia the prior autumn, and, after reuniting with Alfonso and Mother, Isabel had discarded the pretense of neutrality in her brothers’ war to openly support Alfonso. Her freedom and honesty had then invigorated her, but she now realized her decision grew fraught with increasing uncertainty and peril.
Enrique had persuaded many noblemen to abandon Alfonso’s rebellion, and Alfonso’s supporters appeared to be losing enthusiasm. Castile’s common subjects were weary of the conflict—they had been taxed to support troops of both her brothers, commerce had dwindled when townships became embattled, and vandals now roamed the countryside looting with impunity in the absence of royal authority. The Toledans had been the latest to defect to Enrique, and Archbishop Carrillo now urged that Alfonso promptly muster troops in Ávila to reverse this betrayal. She would ride to Ávila at Alfonso’s side that morning, departing Arévalo more quickly than intended because of the onset of plague, with young and old succumbing around the town in recent weeks.
Before breakfast, Isabel entered Mother’s chamber to find her wan and exhausted after a night of ghostly terror, having barely slept. They strolled hand in hand from the castle to the small church close by, set on a steep embankment overlooking a western river ravine that, together with an intersecting eastern river ravine, served as the town’s principal defenses on three sides. The church had been converted from a mosque during the Reconquista and renamed in honor of St. Michael, the leader of the army of God who confronted Satan and threw him from Heaven. Isabel recalled her childhood fondness for the quiet repose and sanctuary she found within, well removed from the murmur of village life. She prayed with Mother for Alfonso’s victory and safety, for salvation from the plague, and for Grandmother, who had died two years earlier.
Later that morning, Mother’s Castilian and Portuguese staff served bread, honey, and ham, and Isabel bid Mother a tender, optimistic good-bye, sharing none of her doubts about Alfonso’s success. While customary for women to ride mules, Isabel had enjoyed the speed and agility of a horse since youth, with Mother and Grandmother’s approval, and she donned a prince’s breeches beneath her dress and joined Alfonso and his guard in the castle plaza. They mounted to ride south, passing in single file through a narrow gate in the southern wall that completed the town’s defenses, slowly entering a main street of the Jewish aljama.
As many Hispanic towns, Arévalo had significant Jewish and Mudejar quarters, and its homes were largely of Mudejar design, reflecting construction during the period of Islamic conquest. The street wound narrowly between houses of two and three stories and bustled with people working and shopping. Tailors, cobblers, blacksmiths, and merchants sold goods from their homes. Wash hung drying on cords strung above. Adults and children all stopped to watch the royal party pass, many leaning out of doorways and windows. Isabel smelled fires cooking lunch, almost as if she were inside their kitchens. She waved modestly with cheer and dignity to all she passed, regardless of her belief that the Jews were peoples of lesser stature. The riders crossed an open square, and Isabel sighted young mothers chatting, infants slung on their hips. The women waved their infants’ hands, and Isabel smiled warmly and waved back. Men saluted and praised Alfonso. They understood the sovereign protected their community.
Within moments, the riders entered the street that divided the Jewish and Mudejar quarters. While the Jews and Mudejar dressed differently and had their own religious languages, they spoke the same speech in daily intercourse. Activity on either side of the street was the same. Merchants of both communities sold goods to buyers of both communities. The Mudejar women wore veils. Isabel continued to wave and smile. There were no Mudejar praises for Alfonso.
As she rode, Isabel recalled being taught as a girl in St. Michael’s church of Christ’s Second Coming. When the infidels were defeated and Jerusalem retaken, he would return to earth to sit as king of all men, and the world in its present form would be consumed in fire. The souls of all men, then living or dead, who believed in Christ would be united in bliss in a renewed world, purified by fire and glorified by Christ’s presence. But the souls of men who didn’t believe in Christ would burn in hell forever. The Jews and Mudejar could convert and be baptized, and they would be admitted to Heaven. But if they didn’t, they would suffer this eternal damnation.
Isabel searched for the synagogue and mosque where these villagers worshipped. She couldn’t discern the synagogue, but the mosque was clearly revealed by its diminutive minaret, and the riders rode directly past it. Isabel beheld it cautiously, apprehensive of the presence of the devil. But she confessed she could neither see nor feel evil. The Mudejar women simply were preparing lunch, babies also slung on their hips.
The riders progressed beyond Arévalo’s outskirts, entering verdant fields of wheat and barley, and Isabel reflected that, on Christ’s return, the Mudejar and other Mohammedans would receive their just punishment for denying him and conquering Hispania. But the thought of the Jewish mothers and babies burning disturbed her. She reflected on the awesome severity of the punishment and said a prayer that the mothers and babies convert.
At dusk, the small party arrived in the tiny village of Cardeñosa, nestled in a shallow valley in the grassland mesa some miles north of Ávila, and the patriarch of the village’s leading family offered Alfonso and Isabel his home and beds for the night. The simple decency, loyalty, and adulation of this common man and his neighbors—farmers, herdsmen, and their womenfolk—touched Isabel. They rejoiced to meet Alfonso and herself. They did hold Alfonso to be their king and herself an important princess, and they looked to Alfonso to protect them—from hunger, disorder, and lawlessness—in return for that loyalty. That evening, their host and his brethren offered their finest meal and, after dining, she and Alfonso lodged in the stone cottage and quickly fell asleep, exhausted from the ride.
Isabel woke before dawn to roosters crowing, and their host provided breakfast and courtesies as they awaited the king’s rising. The guard began to ready the horses. As the morning grew long, Isabel wondered at Alfonso’s absence, and Carrillo became impatient and dispatched Alfonso’s steward to wake him. The steward summoned others, and then Carrillo. A commotion ensued, and Isabel rushed to Alfonso’s
bedside to discover, in horror, that he remained motionless even after shaken. Carrillo implored her to leave immediately, fearing Alfonso stricken with plague, and a doctor was summoned urgently. Isabel obeyed, stunned by the abrupt onset of Alfonso’s illness and frightened his condition was grave.
The doctor arrived, found Alfonso’s mouth black, and applied leeches over his body to bleed him. As the day passed, he neither regained consciousness nor died, but the dreaded corpuscles signaling the plague did not rise on his body. Some whispered it was poisoning, not pestilence. As night fell, Isabel cried to herself. She loved him, he was the only family she could rely on, and Enrique held her in rebellion. She prayed desperately for his survival. But he weakened through the night.
There was no improvement during the second day, and, by the third, Isabel recognized death was at hand. She wiped her tears and grimly acknowledged Castile was in chaos and that civil war had wronged most everyone. Fear, assault, and even rape and murder invaded daily life. Her hosts, and thousands of Castilians like them, simply longed for a ruler—whoever it might be—to provide law and order.
Isabel was shocked to perceive the Lord’s design emerging from her brother’s death. She and Alfonso had lived in close proximity and intimacy as brother and sister, but the Lord would take Alfonso’s life and spare her own. Father’s will provided she would rule after her brothers if they failed to produce a legitimate heir—and he would deny them such through impotency and death. His intent was unmistakable, and she recognized as never before that she yearned to be queen of Castile and should fight to achieve that with her utmost determination.
Upon Carrillo’s advice, Isabel wrote noblemen and townships throughout the kingdom that King Alfonso was dying and that she was the sole and legitimate heir to Castile. Alfonso died on July 5, and Isabel retired with advisers to a monastery in Ávila to consider how she should become queen.