The launch dropped into the water with a splash. At once the launch’s crew of three oarsmen scrambled down the lines and began untying the knots to free the launch from the caravel. In the meantime, Juan tried to climb down the rope ladder, which, with the ship tilting, dangled in midair and swayed dangerously. Let me live to reach the launch, Holy Mother, he prayed, and then I will be a hero to save the others.
His feet found the boat but he could not pry his fingers away from the rope ladder.
“Let go!” demanded Peña, one of the seamen.
I’m trying, thought Juan. Why aren’t my hands working?
“He’s such a coward,” muttered Bartolomé. They pretend to speak softly, thought Juan, but they always make sure I can hear them.
His fingers opened. It had only been a moment. No one could be expected to act with perfect control when death by drowning lurked only moments away.
He clambered over Peña to get to his place at the stern, controlling the tiller. “Row,” he said.
As they began pulling, Bartolomé, sitting in the bow, called the rhythm. He had once been a soldier in the Spanish army, but was arrested for stealing—he was one of those who joined the voyage as a criminal hoping for pardon. Most of the criminals were treated badly by the others, but Bartolomé’s military experience had earned him some grudging respect from the others—and the slavish devotion of the other criminals. “Pull,” he said. “Pull.”
As they rowed, Juan turned the tiller hard to port.
“What are you doing?” demanded Bartolomé, when he saw that the launch was pulling away from the Santa Maria instead of heading for the bow, where the anchor was already beginning to descend.
“Do your job and I’ll do mine!” shouted Juan.
“We’re supposed to lie under the anchor!” answered Bartolomé.
“Do you trust your life to the Genovese? We’re going to the Niña for help!”
The seamen’s eyes widened. This was a direct contravention of orders. It bordered on mutiny against Colón. They still didn’t resume pulling on the oars. “De la Cosa,” said Peña, “aren’t you going to try to save the caravel?”
“It’s my ship!” cried Juan. “And it’s your lives! Pull on your oars and we can save everyone! Pull! Pull!”
Bartolomé took up the chant, and they pulled.
Only now did Colón trouble to notice what they were doing. Juan could hear him crying out from the quarterdeck. “Come back! What are you doing? Come and lie under the anchor!”
But Juan looked fiercely at the seamen. “If you want to live to see Spain again, then all we can hear is the splashing of the oars.”
Wordlessly they rowed, hard and fast. The Niña grew larger in the distance, the Santa Maria smaller behind them.
It’s amazing which events turn out to have been inevitable, thought Kemal, and which can be changed. The sailors all slept with different native women in Paradise Valley this time, so that apparently the choice of bedmates was entirely by random whim. But when it came to disobeying the only order that could have saved the Santa Maria, Juan de la Cosa apparently made the same choice no matter what. Love is random; fear is inevitable. Too bad I’ll never get a chance to publish this finding.
I’m done with telling stories. I can only act out the end of my life. Who then will decide the meaning of my death? I will, as best I can. But then it will be out of my hands. They will make of me whatever they want, if they remember me at all. The world in which I discovered a great secret of the past and became famous no longer exists. Now I’m in a world where I was never born and have no past. A lone Muslim saboteur, who somehow made his way to the New World? Who in the future will believe such a fantastic tale? Kemal imagined what the learned articles would sound like, explaining the psychosocial origin of the Lone Muslim Bomber legends from the voyage of Columbus. It brought a smile to his face, as the crew of the Santa Maria rowed for the Niña.
Diko came back to Ankuash with two full baskets of water hanging from the yoke over her shoulder. She had made the yoke herself, when it became clear to them all that no one in the village was as strong as Diko. It shamed the others, to see her carry her water so easily when for them it was so hard. So she made the yoke so she could carry twice as much, and then she insisted on hauling the water alone, so that no one else could be compared to her. She made three trips a day to the stream under the falls. It kept her strong, and she appreciated the solitude.
The others were waiting for her, of course—the water from her large baskets would be poured out into many smaller vessels, most of them clay pots. But she could see even from a distance that there was an eagerness to them. News, then.
“The white men’s canoe was taken by the spirits in the water!” cried Putukam, as soon as Diko was close enough to hear. “On the very day you said!”
“So now maybe Guacanagarí will believe the warning and protect his young girls.” Guacanagarí was the cacique over most of northwestern Haiti. He fancied sometimes that his authority extended all the way up the mountains of Cibao to Ankuash, though he had never attempted to test this theory in battle—there was nothing this high up in Cibao that he wanted. Guacanagarí’s dreams of being ruler of all of Haiti had led him in the prior history to make a fatal alliance with the Spanish. If they had not had him and his people to spy for them and even fight beside them, the Spanish might not have prevailed; other Taino leaders might have been able to unite Haiti in some kind of effective resistance. But that would not happen this time. Guacanagari’s ambition would still be his guiding principle, but it would not have the same devastating effect. For Guacanagarí would only be a friend to the Spanish when they seemed strong. As soon as they seemed weak, he would be their deadliest enemy. Diko knew enough not to trust his word even for a moment. But he was still useful, because he was predictable to one who understood his hunger for glory.
Diko squatted down to take the yoke from her shoulders. Others held up the water baskets and began to pour them off into other vessels.
“Guacanagarí, listen to a woman of Ankuash?” said Baiku skeptically. He was taking water into three pots. Little Inoxtla had cut himself badly in a fall, and Baiku was preparing a poultice, a tea, and a steam for him.
One of the younger women immediately rushed to Diko’s defense. “He must believe Sees-in-the-Dark! All her words come true.”
As always, Diko denied her supposed prophetic gifts, though it had been her intimate knowledge of the future that kept her from living as a slave or the cacique’s fifth wife. “It is Putukam who sees true visions, and Baiku who heals. I haul water.”
The others fell silent, for none of them had ever understood why Diko would say something which was so obviously false. Who ever heard of a person who refused to admit what she did well? Yet she was the strongest, tallest, wisest, and holiest person they had ever seen or heard of, and so if she said this, then there must be some meaning in it, though it could not be taken at face value, of course.
Think what you want, Diko said silently. But I know that the day has now come when I will have no more knowledge of the future than you have, because it will not be the future that I remembered.
“And what of the Silent Man?” she asked.
“Oh, they say he is still in his boat made of water and air, watching.”
Another added, “They say these white people can’t see him at all. Are they blind?”
“They don’t know how to watch things,” said Diko. “They don’t know how to see anything but what they expect to see. The Tainos down on the coast know how to see his boat made of water and air, because they saw him make it and put it into the water. They expect to see it. But the white men have never seen it before, so their eyes don’t know how to find it.”
“Still they’re very stupid not to see,” said Goala, a teenage boy freshly into his manhood.
“You are very bold,” said Diko. “I’d be afraid to be your enemy.”
Goala preened.
“But I’d b
e even more afraid to be your friend in battle. You are sure your enemy is stupid because he doesn’t do things as you would do them. It will make you careless, and your enemy will surprise you, and your friend will die.”
Goala went silent, while the others laughed.
“You haven’t seen the boat made of water and air,” said Diko. “So you don’t know how hard or easy it is to see it.”
“I want to see it,” said Goala quietly.
“It will do you no good to see it,” said Diko, “because no one in the world has the power to make one like it, and no one will have such power for more than four hundred years.” Unless technology moved even faster in this new history. With luck, this time technology would not outstrip the ability of human beings to understand it, to control it, to clean up after it.
“You make no sense at all,” said Goala.
The others gasped—only a man so young would speak so disrespectfully to Sees-in-the-Dark.
“Goala is thinking,” said Diko, “that it is the thing that will only be seen once in five hundred years that a man should go and see. But I tell you that it is only the thing that a man can learn from and use to help his tribe and his family that is worth going to see. The man who sees the boat made of water and air has a story that his children will not believe. But the man who learns how to make a great wooden canoe like the ones the Spaniards sail in can cross oceans with heavy cargo and many passengers. It is the Spaniard’s canoes you want to see, not the boat made of water and air.”
“I don’t want to see the white men at all,” said Putukam with a shudder.
“They are only men,” said Diko. “Some of them are very bad, and some of them are very good. All of them know how to do things that no one in Haiti knows how to do, and yet there are many things that every child in Haiti knows that these men do not understand at all.”
“Tell us!” several of them cried.
“I’ve told you all these stories about the coming of the white men,” said Diko. “And today there’s work to do.”
They voiced their disappointment like children. And why shouldn’t they? Such was the trust within the village, within the tribe, that no one was afraid to tell what he desired. The only feelings they had to hide from their fellow villagers were the truly shameful feelings, like fear and malice.
Diko carried her yoke and her empty water baskets back to her house—a hut, really. Thankfully no one was waiting for her there. She and Putukam were the only women to have houses of their own, and ever since the first time Diko had taken in a woman whose husband was angry at her and threatened to beat her, Putukam had joined her in making her house available as a refuge for women. There had been a great deal of tension at the beginning, since Nugkui, the cacique, correctly saw Diko as a rival for power in the village. It only came to violence once, when three men came in the shadow of night, armed with spears. It had taken her about twenty seconds to disarm all three of them, break the spear shafts, and send them staggering away with many cuts and bruises and sore muscles. They were simply no match for her size and strength—and her martial-arts training.
It wouldn’t have kept them from trying something later—an arrow, a dart, a fire—except that Diko had taken action at first light. She gathered up her belongings and began giving them away as gifts to other women. This immediately aroused the whole village. “Where are you going?” they demanded. “Why are you leaving?” She had answered disingenuously: “I came to this village because I thought I heard a voice calling me here. But last night I had a vision of three men attacking me in the darkness, and I knew that the voice must have been wrong, it was not this village, because this village doesn’t want me. I must go now and find the right village, the one that has a need for a tall black woman to carry their water.” After much remonstrance, she agreed to stay for three days. “By the end of that time, I will go unless everybody in Ankuash has asked me, one at a time, to stay, and promised to make me their aunt or their sister or their niece. If even one person does not want me here, I will go.”
Nugkui was no fool. Much as he might resent her authority, he knew that having her in the village gave Ankuash enormous prestige among the Taino who lived farther down the mountain. Didn’t they send their sick to Ankuash now to be healed? Didn’t they send messengers to ask the meanings of events or to learn what Sees-in-the-Dark predicted for the future? Until Diko came, the people of Ankuash were despised as the people who lived in the cold place on the mountain. It was Diko who had explained that their tribe was the first to live on Haiti, that their ancestors were the first to be brave enough to sail from island to island. “For a long time, the Taino have had their way here, and the Caribs want to do the same to them,” she explained. “But the time is soon coming when Ankuash will once again lead all the people of Haiti. For this is the village that will tame the white men.”
Nugkui was not about to let this exalted future slip away. “I want you to stay,” he had said, gruffly.
“I’m glad to hear that. Have you seen Baiku about that nasty bruise on your forehead? You must have bumped into a tree when you went out to pee in the dark.”
He glared at her. “Some say you do things a woman shouldn’t do.”
“But if I do them, then they must be things that I believe a woman should do.”
“Some say that you are teaching their wives to be rebellious and lazy.”
“I never teach anyone to be lazy. I work harder than anybody, and the best women of Ankuash follow my example.”
“They work hard, but they don’t always do what their husbands tell them.”
“But they do almost everything that their husband ask them to do,” said Diko. “Especially when their husbands do everything the women ask them to do.”
Nugkui had sat there for a long while, sucking on his anger.
“That cut on your arm looks ugly,” said Diko. “Was somebody careless with his spearpoint on yesterday’s hunt?”
“You change everything,” said Nugkui.
Here was the crux of the negotiation. “Nugkui, you are a brave and wise leader. I watched you for a long time before I came here. Wherever I went, I knew that I would make changes, because the village that teaches the white men how to be human has to be different from all other villages. There will be a dangerous time when the white men are not yet tamed, when you may need to lead our men in war. And even in peace, you are the cacique. When people come to me for judgment, don’t I always send them to you? Don’t I always show you respect?”
Grudgingly he admitted that she did.
“I have seen a terrible future, in which the white men come, thousands upon thousands of them, and make our people into slaves—the ones they don’t kill outright. I have seen a future in which on the whole island of Haiti there is not one Taino, not one Carib, not one man or woman or child of Ankuash. I came here to prevent that terrible future. But I can’t do it alone. It depends on you as much as on me. I don’t want you to obey me. I don’t want to rule over you. What village would respect Ankuash, if the cacique took orders from a woman? But what cacique deserves respect, if he can’t learn wisdom just because a woman teaches it to him?”
He watched her impassively, and then said, “Sees-in-the-Dark is a woman who tames men.”
“The men of Ankuash are not animals. Sees-in-the-Dark came here because the men of Ankuash have already tamed themselves. When women took refuge in my tent, or Putukam’s, the men of this village could have torn apart the walls and beaten their wives, or killed them—or Putukam, or even me, because I may be clever and strong but I am not immortal and I can be killed.”
Nugkui blinked at that statement.
“But the men of Ankuash are truly human. They were angry with their wives, but they respected the door of my house and the door of Putukam’s house. They stayed outside, and waited until their anger had cooled. Then their wives came out, and no one was beaten, and things were better. They say that Putukam and I were making trouble, but you are the cacique.
You know that we were helping make peace. But it only worked because the men and women of this village wanted peace. It only worked because you, as cacique, allowed it to work. If you saw another cacique act as you have acted, wouldn’t you call him wise?”
“Yes,” said Nugkui.
“I also call you wise,” said Diko. “But I won’t stay unless I can also call you my uncle.”
He shook his head. “That wouldn’t be right. I’m no uncle to you, Sees-in-the-Dark. No one would believe it. They would know that you were only pretending to be my niece.”
“Then I can’t stay,” she said, rising to her feet.
“Sit down,” he said. “I can’t be your uncle, and I won’t be your nephew, but I can be your brother.”
Diko had fallen to her knees before him then, and embraced him where he sat on the ground. “Oh, Nugkui, you are the man I hoped for.”
“You are my sister,” he said again, “but I thank every pasuk that lives in these woods that you are not my wife.” With that he got up and left her house. From then on they were allies—once Nugkui’s word was given, he didn’t break it or allow any of the angry men to break it either. The result was inevitable. The men learned that rather than have the public humiliation of their wives taking refuge in the house of Diko or Putukam, they would control their anger, and no woman had been beaten in Ankuash for more than a year. Now women were more likely to come to Diko’s house to complain about a husband who had lost his desire for her, or to ask her for magic or prophecy. She gave them neither, but instead offered sympathy and commonsense advice.
Alone in her house, she took up the calendar she was keeping, and reviewed in her mind the events that would come in the next few days. Down on the coast, the Spanish would be turning to Guacanagarí for help. In the meantime, Kemal—the one the Indies called Silent Man—would be destroying the other Spanish ships. If he failed, or if the Spanish succeeded in building new ships and sailed for home, then her work would be to unify the Indies to prepare them to beat off the Spanish. But if the Spanish were stranded here, then her work would be to spread stories that would lead Columbus to her. As social order broke down in the expedition—a near certainty, once they were stranded—Columbus would come to need a refuge. That would be Ankuash, and it would be her job to get him and any who came with him under control. If she had had to do a number on the Indies to get them to accept her, wait till they saw what she did to the white men.
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