“The poison will wear off,” said Diko. “The evil men among them will remember their anger.”
“We will remember our anger, too,” said one of Guacanagarí’s young men.
“If you kill all the white men, even the ones who did no harm, then you are just as bad as they are,” said Diko. “I promise you that if you kill in haste, you will be sorry.”
She said it quietly, but the menace in her words was real—she could see that they were all considering very carefully. They knew that she had deep powers, and none of them would be reckless enough to oppose her openly.
“Do you dare to forbid us to be men? Will you forbid us to protect our village?” asked Guacanagarí.
“I would never forbid you to do anything,” said Diko. “I only ask you to wait and watch a little longer. Soon white men will begin leaving the stockade. I think that first there will be loyal men trying to save their cacique. Then the other good men who don’t want to harm your people. You must let them find their way up the mountain to me. I ask you not to hurt them. If they are coming to me, please let them come.”
“Even if they’re searching for you to kill you?” asked Guacanagarí. It was a sly question, leaving him an opening to kill whoever he wanted, claiming he did it in order to protect Sees-in-the-Dark.
“I can protect myself,” said Sees-in-the-Dark. “If they are heading up the mountain, I ask you not to hinder or hurt them in any way. You’ll know when the only ones left are the evil ones. It will be plain to all of you, not just to one or two. When that day comes, you can act as men should act. But even then, if any of them escape and head for the mountain, I ask you to let them go.”
“Not the ones who raped Parrot Feather,” said Dead Fish at once. “Never them, no matter what way they run.”
“I agree,” said Diko. “There is no refuge for them.”
Cristoforo awoke in the darkness. There were voices outside his tent. He couldn’t hear the words, but he didn’t care, either. He understood now. It had come clear to him in his dream. Instead of dreaming about his own suffering, he had dreamed about the girl they had raped and killed. In his dream he saw the faces of Moger and Clavijo as they must have seemed to her, filled with lust and mockery and hate. In his dream, he begged them not to hurt her. In his dream, he told them he was just a girl, just a child. But nothing stopped them. They had no mercy.
These are the men I brought to this place, thought Cristoforo. And yet I called them Christian. And the gentle Indians, I called them savages. Sees-in-the-Dark said nothing but the simple truth. These people are the children of God, waiting only to be taught and baptized in order to be Christian. Some of my men are worthy to be Christians along with them. Pedro has been my example in this all along. He learned to see Chipa’s heart when all I or anyone else could see was her skin, the ugliness of her face, her strange manner. If I had been like Pedro in my heart, I would have believed Sees-in-the-Dark, and so I would not have had to suffer these last calamities—the loss of the Pinta, the mutiny, this beating. And the worst calamity of all: my shame at having refused the word of God because he didn’t send the kind of messenger I expected.
The door opened, then closed again quickly. Quiet footsteps approached him.
“If you have come to kill me,” said Cristoforo, “be man enough to let me see the face of my murderer.”
“Quiet, please, my lord,” said the voice. “Some of us have had a meeting. We’ll free you and get you out of the stockade. And then we’ll fight these damned mutineers and—”
“No,” said Cristoforo. “No fighting, no bloodshed.”
“What, then? Do we let these men rule over us?”
“The village of Ankuash, up the mountain,” said Cristoforo. “I’ll go there. The same with all loyal men. Get away quietly, without a fight. Follow the stream up the mountain—to Ankuash. That is the place that God prepared for us.”
“But the mutineers will build the ship . . .”
“Do you think mutineers could ever build a ship?” asked Cristoforo scornfully. “They’ll look each other in the eye, and then look away, because they’ll know they can’t trust each other.”
“That’s true, my lord,” said the man. “Already some of them are muttering about how Pinzón was interested only in making sure you knew that he wasn’t a mutineer. Some of them remembered how the Turk accused Pinzón of helping him.”
“A stupid charge,” said Cristoforo.
“Pinzón listens when Moger and Clavijo talk about killing you, and he says nothing,” said the man. “And Rodrigo stamps about, cursing and swearing because he didn’t kill you this afternoon. We have to get you out of here.”
“Help me get to my feet.”
The pain was sharp, and he could feel the fragile scabs on some of the wounds break open. Blood was trickling on his back. But it couldn’t be helped.
“How many of you are there?” asked Cristoforo.
“Most of the ship’s boys are with you,” he said. “They were all ashamed of Pinzón today. Some of the officers talk about negotiating with the mutineers, and Segovia talked with Pinzón for a long time, so I think maybe he’s trying to work out a compromise. Probably wants to put Pinzón in command—”
“Enough,” said Cristoforo. “Everyone is frightened, everyone is doing what he thinks is best. Tell your friends this: I will know who the loyal men are, because they will make their way up the mountain to Ankuash. I will be there, with the woman Sees-in-the-Dark.”
“The black witch?”
“There is more of God in her than in half the so-called Christians in this place,” said Cristoforo. “Tell them all—if any man wishes to return to Spain with me as a witness that he was loyal, then he will get away from here and join me in Ankuash.”
Cristoforo was standing now, and had his hose on, with a shirt loosely thrown over his back. More clothing than that he couldn’t bear, and on this warm night he wouldn’t suffer from being so lightly dressed. “My sword,” he said.
“Can you carry it?”
“I’m Captain-General of this expedition,” said Cristoforo. “I will have my sword. And let it be known—whoever brings me my logbooks and charts will be rewarded beyond his dreams when we return to Spain.”
The man opened the door, and both of them looked carefully to see if anyone was watching them. Finally they saw a man—Andrés Yévenes, from his lean boyish body—waving for them to come on. Only now did Cristoforo have a chance to see who it was who had come for him. It was the Basque, Juan de la Cosa. The man whose cowardly disobedience had led to the loss of the Santa Maria. “You have redeemed yourself tonight, Juan,” said Cristoforo.
Cosa shrugged. “We Basques—you never know what we’re going to do.”
Leaning on de la Cosa, Cristoforo moved as quickly as he could across the open area to the stockade wall. In the distance, he could hear the laughter and singing of drunken men. That was why he had been so badly guarded.
Andrés and Juan were joined by several others, all ship’s boys except for Escobedo, the clerk, who was carrying a small chest. “My log,” said Cristoforo.
“And your charts,” said Escobedo.
De la Cosa grinned at him. “Should I tell him about the reward you promised, or will you, my lord?”
“Which of you are coming with me?” asked Cristoforo.
They looked at each other in surprise. “We thought to help you over the wall,” said de la Cosa. “Beyond that . . .”
“They’ll know I couldn’t have done it alone. Most of you should come with me now. That way they won’t start searching through the stockade, accusing people of having helped me. They’ll think all my friends left with me.”
“I’ll stay,” said Juan de la Cosa, “so I can tell people the things you told me. All the rest of you, go.”
They hoisted Cristoforo up onto the stockade. He braced himself against the pain, and swung down and landed on the other side. Almost at once he found himself face to face with one of the T
aino. Dead Fish, if he could tell one Indian from another by moonlight. Dead Fish put his fingers against Cristoforo’s lips. Be silent, he was saying.
The others came over the wall much more quickly than Cristoforo had. The only trouble was with the chest containing the logs and charts, but it was eventually handed over the top, followed by Escobedo.
“That’s all of us,” said Escobedo. “The Basque is already heading back to the drinking before he’s missed.”
“I fear for his life,” said Cristoforo.
“He feared much more for yours.”
The Tainos all carried weapons, but they did not brandish them or seem to be threatening in any way. And when Dead Fish took Cristoforo by the hand, the Captain-General followed him toward the woods.
Diko carefully removed the bandages. The healing was going well. She thought ruefully of the small quantity of antibiotics she had left. Oh, well. She had had enough for this, and with any luck she wouldn’t need any more.
Cristoforo’s eyes fluttered.
“So you aren’t going to sleep forever after all,” said Diko.
His eyes opened, and he tried to lift himself from the mat. He fell back at once.
“You’re still weak,” she said. “The flogging was bad enough, but the journey up the mountain wasn’t good for you. You aren’t a young man anymore.”
He nodded weakly.
“Go back to sleep. Tomorrow you’ll feel much better.”
He shook his head. “Sees-in-the-Dark,” he began.
“You can tell me tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Tomorrow.”
“You are a daughter of God,” he said. It was hard for him to speak, to get the breath for it, to form the words. But he formed them. “You are my sister. You are a Christian.”
“Tomorrow,” she said.
“I don’t care about the gold,” he said.
“I know,” she answered.
“I think you come to me from God,” he said.
“I have come to you to help you make true Christians of the people here. Beginning with me. Tomorrow you’ll start to teach me about Christ, so I can be the first baptized in this land.”
“This is why I came here,” he murmured.
She stroked his hair, his shoulders, his cheek. As he drifted back to sleep, she answered him with the same words. “This is why I came here.”
Within a few days, the royal officers and several more loyal men found their way up the mountain to Ankuash. Cristoforo, now able to stand and walk for a while each day, set his men to work at once, helping the villagers with their work, teaching them Spanish and learning Taino as they did. The ship’s boys took to this humble work quite naturally. It was much harder for the royal officers to swallow their pride and work alongside the villagers. But there was no compulsion. As long as they refused to help, they were simply ignored, until they finally realized that in Ankuash, the old hierarchical rules no longer applied. If you weren’t helping, you didn’t matter. These were men who were determined to matter. Escobedo was the first to forget his rank, and Segovia the last, but that was to be expected. The heavier the burden of office, the harder it was to set it down.
Runners from the valley brought news. With the royal officers gone, Pinzón had accepted command of the stockade, but work on the new ship soon stopped, and there were tales of fighting among the Spaniards. More men slipped away and came up the mountain. Finally it came to a pitched battle. The gunfire could be heard all the way to Ankuash.
That night a dozen men arrived in the village. Among them was Pinzón himself wounded in the leg and weeping because his brother Vincente, who had been captain of the Niña, was dead. When his wound had been treated, he insisted on publicly begging the Captain-General’s forgiveness, which Cristoforo freely gave.
With the last restraint removed, the two dozen men remaining in the stockade ventured out to try to capture some Tainos, to make them into slaves or whores. They failed, but two Tainos and a Spaniard died in the fighting. A runner came to Diko from Guacanagarí. “We will kill them now,” said the messenger. “Only the evil ones are left.”
“I told Guacanagarí it would be obvious when the time came. But because you waited, there will only be a few of them, and you’ll beat them easily.”
The remaining mutineers slept in foolish security within their stockade, then woke in the morning to find their watchmen dead and the stockade filled with angry and well-armed Tainos. They learned that the gentleness of the Tainos was only one aspect of their character.
By the summer solstice of 1493, all the people of Ankuash had been baptized, and those Spaniards who had learned enough Taino to get along were permitted to begin courting young women from Ankuash or other villages. As the Spanish learned Taino ways, so also the villagers began to learn from the Spanish.
“They’re forgetting to be Spanish,” Segovia complained to Cristoforo one day.
“But the Taino are also forgetting to be Taino,” Cristoforo replied. “They’re becoming something new, something that has hardly been seen in the world before.”
“And what is that?” demanded Segovia.
“I’m not sure,” said Cristoforo. “Christians, I think.”
In the meantime, Cristoforo and Sees-in-the-Dark talked for many hours each day, and gradually he began to realize that despite all the secrets that she knew and all the strange powers that she seemed to have, she was not an angel or any other kind of supernatural being. She was a woman, still young, yet with a great deal of pain and wisdom in her eyes. She was a woman, and she was his friend. Why should that have surprised him? It was always from the love of strong women that he had found whatever joy had been granted him in his life.
13
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Reconciliations
It was a meeting that would live in history.
Cristóbol Colón was the European who had created the Carib League, a confederation of Christian tribes in all the lands surrounding the Carib Sea on the east, the north, and the south.
Yax was the Zapotec king who, building on his father’s work in uniting all the Zapotec tribes and forming an alliance with the Tarascan Empire, conquered the Aztecs and brought his ironworking and shipbuilding kingdom to the highest cultural level achieved in the western hemisphere.
Their achievements were remarkably parallel. Both men had put a stop to the ubiquitous practice of human sacrifice in the lands they governed. Both men had adopted a form of Christianity, which was easily united when they met. Colón and his men had taught European navigation and some shipbuilding techniques to the Tainos and, when they were converted to Christianity, the Caribs as well; under Yax, Zapotec ships traded far and wide, along both coasts of the Zapotec Empire. While the Carib islands were too poor in iron for them to match the achievements of the Tarascan metalsmiths, when Colón and Yax united their empires into one nation, there were still enough of Colón’s European crew who knew ironworking that they were able to help the Tarascans make the leap forward into gunsmithing.
Historians looked back on their meeting at Chichén Itzá as the greatest moment of reconciliation in history. Imagine what would have happened if Alexander, instead of conquering the Persians, had united with them. If the Romans and Parthians had become a single nation. If the Christians and Muslims, if the Mongols and the Han . . .
But it was unimaginable. The only reason they could believe it was possible with the Carib League and the Zapotec Empire was that it actually happened.
In the great central plaza of Chichén Itzá, where once human sacrifice and torture had been offered to Mayan gods, the Christian Colón embraced the heathen Yax, and then baptized him. Colón presented his daughter and heir, Beatrice Tagiri Colón, and Yax presented his son and heir, Ya-Hunahpu Ipoxtli. They were married on the spot, whereupon both Colón and Yax abdicated in favor of their children. Of course they would both remain the powers behind the throne until their deaths, but the alliance held, and the nation
known as Caribia was born.
It was a well-governed empire. While all the different tribes and language-groups that were included within it were allowed to govern themselves, a series of uniform laws were imposed and impartially enforced, allowing trade and free movement through every part of Caribia. Christianity was not established as a state religion, but the principles of nonviolence and communal control of land were made uniform, and human sacrifice and slavery were strictly forbidden. It was because of this that historians dated the beginning of the humanist era from the date of that meeting between Yax and Colón: the summer solstice of the year 1519, by the Christian reckoning.
The European influence that came through Colón was powerful, considering that only he and the merest handful of his officers and men were available to promulgate their culture. But, having come to Haiti, a land without writing, it should not have been astonishing that the Spanish alphabet was adopted to write the Taino and Carib languages, or that Spanish should eventually be adopted as the language of trade, government, and record-keeping throughout the Carib League. After all, Spanish was the language that already had the vocabulary to deal with Christianity, trade, and law. Yet by no means was this a European conquest. It was the Spanish who gave up the idea of personal ownership of land, which had long been a cause of great inequities of the old world; it was the Spanish who learned to tolerate different religions and cultures and languages without trying to enforce uniformity. When the behavior of Colón’s Spanish expedition in the new world is compared to the record of intolerance marked by the Inquisition, the expulsion of the Jews, and the war against the Moors in Spain itself, it is obvious that while Spanish culture provided a few useful tools—a lingua franca, an alphabet, a calendar—it was the Tainos who taught the Spanish what it meant to be Christian.
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