by Shirl Henke
Aaron gave her a look of pure loathing as he withdrew the dirk from his belt and held it at her throat. “Tell her you will be down anon—get rid of her or I'll kill you both!”
“Go and tell the cook to pour cool wine from the cellar cask into pitchers and set it before our visitors, along with the new cheeses hung in the well. Hurry. I will be along in but a moment!”
As Miralda's footfalls faded with her muttering, Aaron turned to Magdalena, the dirk gleaming dully in the dim light. “Well feigned. You almost kept me here long enough for the trap to spring closed.”
“I did not—”
“Silence. You almost had me believing your lies.” His low voice cut as deeply as a blade. Then, almost against his will, his other hand took a long curling mass of russet hair, burnished almost black in the waning light, and held it up in his fist. He studied her face. “What is the hold you seem to have over me? Best beware, witch, lest the Holy Office burn you for the practice of necromancy!” He released her hair and with blurring speed his fist connected to her jaw, toppling her backward on the bed, unconscious.
Chapter Ten
Off the coast of Española, November 26, 1493
My Dearest Father:
It seems strange to write these entries knowing that you will never read them. Yet somehow I sense your presence with me and feel you would wish that I continue my accounts of the wonders in the Indies. This is the link that binds us together over time and distance, reaching even beyond death.
Aaron paused thoughtfully. Would a son of his ever read what he wrote? Or write to him? “I grow fanciful in my grief. Best attend to the matter at hand and record what has transpired on this voyage,” he murmured and resumed writing.
The admiral returned from his audience with Fernando and Ysabel covered with great triumph. In Castile and Aragon, all the way to Catalonia and then back to Seville, crowds gathered to cheer the Genoese whom they had for so long scorned. On September 25th, after much disputing with Don Juan de Fonseca, the royal provisioner, we set sail from Cadiz with our fleet of seventeen ships. The gold and green banners of Castile flew alongside the new standard of the admiral, who has been granted, among other privileges, his own coat of arms. The admiral's flagship, the Maria Galante, is far more worthy than Santa Maria. She is two hundred tons, with spacious quarters for all officers.
For all the glory this voyage promises, I fear for my friend and commander. This enterprise has cost him dearly, for in the turbulent return across the Atlantic, the icy storms smote him with terrible pain in his joints that even the warm Andalusian sun cannot cure. In spite of the crippling sickness, Don Cristobal stood on the quarterdeck of his flagship, splendidly attired, waving to the crowds until we passed from the harbor and out into the open sea. By comparison, my slight seasickness is as nothing and 'twill be gone once I touch land.
This is indeed a Grand Fleet, including over fifteen hundred men of all classes—sailors, merchants, artisans, farmers, soldiers and, at the special request of Queen Ysabel, priests to convert the people of the Indies. Would that these Minions of Truth could leave the innocent Tainos to their zemis. Most of those hoping to build a new life on Española are gentlemen who have never known the deprivations of soldiering. Of the few who have, men such as Mosén Margarite, Francisco Roldan and Alonso Hojeda are brutal warriors and avaricious treasure seekers. I would prefer they not treat with the gentle Tainos.
I am also troubled by the admiral's youngest brother, Diego Colon, who accompanies us. Physically he resembles the admiral in that he is slim and possesses reddish hair, but there the resemblance ends. He was destined for a career in the Church, but rebelled and left Genoa to seek his fortune trading on Cristobal's triumph. He has none of his older brother's steady judgment or gentle sense of humor. I fear his ambition if he is left in command.
We have enough chaos already. Our decks are crowded with livestock as the holds are filled with seeds and foodstuffs. Pigs and chickens race about nervous horses and cattle. I long for the sight of our settlement. We have sailed from island to island for nearly a month, claiming all for God and monarch.
I know naught of navigation, but the genius of Don Cristobal awes me. Two times now he has brought the fleet across the vast Atlantic to the thousand islands of the Indies. We are but a day's sail from our departing point last January. Even I recognize the coastline of Española. The admiral says we should reach La Navidad, the fortress of our shipwrecked men, on the morrow. I wonder how they have fared in our absence? The Caribes are in evidence on many islands and even gave fight, killing one of our company. We found signs of human bones, even captive Tainos, whom the admiral freed.
These Caribes are far darker than the Taino with coarser hair, thicker and shorter of build. They are reasonably skilled with bow and arrow and with darts, but the greatest threat is from the poison they employ on the tips of their weapons. The pain from it is great, as I can attest, having been grazed by an arrow.
Aaron put down his pen, thinking how fascinating Benjamin would have found the poisonous herbs and other items he had collected on the first voyage. If only his sire had lived to see the curiosities. He forced the thought aside and closed the log book. There would be time to write more when his humor improved.
On November 26th, the marshal of the fleet found his humor badly in want of improvement. When a gromet signaled there were two men lying on the beach, two ship's boats were put down at the mouth of the cove. Aaron was the first to leap ashore, sword drawn, backed by four crossbowmen, their arbalests ready to fire. The men lying on the beach had made no response to their cries of greeting. Now Aaron saw why. They had been strangled with bejuco cord, a weapon Aaron had seen used by Tainos as well as Caribes.
He prodded the body of Rigo Escobedo with his sword. Although filthy and grotesque in death, he looked to have suffered no other ailment, nor did the gromet who lay beside him, but for one telling disfigurement. Both men had their eyes plucked out. Taino religion certified men as dead only when they no longer possessed the power to see.
“Those savages!” Margarite swore a string of colorful oaths. “Your Taino friends have turned on us!”
“I will not judge them, nor will you, for such is the task of the admiral. These men have not long been dead, for the heat makes bodies decay rapidly here.” He pointed to two young men more inclined to obey orders than Mosén Margarite, who was full of himself and possessed a foul Argonese temper. “Search the beaches to the east and west for any signs of Indians, but do not attack unless they clearly show hostile intent. You, Pedro, have seen Taino and Caribe and know the difference,” he said to a quaking gromet. “Go with them.”
Aaron knelt and further examined Escobedo. He instructed two sailors to bury the men and sent one boat back to the flagship to fetch a priest. “Let that fat; complaining Fray Buil bestir himself to say words over the dead,” he muttered as his eyes scanned the jungle. What in hell had happened?
Within the hour they were back aboard Maria Galante, sailing toward La Navidad. The air aboard the flagship was tense with anxiety. What had begun as a pleasure jaunt and great adventure had become suddenly fraught with mysterious dangers.
“Do you think the Taino killed those men?” Colon asked incredulously.
Aaron shrugged, looking at Don Cristobal's brother Diego, who was pale and nervous already. “The Taino use this means of killing, but I have only seen them employ it to cut short the suffering of those already dying. Also, there are at least six caciques on the island. Guacanagari is but one of them.”
“That does not signify that his men could not have strangled our men,” Diego interjected, wanting to voice his opinion as his brother's second in command.
The three men were closeted in the admiral's more spacious quarters aboard the new flagship, sitting around an oak table. Aaron stood up and paced to the port window and looked out at the descending darkness. “I like it not that La Navidad does not return our cannon signal, but we will know the fate of the fortress
come daylight. For now, all we can do is prepare for the worst. I trust my friend Guacanagari, but let us proceed with caution and take no rash action against the Taino, nor let ourselves fall prey to carelessness.”
Dawn brought the worst fears of all into grim, merciless perspective. The fortress, so carefully built of timbers from the wrecked Santa Maria, was a burned-out shell. Skeletons lay obscenely sprawled in the golden light, scattered across the length of the beach. The destruction of La Navidad had taken place some time ago. Refuse littered the pristine sand, as if the men had lived like animals, wasting their provisions, planting no crops. A few were strangled, but many had been pierced by arrows or spears. Three, found near a poorly erected grass hut down the beach, had probably died of disease, if such could be judged from their remains.
“Forty men, sailors, soldiers, many of them gentlemen—all dead,” Cristobal said in resignation. Standing next to him was Caonu, who had just arrived from Guacanagari's village, escorted by two wary soldiers. The trembling youth's face was strained and pale now, no longer joyous as his large dark eyes swept from his captors to Aaron, pleading for deliverance.
“How did this happen, my friend?” Aaron asked in the Taino language, his expression conveying a clear message to Hojeda and Margarite, who menaced the boy. Diego Colon, although standing back, also looked ready to prejudge based on the horrors surrounding them.
Caonu spoke rapidly and Aaron had to keep interjecting pleas for the frightened youth to slow down so he could follow the tale of debauchery and treachery that unfolded.
“What says the heathen?” Diego asked brusquely, interrupting the dialogue.
“Hold your peace, Diego. The marshal speaks the language and has spent some months living with them. Let him complete his task,” Colon remonstrated. He had always been fond of his youngest brother, and had in fact named his elder son for him. But if Diego would command on Española while the admiral went to sea for further exploration, his brother must learn patience and whom to trust.
Colon ran one large, cruelly gnarled hand through his thinning hair, no longer the bright fiery red of his youth, but now lightened with gray. Placing one arm about Diego's shoulders, he drew the younger man toward a clear stretch of beach, unmarred by the ugliness of death. “Return to the flagship and summon the captains of Carrera and Prìmivera. Send them with orders to search eastward and westward for a suitable site where we may build a new fortress. Let it not be too far from here, no more than a day's journey.”
Diego digested the assignment, which he deemed to be worthy of his importance and nodded. “I will dispatch them at once, Cristobal.”
Aaron turned from his conversation with Caonu and addressed the admiral. “I must go to the village and speak with Guacanagari.”
“Is it safe to do so?” Cristobal asked bleakly, looking at the carnage about him.
“Yes, I believe so, although these fine civilized men comported themselves so abominably that I would not fault Guacanagari for killing us all!” He gestured to the bodies being gathered for burial.
“What, by the Blessed Virgin, happened?” Colon asked.
“The men split into factions. The gentlemen of the court expected the lowly seamen from the marshlands to obey them, which they would not. The assayer from Seville organized many of them to search for gold—which they did, not by prospecting in the streams as the Taino showed them, but by forcing Guacanagari's people to work in their stead.” Aaron paused and shrugged. “As for the rest, Galicians, Cordobans, Basques, each small group took women from Guacanagari's village—some by force—and went off, deserting the fort and building these shacks. They drank, wenched, and had the Tainos do their bidding. Some of the more adventurous struck out with Guacanagari's people as guides and trespassed into the cacicazgos of Caonabo and Behechio. Both are far less tolerant than young Guacanagari. Caonabo is half Carib! The caciques killed them, and I believe they were right. These men deserved to die,” Aaron said grimly.
Don Cristobal Colon, brilliant navigator and chartmaker, visionary explorer, stood on the beach amid the wreckage. “I fear I am more at home at sea than on land. I thought these men could be trusted. I left Harana in charge, thinking we had taken all the troublemakers back to Castile with us.” He looked at Aaron's grim face and met his gaze. “Perhaps we should send a company of heavily armed men with you.”
“No. I would prefer to go alone. Guacanagari and his family trust you and trust me as your representative. If I return this trust, I think we can mend what these fools have wrought.”
The admiral nodded. “Go with God, my young friend.”
God, the Christian pantheon of saints, the Taino zemis, I will accept help from any and all, Aaron thought as he bade farewell to Colon and turned back to Caonu.
* * * *
Ysabel, Española, February 2, 1494
The rude village was filled to overcrowding with pigs, chickens, sheep, cattle, even the few skittish horses that had survived the last bitter month. From the end of November to the opening of the new year, Colon and his grand fleet had struggled, beating a course eastward, against the wind, along the ruggedly beautiful coastline of Española. The admiral finally chose a level grassy plain with a small river not too far distant as the best choice for a new settlement, given the fact that both men and animals were sickening aboard ship. He named the new city Ysabel in honor of his patroness.
Aaron held his peace, but he thought it a singularly appropriate name for the unlikely site, feeling as he did about the unattractive and fanatical queen. The river was brackish and too far from the plain to be really convenient. The land was marshy and the climate, come the heat of summer, would be miasmic. But he had been otherwise occupied with peace-making missions between the colonists and the Tainos and had not been consulted.
Now, as he surveyed several thatched huts, greatly inferior in construction to those of Guacanagari's village, Aaron shook his head in disillusionment. Men idled about in the central plaza or sat drinking wine in front of their rude quarters. Dung littered the streets. Pigs squealed, chickens squawked, and sheep bleated in complaint, running hither and yon, heeded only when hunger bestirred the gold seekers to catch a prize and butcher it. Food was scarce and few crops had been planted. A combination of poor soil and poorer cultivation would yield meager harvests. Already the settlers had grown dependent on the Taino for cassava bread and yams as staples. Still many men sickened and died of fevers and other maladies.
A few stone buildings had been erected, an austere governor's residence for Don Cristobal, who according to his royal patents was the chief civil and military authority, and an arsenal. Although Colon had offered his fleet marshal command of the island's military, Aaron had declined, feeling that he better served both colonists and Tainos by living among the Indians and acting as a go-between. Few of the settlers had made any effort to learn the Taino language and most abused the generous Indians shamefully, trading cheap trinkets for vital food and gold.
Gold. Aaron looked at the harbor. A dozen ships were outfitted for the return voyage home. Over thirty thousand ducats in gold was aboard, along with exotic birds and other lesser booty. Even a few baskets of pearls had been obtained by trade with Tainos from outlying islands. Over three hundred of the disappointed colonists were returning, including many of the clergy who were as disillusioned with their meager success in converting the Indians as the caballeros were with their failure to find instant riches.
Yet riches were present, for those who had pluck and brains enough to gain them. Aaron's plan for vengeance swung on his ability to get rich. But beating and maiming Tainos to force them into giving up their small gold supplies was not the answer. A cold smile crossed his face as he recalled his conversation with a half-Caribe cacique from Higuey in the southeast. His people had found gold in the interior rivers. Someday soon, when he could gather enough from this richer yield, he could return to Seville and exact a fearsome penalty from Bernardo Valdés.
Francisco Roldan, b
ig, bluff and hearty, strode up to Aaron, kicking a squawking chicken away with one booted foot. Throwing his meaty arm about the slimmer man's shoulders, he asked with genuine curiosity in his voice, “How do you manage to win more gold, even brazilwood, from the caciques by smiles than Margarite does with his sword?”
“You should know, my friend. You, too, are fast becoming as acclimated to Taino life as I,” Aaron replied with a smile.
“Ah, but you have the favor of Guacanagari's lovely sister, an asset of priceless worth.” Roldan's own prowess with the Taino women was legendary and his tastes notably catholic.
Aaron sighed and the smile left his face. “Unlike you, who have a ‘wife’ in each village from Marien to Xaragua, I am faithful to Aliyah.”
“Faithful, yet unwed by either her laws or ours. Do I detect a hint of conscience in an adventurer such as you?” Roldan teased. “Have you a wench back in Seville—or worse yet, a lady who holds your heart captive?”
Aaron scoffed as the vision of cat-green eyes brimming with tears flashed into his mind. “Scarce that. I am pledged to no woman, nor would be until other matters are attended.”
“Yet the fair Aliyah works her wiles on you and cajoles her brother to force the match.”
“You have become far too adept at picking up Indian gossip,” Aaron replied crossly.
Seeing that the joke had turned sour, the mercurial Francisco changed the subject. “You brought a good deal of booty in for our governor's treasure fleet. Think you the Majesties will be pleased?”