by Shirl Henke
“Nothing will ever satisfy Fernando's greed,” Aaron replied bluntly, for he had grown to like Roldan, a rough but honest soldier who treated the Tainos fairly. “As to his queen, when her priests go scurrying home without a soul baptized, I think she will be sore displeased. The admiral is. He hoped for mass conversions.”
“I know you like him well,” Roldan replied, looking about the busy harbor area where ship's boats busily loaded goods, “but Don Cristobal is a fool as an administrator. He should stay at sea, which is his own true element. On land he flops like a banked bonita, giving and countermanding orders, treating the Taino as allies one day, as enemies the next.”
Aaron sighed. “He has chosen poor men to command, I agree. Margarite is a brutal butcher and Hojeda I would trust no sooner than I would pet a coiled adder. His brother Diego has little to recommend him either, but look about us, Francisco. These men are not settlers. They do not adapt to the land. They will not become farmers or herdsmen and they are too arrogant to learn the Tainos' ways—all they do is bleed the caciques for food and gold.”
“Soon there will be a rebellion,” Roldan said softly. “You know it as I do. The question is, with your loyalties so divided, where will you stand?”
Aaron looked into the Castilian's shrewd brown eyes. “I do not know. There is an oath I must keep, sworn .back in Seville. I would not see Guacanagari's people harmed. Nor do I wish the admiral's colony to fail and drag his dreams down with its demise.”
“So that is why you stepped down as Colon's marshal. You could have had Margarite's job, but it would have meant spilling Taino blood. Even now he sets up forts across the interior mountains, from which our colonists will bleed the Tainos for yet more gold and food.”
“Both can be obtained by honest barter—and by working alongside the Taino.” Aaron studied Roldan. “I have heard about a powerful cacique in Xaragua, far to the southwest of here, who would defy the invaders. You will ally with him, will you not?”
“Let us pray to all the saints it comes not to that, but if it does, I will not ally with the cacique of Xaragua...I will be the cacique of Xaragua!” He threw back his head of thick brown curls and laughed.
* * * *
Aliyah stroked Aaron's chest, then moved deft fingers up to his bristling jawline. “Will you cut the hair from your face? It burns my skin,” she said with a pout, hefting her full breasts, one in each hand, to display whisker burns on the tender flesh.
Aaron rolled back on the platform bed inside the bohio and watched her as she posed artfully. She had grown shrewish and jealous since his return. Of course, in his absence she had resumed relations with several noblemen of Guacanagari's village.
With a sigh he said, “I will shave for you, Aliyah.” I seem to be cursed with faithless women, he thought in irritation, wondering what had become of Magdalena Valdés so far across the ocean.
* * * *
Valladolid, March 1494
“He is not so tall as the admiral, but has the same red hair. And Don Bartolome has not the crippling affliction, but is most robust,” Estrella Valdés said breathlessly as she paced the carpeted floor of the quarters she shared with her daughter.
“I am surprised you did not look on his young nephews as prospects for dalliance as well,” Magdalena said, rolling her eyes in disgust.
“You will show your mother some respect, Magdalena! They are but boys brought by Don Bartolome to be pages at the court. Don Cristobal's younger son is a babe of six and even the elder is a stripling of fourteen years.” Estrella regarded her daughter thoughtfully, then mused aloud, “Of course, in a year or two he might have possibilities as a husband for you.”
“All you ever think of is ridding yourself of me. I will wed none of your odious choices, Mother.”
“You foolishly pine away for one long gone. His family is in disgrace and there is no possibility of your marrying him even if he were to return.” Estrella shuddered, then continued with her scheming. “Your father will arrange a match if I do not. You might find some of his choices far more odious than mine.” Ignoring Magdalena's angry scowl, she looked in the mirror of polished steel on the wall, studying her faded beauty, the loose skin beneath her chin, the fine lines webbing her eyes. “You are young and fresh. What power you could wield, stupid girl, if only you would cooperate!”
Magdalena's face became a hard mask. “I will not wed at your pleasure, nor will I sell myself as a leman to please you or that man you married.” She could never again name Bernardo Valdés as father.
“You are a fool to hide yourself away and pine for that Jew! The king is taken with you.”
Magdalena recalled Fernando's jet eyes following her last evening at the banquet honoring Don Cristobal's brother. Merciful Virgin, what had she done to deserve such unwanted attention! “I am not you, Mother. I want nothing to do with the king's favors. And less to do with the queen's wrath.”
Ever a court game player, Estrella considered her daughter's words and found they had merit. “Ysabel minds not as much that Fernando sports with married women, but young maids of exceptional beauty...of those she is fierce jealous. Still—”
“The queen minds every infidelity of her lord,” Magdalena interrupted. “But noblewomen who are wed and have the protection of a husband cannot be banished to a convent!”
She had learned much in her scant weeks with the court. Until her mother's fading beauty had caused her fall from royal favor, she had been the king's mistress and thus had earned the enmity of the painfully plain queen. But Estrella had always been clever, managing to return to court on some pretext each time Ysabel sent her to Seville to tend her children. Now that she was unable to secure the advantages derived from being the royal whore she wanted to place her daughter in Fernando's bed and use Magdalena for her own selfish schemes.
“If you but use your brain, there is little danger of a convent,” Estrella replied dismissively. “You will have to risk the queen's ire again tonight. I am certain his Majesty will ask you to dance at the ball. Forget your marrano love. Do not be a fool!”
Am I a fool? Magdalena thought that night as she kept step in a stately pavane. Her cloth-of-gold gown was cut low across her breasts and the squared neckline was lavishly sewn with pearls. She held the long train in her free hand, swinging it gracefully as she executed the intricate movements of the dance. It was pleasant to wear lovely clothes and have young noblemen attend her, such as the boy who fawningly held her hand at the moment. Half a dozen others waited at the sidelines of the polished stone floor, each eager to take his turn with Don Bernardo's lovely daughter.
Magdalena looked across the crowded room full of merry makers, glittering with rich furs, velvets, silks and jewels. The nephew of the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, Don Lorenzo Guzman, began to walk deliberately toward her. She knew him only by sight, but his attention made her almost as uncomfortable as the king's. He was the widower of poor Ana Torres. After her cruel death, he had been exonerated of all blame in her supposed judaizing. Powerful family connections had weight, even with the Holy Office. She averted her eyes from his hawklike visage, praying he would pass her by.
Everywhere I go I am haunted by memories of the House of Torres, even at the royal court. Once she would have given anything to be the center of admiration, but that was when she had hopes Aaron would be one of those watching her, waiting his turn to dance and flirt with her. Instead, this tall, skinny man with malevolence in his cold pewter eyes stalked her.
“May I have the favor of this dance, beautiful lady?” Guzman looked at her with narrowed eyes, the lids heavy with passion as he inspected her body, pausing significantly at the swell of her breasts.
He was the nephew of one of the most powerful noblemen at court. Lorenzo could step before her other young swains and ask her to dance. None of them dared to protest and she saw no graceful way to refuse without creating a scene that would attract the king's attention. Magdalena nodded woodenly and let him take her hand.
�
�So somber. Can you not smile for me as you have for those young pups?” Lorenzo again subjected her to a thorough perusal, knowing how nervous he made her and relishing her discomfiture. Bernardo's daughter had genuine possibilities as a mistress. He had always favored brunettes, but this one, with her cat's green eyes and russet hair, intrigued him. More than that, he knew from Bernardo's stupid wife that Magdalena had been smitten with Benjamin Torres' younger whelp, now vanished in the Indies. To take one last thing from the House of Torres would give him great pleasure.
Magdalena endured his teasing insinuations, replying with curt remarks barely a shade away from outright rudeness. Finally, she stopped at the end of the dance and said bluntly, “You seem to enjoy toying with me, Don Lorenzo. I am but a simple country girl lately come to court, not of my lady mother's stripe. I have no patience or skills for intrigue.” Or stomach for your hands on me!
“Ah, but I have infinite patience...and skill, my lady.” With that suggestive remark he pulled her hand to his lips and kissed it.
Magdalena started in horror at the touch of his wet lips on her flesh. Dear Mother of God, what web have I stepped into now?
“You are much bemused, my fair flame,” King Fernando said as he dismissed Lorenzo with a wave of his elegant hand.
Seething inwardly, Guzman replied, “As you wish, your majesty.” He bowed to the king and then to Magdalena.
As they watched Lorenzo retreat, Fernando Tras-tamara reached for her hand and signaled the musicians to begin another pavane. “What do you think on?” he asked as he led her through the intricate steps of the dance.
“Nothing of import, your majesty. I do but daydream of Seville,” she said nervously, feeling the watery blue eyes of Queen Ysabel piercing her back like shards of glass.
“Seville. What could possibly be in Seville but heat and marshes? I prefer to journey no farther into Andalusia than the mountains of Granada.”
“I understand the Moorish city is most beautiful,” she replied.
“Moorish no longer. Now Christian, won at dear cost in battle, but let us speak not of wars. I would much enjoy showing you the great wonders of the Alhambra.”
“My mother has spoken of its splendor, your majesty,” she said, unable to resist mention of Doña Estrella, his former lover. At least with her red hair and green eyes, she was no get of this dark Argonese devil!
“Your mother was a woman of great beauty, but even in her prime she would pale by comparison with you,” he murmured smoothly, escorting her from the dance floor toward a high-arched doorway. Beyond it was a courtyard filled with evergreens. “I grow warm from dancing and would have fresh spring air...and charming company.” It was not a request.
Queen Ysabel sat on the dais across the crowded room, her eyes narrowed and her face flushed. She had dressed especially to please her husband in a splendid new gown of rich ruby velvet, trimmed in ermine, its slashed sleeves inset with pale rose satin. Her faded hair was hidden beneath an enormous turbaned headdress encrusted with rubies. Yet for all her pains to please him, he had left her side to cavort with that Valdés harlot, the daughter of a harlot!
Never, even as a young woman, had Ysabel's hair been that deep a red, that lustrous or thick, nor had her figure ever been slim, long-legged, and pliant. She cursed the girl, then realized her mortal sin of jealousy would have to be confessed.
She studied the empty doorway to the courtyard where Fernando had taken the creature, a young unmarried girl whose father was a Crossbearer. Surely such a man of religion would be willing to dower his daughter suitably for entry into the Contemplative Second Order of Dominican nuns in Madrid. There she could spend her life under a vow of silence, fasting and praying for forgiveness of her sins. Ysabel smiled radiantly and nodded toward Don Pedro Gonzales de Mendoza, Cardinal of the Spains and Archbishop of Toledo. He would be pleased to handle the negotiations for the dowering, the queen was certain.
Chapter Eleven
“You cannot mean this?” Magdalena sank down onto the hard wooden bench. “A convent!” Her blood froze as she searched Bernardo Valdés's coldly furious expression.
Her father stood across the room from her, his face gray and taut. His grand schemes for this, his most marketable offspring, had all gone for naught. He drew himself up stiffly and laced his thick, beringed fingers across his paunch. “It is you who have brought us to this sorry pass. At least your mother knew how to be discreet! The queen saw you and the king slip into the courtyard. God's bones! There were hundreds of witnesses. Her majesty does not take well to public humiliation,” he said grimly.
Magdalena's eyes blazed and she leaped up, wanting to claw his eyes out—cold, unfeeling, stupid man! “What was I to do when his majesty took my arm and led me to the door—slap his face and thrust him away from me? He gave me no choice! I have done everything I can to discourage him since you insisted on bringing me to court.”
“If you had brains, or the cunning inherent in the more useful of your sex, you would never have discouraged the king. If you had plied him well, you could have made a discreet assignation for later that evening and her majesty would never have become so wroth.”
Magdalena looked at Bernardo Valdés as if he were an insect. “I only regret I did not kill you that day in the stables,” she said with quiet intensity.
Bernardo reddened in mortification. His eyes quickly scanned the room to see if any possible weapons were at hand. Nothing. His mouth twisted in a cruel parody of a smile. “I beat you bloody when last you tried such an unnatural act.”
“You mean you had your groomsmen hold me while you vented your wrath,” Magdalena said scornfully. “As to what is unnatural, selling your own daughter to be debauched and pawed for royal favor is unnatural. Benjamin Torres is the true father of my heart. You are but the Pandarus who may have sired me. Once I overheard my mother tell her cousin Lucia that she was uncertain who my father was. A young count was her lover at the time I was conceived. Then I cried. Now I pray nightly that it is true!”
Bernardo considered slapping her, but she was fierce-tempered and strong in spite of her slight size. Ignoring the slur, which he had long suspected was true, he said, “Now that you have disobeyed my instructions—and those of your mother—you will suffer the consequences.”
“Tell me, will her majesty pay my dower to rid the court of me, or are you forced to bear that final burden?” Knowing Bernardo's greed, it was a small bit of revenge, all she could expect.
His deeply flushed face revealed the truth. “Entry into the Dominican Convent in Madrid is an honor dearly bought. You have ever brought me grief. I am well rid of you.” He turned to leave her quarters, then paused and fixed her with a malevolent glare. “Try none of your foolish escapades now. If you vex me enough, I could always denounce you to the Holy Office. You well know my influence with Fray Tomás,'' he finished on an oily smooth note, gloating to spite the red-haired bitch.
After he had slammed the heavy oak door, Magdalena sat numb with horror. A nun, cloistered away for the rest of her life to fast and pray. Never again would she know the freedom of racing Blossom across the Andalusian plains or feel the wind rippling her hair, never again smell the sweet fecund earth after spring rain...never again would she feel Aaron's lips on hers, his hard beautiful body covering her, caressing her. Never would he know how she loved him!
When Magdalena had come to court, she had done so in the very unlikely hopes of meeting Aaron Torres. Twelve of Admiral Colon's ships, laden with gold, spices and exotic Indians had returned to Castile and the men with them had been summoned at once to report to the king and queen. Of course, it would have been most dangerous for him to chance an encounter with the Holy Office after his family had been condemned, but she had prayed Aaron would return so covered in glory that the Majesties would pardon him. Nevertheless, she knew it was better that he had remained in the Indies with the Genoese. Now she would never see him again.
Tears burned her eyes, but she dashed them back. The
re must be a way. Her hands clenched the locket tightly, rubbing the gold exterior as if caressing her lover. Over the past months it had become an unconscious habit. Suddenly she looked down at it and her heartbeat, leaden with sorrow a moment before, speeded up with a fierce surge of hope.
“The admiral's brother!” she cried aloud in the empty room.
* * * *
Bartolome Colon had just passed an emotionally exhausting evening saying farewell to his brother's young sons. Diego, the young courtier, at fourteen was already becoming a politician, while little Fernando at six was a chubby child of endearing brightness. He had grown fond of them in the weeks he had spent in their company, escorting them from Cordoba to Valladolid. At the large and frightening court, he had become their surrogate father. After his years with the English and French courts, Bartolome Colon had learned his lessons well. He did his best to teach his nephews how to survive as Prince Juan's pages.
How his heart ached to leave two lonely boys in this fearsome place of political intrigues. At least the young prince, who was slow and in frail health, was known to be kind, unlike his sire or his dame. Diego and Fernando had known so little of their father, and now their uncle was deserting them, too. But he had done as Cristobal had instructed and the Indies beckoned him. The dream, so long deferred, was about to be realized. Tomorrow he would begin his journey to Cadiz and thence to the new city of Ysabel on Española. He was to be Cristobal's adelantado, the second in command on the island.
Bartolome walked across the courtyard. A light spring drizzle was falling, chill and uncomfortable. Cristobal's letter spoke of the balmy warmth of the Indies. He hastened his steps, pulling his heavy velvet cloak closer about his broad shoulders. Just as he reached the shelter of the portico that ringed the courtyard, a small figure darted from the shadow cast by a column. The hour was late and this part of the palace deserted. His dirk flashed into his hand with blurring speed. “Who goes?”