by Shirl Henke
Aaron sighed. “No, Cristobal. You are not to blame. And if we had not opposed Caonabo and his allies, they would have attacked Guacanagari's village and killed every Taino in Marien, then massed to attack us.”
“They were so childlike in their generosity and trust before we came among them,” Cristobal said softly.
“We cannot restore what is lost, but we can try to prevent the spread of what caused this loss of innocence,” Aaron replied. “We must work with the caciques to keep order and protect their people from being enslaved by colonists who force them to search for gold.”
“Easier said than done, Torres,” Bartolomé said as he rode up. “As an outsider yourself, you see how well we Genoese Colons are obeyed by the Castilians. Already we have word from the royal council itself that letters of commission have been granted to others—Castilians—to explore the waters of the Indies. Fernando wants his tribute. If we send nothing back, we will be replaced.”
Knowing the truth of court politics, Aaron looked at Cristobal and asked, “What will you do?”
The explorer looked off into the distance, as if seeing beyond the mountains to alien lands far away. Then, dragging himself back to the ugly scene about them, he said in a weary voice, “First we will send the king and queen what tribute we can—the hostile captives from the interior to be sold in Seville as slaves, then what precious little gold we have at hand and other goods, cotton cloth, herbs and spices...” His voice trailed off.
“You must return to the Majesties' court and plead for loyal soldiers who will follow your orders. Stop the lies of Margarite and Buil and the others who are poisoning the royal ear,” Bartolomé said with fervor.
Aaron looked about him. Would some Castilian or Argonese bureaucrat be any worse in dealing with the Tainos? In settling disputes between the greedy colonists? He honestly was not certain any longer. Still, Cristobal and Bartolomé were known quantities. Some faceless nobleman might be infinitely worse. “Perhaps you might convince the king and queen to send more honest settlers and recall all the useless gold-hungry nobles who refuse to act peacefully.”
The elder Colon studied Aaron's face intently, as if knowing his friend's doubts and fears. Some of his old resolution returned as he finally replied, “It will take a good while to ready the ships and set things in order in Ysabel, but then I will sail to Castile.”
“Readying ships will prove far easier than setting things in order back in Ysabel,” Bartolomé said sourly.
Cristobal looked from his brother to his commandant. “You are the two men I most trust in all the Indies. You must keep a close watch on Alonso Hojeda lest he decide to strike out again gold hunting in the interior.”
“Or strike out to ally with your old friend Roldan,” Bartolomé added, with a meaningful stare at Aaron.
Aaron sighed. “Francisco has ever been a trial to me. I do not expect him to heed Hojeda's vanity and march an army from Xaragua to Ysabel, but I know that as long as Roldan defies your authority, it looks ill to the powers at court. Perhaps I can convince him to make peace. After we return to the settlement I will send word to him and see which way the wind blows in distant Xaragua.”
Bartolomé clapped Aaron on the back while Cristobal smiled quietly and said, “I trust your diplomacy, Diego.”
Hojeda, true to his word, brought Caonabo back, tied to a horse. He paraded the haughty old cacique before the camp the night after the battle, saying he would sail with the slaves and personally present the old chief to the queen. Mayhap her old confessor, Torquemada, could save his soul.
Aaron bid Cristobal and Bartolomé farewell at dawn the next day, explaining that he would return to Ysabel after accompanying Guacanagari and his warriors back to their village. They, too, had a sizeable party of slaves from among the vanquished. Yet in a Taino village, even enemy captives would fare better than among whites. Aaron had not the heart to watch the defeated Tainos being herded onto the pitching deck of caravels and sent to their doom in cold northern climes...
“Your heart is troubled,” Guacanagari said to Aaron as they walked along the narrow, tortuous path, their men following behind at a discreet distance. “Aliyah has gone to Behechio to wed. She will not be in the village.”
Not wishing to discuss Aliyah any more than he wished to discuss the complex issue of slavery, Aaron brought up another concern of his. “I will miss Navaro,” he said with regret.
“Perhaps when she carries Behechio's child, she will agree to give over yours,” Guacanagari said very carefully. “Your wife would welcome Navaro into your home, I think.”
Aaron's eyes fastened on his friend. In spite of Guacanagari's dusky complexion, Aaron detected a blush. “Magdalena's jealousy sparked the fight that led to my losing the boy. What do you know of her feelings for Navaro?”
Guacanagari said nothing for a moment, neither slowing his step, nor looking at Aaron. He appeared to ponder, then said, “Aliyah taunted your wife most cruelly, my friend. She, too, was jealous, boasting of how she had your son and your skinny pale wife was barren and useless. That was why Magdalena attacked her. I only found this out when my sister left for her marriage. I overheard her telling one of her cousins what she said to Magdalena in your tongue that day.” He let Aaron digest this; then after they walked a little farther, he asked, “Have you ever considered why your wife is jealous? If I mistake it not, she is even more jealous than Aliyah.”
Familiar irritating feelings of guilt washed over Aaron once again. And again his wife was the cause. “I cannot explain it, but ever since we were children in our homeland far across the ocean, she has pursued me. She entranced my father into pledging me to a marriage with her.” He smiled ruefully at Guacanagari. “That is the first time I have ever admitted the truth of her claim on me. She had my father's ring, but I denied what it meant. I think even then I knew what he had done, but I was too bitter and proud to admit it—too filled with hate for her father. But that is all over now. Bernardo Valdés is dead, and the House of Torres is avenged. Magdalena is alone, thousands of miles from home, wed to a man who has not used her at all kindly.”
“She has pursued you so far, for so long. Does it not mean she loves you?” Guacanagari prompted.
“Yes, I suppose it does,” Aaron admitted. “Perhaps her family, the past, the whole world back there no longer matter.”
“Do you love her?”
The words hung suspended between them as the jungle noises seemed suddenly magnified. Parrots fluttered and screeched, small animals made light brushing noises beneath the dense foliage and the low murmur of a stream running down the mountainside seemed to call out to him. Do you love her?
Aaron finally spoke. “She bewitches me, like one of your zemi goddesses. I desire her, I feel alive when I am with her whether we make love or argue...is that love, Guacanagari?”
The young cacique shrugged in puzzlement. “For the men from the sky, perhaps it is. I do not know, for your ways are not our ways. What to us is simple, you make difficult. We plant enough food to eat. You must store it in great wooden bins. We fight only if someone offends our family's honor. You fight for gold and land. Every Taino family offers prayers to their family zemis and is blessed. No one tells them to pray otherwise. You have many gods and all of them seem angry with one another, each demanding that you worship only him and prevent other white men from praying to their god.” He stopped walking and gave a signal for the warriors behind them to sit and rest. Then he strolled to the banks of the stream, which had now wended its way nearer the trail.
Aaron followed him and the two men sat apart from the others. “You are right. We do make life very difficult at times. Perhaps that is why I have enjoyed the time I spent learning your ways so much.”
“Yet you remain a white man. Your heart is not among us,” Guacanagari said gently.
“My heart is not truly among the white people here, either,” Aaron replied. “I belong nowhere, neither here nor in Ysabel, certainly not in the land of my birth.
My uncle and what remains of my family are in a cold and distant country. I would not live in France either.”
“Would you live with your wife? Is Magdalena not the one to make you a home?”
Aaron remembered how it had felt, both in Guacanagari's village and in Ysabel, when he entered their simple dwellings and saw her russet head bent over simple household tasks, or how she would open her arms to him when he claimed her in bed at night...the nights, filled with passion...and with love. Suddenly he felt the need to see her face once again. Did he love Magdalena?
Guacanagari read Aaron's expression for a while, then said, “I promised her I would not speak of this thing...but now I am going to assert my royal right to change my mind, for you are both like children stumbling in the darkness. Perhaps I possess a small torch to light your way to each other. Before Magdalena left our village with you, she came to call on me, very early in the morning...”
When Guacanagari had finished telling the tale of the brown velvet cloak and Magdalena's desperate attempt to regain Navaro, he looked at his friend.
A small, wistful smile touched Aaron's lips. “So, that is what truly became of her finest court gown. She would love Navaro as her own. Now I know that. Like me, my wife has learned much from the Taino people. We are both grateful.”
“Good,” Guacanagari said with a grunt as he rose and motioned for the entourage to follow him. “Then let us make haste so you may return to your wife and tell her that you have been a very big fool.”
Chapter Twenty-One
On his long trek back to Ysabel, Aaron had much time to ponder what he would say to Magdalena. Out of deference to the Tainos, he had left his mount with the Colons, who would return it to the settlement. He ran along the rough, twisting pathways, now so familiar to him, observing afoot all the splendors of this paradise that were so often trampled by men on horseback. The warm, fecund smell of the rain-washed earth, its lush emerald vegetation, the brilliance of birds and flowers —all bathed his senses with new wonder.
Magdalena had appreciated the beauty of Española, not complaining of the heat or insects, or shrinking from joining the rhythm of life on the island. As he dog-trotted, sure and strong as any Taino runner, he realized that she had adapted here as much as he had. He could still see her kneeling in wonder before a bed of crimson flowers, smelling and touching their delicate beauty with childlike awe. A smile touched his lips as he recalled her courage in swallowing—and keeping down—the delicacy of the fish eyes. Even the religious observances of the Tainos had meaning to her.
“I have always condemned her for the sins of her parents—even when she was but an innocent child in the marshes of Andalusia, surely then still untouched by any man.” There was an inherent goodness in Magdalena that transcended the taint of Estrella and Bernardo Valdés, no matter what corruption they had surrounded her with at home or at the court. Benjamin had sensed it immediately, and his father had always been a meticulously shrewd judge of character.
“But I have been a fool!” How many men had a woman pursue them across the ocean, all for a love she had borne him since she was a girl? And love it must be, for she knew he owned naught but his sword and horse after his family's wealth had been confiscated. She could have wed a duke or a count—or accepted lavish royal favors from that Trastamara bastard as her mother had.
He considered her story about Ysabel banishing her to a convent, not so preposterous really if he believed that she had rebuffed the lecherous old king. Fernando always sought with feckless abandon what was denied him. The spiteful queen would have had to be blind not to sense Magdalena's vulnerability and the effect it had on her philandering royal consort. Just recalling his taunts to her about being the king's paramour made him cringe now for his cruelty and blindness. Whatever lover or lovers she may have had before he seduced her into his bed in Seville, they had not been taken with the calculation of Estrella Valdés. Anyway, that was all behind them now. It did not matter.
Vowing to begin again with his wife, Aaron stopped at the edge of the settlement and surveyed its squalor. Bartolomé had attempted to persuade his brother to move the colony to a more suitable site, and Cristobal had agreed that along the southern coasts of Española he had found more felicitous harbors where they might relocate. This place was a sinkhole, the river too far away, the soil too rocky, the harbor too exposed for it ever to grow into a true port city. Of course, if the Colons did not receive more royal backing, and suitable settlers willing to obey the law and work to build the island, no place would serve.
“I shall take Magdalena away from here before she falls victim to a fever or noxious disease nursing these contentious people. We will build our own life.” Smiling, he thought of a russet-haired girl riding her horse breakneck across the marshes outside Seville, sweaty and windblown with her fat plait of hair flying behind her like a horses' tail. Something inside him softened as he imagined a small replica of Magdalena, riding across Española on a fine pony given her by her father.
When he approached their home, the place was oddly quiet. Analu came running from inside the house with a frightened look on his face. He fell to his knees at Aaron's feet and the white man's chest squeezed tight with dread. “Where is my lady?”
“Gone. I know not where. The second night after you and the governor left, she did not return from the hospital. I went in search of her and the medicine man told me she had departed as usual.”
“That was a week ago!” Aaron's face was chalky with fear. He yanked the servant to his feet. “Did you go to the governor's brother, Don Diego?”
“Yes, but he refused to see me for three days. Then when I cried out to him on the streets while he was riding one of your great beasts, he told me he knew nothing of the lady.” Analu hesitated, feeling the steel imprint of Aaron's fingers digging into his arm. The lady had been very sad at their parting. “Several ships sailed away while you were gone, one that second day...I searched everywhere, even sending a runner to Guacanagari's people. She has vanished.”
A ship sailed away that day. Surely she had not given up, left him? With chilling clarity all his words of scorn and rejection, his suggestions that she return to the court, everything came rushing back to him. He had left her feeling responsible for Aliyah's spiteful decision to keep Navaro. Why could she not have told me she tried to regain my son? Feeling a wave of nausea sweeping over him, Aaron pushed past the distraught servant and entered their home.
His eyes quickly scanned the orderly room. Would she have left a note? Surely she would have taken her few possessions. She treasured the books from his father. Nothing seemed to be missing. Like a crazed man, he began to toss clothing on the floor, throwing things from her chests. All her gowns, her cloak, even the books, her jewel cask—everything was here. What could she have used to purchase passage on a ship? What would she have worn? Then his fingertips brushed a rolled parchment buried at the bottom of the second chest, the smaller one she kept her books in to prevent their mildewing in the damp jungle air.
As he extracted it, a strange sense of foreboding washed over him, for he recognized the seal on it—the one his father had used for medical documents. Trembling, he unrolled it, instantly recognizing Benjamin Torres' strong, sweeping penmanship. His eyes flew down the page, reading the clinical details describing precisely how his wife had lost her maidenhead. The date registered in his spinning head—scant months before he seduced that oddly vulnerable, eagerly innocent girl who had fled his quarters in tears after her initiation into womanhood. And he, callous fool, had been the one who first touched her! The only one who had ever touched her. And now she was gone.
“Magdalena, oh Magdalena, my wife, what have I done to you? Have I driven you to flee?” He sat on the floor, head buried in his hands with the parchment lying beside him, its edges limp in the dampness.
“What will you do? Perhaps now that the governor has returned he can speak with his young brother...” Analu's voice cut into Aaron's trance.
&nbs
p; Quickly standing up, Aaron rolled the parchment carefully and reverently replaced it in Magdalena's chest. “Straighten up this mess. I will go to the governor and see what I can learn,” he said to the Taino. Then he grabbed a pair of his hose, boots for riding, and a loose tunic. Shedding the loincloth he had worn while journeying with the Indians, he dressed rapidly. His armor and sword would be awaiting him at the palace, and his horse would be stabled and cared for with the rest of the Colon's mounts.
“When did the soldiers return?” he asked Analu.
“Late last night. They had many captives who will be sent across the waters to be sold as slaves...or to die.” There was an odd fatalism in the Taino's voice.
Aaron nodded and departed for his interview with Cristobal. Diego Colon had better know something about where Magdalena had gone!
When he reached the palace and retrieved his sword, he was informed that everyone was at the waterfront, seeing to the loading of the caravels bound for home, laden with slaves and booty. Sickened by the very scene he had hoped to avoid, yet desperate to find word of Magdalena, he traversed the short distance to the harbor where a great crowd had gathered.
The scene was chaos, with mounted soldiers brandishing the flat of their swords against the backs of chained Indians, many of whom were injured and stumbling, terrified to be so close to the horses. They climbed aboard the ship's boats, eager to be away from the cursing, milling throngs of mounted white men.
Hojeda rode back and forth, yelling orders to the men loading slaves into the boats.
Aaron searched the crowd for the tall figure of Cristobal. Looking bent and exhausted, the governor stood off to one side on a small hill, Bartolomé and Diego Colon at his side. As soon as Aaron climbed to where they stood, Hojeda turned his horse and cleared a path through the crowd until he reached them. Swinging down, he swaggered up to Torres, a gloating smile on his face. “Did you witness the great Caonabo enter the boats? I told you I would sail with him in chains.”