A Singular Captain

by John Regan

  Chapter 8

  It was one thing to execute a sailing master but the bastard of a bishop was another matter. The captain general ordered Cartagena released from the stocks.

  “Cartagena, let this be a warning. I will not tolerate any behaviour that puts our expedition at risk. As you know, mutiny is a capital offence. I choose not to impose that punishment but require from you a promise of loyalty, if not to me then to the king. You will transfer aboard Concepción and I will hold Captain Quesada responsible for your behaviour. Do you swear to uphold the regulations of the Armada and contribute to our purpose, which is to find El Paso and the Spice Isles?”

  “I swear, Captain.”

  “You will address me as Captain General.”

  “I swear, Captain General.”

  By trumpet fanfare, Antonio de Coca was proclaimed the new captain of San Antonio and all returned to their respective ships. Watching the boats pull away from Trinidad, Duarte commented, “Unfortunately, brother-in-law, the bad apple has probably sent the whole barrel rotten. Can’t you just imagine the talk over there? Omigod, Quesada in charge of Cartagena is like the fox in charge of the wolf.”

  “I don’t have much choice. They are all as bad as one another. At least I have separated the unholy nephews.”

  “Fortunately, the cancer has not spread to the common seamen but who knows what they will do next?”

  “Yes, indeed. Who knows? I will make a few rearrangements. I was tempted to put you in command of San Antonio but I can imagine the squawks in Seville and Valladolid.”

  “Oh, brother-in-law. What a good idea! I’m sure I can do a better job than de Coca and we could keep it in the family.”

  “There’s just one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You talk too much.”

  Pigafetta was still in shock over the sudden deaths and the priest’s refusal to perform a burial or memorial service for the dead, one a sodomite and the other a suicide; both mortal sinners. He retired to his cubby hole of a cabin but abandoned his attempt to describe these events. Some things are better left unsaid.

  Magellan sent his pilot, Gomez, across to San Antonio. De Coca, the accountant, was going to need a good pilot. He promoted Albo, the assistant, into Gomez’s place and brought John Carvalho, Concepción’s pilot, across to Trinidad. Carvalho was another refugee from Dom Manuel’s Portugal and had spent four years in Brasil setting up a brasil wood factory. He knew the coast and the captain general planned to draw upon his local knowledge. The wind gradually returned and the Armada shaped a course for Brasil. The captain general was now confident that he was south of the doldrum belt that protected them, to a certain degree, from Dom Manuel’s prowling warships.

  Carvalho proved a rich source for Pigafetta’s research and he interviewed him several times, wax tablet in hand to record the words direct from his lips. Carvalho claimed to have set up the trade in brasil wood, prized for its rich, red dye, which now brought five ducats the quintal in Lisbon. Carvalho counted himself lucky to survive the experience and avoid ending his days, stuffed with sage and onion, on some native’s dinner table. Carvalho had nothing but scorn for Juan de Solís, former chief pilot of Spain, who had been careless enough to get himself eaten and ungodly enough to let it happen on a Friday, when red meat is prohibited.

  Carvalho warned there was now a Portuguese base at Pernambuco, where the shoulder of Brasil bulges into the Ocean Sea. When land was sighted the captain general altered course southwards and sailed along the coast so far off that nothing could be seen of cannibals or brasil wood except a faint blue smudge from the masthead.

  It was another two weeks, and over two months from Tenerife, before Carvalho judged it safe to approach the land without the fear of Portuguese warships. With leadsmen chanting the depth and a boat ahead sounding the channel, the Armada de Moluccas, under reduced sail, groped through an opening between a low stretch of jungle on one side and a remarkable cone-shaped rock on the other. Once through the entrance, a huge, almost landlocked bay appeared where the sun sparkled on the water and strange, harsh cries hung in the warm, still air.

  “The southern shore is preferable for anchoring, Captain General,” Carvalho said. For some reason he was whispering. “The bottom is sand and the depth not excessive.”

  “Fresh water?”

  “An ample supply from a creek.”

  “Food?”

  “Abundant food and a great variety. Truly, Captain General, this place is almost paradise.”

  “Unfortunately, it belongs to Dom Manuel. We shall not linger long.”

  As soon as the anchors went down, chattering natives emerged from the forest, launched log canoes or swam out and invaded the ships. Pigafetta was enthralled by these outlandish creatures with bodies daubed in bright colours and no more than a few feathers to cover their shame. Some wore stones dangling from pierced lips, which were hideously distorted as a consequence. The girls were short and plump with olive or brown complexions and breasts just the right size to hold in the hand.

  Trinidad’s deck was transformed into a bizarre and riotous market. For a knife or fish hook a man could buy a brace of fowl and for a hatchet a wench. Pigafetta watched in astonishment as a girl loosened an iron nail as long as his finger from the woodwork, pushed it into her private part and carried it in a crouching walk back to her canoe.

  “Beware,” Carvalho warned, “these people are called Guarani and their arrowheads are tipped with poison. Be careful not to take the wives but only the daughters.”

  “How do I know which are wives and which are daughters?”

  “The wives are marked with scars on their breasts or arms to show they are the property of their husbands.”

  Pigafetta thought this a wise practice that could be introduced in Europe to avoid unpleasantness with jealous husbands. Several of the sailors had discovered the custom and were coupling with unscarred girls in different parts of the ship, even under the Virgin Mary, who gazed upon the scene in silent censure.

  Looking down from the quarterdeck, the captain general’s expression was not benign. He gripped the rail as if to steady himself against deep emotions, his lip curled in disgust. His feelings evidently came to a climax when he saw the priest, Padre Valderrama, bartering a knife for a bird of brilliant colours with a girl so scantily clad she would have been stoned in Seville. He came down the ladder, elbowed his way through his debauched crewmen and addressed the priest sharply.

  “Padre, how do you barter like the money-changers in the temple? These ignorant heathens have not received God’s word. It is your duty to lead them into the light.”

  “Indeed, Captain General, but I don’t speak their language.”

  “Nor did the apostles speak the language of the multitude on the day of Pentecost and yet they were understood.”

  “Captain General, I am not a saint but merely a poor priest.”

  “Then, as a poor priest, you may celebrate the feast of Santa Lucìa, which is today. Or had you forgotten the Virgin of Syracuse?”

  “Not forgotten, but I doubt the faithful are interested in virgins today.”

  Like a prophet before the multitude, Magellan waded into the crowd with arms outstretched, beckoning and calling, “Gather now for riches greater than you will find in any market place. Come to hear the word of God. Come, you creatures of the forest, and hear the words that lead to salvation.”

  Uncomprehending Guarani and grumbling sailors were herded into a congregation before the icon of Our Lady. Usurping the priest’s role, Magellan led them in the Pater Noster and then made a speech exhorting the sailors to treat the natives with kindness, as children of God in their innocence.

  “These are Adam and Eve before the fall,” he declared, “walking in the Garden of Eden, naked and not ashamed. It is upon you, it is upon me, upon all of us to extend the hand of friendship and lead them into the ways of the Lord.”

  He made the sign of the cross over them and then climbed
the ladder back to the poop, where he stood sentinel, waiting for the debauchery to cease. It seemed as if he had called upon God to enforce his message. The dark clouds that had been building all afternoon now cracked and opened up with rolls of thunder, flashes of lightning and pouring rain. The crowd on deck began dispersing.

  “Well, Pigafetta, that puts an end to the party,” Duarte said. “My brother-in-law obviously has divine powers. Carvalho and I are going ashore. Do you want to come?”

  “All right. I just have to get my tablet.”

  The squall passed over as quickly as it had arrived and by the time they reached the beach Pigafetta’s clothes were nearly dry. They were transported in a canoe that was itself worthy of study. These boats could carry thirty or forty warriors and were made from a single tree, hollowed out with stone axes. They had no iron, which was the main thing they coveted from the ships of the armada. Men dipped their paddles in perfect time and the boat sped along.

  Carvalho was familiar with this place and could speak the language of the natives and carried on a conversation with them as they followed a trail through the forest.

  “It seems the captain general has made a big impression on the people,” he said. “They seem to think the sign of the cross brought down the rain. It is the first rain they have had in two months.”

  They came to a village of thatched houses around a ring, with a fire burning at the centre, and some people came out of the houses and wondered at the white men but were reassured when Carvalho spoke to them in their own language. Then there was a great bustling and Carvalho, Pigafetta and Duarte were seated on the ground and served with wine made from sugar cane.

  “They are pleased to welcome us,” Carvalho said, “and I think they are going to put on a ceremony.”

  One of the girls showed interest in Pigafetta’s tablet and his strange scratchings in the wax. He showed her a comb and she responded chigap. He wrote the word in his tablet and repeated it back to her and she was astonished that the marks he made on the wax could represent the thing that he held in his hand. Likewise, knife was tacse, fishhook pinda, scissors pirame and Pigafetta himself came to ponder the strange power of words.

  Exploring her body by hand, he found that hair was asco, foot tie, leg cosh, breast ochy, the female nature gechel. He did not find a word for the little hard lump inside the female nature, for she merely moaned when he touched it but he proved these native women were no different from Europeans and was pleased with this anthropological discovery. They also had the power to arouse a man and Pigafetta continued his research in a professional manner.

  The people lived together in long houses and slept in nets, which they called hammock, slung between two poles. They ate potatoes, bananas and sugar cane and flesh of the tapir, a kind of pig. They also ate the flesh of their enemies and their warriors were very fierce.

  “Not because they like the taste,” Carvalho explained, “but because it is their custom. Back in history a woman had her son killed in battle but warriors captured one of those who killed her son and brought him before her. When she saw the man who killed her son she was enraged and attacked him like a dog and bit a piece out of him, and thereafter it became the custom. They do not eat them all at once but roast a piece and eat it and then, some days later, cook another piece and eat it.”

  The women of the village put a pig on the fire to cook and the men performed a fierce dance that looked like a war dance but Carvalho said it was a welcome and a great honour for the strange white men from across the sea.

  “There you are, Pigafetta,” Duarte said, “there is something to write about in your book. I wager you never thought you would be having dinner with cannibals.”

  “No. I just hope I don’t become dinner.”

  Next day, according to the almanac, was to be a conjunction of the Moon with Jupiter. The captain general ordered the pilots of all five ships ashore with their backstaffs, astrolabes, plum bobs, compasses and sandglasses and set up the equipment on a flat rock near a beach.

  “We should be able to find the longitude of this place in relation to the Line of Demarcation,” he explained, “by comparing the time of the conjunction here with the time in Cadiz, which is given in the Alfonsine Tables. The idea is, we erect a vertical pin in the centre of the compass and wait for the shadow to touch the south point of the card, making allowance for the magnetic variation.”

  “What is magnetic variation, Captain General?”

  “Magnetic variation is the difference between the direction of the pole star, Polaris, and the north point of the compass, which is attracted by a mysterious force to a place that seeks to draw all things made of iron towards it. Unfortunately, we are now in the Southern Hemisphere and Polaris is not visible so we have to make other arrangements.”

  “At the moment when the Sun crosses the meridian, we turn the sandglass and keep doing so until the conjunction tonight, when the Moon and Jupiter come together. Then we shall know the difference between the time of conjunction in Cadiz and the time here, and that time difference is the longitude, which I can compare with the longitude of the Line of Demarcation on the map.”

  “Amazing,” said Pigafetta, who had no idea what he was talking about.

  He watched in fascination as the captain general, Carvalho and other pilots measured the Sun’s altitude at intervals and recorded the information to be used later for calculating the longitude. The main experiment, however, was a failure. The armada had arrived in this place on the Tropic of Capricorn in midsummer. The Sun at noon was directly overhead and cast no shadow. Without knowing the time of noon it was not possible to know the longitude.

  “So much for the scholars and their theories,” Magellan said. “What do you think, Pigafetta? Should I write a letter to the pope and tell him the whole idea is a piece of nonsense? The line between the realms of Portugal and Spain is nothing but a shadow; such is the reality of the Line of Demarcation, and yet we go to war over it.”

  “I doubt the pope would receive the news kindly, Captain General. Pope Leo has other things on his mind.”

  The captain general ordered his men to pack up their equipment but while they did so a party of natives appeared from out of the forest and approached, dancing and chanting. Several wore headdresses of jaguars’ pelts, including the fangs, and were armed with spears and bows and arrows. The captain general drew his sword and ordered his men to do likewise.

  “What does this mean, Carvalho? Are they dangerous?”

  “No, Captain General. They come to greet you.”

  Magellan sheathed his sword.

  In the midst of this crowd and head and shoulders above it was Duarte, who had not returned aboard ship overnight, trying his best to sing the natives’ song and performing dance steps in time to the rhythm. He waved both arms above his head and laughed out loud at some unknown joke.

  “Duarte!” the captain general called. “What do you mean by this? You are drunk!”

  “Greetings, brother-in-law. Greetings. I want you to meet my friends.”

  “Get yourself back to the ship and abstain from the wine.”

  “Don’t be such a grump, brother-in-law. I want you to meet my friends, La Señora Juan Lopes Carvalho and son.”

  With a flourish of his hand and a drunken laugh, Duarte stepped aside and bowed, introducing a plump woman, naked but for a cord around her waist supporting a parrot’s tail-feather. She advanced shyly and smiled at Carvalho, who stared in astonishment and then burst into laughter and swept her into his arms.

  “Caramuru,” the woman cried, tears of joy running down her face, while Carvalho addressed her as Piratininga, hugging and kissing her.

  Carvalho then threw his arms around one of the men wearing a jaguar skin, clapping him on the back and talking in the native language.

  “This is Maracajaguaçu, Captain General,” Carvalho said. “His name means ‘great cat’ and he likes nothing better than a human thigh to eat.” Carvalho seemed to find this amusing. />
  “You seem to be on friendly terms,” Magellan said.

  “He’s like a godfather to my son, Captain General. This is my son.”

  Carvalho nudged a naked native boy with a pot belly and big brown eyes who stood with one foot on the other instep like a stork, prodding him forward and instructing him: “Say hello to the nice captain general.”

  “Has he been baptised?” the captain general asked.

  “Not in the Christian church.”

  “In which church, then?”

  “Not exactly any church, but these people have their own customs, you know. A boy doesn’t become a man until he has killed and eaten his first enemy.”

  “Barbarous!”

  “They believe they absorb the strength of their enemy by eating him. Something like the Eucharist, only this is the real thing. They don’t drink blood, though, as we do with the Communion wine.”

  “Your son must be baptised. Ask the chief if he will accept the ministry of Padre Valderrama.”

  “Very well, but advise him to take care not to become too popular; it’s a great compliment to be eaten.”

  The captain general was anxious to be gone from this place, which had been named Rìo de Janeiro by Vespucci in ’02. Vespucci also claimed to have sailed within 18 degrees of the Antarctic pole, or 72 degrees of latitude, but Vespucci was a liar in Magellan’s opinion. To name America after Amerigo Vespucci was a scandal in his view. Had Vespucci sailed to 72 degrees of latitude he would have found El Paso, the passage through the continent of the New World leading to the South Sea and hence to the Spice Isles and Cathay.

  The ships traded trinkets for fresh food and filled their barrels with water but not fast enough to suit the captain general. Sailors on expeditions ashore dragged their feet and often remained overnight, gathering a retinue of native girls in noisy, drunken parties. It was a great joke that the natives believed the ships’ small boats were given birth by the ship when lowered into the water and then suckled like piglets as they lay alongside.

  To counter these temptations, the captain general ordered Valderrama to celebrate Christmas mass onshore and was gratified to see the natives on their knees with hands clasped piously before them as the priest proclaimed the joyous news of the birth of Our Saviour. The strategy failed in the case of Duarte, who decided that he wanted to settle in Rìo, take on four or five native mistresses and run a brasil wood business as Carvalho had done.

  “Come to your senses, Duarte,” the captain general said over dinner. “If you drank less wine you might be able to think straight.”

  “Brother-in-law, we are a long time dead. Where would you rather be than in this paradise with plenty of food, sexy girls and congenial companions? Not to mention the fishing.”

  “Have you no higher aim in life?”

  “What is higher? Like you, bashing your head against the Line of Demarcation?”

  “I will not permit you to desert the fleet. Be warned.”

  “Ominous words, brother-in-law.”

  “I mean them.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Duarte said, and picked at his meal listlessly thereafter.

  As the fleet prepared for departure two days later, the captain general spied Cartagena ashore in company with de Coca despite his orders that the unholy nephews were not to communicate. He sent a boy to fetch the master-at-arms.

  “Espinosa, I have come to depend on you more and more,” Magellan said when the master-at-arms presented himself. “Please take a dozen men and bring me Cartagena and de Coca. I prefer them not to be injured but you will do what is necessary to ensure they obey.”

  “Very well, Captain General.”

  He returned in an hour with Cartagena and de Coca under armed guard, sitting stiff and silent on a thwart in the pinnace, clinging to the shreds of their dignity. Cartagena climbed up the ship’s side, over the bulwark and marched down the deck with a brave front for the seamen who had watched his humiliation two months before. There was still defiance in his manner, Pigafetta noted with dismay. De Coca was cast from the same mould but not so arrogant.

  “Cartagena,” the captain general said, exasperated, “you don’t seem to understand that I will not tolerate insubordination. No ship and no fleet can function with two masters. We must unite in one purpose if we are to succeed. The purpose is to find El Paso and the Spice Isles. Everything else is trivial, including your wounded vanity. I don’t want to put you in irons but I will if you continue to defy me. De Coca, you are relieved of your duties as captain of San Antonio. I am appointing Àlvaro de Mesquita in your place.”

  There on the tranquil blue waters of Guanabara Bay, with parrots screeching overhead and cannibals prowling the forest, Cartagena and de Coca gave their solemn oath to obey the captain general. He had another task for the master-at-arms.

  “Espinosa, we shall be heaving up the anchor in a few hours. “I want you to go through all five ships and get rid of any women who might be stowed away. You can also take Captain Mesquita across to San Antonio, his new command.”

  “Very well, Captain General.”

  Espinosa’s men made a haul of around thirty women, including Piratininga, the mother of Carvalho’s son, Joãozito, or Little John. She and all the others were ferried ashore, where they watched their men heave on capstan bars or climb aloft to shake out the sails from their gaskets. As the black ships slowly gathered way the women began to wail and sob. Some swam after the ships, Joãozito waved goodbye to his mother with tears in his eyes. Pigafetta was beginning to understand what it meant to be a sailor.