Paradise & More (Torres Family Saga) (19 page)

      
“Only one that I can see. Did you live as do the people of the Indies? Are they then so primitive they deport themselves free of all decency?” Magdalena was asking things she sensed she did not want answered.

      
His face tensed with anger. “After returning to the savagery of my homeland, I wonder who are the civilized and who the primitive. What think you, daughter of a Crossbearer? Is the obscenity of an
auto de fe
decent?” His grip on the fine bones of her wrist tightened and she winced in pain. He released her and rolled up on the side of the bed, reaching for his discarded hose and boots.

      
“No matter how I disclaim Bernardo Valdés's perfidy, you will never believe me, will you?” She let out a small choked laugh at the cruel irony. “I am banished here, locked away in the country while my parents revel at the court, for I am a most unnatural daughter. I tried to kill my father with a hay rake.”

      
At those words, he turned in the midst of pulling on his second boot. A look of frank incredulity crossed his face, mingled with the tiniest hint of curiosity.

      
She swallowed hard and continued. “I told you that I visited your father the night...the night before he died. I had overheard my father and a stranger plotting to divide the riches of the Torres family after they had set a trap for Benjamin. I raced Blossom to the Convent of San Pablo. It was too late. He would not let me attempt to bribe the guards, and at dawn the next day...” Magdalena shook her head hopelessly. “I rode home and found Bernardo Valdés calmly berating a peasant who was not attending to his hay raking as he should. I seized the rake from the poor dullard and turned it on my father. He still bears the scars from the three gashes I placed on his right side,” she said venomously. Then she looked up at his skeptical expression. “You do not believe me.”

      
“Were you me, would you?” he asked, not unreasonably. “So, you are in exile and your father absents himself from his dangerous daughter. I will succeed where you have not, Magdalena.”

      
“Aaron, please, he is dangerous! I would not see you in the hands of those madmen he consorts with—do not pursue him to court,” she pleaded. Her hand reached out to grasp his arm.

      
“Never fear, Magdalena. I will not waste my life in a useless gesture most likely to fail.” He paused and his eyes narrowed on her speculatively. “But your father will face the same fate as mine. The instruments of the Inquisition often devour their own.” His voice had grown cold now, ice cold.

      
Magdalena studied his implacable, beautiful face as he finished dressing. Dare she tell him of his father's last request? She clutched the locket with one hand and held the bed linen to her body with the other. The decision was denied her when the pounding of horses' hooves and a cry from below interrupted them. Then Miralda's lumbering tread sounded on the stairs, calling ahead, “Dona Magdalena, hurry. 'Tis your father come with many important men of the Holy Office!”

      
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.