The Moor's Account (28 page)

I am using just enough, Fernándes replied. I have done this before, you know.

And why are you making only two paddles for each raft?

Am I the carpenter or are you? Fernándes said testily. His ax was raised, its iron blade catching the light.

Father Anselmo had to intervene. Let Fernándes do his work, he told us. He knows what is best.

Once the first raft was ready, we set it onto the water. The oak logs were rough and splintery, barely held together by precious strands of horsehair. Diego and I sat on either end of the vessel, with the paddles in our hands, while Dorantes, Castillo, and Father Anselmo sat in the middle. A cold wind blew from the east, making their shirts flap violently against their bodies.

We should stand against the wind, Castillo cried.

It was an ingenious idea: the bodies of those who were standing arm in arm became a kind of sail, so that the wind propelled the raft forward. The water was fast, but murky. It could easily conceal a dangerous boulder or a fallen tree trunk. With fear and excitement coursing in equal measure through our veins, we paddled in the direction of the current, and to our great relief we made it to the other bank.

From there, we beckoned the others to cross. Oddly, both of the paddlers on the second raft sat at the fore of the vessel, which made it difficult for them to maintain a good balance. And, although they must have seen how Castillo had used the wind to our favor, they did not imitate us. They paddled more vigorously than they needed and their raft quickly acquired speed. Standing on the riverbank, we were as tense as captives—we could watch them, but could do nothing to help them. They were going downriver at a frightful pace. As soon as they passed within earshot, Dorantes called out to his friend Valdivieso: Jump, amigo! Jump, you can swim the rest of the way.

Valdivieso threw himself in the river, gasping as his body hit the cold water. His raftmates were left in a panic. The vessel was very plain; it was a squarish structure with no sweeps to control speed or direction. Now, with Valdivieso gone, it became lighter and even faster than before. The current carried it about like a dry twig. After a moment, several others jumped into the water, too, but Estrada and Chaves, who did not know how to swim, stayed on. We never saw either of them again.

To lose two of our number when we had been away from the Island of Misfortune for only one day was a terrible blow to us. It was hard to escape the feeling that our journey was doomed. Sitting on the riverbank afterward, my limbs trembling despite the crackling fire, I began to wonder whose turn would come next. And when would mine be? In two days? Three? A week? And yet, at the same time, I tried to tell myself that no, this was it—this had to be—the final test. I had gone through enough.
I would be found innocent of whatever evil we were all being punished for, I would reach Pánuco soon, I would return home. I would be saved.

We continued along the trail all of the next day, eating nothing but blueberries and meadow grass. Our beards had already grown long and bushy, but now, with our teeth stained blue and our stomachs bulging with undigested grass, we began to look like figures from some ancient story, told by generation after generation to warn young children about the dangers that lurked far away from home. At length, we came to a beautiful green lagoon, where a man was floating peacefully. It was the flash of yellow hair and white skin in the glinting waters that made the friar call out to him. The man swam to the shore in quick, smooth strokes, emerging as naked as the day he was born.

It was Francisco de León, a settler from Cabeza de Vaca's company, a cobbler who had proven himself useful to the captain during our long journey through La Florida. (On a long march, nothing was more precious than shoes and no one more vital than a shoe mender.) Tall and broad-shouldered, he had a scar on his cheek, just beneath his right eye. We had not seen him since our crossing of the Great River and had thought him dead long ago, but León explained that, after landing at the Island of Misfortune, he and two others had walked to a beach nearby, where they had found an abandoned Indian canoe. They had taken it here, to the continent, but had failed to moor it properly and now it was lost. We were all stunned into silence, imagining what we could have done with a canoe if only we had known about it.

But why did you not tell Cabeza de Vaca about the canoe? Dorantes asked, his voice made shrill with indignation.

The dugout would have been too small to carry all of us, León replied.

You could have taken turns.

Cabeza de Vaca had let the Indians come to our beach. And he wanted us to go with them to their camp.

So you chose not to tell him about the canoe? You fool! He could have used it to shuttle all of his men to the continent and maybe my men, too. They would not have needed to spend the winter on the island. Do you know how many of them have died? Their deaths are your fault.

How are they my fault? The captain did not ask me what I thought about going with the savages to their camp. Why should I ask him what to do about the canoe?

This response so angered Dorantes that he turned away from León and faced the lagoon. His authority had been challenged nearly every day since our departure from the Bay of Oysters, and he did not know how to respond as his power frittered away.

It was Castillo who tried to fill the awkward silence. What happened to the others who went with you? he asked.

They died of the fever, León replied.

What about you? What did you eat all winter?

Oysters. Seaweed. Grass. Bird eggs. Lizards. Whatever I could find.

Once again, Father Anselmo tried to diffuse any friction. He placed his arm around León's shoulders and, squeezing him affectionately in spite of his terrible revelation, he said: We lost two Christians yesterday, but now the Lord has delivered you to us and us to you. He whispered a long prayer, thanking God for the blessing of a new companion and asking for our safe return to Pánuco. Gratefully, León kissed the friar's hand. Then, with the ease of a squirrel, he climbed up a nearby tree, from which he retrieved his clothes, a knife, and a pair of gloves that looked too large for him. He was the first addition to our party, which had known nothing but loss for the last year. In spite of everything, we tried to take this as a good sign. We needed one.

S
OME DAYS LATER
, we came upon an immense forest of oak trees, a landscape of deep green cut through by sharp, brown lines. As we made our way through the woods, yellow warblers congregated on the branches above us, though their sweet melodies were eventually muffled by the sound of a mighty river. This was the Segundo Río. On its gray and rocky bank, half in and half out of the water, the wind whistling through the logs, was one of the rafts we had made at the Bay of Oysters. A white vestment stitched to the sails—I had sewn it there myself—helped me identify it as the raft captained by the comptroller. It had also carried the commissary and forty-seven other men. How did it arrive here?

We looked for clues of the men's whereabouts, but there was no sign of them anywhere. No remnants of a campfire, no traces of food, no tracks leading away from the raft into the wilderness. It was as if Enríquez and all his men had simply vanished into thin air, leaving their raft behind. Silently, and with eyes cast down, Fernándes the carpenter began to undo the horsehair rope from the part of the raft that sat above the water.
Dorantes tore the sails from the masts; they could be used for bedding. As for the logs, they were rotten; they broke easily and fed our fire that evening.

All around us, frogs croaked, crickets sang, and twigs snapped under the feet of some nocturnal beast or other, but we ate in complete silence, all of us in a mood of barely suppressed panic. If the comptroller and his men had managed to sail this far away from La Florida, two hundred and fifty leagues away by one reckoning, only to disappear without leaving a trace, what did this mean for the rest of us? I was tormented by visions of death, which I tried to push to the back of my mind.

To break the mood, Diego began to sing an old ballad from Castile, a cheerful ditty about a lady who acts by turns brash and bashful, tormenting her lover. Diego had a beautiful voice and we all listened to him with pleasure. His older brother began to reminisce about a dinner they had both attended in Seville, where a young lady of their acquaintance had signaled her interest in him in a most brazen way. Do you remember her? Dorantes asked.

Yes, Diego said. But she was married.

I know, Dorantes replied with a rueful smile. That did not stop her.

Stop her from what?

What do you think, Chato? Her husband was in Italy—he had been there for two years, I think—and he almost never answered her letters. You saw her, did you not? She was beautiful. And she was getting lonely.

Dorantes seemed to take no notice of the horrified look on Diego's face; instead he delighted in the smiles of admiration from the others and in their questions about his affair with the lady. After a while, however, silence fell on our company again. This time, Dorantes tried something different. Estebanico, he said. Can you tell fortunes?

Fortunes? I said. Me?

Your people are known to be great fortune-tellers.

Remember, Castillo said, the Moorish woman on the Gracia de Dios?

Yes, Dorantes replied. I was thinking of her just now, which was why I asked Estebanico.

What did she say? I asked.

I do not believe—Father Anselmo began.

Come now, Father, Dorantes said. We are just trying to pass the time.

It is harmless fun, Castillo agreed.

But do you not think—the friar said.

La Mora, Castillo interrupted, was from the town of Hornachos. I do not know if any of you remember her. She was one of the women on the Gracia de Dios.

What was her name?

Her name? I know not. But she was a shrew with dark eyes that made you feel as if she could see right into your soul. When we were still at port, one of the sailors called her a bad name, and she flew into a fury and said she was leaving the expedition. You know how women are, especially the Moorish ones. But before leaving the ship, she told the other women that their husbands, and indeed all the men in the armada, were going to die in the new world. The women should look for new husbands, La Mora said, for they were, all of them, widows already, even if they did not know it yet. Naturally, this prophecy upset the husbands, and they tossed her out onto the dock with all her belongings. Don Pánfilo had to speak to the passengers in order to quell the commotion. He said that although some of us might perish in La Florida, those who fought valiantly would receive such riches they would look upon their rewards as miracles.

Dorantes laughed bitterly. Such riches we have received. Miracles!

The flames crackled and a log broke, shooting up sparks.

Perhaps the miracle is that we are alive at all, Father Anselmo said.

Dorantes turned to me. Well, can you tell fortunes or not?

Give me your hand, I said. He offered me his left palm. Red calluses dotted the line from his index to his little finger and a new scar crossed his wrist, likely the result of his work with Fernándes on the raft some days earlier. You have a secret, I said. Something you have hidden from everyone.

Everyone has secrets, Dorantes replied.

But this, I said, this is something else entirely. Let me see. I turned his palm toward the light of the flames. It is something you have hidden from everyone, even your own brother.

Dorantes yanked his hand away.

Everyone has secrets, I thought, but no one wants to hear one's private shame turned into a public fame. I had not expected to be right; I was only teasing him, but his reaction suggested I had uncovered something. What was he hiding, I wondered with a smile.

What do you know? Dorantes said. You are just a Moor.

A Moor whose prophecy you seek, said I.

•  •  •

T
HE
T
ERCERO
R
ÍO WAS
fast, wide, and very dark, as if it carried the soil of all the earth toward the ocean. The seagulls and pelicans that hovered above the riverbank suggested that we were close to the river's mouth, though the birds' calls were drowned out by the noise of the current. As usual, we had to build a raft in order to cross, but Fernándes was lagging behind, along with his friend Benítez, a night watchman from Toledo. The two of them had been eating great quantities of meadow grass, with the result that their stomachs had swelled, making it more difficult for them to walk. Their pace had grown increasingly slow and when they finally caught up to the rest of us, they slumped on their knees, exhausted.

We were standing on the riverbank, trying to decide what to do, when two Indians appeared in a red dugout canoe. Like the Capoques, they wore reeds in their nipples and lower lips, though their tribal tattoos looked different. Still, they looked to be allies of the Capoques and we hoped that they would be as generous to us. We did not have any beads or trinkets left, but the friar agreed to part with his rosary, which we presented to the two Indians, in exchange for a ride across the river. Afterward, they told us to wait for them on the rocky shore; they were going to bring one of our brothers for us.

Who could it be? someone asked.

Should we wait?

No, we should continue without delay.

But look at Fernándes. He cannot walk much farther.

Benítez is running a fever.

We were still arguing in this way when we saw the Indians return with a Castilian, a short, thin man with a patchy beard. His name was Martín. He was one of the five deserters Cabeza de Vaca had told us about, the ones who had swam all the way from the Island of Misfortune to the mainland. He and León embraced, but the rest of us were more eager to find out what had happened. Are the others with you? we asked.

No, they are all dead, he replied. Two drowned during the crossing. One made it to the continent with me, but he died of the fever about a month ago.