VOYAGE OF STRANGERS (16 page)

The ship’s boys learned that what she lacked in strength she made up for in agility and wit. Once she had beaten the lot of them in a race up the rigging to the crow’s nest and reduced the biggest bully to tears with a scathing assessment of his behavior, motives, and probable end, they accepted her as a sort of mascot, whose eccentricities were to be tolerated. These included cleaning her teeth daily with a frayed length of rope, as I did myself, and frequently sucking on a lemon. She always offered to share, though all refused her offer and no doubt would one day suffer from swollen, toothless gums in consequence.

The only shipmate she failed to beguile was the Taino known as Diego Columbus, the Admiral’s interpreter since the earliest days of the first voyage. He and Cristobal were the only Taino still alive to make the return journey to their homeland. Unlike Cristobal and those who had died of fevers, the flux, the cold, the unaccustomed food, and perhaps homesickness and despair, the interpreter was unaccountably robust and accustomed to being the Admiral’s favorite. Once or twice he tried to do Rachel an ill turn, such as setting a full bucket in her way to trip over or rolling her spare shirt in fish guts. I offered to intervene and teach him a lesson he would not soon forget, for the Indian was no fighter. But Rachel scorned my assistance. She washed out the stinking shirt with soap, a gift from the Espinosas that she had been hoarding. Then she gave him such a dressing down in front of the grinning crew that he slunk away without a word and confined himself to sulks and baleful looks thereafter.

The Canaries were a string of fertile isles with mountains rising above crescent curves of sand. As the Admiral had found the year before, winds originating here would carry us westward across the Ocean Sea to landfall in the Indies. The conquest of these isles had begun long before. Some of them were still held by the folk native to the place, the Guanche. But Gomera, where we dropped anchor, was held for Spain by a lady, Doña Beatriz de Peraza, who had been a maid of honor to Queen Isabella in her girlhood. It was said that she had once attracted the attentions of King Ferdinand and that the Admiral himself, who had met her at the start of the previous voyage, was in love with her. But neither Rachel nor I were invited to her castle to behold her purported beauty, though to Rachel’s delight, the lady ordered dazzling bursts of fireworks and a salute of cannons to celebrate our arrival in San Sebastian, the principal town.

While the Admiral exchanged courtesies with Doña Beatriz and reviewed his charts, we sailors labored to provision the fleet anew and herd cattle, sheep, and pigs aboard to join the horses we already carried, for the new colony in Hispaniola must have livestock. When not on duty, we had leave to wander through the town. Most of the men thus at liberty went no further than the nearest tavern. But Rachel insisted on a brisk walk to the outskirts of the town, where farms and groves of oranges and lemons began. We came away with a sack of tangy fruit, along with a lemon sapling that had a root ball the size of my fist. With her usual persuasiveness, Rachel assured me that she would assume full care of it once on board Mariagalante, would I but carry it back to the ship. She had already won permission from the Admiral to keep it in his cabin, thus demonstrating that he was no more proof than I against her blandishments.

“It will need sun as well as water,” I said.

“Then I will give it a daily airing on the deck,” she said, “and we will plant it at La Navidad in honor of our arrival there.”

“I suppose you will want me to dig the hole,” I grumbled.

Rachel merely laughed. She linked her arm through mine and skipped along, bobbing like a dinghy in the wake of a caravel. 

“You had better not skip nor cling to my arm,” I warned her, “where any can see us.”

“I won't,” she promised, “but there is not a soul in sight. It is such a beautiful day, and we have such a great adventure before us.”

“Not every adventure is kissed by the sun,” I said, thinking of storms at sea and man’s capacity for greed and cruelty.

“You worry too much,” she said. “Give me an orange and your knife to cut it with. We must not be remiss in preserving our teeth.”

I drew an orange, which the ancients called a golden apple of the Hesperides, from the sack. I cut the glowing sphere, still warm from the sun, in two and handed half to Rachel. We ate the orange as we went along, juice dripping down our chins.

“Look, there is Cristobal,” Rachel said as we approached the ship. “He must be feeling better, to have come up on deck.”

The Taino surveyed us as we clambered aboard and joined him at the rail. The scene below us was one of purposeful chaos, as always on the docks in any port. Sweating men in shirtsleeves barked orders. Boys drove lowing cattle and bleating sheep and goats toward the ships. Women hawked cooked meat and fruit. Heavy wooden crates and barrels swung over the side and onto the deck on tackle with rope and hook, like a giant’s fishing pole. Everywhere we saw Guanche slaves at work, their golden skins grimed with dirt and sweat and their muscles bunched with effort.

“I am glad to see you in the sun, Cristobal,” Rachel exclaimed. “Do you feel stronger today?”

“A little.”

His face lightened as he looked at her tenderly. Cristobal had not been deceived for a minute when Rachel was transformed into a boy. Being indifferent to clothing, he was not to be fooled by it. We trusted him to say nothing, and he did not, not even to comment on it to me or Rachel. In truth, he looked worse: his skin jaundiced, eyes bloodshot, and wasted frame shivering in spite of the blistering sun.

“Do you not want to go ashore?” she asked him. “There is much to see.”

Cristobal spat over the side.

“I see well enough from here.”

Rachel and I surveyed the lively scene. The noise and color made it seem cheerful, but Cristobal’s eye rested on the laboring Guanche, whom their overseers kept at work with shouts and the occasional crack of a whip.

“What do you see?” I asked.

“I see dead men walking,” he said. “I see the future of the Taino.”

Chapter Twenty

On the Ocean Sea, October 13 - November 3, 1493

The Canaries being known for their tranquil air, we had to wait for the wind. But once it came, it filled our sails and sent us scudding westward. The blue dome of the heavens arched above us, and the sea, with its hundred shifting shades of blue and green, stretched out before us. The voyage passed quickly, and not only because the weather favored us. On the first voyage, we had constant
ly to fight back fear. If the Ocean Sea proved to stretch far beyond our reckoning, we should be dead of thirst, starvation, or the destruction of our ships by storm long before we reached the Indies. This time, we knew our destination.

All were eager to see the Indies, those who had shipped with us in 1492 no less than those for whom this was the first voyage. Conversation as we worked, ate our dried peas and biscuit, and lay looking at the brilliance of the stars at night turned often to speculation as to how the men left at La Navidad fared and how soon we ourselves would lay our hands on gold.

At times, I found myself joining in the dreams of the others, wishing for wealth sufficient to restore my family’s shattered fortunes. I longed to lay gold enough before them that my mother would not go shabby, my sisters without husbands, or my father old before his time. 

Of the missions with which the King and Queen had charged us, only the Admiral and the priests seemed to care about the conversion of the Taino. The leading cleric, Fray Buil, was haughty and intolerant. I made sure to avoid him. Of the others, only young Fray Pane was unassuming and humble. He took his turn on watch and sat often with Cristobal, when neither Rachel nor I nor occasionally Fernando could be spared from our duties. Once we had left land behind, the Taino grew steadily weaker, till he could barely sip a posset or a little wine and could not hold down solid food at all.  If Fray Pane said his rosary and murmured prayers for the saving of Cristobal’s soul for Jesus, he also wiped his brow and held the basin while the Taino retched and shuddered. He seemed to understand that baptism in Spain had meant lit
tle to Cristobal. But he did not recoil in horror or cry heresy, but patiently put his point of view over and over again, hoping to make a deeper impression before the Indian died.

“It grieves me,” the little cleric said to me, “that he should die without the comforts of religion.”

As he understood no Taino, Fray Pane didn’t know how often Cristobal called out to Yucahu and Atabey, his gods of father sky and mother earth, and to Maketaori Guayaba, ruler of the underworld where the Taino believed their souls went when they died. At night, Cristobal told us, the souls of the dead turned into bats, which flew abroad and feasted on the
guayaba
, or guava. This fruit had a tangy savor similar to that of lemon.

“If I do not live to reach my own land,” Cristobal told us in the ghost of a whisper, “my bat soul will have to make do with your lemon tree. So tell it to make haste to grow and bear fruit, for a soul that cannot feed will starve and fade away.”

Rachel wiped away a tear at this. I took his skeletal hand in mine as if I could pass to him some of my own strength.

“You will see your village again,” Rachel said. “You must!”

“I pray to Ha’shem,” I added, “that you will be reunited with your family. Hutia must long to see you, and it would not be right to disappoint him.” I hoped thus to fan in him the spark of a will to live. But I was not hopeful, though I tried not to infect Rachel with my gloom.

“Do bats have teeth?” Rachel asked. When Cristobal nodded, she said, “They must have healthy teeth even in the afterlife, from feeding on such fruit.”

This won a smile from Cristobal, as she had hoped. Except for us, none on board regarded him or took any care to make sure he was fed, clean, and resting as comfortably as he could. The Admiral would have left him in Spain, had I not requested that he be allowed to return to his homeland, promising truthfully that he would not take up much room or consume much of the ship’s provisions.

The Admiral’s indifference to Cristobal’s fate did not surprise me, although it shocked Rachel. When he had decided to carry some of the Taino to Spain, he was not yet committed to enslaving them all. I believed he held that plan in reserve, should the gold we amassed in the Indies prove too little to enrich the Crown beyond its previous prosperity. He had brought Cristobal and the others to display them to the King and Queen as marvels, herding them onto the ships and then across the Iberian Peninsula to Court like prime cattle. But they were a disappointment to him, becoming ill and dying rather than remaining handsome and strong. So being a man of vision whose favorite cry was
Adelante!
Go forward! he set his sights on the horizon and moved on.

Diego Columbus might have helped and comforted his compatriot, understanding better even than we the conflict between Spanish and Taino ways. Instead, he felt so jealous even of this weak rival that he urged the Admiral to leave him behind. Luckily, my petition to allow Cristobal to go home prevailed. Once aboard, he found in Rachel a new and more dangerous competitor. So both of us were in the interpreter’s bad graces and kept an eye out lest he do us some truly damaging disservice. We could not avoid him, because he still served the Admiral. Illiterate, he could not act as a scribe, and thus eyed paper and quill itself with loathing. However, he took pains to make himself useful to the Admiral in other ways.

Several times when Rachel came into the Admiral’s cabin, she found spilled ink and spoiled paper on the Admiral’s desk, or quills she had painstakingly sharpened snapped in two. These things were precious, for our supply was limited. Other than Rachel, the interpreter was the one most often in the cabin. While he took care not to get caught, neither of us doubted he was responsible.

“He is sly and mean-spirited,” Rachel said, in a fury. “I thought the Taino were great of heart and generous, like Cristobal.”

“No race has none but good men,” I told her, “not even the Jews. But I have met no other Taino with such jealousy and envy in his heart. Perhaps it is we, that is, Europeans in general, who have infected him with our fear that if others enjoy plenty, we will not have enough.”

“Enough what?” she asked. “Quills and ink?”

“Enough of whatever such men covet because they see that others value it,” I said. “Gold, land, rank, but also love, esteem, and even friendship. Will you tell the Admiral of this? Or would you like me to take the man aside and convince him to fear my wrath? I can do it, you know, if you say the word.”

“You have become a man, my brother,” Rachel said. She wrinkled her nose at me, and the fire died out of her eyes. “I would quake before you myself, did I seek to oppose you in any way. No, let us leave it. The Admiral is still fond of the fellow. It would pain him to know him so vindictive and untrustworthy. I can clean up the ink and sharpen more quills.”

“As you wish,” I said, noting that, like me, Rachel avoided the interpreter’s name, wishing to call him neither “Diego” nor “Columbus.” “But let us not turn our backs on him, especially if he finds us alone at the rail on a moonless night.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Dominica, November 3, 1493

The wind continued steady and the weather fair. We sighted drifting grasses and birds that we knew nested ashore. Pelicans, which I had considered birds of good omen since our first voyage, visited us on deck. Comical and ungainly once they folded their wings, they were eager to contest the catch of fish with which we varied our diet of salt beef and the tiresome and by this time wormy biscuit. We made landfall three weeks to the day from our departure from the Canaries.

At the cry of “Land!” from the lookout in the crow’s nest, all those not on watch roused from slumber and stumbled toward the rail, scratching at their bodies and rubbing sleep from their eyes. Rachel, barefoot and tousled, emerged from the Admiral’s cabin, where she slept on a pallet near the door. The Admiral overtook her in a couple of eager strides. The men who clustered around the rail made way for him.

Dawn was breaking. A high mountain pierced the bank of steel gray cloud before us. The peak was little more than a black bulk, as the sun was rising behind us in the east. As we watched, its slopes were touched with pearl and then gold until those with keen eyes could discern the green of forests. We sailors had much to do before we could land. We scurried about our work, hardly needing the orders of master and pilot to ready the ship with speed and efficiency.

The Admiral returned to his cabin, taking Rachel with him to assist in writing the great news not only in his logbook but also in the letters he was preparing for the Sovereigns. When he returned to the deck, he summoned Fray Buil and the other priests to lead prayers of thanksgiving for our safe arrival, exclaiming on the omen of our making landfall on the Christian Sabbath.

“I will name this island Dominica,” he declared, then bowed his head in devotion as the company began to sing.

Rachel slipped away, whispering to me that she would tell Cristobal, too weak to rise from his pallet below, that he was home. I didn’t know how much the news would please him. We were still far from Hispaniola, where my friend Hutia and the rest of his family awaited him, surely praying to their gods that he still lived. His village lay near our fort of La Navidad. With a shudder of apprehension, I remembered that my enemy Cabrera waited, too, and how he had cursed me as our boat pulled away from shore. But I was no longer a boy to be intimidated. I trusted that when the time came to face him, Ha’shem would be with me. As the company sang their Latin Hail Mary and Praise to God, I murmured under my breath the words of the Psalm of David: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…I shall fear no evil….”

A hand fell on my shoulder. My eyes flew open. It was only my friend Fernando, who whispered in my ear, “Rafael asks you to come quickly. Cristobal is dying.”

All were still rapt in prayer or staring at the shore as if the intensity of their gaze could bring it closer. I found Rachel kneeling with Cristobal’s head in her lap, tears falling unheeded down her cheeks. A small candle illuminated the dark enough to see the labored rise and fall of the Taino’s chest, his breath harsh with his approaching death.

She raised her face to mine.

“He is too weak to rise and go above. I cannot bear it that he may not see the land with his own eyes. It is so close, so close!”

“I can carry you,” I offered. “Do you wish to see the island?” He weighed so little by now that I could do it without even breathing hard.

“It is not my home,” he whispered, each word costing more than he could spare from his small store of remaining breath. “It is enough that I have crossed the water. The
cemi
can hear my voice again. I will rest in the arms of Atabey, and my soul will reach Coaybay before the sun is high.”