VOYAGE OF STRANGERS (28 page)

The Admiral shook off Don Diego and raised himself to a sitting position.

“Barto, Diego, be so good as to go and see what has occurred. If it is a matter of any import, we must control it immediately. Not all the malcontents sailed home with Margarit.”

“Of course, brother,” Don Diego said, making immediately for the door.

Don Bartholemew looked surprised. He raised his eyebrows toward us.

“I would talk with these lads further,” the Admiral said. “Leave them with me.”

“As your Excellency pleases,” I murmured.

Rachel bowed. As so often, her thoughts and mine marched together. We needed Don Bartholemew’s good will, and a show of humility would go some way toward attaining it.

Don Bartholemew shrugged and turned to go.

“So, young Rafael,” the Admiral said blandly. “You have grown in these last months, but I see that you have not yet started your beard. Ah, well, you are yet young.”

“Yes, Excellency.” Rachel made a hasty bow to him and another to the Admiral’s brothers as they hurried away.

When we were certain they were out of earshot, I went down on one knee. Rachel copied me.

“Excellency,” Rachel said, “before we speak further, what can we do for your comfort?”

“Ah, I have missed my page.” The Admiral’s features, steely with pain as well as the habit of command, softened into his most kindly smile. “Very well, assist me to lie down.”

We both sprang to do so.

“Ah, that is better. And that pillow under my leg will ease it greatly. Now, what can we do for your protection? For I am mindful that you are not as young as I would have my brothers believe.”

“Excellency, we must contrive something,” I said, “but I am at a loss as to what that can be.”

“Shall I send you home?” he asked. “Ships have now returned to Spain without my guidance. More will go when I can send sufficient treasure to please Their Gracious Majesties. We must also beg for more provisions, though my brother’s arrival with three laden caravels has relieved our immediate needs.”

It would be some time till a caravel departed. Before that happened, Rachel’s bosom might swell to unmistakable proportions, or some rough sailor or soldier might come upon her washing a bloody rag. Besides, to return to Spain would be to exchange one kind of danger for another.

“Excellency,” I said, “I don’t know what to do for the best.”

The Admiral assured us that we could rely on his protection if we remained, but it seemed to me that if the matter were made public, it might be taken out of his hands. We discussed the dilemma but had come to no conclusion when the shouting, which had grown louder and more excited rather than subsiding as we talked, became an uproar moving toward the Admiral’s quarters.

Don Diego burst into the room.

“Ships! Three caravels have arrived!”

The Admiral sat up abruptly, crying out with pain as the movement put pressure on his gouty leg.

“Help me up, and hand me those sticks.”

“Captain Torres leads them,” Don Diego said. “He brings settlers—and among them are women!”

All of us made haste to help the Admiral to his feet and then, once we had him leaning on his sticks, to let him walk without our assistance as he commanded.
             

“It is our opportunity!” I whispered to Rachel.

Necessity made both of us think quickly. Rachel had left a few possessions, including the traveling dress she had worn in Spain, in the hut we had shared with Fernando. Praying that he and none other still occupied our haven, I sent her running to change her clothes. If she covered all with a concealing cape, she could make her way through the settlement and join the new arrivals without being noticed. I followed the crowd streaming toward the shore.

When I arrived, several boatloads had already landed. The travelers, looking wan and exhausted after several weeks at sea, either clung together or looked around with apprehension rather than wonder. Many trees had been felled in the building of Isabela. Coming ashore on this spot no longer gave the impression that the traveler had arrived in paradise. But the beauties of the forest and the richness of the soil would no doubt put heart in them soon enough.

All looked curiously at the twenty or thirty women who climbed the bank and made their way toward the center of the town. I heard a few ribald comments, but most regarded the newcomers with sympathy and awe. I had no doubt that Christian women would be treated very differently from the Indian women. What kind of woman would embark on such a precarious journey into the unknown? None of them looked like loose women or the kind who attach themselves to armies. None was dressed richly. Most wore drab gray or brown woolen cloaks and carried sacks that no doubt contained the sum of their possessions. They had broad peasant faces. Under the cloaks, I guessed, were sturdy arms and backs used to labor. Many of the men carried tools for farming. A few of the women seemed to be the farmers’ wives. One or two were greeted with great excitement by men of Isabela. These must be wives or sisters who had crossed the Ocean Sea to join their menfolk in making a new life.

Several of the women had children, not babes in arms, which I thought wise, but boys and girls who clung to their mothers’ cloaks or helped to carry their bundles. One woman in particular caught my eye. She walked alone except for two children. One was a boy of perhaps ten who bore on his back a bundle that looked too heavy for him. When his mother reached out a hand to assist him, he shook it off and held himself a little straighter as he marched along. The other was a girl of five or six, half hidden in her mother’s skirts. In one arm she clutched a poppet made of rags, clearly a girl baby, for it had button eyes and hair of brown wool, and it wore a grimy, salt-stained garment that had once been, perhaps, a kerchief of blue cotton.

This woman’s face looked kind. I watched her approach. The newcomers must climb to reach the fort, and since all bore burdens, their passage was slow. The sun burned high in the sky. The procession halted raggedly as the voyagers paused to remove their heavy cloaks. The woman I observed halted perhaps a hundred yards away. She removed her cloak and draped it over her arm. The boy tried to take it from her to add to his own burden, but she refused. She bent to tie a white kerchief around the little girl’s head and unwind the shawl that the child had worn for warmth.

I felt Rachel nudge me. Glancing to the side, I saw that her hands were hidden beneath a gray cloak that bulged out.

“I brought all my things,” she said.

“Was Fernando there?”

“No, but his Taino mistress was.”

“What?” I kept my voice low with an effort. “I don’t believe it. Fernando?”

“She assured me that it is true,” Rachel said. “She is seventeen, and she says he treats her kindly.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said, though I was not quite sure if this news meant that Fernando had become a better ally to the Taino or a predator like the soldiers.

“What now?” she asked.

In a moment, I made my decision.

“Do you see that woman, the one who has just kissed the little girl? When she passes us, fall into step with her. As you do so, slip off your cloak and lay it over your arm. You might offer to carry hers as well. She is heavily burdened already.”

“I will do better.” Rachel needed no explanation to comprehend and improve on my plan. “I will offer to carry the little girl. See how her little feet are dragging with weariness and the poor poppet is trailing in the dust.”

It was quickly done. In another minute or two, Rachel had the child, poppet and all, in her arms. She turned a sunny smile on the mother.

“May I walk with you? I am Raquel. You must have crossed on one of the other ships. What a lovely little girl—what is your name, sweetheart? And a fine son, too. You are fortunate. I traveled alone, for I have no family back in Spain, and I am determined to make a better life for myself here than I could have done if I had remained.”

“So am I,” the woman said, smiling back with great warmth. “We are happy to have your company. My name is Pilar. I am a widow, and these are my children, Ana—don’t suck your thumb, Ana, and thank the pretty young lady for carrying you—and Benito. It was a long journey, was it not? Yet there is something in being out of sight of all land, surrounded by sea and sky, that lifts the heart, do you not think so?

“I do indeed,” Rachel said. “It seems that we are meant to be friends.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Isabela, October 15, 1494 – January 15, 1495

We spent a tedious winter enlarging the palisade around Isabela and building new huts, storage rooms for roots and grains, smokehouses for fish and such meat as we slaughtered, albeit sparingly, and an armory much like the
caney
in the
yucayeque
but reinforced with hardwood logs and bands of iron. The women, Rachel among them, planted, hoed, and weeded in hopes of growing enough food to feed the whole colony and end our reliance on provisions sent from Spain. Most still refused to eat
yuca
or plant their beans and maize in
conuco
. But Rachel persuaded Pilar and one or two of the other women to do so, and their harvests yielded double the crops of the others.

Children worked alongside the women. Rachel not only made the work into a game for Benito, but amused Ana, who was too little to work but could not be left behind, as well. For this, Pilar thanked Rachel ov
er and over, saying she didn’t know what she would do without her. Most of the women married shortly after their arrival, putting themselves under the protection of some sturdy farmer, a sailor with a ready smile, or a soldier who had amassed a greater hoard of gold than the others. But Pilar, who had been happy with her dead husband, was not so eager to lose her independence. I think for a while she had hopes of me, though she was my elder by ten years. But I gave her no encouragement. I was always welcome at her table and was happy to perform any tasks on her behalf or Rachel’s that demanded a man’s strength.

We told Pilar, the children, and any others who expressed curiosity that Rachel was my cousin. I had not known, we said, that she planned to settle in the Indies. Nor had she known that I had sailed with the Admiral, not only on this expedition but on the first voyage, which all the newcomers wanted to hear about, as well. 

“The day your ship arrived at Isabela,” I told the wide-eyed children, “was two years to the day after we made our first landfall, after sailing many leagues with no notion of whether we would ever come to land.”

The children regarded me with as much awe as they accorded the Admiral, whom they saw rarely and only at a distance. Rachel and Pilar both assured me that they were unusually well behaved when I was present. I formed the habit of taking my evening meal with them. Afterward, we would sit by the fire, little Ana on my lap or Rachel’s, until both children grew drowsy and I realized that I too must sleep, for I could always count on a long day’s work the next day.

In theory, I still shared Fernando’s hut. In truth, I gave him and his Taino companion as much privacy as I could. He seemed fond enough of the girl, though their conversation was limited, as Fernando had never managed to learn much Taino. Instead of giving her a Spanish name, he called her Yayama, his little pineapple, declaring that like that curious fruit, she was prickly without but sweet and succulent within. I found occasion to ask her privately in Taino if she was happy with her situation. Later, I learned that Rachel had done the same. She swore to both of us that she was content. Like Cristobal, she would not tell us her original Taino name.

“My family is gone,” she said. “That name is no longer mine. Only Atabey remembers it.”

During these months, Hutia came and went between Isabela and the remote villages and caves to which the Taino who still resisted subjugation had retreated. He avoided being penned up with the captives by telling any Spaniard who accosted him that he was my servant and interpreter. Though I saw little of the Admiral these days, I was still known to all as his favorite. Indeed, it was understood that I was especially precious to him since the young page, Rafael, had reportedly sickened and died while on an errand to Santo Tomas. We made sure that those at Santo Tomas heard that Rafael’s demise had occurred at Isabela. Either way, none doubted this, as many had died. The remaining clerics, Fray Pane and others who had arrived with Don Bartholomew or Captain Torres, performed many more funeral masses than weddings. At any rate, if Hutia’s excellent command of Castilian did not give sufficient credibility to his story, the suspicious were welcome to apply to me for confirmation.

It took me some time to realize that Rachel was beguiling the tedium of a life consisting only of work, interspersed with meals and sleep, in a way of which she knew I could not approve. Like me, she was always happy to see Hutia, but naturally she was not present every time we met. The unremitting round of work made her restless and cranky. She did not crave leisure, for Rachel had no use for idleness. But she longed for freedom.

“Let me but spend an afternoon in the forest talking with the parrots and weaving myself a garland of flowers, and I will take up my hoe more willingly,” she said.

“You cannot wander through the forest alone,” I said. “It is not safe.”