“Porca miser ia exclaimed the cook and, muscles bulging, lifted his old friend off the floor in an effusive embrace.
“Sssshhh! More respect, you are in a cathedral,” a monk scolded them.
They went outside, ecstatic, clapping each other on the back, not believing they had been lucky enough to run into each other, although that happenstance was easily explained. Galileo Tempesta was still working as cook on the Madre de Dios, and the ship was anchored in La Coruna harbor, loading on weapons to take to Mexico. Tempesta had used his time on shore to visit the saint and ask him to cure him of an unspeakable illness. In whispers he confessed that he had contracted a shameful illness in the Caribbean, a divine punishment for his sins, especially for having hacked his poor wife with a hatchet years before, an unforgivable outburst, it is true… though she deserved it. Only a miracle could cure him, he added.
“I don’t know whether the saint devotes himself to those kinds of miracles, Senor Tempesta, but it occurs to me that perhaps Amalia could help you.”
“Who is Amalia?”
“She is a drabardi. She was born with the gift of seeing others’ destinies, and of healing sickness. Her remedies are very effective.”
“God bless Santiago, who put her in my path. You see how miracles happen, young de la Vega?”
“And speaking of Santiago, whatever happened to Captain Santiago de Leon?” Diego inquired.
“He is still captain of the Madre de Dios, and more eccentric than ever, but he will be very happy to have news of you.”
“Perhaps not, because I am a fugitive ”
“Even more reason,” the cook interrupted. “What are friends for if not to offer a hand when a person is down on his luck.”
Diego led Tempesta to a corner of the plaza where several Gypsy women were selling fortunes and introduced him to Amalia, who listened to his confession and agreed to treat his malady for a steep price. Two days later, Galileo Tempesta arranged a meeting between Diego and Santiago de Leon in a tavern in La Coruna. As soon as the captain was convinced that this Gypsy was the lad who had been a passenger on his ship in 1810, he was eager to hear his story. Diego gave him a summary of his years in Barcelona and told him about Juliana and Isabel de Romeu.
“There is an order for the arrest of those poor girls. If they are captured, they will end up in prison or deported to the colonies.”
“What offense could those young women have committed?”
“None. They are victims of a heartless villain. Before he died, the girl’s father, Don Tomas de Romeu, asked me to take them to California and place them in the custody of my father, Don Alejandro de la Vega. Can you help us get to America, Captain?”
“I work for the government of Spain, young de la Vega. I cannot transport fugitives.”
“I know that you have done it before, Captain ”
“What, senor, are you insinuating?”
As answer, Diego opened his shirt and showed him the medallion of La Justicia that he always wore around his neck. Santiago de Leon studied the talisman for a few seconds and then for the first time Diego saw him smile. His avian features changed completely, and his tone grew soft as he recognized a brother. Although the secret society was temporarily inactive, both were forever bound by their oath to protect the persecuted. De Leon explained that his ship was scheduled to leave within a few days. Winter was not the best season for crossing the Atlantic, but summer was worse, when the hurricanes raged. He had urgent orders to transport his cargo of weapons to combat insurrection in Mexico: thirty cannons, a thousand muskets, and lead and gunpowder for a million rounds of ammunition. De Leon regretted that his profession, and economic necessity, forced him to that task, because he considered the struggle for independence to be legitimate. Spain, determined to recover its colonies, had sent ten thousand men to America. The royalist forces had retaken Venezuela and Chile in a crushing campaign of blood and atrocities. The Mexican insurrection had similarly been snuffed out. “If it were not for my loyal crew, who have been with me for many years and need this employ, I would leave the sea and devote myself exclusively to my maps,” the captain confided. They agreed that Diego and the women would steal aboard at night and stay hidden until the ship was on the high seas. No one other than the cap tain and Galileo Tempesta would know the identity of the passengers. Diego thanked him with all his heart, but the captain replied that he was merely fulfilling an obligation. Any member of La Justicia would do the same.
The week went by in preparations for the journey. The girls had to rip open their petticoats and take out the gold doubloons because they wanted to leave something to the Roma, who had treated them so well, and they also needed to buy clothing and other indispensables for the crossing. The handful of precious stones was again sewn into their petticoats. As the banker had told them, there was no better way to carry money in times of difficulty. The girls chose simple, practical clothes suitable for the life that awaited them, all black, because at last they could wear mourning for their father. There was not much to choose from in the modest port shops, but they bought a few articles of clothing and accessories on an English ship anchored there. For her part, Nuria had taken a liking to the Gypsies’ gaily colored garments during her time with them, but she, too, wanted to wear black for at least a year, in memory of her deceased master.
Diego and his friends said their goodbyes to the Roma tribe with heavy hearts, but without sentimentality, which would not have been welcomed among those people hardened by the habit of suffering. Pelayo gave Diego the sword he had forged for him, a perfect weapon, strong, flexible, and light, so well balanced that he could throw it up, watch it somersault in the air, and catch it by the hilt with no effort at all. At the last moment Amalia tried to give the pearl tiara back to Juliana, but she refused to take it, saying that she wanted Amalia to have it as a remembrance. “I don’t need that to remember you and your friends,” the Gypsy said with a nearly contemptuous gesture, but she kept it.
The four friends set sail one night in early March, a few hours after the port guards had come aboard to inspect the cargo and authorize the captain to weigh anchor. Galileo Tempesta and Santiago de Leon showed their charges to their assigned cabins. The ship had been refitted two years before and was in better shape than it had been on Diego’s first voyage; now on the poop deck there was space for four passengers in individual cabins on either side of the officers’ mess room. Each minute cabin had a wooden bed strung from the overhead by lines, a table, chair, and trunk, and a small armoire for clothing.
Those compartments were not commodious, but they offered privacy, the greatest luxury on a ship. The three women closed themselves in their cabins during the first twenty-four hours at sea without taking a bite, green with seasickness, sure that they would not survive the horror of rocking on the waves for weeks. As soon as they left the coast of Spain behind, the captain authorized the passengers to come out, but he ordered the girls to maintain a discreet distance from the sailors, to prevent any problems. He did not give any explanations to the crew, and they did not dare ask for them, but behind the captain’s back they muttered that it was not a good idea to bring women aboard.
On the second morning the de Romeu girls and Nuria, their nausea passed, came to life to the muted sounds of the bare feet of the sailors changing watch, and the aroma of coffee. By then they were used to the bells ringing every half hour. They washed with salt water and wiped away the salt with a cloth dampened in fresh water, then dressed and staggered out of their cabins. In the officers’ salon they found a rectangular table with eight chairs, where Galileo Tempesta had set out breakfast. Coffee sweetened with molasses and fortified with a dash of rum restored soul to body. Oats with the spicy scent of cinnamon and clove was served with an exotic American honey, courtesy of the captain. Through the half-open door they could see Santiago de Leon and his two young officers at the work-table, checking the lists of watches and the manifest of the provisions, wood, and water that would have to be distributed prudently until the next port of supply.
On the wall were a compass indicating the ship’s heading and a mercury barometer. On the table, in a beautiful mahogany box, was the chronometer, which Santiago de Leon cared for as if it were a religious relic. He greeted them with a brief good morning, showing no surprise at his guests’ mortal pallor. Isabel asked about Diego, and the captain pointed vaguely in the direction of the deck. “If young de la Vega hasn’t changed over the years, you will find him high up the mainmast or sitting on the figurehead. I don’t think he will be bored, but for you three this journey will be very long.” However, that was not the case; soon each woman found an occupation. Juliana devoted herself to embroidering and to reading the captain’s books, one after the other. In the first pages she found them boring, but then heroes and heroines were introduced, and thus wars, revolutions, and philosophical treatises acquired their own romance. She was free to invent ardent, star-crossed love affairs and choose the ending. She preferred the tragic ones, which made her weep more. Isabel found distraction in helping the captain reproduce his fantasy maps; once she proved her skill at drawing, she asked permission to sketch portraits of the crew. The captain eventually gave his consent, and she won over the sailors. She studied the mysteries of navigation, from the use of the sextant to the way to identify underwater currents by changes of color or the behavior of fish. She made drawings of the sailors’ many duties: caulking the deck seams with fiber oakum and tar, pumping the water that collected in the bilges, mending sail, repairing frayed line, oiling the masts with rancid fat, painting, scraping, and scrubbing decks. The crew worked every minute; only on Sunday was the routine relaxed and approval given to fish, whittle carvings, sew, tattoo, or pick fleas off one another. They stank like wild beasts because they rarely changed clothing, and they considered bathing to be dangerous to the health. They could not understand why the captain bathed once a week, and even less the mania of the four passengers for washing every day. The Madre de Dios was not ruled by the cruel discipline of ships of war: Santiago de Leon demanded respect without resorting to brutal punishments. He allowed games of cards and dice, which were prohibited on other ships, as long as money was not bet; he doubled the rum ration on Sundays; he was never behind in paying his men; and when they anchored in a port, he organized shifts so everyone would have time ashore. Although he had a cat-o‘-nine tails in a red pouch hanging in a visible spot, he had never used it. At most he sentenced men who broke rules to a few days without grog.
Nuria made her presence felt in the kitchen; in her opinion Galileo Tempesta’s dishes left much to be desired. Her culinary innovations, prepared with the usual limited ingredients, were celebrated by everyone from the captain down to the last ship’s boy. The chaperone quickly adjusted to the sickening odor of the provisions, especially the cheeses and salt meat, to cooking with murky water, and to the dead fish Galileo Tempesta laid on the sacks of biscuits to combat weevils.
When the fish were crawling with worms, he replaced them, and in that way kept the biscuits more or less weevil-free. Nuria learned to milk the two goats on board. They were not the only animals; there were also hens, ducks, and geese in cages, and a sow and her piglets in a pen, in addition to the sailors’ pets monkeys and parrots and the irreplaceable cats, without which rats would be lords and masters of the ship. Nuria discovered new ways to combine milk and eggs, so there was dessert daily. Galileo was a grouch, and he resented Nuria’s invasion of his territory, but she found the simplest way to resolve that problem. The first time Tempesta raised his voice to her, she popped him on the head with a cooking spoon and went back to stirring the stew. Six hours later, the crusty old Genoese proposed marriage.
He confessed that Amalia’s remedies were beginning to take effect and that he had saved nine hundred American dollars, enough to open a restaurant in Cuba and live like kings. He had been waiting eleven years to find the right woman, he said, and he didn’t care that Nuria was a little older than he was. Nuria did not dignify this with a reply.
Several sailors who had been on the ship during Diego’s first voyage did not recognize him until he won their handfuls of garbanzo beans playing cards. Time for sailors follows its own laws; the years pass by without leaving a trace on the smooth surfaces of sky and sea, which was why they were surprised that the boy who only yesterday had frightened them with stories of the living dead was today a man. Where had five years gone? It comforted them that even though he had grown and changed, he continued to enjoy their company. Diego spent a good part of the day working with them in duties around the ship, especially the sails, which fascinated him. Only at dusk did he disappear briefly into his stateroom to wash and dress like a caballero to join Juliana.
The sailors realized from the first day that Diego was in love with the girl, and although they sometimes made jokes, they observed his devotion with a mixture of nostalgia for something they would never have and curiosity about the outcome. Juliana to them was as unreal as a mythological siren. That unblemished skin, those liquid eyes, that ethereal grace could not be of this world.
Running with ocean currents and the mandate of the wind, the Madre de Dios headed south along the coast of Africa, passed the Canary Islands without stopping in, and reached Cape Verde to take on water and fresh food before initiating the crossing, which, depending on the weather, might take more than three weeks. It was there they learned that Napoleon Bonaparte had escaped from his exile on Elba and returned in triumph to France. Troops sent to block his march toward Paris had defected to his side, and he had regained power without firing a single shot while the court of Louis XVIII took refuge in Ghent and prepared to conquer Europe for the second time. On Cape Verde the travelers were welcomed by the local authorities, who presented a ball in honor of the captain’s daughters, which is how they introduced the de Romeu girls. Santiago de Leon thought that that would allay suspicions in case the arrest order had traveled that far. Many of the administrative officials were married to tall, proud, beautiful African women who appeared at the party dressed in spectacular finery. By comparison, Isabel looked like a wet dog, and even Juliana seemed nearly mousy. That first impression changed completely when, urged by Diego, she agreed to play the harp. A full orchestra was already providing music, but the moment she began to pluck the strings, a silence fell over the large salon. A couple of time honored ballads were all it took to enchant everyone there. For the rest of the evening, Diego had to stand in line with the other caballeros to win a dance.