To the Indies (25 page)
Authors: C. S. Forester
Tags: #Inquisition, #treasure, #Caribbean, #Indian islands, #Indians, #aristocrats, #Conquistadors, #Orinoco, #Haiti, #Spain, #natives
“But how can we bribe them?” asked James Columbus, his foolish jaw gaping.
“The Admiral has more in his gift than Roldan has. Titles. Offices. Estates.”
Rich was searching in his mind for the sort of thing that would appeal to the García he visualized standing before him. “Some new expedition to seek for the Great Khan — García would desert anyone in exchange for the command of that.”
He was proposing treachery of the meanest possible sort, he knew. Yet he was only proposing to meet treachery, and then only when it seemed impossible to employ any other means.
“No one but me sails from Española on any expedition at all,” said the Admiral, instantly. That showed what was necessary to rouse him.
“It need only be promised him,” said Rich wearily. “Your Excellency can reconsider it when Roldan is once hanged.”
The Admiral peered at him with narrowed eyes. It was only obvious that he suspected Rich of planning something more than he had actually suggested — that he was subtly endeavoring to filch from him a little of his precious power and possessions.
“Never!” said the Admiral. “I shall never allow such a subject to be discussed!”
This was the sort of exasperating deadlock to which Rich had grown accustomed in these last few days.
“As Your Excellency wishes, of course,” he said. “I am merely making what suggestions occur to me.”
That meeting, like those preceding it, broke up without any decision. The next seemed to call for a plan even more urgently because now there was a new and disastrous development. The sentinel on the citadel ramparts announced a ship — she was the caravel
Rosa
, one of the three which had parted from the main expedition to sail direct to Española and which should have arrived three months back. Anxiously they watched her, running gaily down before the eternal east wind, the Admiral and the
Adelantado
and the rest of the Columbus clan, Rich and Alamo and the Acevedo brothers.
“She’s the
Rosa
!” said Perez with satisfaction.
“She carried most of the horses,” said the Admiral.
“Did she, by God!” said Bartholomew. “Then that will end our friend Roldan’s career, if enough have survived this infernal long voyage they have made.”
“A big ‘if’, ” whispered Alamo to Rich.
“Why?”
“I know more about those horses than the Admiral does. The horses that came on board are not the same ones as Their Highnesses paid for. The contractors showed the Admiral two hundred horses on land for his approval, and shipped two hundred quite different horses when they had received it. Four months at sea? Half of them would not survive four days!”
They watched the
Rosa
catch the sea breeze and head for the river mouth.
“No sign of the other two,” said Bartholomew, anxiously. He scanned the horizon unavailingly. “Lost at sea? Parted company? We shall know soon.”
They knew soon enough; there were three captains on board the
Rosa
with reports to make. It was a rambling story, of losing their way, of finding themselves among the unexplored cannibal islands to the south-eastward, and of finally anchoring at Isabella in the north of the island — Roldan’s headquarters.
“Holy Mary!” said Bartholomew. “What next?”
Ballester, the captain of the
Rosa
, spread helpless hands.
“Half the men in our crews left us,” he said. “Sixty men — there had been much sickness, as I said. They took the other two caravels. They took the stores out of the
Rosa
. Those of us who would not join them they allowed to sail round to here. That man with no ears — Martinez — would have made us walk across the mountains, sick though we all were. But Roldan let us take the
Rosa
. He said — ”
Ballester checked himself.
“What did he say?”
Ballester had no desire to repeat what Roldan had said.
“Really, sir, it was not important. I could not — ”
“What did he say?”
“Well, he said we should soon come sailing back to him after a little experience of San Domingo.”
There was an awkward pause, until Bartholomew changed the subject.
“How many men did you leave at Isabella?”
“Sixty-two. Twenty of them were sick.”
“How many horses?”
“Five.”
“Five? Where are the other hundred?”
“Dead, sir. We were short of water for a long time. And on the voyage — ”
“That’s all right, man. If Roldan has them, I would rather they were all dead. How many men have you brought in the
Rosa
?”
“Forty-seven, sir. That includes five sick who are likely to die, and two friars.”
The council looked at each other.
“The balance is hardly altered then,” was Bartholomew’s comment. “We can still fight him.”
Despite the heat and the drumming of the rain outside Rich found his brain working fast. The newly landed Spaniards at Isabella would be a source of dissension there, very likely. They would not — gaolbirds though they might be — take kindly to fighting Spaniards the moment they had landed. They might have slipped easily into mutiny after the hardships of the voyage, but they might hesitate at treason. An immediate move on Isabella would cause them to hesitate, and hesitation is infectious. Roldan’s men would hesitate as well. The passive rebellion might be borne down by a bold stroke.
“The sooner the better,” he said, without time to wonder at himself for such advocacy of energetic action.
Everyone looked at the Admiral now, and the Admiral shifted in his seat and eyed them uneasily. With the arrival of the squadron there could be no question of further postponement of the decision. And Rich, watching him, noticed how he gazed first at him and then at the
Adelantado
; he guessed what wild conclusions the Admiral was drawing from the unwonted circumstance of the two of them being of one mind. Rich was paralleling the Admiral’s thoughts quite closely, yet even he was surprised at what the Admiral decided eventually to do. The decision was not reached easily. There was argument — of course there was argument — and a little spurt of old man’s rage, but it was agreed to in the end. The Admiral was to sail round in the
Rosa
to Isabella, and there he was to make one last effort to recall Roldan and his supporters to their allegiance, and, in the event of their refusal, he was to denounce them as traitors.
“One more wasted month,” sneered the
Adelantado
, reluctantly agreeing.
Rich thought the same, but in the face of the old man’s unreasoning obstinacy there was only one alternative to agreement, and that was to raise a fresh mutiny in San Domingo.
The Admiral had sailed, and Rich had leisure now for his other duties, to make plans for the future government of the colony, to try to estimate its future worth, to put the final touches on the report to Their Highnesses which had already grown to such inordinate length. It called for a good deal of consideration to discover the right wording of the suggestion that in place of shiploads of gold and pearls Their Highnesses would be better advised to expect sugar and hides, and of the advice that negotiations should be opened with the half-hostile court of Lisbon for the supply of Negroes.
Still deeper consideration was necessary to suggest a working system of government. There was one precedent to follow in this case — the constitution of the late Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Holy Land, like Española, was to all intents a new country conquered from the heathen by the Christians, and its constitution had been drawn up in the Assize of Jerusalem in clear-cut legal Latin which embodied the deepest thought of the Middle Ages on the knotty problem of how to erect a stable government on the shaky foundation of the feudal system. But the Kingdom of Jerusalem had fallen through its own rottenness, after all. And there was, as Rich came wearily to realize time and again, that thrice-accursed agreement between Their Highnesses and the Admiral which would hinder any attempt on the part of the court of Spain to make any laws for the Indies, as long as the Admiral clung so frantically to every bit of the power which that fantastic document had granted him.
At every turn Rich was reminded of the difficulties around him. The Admiral had borne off to Isabella with him the last horn of ink which the island possessed — before Rich could even set pen to paper (and paper was scarce) he had to consult Alamo regarding this difficulty and wait until, out of burnt bones, Alamo managed to compound a horrid sludge which would just answer the purpose. There were two hundredweights of gold, there was a gallon of pearls, in San Domingo — enough wealth to build a city in Spain — and yet he had to live in a wretched timber hut in a corner of the citadel ramparts, where the rain leaked in through the gaps, and where bugs were already well established, and which had the sole merit of being private now that Antonio Spallanzani had sailed with his master to Isabella.
Food was scarce. The fifty men who constituted the garrison should have been amply fed from the surrounding country, where thousands of Indians cultivated the soil under the direction of the Spaniards. But naturally these supplies for the government had to be paid for with government funds — with the gold that came from the fifths and tenths and thirds that were levied on the treasures of the island as collected by the Spaniards outside the town. And when the Spaniards paid it in again, being gold it was subject once more to those fifths and tenths and thirds, until it was a most unprofitable business even to sell roots to the garrison, certainly not worth the enormous trouble of bringing them in. In San Domingo the healthy sickened and the sick died and discontent seethed, and the
Adelantado
dared not use strong measures for fear of further defections to Roldan, and Rich scratched his head unavailingly to try to make some sense out of the tangle of laws and privileges which had already grown up in that part of the island, which still remained lukewarm in the government’s cause.
There were times when Rich wondered whether he were really awake, or whether he was not deep in some prolonged and fantastic nightmare, from which he would presently awake to find himself safe in bed in Barcelona. All this might well be a dream; in clairvoyant moments he realized how quite unlikely it was that it should be reality — that he should have crossed the ocean, and explored new lands, and ridden in a cavalry charge striking down living men with his sword, and should have taken part in high political debate seriously discussing the hanging of hidalgos. It was a marvelous moment to be invited to the
Adelantado’s
table, there to eat gluttonously of turtle when a fortunate catch had provided several of the creatures. Rich remembered his shuddering disgust at turtles in the Cape Verdes, where lepers congregated to seek a cure by daubing themselves with turtles’ blood. Now he was hungry enough to eat them with appetite — that was a nightmare in itself.
The parrot that Malalé had given him in Paria had died long since, while under Diego Alamo’s care during his absence at Soco. It had been a disappointing piece of news to receive on his return; in the brief time that he had owned the lovely thing of red and blue he had grown fond of it, with its comic habits and its crowbar of a beak which prized open any buckle which bound it. Rich had an uneasy feeling that this island was fated, that everything Spanish that lived in it was doomed to an early end, whether parrots or codes of law. He was aware of a growing disgust for the place.
And then the
Rosa
came sailing back into the harbor, the Admiral’s flag flying at the masthead, and Alonso Perez blowing fanfares on his trumpet, startling the sea birds into flight all round the river mouth. The
Adelantado
put off hastily from the shore to welcome his brother; everyone else congregated on the beach in anxious expectancy, wondering what had been the outcome of the negotiations with Roldan. They watched for some time before they saw the Admiral descend slowly and painfully into the boat — apparently the brothers had plunged immediately into a long discussion without waiting to return to land.
Apparently, too, the discussion had not been very friendly, to judge by the
Adelantado’s
black brow as he splashed through the shallows to the shore; he stood digging his toes irritably into the sand and meeting no one’s eyes while the Admiral was being helped ashore, feeble, almost tottering, by Alonso Perez and a couple of Indians. But the Admiral was no sooner within earshot again than Bartholomew turned upon him to renew the discussion.
“Have you a copy of this precious treaty, brother?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the Admiral. He halted in his slow course up the beach and fumbled in his pocket.
“Oh, it can wait until we reach the citadel,” said Bartholomew. “Gentlemen, come with us and hear what His Excellency the Admiral has agreed upon.”
The Admiral fluttered a thin hand in protest, only to call forth another bitter comment from his brother.
“Why should they not know?” demanded Bartholomew. “You say the news is to be proclaimed publicly. That is one of the terms.”
It was only the least of the terms. Bartholomew read the document aloud in the council room, while Rich and the others looked at each other in unbelieving astonishment. It seemed quite incredible that such a treaty could have been made. Item by item Bartholomew read it out, with its unlettered travesty of legal terminology, its ‘whereases’ and ‘aforesaids’ which a group of ignorant people had put in in an attempt to imitate lawyers’ expressions. By the first clause Roldan and all who followed him were given a pardon for anything they might have done during their stay in the Indies. By the second clause they were, each and severally, to receive from the Admiral a certificate of good conduct. By the third clause a proclamation was to be made throughout the island, to the effect that everything Roldan and his followers had done had met with the Admiral’s entire approval. By the fourth clause Roldan was to select who should be allowed to go back to Spain, and those that he should nominate should be allowed to transport whatever property they might desire, either of valuables or of slaves. By the fifth clause the Admiral guaranteed that whoever should remain in Española should receive, free of obligation, as much land as a horse could encircle in a day, with the inhabitants thereof; the recipients to select both the land and the horse. The sixth clause merely confirmed that Roldan was invested with the office and powers of Alcalde Mayor, but added that these powers — as the original document had merely implied without express statement — were of course given in perpetuity to Roldan and his heirs forever, as long as the Admiral’s viceregal authority and that of his heirs should endure.
The
Adelantado
interrupted his reading and tapped the document with a gnarled forefinger.
“You did not tell me about this last one, brother,” he said, and then, turning to the rest of the meeting: “That appears to be all of importance, gentlemen. The rest is merely a résumé of the titles of His Excellency the Admiral of the Ocean and of the Right Honorable the Alcalde Mayor of the Indies; I think I can spare myself the trouble of reading them.”
There was only a murmur in reply, and a shuffling of feet. Rich’s mind was already deeply engaged upon a legal analysis of the treaty he had just heard read, and the others were too stunned to speak.