VOYAGE OF STRANGERS (22 page)

Just in time, I perceived that she was teasing me.

“Brush your hair and go to sleep,” I said. “It might be well for us to be the ones to rouse him in the morning. We can carry him back here, so he will speak to no one until he has his wits about him. He will be glad of dark and privacy, too.”

“Do you suppose he will be grateful?” Rachel asked, head tilted to one side as she combed tangles out of her hair.

“No man is grateful the morning after,” I said. I had made the experiment for myself and concluded that the elation of spirits was not worth the ensuing sickness. “Or if he is, he will not admit it.”

But in the morning, we did not
need to rouse Fernando. We arrived at the biggest fire, now reduced to smoldering embers, to find everyone on shore assembled and shouting except for several of the cavaliers, who were ahorse and racing toward the ships.

There was such confusion that at first we could not tell what had occurred.

"What is it? Are we attacked? What has happened?”

“Gold! Gold! Hojeda is back, and they have found gold!”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Isabela, January 20 – March 16, 1494

“Cibao is real! It'
s not just a legend!” I swung Rachel into the air and whirled her around.

“Did you not believe in it before? Diego, put me down!”

All around us, men were laughing and crying, hugging their fellows or pounding them on the back. Some capered in a clumsy dance, chanting, “Gold! Gold! Gold!”

“Diego, have you heard? We will all be rich!” Fernando rushed up to us, no sign of the night’s excesses in his beaming face. “Gold! Gold! Gold!” He too seized Rachel and swung her around.

“Have they found a mine, then?” I asked. “Have they all returned?”

“Have you seen the gold?” Rachel asked. “Can we see it?”

Fernando laughed.

“Not a mine, not yet, but it is surely there, for they found rivers of gold, mountain streams carrying a bounty of nuggets down the mountainside. Captain Hojeda turned back because he came to a river in flood that the men could not cross. But he left a small group under Captain Gorbalan seeking a way to go further. I have not seen any of the gold yet, for the men who brought it are besieged, and Captain Hojeda has taken the greatest part of it to Admiral Columbus.”

“It seems to me,” Rachel said with mock solemnity, “that the Admiral must have great need of the services of his page, and even more of a scribe or two, for this news changes everything. Diego, will you accompany me?”

I did not resist. There would be no digging, building, or planting done today. Already the captains were declaring a general holiday. Gourds of
chicha
, the local brew, were being handed around. We found the Admiral in the large hut that had been built as his residence ashore. He was surrounded by his chief advisers, including his brother, Don Diego, Dr. Chanca, Captain Torres, several of the other ship’s captains, and the cleric, Fray Buil, as well as Captain Hojeda. The twinkle in his eye suggested that he guessed our arrival had more to do with burning curiosity than with devotion to our duty. But he shared the general benevolence to such an extent that he beckoned us forward so we could see the three great nuggets that lay on the table.

“Excellency, the savages who gave me these,” Hojeda said, “assured us that we would find abundant gold higher up the mountain.”

“Thanks be to Christ Our Savior and the Blessed Virgin,” the Admiral said. “Fray Buil, will you lead us in a prayer of thanksgiving?”

Having invited ourselves to this celebration, Rachel and I could do nothing but kneel with the rest and join in the prayers. None sang more fervently than the Admiral. He fairly glowed with the joy of this discovery, which vindicated all his claims about the worth of his mission to Spain and to the Church. Perhaps, like me, he had secretly doubted that Cibao was more than a chimera. Not having brought back the expected riches on our return last year, he must have feared failure and disgrace. Now success was assured, not only for the expedition but for the establishment of a Spanish colony on Hispaniola, which the Sovereigns had promised he would govern.

The gentlemen continued to confer as Rachel busied herself preparing paper and ink for writing and I took out my knife and started sharpening the finest quills. We needed no orders to know that as soon as he dismissed his advisers, the Admiral’s next task would be to compose a letter to the King and Queen. 

“What will you do next, brother?” Don Diego asked.

“Let us await Gorbalan’s return. The proof of Cibao is already conclusive.” The Admiral nodded to Captain Hojeda, who bowed in return. “But the more information we have, the better. I would like to send gold as well as news to Their Majesties.”

“Excellency.” Dr. Chanca stepped forward. “Many of the men are sick. Flux and fevers have left them too weak to march, no less mine or farm or labor at building a city. Might we not send those who are ill back along with the report? Their condition and testimony will be eloquent when we ask for what we need: foodstuffs and supplies. The men cannot remain well on the fish, maize, and roots that the Indians eat.”

“I don’t understand it,” the Admiral said. “On our first voyage, hardly a man took cold. Now we have hundreds sickening and some dying. They complain of the native food. If that is the source of all this illness, we must beg the Queen to send us what they crave: wheat flour and salt pork, along with olive oil, nuts, honey, and rice.”

“The yam and
yuca
or cassava that grow here are nutritious enough,” Dr. Chanca said. “But the men are ill at ease eating only foods they are not accustomed to. This causes their humors to become unbalanced. They complain that they are tired of fish.”

“I am tired of fish myself,” the Admiral said. “But I don’t believe that the fish are to blame for my taking to my bed.”

“You were struck down by exhaustion due to overwork,” Don Diego said. “You are not yet fully recovered. You must take better care of yourself if you wish to be strong enough to lead an expedition to the mountains and perhaps found a second city near the gold fields.”

“Yes, yes, of course I will go myself to see this wonder,” the Admiral said. “How can I rest when there is so much to do? I am both Admiral and Governor General, so I must be conversant with every detail.”

“You must delegate, brother,” Don Diego said, a criticism that none of the rest would have dared level at the Admiral, though there was much truth in it.

“Very well, brother,” the Admiral said. “While I lead a greater expedition to Cibao, you shall remain as governor of Isabela in my absence.”

“I don’t seek advancement,” Don Diego protested.

This was true. All knew that the Admiral’s brother was a devout and unambitious soul, who did not even want the bishopric the Admiral begged on his behalf. This very fact might make him a wise choice for leadership of the colony, for he would be unlikely to abuse his power, as some of the others surely would.

Later, Rachel and I talked over what we had heard.

“If he sends part of the fleet back to Spain, you should go with it, Rachel,” I said. “You cannot pass for a boy indefinitely. How old are you now?”

“I will turn fourteen in June.”

“You are fast becoming a woman. We have seen how easily Fernando unmasked you. You cannot hide away in our hut forever. You must work. The ship’s boys are already developing manly muscles, and their beards are starting to grow.”

Rachel sniffed.

“And do they not put on airs about the scraggly patches on their cheeks, like fields in a drought, if indeed they produce
more than the fuzz on a peach.”

“You have turned boy enough that you make everything into a contest,” I said. “But in this, you will never compete with them, and the more time passes, the more noticeable it will become. You can neither march with the soldiers nor linger in close quarters on the ship, even if the Admiral would give you leave to do so.”

“Don’t send me away! I will not feel safe, so far from you. Besides, what would I return to? They will land, most likely, in Cadiz. How, then, will I make my way to Italy? Doña Marina has long since returned to Barcelona, surely. I will have no friends, no means, and no way to explain myself.”

“Then what shall we do with you?” I expected no answer, for I could not argue with her reasoning.

“Send me to the Taino,” Rachel said. “I will learn more of their ways, and Hutia will make sure I come to no harm.”

I could not think of as many objections as I would have liked to.

“You already know more than enough of their ways,” I said. “If I leave you there for any length of time, you will end in going about naked. And you will never learn to be a lady.”

“That cause was lost,” Rachel said, “the moment I left the convent in Barcelona. So it is really all the King and Queen’s fault. If they had not expelled the Jews from Spain and unleashed the Inquisition on those who remained, I would be there yet.”

Captain Gorbalan returned the following day with even better news. He had crossed the broad river with the help of the Taino, who not only offered him a
canoa
big enough for all his men, but themselves swam across the swift current, pushing it before them. He had met yet more Taino who assured him that the higher one climbed, the more gold could be found. He had even watched a Taino goldsmith at work.

When we told Hutia of our good fortune, he shook his head.

“There is not as much gold in those mountains as you believe.”

“But the rivers are full of it,” Rachel said.

“That is because it has been washing downstream for more suns than anyone can count, since the time of my ancestors. We take out very little, just enough to adorn ourselves and honor the gods.”

I believed Hutia spoke the truth as he knew it. I did not like to think of how the Spaniards would react when they learned the gold supply was not limitless. Instead, I hoped that Hutia’s estimate of the quantities involved was mistaken. The Taino were no mathematicians, as far as I knew.

“Diego says I may not march with the soldiers to dig the gold. May I come and stay with you and your family while he is gone? And learn to play
batey
?”

“Of course you may stay, little sister,” Hutia said. “But you already play
batey
.”

“I mean well enough to
win
,” Rachel said with such determination that Hutia and I both burst out laughing.

“Shall I find her a husband, brother Diego?” 

“No!”

I must have sounded appalled, for this time both Hutia and Rachel laughed.

At the beginning of February, the Admiral sent a dozen of our ships back to Spain. Along with letters for the Sovereigns and sufficient gold to impress them, if not as much as he would have liked, the fleet carried the men too sick to remain, three score colorful but noisy parrots, and two dozen unhappy Indians. If the Admiral needed to salve his conscience about enslaving them and sending them so far from home, probably to die as the previous captives had, he did so by insisting they were cannibals. But Hutia told us they were men of the islands like any others, only that they had resisted us instead of making us welcome, so that the Admiral reckoned them fierce and warlike. Thus we might subdue them rather than befriend them.

The expedition to Cibao became the focus of all our efforts from the moment the homeward bound ships sailed. I was ordered to make ready to march, along with    Fernando and every other man not too ill to travel and labor, except for the soldiers needed to defend Isabela and sailors to guard the five remaining ships. The Admiral wanted no repetition of the slaughter at La Navidad among either group, those who marched and those who stayed near the shore.

So we struck inland, climbing to a pass that led over the range of rugged peaks and down into a fertile valley that rivaled in beauty even the Andalusian spring. We looked down upon trees heavy with rose-colored blossoms and a rich black land in which every kind of vegetation grew to an astonishing size, from low shrubs with enormous leaves to towering hardwood trees. That day I marched among the farmers who had come as settlers. I heard them exclaim over the richness of the soil.

“We can grow sugar cane here and make our own molasses,” one said.

“And wheat for bread,” said another, “or even that infernal biscuit the sailors eat.”

They all laughed heartily at this.

“In this soil,” said a third, “every seed and slip we brought with us will flourish.”

On the near rim of the valley, the Taino greeted us with their usual generosity, though only I realized that this virtue was an important part of their religion. The others believed that the Taino, as heathen savages, were an inferior breed who would naturally yield the most precious thing they possessed to their superiors, that is, the Christians. They even laughed among themselves about the Taino’s failure to prize gold as they did, as indicating a lower intelligence. In fact, the Spaniards sought any excuse, or needed none, to help themselves to the Taino’s gold, as they had the Jews’. On the other hand, when the Taino, thinking the exchange of possessions must be customary among us, picked up a shirt or knife or wineskin that caught their eye, we were quick to punish them.