The King's Fifth (5 page)

T
HERE AT THE MOUTH
of the mighty River of Good Guidance, where its waters pour into the Sea of Cortés, we drank our fill and more. Still too weak to climb into the longboat, clinging to rail and rudder, we then paddled feebly toward a row of sand dunes.

After a while, when it seemed that we would never reach the shore, friendly currents gathered us in. They bore us into a salt lagoon where long-legged birds were wading and, gently as a mother with her child, set us down.

We rested two days beside the lagoon, gaining strength. Early on the third morning we shouldered our baggage and set out to the southeast. We went in this direction for two reasons. Directly to the east, which was the way to Cíbola or so Captain Mendoza thought, the country was broken by sea-swamps and estuaries. Of more importance was the fact that somehow we must find Juan Torres and the horses. Knowing that we had been driven northward by the storm, he would probably follow the coast in the hope of crossing our trail.

On the morning of the fifth day, having made only nine leagues with our heavy burdens, it was decided to send Roa ahead on the chance that he would come upon a village where he could ask for help.

It is said by the poor of Seville that good fortune is like bread—sometimes a whole loaf and sometimes none.

This was our time of good fortune. No sooner had we encamped that afternoon than we saw smoke rising from a canyon nearby. In a short time Roa with three Indians came out to greet us and lead the way into a village of many huts, which was called Avipa.

Good fortune was still with us.

At the far end of the village a crowd stood in a wide circle around a mounted Spaniard. It was Juan Torres, blacksmith, armorer and keeper of Mendoza's two horses. As he saw us and spurred the roan to a gallop, the crowd of Indians scattered in all directions, letting out unearthly cries of fear.

"I never thought to see you again," he said, swinging down from the saddle. "Yet I am in the village no more than a moment when who comes running out of a hut but Benito Roa."

"You should not be so happy to see us," Zuñiga said. "For now we place our baggage on the roar. While you,
señor,
walk like the rest of us."

"To walk is good," Torres said, "after the leagues I have ridden. It was like riding the length of Spain,
amigos.
"

Torres was a small man, with a glib tongue and eyes that did not rest for long on anything. I had seldom seen
him on board the
San Pedro,
but what I had seen I had not fancied.

"Many adventures have befallen me," he said, "of which I will tell you once I have eaten."

"We are not without adventures ourselves," said Mendoza.

We made camp on a stream outside the village and were brought a fine supper of rabbit roasted on a spit, small squash and lemon-colored melons which surprised the tongue with their sweetness. While we ate, a group of Indians sat outside the circle of our fire, saying nothing. Now and again one would get up and walk over to where the horses were tethered, grunt something to himself, then come back and sit in silence.

"We will mount guard tonight," Mendoza said. "And those not guarding will sleep with their eyes open."

The first watch was mine. The moon had risen and I was walking along the stream, matchlock on my shoulder, when a shout and the barking of dogs brought me to a halt. There was another shout, the flare of a second torch, the sound of what seemed like iron-shod hooves striking stone. I went to awaken the camp, but Mendoza, Zuñiga and Roa already were running toward the village.

Unsure of what I had heard, fearing an attack, I doubled back to guard the roan and her foal. I was there only a short time before three horsemen rode out of the village and down the stream, light from torches shining on their helmets. They were followed by an Indian youth and a priest in a robe tucked up to his knees.

The party, we learned, belonged to Coronado's army.
They had been sent to search for Admiral Alarcón and had traveled for three days from a valley where Coronado was now encamped. The leader of the party, Ensign Gómez, told us that for a month before reaching the valley the army had marched on half rations.

"The sheep began to lose their hooves and were left behind. The pigs became little save bristle and bone. Cows and mules died. Men died, too. At last, in desperation, Coronado decided to leave the main army to travel at its own pace and push ahead with an advance guard of a hundred. He is now encamped in a valley where food and water and grass are plentiful and the Indians friendly. Still, a long journey lies between us and Cíbola. We can use the supplies Alarcón carries."

"Where the Admiral is, I do not know," Mendoza said and described the fearful storm. "If his galleons were not sunk, they were driven ashore some place."

As he said this, Mendoza glanced at me. It was a warning to be silent. It commanded me not to tell what I knew—that Admiral Alarcón planned to sail for two days after we left him, then anchor and wait for Coronado.

"Could he have found his way into the River of Good Guidance?" Gómez asked.

"We were at the mouth of that river. We have just come from there and did not sight him," Mendoza replied. "It is my belief that his ships foundered in the same storm that overtook us."

"But it is possible that they rode out the storm," Gómez said. "As you did."

"If so, where are they? How do we find them on such
a vast sea? And if by chance we do find them, what is the condition of the food they carry?"

Once more, Captain Mendoza glanced at me, commanding my silence.

He is the leader of our party, I told myself, my superior. I cannot contradict what he has said. And if I do inform Gómez about Alarcón's plans, it will be of no value because the storm has surely changed them. Besides, everything the Captain has said is true. The ships are probably lost. If not lost, then the supplies they carry are damaged beyond use. Furthermore, if the ships are still afloat, where are they?

This was what I told myself, as I stood listening to the two men. But now, while I sit at my bench and write what I remember of that night in Avipa, I know that all of it was meant to excuse my silence. I was anxious, nay, in a state of great excitement, to reach the country of Cíbola, like Mendoza but for a different reason. The only thought I had was of the map I would draw of its Seven Golden Cities, the map that no one ever had drawn before.

"If the ships are not at the bottom of the sea," I said, "which seems likely, how many weeks will it take to find them?"

It was an idle question, meant for Gómez, but Mendoza was quick to answer.

"I will tell you," he said. "By the time they are found, if find them we do, and pack animals are collected and the supplies loaded and carried back to camp, by that time snow will have fallen."

"Coronado has been on the trail many months," I said. "He must long to set foot in Cíbola."

"When the cordillera is covered with snow," Mendoza continued, "the army cannot move forward until spring."

I walked away and left the two men arguing. They argued far into the night, but at dawn we set off for Coronado's camp. There was no power on earth that could have held Mendoza back, nor, alas, held me.

T
HE VILLAGE WAS AWAKE
as we moved away, more to see the horses than us Spaniards. Indians stood in the doorways of their huts, peering out in fear and wonder at the long-legged beasts. Beside one of the huts I saw a flock of turkeys, and thinking of the paints I would need to mix for my maps, I stopped to ask if I could buy four or five eggs.

The old woman who owned the flock understood my motions of a turkey in the act of laying. I felt very foolish stooping in the dust, but when I held up five fingers and showed her a trinket, she fetched me a fine clutch of eggs, brown-speckled and still warm. I would have preferred the newly-laid eggs of a hen, but there were none of these birds in the village.

Ensign Gómez and two soldiers rode in the lead. Mendoza rode behind them on the blue roan, the foal at her heels. The slender Indian youth and the priest, Father Francisco, who had a crooked leg and walked lopsided, followed. Zuñiga, Roa and I came last. Our baggage
had been loaded upon the pack animals, so for a time we kept up with the train.

At a safe distance a band of curious Indians ran along beside us. But at the brow of the first hill they disappeared into the brush. The youth made a gesture toward them, which I took to be impolite, then left the trail and waited for me, laughing.

"Why do you laugh?" I asked.

"Because of the Indians," the youth answered. "Those who have hidden in the brush. Those who have not seen a horse before."

"You are very young," I said. "You cannot have seen many yourself."

"I have thirteen years and two hundred and six days and I have seen horses before. Dozens of horses. Horses of all the colors." He cast a glance toward Mendoza. "But I have seen no horse so beautiful as the one the captain rides. It is the color of a rain cloud, just before the rain falls. And the little one is beautiful also. I would like to ride on its back someday."

"It is not ready to ride," I said.

"Someday."

"When it is, you cannot ride it," I said. "Do you know why?"

"I know why. It is because of a man whose name was Cortés. He was the man who killed all the Aztecs. When he had killed them he made a law that no Indian can own a horse. Or ride upon a horse. This is true?"

"It is true."

The youth looked sidewise at me and laughed again.

"Do you know what the Indians of Avipa asked me, just before they ran and hid in the brush?"

I shook my head.

"They said that these animals have very big teeth, so with such teeth they must eat people. I said yes, they ate people, but they liked to eat Indians best."

"That is why they ran off?"

"Yes, but this is good. These ones of Avipa are fine at stealing. While you talk they steal from you. They pick up things with their toes, which are like fingers, and hide them away in their clouts. In front of your eyes, they do this."

The youth spoke Spanish clearly, though with long pauses and curious sounds between each word.

"Where did you learn my language?" I said.

"I learned from Captain Coronado. Also, before that, in the house of Don Alesandro, who is the Alcalde of Compostela, where I was a maid for his children, of which he has nine."

"A maid?" I said, surprised. "How can a boy be a maid?"

"I am not a boy. My name is Zia."

Zia was thin, all arms and legs, straight as a stick, tall for thirteen years, two hundred and six days, with birdlike bones and eyes that were sometimes melting. Now as she looked at me they were the color of obsidian.

"In all your life have you heard of a boy named Zia?" she said.

"No, nor of a girl called by that name."

"Then you have not heard of much," she said.

The next moment she was gone, skipping ahead over the rocks. But before long she came running back.

"Where," she said, "have you learned the language you speak? It does not sound the same as the language of Captain Coronado. Or the language of Don Alesandro."

"In the country of Spain. In a town named Ronda, where I was born."

"In that country does everyone speak this language?"

"Yes, but there are many dialects. Many ways of speaking, as you have just said."

"Here, also, there are many ways."

"How many do you know?"

"Six," Zia said proudly and named them one by one on her fingers. "But I do not know much of what they speak in Avipa. It sounds like the fighting of cats."

Zia wore a deerskin jacket and around her waist, cinched with a belt of woven string, a red velvet kirtle that looked as if it had been fashioned from a soldier's cast-off cloak. But it was her hat that caught my eye. From the rim hung balls of red wool, intermingled with small silver bells that tinkled as she walked.

"Is this the hat of your country?" I said.

"Yes, of Nayarit, which is close to the town of Compostela. Do you wish to hear me speak of it?"

Before I could answer and for the next league or more, she told me about Nayarit, of her father who had died soon after she was born, of her mother, who was a seamstress for Coronado and had sickened and died and was buried on the trail near Culiacán.

"Have you come like the others to find gold in the Land of Cíbola?" she asked. "Do you talk about gold and dream of it?"

"No."

"Why not? The others do."

"Because I am a cartographer, a maker of maps. And therefore I dream of maps. Do you understand what I mean by map?"

"I have seen one, which belongs to Captain Coronado." She glanced at the roll under my arm. "These are maps that you carry?"

"Maps and the colors to make them," I said. "Paper and ink, brushes and pens."

"Sometime I would like to see these maps."

"Sometime I will show them to you."

"Now?"

"Later."

"When we come to Coronado's camp?"

"Then."

She looked at me to make certain that I meant what I had said. Then from a pocket in her skirt she took a small, ratlike creature, with long back legs, and held it up in the palm of her hand.

"What is it?" I asked.

"An aguatil. It lives in the deserts and never needs to drink water. It does not like water. It's name is Montezuma."

I doubted her story but it was true. In the days to
come, when horses and men thirsted, this ratlike creature thrived, getting by some means from the seeds it ate, the water it needed.

"Now that I have shown you my pet," she said, "I wish to see the maps."

"Later."

"At Coronado's camp?"

"Yes."

Thrusting Montezuma back into her pocket, she ran with skips and jumps toward the head of the column.

Our way led through fields of cactus and we went slowly. Many of these plants were like trees, in the shape of a cross, tall as a man on horseback. Others looked like small barrels, others like friendly bushes. But all were covered with secret spines or claws, needle-sharp and painful to the touch.