VOYAGE OF STRANGERS (19 page)

La Navidad or, rather, its charred and abandoned ruins lay before us. The little fort had been burned to the ground.

Chapter Twenty-Four

La Navidad, November 29, 2010

Although none could deny that the fort had been destroyed, the Admiral was reluctant to believe that all forty of the Christians could be dead. He had cannon fired again and again, hoping to hear an answering shot that would confirm, as he wished, that the survivors had withdrawn into the woods, taking at least some of their artillery with them. But no answer came. And most of the Taino, rather than flocking to see us as they had in the past, ran away when we caught sight of them. A few bold fellows risked our wrath to barter with us. Since they offered us gold in exchange for hawk’s bells and red caps, the Admiral did not refuse to treat with them. Now realizing that I too could be a competent interpreter, he set Diego Columbus and me to questioning each of them over and over. But we could not get a satisfactory answer out of them.

That some of the garrison were dead became ever more plain. The Taino who came to barter showed us the decaying bodies of eleven Spaniards hidden in the grass. Dr. Chanca, who knew such things, declared that their condition showed they had been dead only a month or two. Their features could no longer be discerned, but I recognized the ornament that Juan Cabrera had worn in his ear, not a ring but a bit of gold fashioned into a skull, with two chips of ruby for its eyes. My last words to Cabrera the year before had been a true prediction. If a hell existed, he was surely there now. I could not be sorry that he was dead.

I saw Don Melchior Maldonado surveying the bodies. The gentlemen volunteers didn’t dig the graves themselves, but ordered the soldiers and sailors to do so, and the Admi
ral ordered Fray Buil to say a mass for the repose of their souls. To my relief, Don Melchior did not recognize the tiny jewel. As he had said, Cabrera was but a distant cousin. His face, however, grew grimmer as it became more evident that we might never know what had become of those whose bodies were missing. 

Not all the Taino could maintain their silence indefinitely, for they were a naturally friendly and loquacious people. They claimed that
Guacanagarí’s enemy, Caonabo, had attacked both fort and village, and that his people’s poisoned darts and fishbone arrows were responsible for all the Christian deaths. The Admiral demanded that the
cacique
come to him, if he wished to prove his friendship. They said he had been wounded by Caonabo and could not leave his
hamaca
, the woven hanging beds in which the Taino slept.

Several of the Taino, while denying any responsibility for the Spaniards’ murder, complained that each of these men had kept several women in their quarters in the fort.

“They were jealous, Excellency,” Diego Columbus told the Admiral, “for so many women preferred to live in your warriors’ huts that they had not enough for themselves.”

Diego Columbus showed no sign of loyalty to or sympathy with his fellow Taino. I could never discern if he loved the Admiral for elevating his status from that of slave to valued interpreter and feared to lose this distinction, which certainly protected him from death or maltreatment, or whether from the beginning he had decided that the God of the Christians, perhaps embodied in his mind by the Admiral, was more powerful than the Taino gods and changed his cloth accordingly.

I thought it far more likely that the Spaniards had assaulted and subdued the Taino women, who had then remained with them out of fear or shame. Each of the men, we were told often enough that I believed it, had kept five women in his private hut. My opinion was confirmed, if only to myself, a few days later when half a score of Taino women from the isle of Boriquen, whom we had “rescued” from the Caribe, jumped overboard, swimming half a league to escape us. Worse, we made every effort to recapture them and succeeded in bringing four of them back to the ships.

No one but I, and of course Rachel, found anything odd or contradictory in this. I believe that their blindness, including the Admiral’s, to the wrong in how they treated the Taino lay in the simple fact that the Taino were not Christian. Thus what the Spaniards called Christian virtues, such as charity, fair dealing, and decency, need not be applied to their relations with the Taino. This was no different, in the end, than their attitude toward the Jews.

Don Melchior, who still had not given up hope that his cousin had somehow survived, volunteered to lead an advance party to visit Guacanagarí and get to the bottom of the matter. In the end, the Admiral gave him a caravel, so that in addition to questioning the
cacique
, he could scout a possible location for a new settlement. I was ordered to go with him as interpreter, while Diego Columbus stayed with the Admiral to help deal with those Taino who came to trade or were captured. If the Admiral had ever doubted the merit of enslaving them, he did so no longer after discovering the Christian dead and the blackened remains of the fort. We sailed east, while another caravel was sent to the west. 

We had sailed no more than three leagues along the coast when a
canoa
paddled out to us, those within it saying that we would find Guacanagarí in a nearby village. Don Melchior led the shore party himself, requesting that I accompany him, along with Dr. Chanca, who would be able to ascertain the truth about the
cacique
’s wound. We found him lying with a bandaged thigh on a
hamaca
in a dark hut crowded with attendants and relatives. The men wrinkled their noses at the stench of sweat and damp. To tell the truth, I didn’t think the smell half as unpleasant as that of a cabin full of Christians after a month at sea.

“I must see what lies under that bandage,” Dr. Chanca said. “Let us get him out into the light. We need to rid ourselves of all these people, too. If he is indeed wounded, I must sniff at the wound to ascertain if it has become infected.”

At Don Melchior’s command, I translated this request, using language far more polite than that in which the doctor had couched it.

Guacanagarí
, cooperative, as he had been on our first meeting in 1492, dismissed his entourage and allowed an attendant to help him outside and seat him on a log. As Dr. Chanca began to unwrap the bandages, he moaned and winced.

“
Guay
! It hurts! The pain is terrible!”

“What weapon wounded you?” I asked, not waiting for Don Melchior or Dr. C
hanca to prompt me. “An arrow? A spear?”

“A stone.”

When I translated this, Dr. Chanca stripped off the remaining bandage without the care he had shown at first.

“There is no wound!” he exclaimed.

“But it hurts!” Guacanagarí insisted. “Do you not see the terrible bruise?”

Don Melchior seized him by the shoulders as if to shake him. At this, the Taino drew closer around us with cries of protest.

“Better not, sir,” I said softly.

Maldonado growled and backed off.

Dr. Chanca regarded the
cacique
sternly.

“You must not lie to us!”

“I do not lie,” Guacanagarí said. “Caonabo attacked us and burned the fort and our other village. Ask my people if a big stone did not hit me in the leg.”

“You can walk well enough to visit the Admiral on his ship with wings,” Dr. Chanca said.

“I invite him to come and visit me,” Guacanagarí said with as much dignity as he could muster.

Behind me, where the soldiers waited, I could hear mutters of, “The old fraud! Let me but get my sword out, and you’ll see how fast he can run. I bet he burned the fort himself. Why don’t we kill them all?”

Don Melchior quelled them with a glance.

“Why should the Admiral come to you?” he asked.

Guacanagarí’s eyes darted from side to side as he thought quickly.

“Because I have gifts for him,” he said, “that are so great and heavy that I cannot bear them all.”

“Leave a couple of armed guards behind to escort him to the flagship,” Dr. Chanca advised. “They will make sure he gets there.”

“We must return to the fleet ourselves,” Don Melchior pointed out. “Better to report first to the Admiral and see if he prefers to receive the rascal or pay a state visit and scare the clout off him. Has he seen horses before?”

“No, sir,” I replied, for we had carried none on the first voyage. 

“Good.” Don Melchior’s tight smile did not bode well for
Guacanagarí. “I believe a troop of horse with mounted men in full armor will convince him that we are not to be trifled with.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Hispaniola, December 2, 1493

Once convinced that every man who had remained in Hispaniola was dead, all were eager to quit the blackened ruins of La Navidad. Some wanted first to kill Guacanagarí, others to fire the village, reasoning that if his story of Caonabo’s attack was false, all the Taino must have participated in the slaughter. Others wanted only to bury what remained and be gone. The Admiral alone was persuaded, after much reflection and questioning of the
cacique
and his chief followers, that in spite of his attempt to gain our compassion by pretending to be wounded, Guacanagarí had spoken the truth about the attack on the fort. The Admiral's opinion, of course, prevailed.

I did not believe that
Guacanagarí’s story explained the bound bodies on the riverbank. In the heat of battle, would warriors have paused so far from the fort to capture and bind prisoners, and having done so, then leave them to rot? But I shared these thoughts only with Rachel. The Admiral and the
cacique
visited each other with great ceremony. Guacanagarí was duly terrified by the horses. There were no large animals on Hispaniola, and not only the great teeth and stamping hooves but the horses’ obedience to the heavily armed men who sat upon their backs made a great impression. In any case, now that the lascivious and violent garrison of the fort was gone, Guacanagarí had no reason to rebel against us. He entered eagerly into discussions of where Cibao might lie and where we might hope to find the most salubrious location for a new settlement. His followers plied us with fruit, woven cotton cloth, and gold, both nuggets and thinly beaten sheets worked into ornaments.

Because the whole fleet lay at anchor and no danger threatened, we sailors had a great deal more liberty than had been granted us until now. On the day before
the Christians’ Sabbath, when all would attend a funeral mass for the dead to be led by Fray Buil, Rachel and I were able to steal away. Our pretext was to search for a spring to add to our supply of fresh water. Our true intention was to celebrate our Shabbat. We didn’t think Adonai would mind hearing the
b’rucha
over the candles on Saturday morning instead of Friday night.

Rachel had smuggled two wax candle stubs out of the Admiral’s cabin. I had brought my tinderbox as well as my
tallit
and
t’fillin
. We walked for two hours before we decided that we had gone far enough that none of the crew, even those who might have set out to hunt birds and such small animals as the hutia
for the table, would come upon us by chance. It felt exhilarating to let our voices ring out in the
Sh’ma
.

“
Sh’ma Yisroel, Adonai elohenu, Adonai echod
.”

“Such freedom!” Rachel echoed my thought. “Better than freedom—this feels like homecoming.”

“I'm glad you came with me, Rachel,” I said, “I mean to the Indies, not only today. Together, we are at home wherever we may be. After all, we are not the first Jews to be wanderers.”

“No, indeed,” she said. “Moses and those who fled with him from Egypt wandered for forty years in a wilderness more barren and less beautiful than this.”

“And then,” I said, “the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and our whole people dispersed.”

“And now we are dispersed again from Spain,” she said.

“Don’t worry, little sister. We shall find a new home in Italy when we return. With the great purses of gold we bring them, Papa and Mama will be able to build a house even finer than our old home in Seville.”

I hugged her, and she nestled into my arms.

“That feels good,” she said. “It is
tiring
being a boy.”

“Once the site for our new settlement is chosen and construction begun, we will be able to live ashore, and you will not be so closely observed at every moment.”

“Do you think so? It would be heaven indeed to share a tent with you, or perhaps a Taino hut.” Her face fell. “But perhaps the Admiral will choose not to leave his cabin. It is very comfortable, you know.” She added, “Especially for him, since he doesn’t sleep on the floor.”

“We will ask him to find someone else to serve him,” I said.

“I believe he forgets half the time that I am not a boy,” Rachel said, “he has grown so accustomed to me.”

“Then I shall remind him,” I said. “You have served him well, and it is time someone else picked up the burden. The gromets will be running wild if they are let loose on shore with none of their regular duties. I will recommend the best of them to take your place.”