VOYAGE OF STRANGERS (27 page)

“Danger!” I cried. “Rachel, come!” I seized her hand.

The circle of women stirred but continued working, not comprehending that the emergency involved them. I realized that I had spoken in Castilian.

“Soldiers come!” I said in Taino. “You must hide! Quickly! Somebody tell Tiboni and the
cacique
. And get the children!”

Now they began to move, more slowly than I wished them to, putting down their tools and beginning to collect the babies and small children who played in the dirt nearby. Someone ran toward the
cacique
’s
caney
, another toward the
batey
court, where shouts and laughter indicated that older children played. I didn’t wait to hurry them along but pulled Rachel after me toward Tiboni’s
bohio
, where our possessions lay. Most had been untouched for months, although I always carried my tinderbox and my dagger of Toledo steel.

“We must dress in our Spanish clothes and hide,” I panted. “They must not see us like this.”

Rachel tugged at my hand, trying to draw me back toward the center of the village.

“We must fight! We cannot leave the others to face them alone!”

“We can do nothing! They have swords and horses. With luck, the villagers will be able to hide in the forest or get to the caves. I must keep you safe.”

“I don’t want to be safe if everyone I love is killed!” But she was running with me now.

We reached Tiboni’s
bohio
and ducked inside. It was empty. I fumbled my way into my shirt and breeches, and Rachel did the same.

“Hutia!” she exclaimed. “Was he not with you? What has happened to him? If the soldiers have taken him, I
will
go back.”

“
No
, Rachel! Hutia is fine. He is tracking them and will try to create a distraction to slow them down.” I tossed her a sloshing water skin. “Here. We must have water if we are to reach Isabela.”

“Then they will be hunting
him
!” Rachel wrung her hands. But in the next moment, she threw the last precious remnant of Espinosa soap into her tinderbox and stuck a fishbone-headed knife into the leather belt she had already wrapped around her waist.

“Boots!” I said, burrowing through the pile to find them and tossing the smaller pair to her. “We cannot cross the mountains barefoot.”

“Will this do?”

I looked at her and saw a ragged European boy—with a face painted in white and ochre.

“Your face! And how is mine?” I snatched up a crumpled kerchief and poured water onto it from the water skin I had slung across my shoulder.

“You are still smudged from yesterday’s
batey
. Here, let me.” She took the damp rag from my hand and scrubbed at my face. “It will have to do. Come.” She pushed away my hand as I reached to help her and dabbed at her own face as we ran.

“We cannot stay to look for Hutia!” I told her, guessing the reason for her willingness to run toward the woods rather than the center of the village. “He will find us at Isabela.”

At that moment, from behind us came a burst of cries and shouts, the clash of weapons, and then a series of women’s screams.

Tanama! I had not thought of her in my anxiety to get Rachel away.

“Stay here!” I told Rachel fiercely. “Climb a tree!” There were vines and low-hanging branches everywhere, but I didn’t wait to see if she obeyed me. I was already running back toward the noise of the fray, my dagger in my hand.

The unequal fight was already almost lost by the time I arrived. The horsemen’s swords ran with blood. The horses’ hooves were caked with blood and dust. Taino men lay in a tangle of broken limbs before the doors of the
bohios
, where they had evidently tried to make a stand. Soldiers were herding the women and young boys into the center of the
batey
court, beating at them with the flat of their swords or snapping leather whips that left raw welts on their flesh. Smaller children wandered about, screaming and crying. The soldiers made no effort either to herd them with the others or to step aside when they stood in the way of the horses’ hooves. From the numbers, I guessed that some of the Taino had reached the shelter of the forest in time, but not many. I prayed that Tanama was among them, for I could not see her anywhere.

Tiboni and several of the other
nitaino
had evidently tried to protect the
cacique
, for they lay in a welter of blood in the area in front of the
caney
. The only man the soldiers had bothered to take prisoner was the
cacique
himself. They had loaded him down with chains, although it looked as if both his arms had been broken.

“Hey! Where did you spring from? Have you lost your horse?” A bearded face grinned down at me below a battered helmet.

It was a soldier I knew by sight, but not by name, though all of them knew me as the Admiral’s sometime scribe and interpreter.

“I became separated from my company,” I said, “except for the lad Rafael, the Admiral’s page. Can you lend me a mule?”

“Help yourself.” He lifted his chin toward the mêlée.

I could see that a mule or two wandered riderless. I grabbed at a dangling bridle. My chosen mule brayed once in protest but bowed its head and allowed me to lead it when I gathered up the reins and tugged sharply on them.

“Here,” the soldier said. “You speak their jabber, don’t you?” He nodded at the weeping huddle of captives. “Tell them to stop howling, for they are going to Spain, whether they like it or not. And tell those pretty girls that if they smile sweetly, they’ll get some real men riding them. I wouldn’t mind going for a gallop myself, but we’d better get this mess in order first.”

“Don’t call me by name,” I told the women in Taino. “I will do what I can for you, but I fear it will not be much. And try to calm yourselves, as they will not hesitate to subdue anyone who causes trouble. If you are compliant, most of them will be less cruel.”

I felt bitterly ashamed to give them such advice. But I could envision no happy outcome for them, unless Rachel and I could somehow free them on the march back to Isabela. But as the soldiers were even now attaching iron chains to their arms and necks and linking them together, I didn’t see how that could be accomplished. At my words, they did their best to sob more quietly. The soldier grunted with satisfaction and turned away as I mounted my mule.

“Has anyone seen Tanama?” I asked softly.

“She went to the stream for water,” a young woman said, “before the
anki
, the evil ones, came. I did not see her return.”

“I must march with them,” I said. “I will make them give you water, and I will try to get them to loosen your chains.”

I got the mule to wheel and kicked my heels into its sides, forcing it to a gallop back toward the nearest stream, close to where I had left Rachel.

I found Rachel and Tanama both struggling with a single soldier. He had flung his sword aside, as well as his helmet, or else it had fallen off in the course of his exertions. He bestrode Tanama, forcing himself upon her as she screamed and fought. Rachel had leaped on him from behind and clung to his back like a monkey, beating at his head with a rock as he tried to shake her off without ceasing his assault on Tanama. I dismounted, for the mule, unlike the
caballeros
’ horses, was not trained to battle. But I could not see how to join in the fight without hurting one of the women, pressed between them as he was.

“Your knife!” I called out to Rachel in Taino. “Draw your knife. Push it straight in behind his ear, if you can.”

I drew my own dagger, hoping for an opening. Rachel drew her knife from her belt with some difficulty, as the soldier, who was built like a bull, kept trying to buck her off. As I watched in horror, he reached behind him, pried her flailing fist open, and seized the fishbone knife as she loosed it. With a twist of his shoulders, he flung her off his back. He raised his arm high above his head and plunged the knife into Tanama’s chest.

With a howl of grief and outrage, I threw myself upon him and buried my dagger in his back, just below his left shoulder blade. With a grunt, I drove it in up to the hilt. It must have found his heart instantly. The soldier flopped forward onto Tanama. I rose shakily to my feet so I could kick him off her. Rachel, trembling, came forward and added the force of her boots to mine. But by the time we rolled him onto the ground, Tanama was already dead.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Quisqueya - Isabela, October 6-12, 1494

The nightmare journey over the mountains and down to the coast took six days. The Spaniards were in good humor at having taken many slaves. In the villages they had raided before reaching ours, they had tortured enough people to locate and seize every grain of gold in the vicinity. This success too raised their spirits. They joked and laughed incessantly, in marked contrast to the misery of the Taino, who stumbled along, scarcely able to move for the weight of their iron chains. Many had been wounded in the fight at the village, and their captors would not allow them time or freedom to seek healing herbs or make salves that might have alleviated their pain and weakness.

I might have hesitated to protest, for fear that Rachel would be exposed if we came too sharply to the notice of the soldiers. But Rachel shamed me, for she insisted on bringing water to the captives, binding the worst wounds with such cloth as she could find, and going among the wretched Taino with words of compassion, if not comfort.

“I cannot believe the Admiral will allow this treatment,” she said to me.

A second mule could not be spared, so she rode behind me. This gave us opportunity to talk privately as the mule picked its way through streams and down precipitous slopes. As I held the reins, she often carried a baby in her arms. Some of the women had snatched up their infants as they were herded into the plaza. Even these rough men were loth to tear mother and child apart. Babies make inconvenient slaves, as they need constant tending. But none had the heart to abandon them in the forest, nor kill them outright, were it not in the heat of battle.

“Don’t promise them,” I warned her, “that the Admiral will r
elieve their misery. He didn’t authorize them to make such raids, but he may choose to believe that it is all in the name of Christianity, and that it is the Taino who have transgressed by withholding gold from the soldiers.”

“I can't believe it,” she said. “The Admiral is kind.”

“The Admiral is devout,” I said, “and ever conscious of his debt to Ferdinand and Isabella.” I looked around to make sure none had overheard me speak so disrespectfully of the Sovereigns. But truly, their policies had caused great misery to all but Christians. “He must justify the expense of his voyages in one way or another.”

“Surely they have found the mine of Cibao by now,” Rachel said. “Is that not enough?”

But they had not. We stopped briefly at Santo Tomas, which was now a serviceable fort from which parties of men went forth, not only to coerce gold from the Taino but to gather it from the rivers and streams whose bounty had made us so certain that the legend of Cibao was fact. The mine, however, remained elusive.

We arrived at Isabela dirty, weary, and discouraged to find many captives penned up there already. The men, following the Admiral’s example, had taken to referring to them as Caribe, to create the illusion that they enslaved only the fierce enemies of the gentle Taino, the “good people” as their name meant. But this was a lie to ease such conscience as might trouble them in the matter. The Admiral, as we soon found, saw no contradiction between his original intent and his current policy.

We were admitted to the Admiral’s presence without difficulty, once he had explained us to his brother, Don Bartholomew, who had become his chief adviser. He did so without revealing that Papa, his companion in the fateful shipwreck in his youth, was Jewish. This in itself was a kindness for which I was grateful, although I wondered if the Admiral had perhaps managed to forget that inconvenient fact. But how could I fault him for lying to himself, when the account I gave him of our activities over the past six months was a farrago of lies?

We found the Admiral in bed. He had been stricken with gout on his voyage of exploration during the summer and frequently had to direct the running of the colony without leaving his quarters, though he did so with great energy in spite of his obvious pain. His face lit up when he saw us. He had no such mixed feelings about us as we harbored toward him, but saw us only as loyal and useful followers of whom he was particularly fond.

We could not speak of Rachel’s increasingly precarious situation, as Don Bartholomew and their brother, Don Diego, were present. To me, having seen her in her true guise all these months, she appeared unmistakably as a young woman. But I could discern no puzzled frowns or sly looks when the Columbus brothers gazed on her. The Admiral invited us to sit by his bedside on wooden stools while we recounted our supposed adventures in detail. I was running out of invention when there came shouts of great excitement from the direction of the shore.

The Admiral raised himself, wincing with pain. Don Diego hurried to support him. Don Bartholemew looked at us, clearly expecting the humblest of those present to find out what had happened and bring word back to the great ones.