Journey of Strangers

by Elizabeth Zelvin

  There was plenty of work to do. Caminha decreed that his people would not live in tents and commanded that huts be built for all. But this must wait until the first sawmill had been built and the first fields cleared and planted with sugar cane. They must fell enough trees for dwellings and storehouses, sugar mills, and more sawmills, for the island was to be completely self-sufficient, not dependent on supplies from Portugal. Fresh palm fronds must be cut to thatch the buildings. This would be an ongoing task for the children, as the intermittent torrential rains and the tendency of birds and lizards to peck at and burrow into the thatch meant the dwellings would have to be renewed from time to time. All the children, even the smallest, quickly learned to shinny up the trees. Belmiro, along with a few other degradados who particularly enjoyed exerting their authority over those weaker than themselves, spurred them on at first by cracking whips made of long strips of pigskin, raising raw welts on their calves and backs. The children soon learned to scoot up too high to reach. One defiant boy threw down a coconut on Belmiro’s head, but his punishment, which involved the lash as well as fists and boots, deterred the others.

  They climbed with knives or short sickles in their teeth, since no work could be done without them. But being armed, to Joanna’s despair, did not lend them one jot of power. At least they would not go thirsty, as they had on board the ship. Thanks to the copious rainfall, there were many streams and small rivers on the island, essential to the sawmill and to irrigating the fields. Nor would they starve. There were coconuts and bananas for the picking. Joanna had seen no large animals so far except the pigs, which had been released to root where they would. A small group of settlers from Madeira, who had been invited by the king himself to join the colony because they knew all about making and exporting sugar, swore that once the cane was growing and discarded husks available for the pigs to eat, their roasted flesh would taste unimaginably sweet. Joanna, hearing this, thanked Ha’shem that so far no one had proposed slaughtering a pig and challenging the newly baptized Christian children to show their sincerity by swallowing a food that all knew was forbidden to Jews. She did not know what she would do when that moment came. But it was not today’s problem. She had heard that there were giant lizards in the swamp with teeth as sharp as a dragon’s. But whether or not their flesh was good to eat, no one had yet mentioned.

  The governor’s house was built even before the first field was cleared. It boasted planks and roof tiles brought from Lisbon on the carracks. They were the final cargo to be offloaded, the day after the settlers’ arrival. Then all six ships sailed away, heading east toward the Guinea Coast, a bare hundred miles from the island. It was apparent from the beginning that the favorite food of the Povoação would be gossip. Everyone knew the ship captains had been ordered to bring back as many slaves as they could cram into the holds as soon as possible. Those to be sold on would be shipped to Elmina, once the settlers had taken their pick. The settlement was charged with supplying the garrison at Elmina with fresh vegetables, fruits, and grain, so kitchen gardens must be planted and fields set aside for wheat or whatever would grow best.

  It was also known that the governor’s grant allotted him one braço, an arm—in other words, one slave—for every sugar mill and sawmill built on the island.

  “Imagine being paid in slaves!” Belmiro’s small, piggy eyes gleamed at the thought. “I’ll undertake any task they wish for such a currency.”

  In fact, the degradados were well motivated to work hard, although much of the actual labor devolved upon the slaves they had—the Jewish children—in anticipation of the slaves to come.

  “It is up to you how much land you clear,” Caminha said, having called a general assembly on the beach. “You will be issued canes that may be divided so they will root and grow. The first crop belongs to me, except for a small portion that you may barter for supplies to feed and maintain yourselves for the first few months. After that, the land you have cleared is yours. If you wish to become lord of a great fazenda, you may achieve it by industry.”

  “What about slaves?” Belmiro called out. “Can we trade in them too?”

  The degradados standing near him laughed, for all the men who knew him from the prison in Lisbon or from the ship, especially those who had played at cards or dice with him, knew how he loved to dicker.

  “He’s lazy as a sow,” Mateus called out, raising another laugh, “but he knows how to get the best of a bargain!”

  “Sugar first,” Caminha said, “then, with the first crop that is your own, you will be allowed to invest in the trade in blacks. There’s an unlimited supply in the Congo, and Elmina’s well set up for distribution, but the king intends that every slave will first pass through São Tomé. And remember, a black is like a stalk of sugar cane: start with one little one, and they’ll multiply and give you a good crop!”

  All the degradados laughed at this. Joanna felt a hot flush of humiliation flood her, sweeping from her cheeks down the length of her arms and from belly to crotch. It felt as if their cruel laughter was directed at her own body. Their mockery reduced her to the status of property like the hapless blacks.

  In fact, since the night on the beach with Pero, Imaculada had kept her away from the men most evenings, instead setting her tasks that kept Joanna busy from morning till night. Imaculada made sure the governor’s companions and advisers knew she herself was available and that exceptional services would be provided for the right price. Joanna had heard her tell Felicidade that she hoped to amass enough coin to invest in slaves of her own, not merely in partnership with Belmiro. She knew that once the women slaves arrived, her usefulness would come to an end, as they would perform whatever acts the gentlemen required for free. But in the interim, she would make the most of it.

  “You will do as you wish,” Felicidade said petulantly. “You always do.”

  “What is the matter with you?” Imaculada demanded. “Are you breeding?” She sounded annoyed.

  “Maybe,” Felicidade said. She brushed a lock of hair off her damp forehead with a listless hand. “I have been vomiting, but not only in the morning. It comes and goes. And I ache all the time.”

  “We don’t have time for babies!” Imaculada snapped. “If it were anyone but you, I’d throw you out of the compound.”

  The first shipload of Africans arrived within two weeks. Naked and chained together, clanking as they walked with shuffling feet and heads bowed, they looked even more demoralized than Joanna had felt on her arrival, though their voyage had been much shorter. Gossip had it that the King of the Congo, an African himself, sold his enemies and perhaps even his own people to the Portuguese slavers. If that was true, they must feel abominably betrayed on top of their despair about the future. At least the Jewish parents, including Joanna’s, had not consented to the seizing of their children. And no Jew other than an idiot would ever expect loyalty from any Christian king. So they could not be betrayed. Hate was better. It kept her strong.

  “Do you hate the Africans?” Simon asked her one day as they hacked at the impenetrable thickets that set a limit on the size of the new plantations. It had become impossible not to allow the bigger children as well as all the degradados axes, saws, and knives. There was too much cutting to be done, too much land to clear, and no place to run.

  “I am not sure yet,” Joanna said. “They are slaves, like us, but they are adults and therefore bigger and stronger than we are. And they know nothing of Jews and Christians, so they have no reason to make common cause with us. We must wait and see how they treat us.”

  “And if they treat us neither ill nor well, but leave us alone?”

  “Then I will try to hate them only a little,” she said.

  Chapter 18: Diego

  Signor Pesaro was right: there was no way to avoid the war. The straightest road out of Genoa was to Piacenza, eighty miles away. It led through mountains, an abode of bandits even in times of relative peace, and would lead us north as well as east. I doubted Papa would have chosen
to go north, where the boot that Italy resembled on the maps broadened into a band of frilly petticoats that represented the Alps. Piacenza lay only forty-odd miles from Parma, itself a mere twenty miles from Fornovo, the site of the recent battle. Signor Pesaro had a remarkable grasp of distances, thanks to having traveled all these routes so many times. How long would it take to travel twenty miles? Signor Pesaro assured us that an army, dragging its tail of camp followers and foraging as it went, did well to cover ten miles a day. We would move faster, but so would single soldiers and small parties, especially if they had mounts.

  It was becoming apparent to me that we would never be safe in Christendom, and I believed that Papa would have drawn the same conclusion. Any one of the eastern ports might have been their point of departure for Ottoman lands. To bear south and east, as our family had most likely done, we could start by following the coast. The farther south we went, the more the boot would narrow, until we might cross it with relative ease. But south meant Rome and then Naples, cities Charles had lately occupied. No one knew whether all his troops had joined the drive northward to engage the Italians and their allies at Fornovo. The battle over, with both sides weakened by losses yet declaring victory, French soldiers would be streaming north toward home and Italian soldiers south, toward their homes. Worse, from our perspective, their leaders might have rallied them to march on Rome and Naples, meaning to retake them by siege or battle at any cost. Little as we wanted to meet soldiers who had shed the yoke of discipline, still less did we want to meet an army.

  We could deduce one certainty regarding the army’s route: it must follow the existing roads or leave its wagons behind. Signor Pesaro smiled and rubbed his hands together when I voiced this thought to him.

  “I count on it,” he said. “One of my agents reports that the French have won their way northward but had to abandon the greater part of their booty. More details of the battle are trickling in. For one thing, it rained. The French could not keep their powder dry, so they lost the advantage of their mobile artillery. The Italian soldiers fought the harder for their leaders’ promise that they would be permitted to loot. So if they had no wagons at Fornovo, they will have acquired them once the battle was over. Well, well, it is a pity, but war is war, and someone must profit in the end.”

  “We must avoid the main roads, then,” I said. “We will strike out inland, bearing south and east toward Siena or Arezzo. If we reach the Adriatic coast too far south, we risk missing word of our family.”

  “Try Ancona,” Signor Pesaro advised. “It is less than two hundred miles from Firenze, and our people are less unwelcome there than in other parts of Italy. Perhaps they have come to rest there, and your journey will be over. If not, it is likely that you will find word of them. There are synagogues in Ancona. Besides, many Byzantine Greeks settled in Ancona after the taking of Constantinople forty-odd years ago. They carry on a lively trade with the Ottomans these days. The sultan has agents stationed permanently in Ancona, ostensibly for trade but no doubt to spy on Venice, his chief rival in the area, as well.”

  “That sounds promising,” I said.

  Against my better judgment, my heart leaped at the prospect of perhaps finding Mama, Papa, and the girls safe and happy. Even if they had moved on, they might have found someone to whom they could entrust a message. Rachel clapped her hands, her cheeks flushed with excitement. Hutia put his arm around her.

  Signor Pesaro closed his eyes and held out his arms, palms raised, in prayer.

  “Baruch atah Adonai shomei’ah tefilah. Blessed art Thou, Adonai, who hearkens to prayer. Direct our steps in peace and grant that we reach our destination safely. Save us from enemy and ambush, from robbers and wild beasts on the journey, and from all the terrors that rage in the world.”

  “Amen,” Rachel and I said along with Signor Pesaro, and Hutia joined in a moment later.

  Three days later, we were following a sheep track that had probably not been used recently and seemed to consist largely of tussocks, rabbit holes, sharp, protruding rocks, and tree roots thrusting their way up through the earth. We led the horse we had obtained through Signore Boccanegra’s good offices along with two mules. If any of them went lame, we would be in trouble indeed. I carried a sword and the arquebus the banker had insisted I take, tactfully calling it a loan. Hutia carried a crossbow and had two throwing knives tucked into his waistband. Rachel carried the Taino bow and red-fletched arrows, the only weapon the corsairs had left us, or rather, that Amir had confiscated, claiming them for himself and then returning them to us when we disembarked in Toulon. Signore Boccanegra had taken our letter of exchange on the Banco di San Giorgio and helped us provision ourselves for the journey, our mounts and my sword being the biggest expenses. We had discussed getting Rachel her own crossbow, which was very much a weapon of war by land or sea. But she had refused, saying that she could too easily imagine killing someone with it at close range.

  “It would be a horrible death,” she said. “I am not quite ready to be the cause of it.”

  “And if Diego or I were in mortal danger?” Hutia asked.

  He placed his arm lightly around her waist and pulled her toward him. He took such liberties more and more frequently, and Rachel encouraged him. I had decided that I had enough to worry about without trying to check them. Once we found the family, as I allowed myself to hope we would, the pair would be Mama and Papa’s problem, not mine.

  “Then I would do whatever I had to,” Rachel said.

  Now the July sun beat down on us, causing rivulets of sweat to trickle down my face and arms as well as the back of Rachel’s neck, with damp tendrils of hair escaping from her cap. Hutia led the way, Rachel walked between us, and I followed, leading the animals.

  “This padded doublet is hot,” Rachel complained. “Can I not take it off? I have a linen shirt underneath it.”

  “No!” I said. “The padding may not turn an arrow or a blade, but it will slow one down and keep it from going too deep. Is it worth your life to feel cool at this moment? Take a sip of water. We will stop and rest as soon as we come to a stream.”

  Rachel bent to retrieve her water skin. So the bolt that sped out from behind the trees did not pierce her head but skewered her hat and sent it flying. Her long hair would have tumbled down, revealing her gender, had she not chopped it into a ragged bob around her ears before we left Genoa. I drew my sword with a shout, and Hutia raised his crossbow and sent a bolt flying in the direction from which the attack had come. Rachel also raised her bow.

  Three men burst through the underbrush. One, a short, wiry fellow with ragged brown hair and skin pitted with pox marks, held his crossbow poised to shoot again. The other two held swords that showed signs of recent use. One of them was a tall fellow whose long reach would make defeating him a challenge. The third was stocky and of medium size. Older than the others, he held his sword as if casually, his eyes watchful. I surmised he was the most experienced of the three. As his eyes met mine, he grinned, baring stained and rotted teeth.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rachel duck behind me, lowering her bow. I understood why when I heard a determined thwack, then another, followed by the surprised bray of one of the mules before all three animals, seizing their unexpected freedom, galloped off. If we won this fight, we would have the devil of a time retrieving them. But that was better than giving our enemies the chance to take them. Rachel’s action had removed at least part of their incentive to fight us. The big man growled, and the crossbowman stepped to the side as if considering trying to outflank us and go after them.

  “Don’t!” I barked. “You won’t catch them, and we are three to three.”

  I had time to think that Hutia had been clever to insist that we put our bags of grain on the ground at our feet before allowing the horse and the mules to touch them, so they associated getting fed with us rather than with sacks on their own backs. The bags were almost empty, so soon they would be cropping grass, which even the stupider mule must reali
ze did not require our presence. I leaped forward to meet the big swordsman’s thrust and block it with my own blade. We disengaged and circled, each seeking an opening. I hoped that I would not trip on the rough ground and that he would. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the second swordsman moving toward me and heard a deep, humming twang as Hutia’s bolt took him in the throat. I hoped that Rachel would not hesitate to loose her arrow before the crossbowman could shoot again. Then my world narrowed to my opponent’s weaving blade and the murder in his eyes.

  Chapter 19: Joanna

  Within a short time, the coming of the Africans transformed the life of the island. The Povoação became a town, albeit a small one. Clusters of wooden houses with palm-thatched roofs on stilts to avoid flooding in the worst of the rainy season surrounded a roughly built church, a sawmill powered by the Agua Grande, and a sturdy building devoted to the administration of the island as well as housing the fazenda real, the royal treasury. Only half the wealth of the settlement was stored there, as slaves were a more common currency than gold. Even the priests were paid in slaves for their labors for the community, which included baptizing the newly arrived slaves and instructing them in Portuguese as well as religion. Before long, there were any number of fazendas stretching as far as half a day’s walk from the settlement, planted mostly with sugar cane, although pepper grew well in large enough quantities to be exported. A few of the new fazendeiros, ambitious to increase their domains as quickly as possible, also grew vegetables and fruit for the Elmina garrison, taking payment in slaves who could be set to clearing and planting more fields. Ships came and went frequently between the harbor and the mainland, bringing newly captured slaves and shipping some of them on, along with the produce grown on the island, to Elmina. Less often, ships arrived from Portugal with news and fabricated goods and returned there loaded with sugar, pepper, and the Crown’s share of gold and slaves.