‘There’s bad weather coming,’ he said.
‘Yes. I don’t like the groundswell,’ Iago observed.
‘We’ll be shortened down before nightfall,’ Olivera added and Iago grunted his agreement. Further comment seemed superfluous.
By noon the sky was overcast, and the wind had shifted and increased as the two men had predicted. Although the wind had drawn further aft, allowing them to square the yards, it was no longer the benign vendavales. Now there was an edge of menace in the breeze and in the afternoon it backed again and the watch braced the yards, heaving down the fore- and mainsheets. Although the topgallants had been taken in, the Santa Margarita heeled further than she had done for some time. The easy roll and gentle pitch that had marked her northward progress gave way to an uncomfortable lurch to leeward which combined with an increasingly heavy pitch. Slowly at first but with increasing speed, the wind backed further.
The change in motion brought Guillestigui and his suite on deck, but they retreated after staring about them and cracking a few jests. It was more comfortable in the great cabin; the deck could be left to the seafaring men. By mid-afternoon Lorenzo ordered the topsails reefed and at sunset – a lurid ochre-yellow stripe across the western horizon below dark and lowering cloud – the courses were clewed up and both watches sent aloft to secure the heavy sails along their yards before dark.
‘We shall not want them for some days,’ Lorenzo remarked to no one in particular. Then, raising his voice to the men aloft on the yards, he sang out, ‘Make certain you pass those gaskets and hitch them properly. I don’t want those sails torn loose when the gale strikes us.’
As the Santa Margarita began to butt into the head sea, her bluff bow rising before thumping into the next wave, spray lifted over the weather bow and streamed across the deck with the force of birdshot. The seamen on deck huddled in the shelter of the break of the forecastle, staring aft at the officers exposed on the half-deck.
Iago took it upon himself to go below and warn his fellow passengers to secure all their personal possessions and to stow away all except those items indispensable to their daily comfort.
‘The sight of you always presages doom, Don Iago,’ Arrocheros said with unpleasant sarcasm, raising his voice to fight the noise of the vessel as she creaked and groaned, and the slam of a heavy wave struck her weather bow, sending a shudder throughout the hull.
‘I fear for once you are right, Don Baldivieso,’ Iago responded sharply, catching Doña Catalina’s eye with a reassuring smile. She was a comely enough woman, he thought inconsequentially, and would be in fear for the child she was so obviously carrying. He did not carry his dislike for Arrocheros to his wife. On the contrary, he felt sorry for her and he wondered how close to its term the unborn baby was. Further forward, led by Fray Mateo, Fray Hernando and Fray Agustin, marked conspicuously in the gloom by the high white wimples of the nuns, the Holy Ones knelt in prayer. Iago returned to his own quarters. Ah Fong stood as he drew aside the canvas screen and Ximenez looked up from blacking Iago’s boots.
‘Is a wind coming?’ Ah Fong asked.
He nodded and smiled. ‘I fear so. We must tuck any loose things away.’ He looked at Ximenez. ‘I told you not to bother with those . . .’
‘A man must do something, master.’ Ximenez’s anxiety was palpable.
‘My advice is to get some sleep,’ he said, reaching for his hammock and indicating the dwarf’s bedroll. ‘You never know when you may be summoned to man the pumps.’
‘I am not a seaman,’ Ximenez protested.
‘We may all be seamen before this gale has blown itself out,’ Iago remarked, disguising his own anxiety under a wry response.
Night added its own terrors to the gale as the Santa Margarita staggered hove-to under the onslaught of wind and sea. Only a few glims, ensconced in their horn lanterns for fear of fire, illuminated the darkness under the half-deck where most people turned in, hunkered down in their blankets or swinging in the more comfortable hammocks. There was a grim air of endurance that met the encroachment of damp misery, added to at dawn when the cooks were unable to light the galley stove and everyone faced a day of cold food accompanied by a penetrating chill that seemed inseparable from the fusty dampness that now pervaded every nook and cranny of the ship.
But it was not a gale, as Iago had realized with a sickening void in his entrails. The wind headed them and began to streak the sea with spume and whip the wave crests off. By now he knew they were entrapped by a baguiosa, a taifun, a huracán, call it what you will. The wind was rising fast; already a screaming note tore at the Santa Margarita’s fabric and he knew, with an intuitive certainty, that within the hour it would have changed its note so that behind the terrible howling he would hear a deeper note, the boom of a great wind that he had heard only once before. He felt the sudden gripe in his belly, the animal, visceral reaction of fear that chilled his blood and made his heart thunder in his breast. In his mind’s eye he recalled Ocampo’s curse, echoed now in the rising wind. Then the moment passed: Ocampo was a damned priest and had nothing to do with this great storm. Nor did God. The power of this storm lay in the elemental forces that girded the earth which, whether created by God or caused by the eruptions of natural powers whose origins lay beyond their comprehension, now pressed upon the Santa Margarita and her frightened company.
And then, as if to confirm nature’s dominant power in the world, he heard above the howl and boom of the typhoon the scream of a woman in the first pangs of labour. Doña Catalina de los Arrocheros had been brought to her full term.
Looking up at a sudden movement Iago saw Ah Fong rise from her bed. The fitful light of the glim fell upon her pale face. Reading her expression of concern, Iago said quickly, ‘No!’
His admonition and the screams woke Ximenez.
‘But the baby . . .’ remonstrated Ah Fong.
‘There are women enough in this ship to attend to Doña Catalina,’ Iago said sharply.
‘But . . .’
‘No!’
Slowly Ah Fong subsided on to her palliasse. The scream came again, and with it other noises, of Arrocheros calling for help, of the soothing platitudes of a hurrying nun, of cries for water, for cloths, all pierced by the labouring woman’s helpless cries. Setting his jaw, Iago rolled himself into his hammock. ‘Go to sleep,’ he commanded his companions.
But Doña Catalina’s distress and the fury of the storm prevented any sleep under the half-deck that night. About half an hour after her first shrieks, the Santa Margarita staggered under the impact of a heavy sea. Falling off her course, the next wave crashed aboard, filling the waist and bursting the forward door between the half-deck and the waist so that a sudden cold sluicing of water poured along the deck, driven by the sudden rising of the bow to the breast of a wave. The deluge threw everything into confusion, soaking in an instant all those unfortunate enough to be lying on the deck. This included Doña Catalina who, laid upon a palliasse, had been propped upon cushions and now wallowed like a sow in a sodden sty amid more general cries of discomfort, shock and outrage.
Iago dropped from his hammock to the deck swearing under his breath. As he dragged his boots on Ah Fong loomed alongside.
‘Go see if I can help,’ she said as, above the general pandemonium, rose the terrified and continuing pleas of Doña Catalina. Lifting the coconut matting, Iago left Ah Fong and Ximenez looking at each other. The Santa Margarita shipped another sea and a second rush of water sluiced about them, bearing in its swirl the detritus of human existence.
The Arrocheros’s bed-place was as exposed as a market, lit by an assembly of carefully tended glims and lanterns and full of the curious and the would-be helpful. He could see little of the unfortunate woman for the bulk of two nuns kneeling at her drawn-up feet while another solicitously mopped her forehead which alone of her features caught the gleam of the yellow lamplight. Arrocheros himself stood above her supine figure, braced against the motion of the ship, one hand at his mouth in
apprehension. Alongside him stood Fray Agustin, intoning a prayer, while Fray Hernando kneeled and told his rosary, his lips moving with intense and silent devotion. The one thing this great ship lacked, Iago realized, was a physician. Her manning in the Philippines deprived her even of a barber-surgeon, for none had been available or willing to undertake the voyage, and those attached to the garrison were forbidden to desert the colours.
As the ship gave a particularly vicious lurch and all those on their feet grabbed for handholds, Arrocheros saw Iago looking on. The hatred for Iago that had disfigured his features earlier had gone; now there was only a desperation that displaced the merchant’s pride.
‘Don Iago,’ he called, moving towards Iago as though glad of the sight of his enemy and the chance Iago’s appearance gave him to do something. ‘Don Iago, is there nothing that can be done to ease this damnable ship’s motion? My wife is having a difficult time, the birth is not easy . . .’ Arrocheros’s voice fell away. In the imperfect light Iago could see his forehead was as wet as his labouring wife’s, his cheeks streaming with parental remorse. The hand which fell upon Iago’s arm shook slightly. ‘I beg you, señor.’
‘I fear that I can do little to ease your wife’s situation, Don Baldivieso. I am sorry, but the storm is at its height and we must simply endure.’
But his placating words were lost in a great cry of joy as, with a mighty grunt, Doña Catalina delivered a fine boy into the topsy-turvy world amid a slithering of bloody slime. Those surrounding her gave vent to their feelings. Arrocheros, transformed in an instant into a happy father, ignoring Iago as he did the reeling deck and the dancing lamplight, moved swiftly to his wife’s side as one of the sisters wiped the new arrival and the other knelt to tug gently at the umbilical cord. No one, except Iago, felt the Santa Margarita’s deck heel and then cant as the ship climbed the advancing face of a great wave. Afterwards Olivera, who had the watch on deck, told them it had come out of the night like a wall of silent menace, the wind falling calm in its mighty lee, until, investigating this phenomenon and fearing that it might mark their entry into the eye of the storm, he saw above him the crest overshoot the summit of this wall of water.
Below, few realized the imminent peril. All those who could see were watching the snipping of the cord and the delivery of the child into its mother’s arms. It was at this moment that the wave broke aboard the Santa Margarita.
Reaching out her arms, Doña Catalina never received the infant, for as the sister held it out to her there arose a noise like the end of the world and the entire space of the half-deck filled with water. It swept about all those assembled to witness the culmination of Doña Catalina’s labour, bowling them over, knocking the breath out of them and stopping their cries with the stupefying weight of a cold and pitiless death. Almost all of the lights were doused.
After what seemed an age but amounted to less than half a minute, the staggering ship rose to the thrust of the advancing bulk of the enormous wave itself and the water drained away, reducing rapidly to no more than a foot that slopped around and, though they did not know it then, would stay with them for another two days, washing every personal item out of the possession of its rightful owner. Only two well-fitted lanterns, those hung high under the deck beams, gave light on to the hellish scene as the crowd regained its gasping breath, screaming, shouting, cursing or praying. Slowly, it dawned upon them that this was not the hell they all deserved beyond death, but their own little world torn apart by a great wave. A gasping relief, even a smile, flitted across a few stoic faces until the cry went up:
‘The baby!’
‘Oh God! My baby!’
‘Mother of God! Where is the baby?’
‘The baby, the baby . . .’
‘He has gone!’
‘The wave has taken him!’
‘Unchristened!’
‘Oh merciful Christ! The sea has torn him from my arms!’
‘God curse this ship! Where is my baby?’
For a moment Iago was as stunned and confused as the others. Then, as the resourceful Marmolejo cajoled the driest of the extinguished glims into illumination from those still alight, Iago cast about the lee side of the ship to which she leaned and to which the draining water still ran on its way over the side and out of the labouring vessel. He moved rapidly, wading through the flotsam of human existence, shoving aside the boxes and bales that had torn loose from their lashings, pulling sodden blankets and garments aside, tripping over artefacts and items of unknown description underfoot and underwater until he saw what he sought, the pallid gleam of a tiny body tossed along by the retreating stream of sea water.
The pink mite with its bleeding stump of an unabridged navel was shuddering with cold and shock, its crying inaudible above the prevailing wailing of those behind him. He scooped it up, shouting triumphantly. It was the work of a moment to return to the sodden bed-place of Doña Catalina and restore her baby to her trembling arms.
‘Where?’
‘He was behind those boxes. The sea must have carried him.’
‘Oh, Don Iago . . .’ Doña Catalina could say no more and Iago fell back, glad that the child had not drowned. Arrocheros wrung his hand with gratitude and he shook his head. ‘It was nothing, nothing. Thank the sister here who delivered the child.’ Iago saw her face for the first time, a half-breed Mexican face, old but not withered, kindly in the dramatic light of the lanterns. She smiled and crossed herself.
‘It is a miracle,’ shrieked one of the watching women, and the cry was taken up all about them. As Iago retreated, his back slapped by the men, three or four women catching his hand and kissing it, he saw Ah Fong among the crowd. She was smiling at him and he felt pure joy fill him, even as the Santa Margarita was assailed by another green and breaking sea.
Seven
Dies Irae
The miracle did not last long. Although baptized Francisco by Fray Agustin in honour of his own order, Doña Catalina’s son died eight days later. By this time the typhoon had passed and the Santa Margarita again sailed north in search of a favourable westerly wind. She faltered once in her onward voyage, hove-to briefly while the tiny body was committed to the deep amid the tears and keening of the women. In honour of the moment the captain-general ordered a gun fired over the sea as the main yards were braced to catch the wind and the battered ship gathered way again. Order had once more been restored between her decks.
After the storm and the short, shipboard life of Francisco de los Arrocheros a different mood pervaded the Santa Margarita: one of hardening. It was as though the ordeal of the typhoon had stripped a soft layer of shore-borne and civilized living from the passengers, turning them into more feral beings. Henceforth they adopted something more akin to the behaviour and attitudes of the hardened seafarers. The men among them swore more frequently; a few with intellectual pretensions bravely attempted to argue theology with the friars, while the holy men themselves foresaw a glimpse, if not quite of martyrdom, then of spiritual trial. Following Iago’s example, a few cast off the pretensions of the shore altogether and laboured about the ship, filling the time and acclimatizing their bodies along with their mental resilience.
While the laity, adrift in this wasteland of endless water, doubted the goodness of Almighty God, the Franciscans saw the severity of His divine purpose and in solemn conclave together swore to bear witness to their faith whatever lay ahead of them in the coming weeks.
Arrocheros and his wife endured their private purgatory; they became withdrawn, oblivious to the curious denizens of the crowded half-deck all about them. They fell to quarrelling as though in the privacy of their house near the rice market just outside the Parian Gate to Intramuros Manila. Doña Catalina maintained the child, a son and heir to Don Baldivieso’s wealth, would have thrived in Manila had her husband not nursed selfish ambitions of returning to Mexico. For his part, the merchant countered that there would be nothing for any heir to inherit if they did not return to Panama, where her brother was ‘provi
ng as untrustworthy as a Protestant dog’.
As for the sailors, they merely shrugged, thankful that the wave that had swept the vessel had done nothing worse than loosen a few packages in the waist and frighten the passengers. Such moments were necessary to rid those quartered under the half-deck of their pride and make them appreciate the true worth of the seafaring men upon whose skill and fortitude so much rested. The burial of Francisco de los Arrocheros they dismissed with a shake of the head; better a helpless and puking infant the less amidships than one of their own number. Even their women thought the child better off in the hands of God than aboard the Santa Margarita, a view also expressed – though for different reasons – by the sisters of mercy by way of consolation to the distraught Doña Catalina.
Why should the blessed Margarita, some cynics asked, martyred for her virginity, not seek the swift reclamation of a young soul rather than inflict the torments and temptations of human life upon its innocence? Who knew? Those who cared, mostly women, keened their sorrow in the darker recesses of the ship, but within a few days of his death, the little Francisco had faded in the memories of all except his father and mother, for the weather began to improve. There had been mutterings amongst the seamen that Ocampo’s curse was the cause of their ill-luck. Alongside this attribution others, more commonly the passengers, among whom Arrocheros himself was the most vociferous, said that the time they had wasted off Ticao had placed them in harm’s way. Some notice of this discontent reached Guillestigui, who had been chiefly conspicuous by his absence from public view, for he resumed his appearances on deck. When asked by one of his staff the direct and deliberate question of whether he considered Ocampo’s curse influential, he stated in a loud voice that he did not give a damn about Ocampo’s curse or his own excommunication. This outburst, contrived as it was, deeply troubled the Holy Ones, but it was soon set aside by the majority on board who began again to feel the warmth of the sun and the balm of favourable winds.
The Disastrous Voyage of the Santa Margarita Page 12
