Prisoner of the Indies

by Geoffrey Household

  Panchito had been seized at San Juan when pilfering merchandise. His accomplice, a Spanish seaman, narrowly escaped. This man used to visit Panchito daily, bringing wine and food – which Panchito had the kindness to share with me – and all the news of the town. He said that I should be sent back to the City of Mexico by the wagon train after the fleet had sailed.

  Both greatly pitied me since I had committed no crime at all. Panchito got his friend to bring into the prison two good knives with a strong file at the back of the blade, so that we might cut through our irons whenever it was likely to profit us. He sold me one of them, which I hid in the foot of my left boot.

  It came to me only just in time. Three days later I was called before the justices and never saw Panchito again. The ball was taken off, and new leg-irons were forged for me, joined by an iron bar between the chains so that I could hardly stumble along. My wrists were confined in manacles chained together and to an iron collar round my neck. In that plight I was helpless as the hens of a chicken-seller.

  I was flung into the cart which was to take me up from Vera Cruz to Mexico. It was the leading wagon in a train of sixty, and I had it to myself, being a piece of merchandise of great value to the Holy Office. We started early in the morning, for which I was thankful. If we had still been in the low country of the coast at nightfall, I should have been tormented by mosquitos without a hand to brush them off or scratch myself. This town of Vera Cruz is so unhealthy that any woman expecting a child is sent inland well before her time. Every morning they drive two thousand cattle through the streets to trample down the dust and filth, believing that this takes away the evil vapours. But it did no good that I could see.

  As my cart bumped over the road, I passed the time trying to slip my hands, which are long and slender, out of the manacles. The task was very painful but at last I succeeded in it, and could even put the manacles on again. The drivers, walking alongside their mules, were busy urging them on and paid no attention to their prisoner. The creaking and groaning of the high wheels covered any noise that I might make. So I freed my hands, took the file out of my boot and started to file through my leg irons.

  A day’s journey from Vera Cruz the plain comes to an end and the road begins to climb into the mountains. By the mercy of God a wheel of my wagon broke at the bottom of the hill. The driver set an Indian carpenter to work on it, and meanwhile the rest of the train passed on and halted at a tavern up the road kept by a Negro woman, who, you may be sure, made more money than ever she would on the coast of Guinea.

  Here the hill is so steep that it is the custom to take the mules out of three or four wagons and harness them together. The teams then draw up each wagon separately and come down for another. My driver unhitched his mules, cursed me for a spy and a Lutheran who had brought him bad luck, and all cantered away into the dusk jingling their bells.

  The Indian soon finished mending the wheel and went off to the tavern, hoping to get a cup of the forbidden pulque for his labour. So I was left alone. Up the hill the drivers and the mounted guards were all shouting and cracking their whips, trying to get the whole train to the top before they camped for the night.

  I worked away at my leg irons until the file cut through and I could bend them apart. Taking two small cheeses and some cold maize cakes, which the driver had given me so that I should not die of hunger on his hands, I ran off into the woods. It was now dark. Soon I no longer knew where the road was; but now and again I could see the faint light of the candles in the tavern. Keeping it always behind me, I stumbled fast uphill between great boulders and the trunks of trees.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  After hiding my leg irons under a bush and covering them with moss so that it should not be known that I had broken free, I rested and slept a little on the top of a ridge. I had climbed higher than I knew, and at dawn I could see the road to Mexico beneath me and the camp of the wagon train. Far down in the forest the drivers were looking for me, believing that I must have rolled out of the cart and could not have gone far. The mounted guards were riding wherever they could go – and that was no great distance, for their horses were useless in such tangled country.

  Across the valley to the north I saw blue smoke rising from the rocks and then the red sparkle of a fire. I made my way towards it, approaching very cautiously though I did not apprehend there would be Spaniards in such a wilderness. When I came nearer I saw that a hunting party of Indians were roasting a deer for their breakfast.

  I called to them in Nahuatl, saying that I was English and had been imprisoned by the cruel Spaniards. They answered at once that I should have no fear and join them.

  With my mouth full of their venison, I told them how we had not had so kind a reception when we were trying to reach Tampico twelve years before. That was no wonder, said they, for then the Indians had known nothing of the English and taken us for some new tribe of shipwrecked Spaniards whom they dearly wished to slaughter, and dared not for fear of revenge; but in these days all the Indians of the coast knew that there were other white men who also had horses, ships and guns.

  They marvelled that a man who was not born in their country should speak their language so easily. They had heard of my friend, Xolotl, but did not greatly respect him or the Tenochca either, as they called the Aztecs. They themselves were Totonacs who had joined with Cortés as soon as he landed and fought alongside the Spaniards. But in spite of their services their people had not been well treated and relieved of taxes, as the Tlaxcalans were. So they had taken to the wild mountains where the Spaniards could not come at them.

  I asked them if they would file off the iron collar from which my manacles were suspended. Since they were but Christians in name and, for all I knew, might think their own gods would like a taste of me, I did not much relish the knife so close to my throat. But they were as gentle with me as I could wish and soon had my collar off.

  I was now beyond all pursuit, and my purpose was to put as many leagues as I could between myself and the City of Mexico. Outside the towns New Spain is still empty, so I was hardly likely to fall in with anyone who knew my face and my story.

  One of the Indians willingly consented to be my guide. He brought me to one of their great villages, and glad I was to see it, since I was so trembling with fever that I could scarce drag one foot after another for more than twenty miles. When we arrived, an Indian doctor took me to his house and put me in a hammock well wrapped in quilts. Then he gave me a drink of herbs and pulque so strong that I reached four hundred rabbits. But I awoke free of fever and suffering only from weakness.

  These Totonacs were never conquered by the Aztecs, and therefore lack their arts and luxuries such as embroidery and carvings and fine featherwork. But they have handsome earthenware of an orange colour, gallantly painted, and they live very well. They have plenty of deer and game – which is scarce in the hills around Mexico – and fruits and tame turkeys to go with their maize bread. They also roast a fat slug which lives on the maguey plant and is excellent eating with red peppers.

  They have little religion, whether Christian or pagan, and still do honour to Xipe, the god of seedtime and planting, who was also worshipped in the City of Mexico. At his festival his priest is dressed in a human skin, stretched to fit him very exactly. They would not tell me if it was still their custom to flay a prisoner to get the skin, for they begin to be ashamed of such beastliness.

  After I had been three days in the town I bought from an Indian for six pesos a little red mare, which he must have stolen since they are not permitted to possess horses or to ride. She was old but sure-footed with powerful quarters, and I thought her well fitted to carry me over mountains and through the woods.

  So I started off gaily enough. But I was only a few miles from the town when I saw on the path ahead of me a Franciscan friar, mounted on a fat, grey pony. He was waiting for me, having heard the hooves of my mare in the silence of the mountains, and I could not avoid him. No Spaniard but a friar would have ventured alon
e into that country where there was nothing to be gained but Indian souls and no one worth conquering but Xipe.

  I found to my great dismay that we knew each other very well. He was a certain Brother Bernardo who spoke Nahuatl and was much loved by the Indians of Tlatelolco.

  ‘Miguel Perez!’ he cried. ‘And what are you doing here?’

  ‘I am riding for the good of my health,’ I said.

  ‘Then ride fast and pray that you are not discovered! I have heard that you are forbidden to leave the City.’

  ‘Would you have me obey the Holy Office?’ I asked.

  ‘Miguel, I will only answer you this: that God did not give us a body to be burned and tormented, but as a humble home for the soul. To a servant of St Francis, even your red mare must be a little sister. Then think how much more are you my brother, even if you were a heretic as I am sure you are not.’

  I knew at once that I could trust him and I told him my story while he exclaimed at the pity of it, saying that I was no enemy to the Church or to Spain and that it was wrong to persecute me because I wished to return to my country.

  ‘What is your advice, dear Brother Bernardo?’ I asked. ‘You and your order know all the roads of New Spain. Where shall I go?’

  ‘Now where shall we send him, Isabelita?’ he asked his pony, who pricked up her ears at the sound of her name.

  She was in a condition to please the eye of any horseman, and I thought it must be a happy life to be the little sister of a good Franciscan friar.

  ‘Isabelita was born in Honduras,’ he went on, ‘and she tells me that there are many little ports along the coast where an honest Spaniard like Miguel Perez could take a ship for the Islands. In Honduras no one will ever have heard of him. Meanwhile ride on with us, and we will set you on your way.’

  We travelled together for three days, staying in Indian houses. The people thereabouts knew and loved him, and freely gave food to him and his Isabelita as well as money for his good works. When at last we parted, he going towards Yucatan and I to the south, he gave me all his money, amounting to twenty pesos, saying that I needed charity more than any man he was likely to meet on his journey. Out of courtesy I could not refuse it.

  So on I went, travelling through the high valleys of Oaxaca and Tehuantepec. Sometimes I would sleep in Indian villages and sometimes in the open, never needing to tether my mare, who would stay close to me for fear of wild beasts. But there are few in those highlands except the puma, which the Spaniards call the lion, and he will not attack a man, though, being curious as any cat, he will follow at a distance.

  My course was now easterly, and the City of Mexico left so far behind that I was sure there could be no hue and cry after Miguel Perez. I often called at the estancias where I was made very welcome. There cannot be such hospitality among Christians anywhere as the people of New Spain show to one another.

  In these lonely places where one Spaniard and his family lived among thousands of Indians I wondered that the Indians did not fall upon them and kill them. One such Spaniard in Chiapas, whose nearest neighbour was distant two days’ hard riding, told me that it was because the Indians had great faith in the justices. If an Indian is beaten or ill-treated – it is no crime to abuse him with foul words – he will wait patiently for a chance and walk to the nearest town to make a complaint, taking a friend with him as a witness. And the justices, who call the Indians their orphans, will punish their own countryman, however rich he is.

  This, said the good man, is the reason why the Indians are so tame, being before the law as rightful subjects of King Philip as the Spaniards. It may be so where the friars and the Governor are strong. But many Spaniards are cruel, and the justices too far off for an Indian to visit.

  Soon afterwards I lost my way among the rivers and hills and wandered for more weeks than I can count, being fevered for most of that time and tended by Indians. I think that I was so near to death that I was cured, just as a man who recovers from the plague cannot catch it again. However that may be, I never had another day’s sickness in the Indies.

  Seeing that I could not reach the coast of the North Sea, however long I tried, I took the high road to Guatemala and stayed in the town until my mare and I had recovered our strength. There were only eighty Spaniards, all prospering. The Indians, too, were the wealthiest I saw in New Spain, for Guatemala lies neither too high nor too low and is very fertile land, well watered.

  The morning after my arrival I was brought before the justices, not so much to account for myself as that they wished to hear what news I had and to offer me employment if I wanted it. Among them was one very old man who had been regidor or chief magistate of Guatemala. He had the face of an eagle, with no hair on his head and a white tuft on his chin. His voice rumbled in his chest like distant thunder and he spoke with the sharpness of a soldier.

  ‘What are you doing, lad?’ he asked.

  ‘I am seeking whatever there is to find, your worship,’ I answered. ‘And if there is nothing, I still take pleasure in the search.’

  This seemed greatly to delight him, and he declared that I was a true Spaniard, not a booby sitting in comfort and served by Indians. He held out to me his trembling hand and told me to take it and to say thereafter that I had shaken hands with Bernal Diaz del Castillo.

  I took it gently and bent to kiss it, for this man was the last of the Conquerors left alive, who had fought with Cortés from beginning to end and won fame in the terrible battle of the causeways when they took the City of Mexico. He had been born in 1492, and it was a marvel in my eyes that one man’s life should span the time between Columbus’ first sight of the Indies and this New Spain of cities and churches.

  ‘Aye, the last of them, Don Miguel,’ he said, ‘blind and deaf and in poverty.’

  Truly he was neither, but he complained as the old do because he had never made a fortune and could no longer see what was under his nose nor hear unless one spoke boldly into his great hairy ear.

  ‘Where do you come from?’ he asked me. ‘Castile or Aragon, Leon or Asturias or Extremadura?’

  He rumbled the splendid names with tears in his old eyes, remembering his youth.

  Now, this was a question to which I had to have a ready answer. If I said I was born in any town of New Spain, there was sure to be some bystander who knew it and all the few families. So I always replied that I came from Cerceda in Galicia. I had a friend – it was that seaman who brought the files into prison – who did indeed come from Cerceda, and told me that it was so far from the ports and the roads which led to them that few ever came out of it and hardly a stranger visited it.

  Thus neither Bernal Diaz nor his friends doubted that I had come over as a boy to seek my fortune. They entertained me excellent well, telling me that I could go no farther than the eastern limits of Nicaragua and that I should then return and settle among them.

  I had now travelled eight or nine hundred miles from the City of Mexico and knew that I was safe from the Holy Office. But I was still on the shores of the South Sea from which I could only go home round the world like Francis Drake. So I determined to press on towards the Isthmus of Panama.

  For seven days I rode to the east, passing through rich lowlands where the Indians grow cocoa beans, which are ground and made into the drink which they call chocolate. This is so loved by Indians and Spaniards alike that in the markets of the City of Mexico the beans are used as money and given in change as we do farthings.

  Thereafter were few plantations, only lake, mountain and forest with never a way to the north. Between the settlements were tracks so seldom used that twice I came upon an empty ox-cart with the bones of the dead oxen lying where they had been unharnessed to die. I travelled on through this wilderness a month and more until I could go no farther, as they had warned me in Guatemala. There were no paths through the swamps and no longer any Indians who understood Nahuatl. When my mare and I were near dead of starvation, I had to turn back.

  I came again to the confines of
Guatemala and worked for a while as an overseer, for I had spent the better part of my gold and did not wish to unsew from my doublet the little that remained. Nearly a year had passed since my escape, and soon the ships would be sailing to join the fleet. I therefore determined to try once more the journey to Honduras which had cost me so many pains, and asked the Indians if there were any way to the North Sea through the forests of Guatemala. They told me that there was, but that the country was difficult and without inhabitants.

  They also told me that my red mare could make the crossing from sea to sea and live, but at first I put no faith in what they said. They still believe that wherever a man on foot can go a horse can also travel. When the Spaniards first landed, the Indians thought that horse and man were one animal like the centaur of the Greeks, as may be seen in their pictures, and even after they knew that the two were separate, they gloried in the killing of either. Bernal Diaz told me that as the Conquerors fought their way into Mexico, they saw the heads of their comrades and the heads of the horses hanging side by side on the skull racks of the temples.

  However, the Indians remembered very well that Cortés had taken a force of cavalry through the forests when he discovered Honduras, so there was some reason to believe that I could do the like. They had a strange story of Cortés’ horse, which he much loved. When it fell sick on the journey, he left it at a village, commanding the people to take care of it and honour it as if it were himself. This they did, offering it turkeys and the choicest dishes which their cooks could prepare. When the horse died, as is no wonder, they fashioned a statue of it as large as life, treating it as a god so that Cortés should know, if he ever passed that way again, that it was from no lack of care and respect that his horse had died.