Captain from Castile

by Samuel Shellabarger; Internet Archive

  Crews were busy with lading and tackle; hulls were being tarred; a couple of vessels had been beached for greasing below the water line. The sun played on gilded beakheads and varicolored canvas; it flashed on armor and kindled the blues, reds, and yellows of costume; it brought out the gaudy Saint Christopher on the mainsail of an incoming ship and the colored pennons of her topmasts.

  The agglomeration of wooden shacks, a quarter of a mile deep, which occupied the space between waterfront and town, and which housed a community of international riffraff infamous even in that age, now hummed like a fair. Sailors, merchants, hidalgos, mountebanks, peddlers, charlatans, prostitutes, and tliieves, thronged between the squalid huts. A din composed of every sound possible to human lungs floated up to the brothers of Saint Francis, leaning next to each other against the parapet.

  As seen from behind by a couple of beggars lounging on the church steps, the two monks offered a droll contrast. One of them was broad of shoulder and beam, with too short a robe that displayed his big, naked calves; while the other, slender and tall, wore a habit too long for him. Though he kept hitching it up under the rope around his waist, it slipped down again and looked frayed and dusty at the skirts.

  "See that caravel?" said the burly monk, pointing. "She's the Boniface. Her master's Jorge Santerra, a good friend of mine. She's a bitch

  in rough weather, but seaworthy for all that. Damn me, the sight of her turns me homesick! I'll bet you ten pesos she makes port first and skims the cream off the market. Ten yellow clinkers she does!"

  He scratched his thigh and continued to gaze.

  The other asked, "Where's our ship, the lulia —the Genoese? I don't see her."

  "Over behind the French galleass," his companion answered. "There's her topmast." Then abruptly, as if to get something that was difficult to say over with, "But—well—as a matter of fact, your ship, not mine. Mine's the Boniface. Tell you the truth, I paid my passage money this morning to Santo Domingo."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean I'm not for Italy, after all."

  A bleak pause. The slender monk hitched his robe. "But I thought—"

  "Yes, by God, I know," the other burst out. "Devil take me for a quitter! But I can't help it. It's the feel of the west wind, maybe, or the sight of the ships, the talk on the beach. Italy's an old road; I want new ones." And when silence fell again, he added, "Don't you feel it yourself?"

  The younger man nodded. "Seguro. Who wouldn't, in this kettle?" He jerked his chin toward the harbor. "Everybody gets the fever."

  "All right then, how about your coming along with me?"

  "You know the answer to that, Juan Garcia. If Father's still living, he expects me in Italy. I can't fail him. Besides," Pedro went on, as if arguing with himself, "what's the itch that's got hold of those people down there? Gold. Why are they sailing for the Islands? Gold. What's the only thing they think about, talk about ever)- cursed minute? Gold. Well, maybe there's something else in life."

  His voice hesitated and died out. His eyes were on the west.

  His companion brought a heavy fist down on the parapet. "Yes, son Pedro, and there's a lot to be said for gold. It got us out of Jaen, and it's the one thing that can get you back there—I mean on horseback, riding high, avenged, honored, reinstated, which is what you hanker for. But you're wrong about that crowd for the Islands. We talk gold, but we mean something more. Gold's the excuse."

  "For what?"

  "I don't know—call it urge, curiosity—I don't know."

  Without realizing it, Garcia had touched on what gave real significance to the crowded harbor. Behind this western beach lay all the past of the white race: its wars and wanderings, its unceasing nostalgia for beyond-the-horizon, its inveterate dissatisfaction with what it was or

  had or knew. Having reached the limits of its continent, it could not stop there. Avaricious, cruel, brutal, blind, but always doing and daring, it was driven to set out on crazy planks for unknown continents, different from other races only in this, that it has been the supreme tool of the obscure, creative purpose expressing itself in life.

  Pedro de Vargas responded to the vibration. Since reaching Sanlucar, he had felt the drag of the current setting west. If he stuck to the plan for Italy, it was by an effort of will.

  "Vayal' he muttered, "good-by will come hard, Juan Garcia."

  More than hard—unthinkable. The long road across Spain, stealing, begging, hiding, bluffing; fear and fun; robust comradeship, had bound the two men closer than brothers. And now during these last days at Sanlucar, safe in the godless fraternity of the waterfront, monks by day, ruiflers by night, rich from the proceeds of Garcia's bill of change, they had tasted together the joy of success; they had reached the sea, outwitted pursuit. Pedro thought of the Genoese galley without Garcia, the strange faces. Italy meant the past, the conventional. He thought with an ache of his friend heading west, of the fleet with its billowing sails and expectant decks. "Land, ho!" The new, uncharted world!

  Garcia swallowed and frowned. "I'd go with you, boy, but it's no use* What does Italy offer a plain man like me? To shoulder a pike or scratch fleas in some big lord's guardroom. I have no kinsmen cardinals to give me a leg up like you have. Sure—you wouldn't forget me, but I'd be a sow's ear. It's different in the Islands. Nobody has any kinsmen, and tomorrow counts more than yesterday. We won't talk about good-by, though—not yet."

  "The galley sails in two days."

  A fatalist, Garcia shrugged his shoulders. "That's a long time, brother."

  The great point about life on the beach at Sanlucar was the unanimous antipathy to law and its agents that prevailed there. The beach had its own law—that of survival. The weakling was fair game. Everyone kept a speculative eye on his neighbor and a vigilant guard of his own purse and throat. But as most of those who frequented the shacks along the water had cheated the hangman somewhere or other, they were united by a common prejudice. No sensible bailiff poked his nose into the narrow ways between the hovels; no informer of the Holy Office kept his health in that uncongenial air; stool pigeons were almost unknown. The Brethren of the Beach furnished crews, loaded and unloaded cargoes, drifted in and out on ships, and had no truck with

  righteousness or its tools. Between them and the authorities of San-lucar existed a policy of hands-off. Let a hard-pressed criminal once dive beneath the scum of that sanctuary, and he was safer than if he embraced the high altar of any church in Spain.

  It was not to the credit of Juan Garcia and Pedro de Vargas that this community accepted them without question from the moment of their arrival, dusty, hard, and tattered. Outlaws have a flair for each other. The connoisseurs of the beach knew them at once for desperate men like themselves, men with the kind of past that earned them the liberty of the waterfront. It made no difference that the hidalgo stuck out all over young de Vargas: to be a ruffian was the main thing, and no prejudice existed against noble ruffians. What counted was the cold alertness of his eyes (no longer half so young as they had been two months before), the size of his wrists, the length of his reach, the downward hook at the corners of his mouth, and his quickness of movement. He played cards or dice with distinction. A hint of danger clung to him. They called him "Pelirrojo," Redhead, respectfully.

  The beach minded its own business, yhat bond existed between de Vargas and an old-timer like "the Bull," as Garcia was nicknamed, or what the pair had been up to back in Spain, did not concern anybody. That de Vargas made inquiries about an Indian servant named Coatl, who had managed to sign up as gromet on a ship for the Islands a month earlier, roused a mild but not inquisitive interest. That he and Garcia left the shacks at times, disguised in the robes of the two monks whom they had stripped on the way to Sanlucar, did not cause remark, for it was a place used to disguises. Of course they took care that no one knew of their trip to the Medici banker's in Cadiz or that they carried the value of eight hundred castellanos concealed on their persons, since knowledge of that sort provoked
murder.

  On the evening of the day when they had stretched their legs by walking up to the church of Our Lady of the West, the Redhead and the Bull, once more in layman's clothes, took their ease at the Venta de los Caballeros in the place of shacks.

  The tavern consisted of a line of sheds pieced together and completely open on the harbor side. A hundred yards from them lay the water and the far scattering of ships. As twilight deepened, it was hard to tell where the sand ended, for sand and water merged in a wide plain overarched by the evening sky. Lights began to appear on the anchored vessels. The noises of day lapsed into silence broken by isolated voices, laughter, tinkle of instruments and snatches of song. An offshore wind, languid with the smell of orange groves, sweetened the

  odors of tar and fish alongshore. The Andalusian night, mysterious and star-heavy, was already closing in.

  A mixed company occupied the line of tables. Englishmen, Dutchmen, French, Portuguese, Italians, and even Greeks from the Levant, spoke their own languages or joined, if necessary, in the lingua franca of the ports, which was a mixture of all languages. Costumie kept pace with the diversity of tongues. At the moment, a common interest in food and drink muffled the jumble of voices; but hubbub would swell later, when stomachs were filled and the dicing and fighting started.

  Next to Pedro at table sat Luis Casca, surnamed "Nightingale" because of his gentle voice, which could utter abominations as if making love. He had lost one ear and wore his hair in a blob over that spot. From the lobe of the other dangled a woman's pearl earring. His handsome Sicilian face was marred by a scar from forehead to chin. Otherwise he looked like a sentimental girl, except when he used his knife.

  El Moro, a spade-bearded man of few words, sat next to Garcia across the board. He had spent five years as a slave in the Moorish galleys and had earned his nickname from that ordeal. Lacking several teeth, he had the habit of making sucking sounds with his lips. He had small, button-hard eyes. It was said that the whip marks on his back were too many to count. Both he and Casca were sailing with the Indian fleet and had been drawn to Garcia because of the latter's experience in the Islands.

  They were listening to a discourse upon how two enterprising, stouthearted men with little capital could best establish themselves in land and Indians; and how one lucky evening at cards or a successful venture to the Mainland could set a man up for life, when Garcia, springing to his feet, all but overturned the table.

  "Holtty Jorge Santerra!" he roared. "Hola, comrade!" And stopping the master of the Boniface, who was lumbering by, he drew him to the table. "Here's the gentleman who can tell you boys the news. He's fresh from Cuba. That's a better lay for your money than Santo Domingo. Bigger and more land. I'm heading there myself. Tell 'em what you told me this morning, Jorge. You'll take a cup of wine with

  us."

  "Not your stripe of wine, by God," returned the seaman, for Garcia's eccentricity in respect to water drinking was notorious. "If you can favor me with a pint of manzanilla, I'll spend a minute with you; but I'm expected for supper in the town."

  The edge to this was that shipmasters, being people of consequence, did not mingle with the rank and file. It added to Garcia's prestige that

  such a bigwig condescended to sit with him, and the men at near-by-tables stared.

  Jorge Santerra was short and squat. He wore a red scarf on his head and a landgoing hat over it, a combination which gave him a top-heavy appearance. His face and hands had the look of pale old leather crisscrossed with a web of wrinkles. His eyes, impersonal and remote, gave the impression that he was always looking into the distance.

  "These gentlemen," Garcia went on, after the shipmaster had taken a seat, "are bound for the Islands. That is, two of them are. My young pal here sails for Italy."

  "Ah," grunted Santerra without comment. He intended no slight, but was plainly uninterested in Italy. His glance excluded Pedro, while patronizing the Moor and the Nightingale as men headed in the right direction.

  "They're shipping on the Ferdinand" Garcia explained. "I'm telling them that the big chances lie west. Santo Domingo's old stuff. What was the gossip you were giving me from Cuba?"

  Talk dropped off at neighboring tables, and men listened intently to the seaman's answer, though Santerra pretended to be unconscious of them.

  "Well," he returned after drinking, "you know that Hernandez de Cordoba last year discovered land twenty days west of Cape San Antonio de Cuba. Called it Yucatan. Thought maybe it was an island, but a big one, for he never got round it. Said there's a town there that they named Grand Cairo on account of its size. Stone buildings with idols in them, Indians wearing clothes, cultivated fields, and—what's most to the point—gold. In short, Cuba has nothing like it. A land of bloodthirsty people, though. Cordoba got back with twelve wounds in his body, and died two weeks later."

  "Yes," nodded Garcia, "I knew him."

  "So, in May of this year, Diego Velasquez—the governor of Cuba, gentlemen—sent his nephew, Juan de Grijalva, with four ships to take another look. Grijalva wasn't back when I sailed; but one of his caravels came in, Pedro de Alvarado commanding, with reports of the voyage."

  Santerra paused a moment for effect.

  "Seiior! He brought gold to the value of fifteen thousand pesos. Fifteen thousand pesos! Got in no time at all for a handful of glass beads. Hijos, the country must be lousy with gold. And it's not an island, but a continent. They heard of wonders beyond the mountains."

  A deep hush followed. Several men from other tables edged closer

  and formed a spellbound circle. El Moro sucked at the gap between his teeth. The Nightingale's lips were moist. Pedro de Vargas's eyes, showing more green than usual, were riveted on the speaker.

  "Yes, friend," Santerra went on to Garcia, "you're right. It's the West every time. When I left Cuba, all the talk was about the big armada that Velasquez is fitting up to take over the new land before someone else gets the jump on him. He wasn't waiting for Grijalva to come back. Everybody who could lay hands on cash or equipment was buying himself into the venture. Mortgaging, borrowing—Lord! you can get an estate with slaves at a bargain in Cuba now, if you've got ready money. As for politics—the big planters scheming for the command ! They're around the governor like a pack of dogs after meat. But the talk was that Hernan Cortes would get it. He's rich and has influence with the governor."

  For some reason, the name Cortes struck a familiar note in Pedro's mind; but at first he could not remember where he had heard it. Then with a pang he recalled the last family evening at the pavilion and his father's fulminations against the Indies. The ne'er-do-well son of Martin Cortes de Monroy had evidently come up in the world. Talk about a career! What could Italy offer more than this, to be Captain General of an armada out for the conquest of infidel lands? What profit and honor! Compared with taking part in such an expedition, even a place in the Chevalier Bayard's company of lances seemed insipid.

  Someone was asking about Cortes.

  "I don't know him myself," replied the shipmaster. "Saw him once with other hidalgos at the posada in Santiago, and I've carried a cargo of his hides. He made his money in cattle. A good-looking gentleman; very humorous, they say, and popular—especially with the ladies." Santerra stuck his tongue in his cheek and winked.

  "But can he fight?" asked one of the audience, a flashy ruffian in parti-colored hose and with a black beard. "From what you say about Yucatan, it'll take more than a ladies' pet and jelly-belly to win it. Is he a captain? 'Steeth! he sounds like a rich slob."

  Santerra emptied his cup, gave the other a glance, and said, "He looks like a captain." Then to Garcia, "Thanks for the drink, brother. I'm going. By the way, the fleet sails in two squadrons. Be on board tomorrow. We leave with the ebb."

  "Sefior shipmaster," Pedro asked suddenly, "do you suppose the armada for Yucatan has already sailed from Cuba?"

  He was aware of the question in Garcia's eyes. He felt that the rest of his life depended on that moment.
If Santerra answered yes, he

  would go to Italy; if it was no, if there was a chance of his reaching Cuba in time, he would sail westward with the fleet tomorrow. Garcia wanted him, would stake him to the passage. In view of such a prospect, even his father would approve. He would send a letter at random by the master of the lulia. His imagination leaped the sea to an unknown harbor, then beyond to the lands of gold. It brought him back to Spain, wealthy, famous, exonerated. It threw open the doors of the Carvajal Palace, where Luisa waited.

  The shipmaster had got up, but he paused a moment.

  "It takes time to fit out vessels, lay in stores, raise funds, muster a company. And Cuba isn't Spain. No" (Pedro's heart beat faster), "I hardly think they'll sail before the end of the year."

  "And you reach Santo Domingo when?"

  "By All Saints, God willing."

  "Have you room for me on the Boniface?"

  "I thought—"

  Garcia interrupted. "Has he room for you! Viva! Let me hug you! Yes, son, he has room for you on the Boniface."

  Santerra grinned. "That settles it. Hasta mananaj caballeros."

  Part Two

  XXVI

  On a morning of late November in the year 1518, a crowded pinnace entered the harbor three miles from Trinidad de Cuba and discharged its passengers, a group from Santiago.