Immortal Water

by Norman Brian Van

  And now she was going home to her rightful place and a welcomed tribal marriage and the freedom to live as a true human should. Just now the dolphins had presaged her return, greeting her homecoming as dolphins will do. She smiled at them as they whirled away from this stinking Spanish ship.

  Observing her, Juan Ponce could not help but recall wistfully another moment when, long ago, he had first seen his wife. A much different portrait, far removed from this dusky woman. There had been promise then, so long ago.

  “What is this creature doing up here?” A harsh, highpitched voice interrupted his reverie. He turned to face the feverish eyes of las Casas.

  “What is she doing here?” the Dominican repeated.

  “Watching dolphins.”

  “The men can see her. She troubles the men.”

  “She troubles you, friar, and you in turn trouble the men.”

  “She is a witch!”

  “Because she does not submit to your calling?” Juan Ponce could feel his anger rising.

  “You know what she is. When this voyage is done she shall suffer the question.”

  “Inquisition for a native? Not even the Church will agree to that.”

  “She must undergo salvation.”

  “According to the Church she has no soul. She is an animal.”

  “Then you sleep with beasts! When will you answer for your sin?”

  “Enough! You are the one who believes they are human. That is why you’re here, is it not? To convert them? That is why your Inquisition has forced you upon me.”

  “You dare speak to me in this manner?”

  His temper had carried Juan Ponce into a dangerous realm. Like it or not, this monk had the power to harm him. Words whispered in the wrong ears and all he possessed, all he dreamed of, would end. The Inquisition would descend upon him even here, half a world away. Juan Ponce had no desire to be caught in that web. Age is good for one thing, he decided: it brings the wisdom to retreat without shame.

  “Of course I am wrong, fray Bartolome,” he said quietly. “Until the Church decides on this question, neither one of us knows the state of this woman. Suffice to say, friar, that she cannot be a witch if she is animal, and if she is human, in living with me she might find the right path with your gentle persuasion to guide her.”

  “If these Calusa you speak of are to be converted, then she must be first to seek salvation.”

  “Together we’ll see to that. Will you hear my confession this evening? Obviously it’s long past time.”

  “Of course, my son,” las Casas said, smiling his triumph. “Now remove the woman. I shall speak with her again and perhaps she will come to know God.”

  Juan Ponce gave the order. The witch retreated. Las Casas was pleased.

  Beneath it all he was a simple man.

  The following day offered the best weather they had yet seen. The thought that it took him away from his destination irritated Juan Ponce. Once or twice he nearly ordered Sotil to begin again the search for Sotomayor. He knew it would be useless but the urge to move forward was powerful and it played on him like a melody stuck in his mind. He tried to keep busy, even inscribing in his ship’s log the details required by the government; but when the wind is fair and the ocean easy there is little for a commander to do. Sotil took care of the ship’s daily workings. For Juan Ponce all that was left was his cabin and his other, internal voyage. He had trouble writing. His obsession to push back the curtain of the future, now that he was so close, rejuvenated his impatience. There are times in men’s lives when age matters little. Sometimes it is the moment which counts, not the years.

  The witch was impatient, too. She demanded to know why they had turned back. She was angry about it. Not overtly, she would never show him that, but his own frustration allowed him a glimpse of hers. Then again, she was ageing, and if there were truth to her stories, it might be that she too sought what he did. But was she so devious? Could she, a simple Calusa woman, possess that kind of subterfuge? He laughed at the notion. More likely she was upset having been denied the deck, having lost to las Casas, whom she considered a fool. And yet, strangely enough, she seemed to like Sotomayor. Juan Ponce found this peculiar. For if Juan Ponce de Leon had gained a reputation for dealing roughly with natives, then Cristoval de Sotomayor, his lieutenant of so many years, was infamous.

  He was a huge man, blessed with prodigious strength. Younger than Juan Ponce, he had arrived with Ovando when that nobleman had been sent as Viceroy after Columbus had been arrested and forever refused ownership of the lands he’d discovered. Sotomayor knew little of this. He had simply signed on to make his fortune. Many men came with the same reasons. But there were not many like Sotomayor.

  He was assigned to Juan Ponce’s squadron at the beginning of Ovando’s terror. The Viceroy’s plan was simple: end the anarchy in Hispaniola with an iron fist. If a tribe would not submit, eliminate it: men, women, children, animals, houses, crops. Leave nothing but ash. Juan Ponce de Leon became Ovando’s most trusted captain in this. He followed the orders because he saw their sense. And Sotomayor followed Juan Ponce. Absolutely. Perfectly. Without mercy. Neither man was troubled by slaughter. It was merely the business of war.

  Juan Ponce treated Sotomayor as the son he wished he had had. And Sotomayor returned that favour with complete loyalty. He had profited, but he found his love for battle far outweighed that for gold. Juan Ponce de Leon gave him both. It was a bonding of minds. Even in the bad days, when his mentor had been outmanoeuvred and forced to give up his positions, the fiery lieutenant had stayed with him.

  And finally, when Juan Ponce de Leon had decided to claim again what was rightfully his, to muster this voyage, his obvious second was Sotomayor. Even the witch had smiled when she heard his lieutenant was to join them. Juan Ponce did not try to understand why. Perhaps Sotomayor reminded her of her own tribe’s warriors: tall, fearless, and deadly. Juan Ponce might be the brain of the expedition but Sotomayor was its sword. They would have need of that sword, he knew. The last time had been hard. A pine forest island called Slaughter. That had been mere exploration. This time they had come to claim.

  Thoughts of Sotomayor cheered him. Their marriage of arms had been more complete, more honest and forthright, more filled with joy than his actual marriage. Leonor had hated Sotomayor. She had called him common, bloodthirsty, ambitious. Sotomayor had accepted her insults passively. And when she died he’d attended her memorial and comforted the family as best he knew how. His loyalty shone.

  It was after that when Juan Ponce, for the first time, had lied to him. It was not difficult. Sotomayor was not an intricate man. He believed without question the tale of founding a new colony. And so he too had been deceived. Thinking these things brought the old man to his parchment again. The past was his only solace now with the future held in abeyance.

  It was during the wars in Spain that I married. My mother had died while I was away and so I was unable to bid her goodbye. It created a kind of emptiness in me. I began to feel a need for permanence, for a woman to somehow fill that chasm for which I have so little understanding. Children were a part of it. Each man wishes his name carried on. But it was more than that. It was time, for some reason, to marry. There was no rationality to it; only a strange new mood.

  I left it to my father to arrange it, knowing he would choose wisely and well. It would be a union of houses, the business of marriage. My reputation, solid by then, and my maturity made the matchmaking easier. I was past marital age. Not old, but certainly no young man either. And by this time I considered myself more adept socially. I had made the acquaintance of ladies at court as well as that of the camp prostitutes. In my arrogance, I thought I knew women.

  Leonor was of noble birth, of course; her family of like circumstance to mine. Her father was an honourable man. He provided a dowry of twenty five hundred escudos. Not a great sum, but reasonable. She was sixteen when I first met her. I had no idea what to expect as I presented myself to the family. I remembe
r it was early evening, the sun cool and low in the sky.

  Her father was just a little older than me: a plain man, rather bookish and dour, and I think slightly in awe of this rough captain who had entered his house to claim his daughter. We took wine together. He asked about the war. There was no talk of the daughter until his wife appeared to take me to meet her. His wife was a plain woman, very shy. I began to despair of my father’s choice. In his dreams each man wishes a beautiful wife, one of whom he can be proud, one who pleases his senses as well as his house.

  I prepared myself for the worst.

  She was in the garden. She sat on a bench in a bower of orange trees, their blossoms pungent; their webbed branches holding the twilight magically. I felt in that instant like a boy, giddy with anticipation, an odd mixture of fear and hope mingling and making the heart beat just a little faster, making my senses alert and crisp, so that when she stepped out of that dappled grove in a glance I was able to see everything and remember it, perfectly, to this day.

  She took my breath away.

  This all happened in seconds, yet I recall it seeming to last much longer. When she stepped into view she had covered her face with a fan and so, quickly, I studied the rest of her. Her gown was of green moiré silk. It rustled like restless leaves. The fastenings down the front were embroidered in silver which sparkled like early stars in the twilight. They raised to a low cut bodice and beneath the dress a lace chemise. The fan itself was organza inset with pearls. It concealed all of her face but her eyes. And it was her eyes which took me.

  Her eyes were green. They were cool. Lagoons of sea green, touched with sparkle, just like the sea if the sea were perfect. Her hair was shot through with auburn, her flesh pale and almost porcelain. I have seen its like only in those delicate figures which arrive sometimes from Cathay. She seemed so fragile, so feminine, I feared one touch would shatter her.

  And then she lowered the fan. She smiled. This will stay in my memory forever. It was not just her mouth that smiled, her lips full and curved like scallops of sand on a shore, but the coolness of her eyes changed to that emerald flash one glimpses, if he is watchful, as the sun sets upon the New World’s sea. Her flesh dimpled a little at the corners of her mouth, and within her smile there seemed a quick flame that glowed and reached out to touch me so I was infected and smiled as well, just to keep the warmth, hold the rose in her cheeks. She smiled as if she smiled only for me.

  She was beautiful.

  I thought then that beauty meant something. I thought it meant sensitivity, a softness of soul not to be found in harsh features like my own. It was hard to think otherwise in the face of such symmetry, such radiance as lived in the smile of Leonor. The sea has great beauty, yet it is capable of other things: of storms, of rip tides, of hidden shoals. The sky is vast, and yet one lives beneath but a small part of it. How was I to know then that Leonor was merely beautiful flesh, that within lay a soul like bitter herbs and a mind obsessed with smallness. I did not realise she could call up that smile when it suited her, only when it suited her, and the rest of the time she used her cool eyes to hide her feelings just as the sea conceals its dangers beneath placid waves.

  In time we married. In bed that first night there was nothing. She lay still and silent while I raged on top of her trying to make it love. I thought it was merely the loss of virginity. But it kept on. She would submit but it was only that: submission, duty, disdain. It was not long before I went back to the war.

  War loves me.

  While I was gone my son was born. I did not see him until he was three. She named him Luis. He had eyes like hers. The first time I saw him he shook my hand. I have never kissed my son.

  With time her obsessions grew. She had married a man from whom she’d expected great things. She wanted the best of Venetian glass, silver from Milan, plate from Cathay, Antwerp tapestries and Rhenish chalices. She wanted each thing about her to be as beautiful as she. I was a soldier. A very good soldier. I had my share of booty. But it was never enough. And when she discovered my ineptitude at court her disappointment in me was complete. The business of her marriage was bankrupt.

  She told me that, many times.

  Only once was she happy. It was when I had earned the governorship of the island of San Juan Bautista. Only then did she deign to come here to the Indies to share life with me. She was the one who demanded a capitol at San Juan de Puerto Rico. She wanted a house like those she had known in Spain. I built it. It cost many natives their lives. It cost me financial damage. But I saw her smile again. Once.

  And when I lost my position as governor, she left for home. I lost it through intrigue at court, through Diego Colon, the son of Columbus my friend, through snivelling men a thousand leagues distant who plotted without my knowing. Yet Leonor blamed me. She had raised my son and my daughters to loathe me. She had taught them gentility and intrigue, the things at which she was so adept. Oh, it was my fault as well. I was absent too often. I never knew them. I was too busy fighting my wars. And when I was home I could not find the way to show them how much I had missed them. I fell into the only method I knew. I became like my own father. My children grew distant as I had done.

  I have never been one to express emotion. I thought, when we married, Leonor would change that: make me more human, give me the softness I have always felt but not shown. How was I to know, on that quiet evening in a twilit garden, there are those in this world who do not even feel?

  And yet each time I break open an orange to drink of its juices and eat its sweet meat, its pungency reminds me of her; of that first evening before I knew her when, for a moment, I was in love.

  The boom of a ship’s gun curtailed his writing. He heard shouting from the deck. Another problem, he thought, sighing as he rose from the table. It was time to return to command. He had just reached the door when it flew open. A young sailor stood there, flushed and breathless, his red sock cap awry on his head. Quickly he removed it.

  “Your honour!” he said.

  “What is it, boy?”

  “Pilot Sotil sent me to get you!”

  “I can see that. What is the trouble?”

  “No trouble, your honour. He wishes you on deck.”

  “Why was that bombard set off?”

  “A ship, your honour. The lookouts have seen a ship!”

  “What ship?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I was sent to find you.”

  “And you have.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “One thing, young man ...”

  “Sir?”

  “If you are called again to seek me out, knock on my door and wait to enter.”

  “Yes, captain-general, I’m sorry. It’s just ...”

  “Never mind now, but remember.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And boy ...”

  “You’re honour?”

  “Would you mind removing yourself from the passage so I might get to the deck?”

  With the ship’s boy at his heels Juan Ponce climbed the gangway. As he reached the deck a second gun fired: its concussion splitting the air, smoke billowing from its mouth and drifting away in a ghostly whiteness. He climbed to the after deck. Sotil was there, smiling. He pointed into the starboard distance handing Juan Ponce a telescope. A soft boom reached across the waves answering their signal. Juan Ponce trained the glass on the horizon and glimpsed a brief whiteness against the sky. Sails.

  “Sotomayor?”

  “Who else could it be, captain-general?”

  “Who else indeed. We’ll wait a little to be sure.”

  “Of course.”

  “Some luck finally, eh Sotil?”

  “I have no doubt, Don Juan.”

  “And now you’ll tell me the dolphins have brought him,” Juan Ponce said, smiling.

  “Superstition, sir. Superstition.” Sotil’s eyes twinkled.

  “I bow to your knowledge,” Juan Ponce said. “Alaminos was right about you.”

  But he was thinking of d
olphins. If dolphins could do this then so might the witch bring him rendezvous with his destiny. At last he dared to hope. The witch did not have cool, sea green eyes hiding every emotion.

  Hers were as black as pitch.

  8

  Not to know what happened before one was born is to remain a child.

  —CICERO

  Autumn — The Present

  In the lethargy of a hot afternoon Ross Porter sits in the veranda’s shade. The Florida books have whetted his appetite. Not everyone takes an interest in history. But for some, like Ross, there is a joy to envisioning the past. He knows he is only beginning, a rank amateur in this new world he has discovered, but he has that gift which allows him glimpses of lives which to others are merely dust. He has read all morning. He has even joined Emily on the beach soaking up some sun, enjoying himself.

  That evening they eat at a seafood place nearby. The decor isn’t much, a touch too trendy for them, but the crab legs and swordfish steaks are superb. The room’s openness creates a soft cacophony of diners conversing, silverware clinking, and occasionally some laughter. In the midst of the restaurant Ross and Emily have made a separate solitude. Ross is talkative, alive with what he has learned.

  “A shell culture, Em, these Calusa didn’t have pottery. They lived in the coastal swamps on shell mounds. Apparently they built whole towns on them. Their weapons, their plate ware, tools, jewellery; everything made from shells, wood or bone.”