Immortal Water

by Norman Brian Van

  He arose in the dark, stumbling slightly, feeling the stiffness to which he had become accustomed. He groped for the lamp, found it, and with flint and steel made the spark to light it. The room flickered into being, unreal almost in the lamp light. The old man dressed quickly, groaning a little as he reached down to pull on his boots. He took a drink of water from the bucket kept for that purpose: cupping his hands, filling them, bringing them to his lips. Then he washed his face with his dampened hands, blinked once or twice to clear his eyes, brushed his hands together to dry them and went up on deck.

  It was quiet and overcast but a light breeze had filled the sails. Except for the night watch the rest of the ship was asleep. He relieved himself over the side and thought to join the helmsman at the tiller. He could see a lamp gleaming dully up there and the lighted face of the sailor looking down to check the compass rose keeping his vessel on course. Better not to disturb him.

  Something tugged at his mind.

  It was not age or the sacred water. This time it was something else. The sea sang to him in whispers with the soft pound of water upon the hull below. A hypnotic, timeless song troubled by the flutter within his brain. Far off he could make out the lights of Sotomayor’s caravel moving in its long, soft glide. He stood a while in the night’s quiet; then remembered.

  He sighed with that bitter recollection and quietly went below again to the table where his journal lay open. And when he wrote, laboriously, the quill grasped between his fingers, it seemed that pain drained down from his face through his shoulders, arms and fingers and into the ink that spilled onto the page.

  If, as I am told by las Casas, that Satan exists, I have met him, or at least his children. They are called Carib. Even their island, in these lovely Indies of soft shores and pleasant vistas, was a warning: a huge mountain glowering, gloomy and sulphurous, like some Lucifer rising from the sea. And the Carib, not content with their brown skins, have dyed their flesh with roucou. Their faces are painted with white and black stripes over the red. These Carib know what they are.

  Man eaters.

  There is irony here.

  It was to have been an expedition of deliverance. For once, conquest was not the motive. The Carib were marauders known for raiding islands and carrying off the inhabitants. Ovando decided to end their tyranny. I was given two ships and two hundred men to form an expedition. And when we arrived beneath that malevolent mountain and anchored, it was a soft night with a gentle breeze that let us lie to in a cove rimmed by jungle. I met with my captains to plan our reconnaissance of the morning, everyone confident and in good cheer; even Becerillo who, full of meat scraps from the table, slept on the deck beneath my hammock.

  He’d been my companion seven years; a good comrade, a veteran of war. He terrified the natives who had never seen anything like him and when set upon them he would bring them down as a wolf would a deer, one after another until called to heel. He was a massive dog, rippling with muscle and large as a calf, his coat black with tawny splashes about it. Yet for all his ferociousness he had a kind of softness to him as well. He would chase a stick when it was thrown: return it and then pretend to place it on the ground only to slip it away as my hand would reach for it. It was his game: fool the master. It was almost as if he could laugh. That night he snored beneath me. He was a comfort to me as I stroked his huge head and just before I went to sleep I listened past him to the murmur of waves lapping against a sand beach.

  Gentle waves lapping. That is what has brought me to this book tonight. More irony.

  In the morning I sent a small reconnaissance troop ashore to explore, under Sotomayor’s command. This was standard practice. But I did not think to give him Becerillo, did not think a whole tribe would lie waiting. It was not to be the last of my miscalculations.

  Sotomayor did not return that night. This had never happened before. I began to fear for his life and those of his men. I dared send no others after him; not in the dark on an island populated by hostiles. I determined to land in force the next morning. I worried myself awake through the night, listening, always listening for something to tell me what might have happened; hearing only the waves on the shore, each one lapping the shore, each wave like a ticking clock as I waited impatiently for answers.

  At dawn my advance party found Sotomayor on the beach; the only one left of his squadron. Badly wounded, he had crawled down a stream bed after the ambush which had taken his men. He told me they had passed through a deserted village where around them on racks hung human limbs, pieces of men strung up like meat in a butcher’s shambles. They saw mounds of skulls. His men were stunned by this. It brought on an extraordinary fear among them. Many wanted to turn back but Sotomayor, having his orders, would not think of it. They pushed on. Not far past that village in a narrow ravine a hundred warriors came down on them. Swarmed by the red men so suddenly, their fear from the village broke them and they ran in panic, the worst thing to do. Each was hunted down by the Carib. Like animals. Like meat.

  I resolved to sweep every inch of that abominable island to wreak massacre on the Carib tribe. We would kill them all, kill everything; leave nothing but death in our wake. In my passion I had no plan but vengeance. The men were ordered into armour. We landed our boats on the beach and formed up. Becerillo was given the scent, let loose and soon vanished into the forest. I knew he would find our enemies; his howl would lead us to them. He had done the same work so often before.

  An hour passed with no sign from the dog. I’d just considered a move inland when a horde of natives erupted from the trees, hundreds of them in vermilion waves howling and yelping like beasts. I ordered the men into phalanx. Carib spears flew. A few men were hit but mostly the bolts clattered off our armour. The savages stopped, confused by the wall of steel confronting them. Yet there were far too many for my little army to attack or even hold off. We had to get off that beach. Still I realised not all of us could escape. Once the better part of my force had embarked what would become of the rear guard? I sent orders off with the first departing boat commanding the ships’ bombards to fire.

  As the Carib threatened, moving ever closer, I heard a gun boom and a brace of grapeshot cut a swath through their ranks. There were screams, splashing blood and limbs flying. It stopped them. They were amazed at the sudden mangled bodies in their midst. A second gun fired and they ran. The shore was strewn with scarlet bodies. My men cheered and would have pursued the savages into the trees. I halted them. It would be too dangerous to follow those hostiles into the interior they knew so well. They had bested Sotomayor, they had fooled Becerillo; the only thing that had stopped them was cannon. I had need of a better plan. We launched the rest of our boats in retreat.

  Part way out I decried the baying of Becerillo. I saw him break from the trees to the shore. He was chasing a warrior. Once on the beach the savage ran into the water, Becerillo following. I had the boat turned about and we started back for my hound, even now seeking victory in the midst of his master’s defeat. He swam after the warrior. My men cheered him on. But the savage turned and raised himself part way out of the surf and, somehow keeping himself erect, shot an arrow into Becerillo’s throat. The dog closed on him still, swept his great bulk upon the man and closed gaping jaws around his head. The two disappeared beneath the waves. We saw blood foam up on the water but neither surfaced. We did not see them again.

  Gallant Becerillo. When he died, something in me died with him. I cannot explain it, but that death emptied me. Why it should be I do not know. I only know it changed me. After that I no longer went to war. I had tired of war and, in my weariness, had become less astute at its subtleties. My lack of a proper plan with the Carib had informed me of my flaws, and the death of my dog reinforced my failure.

  I turned my ships home. I did not look back on that cursed island. I returned in disgrace to the duplicity of Diego Colon, the hollowness of a destitute marriage and the exhaustion of my defeat. I returned to the insults of my son.

  And never, si
nce then, have I fought battles not my own.

  I am different after Becerillo.

  As she watched the big Spaniard scribbling again, Mayaimi considered how weak he’d become. Once he’d been sovereign of his realm, ruling with that same care she’d noted was so much like Calos, her father. Yet she’d watched the Spaniard over the years be reduced to a troubled, distracted leader, tied up in papers which seemed to her to have more power than his weapons. At times she found herself almost pitying him but those occasions did not last long, for with each subtraction from his powers she knew he was becoming more desperate, and in his confusion her own efforts would find success.

  He began to lose his former skills and those other, significant ones taught her by her mother: that there are ways to accomplish your will if you are prudent and shrewd. Those traits the big Spaniard did not possess. And gradually he lost his self-worth, succumbed to those diminutive scribblers he’d hired who, to her, were insignificant. He should have just killed them. She would have. Calos would. Sometimes she found she did not comprehend this man; sometimes there were facets to him which escaped her. Still, he should have been on the deck this morning ruling his men, not down here scribbling like a weakling.

  “You are at that scratching again,” she said, disrupting him, making him look up from his work to realise it had become day. The lamp still flickered but the cabin was bright with morning light. She peered past him to the page. “What can be so important in scratches?”

  She reached out to tear the page, fingers grasping the parchment. He clutched her wrist, twisting, bending her back as he rose from the chair. He might be an old man but he was still physically powerful. With his other hand he slapped her sharply across her face.

  “Leave alone what you don’t understand,” he said evenly.

  She scowled at him in defiance.

  “You do not sleep. You do not lead your men! Instead you bury yourself down here and scratch and scratch! You promised my homeland in return for the sacred water.”

  “That will come.”

  “When?”

  “You try my patience.”

  “We will never reach my land!” she said.

  “The ship moves even now,” he responded harshly. “Go up on deck and see for yourself. Get out of here, woman, and leave me in peace!”

  She broke from his grasp and went to the door. As she opened it she looked back at him. Her eyes glimmered like hot coals, sorceress eyes, and then she was gone leaving him with an odd apprehension. He noticed then his pulse pounding and a familiar hollow feeling in his stomach. It was ever thus after an argument. A physical fight always left him calm, his enemy beaten to the dirt before him. Yet when called upon to simply dispute a point of law or some intricate contract he was left with a sense of doubt that somehow he’d never satisfied the fundamentals essential to win his point. And, it seemed, that weakness in his character was all that was left to him now: the subtle squabbles of courtiers and officials settled in audencias, with him always feeling he’d been outmanoeuvred, tricked by gambits of rhetoric he’d never needed before. He pulled a small cask of fortified wine from his sea chest and poured a draught for himself. The liquor was golden and dusky and burned down his throat. He knew it would settle him.

  “Medicine for old men,” he muttered peevishly.

  His hand trembled.

  In Santo Domingo the conspirators plotted, hoping that I, Don Juan Hernando Ponce de Leon, Governor of Higuey and San Juan, Knight of the noble house of Leon, Captain-general of the Indies, was finished.

  I was not finished.

  Despite his rejection of me following my return from the Carib debacle, I had learned certain things from my son’s insults. He’d told me to go to Spain to fight another fight against the new proprietors of the Indies; win my way through with subterfuge.

  Putting my losses behind me, I voyaged to Spain and once there I worked to retain my lands and possessions.

  But not before certain other business.

  I knew even then that Colon and his minions would not be restrained. They would try me again from some other direction. And so I prepared for them. In Seville, just before I departed for home, I paid a visit to Don Pedro. He’d arranged a meeting for me with Archbishop Fonseca. I shared a flagon of rare Rhenish wine with the Archbishop. I stayed to dinner and answered his questions. He was most intrigued by the new Indies opening out before him on maps. But maps were not enough for his kind of agile mind. He wanted more. He wanted description and erudition. He asked for specifics regarding supply and communication. He did not, as I thought he might, wish to know about the Church and its place in our New World.

  I told him tales of the pilot Alaminos and Vespucci the cartographer; the importance of Balboa’s discovery and the danger of Cortez’ mutinous path; the ruinous reign of Bobadilla and now the same thing from Colon. And in return he gave me what I asked. A patent. For a place I had come across while doing what I did best. I had, on a voyage long before, discovered a luxuriant, dangerous land and named it. It was, if I lost Boriquen, to be my future.

  He gave me the patent for Florida.

  Perhaps I am not, after all, so simple as my son suspects.

  18

  She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this, Thou know’st how dry a cinder this world is.

  —DONNE

  Winter — The Present

  The hospice room is impersonal beige. It is a monotonous room, semi-private, with an opaque curtain between the beds. There is a faint aroma of flowers. The flowers are withering. Ross Porter sits in a plastic tubular chair beside the bed. Emily is sleeping now. He gazes vacantly out the window at the white, bitter world that is home. Outside a blizzard howls and ice pellets rap against the window with frigid, merciless fingers.

  Three weeks ago they had come home. Ten days later, here: into the pastel uniforms and the stainless steel beds and strange apparatus of sickness, into the reassuring voices whose eyes told another tale, into this room with flowers wilting and tubes in her arms and plasma bags hanging from a chrome-plated tree.

  Into metastasis.

  As the cancer grew it contracted their world, collapsing it into this single room, and outside was a winter so different from the warm, sunny place they had left behind. She would not go to hospital in Florida. Too far away from her family and the comfort of ending where she had begun. She did not say this but he understood. The French teacher, too, understood. She was out of the house by the time they arrived having found an apartment and, leaving their home almost as she had found it, expressed in a note her sympathy. She was a fine young woman. He was sorry he had resented her.

  For a week they lived there, at home. Other than visits to the doctor, they saw no one but family. Robert and Anne came every day. Anne made dinner each evening. They would eat at the table with one empty chair. Emily took what food she could in her bed. Ross would serve her after dinner and the kids would go home to put Justin to sleep. The boy had come with them just once. Emily was so happy to see him. But she fell asleep while he visited her and he cried when she would not awaken. After that they thought it best to leave him at home.

  Ross took the phone calls which started coming and thanked everyone for their concern. Eventually he used the answering machine so he would no longer have to employ his brave voice. And quickly, so quickly Emily was brought to the hospice. The cancer had metastasised faster than any doctor had predicted.

  And now she sleeps in her own small world, in a beige room where consciousness comes and goes at a whim and agony has become her lover. She can hardly speak for the drugs. This morning she did not recognise Ross. The pain lover blocked all things out but itself. And Ross, sitting there exhausted, tormented, once again found himself impotent.

  “It’s me, Em,” he said softly. But her eyes were glazed and did not see him and even when he took hold of her hand there was nothing in return; just a small, dry hand lying in his own. He cried then; even while sitting at her bedside he felt alrea
dy abandoned. He cried for her, for her suffering, and cried as well for his empty future. He wished death for her to end her agony yet willed her more life for himself.

  And now he sits while she is asleep and looks out the window at the white world. It is silent here in this sterile room. The patient in the next bed is a stranger. She does not speak. She listens to her headphones behind the dividing wall of the curtain. The white cold pelts against the window. Despite the blizzard Ross remembers another time: he recalls Emily in their garden. Tulips bloom up to her knees as she stands in their midst, blooming as well: brown from the sun, pale yellow dress, smiling for the camera as he takes her picture.

  Glimpses.

  “Oh Ross, what a wonderful day!” she says laughing, and he laughs with her for on days like this which roll by long and sunny one never thinks beyond the mirage. Flowers do not die. Not really. They resurrect each spring. Emily’s eyes shimmer with life. Her body is beautiful. In a yellow sun dress. Ross kisses her softly her lips pressed to his, her back warm and smooth beneath his hands with the smell of her fresh as spring flowers and she is so ... alive.

  “Ross?”

  The murmur snaps him back to the white world and her gaunt face gazing up at him for the first time this day in recognition. At her temple he glimpses her pulse quivering. He takes her hand once again and is thrilled to his heart by its response. She squeezes his hand in return, weakly, but still she is present and loves him and he is no longer alone.

  “Emily,” he whispers.

  “How long was I sleeping?”

  “A while.”