Immortal Water

by Norman Brian Van

  Why was it, thinking of Leonor, then Emilia, why was it he could not dominate them as he did men in war? For they had both made war upon him. What forces had fashioned them to become so sly and evasive, even as they’d pretended to love him? How could they have been taught such cunning when he, destined for command and governance, never was? Why had he never understood them as he had his comrades, his soldiers, or even his animals? Leonor had twisted him with her ploys. Emilia had bewitched him with her plots. Together, they had defeated him.

  Once a famed conquistador, then a veteran explorer, then rising in rank to governor, he’d been reduced to believing in myths, in magical waters, and new beginnings. They had done that. Or had he done it himself?

  Had it all been the fantasies of an old man; of a man so desperate not to become powerless yet in the very act of trying to prevent it, becoming precisely what he had feared? He wondered who would remember him for the things he had done in the trivial length of his life.

  And yet there had been good, wonderful things: Columbus and his New World, Sotomayor’s loyalty, Becerillo’s unconditional affection, Medel’s fearless love of the sea, Nunez de Guzman’s kindness and care, Ovando’s nobility, Balboa’s friendship. Every instance was cause to rejoice were it not for the other side to his life. Emilia, Leonor, his children, Diego Colon, las Casas, even the bureaucrats who had come to replace the true pioneers. Nothing was new, only experience, but experience was simply the loss of innocence.

  There was no magical fountain.

  There were only the dreams of an ageing man, feeling the aches of his plod through the swamp. This was his reality, he realized: an old man past his prime, in is dotage, not at all what he’d dreamed of becoming.

  “I am too young to be old!” he muttered, for despite the physical aches and emotional pains, he still felt vitality in his soul. Old age had come upon him so stealthily. He had been too vain to accept it thinking, somehow, that he was the exception. Until now. It was all almost too much to bear ... not so much his mortality as his ageing and knowing he would be forgotten.

  At the edge of the cypress he paused for a rest. He sat on a mossy tree trunk. Surrounding him was the grey mist of dusk. He ached for himself.

  When he saw the panther, it was by accident. It had not been there and then, suddenly, it was. At first he was shocked at the sight of a lion in this accursed place but then he recalled the dragons of the river, the herbaceous faces of the Calusa, the witch standing in a canoe on the water, and knew he must expect anything here. He cursed himself for having been careless. The panther had been hunting him and he, in his self-immersion, had missed it.

  It was tawny and sleek and its baleful eyes reflected the dusk in pools of lethal light. It was motionless: not a muscle moving, not a blink of an eye. It crouched on a large, downed tree, the tree angling up, caught in other trees’ branches. The panther looked down upon him like death, patiently waiting. For what was he to it but another swamp creature: slow and slogging and stupid?

  As he struggled up the big cat pounced. It seemed an impossible distance and yet the panther seemed to fly. Then it was on him, knocking him backward with the power of its weight, claws catching on chainmail, screeching on the steel of his helmet. Its breath was hot and hungry. With a gauntleted hand he punched at it desperately before it could bite into his face. He grasped its muscled neck and tried to keep its teeth away. He rolled with it and as quickly as it had attacked, it leapt away from him. But it did not leave. It glowered and circled and snarled, its movements fluid though, for the moment, tentative. The panther did not understand this big tortoise proving so difficult to kill.

  It tensed again, its tail twitching as it readied itself. Juan Ponce, in the few seconds provided him, drew his blade. The cat came at him again so fast he could not find the time nor space to thrust. It clawed again at his mail and bit into his thigh. Its teeth punctured his skin drawing gouts of blood. The blood seemed to drive the cat mad. It had found a vulnerability in this huge armoured tortoise and would tear him apart.

  He was able to swing his arm free, shift his grasp as he held his sword like a huge knife, then thrust the blade into the panther’s flank. It screamed, a yowling howl of pain, yet it would not release him. He stabbed again. Toledo steel into its heart. For an instant it looked at him. Confused and dying, it did not understand this beast which struck back. It tried to escape the deadly skewer. Blood gushed from its mouth. It convulsed, then collapsed, upon him. The twilight of its eyes went dark.

  He shoved it off, wrenching the sword from its tawny body. He rolled away from it, shaking with the adrenalin rush. It took him a moment to settle himself; enough to examine his thigh. Blood surged from wounds made by the panther’s incisors. He rose and hobbled to the swampy water. Removing his scarf he dipped it into the water, then brought it to his leg to clean the wounds. He spent several minutes at this, pulling bits of cloth from the gashes, then tying his scarf tightly around his thigh to staunch the bleeding.

  Once finished he rose, testing his leg. It hurt like the devil. Still, of anything in his life, he was accustomed to physical pain and these wounds had awakened him. He looked once more at the panther. It was not Death Incarnate. It lay in the dirt, a mere animal now.

  He looked up at the sky. With the coming dark he glimpsed the first of the stars. He was an explorer. With his experience he would navigate out of this mire and back to the river. He recalled the direction he, Sotomayor and the witch had come. He waited a while longer until he discovered the pole star. He was no longer helpless. He had killed a panther. He was no toothless swamp creature. He was a man.

  Magic water or none, he had come here to conquer and colonize. He possessed the patents and, despite what the witch had said, he would own this land. He would vanquish it and govern it and grow rich from it. He was finished with brooding. He was finished with doubt. He was Juan Ponce de Leon and it was time, once again, to prove it.

  With his sword he hacked a stout branch from a tree. He sheathed the sword and, using the branch as a crutch, made his way over the uneven terrain by the light of the stars, back toward the river. He did not look back at the panther. Careful to focus upon his surroundings so as not to be prey to some other beast, he thought only of what was to come.

  “Sotomayor is dead. The witch is gone. And every Calusa we find we will slaughter.”

  Las Casas heard the words as Juan Ponce de Leon stared at him with iron eyes. The captain-general had been wounded somehow. He’d staggered into the camp, limping, a branch helping him along. Yet he did not seem to feel any pain, thought las Casas. Indeed, there was something else in his mind. Something terrible.

  “We will hunt them down like the animals they are. We will scourge this land, our land, of every one of them.”

  “But the Church has said ...” Las Casas tried to interrupt.

  “The Church has no business in this.”

  “In the name of ...”

  “You fool. You think Columbus risked all for your Church? You think it was on Cortez’ mind while he slaughtered? You believe it the reason for any of this at all? Your Church is a parasite, las Casas! Were it not on the side of the mighty, it would be nothing!”

  “And yet once,” the friar said, “it was not. Indeed it was the opposite: a small band against an empire even greater than ours.”

  “Stop your infernal arguments, friar! That was then! Now, rather than mercy, it employs Inquisition! That is your Catholic Church. It has changed from lamb to lion!”

  The blasphemy astounded las Casas. He thought the old man had gone mad.

  “What happened to you out there?” he said softly, afraid of the conquistador’s rage.

  “Humiliation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We are leaving.”

  “What of Sotomayor? Where is the woman?”

  “Dead! Gone! It was a trap!”

  “You must rest, Don Juan, you are wounded.”

  “You understand so little. The
witch set a snare for me so complex I failed to foresee it. The Calusa will do the same if those colonists on the coast are not ready. We are leaving! Now! If we do not, everyone will be massacred!”

  34

  Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven.

  —SHAKESPEARE

  Summer —The Present

  Ross Porter has reached the nucleus.

  It is a cathedral, this place, its immense black bark pilasters buttressing an emerald leafy dome; all down from that high ceiling run adornments of climbing vines and dusky flags of Spanish moss. Its windows are openings in the leaves where the sun dazzles through to light ensconced flowers. Its stations are rising hammocks set apart from the flat of the liquid floor. And it contains secretive places too, confessionals set in the darkest grottoes and below its vegetal base and black water, the crypts which contain the remains of its tenants.

  Its choir consists of a flock of storks nesting high in the tops of the trees. From their lofty stalls they drone chants echoing through the temple. Accompanying them is the organ sound of croaking frogs, their vocal chords sounding like old, dry pipes opened by comical fingers playing on stiffened keys.

  The pilgrim enters the nave, a huge grassy marsh in the swamp’s very centre. The sky opens out above him a cyanic blue and the rushes whisper in the breeze of the open place. Dragonflies dart about him on iridescent wings. He clutches his votive offering in his left hand, a rusty relic from another time, and his right arm pushes the rushes aside as he moves to the centre of the expanse. He can see, not far off, an oasis of trees, the altar on which he must place himself, knowing it is the heart of this feral temple. He slogs toward it. He is parched. He is dirty and tired as all pilgrims are when they reach the climax of their wanderings but his faith is immaculate. He knows without doubt he has reached the source.

  The laughter of running water.

  At his feet now is a burbling diaphanous spring, a fountain a few inches high in the midst of grey limestone. Ferns and flowers mark its circumference. The rippling pool is clear and unclouded but the depth from which the fountain gushes he has no way of telling, for the fountain itself conceals its well in the sparkle and dance of its effluence. In the water the rocks are gilded with a pearl shimmer. A rainbow of coloured crystalline pebbles lines the sides of the pool. They appear like jewels from the greater depths thrown up by the force of the water. The pilgrim kneels beside the pool to look deeper into its mysteries.

  He wonders what properties it might contain. This close the water’s aroma is acrid. At first this disturbs him but he soon discerns it must constitute elements which come from the core of the earth. He inhales the pungent, subterranean fragrance. He has come here to drink of this secret water. Preparing to drink, he kneels and cups his right hand. But before he does he takes time to relish the moment of sweet culmination. Then he looks at the surface, at the point where he intends to plunge his hand and sees something which freezes that hand in the air.

  He sees life in the pool.

  On the skin of the water are insects: tiny, ephemeral water striders skimming almost aimlessly. But the pool itself is not smooth for them. It undulates with the waves from the surging spring. He examines the creatures closely. Their travel is not so simple: moments of brief flight where they might catch glimpses of the whole pool, and then other moments of little submersions, minuscule half-drownings. Then they struggle again to the surface, and on the surface sharp little pushes against the ripples propel them a mere few inches. These are the smallest of creatures.

  He catches sight of his own reflection: imperfect, it floats on the surface distorted by the wavelets. He peers down at the grey of his temples, at the lines in the wavering face and the eyes which stare back at themselves, refracted by memories of the life behind them. He looks at the familiar face of a stranger.

  In the scheme of things is he any more than these transient sprites? He has had their flights of comprehension as he raised himself fleetingly above the travel and beheld the far, far distance. And he has suffered the awful submersions, the harsh baptisms below the ripples, glimpsing the depths. But mostly he has just pushed along on the surface, moving here and there almost thoughtlessly, sometimes with purpose, sometimes without. The water sprites live fleeting lives. He does not know how long but suspects it is merely weeks. And in that time they are born, procreate and die. The ripples move them. They move with the ripples.

  I am in the birth room when my son enters the world. He has no name; he has nothing human. He is wet and bloody before they clean him and cut his umbilical. He surfaces for the first time. He already knows how to breathe.

  I was like that once: at the source.

  I see now what I have become.

  Emily is taken from me so I begin to lie to myself.

  Then I take myself away from Robert. I make my boy cry.

  Oh, how I wish I could cast off my armour.

  I obsess in a search for the ephemeral.

  Sometimes I think I have gone too deep.

  The sprites swim away from the fountain. It is far too tumultuous there. They travel out to the edge where the water is calmer. They lose the source as they find the shore.

  Is that what death is? A shore?

  Yet the water escapes through gaps in the rocks and is lost beneath the ferns. The water transforms, touched by what it touches; still water but changed, not the same as its source. It feeds the marsh rushes and circulates through them to make the swamp and then flows in a soft indeterminate current to streams and rivers running to the sea. It evaporates then into the vastness of sky. It becomes rainclouds and that rain falls and touches the ground and percolates down once again into the earth.

  And begins again.

  Cycles.

  We all know the truth.

  It is not profound.

  At the source.

  At the edge of forever.

  Ross Porter looks up from the water. He rises and shifts his gaze to the sky. There is daylight enough to leave safely. He knows he will find his way back. In his hand he still holds the rusted sword hilt. He studies it quizzically, turning it this way and that, the way an archaeologist would. He smiles at it: a collaborative smile. He will not keep it.

  It is not his to keep.

  He tosses it into the pool. The water sprites dance with the splash. It sinks: turning and turning and for one brief instant seems to gleam in its former glory. It comes to rest on a bed of pebbles. The water is a good home.

  Though he is thirsty, Ross Porter rises from the edge of the pool.

  He does not need to drink.

  Instead, he turns and walks back to the rest of his life.

  Smiling.

  35

  Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

  —THOMAS

  Summer — The Past

  I write this now as I weaken. The poison works through me, making my limbs grow cold. I lie on this bed in the bowels of my ship. Sotil commands now. He knows I am dying. He is trying to make for the nearest port. I will not reach my home. I will not see San Juan de Puerto Rico again. My friend Sotomayor has died from a serpent. He called it justice. My own serpent was a different style: it was long and straight and barbed at the end and sailed through the air like destiny to embed itself in my thigh. Poisoned spear. Precisely where the lion had wounded me. Oh, these Calusa are cruel.

  I will try to tell what happened. Yet my mind wanders. I cannot govern it. My hands do not function as I wish. I write slowly and bitterly lying upon this narrow bed. I write to those who come after me now, as a warning, and as a confession.

  We arrived at the beach in the morning. We had travelled down river all night, my men fearful of me. I could feel their dread. I believe they thought me a phantom, a wraith returned from the dank catacombs through which I had journeyed. Even then I was the walking dead; my mind filled with murder.

  The fortificatio
ns were incomplete. I summoned Alvarez and Sotil. They seemed surprised at my abruptness and said the natives had been friendly. When they had appeared they bore gifts. They had traded. The next day they came again with food. After a welcoming feast they departed.

  The construction of the defences was halted. The guard was stood down.

  Thus, when the Calusa warriors came we were not prepared. A caravel fired one of its guns. The shock boomed over the water. A sailor hailed us from his lookout atop a mainmast. He pointed wildly to the east. Across the bay a hundred canoes were racing toward us filled with painted devils.

  On the island they poured out of the trees in shrieking waves spreading carnage among us. They began to encircle us. Then Alvarez led a charge of nine horses along their lines. His men swept down at the savages slashing with swords and axes, scything heads as they galloped, driving them back momentarily. He died for his effort, his horse pulled from under him. And as he went down, disappearing amid a ring of Calusa, all I could see was their weapons rising and falling as they reduced Alvarez to pulp. But his action had given us time to regroup. Sotil ordered more cannon fire from the ships. Boats began to evacuate men from the beach. The wounded went first.

  I went first.

  My disgrace was complete, consummate, with the sting of that viper spear. No, that is not right. In this journal I swore to tell the truth. The spear felled me, true enough, but I was already mortally wounded. They carried me through the surf to a boat. They thought they carried their captain-general: Don Juan Hernando Ponce de Leon the famed conquistador, explorer, governor, legend. Instead, their freight was a wounded old man.