Immortal Water
Page 28
Even now I do not know how many died. I was carried here where I lay now, an invalid on board a ship I once commanded. Las Casas administered to me. When he wrenched out the barb it was black with poison. He crossed himself and left the cabin. Las Casas can be a gentle man. Perhaps I was wrong about him.
The ship’s boy is now my physician. He is frightened of me, of my death as it hangs in the air about me, and so does not speak. He is young. He has dreams and aspirations. He watches death as it comes, quizzically, for he feels himself somehow removed from it. How could it be otherwise? He has his future before him. The end of a life must seem unreal to him: the fading away, the awful ebb. Though he watches over me as he has been ordered, though he cares for me gently and still is a little in awe of me, I can tell he sees past me, beyond; into the passionate distance.
As I did once.
I must sleep. The fever has grown. My mind wanders.
I have slept, the boy tells me, a very long time. He says I spoke in my sleep. The fever delirium gave me a dream. Yet now, awake, I recall it quite clearly. I was in a soft grove in the heart of a marsh. I was kneeling beside a pool of water. In its midst a fountain bubbled. As I peered down into the water I saw myself reflected there. And in that moment of self, looking back at self, I saw what I had become.
I saw the face of a stranger.
I have tried in these pages to bring some sense, some glimmer of meaning, to the life I have lived. I thought I commanded life.
One might as well command water.
As it seeps through one’s fingers.
I will ask the boy for some water to drink.
And then I will sleep again.
I am so tired.
The cabin was dim. Two men peered down at the form on the bed.
“How long has he been like this?” las Casas murmured.
“The boy says all night and all today. He cannot wake him. He’s dying.”
“I know. He didn’t ask me to hear his confession.”
“He wasn’t that kind of man.”
“It’s best to be rid of such as him.”
For a moment the pilot said nothing. He reached out and with his forefinger touched the hand of Juan Ponce de Leon.
“He was courageous. I’m glad I knew him.”
“You admire him?”
“Look at what he’s accomplished!”
“Look elsewhere for heroes, Sotil.”
“I have his journal.”
“The ship’s log you mean?”
“No, another. I read some of it. I think you are wrong about him.”
“Give it to me.”
“When I’ve finished it. There is something to learn from these pages.”
“Don’t be a fool! No one will read it.”
“I will.”
“Give it to me. I command in the name of our Holy Church! Submit, or face the consequences!”
For a moment the young man tightened his grasp on the book. His glare met the friar’s eyes and he saw in them a familiar danger. He was young. He had a bright future. He held the book out. Las Casas snatched it.
“What will you do with it?”
“Burn it. Burn it now, and scatter its ashes.”
Alone on the after deck by the stern rail, the dun coloured silhouette of the friar was framed by the dying rays of sunset. A gentle ruby light shot with streaks of amethyst shone around him and Sotil, looking up at him, could not help but think how the priest blocked the light. Then a smaller, harsh glow appeared in his hand: a torch flickering, reflected in his face. It burned like a minuscule auto da fe as he ripped each page from the journal and consigned it to his holy flame. And as they burned, down to his fingers, he would drop them one by one into the sea. And the ashes floated a moment on the surface, then disappeared; dissolving into the immortal water.
Acknowledgements
Ed Carson, retired Director of the Corkscrew Bald Cypress Swamp, Audubon Sanctuary
Michael Mirolla, an inspiration, as well as my editor
David Moratto, a designer who listens, then delivers
Mervat Haddad, technical and creative advisor
Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain
Archivo Fundación Luis Muñoz Marín
Archivo General de Puerto Rico
Archivo Histórico Arquidiocesano de San Juan (ARQSJ)
Columbus: The Four Voyages by Laurence Bergreen, Viking, 2011
Spain’s Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the Indies Fleets in the Sixteenth Century by Pablo E. Parez-Mallaina, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005
The Spanish Seaborne Empire by John H. Parry, University of California Press, 1990
Randell Research Centre: Florida Museum of Natural History
Waterloo Region District School Board
Cancer Medicine by Waun Ki Hong, MD, DMSc (Hon), Robert C. Bast, Jr, MD, William N. Hait, MD, PhD, Donald W. Kufe, MD, Raphael E. Pollock, MD, PhD, Ralph R. Weichselbaum, MD, James F. Holland, MD, Emil Frei III, MD
About the Author
Once a teacher, theatre director and adjudicator, Brian Van Norman left those worlds to travel with his wife, Susan, and take up writing as a full time pursuit. He has journeyed to every continent and sailed nearly every sea on the planet. His base is Waterloo, Ontario, Canada though he is seldom found there. This is his second novel.