A Singular Captain

by John Regan

  Chapter 14

  Easter had arrived again, the anniversary of the mutiny at Port St Julian and Magellan’s son’s birthday. Easter was a time to dwell upon the sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Saviour, the lamb who washed our sins away with his blood, but also on his own son, who was now two years old. Pigafetta was not a father but he appreciated what must be the captain general’s pain. What would Rodrigo look like now? He must be walking and talking; perhaps asking where his daddy was and his daddy didn’t even know where he was.

  Easter was the prime meridian not only for the church but also for the captain general and he required all hands to attend mass ashore each morning at the bedside of those still recovering from scurvy. They seemed to make rapid progress under the regimen, which he put down to the healing power of the word of God, discounting the effects of fresh food, rest, the balmy climate and freedom from terror.

  He regretted the slaughter of the natives of the Ladrones Islands. The reason for that unfortunate incident was that they had never been baptised; had never been brought to a knowledge of God’s loving kindness, and the greater tragedy was that they had died in their state of ignorance. Now, when natives came aboard to trade their pigs and chickens and goats for bolts of linen or red caps or mirrors, he led them in prayer, all on their knees with himself clasping his crucifix before him. These prayers were not translated by Henriqué because he could not speak Latin.

  The captain general issued strict guidelines to Barbosa and Serrano for conducting trade aboard their ships.

  “Our main purpose is to restock the ships with food and refill the water butts. You will notice that gold is plentiful in this land and they try to use it to buy our merchandise. You must not be too eager to trade gold, because once they learn we value gold they will drive the price higher.”

  Duarte chose to challenge him on this point as they sat over dinner one night in Trinidad’s great cabin; a rich dinner of roast pork, fruit, vegetables and palm wine such as they could not have dreamed of a few weeks before.

  “Brother-in-law, I don’t understand your restriction on trading gold. I mean, our purpose is to create trade for Don Carlos, and although cloves and nutmeg and cinnamon and pepper have been mentioned, surely the king is not averse to gold.”

  “All in good time. First, we must establish our authority over these lands. Just as Portugal has colonies in Kilwa, Cochin, Goa and Malacca I foresee Spanish colonies here, in the Moluccas and elsewhere to join the possessions in Hispaniola and Darien. Show some vision, Duarte. The whole world will be covered by the word of God.”

  “Why not leave the word of God to the priests and let us get on with making money?”

  “It behoves all of us to spread the word of God and bring these people to a knowledge of their Saviour.”

  “There is no money in it, brother-in-law.”

  “A man can not serve God and Mammon.”

  “That’s true. So I choose Mammon.”

  “And I choose God.”

  Pigafetta carried on his researches independently of arguments about God or Mammon. His current interest was coconuts. The coconut palm touched every aspect of these people’s lives and he described in his journal how they make wine from the tree by cutting the bark and suspending containers beneath to catch the dripping sap. When they want to make vinegar, they allow the sap to ferment and set it in the Sun until it turns into white wine, which they call arrack.

  The pith of the coconut they eat uncooked with meat or fish as we eat bread and it has the flavour of almonds. If they mix the pith with vinegar, they make a drink that is like goat’s milk. To make oil, they let the pith of the coconut ferment in water and then they boil it and it turns into butter. The shell of the coconut is covered with fibres like hair that they use to make ropes to tie up their ships. From the leaves of the tree they make thatch for their houses and also cloth, which they dye in bright colours and call tapa. The coconut shell is used for cups, idols with seashells for eyes and also for music like castanets. The coconut is truly a wonderful commodity and a whole family can sustain itself with two palm trees, using one tree one week and the other tree the next, and they have thus understood the art of husbandry.

  To Pigafetta, this cleverness set these people apart from the natives of Brasil and Patagonia and he regarded them as a valuable find. The archipelago was an enticing mystery stretching away into the distance, with other islands visible as silhouettes at sunset.

  On Holy Tuesday, the captain general decided to depart from this place. He realised that Garas-garas was a minor rajah, with only two islands in his kingdom. He had heard of other rajahs and bigger kingdoms farther west. The hospital tents were folded and the few remaining patients brought back on board. He parted from Garas-garas with expressions of great friendship.

  The navigation was slow in these uncharted waters. A boat had to be sent ahead to sound the channel and the ships proceeded at slow speed under reduced sail, anchoring up before nightfall each day. On Maundy Thursday, the fleet arrived off an island not as high as Humanhom, which was the native name for New Providence, but also with palm trees, sandy beaches and water so clear that gardens of bright coral could be seen on the bottom, with shoals of exotic fish. Careful to avoid the coral, which could rip out a ship’s bottom, they came to anchor where they could see smoke from a cooking fire on shore.

  A small prau with eight men aboard soon approached and hailed the ship. Henriqué answered in their language but the boat kept its distance even though the captain general and others on deck waved and beckoned.

  ‘They are just shy,’ the captain general decided. “Punzarol, we shall send them a gift. Select one of the small spars and tie a red cap and some bells and beads to it and launch in their direction.”

  Punzarol followed these instructions and all on deck watched as the men in the boat collected their gift, took it aboard their boat and then set sail and departed. Clearly, there were different ways of dealing with the natives.

  A couple of hours later, two larger boats filled with men approached from that direction under paddles. Magellan had learned the lesson of the Ladrones and ensured all loose items were removed from the deck.

  Evidently, this was another rajah, seated beneath a parasol, dressed in robes and wearing gold jewellery. How they loved their gold! His boat stood off a distance and the other approached, apparently with a lesser dignitary aboard. Magellan was beginning to understand there was a social order here, perhaps no less strict than in Europe.

  “Punzarol, we’ll give him a trumpet salute.”

  Punzarol mustered two ships boys for trumpet duty and the visitor received a captain’s salute as he climbed aboard. He was also dressed in robes and wore a kris – the curly-bladed dagger– in a sheath at his belt but had fewer gold adornments. He made an unhurried study of the ship and of the captain general and other men staring at him.

  “Selamat datang, orang asing,” he said, which Henriqué translated as, ‘Welcome, foreigner.’

  This, in itself, was a big advance, and perhaps these people had been informed by Garas-garas. Although the rajahs might live on separate islands, they communicated with one another. This was important to know.

  This was not the rajah but the son of the rajah, Colambu, waiting in the other boat for a signal that it was safe to approach the foreign devils. The captain general pressed gifts of woven goods, bells and mirrors upon the son of the rajah and said he was keen to become friends with Rajah Colambu.

  Next day was Good Friday and half the morning was taken up with divine service and the stations of the Cross, but when a native prau came nearby, the captain general instructed Henriqué to go ashore in it and ask the rajah if he had any food to please send it out to the ships, which had little food and hungry men owing to a long voyage across the sea.

  Henriqué came back with the rajah himself and the rajah’s son in the state barge paddled by eight men. They came aboard to a trumpet salute and embraced the captain general. Another boat had
three baskets of rice, two large fish, much fruit and coconuts and other things to eat. In return, the captain general gave a red robe, a yellow robe, a red cap, knives and mirrors and said he wanted to be friends with the rajah.

  Espinosa gave the same demonstration of invincible armour as he had given Garas-garas and Master Andrew gave the same demonstration of cannon fire, which had the same effect as it had on Garas-garas only this time three men jumped overboard in fright instead of two.

  The captain general brought out his charts and his globe and showed Colambu the compass, which had guided them across the ocean, and told him how he had found El Paso when everyone said it was not there and then sailed nearly four months across a huge sea and many men died from starvation and sickness. Colambu was mightily impressed and invited the captain general to come and visit.

  “Alas, I cannot leave my ship right now,” the captain general said, “but I shall send my notary.”

  As Rajah Colambu and his son, the datu, took their leave, the captain general said, “Pigafetta, I want you to go ashore with Henriqué. See what manner of town the rajah lives in; what defences, what weapons and how many warriors he commands.”

  “Is it war, Captain General?”

  “No. Just prudence.”

  When they reached the shore, the rajah and the datu raised their clasped hands to the sky as if in thanks for their safe arrival. Then the rajah took Pigafetta’s hand and the datu took Henriqué’s and they led them like children along a well-worn path among the trees to a village where the houses were built of planks and bamboo above the ground on piles, with palm-thatch roofs and with pigs, goats, chickens, dogs and children underneath. The rajah’s palace was not much different, only bigger, and it was necessary to climb a ladder to the rooms.

  They sat on cushions on the deck and Colambu clapped his hands, a servant appeared with a porcelain urn full of wine and served it out in coconut-shell cups. There seemed to be an etiquette to wine drinking and Pigafetta followed the rajah’s lead. Before he took a sip from his cup, Colambu raised his clasped hands to the sky and then turned to his drinking companions and thrust a hand out at each of them in turn. This was evidently a sign of friendship in this land and Pigafetta was happy to comply.

  As he handed over the gifts he had brought from the ship, Pigafetta wrote down their names in the local language. When he read the names back to them, Colambu and the prince were astonished, as had been the girl in Rìo, that strange markings on wax could represent objects. Pigafetta tried to explain through Henriqué, and probably failed, that words can represent not only things but also abstract ideas like love and hate, war and peace and, the most abstract idea of all, God.

  “Abba,” Henriqué said. “Their god is called Abba, and in some places where Moors live, God is called Allah.”

  “Yes, I know about Allah, and the Patagonian giants call it Setebos, and another word is Jehovah, but is it the same god or different gods?”

  Henriqué had no answer but the question troubled Pigafetta. The translator was a vital link between two cultures and this was a huge gulf between them.

  For supper they had platters of rice, pork in its gravy, roast fish with freshly dug ginger, breadfruit and more wine and after dark continued drinking and talking by rush light until Pigafetta’s sin of eating meat not merely on a Friday, but this most important of Fridays, seemed not to matter at all. They slept on mats with pillows of leaves and Pigafetta awoke in the morning with a sore head.

  The captain general had shifted the ships to another island nearby and the prince delivered them to that place, which had a different rajah called Siagu, who was not an enemy of Colambu but a friend, at least for the time being. Pigafetta reported to the captain general that these people were hospitable and friendly and their wine very powerful and, since there was some confusion over the word ‘god,’ they might be receptive to the Christian faith. He had seen no fortifications and no weapons apart from the kris, worn by many.

  The captain general was pleased by this news and sent Henriqué to inform Rajah Colambu that on Easter Sunday, tomorrow, the holiest day in the Christian calendar, he and his men would be coming ashore for an important ceremony to which Colambu and his people were invited. He instructed Padre Valderrama to prepare for Holy Communion with monstrance and censers and a colourful figure of the Virgin Mary and he selected fifty men to dress in their best clothes to escort the sacrament.

  They landed in two boats by an open area on the shore and arranged themselves with the priest and the sacrament flanked by lines of men and led by two musketeers in armour marching towards the place where the rajahs, Colambu and Siagu, awaited them with a crowd of their people who were curious to see the procession.

  The captain general embraced the two rajahs and had them sit in two chairs brought for that purpose and he bathed their feet in water as Jesus Christ bathed the feet of his disciples, only that was Maundy Thursday, not Easter Day. The priest began the mass and all went down on their knees and clasped their hands in prayer and repeated the holy words as a demonstration to the people. At the elevation of the Host, the rajahs remained on their knees like the Christians and praised their god, or Abba, with hands clasped in a pious manner.

  At the conclusion of the service, the musketeers fired in the air and the ships fired their cannons with a mighty roar, which frightened the native people so that many fled into the forest and others wailed in fear. It was some time before they gradually returned to view the rest of the ceremony.

  Next, the captain general showed a large cross, brought from the ship, which featured the crown of thorns and the nails that tortured Our Lord.

  “This cross,” he said, “is a symbol of our faith. Erect this cross in your land and it will protect you from thunder, lightning and tempest. It will protect you from your enemies, for this is the cross of the Holy Roman Emperor and is a sign to all Christian men that your protector is Don Carlos, King of Spain and the greatest Lord on Earth.”

  Rajah Siagu said that he did indeed have enemies on two islands to the north and if the captain general were to go in his ships and defeat them with his cannons then he would heartily thank him and his crew, only this was not the right season to attack. He would tell the captain general when the right season arrived.

  “First, one must become Christian. One must be baptised and accept Our Lord Jesus Christ as a personal saviour. One must be washed in the blood of the lamb. Should you wish to become Christian I will have my priest instruct you in our faith so you can take the vows, and then you will fall under the protection of Don Carlos.”

  The captain general took up the cross on his shoulder and, with the two rajahs and their retinues, together with the men from his own ships, climbed to the summit of the highest hill like Jesus Christ climbing the hill of Calvary. There they erected the cross looking out over the sea, said a Pater Noster and Ave Maria and worshipped the Holy Trinity– God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.

  On this island, pieces of gold as large as walnuts could be found simply by sifting the earth. The rajahs wore gold earrings and bracelets and some of the people had daggers with gold hilts, others had gold in their teeth. One of the sailors who went ashore to fill a water butt came back and said he had been offered a necklace of gold for a string of rosary beads. One of the people coming aboard to trade had a bunch of bananas that he wanted to exchange for an iron knife worth almost nothing. As a test, the captain general offered him a gold real from his purse but the man wanted the knife. The captain general offered him two gold ducats, which is the price Pigafetta paid for a rat when starving, but the man still wanted the knife. Eventually, the captain general gave him the knife, but then he issued instructions to his traders, who were half a dozen men chosen for their honesty. “Do not trade for gold,” the captain general said, “or else the price will go up. Trade red caps and Turkish shawls and Venetian glass for pigs and goats and chickens.”

  This was another curious matter to Pigafetta. In Europe,
people killed for gold but here it was almost worthless. Gold is useless for making knives or axes or cooking pots or anything of practical purpose. Gold is the ultimate expression of vanity, Pigafetta believed, and perhaps that was the reason for the captain general’s scorn.

  All day long these people chewed a fruit called areca, like a pear, wrapped in a leaf from the same tree, called betel. They chewed it and spat it out and it made their mouths and teeth all red and the frequented paths were red from spit.

  It was soon clear that these islands were not big enough for trade with three hungry ships. The captain general looked westwards to the sunset islands and asked the rajahs which was the best port for victualling his ships.

  “Rajah Humabon on the island of Cebu is the most powerful rajah in these parts,” they said. “But the navigation is difficult.”

  “Then I will require a pilot who knows the channel.”

  “I can be your pilot,” Rajah Siagu said, “but first I must harvest the rice. If your men help my people harvest the rice I can go with you in your ships.”

  The captain general agreed to send some of his people to help the rajah harvest the rice but when they arrived ready for work they found the two rajahs drunk from arrack so they slept through the day and no work was done. The captain general was angry but next day Rajah Siagu came in his prau and showed the way and the rice was not yet harvested.

  On this voyage they passed by many lush islands and many praus but always in fine weather and calm sea until they arrived at the port of Cebu at midday, sailing by the shore on one side past many villages and houses built on posts out over the water so the people only had to drop a fishing line down through the floor to catch a fish, and on the other side by a smaller island where the houses were hidden among the trees. The captain general signalled for Victoria and Concepción to take up battle formation, in line astern, and they sailed along the shore discharging their bombards without stones as a salute to the rajah of this land and his people.

  By a bigger village, Siagu came to Trinidad in his prau and said this was the city of Humabon, who was lord of the island of Cebu and some other islands too. The captain general brought the ships to anchor and then, as was now his custom, he sent Pigafetta and Henriqué ashore with gifts for the rajah, to invite him on board to talk of peace, but also to see what arms and defences the rajah possessed. “You may also enquire discreetly about gold,” he said, “but be careful not to seem too eager.”

  This city was bigger than any they had so far seen and the houses more substantial. Many were raised above ground on pilings, and built of planks or bamboo with thatch roofs, so that access was by ladder. Under the houses they kept their goats, pigs, chickens and dogs. People stared, and snatched their children out of harm’s way as the two strangers made towards the biggest and most imposing building to a welcome by chickens and dogs.

  They almost reached the palace before being challenged by a huge, bare-chested man with a wicked-looking weapon hanging from his belt.

  “Who are you? And why do you make such noise to frighten the people?”

  Henriqué made obeisance, bowing from the waist with hands clasped before him, and Pigafetta followed suit.

  “We come from across the sea to trade with the great Rajah Humabon,” Henriqué said.

  “You speak like a man from Java.”

  “Majapahit, but my master is a servant of Don Carlos, king of Spain.”

  “And who is this?” He jerked a thumb at Pigafetta.

  “A servant of the same master, but harmless.”

  “And why do you make such noise?”

  “It is our custom to honour great rajahs like your own. We only wish to trade our merchandise.”

  This seemed to satisfy the guard or official or major domo or whatever he was, and also the people who began creeping forward for a better view of these two men, one a white devil and the other a proper person dressed in baggy pants and strange vests. Children peeped at them from behind their mothers’ skirts.

  Rajah Humabon received them on the upper deck of his palace. He was not a young man; rotund, with gold earrings and bracelets and three spots of gold inlaid in his front teeth. In a sash at his waist he wore the curly bladed dagger, the kris, with a gold hilt and jewel-studded sheath. He and his courtiers sat on embroidered cushions and by a motion of his hand he invited his guests to sit.

  To Pigafetta, it seemed little different from the rituals played out in Valladolid or the Vatican. Henriqué explained that the ships were on their way to find the Moluccas but, because Rajah Humabon’s fame had spread so wide, the captain general knew he must come and pay his respects and ask permission to trade his merchandise.

  “Your ships are welcome,” Humabon said, “but all ships that enter our port must pay tribute.”

  “Our captain general does not pay tribute. He is the captain of the greatest king in the world.”

  Humabon’s eyes narrowed as he peered more closely at his guests.

  “All ships pay tribute in Cebu. Only four days ago a ship from Siam came to trade. They have paid their tribute and are now permitted to trade for gold and slaves.”

  One of his courtiers said quietly to the rajah, “Beware, O Rajah. These are the white devils who raped Malacca and Calicut, killing many people and enslaving many more.”

  “That was Dom Manuel, king of Portugal,” Henrique said, “and his general, Albuquerque. The king of Spain is even more greedy and our captain general as cruel as Albuquerque.”

  Humabon pondered on this information and then he said, “I shall discuss this matter with my people. Meanwhile, we eat.”

  He clapped his hands and servants brought porcelain plates laden with roast fish, pork, rice and fruit, and several jars of wine. Before drinking, Humabon made the same gesture as Colambu had done, raising his clasped hands to the sky. Pigafetta asked Henriqué whether this was a religious practice but he said it was not the custom of his own people. The wine was potent and Pigafetta had trouble descending the ladder when it came time to leave.

  Next day, they went back to hear the rajah’s decision, not to the palace but to what seemed to be a public square, with people looking on while the rajah and his chieftains discussed matters of state, a kind of forum never seen in Europe.

  “Your king is not the friend of the king who sacked Malacca, is that true?” Humabon asked when the civilities were done.

  “Yes,” Henrique said, “but not the enemy either. They both seek to trade in these regions and both are Christian kings who wish to spread the word of Dios.”

  “Dios?”

  Dios is God, like your Abba.”

  “Then why is he not called Abba?”

  “He is different.”

  Humabon thought about this and then said, “Does your captain general have iron and bronze to trade?”

  “Yes, and many other things besides.”

  “If your captain general wants to be friends he should send some blood from his right hand and I will send him blood from my right hand. All captains who come to Cebu are accustomed to exchange presents.”

  Pigafetta noted that he had not used the word ‘tribute.’

  “If you wish to continue that practice, Rajah,” Henriqué said, “then you should begin.”

  Humabon pricked a finger with his kris, smeared his forehead with blood and let a few drops into a cup the size of an egg shell.

  “This is for your captain general as a sign of peace.”