1492 - Mary Johnston (best novels to read in english txt) 📗

to Barcelona, where was the court, and all the bells in every town ringing and every door and window crowded, and here is the Faery Prince on a white charger, his Indians behind him and gold and parrots and his sailors! Processions and processions—alcalde and alcayde and don and friar and priest, and let us stop at the church and kneel before high altar, and vow again in seven years to free the Sepulchre! He hath walked and ridden, waked and slept, in a great, high vision! Most men have visions but he can sustain vision.”

“Aye, he can!”

“So at last into Barcelona, where grandees meet us, and so on to the court, and music as though the world had turned music! And the King and Queen and great welcome, and, `Sit beside us, Don Cristoval Colon!’ and `Tell and tell again’, and `Praise we Most High God!’ “

“It is something for which to praise! Ends of the earth beginning to meet.”

“Aye! So we write that very night to the Pope to be confirmed that the glory and profit under God are to Castile and Aragon. But the Queen thought most of the heathen brought to Christ. And the Admiral thinks of his sons and his brothers and his old father, and of the Holy Sepulchre and of the Prophecies, and he has the joy of the runner who touches the goal!—I would you could have seen the royalty with which he was treated—not one day nor week but a whole summer long—the flocking, the bowing and capping, the `Do me the honor—’, the `I have a small petition.’ Nothing conquers like conquering!”

“He had long patience.”

“Aye. Well, he is at height now. But he has got with him the old disastrous seeds.—Fifteen hundred men, and among them quite a plenty like Gutierrez and Escobedo! But there are good men, too, and a great lot of romantical daredevils. No pressing this time! We might have brought five thousand could the ships have held them. `Come to the Indies and make your fortune!’—`Aye, that is my desire!’ “

I said, “I am looking now at a romantical daredevil whom I have seen before, though I am sure that he never noticed me.”

“Don Alonso de Ojeda? He is feather in cap, and sometimes cap, and even at stress head within the cap! Without moving you’ve beckoned him.”

There approached a young man of whom I knew something, having had him pointed out by Enrique de Cerda in Santa Fe. I had before that heard his name and somewhat of his exploits. In our day, over all Spain, one might find or hear of cavaliers of this brand. War with the Moor had lasted somewhat longer than the old famed war with Troy. It had modeled youth; young men were old soldiers. When there came up a sprite like this one he drank war like wine. A slight young man, taut as a rope in a gale, with dark eyes and red lips and a swift, decisive step, up he came.

“Oh, you are the man who lived out of all your fort? How did you manage it?”

“I had a friend among these friendly Indians who rescued me.”

“Yes! It is excellent warfare to have friends.—You have seen no knight nor men-at-arms, nor heard of such?”

“Not under those names.”

“How far do you think we may be from true houses and cities, castles, fortresses?”

“I haven’t the least idea. By the looks of it, pretty far.”

“It seems to me that you speak truth,” he answered. “Well, it isn’t what we looked for, but it’s something! Room yet to dare!” Off he went, half Mercury, half Mars, and a sprig of youth to draw the eyes.

“Was there nothing ever heard,” I asked Luis, “of the Pinta and Martin Pinzon?”

“He is dead.”

“You saw the wreck?”

“No, not that way, though true it is that he wrecked himself! I forget that you know nothing. We met the Pinta last January, not a day from here, with Monte Cristi there yet in sight. When he came aboard and sat in the great cabin I do not know what he said, except that it was of separation by that storm, and the feeling that two parties discovering would thereby discover the more, and the better serve their Majesties. The Admiral made no quarrel with him. He had some gold and some news of coasts that we had not seen. And he did not seem to think it necessary to seem penitent or anything but just naturally Martin Pinzon. So on we sailed together, he on the Pinta and the Admiral on the Nina. But that was a rough voyage home over Ocean-Sea! Had we had such weather coming, might have been mutiny and throat-cutting and putting back, Cathay and India being of no aid to dead men! Six times at least we thought we were drowned, and made vows, kneeling all together and the Admiral praying for us, Fray Ignatio not being there. Then came clear, but beyond Canaries a three days’, three nights’ weather that truly drove us apart, the Pinta and the Nina. We lost each other in the darkness and never found again. We were beaten into the Tagus, the Pinta on to Bayonne. Then, mid-March, we came to Palos, landed and the wonder began. And in three days who should come limping in but the Pinta? But she missed the triumph, and Martin Pinzon was sick, and there was some coldness shown. He went ashore to his own house, and his illness growing worse he died there. Well, he had qualities.”

“Aye,” I answered, with a vision of the big, bluff, golden-haired man.

“Vicente Pinzon is here; his ship the Cordera yonder. What’s the stir now? The Admiral will go to see Guacanagari?”

That, it seemed, was what it was, and presently came word that Juan Lepe should go with him. A body of cavaliers sumptuously clad, some even wearing shining corselet, greaves and helm, was forming about him who was himself in a magnificent dress. Besides these were fifty of the plainer sort, and there lacked not crossbow, lance and arquebus. And there were banners and music. We were going like an army to be brotherly with Guacanagari. Father Buil was going also, and his twelve gowned men. “Who,” I asked Luis, “is the man beside the Admiral? He seems his kin.”

“He is. It is his brother, Don Diego. He is a good man, able, too, though not able like the Admiral. They say the other brother, Bartholomew, who is in England or in France, is almost as able. How dizzily turns the wheel for some of us! Yesterday plain Diego and Bartholomew, a would-be churchman and a shipmaster and chart-maker! Now Don Diego—Don Bartholomew! And the two sons watching us off from Cadiz! Pages both of them to the Prince, and pictures to look at! `Father!’ and `Noble father! and `Forget not your health, who are our Dependance!’ “

Waiting for all to start, I yet regarded that huge dazzle upon the beach, so many landed, so many coming from the ships, the ships themselves so great a drift of sea birds! As for those dark folk—what should they think of all these breakers-in from heaven? It seemed to me to-day that despite their friendliness shown us here from the first, despite the miracle and the fed eye and ear and the excitement, they knew afar a pale Consternation.

At last, to drum and trumpet, we passed from shining beach into green forest. I found myself for a moment beside Diego Colon—not the Admiral’s brother, but the young Indian so named. Now he was Christian and clothed, and truly the Haitiens stared at him hardly less than at the Admiral. I greeted him and he me. He tried to speak in Castilian but it was very hard for him, and in a moment we slipped into Indian.

I asked him, “How did you like Spain?”

He looked at me with a remote and childlike eye and began to speak of houses and roads and horses and oxen.

A message came from the Admiral at head of column. I went to him. Men looked at me as I passed them. I was ragged now, grizzle-bearded and wan, and they seemed to say, “Is it so this strange land does them? But those first ones were few and we are many, and it does not lie in our fortune! Gold lies in ours, and return in splendor and happiness.” But some had more thoughtful eyes and truer sense of wonder.

We found Guacanagari in a new, large, very clean house, and found him lying in a great hammock with his leg bound with cotton web, around him wives and chief men. He sat up to greet the Admiral and with a noble and affecting air poured forth speech and laid his hand upon his hidden hurt.

Now I knew, because Guarin had told me so, that that wound was healed. It had given trouble—the Caribs poisoned their darts—but now it was well. But they are simpler minded than we, this folk, and I read Guacanagari that he must impress the returning gods with his fidelity. He had proved it, and while Juan Lepe was by he did not need this mummery, but he had thought that he might need. So, a big man evidently healthful, he sighed and winced and half closed his eyes as though half dying still in that old contest when he had stood by the people from the sky. I interpreted his speech, the Admiral already understanding, but not the surrounding cavaliers. It was a high speech or high assurance that he had done his highest best.

“Do I not believe that, Guacanagari?” said the Admiral, and thinking of Diego de Arana and Fray Ignatio and others and of the good hope of La Navidad, tears came into his eyes.

He sat upon the most honorable block of wood which was brought him and talked to Guacanagari. Then at his gesture one brought his presents, a mirror, a rich belt, a knife, a pair of castanets. Guacanagari, it seemed, since the sighting of the ships, had made collection on his part. He gave enough gold to make lustful many an eye looking upon that scene.

The women brought food and set before the Spaniards in the house. I found Guarin and presently we came to be standing without the entrance—they had no doors; sometimes they had curtains of cotton—looking upon that strange gathering in the little middle square of the town. So many Spaniards in the palm shadows, and the women feeding them, and Alonso de Ojeda’s hand upon the arm of a slender brown girl with a wreath of flowers around her head. Father Buil was within with the Admiral, truculently and suspiciously regarding the idolater who now had left the hammock and seemed as well of a wound as any there! But here without were eight or ten friars, gathered together under a palm tree, making refection and talking among themselves. One devout brother, sitting apart and fasting, told his beads.

Said Guarin, “I have been watching him. He is talking to his zeme.—They are all butios?”

“Yes. Most of them are good men.”

“What is going to happen here to all my people? Something is over against me and my people, I feel it! Even the cacique has fear.”

“It is the dark Ignorance and the light Ignorance, the clothed Ignorance and the naked Ignorance. I feel it too, what you feel. But I feel, O Guarin, that the inner and true Man will not and cannot take hurt!”

He said, “Do they come for good?”

I answered, “There is much good in their coming. Seen from the mountain brow, enormous good, I think. In