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

THE caravel tossed in a heavy storm. Some of her mariners were old in these waters, but others, coming out with Bobadilla, had little knowledge of our breadths of Ocean-Sea. They had met naught like this rain, this shaken air, these thunders and lightnings. There rose a cry that the ship would split. All was because they had chained the Admiral!

Don Alonso de Villejo, the Captain taking Christopherus Columbus to Spain, called to him Juan Lepe. “Witness you, Doctor, I would have taken away the irons so soon as we were out of harbor! I would have done it on my own responsibility. But he would not have it!”

“Yes, I witness. In chains in Hispaniola, he will come to Spain in chains.”

“If the ship goes down every man must save himself. He must be free. I have sent for the smith. Come you with me!”

We went to that dusky cabin in the ship where he was prisoned. “It is a great storm, and we are in danger, senor!” said Villejo. “I will take away these irons so that if—”

The Admiral’s silver hair gleamed in the dusk. He moved and his gyves struck together. “Villejo!” he said, “if I lie tonight on the floor of Ocean-Sea, I will lie there in these chains! When the sea gives up its dead, I will rise in them!”

“I could force you, senor,” said Villejo.

The other answered, “Try it, and God will make your hands like a babe’s!”

Villejo and the smith did not try it. There was something around him like an invisible guard. I knew the feel of it, and that it was his will emerged at height.

“Remember then, senor, that I would have done it for you!” Villejo touched the door. The Admiral’s voice came after. “My brother, Don Bartholomew, he who was responsible to me and only through me to the Sovereigns, free him, Villejo, and you have all my thanks!”

We went to take the gyves from Don Bartholomew. It would have been comfort to these brothers to be together in prison—but that the Governor of Hispaniola straitly forbade. When Villejo had explained what he would do, the Adelantado asked, “What of the Admiral?”

“I wish to take them from him also. But he is obstinate in his pride and will not!”

“He will go as he is to the Queen and Spain and the world,” said Juan Lepe.

“That is enough for me,” answered the Adelantado. “I do not go down tonight a freed body while he goes down a chained.—Farewell, senor! I think I hear your sailors calling.”

Villejo hesitated. “Let them have their will, senor,” said Juan Lepe. “Their will is as good as ours.”

Don Bartholomew turned to me. “How fares my brother, Doctor? Is he ill?”

“He is better. Because he was ill I was let to come with him. But now he is better.”

“Give him my enduring love and constancy,” said the Adelantado. “Good night, Villejo!” and turned upon his side with a rattling of his chain.

Returning to the Admiral, Juan Lepe sat beside him through the night. The tempest continuing, there were moments when we thought, It may be the end of this life! We thought to hear the cry “She sinks!” and the rush of feet.

At times when there fell lulls we talked. He was calmly cheerful.

“It seems to me that the storm lessens. I have been penning in my mind, lying here, a letter to one who will show it to the Queen. Writing so, I can say with greater freedom that which should be said.”

“What do you say?”

He told me with energy. His letter related past events in Hispaniola and the arrival of Bobadilla and all that took place thereupon. He had an eloquence of the pen as of speech, and what he said to Dona Juana de la Torre moved. A high simplicity was his in such moment, an opening of the heart, such as only children and the very great attain. He told his wrongs, and he prayed for just judgment, “not as a ruler of an ordered land where obtain old, known, long-followed laws, and where indeed disorder might cry `Weakness and Ill-doing!’ But I should be judged rather as a general sent to bring under government an enemy people, numerous, heathen, living in a most difficult, unknown and pathless country. And to do this I had many good men, it is true, but also a host that was not good, but was factious, turbulent, sensual and idle. Yet have I brought these strange lands and naked peoples under the Sovereigns, giving them the lordship of a new world. What say my accusers? They say that I have taken great honors and wealth and nobility for myself and my house. Even they say, O my friend! that from the vast old-and-new and fairest land that I have lately found, I took and kept the pearls that those natives brought me, not rendering them to the Sovereigns. God judge me, it is not so! Spain becometh vastly rich, and the head of the world, and her Sovereigns, lest they should scant their own nobility, give nobility, place and wage to him who brought them Lordship here. It is all! And out of my gain am I not pledged to gather an army and set it forth to gain the Sepulchre? Have I fallen, now and again, in all these years in my Government, into some error? How should I not do so, being human? But never hath an error been meant, never have I wished but to deal honestly and mercifully with all, with Spaniards and with Indians, to serve well the Sovereigns and to advance the Cross. I call the saints to witness! All the way has been difficult, thorns of nature’s and my enemies’ planting, but God knoweth, I have trodden it steadily. I have given much to the Sovereigns, how much it is future days brighter than these will show! I have been true servant to them. If now, writing in chains, upon the caravel Santa, Marta, I cry to them for justice, it is because I do not fear justice!”

He ceased to speak, then presently, “I would that all might see the light that I see over the future!—Thou seest it, Juan Lepe.”

“Aye, I see light over the future.”

By littles the storm fell. Ere dawn we could say, “We shall outlive it!” He slept for an hour then waked. “I was dreaming of the Holy Land—but do you know, Juan Lepe, it was seated here in the lands we found!”

“Seated here and everywhere,” I said. “As soon as we see it so and make it so.”

“Aye, I know that the sea is holy, and so should be all the land! The prophet sees it so—”

The dawn came faintly in upon us. All was quieter, the footing overhead steady, not hasting, frightened. Light strengthened. A boy brought him breakfast. He ate with appetite. “You are better,” I said, “and younger.”

“It is a strange thing,” he answered, “but so it had been from my boyhood. Is the danger close and drear, is the ship upon the reef, then some one pours for me wine! Some one, do I say? I know Whom!”

I began to speak of the Adelantado. “Aye, there he is the same! `Peril—darkness? Well, let’s meet it!’ We are alike, we three brothers, alike and different. Diego serves God best in a monastery, and I serve best in a ship with a book and a map to be followed and bettered. Bartholomew serves best where he has been, Adelantado and Alcayde. He is powerful there, with judgment and action. But he is a sea master too, and he makes a good map.—I thank God who gave us good parents, and to us all three mind and a firm will! The inheritance passes to my sons. You have not seen them? They are youths of great promise! A family that is able and at one, loving and aiding each the other, honoring its past and providing for its future, becomes, I tell you, an Oak that cannot be felled—an Ark that rides the waters!”

As he moved, his chains made again their dull noise. “Do they greatly gall you?”

“Yes, they gall! Flesh and spirit. But I shall wear them until the Queen saith, `Away with them!’ But ever after I shall keep them by me!