Caribbean (14 page)

When the captain cried: “That’s your town, Santo Domingo,” Ocampo saw the first organized settlement of the New World, capital not only of this island but of all Spain’s possessions in the lands Colón had discovered. As Ocampo watched the city emerge from the sea he saw that it was still only a collection of one-storied wooden structures, dominated by one obviously important stone building of two floors.

“Whose is that?” he asked, and the captain replied: “One Pimentel, the lieutenant governor. Man of high family. Seems to dominate the place.”

When a small fleet of canoes manned by Indians swarmed out from the shore, Ocampo noticed that the men were savage in appearance—low foreheads, very dark hair, brownish skin, wearing no more than a loincloth—but sharp-eyed and eager to conduct their simple commerce with the ship. Then he looked above their clamoring hands and waving paddles, and he caught a remarkably clear impression of the town itself.

It contained, he calculated from imperfect evidence, about nine hundred people, a chain of rude houses along the beach and a central square of sorts from whose northern side rose a wooden church with a proud steeple topped by a sturdy cross. It was in all respects, he judged, the kind of solid Spanish town he had seen so often in the hill country south of Madrid, and he felt reassured by its comforting appearance: In this town I will not feel a stranger.

As soon as the watchers who had lined the shore to greet the incoming ship saw Ocampo stride ashore, sternly dressed, cavalier’s hat cocked on his head, imperial in every motion, with that red and gold patch gleaming in the sun, they realized that an important force had come amongst them on a mission of some moment. Those who had been stealing from the king began to shiver, fearing that he might find them out, but in the next moment they were astonished by a sudden change in his manner: he smiled at the silent watchers, bowed as if paying them honor, and even relaxed his rigid stride, for he wanted to give them a message: “I come among you as a friend.”

They were impressed when he signaled back to the ship, from which two scribes now descended, men in their twenties carrying bundles of papers. No sooner had they hit land than they began to scurry about, looking for an appropriate building to commandeer for headquarters. Rather quickly they focused on the two-story stone house which the captain had said was occupied by a man named Pimentel, but when they asked to inspect the place, the owner, anticipating their mission, coldly informed them: “This house would not be appropriate. My wife’s family occupies more than half, and grandchildren romp everywhere.”

When Ocampo joined his scribes he asked: “What’s the matter here?” but before his men could explain, the owner stepped forward and introduced himself: “Alejandro Pimentel y Fraganza, representative of the king,” and Ocampo bowed, for the man’s last two names were distinguished in Spanish history.

“I am Hernán Ocampo of Sevilla, personal emissary of the king and eager to find headquarters for the work he ordered me to do on his behalf.” In this courteous manner each informed the other that he was a man of some importance, not to be treated lightly.

Pimentel, an austere man in his sixties, bowed stiffly and assured the newcomer: “I shall do everything to assist you, but as I have explained to your men, this house would not be convenient for you. My wife’s family—” His sentence was interrupted by the appearance in the doorway of Señora Pimentel, an attractive woman in her thirties accompanied by an older woman who had probably been her
dueña
in the years before marriage and who now served as a kind of confidential maid, for she moved close to her mistress as soon as she saw that strange men were present. “I have been explaining to the king’s special emissary that since your family occupies much of our house …”

His wife spoke softly but with an obvious desire to settle the problem: “The Escobar house in the square, facing the sea, is hardly being used,” and walking beside her husband, with her former
dueña
two steps behind in her traditional place, she showed Ocampo a simple but commodious frame building with two large windows, one looking out to sea, the other into the heart of the square facing the church, which the citizens were already calling “our cathedral.”

As soon as Ocampo and his men satisfied themselves that the house suited their purpose and was available, the two scribes sprang into action, requisitioning furnishings in the king’s name and directing sailors how to unload and place the items Ocampo had brought with him from Sevilla. The principal piece was a magisterial oak chair, with a heavily carved back and two massive arms, which caused anyone who occupied it to appear aloof and formidable.

“Place it so that I face the shaded wall,” Ocampo directed, “and put the chair for the person I’m interrogating facing the bright light from the window. Your two tables can go wherever you find it most convenient.” But when the four chairs were in position, he studied them, readjusted them slightly, them demanded a saw.

After some searching through the town the saw arrived, and Ocampo revealed his strategy: “Cut a meager fraction from each front leg of the witnesses’ chair. I want to be relaxed and comfortable as I lean back in my big chair, them to be nervous and slipping forward in the small one.”

In those first days the citizens of the island looked with quiet awe at the newcomer, seeing a man whom they could not easily characterize: “Look! Tall and straight like any grandee, with the piercing eyes and pointed beard of a gentleman, but he didn’t get that scar and eye patch playing cards in a garden. If you move forward to speak with him, he smiles and welcomes you.” One of the scribes, hearing such comments, warned listeners: “Suave like a turtle dove, tenacious like a hawk,” and this epigram circulated. Before the week was out Ocampo and his men were listening to a flood of testimony relating to the behavior and performance ashore of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, the late Cristóbal Colón, né Cristoforo Colombo.

Ocampo accepted the testifiers as they came, not trying to keep them in chronological order; he wanted to hear the natural flood of complaints with all the contradictions, lies and verifiable charges as they spewed forth. However, each night when the two scribes were finished with their scratching pens, they arranged their sheets in logical
order, and it is in this sequence that Ocampo’s report was submitted to the king.

The opening statement in that final report was made by one Vicente Céspedes, a rough seaman thirty-nine years old from the famous seaport of Sanlúcar de Barrameda at the mouth of the Guadalquivir from which the galleons of Sevilla regularly set sail. Growling pugnaciously, he said: “If they’ve told you about me, which I’m sure they have, because there’s some as wants to silence me, you already know that I don’t think much of the admiral, seein’ that he stole money from me.”

“If this concerns the withholding of your pay, we already know about that.”

“It does not. It concerns what happened on a Thursday, the eleventh of October in 1492.”

When Ocampo heard this notorious date he cringed, remembering the king’s orders: “We know what he did at sea. I want to know what he did on land.” Staring sternly with his good eye, he told the sailor: “I warned you. We’re interested only in what happened on Española.”

“But that’s what this is about, if you’ll listen, excusin’ my roughness as I can’t read or write or speak like a gentleman …”

Seeing that he could not halt this torrent of words, Ocampo said: “Do proceed.”

“That afternoon the captain general summoned all hands to the afterdeck, very nervous he was, and he said: ‘What did I promise yesterday when you were near mutiny?’ and a man near me bellows: ‘That if we don’t see land in three days, back we go safe to our homes in Spain.’ And he said: ‘That’s still the promise,’ and we cheered.

“But then his jaw firmed, real mad like, and he told us: ‘I am positive, I swear on the grave of my mother, that Asia lies just ahead. It must,’ and I whispered to the man next to me: ‘He’s tryin’ to convince himself,’ but then he reminded us: ‘What did the queen promise when we left Palos?’ and it was me who answered, for I sore wanted that prize: ‘Ten thousand maravedis
^*2
a year for life,’ and he said: ‘True, and today I add that I shall also give the lucky man a silken doublet,’ and I could fair feel that silk makin’ love to me back.

“Well, about this time a fresh wind blew up from the east and fairly whisked us along to the shores of China, and Colón had been so convincin’ in his speech that all of us believed that before we reached the end of the third day, when otherwise we would turn back, we would see China, and I was sure as I had so often dreamed, that it would be me who first saw it.”

“Why were you so sure there would be land?”

“I’d studied the sea, every day. I could tell by the look of the water, its feel maybe, that we were passing into a new area. The big waves had disappeared and the quiet sea looked like some precious jewel that women wear.”

“So your dream came true?”

“It did. Sometime toward midnight I spotted a light on what had to be a shore, it had to be, so I called out: ‘Land ahead!’ and prepared to don my silken doublet and pocket those lifelong maravedis, but can you guess what actually happened, Excellency?”

“I’m not an excellency. What did happen?”

“Captain General Colón refused to honor my discovery and pay me my rewards. And do you know what he did that was much worse? Next mornin’ he suddenly shouts: ‘Land ahead!’ and he claims the maravedis and gives himself the silken doublet.”

“What has this to do with Española?” Ocampo asked, being careful not to sound too impatient, for he had learned long since that it was the most wandering testimony that sometimes produced the most valuable kernels of truth.

“I’m comin’ to that, and when you hear you’ll have to admit it does small credit to Colón. On the fifth of December, after explorin’ south and west near the island that the captain general later named Cuba, our three caravels landed for the first time on this island.” With a kind of mock salute, he told Ocampo: “So you now have me on this island of Española, where you wanted me.”

Ocampo, ignoring the familiarity, merely nodded: “Go on.”

“Bleak shore, nothing to tempt us, and when some of the sailors asked: ‘Can this be the China of Marco Polo?’ the captain general grew furious and would not speak further with us. So we sailed around this island on Christmas Eve, a Monday, I believe it was, for I had the watch and you remember those things. We come to a fine bay on the north shore of this selfsame island as we’re on now, and all was peaceful, and the men off duty—there was forty of us altogether in the crew, countin’ officers—began to hum songs of Christmas,
and at midnight, me bein’ off duty, I fell asleep to dream of the Christmases I’d known in Spain.

“Where was General Colón? Fast asleep. Second in command? Third? All sound asleep. And in that condition the
Santa Maria
gently, silently slipped onto a sandy reef and before the men runnin’ wildly about the deck could break her free, big waves setting in from the northwest drove her ever higher onto what you might call the land. It was horrible. Colón should have been ashamed of himself, for in the hour before sunrise it was clear to us that our ship was a total loss and we shifted over to the little
Niña
, which could ill afford to accept us, seein’ that her regular crew of twenty-two had already used up all space available and we would be forty more.”

“And then?”

“The captain general said: ‘We’ll take the plankin’ from the
Santa Maria
and build the first Spanish city in China,’ for he insisted that that was where we were. We built two shacks and Colón and the priest, or the man who passed as one, held a service and dedicated the place as La Navidad, out of memory for the day, Christmas, when we landed there. And when the time came for the little
Niña
to carry us back to Spain, Colón saw that twenty-two of her men plus forty of ours was far too many to make the trip, so he appointed thirty-nine men to man the new town, and I was one of them. Then off he sailed to save his own skin.”

As soon as these words were spoken, Ocampo knew them to be false, for earlier testimony had established without question that everyone left at La Navidad in January of 1493 had perished: there had been no survivors; and thus Vicente Céspedes had revealed himself as one more romancer with a grudge to settle against Colón.

Leaning forward, Ocampo asked harshly: “Why do you come to me with such lies? You know all the men at La Navidad died?”

Céspedes, almost sliding from his sloping chair, said, with almost boyish eagerness to clear himself: “It was a miracle, Excellency, I’ve never been able to fathom it. But as the
Niña
was about to sail, one of the men aboard, a friend of mine from Cádiz, shouted: ‘Céspedes! I’d like to stay … see the natives,’ and we exchanged. He died and I didn’t.”

Ocampo was enormously interested in the sailor’s simple statement. It touched directly upon Colón’s sense of responsibility toward his men: “What steps were taken to protect the lives of the thirty-nine left behind?”

“Damned little.” As soon as he uttered the words he drew back and looked apprehensively at Ocampo, remembering that some authorities considered the word
damn
a serious blasphemy punishable in New Spain by a visit to the chambers of the Inquisition, but Ocampo as a former soldier did not. Swallowing, Céspedes resumed: “In fairness to Colón, there was very little we could have given them, but when we sailed away, good houses had not yet been built, we couldn’t give them much powder for the few guns we could spare, not much lead for bullets, and no food.”

“None?”

“Maybe one half-barrel of flour, some scraps of pork.” Céspedes shook his head, then added brightly: “But my friend from Cádiz, the one who traded with me because he wanted to stay, said: ‘We can fish and hunt game and depend on help from the natives.’ ”

“There were natives?”

“Many. And since we’d had good relations with them, we supposed the thirty-nine would depend on them for assistance.”