Caribbean (27 page)

Here Señora Cristóbal broke down, but after sniffling for a while, resumed with this information: “A fair portion of what that damned
Drake stole from the
Cacafuego
 … I mean, it took him three full days to move the stuff from our ship to his … I call it our ship because certainly a fair part does belong to my husband and me. Our sailors have told me, because as you may know, Drake set them all free to sail the
Cacafuego
back to Panamá after the cargo was transferred from our ship to his. One sailor told me that when the
Golden Hind
broke away to resume its exploration for the Northwest Passage, its cargo of stolen treasure was so great that the ship rode perilously low, and that he had heard one of Drake’s sailors remark: ‘If we manage to get this leaky basket back to Plymouth, we can all buy estates in Devon’—because the tremendous treasure would be shared by less than a hundred and thirty men. That’s all there were on Drake’s ship, and to think that these few stormed so many of our seaports, captured so many of our ships, stole so much of our wealth!”

When she composed herself Señora Cristóbal continued: “Did you know, Don Diego, that when Drake captured the
Cacafuego
he first gave its owner, my brother-in-law, a fine cabin aboard the
Golden Hind
, with instructions to his crew that Don San Juan was to be given exactly the same amenities that they would give Drake? And that later he allowed him to return to his more spacious quarters on the
Cacafuego
, where the two men conversed, night after night? Did the reports say that? And when the time came for the two ships to part, Drake gave every sailor on the
Cacafuego
a present of some kind, and he was thoughtful enough to take the presents from the loot he had taken at Valparaíso and not from what he had stolen from their own ship. Some of the presents were quite valuable, tools and things like that which men prize. When he gave Don San Juan three lovely pieces of jewelry for his wife, my brother-in-law said: ‘I have a sister-in-law, part owner of this ship you could say, and she adores pretty things,’ and Drake sent me these two emerald brooches, also from Valparaíso.”

Señora Cristóbal’s prolonged monologue had contradictory effects upon Don Diego. On the one hand he was relieved that Drake was demonstrating his demonic power in other parts of the Spanish empire: “Now maybe those governors will appreciate what we had to put up with. Maybe they’ll recognize what we did in holding him within bounds.”

But then, perversely, he felt a sense of deprivation to think that Drake was performing these daring raids and gigantic thefts in a new area, and he felt deprived of an additional opportunity to frustrate this greatest of the English pirates: “In our ocean we never allowed him to steal a
Cacafuego
.” It was as if he and Drake had been destined to duel in the Caribbean, and to change suddenly the definitions of the contest was unfair. Sometimes, when caught in these confusions, he visualized Drake and himself as medieval jousters, himself the designated hero of a great king, Drake the champion of a beautiful queen, but such imaginings fell apart when he remembered what a mean-spirited king Philip was and how epically ugly Elizabeth was to be a queen.

Don Diego was fascinated when he learned from Madrid that Drake had completed his journey around the world. “Proves he’s as obdurate a man as I said in my dispatches,” he told members of his government. And to himself he said: I must be the only man in the world who has defeated Drake four times.

He was further pleased in 1581 when broadsheets from Europe arrived in the Caribbean, showing Queen Elizabeth in great lace ruffs about her neck standing on the deck of the
Golden Hind
while Drake knelt before her to receive his knighthood. That flamboyant act, a thumbing of the English nose at the Spanish king, as if she were saying: “See, Philip, how I honor your principal enemy!” seemed to make Drake and Ledesma equal, the former now an English knight, the latter a Spanish admiral.

But Don Diego was not altogether happy when the lisping grandchildren in his family began chanting in the gardens of Cartagena the Spanish version of a new nursery rhyme honoring Drake’s promotion:

At this point one of the children would shout: “What man?” and the others would reply in screaming unison: “
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE
!”

And then, in late August 1585, King Philip’s postal frigates again darted through the Caribbean with ominous dispatches:

The guess was a shrewd one, for at the end of January 1586 a young Spanish officer arrived with an incredible tale, which he revealed in stammering syllables as he sat with Don Diego in the governor’s quarters: “On the first day of the New Year, Drake’s fleet sailed arrogantly into our harbor at Santo Domingo on Española, and this time everything was different, for he landed not adventurous sailors but a real army clad in armor. I’m ashamed to report that time and again our troops took one look at those fierce Englishmen, fired their muskets, mostly in the air, and fled, the leaders of our city having done so earlier. By nightfall, Santo Domingo lay completely open to Drake, who came ashore on 3 January to stake his claim to the town and everything in it.”

Ledesma was shaken by this appalling news concerning a city he had often visited and with whose governor he had cooperated: “It was no meager town of wooden buildings and grass shacks that Colón and Ocampo knew at the beginning of the century. This was a city of carved stone, broad avenues. If Drake could subdue it, what might he do here at Cartagena?” His lips dry, he asked the messenger: “You mean that after only one day of fighting …”

“More like one morning, Excellency.”

“And Drake was in control of everything—buildings, homes, churches?”

“Everything. He was especially hard on the churches. Carted away anything of value, and raged when he learned that the priests had sequestered the jewels and other treasures deep in the surrounding woods.”

“But why? I know this man. He’s not like that.” Ledesma was not so much protecting Drake’s reputation as he was striving to escape the painful realization that Drake, if he was so changed, represented a much graver danger than before, and the stuttering messenger added fuel to that thought: “To a group of military officers engaged in negotiation with him, he sent his reply in the hands of a little black
boy, but one of our officers shouted scornfully: ‘I do not accept communications from niggers,’ and in his rage he ran his sword clean through the boy’s body. The wound was fatal, but the boy did not die before crawling back to Drake, where he gave the officer’s answer and died.”

“And what did Drake do?”

“On the spur of the moment he grabbed from a holding cell filled with Spanish prisoners two of our monks and had them hanged on the spot. He then sent a prisoner to inform the officers that unless they produced the man who had slain the black boy, he would hang two more monks every morning and afternoon.”

“Did you produce him?” Ledesma asked, and the young man said: “We did, and Drake refused to hang him. He threw the culprit back at us officers and said: ‘You hang him,’ and we did.”

“But why is he suddenly so bitter against our church?” Ledesma asked, and the officer said: “I heard Drake say: ‘Your Inquisition burns alive any English sailor they catch, if he admits he respects the new faith in England. Many of my men have perished that way.’ ”

“What did he do with Santo Domingo? If there was no treasure from the churches, no ransom money?”

“He said he would wait three days, and when no money came back from the people who had fled, he began to burn down the city … one area each day. The stone buildings that would not easily burn he destroyed by pulling down the walls.”

“How did you escape?”

“We have always kept our frigates hidden in estuaries, far from town.”

“So Santo Domingo is destroyed?”

“No. After three weeks, even Drake tired. The burning had stopped before I left. About half the city still stands.”

“Get some rest. Tomorrow I want you to go fast to Nombre de Dios. To warn them to prepare.”

On the afternoon of 9 February 1586, Admiral Sir Francis Drake led his twenty-one ships smartly past the western walls of Cartagena, and disappeared to the south as if ignoring the city and the futile shots fired at him from its forts. But just when Governor Ledesma and his military leaders were congratulating themselves that they had escaped the fearful El Draque, he turned sharply to port and entered
Boca Chica, whose narrow entrance he had forced before. Without slowing his speed, he came into the big Southern Bay, where he anchored in familiar waters, just as if he were back home at Plymouth. Soon his twenty companions were anchored near him and it was obvious that the great siege of Cartagena had begun.

Governor Ledesma asked those about him: “Will he be able to force his way into the city?” and they assured him that the only causeway into the town was much too narrow to permit the entry of soldiers, especially when guns upon the walls would be aimed directly at them. “We’re safe,” his men repeated, “and since we have adequate food inside the walls and deep wells, there’s nothing Drake can do.”

But there was. Placing his army troops under the direction of the forceful general who had subdued Santo Domingo so easily, he moved his ships first into the spacious Middle Bay and then into the close-in Northern Bay, from where a few foot soldiers could be put ashore for a flanking attack on the causeway. Then, with great daring, he moved some of his larger ships boldly into the small Inner Bay that gave directly on the approaches to the city.

Never before had Cartagena been attacked by so many troops so capably led, and before Ledesma’s generals had time to shift their troops to more favorable positions, Drake’s men were upon them. The fighting was unexpectedly fierce, because when Ledesma led the defense of a city the result was quite different from the pusillanimous surrender at Santo Domingo. English soldiers fell, scores of them, and with Ledesma and his three sons-in-law rallying their troops now here, now there, the battle’s outcome seemed to hang in the balance, favoring first the English, then the Spanish.

But in the end Drake’s superior firepower told, and gradually Ledesma’s men were driven back to the central plaza. There, under Don Diego’s personal leadership, they fought with extraordinary bravery. But the English smelled blood, principally from their own dead, and with unparalleled fury they literally shoved the Spaniards back, yard by yard, until the assault filled the marketplace, and there the Spaniards, including the fifteen men from the Ledesma clan who had borne arms, surrendered.

Early next morning Drake brought all his ships into the tight little Inner Bay, in which position his gunners could command the city, and only then did he come ashore to savor his capture of Cartagena, a city which the Spaniards had boasted could never be taken. Asking directions to the governor’s house, where he could dictate the terms
of surrender, he was led to Ledesma’s fine residence facing the cathedral, and there he met the sixteen men of the family that had given him so much trouble.

“Admiral Ledesma,” he said in the excellent Spanish he had been taught by Spanish captives on his voyage around the world, “your men fought with commendable bravery,” but before Ledesma could respond, General Carleill, leader of the English troops, added: “Not only his troops, Drake. He himself,” and Drake saluted.

The simple negotiations for a surrender required a frustrating five weeks, for if Ledesma was obdurate in battle, he was a brazen lion when it came to frustrating the English conquerors, regardless of what reasonable demands they made. Backed by no soldiers, fortified by no fleet, and not even supported by the dignitaries of his church, all of whom had fled with their valuables to the mainland hills, tall, composed Don Diego could rely only upon the shrewd counsel of a few of his family members and the solid support of his conquered people.

Drake opened negotiations with a straightforward request, such as he had used with success in dealing with other captured Spanish cities: “I will leave in peace, not one house having so much as a door broken, for a modest ransom, let’s say one million ducats
^*2
loaded by your men on my waiting ships.”

Don Diego said quietly: “But, Admiral, you can see there’s simply no money in the city. None.”

Without raising his voice, Drake said: “Then you must know from what recently happened at Santo Domingo that if the ransom is not paid, I shall start tomorrow morning to burn a different section of your city each day until Cartagena is no more.”

Maintaining the same level of discourse, Don Diego asked: “Admiral, do you wish to be remembered as the Tamerlane of the West, the forever hated scourge of the West Indies?”

During the first four agonizing weeks, when every Spaniard he spoke to, including some members of his own family, advised him to surrender to Drake’s demands, at least as far as possible, Ledesma resisted Drake’s considerable pressure, and at the same time persuaded the Englishman not to burn the city. In the later stages of negotiations he was supported only by his three sons-in-law, whose
wives hiding in the hills slipped messages into the city: “Husband, do not give in,” and with this comforting assistance he persisted.

These were four of the strangest weeks in the history of Cartagena, because Drake and Ledesma shared the same house, the governor’s residence, and in the evenings they invited whatever leading citizens still remained in the city to lavish dinners at which Drake and the governor tried to outdo each other in courtesies extended to the guests. With Drake speaking in Spanish, Ledesma in English, they discussed subjects of grave importance to their two nations and to the Caribbean in general, each man and his supporters feeling free to express his convictions and defend them.