God Carlos (3 page)

“Where do you allow your men to sleep, señor,” he asked mildly, fixing the older man with a careful stare.

“Anywhere they like,” came the crisp reply, “so long as their presence does not interfere with the smooth running of the ship.”

“On deck, at nights?”

“Certainly, on deck. But I warn every man to lash himself down with rope so he won't be washed overboard.”

“You do not insist that the men sleep below?”

“It is an oven sometimes below deck,” de la Serena said candidly. “No man should be asked to sleep in an oven.”

Carlos tried to read the craggy face before him, to fathom its temperament, its truthfulness. De la Serena returned his stare openly, and for a brief moment the two of them looked at each other deeply like lovers. Then Carlos, feeling uncomfortable, turned away with a casual shrug.

He did not understand how anyone could be born on Mallorca—one of the Baeleric Islands, consisting of eleven islets and four larger islands, none of which Carlos particularly liked, probably because he had visited them only during stormy seas when his ship was in danger of floundering. He thought the island barren and inhospitable, suitable with its ironbound shoreline as a rookery for sea birds.

De la Serena asked a series of nautical questions, to test Carlos's seamanship, and the Spaniard answered with an offhanded nonchalance that bespoke his experience. The older man knew a sailor when he saw one. Carlos knew the names of all the kinds of vessels tied up around them. He had strong opinions on the handling differences between a lateen sail and square rigging. Like most seamen of the day, he was filled with suspicions and had stories to tell about how some talisman had saved his life. But more importantly, to de la Serena at least, was that he bargained hard for the little comforts that true seamen loved to have around them—liberal run of the ship, for example—asking questions about the cook and the types of meals that would be served.

It remained only for Carlos to pass one more test, and de la Serena, who had already decided to sign him on, asked him to shimmy up the main mast and climb into the crow's nest. The
Santa Inez
, like all vessels of her day, was without ratlines, which had not yet been invented, and reaching her crow's nest required a seaman's agility and strength.

Carlos walked over to the main mast, gripped a halyard, leaped onto the mast, and propelled himself up, using his hands and feet to clasp the wood. In a blink, he was in the crow's nest and pretending to be scanning the horizon.

“Come down and sign the papers,” de la Serena invited.

Carlos slid down the mast. “I have nowhere to sleep tonight,” he began, but de la Serena cut him short.

“Sleep aboard ship,” he said, heading below for the papers.

A few minutes later, the mostly ritualistic signing was complete, and Carlos got the opportunity to show off his cursive signature with all its elaborate curlicues. His contract said that until the
Santa Inez
returned to Cádiz, Carlos was bound to service aboard her at one thousand maravedis per month. It was not much, but it was a little more than Carlos had earned on his last ship.

De la Serena opened a bottle of wine and they drank a goblet each and shared some bread. Other than the two of them and a cabin boy named Pedro who mostly stayed out of sight, the ship was deserted, the crew having gone carousing for what might be the last night ashore for many weeks. With a little wine under his belt, de la Serena became very talkative, and the two men sat on deck and chatted about the Indies while a grainy darkness settled over Cádiz.

Carlos was content. He listened sleepily to the other man's rambling, casting an occasional eye at the whores prowling the shadows and weighing his chances of sweet-talking one of them into giving him a free sample.

Such a thing had never happened to him, but a long time ago, he had shipped out with a man from Albacete who swore that it had happened to his cousin in Perpignan, France, during a layover of five days while a bitter storm raged over the Mediterranean. It was a miraculous interlude that his cousin had enjoyed with the whore, all done freely and with affection. In fact, when the bad weather lifted and the time to sail again had come, the whore handed him a sackful of money and begged him to jump ship and live with her. Such a thing had never happened to Carlos, yet he was hopeful.

Some few hours later, he curled up in a corner of the deck and went to sleep. De la Serena retreated to his quarters below. Like many ships of her time, the
Santa Inez
had only a single private compartment, which belonged to the master. Everyone else aboard shared the common areas of the ship as living space.

Carlos fell into a deep sleep as a crescent moon leaked a soft saffron light over the minarets of Cádiz erected in the eighth century by Moor invaders. Over the centuries, all of Spain had been a bloody battleground between Christianity and Islam, and everywhere on this ancient land vestiges marking the dominance of one creed over the other lingered. The bulbed towers soared over the smaller buildings of the sleeping city like stalks of giant tulips, and it required only a little imagination to hear the bleat of a muezzin calling the Islamic faithful to prayer. But that custom was no longer observed, Alfonso the Wise, king of Leon and Castile, having driven the Moors out of Cádiz in the early thirteenth century, restoring Christianity.

None of this was known to Carlos, who, though he was not an innocent, always slept soundly, for a seaman learned to sleep anywhere and anytime when he was tired. And today, a long and trying day by his own calculation, had been exhausting. So although the deck was hard and the wood cold against his bones, he was asleep almost as quickly as his head touched the floor.

Chapter 4

Carlos was jolted from the blurriness of a dream by what he thought were squabbling birds. But then from the rear of the ship he heard a coarse male voice booming and realized that he had been awakened by a noisy quarrel.

Raising his head carefully to peep over the deck railing, he saw a knot of four women on the quay, one old and three young, gesturing angrily and screaming at the ship. On the quarterdeck de la Serena stood hurling insults back at them.

“You are an old man, an unwell man! It is madness to go to sea in your condition. Come home, Alonso. Give up this rashness. Accept God's will and be thankful!”

“There is nothing wrong with me that a long voyage won't cure!” de la Serena thundered.

“Papa! I miss you already! I beg of you, return home with us,” one of the young woman bleated pitifully.

“Don't worry,” de la Serena bellowed back with heavy sarcasm, “your dowry is safe. I have made arrangements on your behalf. You will not be deprived of one maravedi.”

“Papa, it's not the money. It's you.”

“And how long did your mother rehearse you in that touching speech?” de la Serena sneered.

Crewmen who had returned late began to emerge from different parts of the ship, rubbing their eyes and yawning at the commotion. A few of them leaned against the railings, grinning and spitting.

The row waged on, with the women spilling tears and wailing like they were demented while de la Serena blasted them from the quarterdeck with a string of rebuttal oaths. The older woman called on the Virgin Mary to bear witness to how a hard-hearted husband and father was deserting his family in their greatest hour of need and fleeing like a young
caballero
to the so-called New World.

“There's nothing new about it!” shrieked the wife. “It is just as old as our world. You will die there and be buried an old man unmourned among strangers. Your bones will be eaten by wild dogs. No grandchildren will ever put flowers on your grave.”

“Papa, stay with us. Don't leave us here alone!”

“I curse this ship, this
Santa Inez
. If it takes my husband from me, may it be cursed with bad weather and sea serpents! May the Holy Virgin raise her hand against this vessel that would separate a husband and father from his wife and daughters.”

On hearing this malediction against their ship, some sailors began to surlily mutter among themselves, and one or two, as if they could stand to hear no more, drifted away below deck or stepped onto the quay and wandered off out of earshot.

“We sail with the tide,” de la Serena called after two of the men as they left. They waved in dismissive acknowledgment and continued strolling down the quay without looking back.

“When did you sign on?” an older sailor who spoke with the accent of an Andalusian asked Carlos.

“Last night,” Carlos replied. “I am Carlos Antonio Maria Eduardo Garcia de la Cal Fernandez.”

He did not know why he gave his full name except that he felt like it. The old man acknowledged him with a little nod and muttered, after spitting elaborately over the side and watching his spittle float away, “My name is Hernandez Medina. I do not like it when women curse a ship before she sails. It brings the worst kind of bad luck.”

“So I have heard,” Carlos responded indifferently.

Another man joined them. “Hernandez, did you hear what she said? She has put a curse on our ship.”

“That is what we were just talking about. I do not like this.”

“I will not sail on this ship unless the curse is taken back,” the man muttered darkly, walking off.

“I'd better tell the captain about this,” Hernandez said with a sigh. “We're already shorthanded.”

He scurried across the deck and conferred with the captain while the women continued to wail at the ship, their voices rising in a shriller stridency. After some back-and-forth whispering between the two men, de la Serena, with obvious reluctance, crossed the gangplank and waded among the women, pleading with them in a low voice as they sniffled and wept and touched his clothing as though to keep him land bound. Huddled closely together, the group drifted away, still chattering animatedly with each other.

“It is often like this,” old Hernandez intoned solemnly, appearing at Carlos's side. “The man wishes to leave because his heart belongs to the sea, and the women try to bind him to the land.”

“But is he sick?” Carlos pressed.

“He is sick of land life,” Hernandez said dryly. “He longs for the sea. He wants to have something in the New World named after him. It is his passion.”

“What does he want to be named after him?”

Hernandez shrugged. “A river, a mountain, a town, an estuary, a bay—anything that will outlast a man and give him some remembrance. Everything in Spain is already named. Many things are still unnamed in the New World.”

“That is why he's going to Jamaica?”

“That is why he's going to Jamaica.”

And the seaman expertly sent a wad of spit arcing over the deck of the
Santa Inez
where it plopped like a pebble in the murky sea coiling tidal threads around the barnacled pilings of the quay.

Moving like one body, de la Serena and his huddled family had drifted off to a shaded spot under the eaves of a warehouse, where they were intensely negotiating his departure in hugger-mugger whispering.

 

* * *

 

At two that afternoon, the
Santa Inez
cast off her shorelines, picked a path through the thinning throng of ships, many of which had departed earlier, and kedged her way into the harbor. She rode the ebb tide until she caught a sea breeze that billowed out her mainmast square sail and bonnet and drove her into the Atlantic.

Except for a few bystanders who watched her shove off with mild curiosity, no one who loved her was on the quay to wave goodbye. Whatever de la Serena had said to his family was enough, for his wife and daughters had departed hours ago, trailing behind them a muffled weeping. Once clear of the harbor, the
Santa Inez
hoisted her foremast square sail and was soon spanking briskly along to a quartering wind.

To a man, her crew was Spanish and Catholic, a short race of men resembling Carlos in build and complexion, stumpy and thick like drought-stunted trees. She had left port shorthanded, the curses called down on her by de la Serena's wife having cost her five crew, who simply walked away rather than sail on a vessel that might have displeased the Virgin Mary. She should have had a complement of at least twenty-five. Instead, her crew numbered only twenty, not counting de la Serena. They were sailing a vessel of some sixty tons—calculated in storage capacity for casks of wine,
toneladas,
as was the prevailing measure of the day. She was some seventy feet long with a twenty-five-foot beam and nine feet deep amidships.

Behind her, the Iberian Peninsula looked like a ravenous millipede erupting out of the body of continental Europe to sink its teeth into the brow of Africa. Seeing this, however, required a perspective aloft that sailors of that time did not have except in their dreams. Trapped at sea level, they could see only the gentle waves splashing against the hull of their ship; off the port side, the immensities of Africa; and astern, Cádiz wobbling low on the horizon.

The
Santa Inez
was steering southwest, a course that would take her near the Canary Islands. This passage between Spain and the Canaries had already become the traditional route to the New World based on the prevailing winds. It was usually a rough passage, its Spanish nickname being then el Golfo de las Yeguas—the Sea of the Mares—for the many brood mares that had died while being shipped to the Canaries. But as the Admiral had shown, it was a necessary passage to catch the northeast trades to the New World.

For now, the weather was mild, the seas gently rolling.

 

* * *

 

It is the truism of seafarers that every sailor deals in his own way with a new voyage. Some men become morose and moody, putting on a sullen face until they get accustomed to the rhythm of their sea schedule. Others are cheerful and outgoing, laughing at the least joke, ecstatically happy to be away from land where they had cross wives, demanding girlfriends, or were burdened with debts they could not repay. For Carlos, the first days at sea were always days of withdrawal.