LIFE NEAR THE BONE (9 page)

On another spy visit, months later, she found the city almost complete and knew the commander ruled it. She witnessed brutal beatings and rapings of her people and horrible murders that were carried out without provocation.

Then as she watched one native being cut to ribbons by a long shiny sword of one of the soldiers, she saw a man wearing a long gown of rough, brown cloth come into the street and scream at the soldier. She did not know this language, but she understood from the scene, the soldier hanging his head low and not meeting the other man’s eyes, that the man in the gown controlled some sort of power to stop the violence in its tracks. At their feet lay the murdered native, one arm sliced completely from his body, other mortal wounds spurting gouts of blood from his still body into the dust of the pathway.

The soldier skulked off, chastened. The gowned man stood over the dead man in the dirt and made gestures over his chest and mumbled what Angelique knew must be prayers. Then he was their religious man, like her island’s own witch doctors had been before she outlawed them. This religious man obviously enjoyed much more authority than any witch doctor. He had cowed the soldier, berating him for the violent murder of the innocent.

She might be able to sneak into the city and gain this person’s trust and goodwill, get him to take her under his protection. The glimmer of a plan formed in her mind like a tiny sun lighting up a dark landscape.

She watched longer, while the religious man called for other soldiers to take the body and, presumably, bury it. She watched his face closely, saw the revulsion there as the bloody body was lifted and the separated arm gathered from where it lay like a torn talisman of death. All this made her happy. Surely he was a man who could be used. Manipulated. He thought a man’s life important, when it wasn’t. He thought violent death horrible, when it was the normal state of the world. She could use his weak-minded beliefs against him.

She crept deeper into the jungle for the trek back to her mountain. She missed comfort, companionship. She missed fire, because she could not have one in her cave, too much chance of being found out. She missed bathing in the sea. It had to be said, she missed the people. Without them she was forced to live like an animal and that displeased her immensely. Pleasure, comfort, power, these were what she was used to and for which she lived. Time passed, the island changed from day to day thanks to the invaders, and she remained the same, but alone. Too alone.

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It was at the end of a year into the occupation that she finally found a way to get to the religious man. She spent long months just watching, taking note. The first time she’d seen him, screaming at the murderous soldier, might have been an aberration of his normal behavior. She watched him for many months longer, to be sure she was right in her evaluation of the man. After a few more incidents, she was very sure, but then getting to him when he was alone proved to be difficult. He lived in a small addition added onto the church. He was a busy man, consulted all day until sunset by people who came and went from his door. At night there was a guard stationed near his dwelling and this guard was a good one for he never fell asleep on duty, never seemed less than on absolute alert for suspicious intruders.

It was proper, Angelique knew, to protect your religious leaders. Especially from a wild people you were trying to convert, which is what she saw happening. One day a week the religious leader had soldiers round up as many natives as they could muster and march them to his great church building, through the large double wooden doors, and into waiting pews hewn from the largest hardwood trees on the island. The religious man read from an open book and spoke with vigor about whatever religion he was espousing.

She would get to him, ask for his protection, but she had to find him alone.

In the deep summer following the first year of occupation, Angelique accidentally found her chance. She had come down from her mountain hide out and stood in a new hidden area in order to see the progress of the abruptly built town the invaders were creating. It was a new spot where she hid, closer to the encampment, and she thought she was covered by vine, leaf, and thick shadow and could not be seen, but a voice behind her spoke in the foreigner’s language, and she turned around, panicked she’d been discovered. She feared turning into the business end of the deadly, fiery weapon. She might have known someone was coming had she not been so concentrated on the little town of strange buildings facing the sea.

It was the religious man. He stood before her in his cassock, smiling down at her. He spoke again, but she shook her head to show she did not understand. He reached out to touch her shoulder, but she jerked away impulsively. He stooped and quietly observed her with kind, patient eyes. She knew this was her time. She brought tears to bear and let them roll down her smooth cheeks. She wept and saw what that did to the religious man. Distress entered his eyes and again he reached out on impulse. This time she let him touch her. He had her little bare shoulder and pulled her from her hiding place into the open. He brought a soft white cloth from a pocket in his gown and wiped her face. She had not felt such fine linen cloth in two centuries. She nearly swooned from the feel of it. He made gestures meaning he wished for her to come with him.

It is what she wanted. It is what she had hoped for but had never found a way past the night guard to the religious man inside the church. She had studied their language from the distance and thought she knew a few words. She used the word which meant “thank you”, looking up at the kindly gentleman. He was pleased, yes, he was very pleased with her. He smiled and led her from the edge of the jungle into the open spaces of the invaders’ town, his hand firmly, protectively, on her small shoulder.

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She was taken under the religious man’s wing and given a soft blanket to sleep on in the corner of his room. He thought her an orphan. He had no idea what the islanders were babbling about when they pointed at her and tried to communicate with their former queen. It was lucky, she knew, that the invaders took little interest in learning the dialect of the people they ruled. They expected the population to learn their language, which in time she knew they would, out of pure necessity.

Meanwhile she made great efforts to learn the invaders’ tongue. She pointed to things and cocked her head and waited for the religious man to give her the word for it in his language.
Bowl. Pitcher. Candle. Book.
Having an advanced intelligence and the experience of having lived for two hundred years, never mind the thousands of years she had lived in human bodies before, she caught on quickly. By the week’s end she was communicating with him in a rough, simple exchange.

“I am a priest,” he told her. “I have been sent here from my country, Spain, obligated to Her Highness to teach the people about the one and true God.”

“Oh, this place,” he replied, scoffing at the idea. “This place does not seem to have gold or treasure. I am afraid your island is pretty worthless to my queen—except for the souls to be saved, of course, which are by no means worthless.” He smiled, showing small uneven teeth, and to Angelique he might as well have been a baboon picking fleas off his belly.

“Then your captain will be moving on soon, I would think,” she said, belying an intelligence not usually seen in ten-year-olds. “If there is nothing here then it is not worth staying?” Oh, for them to give up this horrid place and take her with them!

“Well, the search is not complete. My captain thinks the natives lie to him to keep their treasure hidden. It’s getting more difficult for me to stay his hand against the people.”

She shook her head. “Your captain is mistaken. Tell him for me that I know for a certainty there is no gold. No treasure. We are a poor people. We do not even have boats or ships! You saw how we lived, in palm frond huts, with little fires and no ship at all.” She felt enraged at his stupidity and the greedy ignorance of his leader, but her small face was a study in control.

He looked at her suspiciously for the first time. She realized she should reign in her anger and her tongue. She worked at looking demure and young again. “I didn’t mean to dispute you, Lord. I am nothing but a poor ignorant peasant. I am only trying to be of service.”

That she had done. She made herself useful, handing the priest his ink pot when he took up a pen, tying the knot of his rope around his rough cassock, going for cool drinks when he appeared to sweat. If she were indispensable to him, he would not send her away or place her with the villagers. She already knew she bewitched him the way he sneaked little glances when he thought she would not notice. He was both baffled and dazzled by the child. Once she was cleaned up and sweet smelling, her hair brushed to a hard shine, he could see the real beauty. She held a power over him—not one to do with lust--and not strong enough unless she also served him and remembered to keep her tongue in check. Children were not supposed to display such anger, certainly not in the presence of a conquering invader.

“It is all right,” he said now, drawing her into the circle of his arms and patting her paternally on the back. “Our captain will discover on his own, in his own time, that there is nothing here and he will leave. But…we—a group of soldiers and me--we will stay. You know that, don’t you?”

She leaned back to look up at his eyes. She put on a bright, smiling, happy face. “Of course! You must stay! I would not want you to leave. You are very kind and very smart. We are stupid. We need you. We need to know more of…of your God.”

He heard what he wanted to hear, smiling broadly now, and turned back to his large book that lay open on the table before him. “I have a sermon to write,” he said. “and my diary entry to make.”

She made herself scarce, leaving the room to roam his little house attached to the church. She went to the cook in the kitchen, who bowed to her. She walked up to her as she had done several times already and slapped her in the head and demanded she stop it. “Do not bow to me again! I told you before.“ The cook did not understand her queen, this new behavior that before demanded obedience, but which now did not want any show of respect. She mumbled an apology and offered the little queen a platter of sliced bananas and mango.

Angelique took the plate and sat at the kitchen table to gorge. These treats were really meant for the priest, but so what, the cook could procure more ripe fruit and prepare another plate.

When will he leave
, Angelique thought.
When will the great captain in the beautiful silver breastplate leave the island and sail for a more civilized country?

It would be another long period of time before her question was answered to her satisfaction.

CHAPTER 9

THE PRIEST OF HISPANOLIA

His name was Las Carasas. Though of humble origin he managed to join Columbus as one of his soldiers. More than soldier, however, he proved to be the most pious of the crew, his Bible always open and under consult. Due to his ability to read and write, his knowledge of the scripture, it was Columbus himself who officially made him their religious cleric. On the island Columbus called Hispanola, Las Casas took up the charge to build the island’s first Christian church. Later this man would have a son, Bartholomew, who would go to university and become a great friar who spent the latter part of his life fighting for the rights of Indians to be treated as human beings and not as serfs or slaves. But before Bartholomew was even a twinkle in his father's eyes, Las Carasas was the one who showed some small pity for some of the natives of Hispanola, especially the little girl he grew to know as Angelique.

A beautiful child, Angelique, orphaned and living wild in the jungle, he had found her in hiding and quaking with fear. Little by little he had brought her out of her shy shell by treating her with kindness. She was given a place to sleep, little tasks to make her feel useful, food, and protection from the otherwise barbaric soldiers who were building Columbus’ new city. Even this child would certainly have been raped, given her beauty, if Las Carasas had not taken her under his wing.

Many of the natives, the Indians as Columbus called them, were ignorant, backward primitives, but Las Carasas thought the child Angelique showed an intelligence that surprised him. She learned his language and within weeks was able to understand his requests and speak with him about her island. She was quick to make him comfortable and to supply at his very hand the thing he was thinking of getting for himself. She possessed an uncanny ability to know exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it.

She seemed to be more advanced than her age would belie, so he finally put her to work translating his bad penmanship from the notes in his diary to scrolls detailing the discovery of Hispanola and the building of the great city, of which Columbus was governor. He would find her each day, her small head bent over the pages, writing out in beautiful script his notes that others could hardly decipher. Out of a feeling of generosity, he began to lay one gold coin on his desk for her each day that she worked so diligently. He thought that were she to save these small monies, by the time she was grown, she would be worth more than any islander or quite a few of the soldiers.

He never saw her take the offerings, but when he returned to find his notes translated to the scrolls and Angelique gone to the kitchen, he would find the coin had disappeared. If he ever had a daughter in Spain when he returned, he hoped she would be half as smart and useful as little Angelique—and half as beautiful, for she was such a striking creature with her cafe au lait skin and stunning black hair.