The Sound of Many Waters (30 page)

“Looks delicious,” said Zane.

“Well, she should be. Chopped her head off myself two hours ago.”

Zane refused to let the image of a headless chicken intrude his thoughts and instead focused on the man’s knife slicing through the crispy golden skin. Pieces of juicy meat unfolded onto the platter.

“Come on, now,” said the man. “Get some.”

Zane took a plateful. “Thank you.”

He was ravenous. He cut a piece of the chicken with the side of his fork and impaled it along with half a potato wedge.

“Wait!” said the man.

Zane stopped with his mouth open. “What?”

“You forgot the most important part of every meal.”

“Washing my hands?” Zane stood up.

“No. Grace.”

“Sorry about that.” Zane took his seat.

The man closed his eyes and folded his hands. “Go ahead,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“Go ahead and say grace.”

Zane paused. “I don’t really know how.”

“Improvise.”

Zane tried to mimic the way the man held his face and hands. “Dear God,” said Zane, squinting. “We thank you for this food—”

“Don’t speak for me,” interrupted the man.

Zane opened his eyes to see if the man was smiling, but he was not. Zane started over. “
I
thank you for this food, dear God, and also I ask you to please…” This time, Zane interrupted himself. “Sir?”

The man looked up. “Yes?”

“I need to know something, something that’s bothering me.”

“What is it?”

“Do you know the man who was in that moving truck out there?”

“Unfortunately, I’ve known him for a long time.”

“Where is he?”

“That I don’t know. He took my horse last night—said something about going hunting—and I haven’t seen him since. Why?”

“You mean he’s still around?” Zane’s breathing quickened. Sweat materialized on his forehead. He looked toward the door.

The man leaned back in his chair. “I think it’s time I tell you who I am.”

Chapter Thirty One

“The story I told you,” said Francisco, kneeling in the woods above the spring, “the one about how I came to La Florida with Ponce de Leon. That was not true. And I did not fall off a ship and get taken captive by the Calusa.”

Dominic pressed the sword against his neck. “So you are a liar.”

“We are all born with blood on our hands, are we not? I lied because the truth was a secret, one that must be kept at all costs. But now, it is time for you to know. My brother and I, you see, we joined a later expedition—Hernando as a soldier and me as a chaplain—under the leadership of a conquistador named Pánfilo de Narváez.”

Dominic shuddered. “My father was on that expedition.”

“I know. Álvar Cabeza de Vaca was my dear friend, and by far the most honorable man on the voyage.”

“I doubt that.”

“It is true. In fact, he urged Narváez to follow the coast, but Narváez’s lust for gold, and for something even more tempting, drove us inland. We became lost and wandered in the wilderness for many weeks with nothing but survival as a goal. Some natives, like the Timucuans, helped us, while others were hostile. Envision it, commander. When the expedition began, we were three hundred men. When it was over, only six of us were left alive.”

“More lies. Everyone knows there were only four survivors—my father, two soldiers, and a slave. They trekked all the way to Mexico.”

“Yes, four survivors made it out, but my brother and I stayed behind.”

“And why in God’s name would you do that?”

“I was in my early fifties at the time—one of the oldest in the group—and as our expedition was passing through this region of La Florida, my heart began to fail. Narváez left me behind at Many Waters. Both your father and my brother stayed back to see me into the next world, and, just as I was about to draw my last breath, the villagers decided it was safe to reveal their secret. They said it was to help me, but, as I learned later, the Timucuans—convinced by our burnished armor and powerful weapons that we were dem
i
gods—wanted our help to protect their secret from their native enemies. Thank God they waited until Narváez had gone ahead. You see, his other goal was to find the ultimate source of power. Immortality. Natives in other regions had long spoken of a spring, hidden somewhere in the wilds of La Florida, that was blessed with restorative powers.”

“Everyone knows that fairytale,” said Dominic. “The fountain of youth.”

“No, not the fountain of youth.” Francisco gazed at the spring, its surface ignited with afternoon sunlight. “The fountain of
life
—for when the natives placed me in these cool waters and I drank its sweet nectar, I emerged completely healthy, my mind as sharp as a lance. Álvar and Hernando were astonished. We quickly realized the implications of what we had disco
v
ered and your father insisted that Narváez must never know about it, so we devised a plan. Hernando and I would stay at the village, and Álvar would rejoin the expedition. If he found his way home to Spain, he would seek council from the pope, try to gain control of the lands where the spring lay, and return on a later expedition. He brought a bottle of the water with him as proof. But he never came back. In later years, I had heard from other missionaries that he tried to convince the king to appoint him as governor of La Florida, but in the many years it had taken Álvar to reach Mexico and then Spain, the king had already granted the next expedition to De Soto, who, inc
i
dentally, met his end in these wilds just like Narváez.”

Dominic kicked Francisco to the ground and spit on him. “Liar! My father never found such a thing!”

Francisco looked up at Dominic with the tranquility of a saint. “Then why is it, commander, that your father and his three closest friends were the only ones to reach Mexico alive? Don’t you see? It’s because they had water from the spring! My guess is they had to use it all to survive, and thus Álvar had none to bring to Spain. Denied permission to return here, he never spoke of it again, such a good and noble man as he was. You see, one sip or one submersion does not make you immortal. It only extends your life and cures your maladies. One must drink every day if one wants to halt the process of aging. A sip a day keeps the reaper away, I have always said, but I also learned that no amount of water can reverse a mortal wound.”

“You learned that from slaying your brother, didn’t you, you coward.”

Francisco looked down. “Hernando and I lived together in this paradise for many years. But while my loyalties were with God, his remained with the crown. He found nothing peaceful about the isolation of this place. One day we heard from a native scout that the Spanish had founded a town on the coast—the inaptly named San Agustín, two days east of here—so Hernando filled a canteen from the spring, donned his armor, and set off to deliver the water as a gift to the king and hopefully earn himself governorship of a more civilized territory somewhere else.”

“So you killed him.”

“Am I not my brother’s keeper? He would have torn the very fabric of nature by disclosing this place! The natives appointed us to guard it because they knew they could not do it forever. You see, they long ago observed that animals will not drink from the spring, none except for panthers, which are like gods to them. And for that reason, the natives—even the worst among them—will not drink from it, either. It is against the balance of nature, they say.”

Dominic gazed at the spring. Despite its beauty, his heart felt nothing toward it. He was exhausted from all the emotions clashing inside, and his mind strained to make sense of the old man’s wild story. The details of his father painted Á
l
var as a different kind of man than the one Dominic had known, and yet everything else Francisco said about the expedition echoed the few stories Dominic had heard. He ran the numbers through his head. The Narváez expedition began in 1527. If Francisco were in his fifties at that time then, by God, that would make him well over a hundred now. It seemed impossible, and yet, strangely, it all made perfect sense.

“Do you mind if I pray, commander?” said Francisco.

Dominic’s eyes narrowed when he saw the rosary that now dangled from Francisco’s hand. It was Pablo’s rosary. The old man must have pilfered it off the beach after the shipwreck. Dominic twitched. A flood of memories tore through his mind: the roar of the hurricane, the plunge into violent waters, Juan’s sandy face smiling at death, and Francisco swinging an oak log at his face. Through it all, he heard Pablo’s taunts.
Your sins are unforgivable, captain!
Unforgiveable!

Francisco kissed the rosary and then gazed up at Dominic and said, “God loves even you.”

Dominic’s eyes bulged with rage. He lifted the sword high and, as he swung it down, he heard Francisco whisper, “Gracias,” and then the old man’s head bounced down the embankment and plopped into the water.

Dominic looked at the headless quivering body on the ground below him and at the red stain in the otherwise flawless spring and a debilitating combination of grief and remorse seized him and brought him to his knees. He wrapped his arms around Francisco’s body and held it close, sobbing.

“
Forgive me
,” he cried out.

He wanted to kiss Francisco’s cheek but that part of the old man, he realized, was at the bottom of the spring. Dominic put the sword to his own throat. He took a deep, sobbing breath and pressed the blade against his skin. But then he thought about Mela and his son. He let the headless body fall to the ground and stepped to the edge of the spring. He ripped off his helmet and threw it in the water. Then he looked at the blood-smeared sword in his hand.

“No more,” he said, and he flung it toward the spring. It flailed through the air like a soul falling into hell and glinted as it sank into the dithering blueness.

He buried Francisco without his head in a shallow grave near the oak sapling and used a crude wooden cross ripped from the door of the hut as a grave marker. Then he walked down the trail and stood looking at the village wall for a long time. Did Mela think he was dead? Who would protect her and the children now that he was banished and Francisco was gone? He wanted to storm in and take them back, but he knew it was impossible without an army.

Without an army, he thought again, and then he looked up at the sky and used the sun to find east.

The woods off the trail were thick with creeping plants that had formed great webs of foliage. Scattered sloughs and mires impeded his way. At such a sluggish pace, he would never make it to the coast in time to save his son, and a heavy despair pressed down on him. A stick cracked off to his side; he spun around but saw only trees and bushes.  “Hello?” he said, but there was no reply.

He came to a large fallen oak. Parts of it had been clawed to shreds by some animal. He stepped up onto the tree trunk and was about to step down on the other side but he stopped. There before him was a huge ball of shiny black fur. The animal spun around and rose on its hind legs and Dominic re
c
ognized the beast as a black bear. The bear sniffed the air and growled.

“Easy,” said Dominic. He stepped backward off the tree trunk and heard a huffing sound. The bear came bounding over the tree and lunged at him with its claws extended and its teeth bared. Dominic fell to the ground and curled his legs up against his body and the full weight of the bear landed upon him. But it did not move. Dominic, now covered in blood, squeezed out from under the thing. He gazed at the bear and saw an arrow sticking out of its back. Itori came running up and knelt beside Dominic.

“Hurt?” said Itori.

Dominic patted his body but did not find any lacerations. “No. I am not hurt.”

Itori smiled at the heap of dead bear. “Heart.”

“I see that. Good aim.”

Itori helped Dominic to his feet. “Where…go?”

Dominic hesitated. “To the coast.”

“Itori…go.”

“No.”

“Itori…go. Itori…know…way.”

Dominic sighed. He felt ashamed of what he had done to Francisco and even slightly afraid of what he might be capable of doing to Itori, but the wilds of La Florida harbored dangers beyond his comprehension. He could choose to be stubborn about his mission and continue alone, or he could utilize Itori’s inherent knowledge of the forest and have a chance to save his son.

“Come on,” said Dominic, and Itori’s eyes lit up.

Chapter Thirty Two

Zane sat speechless, having just been told the most outlandish tale he had ever heard. Did this lunatic really believe he was a Spanish conquistador named Dominic Cabeza de Vaca who had been living next to the Fountain of Youth for over four hundred years? Judging by the serious expression on the man’s face, he did. Zane was terrified, and yet strangely intrigued.

“Won’t you say anything?” said Dominic.

Zane tapped his fork on the plate. He still had not taken a bite. “What should I say?”

“That you believe me, or that you don’t.”