To the Edge of the World (11 page)

XV

May 28–August 24, 1520

“. . . and through the wind and waves he rowed. Rowing, rowing, until his muscles screamed and he overtook the junk. He boarded it and single-handedly defeated fifty of the Chinese—”

“You are making this up,” interrupted Rodrigo. “No man could defeat fifty men by himself.”

“I swear it upon my soul,” said Gutiérrez, a cabin boy younger than I. “No doubt the captain-general wore full armor.”

“If he wore full armor, then he could not have rowed like a madman through such weather.”

“May the earth swallow me whole if this be a lie.” Gutiérrez paused, as if waiting to see if he spoke the truth. “Then, after all the Chinese lay dead, he rescued his friends from their prison below deck and from then on they sailed the junk.”

Rodrigo spat. “Tales.”

Gutiérrez turned to me. “You believe me, don’t you, Mateo?”

When I started to answer, Espinosa spoke from behind me. I had not even known he was there. “Your tale is a little stretched, but it makes for fine listening.” He moved to sit beside me on my bedding. “The captain-general is a brave and good man. He has done many miraculous things in his life. There was the time when, as a young officer, he was shipwrecked with the ship’s company on an atoll. They had only a few small boats, skiffs probably, but certainly not enough room for everyone.”

“Let me guess,” said Rodrigo with a wicked smile. “Magallanes swam back home with everyone clinging to his back. In full armor, no less.”

Instead of laughing, Espinosa’s face hardened, and he said, “You would do well to admire him, Rodrigo, for he has many fine traits that in you I find lacking.” Rodrigo clapped his mouth shut and Espinosa continued, “The ship’s officers planned to set off in the skiffs, promising to send a party back to rescue the common crew. But the crew protested, saying the ship’s officers meant to abandon them.”

“Did they?” I asked.

“They had planned on it. What did the officers care about the crew? After all, the officers were aristocrats, sons of nobles, and the crew naught but commoners. The scene grew ugly, and when it seemed certain blood would flow, Magallanes stepped forward and offered to stay behind with the crew while the rest of the officers fetched help.”

“And what happened?”

“The crew loved him for it, and the officers left without bloodshed. For three weeks Magallanes and the crew suffered under the scorching sun with few provisions.”

“I take it they were rescued,” said Rodrigo, “else Magallanes would not be here.”

“Yes, they were rescued. His selfless act was talked about for many months.”

“Just as how he is killing us now will be talked about for many years?” retorted Rodrigo. “Magallanes has marooned us here to die. We have only rotten goose meat and biscuit to eat. Plus he has sent the
Santiago
on a fool’s mission, looking for a passage that does not exist. They have been gone for weeks. They are probably shipwrecked, and this time His Holiness is not there to save them. Maybe he will send each ship out, one by one, until we are all dead.”

Espinosa fixed his gaze on Rodrigo. “Why do you hate him so, my friend?”

Rodrigo shrugged.

Espinosa was silent a long time before saying, “It is time to let your hatred go. It is time to stop punishing him for merely being Portuguese. Magallanes has been commissioned with an impossible task—to establish a westward route to the Spice Islands—a mission few in this world would dare attempt, much less accomplish. Give him room to succeed, my friend, and perhaps he shall surprise you.”

Each day we watched from our islet for the
Santiago
.

Each day we saw nothing but the endless stretch of gray sea.

On the third day of June, I turned fifteen years old. It has been one year, I thought, since my parents died, since I left Ávila, since I slept in the ditch by the river of mud. I have been through much. I brushed my fingers over my sparse whiskers, thinking, I am a man.

Shortly after midday, we saw a strange and wonderful sight. Never in all the time since we had been in Port San Julián had we seen another human being. In fact, not since the cannibals. Yet on this day, we saw a native. He was a giant, huge and well formed. When he saw us standing before the barracks, he danced on the shore of the mainland, twirling and leaping.

Magallanes ordered a seaman ashore in a skiff to invite the giant to our islet. At first the giant would not come, crossing his arms and planting his feet. Then the seaman did a hilarious thing. He pranced around the giant, dancing the same ridiculous dance. It worked. The giant smiled and climbed into the skiff.

When he came to the islet, we gathered about him, astonished at his great height. He was at least ten palms high and even the tallest Castilian among us did not reach above his neck. Except for yellow encircling his eyes, his entire face was painted red, with black heart-shaped emblems on his cheeks. He carried bow and arrows, the string of the bow made from animal gut and the arrows like ours except they had a stone point instead of iron. He wore the skins of the same animals we had found on the upper plains, only his clothing was well stitched and he placed them around his feet as well, leaving gigantic footprints wherever he stepped.

We quickly fetched him gifts from our trade stores. He glanced at himself in a mirror and shrieked, falling backward. When he recovered, we gave him mirrors and bells, combs and rosary beads. We offered him food and he devoured an amount that would have fed five men, maybe ten. It was astounding. Afterward, we rowed the giant back to the mainland.

That evening Magallanes ordered full rations of wine. For the first time in weeks I played my guitar. The men drummed rhythms, sang songs, laughed, and drank much wine.

The native did not return the next day, nor the next. Our vigil for the
Santiago
continued, only now we also watched the mainland for signs of natives.

By mid-June, the world outside turned a ghostly white, burying the ships under ice and snow. Our mood blackened. We sickened of so much meat. We tired of our barracks, now filthy with the stink of many men living together. We hated the wind that constantly howled, night and day, seeping through the cracks of the barracks to mock the fires. One of our shipmates was sick, the stench surrounding his bedding so nauseating we grew irritable to smell it and argued whose turn it was to change his furs.

One day when I told Rodrigo it was his turn, he pounded the wall of the barrack with his fist. “I cannot stand this! I must get out of here or I will go crazy.” Then he turned to me and, indeed, he looked crazy. His hair stood on end, messy and unshorn. Stubble covered his face. He stared at me, his eyes wide and frantic, until I could see the whites all around them. I could smell his breath, hot and foul. “Mateo. I will pay you a ducat to change his bedding for me.”

“You do not have a ducat any more than I do.”

“I swear to you, as soon as I am wealthy, I shall pay you.”

“But I will be wealthy, too. What will one little ducat matter to me?”

“A thousand ducats then.”

“You will never have so much money.”

“I promise you, one day I shall be the wealthiest man in Spain.”

“Wealthier than the king?”

“The second wealthiest then. You can be my financial advisor.”

“Then, as your financial advisor, I advise you to save your money and change the bedding yourself.”

“Mateo, please.”

“No.”

“Mateo, please. I beg of you. If not for money, then for my sake.” And he stared at me with those crazy eyes.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. But I did what he asked, cursing with disgust until the task was done. “You owe me,” I said later.

He nodded and ran his hand through his hair. “I won’t forget, my friend. God help me, I hate this place.”

It was like that. These conversations. Crazy and desperate, as if this were a nightmare from which we couldn’t awaken. I hated this place, too. But now I wondered if Rodrigo was losing his mind.

Rodrigo had been right about one thing. The
Santiago
had indeed been shipwrecked. This we discovered when the survivors returned and told their tale.

“So now we are four ships instead of five,” complained Rodrigo. “We will be many men crammed together—if we ever leave this accursed place, that is. Do you realize, Mateo, that when we leave we will continue southward? There is no end. There is no mercy.”

“Be quiet, Rodrigo. You should be happy the
Santiago
’s men are safe.”

“We are none of us safe.”

“Stop it, Rodrigo. Think about other things. Think about Spain and the happy day we return.”

“That’s just it, Mateo.” He looked me full in the face.

“What do you mean?”

“Perhaps no one will live to see Spain again. Not even you.”

I blinked at him stupidly. “Don’t say that. You curse us with such thoughts. Of course we will return to Spain. All of us.” But, for some reason, my words sounded hollow, and I was forced to look away.

In celebration of the return of the
Santiago
’s crew, Magallanes ordered wine for everyone. Again I brought out my guitar. Then Magallanes ordered the chains struck forever from the mutineers, provided they remained loyal. “They have suffered enough,” he proclaimed.

Cartagena, moved to the barracks when the weather turned too bitter aboard ship, said nothing as they struck the chains from his ankles. He seemed but a shadow of the proud man I had first seen aboard the
San Antonio,
alone and silent, as if he were already marooned. It is enough, I thought. Enough that he should suffer so. We have all suffered. Let it end.

I wanted to tell him I was sorry. I wanted to tell him that he was no longer my enemy, that I no longer hated him. Several times I approached him where he sat staring into the fire. But my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth and instead I walked away.

One day there was a terrible fistfight. It exploded from the area around the fire when someone wouldn’t make room for someone else. Fists flew and curses erupted. I saw a smear of blood, a pockmarked face, and knew one of the men was Segrado. Espinosa broke up the fight, forcing the men apart. Segrado’s chest heaved, and he had the look of murder in his eyes. Then, to the utter amazement of all, including Segrado, he burst into tears—deep, wracking, silent sobs. Espinosa let him go when he thrust his way out of the barracks and into the cold. When the door closed behind him, there was an embarrassed silence.

Since leaving Brazil, Segrado had never bothered me again, not even to look at me. It was a relief, but that was many months ago. To see him reduced to tears shook even me. Later that evening I was sitting by one of the fires eating my supper when Segrado stumbled into the circle beside me to warm his hands. He smelled of cold, and his body trembled beneath his clothes. Suddenly, I handed him my plate. “It’s hot,” I said.

He gaped at me, his nose red and dripping, his beard crusted with ice. Then, finally, he grunted, crouched, and began shoveling food into his mouth.

On my other side, Rodrigo hissed in my ear, “If you weren’t hungry, why didn’t you give it to me? Why did you do so foolish a thing?”

I shrugged, remembering the pimply-faced boy who walked into the sea and the proud Castilian captain sentenced to die.

As the days passed, we continued to watch for natives. It gave us something to do besides fight each other. We decided to capture a few of them, to take them to Spain as a gift for the king. Six days after the return of the
Santiago
’s crew, two giants appeared onshore. They were good specimens, each painted with a different design. This time a crew of twelve men, including Magallanes, was dispatched in a longboat toward the mainland to greet the natives. I watched from the islet, as did all the others. I thought perhaps the natives would suspect something was wrong, but they smiled and danced when the longboat touched shore.

Magallanes ordered the natives be loaded with gifts. Even from the islet, I saw their delight. Then Magallanes gave each of them a set of iron shackles. They seemed pleased and sought to hold the iron shackles but could not because their arms overflowed with gifts. Magallanes knelt before them and placed the shackles about their ankles, indicating that in this way they could carry them and their gifts as well. At first they were happy, but when they tried to walk, they realized they had been fooled. They cast their gifts to the ground and bellowed like the bulls of Spain.

There were congratulations among everyone. We had done it. We had easily captured two natives. They were brought to the islet and housed in the barracks. Once they saw we meant no harm, though still seeming sad, they stopped their bellowing.

They quickly adapted to life in the barracks. Each of them could eat a basket of biscuit and drink half a bucket of water in one gulp. Never had we seen such appetites. We also watched in fascinated horror when they ate rats, not bothering to skin them first.

Now we dared not go to the mainland except in armed parties of forty men or more, for we were constantly pestered by scores of angry natives. So although winter yet continued, it was agreed: it was time to move camp.