The Seven Serpents Trilogy

  I was marched thereupon to the beach, loaded into the longboat, and rowed to the caravel, where Don Luis’s instructions were carried out to the letter.

  I was familiar with Don Luis’s cabin, having spent part of every evening there since the beginning of the voyage. Besides a chart table, used for dining, and two chairs bolted tight to the flooring, there was a small sofa, which I had never had the pleasure of using. In the aft bulwark was a large window with thick glass, very old and scratched inside and out. Through it I had a view of the beach, both arms of the bay, and when the caravel turned with the tide, a glimpse of the open sea.

  I stood looking out through the hazy glass, watching the longboat return to the lagoon, while I surveyed my problems. At the moment they seemed fairly simple. I couldn’t blame Don Luis for my plight, since, as owner of the Santa Margarita and leader of the expedition, his fortunes rested upon the blind loyalty of those he com manded. Neither could I blame myself for refusing to obey an order that I felt would betray people who had befriended me.

  As for the present, it would be fairly comfortable here in the owner’s cabin, bound up though I was. The fu ture? Cloudy. Not hopeless, however. With luck I would find myself on board a caravel bound back to Spain, to Arroyo, and my studies. More than likely Don Luis would be glad to rid himself of my company, of a re minder that he once had had a conscience.

  Afternoon clouds piled up and the sky turned black. Then a streak of light broke through and suddenly fell through the window upon the opposite bulwark, placing upon it a crude semblance of a cross. Blinded by what I saw, hastily I got to my knees and said a long prayer of thankfulness and contrition.

  But the cross faded away. I was left with an uneasy feeling of unhappiness. The idea that I would be freed and in time find the way home to my village now seemed hollow. The truth was, I’d failed. It was not my fault, perhaps, yet I hadn’t done what I had come to the New World to do. I couldn’t think of a single person, of one savage soul I had brought to a belief in Christ. Yes, I had failed, and the knowledge of my failure unsettled me.

  It came on to thunder. Forked lightning rent the clouds. Rain fell straight down, as it had done every af ternoon since we had come to the island.

  I wondered how Guzmán and his band were faring. If they brought back the Indians, whether as captives or of their own free will, I would ask for another chance to go among them and speak Christ’s message, which in its majesty was meant for all the earth’s oppressed, they among them.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE STORM BLEW AWAY. THE WINDOW WAS BLURRED WITH RAIN, BUT I made out our longboat as it left the lagoon and crossed the bay toward us. It sat low in the water, loaded as it was with a heavy cargo. Two men rowed and one sat in the bow.

  The latter, I presumed, was Don Luis, but the man turned out to be a middle-aged Sevillano, Alberto Barrios by name. We had been on friendly terms from the first, when he had come to me about a problem he was having with a girl from Cádiz whom he had known for five years yet couldn’t make up his mind about marry ing. I knew nothing about marriage or girls, especially girls from Cádiz, but I was good at listening, which, as it developed, was all that he really wanted of me.

  Barrios was one of the few members of our crew who could be trusted, and so Don Luis had put him in charge of moving the gold. It was stored in baskets with two long handles, which made it possible for several men at once to lift the heavy loads. Gold is very heavy. A piece one-and-a-half spans in all dimensions—a cube, in other words—weighs close upon a ton. The work, therefore, went slowly and took up the rest of the afternoon.

  At nightfall I heard steps outside the door, and a fig ure came in, holding a lantern and a plate of food. The plate was set down in front of me, and by the glow of the lantern I recognized Alberto Barrios.

  “I heard you were on board,” he said. “Tied up like a chicken.”

  “Where’s Don Luis?”

  “With Guzmán. They marched off with the soldiers and both the dogs soon after you were put aboard. Went up the stream, and about an hour after they left I heard the dogs barking and a musket shot. But no news came back, at least while I was at the lagoon.”

  Barrios had been caught stealing an anchor and sent to prison for ten years, where he served two years be fore being released by Their Majesties to join our expedition.

  “How much gold came aboard?” I asked him, out of curiosity.

  “We weighed everything with care, except the small stuff. One nugget came in at sixty libras. And it wasn’t larger than your fist. Another, about the size of a small squash, weighed 620 libras. Altogether, we weighed more than four thousand. And mind you, it’s pure gold. Soft. You can make a dent in it with your thumbnail. There are two more loads as big as the first. We’ll handle them tomorrow, providing the sea stays calm. And don’t forget that a libra of gold is worth nine hundred pesos.”

  Barrios went to the window, glanced out at the black night, and came back to stand over me. His eyes glittered in the glow of the ship’s lantern.

  “You’ll have plenty of time,” I said. “We’ll not see Don Luis for days, perhaps a week.”

  “But we won’t lie around here waiting for him. His instructions were to load everything as fast as possible. He told Captain Roa to raise anchor and stand off the coast when that’s done. He’s eager to leave the bay before the owner shows up. I saw the gentleman, Olivares is his name, when I was there in Hispaniola, and I’ll say that he’s not one to sit by and watch someone steal treasure that’s his by law.”

  The caravel strained against her cable, backed off, and began to sway to a gentle creaking of timber.

  “The wind,” Barrios said.

  He glanced at my bound hands but made no move to unbind them.

  “It’s not a decent way to treat a boy,” he said, “a young man who has aspirations, who someday will take holy orders.”

  He was uneasy. The cabin was too small for him to do much pacing, so instead he kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Watching him, I suddenly got the idea that it was not only the wind and weather he was concerned about.

  “Don Luis is fast becoming a monster,” he said. “He takes after Guzmán, who was born a monster.”

  It occurred to me that Barrios might be testing my loyalty to Don Luis. If this was true, it could be for only one reason. There must be plans afoot to seize the gold. As soon as it was all on board, the conspirators, under the guise of obeying Don Luis’s instructions, would raise anchor and sail the caravel out of the bay. Once out, they would never return.

  The cabin began to shift from side to side in a gentle, wallowing motion. Barrios strode to the window and looked out into the starry night.

  “It’s the wind again,” he said.

  I wondered who the conspirators could be. Was it possible that Captain Roa himself was among them? If so, the conspiracy had a good chance of success. With out him? Even then it could succeed.

  Barrios had been holding the lantern. He now set it in gimbals above the table. “It’s a hot night,” he said.

  I felt like a martyr of some sort, sitting there with my hands bound. I asked him to untie me.

  “I don’t have that authority. Not now,” he said.

  “What do you mean by ‘not now’?”

  He seemed surprised at my question. “Nothing. Nothing.”

  We were silent for a while; then Barrios said, “Things happened in Hispaniola when we were there last week. You might want to know, being that you’ve had deal ings with the Indians and like them. It was this way.

  “Don Luis came back one afternoon—that was the afternoon of the day we got to Hispaniola—he came back to the caravel after talking to the governor. He was in a bad mood, angry because the governor had turned down his request for Isla del Oro. The man who served his meals he kicked around and he gave the crew a number of daft orders. Then at suppertime, when wine was brought, he got himself in a better mood.

  “Roa reminded him that he had d
ug out a lot of gold, gold worth a hundred thousand pesos, at least. ‘Besides,’ Roa said, ‘you can round up the Indians and take them along to your new encomienda. They’re worth more than gold.’ ”

  This news astounded me. “It’s against the contract of the Indies to handle Indians this way.”

  “That’s what Don Luis said as soon as Roa suggested the idea. Furthermore, breaching of the contract is pun ishable by death,” Barrios explained. “Don Luis knew this. He said that he valued his head since it was the only head he had. But Roa explained how easy it was to evade the law and thereby keep your head.”

  Barrios went again to the window and came back to report whitecaps on the bay and a rising wind.

  A glimmer of suspicion entered my mind. Impa tiently, I waited for him to continue.

  “You evade the law by causing the Indians to revolt,” he continued. “You do this by working them too hard, or not paying them the few centavos required by law, or just lopping off a few heads. If Indians do revolt and flee into the jungle, according to the law, you can go af ter them and bring them back. Henceforth and for the rest of their lives, they are slaves and belong to you, to use or to sell as you wish. It’s a common practice. The Indies could not prosper without it. But if it continues, all the Indians will be dead or enslaved.”

  I got to my feet. We looked at each other across the table. His eyes shining in the glare of the swaying lan tern, Barrios studied my face.

  “Where is Don Luis now?” he said in an angry tone, and chose to answer his own question. “Chasing In dians, that’s where he is. Why is he chasing Indians? Because the Indians revolted and fled into the jungle, and he needs them to work the mine, the mine that isn’t his. And why did the Indians flee? Because Guzmán worked them until they were sick and then set the big dog on their leader and mangled him to death.”

  I kept the horror to myself. “I believe you,” I said, scarcely able to form the words.

  “I speak the truth.”

  “Then what I saw at that moment when the dog was loosed was not just murder caused by anger. It was worse, far worse. It was murder planned and thought about. It was murder born of greed, done coldly and deliberately.”

  Barrios nodded.

  He went to the window for a third time and peered out, shading his eyes against the glare of the lantern. “Surf ’s running high. We won’t be able to use the lancha tomorrow. But I’ll load the gold if I have to swim and carry it piece by piece.”

  Barrios didn’t ask me to join the conspiracy that was plainly afoot, but as he left the cabin he unbound my hands, saying that before long I might need them.

  CHAPTER 14

  AT DAWN, AMID A VIOLENT STORM OF WIND AND RAIN, BARRIOS SEIZED the Santa Margarita. Captain Roa was bound hand and foot and put away in a cubbyhole below deck next to the stable. Unbound, I was allowed the freedom of Don Luis’s cabin, but a sentry armed with a saber stood outside my door.

  The storm lasted two days and two nights. On the morning of the third day, under blue skies, the crew set off for the lagoon. Barrios had decided to transport the remaining two loads of gold to the beach by muleback and there put it on the lancha for the short trips to the caravel, thus saving valuable time. And time was valu able to Barrios, for Don Luis and Guzmán could be ex pected at any hour, as could the owner of the island, the gentleman from Hispaniola, Señor Olivares.

  During the two days of the storm I hadn’t lacked for comforts. I ate what the crew ate, but from time to time Barrios brought me extra viands that he had set aside for himself, including a slice of goat cheese, slightly overripe, five sea biscuits, which officially we’d run out of weeks before, and a small pot of excellent orange conserve he had brought along from Seville, made, he said, by the girl from Cádiz.

  I felt somewhat like a pig being fattened for slaugh ter, though I knew that the small gifts were meant to curry favor. Even if I chose, there was little I could do to interfere with the mutiny, but Barrios liked me and wanted to feel that what he was doing I understood and sympathized with.

  Besides, more than likely he was looking ahead to a dire possibility that someday he might be haled before a court and asked to explain how he had come into pos session of a caravel loaded with gold. A young witness of good reputation, willing to testify in his behalf, could save his treasure as well as his neck.

  And should that happen, if before a court in Hispaniola or in Spain I was called upon for testimony in his behalf, I would give it. Neither the gold nor the caravel belonged to him. He had stolen both. He was a thief.

  And yet my horror at what Don Luis had done was so overpowering that I could almost see myself standing before a court, swearing to tell the truth and then not telling it.

  For an hour after dawn there was no movement aboard the Santa Margarita. Occasionally I heard my guard, a sailor named Luna, mumble a word or two. Now and then he walked away, I presumed to take a closer look at the bay and the sea.

  The caravel herself swung at anchor, quietly turning her stern toward the shore as the tide ran in.

  I had a good view of the bay. For the first hour after Barrios and the crew went off, there was movement neither on the beach nor along the fringe of the jungle. Then, as the tide ebbed, and there was no sound except the crying of the gulls, I heard a single cannon shot. It was followed shortly by a volley of musket fire. Then it was quiet again.

  I called through the door and asked Luna if he saw anything.

  “Nothing,” he replied. “Nada.”

  “There’s a fight somewhere,” I said.

  “The noise comes from the lagoon.”

  “The muskets and cannon both?”

  “Both.”

  “I have only a view of the bay,” I said. “What do you find otherwise?”

  “Otherwise nothing. I can see far out. It is very clear on the ocean.”

  “No sails? A caravel is expected.”

  “No sails. No caravel. Nada.”

  As I peered through the window, I pictured in my mind a scene at the lagoon. Barrios and the crew were in the act of loading the last of the gold on the mules, making ready to start off for the beach, when Don Luis and Guzmán with their men came out of the jungle. I decided that they had failed to find the Indians and were in an angry mood. Barrios would explain that he and the crew had already moved a boatload of gold to the Santa Margarita and would have moved all of it except for the storm. No further explanation would be needed until Don Luis arrived on the caravel and found Captain Roa bound hand and foot.

  At that moment, Barrios, who was not dull witted, would say that the captain had tried to seize the caravel and sail off with her, but that he, Barrios, had stood staunchly against it. Captain Roa would deny this, but Barrios would be backed up promptly by the crew and by me.

  As events turned out, as the true story unfolded piece by piece, I was proved wrong. Don Luis and his men did march out of the jungle while the crew was busy loading gold. But they came with thirty Indians—twenty-seven men and three women, one of them carrying a child—captured after a bloody fight in a canyon at the head of the stream. They had captured more, but five of the Indians died of wounds on the march back to the lagoon.

  Barrios and the crew were surprised, but instead of acting as I thought they would, several members of the crew took fright and bolted into the jungle, choosing to take their chances with the Indians rather than with Guzmán. The rest meekly submitted, all except Barrios, who told the story I imagined he might tell. It was re ceived with a howl of laughter by Don Luis and by Guzmán, who felled him with one thrust of his sword.

  The first I knew of this was about an hour later, while I stood peering out of the cabin window. The caravel had shifted with the tide, which was now running seaward, so I had only a partial view of the island.

  Six mules plodded along the beach, followed by sol diers and members of the crew. Next came a long, straggling line of naked Indians, then a band of musket men. Mounted on horses, Don Luis and Guzmán brought u
p the rear.

  The line looked like a big ungainly snake, winding its way down the narrow strip of sand between the jungle and the sea. The Indians slowly walked along, one after the other, bound together, the man in front bound to the man behind by a single length of ship’s rope that en circled the neck of each. One man couldn’t flee unless all fled. If one man stumbled or stopped, it caused trouble everywhere along the line.

  Just such trouble took place as the Indians ap proached the longboat.

  My view wasn’t good, but I saw the line suddenly buckle, buckle and stop, then move forward, then stop again. Somewhere in the middle of the line an Indian, a man with gray hair, had been overcome by exhaustion, or perhaps by fear, as he saw the caravel riding at an chor and fully realized his fate. In any event, he fell to his knees, struggled to get up, but failed.

  Guzmán, who had ridden forward as soon as the line came to a halt, sat above the fallen man, looking down at him in contempt. He must have shouted some com mand, for the Indian grasped at the air and strained to get to his feet, but again fell to his knees. With one hand on the peak of his saddle, Guzmán reached down and swung his saber. The rope severed, the old man’s head flew off and rolled into the surf. Thus freed of the en cumbering body, the Indians moved on.

  I noticed two gaps along the length of rope where men had stood with their necks encircled, so I con cluded that Guzmán had dealt with them in the same manner.

  As the line reached the boat waiting on the beach, cries went up that clearly reached me above the noise of the surf. The Indians looked wildly about, and for a mo ment I thought that surely they would try to break their bonds and flee. But the soldiers stood with weapons ready, while Don Luis rode around the huddled group, making gestures that were meant to calm them.

  I watched in disbelief.

  I had heard Las Casas speak of horrors dealt to the gentle people of the Indies, but his words, forceful as they were, had not prepared me for what was taking place at this very moment, for what had taken place in the past—men and women forced to labor until they sickened, the cacique Ayo mangled to death by a vi cious dog, men and women pursued, captured, and led into captivity by a rope around their necks, beheaded if they faltered.