‘It should put the fear of God in them when they see our numbers,’ said Sandoval, sounding, he thought, more enthusiastic than he felt. His palms were damp, his bowels were in a knot and his heart was thudding irregularly. Funny that – how you never really knew you had a heart until a time like this.
‘With a bit of luck we won’t have to fight at all,’ Brabo said. He cupped his hands to his mouth and emitted a sound remarkably like the call of one of the local night birds. ‘I’ll do that three times when we’re in place behind them,’ he said, ‘loudly enough for Domingo to hear as well, then we’ll move in at the double – all subject to your agreement, of course, sir.’
Sandoval felt uneasy, but Brabo’s plan sounded more likely to succeed than simply charging round the corner en masse, which was the only other strategy that came to mind. Dear God! This was actually happening. He was in it up to his neck and there was no way out now. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘let’s get on with it.’
‘Halt! Who goes there?’
‘Ensign Gonzalo de Sandoval, off duty from the fleet and on his way to Santiago for some entertainment.’
‘Come forward then.’
Clearly visible in the moonlight, the guards had taken up position about two hundred paces ahead – twelve big men, all decked out in their ostentatious formal uniforms despite the night’s heat. They’d made no attempt to hide but sat in plain view, occupying a little clearing on sloping, lightly forested ground overlooking the road. If this was an ambush, Sandoval thought, it was a very strange one.
He didn’t hurry to cover the two hundred paces. Every second he could delay here gave more time for Brabo to climb the outcrop and get round behind them. But the guardsmen were instantly suspicious. ‘Don’t dawdle!’ yelled their officer, leaping to his feet. There was a rattle of swords and armour as all the others stood too, and quite suddenly the atmosphere of the encounter turned sinister.
Overcoming an overwhelming urge to turn tail and run, Sandoval stepped forward briskly. ‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘The sight of so many armed men unnerved me.’
‘If your business is legitimate you have nothing to fear …’
‘My business is at the Moor’s Head,’ Sandoval said, naming a famous tavern in Santiago’s red light district. He was close enough now to see the three gold roundels blazoned on the cuirass of the clean-shaven middle-aged officer doing the talking. A colonel. Surprisingly high rank to be leading such a small squad. There was something familiar about him and, as he entered the clearing, Sandoval recognised the tall, upright, square-shouldered, self-important stance, and the malicious, mean-spirited features of Francisco Motrico, commander of the palace guard, yet another of the governor’s many cousins to have found high office.
A Velázquez loyalist to the core.
Sandoval had been in Cuba less than three weeks, and in that time he had visited the governor’s palace only twice, but he already knew enough about the way things worked here to realise it was pointless to try to bribe or recruit this man. Judging from the stony expressions of the rest of his squad, all mature, hard-eyed soldiers, there’d be no compromise with them either.
Quite possibly they were all related to Velázquez!
‘So you’re with the governor’s fleet,’ said Motrico gruffly. ‘Which vessel? Which commander?’
‘Santa María de la Concepción,’ Sandoval replied without thinking, ‘the captain-general’s vessel.’
There was a peculiar shuffling and exchange of glances amongst the guards, one of them sniggered and Motrico said ‘detain him’ in a tone so soft and conversational that Sandoval didn’t fully understand it referred to him until two guardsmen twisted his arms behind his back, forced his head and neck down, removed his sword and frogmarched him over to the colonel.
‘What’s this about?’ Sandoval protested. His heart was now jumping so fast it threatened to burst forth from his chest. His mouth felt dry, his bladder was painfully full and his whole body was suddenly drenched with sweat. ‘By what authority do you detain me?’
‘By the authority of the governor of Cuba and the Crown of Spain. Orders have been given for the arrest of Don Hernando Cortés. We’re here to carry them out.’
‘Well, don’t let me delay you, please.’ Sandoval’s mind raced: ‘I want no part of this. I’m on my way to Santiago for a few drinks and a girl.’
‘You’re a filthy spy for Cortés,’ snarled Motrico.
‘I’m no such thing,’ protested Sandoval. ‘If I was, why would I tell you I’m sailing with him?’
‘You are what I say you are, and I say you’re Cortés’s spy.’ The colonel bit his lower lip and the moonlight revealed an uncompromising glint in his eye. ‘Under normal circumstances I’d just detain you, take you back to the palace and find out more about you, but unfortunately for you these aren’t normal circumstances. All my men are required for tonight’s purpose, I don’t have the people to guard you or even a rope to bind you, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to execute you.’
The statement was so out of proportion, so shocking and so sudden that once again Sandoval only grasped its significance after the two guardsmen at his shoulders shoved and kicked him down to his knees. While one stayed behind him, trapping his arms, the other stepped round in front of him, took a tight grip on his hair, pulled his head violently forward and exposed his neck.
Sandoval’s bowels, already in uproar, seemed to turn a somersault. ‘Execute me?’ he yelled. ‘God in heaven, man, that’s preposterous!’
‘Nothing preposterous about it,’ said the colonel. His tone was measured, as though all that was at stake was a point of argument. ‘Just can’t risk you running back to Cortés and telling him we’re here.’
Struggling mightily, Sandoval forced his head up to look Motrico in the eye. ‘You won’t get away with this,’ he shouted. He felt another terrifying lurch of his bowels. ‘I’m a brother Spaniard and an innocent man.’
‘You’re a spy and as guilty as sin.’ With a loud swish and a blur of reflected moonlight, the colonel drew his sword and raised it ceremoniously above his head as the guard tightened his grip on Sandoval’s hair, forcing his head down again.
Almost simultaneously – and never more welcome – came the call of a night bird repeated three times, the sharp clunk as a crossbow was fired and the thump of the bolt striking home. There was a beat of absolute silence followed by the wild roars of battle cries, the sound of a mass of men charging through the trees and into the clearing, the sounds of weapons being drawn and blows struck. Sandoval felt the grip on his arms suddenly loosen and found himself free.
So this was war, he thought, strangely rational now. He struggled to his feet in the midst of a maelstrom of fighting and saw that Motrico was down on his knees, a crossbow bolt transfixing his neck. The colonel’s hands were fluttering around the projectile, one at the barbed head, the other at the base, seeming to caress its leather vanes. Sandoval spotted the glint of his sword where it lay on the ground and snatched it up as a panicking, wild-eyed guardsman came at him. He parried the blow and whirled, letting the man stumble past, stabbing him in his unarmoured flank just as he’d been taught in fencing school. He knew the strike was perfectly executed as he drove it home, but what he wasn’t prepared for, what no amount of teaching could ever have prepared him for, was the bony, muscular resistance of a living human body to the blade, the squelching suction of the guts as he withdrew it, and the screams and rolling eyes of a fellow man in unendurable pain. As much to end those terrible screams as anything else, and since no one seemed about to attack him, Sandoval stabbed the point of the sword down repeatedly into the fallen man’s face, smashing his teeth, caving in his nose, reaming out his eyes, splitting his skull until there was nothing human left of him at all.
‘Make you feel better, sir?’ asked Brabo, appearing silently at his side, his face grim and smeared with gore, a dripping sword in his hand.
Sandoval thought about it, looked down at the ruin at his
feet. ‘I don’t know what I feel. I’ve never killed a man before …’
‘You’ve certainly killed this one, sir. Was it your first battle?’
‘It was. I felt afraid.’
‘Everyone feels fear. It’s what we do with it that matters. You did well, sir! You should be proud of yourself.’
Sandoval took a deep breath and looked round the clearing where moments before he had faced execution. Brabo’s men had made the first assault, saving his life; Domingo and the other half of the squad had arrived a few moments later and finished things off. As fast as it had begun, the fighting was over and all the guardsmen were dead. ‘Thank you, Brabo,’ he said.
‘For what, sir?’
‘For saving my life!’
‘The caudillo told me to keep an eye on you, sir. “Through thick and thin”, was how he put it. Would have been more than my job’s worth if I’d let that ape Motrico take your head.’
Sandoval looked up, trying to judge the time. From the position of the moon he guessed midnight had already passed.
‘Come on, men,’ yelled Brabo. ‘Let’s get these bodies dragged back into the trees. I don’t want any of this visible.’ But even as he gave the order, the sergeant paused, cupped his hand to his ear and peered down the road where it vanished amongst shadows in the direction of Santiago.
Sandoval did the same.
Faint but clear on the night air, he heard men approaching.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Santiago, Cuba, Thursday 18 February 1519 to small hours of Friday 19 February 1519
Swords that had been cleaned and sheathed only moments before hissed from their scabbards again, but then came nervous laughter, smiles, a few curses, and Sandoval felt Brabo’s big calloused hand clapping him on the shoulder. At the point where the road from Santiago emerged from the shadows into the full glare of the moonlight, a large drove of pigs had appeared and numbers of sheep, goats and cattle followed behind them. Herding the whole menagerie forward with curses, kicks and blows from the butts of their spears were fifteen or twenty men. At the rear were two heavily loaded waggons drawn by bullocks. Right at the front, unmistakable in his size and solidity, Sandoval recognised Bernal Díaz, the young soldier who’d received his commission as ensign yesterday in the same ceremony as himself.
He stepped out from the clearing as the bleating, oinking, snuffling mass of animals approached. ‘Well met, Díaz,’ he called.
‘Well met, Sandoval. What are you doing here?’
With pigs and goats swirling round them, the two men embraced and Sandoval briefly explained.
‘I see,’ said Díaz, ‘so the caudillo told you the whole story but me only part of it.’ He sounded offended.
‘Believe me, my friend,’ said Sandoval. ‘He didn’t tell me the whole story! I knew these men were here’ – he gestured to the guardsmen’s corpses being dragged into concealment amongst the trees – ‘but not why they were here. They were a threat to your mission, that’s all he said, and we were sent to clear the road of them …’
‘Sirs,’ said Brabo, ‘get used to it. It’s the habit of the caudillo to tell you only what you need to know.’
‘So how much,’ Díaz asked, ‘did he tell you?’
‘Everything,’ said Brabo. ‘But then I’ve been with him a long time …’ He grinned. ‘Anyway, he only wanted this kept quiet until we’d dealt with things here, so I suppose I can let you in on it now.’ He shouted directions to the clean-up squad in the trees and continued: ‘This afternoon Cortés got word of a plot to kidnap him and take him in chains to Velázquez. These guards were part of it …’ He paused as the sound of a rider was heard approaching at a gallop from the direction of the port and waved cheerfully at the man as he thundered past. ‘I was expecting him,’ he explained, ‘but it won’t be long before a hospital carriage comes by in the other direction.’ He sniffed. ‘Might raise all kinds of suspicions if that carriage were to pass us on the road, so what the caudillo wants us to do now, gentlemen, is get our arses and these animals back to the ships at the double … All subject to your agreement, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Sandoval.
‘Of course,’ said Díaz.
The last of the bodies were dumped out of sight amongst the trees, a flock of goats was driven through the clearing to erase all signs of the fight, and the column of men and animals surged forward again towards the harbour.
Sandoval felt a shadow pass overhead and looked up to see a wisp of cloud blowing across the face of the moon. A wind stirred and, despite the night’s heat, he shivered. Something cold in that unexpected wind, he thought; something dark in that unpresaged cloud blowing in out of a clear sky.
Without consciously choosing to do so, he found he was thinking about the man he had killed back in the clearing. He might have had a family, children, a beloved wife to hold close each night, and he must surely have had ambitions and dreams. But now everything he ever was or would be had ceased. All his thoughts and all his hopes had come at last to nothing. His story was over and it was Sandoval who had ended it.
A terrible regret clenched his heart as he walked and he was haunted by images of what he’d done to the guard, a memory of the way the sword had lodged in his vitals, echoes of his screams, the nightmare of his face …
‘Have you ever killed a man?’ he asked Díaz.
Some emotion – was it wariness, was it sorrow? – seemed to shake the big ensign. ‘I was with Pedrarias in Darién,’ he said softly, ‘I sailed with Córdoba. Of course I’ve killed men.’
‘But have you killed Spaniards?’ Sandoval persisted.
Díaz didn’t answer.
Soon afterwards a second man on horseback appeared, this time riding from the direction of Santiago. Díaz recognised Fernando Alonso, and when Sandoval ordered him to be stopped to discover his business on the road, Díaz said, ‘No. I can vouch for him. He’s the director of the slaughterhouse on his way to claim payment from Cortés.’
‘You didn’t pay for these animals?’
‘Not nearly enough. The caudillo gave me three hundred pesos. The price was one thousand five hundred. I was made to feel a fool, then a thief – so I ended up writing a promissory note.’
‘Think Cortés will honour it?’ Sandoval’s tone suggested he didn’t believe there was the remotest chance he would.
‘He’d better,’ said Díaz. ‘I’ll lose all faith in him if he doesn’t.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Not that anyone cares for the opinion of an uneducated idiot like me!’
A powerful gust of wind ran its fingers through his hair, tugged at his clothes, whispered amongst the trees. He’d been conscious for some while of a change in the weather, of a restlessness in the air, but looking up he was surprised to see a turbulent mass of clouds already swarming over the sky.
He still couldn’t get Cortés off his mind and, soon afterwards, as they reached the Customs House, he turned to Sandoval: ‘There must be a reason why the caudillo chose us to do his dirty work,’ he said. ‘I mean you and me rather than anyone else.’
In the next moments they were occupied herding the animals into the port through the archway that straddled the road. The few Customs officers on duty so late at night had been arrested, and the building was held by a squad of expeditionaries, known to most of them, who waved them through with many ribald comments about the differences between soldiers and farm boys.
Díaz thought Sandoval had forgotten his question, but it seemed he’d been considering it. ‘I think it’s clear,’ he now said. ‘There was nobody else Cortés could trust or spare to do it, but he could be sure two rookies like us would leap at the chance to please him.’
‘I know he’s a great man,’ said Díaz, ‘but I think he uses people – and he makes promises too easily. He told me he’d protect me if I got arrested for raiding the slaughterhouse. I hope he would have kept that promise, yet part of me doubts him.’
‘He told me the same thing when he sent me to kill fellow
Spaniards. I don’t know … maybe it’s all just words – I’m filled with doubts too, Bernal – but there’s something inspiring about the man that sweeps all that away. If anyone can bring us victory in the New Lands, it’s Cortés.’
‘That’s why I signed on,’ said Díaz. ‘But I still don’t trust him.’
They spilled out onto the harbour road to confront a scene of intense activity where the fleet was still loading. Lanterns blazed in the rigging and men scurried around the ships like swarms of insects. Reflecting off the water, the intense, almost white light of the moon made everything seem as bright as day until a bank of thick dark cloud scudded over it, plunging the world into instant night. The gusts of wind continued to grow stronger and ever more frequent, blowing always from the east, and Díaz sensed the electric excitement – and dread – of a coming storm.
‘Not good weather for sailing,’ he said, thinking aloud. The moon had come out from behind the clouds again and if even the sheltered water of the harbour had grown so choppy, then what would the open sea be like?
‘We’ve no choice now,’ Sandoval said. His voice was grim. ‘We’ve killed twelve of the governor’s guardsmen, we’ve raided the city slaughterhouse. It’s you and me who did that, Bernal – not Cortés, not his friend Alvarado, but you and me – and if we get stuck here it’ll be you and me dancing a jig at the end of the gallows …’
‘But Cortés …?’ said Díaz. He realised too late that a tone almost of pleading had crept into his voice.
‘Will protect us?’ Sandoval completed his question and looked worried as another ferocious gust of wind hit them. ‘I hope we haven’t bet our lives on that.’