‘We’ll get news of our friends now!’ exclaimed Tarpia, eagerly.
Everybody rushed to the side of the ship and watched the canoe as it danced over the glittering water towards them. It was an Indian who paddled it, but not a naked one. He wore a shirt of coarse towcloth, as everyone could see when he scrambled up the side, but it was not that which specially caught Rich’s notice-and the Admiral’s notice, too. In his hand he carried a crossbow; it was rusted, and the cord was frayed, and the winding handle was bent lopsided, but it was a crossbow for all that, and in the Indian’s belt of creeper was a single bolt. Before the Indian, blinking round at the ring of Spaniards, had time to collect himself the Admiral was demanding where he had obtained the weapon. The seriousness of natives of the island possessing such weapons of precision was apparent to all.
‘Loldan gave it me,’ said the Indian; he could speak Spanish after a fashion.
‘Roldan!’ exclaimed the Admiral. ‘The Alcalde Mayor?’
‘Yes. We friends,’ said the Indian, proudly. ‘I shoot bad Indians. Christian I am.’
He bent his head and made the sign of the cross, and intoned something in a weird sing-song, which was just recognizable as the Pater Noster. Some of the group round him laughed, as they might at the antics of a performing ape.
‘Where is my brother, His Excellency the Adelantado?’ asked the Admiral.
‘In the town,’ said the Indian, pointing down the coast with an appearance of indifference. ‘He’s not Loldan’s friend.’
‘Not Roldan’s friend?’ repeated the Admiral, blankly.
‘No. He fight. Loldan fight. Indian fight.’
The Indian grinned a simpleton’s grin. A gesture more eloquent than his bad Spanish called up a picture of bloody confusion throughout the island. Someone in the background whistled in amazement at his words.
‘But why? Why?’ groaned the Admiral. The Indian grinned again and tried to explain. There was no sense in his words. Spanish quarrels meant nothing to him. Rich suspected him of being mentally subnormal, even when allowance was made for the difficulties of language.
At least the Admiral was prepared to waste no more time on him.
‘Take that crossbow away from him,’ he ordered, curtly. ‘Put him over the side. Captain, lay the ship on the other tack.’
This was decision, activity. Only a few seconds was necessary to bundle the protesting Indian back into his canoe and to begin to claw seaward again away from the lee shore. Rich admired the Admiral as he stood on the high poop rapping out his orders. Firmness and decision of this sort would soon stamp out any disloyalty when they reached San Domingo.
The wind blew briskly past them as the Holy Name ploughed along, lying as close to the wind as she could; it set Rich’s clothes flapping and blew the Admiral’s white hair out in horizontal streamers as he stood, staring forward. If intensity of desire could carry the Holy Name along, the clumsy ship would fly, thought Rich, watching the Admiral’s face. The Admiral did not take his eyes from the ship’s course as he began to speak.
‘It was bad news that Indian bore, Don Narciso,’ he said.
‘We know nothing of the truth of the matter yet, Your Excellency.’
‘No. I find it hard to believe that Roldan would oppose himself to my brother, the Adelantado whom I myself appointed.’
‘Who is this Roldan, Your Excellency?’
‘The Alcade Mayor-the Chief Magistrate. He owes that position to me.’
‘Naturally,’ said Rich. There was no appointment in the Indies which was not in the Admiral’s direct gift. ‘But who is he, Your Excellency? I do not know the name. Is he a gentleman? What rank did he hold before this appointment?’
‘He was my servant,’ said the Admiral. ‘But I thought he was honest. I thought he was loyal. I thought--’
The Admiral checked himself with a sigh.
‘Perhaps he is,’ said Rich, with cheerful optimism. ‘We cannot condemn him without knowing the facts.’
‘If he has been fighting my brother he must be disloyal,’ said the Admiral, conclusively. Rich was not so sure; it may have been mere professional sympathy, but he felt that a Chief Justice might easily find himself at odds with a Columbus and still have right on his side.
‘Is he learned in the law, Your Excellency?’ he asked. ‘As I said, I am not acquainted with his name.’
‘Of course he is not,’ said the Admiral, petulantly. ‘Did I not say he was my servant? He was my body-servant, my valet.’
After that, Rich felt there was nothing more to be said. A Chief Justice who had been a valet would certainly be as great a source of trouble as any Columbus. Rich could only gaze forward as anxiously as the Admiral himself, wondering what would be the situation he would find awaiting him when at last he reached San Domingo.
14
They entered the river mouth in the late afternoon, after two weary days of beating against headwinds. The Spaniards on board were pleased and excited at the thought that at last their voyaging was really at an end, and at the prospect of seeing new white faces. The details grew clearer under their eager gaze as the sea breeze pushed them briskly into the inlet; there was the wooden church with its square tower, and beside it the fort-only the simplest arrangement of ditch, palisade, and parapet, but quite impregnable to the simple unarmed folk who were its only possible assailants. At the Admiral’s order the Holy Name swung round the point of the shoal and headed across to the anchorage, where there was deep water up to the foot of the church. Close on their left hand they opened up a clearing in the wild tangle of trees that came down to the water’s edge, and there, starkly visible to all the interior, stood a gallows, from which dangled two corpses.
‘Holy Mary!’ said Moret, with genuine sincerity. ‘It is good to be in a Christian country again!’
He pointed to the gallows.
‘Are they Indians or Spaniards?’ asked Garcia, shading his eyes with his hands, but no one could answer that question. Rich read a moral lesson in the fact that death and putrefaction made the European indistinguishable from the Indian.
Cannon thundered with wreaths of white smoke from the citadel in salute to the Admiral’s flag; the Admiral was standing proudly on the poop looking across at his town; armour winked and glittered in the setting sun over the citadel walls. A small crowd of people were already launching boats and canoes to come out and welcome them.
The leading boat was distinguished by a flag held up in the bows, displaying the Admiral’s arms within a white bordure to indicate the presence of the Admiral’s deputy, the Adelantado. Bartholomew Columbus, when he came on board, looked round him with piercing blue eyes which at first glance gave him a striking resemblance to his brother, but he was more heavily built-a stoop-shouldered, burly man whose dense beard did not disguise the heavy jaw and the thick lips. An Indian woman mounted next after him; there were pearls in her ears, round her neck, and in her long loose hair. She was cloaked in blue velvet, but she made no effort to keep the cloak about her to conceal the slender naked body beneath. She was smiling and chattering excitedly, white teeth flashing, with her hand laid on the Adelantado’s arm. Not even the harsh contrast between the blue velvet and her nudity could mar her beauty.
The brothers kissed, under the gaze of every eye in the ship; the Admiral had a brief word for the woman before he received the bows of the Adelantado’s escort. Rich watched the little ceremony keenly from a distance, anxious to form his opinion of the Adelantado-the latter’s undoubted influence with the Admiral would count for so much in the future of the New World. He saw Bartholomew pluck at Christopher’s sleeve; he pointed ashore and glanced anxiously at the sun-clearly there was work to be done ashore that demanded the Admiral’s immediate attention. The Admiral nodded distractedly; Carvajal and Osorio and Tarpia were all asking for his attention, and the decks were crowding with people from the shore, so that there was hardly room to stand. The din and bustle were tremendous. Carvajal wanted instructions regarding th
e ship and crew, Osorio regarding the stores, Tarpia permission to take his soldiers ashore. Each had a brief unsatisfactory word in reply, and continually Batholomew plucked at the Admiral’s sleeve and begged him to come ashore.
‘Yes,’ said the Admiral, ‘I will come. One moment--’
He caught Rich’s eye and beckoned to him.
‘Bartholomew, I want to present the learned Don Narciso Rich. Their Highnesses have lent me his services to help on the legal side of the administration.’
‘A lawyer, eh?’ said the Adelantado, turning a coldly belligerent eye upon him.
‘Yes, Your Excellency.’
‘We need men of action more than men of law.’
‘I expect so, Your Excellency. But I am here at Their Highnesses’ express command.’
That scored the first point for Rich; he had no intention of being browbeaten, and though his reply was in a humble tone it made a clear statement of the strength of his position. As long as no one knew that his mission was to find a means of curtailing the Admiral’s cherished power, he would have all the prestige of a court favourite and there would be no reason for anyone to dislike him. He was a long way from home, and he wished to see Barcelona again.
‘It is as a man of law that I welcome Don Narciso here,’ interposed the Admiral. ‘What you have told me about what you want to do this afternoon--’
‘I will have no interference in that,’ said Bartholomew, loudly.
The tall Dominican friar at his shoulder broke into the conversation.
‘Indeed not. The Crown itself-Queen Isabella in person-could not interfere there. The Holy See long ago decided that matter. The secular arm had only to do its duty after the Church has reached its decision.’
‘I beg your pardon, but I do not understand,’ said Rich. ‘What is the point at issue?’
‘It is not at issue,’ said Bartholomew, loudly. ‘Brother, please come. Soon night will fall and make an excuse for the Indians to steal away. It has been hard enough assembling them.’
‘Come with me, Don Narciso,’ said the Admiral hastily.
The boat in which they rowed to shore was loaded to the water’s edge-it had been full enough on its way to the ship, but now it held the Admiral and his squire and Rich in addition. Rich was crowded in the bow, wedged so tight that he could not even turn his head to see the approaching shore as the boat moved slugglishly over the little waves, so different from the big rollers outside. He could make a guess at the point under consideration-some heretic had been detected and was about to make solemn recantation. He would lose his goods and would vanish into the dungeons of the Inquisition. Certainly it was a matter in which he could not interfere, nor would he if he could.
The boat took the ground with a jerk-it was strange that no pier had as yet been built-and Rich swung himself, with the others, over the side. He might perhaps have stayed and kept his feet dry, as did the Admiral and the Adelantado and the Dominican, but he judged that it might be better if he remained inconspicuous. He splashed ashore, the Indian woman, her cloak held high, beside him. She gabbled something to him, hastily.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he asked.
The queer Spanish which she spoke suddenly took shape as she repeated herself.
‘Save them, sir. Please try and save them.’
There was a frightful anxiety in her face as she spoke-her features were working with the stress of her emotion.
‘I will try,’ said Rich, cautiously, and puzzled.
‘Try. Speak to him. Speak to the Admiral.’
Next moment her face had resumed its earlier animated interest, and she was smiling at the Adelantado as he stepped out of the boat.
‘This is where the pier will be built,’ said the Adelantado to his brother.
‘I expected to find it built already,’ said the Admiral in a tone of mild expostulation.
‘It would have been, if the lazy dogs of Indians would only work. But they would sooner die. I have seen them die under my very eyes, in the quarries, sooner than labour. It was all I could do to get in the quotas of gold and cotton and build the church and the citadel. We put a hundred corpses a week into the sea, even before the present troubles began.’
They were at the summit of the beach now, with the town before them-a hundred or so of brown huts built of timber and leaves.
‘Where are all the people?’ asked the Admiral.
‘They are awaiting Your Excellency.’
Someone in the Adelantado’s following had run on ahead up one of the straight narrow lanes between the houses. They could see him wave his arm as he reached the farther corner, and they followed him. Pigs and fowls were rooting among the filth underfoot, but no human creature was to be seen. Now they emerged from the lane into a wide open space. The houses were on three sides, on the fourth was the forest. Two trumpets brayed in the heated air; there was a long roll of drums.
It took the sun-dazzled eye some time to note all the details. The three sides of the square other than the one in the middle of which they stood were lined with naked Indians, packed in dense masses; there must have been thousands of them, five or six thousand. At; intervals before and behind the crowd stood Spaniards, conspicuous in their armour, all at the salute while the trumpets blew and while the Admiral returned the compliment.
‘There is a pavilion for Your Excellency,’ said the Adelantado-close beside where they had emerged was a flat-roofed, open-fronted shed of leaves, in which stood a row of chairs, and beside which the colours of Spain and of the Admiral drooped in the heat. But that was not all which the eye slowly took in. Standing in the square were a whole series of lofty stakes, on which hung chains. And round the foot of every stake was a pile of wood. Rich counted them; there were sixteen stakes, each with its chains and faggots. He felt a little chill, for he had an irrational dislike of burnings-he had witnessed very few. The Indian woman was trembling, he could see. There was appeal in her eyes as they met his.
‘The ceremony will begin now,’ said the Adelantado, ushering his brother to the central chair with the utmost formality. ‘Have I Your Excellency’s permission to sit?’
‘I don’t like this business, Bartholomew,’ said the Admiral. ‘I used to think them very harmless people. Must it go on?’
‘They are relapsed heretics,’ said the Dominican. ‘It is God’s law that they should burn.’
‘I’ve kept five thousand Indians herded here all day,’ said the Adelantado, ‘expressly to see this. What would be the effect if I let them go?’
‘But if it were I who pardoned them,’ said the Admiral. ‘What have they done? Is their guilt certain?’
‘They are blasphemers as well as relapsed heretics,’ explained the Dominican. ‘After they had accepted baptism they not merely relapsed into idolatry. They burned down a chapel, and they broke the holy vessels and images to pieces.’
‘Did they know what they were doing?’
‘Having listened once to our teaching they must have known. But even if they did not it makes no difference to their guilt.’
‘But why?’ asked the Admiral. ‘Why did they do it?’
‘The devil prompted them,’ said the Dominican.
‘They were in rebellion over the gold quota,’ said Bartholomew behind his hand.
‘They are like children,’ said the Admiral. ‘Trying to do the wickedest thing they can think of.’
‘And they succeeded,’ said the Dominican. ‘Children can be guilty of heresy and relapse.’
That was perfectly true, as Rich knew well. With his training in Roman law he found it hard to hear of condemnation for a crime committed without guilty intent-this was one of the points over which Roman law and the Church law disagreed-but at the same time it was heresy to question the principles of the Church, and he had no intention of being guilty of heresy himself. He simply could not argue on this point, and he resolutely kept his eyes from meeting the pleading glance of the Indian woman’s.
‘It is a golden opp
ortunity,’ said the Adelantado, ‘of teaching these people a real lesson. I have given instructions that the heretics are not to be strangled at the stake. Perhaps then those that see them die will learn what it means to incur our wrath.’
‘You misunderstand the intentions of the Church, Don Bartholomew,’ said the Dominican, sternly. ‘This is not intended as a punishment. It is to save these poor people’s souls that they must pass through the fire.’
‘It coincides all the same with the needs of government,’ said the Adelantado, complacently.
‘We are saving sixteen souls today,’ returned the Dominican. ‘We are not trying to make the collection of the gold quota easier.’
A drum was beating in a measured tone up at the citadel. The victims were about to be brought down. Rich realized that any intervention in his power must be made at once.
‘There are sixteen souls to be saved,’ he said, ‘but as a matter of pure expediency in God’s cause, Reverend Sir, might it not be better to risk the loss of these sixteen in hope of winning many more?’
‘How do you mean?’ asked the Dominican; his black brows approached each other, and his eyes narrowed as he turned his gaze on Rich.
‘Perhaps if the lives of these sixteen were spared the rejoicing would be so great that many more souls would be won to God.’
‘Perhaps--and perhaps there would be many doomed to Hell. These thousands who witness this act of faith will take care in future to keep heretical thoughts out of their minds. They will pay closer attention to the teaching of the Church. They will have a glimpse of what Hell is like. No, sir, there is no substance in your argument. And it is an evil thing to gamble in human salvation.’
‘Don’t you think there is something in what the learned doctor says?’ asked the Admiral.
‘No, Your Excellency. A thousand times no. They must burn, so that their souls may be saved and that a thousand other souls may not be imperilled.
The procession was filing into the square. A friar bore a crucifix at the head of it, and following him a dozen Spaniards herded the victims along, pricking them with their swords’ points to force them to walk. The resources of the island had been sufficient to provide yellow fools’ coats, gaudily daubed with red symbols, for the victims, whose hands were tied behind them. One of them screamed at the sight of the stakes; two of them collapsed into the dust of the square, writhing there until the escort kicked them to their feet again. The Indian woman beside Rich screamed, too. She ran round between the Admiral and his deputy and flung herself on the earth before them, one hand on the knee of each of them, frantically jabbering the while.