Pastwatch_ The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus Part 21

When Cristoforo finally got them moving, it was by sailing in the evening and hugging the coastline, where the breeze from sh.o.r.e counteracted the prevailing easterlies and carried them smoothly eastward. Even though the nights were clear, it was a dangerous business, sailing at night on an unfamiliar coastline, for no one knew what hazards there might be beneath the water. But Cristoforo could see no choice. It was either sail west and south around the island, which could be so huge that it would take months to circ.u.mnavigate it, or sail at night on the sh.o.r.e breezes. G.o.d would protect the s.h.i.+ps, because if he didn't, the voyage would fail, or at least Cristoforo's part of it. What mattered now was getting back to Spain with glorious reports that concealed the disappointing amount of gold and the generally low level of civilization, so that Their Majesties would outfit a real fleet and he could do some serious exploring until he found the lands Marco Polo had written of.

What bothered Cristoforo most, however, was something that he could not explain even to himself. During the days, as they lay at anchor and Cristoforo worked on charting the coast, he would sometimes turn away from the coast and look out over the open sea. It was then that he sometimes saw something out on the water. It would be visible only for a few moments at a time, and no one else reported seeing it at all. But Cristoforo knew that he had seen it, whatever it was - a patch of water that was slightly different in color from the water around it, and several times a shape like a man standing half in and half out of the water. The first time he saw the manshape, he immediately remembered all the Genovese sailors' tales of mermen and other monsters of the deep. But whatever it was, it was always far out to seaward, and came no closer. Was it some spiritual apparition, some sign from the Lord? Or was it a sign of the enmity of Satan, watching, waiting for some chance to disrupt this Christian expedition?

Once, just once, Cristoforo caught a glimpse of light as if whatever it was had a gla.s.s of its own and was watching him as steadily as he was watching it.

Of this Cristoforo wrote nothing in his log. Indeed, he tended to dismiss it as a sign of some slight madness brought about by tropical lat.i.tudes and the worries about Pinzn. Until disaster struck in the early hours of Christmas morning.

Cristoforo was awake in his cabin. It was hard for him to sleep when the s.h.i.+p was sailing so dangerously close to land, and so he stayed awake most nights, studying his charts or writing in his log or his private diary. Tonight, though, he had done nothing more than lie on his bed, thinking about all that had happened in his life so far, marveling at how things had worked out despite all adversity, and finally praying, giving thanks to G.o.d for what had looked at the time like divine neglect, but now looked like miraculous shepherding. Forgive me for misunderstanding you, for expecting you to measure time by the short moments of a man's life. Forgive me for my fears and doubts along the way, for I see now that you were always at my side, watching over me and protecting me and helping me to accomplish your will.

A shudder ran through the boat, and from the deck came a scream.

Kemal watched through his nightsights, hardly believing his good fortune. Why had he ever worried? Weather had been the cause of Columbus's delays in the prior history, and the same weather determined his progress now. Waiting for favorable winds had brought him to this spot just past Cape Haitien on Christmas Eve, within fifteen minutes of when he had arrived in Kemal's former past. The same currents and similar winds had caused the Santa Maria to drift onto a reef, just as before. It was still possible for everything to work just right.

Of course, it had always been the human factor, not the weather, that was expected to change. For all the talk of how a b.u.t.terfly's wing in Beijing could cause a hurricane in the Caribbean, Manjam had explained to Kemal that pseudochaotic systems like weather were actually quite stable in their underlying patterns, and swallowed up random tiny fluctuations.

The real problem was the decision making of the men on the voyage. Would they do what they had done before? Kemal had watched the sinking of the Santa Maria a hundred times or more, since so much depended on it. The s.h.i.+p sank because of several factors, any one of which might be changed on a whim. First, Columbus had to be sailing at night - and to Kemal's relief, he was consistently doing just that in order to fight the trade winds. Then, both Columbus and Juan de la Cosa, the owner and master of the s.h.i.+p, had to be belowdecks, leaving the piloting of the s.h.i.+p in the hands of Peralonso Nino - which was proper enough, since he was the pilot. But Nino then had to take a nap, leaving the helm in the hands of one of the s.h.i.+p's boys, giving him a star to steer by, which would be fine for an ocean voyage but was hardly helpful when sailing along a treacherous and unfamiliar coast.

In the event, the only difference was that it wasn't the same s.h.i.+p's boy - from his height and manner, Kemal could tell even at a distance that this time it was Andres Yevenes, a bit older. But whatever experience Andres had would hardly help him now - no one had charted this coast, so even the most experienced pilot wouldn't have known that shelves of coral would be so close to the surface without making any visible change in the sea.

Even this had still been recoverable even in the prior history, for Columbus immediately gave orders which, if they had been obeyed , would have saved the s.h.i.+p. What really sank the Santa Maria was its owner, Juan de la Cosa, who panicked and not only disobeyed Columbus's orders but made it impossible for anyone else to obey him. From that point the caravel had been doomed.

Kemal, studying de la Cosa from the beginning of his life to the end, was unable to discover why he did such an inexplicable thing. De la Cosa never told the same story twice, and obviously lied every time. Kemal's only conclusion was that de la Cosa had panicked at the prospect of the s.h.i.+p sinking and had simply got away as quickly and effectively as possible. By the time it became obvious that there was plenty of time to take all the men off without serious danger, it was far too late to save the s.h.i.+p. At that point, de la Cosa could hardly admit to cowardice - or whatever his motive was.

The s.h.i.+p shuddered from the impact, then listed over to one side. Kemal watched anxiously. He was in full scuba gear, ready to come in close and put an explosive charge under the caravel in case it looked as though Columbus was about to save it. But it would be better if this s.h.i.+p could sink without inexplicable fires or explosions.

Juan de la Cosa stumbled out of his cabin and clambered up to the quarterdeck, not quite awake, but definitely inside a nightmare. His caravel had run aground! How could such a thing have happened? There was Coln, already on deck and angry. As always, Juan was filled with anger at the very sight of the Genovese courtier. If Pinzn had been in charge, there would have been no such nonsense as sailing at night. It was all Juan could do to get to sleep at night, knowing that his caravel was coasting a strange sh.o.r.e in darkness. And, just as he had feared, they had run aground. They would all drown, if they couldn't get off the s.h.i.+p before it sank.

One of the s.h.i.+p's boys - Andres, the one that Nino fancied this week - was offering his pathetic excuses. "I kept my eye fixed on the star he pointed at, and kept the mast lined up with it." He looked and sounded terrified.

The s.h.i.+p lurched heavily to one side.

We will sink, thought Juan. I will lose everything. "My caravel," he cried out. "My little s.h.i.+p, what have you done to it!"

Coln turned to him with icy coldness. "Were you sleeping well?" he asked acidly. "Nino certainly was."

And shouldn't the s.h.i.+p's master be asleep? Juan wasn't the pilot and he wasn't the navigator. He was just the owner. Hadn't it been made clear to him that he had almost no authority, except as bestowed on him by Coln? As a Basque, Juan was as much a foreigner among these Spaniards as Coln himself, so that he got condescension from the Italian, contempt from the Spanish royal officers, and mockery from the Spanish sailors. But now, after having all control and respect stripped away, it was suddenly his fault that the s.h.i.+p ran aground?

The s.h.i.+p listed further to port.

Coln was speaking, but Juan had trouble concentrating on what he said. "The stern is heavy, and we've dragged onto an underwater reef or shelf. We'll make no headway forward. There's no choice for it but to warp the s.h.i.+p off."

This was the stupidest thing Juan had ever heard of. It was dark, the s.h.i.+p was sinking, and Coln wanted to try some stupid maneuver instead of saving lives? That's what you'd expect of an Italian - what were Spanish lives to him? And when it came to that, what was a Basque life to the Spaniards? Coln and the officers would get first call on the boats, but they wouldn't care what happened to Juan de la Cosa. While the men would never let him into a boat if they had a choice. He could see it, had always seen it in their eyes.

"Warp the s.h.i.+p off," said Cristoforo again. "Take the launch out, carry the anchor to sternward, drop it, and then use the windla.s.s to draw us off the rock."

"I know what warping is," Juan answered. This fool, did he think he could teach seamans.h.i.+p to him?

"Then see to it, man!" Cristoforo commanded. "Or do you want to lose your caravel here in these waters?"

Well, let Coln give his orders - he knew nothing. Juan de la Cosa was a better Christian than any of these men. The only way to get all the crew off was to bring the Nina's boats over to help. Forget drawing the anchor out - that would be slow and time-consuming and men would die. Juan would save every life on this s.h.i.+p, and the men would know who cared for them. Not that braggart Pinzn, who selfishly took off on his own. Certainly not Coln, who thought only of the success of his expedition, never mind if men died in the doing of it. I'm the one, Juan de la Cosa, the Basque, the northerner, the outsider. I am the one who will help you live to return to your families in Spain.

Juan immediately set several men to lowering the launch. In the meantime, he heard Coln barking orders to furl the sails and free the anchor. Oh, what an excellent idea, thought Juan. The s.h.i.+p will sink with sails furled. That will make a huge difference to the sharks.

The launch dropped into the water with a splash. At once the launch's crew of three oarsmen scrambled down the lines and began untying the knots to free the launch from the caravel. In the meantime, Juan tried to climb down the rope ladder, which, with the s.h.i.+p tilting, dangled in midair and swayed dangerously. Let me live to reach the launch, Holy Mother, he prayed, and then I will be a hero to save the others.

His feet found the boat but he could not pry his fingers away from the rope ladder.

"Let go!" demanded Pea, one of the seamen.

I'm trying, thought Juan. Why aren't my hands working?

"He's such a coward," muttered Bartolome. They pretend to speak softly, thought Juan, but they always make sure I can hear them.

His fingers opened. It had only been a moment. No one could be expected to act with perfect control when death by drowning lurked only moments away.

He clambered over Pea to get to his place at the stern, controlling the tiller. "Row," he said.

As they began pulling, Bartolome, sitting in the bow, called the rhythm. He had once been a soldier in the Spanish army, but was arrested for stealing - he was one of those who joined the voyage as a criminal hoping for pardon. Most of the criminals were treated badly by the others, but Bartolome's military experience had earned him some grudging respect from the others - and the slavish devotion of the other criminals. "Pull," he said. "Pull."

As they rowed, Juan turned the tiller hard to port.

"What are you doing?" demanded Bartolome, when he saw that the launch was pulling away from the Santa Maria instead of heading for the bow, where the anchor was already beginning to descend.

"Do your job and I'll do mine!" shouted Juan.

"We're supposed to lie under the anchor!" answered Bartolome.

"Do you trust your life to the Genovese? We're going to the Nina for help!"

The seamen's eyes widened. This was a direct contravention of orders. It bordered on mutiny against Coln. They still didn't resume pulling on the oars. "De la Cosa," said Pea, "aren't you going to try to save the caravel?"

"It's my s.h.i.+p!" cried Juan. "And it's your lives! Pull on your oars and we can save everyone! Pull! Pull!"

Bartolome took up the chant, and they pulled.

Only now did Coln trouble to notice what they were doing. Juan could hear him crying out from the quarterdeck. "Come back! What are you doing? Come and lie under the anchor!"

But Juan looked fiercely at the seamen. "If you want to live to see Spain again, then all we can hear is the splas.h.i.+ng of the oars."

Wordlessly they rowed, hard and fast. The Nina grew larger in the distance, the Santa Maria smaller behind them.

It's amazing which events turn out to have been inevitable, thought Kemal, and which can be changed. The sailors all slept with different native women in Paradise Valley this time, so that apparently the choice of bedmates was entirely by random whim. But when it came to disobeying the only order that could have saved the Santa Mafia, Juan de la Cosa apparently made the same choice no matter what. Love is random; fear is inevitable. Too bad I'll never get a chance to publish this finding.

I'm done with telling stories. I can only act out the end of my life. Who then will decide the meaning of my death? I will, as best I can. But then it will be out of my hands. They will make of me whatever they want, if they remember me at all. The world in which I discovered a great secret of the past and became famous no longer exists. Now I'm in a world where I was never born and have no past. A lone Muslim saboteur, who somehow made his way to the New World? Who in the future will believe such a fantastic tale? Kemal imagined what the learned articles would sound like, explaining the psychosocial origin of the Lone Muslim Bomber legends from the voyage of Columbus. It brought a smile to his face, as the crew of the Santa Maria rowed for the Nina.

Diko came back to Ankuash with two full baskets of water hanging from the yoke over her shoulder. She had made the yoke herself, when it became clear to them all that no one in the village was as strong as Diko. It shamed the others, to see her carry her water so easily when for them it was so hard. So she made the yoke so she could carry twice as much, and then she insisted on hauling the water alone, so that no one else could be compared to her. She made three trips a day to the stream under the falls. It kept her strong, and she appreciated the solitude.

The others were waiting for her, of course - the water from her large baskets would be poured out into many smaller vessels, most of them clay pots. But she could see even from a distance that there was an eagerness to them. News then.

"The white men's canoe was taken by the spirits in the water!" cried Putukam, as soon as Diko was close enough to hear. "On the very day you said!"

"So now maybe Guacanagari will believe the warning and protect his young girls." Guacanagari was the cacique over most of northwestern Haiti. He fancied sometimes that his authority extended all the way up the mountains of Cibao to Ankuash, though he had never attempted to test this theory in battle - there was nothing this high up in Cibao that he wanted. Guacanagari's dreams of being ruler of all of Haiti had led him in the prior history to make a fatal alliance with the Spanish. If they had not had him and his people to spy for them and even fight beside them, the Spanish might not have prevailed; other Taino leaders might have been able to unite Haiti in some kind of effective resistance. But that would not happen this time. Guacanagari's ambition would still be his guiding principle, but it would not have the same devastating effect. For Guacanagari would only be a friend to the Spanish when they seemed strong. As soon as they seemed weak, he would be their deadliest enemy. Diko knew enough not to trust his word even for a moment. But he was still useful, because he was predictable to one who understood his hunger for glory.

Diko squatted down to take the yoke from her shoulders. Others held up the water baskets and began to pour them off into other vessels.

"Guacanagari, listen to a woman of Ankuash?" said Baiku skeptically. He was taking water into three pots. Little Inoxtla had cut himself badly in a fall, and Baiku was preparing a poultice, a tea, and a steam for him.

One of the younger women immediately rushed to Diko's defense. "He must believe Sees-in-the-Dark! All her words come true."

As always, Diko denied her supposed prophetic gifts, though it had been her intimate knowledge of the future that kept her from living as a slave or the cacique's fifth wife. "It is Putukam who sees true visions, and Baiku who heals. I haul water."

The others fell silent, for none of them had ever understood why Diko would say something which was so obviously false. Who ever heard of a person who refused to admit what she did well? Yet she was the strongest, tallest, wisest, and holiest person they had ever seen or heard of, and so if she said this, then there must be some meaning in it, though it could not be taken at face value, of course.

Think what you want, Diko said silently. But I know that the day has now come when I will have no more knowledge of the future than you have, because it will not be the future that I remembered.

"And what of the Silent Man?" she asked.

"Oh, they say he is still in his boat made of water and air, watching."

Another added, "They say these white people can't see him at all. Are they blind?"

"They don't know how to watch things," said Diko. "They don't know how to see anything but what they expect to see. The Tainos down on the coast know how to see his boat made of water and air, because they saw him make it and put it into the water. They expect to see it. But the white men have never seen it before, so their eyes don't know how to find it."

"Still they're very stupid not to see," said Goala, a teenage boy freshly into his manhood.

"You are very bold," said Diko. "I'd be afraid to be your enemy."

Goala preened.

"But I'd be even more afraid to be your friend in battle. You are sure your enemy is stupid because he doesn't do things as you would do them. It will make you careless, and your enemy will surprise you, and your friend will die."

Goala went silent, while the others laughed.

"You haven't seen the boat made of water and air," said Diko. "So you don't know how hard or easy it is to see it."

"I want to see it," said Goala quietly.

"It will do you no good to see it," said Diko, "because no one in the world has the power to make one like it, and no one will have such power for more than four hundred years." Unless technology moved even faster in this new history. With luck, this time technology would not outstrip the ability of human beings to understand it, to control it, to dean up after it.

"You make no sense at all," said Goala.

The others gasped - only a man so young would speak so disrespectfully to Sees-in-the-Dark.

"Goala is thinking," said Diko, "that it is the thing that will only be seen once in five hundred years that a man should go and see. But I tell you that it is only the thing that a man can learn from and use to help his tribe and his family that is worth going to see. The man who sees the boat made of water and air has a story that his children will not believe. But the man who learns how to make a great wooden canoe like the ones the Spaniards sail in can cross oceans with heavy cargo and many pa.s.sengers. It is the Spaniard's canoes you want to see, not the boat made of water and air."

"I don't want to see the white men at all," said Putukam with a shudder.

"They are only men," said Diko. "Some of them are very bad, and some of them are very good. All of them know how to do things that no one in Haiti knows how to do, and yet there are many things that every child in Haiti knows that these men do not understand at all."

"Tell us!" several of them cried.

"I've told you all these stories about the coming of the white men," said Diko. "And today there's work to do."

They voiced their disappointment like children. And why shouldn't they? Such was the trust within the village, within the tribe, that no one was afraid to tell what he desired. The only feelings they had to hide from their fellow villagers were the truly shameful feelings, like fear and malice.

Diko carried her yoke and her empty water baskets back to her house - a hut, really. Thankfully no one was waiting for her there. She and Putukam were the only women to have houses of their own, and ever since the first time Diko had taken in a woman whose husband was angry at her and threatened to beat her, Putukam had joined her in making her house available as a refuge for women. There had been a great deal of tension at the beginning, since Nugkui, the cacique, correctly saw Diko as a rival for power in the village. It only came to violence once, when three men came in the shadow of night, armed with spears. It had taken her about twenty seconds to disarm all three of them, break the spear shafts, and send them staggering away with many cuts and bruises and sore muscles. They were simply no match for her size and strength - and her martial-arts training.

It wouldn't have kept them from trying something later - an arrow, a dart, a fire - except that Diko had taken action at first light. She gathered up her belongings and began giving them away as gifts to other women. This immediately aroused the whole village. "Where are you going?" they demanded. "Why are you leaving?" She had answered disingenuously: "I came to this village because I thought I heard a voice calling me here. But last night I had a vision of three men attacking me in the darkness, and I knew that the voice must have been wrong, it was not this village, because this village doesn't want me. I must go now and find the right village, the one that has a need for a tall black woman to carry their water." After much remonstrance, she agreed to stay for three days. "By the end of that time, I will go unless everybody in Ankuash has asked me, one at a time, to stay, and promised to make me their aunt or their sister or their niece. If even one person does not want me here, I will go."

Nugkui was no fool. Much as he might resent her authority, he knew that having her in the village gave Ankuash enormous prestige among the Taino who lived farther down the mountain. Didn't they send their sick to Ankuash now to be healed? Didn't they send messengers to ask the meanings of events or to learn what Sees-in-the-Dark predicted for the future? Until Diko came, the people of Ankuash were despised as the people who lived in the cold place on the mountain. It was Diko who had explained that their tribe was the first to live on Haiti, that their ancestors were the first to be brave enough to sail from island to island. "For a long time, the Taino have had their way here, and the Caribs want to do the same to them," she explained. "But the time is soon coming when Ankuash will once again lead all the people of Haiti. For this is the village that will tame the white men."

Nugkui was not about to let this exalted future slip away. "I want you to stay," he had said, gruffly.

"I'm glad to hear that. Have you seen Baiku about that nasty bruise on your forehead? You must have b.u.mped into a tree when you went out to pee in the dark."

He glared at her. "Some say you do things a woman shouldn't do."

"But if I do them, then they must be things that I believe a woman should do."

"Some say that you are teaching their wives to be rebellious and lazy."

"I never teach anyone to be lazy. I work harder than anybody, and the best women of Ankuash follow my example."

"They work hard, but they don't always do what their husbands tell them."

"But they do almost everything that their husband ask them to do," said Diko. "Especially when their husbands do everything the women ask them to do."

Nugkui had sat there for a long while, sucking on his anger.

"That cut on your arm looks ugly," said Diko. "Was somebody careless with his spearpoint on yesterday's hunt?"

"You change everything," said Nugkui.

Here was the crux of the negotiation. "Nugkui, you are a brave and wise leader. I watched you for a long time before I came here. Wherever I went, I knew that I would make changes, because the village that teaches the white men how to be human has to be different from all other villages. There will be a dangerous time when the white men are not yet tamed, when you may need to lead our men in war. And even in peace, you are the cacique. When people come to me for judgment, don't I always send them to you? Don't I always show you respect?"

Grudgingly he admitted that she did.

"I have seen a terrible future, in which the white men come, thousands upon thousands of them, and make our people into slaves - the ones they don't kill outright. I have seen a future in which on the whole island of Haiti there is not one Taino, not one Carib, not one man or woman or child of Ankuash. I came here to prevent that terrible future. But I can't do it alone. It depends on you as much as on me. I don't want you to obey me. I don't want to rule over you. What village would respect Ankuash, if the cacique took orders from a woman? But what cacique deserves respect, if he can't learn wisdom just because a woman teaches it to him?"

He watched her impa.s.sively, and then said, "Sees-in-the-Dark is a woman who tames men."