To the Edge of the World (5 page)

Come dusk, whenever it was our watch, Rodrigo and I lit lanterns and hung them on the Trinidad’s stern so that the other ships could follow the
Trinidad
through the night. We also used the lanterns as signals in the event of storms, sandbars, reefs, or other deadly perils. Then, every night, after the lighting of the lanterns, each ship drew alongside, and one by one, the captains hailed Magallanes. “God save you, Sir Captain-General and master and good ship’s company!” Magallanes acknowledged their salutes with a nod of his head.

And on each night as the
San Antonio
passed, Cartagena caught my gaze and held it, forcing me to turn away. How I hated him now. Each night I resolved again never to help him. Never. Even if he should slit my throat like a rat’s.

Then, as we approached the equator, the weather changed. To the Trinidad’s stern I hoisted three lanterns. Headwinds slowed the ships until they no longer moved forward. They struggled and bucked like untrained animals under harness. We heeled so far to the sides our yardarms skimmed the waves and our curses turned to prayers.

One week passed and still the gales pounded us. Already I had fallen to my knees again and again, waiting to be swept overboard, to be swept to heaven, to my parents. Angry thoughts of Cartagena vanished like sea spray. The Trinidad’s bow rose to meet each wave, frantic, like an animal drowning, clawing for survival. Water crashed over the decks, tearing away anything not tied down. After each passing wave, the ship fell into the trough with a bone-crunching smack before rising with a shudder to meet the next wave. I clutched the railing and retched and retched alongside Rodrigo. He said we were “feeding the fish.”

One night I burst from sleep as someone shook me with great violence. We are going down, I thought. It is the end.

“Mateo! Mateo!” It was Rodrigo.

Bleary, frightened, and exhausted, I sat up, then realized with a dull sense that we were not sinking. Rodrigo had awakened me for nothing. Angry, I pushed him away and lay back down.

“Read this.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Read this.” He thrust a paper at me.

“What is it?”

“I believe it is the message from Spain, the message Cartagena told us to find.”

“Where did you get this?” I grabbed it from his hand.

“From the captain-general’s cabin while he was on deck. It was easy to find. You were blind not to see it. But I cannot read. You said you can, and now you must prove it.”

I glanced at the paper, but it was too dark to see. Rodrigo followed me as we made our way aft, lurching to and fro as if we were drunk. No one paid us the slightest attention when I withdrew a paper from inside my shirt and held it near the lantern light.

The wind tried to tear it from my hand, and the driving rain splotched the ink. I shielded it with my body and read aloud.

VI

October 25-November 24, 1519

Greetings, Captain-General Fernando de Magallanes,

In the name of the Most High and Mighty God Our Lord,
I bring you warning. Take heed of the three Spanish captains
from Castile: Cartagena, Mendoza, and Quesada. Before the
fleet set sail, they openly boasted of slaying you. They despise you
for receiving command of the coveted expedition and are supported in their hatred by the most powerful men in the Spanish
court.

They conspire to replace you with that pup Cartagena, an
untried weakling who has never before captained a ship, a weakling who will doubtless lead the fleet to disaster if given the
opportunity.

Do nothing to arouse their suspicions.

Godspeed. Your father-in-law,
Diogo Barbosa

As I read the last line, a fierce gust of wind ripped through the ship. I allowed it to tear the letter from my grasp and watched as the parchment disappeared into darkness, swallowed by the raging ocean.

Rodrigo railed and called me a fool—a clumsy, bungling idiot with a brain no bigger than a turd—but it did not matter what he thought. I did not want him to give it to Cartagena.

Later, huddled beneath the fo’c’sle, we discussed the letter.

“I promise you, Mateo, Cartagena shall know about the letter, lost or not.”

I snorted. “That will be quite a feat seeing as he is on one ship and you are on another. What are you going to do? Swim?”

Rodrigo glared at me, narrowing his eyes. “You mock me. You know I cannot swim any more than you can. Besides, there will come a day when we are once again on land, and it is then I will tell Cartagena everything.”

“Everything?”

“Of course I will not tell him about how you tossed the letter overboard, unless you wish your throat slit. But I will tell him that Magallanes knows of his plot and to take heed.”

“That is mutinous, Rodrigo! Cartagena is planning to murder the captain-general! You cannot possibly think of helping him!”

“Hopefully he will succeed. Then we will have a real man to lead the armada rather than this limping coward of a Portuguese.”

“Magallanes is not a coward.”

“What?” Rodrigo spat. “Are you blind? Did you not see the way Cartagena dominated the captain-general during the meeting? Did you not see my spittle on Magallanes’s boot? Spittle that Magallanes did not bother to wipe away? It proves he is a coward. The whole ship knows it.”

I nibbled on a fingernail. “I think he is a fine man.” My words sounded uncertain.

“Pah! I think you are in love with him. Cartagena is a much finer captain than Magallanes. Any fool can see that.”

“Cartagena has never captained a ship before. No more than I have. If he is captain-general, we will all sink and drown.”

“What? Are you deaf as well as blind? Can you not hear the storm around you? You see, Mateo, the moment has already come when we will all sink and drown. All because of this lunatic. It is his fault. He has plotted a stupid course, into the path of a hurricane.”

I pushed Rodrigo away and told him to leave me alone. And when he would not, I stumbled down the companionway into the hold and manned the pumps. Up, down. Up, down. Hour after hour, until my muscles screamed with pain. But I did not care. Anything to get away from Rodrigo.

Three days later, none of this mattered for we were about to die.

The storm lashed us, angry and hateful. We knelt about the padre to give confession, together vowing to pilgrimage to the shrine of Nuestra Señora de la Victoria, if we survived. Rodrigo and I waited and waited for our turn to confess but could wait no longer. The padre was too busy. We would die first. Pelted by rain, between peals of thunder and bursts of lightning, we clung to each other and hurriedly confessed. I to Rodrigo and Rodrigo to me.

“Forgive me, Rodrigo, my brother, my friend, for I have sinned. Yesterday I cursed my parents for dying of the pestilence—”

“That is nothing,” he said, his face made eerie by a flash of lightning. “Today I cursed the stupidity of God and all His useless angels who sit with their wings folded, shining their golden halos while we die.”

“Rodrigo!”

“It is true. Now His fury has been unleashed. Now we will all die. It is my fault, Mateo. Forgive me.”

I gave Rodrigo much penance. I begged God to be merciful to his soul. Rodrigo did the same with me. Then, because we were not dead yet, I promised to give half my gold, my jewels, and my spices to furthering the work of God, should I live. Rodrigo promised a third.

Then in the distance a wave moved toward us. It was a wall of water, gigantic, towering like the castle walls of Castile. It came and it came, howling with the sound of death. We stood on the open waist deck, waiting. This was the end.

The ship rose, up, up, struggling to meet the wave.

Suddenly, to my bewilderment, strange green fires erupted from the rigging and the yardarms. I felt an odd tingling and my ears filled with a crackling sound. “We are saved!” Rodrigo cried, pointing to the green fires.

He threw himself upon the deck. I cast myself beside him. And beside me, the padre. “God has heard our prayers!” he yelled as the terrible, fearsome wave washed over us, tossing us hard against the scuppers, knocking the breath from me with the power of a sledgehammer.

Then the wave was gone.

Rodrigo coughed, spat out a mouthful of water, and crossed himself.

The padre wiped his eyes. “I have seen it before. It is the saint of sailors, San Elmo. While he protects us, none of us will die. It is a gift from heaven.”

We dragged ourselves to our feet.

Then, while we watched, scarce believing our eyes, the saint disappeared. And with his disappearance, the clouds scattered, the sea grew calm, and a great multitude of birds settled upon the ship.

“It is a miracle,” whispered the padre. “By the merciful hand of God, it is a miracle.”

“Aye,” I murmured.

There was no wind. No rain. No clouds. No waves. We hung our clothing from the rigging to dry and, for the first time in almost two weeks, sunned ourselves on the deck. I said the rosary again and again. Rodrigo and I no longer argued—a miracle, too.

But day after day passed without a whisper of breeze. The sea turned to glass, a liquid mirror in which I could see my reflection.

No one said it, but we all knew. We were becalmed, as helpless on the sea as a beetle on its back, frantically waving its legs, going nowhere.

So close to the equator, the air turned damp and stifling, crushing us, as if the
Trinidad
were no longer a ship but an oven, roasting us alive. The ship’s wood creaked and swelled. My guitar was useless—its wood swollen with moisture, its tone flat as a puddle. I laid it aside. It did not matter. I could scarce breathe.

While the other captains rowed back and forth between their ships, visiting each other, the captain-general visited no one. Instead he paced the quarterdeck, hands locked behind him. He said nothing except to give orders.

Upon his orders, we polished the metalworks until they shone. While we slept, they rusted again, so the polishing never ended. Then the sails grew a green slime, nasty and rank, and each day we scrubbed for hours.

The water turned peculiar. It glistened like oil, and we feared to know what it was. And although there was not a wave in the ocean as far as we could see, the water swelled beneath us, lifting us up and up, twirling us around before dipping low again. The blocks rattled. The masts creaked and swayed. The yards slammed back and forth, making sleep only a dream. Men cursed each other and fistfights erupted like pox. The fights never lasted long. It was too hot.

Our rations for water, wine, and bread were cut in half. The meat turned rotten and stank. Casks of wine exploded in the hold, bursting their staves. The wheat shriveled into nothing but husks. Sharks swarmed about our ships. Espinosa caught one and cooked it and offered me a chunk. I hated the taste of its flesh. It tasted like dead men.

Normally we used a stern-slung cage as our latrine, but during the storms it had become too dangerous, tossing men about, and so we had used the bilges. Now a putrid vapor steamed from below, belching like a diseased bowel. It caught us unawares and the scuppers clogged with vomit.

We slumped in the shade, exhausted.

“Where has the captain-general led us?”

“Are we to die on this godforsaken sea?”

“Magallanes knows no more where he’s going than a blind fish.”

“It would be better if Cartagena were captain-general rather than this limping fool.”

“I would sooner have the storms back and die in an instant than waste away until the birds pick the flesh from my bones.”

Only Espinosa remained loyal, his face rugged and lined, his voice low yet as commanding as if he were on the battlefield. He said the next man who reviled the captain-general would find his privies skewered on the point of a knife and tossed to the sharks. That silenced the men. After that they waited until Espinosa slept or went to the latrine before again reviling the captain-general in hoarse, throaty whispers.

For myself, I knew not what to think. I knew only that I was sick with misery.

Even the ship sickened. Tar oozed from the seams. Water seeped through the timbers. We manned the pumps in the hold, panting, sweat pouring from us as the stifling heat sucked the marrow from our bones. Ten minutes was the longest anyone could pump. I hated the hold. I hated the pumps. I hated the raw blisters on my hands. But I hated the thought of drowning even more.

Two weeks after our misery began, clouds gathered. For a moment the pumps stopped. We gathered in the waist deck, breathless, waiting, hoping. The clouds opened, spattering us with hot, fat raindrops. After a few seconds, it was gone, and along with it our hope. We swelled with sticky moisture and despair, more miserable than before. Back we went to the hated pumps.

Then one day as I sat listless upon the deck, cursing the day I met Espinosa, I felt what I had not felt in weeks. A breath of wind.

It was almost a strange feeling, as if it did not belong. I raised my head. Did the others feel it, too? We looked at one another, startled. Then, above my head, the sails rippled. I slowly rose to my feet. Across the water I saw the sails of the four other ships snap, then billow, then tighten.

I raised my arms as a gust of wind blew the hair from my face, as the clouds opened with a burst of rain, sweet-smelling and cool. Then Rodrigo was beside me. Naked from the waist up, we looped our arms and danced—laughing like children, whooping like savages.

After we crossed the equator, our troubles began anew.

Each evening Magallanes waited on the quarterdeck for each ship’s salute. But on this night, Cartagena’s ship, the
San Antonio,
kept her distance, the large ship mocking us with each dip of her bow. Cartagena stood on the quarterdeck with his dogs, smiling at the captain-general across the waters. Finally Magallanes left the quarterdeck, saying nothing, doing nothing, his hands linked behind his back as he limped to his cabin.

“Coward!” muttered Rodrigo to his back.

I could not meet Rodrigo’s eyes. Perhaps he had been right all along. Any honorable man would demand retribution at such an insult. If it were me, I would have leaped across the space between us and impaled Cartagena on the point of my sword . . . if I had a sword.

Whispers spread among the crew like fire in the wind.
What
does this mean? Such open defiance. Did you see the way Cartagena looked
at him? Is our captain-general a coward?

Then Rodrigo did something foolish. He told someone about the letter. Within minutes, everyone knew. . . .

Cartagena plans to kill Magallanes!

Did you hear?

Cartagena plans to kill Magallanes!

Again, the next night, the same thing. Cartagena refused to salute. And again. How much longer would Magallanes allow this to continue? The very air seemed to shout, “Our captain-general is a coward!”

On the third night, as stars clustered in the heavens like shells on the shore, the small ship
Victoria
pulled abreast and gave her salute. Captain Mendoza, one of the Spanish captains, then shouted, “Captain-General, sir, we have had an incident aboard.” Mendoza paused and I could have sworn his face colored under the light of the lanterns. “Our master was caught, how shall we say—flagrante delicto—in the arms of his lover, an apprentice seaman.”

On each ship, the master was second in command to the captain. To accuse the master of such a crime brought immediate silence to the Trinidad’s crew. We had all been warned. This crime, described to me in repulsive detail by Rodrigo, was punishable by death. I crossed myself and saw the movement of other arms in the darkness.

Magallanes sighed, and his face seemed to sag even more. “Very well. I shall arrange a court-martial with all captains and pilots for the morrow.”