War God (35 page)

Cortés pounded back down the stairs to the navigation deck. The warping team were applying their weight to the springline now, pulling it rapidly round the cleat to put leverage on the stanchion while Alaminos leaned on the whipstaff, turning the steering hard shoreward. Responding to these opposing forces, the bow of the
Santa María
began to swing ponderously out from the pier, while deckhands swarmed over the masts, unleashing the flying jibs and the inner jibs. These were immediately filled by fierce gusts of wind, and there came a tremendous cracking and lashing of canvas as the foresail, too, was unfurled. At the last moment, the two men still on land loosed the springline from the stanchion, leapt across the rapidly widening strip of water between the ship and the pier, grabbed dangling ropes and hauled themselves on board.

‘That was well done,’ Cortés said to Alaminos, clapping the navigator on the shoulder. But the man made no response and was staring back to land.

Cortés followed his gaze. A mounted troop of the governor’s palace guard was galloping hard along the pier. At their head, dressed in full armour and quite unmistakable in the moonlight for his bulk and girth, was Velázquez himself.

With a sigh Cortés gave the order to lower sails, there was a flurry of activity as the crew obeyed, and the
Santa María
’s forward dash slowed and stopped.

Pepillo could not believe his ears as he heard Cortés give the command to lower the sails, could not believe his eyes as the great ship wallowed to a halt, and was utterly perplexed and dumbfounded as the caudillo then called for a skiff to be lowered, showing every sign of getting into it himself and returning to the pier where the governor and his men waited – most certainly to arrest him!

Unnoticed in the hive of activity, Pepillo and Melchior had made their way to the rear of the navigation deck and now stood at the door of the stateroom, hammers and saws in hand, ready to demolish the partition as their master had ordered.

Pepillo had not told Melchior that he, too, now worked for Cortés – and in such an exalted position as the great man’s secretary. He worried that the Negro, who seemed to have a high opinion of his own abilities, might take the news badly. So he had stuck to the simplest part of the truth, namely that Cortés had assigned both of them to remove the partition.

‘Muñoz doesn’t object to you doing this work?’ Melchior had asked. ‘Because if he does, I don’t really need your help.’

Pepillo hastened to reassure the older boy that Muñoz was presently in no position to object. ‘He can’t! While I was up on the aftcastle, the caudillo had him marched over to Don Pedro Alvarado’s vessel and thrown in the brig. I think he’ll let him out tomorrow.’ He couldn’t bring himself to add that the Dominican wouldn’t be returning to the
Santa María
. Once he revealed that, he thought, he’d be more or less obliged to cough up the rest of the story and he felt reluctant to do so without preparing the ground.

So there he and Melchior stood, at the door of the stateroom, divided by a secret, while Cortés seemed poised to hand the expedition back, without a struggle, to the man he’d been about to steal it from. ‘Why’s he doing this?’ Pepillo whispered as crewmen hurried to lower the boat.

Melchior raised a sardonic eyebrow. ‘Doing what?’

‘Returning to the pier. Delivering himself to the governor.’

‘No chance of that!’ Melchior scoffed. ‘It’s like I told you this morning – there’s an old quarrel between these two. I expect my master wants the last word … Come on, let’s watch from the rail.’

The wind had risen again, adding to the swell, and as the skiff reached the water it banged repeatedly against the
Santa María
’s towering flank. A ladder was rolled down and Cortés strode to it, telling Guiterrez to bring the oars and follow. Then they both climbed on board, Cortés cast off the line and Guiterrez at once began to row towards the pier, the little boat rolling perilously, throwing up wings of foam as it breasted the waves. The moonlight still shone fitfully through the clouds, reflecting off the angry water, and Pepillo could see Cortés gesticulating to Guiterrez, who suddenly began to thrust back on one oar while pulling hard with the other. The flimsy craft turned, almost foundering in the process, and was soon bumping against the
Santa María
again.
Thank goodness
, Pepillo thought as the ladder was once more rolled down,
the
caudillo has come to his senses.

Cortés was shouting something now, standing up as Guiterrez held the skiff in place, pointing to the navigation deck; pointing, it seemed, directly at Pepillo and Melchior who were peering down over the rail.

‘My master wants me to accompany him,’ said Melchior, swelling with pride.

He ran to the main deck where the ladder was positioned, but returned in moments with a thunderous face. ‘It’s not me my master wants,’ he told Pepillo. There was resentment and hurt in his voice. ‘It’s you.’

‘Come on,’ Cortés boomed as Pepillo climbed down into the wildly bucking skiff. ‘Quick about it. I need you to keep a proper record of what passes between me and the governor. What’s said now will have a place in history.’

Much troubled by Melchior’s reaction, Pepillo was now doubly dismayed. ‘I have no writing materials, sir …’ A plunge of the skiff all but pitched him into the sea and he fell back hard on a bench that stretched from side to side across the stern of the little boat. Cortés sat down next to him. ‘Of course you don’t have writing materials, lad! I don’t expect you to perform miracles. But your memory will suffice. Mark well what’s said and jot it down when we get back to the ship.’

The
Santa María
had dropped anchor about three hundred feet from the pier, not a great distance, Pepillo thought at first. Yet the wind was blowing strongly out to sea and it was quickly obvious that the skiff was making poor headway, despite a great deal of rowing, splashing and blaspheming by Guiterrez. What seemed like an age passed before they came within thirty feet – and hailing distance – of the pier, and Cortés at last ordered the little boat held still, a feat that seemed to require even more mighty efforts and curses. ‘Watch your tongue, man!’ he snapped as the sailor took the Lord’s name in vain for perhaps the twentieth time. ‘We’re here to parlay with the governor, not break the third commandment.’

‘Sorry, sir,’ said Guiterrez. ‘But these waves. They’re terrible, sir. Like to capsize us, they are.’

Velázquez had dismounted and stood on the edge of the pier, which towered a full fifteen feet above the heaving waterline. Raised up on this eminence and silhouetted by the setting moon, his massive, armour-clad figure seemed monstrous in Pepillo’s eyes. Most of his men, perhaps as many as twenty, had also dismounted and stood around him, glaring down at the little boat. Only four remained on horseback and one of the great beasts now reared and pawed the air as a streak of lightning crashed across the sky. At this Guiterrez paused from plying the oars to cross himself – a singularly useless thing for such a blasphemer to do, Pepillo thought. But Cortés, too, seemed moved by the scene: ‘Behold a pale horse,’ he said quietly, ‘and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.’

The governor cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted something, but the words were snatched away on the wind.

‘Get us closer,’ Cortés ordered Guiterrez.

‘Closer, sir? I’m not sure that’s wise.’

Cortés’s face was set. ‘Closer, please.’

Guiterrez heaved at the oars again, thrusting the skiff through the waves, the pier loomed ever higher above them and suddenly they could hear the governor. ‘Why is it, Don Hernán, that you sail in such haste?’ he bellowed. ‘Are we not friends? Are we not business partners? Is this a courteous way for you to take your leave of me?’

Cortés stood up in the lurching boat, his feet spread wide, somehow keeping his balance, and made an elaborate bow: ‘Forgive me, Don Diego, but time presses and this was something that needed to be done rather than talked about. Has Your Excellency any final commands?’

‘Yes, you wretch,’ Velázquez shouted. ‘I command you to accept my authority and return to shore where I’ll give you the hanging you deserve.’

‘My deepest regrets, Excellency,’ Cortés said with another mocking bow, ‘but that is something I can never accept. This expedition sails on the authority of God and of His Majesty the King alone to conquer new lands and bring wealth and honour to Spain. I cannot permit such high purposes to be subordinated to the whims of a mere provincial governor.’

‘Then accept
this
,’ Velázquez spluttered, and two men, previously unseen, suddenly stepped through the ranks of his guard and raised long devices to their shoulders in the manner of crossbows – devices in which smouldering embers seemed to be embedded. Pepillo had never seen crossbows such as these, but he felt sure they would harm Cortés, so without further thought he propelled himself forward, wrapped his arms round his master’s knees and knocked him down into the bottom of the boat. Simultanously he heard two loud reports, projectiles whizzed and whined through the air just above his head, and Guiterrez began to row like a madman back towards the
Santa María
. The wind was with them now and they moved much faster than they had before.

‘Forgive me, master,’ Pepillo heard himself yelling. He felt sure he had made some terrible mistake. His career as the caudillo’s secretary was over before it had begun.

Cortés struggled upright and peered back over the side of the skiff at the rapidly receding pier. Then he started to laugh. ‘Forgive you, lad?’ he said. ‘I was having such fun baiting Velázquez, I didn’t see the muskets. I think you’ve just saved my life!’

Ten minutes later, the
Santa María
was under way, every sail bending before the wind.

The signal lights of the rest of the fleet were visible far ahead of them, shining like shooting stars, proceeding through the narrow, mile-long inlet that connected Santiago harbour to the open ocean.

The weather had turned truly foul and, despite the shelter afforded by the inlet, huge waves rolled under the ship, sending it caroming and tumbling from crest to trough. Alaminos and Cortés both had their hands on the whipstaff, which jumped and quivered as the racing seas shook the rudder.

Pepillo heard banging and crashing sounds coming from the stateroom, where he found Melchior at work by lamplight, demolishing the partition with a sledgehammer, delivering every blow with grim, focussed attention. A huge splintered gap was now open between what had formerly been the cabins of Cortés and Muñoz, and since Melchior had coldly refused his help, Pepillo walked through, lit a lantern and began to collect up various items of Muñoz’s property that the Dominican had set out on the bed and the table. On the latter he found parchment, a quill and an inkwell and, remembering his instructions, sat down to write out the words that had passed between Cortés and Velázquez at the pier.

The keening of the wind in the rigging, the crack and whip of the sails, the alarming groaning of the timbers, the concussion of the waves and the increasingly tumultuous rearing and plunging of the ship made the task burdensome, and Pepillo realised he was beginning to feel quite sick. Still he persevered. He had just reached the point where the caudillo said that the expedition had sailed on the authority of God and the king of Spain alone when the
Santa María
heaved over violently to starboard and took on a great mass of seawater that foamed and boiled thigh-deep across the floor of the stateroom. Helpless to resist, Pepillo was dragged from his chair by the flood and sluiced towards the open door.

Shikotenka judged his squad’s losses to be light. Only cousin Tochtli and three others had died in the raid and nine more were injured, none too seriously to disrupt the next phase of the plan. Alarms were being raised everywhere and the vast Mexica camp seethed with noise and anger, drums beating, conches blaring, warriors boiling forth from every quarter, responding to the threat with all the instinctive fury and blind aggression of a disturbed ant colony.