Vengeance in
Seville

Book Two of the Martin
Silvereye Trilogy

Matilde Asensi

© 2015 Matilde Asensi
© 2015 translation by Xander Fraser

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER I

It was a dark and cloudy day in early October, right at the end of the 1606 dry season, the sky looked as if it was on the point of unleashing a rainstorm of biblical proportions and everyone in town was having their siesta, when all of a sudden someone started banging away insistently at my front door, the noise getting louder and louder. In Margarita, this was completely unheard of and it was regarded as the height of bad manners. Margarita was the most important town on the island of the same name and I'd been living there for just over six months, since I'd arrived to lay claim to my inheritance, the properties and possessions of my uncle Hernando and of my husband and my father-in-law, who had died in a smallpox epidemic. In the rest of the Caribbean I was known as Martín Nevares, but in Margarita everybody knew me as the young widow Catalina Solís, the owner of a thriving brass foundry and of two recently renovated houses, one that I lived in myself and another one that I rented out for very good money. My life there was very happy, gloriously comfortable and altogether a pleasure, I have to say. Ever since I'd moved to the island, I'd had two fine-looking young men paying court to me, which certainly didn't do me any harm in people's eyes, and my reputation as an honest, respectable and wealthy woman was quite enough to ensure that I was very well-regarded.

As I said, it was utterly unthinkable that somebody would have the gall to turn up at a respectable house at siesta time, let alone wake up the entire neighborhood with their frenzied knocking. Peace reigned throughout the island, apart from the endless buzzing of mosquitoes, of course, and the occasional sounds of dogs barking, the clucks and crowing of chickens and the squeals and grunts of nearby hogs. I was having a nice snooze underneath the beautiful palm trees in my patio while my maid Brígida fanned me with a big palm frond. It was so humid that the air was hard to breathe and, at that time of the day, the best thing to do was to do absolutely nothing, right up until sunset, to avoid the dizzy spells and breathing problems which had put so many locals in their graves.

So when I heard the thunderous banging on my door, my eyes flew open and, for a moment, all I saw through the branches above my head was the trelliswork on the top floor galleries.

'Mistress!' It was the voice of Manuel, my servant, coming from the doorway into the patio.

'Yes, Manuel?'

'Mistress, there's a man at the door who says he's called Rodrigo de Soria and he insists on talking with you in person. He's armed to the teeth and I…'

'Rodrigo!' I cried. I leaped up from my day-bed and started to run towards the front door of the house, scrabbling to lift up my dress to avoid tripping over as I went - at times, I really missed Martín's breeches: they'd made life so much easier.

What a huge pleasure it would be to see Rodrigo again! It had been six months since I'd gotten any news of my family, apart from the odd bit of gossip that I'd picked up eavesdropping on the stallholders in the marketplace: that Esteban Nevares, the old captain from Santa Marta, had fallen out with so-and-so, that María Chacón had raised the prices in her brothel, that the runaway slaves' stockades by the Magdalena River were doing well… I was halfway across the dining-room and racing towards the door in eager anticipation when I suddenly realized that something didn't make any sense. What was my old shipmate Rodrigo doing on the island of Margarita? Worst of all, why was he asking for me, for Catalina Solís, who he shouldn't know anything about at all and who supposedly he'd never even met? Rodrigo was a member of the Chacona's crew and, as far as he was concerned, I was Martín Nevares, the illegitimate son of his captain, the minor nobleman Esteban Nevares, who had legally adopted me after rescuing me from a desert island. As far as I knew, nobody had ever told him that I was actually a woman, and the widow of a Margaritan foundry owner into the bargain, having been married off to a young man that I'd never met, a man who'd been kicked in the head by a mule when he was a child and left with his skull in ruins and his brain almost completely useless. Rodrigo knocking on my door and asking to see Catalina Solís? Something must have happened in Santa Marta and I was starting to worry that the news could only be bad.

My old shipmate was a headstrong man and he had been far too impatient just to stand and wait for me at the front door. I could hear his loud footsteps approaching across the packed-earth floor of the hallway and he strode into the dining-room, his cocked hat in his hand. The second he saw me, he took a sudden step backwards, a look of total shock on his face, a reaction which wasn't entirely unexpected, to be fair. He didn't say a word, he was struck dumb and frozen in place, just staring at me with my women's clothes on and my black widow's veil covering my tied-back hair. My blood was racing, but he looked half-dead and was struggling to take his next breath, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.

'M-Martín?' he finally managed to stutter out. Seeing traces of his young co-conspirator in scrapes and adventures up and down the Caribbean in the features of the elegant twenty-four-year-old widow standing right there in front of him was stretching his imagination well beyond breaking point. I felt so happy to see him that for a moment I forgot all my worries about why he had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, I ignored how upset he was and I bypassed all the rules of respectable behavior. I just laughed out loud and ran up to give him a hug. He was completely horrified. He stepped out of my reach as if I was the Devil himself, and instinctively reached for his sword.

'Rodrigo! Snap out of it, man!' I shouted at him. 'What the hell do you think you're doing, going for your sword? There's no fight to be had in this house, this is the home of your friend and you'll always be welcome in it!'

It was becoming clear to me that Rodrigo was under the impression that some kind of spell had been cast on him and he was desperately fighting to shake off all the evidence of his eyes and ears.

'What kind of madness is this?' he roared. 'Who the hell are you, señora, and why do you look so much like my good friend Martín?'

'Because I am Martín, Rodrigo,' I snapped back at him, beginning to lose patience with his endless uncertainty. 'Don't call me "señora" or anything like that. I'm your old shipmate, for goodness' sake.'

Rodrigo took a long hard look at me, blinked twice, narrowed his eyes and looked at me all over again, taking deep breaths as he did so. He threw his hat onto the table and ran both his hands through his graying hair. He looked completely lost.

'So tell me this then: if you really are my friend Martín,' he spat out contemptuously, 'what the hell are you doing dressed up as a woman? It's doesn't make sense and I don't like it at all.'

'Didn't the person who sent you tell you? They must have done, surely.'

His face, tanned and leathery from all his years at sea, was sullen and grim. He just couldn't accept it and he was still caught up in what he thought could only be some kind of bad dream. But, after a while, I finally saw him take a deep breath and look around at his surroundings as if he was seeing them for the first time, as if the furniture in my house and its walls and ceilings were gradually bringing him back to his senses. I didn't understand, or perhaps I didn't want to understand, why it was that he was finding the truth so hard to accept, as I'd often suspected during my five years at sea on the Chacona that Rodrigo had come to know my secret. But his reaction told me that I could hardly have been more mistaken and that he really had believed that I was a sixteen or seventeen-year-old half-breed boy.

To help him jog his memory, I pulled off my widow's veil, unpinned and let down my hair, which I'd made sure to keep long just like Martín did, in case I was forced to turn myself into him in an emergency.

'That's enough, Rodrigo!' I commanded, putting on the deeper voice that he was so accustomed to. And it worked wonders. His expression changed, he calmed down and the frown disappeared from his forehead. 'Come on then, let's go to the patio and you can tell me what you're doing here, bothering me in my Margarita hideaway.'

My beloved old shipmate had once been the owner of a gaming-house. An expert gambler and cardsharp, he was a seasoned sailor and a fine man with a big heart, and he obeyed me as naturally as he did when I captained my father's merchant xebec.

'Brígida,' I called to the maid as I entered the patio, 'tell Manuel to go to the well for some fresh water and then bring us a big jar of aloja¹ and two glasses.'

'We don't have time for a drink,' Rodrigo said in a grim voice, without sitting down in the chair which Brígida had brought for him. 'We have to leave immediately.'

'Leave?' I had suspected as much.

Rodrigo was keeping an eagle eye on the maid, who was going back into the house through the kitchen door, and he didn't begin to tell me what was going on until she had shut the door behind her.

'If you really are Martín,' he told me, 'you should know that your father was arrested by the Governor of Cartagena's soldiers on Monday, the eleventh day of September.'

It was an absolute bombshell. I couldn't believe it. My father a prisoner?

'What are you saying?' I finally managed to ask, still faint with the shock of it. 'The last I knew, Don Jerónimo de Zuazo and my father were the best of friends after we outwitted the Curvos and helped to end the war with the runaway slaves.'

'Well, now you're finding out just how long friendships last when you're dealing with the rich and powerful,' Rodrigo commented bitterly. He finally sat down. 'Don Jerónimo's constables turned up at the house in Santa Marta and arrested your father for crimes of lèse-majesté against the Spanish Crown.'

'What? Lèse-majesté?' I'd never heard anything quite so ridiculous in my entire life.

'There are two very serious charges against him: one is for smuggling and the other one is much the same, for buying arms from enemies of the Crown, the Flemish at Punta Araya. You know that we're still at war with Flanders.'

'I don't understand why this is happening, Rodrigo! It makes no sense to me!' I shouted at him. I was furious. 'Everybody knew about our dealings with de Moucheron², but nobody was remotely concerned about it. So why arrest my father now?'

'A new Royal Decree has just been issued ordering that any trade with the Flemish anywhere in the Empire be very harshly punished, and the smuggling makes it even worse. The King wants to cripple the economies of the rebel provinces with a blockade and force them to surrender.'

Rodrigo sighed despairingly.

'We would have been far better off dealing with the French or the English! The Governor of Cartagena needs to make an example of a few prominent citizens to show that he's taking the King's decree seriously. That's why he arrested your father, and we have to expect the worst.'

I didn't understand exactly what he was saying. I frowned at him and he went on to make it brutally clear:

'Illicit trading with the enemy in times of war is always punished with a death sentence. And there's no appeal.'

'What?' I screamed, absolutely horrified.

I couldn't possibly have felt any worse. I began to cry, without making a sound, remembering the terrible pain that I'd gone through years before as a small girl in Toledo, when the Inquisition had thrown my real father into jail, where he ended up dying of malaria in 1596. Now, ten years later and on the other side of the world, my adoptive father had also been made a prisoner and, because of what I had lived through in Toledo, I felt sure that I would never see him alive again, just like the last time. Even if we managed to avoid him being brought to trial, which we definitely had to do, come what may, my father was already an old man, a very old man, and he had begun to suffer from spells of confusion and disorientation which had started when he'd been forced to become a smuggler to pay off his crippling debts to that out-and-out swindler and cheat Melchor de Osuna, a filthy parasite if I'd ever met one.

There was no way around it. We had to rescue my father as soon as possible, which meant setting off for Cartagena immediately. With his poor health and the humiliation of being chained hand and foot, he certainly wouldn't last long in prison.

'You still haven't heard it all, I'm afraid,' Rodrigo went on, wiping the sweat off his forehead, which still bore the red mark across it left by his hat.

'How much worse can it possibly get?' I asked.

Rodrigo looked me in the eyes, a grim expression on his face.

'Try and keep calm, señora, and hold your emotions in check, because what I'm about to tell you is just as bad as the news I've just given you. On the very same day that the soldiers came to arrest your father, Monday the eleventh day of September, Santa Marta was attacked during the night by the Flemish corsair Jakob Lundch in his ship, the Hoorn. You've probably heard of him.'

I nodded. Unfortunately, I had heard of him, and none of it was good. Jacob Lundch had been attacking our coastal towns for over two years and local children burst into tears at the mere mention of his name. Only two months ago he'd been spotted close to Margarita but, luckily, he sailed on towards Trinidad. In Mampatare, a small port on the island, they organized processions of thanksgiving and there'd been celebrations in all the nearby towns and villages.

'The truth is that nobody really knows exactly how he got away with it,' Rodrigo explained. 'People think that he must have kept out of sight behind Morro Island until nightfall and then sailed into the bay under cover of darkness. One way or another, before people even had time to grab hold of their muskets, arquebuses and crossbows, the pirates were already rampaging through town, beating and killing them. Once they had the town under their complete control, they set about raping all the womenfolk and stealing everything that they could lay their hands on, up to and including the chalices in the churches. Just before dawn, they set the town on fire, and not just the town: they also started fires on every single ship in port, including the Chacona, and then they weighed anchor and sailed away.'

Rodrigo paused for a second and rubbed his calloused hands over his cheeks and neck.

'It gets worse. Your mother, who hadn't even had time to get over the arrest of the Captain, suddenly found herself fighting to save the lives of the girls in the brothel. The Flemish had raped them all and then tied them to the beds so that they wouldn't be able to escape from the fire. The entire house, the brothel and the store were all utterly destroyed. They burnt down with all the women inside.'

The blood drained from my body. I felt like my soul was being crushed.

'What… what happened to Mother?'

'She survived,' he said, and tried to clear his throat, 'but barely. I don't know whether she's still alive. When I left Santa Marta to come and get you, she was on her deathbed in Sando's stockade. King Benkos' son took care of her. He was alerted by the glow of the fire in the night sky and came down with some of his men to see what was going on. He found her badly wounded, just lying there on the ground. I'm sure that the townsfolk who managed to escape thought she was dead, otherwise they would have taken her with them. She was burned by the fire, not too badly on her flesh, just her arms and legs, but I think that her lungs were damaged and she was having trouble breathing. I left her in Juanillo's care, Juanillo the ship's boy who, luckily for him, was spending a few days at the stockade when the pirates attacked. I was spared because three months ago I started an affair with a woman called Melchora de los Reyes, a widow woman who lives in Río de la Hacha and who I'm about to marry, and I was over there enjoying her company. Everything I'm telling you, I only found out about two days after it happened, when I got back to Santa Marta and discovered it burnt and abandoned and I swear to you, Martín, it drove me crazy. With these very hands,' he held them out to me, palms upwards, 'I buried many of my neighbors who were just lying there, rotting in the sun, like so much dead meat. Almost all of our shipmates are gone: Mateo Quesada and Lucas Urbina, I buried them in the hallowed ground of the church. Guacoa, Jayuheibo and young Nicolasito, I buried them in the forest, the three together so that they would never be alone, and Black Tomé, Miguel and poor old Antón I wrapped in cotton sheets before burying them at the bottom of a ditch which I dug out in the town square. I worked like a donkey. There was no one else there, not for miles around.'

I heard every word he said, every one of them hurt me badly and I started crying again. I felt dead inside.

'Why the hell didn't the runaway slaves from the stockade bury them?' I asked him angrily, drying my eyes with a linen handkerchief. Rodrigo looked over at me and I could tell that he just couldn't get used to seeing me behave like a woman.

'Have you forgotten everything? They're Africans and they have their own particular superstitions. Sando ordered his men to search for survivors, so they did do that and then they got the hell out of Santa Marta as fast as they possibly could, because they're afraid of the spirits of the dead.'

At least, I said to myself, my mother had survived. She could easily have been just another one of the corpses left out to rot in the sun.

'I stayed in Sando's stockade for a few days,' Rodrigo continued, 'and then I returned to Santa Marta to find a ship to bring me here, but there were very few who sailed close enough to shore to see my attempts to hail them or even to make out what had happened to the town. It was days before I found a captain who was prepared to take me in exchange for my working on board his ship. It was hard for me, very hard, waiting there completely alone except for my horse and having to look at the burnt wreck of the Chacona, day after day after day. I came here at your mother's command to bring you news of what had happened and to bring you back with me so that you can be by her side. She wants you there. She can hardly talk, but she managed to tell me to go to Margarita and ask for the widow Catalina Solís, a lady who could put me in touch with Martín. That's all she said and I swear to you, I just assumed that you'd moved in with some woman called Catalina. The last thing I expected was that Catalina was going to turn out to be you, I can tell you that.'

I didn't have the strength to smile. Who would have, under those circumstances? In my anger and my grief, I thought about the pathetic way I'd reacted at the news and it made me really ashamed of myself. How dare I break down in tears when my father was languishing in jail in Cartagena, my mother was on her deathbed in Sando's stockade and my crewmates on the Chacona and the girls in the brothel were rotting in their graves? I wiped my face with my handkerchief and looked over at Rodrigo defiantly.

'By my father's and my mother's lives and by their honor,' my voice was now the deeper one that Martín used, 'I hereby swear that I will do everything that I possibly can to right these wrongs or I shall cease forever to call myself by my true name or regard myself as worthy to be my parents' daughter.'

Rodrigo opened his mouth as if he was about to ask me exactly who my real parents were and whether I was their daughter or in fact their son, but he thought better of it. I just ignored him. He'd have plenty of time on our journey home to ask me whatever he felt like asking me. Right now, the priority was to get going, as soon as we possibly could.

'Wait for me here,' I told him. 'I have to get a few things organized and change out of these women's clothes.'

The rain which had been threatening all day finally began to hammer down torrentially, as it often did at this time of year in the Caribbean. But that was the last thing that I was worried about. I couldn't stop thinking about my father, so old already, so prone to his spells of not knowing where he was or what was happening and so much weaker physically than he'd ever been. If I didn't get to his side soon, he was all too likely to die of grief and of shame, tormented by the public dishonor and humiliation, the very worst thing that could happen to a fine, upstanding Spanish gentleman like himself. I'd have to start off by going to Sando's stockade as quickly as possible, to collect my mother and take her to the Hospital of the Holy Spirit in Cartagena and, once I'd done that, I had to get my father out of prison any way that I could, whether legal or otherwise. I was prepared to spend everything I had in bribes, and I had plenty, thanks to the pirate treasure that I'd found on my desert island. And I was more than ready to kill the Governor, Jerónimo de Zuazo, with my own hands if he refused to drop the charges against my father and set him free.

'Brígida!' I shouted, and the maid appeared immediately, standing in the kitchen doorway, a brass tray with two glasses and a jar of aloja in her hands.

'I'm going away and I don't know how long I'll be gone. I'm leaving you in charge of everything. Tell Iñigo to keep the foundry open.'

Brígida nodded her head obediently.

'And now I want you to go to the mill with Manuel and buy a celemín³ of cornflour because we're running out of it.'

'What? Right away, señora?' She was clearly surprised, as this was the hottest part of the day and the mill was right on the other side of town.

'Yes, right now, Brígida. By the time you return, I'll be gone, so take good care of the house until I get back.'

When Brígida left, I raced up the stairs to my room and opened up the big trunk that I used for bed linen. Hidden right at the bottom of it, and well wrapped up in sheets, were the clothes that belonged to my other self, to Martín Nevares. I'd put them away there six months earlier, when I arrived in Margarita to take possession of my recently inherited properties. At that time - and I still hadn't changed my mind about that - I was determined to live as Catalina rather than as Martín, and I was dying to be myself after years and years of pretending to be my poor dead brother. The charade had been dreamed up by my new father when he rescued me from the island that I'd been stranded on for well over a year, to save me from an awful marriage by proxy which had made me the lawfully wedded wife of the drooling Domingo Rodríguez, who - unbeknownst to me, as we'd never met - had been reduced to idiocy by a kick in the head from a mule when he was a child. What I could never have possibly imagined when I left Santa Marta to live in Margarita was that, while I was enjoying my new life there as a young and wealthy widow, my family was going to suffer the appalling misfortunes which destiny seemed to reserve for the best and most decent people.

I took off my bodice, my dress and the petticoat and put on a clean man's shirt, a jerkin, breeches and a pair of boots. From the other trunk that I kept beneath my bed, I took out my beloved red cocked hat, which was a bit creased and sorry-looking from all its time in captivity, and my weapons, the beautiful dress sword which my real father had forged for me in his smithy in Toledo and the dagger for my left hand. I attached both the scabbards to my swordbelt and only then did I take a look at myself in the mirror to contemplate my transformation.

'Well met, Martín Nevares,' I greeted my reflection. Staring right back at me was a good-looking young man, who looked like a mestizo⁴, a Spanish-Indian half-breed, tall, with strong arms, straight black hair, thick black eyebrows and strikingly dark eyes.

Satisfied with what I saw, I went over to the window looking onto the patio and called down to Rodrigo.

'Get yourself up here, shipmate!' I shouted to him. He looked up and when he saw me dressed as Martín again, the stern expression on his face immediately changed into a relieved smile. 'I need a porter.'

'I'm your man, brother!' he shouted back. He leaped out of his chair and ran into the cool interior of the house. Only seconds later, he was standing right by my side.

'Shut the door,' I told him. As soon as it was closed, I knelt down and jimmied up a length of floorboard with the point of my dagger. Then I quickly pulled up three more.

'What the hell are you doing?' Rodrigo asked me.

There in the semi-darkness, on a platform I had built between two of the floor joists, were a couple of big iron chests.

'Remember the pirate treasure from my island?'

'Damn right I do! How could I forget that?'

'Well, here I keep a third of it. I'm a seriously wealthy man, my friend,' I declared, already comfortable in my old disguise, 'richer than you could ever have imagined. With what I've got in these strongboxes, I could buy the whole of Margarita and still have plenty of money left over. What we found on the island was already a fortune, but we made a huge profit, my father and I, when we changed it into gold doubloons⁵.'

'Hang on a minute: if this is only a third of it, what have you done with the rest of the money?'

'I've hidden it all. A third of it's in Santa Marta and the other third's in Sando's stockade.'

'Everything in Santa Marta has either been destroyed or stolen,' Rodrigo pointed out.

'Don't worry about that, my friend. It wasn't anywhere that Jacob Lundch could have gotten his hands on it. Only my father and I know where we hid it and, from what you've told me, my father had already been arrested by the time that Flemish bastard got anywhere near the house. With what we've got here,' - at this point, with all my strength and with a lot of huffing and puffing, I began to lift out the first of the boxes - 'there'll be more than enough for us to buy any favors we need.'

'Get out of my way, boy!' Rodrigo growled, giving me an almighty shove. 'What makes you think you've got the strength to do that?'

I was taken aback, but only for a second. I rewarded his friendly concern with a well-aimed kick to his shins, which had the desired effect of shutting the man up.

'You get out of my way, you blundering oaf!' I yelled, kicking out at him again with both feet, but failing to land another blow as he successfully dodged me. 'I suppose you think I can't do it alone just because I'm a woman, is that it, you condescending moron? Forget about Catalina! My name's Martín and I'm just as capable of lifting this chest as you are! You've seen me working an oar in the longboat, and I'm stronger than most of my shipmates, you know that.'

'Oh come off it, Martín! Wasn't it you who said that you needed a porter? Fine, you go ahead and cart your damn treasure all by yourself then! I look forward to seeing you break your back!'

And that was more or less how it turned out. I finally managed to reach the port after lugging the two chests downstairs, lifting them into a handcart and covering them up with bundles of spare clothes and baskets full of supplies for the journey. The whole way, Rodrigo walked along by my side, his hands firmly clasped behind his back, and never once offered to help me out. I have to admit that I would have appreciated it but then again, you reap what you sow, I guess. Anyway, he didn't know that apart from tying my hair back so that I could leave it long the way young men wore it in Tierra Firme⁶, I also regularly spent days working in my foundry as just another laborer, to make sure that I didn't lose the strength that I'd built up in my arms and legs when I'd sailed on board the Chacona. What I may well have lost, I regretfully had to admit to myself, was my skill at swordfighting, because I hadn't had anyone to practice with for six long months and it's an art that has to be kept fine-tuned. I was hoping that Rodrigo would agree to spar with me occasionally on our trip to Santa Marta.

'You seem very relaxed, Martín,' he remarked when we finally arrived at the shore, the bay stretching away in front of us. 'It took me three days to find a merchant ship in Santa Marta which was sailing to Margarita. What are you planning to do with the treasure here in port while we wait for a ship that's bound for Santa Marta and whose captain is willing to give us passage?'

I lowered the handles of the cart and grounded it in the sand. 'Take a look over there,' I told him, pointing over at a small ship with a squared-off stern and a shallow draft that was anchored in the middle of the cove. 'Do you see that forty-ton patache⁷ with its hull painted red?'

Rodrigo nodded to me, his eyes fixed on the vessel.

'She's the Santa Trinidad and she belongs to Catalina Solís,' I announced to him. 'I have in my pocket a short message to the captain, written in the lady's own fair hand, which instructs him to put himself at the complete disposition of a member of her close family, a certain Martín Nevares.'

Rodrigo couldn't believe his ears.

'What? You? The owner of a forty-ton patache?'

He clearly found the whole idea very hard to believe.

'This little ship,' I began to explain, 'was a slightly misguided whim of mine and I've spent much more time and money on her than I should have done, I have to admit. At the beginning of June, the annual Tierra Firme Fleet called in here on the way to Cartagena, to pick up the silver mined in Peru. The Santa Trinidad was one of the mailboats assigned to the Fleet, she was in bad condition after the Atlantic crossing and, on top of that, a good part of her hull had been eaten away by shipworms⁸. So I bought her, thinking that if I got her repaired, I could sail off and visit my family in Santa Marta whenever I felt like it. She won't manage another trip across the Atlantic, but she's fast and exactly what I need.'

Many of the crew were out on the town and we didn't get everybody on board until after midnight, so in the end we didn't set sail until dawn. The sea was choppy and there were strong tailwinds blowing, so we were forced to hug the coastline without heading out into the open sea and had to keep a sharp lookout for the big sandbanks so common in the Caribbean and so dangerous for shipping. Fortunately, the old Indian helmsman on the patache was every bit as good as the poor departed Jayuheibo had been when it came to his sailing skills, and he knew the Caribbean so well that he had no need of any nautical or harbor charts.

So we hoisted the sails and set our course for Santa Marta, the seas so rough that it took us two weeks to reach our destination, which gave me the chance and plenty of time to tell Rodrigo the whole story. He was particularly impressed and very proud to hear how brave and ingenious my father had been in saving me from the appalling fate that awaited me had I fallen into the hands of my uncle and my half-wit husband.

'And to think that a man as generous and warm-hearted as the Captain has been chained up and thrown in jail! It's just unbearable!' he roared out, striding up and down the deck like a bull who'd just entered the bullring.

But I felt strangely confident about the future. Something told me that the money I had at my disposal would do a lot for my father, that it would certainly save his life and if in the end we couldn't avoid his going to trial, it would hire him the very best lawyers available who would win the case or at least get him off with the lightest possible sentence. Up there on deck, staring off into the endless horizon, hour after hour, I worked out all the things I would have to do as soon as we docked in Cartagena. One of those, and by no means the least important, was to buy a house for my mother there so that she had a comfortable place to convalesce in and recover from her wounds when she was released from hospital and until my father's affairs were finally cleared up. Until then, we would both stay in Cartagena as there was no way that we would ever leave his side and abandon him to the unreliable whims of the King's justice. I also felt that there was a good chance that I could persuade Don Jerónimo de Zuazo, on the basis of his supposed friendship with my father, to allow him to be held under house arrest in the home that I was going to buy, under the custody of a few of his soldiers.

CHAPTER II

On the twenty-first day of October, a little more than three hours after sunrise, the immense peaks of Santa Marta's Sierra Nevada emerged out of the mist on our port side, and at last the Santa Trinidad slipped past the little island of El Morro and changed course to enter the bay. The view of the town from on board was deeply depressing: where once the houses had been, there was nothing but a thick layer of ash, dotted with the occasional shack and lean-to roughly knocked together by the poor survivors. The Governor's residence was still standing, at least, but without any roofs and with its once-white walls badly stained with soot. The chapel had survived the fire, but the church was nothing more than a pile of burnt roof beams and blackened stone and the San Juan de las Matas fort, which had only been built four years earlier, was completely in ruins.

'Over there is all that remains of the Chacona,' Rodrigo said bitterly, pointing at a charred section of the keel and a few ribs which were sticking up out from the water. There was so much black everywhere that the vibrant green of the forest, the bleached white of the sand and the deep turquoise of the sea just faded into insignificance. I had nightmarish visions of people in panic running around screaming as they desperately tried to escape in the middle of the night, of flames shooting up into the sky from the burning houses and the blood of my family, friends and neighbors forming thick red pools in the sand and clotting in the heat of the fires.

I ordered the captain of the Santa Trinidad to drop anchor and to wait for us while we traveled to the stockade and back, and told him to prepare his own cabin to receive someone who was badly injured. Then we climbed down onto the longboat and went ashore. On the beach was one of the few townspeople who had dared to return, Tomás Mallol, and he recognized me immediately and began to call out to us.

'Friends! Over here, over here!' he shouted, frantically waving his hat in the air. 'It's Martín, Martín Nevares! Esteban's son has arrived!'

The five or six people who were desperately struggling to rebuild their houses and their lives appeared as if out of nowhere. They ran up and began to embrace me, to cry on my shoulders, to offer their heartfelt condolences and to beg for my help. One had lost all his children, another had lost his wife and had all his cattle slaughtered and stolen and another had lost both his parents and his workshop had been completely destroyed. They were delighted when I told them that Mother was still alive. They had only recently returned to Santa Marta, having spent weeks and weeks hiding in the forest with the Indians, recovering from their wounds and trying to get their courage up to venture out again.

Suddenly I saw Alfana, my father's chestnut mustang, tethered to a tree stump right by one of the newly-built shacks and snuffling around for something to eat.

'Alfana!' I called out to him. He lifted his head and turned his ears in my direction. He immediately recognized me, whinnied and champed at his bit, pulling at the reins to try and get free.

'He managed to escape during the attack,' explained one of my neighbors, Juan de Oñate. 'And he came back yesterday - it's almost as if he knew that you would turn up today. He has wounds on the crest of his neck and on his hindquarters, but they're already healing.'

I stroked his mane and rubbed his forehead between the eyes.

'Where are the other animals we had at home, do you know?' I asked. Mother was forever finding stray animals of all shapes and sizes and making them part of the family.

'We haven't seen any of them, I'm afraid,' Juan replied.

'So, Alfana, do you want to come with me to go and fetch Mother from Sando's stockade?' I said to the mustang, whispering into one of his sharply pointed ears. He pawed the ground eagerly, as if he was a young colt again.

I untied the reins from the tree stump and led him down to where everyone was standing.

'Could one of you lend us another horse, my friends? We need to leave immediately to fetch my mother.'

We left Santa Marta along the track that runs through the vegetable plantations and we crossed the Manzanares River in the mid-afternoon. Soon it grew dark. Alfana behaved very well, despite the fact that, when we galloped, the saddle rubbed up against one of the wounds on his hindquarters, a wound which I had cleaned and covered with a bandage after treating it with a balm made with rosemary. The horse that Rodrigo was riding did play up a bit when we lit some torches to light our way, probably because it reminded her of the fire that the Flemish pirates started when they overran Santa Marta.

By dawn we were at the gates of Sando's stockade. His nightwatchmen had seen us coming and, as we dismounted, they demanded that we identify ourselves. As soon as they knew who we were, they shouted out the news of our arrival to the whole stockade. Even before the gates of the palisade were fully open, I could see the smiling faces of Juanillo, one of the two ship's boys on the Chacona, and of Sando, King Benkos' son. Sando's smile seemed to me to be a bit forced, as if there was something that he was afraid to say. I let go of Alfana's reins and ran up to him, fearing the worst.

'Give me good news, brother, please,' I begged him, holding him by the shoulders and shaking him backwards and forwards, 'or I swear to you that I'm going to go crazy!'

'Hey, come on, man!' he told me, 'Let me go! Señora María is fine! What are you so afraid of? Go on then, let go of me!'

I did what he asked, but I didn't believe a word that he said. Juanillo, who was now as tall as Rodrigo was, came up and stood at his side, clearly enjoying the spectacle.

'So Mother hasn't died, you say? Then why on earth did you have that sad smile on your face when you first caught sight of me?'

Sando took me by the arm, gave Rodrigo a polite greeting and then, with a big smile on his face, and this time without a drop of sadness in it, he led me into the settlement.

'I'm no good when I've just woken up, Martín, my friend. What kind of expression do you expect me to have on my face when I've just been dragged out of bed all of a sudden by the shouts of a couple of nightwatchmen?'

'So Mother's alright?' I asked him, finally beginning to feel relieved.

'Just come with me.'

I gave a big hug to Juanillo, who was almost a head taller than me now, and both of us, along with Rodrigo, started following Sando along the alleyways that separated the huts, until he stopped in front of an unusually large one. Around the doorway there was a big crowd of Africans, curious to see what was going on. They were all former slaves, runaways that were known as cimarrones or apalencados⁹.

'May we enter, Señora María?' Sando yelled.

'Come in, come in,' replied a voice which, though weak and husky, was undoubtedly Mother's. The sound of it made me gloriously happy.

'Look who I've brought to see you, señora!' Sando declared, pulling aside the length of cloth which served as a door. Arm in arm, Rodrigo and I stepped through the opening. A few gaps in the interlaced branches which formed the walls of the hut let in a little of the early morning light. Sitting there on a simple cot with two plump pillows supporting her back and covered by a clean linen sheet was Mother, with her familiar broad and open face, her fine nose and her dark eagle eyes. Her hair was gathered up in a hairnet and it looked as if she was naked under the sheet. I was so happy to see her again and, above all, to see her alive and still very much herself.

'Martín, my son!' she cried out, stretching out her arms towards me. They were covered with bandages and, judging by the expression that crossed her face, her wounds were still causing her considerable pain.

'I think it would be better, Mother,' I said as I went to her side and took her by the hands, 'if I didn't hug you yet. I really don't want to hurt you.'

'Yes - how do you feel now, Mother?' Rodrigo asked her as he joined me at the bedside. She looked up at him with gratitude and affection in her eyes.

'Thank you so much for bringing Martín to me, Rodrigo,' she said to him with a wicked smile. 'I imagine you know everything now, don't you? Otherwise you would never have been able to find him, I suppose.'

'You've hit the nail on the head there, Mother,' Rodrigo replied. 'The widow in Margarita that you told me to call on had him sent for immediately. I must say that she's a fine-looking woman, that Catalina Solís, very attractive. A real beauty, in fact. You would have done very good business with her in the brothel, and that's a fact.'

Very discreetly, I stamped down on one of his feet with all my strength, but the sly devil carried on smiling as if nothing at all had happened. Mother immediately burst out laughing and let go of my hands to grab hold of the sheet, to stop it falling off her as she enjoyed his crack. Despite her advanced age - closing in on fifty, I suspected - Mother was a very beautiful woman.

'Catalina Solís is a respectable widow, Rodrigo,' she remarked, mischievously. 'Leave her to her quiet life over there in Margarita, giving the neighbors nothing to gossip about.'

Then her face clouded over.

'Now that Martín has returned - sit yourself down at the edge of the bed, son - we can set about rescuing Esteban, my poor Esteban.'

I could hear a rumble in her throat when she spoke that sounded like distant thunder. Her lungs were clearly still in very bad shape from the fire.

'I find it so painful to think of him in that awful prison cell in Cartagena, all on his own with no one to help him. We have to get him out of there, Martín, as soon as we possibly can. Do whatever has to be done, son, but just get him back to Santa Marta, I beg you!'

'That's what I'm here to do, Mother,' I reassured her, stroking one of her hands to calm her down, 'but we'll do it together. You're going to come with Rodrigo and me, there are important things that we can't do without you. But before I do anything else, I'm going to take you to the Hospital of the Holy Spirit so that a doctor can treat your burns and improve your breathing.'

'But I'm absolutely fine, Martín!' she insisted, looking shocked at my reaction. 'The only thing that's bothering me is not being able to smoke. Can't you see how well I can move now? Can't you hear how well I can speak? Come closer, Rodrigo!'

My shipmate took a step forward.

'Rodrigo,' she continued, 'tell Martín the state I was in when you left here.'

'I already told him that in Margarita, Mother. In fact, I told him that I was afraid you'd be dead by the time we got here. So I can't tell you how happy and impressed I am to find you so well and so lively.'

'You see, Martín? And I owe it all to that woman standing over there, Damiana Angola,' she said, pointing at a short, middle-aged African woman with a plump face who was standing right at the other end of the hut. 'Damiana is a healer, one of the good ones like in the old days, like the ones there were in Seville when I was young and working away in the Compás¹⁰.'

On hearing her name, the lady smiled over at them. Her tightly curled hair was tied back in a fustian headscarf and on her right cheek was the faint trace of her slave brand, a large letter "H" which was clearly very old, as the scar tissue was as dark as the surrounding skin and only shone out when the light hit it from the side, just like jewels did.

'Take Damiana with you, Mother,' Sando suggested, from the doorway. 'She's become very fond of you and she'd be delighted to go with you.'

Mother looked over at him with a withering expression on her face, and he took a step backwards, involuntarily.

'I lost absolutely everything in the pirate attack. How on earth do you expect me to be able to pay for the services of such a good healer, you foolish young man? Before, yes, I was a wealthy woman, but now I am utterly destitute.'

'I'll take care of all that, Mother,' I cut in. 'From now on, I'll deal with all your expenses and pay for whatever you need.'

'I've no need for your charity, boy!' she declared, straightening herself up in bed, without forgetting to take good care that the sheet didn't fall to reveal anything inappropriate. 'What I need you to do is rescue your father!'

'Well, stop arguing then and get yourself up out of bed,' I snapped back at her. I got to my feet, slapped my hat back onto my head and headed for the door. 'I'll wait for you outside, Mother. And you, Damiana, do you want to come work for me or would you rather stay here in the stockade? I badly need someone to take charge of running the house that I'm planning to buy in Cartagena, and someone to take good care of Mother at the same time. I can offer you a salary of three ducados¹¹ a year, And free clothing, footwear, food and lodging, of course.'

It was an excellent offer, more than a free white manservant made, but because I had seen that my mother was really attached to her and had said that her almost miraculous recovery was entirely due to her expert care, it seemed to me that she deserved to be treated with particular respect.

'Room and board's quite enough for me, thank you, señor,' Damiana declared, drying off her hands with a piece of cloth.

'No, no, Damiana, don't say that!' Mother exclaimed, waving a bandaged hand at her. 'If my son wants to offer you a decent salary, just say yes and have done with it, for goodness' sake!'

Given that arguing about servants' wages was strictly a women's affair and I didn't want Rodrigo or Sando to think that these minor domestic details remotely concerned me, I sauntered out of the hut with a bored expression on my face and joined the two men outside.

'So, I'll order my people to get some stretchers ready,' Sando announced to me.

'And lend me a couple of strong lads and two horses. When they return to the stockade, I'll send Alfana with them - you know, my father's mustang - so that you can look after him while we're away.'

'Whatever you need, brother. How will you get to Cartagena?'

'We have a ship waiting for us at Santa Marta,' I replied.

'Yep, this boy here has gone and gotten himself a forty-ton patache!' Rodrigo remarked, beaming with pride.

Sando started laughing.

'Well, I had heard that our Martín had become a seriously wealthy man!' he finally managed to say. 'Not to mention his good luck with that widow in Margarita, eh! I bet that you're showering her with plenty of fancy presents, you little devil! Which reminds me - do you want to take some of that stuff that you left here with me?'

I knew immediately, of course, that he was referring to the third of my treasure that he'd been taking care of.

'I'll be taking all of it with me, brother. I suspect that it'll come in very handy over in Cartagena.'

He nodded understandingly.

'Make sure that you save your father, Martín. The King of Spain's justice can't be relied on. It stinks. Don't trust anybody.'

'Has King Benkos heard of our misfortune?' I asked him. The mention of kings had brought Sando's father to mind.

'I'm convinced that he hasn't heard a thing yet,' Sando told me, with a worried look on his face. 'And we'd better hope that the news takes a long, long time to reach his stockade. You know what he thinks of the Spanish and it would be just the excuse he'd need to start cutting off a few of their heads. He'd assemble a whole army of runaways to attack the city and free your father. My father still thinks he's the great African king that he once was.'

CHAPTER III

We left Sando's stockade an hour later, heading for the coast, and we didn't reach Santa Marta until the evening of the following day. Before we set off, I'd dug up the last two chests of treasure which I'd buried close to the banks of the Manzanares. It was hard work making our way through the forest with Mother on a stretcher, but she never said a word in complaint and Damiana looked after her with all the loving care in the world. As soon as we arrived in town, the poor survivors came up to greet her and share their troubles with her and, while the runaways took all our things over to the patache, she had a painful time talking about the destruction of the brothel, the killing of the girls, the loss of the Chacona and most of her crew and the unjust imprisonment of my father. At one point, I caught sight of her staring wistfully at the ruins of what had once been our home and, there and then, I swore to myself that one day I would have it rebuilt, exactly as it was before Jakob Lundch's barbarous attack, so that she could return there with my father almost as if nothing awful had ever happened.

Not long after we'd set off in the longboat, rowing towards the ship and less than twenty varas¹² from shore, someone suddenly started shouting at us.

'Mother! Mother!'