The Butcher's Daughter, page 18
“The harbor is crowded. Do the ships we saw in the harbor belong to the treasure fleet?” I asked.
“No, no. The treasure fleet is far grander! The ships you saw will support Admiral Pedro de Valdés’s fleet once he arrives. I am told the king is sending Valdés here to hunt down the Englishman Drake. The Spanish Court was none too pleased with the loss of the Silver Train at Nombre de Diós as you might well imagine.”
“Ah, I see,” I said. “So once Valdés arrives with more ships, he’ll take on supplies and scour the Caribbean looking for Drake?”
“I am of course not privy to the admiral’s specific instructions, but yes I should think so,” Cortés answered, pausing to admire a gold doubloon in his hand. He held the coin up against a shaft of golden light pouring in through a hole in storehouse’s roof directly above our heads. The large coin glittered against the sun’s brilliant radiance. “New World gold has a powerful allure. For years Spain and Portugal have been fighting off pirates in the New World. These rogues come from France and England mostly, but some sail from other lands too. The English pirates have become more brazen lately and there are those who suspect they operate in these waters with Queen Elizabeth’s secret blessing. There is even talk of open war with England.”
“That could complicate matters for us, Rodriguez.”
Cortés looked at me and smiled. “Yes, and so we must use more care. That is why there is no cargo here. That is why you must sail on to Old Havana.”
“Old Havana?”
“Old Havana, yes. A few years after Columbus’s voyages, Conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar founded the town of Havana along the Rio Mayabeque on the south side of the island. But Old Havana is a small port and when gold was discovered in Nueva España, and the treasure fleets started sailing between the two worlds, the early colonists moved here to the north side of the island because of the Puerto de Carenas.”
“Yes, I see. Spain needed a deep water port large enough to support the treasure fleet. The fleet can assemble in Havana, refit and take on supplies before making the long and arduous voyage back home across the Atlantic. Havana is an ideal point of debarkation.”
“Precisely, Mary. Havana is ideal. Old Havana is mostly ruins now, but it is less than thirty miles away by land and the roads are passable so this is where I sent our cargo bound for the Old World. There will be more cargo waiting for you at Santo Domingo.”
“Excelente, Señor Cortés.”
Just as Cortés had predicted, Spanish officials did indeed board Westport before we sailed. A serious-minded customs agent from the Casa de Contratación, together with a pleasant, young lieutenant of the Royal Navy, inspected Westport from stem to stern. The two men noted her empty cargo holds and after they found nothing irregular in her registry papers, they let us go our way. After we rejoined my little fleet waiting for us outside the harbor, we sailed west and then south and then east around the windward coast of the Island of Cuba until we reached a poor, forgotten seaport of mostly neglected buildings and ruins. We saw Cortés’s men, a mix of laborers and slaves, waiting for us along the docks with wagons and mules loaded down with materials from all across the Spanish Main.
Not one to forego life’s comforts, we found Cortés, wearing white pants, a white linen tunic and sandals, sitting at a table underneath the shade of a white canopy near the shore with platters of food and bottles of wine already set out. Behind him stood a pair of Negro slaves holding fans, moving the still air around for his comfort.
“¡Siéntate a comer, esta muy bueno!” he called out to me as I stepped out of the longboat. He waved me over to join him.
“This is most civilized,” I said and laughed as I plopped down in a chair next to the Spaniard.
“We do what we can to maintain a dignified life even in this hostile country.”
Cortés and I passed the time eating and drinking and exchanging frivolous chitchat as men toiled in the sweltering heat to load the ships. The meal gave me no pleasure, but I did not wish to offend my host. My men would understand. They had seen me get my hands dirty plenty. They had seen me sweat and bleed. But I wondered what Cortés’s men and his slaves must have thought of us, relaxing in the shade, being pampered like Egyptian royalty as they labored nearby in the sun.
Once the cargo was loaded onto the ships, I paid Cortés the balance due, thanked him for his hospitality and we agreed to meet again in two or three months’ time after my fleet made its way back to the New World with Old World goods to sell. Now all the risk was mine to bear.
I stood between Gilley and Hunter on the Star as the crew made ready to sail. I linked my arm inside Gilley’s, a man who was dear to me like a father, and held him close. “According to our good amigo Cortés,” I said, “you will meet a man named Miguel Hernandez in Santo Domingo. He will make all the arrangements for the rest of our cargo. Here is a receipt from Cortés to prove payment has been made in full. And then it is off to Ireland you go and I pray we find you well in two or three months’ time. We’ll all rendezvous back in Guadeloupe then.”
“No worries, Mary,” Gilley replied and patted my arm reassuringly.
“Do you want Hunter, Atwood or Efendi to go with you?”
“Nay, Mary. MacGyver is first rate. And besides, if you plan on traipsing through the jungles of New Spain, you’ll need those three ruffians with you.”
“Fare thee well then, Tom. You must return to us safe and sound.”
“With God’s good grace I shall, Mary, with God’s good grace.”
“We should,” interjected Hunter, “discuss that little pleasure trip of yours, Mary.”
“What is there to discuss, James?” I asked in a defensive tone. I already knew what Hunter would say.
“You’re a strong and a strong-willed woman, Mary, as tough as nails in body and mind and you command the respect of all the men for it. But the jungles of the Isthmus of Panama and New Spain are no place for you. The conquistadors are some of the hardest, toughest, bravest men I’ve ever marched with and many of them don’t survive the jungle. The jungle is merciless. She is a killer.”
Gilley nodded. “James, you’ve handed Mary sage advice - for all the good it will do you.”
I kissed Hunter on the check. “Aye James, for all the good it will do you.”
Once Hunter and I were back on board the Phantom, we waved Gilley off as a lively wind pushed his tiny flotilla out to sea under fair skies. Hunter and I stood quietly at the rail together, hand-in-hand, watching our ships sail east for Santo Domingo before sailing on to Ireland beyond. We watched our ships until they turned into little specs, until they slipped over the far horizon and disappeared. And then I gave the order to pull our anchor in. My men turned the capstan singing a bawdy, spirited shanty. And after they lashed the anchor down to the cathead with sturdy rope and chain, they went aloft to set the sails and the ship began to stir.
I took the tiller firmly in my hands and eased the Phantom out into deeper water. I pointed our ship’s sharp nose west towards New Spain. I sailed us out to sea under a blood red sky, I sailed us into a setting sun...
Chapter Nine
English pirates had left very little of Nombre de Diós standing. Drake and his French and Cimarron allies had put the torch to the entire village just as Martin had said. The English had burned everything to the ground. They had destroyed Nombre de Diós with purpose. I thought that curious. Drake was not content to simply steal Spanish gold and silver. He seemed to hate the Spanish too and I wondered why. We passed by charred ruins, replaced by crude, makeshift huts and tents. We passed the sorry, little fort we had seen a few months back up on the hill overlooking the bay, the fort that had no cannon. Drake’s forces had gutted the fort with fire too. Even the hospital and the Dominican monastery had not escaped Drake’s English wrath.
I led my men, one hundred strong, one hundred of my very best handpicked by Hunter, through the streets of that broken, little town while sad-faced villagers turned out to watch us with trepidation. I felt pity for them. There would be no treasure fleet this year, no Feast of the Golden Bull to celebrate Spain’s preeminence among nations. There would be no money from far-flung provinces flowing into the pockets of those who called Nombre de Diós home.
I left Atwood behind in command of Phantom with a skeleton crew and he was to return in two weeks’ time to fetch us or, if we were not back by the end of three, he was to sail on to Cartagena and wait for us there. Cartagena was to be our rallying point if things went wrong for us in Panama.
The Name of God’s garrison commander, a feisty, little fellow with a long and wild mustache, approached us in the middle of the town with a puny squad of men in tow. The captain demanded to know our purpose in Panama and refused to let us pass. I told him we were off to find the fabled city of El Dorado and he snickered. He laughed in my face as if I was a fool. But after we paid the villagers for our supplies and for as many good mules, donkeys and machetes as we could find - after I filled the commander’s purse with silver - he grudgingly waved us through. We marched under a blazing sun in single file down a dusty, dirt road and headed for the jungle just beyond the town. And when I spun around to take one last peek of the sea before we disappeared into the wild, I caught the commander still standing at the edge of his village watching us with an evil eye. I could see in his face that he had written us off as dead.
“Don’t think our good captain would wager any money on our safe return, Mary,” Hunter said cheerfully as we walked side-by-side at the head of the column. “I don’t think he expects to ever see us again.”
I kept my eyes focused on the narrowing path ahead. On either side us was stagnant water, swampland, and thick foliage. Insects started coming at us in droves.
“Would you like to remain in town and wait for us?” I asked.
“Only if you stay behind with me and we find ourselves a sturdy bed,” Hunter answered, smiling.
“You best save your strength for the task ahead, Captain James Hunter. If we’re not dead in a week, or at each other’s throats with knives in two, we’ll see about the other.”
We marched for several days in stifling heat looking for something that might make sense out of Hunter’s map. We walked in our heavy clothing drenched in sweat. We scratched our skin raw from the swarms of insects tormenting us and most of us had been hit with the runs. All of us were grimy and miserable. I would gladly have paid gold to take a cold bath in fresh, clean water. On the third day I had Hunter cut my hair, down to the roots, which provided me with some minor relief from my sufferings.
We ignored these hardships and pressed on, still uncertain of what we were looking for. But then, on the fifth day out, off to the side of the path and covered over with vines and plants, a pile of rocks caught Efendi’s keen eye. He fell out of the column, carefully brushed aside the overgrowth and smiled. Someone had whitewashed the small stones and had purposely set them out in the shape of a crude cross. Hunter and I and half my men had blindly stumbled past the rocks.
Hunter took a knee and retrieved his map, orienting the cloth to the cross. “My God,” he murmured. “I had little hope that this map was anything more than a hoax.”
“What is it, James?” I asked as Efendi and I peeked over Hunter’s shoulder.
“Look, Mary,” Efendi said and pointed to a small cross on the map next to a trail.
“Foolish me,” Hunter said as he traced an imaginary line over the map with his finger. “I thought this mark was an x, a symbol for what I knew not. But it must be these stones laid out along the trail. I suspect we are looking at what is meant to be a needle pointing west, not an x or a cross. If we cut through the jungle here, we should come to these ruins. Once we reach the ruins we need to turn south and follow along this river or stream depicted over here for a short way until we reach this hill. At the hill we turn east until we find this.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“I know not, Mary. We can only hope we’ll recognize it when we find it, if we find anything at all.”
“It looks like a pencil to me.”
Hunter grunted. “Let’s hope not.”
“How far, James, do you think?” Efendi asked.
“I’m not certain, Mustafa. If the priest had any sense of scale when he drew this map, we should have a better idea once we reach these ruins. But the Isthmus of Panama is a narrow strip of land so these distances cannot be very great. And then again, we may be searching for something no more real than the myth of El Dorado.”
“Should we,” I asked, “leave the mules and some of the men here?”
“It is tempting to go in with just a scouting party, but I dislike the notion of splitting up our men out here,” Hunter said and then glanced over at Efendi. “Mustafa?”
Efendi nodded in agreement and pulled his machete from his belt. “Our muskets, balls and powder are on those mules. Our rations too. We can’t carry all that weight on our backs while wielding these.”
I looked down at the stone needle pointing north, pointing into the thick jungle beyond the trail. Our journey, I realized, had so far been easy. I hesitated. My muscles ached, my bones were weary. I had never felt so tired. I had never been so filthy.
“You still want to push forward, Mary?” Hunter asked, sensing my hesitation. “Why don’t you take ten men and return to town, let Mustafa and me press on from here?”
I grit my teeth. I blotted out any thought of weakness and grabbed Efendi’s machete from him. “This way you say?” I asked and pointed.
“Aye,” Hunter replied with a long sigh, pulling out his own machete. He followed me into the wall of plants, leaves and vines with our men and pack animals falling in close behind.
Hacking our way through the thick foliage was slow, tedious work. Painful blisters soon covered my palms and feet. All of us were caked in grime and soaked in sweat. The sound of dripping water, an incessant, most irksome noise from condensation running off the leaves surrounded us. But at least we found the heat more bearable the deeper we traveled into the jungle. The sun could not penetrate through the treetops. The bugs became less of a nuisance too. I supposed that we were too filthy to feast on. By noon on the seventh day we stumbled onto the stone ruins of a small, abandoned Indian village, or what may have been an outpost.
“This,” Hunter said as he looked down at his map and held out his compass, “must be the place. I hear running water over there. That must be the stream. I am encouraged.”
“Let’s push on,” I said in as strong a voice as I could muster, desperately trying to mask my exhaustion.
Hunter nodded. “Mary, truly you would make any conquistador proud.”
I forced a smile. “James, whew, you need to stand downwind!”
“A bit ripe am I?” Hunter asked and chuckled. “But you, my lady, are hardly any better. Let’s go and find that hill.”
Efendi took a step towards me and started chuckling too. But then, in a blur of motion, he roughly shoved me aside, whipped out his dagger and launched the sharp-edged steel past my head.
When I spun around to see what had spooked Efendi, I saw an enormous snake a few paces from my feet with Efendi’s knife sticking in its neck, pinning it to the ground. The hideous black and tan creature hissed at me as it wrapped itself in coils, struggling to set itself free.
Hunter took his machete and quickly cleaved the monster’s head in two. “The Spanish call it a terciopelo, the Spanish word for velvet,” he said gravely as he recovered Efendi’s knife. He wiped the snake’s blood off on his sleeve before handing the knife back to Efendi. “Its venom is very deadly.”
I beat down the urge to vomit and quickly gathered-up my things. Hunter formed the men up and we quietly pushed on to the sound of gurgling water.
When we reached the stream the ground around us turned flat, was clear of any brush, and we were able to pick up our pace. We started making good time. The trees thinned out along the way and we could see the sky above our heads. A light breeze caressed our skin and spirits rose as we trudged along the clearing.
We did not need to travel far. The hill, not more than twenty feet high and oblong in shape, was not hard to find. There was only one. The hill seemed oddly out of place and we supposed that men had made it. Hunter thought that perhaps the hill was an Indian burial mound.
We left the hill undisturbed and turned left, heading south back into the jungle, and our journey turned hard again, even worse than before. The farther in we walked the soggier the ground became until we found ourselves trudging across thick muck and then through knee-deep water. Every step we took became a battle against the mud sucking at our shoes and boots. The mules and donkeys brayed, the men grumbled. Still we pressed on.
And when night closed in around us, we lit our torches, tightened our belts and continued marching forward. We had no choice. There was no dry ground to rest on. We marched through the swamp all through the night, sometimes in waist-deep water, munching on cold sea biscuits and on dried, salted meat, or what the Incas call Ch’arki in their Quechuan tongue.
“Let us hope,” Efendi said, a man who never seemed to tire, “that Tom and the lads are having a better go of things sailing across the Atlantic. I once walked across the Syrian Desert. The journey was brutal and nearly killed me. This, I think, might be worse.”
I took in the dirty, exhausted faces of my men. “Captain Hunter.”
“Aye, Mary.”
I raised my voice so that all could hear me. “Are we lost?”
“Nay, Mary. We are not lost. But this marsh land is not on the map. If this land is newly flooded, even if we find the spot we are looking for, we’ll never be able to dig anything up out of it.”
“Which way, Captain Hunter?”
“Straight ahead as best I know.”
“Lads,” I said and pointed my machete from man to man. “I am, if you care to hear the truth, bone-weary, hungry and in a foul temper. I’m more miserable than I’ve ever been. I’m tempted, so very tempted, to turn around and quit. How I long to be back aboard our sturdy vessel out on the open sea with a cool, fresh sea breeze blowing in my face! I suspect all of you feel about the same. But we’ve come this far. We must be close. You’ve heard the whispers. You’ve heard the rumors and they are true. We’re looking for buried, Aztec gold, gold stolen by Spanish deserters, gold that will be ours by right if we recovery it. We need to find dry land and then, if it is God’s will, we’ll find the gold and leave this accursed place. Are you with me?”
“No, no. The treasure fleet is far grander! The ships you saw will support Admiral Pedro de Valdés’s fleet once he arrives. I am told the king is sending Valdés here to hunt down the Englishman Drake. The Spanish Court was none too pleased with the loss of the Silver Train at Nombre de Diós as you might well imagine.”
“Ah, I see,” I said. “So once Valdés arrives with more ships, he’ll take on supplies and scour the Caribbean looking for Drake?”
“I am of course not privy to the admiral’s specific instructions, but yes I should think so,” Cortés answered, pausing to admire a gold doubloon in his hand. He held the coin up against a shaft of golden light pouring in through a hole in storehouse’s roof directly above our heads. The large coin glittered against the sun’s brilliant radiance. “New World gold has a powerful allure. For years Spain and Portugal have been fighting off pirates in the New World. These rogues come from France and England mostly, but some sail from other lands too. The English pirates have become more brazen lately and there are those who suspect they operate in these waters with Queen Elizabeth’s secret blessing. There is even talk of open war with England.”
“That could complicate matters for us, Rodriguez.”
Cortés looked at me and smiled. “Yes, and so we must use more care. That is why there is no cargo here. That is why you must sail on to Old Havana.”
“Old Havana?”
“Old Havana, yes. A few years after Columbus’s voyages, Conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar founded the town of Havana along the Rio Mayabeque on the south side of the island. But Old Havana is a small port and when gold was discovered in Nueva España, and the treasure fleets started sailing between the two worlds, the early colonists moved here to the north side of the island because of the Puerto de Carenas.”
“Yes, I see. Spain needed a deep water port large enough to support the treasure fleet. The fleet can assemble in Havana, refit and take on supplies before making the long and arduous voyage back home across the Atlantic. Havana is an ideal point of debarkation.”
“Precisely, Mary. Havana is ideal. Old Havana is mostly ruins now, but it is less than thirty miles away by land and the roads are passable so this is where I sent our cargo bound for the Old World. There will be more cargo waiting for you at Santo Domingo.”
“Excelente, Señor Cortés.”
Just as Cortés had predicted, Spanish officials did indeed board Westport before we sailed. A serious-minded customs agent from the Casa de Contratación, together with a pleasant, young lieutenant of the Royal Navy, inspected Westport from stem to stern. The two men noted her empty cargo holds and after they found nothing irregular in her registry papers, they let us go our way. After we rejoined my little fleet waiting for us outside the harbor, we sailed west and then south and then east around the windward coast of the Island of Cuba until we reached a poor, forgotten seaport of mostly neglected buildings and ruins. We saw Cortés’s men, a mix of laborers and slaves, waiting for us along the docks with wagons and mules loaded down with materials from all across the Spanish Main.
Not one to forego life’s comforts, we found Cortés, wearing white pants, a white linen tunic and sandals, sitting at a table underneath the shade of a white canopy near the shore with platters of food and bottles of wine already set out. Behind him stood a pair of Negro slaves holding fans, moving the still air around for his comfort.
“¡Siéntate a comer, esta muy bueno!” he called out to me as I stepped out of the longboat. He waved me over to join him.
“This is most civilized,” I said and laughed as I plopped down in a chair next to the Spaniard.
“We do what we can to maintain a dignified life even in this hostile country.”
Cortés and I passed the time eating and drinking and exchanging frivolous chitchat as men toiled in the sweltering heat to load the ships. The meal gave me no pleasure, but I did not wish to offend my host. My men would understand. They had seen me get my hands dirty plenty. They had seen me sweat and bleed. But I wondered what Cortés’s men and his slaves must have thought of us, relaxing in the shade, being pampered like Egyptian royalty as they labored nearby in the sun.
Once the cargo was loaded onto the ships, I paid Cortés the balance due, thanked him for his hospitality and we agreed to meet again in two or three months’ time after my fleet made its way back to the New World with Old World goods to sell. Now all the risk was mine to bear.
I stood between Gilley and Hunter on the Star as the crew made ready to sail. I linked my arm inside Gilley’s, a man who was dear to me like a father, and held him close. “According to our good amigo Cortés,” I said, “you will meet a man named Miguel Hernandez in Santo Domingo. He will make all the arrangements for the rest of our cargo. Here is a receipt from Cortés to prove payment has been made in full. And then it is off to Ireland you go and I pray we find you well in two or three months’ time. We’ll all rendezvous back in Guadeloupe then.”
“No worries, Mary,” Gilley replied and patted my arm reassuringly.
“Do you want Hunter, Atwood or Efendi to go with you?”
“Nay, Mary. MacGyver is first rate. And besides, if you plan on traipsing through the jungles of New Spain, you’ll need those three ruffians with you.”
“Fare thee well then, Tom. You must return to us safe and sound.”
“With God’s good grace I shall, Mary, with God’s good grace.”
“We should,” interjected Hunter, “discuss that little pleasure trip of yours, Mary.”
“What is there to discuss, James?” I asked in a defensive tone. I already knew what Hunter would say.
“You’re a strong and a strong-willed woman, Mary, as tough as nails in body and mind and you command the respect of all the men for it. But the jungles of the Isthmus of Panama and New Spain are no place for you. The conquistadors are some of the hardest, toughest, bravest men I’ve ever marched with and many of them don’t survive the jungle. The jungle is merciless. She is a killer.”
Gilley nodded. “James, you’ve handed Mary sage advice - for all the good it will do you.”
I kissed Hunter on the check. “Aye James, for all the good it will do you.”
Once Hunter and I were back on board the Phantom, we waved Gilley off as a lively wind pushed his tiny flotilla out to sea under fair skies. Hunter and I stood quietly at the rail together, hand-in-hand, watching our ships sail east for Santo Domingo before sailing on to Ireland beyond. We watched our ships until they turned into little specs, until they slipped over the far horizon and disappeared. And then I gave the order to pull our anchor in. My men turned the capstan singing a bawdy, spirited shanty. And after they lashed the anchor down to the cathead with sturdy rope and chain, they went aloft to set the sails and the ship began to stir.
I took the tiller firmly in my hands and eased the Phantom out into deeper water. I pointed our ship’s sharp nose west towards New Spain. I sailed us out to sea under a blood red sky, I sailed us into a setting sun...
Chapter Nine
English pirates had left very little of Nombre de Diós standing. Drake and his French and Cimarron allies had put the torch to the entire village just as Martin had said. The English had burned everything to the ground. They had destroyed Nombre de Diós with purpose. I thought that curious. Drake was not content to simply steal Spanish gold and silver. He seemed to hate the Spanish too and I wondered why. We passed by charred ruins, replaced by crude, makeshift huts and tents. We passed the sorry, little fort we had seen a few months back up on the hill overlooking the bay, the fort that had no cannon. Drake’s forces had gutted the fort with fire too. Even the hospital and the Dominican monastery had not escaped Drake’s English wrath.
I led my men, one hundred strong, one hundred of my very best handpicked by Hunter, through the streets of that broken, little town while sad-faced villagers turned out to watch us with trepidation. I felt pity for them. There would be no treasure fleet this year, no Feast of the Golden Bull to celebrate Spain’s preeminence among nations. There would be no money from far-flung provinces flowing into the pockets of those who called Nombre de Diós home.
I left Atwood behind in command of Phantom with a skeleton crew and he was to return in two weeks’ time to fetch us or, if we were not back by the end of three, he was to sail on to Cartagena and wait for us there. Cartagena was to be our rallying point if things went wrong for us in Panama.
The Name of God’s garrison commander, a feisty, little fellow with a long and wild mustache, approached us in the middle of the town with a puny squad of men in tow. The captain demanded to know our purpose in Panama and refused to let us pass. I told him we were off to find the fabled city of El Dorado and he snickered. He laughed in my face as if I was a fool. But after we paid the villagers for our supplies and for as many good mules, donkeys and machetes as we could find - after I filled the commander’s purse with silver - he grudgingly waved us through. We marched under a blazing sun in single file down a dusty, dirt road and headed for the jungle just beyond the town. And when I spun around to take one last peek of the sea before we disappeared into the wild, I caught the commander still standing at the edge of his village watching us with an evil eye. I could see in his face that he had written us off as dead.
“Don’t think our good captain would wager any money on our safe return, Mary,” Hunter said cheerfully as we walked side-by-side at the head of the column. “I don’t think he expects to ever see us again.”
I kept my eyes focused on the narrowing path ahead. On either side us was stagnant water, swampland, and thick foliage. Insects started coming at us in droves.
“Would you like to remain in town and wait for us?” I asked.
“Only if you stay behind with me and we find ourselves a sturdy bed,” Hunter answered, smiling.
“You best save your strength for the task ahead, Captain James Hunter. If we’re not dead in a week, or at each other’s throats with knives in two, we’ll see about the other.”
We marched for several days in stifling heat looking for something that might make sense out of Hunter’s map. We walked in our heavy clothing drenched in sweat. We scratched our skin raw from the swarms of insects tormenting us and most of us had been hit with the runs. All of us were grimy and miserable. I would gladly have paid gold to take a cold bath in fresh, clean water. On the third day I had Hunter cut my hair, down to the roots, which provided me with some minor relief from my sufferings.
We ignored these hardships and pressed on, still uncertain of what we were looking for. But then, on the fifth day out, off to the side of the path and covered over with vines and plants, a pile of rocks caught Efendi’s keen eye. He fell out of the column, carefully brushed aside the overgrowth and smiled. Someone had whitewashed the small stones and had purposely set them out in the shape of a crude cross. Hunter and I and half my men had blindly stumbled past the rocks.
Hunter took a knee and retrieved his map, orienting the cloth to the cross. “My God,” he murmured. “I had little hope that this map was anything more than a hoax.”
“What is it, James?” I asked as Efendi and I peeked over Hunter’s shoulder.
“Look, Mary,” Efendi said and pointed to a small cross on the map next to a trail.
“Foolish me,” Hunter said as he traced an imaginary line over the map with his finger. “I thought this mark was an x, a symbol for what I knew not. But it must be these stones laid out along the trail. I suspect we are looking at what is meant to be a needle pointing west, not an x or a cross. If we cut through the jungle here, we should come to these ruins. Once we reach the ruins we need to turn south and follow along this river or stream depicted over here for a short way until we reach this hill. At the hill we turn east until we find this.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“I know not, Mary. We can only hope we’ll recognize it when we find it, if we find anything at all.”
“It looks like a pencil to me.”
Hunter grunted. “Let’s hope not.”
“How far, James, do you think?” Efendi asked.
“I’m not certain, Mustafa. If the priest had any sense of scale when he drew this map, we should have a better idea once we reach these ruins. But the Isthmus of Panama is a narrow strip of land so these distances cannot be very great. And then again, we may be searching for something no more real than the myth of El Dorado.”
“Should we,” I asked, “leave the mules and some of the men here?”
“It is tempting to go in with just a scouting party, but I dislike the notion of splitting up our men out here,” Hunter said and then glanced over at Efendi. “Mustafa?”
Efendi nodded in agreement and pulled his machete from his belt. “Our muskets, balls and powder are on those mules. Our rations too. We can’t carry all that weight on our backs while wielding these.”
I looked down at the stone needle pointing north, pointing into the thick jungle beyond the trail. Our journey, I realized, had so far been easy. I hesitated. My muscles ached, my bones were weary. I had never felt so tired. I had never been so filthy.
“You still want to push forward, Mary?” Hunter asked, sensing my hesitation. “Why don’t you take ten men and return to town, let Mustafa and me press on from here?”
I grit my teeth. I blotted out any thought of weakness and grabbed Efendi’s machete from him. “This way you say?” I asked and pointed.
“Aye,” Hunter replied with a long sigh, pulling out his own machete. He followed me into the wall of plants, leaves and vines with our men and pack animals falling in close behind.
Hacking our way through the thick foliage was slow, tedious work. Painful blisters soon covered my palms and feet. All of us were caked in grime and soaked in sweat. The sound of dripping water, an incessant, most irksome noise from condensation running off the leaves surrounded us. But at least we found the heat more bearable the deeper we traveled into the jungle. The sun could not penetrate through the treetops. The bugs became less of a nuisance too. I supposed that we were too filthy to feast on. By noon on the seventh day we stumbled onto the stone ruins of a small, abandoned Indian village, or what may have been an outpost.
“This,” Hunter said as he looked down at his map and held out his compass, “must be the place. I hear running water over there. That must be the stream. I am encouraged.”
“Let’s push on,” I said in as strong a voice as I could muster, desperately trying to mask my exhaustion.
Hunter nodded. “Mary, truly you would make any conquistador proud.”
I forced a smile. “James, whew, you need to stand downwind!”
“A bit ripe am I?” Hunter asked and chuckled. “But you, my lady, are hardly any better. Let’s go and find that hill.”
Efendi took a step towards me and started chuckling too. But then, in a blur of motion, he roughly shoved me aside, whipped out his dagger and launched the sharp-edged steel past my head.
When I spun around to see what had spooked Efendi, I saw an enormous snake a few paces from my feet with Efendi’s knife sticking in its neck, pinning it to the ground. The hideous black and tan creature hissed at me as it wrapped itself in coils, struggling to set itself free.
Hunter took his machete and quickly cleaved the monster’s head in two. “The Spanish call it a terciopelo, the Spanish word for velvet,” he said gravely as he recovered Efendi’s knife. He wiped the snake’s blood off on his sleeve before handing the knife back to Efendi. “Its venom is very deadly.”
I beat down the urge to vomit and quickly gathered-up my things. Hunter formed the men up and we quietly pushed on to the sound of gurgling water.
When we reached the stream the ground around us turned flat, was clear of any brush, and we were able to pick up our pace. We started making good time. The trees thinned out along the way and we could see the sky above our heads. A light breeze caressed our skin and spirits rose as we trudged along the clearing.
We did not need to travel far. The hill, not more than twenty feet high and oblong in shape, was not hard to find. There was only one. The hill seemed oddly out of place and we supposed that men had made it. Hunter thought that perhaps the hill was an Indian burial mound.
We left the hill undisturbed and turned left, heading south back into the jungle, and our journey turned hard again, even worse than before. The farther in we walked the soggier the ground became until we found ourselves trudging across thick muck and then through knee-deep water. Every step we took became a battle against the mud sucking at our shoes and boots. The mules and donkeys brayed, the men grumbled. Still we pressed on.
And when night closed in around us, we lit our torches, tightened our belts and continued marching forward. We had no choice. There was no dry ground to rest on. We marched through the swamp all through the night, sometimes in waist-deep water, munching on cold sea biscuits and on dried, salted meat, or what the Incas call Ch’arki in their Quechuan tongue.
“Let us hope,” Efendi said, a man who never seemed to tire, “that Tom and the lads are having a better go of things sailing across the Atlantic. I once walked across the Syrian Desert. The journey was brutal and nearly killed me. This, I think, might be worse.”
I took in the dirty, exhausted faces of my men. “Captain Hunter.”
“Aye, Mary.”
I raised my voice so that all could hear me. “Are we lost?”
“Nay, Mary. We are not lost. But this marsh land is not on the map. If this land is newly flooded, even if we find the spot we are looking for, we’ll never be able to dig anything up out of it.”
“Which way, Captain Hunter?”
“Straight ahead as best I know.”
“Lads,” I said and pointed my machete from man to man. “I am, if you care to hear the truth, bone-weary, hungry and in a foul temper. I’m more miserable than I’ve ever been. I’m tempted, so very tempted, to turn around and quit. How I long to be back aboard our sturdy vessel out on the open sea with a cool, fresh sea breeze blowing in my face! I suspect all of you feel about the same. But we’ve come this far. We must be close. You’ve heard the whispers. You’ve heard the rumors and they are true. We’re looking for buried, Aztec gold, gold stolen by Spanish deserters, gold that will be ours by right if we recovery it. We need to find dry land and then, if it is God’s will, we’ll find the gold and leave this accursed place. Are you with me?”
