Caribbean (30 page)

“Too much for one day, my dear friends. We’re home and six of the other ships from Cartagena will be coming in too, I trust. We’ll talk later,” and without further amenities he left them with Ortega, who continued the dismal story, except that he also avoided any discussion of the passage of the ships back to Spain.

When Doña Leonora led her husband to bed she saw how exhausted he was, not from the sea voyage home, for he loved his old
Mariposa
as one of the sturdiest ships in the ocean, but from the anguish of being forced to report on the humiliations and disasters that had overtaken the little fleet he had taken from Cartagena. As soon as she observed his response to her first questions she knew she must stop and allow him to sleep. She asked: “Did your other ships carry horses too?” and he groaned. Then she asked: “If you saved twenty of your ships in the battle, how many did you get back home to Spain?” and he turned his face to the wall, indicating that he could accept no further conversation. He was one more valiant warrior, the same in all centuries, who had come home from battle unable to explain to his wife what had happened.

Next day, however, when he again met with the elders of his city he was prepared, with Ortega’s help, to speak frankly about the catastrophes
in which he had participated: “We were led by a complete ninny, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, a man who hated the sea, who got violently sick when a ship rolled, and who had warned the king: ‘Since I do not know how to fight ships, I will do poorly,’ and he did. The English outsmarted him at every turning of the tide.”

“Was he a coward?”

“Spaniards are never cowards … but they can be stupid.”

But the men kept asking: “You sailed that great fleet to England and never fought a battle?” and Ledesma said: “Not in the old style, no. Great ships lunging at each other? No. More like trained dogs worrying a bull till he staggers.”

“And you never saw Drake or his ship?”

Very slowly Ledesma said: “I never … saw … Drake,” but Ortega voiced what he had intimated the day before: “But we knew he was out there,” and when someone asked how, he said: “By the results.”

“Now tell us … what happened to the fleet as it passed Ireland?” and bracing his shoulders, Ledesma turned to his captain: “Ortega, what happened to our sanity at Ireland? Why did we Spaniards throw the whole thing away?”

The question was one that would haunt naval historians for the next half-millennium, and even then no sensible answers would be produced. However, Ortega, as one of the few captains who had brought his ship safely through the disaster, did know certain basic facts: “We had no proper charts. They failed to show how far Ireland jutted out into the Atlantic. When our ships turned south prematurely they ran into headlands that shouldn’t have been there, and driven by the gale blowing so strong from the west, they couldn’t tack to escape those terrible rocks.”

The tale having been properly launched, Ledesma, always willing as the commander of an operation to assume his share of the blame when things went wrong, said quietly: “We should have had a safe run home to our Spanish ports. No English ships were harassing us. But we lost twenty-six of our largest Armada vessels … an entire navy … not one ship down as a result of enemy action. In the wild storms of the North Atlantic, sheathing came apart. In mournful darkness they collided and sank. But most of them, running before the fierce winds of approaching winter, crashed head-on into those dreadful headlands of western Ireland, drowning half the crew, depositing the others near naked on the inhospitable shore …”

Shaking his head at the magnitude of the disaster he had escaped because of his own superior seamanship, he indicated that Ortega should continue: “Tell them of what happened when our shipwrecked men were lucky enough to make it to land,” and the captain revealed an incredible tale: “By the time we left Spain for here, all we had were rumors, but I questioned three of our sailors who escaped the terrors of Ireland, and they told a story of such horror that it flashed through the fleet. It seems that whenever a Spanish crew reached shore, one of three things happened. Some were stripped naked by the wild Irish peasants and most killed on the spot. Those who survived fell into the hands of Irish landlords who sought favor with the English and were either slaughtered or turned over to them. And those who surrendered honorably to English officials were murdered one by one, and in public, to teach them a lesson.”

Later, when rumor could be hardened into demonstrable fact, it would be determined that six thousand of Spain’s finest sons landed on Irish beaches after their ships sank, and all but seven hundred were murdered.

Ledesma, looking at his fellow Cartagenians, said: “The brave young men who sailed with me from this city … so valiant … so indestructible. We brought them through a hell that few men ever know, and we held them together …” He clenched his hands and pounded at air: “We brought them through everything Drake could throw at us. And then to lose them to English murderers in Ireland. Oh my God … my God.”

The listeners could see his fists tighten and the muscles in his neck stand out: “Yes, the English murdered our men, shamelessly, but we’ll be avenged. I’m certain that before I die, El Draque will return to these waters. He must … And when he comes, if God allows me strength, I shall do battle with him once more, and I shall hound him to his grave.” And from that moment Ledesma manifested the kind of blood hatred of the Englishmen who had murdered his sailors that Francis Drake had always had for Spaniards who had burned his sailors. On neither side would the passionate enmity be allowed to wane.

The tragedy that overtook Admiral Ledesma in his futile confrontation in Europe was so harrowing that in an effort to forget it, he turned his remaining energy to more humane concerns, and day after
day he roamed his city, identifying projects that must now go forward: “I want to finish the battlements to enclose the entire city. We need better wells … a fort to protect Boca Chica …” And once when he was inspecting a section of wall he stopped suddenly and turned to face Ortega: “I’ve watched you carefully, Roque.” This was the first time in this chaotic year that he had ever called his kinsman anything but Captain. “And I’ve seen that you’re a man of honor. We’d not have brought the
Mariposa
back with any lesser captain.” Ortega saluted. “And I’m growing old, sixty-one this year, very old I find, and have no son to carry on my name. Why don’t you become Roque Ledesma, and plan to take my place when I’m gone?” And Ortega saluted again, speechless.

Then a happy idea struck: “Look, you’re already entitled to the name Ortega y Ledesma. Change it to Roque Ledesma y Ledesma and let people guess if it represents some kind of incest.” He laughed at his joke, but still Ortega did not speak, so the admiral left his suggestion hanging.

He soon learned that his widowed captain was attending to a very serious matter pushed upon him by Doña Leonora, who had resumed her determined campaign to find a proper husband for Señorita Beatrix, her niece from Española. “I want you to give Captain Ortega a week of rest, Diego,” she said, and during those relaxing days she kept Beatrix constantly before Ortega, and whereas in the first two days he was still preoccupied with Spanish defeats, on the third he began to notice how charming Beatrix was, but the girl remained too shy to press her attention upon him. So Doña Leonora knew it was incumbent upon her to intervene. “Captain Ortega,” she said boldly, “surely you’ve noticed that Beatrix is quite taken with you … your manly ways and all.” He coughed modestly.

“She’s a dear girl, really she is. While you were away at war I had a chance to see what a splendid wife she’d make.” When Ortega hesitated, she added: “You’re not getting any younger, Roque …” and with her unprecedented use of his first name he recalled that the admiral had done the same when speaking to him about the name change, and all of a sudden he could see the shattered fragments of his life—his impoverished mother, the loss of his wife, the defeat in England, the uncertainty in the New World—mending themselves in a grand coalescence with the Ledesmas of Cartagena. He would marry their niece, adopt their name, and enter the grand alliance they were building for themselves in this rich and famous city.

In a low voice he asked: “Doña Leonora, would I have your permission to ask your husband for Señorita Beatrix’s hand in marriage?” and she reacted with opened mouth and arched eyebrows as if the idea were his alone and somewhat startling: “I think he would listen,” and she left with the satisfaction of knowing that she had solved the problems of yet another of her numerous relatives.

But when the vice-regent, now a senior official, heard of the proposal to give Ortega a new name, he lodged serious objections: “Don Diego, where is your sanity? People are already whispering: ‘This town isn’t Cartagena, it’s Carta-Ledesma.’ If you make this name change, you’ll be throwing your nepotism in their faces.”

Don Diego promised that he would think about the danger, but that night as he strolled upon his battlements he thought: The most permanent goal a man can achieve is to use members of his family to weave a network of influence and stability. Look at Drake. In shadows, for fame is transient. Look at what happened to Cortés. The favor of a king is a fragile reed to lean upon. But to have your daughters’ husbands in positions of power, to see your sister’s sons with good salaries, that’s permanent. That you can depend on. What did Drake say that last night? He grieved that he had no sons? Well, I too have none, but I’m going to get one, Roque Ledesma y Ledesma, fine name, and those who don’t like it can go to hell! So the name change took place.

The seven years following the disaster of the Armada produced little excitement in the Caribbean, primarily because Drake left it alone, and without him to duel, the place seemed unimportant. Mule trains crossed the isthmus from Panamá to Nombre de Dios and off-loaded their treasure onto ships which Cartagena’s flotilla escorted to Havana, where bullion fleets were organized for the passage home to Sevilla, and in these years not a ship was lost.

Word did filter through that Drake had taken as his second wife an heiress of good family and had been elected as the Plymouth Member of Parliament, where he occasionally spoke on naval and military matters. Lured out of retirement to command an attack on the northwest coast of Spain and Portugal, he made a hash of the effort and was rebuked by being forced into what everyone supposed was a permanent retirement. After that the Caribbean heard nothing
of him and people began to suppose that both he and his older companion, Hawkins, now Sir John, were dead.

And then, in late February 1596, came the revitalizing news that Don Diego had been awaiting for so many years. It came not from King Philip in the Escorial but from one of his ministers in Madrid:

The average Spanish governor experienced a moment of dizziness when he learned that both Drake and Hawkins were coming to assail him, but not Don Diego, who reveled in the realization that both his mortal enemies would be coming into his predilected waters at the same time. “God is being good to me,” he told the men of his family, and they reassembled their team to frustrate this final challenge of the English sea dogs.

With maps spread on tables, the Ledesmas concerted their strategies, guided always by Don Diego, who had a sixth sense as to what Queen Elizabeth would instruct her admirals to do and what precise steps they would take to do it. In their planning, the men referred invariably to Drake first and Hawkins second, it having been agreed in all European fleets that now the old uncle took orders from the younger and bolder nephew. Don Diego, in framing his strategies, thought only of Drake, and directed the vice-regent: “Since you beat him back at Nombre de Dios that other time, go back and do it again.” When the young man demurred: “I doubt Drake will bother with so small a town,” Don Diego snapped: “He’s Drake. He’ll be drawn to that spot the way a shark is drawn to the smell of a wounded body. He seeks revenge.”

Convinced that Drake would make another attempt to sack Panamá, Don Diego assigned his two other sons-in-law to build a dozen barricades along the jungle trail the Englishmen would be attempting to follow, and to poison all available springs. Then he looked at his most recent bright hope, Roque Ledesma, and with that good sailor he pored over the charts of the Caribbean and decided: “He will not come to Española, for he destroyed it last time. Where will he come?”
After considerable speculation the two plotters decided that Drake would invade Puerto Rico, where the rich capital of San Juan would offer the kind of treasure he had taken last time at Santo Domingo: “You and I will go there, Roque, to make his life miserable.”

“You never take Hawkins into your calculations,” one of his nephews pointed out, and Don Diego explained: “Hawkins is like me, predictable. We fight him as we find him. But with Drake, you have to be guessing all the time, for his brain is like a hummingbird. His wings never rest.”

In conclusion, he made an arbitrary assignment. To the Amadór brothers, his loyal supporters for decades, he said: “Go back to Río Hacha. He’s sure to strike there at some point in this rampage,” and when the brothers argued truthfully that Río was now a desolate place with very little to attract the avarice of a pirate, Don Diego replied: “His memories are there because it was there he suffered his first defeat. He’ll be back.”

But then Roque voiced the greatest objection of all to this dispersal of the Ledesma forces: “You’re leaving Cartagena unprotected,” and Don Diego said: “He’ll not come here again. Because he conquered this city once, no need to repeat. Puerto Rico’s a new target. All the others are defeats that have to be avenged.”

“Then why won’t he go back to San Juan de Ulúa? His greatest defeat of all?”