Paradise & More (Torres Family Saga) (30 page)

      
The admiral had insisted on simple cotton tunics for the Taino women in Ysabel. Even the men wore at least a scandalous breechclout, if not a cloak or some other decent covering. But these brown-skinned people, men and women as well as children, were completely nude. Some of them were painted with brilliant red and black dyes in odd markings. Many of the women seemed to favor white paints. All wore brilliant parrot feathers in their hair and a wide variety of jewelry made of fish bones, shells, various metals and, now, the trading beads and hawk's bells brought from Castile.

      
Magdalena eyed them uneasily as they spoke rapidly and pointed at her, singling her out from her male escorts. They seemed curious but were too terrified of the horse to approach. Luis dismounted, leaving his horse with Bartolome, and engaged in conversation with several young boys who then raced into the village.

      
“Are we welcome or not?” Magdalena asked nervously.

      
Luis smiled in reassurance. “These people have always been friendly and honest. They will be our staunchest allies against any Indians who would refuse allegiance to the monarchs. All we need do in return is keep faith and not abuse them.”

      
“You mean slit their noses and cut off their ears if they do not bring sufficient gold to satisfy us?” Bartolome asked, knowing of the gold quotas Hojeda and Margarite had tried to impose earlier.

      
Magdalena gasped in horror. “That has been done?”

      
“Yes, and it earns us more enemies daily,” Luis replied. “As yet Aaron has kept Guacanagari's people from feeling any more Toledo steel, but I know not how long the peace can last if we do not mend our ways.”

      
“That is why he is to resume his duties for my brother. He is a trained soldier and can hold the avaricious ‘gentlemen’ goldseekers in check,” Bartolome replied.

      
“We must dismount now. 'Twould be poor return for their hospitality to terrify them by riding our horses into the village. See the enclosure of canes Aaron has built yonder? We will leave them in there with his horses until we are ready to depart. I am afraid we must act as our own grooms,” he added ruefully as they reined in beside a fenced area outside the village. Several horses, including the bay Aaron had ridden, grazed peacefully in its confines.

      
After the horses were tended, the numbers of Tainos swelled around the visitors as they walked into the village. On foot, Magdalena felt far more vulnerable. The natives stared in wonder at her hair and her clothing. How strange it was to feel uncomfortable because she was dressed while those who were naked gawked in casual curiosity!

      
“‘Tis fearful hot. Go slowly, Magdalena, lest you overtax yourself,” Bartolome cautioned, observing her flushed face and shortness of breath.

      
“She is not faint from heat but faint at the prospect of confronting her husband, whom she has disobeyed,” Aaron said, moving into their path. He had materialized suddenly from behind a large building, dressed in the minimal scrap of cotton that some of the armed men wore. He scowled at his wife. “By all the saints, why have you come here?”

      
“The
adelantado
and I have come with the admiral's gifts to present them to his friend Guacanagari,” she said with feigned sweetness, ignoring his black frown. “Will you present me as your wife—or have you even told him of our marriage?”

      
His eyes were dark as seawater, “Oh, I have told Guacanagari of you, my lady. He was a bit disappointed at my rash act—considering that his sister has presented me with a son in my brief absence.”

      
Magdalena felt as if she would never breathe again. Only the numbing pain kept her from running across the jungle trails back to Ysabel.

      
“Who has come from the admiral?” a tall handsome young man asked as he approached Aaron.

      
From the way the people parted for him, Magdalena knew at once he must be Guacanagari, the
cacique
.

      
Luis presented Bartolome, the admiral's brother and Magdalena, Aaron's new wife. The young
cacique
bowed to Bartolome and then assessed her with keen black eyes and spoke in his soft melodious tongue to Aaron.

      
Grimacing, Aaron translated for her. “Guacanagari is most gracious. He says you are very beautiful, a fit mate for me,” he replied in a tone heavy with irony.

      
Luis, Bartolome, and Guacanagari walked apart, engaging in a conversation, discreetly leaving Aaron and Magdalena to settle their differences alone.

      
“You are mad! With Aliyah just delivered of her first child, I do not wish to parade my fine lady wife in front of her or Guacanagari.”

      
“Yes, 'tis a pity that ‘your fine lady wife’ did not choose to meekly sit and repine in Ysabel, while you strutted about here receiving the plaudits of these savages for your virility. And you dare call Fernando Trastamara a lecher!” She lashed out with all her humiliation and suppressed pain transmuted into sheer rage.

      
His face, taut with anger before, now became rigid. “I will give you a good taste of how savages live! You have come after me, now you will live with me—and I choose to live here.”

      
“The admiral commanded you live in Ysabel,” she said, stamping her foot furiously.

      
“The admiral commanded me to strengthen the ties between him and Guacanagari's people. I will do so in my own way. But now, I will escort you to your new abode.” He reached for her wrist and took it in a steel-hard grip, yanking her behind him as he strode toward the center of the huge village.

      
Magdalena stumbled after him, grateful for her leather riding boots. Even though they were miserably hot and itchy, they offered more protection from the rocky earth than her cloth slippers would have.

      
Aaron stopped in front of a thatched-roof cane hut of medium proportions near the large sunken courtyard at the center of the village. “Tis not as spacious as the
bohio
I shared with Aliyah, but as befits my new status as your husband,” he shrugged, “twill serve.” He pulled her inside.

      
After the blazing sun, Magdalena blinked to accustom her eyes to the dimmer light. In truth, it was much like the cane house they inhabited in Ysabel, except the construction was a bit sturdier, but she would never admit that to this arrogant lout. The hut was spartanly furnished. A strangely shaped chair with a curving back and claw feet sat in one corner, a
hamaca
was strung between two support posts in the center of the room, and several pieces of pottery were placed neatly in a corner. Only Aaron's weapons and a saddlebag filled with his personal effects attested to the fact he lived here.

      
“Even less luxury than Ysabel afforded, I fear. You will find sleeping in a
hamaca
very interesting,” he said with an icy smile.

      
Just looking at the wretched hemp netting made her insect-bitten skin cry for mercy, but she said nothing. Surely men and women did not make love in those awful contraptions! Magdalena would have cut out her tongue before she asked. Changing the subject, she inquired, “What of the much-praised Taino hospitality? Are we to be fed—or are you punishing me by excluding me from the feast for the
adelantado
?”

      
“There will be food aplenty...and in time you will learn to help cook it.”

      
She stiffened angrily. “I am not one of your Indian women. I am nobly born.”

      
“Aliyah is the sister of a great
cacique
. A royal princess by European standards. Yet she tended a cookfire for me. I fear I was forced into a poor bargain with you to wife, my lady.”

      
“At this moment, no one could wish you wed to your savage mistress more than I!” she spat.

      
“You continue to refer to these people as savages. They may be primitive in the ways of weaponry and plain cruelty so familiar to the white race, but they have a beautiful way of life. Never again will you call them savages. Do you understand me?” His steely blue eyes bored into her furious green ones.

      
“You do this in revenge! Because I have forced you to wed me, you would make a peasant of me. Do your worst, Don Diego Torres,” she said scornfully, “for I was raised on horseback in a miserable crumbling estate on the marshes of the Guadalquiver. I can do anything your fine royal princess of the Tainos can!”

Chapter Fifteen

      
Magdalena quickly was compelled to eat her words— and a few other items even more difficult to choke down. There was indeed a great feast that evening in honor of the admiral's
adelantado.
All the highest ranking nobility of the vast village met at the long, high-roofed
bohio
belonging to Guacanagari.

Magdalena, having brought little clothing, was at a loss as they dressed for the occasion. She watched Aaron don a scanty loincloth and wrap an intricately wrought girdle about his slim hips. The workmanship was beautiful, she grudgingly admitted to herself. The fine cotton threads were worked with colorful shells, beads, and gold jewelry.

      
When he looked up and caught her observing the girdle, he flushed beneath his bronzed skin and said gruffly, “Aliyah made this for me as a gift. I must wear it for ceremonial occasions.” With that he casually selected several brilliant red parrot feathers and worked them artfully into his hair.
 

      
“You look like a yellow-haired Taino,” she said accusingly. “Would you truly turn your back on civilization and join these people?”

      
His eyes met hers with an icy blue stare. “I did not turn my back on civilization until it turned on me. My whole family is either dead or in exile. Should I love the lofty ideals of European ‘civilization’ for that?”

      
Magdalena forced herself not to flinch beneath the bitter sting of his words. “And for the sins of the fathers, the children shall be punished. You will always see me as the Crossbearer's daughter and hate me for what Bernardo Valdés did.”

      
He did not reply to that, only instructed her, “Get dressed. We will be late. I hear the drums summoning the honored guests.”

      
“I have naught but a white linen under-tunic and a loose brown velvet gown.”

      
He scoffed aloud. “God's bones! Velvet in this heat. You are more foolish than those soldiers behind the stockades who are sweating in their leather armor. Wear the under-tunic alone. Twill serve.”

      
Recalling her humiliating introduction to the admiral when she dressed so scandalously on the plaza at Ysabel, she flushed. “In Seville I would be thought a woman of the streets to go dressed in such a fashion.”

      
“Had you stayed in Seville, this all would have been spared you,” he replied without the slightest sympathy.

      
By the time Aaron and Magdalena arrived at the
bohio
of Guacanagari, she felt her heart hammering within her breast.
Tis a miracle no one can see it vibrate through this sheer cloth!
she thought with mortification as she followed Aaron into the large, crowded room. Guacanagari reclined on a low wooden couch which was elaborately carved and covered with soft cotton cushions. Several other men of obvious rank had similar seats, as did a number of women.

      
As guest of honor, Bartolome was seated at Guacanagari's right hand and Luis Torres just behind him. While Aaron led her to a couch set aside for them, Magdalena felt the hot, hateful glare from a pair of narrowed obsidian eyes, glowing like coals. Instinctively, she knew the woman was Aliyah. Magdalena's heart sank as she surreptitiously studied her rival's flowing ebony hair draped across her body like black satin. She wore brilliant yellow feathers worked all through her hair and a heavy tangle of beads about her throat. Her-only concession to modesty was the long skirt woven cunningly of native grasses that clung to her hips and fell to midcalf. Her skin was a dusky golden hue, no darker than Aaron's. Her breasts were large and milk-filled, but otherwise she was marvelously recovered from birthing a child a scant three days ago. She was lushly curved, yet her belly was as flat as any virgin's.

      
She has borne Aaron's child and suckles it.
Magdalena felt faint as she forced herself to remain calm and recline on the couch as if this were an everyday occurrence. She met Aliyah's fiery glare boldly.
I will not cower. I am his wife!

      
Aliyah's face was round, the planes of it austere and handsome rather than pretty. Her nose was broad and slightly flat but small, her lips pouty and generous. Her eyes were her most arresting feature—so dark a brown they looked night black. Cat-green eyes returned the killing stare. Magdalena forced herself to smooth her linen tunic out and then casually, possessively, glide her hand up to Aaron's shoulder. ‘‘Small wonder she is taken with you. 'Tis your yellow hair she covets. All the feathers she sports in hers must have made bald half the parrots on Española, ” she said snidely.

      
He chuckled without mirth. “Never fear. We will doubtless have them served up as one course in our feast.”

      
“Parrots? They eat parrots?” She hoped her voice did not break.

      
He leaned near her and said quietly, “Do not disgrace me. Whatever food is placed before you is a special tribute given first to Guacanagari and shared only by those of highest rank. There will be dogs, iguanas, and
hutias
roasted...then other things. You must sample all of them as if you were at a banquet with the queen.” His eyes challenged her as he threw back her words. “You told me to do my worst. This feast is the pleasant part. Enjoy tonight, Magdalena—if you have the courage.”