Recruits (Keeper of the Water Book 2) (30 page)

“Ugh,” I groan uncontrollably, wishing I hadn’t allowed jealousy to get the better of me.

John frowns and tries to slide closer to me on the bench but I hold up a hand to stop him.

“It was more than 500 years ago. In those days, you didn’t deny
any
request from a queen unless you wanted to find your neck on the chopping block,” John says. “Anyway, my secret tryst with the queen… let’s just say it went well. Isabella had her own secret stash of resources so without the king knowing, she supplied me with several ships and hundreds of soldiers. Along with the two troops I originally told you were my uncles, we returned to the small Greek island where the Amazons lived. I wanted to take back my old ship the Amazons forced me to abandon but it was gone. I hoped some locals had taken it but didn’t have a good feeling. My bigger army marched across the island and into the mountains but found the women warriors gone. I located the same small spring but the water wasn’t the same bright blue as when I saw it last.

“Still, my two troops and I drank thirstily from it while the rest of the soldiers looked on like we were crazy.
How do we know if it worked? If we’re invincible?
one of my troops asked. The three of us did not
feel
any different and weren’t sure if anything happened. One of my
uncles
had another soldier drink from the spring and then promptly stabbed him. The soldier looked shocked and collapsed in a pool of blood. We tried to feed him more water but it was worthless and he soon died.

“The rest of the soldiers looked on in shock as we kneeled over the dead man. None of them was told exactly what we were seeking in these mountains, only that we worked on behalf of the queen. We avoided a mutiny and proceeded to question the locals about where the women went. I returned to the village downstream but wasn’t met with the same amount of hospitality as last time. Many of the village elders had died over the last few months, not long after the women were spotted leaving in the middle of the night.
Soon after you show up here and bother them,
one of the Greek women yelled at us, unafraid of the weapons we possessed. My soldiers asked if I wanted them to burn the village to the ground but I just shook my head and waved them on, wanting to do no further harm to the villagers.

“For several days, we searched for any clues. Very few islanders noticed the women departing and those that did said they moved like spirits. I was starting to dread that the water was gone forever. But on the day we began boarding the ships to leave, a small boy approached me and said he saw the ship full of women departing months earlier. He pointed in the direction where they sailed off and watched them disappear into the distance. It wasn’t much to go on but there was still a spark of light in the search for eternal life.

“It was pointless for all of us to head in that direction so I gave my
uncles
one of the ships and a few dozen men and sent them to follow the trail. The rest of us returned to Spain, where Queen Isabella was disappointed to hear of the journey’s failure. But she was still glad to see me. During the months of waiting that followed, the queen sneaked me into the castle on many occasions for… romantic encounters.”

“Classy,” I say.

“Trust me, I didn’t like seeing her any more than you do,” John says.

“I find
that
hard to believe,” I counter.

“I’m not kidding,” he says. “Sure, I was attracted at first to her power and desire for me but that meant nothing to me without the water. My biggest worry was that the king would find out about the affair before my two troops returned with news of the Amazons’ whereabouts. Isabella always sent that same first guard to find me and I was constantly on the lookout for him, constantly paranoid that he would show up at any moment and drag me to the castle. I became a bit of an expert on avoiding him but I couldn’t hide forever and had to
visit
the queen more often than I wanted.

“Months passed and I started to believe that my soldiers would never come back, would never be able to pick up the Amazons’ trail. I began making plans to leave Spain altogether. I didn’t want to press my luck too far and have the king hear about my affair with his wife.”

“Running away seems cowardly to me,” I say. “You could’ve just ended the relationship.”

This time, it’s John’s turn to raise an eyebrow at me.

“Have you
met
Cassie before? She’s not big into the whole ‘taking no for an answer’ thing,” John explains. “And it was even worse when she was a queen. She became more obsessed with me over time, though it wasn’t
purely
a physical attraction. She spent hours asking about my life, where I’d been and where I wanted to go. The longer our affair lasted, the more she complained about her husband, about how their marriage was souring to the point where she was afraid of him replacing her – and thus removing her head from her body. She became more emotionally unstable and I had to be careful to avoid turning her wrath in my direction.

“One day, I asked her,
Why don’t you spend less time with me and more with the king? Maybe the two of you could rekindle your romance if –
that’s as far as I got before she stopped me. Her face skewed in anger and she told me I was right, that maybe she should start talking to her husband more, that maybe she would start with the details of our secret relationship. It was the situation I feared most so I tried to reason with her.
You would end up on the gallows beside me if he ever found out,
I argued. But she didn’t care and said she’d rather die than live without me.”

I snort. “Apparently some things never change – she’s
always
had a flair for the dramatic.”

John nods. “I quickly apologized and told her I would rather hang than see her reconcile with the king. She was suspicious at first but I was persuasive in
other
ways. After I satisfied her that we were still ‘happily in love,’ I promptly left the castle and packed my belongings. I spotted Isabella’s guard watching me and could not risk an escape until nightfall. I didn’t know where I would go but
anywhere
was better than looking over my shoulder for the king’s guard – or worse, the queen’s. The night was pitch black – no moon in the sky – so it was my best chance to leave. But I barely stepped out of my home when I bumped into a pair of large men I did not recognize in the dark. Figuring the guards had come to kill me, I drew my sword, ready to fight to the bloody end.

“
Ponce, it is us, we have returned,
a familiar voice said. My eyes quickly adjusted to the dark but while I recognized the voice, I did
not
recognize the men. My two troops had returned but they looked little like the men I’d sent on the trail of the warrior women. The two appeared haggard, the hair on their heads and faces long and scraggly, their bodies much thinner and malnourished. Physically, they were in much worse shape than me but mentally they hadn’t cracked, as I was on the verge of doing. They both grinned widely and their voices were filled with excitement.

“I hurried my two troops inside and they immediately noticed my packed bag.
Going somewhere?
they wondered but I told them I was more interested in their story. They sailed in the direction pointed out by the young Greek boy, all the way across the Mediterranean Sea. They followed reports of ship sightings all the way to Portugal but that’s where the trail went cold.
Until we spoke with a drunk old fisherman,
my troops told me. The old drunkard swore he spotted a ship full of beautiful young women sailing west into the great ocean. None of the other Portuguese sailors believed the old drunk. But his story matched what we were looking for, even though the old sailor swore the women must’ve been trying to kill themselves since they sailed west toward the great unknown.

“This news immediately made me think of the Italian explorer from the royal throne room. I abandoned my plans to leave Spain and sought out Christopher Columbus, who still remained in the area. He welcomed me with open arms, especially when he found out that my royal request was also denied. He must’ve thought we shared a common bond because of the ‘evil’ queen; I didn’t bother telling him that Isabella wasn’t quite the adversary for me as she was for him. I tried to convince Columbus to make his proposal for sailing west to the royals one final time.
Why I do this and waste my breath? I go to French royalty next to ask for money. They will no laugh at me like Queen Isabella does,
Columbus told me. But I finally told him that I heard of other explorers trying to steal his idea and this angered him enough to return to Ferdinand and Isabella. Much to the Italian’s surprise, the queen was more receptive the third time and granted his request, obviously because of the plan I formed.

“Columbus urged me to join him on the expedition but Isabella’s only stipulation for granting the Italian’s request was that I remain in Spain. The thought of being stuck near her was repulsive but I didn’t have much choice. My two troops regained their strength and joined Columbus’s voyage, traveling aboard the Nina with the intent of picking up the trail of the women and the water. I watched Columbus and his three ships sail away, wanting nothing more than to be there with them, even if it meant sailing over the edge of the world as some people feared.

“I was still a young man and tried to continue with my life, though my secret meetings with the queen became increasingly intolerable. We met often in that small room near the dungeons but Isabella was growing more careless and had us meet in more public places. A part of me still wonders if she
wanted
the king to catch us. But despite some close calls, our affair remained a secret. I tried living life like normal, tried courting several
available
women, but the queen’s guard doubled as a spy and Isabella found out about everything I was doing. My life was miserable and I felt even more imprisoned since I knew Columbus’s journey could arrive back at any time.

“And then one day not quite a year later, the Nina returned with Columbus proclaiming great success. King Ferdinand was pleased with the spoils from the New World but neither of my soldiers was aboard the Italian’s ship. The voyage’s manifest did not list either of my troops among the deceased but Columbus had no idea what happened to them. I didn’t bother telling him that my two men must’ve picked up on the Amazons’ trail and sneaked away from the rest of the expedition to track them.

“Columbus left for his second trip to the New World only months later and I suggested to Isabella that I should go along. She didn’t like the idea – and even
joked
that I was trying to get away from her – but in the end I convinced her that my troops must have found a lead and I should be there to help. Unfortunately, the five-week trip across the Atlantic was dreadful. By the time we reached the New World, I could not find an opportunity to sneak away from Columbus, nor did I find any clues about the whereabouts of my soldiers
or
the warrior women. The only good part of the journey was the months I spent away from Queen Isabella.

“When we got back to Spain, I hoped to find the queen’s obsession for me dwindled, that maybe she improved her relationship with the king or at the very least found another boy toy with which to amuse herself. But it was just the opposite. Time only fueled her passion for me and she refused to let me leave with Columbus on his third trip. I was back to feeling trapped, not knowing whether to try running away or tell the king myself. By the time Columbus’s third trip returned, I wasn’t very hopeful of hearing any good news… and then I saw one of my troops among the group of sailors.

“I could barely believe it was him, barely believe that I was seeing him again after so many years. He told me that it took them years of traveling along the coast of the New World, during which time they slaughtered many natives while looking for the warrior women. Eventually they discovered the wreckage of our old war ship far north of the area where Columbus’s first voyage landed. They had to steal small boats from natives and hop from island to island until they finally landed on a much bigger landmass. They tracked the women farther into this new land and finally learned of their whereabouts from another nearby native tribe.

“They described the land as very wet and swampy, not the sort of terrain we were accustomed to in Spain. My men extensively explored the land and found it surrounded by water on three sides – an isthmus. The wildlife was unlike anything they’d ever seen either; green beasts with razor-sharp teeth that lived in the swamps and attacked whenever they got too close to the water’s edge. But they eventually discovered the Amazons, who took refuge right in the middle of the most dangerous swampy lands. The women must’ve thought they would be safer in the middle of so much natural protection, that no logical humans would endure such danger to travel within their area of the swamp.

“But my two troops
did
and knew the women well enough to avoid getting too close. Still, they had no doubt of the water’s location and one of them remained behind in the New World to make certain that the women did not leave again. This obviously made me anxious to return to my other soldier, though it couldn’t have come at a worse time. During the few months before he returned, I saw Isabella with diminishing frequency. Rumors began to swirl of her health declining, which gave me mixed emotions. I certainly didn’t want her to die, not just because I needed her resources but also because a part of me
did
feel a degree of emotional attachment for her.