Return to Paradise (Torres Family Saga) (2 page)

      
The boat had finally been turned, catching a strong current that drew them nearer the beaches. If only they could get past the jagged rocks jutting out like the enormous gray fingers of Poseidon.

      
Benjamin prayed for deliverance, not only from the sea and the rocks, but from the Imperial Army as well. In his medical books were inscriptions written in the Ladino dialect of the Sephardim, the Jews expelled from Spain by King Carlos' grandparents in 1492. He fervently hoped these soldiers were as illiterate as the general lot, not educated as his father Aaron.

      
The rocks loomed nearer, then the boat was literally pitched past them by a giant wave, one boatswain was thrown into the frothing waters, as were several of the gromets. Benjamin held tightly to his precious medical gear as another powerful wave crashed against him. Then all went black...

* * * *

      
He awakened with a splitting headache, made worse by the insistent shaking being given his bruised body. A small thin man with a brushy red beard was attempting to awaken him, jabbering rapidly in some dialect that Benjamin could not understand. Should he attempt Castilian or Provencal? Listening to the words over the dazed pounding in his head, Torres decided the language was some form of German. The man was dressed in the coarse woolen hose and quilted armor of a foot soldier, probably an artilleryman. Benjamin Torres was a guest of the Imperial Army of the Emperor Carlos V. He chose Castilian. “Where are we? Have any of the other men shipwrecked with me been saved?”

      
The little man replied in a badly mangled version of that language. “A few, yes,” he replied holding up three fingers. “They no broken. They say you doctor. We have wounded. You come? Help?”

      
“My bags—they had instruments, medicines—were they lost?” Benjamin asked as he sat up and looked around. He was sheltered in a crude tent of oiled skins, lying on a lumpy pallet of moldy-smelling damp wool, probably lice infested. After a rapid inventory of his extremities, he decided to attempt standing up, as it seemed he was not seriously injured.

      
Before the small German could answer his questions, another man shoved open the tent flap, bringing with him the harsh salt tang of ocean wind. “Your bags, physician, if so you be,” the thickset older soldier said, handing Benjamin his precious belongings. He had the dark eyes and rounded face of an Argonese and spoke far clearer Castilian.

      
Benjamin accepted his satchels, grateful they were intact. “Yes, I am a physician. Who requires care? Take me to them.”

      
“General Pescara's best field officer is the first you must see. Don Francisco says he has taken some shot in his side and the bleeding is fierce,” the grizzled veteran replied as he led the younger man from the tent.

      
The beaches were littered with crude lean-tos and other shelters. Campfires flickered in the dim gray light of dawn. The sea was once again glassy calm, as if the previous night's storm had never occurred. Benjamin treaded his way past the rough men huddled around their fires, breaking their fast with meager rations of hard biscuits and watered sour wine. His stomach growled but he ignored it. Burly, blond Lutherans from the Baltic Sea sat beside uneasy black-haired Sicilians. Fair-skinned Castilian hidalgos haughtily ignored both Imperial allies as they ate.

      
“Where are we?” Torres asked his guide.

      
“Look you up the coast,” the Spanish soldier replied. “Beyond the low hills lies the great seaport of Marseilles. We have battered and scarred its stone walls with our cannon, yet the city remains secure as long as supplies come to her from the sea,” he added bitterly.

      
Benjamin realized that if the Imperial troops learned his was one such supply ship sent out through neutral Genoa, his life would be forfeit. He made no reply. Worse yet, his family lay within the walls of the besieged city. They were doubtless frantic with worry for him, as he was for them. “My ship was bound for Malaga. We were indeed blown far off course,” he said grimly.
So near, yet so far from deliverance.

      
“Where is this commander of yours? I see many men who could use my care,” he finally felt bold to ask as they walked up the gentle slope of a hillside toward a small wooden hut with several guards in front of it. The hard-looking Spaniards parted as the Argonese led the physician inside.

      
Benjamin let his eyes adjust to the dim light as he heard fluent cursing in Castilian. Recalling some of his father's more remarkable oaths, he decided the commander must be a native of Seville to have acquired the same unique idiom. “Bring a lighted torch,” Benjamin ordered. “I can see naught.” As he approached the low pallet he saw the man lying on it, a large red ooze soaking through his heavy tunic. His armor had been removed and the injury bound crudely. The man lay still, his breathing labored, his face turned away from Benjamin.

      
Some subconscious instinct made Torres pause before he opened his bag with a loud click of the latch. The man was swarthy as the Argonese, perhaps more so, yet his features—slim, straight nose, high forehead and bold jawline—were classically chiseled. And disturbingly familiar.

      
The Argonese, who obviously had never before seen Pescara's favorite young officer, now stared in gape-jawed amazement, first down at the wounded soldier, then up at the physician kneeling over him. Just then the wounded man let out another oath and his eyes snapped open.

      
Two identical pairs of brilliant blue eyes fastened each on the other. “Like unto a mirror held up to me, bathed in light...while I am caste in darkness,” Rodrigo said in a rasping voice.

      
The man lying before Benjamin had
his
face, the full arched eyebrows and wide sensuous lips, the square jaw with its cleft chin, but above all the eyes, bright blue Torres eyes!

      
“You are golden and I am black. Think you it signifies our morals...or our fates?” Rigo asked, stifling a wince of pain as Benjamin began to remove the bloody bandage with trembling hands.

      
“I know not your morals nor can I read our fates, but I do know your name.” Benjamin felt the injured man tense as those unsettling light eyes in that dark face searched his own expression silently. “You are Navaro Torres, my brother!”

Chapter One

      
The wounded man let out an oath and grabbed Benjamin's jerkin with surprising strength. “Navaro?” he rasped. “Why do you call me that?”

      
“Twas the name your mother gave you,” Benjamin replied.

      
“I can scarce believe our sire would speak of his by-blows to his lady wife or legitimate son.”

      
“You are wrong,” Benjamin said as calmly as he could, sensing the bitterness in the half-caste mercenary whose hold on him loosened involuntarily when the physician began to probe his wound. It was a long, ugly tear, doubtless from the jagged scrap metals used by the French artillery.
Please, God, do not let him die ere Papa can be reunited with him,
he prayed silently.

      
As he rummaged through his bag for clean linen, the physician continued, “Our father searched for you from the day you vanished from Española. We always believed you were sent to a far away Taino village. Your uncle Guacanagari sent emissaries across the island, even to Cuba and all the lesser outlying islands as well.”

      
Benjamin could see the cynical disbelief etched on his brother's face in spite of the ravaging pain Navaro endured so stoically. He probed the wound, extracting a small piece of iron.

      
“You called me Navaro. Is that my savage name? Tis not Castilian.”

      
“It is the Taino name given you by your mother—and Taino people are not savages. They possess more honor and dignity than most Castilian gentlemen I have met,” Benjamin replied, taking another jagged bit of metal from the open wound. “You withstand pain as if well used to such. How long have you been a soldier?”

      
“I was first blooded in my eleventh year,” he replied with an oath as Benjamin probed further. Dismissing the pain he continued, “You speak of these Indians as if you lived among them. Does my mother yet live?”

      
The physician's bright blue eyes locked on his face for a moment. “I am sorry. She died when you were but a few months old, in an uprising in Xaragua. That is a southwestern province of Española. Aliyah was wedded to a famous warchief and herself the sister of Guacanagari, the most honored of all
caciques
. You are descended from royalty,” Benjamin said, measuring Navaro's reaction.

      
That same cynically harsh smile slashed across his face once more, then changed to a grimace of pain. His vision grew fuzzy and he fought the loss of consciousness. “Taino,” he murmured, as if trying out the word on his tongue and finding it bitter.

      
“Your accent is Sevilliard. How came you to live there?” Benjamin asked, wanting to avoid further questions that would upset his brother. Obviously he had suffered much for his Indian blood.

      
“I was raised in Seville from my earliest memory, by a good family. Ysabel and Pedro de Las Casas had little in material goods, but they were kind to me, as was my foster brother, Bartolome. Twas not until I was older, a child playing in the streets, that I learned what my heathen blood meant. Only our unknown sire's blue eyes kept me from being sold into slavery, as were all the other primitives from the Indies.”

      
Benjamin wanted to laugh at the bitter quirk of fate that had returned his brother to the place from which their father had been banished. “Our father is from Seville.”

      
“Tis a large city. Little surprise that I never encountered any of your house. I resided in a poor neighborhood. You, Physician, look to be from more prosperous quarters.”

      
“We have no family left in Seville. My parents came to the Indies with the Colons. I was sent to Padua in the State of Venice to study medicine. Soon we will return home. Españöla is truly paradise, Navaro. Wait until you see it,” Benjamin said, recalling the lush Caribbean of his childhood.

      
“Do not be so certain I will choose to go with you. And my name is Rigo. Rodrigo de Las Casas, a captain in General Pescara's Imperial Army.”

      
As Benjamin pressed linens to the cleansed wound to staunch the bleeding, his patient finally lost consciousness. The physician swore as he saw red seeping through the compresses. He applied more pressure and briskly instructed the Argonese soldier to tear some of the excess linens in his satchel for bindings. When his helper proved slow and clumsy, Benjamin impatiently took over and quickly tore off several lengths with which to tightly bind the compress to the injury by wrapping it about Navaro's waist. Rigo, he corrected himself. Rigo de Las Casas, raised a Spanish Christian. What will be his reaction when he learns his grandparents were burned by the Inquisition as relapsed Judaizers? Benjamin thought grimly.

      
“What kind of surgeon are you?” the Argonese asked querulously. “You have not poulticed the wound with cow dung or feathers. Will you not have my men bring boiling oil to cauterize it?”

      
Benjamin sighed impatiently, “I have been trained by the finest physicians and surgeons anywhere—at the University of Padua. Placing filthy poultices on open wounds only causes putrefaction, which does not promote healing. As to cauterizing by using boiling oil, it kills more men than it saves. He is my brother; I will not let him die.”

      
“I am most relieved to hear that, as I prize my captain highly,” a cultured voice with a Neapolitan accent interrupted smoothly. “Fernando Francisco de Avalos, Marques de Pescara, at your service, Physician.”

      
Benjamin turned to inspect a small, well-built man dressed in battle armor. Behind him an aide held his headpiece and gauntlets. Pescara's keen black eyes, set in a harsh, angular face, studied him intently, then moved to his unconscious officer.

      
“Your captain is gravely injured. Have you no better place for him than this filthy sty?” Benjamin asked.

      
“After a month of fruitless siege in which the French are far better supplied than the Imperial Army, we count ourselves fortunate to find any shelter from heaven's inclemency,” Pescara replied bitterly. “Rigo and I have both slept in the open since this folly was begun by our illustrious Count of Provence, the Due de Bourbon.”

      
“Then you will lift the siege?” Benjamin asked hopefully. If he could but get Rigo into Marseilles, to their uncle's home, his chances of survival would be far greater.

      
Pescara shrugged. “I am done with feckless carnage. There is no profit in it. Whether Bourbon will agree, we shall see. In any case, there is no safe town where we can take him within a day's journey.” The marques looked at the younger man with a shrewdly assessing gaze. “What means this amazing resemblance between you and Rigo?”

      
“He is my brother,” Benjamin replied simply, debating how much it would be safe to reveal to this Spanish-Italian nobleman.

      
“Aye. That is plain enough. Yet I warrant you did not have the same mother. Rigo was born in the New World of a cast-off heathen mistress. You have the look of pure blood about you.”

      
Benjamin fought the urge to laugh at the grim irony. Purity of blood—in a Spanish Jew! “My father's family is from Seville, but he and my mother live on Española. I and my younger brothers and sisters were born in the New World. I would return your captain to his birthright. But first I must save his life. How much do you value him?”