The King's Fifth (4 page)

The sun rose in a cloudless sky, the same as before. We passed a large island without grass or tree or bush. The sun was a leech that sucked the moisture from our flesh.

That night I remember well.

At dusk the Captain gave us a sip of water and each a biscuit. Little water was left in the goatskin, but this he guarded, putting the goatskin between his knees, his sword within reach.

It was quiet and the moon had risen when I heard behind me on the sea a thin, dry sound, like a knife cutting through silk. The sound grew louder and drew abreast of the boat and I saw a dark fin glide past. It curved away into the night, leaving a trail of phosphorescence. Another fin cut through the water and a third.

Shortly thereafter, Lunes crawled to where I lay in the bow. He put his mouth close to my ear. "The Captain sleeps," he whispered. "I will take his sword and the goatskin. Then we row to the shore. It is near. Listen. Hear the surf?"

"The boat would founder," I said. "We would lose everything."

"You wish to die here?"

"Better this than the other."

Lunes leaned across the rail and put his hand in the water. He rose to his knees and said something I could not hear. Again he leaned over the rail and before I could stop him he had slipped into the sea and was swimming slowly away from the boat.

I called to Mendoza, but he was already awake.

"Let him go," he said. "His kind we do not need."

I watched Lunes swim down the moon's path, a spot that grew small and was lost at last from view. Once more I heard the sound of knives cutting through silk.

I lay down and closed my eyes but did not sleep. Time passed, perhaps an hour. There was movement in the stern of the longboat. It was Mendoza. He held the goatskin above his head and was drinking.

He put down the goatskin. "Do you sleep, conceiver of maps?" he said.

I did not answer, not wanting him to know that I had seen.

"You are awake," he said. "I have heard before the sounds you make while sleeping. You wonder why I drink the water and fail to share it with you."

I remained silent. I could not have spoken had I wished to.

"You do not ask the question of me," he said. "But I will tell you. By drinking I save my own life and thus shall you save yours. For without me, you perish. Furthermore, I have consumed all the water, only a mouthful, but the last. This is for you to know. Not Zuñiga. Not Roa. This is a secret between us."

It is true, I thought as I lay there in the bow of the longboat. Only he has kept us alive, through the storm and the terrible days since. Without him the boat would have foundered, or we would have gone mad, like Lunes, or fought among ourselves, but somehow perished.

As I listened to him in silence, the suspicion crossed my mind that he was thinking only of himself, of saving his own life, not ours. It was a treacherous act, which I, who had broken my pledge to Admiral Alarcón would not have done. Or so I told myself, not knowing that the dream of gold can bend the soul and even destroy it, unaware that one day it would do the same to me.

Mendoza fell silent. The boat drifted northward on a slow tide. Everything about us was silver, moon-bright and shimmering.

During the night the sea changed. It was now the color of parchment, with dark streaks running through and fronds of a weedlike plant floating. The cliffs had gone and there were low dunes instead, rolling away to the east. Mendoza reset the ragged sail and changed course toward them. There was no wind, so he picked up the oar and began to row, the rest of us too weak to help.

We moved slowly across the flat water, which soon glittered like a burnished shield. None of us thought that he would ever reach the land. One by one, except for Captain Mendoza, we prayed aloud to San Nicolas of Mira and committed ourselves to God.

Clouds came up in the south. Again they reared themselves and formed castles and battlements, but no one spoke of them.

Of a sudden Roa staggered to his feet. He was very fat and it took him a while to do so. "I die of thirst," he cried. "There is fire in my throat."

Crouching, he moved toward Mendoza, who held the empty goatskin in his lap.

"We drink at noon," Mendoza said. He stopped rowing and grasped his sword. "At noon, only."

Roa glanced at the sword. He took a step backward, muttering, then threw himself across the rail and began to claw the water. I tried to pull him back but he wrestled free. With a lunge he was out of the boat, to flounder in the sea, drinking mouthfuls of sea water from cupped hands.

He stopped drinking. He looked up at me and a strange light came into his eyes.

"Water," he cried. "Fresh water!"

It was a hoarse, unearthly cry that rang in my ears, the cry of a man demented.

Mendoza held out the oar and shouted for him to take it. Roa did not heed the command. He rolled over on his back and let the sea water pour into his mouth. He made wild, choking sounds, flailing his arms. Then he
grew quiet and paddled to the boat and asked for his helmet.

I found the helmet and leaned over the rail, ready to grasp him. As I handed it down, Roa eluded me. Shouting a jumble of words, he dipped the helmet half-full and held it up. Mendoza took the helmet, while I managed to seize Roa's outstretched arm.

"Drink!" Roa cried.

Mendoza put the rim of the morion to his lips, for no other reason, I am sure, than to humor him. The next instant the Captain threw back his head and let the water pour over his face. He laughed and took a drink and laughed again. He handed me the morion. With one leap he was in the sea, rolling over and over like a dolphin.

The water was cool to my lips, as fresh as if it had come from a deep well in the earth. I gulped it again. Suddenly I remembered a note from Ulloa's chart, which said that at the mouth of the River of Good Guidance, where the river emptied into Cortés' Sea, in that place there existed a small lake of fresh water.

Since dawn when I first saw that the sea had changed color, we had been drifting on this lake. And by some great good fortune, by a miracle, during the time when the tide was at ebb. For at high tide, so Ulloa had noted, the sea raced into the river mouth and the lake of sweet water disappeared.

Yes, through a miracle, we were floating at the mouth of the very river, upon the very lake of sweet water, which Admiral Ulloa had discovered.

The Fortress of San Juan de Ulúa
Vera Cruz, in New Spain
The twenty-fourth day of September
The year of our Lord's birth, 1541

T
HE JAILER HAS FINISHED
his nightly rounds and I can hear the clanking of keys as he climbs the stairs. He has brought my supper, but of more importance, a new sheaf of paper. While my memory is still fresh I can write down everything that has happened to me this day, my seventh day in prison, the day before my trial begins.

About mid-morning Don Felipe comes to my cell. "The Royal Audiencia has appointed counsel to defend you," he says. "The gentleman is waiting above." He hands me a comb and a sharp razor. "You cannot go to meet him looking like a picker of rags."

As I start to shave myself, Don Felipe says, "When you talk with the counsel, guard what you say. His concern for your guilt or innocence is small. His real concern lies elsewhere. In the treasure. About that, everything he can pry from you he will pry. So speak little,
señor,
and this with caution. Likewise, remember that a trial before the Audiencia is not like other trials you may know about. The Audiencia makes its own rules. If you remember this, it will save you confusion."

We climb the stairs together, Don Felipe's two Indians at our heels. After twelve steps we come to a broad landing and a sentry box. In the doorway a man with a pointed beard leans on a musket. As I follow Don Felipe across the landing, I hear the sound of voices beneath me. They come from a row of narrow, iron-barred openings cut into the stone.

"Prisoners," Don Felipe says. "Their food is let down by rope. We have other cells, even smaller, so small that a man can crouch but cannot stand. Others that are mere holes in the sea-wall, half-flooded at high tide. And the large hole. In this one a dozen men stand with their arms through rings in the wall, while the tide creeps up to their chins, twice each day."

In his voice there is a tone of pride, an ominous tone as well. "In all of them," he says, "men die in a few weeks or go insane. So you see,
caballero,
how truly fortunate you are."

At the end of the landing is a second flight of twelve stairs and this leads to a broad esplanade. Beyond a stretch of water are the red roofs of the City of the True Cross. Everything I behold is new to me, for I was brought to the fortress at night.

We cross the esplanade to a stone tower and Don Felipe leads the way into a small, dingy room where a young man is seated. He is scarcely older than I am, perhaps twenty or twenty-one. His name is Pablo Gamboa and he wears a clean but threadbare doublet, trimmed with ragged lace at cuffs and throat. Both his age and his poverty discomfort me.

In a thin, undernourished voice, after a polite greeting, he says, "To the charge of defrauding his Majesty, the King, do you wish to plead guilty or not guilty?"

"Guilty," I answer.

This takes him aback. His eyes, which are large and hungry, grow larger. "Then you did defraud the King of his rightful share of treasure, which you have in your possession, and so wish to plead?"

"The treasure is not in my possession."

"Where is it?" the counsel asks.

"In the land of the Seven Cities," I reply, remembering Don Felipe's admonition.

"If this is the case," he says, "the matter is simple. Give the King his royal share of this treasure and I shall ask clemency for you."

"The treasure is hidden," I answer. "Forever."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that it is hidden in a secret place and hidden there where no man will ever find it."

"Then you do not wish to give the King his share?"

"No."

Counsel Gamboa looks at his fingers, which are thin and sallow, and after a moment at me. He seems to think I am mad.

"Peculiar," he mumbles. "How do I present your case to the Royal Audiencia? And ask clemency for one who deliberately defies the King?"

"I do not defy the King. I refuse to tell where the gold is hidden. That is all."

"For what reason?"

"For a reason that is my own. Which can be of no interest to the King or to the Royal Audiencia."

Counsel Gamboa shakes his head. Now it is clear he thinks that he is dealing with a madman. He asks me if I am aware of the severe penalties for the crime I have committed. When I answer that I am, he again shakes his head and escorts me to the door, saying that he will give my case his closest attention.

While we walk back to my cell, Don Felipe, who has listened outside the door, commends me for not betraying the gold's whereabouts. But we are no sooner in the cell with the iron door closed than he turns a different face.

"The map," he says, "How does it proceed?"

"Slowly. In my mind, only."

"In your mind?" He takes two steps toward me. "You were in the land of Cíbola. There you found a great treasure and there you hid it. Since you are a cartographer you would have made careful notes. The degrees of latitude, certain features of the landscape—rocks, streams, hills, mountains—concerning this hiding place. These notes you must have."

"I have notes on the country. But not of the hiding place. They are in Mexico City."

"Where?" Don Felipe picks up the candle and holds it close to my face, as if it will help him to tell whether or not I speak the truth. "Where in the City of Mexico?"

"Near the Zócolo," I answer. "A
fonda
called The Three Brothers. I left them there with the proprietor the day I was brought to Vera Cruz."

Don Felipe puts down the candle.

"I send a messenger to this inn," he says. "Within six days or less he will return. If he returns without the notes, then,
señor,
you shall spend the rest of your days in a hole. First in one where we let down food on a rope. Then, if you are still alive, in the deep one where the tide flows in and out."

"The notes might have been stolen," I protest. "Or lost. The Three Brothers is not the safest place in the City of Mexico."

"Stolen? Lost? Could a thief tell from the notes where the gold is hidden? Could anyone tell?"

"No. They can be read by me only."

"Excellent! Now pray. Pray that the notes remain safe."

He walks to the door and opens it, but then changes his mind and closes it again. He goes to a corner of the cell and there on his knees claws loose a stone. Below it is a second stone, a third, beneath the three an opening large enough to conceal a small bundle.

"Use this," he says, putting back the stones, "to hide the map you will make. And also the journal you keep."

I do not tell him that already I have found an opening in the wall, better than the one in the floor, where I now hide the journal.

The same star shines beyond the window. Its name I should know, but do not. The sea is calm. Far below me I hear the moans of some poor wretch. Now, before my trial begins tomorrow, I can write of our meeting with Zia and Father Francisco, of the forgotten city of Chichilticale, and the old man's prophetic curse.